Parable

 

A single woman retreated to the country to live a life in harmony with Nature. She lived in a small cabin without electricity. She pumped her water with a bicycle-powered  pump into a cistern which also collected rain.  She fueled the cabin by carefully gleaning wood from the surrounding forest. She installed a highly efficient wood stove with some alterations made to her chimney to accelerate burning and diminish ash. In a clearing, she planted a garden for food. She dug a root cellar in the shade of her cabin. She built a hen house and got some chickens and a rooster. And she took a piglet from a neighbor to raise for cooking fat, winter meat and summer bacon. Her old car was seldom used. The bicycle got her to the nearby village for mail and dry goods. Her life was the work of living. She rose early and retired early. Her neighbors respected her lifestyle and visited her often to offer what they could. She did likewise for those whom she respected.

A married man with an MBA lived in Manhattan with his wife and three children. He worked in banking. His family had made a fortune raising millions of chickens for slaughter in cramped commercial chicken barns. He was educated in Ivy League schools. His family occupied a large four -bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. His children went to school every morning in a hired car with the au pair, a young woman from Haiti with a college education. On weekends, he and his family often took the garaged Lexus SUV up to the country to their large country house, which was maintained by a live-in caretaker, a poor divorced farmer from the local area who had little education and had lost his farm.

The banker's property abutted the single woman's small land holding. The wooded area of the properties were not formally divided by wall or fence. The banker and woman met occasionally while walking in the woods. They exchanged neighborly greetings from a distance.

The banker's children grew to adolescence. They took to drinking and smoking dope in the woods where they drove their all-terrain vehicles. On several occasions, they disturbed the sleep of the single woman by prowling around her cabin and stirring up her animals in the middle of the night. She decided to complain to the banker and walked over to his country house one weekend.

The banker was annoyed that she had walked up to his house unannounced and had rung his bell. "Why didn't you call me first?" he growled without inviting her in. "I have no phone," she said blandly. The banker grudgingly asked her in and looked skeptically at her soiled boots as she walked across his Italian-tiled foyer. He offered her a seat in the foyer while he stood above her. "What's this about?" he asked.

The single woman was surprised by the banker's immediate coldness. Her local friends were cordial and hospitable whenever she visited on a whim. "I'm sorry if this is a bad time, but I have to tell you that your children have been coming over to my place in the middle of the night and disturbing me and my animals. It has happened several times now, so I wanted to nip it in the bud. I thought you should know so you could take care of it."

The banker smiled at the woman with a pitying look, the look he reserved for panhandlers in the city. "What makes you think it's my kids?" he said slyly. The single woman answered neutrally,"I know your kids. I see them all the time and their ATVs in the woods."

The banker took a deep breath and exhaled with exasperation. "Look. I've been wanting to talk to you for a while, so I'm glad you came over. I think we can come to a mutual solution. I've been wanting to buy you out. We can smell your wood smoke and your pig when we walk in the woods. I can hear your rooster some mornings off in the distance. It's annoying. I could give you more than the market price per acre. It's a win-win. Besides, a single woman like you has no business living out there alone in the middle of nowhere."

The woman had not expected his callousness. Her life was surrounded with a Nature she loved and respected. Her neighbors and friends were a tough lot, but they were honest, respectful and hard-working. Her own life was hard, but it was a life she chose and wanted to keep. It was a life she could feel good about in relation to her environment. This banker's dissatisfaction with her proximity on the basis of his occasional walks in their woods  and a polite complaint about his spoiled brats stunned her.

She stood. "No," she said. "But I will warn you that I will defend my property and my animals in the middle of the night if we are disturbed again. I will also let the local police know about the problem, just so there's no confusion if some unfortunate accident befalls a forewarned malicious trespasser. As for your money, I have absolutely no need of it. Good day." The woman walked out of the house and off the man's property.

The banker poured himself a drink in his paneled study. He sat in his leather office chair and used the remote to turn on his wall-size TV. "I'll get her to sell out to me...it's just a matter of time," he thought to console himself.