BREAKING GROUND
I am a poor, wayfaring stranger, while journeying through this world of woe,
Yet, there’s no sickness, toil nor danger, in that bright world to which I go.
I’m going there to see my Father, I’m going there no more to roam;
I’m only going over Jordan; I’m only going over home.
—“Wayfaring Stranger”
Rita
She can’t believe that the world is well into October, until she steps out the door and is chilled instantly. Wood smoke streams from two or three nearby chimneys and lingers in a faint haze above backyards. Whereas recent weeks were filled with the near-ominous presence of fields brimming over and extending to every horizon, these days offer a sort of emptiness. The harvested cornfields are dark expanses of stubble, while the land looks shaved where soybeans stood just days ago.
Rita gets in the car and drives in darkness past empty fields; whether corn or beans, the bounty has been cut and cleared, stored or sold, depending on market prices. The place always feels different the first few days after combines have shuttled over the last acres. Once the ever-present crop dust has cleared, the country is less dense, the land swept by steady gusts that arrive from colder, distant places. People and livestock gulp at the atmosphere, enjoying the lower humidity and a slight spiciness in their nostrils.
Every autumn Rita finds a certain relief: the high-labor seasons are over for now, and all that’s left are the shortening days and hardening land. Remaining plant matter sours and disintegrates into the topsoil. The cold and quiet are on their way, and nearly everything will soon have opportunity for rest.
There is no real rest for the weary, however, and Rita has been in overdrive all day, having begun her fall cleaning at six this morning. She has sorted through her kitchen, leaving just one cupboard for tomorrow. After a tuna-sandwich supper, she listened to the news on television while sorting through her coupon drawer, and in doing so she discovered about twenty coupons that were but a day or two from expiration. Well, Jodie goes shopping in Oskaloosa tomorrow. Between her cart and Rita’s, hardly a bargain will be lost.
Maybe she’s restless from a day of sifting through things. Really, though, she just wants to see the kids. No one dropped by today, which is unusual but not unheard of. Whenever Mack goes more than a day without showing up, she goes to him. She tells herself that it’s because of his recent rough spell. But mainly she needs to see her boy. It’s just natural. He lives but a few miles away, and cold or not, Rita starts up her poor car and heads for the farm. It’s late, but no one goes to bed early anymore now that the kids are teenagers.
When she turns down the long driveway, it is nearly ten at night, and every light in the house is on—like an old factory with the late shift in full swing. In windows on both floors she can see their silhouettes: Kenzie in her bedroom, Jodie in the kitchen, and Mack in their bedroom upstairs. It should make Rita happy, seeing her family home at day’s end. But even the unoccupied rooms are fully lit, and the house looks strangely alert, as if someone were very ill and other family members were trying to find medicine or extra blankets and calling a doctor or the pastor. The outdoors has turned quite brisk since nightfall, and it’s time for people to be snug under covers, not wandering around in confusion.
“Oh, Lord, Lord, what’s going on?” The air bites at her joints when she gets out of the car. She sees Jodie look out the window in her direction, then move toward the back door. It opens before Rita reaches the steps.
“Mom, what are you doing out this time of night?”
“Oh, I found some coupons. You said you’d be going to town early tomorrow.”
Jodie doesn’t respond to that. She could say, And you’re going with me—why drive out here now? But that would miss the point entirely. The warm kitchen smells of garlic and apples—and maybe muffins of some kind. Rita has started coughing, and Jodie guides her to a chair at the table.
“That sounds awful. You’re really congested.”
“Oh—” Rita stops to take a better breath. She can hear the slight sound of her own chest whistling. “It’s worse at night, you know.”
“Have you taken anything?”
“This afternoon I took one of those fizzy cold tablets. I think the date on them is old.”
“I’ve got some high-powered stuff.” Jodie has a glass in hand. She opens the narrow cupboard next to the window over the sink and picks through medicine bottles and small pieces of bubbled cardboard with colored pills encased in the plastic. “Here. This will help you sleep too.”
“Where are the kids?”
