A Thousand Acres (22 page)

But to imagine ourselves together in this place was to imagine collisions and explosions, seismic movements of the earth we were standing on. It was to imagine everyone around us dead, in fact.

And I imagined it, with a current of muted fear that ran under my usual eagerness to imagine the worst. To imagine Jess gone was to imagine two other impossible things, that he had never returned (but he had, and at times I realized this afresh with a pressing feeling that felt a lot like remorse), or, sometimes, that I was the dead one. When I made myself imagine him leaving, going back to Seattle, getting married, having children, being dead certainly seemed preferable to returning to the life I had lived before his return.

My father said, "That's a nice place."

I looked right, but we were past it. I said, "Ward LaSalle's place?"

Ward was Ken's second cousin.

"Fields were real clean."

"I see you took the gauze off your cut, Daddy. It looks pretty good."

"Let the air get at it."

"Today, maybe. But you don't want to get into the combine with an open wound, do you? Do you have some antibiotic ointment at home?"

He didn't reply.

"We can get some.

It was silly to think that Jess would never marry. Being like Loren was just the way he didn't want to be.

"What's the matter with you?"

I started. "What?"

"What's the matter with you? That semi passed and you acted like you were going to jump out of your skin."

I hadn't even seen the semi.

It was remarkable how my state of mind had evolved over the last live days. I could distinctly remember the strength I felt as I walked away from Jess, ducked under the rosebushes and trotted toward my house.

I'd wanted to put distance between us. I had literally had enough of him, was full of him, and while not precisely happy or elated, I felt finished somehow, made right. We had promised nothing, not even spoken of the future-what we were doing seemed more essentially a culmination of the past, only a culmination of the past.

I don't know why I was surprised to find how quickly those feelings drained away, how eagerly I longed to have again what I thought had been sufficient for a lifetime.

I don't know why I was surprised to discover myself questioning all my memories of Jess, sifting through them for clues about his feelings and plans. I knew about his feelings and plans. He was all the things he had told me-restless, fearful, torn between what he would have called American greed and Oriental serenity. I knew what was up with Jess, but it was suddenly all mysterious.

I don't know why I was surprised to discover everything changed, since it was obvious in retrospect that I had sought to change it.

And I was surprised to discover how my mind worked over these things, the simultaneity of it. I seemed, on the surface, to be continually talking to myself giving myself instructions or admonishments, asking myself what I really wanted, making comparisons, busily working my rational faculties over every aspect of Jess and my feelings for him as if there were actually something to decide.

Beneath this voice, flowing more sweetly, was the story: what he did and what I did and what he then did and what I did after that, seductive, dreamy, mostly wordless, renewing itself ceaselessly, then projecting itself into impossible futures that wore me out. And beneath this was an animal, a dog living in me, shaking itself jumping, barking, attacking, gobbling at things the way a dog gulps its food.

Daddy said, "That Spacelab thing is going to go right over this area, according to the paper."

I said, "What?"

"The thing that's falling. Goes over here all the time. It's going to be something when it falls, let me tell you."

I glanced at a passing field, flat and defenseless, and thought for a moment about meteorites and space capsules, things glowing in the atmosphere, then making holes in the ground. I felt a visceral flutter of fear. It was his voice that did it, I think. I said, "Don't worry about it. You could draw it to you. ' He turned his big head and looked at me. I smiled. I said, "That was kind of a joke, Daddy."

He said, "What happens is people don't watch out. They get careless because they weren't taught right."

I said, "You can't watch out for Skylab, Daddy. The pieces are too heavy."

"They were careless with that whole thing. Shouldn't even be falling.

The joke's on them, isn't it?"

"I guess so." After a second I said, "I thought it was supposed to be cooler today." We came into Pike passing the elevator that sat right by the freight tracks. The chiropractic office was the first office at the bottom of Main Street. I pulled into the shade of the overhang.

When I got out, Daddy said, "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to walk down Main Street. I'll be back and then we'll go over to the Pike's Peak and have dinner." He huffed. I said, "I don't want to sit in the car. It's awfully hot."

"What if I'm done before you come back? I gotta wait for you."

