The card refers to a bit of history, in the Scottish Highlands. Until the late eighteenth century, the Highlands were populated mainly by tenant farmers, poor families in little stone huts eking out a small living from the soil and paying a small rent to the landlord. Then the landlord — or whoever acted as the landlord's accountant, in those days — discovered there was more money to be made if the human beings on all that land were replaced by sheep.
So, for the next seventy years, more or less, there was in the Highlands what came to be called the Clearances, in which families, clans, villages, everything was cleared from the land, which was then given to the sheep. The tenant farmers had lived there for generations, built the houses and barns and corrals, worked the soil; but it wasn't theirs. No one had lived on it but them, but it wasn't theirs, so what were they to do?
They left, not willingly. Some went to Ireland, some went to North America, some went to hell. Some died of cold or starvation. Some resisted, and were given the chop right there, on their own land. Well, no; not their own land.
I learned about the Clearances in college. I always enjoyed the history courses, because they were simply stories, so I did well in them, bringing my whole grade average up.
One year, another guy and I did a term paper on the Clearances, and in the course of it my partner looked up the word in the Oxford English Dictionary, the big one. I so loved the definition that I never forgot it, and after I got the chop, during one of my days of legitimate library research, I looked it up again, to be sure I had the phrasing exactly right. I wrote it on this 3x5 card and put it up on the wall here, in front of me.
Clearance 2. spec. The clearing (of land) by the removal of wood, old houses, inhabitants, etc.
You'll never see a clearer proof that history is written by the winners. Just think; one comma less, and the inhabitants would have fallen into the etc.
It's the descendants of those landlords that are doing the clearances called downsizing now. The literal descendants, sometimes, and the spiritual descendants always.
You like that desk where you are? You say you've given the company your life, your loyalty, your best efforts, and you think the company owes you something in return? You say all you really want is to stay at your desk?
Well, it isn't your desk. Clear it. The owner has realized he can make more money if he replaces you with another sheep.
Here's the resumé I want. The address. I'll visit Mr. Garrett Roger Blackstone tomorrow, after I drop off Marjorie at Dr. Carney's office.
Garrett Blackstone
PO Box 217, Scantic River Rd.
Erebus, CT 06397
Teclass="underline" 203 522-1201
Born Marysville, NJ August 18, 1947
Loyola Elementary School, Marysville, NJ — St. Ignatius Combined Middle School, Smithers, NJ — St. Ignatius High School, Smithers, NJ — Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, receiving BA, art history 1968
United States Army, 1968–1971 — stationed in Texas, Vietnam, Okinawa
Married 1971, Louise Magnusson — four sons
Salesman, Rutherford Paper Box Co., Rutherford, MN 1971– 1978
Manager, product line, Rutherford Paper Box Co., 1978–1983
Manager, product line, Patriot Paper Corp., Nashua, NH 1983– 1984
Plant Manager, Green Valley Paper, Housatonic, CT 1984–present
Twenty-six years' experience in the paper industry.
Eighteen years' experience with a broad variety of paper manufacture as manager in charge of all product lines for a broad-base papermaker.
Experience includes consumer paper products, industrial paper products (including polymer paper applications) and defense-related paper products.
I am a willing worker, and am prepared to devote whatever part of my experience and expertise is of use in the new work situation.
25
At the mall, I stop in front of the entrance to Dr. Carney's office. Before she gets out of the Voyager, Marjorie leans over and kisses me, lightly, on the cheek. I look at her in surprise, and her eyes are shining. "It's over," she whispers. Then, seeming to be embarrassed, she slides out of the car, waves behind herself without looking back, and hurries into the building.
I know what she means, of course. The other man, the guy, the boyfriend, that's what's over. She won't be unfaithful to me any more.
As I drive east across northern Connecticut toward Erebus, I think about what she said, and what it means, and why she said it. I've believed the affair happened in the first place because of the general despondency around our house as my unemployment has lengthened from months into years, and I've believed that she finally told me about it because she wanted it to end, but she also wanted me to know what she'd been going through, what had made it necessary. And she wanted somebody neutral around, a counselor, our Longus Quinlan, to help us find our way out of this morass. If there is a way.
So the affair was a battering ram, that's all. And now the door is open, and she doesn't need the battering ram any more. And she wants me to know that, too.
But now, driving along on these little roads from little town to little town, I wonder if there isn't a second reason as well. Maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel better, make myself believe that I had something to do with it, too, but I can't help wonder if another factor in her change toward me is the way I handled the Billy emergency.
I handled it well, I know I did. But I also handled it differently from the way I would have a couple of years ago, back when I was a regularly employed person in what I thought of as a normal and changeless life. In that time, when I was the person I was before I got the chop, I would have been much more passive in this situation. I would have trusted the law, or society, or somebody, to do right by Billy. And the result would have been, they'd have gotten him for four burglaries instead of one, and he'd be looking at jail time. They might not even have set bail.
I did the right thing with Billy, and the reason I did the right thing, and could even think about the problem the right way, is because I don't trust them anymore. None of them. Now I know it; nobody will take care of me and mine but me.
Erebus is a village in the hills of north central Connecticut, between Bald Mountain and Rattlesnake Hill, just across the state line from Springfield, Massachusetts. Scantic River Road doesn't go through the actual village itself, but wanders the nearby hills, southward from the state line. I actually drive up into Massachusetts briefly, to pick up Scantic River Road at its northern end, and then I drive slowly southward, looking for PO Box 217.
This is suburbia along in through here, but a more relaxed suburbia than the areas closer to New York City. This country around here is a bedroom for Hartford and Springfield, so there's less visible money thrown around and less visible effort at high style. The basketball hoops above the garage doors look as though they're actually used from time to time. There are more pools above the ground than in it. The cars are less showy, and so are the gardens.
217 is a bit of a problem, being in the middle of a blind curve, with signs in both directions warning of their hidden driveway. It's on the west side of the road, on the right as I drive south, and while the road itself is mostly level along here the land climbs steeply to the right and falls away to a fast narrow stream on the left. A stone wall retains GRB's land around this curve, with a narrow driveway chopped into it, leading upward toward a house I can barely glimpse.