A Thousand Acres (1992 Pulitzer Prize)

by Jane Smiley

  IN THE DAYS AFTER THE CHURCH supper, I looked for Jess Clark to come by.

  There seemed to be a lot to talk about, but as it turned out, I only saw him twice. Even then, he was quiet and inaccessible.

  The candor of our earlier talks, which I longed for in spite of myself had vanished. All he said was, "I'm surprised at how lost I feel"; "I can't believe how sure I was that he'd changed"; and "I can't think of anywhere to go now. These three remarks went unelaborated upon. When I answered them, my responses hung between us before I finished speaking, Jess was already preoccupied with his own thoughts again.

  His bearing changed, too. His former fluid grace, the acceptance of change and movement that ran through him, had stiffened. He held himself upright.

  It hurt and embarrassed me to see him. I ventured awkward sympathy that failed to ease or soften his demeanor. I knew he was, as always, telling me the truth. He was lost.

  I didn't tell him about my revelation when I lay down on the very bed he was sleeping in every night, even though I couldn't think of his sleeping in my old room without thinking of it. Nor, after all, had I Rose, though I'd come close. For one thing, I'd been so certain that she was wrong-suspicious and dismissive of her memories. For another, it was easier to be her sympathetic supporter than her fellow victim.

  And she would surely remind me of incidents that I could not bear to remember. As certain as sunrise, discussion would open that terrible sack and shine a light into it, and she would press me and I would not be able to resist her, until the drama and anger of it would sweep me up, too, and I would feel a growing obsession to remember surging through me, seizing me, taking me into a danger that I could not endure yet.

  We talked about what Harold had done at the church supper. What I thought was that Jess's driving up to that organic farm, then caroling on and on about it had been some kind of last straw. I had never thought Harold would be sympathetic to Jess's organic farming idea, but I thought he had been of two minds about Jess himself. Rose took a darker view: that Harold had been plotting to humiliate Jess for a long time-maybe since Jess's return-that he'd been playing him off against Loren and encouraging him with the will talk in order to get his hopes up. That was the Harold we had discussed during our Monopoly games, the Harold who hid calculating purposes behind foolishness. I related the incident I'd seen helping Jess transfer their frozen food from their freezer to ours-the way Harold snapped from rage to repartee without even a moment to collect himself. "Doesn't that prove, said Rose, "that it's all a game with him? That everything he does is the result of some calculation? He gets people to laugh at him, but he's not laughing."

  Then Harold Clark decided to side-dress his corn, maybe so he could get out there on his new tractor one more time. It was not something he did every year, and as far as I could tell, everybody's corn looked fine. There had certainly been plenty of rain-our corn was an intense, healthy green. But why not, Harold must have thought. A little insurance for the yield, and the pleasure of driving that shiny red piece of machinery along the fencerow next to Cabot Street Road.

  The only thing Harold said later was that one of the outside knives looked clogged. What he would have done then was to pull the rope that shut the valve on top of the tank. Maybe he was in a hurry, because then he got down off the tractor and went around to the malfunctioning knife where it bit a few inches into the soil. No one knows why he jiggled the hose. Possibly he only touched it while bending down, brushed against it with his hand or his sleeve. At any rate, the hose jerked off the knife, and with the last puff of pressure remaining in the line, sprayed him in the face. He wasn't wearing goggles.

  Anhydrous ammonia isn't "drawn to the eyes" because of their moisture, the way people sometimes say, it only feels that way, because the moisture in the eyes reacts with the fumes and creates a powerful alkali.

  In spite of the pain, Harold staggered to the water tank on top of the ammonia tank, knowing that his only hope was to flush his eyes and neutralize the ammonia. The water tank was empty. At this point, Harold was overcome, and he simply keeled over in the field.

  It was Dollie, on her way to work at Casey's ii, Cabot, who saw him.

  He was kneeling among the rows of corn, rocking back and forth with his hands over his face. There wasn't any water anywhere out there. She drove him back to the house and helped him get his face under the outdoor spigot. Then Loren got home, and he drove Harold to the hospital in Mason City.

  Jess was out running.

  Pete was in Pike buying cement.

  Rose was helping Linda sew a pair of polka-dot shorts and a halter top.

