The Body Of Jonah Boyd Read Free Page A

preparation
     of the Thanksgiving turkey, she radiated the slightly weary, slightly burdened grandeur of one of those monarchs whose biographies
     she was forever reading—Mary, Queen of Scots, Catherine the Great. But more than either of them, Elizabeth I. In her imagination,
     I fancy she saw herself as the reincarnation of the Virgin Queen.
    One peculiarity of home ownership in the neighborhoods immediately surrounding the Wellspring campus is that the university
     itself owns all the land. When you buy a house, you buy only the house; the land will then be leased to you for ninety-nine years at the rate of a dollar a year— but only on the condition that you are a tenured professor or senior administrator at the university. And though a spouse can inherit a lease, it can be passed on to a child only in the unlikely circumstance that the child,
     too, is a tenured professor or senior administrator at the university—a rule that enraged Nancy, who had a mystic feeling
     for her home, and wanted it to remain in the family. What plots were hatched in the seventies to get Daphne—now a psychologist—a
     position at the student health center! All to no avail. Ernest was killed, and Nancy died, and the house passed out of the
     family’ hands, until Ben, rather remarkably, reclaimed it.
    To understand how this odd provision came into being (and it really is the heart of the story), you need to know something
     about Wellspring’ history. The university was chartered in 1910, when cattle baron and theosophy devotee Josiah Red-dicliffe
     sectioned off ten thousand acres of hilly farmland for the purposes of founding a college that would serve as “a wellspring
     of knowledge and hope forever more.” The “forever more” is key: Although the charter invested the board of trustees with the
     power to decide just how to use the land, it stipulated that not even an acre of it could be sold. In its early years, Wellspring was isolated, an “Eden of
     learning” amid the arroyos and swaying grasses. And this was just how Josiah Reddicliffe wanted it: He had a vision of sturdy
     young males going out to round up cattle after a few hours spent reading Pliny the Elder. But then a few merchants and bankers,
     doctors and lawyers, opened shops and practices on the fringes of the campus. In 1920, the town of Wellspring was officially
     incorporated. Four years later, chiefly to appease certain members of the faculty who were getting weary of the commute from
     Pasadena, the board of trustees came up with the land lease scheme that obtains to the present day. These professors built
     the first houses on Florizona Avenue, including the one Nancy Wright was so determined to keep for her children.
    Why did she care so much? Ernest certainly didn’t. Indeed, one afternoon a few months before his death, he came home and announced
     quite casually that he’d just put the house on the market, and put a down payment on a new condominium on Oklakota Road. Nancy’
     outrage, he later said, baffled him. Why should they go on rattling around in such a big house, he argued, especially now
     that he was retiring, and Daphne and Mark were on their own, and Ben was about to start college? He was not the sort of man
     to understand the mysterious sensibilities that yoke some people to their homes. “I hardly even notice where I live,” he told
     me once. “Rooms, furniture. Intelligent people don’t care about these things.” Still, on this occasion at least, Nancy must
     have prevailed—whether through threats or pleading or bargaining, I shall never know, the secrets of that bedroom having died
     with its occupants—for a few days later, he withdrew the offer on the condominium, and stopped the sale of the house.
    It was after he was killed, and she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, that Nancy began in earnest her campaign to keep the
     house. In this she was joined by Daphne and Ben, both of whom had by then moved back home, and who