MARGARETVILLE

A private moment, suddenly, walking the back field alone, with four lowing cows, purchased neither for beef nor milk but instead for this very thing, scenery, munching grass.

Early morning, a weak chill promising a milder day, a line of trees to his left in the foggy middle-distance like black spiderwebs against the grey morning sky, and to the right his own architecturally-enhanced 1890's manor house re-designed to impose over this stretch of northern Westchester former-farmland and dwarf the other "luxury" homes in the neighborhood, themselves all built in the late-1980's & early 90's.  To "impose" not so much to look down on them (the other homes, that is), but, since his entire estate was landscaped and sight-lined via an expensive project of photography, surveying and digitally enhanced 3-D modeling to give the impression that no other house even existed for miles around, to make the other homes and their inhabitants feel self-consciously inadequate, when gazing out their seemingly tiny windows only at mature pines, rolling hills and the occasional sprinting, riderless horse, yet knowing what lay beyond.

The "Great House" as it was called is similarly enfogged, all its windows lightless, extended family members there all still aslumber, even his father, the very man himself, overtaken by last night's celebration, wine-soaked and sauced into sedation, and administered aspirin and antacid prophylactically last eve, pre-tuck-in, by a dutiful son, with the band still playing My Way downstairs in the ballroom, and his father humming along and muttering about what a classy gentleman Sinatra was, when he knew him, even for an "eye-talian."

He is filled with a sense of satisfaction, of accomplishment.  A man in full, as they say, or at least he likes to think so.  He is momentarily self-conscious about not really knowing what that phrase might mean, "man in full," and now suddenly reminded of being corrected, ill-advisedly, by his former assistant when he suggested the assistant add the phrase "jack of all trades" (meant as a compliment), to a speech he (the assistant) was ghost-writing for him, to be delivered at a ceremony honoring NY's mayor.

"...and master of none?" the assistant had said, finishing the phrase but adding the upturn at the end as if in question, at least having the grace to do that, suggesting that perhaps this might not be the best thing to include in the speech but knowing, too, as soon as he opened his mouth that it was the wrong thing to say to his boss.

He waited a few months to fire him not wanting to associate the termination with a question of pride on his part and allowing, to himself, that the assistant should have known better, but not so much because he shouldn't have corrected him, his boss, but more so that it ultimately didn't matter what a man of his stature said in a speech to even the mayor.  Money mattered and in this town it was all that mattered.  Gazing down the hill, past the cows and the horse paddock at the antique barn he had had moved from a town in upstate NY called Margaretville, at great expense, and had painted bright red so it couldn't be missed from the third floor bedroom window, say--the bedroom incidentally his father now slept in--he knew that if money mattered, then HE must certainly matter.

So yes, a man in full.  And speaking of which, he is now thinking of Beef Wellington, which had been on last night's menu.  Of the two kinds of powerful men (either (a) the classic disciplined self-denier who allows himself no vice save greed and never lets down his guard for an instant or (b) the life-to-the-fullest glutton indulging every whim and spending always for the finest) he was more the latter although he didn't engage so much in the so-called lustful vices preferring more to eat, drink and play-at extreme sport than to "chase tail" as it were, which was a phrase he had overheard his father use speaking to one of his banking acquaintances on a hunting trip long ago in Colorado, the phrase sticking in his head then, at thirteen, since they were hunting quail at the time and he had vomited in the bushes when he had come upon the remains of a bird his father had shot out of the sky, essentially a bird in two pieces, one of which was a bloody stump of tail feathers, i.e. the birds ass.  No surprise then the bad associations with "tail-chasing" or that his wife, Noelle, around the office and behind his back (and of course hers as well), was referred to instead, when spoken of, as "No-ASS."

The expanse of his estate, its rolling grass hills, its bushes and trees had a sort of laxative effect on him, the way a bibliophile, for example, might feel after a few hours in a really good bookstore, or a child in a really first-rate toy store--the feeling of excitement and of belonging in a place, and of being "home"--there's a certain feeling of comfort.  Or maybe it was the Wellington, either way he felt in that moment the need to evacuate.

He considered the walk back uphill to the house.  It was maybe 300 yards away and would require him to leave the outdoors and abandon his walk and most likely end his "private moment."  The barn, more like 150 yards in the other direction, and downhill, was often locked and he didn't have his keys with him.  Still though not so far a walk to give it a try but it occurred to him all at once that this land here, these 1,856 acres of utter privacy, was his property, it was the physical manifestation of all that he had accomplished.  And no one was around except the cows, the farm staff had all been given the morning off.  He was known in the circles of so-called high finance as a decisive man, with the ability to very quickly weigh the facts and to make a choice--to roll the dice, and live with the consequences.

He removed his workout pants, tossed them aside and, underwearless, lowered himself, bending at the knees and spreading his feet wide enough to establish a firm hold on his center of gravity.  He considered his position, looked around himself once more, saw the cows were all turned away strangely but no less amusingly, and with a profound sense of satisfaction and self-assurance he relaxed his sphincter and issued forth.

In the back of his mind he worried that once started he would regret what might be considered a relatively crass act.  Yet even as the acrid smell of his own offal mixed with the cool scent of the grass and wafted to his nose it didn't dampen the feeling of satisfaction he felt, as if the entirety of his life had led up to this moment of utter well being and comfort, and, let's face it, self-expression.  He thought again of his family and especially of his father, the man he had tried so hard over the years to please and impress, sleeping there in the distance, in the safety and comfort of his home, under the auspices of his protection and provision.  What was the phrase?  The sweat of his brow?  One cow suddenly turned its head and looked at him.  Even at a distance he got lost in its soulful brown eyes and felt akin, in that moment and via that inter-species connection, with all of nature and all of God's creation.

His father, returning from the large bathroom his son had told him was furnished entirely of white Georgia marble ("just like the Lincoln Memorial") and where he had peed for the fifth time that night, sighed in the half-light of the room, exhausted, spent; a lifetime come to this.  Not even able to get a really good night's sleep anymore.  He gazed out the window spotting the luridly painted red barn his son had found somewhere upstate and had moved absurdly here.  "Why not just fucking build a red barn," he had thought at the time but was sensitive to his son's feelings and knew, just as he had in his day, that his son needed to make his own mark on the world.  He was just about to return to bed when he spotted his son out in the field with the cows.  He squinted and wondered.  In the army they called it "copping a squat."

The sun rose higher in the sky and the cows alternated between sunning and shading.  The trees swayed in a faint breeze.  The barn baked all that summer and its red soon faded again with time just as it had before in another place.