The Neighbors

The second time we were on the property – the first was a tour with a real estate agent –we took the old Jeep onto the upper ridge which has since been cleared and planted for wildlife. It was autumn, the day crisp and bright in the early afternoon. We followed a deeply trenched road into a sink hole and even though the jeep was raised, it quickly became high-centered on the mud bottom. When the drive to reverse wheel spinning proved futile, we abandoned the vehicle, waded out and stared at it. Presently Jim, my son, said he heard a truck and so we headed to the sound.



A mile later at a fork in the road, we saw a gate, a barn, and beyond, a man leaning against a tractor. He watched as we came through the gate. He was tall, gaunt, dressed in faded and worn blue denim overalls. The tractor on which he leaned had weeds growing around its wheels, the tires gone flat. Its paint had long since given way to rust.

He was as weathered as the tractor. Behind him was a flatbed truck without side rails. On its wooden bed there were many items, worn, but of use to anyone working a place like this with a broad and undulating pasture on which grazed Hereford cattle – some cows but mostly steers, altogether about fifteen animals not including the bull confined to a wooden fenced pen beside the barn.

We shook hands as introductions were exchanged. “We are looking at the place up above, thinking we might buy it,” I said. “But right now, we’re stuck and hoping you might be able to help.”



He looked to the west as the sun was sinking behind the ridge. “I don’t know if I have my chain with me today” – time passed, so that the gravity of that pronouncement could take full effect.

A wise man and mentor to me, a poet, who had been raised on a farm in Haleyville, Alabama once wrote in a poem of the south, “A simple man’s no fool.” Somehow the line seemed to fit, as did the sense of having gone through this same feeling during the days when I fancied I could dicker successfully with men who hunkered on their heels and spit as I tried to best them at horse trading.

After a while he said, now carefully watching my face, “I coon hunt back there on down into Brown Hollow.” It was the first time I heard the name. “I don’t kill them any more but I like to run my hounds.” The light was fading and the thought of being in this rough area with a stuck Jeep that may not be easily found in the dark gave little comfort. “Do you think,’ he asked, “if you boys buy the place I could still run my hounds back there?”

So there it was, the hook firmly set in my jaw, the line taut. “If we buy the place, we mean to be good neighbors.” I paused in futile attempt to salvage a little dignity, then said, “If we buy the place, you would always be welcome to run your hounds up there at night.”

“Say,” he said. “I think I see my chain up there on the back of my truck.”