now-cherished episodes of bloody knees, runny noses, sweat-plastered hair, and the gathering of vegetables. On simmering Saturday mornings we’d load up the baby blue Impala, the three of us piling in each upon the other across the felt foam interior, the well of a trunk jam-packed with coolers, end-to-end—and we’d comb the fields, following row upon row upon row of corn stalks and tomato and strawberry plants and sprawling melon vines.
“You haven’t answered yet,” she said. “The study.”
“Let me think. What’s the rush?”
“No rush. Just no cheating.”
“Seriously, who am I going to ask?”
We wandered out into the field, my daughter and I, buckets under our arms and each in our own direction. I struck a path down the rows of corn stalks, which had grown brown in the drier-than-usual summer. The ears were stunted and coarse. Nothing much looked good, to be honest, but I picked anyway, walking around for half an hour, up and down the rows, rummaging through the dead and the sun-dried vegetation.
When I finally came across Hero, she was squatting beside a patch of once-hoped-for watermelon. Most had succumbed to blossom-end rot, half-grown and rounded like softballs.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen melons growing,” she said.
“This hardly qualifies.”
“Still. Call me impressed.”
She stood, unwinding herself upward and stretching. I handed her a shriveled strawberry from my basket. She ate it whole. An elderly gentleman in broad suspenders ambled by us through the rows with a nod of his head.
“Mark Twain,” I said, to which Hero cocked a sly eyebrow. “Your question.”
She frowned. “He’s the only one you can think of, right?”
“What are you implying?”
“Try again.”
“He was a writer, right?”
“I’m reluctant to offer any assistance,” she said, turning away.
I balanced my basket on my hip. “This is hard, you know.”
“No, you’re right. It’s fine. Next time I’ll give you something easier.”
We carried our laden containers back to the shack. Hero had filled hers with beans, and only beans, a couple pounds worth, at least. I went for variety: tomatoes, carrots, and as much corn as I could lift. We’d never eat it all, even if it hadn’t been dried out. This was my experience. Most of it would end up rotting in the fridge or given away to friends. It was really just for comfort and for show.
“There’s Robert E. Lee,” I said, suddenly inspired, setting the bags in the truck bed.
“That’s your answer?”
“He wasn’t a politician. Right?”
Hero shrugged. “That could go either way.”
I started up the engine and rolled back out onto the highway toward home. Hero reclined her seat and curled up away from me with a yawn.
“To tell the truth,” she said, “it didn’t matter who you picked. I was just testing myself. To see who I thought you would pick.”
“Who did you expect, then?”
She smiled. “That I don’t have to tell you.”
two
Magnolia Grove, the neighborhood in which I live, is a transitional community, marching slowly but certainly toward complete self-sufficiency in my lifetime. The neighborhood was not designed this way; it was actually not designed at all, at least not as a unified community. The plots are irregular, as if haphazardly drawn and placed, as are the roads, which wind creek-like through the clusters of dense foliage. Structures sprawl, outwards, upwards, asymmetric and geometric dreams of genius and hazardous whimsy. No serious limitations guide their constructions but for gravity, and even that appears in some cases to have been an afterthought. Many of the homes here predate the War, while some date only to the suburban boom of the fifties, though even most of these owners have modeled their homes to the antebellum period. There’s no room here for anything new. Frank Lloyd Wright designed a house here somewhere, I’m told, buried deep behind a thicket or glade, off some overgrown drive. The owners want its location kept secret. We understand, the other homeowners—that overarching desire for privacy and seclusion, to turn away from the bustling outside world and recapture something we’ve lost.
This desire was, in fact, what led us to make our collective decision. Nearly all exiting streets, those that led directly out of the neighborhood, would be blocked off. Too many automobiles, uninvited and suspicious, ventured past our homes at night while we peered out from behind our drapes and blinds. Too many commuters cut through during rush hours to avoid the expressway. Too many west-siders, unwanted, unwelcome. We needed to close ranks, establish our independence and community solidarity.
Our best option, at least at first, was to make entrance and escape a more difficult proposition. Initially this was done by simple barricade. Drivers, though, apparently found these obstacles too constraining. Not a week would go by without someone running down the wood and metal stops. I understood the temptation, found myself on several occasions, with each wrong turn, suddenly facing the steady blip of orange, taunting me, teasing out the impulse to accelerate swiftly and grind down the obstructions.
The ever-increasing rebellion was cured for everyone eventually, once construction crews were brought in to erect concrete dividers, the perpendicular median strips that blurred any notion of continuity. This path ended; another began just beyond. Roads were renamed to further obscure past associations. Fifth Avenue became Sycamore. Third became Greenwich. Lafayette became Oak. Calhoun became St. Francis.
One homeowner, a self-employed landscape artist, oversaw the layering of grasses, flowers, trees, to give the barriers an untouchable quality, like fine china. These end-stops became, in most cases, aesthetically far superior to the yards they bordered. The landscaper left fliers wedged beneath door-knockers, between iron gate railings, under doors and into vase-lined hallways. Discounts for all community members. In response, homeowners on some dead-ends, annoyed by the seemingly ceaseless leafleting, tore out the daylilies and St. Johns wort and creeping thyme and replaced them with mammoth aloe plants and flowering cacti. Tempers flared.
Traffic out of and into the remaining opening has grown as a consequence of our roadblocks, and the single lane has slowed travel time down to a trickle. Left turns are restricted to low-volume hours. Trucks fifteen tons or over, or above ten feet in height, are prohibited. We welcome the rule of law. We’ve discussed widening the entrance to four lanes, plus a fifth for left turns. We considered petitioning the city for a traffic signal.
“This is all just so dumb,” Hero observed immediately upon her arrival. “You can’t just lock everyone out.”
But as I explained to her, that was the idea.
Someday soon, our community will be guarded by a gate, a swinging mechanical arm, a sequence of four numbers, and a speaker phone by which guests can contact their respective hosts. But there’s more. The plan, from what I’m told, is for this neighborhood to withdraw even farther, to finally sever our bonds with the outside world, to become, in some sense, completely self-reliant. We will have our own grocery stores, our own gas stations, our own movie theater. I imagine we’ll need our own office buildings, our own airport. Auto factories to make our cars and parts. Our own ranches and fields of crops. Slaughterhouses and textile factories and newspapers and universities. A new South, wholly self-sufficient.
Homes in Magnolia Grove are upper end, in price if nothing else, when there are actually ones for sale. But this happens rarely. I have only ever seen two houses here on the market. Despite this, the homeowner’s association still produces promotional materials, perhaps if only to keep public interest and property values high. The latest bulletin describes, among other things, the neighborhood’s goal as:
Building