Chapter 6

ALL MY SUPPOSITIONS ABOUT LIFE in this godforsaken time went topsy when a handsome fellow politely took my hand in his and fixed his owlish eyes on mine. Wordlessly yet explicitly, he probed my spiritual well-being or my sexual preferences, or both and perhaps more. His name was Aram. He was of medium height and build, a tad shorter than I, his well-proportioned body wrapped in confidence with skin the shade of a camel. On that day my heart leapt, so long had it been that a man, apparently untethered, came into view. Now, the memory confuses me. The way I experienced his command of himself and his masculinity, the way my own femininity resurged in those intoxicating days. The way all this seemed to transcend the deprivations of our time as though it could elevate everyone around us. What astonishes me is who we were then. And who we are now.

***

Macy, my friend since childhood, is short and muscular. With the help of an ex-Amish neighbor and a bunch of Latin men and women who showed up from the south, she’s spent the better part of a decade reviving a livestock, vineyard, and market gardening operation on the Ohio River. From clearing and burning brush, planting beds — grapes and pasture — to rehabbing pens, outbuildings and a farmhouse, her work has been legendary. Her farm now supplies vegetables, dairy, chickens, turkey, beef, pork, and fine wines to people along the river.

Our friendship has certainly had its belligerent moments, but overall, we’ve more often found a workable balance between her feisty, social genes and my calmer, introverted ones. Macy needs company. I don’t. She is bisexual. I’m not. Macy’s hands-on. I’m more cerebral. Inexplicably, this oppositional cocktail has made for an enduring friendship.

I’ve been with a couple of rather unsatisfactory blokes, neither of whom were long term. I never wanted them permanently in my bed or even my life. That may have had something to do with the fact that back then I still lived with my dad. But even after I moved out, I continued to cherish my privacy. That and the pitiful dearth of more dashing partners have left me a circumstantially unattached woman on the downslope to thirty.

Macy, on the other hand, was swept a few years ago into the orbit of Mariah Gonzales, a bounteous, exuberant Mexican woman who expanded Macy’s sense of the possible and helped scale up their farming enterprise. Now partners in all senses, Macy and Mariah have become a force to be reckoned with. Their farm, Mama Riah & Company, has not only thrived economically but also has provided employment for about fifty managers, field hands, vintners, poultry attendants, dairy workers, and livestock herders. To know of their success is to have hope in bright new beginnings in these otherwise
drab days.

One resplendent spring day, on my chocolate mare, Karma, I rode down Old 33 with Stefan, my dad, on his russet Morgan, Colonel, passing through a string of abandoned places with names that reek of mold: Shade, Pratt’s Fork, Burlingham, Darwin. We were on our way to visit our friends in Pomerance. Most of the people in Pomerance emigrated from our village of Argolis so every visit turned out to be a reunion. We planned a late afternoon picnic on the river followed by overnight at the home of one of dad’s oldest friends. The sun beamed its warmth on our faces, long pallid from weeks of steel-gray skies. Star-studded dogwoods adorned the edges of the oak-maple forests on either side of the former freeway. Our horses’ spirited gait told me they too felt the revival that always comes with spring.

“Rock Springs, coming up,” shouted dad in the lead. He was smiling, boyishly happy, not his typical shielded self.

“Pomerance here we come.”

We’d made this trip many times in the past several years as the fortunes of Argolis and Pomerance had become intertwined in what appeared to be a reawakening regional economy. New settlers in and around both villages brought new skills and energy, but unfortunately almost no children. Even the little Latin community across the river from the Mama Riah Farm had no children under twelve. It’s stunning that nobody of reproductive age around here has borne a child for almost a decade. Despite all the speculation about how the last pandemic made male survivors sterile, nobody knows what’s really true. Some young men allege it is the women who are barren. My experience is certainly not instructive. I desperately douched after sex every time. The last thing I needed was a kid. But without kids, all the promise of better times is nothing but delusion.

We trotted through the remnants of downtown Pomerance and up the rise past the shuttered courthouse to a stately, though crumbling, Victorian. Hitching our horses to a fencepost, we climbed a steep walk and steps to the porch. A dog woofed.

“Boss! You in there?” Dad called through the screen door.

A white-bearded man with a walking stick and a trailing low-slung dog came to the door. “Yep, I’m still kicking, Stefan. Goldamnit! You’ve got that luscious daughter along too. This calls for a celebration. What the fuck shall we celebrate?”

“How about my sixtieth birthday?”

“Sixty! Shit, Stefan, that must make me at least seventy.”

“Hi Mr. Hays,” I managed to squeak. He gave me an oh-too-long hug and bubbled with enthusiasm about the prospect of a party.

“Gotta get the word out on gossip-dot-net.” The reference escaped me, but on the out breath, Dad shook his head.

…