“Upstairs. Kenzie’s got her nose in a book probably.” Jodie doesn’t venture any ideas about Young Taylor. About all the boy does these days is listen to music and read magazines with names like Industrial Nation.
“What’s Mack up to?”
Jodie seems preoccupied and doesn’t answer.
“If he’s up, I’ll go say hello before I go.”
“How’s the car doing? I’m surprised you’d bring it out this time of night.”
“It’s just fine. That new starter did the trick.” Rita gets up from her chair and reaches around Jodie to put her glass in the dishwater. “I’ll say hi to Mack.”
“He might be in bed.”
After all these years, Rita can sense when Jodie is withholding information, something she rarely does with Rita, even though she’s pretty tight-lipped around people outside the family. The shape of her shoulders just now, when she is turned away from Rita, gives the impression of something gone wrong. Rita does her best not to grunt as her sore knees move her up the stairs. She walks past Kenzie’s room; its door is shut, as is Young Taylor’s. Rita can see the slit of light under the door to Mack and Jodie’s bedroom. She steps up to it and taps lightly.
The door opens and Mack, fully dressed, looks at her in surprise. “Mom? Everything okay? Kind of late to be out.”
There are white dots at his cheekbones, the signal Rita feared. Those dots appear when he’s upset. And his eyes hold the same desperation and great fatigue that glowered in them during the weeks prior to the hospital business.
“I’m fine, Mack. How about you?”
He doesn’t answer. Just looks at her, his lips in a straight line.
“Are you feeling all right?” She stands ready to hear the worst. Lord knows, she tries to be an optimist, but so many times the worst has been exactly what she’s had to hear.
“Oh, I’ve decided to take a little break.”
Rita can’t make sense of that. “From what?”
He opens the door then, sighing a bit, and lets her in. There is his suitcase on the bed, open and half filled with clothes. It makes her think of those scenes in the movies when a couple has had a fight and one of them reaches up into the closet and pulls down a suitcase. Which is funny, because most suitcases are pushed back out of reach and covered with blankets or old clothes. And then when they’re opened, they’ve likely got other stuff inside them—wrapping paper, wool sweaters, or receipts and records a person is afraid to throw away. It’s never as simple as one-two-three.
But here is Mack’s suitcase, which he unpacked barely a month ago, when he got home from the hospital.
Rita tries to read his face for more information. “What’s going on?”
He looks down the hall, toward the kids’ rooms, and then closes the door and walks over to the bed. He sits on one side of the suitcase, Rita on the other. She looks at the rolled-up socks, the shirts neatly folded.
“I’m going out to the stone house for a while.”
“Why on earth?”
He shrugs, trying to make this a small thing. He’s had that shrug since he was a toddler. “Just need some time to myself. Jodie and me—we’re both feeling a lot of pressure right now.”
She doesn’t know what to say. Time to himself? Two weeks in the hospital wasn’t enough?
“Well, you can’t stay out there. It’s nearly winter.”
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br /> “The stove still works. We used to stay out there all the time, fall and winter both.”
“But it’s not set up for someone to stay more than a few days. There’s no refrigerator, no real furniture that I can remember.”
“I’ll pull together some things. I won’t be there long.”
“If you need to get away, come to my place. I’ve got that extra bedroom. I’ll just cook for two—would be a nice change.”
“No, I appreciate that, but I need this other thing right now.”
Rita picks up a pair of socks, unrolls them, and then rolls them back again. “Mack, you and Jodie can’t split up so soon after this spell you’ve had. You’ve got to give it time. What does she think about this?”
“She’s not real happy about it.” Mack looks at his hands. “But she wants me to do…what I need to do.”
“Did you have a bad argument or something?”
“We’re working on things.” Despite his worry dots, Mack appears to be quite calm. He makes a point to meet Rita’s gaze. “We’re okay.”
Rita looks back down at the suitcase. She sighs, but it turns into another fit of coughing.
“What are you doing out in this cold, coughing like that?” The shrugging toddler is her grown son again, trying to sound authoritative with her.
