They arrived in the mail unannounced. Offers from real-estate agents and developers. Pleads for appointments. Everything around her was giving way. Sell. Sell. Sell.
Her property was a jewel. At odd times she’d spy them circling like turkey vultures. Fancy cars. Arms and hands flailing this way and that. The more audacious ignored the no trespassing signs and climbed the fences. Some even had maps. Took snap shots. And she shot back over their heads with her trusty .22. Laughed out loud when they scrambled back into their cars like scaredy cats and sped away, muttering under their breath ‘crazy old bitch’ nervously checking in the rear-view mirror just to make sure.
“Now Beaulah,” the sheriff tried to reason, “we’ve been through this a hundred times. You can’t just point a rifle at someone and pull the trigger.”
“Jeb, it says as plain as the nose on your ugly face, NO TRESPASSING. It’s my land. You know I raise chickens. Got to protect ‘em from hawks and varmits, don’t I? Is it my fault some busybody’s around my land when I’m doing the protectin’?”
“Can’t you just meet with them? You could make a lot of money. Take it easy and retire.”
“Retire? When I’m dead and buried is retiring enough. And if any of those scoundrels sent you here to soften me up, you tell ‘em all to go to hell and keep off my land. I got generations buried right here. I don’t need no greedy city folk keeping ‘em comp’ny. I got a right to my land and my privacy. That’s the only law you need to be protectin’.”
But when her own long-lost brother arrived as unannounced as real-estate bids, skulking the property, she knew it was serious. He knew land values. Had been contacted by the very same developers. Had dollar signs in his eyes. An easy life all planned out.
“Who the hell are you comin’ here with your hand out like you own the place? What have you ever done on this farm but complain about it and leave as soon as the gettin’ was good? In fact, as far as I’m concerned, you ain’t no kin of mine and got no right to one clod of dirt from this place and that includes being buried on it.
“Where were you when you when my husbands died? Where were you when I lost my only son? You, his uncle who never even sent a birthday card. You signed out of this family a long time ago and I’ll be damned before I sign on any dotted line to give it away to you or anyone else!”
He stared at her, speechless. Dumbfounded. Had forgotten the venom of her wrath.
“What have you ever done to make this place work? Tell me? Ain’t ever lifted one little finger. You ain’t ever invested one penny in it. It’s my money that made it grow when most other farms are going under. I’m the one who made it work. I’m the one who paid the taxes. My blood and sweat that kept it goin’. You should be ‘shamed of yourself even settin’ foot on it. But it’s no surprise. Spineless and lazy like half the greedy country.”
He found his nerve and shot back, “Blood is thicker than water, Bea. And I got rights. Family and birth rights.”
“You ain’t got shit!”
Selected excerpts from the novel COMMON GROUND by Gary T. Czerwinski, copyright 2009.