A Thousand Acres: A Novel

by Jane Smiley

  One day, when Ty came in for supper, Jess was behind him. He had on jeans and a light blue T-shirt, and his hands were dirty up to his elbows. Ty said, “Hey Ginny. I got this guy to do some honest work for a change, but now he wants supper.” He kissed me on the forehead and went down in the cellar to drop his clothes by the washing machine and change. I said to Jess, “What did they make you do, muck out the farrowing pens with your bare hands?”

  “We were fixing the differential on the old tractor.”

  “The Farmall? What are they going to use that for?”

  “I’ve been assigned to manure spreading behind your dad’s house.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “I don’t mind. Anyway, manure spreading is something I believe in, and judging from the size of the manure pile and the condition of the manure spreader, there hasn’t been that much manure spread in the last few years. Like forty.”

  “We get good yields,” shouted Ty. “And that’s the name of the game these days. Anyway, wait till I’ve got that Slurrystore.” His heavy step creaked on the cellar stairs. “Then we’ll have manure spreading every which way. You going to eat with those hands?”

  I handed Jess a towel and he went out to the back sink and turned on the water.

  Ty murmured, “Is there enough supper?”

  I whispered, “Isn’t he a vegetarian, though? All I’ve got is hamburger noodle casserole and some green beans and salad.”

  “I forgot about that.” He opened the refrigerator. When Jess came back, he handed him a beer, but Jess put it back and took out a Coke. They sat down at the kitchen table. Jess said, “Ah, you farmers always think a big new piece of equipment is the answer.” I glanced at him. His expression was aggressive but merry, and Ty took this as a joke. He said, “Nah. Two big new pieces of equipment. That’s the answer.”

  I set the food on the table, with a bowl of cottage cheese, then said, “Anyway, we’ll see what the answer is. We’ve got plenty of big new pieces of equipment on order.”

  “Mmmm,” said Ty, with dramatic relish.

  “I’d forgotten what a nice kitchen this is,” said Jess. “Didn’t the Ericsons have some kind of bird in here?”

  “They had a parrot. But I thought he was always in the living room. Remember how he used to order the dogs around?” I said to Ty, “From overhearing Cal training them, I suppose, this parrot had learned to give the commands, and when any of the dogs went into the living room, the parrot would start shouting orders, and the dogs would obey. Once we came in from outside, and we heard the parrot squawking and shouting ‘Sit! Roll over!’ and we went in the living room and there was the collie panting and doing all these tricks. Mrs. Ericson had to put a sheet over the parrot’s cage.”

  “When did they leave?” asked Jess.

  “Oh, I’m sure they were gone before you were. I was fourteen when Daddy bought this farm.”

  “Stole it from Harold, you mean.” Jess stared me down, that audacious twinkle again.

  “Oh, right. I forgot.”

  What I had forgotten was the pleasure of a guest for dinner, someone unrelated, with sociable habits learned far away. While we helped ourselves, Ty said, “What do they think about this oil shortage out west?”

  “Oil company scam.”

  “They’ve got Carter by the short hairs.” Ty glanced at me, because he knew I rather liked Carter, or at least, liked Rosalynn and Miss Lillian. I rolled my eyes.

  “The thing is,” said Jess, “he’s a realist. He looks at all sides. He ponders what he should do in a thoughtful way. You should never have a realist in the White House. Being president is too scary for a realist.” I laughed. Ty said, “Ginny likes him. I voted for him, I’ve got to say, though I don’t know a thing about farming peanuts. But every time something comes up, he just wrings his hands.”

  “Nah,” said Jess. “He says, ‘What should I do?’ A president’s got to say, ‘What do I want to do? What will make me feel good now that I’m feelin’ so bad?’ He’s like a farmer, you see, only the big pieces of equipment he’s got access to are weapons, that’s the difference.”

  Ty was smiling. When dinner was over, I didn’t want Jess to leave. Ty didn’t either. There was a moment, after I had picked up the plates, when we all looked at the table. Then Ty got up and opened the refrigerator again, and said, “How about another beer?”

