A VIEW OF THE WOODS
477
the greater interest and every now and then he gave the Pittses a prac–
tical lesson by selling off a lot. Nothing infuriated Pitts more than to
see him sell off a piece of the property to an outsider, because Pitts
wanted to buy it himself.
Pitts was a thin, long-jawed, irascible, sullen, sulking individual
and his wife was the duty-proud kind: It's my duty to stay here
and take care of Papa. Who would do it if I didn't? I do it know–
ing full well I'll get no reward for it. I do it because it's my duty.
The old man was not taken in by this for a minute. He knew
they were waiting impatiently for the day when they could put him
in a hole eight feet deep and cover him up with dirt. Then, even
if he did not leave the place to them, they figured they would be
able to buy it. Secretly he had made his will and left everything in
trust to Mary Fortune, naming his lawyer and not Pitts as executor.
When he died Mary Fortune could make the rest of them jump;
and he didn't doubt for a minute that she would be able to do it.
Ten years ago they had announced that they were going to
name the new baby Mark Fortune Pitts, after him, if it were a boy,
and he had not delayed in telling them that if they coupled his name
with the name Pitts he ·would put them off the place. When the
baby came, a girl, and he had seen that even at the age of one day
she bore his unmistakable likeness, he had relented and suggested
himself that they name her Mary Fortune, after his beloved mother,
who had died seventy years ago, bringing him into the world.
The Fortune place was in the country on a clay road that left
the paved road fifteen miles away and he would never have been
able to sell off any lots if it had not been for progress, which had
always been his ally. He was not one of these old people who fight
improvement, who object to everything new and cringe at every
change. He wanted to see a paved highway in front of
his
house with
plenty of new-model cars on it, he wanted to see a supermarket
store across the road from him, he wanted to see a gas station, a
motel, a drive-in picture-show within easy distance. Progress had sud–
denly set all this in motion. The electric power company had built
a dam on the river and flooded great areas of the surrounding
country and the lake that resulted touched his land along a half-mile
stretch. Every Tom, Dick and Harry, every dog and his brother,
wanted a lot on the lake. There was talk of their getting a telephone
