The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2004

F O C U S O N F S F I C T I O N 38 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 T HE K EEPER n the room of his own, in the house of his own, at the end of the road of his own, Conrad Campbell picked up another box. The distur- bance of the dried cardboard raised the fecal dust that had come to cover everything he had dragged out of Rose’s old house. These 10 boxes, the remnant of 50, sat on the floor in front of the bright maple bookcases. Conrad Campbell had moved to the end of this flat, sandy road a decade earlier. He had searched for a place that had both the feeling of home and that avoided the tendrils of the world. Much of his career had him working on a series of impossible prob- lems that were, in the end, the same. They were all prob- lems of ample resources, poor distribution and primitive power; twice in the past 35 years he had been quoted as a “career diplomat” in the Washington Post. He was an expert on famines and epi- demics. Campbell labored under the idea that he held the best interests of all and worked for a higher cause, but in the end he left with pro- found fatigue and uncertainty. Rose Winstead Williams was a relative of questionable connection; they shared peo- ple in the same hometown whom they both called cousins by marriage. Camp- bell found Rose, a childless widow, seemingly forgotten, living on an ancient estate along the shore of Nassawango Creek. The discovery followed from his answering an odd advertisement in Pine Hill’s free weekly paper: Curious and watchful neighbor needed for guest house. Rent to own. Need Cash. Campbell bought Rose’s guest house and 25 acres of land and took up residence about 200 yards from Rose’s house, where she cured herbs, distilled oils, and stored all that she collected. On thick, old paper, she maintained journals of her discoveries, including pencil and watercolor sketches. They shared a garden, and he became her conduit for rou- tine supplies. From these rotting boxes Campbell was trying to con- struct order, to save the farm. Strewn across card tables around the room were relat- ed piles. On the power com- pany table were four piles. In the first were letters asking for payment of derelict bills. In the second were invoices from appliance repair shops called in to fix powerless appliances. The third pile contained letters from Rose to Eastern Shore Power and to various Maryland agencies complaining of electrical waves that were being pumped into her house, try- ing, if not to kill her outright, I N EGOTIATING A PEACE WITH R OSE W ILLIAMS ’ LOYAL CAT IS C ONRAD C AMPBELL ’ S GREATEST CHALLENGE . B Y R ICKY R OOD Donald Mulligan