well. That was a big farm and a rich one, even by the standards of the area, which were high. That meant a lot of farming, especially in the spring and the fall, but we worked mostly summer crops and, with Pete and another man working regularly on the repairs and upkeep usually reserved for cold months, our winters were easy ones.
That had been a necessary schedule when I had been in school and there was no one to run the farm, and we had stuck with it since then. Others argued that the farm could turn twice the profit, and probably it could have, but we did well enough as it was. Another owner, one interested mostly in accumulating wealth, could have done very well indeed by the Baker lands. There was a large piece of land, mostly untended, that could be turned into a highly profitable place too. In addition to that, there was another small farm that had been rented out in the past and had produced a small but livable income for the farmer tenants. They had moved from there the year before, and Mrs. Baker had shown little interest in replacing them, so that, except for keeping the house and the farm buildings in repair, we did little or nothing with that.
Mrs. Baker was old, of course, and no one imagined that she would live too many more years. She had all the income from the property that she needed or would ever need. Someday soon it would pass into other hands—maybe Kenny’s, maybe not. Whoever it was would be getting a lot, not a great fortune, maybe, but not a small one either.
I wondered if Kenny had thought much of that, and whether that had influenced his coming back. He had never given much thought to money when he was young, but a young man didn’t, usually, not until he had gotten old enough to appreciate its value. At any rate, Kenny had never been poor, not so long as he had been at home. People who have never had money, and those who have always had it, don’t as a rule attach much importance to it. It’s those who’ve had it and lost it to whom it means the most.
I felt guilty harboring such thoughts, and yet I found myself again and again wondering how Kenny had lived since he had gone from here. How hard had he had to work to earn what kind of living? How many things had he wanted that he’d had to admit he couldn’t afford and that there had suddenly been no one to afford for him?
Enough to make him think about the money in this land? Enough to cause him to remember that this could have belonged to him, and might yet? Enough—I tried not to think of this, but it came anyway, in the stubborn way that unpleasant thoughts have—enough to bring him home?
That was the question that was really bothering me, and now that I had faced it, it wouldn’t go away, but kept hanging around in my head no matter how hard I tried to lose myself in my work.
What had brought Kenny home? His mother? I tried to remember what it had been like between the two of them, whether they had been close, whether they had loved one another in the way that some mothers and sons love one another—but I honestly didn’t know. Somehow I had always thought of Kenny as loving everyone generally and no one specifically. Maybe that was because I had been afraid of realizing who and what he didn’t love. He had never said to me, “Mar, I love you,” and I guess for that reason I had never let myself imagine him saying it to anyone else.
But he had loved the farm. I couldn’t deny that. For all his carelessness and his chasing after things, I had always believed in his love for this land. He had taken to the tractors and the farm equipment the way some young men take to women or drink. He had romanced the sun through many a summer, and there had been more honest passion in the way he threw hay than had been evident in any of his little episodes with the girls around town.
Maybe this was what had brought him home. Or maybe it was just the fact that this was home. Kenny was the sort who had to have someplace to go. Maybe he had come to the point during those five years where there was no place else to go but home.
I’d have given anything to have that question answered, but there was only one person who could have answered it, and I wasn’t likely to put my question to him.
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