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there’s a tiny TV—Marie gave it to them. As far as I know they seldom watch it. They’re in bed by eight, up before dawn. They’re farmers, for godsake!”
    “No enemies.”
    “You asked that before, I don’t know of any. Tim and Willy have helped over there on occasion. Pete and I took over when Lucien went in for a hernia operation last fall. The milk truck comes every third day. There’s the mailman, the gas man, salesmen—I can’t think of anyone else. He might have had a high school boy help out during harvest, I think I saw one this fall. I couldn’t help, I needed Tim here.”
    “You don’t know who this boy was?”
    “No, but maybe Emily does. Or—”
    “Or?”
    “Her boyfriend, Wilder, Wilder Unsworth. Family came up from Long Island last year. Something about the oldest getting into drugs, Emily says. Like it hasn’t hit Vermont too! It’s the youngest, Garth, who’s been tormenting Vic. He’s not the only one. There’s another—Marsh—father’s a prof at the college. Well, Wilder’s all right, I guess, at least Emily thinks so, and she’s a sensible girl, as adolescent girls go! He’s smart in school, pleasant enough when Emily brings him in here. But distant. He’s attracted to Emily—but not to the farm. I worry about it, that he’s using her.”
    “How do you know?”
    She gave him a fierce look. “How does one know anything? He—he has a kind of wrinkle in his nose. Doesn’t look me in the eye, like I’m one of the cows, dressed up in boots.”
    She bit hard into a doughnut. “I’m sorry, Colm, I’m all caught up in Vic’s trouble. You can imagine what it’s like to be a sensitive fifth grader living on land you lived on all your life, grandfather before that, and some kid comes up and says you’re dirt. You should know that. You’re Irish.”
    “My grandfather knew.”
    She looked sympathetic. She knew the story. How he was a town cop, killed by a booze runner up in Burlington—they had his picture on the wall down at the station. Colm was ten years old then, Vic’s age. It was good to talk to someone who knew one’s story. Comforting. “Do they say that to you, Ruthie?”
    “I’m an adult. They don’t dare. But I see how it is in town meeting. They sit together, the flatlanders—well, not all, I shouldn’t stereotype, there’s a lot of well-meaning ones—but asking questions, criticizing. Like how could we run things the way we do? How could we vote down the school budget, this agency, that agency, like we don’t care about the poor, the disabled? It’s just that we don’t have the money, we’re trying to survive ourselves. My God, they’re driving us off our land! And you’re helping, Colm Hanna, you’re in real estate.”
    He threw up his hands to ward her off. She didn’t smile, she was too wound up. “That farm, other side of Larocque’s, goes for five hundred thousand dollars. Five hundred thousand! Midwesterner put a couple thousand into it, now he’s reselling it for a windfall. No local can afford to buy it.”
    He sighed. He knew. The farm broker up here now, panting after the realtors, they’d all had her out looking—all but him, he made sure Ruth knew that. Someone, some developer behind her, he didn’t know. He wouldn’t be tainted with that brush. One day he’d explain it to Ruth, why he was in real estate.
    Maybe he just liked to walk the land, that was all. How else could he walk on other people’s property? And how was it their property anyhow, he asked himself: they took it from the Indians. From Belle’s forebears.
    Or was it anybody’s property—ever?
    Her nose was shiny with indignation. She laid her hands on the table, the long hard fingers gripped together; she looked toward the window like she hoped someone might come to interrupt their conversation. Was he boring her? He worried about that. He wasn’t some gregarious Pete.
    He followed her gaze, saw the men outside, progressing slowly along their line, their