The property, Mr. Chapman told me in the car, had been left to him by his father, who had liked to go there in the fall to hunt, or perhaps just to escape. His father had died just a few months before; Mr. Chapman didn’t hunt, didn’t like the outdoors, and wanted to use the money to invest back into his dry cleaning business. He didn’t want to sell through a real estate agency because he didn’t want to have to pay a commission; he figured that with a lot of people “flush”, as he called it, and wanting to get away from the city periodically, there might be a market for it. He himself couldn’t be less interested.

“I’d be bored stiff,” he said. “My father used to take me up there sometimes, but I couldn’t take it. Drove me stir crazy, nothing but trees and birds. I couldn’t sleep. And there wasn’t anything to do up there. My father killed things, that was his entertainment, but I don’t want to do that. Why the hell he left it to me, when I couldn’t have cared less and he knew it, I’ll never understand. He must have known I’d want to sell, so I guess he didn’t care any more.”

He was thin, this Mr. Chapman, with graying hair, early fifties probably, I decided, sharp-featured and gentle-voiced. I could see that he was not a hunter, and his skin was the same kind of gray as my own, a city-dweller’s skin. He had a pleasant, warm voice, but tired; he had little hope that this trip would produce anything for him, thought it was a day wasted from a life that had no time to waste. For as he pointed out, even if I liked the place I would have to talk to my husband about it, and we would have to take the trip again.