Mislaid

by Nell Zink

Not being a big reader or a particularly determined steward of pieces of paper, Ike didn’t know his creek bank had its origins in Reconstruction land grants that totaled nearly four hundred acres. Nor did he know he had held on for an unusually long time. After World War II—in the years of the “Great Migration,” when black people came out en masse as cold-loving proletarians—many Virginia counties had become dotted with vast and beautiful army, navy, air force, and CIA bases. That is, certain people’s land was taken in great swathes by eminent domain for national security, and where black people once hunted, fished, and farmed, servicemen now dwelt in high-ceilinged brick mansions on the water, watching pleasure boats come and go. Whenever the US Congress leaned on the services to stop being dogs in the manger about such valuable real estate, they would—just an example here!—sell part to developers for a golf resort and the rest to retired officers. If you have to be bad, be so bad sympathetic hearers just shake their heads and give up.