The Excellent Lombards(59)

“That was epic,” Philip said on the way out.

“That’s how it is around here,” Dolly said drily.

My father, I didn’t explain to them, would eventually win; he would win. He had to. He would win because he was right in principle. The whole world could not be built upon, the whole earth cement. It might take time but he would prevail. In fact, it wasn’t until the recession of 2008 that no new subdivisions were proposed. In that spring the building of prospective homes on those plats that had been approved was suspended. Every single plan on hold for lack of money. Even though my father had done nothing to cause the recession except privately hold to his convictions about farmland, nonetheless, Jim Lombard’s deepest dream, his dream for zero growth, of course had come true.





20.





The Fears of MF Lombard,

Part One




I was outwardly more or less perfectly well adjusted, as far as I could tell, although sullen when it was necessary, but MF Lombard—the name I now used—MF in her inner sanctum was generally, more or less, terrified. The towers had come down, for one, when we’d been in school, the entire day devoted to CNN, the planes piercing the buildings, the office workers, those specks, falling through the sky, the buildings collapsing, over and over again. But more frightening than the footage itself was the shock of our teachers, some of them weeping as they watched, and also how silent, at first, the bad students were, the troublemakers, some of them with their heads down on their desks, as if even they couldn’t find a prank like that useful to look at.

At lunch I found William, I needed to be with William. He now wore good-boy clothing, Oxford shirts tucked in, his oversize pants with pockets for guns a fashion statement of the past. I didn’t usually see him much during the school hours but I had the feeling he was waiting for me, sitting on a bench by himself outside the library. I sat next to him, the two of us not saying anything. We were embarrassed. We didn’t know where to start. Everyone would understand our sitting together and yet we ourselves, between the two of us, didn’t know what to say. After a minute, however, I began to think that I did have something to tell him. I couldn’t explain it even though the feeling was hard in me, the tough little ball gathering speed out in the distance, within the space of my mind, the light of reason: which was, I was right, MF Lombard had been correct that William should not go far away to college. Because, this is what happened, strangers evidently from the land of Stephen Lombard on the bluest, softest autumn day perpetrating evil. Best to stay put, stay close to what was near and dear.

Amanda was already preparing to go to Germany with AFS in the next year, Dolly so excited for that adventure. And Adam was applying to colleges in California, an agricultural state with no water.

“Do you think we could go home?” I finally said to William.

“I have a calc test.”

“We’re just going to be watching the news for the rest of the day.”

“We’ve been attacked,” he said, needlessly.

William’s saying so, though, made the event real.

“What if our school is next?” I had to wonder.

“They only hit symbols of power,” he muttered.

The bell rang and we were required to move.

In the next few days there was talk of war, of trying to fight the group, the country, whatever it was, that had caught the world’s attention, and it was that idea that frightened me most. At the end of the week, on Friday, I was in the back room of the sheep shed, a place I often went for the purpose of crying. The floor was thick with hay, the room warm and close with dung and rumination. The spring lambs came to see MF with her head down, arms hugging knees, Spinky and Sue bravely approaching, nibbling at human hair. So then I could hold them close, clasping their heads to my cheek, my tears wetting their soft white noses. Sometimes I didn’t even know quite why I was crying but on that day I was scared about retribution, about William having to march off to the Middle East, and I even cried for Stephen Lombard, because maybe he’d be blown up somewhere along the line.

I’d never known May Hill to come around the sheep shed, and afterward I did remember that she had a pail in her hand, and that she was probably going to give her compost to the ewes. She was all at once looking in through the open windows. “What’s the matter with you?” She spoke sternly and yet with curiosity. It was, it seemed, a real question.

I had been distantly in her company in the summers, across the field making hay, and sometimes she walked by the barn when I was working, but I hadn’t been face-to-face with her in years, not since my capture. It was possible in the compound, if you were careful about your route, not to bump into someone like May Hill. And since we never celebrated any holiday with the Volta family there was no danger of seeing her around a Christmas tree. But now she’d come upon me at the peak of my frenzy. What was the matter with me? A good question. Certainly I was crying about how the world in the space of one Tuesday morning had completely changed. Maybe, however, there were also other lurking sorrows that had piggybacked on the big one. For instance, Philip with his springy walk and his blond curls and his good cheer working so ably alongside my father, his infiltration going on year after year. I could hardly remember when he hadn’t been with us. It was if my father had adopted him, as if he were now the first son. Philip, the second coming. And, additionally, there were the college materials, the sheer mass of the mailings in our PO box for William, every day appeals from institutions that wanted him.