My Ninety Acres

by Louis Bromfield

Reprinted in our Spring 2002 Newsletter with permission from Reader's Digest, which does not grant permission for reproduction of their articles on the internet. We are including some quotes from the story to give you its flavor. If you would like to receive a complete copy by e-mail please send an e-mail to skolon@rvlt.org. If you would like to receive a copy of our Spring 2002 newsletter please request by US mail at PO Box 419, Manchester, Michigan 48158. A self-addressed stamped enevlope is requested. Reprinted with permission from Reader’s Digest. Published in Reader’s Digest, November 1945; pages 51-54. Condensed from “Pleasant Valley” by Louis Bromfield, copyright 1943-45, Harper and Brothers. Originally published in Cosmopolitan, September 1944.

had a friend, an old man, who lived in Possum Run Valley on a farm known as "My Ninety Acres." Years ago when Walter Oakes was young, everybody used to speak of "My Ninety Acres" with a half-mocking, half-affectionate smile, because Walter always talked as if it were a ranch of many thousand acres or a whole empire. But as time passed the mockery went out and "My Ninety Acres" became simply the name of the farm.

Old Walter had a right to speak of it with pride. It wasn't a bright new place, but the small white house with its green shutters looked prosperous, the huge fire-red barn was magnificent, and 'there were no finer cattle in the whole county.

The place had a wild natural beauty. The patches of lawn were kept neatly mowed but surrounding them grew a jungle of old-fashioned flowers and shrubs. Beyond the neat vegetable garden the romantic shagginess continued. The wire along the fence rows was hidden beneath sassafras and elderberry and wild black raspberry. The place was shaggy not because Walter was lazy or a bad farmer - there was no more hard-working man in the whole Valley -but because Walter wanted it like that, Walter and Nellie.

* * *

ellie died when her second son, Robert, was born. But sometimes when my father and I walked about the fields of "My Ninety Acres" with Walter and his boys, I wasn't at all sure she wasn't there, enjoying the beauty and richness as much as Walter himself. "Nellie wanted me to put this field into pasture but we couldn't afford not to use it for row crops," he would say, or, "It's funny how many good ideas a woman can have about farming. Now, Nellie always said..." Sometimes I'd return to the house almost believing that I would find there the Nellie who was dead before I was born, waiting with a good supper ready.

* * *

s I watched the big work-worn hand on the stalk of corn, I understood suddenly the whole story of Walter and Nellie and the ninety acres. The rough hand that caressed that corn was the hand of a lover. It was a hand that had caressed a woman who had been loved as few women have been loved, so deeply and tenderly that there could never have been another woman to take her place. I knew now what Robert's remark about Nellie and the ninety acres getting mixed up had meant.

* * *

obert wouldn't sell "My Ninety Acres." I undertook to farm it for him, and one of our men went there to live. But it will never be farmed as old Walter farmed it. There isn't anybody who will ever farm that earth again as if it were the only woman he ever loved.

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