September Song by William Humphrey Read Free Book Online Page B

it seriously too. If only they knew that he was their masked champion, fighting their fight! Let them raise every objection—the heavier the burden on Janet’s conscience. The courtship of that latter-day John Alden, Pete Jeffers, was being won for him in a town meeting, not by a denial of his future father-in-law’s petition to break up the family farm but by the granting of it. A weapon like a plastic pistol: harmless but scary-looking.
    Throughout the meeting he sat silent. He could not take the floor and say, “I agree with everything you’ve said. Tell it to that daughter of mine.”
    However, not all were against him that evening. There were two factions. Those against him, by far the more numerous of the two, were the ones who were there by virtue of other farmers’ having done what he was asking permission to do, subdivide and develop his land. These were the city people. They had been city people and to the natives they always would be city people. A stranger could have distinguished one side from the other on sight. The city people dressed country casual, the country folks in their city best for the occasion. The city people had moved to the country to escape the city. Now they were like immigrants who passed anti-immigration laws to keep out more like themselves. These new locals would have erected, running about down the middle of Poughkeepsie, a Berlin Wall if they could.
    Those for him were the few remaining holdout farmers. The newcomers wanted to legislate that they go on being farmers and thus preserve for them the charm and tranquillity of the countryside. The farmers didn’t give a damn about the charm and tranquillity of the countryside. They wanted to go on being farmers, although it got harder all the time, and the reason it did was the steady invasion of these outsiders driving up the cost of everything, but be damned if they were going to be told what they could and could not do with their property by a bunch of Johnny-come-latelies from downstate.
    After a period of delay sufficiently long to make it look as if consideration had been given to the opposition before a decision was reached, his application for a zoning variance was approved by the village planning board. Now Janet would come to her senses, marry Pete, and keep the farm in the family. It was not that he disbelieved in the power of love, or the power of the absence of it, it was rather that he could not understand how it could prevail over ten thousand apple trees and three hundred and twenty acres of land that had been her family’s for four generations, she the fifth.
    â€œAll right,” said the real estate agent, humoring the old fellow. “If you insist we’ll list it first as a farm. I can see how for sentimental reasons you might want to try to keep it intact. Been in the family for generations and all that. But it’s a good thing you’ve got that zoning variance up your sleeve because you know as well as I do what’s happening to farm acreage in this area.”
    He winced, as he always did, at the expression “farm acreage.” It made land seem like something divisible into small parcels.
    â€œAnd the young people don’t want to farm anymore.”
    â€œMy boy Pete here does.”
    â€œThen he’s one of a kind.”
    â€œYou can say that again!”
    â€œHas Pete got the wherewithal to buy you out? Like I say, we’ll offer it for a while as a farm. But, believe me, a developer is the only buyer you’re going to find—and you’ll have no trouble finding one of those. They’ve all had their eye on this property for years. Even had aerial photographs taken of it. Prime building land. Highly desirable homesites. Got a view of the Catskills from any plot on the place, once it’s cleared. I’ve had several ask me to approach you with an offer, and they’ve gone up with each and every one. You can cry all the way to the