Dirt Under Brahmin Nails: Ch. 2 of "Lady Slipper Farm And The Summer People," by Holly Nadler

• Thorn, formerly a successful young TV writer, who's just out of 12 months of rehab after burning the Lady Slipper Farm corn patch in a drunken rage;
• Mandy, who in addition to the farm works for a real estate office and a caterer, and has a pet teacup pig Alfred (see C.K. Wolfson's illustration);
• Nandica, a Brahmin Indian with a PhD in French medieval poetry, who has forsaken her engagement to a wealthy man in India to be with: 
• Sam, described by Nadler as "a crazy fashion designer." 

Chapter 2: Dirt Under Brahmin Nails

Nandika Pati, 29, was universally thought to be more cute than pretty. Uncannily, she had naturally beige-blonde hair with Indian features, an anomaly she would explain to people if they asked. (Hint: Somewhere in the family tree lurked a bad boy from the days of the British Raj).

At the moment Nandika was thinking she could never perform the grungiest work around Lady Slipper Farm without conducting an imaginary conversation with her mother. Now, for instance, as she crouched in three o’clock rays of the sun and scooped purple-top Milan turnips into a colorful rag-tied bag, the following dialogue took place in her mind:

Mommy, in her lilting Bangalore accent: “Nandika, darling, you have a Ph.D. in French medieval poetry, and from Yale because your father and I could never stint on our children’s education. And now you grub in the soil like a kurmi jati?”

And Nandika would say, “We knew my major was pure folly. It’s been of no use to anyone for the past nine hundred years.”

In real life Nandika had never come up with that handy little riposte. It would have hurt her mother’s feelings and, besides, poor Mommy had no sense of humor.

But Mrs. Pati had always confused good mothering with hectoring: “Your major mattered not at all, darling. You were engaged to a boy from one of Bangalore’s wealthiest families.”

Nandika’s mother never lost a chance to mention this almighty engagement.

Now, in real time, Nandika heard a familiar shout from around the side of the old barn. The structure was large and bulky for the relatively small property, some nine acres off sylvan Tea Lane Road in Chilmark.

Sam Pease came loping, long arms waving his usual high drama hello.

Nandika rose, shifting the loose strap of the rag-tie bag, twelve pounds of turnips sagging against her slender hip.

Sam closed in on her. He took a last antic leap forward to sling her sack around his own shoulder before he lifted her for a high off-the-ground hug, then set her down again.

When Sam, who was 31, told people he was 6’5”, they usually said, “Is that all?!” He seemed seven feet tall, and his personality filled out every inch of that imagined stature.

Now he bent to kiss his girlfriend. He smacked his lips as they drew apart. “Yum! Love that taste of early turnips!”

“So how come you’re hurtling down the fields to find me?” she asked.

“A call came down from HQ,” he said.

HQ was Mandy, Sam’s kid sister and Nandika’s college roommate. It was Mandy who’d filled out the forms to win the grant money to work the farm she and Sam had inherited from thirteen generations of Peases, so technically she was the boss lady.

“We’re a team!” she always said.

“Like a Soviet combine,” Sam had replied on more than one occasion.

“And what does HQ want?  Should we dig a new well before suppertime?”

Sam stood up still straighter as he prepared to deliver his news.

“Uh oh,” said Nandika.

“It’s a bit of an uh oh. I mean, no one’s dead but – “

Nandika removed a lovely tennis-ball-sized purple turnip from the sack, now stationed on Sam’s hip. She dusted it off on the hem of her hemp apron, and examined it intently as if it were a rare jewel which, in a way, it was.

“On the scale of uh ohs on zero to ten, what is it?”

Sam considered this, a frown of concentration on his strong-featured tanned face. “Nine point 07.”

“Yikers!”

“Thorn is out.”

“Out? Does that mean -- ?”

“Yeah. He’s already here. On a job interview. With Sonja Dash.”

“Now there’s an ‘Interview With The Vampire’!”

“More like ‘Interview With Two Vampires’.”

“So he’ll come here?”

“Yup. He should arrive around 6:30-ish, with the ish inching closer to eight or midnight-ish if he hits the bars on the way home.”

Nandika stared up – way up as she was forced to do – at her giant of a boyfriend. “Sam,” she said in a hushed tone. “He’s not going to drink ever again.”

He grinned. “From your lips to the Great Bartender’s Ear.”

The sun now slanted in at a lower angle, burnishing carrots, lettuce and spring onion crops, woods on all three sides. Nandika took in a breath of sheer astonished joy to be here, to be part of this honorable effort in organic farming, a collaboration that took in one Ph.D. – hers; a hip T-shirt design company – Sam’s; a passion for squeezing every last buck out of this rocky island – Mandy’s; and a briefly successful TV writing career – their friend Thorn’s, who had only today completed a court-mandated twelve-month rehab in Florida.

“And why are we taking him back again?” asked Nandika as they trudged towards their farmhouse bordered by a pond. “I mean, I love Thorn when he’s not drinking and setting fire to the corn crop but -- ”

“Don’t forget his good intentions: He wanted to hear all the pops.”

As they drew closer to the house, their gang of seven dogs circled from the porch. The beasts formed a formation like a squadron of WWI airplanes with the whippet, Normie, leading the charge.

Sam moved the sack of turnips over to his opposite hip. “Think what a cult hero Thorn would be if the island had been covered in pop corn!”

She treated him to a fond glare. “You’re an idiot, Sam. Mommy was right. I should have married my Indian fiancé.”

“But I’m more fun than your Indian fiancé.”

“That’s true.”

“And handsomer!”

“How would you know? You’ve never seen him!”

“I’m handsomer than anyone!”

“Only to me, my love.”

Sam performed one of his big arms-circling hellos to the pride of dogs. “Come and get us! We taste better than that vegan swill Mandy feeds you!  Chow down on this one first,” he said, pulling a laughing Nandika in front of him. “She’s got a distinctive curry flavor!”

In another moment the dogs tumbled on and over and around them. The two black labs, Ollie and Andy, sniffed at their calves. Normie was content to gallop in circles. The yellow Lab, Smitty, chased the whippet, which left an assortment of two Chihuahuas, a Westie and a shih tsu, Booby, Mimi, Kumquat, and Leo, to dance, leap, and throw themselves on the two humans for attention.

Sam looked down at the unruly gang. “Just wait until the honcho pig comes home to kick butt!”

“Will everything be all right?” Nandika with a worried face asked her boyfriend.

“You tell me! You got the PhD! Didn’t that teach you how life works? When does everything ever go all right all the time? Or any of the time? Never is the answer. Or, as Winston Churchill said, nevah, nevah, nevah. Don’t forget we’re not just regular farmers, we’re existential farmers!”

She frowned up at him. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning we’ll plant some seeds, see what crops up, and have some fun and Art-with-a-capital-A along the way. Speaking of which, you gotta see the potager I’m putting in outside the greenhouse. It’ll have veggies, herbs, flowers, runner beans, and a cool sort of Calder-esque centerpiece of sweet peas and nasturtiums. It could be all we’ll ever need in this hell-hole!”

He picked up Leo the shih tsu and stuck his five pounds of skin and fur into the rucksack of turnips. Leo squealed, but at the same time looked up at the tall jokester with worshipful eyes.

The other six dogs scampered at their feet as the man and woman walked hand-in-hand in waning amber light across the luscious acres to the antique farmhouse. Beyond, the pond gleamed the color of a copper pot.