by Ron Koertge
I waved my hands helplessly. “I don’t know how to drive a tractor.”
“Can you drive a car?”
I pointed to my mom’s Saturn.
“Stick shift?”
“My dad taught me on a stick shift.”
“Then you just wait right here and I’ll bring her around.”
“Listen, it’s late. Maybe we should…”
But he was already on his way.
Mr. Kramer motioned for me to climb into the Farmall’s palm-shaped seat, which seemed to hang between the two huge rear wheels. He pointed to everything, and touched what he could reach.
“Now, this here’s the clutch and the brake. Throttle’s up here and that’s the gearshift. Happy landings.”
Sitting there on the throbbing machine, I wiped both hands on my doily-colored pants and read the gear pattern on the knob. I looked at Mr. Kramer and mimed, “What now?”
His hand described a big circle and he came closer to shout, “Just get the feel of her.”
Swallowing hard, I wrestled it into first, held the throttle like I was strangling a viper, and eased the clutch out.
The tractor jumped about a foot and died.
“Well, that wasn’t so hard,” I said in the sudden silence. “Am I done plowing?”
“Crank her up and try again.”
Another foot.
“Better call your dad, Rachel. At this rate we won’t get home till Christmas.”
His thumb depressed an invisible starter, so I put mine on the real one and, lo and behold, actually got moving. Mr. Kramer bisected the circle to shout, “Little less throttle and let your clutch out all the way.”
I went all the way around a couple of times, then made a figure eight or two. It was fun. The steering wheel seemed to connect directly with the wide front end. When I turned the black plastic an inch or two, I was pointed in another direction. It made my mom’s car seem like a big, soft toy.
“It’ll feel different dragging a plow, but you’ll adjust.”
“When do we get started?”
“Why don’t you meet me at my place about five-thirty.”
“Gee, my mom’s got to have the car by five-thirty.”
“A.M., son. That’s in the morning.”
“I’d give a lot to be like him,” Rachel said, waving one last time at the disappearing tractor.
“Like Mr. Kramer? Why?”
“Do you know what you want to do when you grow up?”
I shook my head. “Not really.”
“See? But every day Mr. Kramer gets up, feeds the cows, does some chores — it sounds like heaven.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to, though; maybe he has to.”
“Then how about Sully? Hasn’t he known what he’s wanted to do ever since he was a little kid?”
“More or less. His father…”
“Traveling is fun, but a person just can’t travel all her life and put down traveler on her income-tax form where it asks for occupation. I still change my mind every day. I want to be a psychologist sometimes — can you imagine that? And then I want to go to New York and work.”
“Doing what?”
“I don’t know; that’s the trouble. And then I start thinking about all the poor people in the world and I want to do something.”
“Like give them all checking accounts.”
She leaned toward me. “I don’t understand why I’m young and rich and they’re poor and starving. Do you ever feel apologetic? I want to apologize to people sometimes. I want to say, ‘I’m sorry I’m the way I am and you’re the way you are, but it’s not my fault. It just happened.’” She sat back dispiritedly. “I’d really like to do something, though, to help people or to make the world a better place.”
“People like the places your dad builds; does that count?”
“Oh, I guess. But it’s not like I do anything but spend about a zillion dollars a year buying clothes so I can look like everybody else.”
“Well, there’s no shops here — not yet, anyway. So let’s take a little walk before the escalators go in.”
We rocked on the uneven earth, laughing and bouncing off one another. Halfway across I stopped and murmured, “My land.”
“What?” She was breathing a little hard.
“I said, ‘My land.’” Then I made my voice as low as possible and tried it again. “My land.” I turned to Rachel. “It really is kind of a magical phrase. I say it and get goose bumps.”
She sang the first line of an old folk song: “This land is your land, this land is my land…” Her voice was sweet and airy.
“This earth is mine,” I said firmly. “You varmints get off my land.”
“Land ho,” she ventured.
“Give me land, lots of land under starry skies above.”
“The fat of the land.”
“Easy now. Don’t get personal.”
“You’re not fat. You just have big bones.”
“Big bones covered with fat.”
“I’m a little hippy,” she said softly.
“Well, then this relationship is doomed, because I’m a big Republican.”
She laughed politely and patted herself on the bottom.
“That’s why I like these new fashions. They cover me up.”
“You look fine to me.”
“How can you tell? I’m always bundled up like an only child with a cold.”
I thought it was great of her to tell me those things and not sound destructive. I was self-critical beyond belief. For example, I wanted a different nose, a thinner one, so I’d squeeze the one I had until it was sore and generally give it a hard time. But when Rachel talked, she sounded like her own best friend: realistic, maybe, but not mean. Me, I was my own worst enemy.
We sat down under an enormous oak, a few yards into Mr. Kramer’s property but facing mine. I felt like Adam looking out the front door of Eden: here it was rich and sweet and moist. There it was strictly sweat-of-thy-brow.
Rachel settled back against the trunk. “It was really nice of your father to leave you this place,” she said.
“Yeah, but stuff’s been coming up about him lately that I can’t believe.”