“I forgot to bring some things to Jodie today. I wasn’t sleeping anyway.”
“Want me to drive you home?”
“No! The car is just fine. I drove here, and I’ll drive back.” She gets up and goes to the door. “I don’t like this, Mack. It can’t be good for you to be out there by yourself.” She turns suddenly. “Does that counselor know about this?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, why don’t you wait until you talk with him?”
Her son doesn’t answer but ushers her out to the hallway. He walks her as far as the stairwell. They stop on the landing, surrounded by a history of the kids’ school years, static smiles hung in patterns against the wallpaper.
“I’ll come out there and bring you something to eat at least. I’ll find some furniture for you too. Lord knows I’ve got too much for that little house of mine.”
“No need for that, Mom. I’ll be fine.” His words echo down the stairwell, sounding confident.
Jodie is seated at the kitchen table, doing nothing. Rita sits down across from her. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you have a fight?”
Jodie’s glance tells her that this is a silly question. She and Mack have had fights for years. They fight, they make up. “Not lately, but I’ve known for a few weeks that he’s unsettled.”
“Oh, Lord—”
“Not like before. He swears he’s not depressed, and he doesn’t act like he is.”
“I don’t think it’s good for him to move out.”
“He’s not going far. We’ll still see him every day. I don’t think we need to look at this as some major thing.”
“Well, I do.”
“He’ll be fine, Mom.”
“Maybe you should go to counseling together.”
“I’m ready to go anytime he and the therapist think it’s time.”
“Mack knows that?”
“Of course he does. Let me walk you out. Do you want Young Taylor to follow you into town?”
“No.” Rita can hear the anger in her own voice. It disturbs her to sound like this. She’s upset more than angry, but she knows that she sounds angry and that Jodie will think she’s decided this mess is all Jodie’s fault.
The thought of Mack out there in that old house keeps Rita awake, although the cold medicine makes her groggy. She fixes herself some tea and decides to go ahead and write this new prayer in her little book, a prayer requesting that the Lord shake some sense into her son. And she wanders all through the house, even out to the garage, finding things to take out to the stone house tomorrow.
Mack
The next morning the kids are ready for school earlier than usual. On a typical day, Mack hears them sniping at each other in hoarse, waking-up voices while he sits downstairs and watches the early news out of Des Moines. But today they are nearly finished with breakfast when Mack sits at the table. Before leaving for the school cafeteria, Jodie fixed the coffee and put out the cereal and milk, as she always does. But when Mack sits down, he knows that the quiet at the table is unnatural, the sign of his kids waiting for another shoe to drop.
“Young Taylor, I’ll need your help later today,” he says after a moment.
“Okay.”
Mack pours milk over the cereal. Young Taylor takes a bite of his, then says, “When?”
“After school. It won’t take long. I need to move some things to the stone house.”
“What’s going out there?” Young Taylor stares at the glass he’s just emptied of milk, turning it in his hand as though to assess its value.
“The old sofa. The refrigerator from the garage.”
Kenzie looks at him for the first time, and he can see that she feels betrayed. Surely they know. Jodie probably told them last night after he went to bed. He decides to make it clear, just in case.
“I’ll be staying out there for a while.”
They don’t ask if he is going hunting. They don’t ask him anything, just finish their breakfast and gather their things for school.
Well, no time would have been right for this. He made the decision weeks ago, after his blowout with Jodie over Kenzie’s church business. But things kept happening—extra busy at Hendrikson’s, then he was in Ed’s fields, helping get the corn in. And Young Taylor’s attitude was particularly nasty for a few days. But last night Mack sat across from his wife after supper was cleared, and they looked at each other, and he could not form any sentences for her, or them. The pressure moved in on him from all sides, and he took a last gulp of coffee and didn’t look at her when he spoke.
“Jo, I’ve gotta find some space somewhere. I’m no good to you here.”
Her face told him nothing; maybe there was a flicker of fear, or hurt, but he couldn’t linger with it.
“Where do you want to be, Mack?”