  I was as smooth as a professional hostess. I said, “It’s so hot in here. Why don’t we go out on the front porch?”

  Once Jess had settled on the porch swing and Ty on the top step, his spot, I felt a rare rush of luxuriant delight. The evening lay before me, and all I had to do was receive it.

  Jess took two or three deep breaths. The swing chains rattled and twisted against one another. The lilacs were over with, but I’d cut the grass around the house that morning, and the sweet fragrance of chamomile floated on top of the sharper scent of the wet tomato vines I’d watered before dinner. There weren’t any lightning bugs, yet, but I could see one or two cabbage moths pale and dim against the dark greenery around the porch. “This is nice,” said Jess. “This is exactly what I was looking for.”

  “Are you going to stick around the area?” Ty never hesitated to ask what others might only hint at.

  “We’ll see. It’s only been, what, ten days. It still feels like a vacation, though Harold is edging me toward a full day’s work.”

  I blurted out, “You wouldn’t move in with Harold and Loren for good? After having your own place and your own life for twelve or fourteen years?”

  “They do live kind of a strange life, don’t they? I asked Loren who he was dating and he just shrugged, as if he didn’t want to talk about it.”

  Ty said, “He told me, ‘Girls don’t want to move out to the farm. They’ll date you and they’ll come pick things out of the garden, but that’s all.’ ”

  Jess laughed. “I’m sure he’s not the world’s most dynamic suitor. I think his idea of a heartfelt declaration of passion is, ‘We could, you know, get married or something.’ ”

  Ty said, “In high school, he dated Candy Dahl a little bit.”

  “She was cute, wasn’t she? But she wasn’t going to stay on the farm. Marlene told me a long time ago that she’s doing real well in Chicago. I think she’s the weatherlady for some TV station there.”

  “Well, that’s the kind of girls he goes for. Lots of ambition. Good dressers.”

  I said, “I remember some girl he brought home from college, too. She was that way. It’s sort of sad.”

  “I’ve noticed he’s gotten to be incredibly like Harold. Sometimes I think of them as the twin robot farmers. Time to plow! Time to plant! Time to spray! Time to harvest! Time to plow! Every morning they eat the exact same thing for breakfast.”

  “Do tell,” I said.

  “Three links of sausage, two fried eggs, a frozen French bread pizza with pepperoni and extra cheese, and three cups of black coffee.”

  Ty chuckled.

  I said, “You should laugh. You always eat the leftover salad from the night before. Anyway, Jess, you didn’t answer my question, you only made it more interesting. I can’t believe you want to live like that. And Loren isn’t completely wrong about girls, either.”

  “I don’t know. Everything is up in the air. I gave up my lease in Seattle and put all my furniture in storage. I’m thirty-one years old. I felt like I had to figure out a life, and it seemed like I should sort this out before I could figure that out.” He sat back, stretching his legs toward me and making the swing jump, then went on, “I’ve been like one of those cartoon characters who saws off the limb between himself and the tree, and just hangs in midair for a second before the limb drops. But the second has lasted almost fourteen years. I guess I feel like if I reattach the limb, somehow, then the restlessness that’s always gotten into me whenever there’s been the chance to settle down and figure out a life will go away.”

  Ty said, “But do you want to farm? You don’t have to live
with Harold to do that—you could rent my place next year. That’s a quarter-section south of here about halfway to Henry Grove. A guy down there farms it now, but you could get started on that.”

  Jess rocked his heels, moving the swing back and forth. Ty looked at me and I smiled. He was right. It was worth something to have Jess in the neighborhood.

  Jess said, “I don’t know. When would you have to know?”

  “I have to inform the present tenant in writing before September first.”

  Jess rocked his heels some more, then said, “That’s it. That’s what drives me crazy. Yeah, of course I want it. But the idea of sending for all my stuff, and moving it in and being here and saying, yes, this is what I’m going to do, I’m going to practice what I learned when I ran those gardens and I’m going to really dedicate myself to organic farming and make something of my beliefs. It’s not the work. I could do the work. It’s saying, this is it.”

