The Dirt Farmer.
Eli Shinklare relaxed a bit. It had been another long day. The sun was dipping lower towards the horizon, beyond the valley. Fall was closing fast and there was a new wintry chill in the evening air.
Emily came out of the house, chores done for the day, to rest for a short while with her husband on the long porch seat. She sipped a glass of home-made cordial as Eli packed tobacco into his pipe. They looked as ageless together as the vista set before them; an Adam and an Eve sitting in the cool of the day, in their garden.
But it was a trick of the light. Eli was a good thirty years her senior. Five years married, but yet no kids; Eli would often sparkle, “yet we have an endless line of new lambs, ewes and the old ram”. For they were an oddity in the county; both new and old. Eli’s father - also called Eli Shinklare - had himself once farmed this valley, with its rich pastures set in a protecting shade of the small mountains. And a river ran through it.
Young then, he had left to seek better fortunes at fifteen, cutting a blindingly fast pace through his early adult life. He had founded a mining company called ‘Cole, Black and Diamond’ - the name was a small joke that had created a bigger impression than ‘Eli Shinklare jr., miner’ and had allowed him to raise enough investment capital, buy equipment, hire men, and dig for riches in some newly-opened land.
In time, one day he was approached by a business partner who then made him a substantial offer for his business. So, at the prime age of just forty-five he retired to become a comfortably respectable citizen. But he was restless. Eli felt a call to return to the old family farm in that long-remembered valley. Rumour had it that his great-great-grandfather had been first to break the sodds there, naming it Glen Sinclear.
So Eli had left his city properties in the care of his land agent, and set off to drive the long miles back to the old homestead. When he did get there, everything seemed to still be as it ever was; the hills, valley and river were just as he had remembered. But, the actual farm had a ruinous feeling to the entire place. He set off down to drive to the county town, Amsville, and there he had a long talk with his father’s lawyer, old Bo White.
Bo explained to him that his father had leased the ranch to a Mary Smith, who had turned out to be the wife of Dr Lucifer Tenebrae, and she had turned over the lease to her husband. At the sound of that name Eli stiffened up, bristled.
“Surely not? My father would never have handed over his land to that rogue Tenebrae!”
Bo leaned back in his old leather office chair.
“It is all entirely legal. The sting was in that old Eli hadn’t known that Ms Smith had very recently become Mrs Lucifer Tenebrae.”
Eli leaned forward, his business mind working once more.
“How easy will it be to break the lease? Surely there is an expiry or termination clause.”
Bo looked down at his old mahogany desk, then up at the younger man.
“It’s not straightforward. You would need to prove negligence. And that would, I expect, take at least two years of an annual farming cycle, in order to see if the crops are good, livestock are well managed, and the property - house, barns, fences - are kept in good order.”
Bo waited in silence now to see the mettle of the young Eli Shinklare. Many men had easily made threats and empty promises to the old lawyer, but he knew that few are in reality up for such a battle. Eli stood up and walked to the office window looking onto the street. Outside there were dusty trucks and cars parked. A few souls were wandering down the sidewalks. A car drove slowly by.
“OK. Tell me what to do and I’ll get onto it. I’m young yet, with enough time and funds to see this done. Deal straight with me, Bo White, and I’ll pay you well.”
As the new landlord Eli had full access to the properties and land. Lucifer was livid; he offered Eli a tasty mixture of cash with local fame and power, but the owner was not for changing his chosen course, even when the death threats began, and Eli’s car was torched one night.
As Eli set about surveying his property he found the fields carelessly seeded. There had been no attempts to deal with the well-fed and raucous crows, whose many nests stood guard over the wheat in the well-meadow. The public paths had become overgrown with thorn bushes, so people walking through his land to the purple hills and green valley had long taken to wandering through the fields, whose boundary fences had also become sadly neglected and broken down, with large gaps in many places.
In the summer dry the irrigation channels proved to be clogged with mud and weeds, so murky ponds of old bogland had reappeared, shrinking the sun-drenched fields. Thistles grew rampantly everywhere. All in all, the farm’s real value had fallen to less than a quarter of what it had once been worth in his father’s day.
In due time he applied for a writ to terminate the lease. The same day he was confronted downtown by Dr Tenebrae.
“You skunk! What on earth do you want this useless old land for? It is worthless. Don’t waste more of your money on lawyers - I’ll do you a good turn. I’ll buy it from you here, today. It’s worth, I reckon, no more than a quarter of a million. Shake on it?”
It was as Eli Shinklare had suspected. Lucifer Tenebrae had run down the farm deliberately so that he could buy it for a song. But he had never imagined that young Eli would turn up again after so many years and fight him for it.
“Just you and your wife move out, now. Make it quick and I’l not sue you for damage to my property.”
The Tenebraes left that very week.
It had taken five years to restore some kind of order and usefulness to the old land. It would take another five more before it would again turn a profit. Eli could wait and spend his money as he saw fit.
He had met Emily one clear day in the first winter, the daughter of another farmer. Despite their differing ages love grew naturally. One year later they were wed in the local chapel. The whole countryside seemed to have turned out for the celebration - the son had returned, claimed his property, and a wife, and now he was home.
Dr Tenebrae? He absented himself from things, for a time.