“Close by, but just not here all the time.”
The stone house stands on the original Decker homestead. In 1854 Mack’s forebears built a cabin there, on the higher bank of the stream, one of many little branches off the North Skunk River. The wife, Elda, insisted that they build near the water and in the woods. They’d moved over from Indiana, and she needed the feel of trees about her.
This five acres has never been cleared of hackberry, silver maples, and cottonwoods. The Deckers’ son built the larger farmhouse a generation after them. The sturdier parts of that original house form the center of the house Mack’s family lives in. Over the years and generations, rooms were added to every side of the house, and outbuildings were built, torn down, or left to sag gradually back to earth.
Elda and Hiram’s son, Andrew, married once and lost his wife when she bore their first child, a daughter. The girl loved the land and found for herself a young farmer who was more than happy to find not only a wife but one with land. Together they added six children to the family, four of whom lived past the age of ten. Two of the remaining four were sons, and both died in the war, so the homestead went to the eldest daughter, Mack’s grandmother. During that generation of births and losses, the family added acres to the farm. By the time Mack was born, it was a sizeable spread.
Sixty years ago, Mack’s grandfather and Taylor Senior replaced the original cabin ruins by the stream with a two-room lodge of native limestone, equipping it with a wood-burning stove and running water. It stands near the corner of two county roads, which over time have gathered other farmhouses. The horse barn that stood not far from the cabin was torn down years ago to its lower stone level and replaced with a simpler structure where hay and feed could be stored and cattle sheltered in cold weather.
Now Tom Adams rents the barn and its surrounding small pasture.
Today the wind whistles through the cracks, and a dozen or so head of Holsteins congregate there when Mack and Young Taylor pull up the gravel drive.
The drive leads to the barn and gives no indication that a few hundred yards to the east, in the middle of old, tall trees, there sits a small stone house. It has become a place for the kids to play in warm weather, for extra relatives to sleep when necessary, and for the men to occupy when fishing and hunting. It can comfortably sleep six or seven full-grown men in sleeping bags, and no women fret when they track in mud or blood, rise up and clatter coffee cups and thermoses at ungodly hours, or stay up late smoking and having more beer than usual.
The old Frigidaire played out several years ago; its corpse lies on its side, the door removed, on the west side of the barn. The last several years have been so full of fatigue and panic that Mack and Alex didn’t need the stone house for hunting or fishing. After Mack gave up his part of the farm, his time with Alex was strained.
So the place has gathered dust and the droppings of small animals. The daybed against the wall squeaks but seems sturdy enough. Young Taylor and Mack scoot the refrigerator into the place of the old one. This one needs to be defrosted often and is marred and rusty, the place where they’ve been keeping extra ice and soft drinks and frozen items. Jodie wordlessly cleared out what she wanted last night. She even dug out a blanket for covering the sofa, the one on the back porch piled with boxes and work jackets. It is the type of furniture that would have been moved to the stone house long ago if the house had been in use, if that part of family life had continued—the summer fun, the men’s time together, the little getaways.
When he and Young Taylor finish with the moving, Mack takes his son back to the farmhouse. “Thanks, son. I’ll see you all in the morning.” Young Taylor says good-bye, lightly. Mack doesn’t know what the lightness means, and his own emotions stop him from pondering that.
This first evening, Mack spends an hour cleaning out the stove, gathering wood, and starting a decent fire. By then the sky has gone dark, and he doesn’t catch the sun sliding down and the colors changing. He planned on those moments, feeling the need for that kind of transition to mark this retreat he’s made for himself. But by the time he deals with the stove and fire, he is tired and sore and hungry and thirsty. Most of all, he feels so alone that he wants to march back up the road and into his home. He wants to snap out of this and just settle down and make life work. But the small room is gritty and cold around him, and the night outside is too quiet. From time to time he hears a vehicle over on the road, just barely. If he strains, he can hear some burbling from the stream, but the night and cold dampen everything. He wishes he’d brought a radio or a book, something to help pass the time.
Vinita Hampton Wright Page 11