"It's air-conditioned in the office. Just chat with Roberta."

"You wait. You can window-shop some other time."

"I'll meet you at the Pike's Peak, then."

"I don't want to walk there in this heat."

I squinted down the street at the bank clock: 11:12, 87 degrees.

"It's only a block and a half and it's not that hot, Daddy. The walk will do you good." This conversation made me breathless, as if I were wearing a girdle with tight stays.

"You wait. I want to ride."

I glanced toward the chiropractic office. Roberta Stanley, the receptionist, was just inside the door, watching us argue. I said, "It's boring to wait, Daddy. I didn't bring a book or a magazine or anything." I hated the note of pleading that crept into my voice.

Where was the power I had felt only a few days before, the power of telling rather than being told?

Inspired by just that note of pleading, Daddy raised his voice a little. "You wait."

I got back in the car. It was the presence of Roberta Stanley that made me get back in the car. Daddy turned and walked heavily toward the door. Roberta got up from behind her desk and opened it for him.

After he went in, Roberta lingered a moment, smiling at me. I gave a wave, and she waved back. I scrunched down in the seat. All of the Stanleys would certainly hear about this, since Roberta was a terrible gossip. I hated to think about how people felt about us. It didn't matter what it was, disapproval, ridicule, even sympathy or fondness.

I hated to think of them having any opinion at all.

There was a remote possibility that I would see Jess Clark in Pike.

He was often the one to run into town if they needed something, and he had gotten into the habit of doing all the food shopping, since neither Harold nor Loren ever remembered to accommodate his vegetarianism.

That would be nice, I thought, just to see him ambling down the sidewalk, just to watch him from a distance, his ligure imbedded in its surroundings. One of many, a manageable size. He didn't appear, but thinking of him sparked the voices, and I gave into them, sliding farther down into the seat. The effect of sliding down, of relaxing, was to arouse me slightly. I closed my eyes.

Daddy ordered the full hot dinner special-roast beef with gravy and mashed potatoes, canned string beans, ice cream, three cups of coffee.

I had grilled cheese on Roman Meal bread, potato chips, pickle, and a Coke. We sat across from one another, and I saw him eyeballing my plate. He said, "That all the dinner you're gonna eat?"

"I'm not hungry for some reason."

"Hmmp."

"You really shouldn't be eating all that. That's too much. It's a hot day."

"You said it wasn't hot before."

"Daddy, if you got more exercise, you'd feel better. A little walk down Main Street from the chiropractor to the cale wouldn't bother you.

"I can walk it. I don't want to. I walked plenty in my time, and now I want to ride."

"Did Dr. Hudson talk to you about exercise? It's importantHe waved me off with his fork.

"Then I hope you don't get your license taken away.

He drank from his coffee. "You shouldn't talk to me like you do.

I'm your father."

"I try to show respect, Daddy."

"You don't try hard enough. You think because I gave you girls the farm, you don't have to make up to me any more. I know what's going on."

"That's not true, Daddy. We do our best." I smiled. "You're not the easiest person to get along with, you know."

"I don't like it when people are lazy, or when they don't pay attention. This is a hard business, and takes hard work."

I continued to smile. The second half of my sandwich lay on my plate, and I was hungry for it, but instead of eating it, I made myself say, "I don't think you can say that we're lazy. Anyway, I don't think you show us any respect, Daddy. I don't think you ever think about anything from our point of view."

"You don't, huh? I bust my butt working all my life and I make a good place for you and your husband to live on, with a nice house and good income, hard times or good times, and you think I should be stopping all the time and wondering about your, what did you call it, your 'point of view'?"

I felt myself redden to the hairline, and pushed my plate away. "I just want to get along, Daddy. I don't want to light. Don't light with me?"

"You know, my girl, I never talked to my father like this. It wasn't up to me to judge him, or criticize his ways. Let me tell you a story about those old days, and maybe you'll be reminded what you have to be grateful for."

"Okay." I was smiling like a maniac.

