The Farmer Bill Cure

For some reason the day I drove up the Northwest Extension to Allentown and turned west was a light traffic day and the farm was a lot easier to find than I thought it would be. I was more than an hour earlier than I’d been told to show up. When I pulled into the farm yard, I maneuvered my Mustang between a pickup truck with the farm’s name and logo on the driver’s door and a Saab convertible with Maryland tags. I had assumed that I’d probably have to wait in my car until the appointed time, that Farmer Bill would probably still be out doing farm chores. But maybe not if there were two vehicles here at the house.

I got out of the Mustang and climbed the stairs to the porch of the white-painted, somewhat ramshackle wood-framed farmhouse with a fieldstone foundation. I went to the door, walking around a couple of smart-looking tan suitcases nudged against each other at the top of the porch stairs. The screen door was closed, but the front door was wide open. I couldn’t see a bell, so I knocked on the door frame and called out whether anyone was home. Silence, although I heard what seemed to be a radio talk show mumbling from somewhere inside the house, not too close to the door.

This was the country, so I decided I wouldn’t be shot or lambasted if I waited inside rather than out in the car.

I went in and wandered for a few minutes around a sparsely, but cleanly appointed room—undoubtedly the living room—which had several windows on two sides letting in the sunshine of a temperate-zone summer. But I kept hearing sounds from somewhere down a hallway that led off behind the foyer stairs. Maybe Farmer Bill was back in his study or something and hadn’t heard me knock or call out at the door, I thought. I moved back through the dim hallway.