Of the Farm [antikvár]

We turned off the Turnpike onto a macadam highway, then off the macadam onto a pink dirt road. We went up sharp little rise and there, on the level crest where Schoelkopf's weathered mailbox stood knee-deep in honeysuckle and poison ivy, its flopped lid like a hat being tipped, my wife first saw the farm. Apprehensively she leaned forward beside me and her son's elbow heavily touched my shoulder from behind. The familiar buildings waited on the far rise, across the concave green meadow. "That's our barn," I said. "My mother finally had them tear down a big overhang for hay she always thought was ugly. The house is beyond. The meadow is ours. His land ends with this line of sumacs." We rattled down the slope of road, eroded to its bones of sandstone, that ushered in our land. "You own on both sides of the road?" Richard asked. He was eleven, and rather precise and aggressive in speech. "Oh sure," I said. "Originally Schoelkopf's farm was part of ours, but my grandfather sold it off before moving to Olinger. Something like forty acres." "How many did that leave?" "Eighty. As far as you can see now, it belongs to the farm. It's probably the biggest piece of open land left this close to Alton." "You have no livestock," Richard said. Though I had told him there was none, his tone was accusatory. "Just some dogs," I said, "and a barn full of swallows, and lots of woodchucks. My mother used to keep chickens before my father died." "What's the point," Richard asked, "of a farm nobody farms?" "You'll have to ask my mother." He was sUent a mo-