Mad Tom Winter: Gray Man

Mad Tom Winter: Gray Man part 1 - Inventory

Mad Tom Farm & Guesthouse was a large gentleman's estate. Five generations had called it home and four of them still lived there. It was divided by a sturdy, white fence into uphill and down; uphill being the guesthouse and grounds along with the family homes and rentals, and downhill covering the working part of the farm and the woods. For all of this, Maurice was responsible. His ancestors may not have trod these venerable grounds, but he knew, and the family knew, that without him the place would spring more leaks than they had fingers for plugs. The hush of early morning was still in evidence but things were beginning to stir. Up by the Guesthouse the renter's little girl flitted through the yard in big yellow boots, a whiff of coffee drifted past, and sounds from the barn indicated Kate meting out Lady Gertrude's breakfast. Lady Gertrude was a mule with a bit more girth than was good for her and she only received a slender morning ration.

"Is that you Morris?" called Kate.

"Morning," he called back, bristling. He hated when Kate called him Morris. In truth, it was his given name, Morris Diggersby, but he'd always felt it was a name that belonged to a smaller man. It was the sort of name borne by a man with round glasses and a bad complexion who added columns of numbers all day or measured people for shoes. He preferred Maurice and generally people obliged. Maurice was a name that suggested things: quality, dignity, resourcefulness, ingenuity. It was a capable name, a name with an air of accomplishment about it, a touch of mystery, a shadowy evocation of adventure. Kate was the only one on the farm who refused to call him Maurice.

"Have you seen that new bucket I bought?" she asked, appearing from the feed room with a water bucket that had seen better days, "I thought I put it in by the bins but it's not there."

"Haven't seen it."

"One of Gertrude's blankets is missing too."

"Hunh."

"And we haven't had a single egg for three days." Kate turned off the hose and hoisted the bucket, then turned and set it down again, "It doesn't make sense. A fox or raccoon would've killed the hens, some of them anyway."

"Mmm," said Maurice, "Snakes?"

"It'd take a plague of snakes to eat that many eggs."

"Mad Tom then," said Maurice, smiling.

She glared, "Dead men don't steal eggs."

Beyond the barn, the door to the Carriage House slammed then slammed again. Kate flinched. The slamming of doors at the Carriage House signaled her boys' daily run for the bus which, more often than not, they missed. As if on cue, Crunchy, the boys' huge mastiff, galloped after them from the direction of the fishpond, his new blue sweater vest soggy and hanging low, trailing its snowflake border through last year's leaves. In the winter when Kate's work on the farm was slow, she took up her knitting needles to fill the time and no one was safe from her creative ministrations. The proliferation of knitting between the taking down of Christmas trees and the first planting of organic peas was as predictable as the migration of Canada geese. Aunt Augusta's lanky bird dog trotted into view in a rosy pink turtleneck covered with burrs. At the sight of Crunchy's hindquarters disappearing ahead, she dropped the mangy blanket she'd been dragging up the hill and loped past Maurice to join the cavalcade. Samson, not to be left out and blissfully free from knitted accoutrements, took off after them, stumpy legs whirring beneath his manly chest. He only ever made it halfway out to the road before he met the others coming back, but it was the spirit of the thing he didn't like to miss.

Maurice squinted up past the barn. The road wasn't visible from where he stood, but if the boys had prevailed the dogs would ebb back, solemn and dejected, not understanding all over again why the door of the bus had shut them out. He looked down the hill at Augusta's little cottage cradled in a forested elbow. Her woodpile was low; he'd get to that. And the goose was where it had been since Fall, occupying her kitchen stoop. None of the family could figure out why that goose had pitched its solitary tent on her doorstep when the other geese went South, but Maurice had watched her feeding it table scraps. It didn't take an ornithologist to see why it stayed put.

The dogs bounded back full-tilt down the drive, tongues and woolens flapping as they ran, followed by the boys full throttle at their tails with Samson giving it his best in the rear. The whole parade unraveled into a loose commotion at the paddock gate. With an exasperated grunt, Kate moved to the fence to referee. Leaving the melee to sort itself, Maurice whistled for Samson and continued up the drive to the Carriage House to check in for the day.

It was a particular pleasure to Maurice to walk the grounds of Mad Tom Farm. Purchased at the turn of the last century as a summer retreat by a well-to-do family intent on escaping the heat of the city, the original brick and mortar of the place consisted of a serviceable clapboard farmhouse and a small stone chapel with seating for fifteen. A stable out back and a springhouse in the woods completed the inventory. Successive generations had left their mark and the current tally of structures included: four large houses (one a remake of the old Carriage House by Kate and her husband, Felix), the Gardener's Cottage where Augusta lived (never, in fact, inhabited by a gardener), the Summer Kitchen apartments (Maurice himself lived there), two good-sized barns with a paddock between them, two chicken coops, a swimming pool, and a large doghouse that accommodated a small colony of feral cats. The farmhouse itself had evolved over the years into a three-story Victorian confection, and Kate's brother Joe had converted it into a bed-and-breakfast with his wife. Maurice paused by the Carriage House door; a shadow shifted beyond the barn and Samson pressed uneasily against his leg. There were shadows everywhere on Mad Tom Farm; a less sensible man might take them to heart. He shook his head and went inside.

The darkest shadow in the shadowed past of the place was the original caretaker, a simple-minded man named Thomas recruited early on from the county almshouse to help keep things up and running. Old Thomas was handed down through the family for an impossible number of years, his accommodations improving as history progressed. He met his end mysteriously in the brand new swimming pool where he was found floating, face down, on an ordinary Friday morning.

That was the inception of Mad Tom Farm. The whole place had wobbled on its foundations more than a bit without old Thomas' strong, inconspicuous back to hold it up, and the bedlam that ensued had threatened to unhinge them all. By the time Maurice stepped into those fabled shoes and steadied the ship, Thomas was a legend, a family maxim invoked in times of inexplicable plenty or trial. Thus, if the pear trees sagged with the weight of their bounty, someone would mention that "Mad Tom must've been working the orchard this year." If the mule kicked down the pasture fence and ended up in the neighbor's front yard, invariably the comment would be made that "Mad Tom was falling down on the job."

Growing up with the legend and not the man, the younger generations took Mad Tom as an eccentricity, a playful family boggart who lurked in the collective imagination of the place, cushioning unpredictable disruptions and helping them all to weather the flutters of life together on the estate. Maurice himself had no opinion of Mad Tom, but he sympathized with the position of old Thomas. Though their circumstances were different, their work was much the same and he felt a friendly affinity towards this capable man who had been his predecessor.

The mudroom in the Carriage House was quiet for now but Maurice could hear the commotion of dogs and boys approaching up the drive. He looked at his watch and quickly wrote down the time on his timesheet stepping back just as the boys hurtled past in full-throated hue and cry, slamming the mudroom door and clamoring for their Dad. Maurice left the Carriage House to its morning fray and headed for the tranquil haven of the woodshed.