  Ty said, “Organic farming?”

  Jess guffawed. “Hey. You make it sound like I offered to shoot your dog! Just think of it as manure spreading on a large scale, okay?”

  I said, “Anyway, that’s not the point.”

  Jess said, “Sometimes I think I ought to get married so I’ll be forced to figure this out.”

  We all fell silent. Thunder rumbled off to the southwest, and Ty said, “An inch of rain would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

  I said, “I should get the dishes done.”

  Jess said, “Think that tractor’s going to run tomorrow?”

  Ty stood up. “That’s a question I never ask myself before bedtime.”

  We all laughed.

  Now there was a long silence. The darkness had deepened into real night—time to get to bed—but Jess and I sat rocking and creaking, reluctant. Ty said, “You know, I can’t get over that family. Those people in Dubuque. I’ve been thinking about them for the past two days.”

  I said, “You mean where the girl was killed.” It had been a shocking murder, especially vivid, even though the paper had a penchant for covering murders in detail. A man had tried to break in to his ex-girlfriend’s family’s house. When the father and brother chased after him, they happened to leave open the heavy front door, which gave him access after he eluded them. He got in, and the girl hid in a bedroom. Then she came out, apparently hoping to calm him down, and he grabbed her and dragged her into another bedroom and slammed the door. When the family and the police managed to get that door open (a matter of seconds) they found him stabbing her with a long knife. The police shot him in the head.

  I said, “The paper went into a lot of detail.”

  Ty said, “Yes, but there were just so many things about it that didn’t have to be. I keep rewriting it in my head. Remembering to lock the door behind you, for one.”

  “In a city,” said Jess, “the door would have locked behind them automatically.”

  Ty said, “Anyone could be that father. Anyone could just react by trying to chase the guy, thinking you could do it. Being that mad.”

  I said, “It was like the movies, where somebody just throws off all his enemies with superhuman strength. Isn’t there some drug that gives you that kind of strength?”

  Jess said, “Yeah, adrenaline.”

  Ty leaned back against the railing. “I just couldn’t shake the images all day yesterday. Today, too. What they must have seen when they opened the bedroom door.”

  We mulled this over. I looked at Jess once, wondering if we seemed naive to be so interested in something like a murder. In cities they had murders all the time. I said, “I wonder what she thought she was doing, going out to meet him.”

  Jess stood up and stretched out his arms. I could hear his shoulders crack. He said, “I’m sure she thought he couldn’t really want to hurt her.”

  I stood up. “What a way to end a pleasant evening.” Ty looked a little sheepish, and Jess smiled. He said, “Things come up.”

  After brief good nights, I went into the house, and it was true, there was a privilege to perfunctory farewells—we would resume our conversation tomorrow or the next day. When Ty came in from his bedtime check, he said what I was thinking—“Actually, it would be more fun to have Jess closer than my old place.”

  “If he were actually farming, there probably wouldn’t be all that much time or energy for socializing.”

  “We’ll see.”

  12

  THE NEXT NIGHT, Jess showed up again, this time on his own, after supper, then Rose called to tell me she would make breakfast for Daddy, since she was leaving early anyway to go pick up Linda and Pammy down in West Branch, which was about a four-hour drive. I did not ask her if she felt well enough to drive all that way, because she wouldn’t have told me the truth, and would have been annoyed. I did suggest that she and Pete come over. We talked about playing cards, poker maybe, or bridge, with one person sitting out, but then Rose had an idea, and showed up with an old Monopoly game, and that’s how the tournament started, the Million Dollar World Series of Monopoly, that lasted two weeks or so and that none of us could keep away from, in spite of all the work to be done. We gathered every night and played at least a little. One night, Ty even dozed off at the table, but when he woke up, he made two or three more moves and bought Pacific Avenue before going up to bed.

