Part 15 (1/2)
Donna welled up some, you could tell. She had a lace handkerchief in her sleeve and she pulled it out early on. That husband of hers was no help to her whatsoever. DeAlton, his name is. He and his son-I ought to say their son their son, I guess, but he seems to take after the father-he and his son didn't seem overly distressed. They both had what I would describe as a little bit of an att.i.tude. Even at a funeral. It was as if they would rather have been somewhere else and they didn't mind your knowing it.
Audie was the one who got overcome, and he got overcome enough for the whole family. I don't know exactly what his problem is. He doesn't have epilepsy, and I don't think he has what they call a seizure disorder, but there's definitely some kind of a fit that comes over him. That's about the only word for it, although the older generation might call it a spell. An episode. The cliche is to say that a person shakes like a leaf but in his case it's the truth. It's a terrifying thing to watch. You think you should do something for him. I've wondered if it might have anything to do with the trouble he has communicating. Maybe if he could just say what's on his mind everything wouldn't get all bottled up and have to shake itself loose the way it does. That's how it seems to me, although I guess it's not a very scientific way of looking at it.
Lester.
THE FIRST INDIVIDUAL to work this earth was the first to lie beneath it and it came to pa.s.s in the same way for his sons after him, the first to work it the first to end his work. Vernon Proctor was brought home and lowered down already half decomposed, preserved and dipped and shot through with chemicals sufficient to last forever, but already cut to pieces and thus well on his way. The casket was closed and the truth went unspoken. The mere facts of life and death. If everyone knows a thing, then why say it. to work this earth was the first to lie beneath it and it came to pa.s.s in the same way for his sons after him, the first to work it the first to end his work. Vernon Proctor was brought home and lowered down already half decomposed, preserved and dipped and shot through with chemicals sufficient to last forever, but already cut to pieces and thus well on his way. The casket was closed and the truth went unspoken. The mere facts of life and death. If everyone knows a thing, then why say it.
1989.
Tom.
NOT LONG PAST SUPPERTIME on a sunny day in the middle of September, Tom was in the hayloft and the hayloft was heaven. A light and steady breeze drifted in through one open door and out through the other, keeping the hanging stems in constant motion. Like palm fronds being waved over a pharaoh's bald head by half-naked slave girls. That was how it seemed to him. The temperature was perfect for both man and marijuana, and the air smelled good up here too, like lush green plants and fresh cool breezes from somewhere else and money. Mixed with the smells of cows and cow manure from downstairs, but you couldn't have everything. on a sunny day in the middle of September, Tom was in the hayloft and the hayloft was heaven. A light and steady breeze drifted in through one open door and out through the other, keeping the hanging stems in constant motion. Like palm fronds being waved over a pharaoh's bald head by half-naked slave girls. That was how it seemed to him. The temperature was perfect for both man and marijuana, and the air smelled good up here too, like lush green plants and fresh cool breezes from somewhere else and money. Mixed with the smells of cows and cow manure from downstairs, but you couldn't have everything.
He'd put in a long couple of days getting the buds trimmed and the stems hung out on clothesline and the rest of it, the tender little stuff, set out to dry on screens that he and his father had dragged back from the munic.i.p.al dump in Ca.s.sius. DeAlton had worried that it was going to be too hot up in the loft but they didn't have much in the way of alternatives and the results for the last few years had been plenty fine hadn't they so that was that. Even DeAlton Poole couldn't very well argue with success. Besides, if today was any indication of how the next few weeks would go, the weather was going to be perfect. Absolutely primo primo.
He squatted in the doorway and looked down, watching his uncles going about their work like ants. Mindless and automatic and driven by something even they couldn't fully understand. Audie and Vernon had been out in the high field since sunup, harvesting corn for silage. Creed had been mending the fence up by the graveyard. Somewhere in the pit of his heart Tom allowed himself a little throb of grat.i.tude for everything they did, by which he meant how they went about the hard work of practically starving to death around this desolate place. Without them, where would he be? Nowhere, that's where. Or at the very least out in the open, which was as good as being in the state penitentiary.
He held on to the doorframe and leaned out into the open air and craned his neck either way. The sun was getting low over the Marshall property down the hill to the west, and Nick was still nowhere in sight. Late as usual. That was all right. The work he'd done in the hayloft might look even better once the shadows came up with the dusk. It'd be like a jungle in there, all spooky and mysterious. It would seem to go up and up forever, and all those hanging stems whispering. That would be good. He stood up to stretch his legs and thought about climbing down the ladder to put a nice tidy little joint on Uncle Vernon's chair for later. The poor old b.a.s.t.a.r.d was getting so he shook so much that if you gave him a Baggie he just spilled it all over his lap, so Tom had started rolling them for him. There was less waste that way. Plus it was kind of the least he could do, if you thought about it.
