The stone house was an interesting piece in the middle of the crop fields. It was a squat cairn in the middle of nowhere, directing to no place in particular. Mel took care to frame a couple of shots and took a couple photographs of the surrounding countryside as well.
The sky was getting darker and all of the windows of the house were shuttered. When she turned her back to head over to the produce sale in the back yard, she did not notice the drapes of one of the upper story windows lift to reveal a pair of narrowed, watching eyes.
She noticed the patrons of the Grandbury farm vegetable sale, milling about, examining vegetables, and putting the ones they wanted in bags and baskets. When they were done choosing their bounty, they would come up to an older woman with a bun in her hair and a cash box in hand to pay for their purchases. Stuart stood a little to the side and he appeared to be interviewing this woman. Mel stood a little apart from the small crowd to take pictures. No one noticed her as she stood in the shadows of the house. Eventually, she finished her current roll of film and with a practiced hand, she changed the film to a fresh roll and slung the camera across her shoulder. As she stepped out of the shadows, she felt the eyes of the vegetable sale patrons flicker toward her, judging. She was obviously different and they said nothing, but she knew they were wondering where she had appeared from.
“Hey Mel!” Stuart had spotted her approaching the vegetable stand and was waving her toward him. Was it just her or was there a relieved tone in his voice? She walked over to him making sure she gave a wide berth to the stumbling bearded men in overalls with leering eyes and the catty women with big hair. “I want you to meet the owner of this place, Hannah Grandbury. She’s, uh, a distant relative of Mad Dog, actually.”
She shook hands with the older woman who regarded her passively. Hannah Grandbury seemed amazingly uncurious and unsurprised. Her gaze missed nothing, but it was more automatic than indicative of an active intelligence behind them. Hannah Grandbury was on autopilot. Mel wondered if her impression was because the woman was bored with everything—after all, the sale and the visitors with questions probably came every year. And if she knew Mad Dog, she probably already knew all about the magazine that they worked for.
The older woman turned away for a moment to take payment from one of the customers before telling them, “When Mad Dog stayed with us recently, all he talked about was how Gavot would make it to his magazine. He wanted to do a big story on it, devote an entire issue to the town. He was going to have several reporters, actually, to come here. I suppose he only spoke with you two before he, uh, fell ill.”
Stuart nodded. “He only spoke to us about his desire to do a story about this town. I could understand him wanting one article on Gavot, but an entire issue? He must really like this place.”
“Perhaps,” Hannah Grandbury replied. “I told him that it was rather ridiculous to do an entire issue. There simply isn’t all that much here, you know? It’s just a farming town. If you want to know more about Mad Dog’s plans on Gavot, you might want to ask my husband. Poor fellow, he had to endure Mad Dog’s non-stop chatter about it while he was here. You two can take the back door to the house—it’s open—and he should be in the kitchen working on the cider. Tell him that I sent you.”
“She’s a rather odd woman, isn’t she?” said Mel as the two journalists trudged past the milling patrons of the vegetable stands to the back of the stone farmhouse. “I had the feeling that she was expecting us.”
“Of course she was expecting us,” Stuart replied breezily. “Mad Dog was the editor of a magazine and he told her he was going to send reporters to the town to do a story. If there are reporters, some of them would be bound to find their way here.”
“I suppose so.”
The back door to the farmhouse was actually two doors—first a screen door before the actual red-painted wood door with a tiny window and white curtains. Stuart opened the doors and motioned for Mel to go ahead of him. She stepped into a noticeably warmer room with a stone floor, fireplace, and kitchen counters. Copper pots hung overhead. A thin older man with steel gray hair, green cap, and a checkered red and blue shirt, perched atop a stool next to a counter. On the counter looked to be some sort of equipment—perhaps a harness. In one hand, he held a rag which he was wiping over the harness. Next to the harness was a canister of polish oil. He looked up as the two journalists stepped into the kitchen. His face was dark and expressionless.
Mel coughed. “Good afternoon. Hannah Grandbury sent us here to talk to her husband.”
“That’s me,” the older man drawled. “Name’s Paul.”
The two journalists introduced themselves and Hannah Grandbury’s husband invited them to pull up stools to sit down.
