Speaking in Tongues

farmers’ profanity. Even some of our girls have taken to this deplorable habit.
    “I’ll keep that in mind, Judge,” Tate had said, remembering without guilt how he’d sworn a blue streak at Junior Foote at school just last Thursday.
    Gazing at his fields, the Judge had continued, “But if you do find it necessary to let loose just make sure there’re no womenfolk around. Almost time for supper. Let’s get on home.”
    Tate stayed at his grandparents’ house in Fairfax as often as at his parents’. Tate’s father was a kind, completely quiet man, best suited to a life as, say, a court reporter—a career he’d never dared pursue, of course, given the risk that he’d be assigned to transcribe one of his father’s trials. The Judge had agonized over whether or not to leave the farm to his only son and had concluded the man just didn’t have the mettle to handle a spread of this sort. So he deeded it over toTate while the other kin got money. (Ironically, as Tate learned during one of the few frank conversations he’d ever had with his father, the man had been dreading the day that the Judge would hand over the farm to him. His main concern seemed to be that running the farm would interfere with his passion of collecting Lionel electric trains.) Tate’s timid, ever-tired mother suited her husband perfectly and Tate could remember not a single word of dissension, or passion, between the two. Little conversation either.
    Which is why, given his druthers, adolescent Tate would hitch or beg a ride to his grandparents’ house and spend as much time as he could with them.
    As the Judge had presided at the head of the groaning board table on Sunday afternoons Tate’s grandmother might offer in a whisper, “The only day to plant beans is Good Friday.”
    “That’s a superstition, Grams,” young Tate had said to her, a woman so benign that she took any conversation directed toward her, even in disagreement, as a compliment. “You can plant soy all the way through June.”
    “No, young man. Now listen to me.” She’d looked toward the head of the table, to make sure her husband wasn’t listening. “If you laugh loud while planting corn it’s trouble. I mean, serious trouble. And it’s good to plant potatoes and onions in the dark of the moon and you better plant beans and corn in the light.”
    “That doesn’t make any sense, Grams.”
    “Does,” she’d responded. “Root crops grow below ground so you plant them in the dark of the moon. Cereals are above ground so you plant in the light.”
    Tate admitted there was a certain logic there.
    This was one of three or four simultaneous discussions going on around the dinner table—aunts and uncles and cousins, as well as the inevitable guest or two that the Judge would invite from the ranks of the bench and bar in Prince William and Fairfax Counties. One crisp, clear Sunday, young Tate shared an iced tea with one guest who’d arrived early while the Judge was en route from the farm. The slim, soft-spoken visitor showed a great interest in Tate’s ant farm. The visitor was Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, taking a break from penning an opinion in a decision—maybe a landmark case—to come to Judge Collier’s farm for roast beef, yams, collard greens and, of course, fresh corn.
    “And,” Grams would continue, scanning the table for the sin of empty serving bowls, “it’s also bad luck to slaughter hogs in the dark of the moon.”
    “Sure is for the hogs,” Tate had offered.
    The dinner would continue until four or five in the afternoon, Tate sitting and listening to legal war stories and planning and zoning battles and local gossip thick as Grams’s mashed potatoes.
    Now, because his ex-wife stood beside him, Tate was keenly aware that those Norman Rockwell times, which he’d hoped to duplicate in his own life, had never materialized.
    The vestige of a familial South for Tate hadn’t survived long into his adulthood. He, Bett and Megan were no longer a family. Among the multitude of pretty and smart and well-rounded women he’d dated Tate Collier hadn’t found a single chance for family.
    And so, as concerned as he now was about Megan, the return of these two into his life was fraught with pain.
    It brought practical problems too. He was preparing for the biggest case he’d had in years. A corporation was petitioning Prince William County for permission to construct a historical theme park near the Bull Run Battlefield.