Nick got there just after sundown and once he'd climbed the ladder he went weaving around the hayloft like a kid on his first trip to Disney World, maybe taking in that Haunted Mansion they have. Looking straight up into the shadows with his mouth sprung wide open, positively thrilled to death. Tom said buddy what you're looking at up there is fifty-dollar bills and Nick said I know it and I'm smelling them too and Tom said that's right. That's right you are. You're smelling a barnful of fifty-dollar bills. Hundred-dollar bills too. Just give it time.
Nick said wait till Henri hears about all this and Tom said since when does Henri need to know anything about it. I don't work for Henri. Nick said we got an arrangement with Henri and Tom said we got an arrangement between the two of us last time I checked. Henri doesn't need to know every G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing I do. Nick dropped it and went on mooning around the hayloft, his head thrown all the way back, sniffing the air like a cat after its supper. The floor was covered with a layer of dirt and woodchips and sawdust and the leavings of a million bales of hay, and his engineer boots made tracks in it. From the loopy way he was following his nose around, Tom thought his trail looked like the one that that little cartoon kid in the newspaper makes, on Sundays when the guy who draws him can't seem to come up with an actual joke.
Tom pulled a Baggie out of his pocket. There was some loose dope in there along with a couple of joints. He offered it to Nick, telling him that this was about the last of his own personal stash left over from last year's crop. He was welcome to it in case he needed a reminder. Nick said no he didn't need a reminder but yes he would take that Baggie off his hands if he didn't mind. It'd be his pleasure.
They sat in the high doorway with their legs dangling and they smoked the first joint and they watched the night come on.
”Of course we're going to have to adjust our arrangement a little,” Tom said after a while. His father had given him that word, adjust. Adjust adjust. Adjust was easier for a person to swallow than was easier for a person to swallow than change change or or fix fix or or renegotiate renegotiate or whatever else he might have come up with. Adjusting was what a person did to the vertical hold on a television set when the picture started flipping for no reason. Adjusting was no big deal. or whatever else he might have come up with. Adjusting was what a person did to the vertical hold on a television set when the picture started flipping for no reason. Adjusting was no big deal.
Nick asked anyhow. ”What do you mean?”
”I mean with me supplying all this product, our old split just doesn't cut it anymore.”
”Hey,” said Nick. ”It wasn't my idea. I didn't ask you to go to all this trouble.”
”So you don't want any part of it? I can find somebody else to help me sell it if that's what you want.”
Nick drew hard on the joint and his words squeaked out high on the slightest drift of pale smoke. ”I didn't say that.” He handed it back to Tom. ”We still got Henri. We still got Henri's stuff is all.”
”I know. We'll split that the same as always.” Tom took a long pull and held it in his lungs and sniffed a little air in on top of it. He studied the joint to see if what was left was worth the trouble and then he handed it back to Nick. ”You just got to start treating me the same way you treat that Canuck is all. As far as this goes. This stuff right here.” Raising his shoulders and c.o.c.king his head to indicate the roomful of dope behind them in the dark.
”I guess you got a point.”
”It's an adjustment. Like I said.”
”Right,” said Nick.
”I don't hear you arguing with Henri. I don't hear you telling him you want to go fifty-fifty.”
”All right,” said Nick. He rubbed out the joint in the hard palm of his hand and crumpled the paper and threw it into the yard and licked the rest off with his tongue. ”Hey,” he said. ”Look over there. Is that the Big Dipper or what?”
Preston.
THE FIRST THING IS, you don't smoke in a barn. Least of all in a hayloft. You don't have to be very smart to figure that out even if n.o.body ever told you. Margaret gave me a telescope for my birthday that year, with a tripod and everything, and I had it set up on the screen porch. It's so dark out back you could just about run an observatory. Margaret was in the front room at the other end of the house with the television on but you couldn't see that from the screen porch. So there I was in the dark looking at Venus I think it was and just kind of finding my way around the heavens on account of I was pretty new at it when what do I see but this little orange dot going back and forth, way up in the hayloft door.
I knew who it'd be. I'd heard Tom's friend come up the dirt lane on his motorcycle while Margaret and I were having supper, and Tom'd been here himself all day and all day the day before that too. I'd about come to the conclusion that he wasn't working anymore unless you called what he was doing up by that old still working. Which I guess it is if you look at it that way, but that's not how you think of it as a rule. You don't think of it as a job, I mean. A regular job you'd go to.
So I knew the two of them were up there, and I just hated like h.e.l.l to see it. To see a perfectly good dirt farm being turned into some kind of opium den. A seraglio seraglio, like Margaret says. I thought about how that land had produced so much over the years. The way it smelled in the spring and summer, good smells and bad smells both. How it had supported Lester and Ruth all those years and then their children one by one. And now to see it come to this. I wondered where was the justice in it. If this was the way everything would go sooner or later.
