Read Online The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford - Free Book Online Page A

stand. Ralph, age five or six, would march up to the counter and somebody—Tommy Benivalle, acned, furiously masturbating high schooler and reserve on the JV wrestling squad—would look gravely down, then slip my son a root beer rock candy on condition he tell no one, since Farmer MacDonald got a “pretty penny” for them. It became Ralph’s first joke. Every penny a pretty penny.
    “He passed.” Meaning ole MacDonald. “Like I said. A few years ago.” Tom Benivalle’s not at ease sharing the past with me. He brushes a speck of phantom road grit off his oxford cloth shirtsleeve. On his breast pocket there’s stitched a tiny colorful pheasant bursting into flight. He buys his shirts from the same catalog I buy mine—minus the pheasant.
    Silence momentarily becalms us while Benivalle refinds the skein of business talk. He is not the bad guy I thought. I could mention my son. He could say he remembered him. “He’s got a daughter up in Freylinghuysen,” he says about the now dead owner. “I approached her about this. She was okay.”
    “You must’ve known her when you were kids.”
    Mike’s still staring at the acreage in his mustard blazer, dreaming conquest dreams. A whole new
it
has bumped up onto his horizon. Lavallette no longer the final
it.
He and Mrs. Mahoney might see eye-to-eye again.
    “Yeah, I sorta did,” Benivalle says scratchily. “He worked at Bell Labs, the old man. My dad had a decorative-pottery place up in Frenchtown. They did some business.” How do I know these natives? I should’ve been an FBI profiler. Sometimes no surprise can be a blessing. I, however, am not the business partner here. My job is to be the spiritual Geiger counter, and see to it Benivalle understands Mr. Mahoney has serious (non-Asian) backers who know a thing or two. I’m sure I’ve done that by now. Thoughts of my son go sparkling away.
    “I’m going to take off,” I say, turning toward Mike, who’s still staring away, dazzled. “I’ve gotta see a man about a horse.”
    Benivalle blinks. “So, then, are you in the horse business?” It’s his first spontaneous utterance to me—besides my name—and it causes him to ravel his brow, turn the corners of his mouth up in a non-smile, touch a finger to the stud in his earlobe and let his eyes examine me.
    I smile back. “It’s just an expression.” Mike unexpectedly turns and looks to me as if I’d spoken his name.
    “I get it,” Benivalle says. He’s ready for me to get going, for it to be just the two of them, so he can start making his spiel to Mike about having himself certified for all that government moolah so they can start moving Urdu speakers down from Gotham and Teaneck. He may think Mike’s a Pakistani. My work here is done, and fast.
             
    M ike and I begin our walk back across the gusty turn-out toward my Suburban. Sweet pungence of leaf-burn swims in the air from the linked back yards across Mullica Road, where a homeowner’s daydreaming against his rake, garden hose at the ready, peering into the cool flames and curling smoke, indifferent to the good-neighbor ordinances he’s breaching, woolgathering over how
things
should most properly
be,
and how they once
had been
when something he can’t exactly remember was the rule of the day and he was young. It could all be put back into working order, he knows, if the Democrats could be kept from boosting the goddamned fucking election that he, because he was on a business trip to Dayton and had jury duty in Pennington the second he got home, somehow forgot to vote in. “Whatever It Takes” should be the battle hymn of the republic.
    “So, I’ll see you later,” Mike says, nose in the breeze as we come to my parked vehicle. He’s feeling tip-top about everything now, even though seeming eager is incautious.
    “I’ll be at the August,” I say. Benivalle has already headed toward his Caddy. He has no inclination for good-byes with strangers. “Gladda meetcha,” I