  I wonder if there is anyone who isn’t perked up by the sight of a Monopoly board, all the colors, all the bits and pieces, all the possibilities. Jess was the race car, Rose was the shoe, Ty was the dog, and I was the thimble. Pete was torn between the wheelbarrow, which he had won with twice, and the mounted horseman, which had more zip, though with that one he had lost twice. Pete was determined to win. It was Pete, actually, who proposed adding the scores of the games, throwing in bonuses for certain strategies and pieces of luck, and shooting for a million dollars of Monopoly money. There would be a prize, too, a hundred dollars, if we all put twenty into the pool, or a weekend in Minneapolis (how about L.A.?), or two days of farm chores in mid-January. In this Jess and Pete thought alike—like city boys, my father would have said, looking for the payoff in a situation rather than the pitfall. Rose and Ty and I played like farmers, looking for pitfalls, holes, drop-offs, something small that will tip the tractor, break it, eat into your time, your crop, the profits that already exist in your mind, and not only as a result of crop projections and long-range forecasts, but also as an ideal that has never been attained, but could be this year.

  Discussions around the Monopoly board were lively. Jess had plenty of adventures to relate, but Pete did, too. He told about hitchhiking across the country in 1967, just graduated from high school in Davenport and hoping to get to San Francisco, where he planned to join the Jefferson Airplane, or at least, the Grateful Dead. Things were uneventful until he got to Rawlins, Wyoming. He was rich (thirty-seven dollars in his pocket) and had a new guitar (Gibson J-200, dark sunburst, $195, a graduation present). A rancher picked him up late one afternoon and offered him a place to stay, then a ride to Salt Lake in the morning. The rancher had two brothers and a wife. They gave him a steak for dinner, then waked him up in the middle of the night and shaved his head and beard. The two brothers held him down, the wife held the flashlight. “You know,” he said, “I’ve never figured out why they didn’t turn on the lights. There wasn’t anybody for miles around.” In the morning they gave him more steak and a couple of fried eggs, and drove him to the nearest blacktop. When he realized that he had forgotten his guitar, he tried to walk back to the ranch and got lost. That afternoon, one of the brothers found him trudging along, handed him the guitar, and drove him back to the blacktop. It was nearly dusk, and the only car to pass him was heading east, so he waved it down, and that guy drove him all the way to Des Moines. “When I got out of that car,” Pete said, “the guy touched me on the arm and said in a whisper that he hoped my chemotherapy was a success.”

  “Ha!” Rose exclaimed. We laughed the way we never did by ourselves, without Jess.

  “Listen to t
his,” said Jess, and he told about confiding to an American woman in a Vancouver saloon that he was evading the draft. She asked him to order her another drink, and when he lifted his arm to hail the waitress, he felt her poke him in the side. She muttered that she had a loaded gun, that her boyfriend had died in Vietnam, and that “if I didn’t say the magic word, she was going to kill me, so I waved off the waitress and I thought for a while, and I said, ‘Bullshit.’ She said, ‘That’s the magic word.’ She took whatever was poking me out of my ribs and then looked at me with a smile and said, ‘Why don’t I have a margarita?’ I ordered her a margarita, and I paid for it, too.”

  When he was sixteen, said Pete, and hitchhiking regularly between Davenport and Muscatine to rehearse with his group, he got picked up by a New York couple in a VW bus, with an Afghan hound and two cats. They had been on the road for eighteen months, living in the van. They asked him if he had ever seen any Jews before, “because we’ve been the first for about seventy-five percent of the people we’ve met.” The husband was writing plays about their travels for the street theater group they were going to found when they got back to New York, and one of the plays was called The First Jews. He asked Pete if he wanted to drop out of high school and go back to New York with them as a member of their company. They pulled over to the side of the road and smoked a joint with him, then the husband took over the driving, and the wife took him in the back, where the dog and cats were sleeping, and seduced him. Rose smiled all the way through this story, as if the carefree glow it cast originated partly in her as well as Pete.