Chapter 4
The Major was one of that rare breed of men who care nothing for worldly success or personal profit. He was an idealist. His parents, both of whom had died when he was young, had left him their small farm in the Green Mountains of Vermont, and this farm, the Major thought, was sufficient to take care of his modest wants. After leaving the army, he set up house here, not far from the fashionable town of Manchester. After the death of Suzy the Major had decided that he would never marry. He installed a photograph of Suzy in an alcove in one of the rooms in the farmhouse and converted this spot into a shrine. He remained loyal to her memory and drove all thoughts of women from his mind. The only woman he would allow in the house was old Dottie Clare, daughter of a farm hand, who had always lived on the farm, and who now became surrogate mother and nursemaid to Mary Joe. She often needled him about his celibacy.
"Jim Cameron, who don't you go get yosel a nice gurrl for a wife."
"What do I want a wife for, Dottie?"
"Why to look after you and the gurrls man! Why else does a man want wife for, but to cook and clean and sew and stitch for him and be a mother to his children"
"You do that for me, Dottie."
"Ah! But there are things I can't do Major," she would say with a gleam in her eyes.
But the Major was not to be moved so easily. To complete his family, he adopted another girl, the orphaned daughter, of a Swedish couple who had died in a plane crash. This little girl, who had blonde hair that spread out around her facein a perfect halo of tangled curls, and eyes black as blackberries, he called Lucy, Mary Joe and Lucy lived in complete amity with each other, Mary Joe, fiery and passionate and Lucy, silent and inscrutable, were the ideal foil for each other. Mary Joe who was older than Lucy by a couple of years was fiercely protective of her younger sister and their attachment to each other was such as even real siblings seldom share.
The farm where they lived was their entire world. The farm house was built on hillside and stood in the lee of a grove of sugar maples. Down in the valley were woods of hickory and oak with an occasional birch standing out because of its white trunk. The farm land went down to the valley and a small brook went through it, at the bottom, but most of the land was gently rolling hillside. The valley was thickly forested and though some of the forest belonged to the Major he was loath to clear the trees and bring the richer valley land under tillage. Further down the valley were other farms with better land. These farms stored their hay in silos instead of old fashioned barns and used the latest machinery. Their farmhouses were made of clapboard or brick and mortar and looked grander. But the Major was content to live in the old way, scratching a living from the soil, but otherwise leaving the land undisturbed.
He called the farm, George Washington farm, with patriotic fervour. The farmhouse was made of logs. It was a very simple affair, really one large hall divided into four smaller rooms with a veranda running along the front. The veranda was enclosed by a railing of the same timber, but as the railing was made of Split logs you could see the grain and knots in the wood. Quite a distance below the house, in one of the corners of the farm was the barn, a low rambling barn with a sloping roof. An open shed close to the farm housed the small tractor that the Major used for cultivating his land, here also stood an iron harrow and a plough, as well as a seed drill and other implements. The lower potion of the farm, along the banks of the brook was left fallow for pasture and the few Holstein cows that the Major owned were to found grazing here. Here you could also see, most days, a big Shire horse with shaggy fetlocks, called Bramble, who was used as beast of burden, draught animal and conveyance, all rolled into one. It was Bramble who pulled the little dog-cart, with old Clare in the driving seat, that took the girls to school. That is, unless the Major himself drove down in his old Dodge pick-up van.
Life at the farm followed the cycle of the seasons. There was much work to do during the planting and harvesting season. At harvest time the girls joined the reapers who slept out in the open among the bales of freshly cut hay. The girls sometimes also slept in the barn, with swallows flitting under the rafters, in the clear twilight. In winter when the snow filled the valleys, and you could hear the occasional howling of wolves, old Clare put her battered kettle on the hob, and told them stories of spooks and goblins who tenanted the streams and hollows of the state of Vermont, or Verdmont, as the old lady was wont to call it. As the children snuggled close to the old woman, the Major sat out on the veranda with his Weatherby rifle in his lap, and once in a while, when a wolf or a bear showed itself in the trees close to the farm, he brought it down with a single well placed shot, just for the heck of it. He was still a crack shot.
The whole farm was enclosed by a rough stone fence. The only flat place in the entire farm was a patch of land right behind the farm house. In one corner of this patch of land the Major had placed a flag staff fashioned out a birch pole. Every morning, with solemn ceremony, the Star and Stripes was here raised and saluted by the Major and the children.
"C'mon boys, "the Major would say to the girls, "time to fall in for the parade."
"Yes sir," the girls would jump up and salute the Major. Out on the little patch of flat ground the Major would raise the flag. After the flag hoisting, the Major instructed the children in unarmed combat.
"All right kids, now we are going to learn to fight. And why do we want to fight."
"To thrash, those who we don't like pa."
"No Mary Joe, we don't thrash those we don't like. We just stay away from them."
"But what if they wouldn't stay away, just wouldn't stay away from us," said Lucy.