“You too? I’m still learning things about my mom. Not bad things,” she added quickly. “But she didn’t like yogurt and she wouldn’t give to charities.” She raised one hand in exasperation. “I didn’t know that until last week. And then my dad told me they’d talked about getting a divorce once.”
“Adults have all kinds of secrets, I guess. I don’t think I have any.” What about your mother, the exotic dancer? said a little voice right down by my solar plexus. “Or at least not very many,” I added feebly. Then, before she could ask me what those were, I said, “Do you think it’s silly of me to want to work this place?”
“I think it’s nice. Honest.”
“What good does it do, though? Who does it help? I’m not exactly going to ship the grain to Africa.”
“Mr. Kramer said your dad didn’t know any better than to lease to people who would use up all the vitamins and nitrogen and stuff. Maybe you just want to put things right.” She looked right into my eyes. “You’re a nice person, Walker. This is just the kind of thing you’d do.” She sighed and closed her eyes, resting against the oak.
I didn’t know what to say, but I did know that I wanted to kiss her. I leaned across; with her eyes closed she couldn’t see me coming.
“It’s so peaceful out here,” she said, right into my nose like it was a microphone or something.
I was frozen, worse than a deer nailed to the road by headlights. God, if she opened her eyes and saw me two inches away, she would probably scream and shoot up the tree like a squirrel.
“Don’t move,” I whispered.
She stiffened. “What?”
“There’s a bug in your hair.”
“How big?”
What a rational girl. “You know how big a pancake is?” I’d retreated gracefully, so when her eyes fl
ew open everything seemed normal.
“I’ve got a bug on me that’s as big as a pancake?”
“No. That’s just for comparison. It’s about one-thousandth the size of a —”
She brushed at her short dark hair. “Oh, he won’t hurt anything.” Then she looked at me and leaned forward. Either she wanted to be kissed or she’d become addicted to chatting with my nostrils.
“Have you kissed a lot of girls?” she asked softly.
“No.”
“Me neither. Boys, I mean. Naturally. But at the concert the other night you seemed so”— she searched for a word —“polished.”
Now we were so close that when she smiled her teeth were as enormous and white as the cleanest wash on any TV ad.
“I didn’t feel very polished.”
“My mother told me that kissing well was a highly desirable quality in a man. She said a lot of other things wax and wane but kissing was forever.”
Boy, I really wished she hadn’t drawn attention to it. I was like the perfectly natural pitcher who goes to training camp, gets his delivery analyzed, and then can’t hit the backstop behind home plate.
As she leaned even closer with her lips parted and slightly moist, I wondered if mine were moist enough; I wondered if they were soft like hers, and if they weren’t, how I could make them soft again.
Quickly I slipped my hand up to check. They felt okay. I knew I couldn’t keep her waiting like that forever, so I just plunged ahead, adjusting all the time, everything from prim old lady to doctor-examines-tonsils. I must have looked like a hallucinating halibut.
She didn’t seem to notice; she just leaned into me, putting one hand up to gently touch my face.
I might have stopped right there and told her the truth about what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to go where the kissing never stopped. I know how terrible and selfish this sounds, but I didn’t want to help people or make their lives better. I probably wouldn’t even have saved somebody from drowning unless she would have rewarded me with more kisses.
Rachel and I necked — as my mother still called it — in a kind of Morse code: long dashes of kissing followed by sharp little smackers, then long ones again. I was content. In a way I was even glad not to knead and probe like the witch in “Hansel and Gretel.”
Of course I wanted to do more, too, but I barely knew Rachel. If I ever touched her all over and took her clothes off and made love to her, it would not be today.
“God,” she said, stretching luxuriously, “this is really nice. Don’t you just want to stay here forever?”
“Oh, my God,” I said, and I sat up straight, leaving Rachel gasping and flushed.
“Will she be mad?” Rachel asked, looking at herself in the rearview mirror.
“No.” I pressed on the accelerator. “There’s plenty of time.”
“God, I can’t meet your mother looking like this. I’ve got dirt all over my pants. She’ll think I fall down all the time.”
Meet my mother? I pictured her standing on the steps, tapping her foot, tassels jingling angrily. Rachel would scream in horror and embarrassment; she would never see me again. She would tell everyone in school. Nobody would go out with me. The story would follow me to college and I would live in a tiny, spider-infested room by myself for four years.
Instead, there she was in her black slacks and her red blouse, looking like she’d just gotten back from the ground round sale at Kroger’s.
“I didn’t know whether to worry or get mad,” she said when we followed her inside. “Now that you’re all right, I can get mad.”
“We were talking to this old farmer out at the land Dad bought for me, and we kind of lost track of time.”
She scrutinized us. “This old farmer, huh?”
Rachel looked down at her shoes.
“I’m Walker’s mother,” Mom said, holding out her hand.
“We didn’t mean to make you late, Mrs. Davis.”
“I’m not mad at you.”
“Talking to Mr. Kramer really was interesting.”
“If you say so.” Mom had that I-know-what-you’ve-been-up-to look on her face. She picked up her big, soft purse. “Well, I have to go, or they’ll be banging their glasses on the table.”