“So you’re from Mad Dog’s magazine, huh?” said Paul Grandbury. “Fancy that. But I suppose in a way, it’s not so surprising. So I guess you want to know about the farm, eh? Well, let’s start all the way back in the beginning. You know when Gavot has been founded?”
Stuart nodded. “We read up on some of the town’s history before coming up here.”
“Good, good. So I won’t have to repeat all that boring history stuff for you. Well, Grandbury Farm has been here ever since the town has been founded. My ancestor Edgar Grandbury staked out the land around here and ever since then, this whole property has been in my family. And so far, it has always been a farm. I’d say that we’ve been really lucky these past, oh, fifty years or so. Many of the families around here had to sell their lands because of the new farming techniques that have been introduced. It makes it hard for a farmer to compete with the large corporations these days, you know?”
“It looks like you’ve been doing well so far,” said Mel.
Paul Grandbury nodded. “We’ve been real lucky. And so far, it looks like the farm’s going to continue on, at least for the next generation. My son and his high school sweetheart are both at college now, but once they graduate, they’ll be coming back here to help with the farm. I guess when I retire, he’ll be taking over. I’m real glad he’s majoring in agriculture. A lot of my friends’ kids these days would rather do communications or history or even physics!” The older man shook his head at the thought of the kids’ strange interests. “Now I tell you, what good is a physics degree? You can’t do anything practical with that!”
“You could work in the government’s energy or defense program,” Mel said.
The farmer snorted. “That’s not practical.”
Stuart sighed, wanting to get the conversation back on track before it devolved into a physics bash-fest. “So, Mr. Grandbury, your family has pretty much kept the farm going throughout the generations?”
“Oh yes. We’re quite proud of that. All our names are written on the back pages of Edgar Grandbury’s first book, an almanac that he bought from the grocery store that was first built in Gavot. It’s sort of a family tradition to write down our names as well as the birth and death dates. It’s sort of like a private genealogical document. It also comes in handy when we try to contact everyone for the family reunions.”
“I see.”
“At any rate, the line’s been pretty much unbroken. But knowing Mad Dog, he’d probably want you to write about what we do at Grandbury farm. It’s pretty much like any other farm. We have the wheat and corn—I manage that with the tractor and plow and such. You can probably read up on the hows and whys in agriculture books. It’s pretty much the same elsewhere.”
“And what about the vegetables that your wife is selling out back?” said Mel. “You keep a vegetable garden too?”
The older man chuckled. “Oh, not me, actually. Hannah actually takes care of that as well as our daughter when she’s not in school. She usually has pumpkins and squash and zucchini and things like that. She grows plenty of gourds, ready for the Harvest Festival. If you didn’t know, a traditional dish most people around here like to make for the Harvest Festival is squash soup. It contains all sorts of squash and pumpkins and gourds—sort of like a stew—along with seasoning. The seasoning can very; it depends on the cooks taste. I like my squash soup with plenty of parsley and pepper. You should try some if you want to have the whole Harvest Festival experience. You know the food vendors down on main street?”
“Yes, we’ve seen some of them,” said Stuart, “but we haven’t really stopped by any of them.”
“Well, you should. Different vendors have different kinds of squash soup. All I’ll recommend is to stay away from anything that is labeled squash-all soup.”
“What’s that?” Mel asked.
“I’m not quite sure myself,” the farmer replied, “but I’m sure it has plenty of onions and hot peppers and other things besides. It’s only for those who are not faint-hearted and who possess cast-iron stomachs. The thing burns in your mouth and belly.”
Mel smiled wryly. “We’ll keep that in mind.”
“We also grow some fruits: peaches, strawberries, currants. We actually sell some of those to the local grocery store, fresh, during the summer. Around this time of year, Hannah makes preserves out of the stuff that’s left. We sell about half of it here at home and about half to the stores. If you have a chance, you should try it, it’s good stuff. A lot of people also come here for apple picking. We have an apple orchard out back, you see. People can pick their own bushels and do whatever they want with the fruit they pick. You know Ida Townsend?”
“Yes, we’re staying at the Townsend House,” said Stuart. “She was actually the one who mentioned your farm to us. She uses your apples to make some excellent pie.”
