Eight Chimneys is a huge derelict holding, encompassing over a thousand acres on both sides ofa three-mile curve ofblacktop.There is dis-order everywhere, from disintegrating stone gates overgrown with vines and capped by headless lions, to its unmown fields in which are hidden rusted threshers, ancient, abandoned tractors, and dead deer.
Some people wonder ifFerguson realizes that his once proud ancestral mansion is a wreck, a pile ofweather-beaten stone and crumbling plaster.He is painfully aware ofhis house’s derelict condition.Five- and ten-acre parcels could be put on the market and they’d surely be snapped up by builders, and investors, but the full reach and grandeur ofEight Chimneys had not been diminished by even a solitary acre since it had first been granted to the Richmonds by King George, and, like genera-tions ofhis ancestors, Ferguson felt that his dignity, his manhood, his re-spectability, and his place in history were all dependent upon keeping the property intact.Unfortunately, ifhe doesn’t do something soon to shore things up, the house might be lost forever.But how could he ever get enough money to put it right again?
He hardly cares about money, except how it might intrude on his right to reside at Eight Chimneys.Though his brothers, Bronson and Karl, and his sister, Mary, all own shares ofthe estate, each with a wing ofthe house, where they come and go unannounced and even invite friends to stay—none ofthem choose to live there.In fact, they have es-tablished their lives in St.Croix, Santa Barbara, and Nairobi, and they re-turn only for the occasional holiday or funeral, at which time they heap scorn and mockery upon Ferguson for how he’s letting the place go.
But now he has an idea, suggested by a lovely, surprisingly clever blind girl named MarieThorne, who has been back at Eight Chimneys for the past year and with whom he is having the most exciting and pleasurable love affair ofhis forty-two years on earth.Marie wants to turn a portion ofEight Chimneys into a museum.Result?Taxes slashed, plus extensive renovations at the public’s expense.The taxpayers will foot the bill, and what a sweet thought that is.Foot the bill, foot the bill, there are times when Ferguson literally cannot stop saying it to himself.It’s his new mantra, which is what he said to his spiritually promiscuous wife.Foot the bill om shanti shanti.There are, ofcourse, details to be worked out, pro-posals to be written in the strange language ofsuch things, public support to be marshalled, legislators to be brought on board—and that is what to-day’s meeting with Daniel is, a beginning, a first step in that direction.
But suddenly Ferguson finds himself staring at something he has never seen before in October.He shifts his weight, the front legs ofhis chair bang down onto the planks ofthe porch, and he stands straight up.
The rain is turning to snow!Thick, heavy snow.At least a month too early.His father once told him about an early October snow and the de-struction it wrought.On this property alone, thousands oftrees were lost.Nature’s design is for the snows to come after the leaves are offthe trees.That way, the snow falls to the ground.But ifthe leaves are still on the branches, the snow catches in the canopies, until the branches can-not bear the extra weight, and then that’s it, the trees succumb, they bend so far in one direction or another that their roots come right out of the soil, or else they snap in two, like old cigars.
Ferguson stands transfixed as the snow drifts over everything.In less than an hour, there is no green, no red, no brown, no gold:every tree is white, and every inch ofopen land is white, too.The snow is wet, porous;it lies in the field like that foam they spray on runways after a crash.This is very, very bad, Ferguson thinks.Yet he’s smiling.He feels a kind ofdelight in the imminence oftrouble, a morbid receptivity to dis-aster.Good, he thinks, good, let it all come down.
Moments later, Ferguson’s wife, Susan, appears on the porch.Ferguson dresses like a handyman, but Susan favors capes, and at least two pounds ofjewelry.She’s a large-boned, voluptuous woman, full ofen-thusiasm and temper.With erupting, abundant black hair and fierce green eyes, she’s the sort ofwoman who frightens children.She and Fer-guson have been married for twelve years.They are second cousins on their mothers’sides, but whatever genetic risk that poses is a moot point.They have no offspring.
“The electricity just went off,”Susan announces.“And once again we are plunged into shit.”
Fuck yourself, I wish your head would explode, get out of my life,thinks Ferguson.Let me sleep with Marie unmolested, spare me your pedestrian, boring guilt trips, get out get out…
“I don’t know why we don’t have a generator,”Susan adds.
“I’m working on it,”says Ferguson.“Sit down, Susan.Look at all this snow.You may never see anything like this again.We are really in for it.
This happened before, in1934,and it was a complete disaster.”
“I was hoping to bathe,”Susan says.“And I was also hoping to make some progress in organizing the library.”Eight Chimneys’state ofdisre-pair has come to irritate Susan, and, lately, imposing some order on it has become a virtual obsession.She simply cannot take it any longer.What had once seemed like a charming, funky casualness, a kind ofstylish nose-thumbing at all ofthose blue bloods who once occupied these rooms, now strikes her as a kind ofhell, an inferno ofshattered sconces, peeling wallpaper, cracked plaster, stained ceilings, threadbare carpets, broken windows, knobless doors, perilous staircases, inexplicable drafts, grotesque armoires, and heirloom furniture theoretically worth hun-dreds ofthousands ofdollars but in reality worth nothing because no one in his right mind would ever want it.
“I don’t want you to organize the library,”Ferguson says.“I need to go through everything first.”
“What is it exactly that you want to‘go through’?”
“There’s a lot to go through.”
“And in the meanwhile, the disorder is intolerable.”
“You should work on your tolerance, then, Susan.It’s a brand-new world, nothing is ever going to be the way we want it.We have to adapt, wehave to grow, learn, change.Haven’t any ofyour spiritual advisors told you this?”
Susan can no longer tell ifFerguson is speaking his mind or trying to make her lose hers.He likes to play devil’s advocate, which she thinks is the most corrupt, exhausting parody ofreal conversation.
“Who are you waiting for anyhow?”she asks him.“You’ve been out here for an hour.”
“Dan Emerson.He’s going to give us advice about making Eight Chimneys a historic site, and maybe even a museum.”
“Oh yes, Marie’s bright idea.”She looks out at the snow.“He’s probably not coming.”