“What do you do?” Rachel asked politely.
I jumped right in. “Waitress,” I said.
My mother and I looked at each another; it was one of those significant glances you hear so much about. I wondered if she was disappointed in me.
“Can I drop you somewhere?” Mom asked Rachel.
“That’d be great. Do you go by the high school? My car’s there.”
“I’ll ride along,” I said, afraid of what they would talk about. Couldn’t you just hear the conversation?
RACHEL: (politely) And where do you work as a waitress, Mrs. Davis?
MOM: Hey, I’m not a waitress, kiddo. I’m a stripper.
RACHEL: (screaming) Let me out! Let me out of here. Help! Police!
“That’s okay,” Rachel said. “This way your mom and I can get to know each other.”
“No, no, no, no, no.” I sounded like a machine gun.
“Honey,” my mother said, looking at me with those eyes the same color as mine. “I wouldn’t. Honest.”
Rachel inspected us both. Poor thing — she was like a tourist who didn’t speak the language.
“Bye, Walker. See you at school, okay?”
I put out my hand and she shook it.
“Today was fun,” she said. Then she squeezed. Meaningfully.
Immediately I got a killer erection. I’m surprised I didn’t turn pale as yogurt, because all the blood in my body must have rushed to my shorts.
Woozy with desire, I watched them from the kitchen window. Then I walked into the living room. It occurred to me that I’d never been alone with a girl in my own house. The place seemed big and mysterious, and every hall led to a bedroom. I wondered if my bed was made. Even if it was, so what? Did you say to a girl, “Want to see how well I made my bed?” Fat chance.
I could hear the furnace hum and the refrigerator go on and off. Was this what it was like to be married to someone, to live in a huge house with bedrooms everywhere and to be able to go into any of them anytime you wanted?
I have to admit that I felt very grown-up as I sauntered around the house. My house. My flat. My place.
Then I went into the bathroom and jerked off like mad.
I was standing in the spotless kitchen wiping the last saucepan when Mom came home from work.
“A little obvious,” she said, “but still nice.”
Boy, she saw right through me. “It’s not a big deal,” I said. “I just need the car at five-thirty, that’s all, and only for a couple of hours.”
“You know better than that, Walker. I have to be at the club by six.”
“In the morning. Five-thirty in the morning.”
“What in the world are you going to do at that hour?”
I filled in the details, scrupulously wiping a dish like one of those guys in the commercials.
“But why,” she asked, “plant anything if the land’s just going to be sold?”
“We don’t know when, though. And if it’s a long time, I’ll have these oats.”
“Which you plow under.”
I stacked the dinner plates perfectly. Now if the camera would just zoom in, I could turn around and scream how clean everything was. “Right, so there’s stuff down there next year.”
“Oh, well, stuff. Why didn’t you say so.”
“It’s like vitamins. Mr. Kramer calls it green manure.”
“You grow manure?”
“Look, it’s more or less Dad’s fault the land is so tired. I just want to put things right, that’s all. It’s no skin off your ass.”
“Watch it, buster.”
“Nose, then. Mom, I’ll do all the work. What little bit it costs I’ll take out of my savings.”
Her voice dropped a couple of octaves and sh
e went soft around the eyes. “You don’t feel very well taken care of, do you? So you want to take care of something else.”
“You sound like Sully. The point is, what’s the difference? God knows it’s harmless. It’s not like I was asking to borrow the car to rob banks.”
“What does Rachel think about all this Farmer Brown business, anyway?”
“She likes it. She said it was nice of me to want to do it.”
“By the way, Walker.” She paused to pour herself a glass of wine from the tall bottle in the refrigerator.
I got ready for the bad news. I’ve never heard an adult start anything good with “By the way.” Never “By the way, here’s your new Corvette.” Or “By the way, could you use an extra two hundred dollars for lunch?”
“I don’t want you and Rachel here by yourselves when I’m at work. I don’t know what her folks would think, but…”
“Her folk. Her mother died.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what her father would think, but even if he drove her over himself and dropped her off with an overnight bag, I don’t want it. Understood?”
I said I did. “What about…”
She made a small circle in the center of the kitchen. “On the other hand, if you’re going to park somewhere and get hit over the head by a maniac, come back here.” She raised both hands. “God, what am I saying?”
“If we park and there’s a big sign saying ‘Maniac Area’, we won’t stay.”
She had her hand to her forehead like The Great Mind-o about to predict, but the corners of her mouth were turned down and her chin was quivering. “God, you’re really growing up, aren’t you?”
“Am I grown-up enough to use the car to work with Mr. Kramer?”
“You’re not going to let me play this out, are you?” she asked good-naturedly. “You’re not even willing to let me do just a few minutes of Mom-in-Distress.”
“Bribe me. Tell me I can have the —”
“Okay. But I get to cry, and”— she jumped on the and —“I get to put my arms around you.”
A little later, when Mom was in the shower, I tried to call Rachel, but all I got was the machine saying Mr. Gardner wasn’t home. Gardner. Some name for a guy who covered the earth with concrete.
Then I collapsed on my bed — right on top of Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder.
