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

Whereas the real business—Kia dealerships, muffler shops, twenty-screen movie palaces, Mr. Goodwrench and the Pep Boys—all that happy horseshit’s flourishing across County Line Road, where Haddamites jam in on Saturday mornings before scurrying back home, where it’s quiet.
    I never minded any of that when I sold houses here. I voted for every moratorium, against every millage to extend services to the boondocks, supported every not-in-my-neighborhood ordinance. In-fill and gentrification are what keep prices fat and are what’s kept Haddam a nice place to live. If it becomes the New Jersey chapter of Colonial Williamsburg, with surrounding farmlands morphed into tract-house prairies, carpet outlets and bonsai nurseries, then I can take (and did take) the short view, since the long view was forgone and since that’s how people wanted it.
    What exactly happened to the short view and that drove me to the Shore like a man in the Kalahari who sees a vision of palm trees and sniffs water in the quavery distance—that’s another story.
             
    S ince we’ve crossed into Haddam Township, Mike’s fallen to sighing again, raking his hand back through his buzzed-off hair, squinting and looking fretful behind his glasses as we head out toward the Montmorency County line. His driving has devolved into fits and spurts in the lighter township traffic. Two times we’ve been honked at and once given the finger by a pretty black woman in a Jaguar, so that his piloting’s begun to get on my nerves.
    I again know what he’s on about. Mike’s belief, and I subscribe to it myself, is that at the exact moment any decision
seems
to be being made, it’s usually long after the real decision was actually made—like light we see emitted from stars. Which means we usually make up our minds about important things far too soon and usually with poor information. But we then convince ourselves we
haven’t
done that because (a) we know it’s boneheaded, and no one wants to be accused of boneheaded-ness; (b) we’ve ignored our vital needs and don’t like to think about them; (c) deciding but believing we haven’t decided gives us a secret from ourselves that’s too delicious not to keep. In other words, it makes us happy to bullshit ourselves.
    What Mike does to avoid this bad practice—and I know he’s fretful about his up-coming meeting—is empty his mind of impure motives so he can communicate with his instincts. He often performs this head-rubbing, frowning ritual right in the realty office before presenting an offer or heading off to a closing. He does this because he knows he frequently holds the power to tip a sale one way or the other and wants things to work out right. I’m sure if you’re a Buddhist, you do this all the time about everything. And I’m also sure it doesn’t do any good. They teach this brand of soggy crappolio in the “realty psychology” courses that Mike took to get his license. I just came along years too early—back when you only sold houses because you wanted to and it was easy and you liked money.
    The other scruple I’m sure is thrumming in Mike’s brain is that during his fifteen years in our country he’s swung rung to rung up the success ladder, departing one cramped circumstance for a slightly less cramped next one. He arrived from India to his Newark host family, segued on to Carteret and the industrial-linen industry, then to a less nice section of South Amboy, where he worked for an Indian apartment finder. From there to Neptune, Neptune to Lavallette—both times as a realty associate. And from there to me—an impressive climb most Americans would think was great and that would get them started filling up their garages with Harleys and flame-sided Camaros and snow machines and straw deer targets, their front yards sprouting Bush-Cheney placards, their bumpers plastered with stickers that say: I TAKE MY ORDERS FROM THE BIG GUY UPSTAIRS.
    But to Mike, the assumption that