“Absolutely. Unfortunately, she won’t share her trade secret with anyone. At any rate, most people I know love to make tarts and applesauce with their pickings. If you’d like, you can go out an pick some if you want.”
“No thanks. We’re just visiting. I’m not even sure if they let us bring food on the train,” said Mel.
“Well, too bad then. Around this time of year, we also let people use our property for various things. Some people like to hold parties and such.” Paul Grandbury patted the equipment he was wiping down on the counter. “I do the hayride every weekend in the early evening. Since you both work at Mad Dog’s magazine, I’ll extend an invitation for you for tonight’s hayride. It’s a shame for you to work during the Harvest Festival—you should take some time out to relax.”
The two journalists murmured their thanks.
“Besides, you might want to stay over for the evening too since the local stargazing club will be here with their telescopes and all to look at the stars and planets. They’re a nice group and Hannah and I like to cook up some hot cider for them as they discuss astronomy.”
Mel and Stuart simply nodded.
“The local stargazing club is actually for all ages although pretty much all the members are of the older sort. About half of the members are from Gavot. Some of the others come to the stargazing club somewhat infrequently since they live all the way in Callas.”
“That sounds interesting,” Mel cut in. “So I heard that Mad Dog stayed at your place not so long ago.”
Paul Grandbury scratched his chin. “That’s right. It’s a distant relationship—you could say he’s a distant cousin if you don’t want to be confused—but it’s our policy to let any of our family stay over if they need to. We have plenty of room to put up visitors. Mad Dog was on vacation and he decided to drop in and see us. He seemed really excited about Gavot, although I don’t see it. Perhaps I’ve lived here so long that everything has just become routine to me.”
“Was there anything in particular that Mad Dog was excited about?” asked Mel. “He just gave us the assignment to cover the Harvest Festival in town and didn’t say specifically what he wanted us to focus on.” She did not mention to the farmer that Mad Dog didn’t tell them any details about their assignment because he had a seizure before he could say so.
He shrugged. “I don’t know, to be quite honest. Mad Dog was just jabbering on and on about how he was going to do an entire magazine issue on the town that I just sort of tuned him out, you know? But you know, I’m not so sure his enthusiasm for Gavot was really spurred on by the town itself, if you know what I mean. He met some people here.”
The two journalists exchanged glances. “What kind of people?” Stuart asked.
“Oh, that’s Mad Dog. He likes meeting people and such. He ran across some creative types. Some of them are from Gavot, but they’re just amateurs taking this art class that was being held by the community center and sponsored by the local bingo club. There was this one artist, a painter I think. He had some fancy name or another. He became really, really good friends with Mad Dog.”
“Really, really good friends?” echoed Mel.
“To be blunt about it, they were lovers. I didn’t figure Mad Dog to be attracted to that kind of person. Complete opposites.”
“You know what they say,” Stuart said. “Opposites attract.”
“At any rate, I think Mad Dog was just crazy about Gavot because he was conducting an affair at the same time. Hormones and rose-colored glasses. I told him Gavot wasn’t worth writing about, but he didn’t listen to me. And it’s obvious he still wasn’t listening when he hired you two to do a story about the Harvest Festival.”
“I noticed that he was wearing a new piece of jewelry when he came back from his vacation,” Mel said slowly. “He seemed rather attached to it. Did he get it here?”
Paul Grandbury huffed and began polishing the harness in front of him in quicker strokes. “That ugly thing? As far as I could tell, he got it from that painter friend of his. When he was still here, my daughter was asking him about it and he said something about it having some sort of folklore associated with it about giving him strength or some such nonsense. I think he was just trying to be amusing.”
“Wasn’t it made of horn silver?” Stuart prompted. “There’s a horn silver mine around these parts, isn’t there?”
“Frankly, I’m not sure what Mad Dog’s necklace was made of. But yes, there is a horn silver mine around here, about a couple miles north in fact. If you just take Main Street and drive north, you’ll probably get there in about half an hour. There’s a sign, you can’t miss it. But if you want to take a visit, I’ll have to warn you that it’s not all that interesting. That mine has been closed for several years now.”
