Spencerville

Keith gathered deadfall from around the trees, sawed and split it into firewood, and stacked the wood near the back door. He spent two days mending fences and began the process of cleaning out the toolshed and barn. He was in good shape, but there was something uniquely exhausting about farm work, and he remembered days as a boy when he barely had the energy to meet his friends after dinner. His father had done this for fifty years, and the old man deserved to sit on his patio in Florida and stare at his orange tree. He didn't fault his brother for not wanting to continue the hundred-and-fifty-year tradition of backbreaking labor for very little money, and certainly he didn't fault himself or his sister. Yet, it would have been nice if an Uncle Ned type had continued on. At least his father had not sold the land and had kept the farmhouse in the family. Most farmers these days sold out, lock, stock, and barrel, and if they had any regrets, you never heard about it. No one he knew ever returned from Florida, or wherever they went.

In the tool shed, he saw the old anvil sitting on the workbench. Stamped into the anvil was the word Erfurt, and a date, 1817. He recalled that this was the anvil that his great-great-grandfather had brought with him from Germany, had loaded onto a sailing ship, then probably a series of riverboats, and finally a horse-drawn wagon until it came to rest here in the New World. Two hundred pounds of steel, dragged halfway around the globe to a new frontier inhabited by hostile Indians and strange flora and fauna. Surely his ancestors must have had second thoughts about leaving their homes and families, their civilized, settled environment, for a lonely and unforgiving land. But they stayed and built a civilization. Now, however, what Indians and swamp diseases couldn't do, civilization itself had done, and this farm, and others, were abandoned.

As he worked, he was aware that chopping firewood for the winter was a commitment of sorts, though he could give away the firewood, come to his senses, and leave. But for now, he felt good taking care of his parents' farm, his ancestors' bequeathal. His muscles ached in a pleasant way; he was fit, tan, and too tired to indulge himself in urban-type anxieties, or to think about sex. Well, he thought about it but tried not to.

He'd gotten the phone connected and called his parents, brother, and sister to tell them he was home. In Washington, not only was his number unlisted, but the phone company had no record of his name. Here in Spencerville, he'd decided to put his name and number in the book, but he hadn't gotten any calls so far, which was fine.

His mail was forwarded from Washington, but there wasn't anything important, except a few final bills which he could pay now that he'd opened a checking account at the old Farmers and Merchants Bank in town. UPS had delivered his odds and ends, and the boxes sat in the cellar, unopened.

It was interesting, he thought, how fast a complicated life could wind down. No more home fax or telex, no car phone, no office, no secretary, no airplane tickets on his desk, no pile of pink message slips, no monthly status meetings, no briefings to deliver at the White House, no communiques to read, and nothing to decipher except life.

In fact, though he'd finally informed the National Security Council of his whereabouts, he hadn't heard a word from them officially, and hadn't even heard from his Washington friends and colleagues. This reinforced his opinion that his former life was all nonsense anyway, and that the game was for the players only, not the former stars.

As he worked, he reflected on his years with the Defense Department and then the National Security Council, and it occurred to him that Spencerville, as well as the rest of the country, was filled with monuments to the men and women of the armed forces who served and who gave their lives, and there was the monument in Arlington to the unknown soldier who represented all the unidentified dead, and there were parades and special days set aside for the armed forces. But for the dead, disabled, and discharged veterans of the secret war, there were only private memorials in the lobbies or gardens of a few nonpublic buildings. Keith thought it was time to erect a public monument in the Mall, a tribute to the Cold Warriors who served, who got burned-out, whose marriages went to hell, who got shafted in bureaucratic shuffling, and who died, physically, mentally, and sometimes spiritually. The exact nature of this monument escaped him, but sometimes he pictured a huge hole in the middle of the Mall, sort of a vortex, with a perpetual fog rising from the bottom, and if there was any inscription at all, it should read: Dedicated to the Cold Warriors, 1945-1989? Thanks.