"Yes, nasty boys," said Mary Joe, "there is a boy who called me a chink, pa, and I want to beat him, beat him black and blue."
"And there is Tim, who sticks thistles in my hair," said Lucy, "I want to teach him a lesson, teach him good and proper, pa."
"No, what I am going to tell you is not for thrashing other boys, no matter how nasty, it is for defending yourself when you are set upon. All right."
"If you say so pa."
Nonetheless, the boys stopped bothering them after they had a few lessons from the Major. He had been the acknowledged master of this art in the army, and there was no reason why his girls couldn't master it. They were apt pupils, especially Mary Joe, and soon enough, along with algebra and history, she was a master of Kung-Fu, Judo, Jiu Jitsu and many other esoteric systems of unarmed combat.
It was during one harvest season that Mary Joe got the chance to try out her skill. They had hired a new farm hand to help with the reaping and baling. A tall broad-shouldered youth, Pete by name, who looked as if he had been sleeping rough, out in the country, and hadn't washed in days. Mary Joe wanted to him away, but the Major didn't like refusing work to any one who wanted it. Pete was hired. One day when they were alone with him in the barn, tossing the freshly made bales of hay out of the trolley, Pete, finding Lucy alone put an arm around her. "Come on sweetheart, give us a kiss."
"Take your hands off me," said, Lucy. Before she could say anything else Mary Joe was onto him in a flash. Her hands caught his throat in a vice, the thumbs digging into the hollows of his neck. Pete just stood there, paralysed by the unyielding grip and the cold fury that emanated from the girl's eyes. In just a few moments his knees sagged, and he fell to the ground, unconscious. It was with difficulty that the Major revived the youth, and when he was carried to the village doctor, tied up to his seat in the dog-cart, the news of Mary Joe's exploit spread through the area like a forest fire.
The girls grew up rapidly. Lucy was a golden-haired beauty, slender and waif-like, with large black eyes, that were astonishing with her blonde colour. Mary Joe, grew up to be tall and dark, with the sensuous curves of her mother. She looked completely oriental, but her temperament and character was inherited from her father. Both girls were bright, but while Mary Joe had a flair for languages, Lucy was good at mathematics and science. So when they grew up, Lucy went to read at the MIT in Boston and Mary Joe majored in far eastern history at the Boston university.
The Major stayed on at the farm. Old Dottie resumed her needling.
"James Cameron, now that the gurls are gone, what are you going to do here all alone."
"I am not alone, Dottie, I have you. Besides I like it this way."
"Shame on you Major, why you will grow a wild man living alone like this. Why don't you go get a nice job in Montpellier and buy yousell a nice clapboard house and a fancy car. Then I could also live sumatt."
"No Dottie, this is my home, I was born here and here I will die. I don't see what could be better."
"Here, why this ain't no place for you. Don't you feel awful lonesome here."
"No I don't"
"Never. Not ever. Not even when the brook is frozen and birches bend low with the snow and there ain't a soul around to come down for a friendly talk over the fence."
"No, not even then. Listen Dottie, haven't you heard the coyotes howling at night sometimes?"
"That I have.''
"And the groundhogs and the chipmunks and Bramble cropping the grass in the paddock."
"I have man, but they ain't people. Its people I talk of."
"Well there is old farmer Oak down in the valley, and folks in the village."
"Lord! how you go on, but they are just ornery people, no company for a gentleman and a soldier and an officer like you."
"Dottie, its ordinary people like these who made America and I am one of them."
He liked moralising about his country because he was a patriot. He loved the forests, when the sugar maples turned russet and gold in the fall. But for the matter of that he liked them in the spring too, he liked the varied shades of green and the swathes of moss campion flowers that made a patchwork of purple and red on the green pasture. He had the rare gift of contentment. He did not feel neglected in his farm deep in the Vermont forests. He did not mind that for all his labour he earned only a fraction of what he might have earned in the city. He did not care that he had no neighbours who were of his mind, and no company except poor old Clare. He was at peace with himself. He had only one ambition left, that one of his girls, preferably Mary Joe, would join the army, and serve the country, just as he had done.
This however was not to be. Lucy showed exceptional aptitude for maths and was obviously destined for the academic world. But it was Mary Joe who attracted more notice. Her fame as a martial arts expert spread thorough the university and even beyond. It was due to this accomplishment that she came to the attention of Tim Bradman, a retired director of the CIA who had made the city of Boston his home, and who occasionally lectured to the students on American foreign policy. Bradman thought that Mary Joe with her mastery of Chinese and unarmed combat, was a natural as an intelligence operative. He persuaded Mary Joe that America would be better served if she joined the CIA rather than the army. It was arranged that she would be employed as an assistant professor in Far Eastern History at the university. The university would not look askance at prolonged leaves of absence for 'field work', that a professor of Far Eastern History might well need to update her knowledge. Intelligence operatives need a respectable facade for their undercover operations, and what could be more respectable than an academic job in a reputed East Coast university. It was thus that she ended up as a CIA operative. And it is thus that she comes into our story.