"There was a family that had a farm south of us. The old man was older than my dad, and he'd come in and drained that land down there, him and his sons. He had four sons, and when the youngest was about twelve, he came down with that polio thing. This was a long time ago, before I even went to school. Well, that boy was all crippled up by the time I remember him, but he didn't stay in the house, nosiree. The old man got him out there and made him plow his furrows as straight as the other boys, and he whipped him, too, to show him that there wasn't any way out of it. There were a couple of daughters, and one up and left home when she was about sixteen, calling her father all kinds of a bully and slave driver, but the thing is, that boy did his share, and he respected himself for it. It was the old man's job to see to that."

"How do you know?"

"What?"

"How do you know he respected himself for it, that that was what he needed?"

"I saw it!" He was beginning to huff and puff.

I said, "Okay, Daddy. Okay. I don't want you to be mad. Let's go down to the Supervalu. You need some coffee at your place, and I need some things, too. I don't know whether these building people expect to eat with us or not."

"You girls should listen to me.

"We'll try harder, Daddy."

It was easy, sitting there and looking at him, to see it his way.

What did we deserve, after all? There he stood, the living source of it all, of us all. I squirmed, remembering my ungrateful thoughts, the deliciousness I had felt putting him in his place. When he talked, he had this effect on me. Of course it was silly to talk about "my point of view." When my father asserted his point of view, mine vanished.

Not even I could remember it.

LATER oN, WHEN I LooKED BACK, what I remembered about that day was the morning, my fear that Rose sensed something between Jess and me, my argument with my father at dinner, the ceaseless thoughts of Jess Clark that were simultaneously bewitching and tedious, a kind of work that I could not stop performing. The afternoon slipped by me. It was true that when we went by the building crew and I said, "Want to stick around for a while and watch them pour the footings?" Daddy didn't answer. But in our life together, we had long passed the point of eloquent silences. When I slowed down to pull in next to my house, he waved me forward, down to his house, and when I pulled in there, he got out without a word. I could, of course, read by his demeanor that he was displeased, but how this displeasure would incubate I could not and did not know.

At home, there was a definite sense of worthwhile accomplishment. The Harvestore man from Minnesota had a cup of coffee and left to go back to Minnesota. The confinement building man from Kansas was staying at the motel in Zebulon Center, and said that while there was a company policy against meals with the people they were working for, because it screwed up expense account tax deductions, he'd be llappy to make one exception and eat with us the next night, if we wanted. I told him we'd barbecue some of our own pork chops. It would be Tuesday, I knew, Daddy's night, but he might eat barbecued pork chops if a stranger was eating with us. Or he might not. It was a gamble. The Kansan was a pleasant wiry man, half a head shorter than Ty, who'd actually grown up on a wheat farm in Colorado. He kept looking out the window, across the south field. Once he said, "If this had been my dad's place, I never would have left. This looks like paradise to me, that's for sure.

Ty said, "We try not to forget how lucky we are.

We walked him out to his truck. A cool wind had picked up, damp and full of rain. The Kansas man said, "Think we'll get it?"

Ty said, "Feels like it." Dark clouds were piling up on the western horizon; blinding streaks of platinum sunlight shot toward us over their humped crests. "There's been some good-sized storms this year, but mostly they've missed around here. I expect we're about due."

"Now when I was a kid, we used to go tornado chasing."

"I did that once."

I turned and stared at Ty.

"Damn risky thing to do, but farm kids are crazy.

They laughed. The Kansas man got into his pickup and wheeled onto the blacktop, waving as he left. I said, "I guess he won't care that that motel doesn't have a cellar."

"Doesn't sound like it."

The weatherman said the storm would come through Mason City about midnight. We were, in fact, already under a tornado watch. I dished up a chicken stew I'd made in the Crock-Pot in the morning and told Ty a little of what had happened at the elevators and in between, about Daddy bringing up Skylab, but I tiptoed around the argument, knowing he would disapprove. He told me about the progress of the building. I listened for news of Jess Clark, but he didn't mention anything. It looked like a quiet evening. It may be true that just about this time, during our after supper conversation over the dishwashing, I did hear a truck stop at the corner, turn, and accelerate toward Cabot. It may be that I heard that, or it may be that it's inserted itself into those memories.