I turned the telescope on the hayloft and Tom and his friend looked like a couple of big old giants sitting up there. They looked like something you'd find at the top of a beanstalk. That marijuana cigarette they were smoking could have pa.s.sed for a comet the way it moved back and forth, getting brighter when they pulled on it and dimmer when it just sat. Which wasn't for very long, let me tell you. It didn't look like they wanted to waste any of it.
I kept an eye on those two until the cigarette went out and then I quit holding my breath and looked at the stars for a while. It's amazing what you'll see. Then they went and lit up another one and I had to keep an eye on them until that one was gone too.
1954.
Audie.
IF I I WAS DONE WAS DONE with the tractor he would take that or if I weren't done he would just walk. When he was done with his own ch.o.r.es he was done and he didn't care if I was done or not. Vernon either. He'd just wash up and go. Even if we hadn't done the milking yet. I think it was the army taught him that. Just get your own ch.o.r.es done and don't worry about the other man. Plus he was kind of giving orders to Vernon and me all the time even though I guess in the army he probably just took them. I'd come back through the pasture and I'd see him going down the dirt lane or maybe already down there turning toward Ca.s.sius and I didn't know where he was going but I knew he was through working for one day. with the tractor he would take that or if I weren't done he would just walk. When he was done with his own ch.o.r.es he was done and he didn't care if I was done or not. Vernon either. He'd just wash up and go. Even if we hadn't done the milking yet. I think it was the army taught him that. Just get your own ch.o.r.es done and don't worry about the other man. Plus he was kind of giving orders to Vernon and me all the time even though I guess in the army he probably just took them. I'd come back through the pasture and I'd see him going down the dirt lane or maybe already down there turning toward Ca.s.sius and I didn't know where he was going but I knew he was through working for one day.
Preston.
LIKE THAT OLD SONG used to say: used to say: ”How 'ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?” ”How 'ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?”
Ruth.
HER NAME IS V VELMA, a name that in these days is just coming into fas.h.i.+on and will not stay in fas.h.i.+on for long. Her eyes are deep-set and her nose is sharp and she favors lipstick the color of fresh blood. She keeps her thick dark hair pompadoured in the front and brushed close on the sides and pinned back into a ponytail that hangs down inside a sling of black netting. The first time Creed Proctor sets eyes on her he decides that this is the woman he would like to have serving him his supper every night of the week, and for a while he will nearly manage it.
He still has some army pay. When he came home he used a little of it to buy his mother a brooch at the Woolworth's in Ca.s.sius and he used some more of it to buy hardware for the whiskey still, but the rest he has kept in a carton under the bed with his clothes and it has been burning a hole there for weeks now. He and his brothers have taken the tractor to the feedstore in Ca.s.sius and they are coming back with the stake-bed wagon loaded down behind it when they pa.s.s the Dineraunt on Madison Street and Creed happens to look in through the window. There she stands behind the counter, working the register and looking up at some customer in the most earnest manner. The light is just perfect and the plate-gla.s.s window between Creed and the woman inside seems to fall away. Even the lettering on it. There is no reflection to separate the two of them and no glare of sunlight from anywhere and no arch of hand-painted letters spelling out MADISON STREET DINERAUNT-GOOD FOOD MADISON STREET DINERAUNT-GOOD FOOD. Just Creed and the dark-haired woman and nothing in between. He realizes all of a sudden that he is hungry but he does not say anything. He isn't going to stop now. Not with Vernon and Audie to drag along. They'd probably think they could beat his time with any girl but they'd be wrong about that. They're just a couple of hayseeds who've never seen anything worth looking at in this big old world. He'll come back sometime soon. He'll make a point of it.
His immediate problem is those army khakis. He's been wearing them every day since returning from Korea, and as much as he has tried to go easy on them they just won't stay clean. His mother washes them every Sat.u.r.day morning with the rest of the laundry and she presses the creases back into them with an iron heated up on the stove, but her disease is already beginning to weaken her and the filth never comes out entirely and the heat of that big rusty iron just seems to set it in. She apologizes every time she hands them over. He sizes them up and tells her that it doesn't make any difference, but it does and she can see that but there is no help for it.
He takes them now from the carton under the bed and unfolds them and lays them out, picturing the girl behind the cash register and despairing in his heart. He simply cannot go down there dressed this way. And he certainly can't go in his coveralls. He considers was.h.i.+ng these poor things himself and he considers asking his mother to try again but neither course seems promising. So he folds them and puts them back in the carton and slides it back under the bed where it belongs, and when the day is done he takes them out again and brings them across the yard to Margaret Hatch. She has a brand new Bendix Duomatic in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and it washes and dries both. Margaret tells him that she will do her best to get the stains out, but that if he really wants to preserve his uniform the way Preston preserved his from the second war then he might want to stick to wearing his coveralls around the farm from here on out. He says he knows that. He says he isn't interested in keeping them but in wearing them. She sighs and says they won't last then and he says he'll be careful. He promises to bring them out only for special occasions.
Margaret.