  Daddy was sitting in the glider on Harold's porch, talking to Marv Carson about getting his farm back.

  Ty was working at the top of one of the new Harvestores with the crew of three Minnisota men.

  I was dropping Pammy off at Mary Louise Mackenzie's house in Cabot.

  I imagine this news rolling toward each of us like a dust cloud on a sunny day, so unusual that at first it seems more interesting than scary, that it seems, in the distance, rather small, smaller certainly than the vast expanse of the sky, which is where we usually look for signs of danger, and where, still, the sun shines with friendly brightness. But they said in the thirties the dust storms were the worst, for the way that the dust got in everywhere, no matter how you sealed windows and doors and closed your eyes and put blankets over your head. So it was that Harold's accident and its aftermath got in everywhere, into the solidest relationships, the firmest beliefs, the strongest loyalties, the most deeply held convictions you had about the people you had known most of your life.

  The thing about anhydrous is that it does the damage almost instantly.

  After two minutes or so the corneas are eaten away. There isn't much the doctors can do besides transplants, and those don't work too well.

  But they kept Harold in the hospital, his eyes patched, for a week, on account of the pain.

  This would have been the Thursday after the Sunday of the church supper, three days after Jess Clark moved into Daddy's house. Feelings were still running high. When I came home from dropping Pammy, Ty was standing in the kitchen. He whirled to face me and said, "Harold Clark's had an anhydrous accident. He's blind now, as if to say, was I satisfied?

  "My God."

  "He can't farm any more, that's for sure."

  "Where'd you hear this? What happened?"

  "Dollie got us down from the Harvestore. Loren took him to the hospital."

  "Then we don't really know-" "Shit, Ginny!" he shouted in my face.

  "We know! The water tank was empty!"

  "Maybe the doctors-" "Stop it!"

  "Stop what?"

  "Stop being this way, this quiet reasonable way! Don't you care?

  The fucking water tank was empty! You know what it means as wellasIdo!"

  I said evenly, "It means he's blind."

  "Don't you care? This is a friend of ours! What happened to you?

  I don't know you any more." He headed for the door.

  I followed him, my voice rising, "What's wrong? What am I saying that's wrong?" He got in the truck and drove off his tires squealing on the asphalt.

  The fact is, I was too astonished to think anything. The imagination runs first to the physical, doesn't it, so that no matter what, you recoil from the pain, imagine yourself blind, your tissues resonating from the power of what has happened. I actually don't remember how I imagined the accident then, when I hadn't learned any of the details, but it entered my life with a crash and I do remember my hands trembling so violently as I tried to do the dishes that a plate broke against the faucet and I had to stop and sit down.

  Then I remember almost throwing up sitting there.

  I got up and hurried down to Rose's place. I burst in with the news, and Rose at once sent Linda out to play, to watch for Pete, to see if she could see Jess down the road. "He's running," she said to me as Linda ran out, "I saw him take off about a half hour ago."
/>   I said, "My God. Can you believe this?" I stepped over the pattern pinned to the fabric on the floor and fell into an armchair. Rose knelt down and resumed setting the facing pieces on the fabric.

  "Rose?"

  "What?" She sounded annoyed.

  I didn't dare say anything else. I guess what I thought was that I'd offended her somehow. I always do feel a little guilty when I break bad news to someone, because that energy, of knowing something others don't know, sort of puffs you up. She picked pins out of her tomato pincushion and poked then into the oniony tissue paper, then sat back on her heels and cocked her head, surveying the fabric. She was wearing a ponytail. She lifted her arms and idly pulled her liquid dark hair out of the elastic, then made the ponytail again, more tightly. The hang of her blouse revealed that she had not bothered with her prosthesis that morning. She said, "Well?"

  "Well, it just struck me so vividly, that's all. It's every farmer's nightmare. I almost threw up.

  "The actual event is shocking. I admit that." She picked up her scissors and looked at me. "But I said it the other night. Weakness does nothing for me. I don't care if they suffer. When they suffer, then they're convinced they're innocent again. Don't you think Hitler was afraid and in pain when he died? Do you care? If he died thinking his cause was just and right, that all those Jews and everybody deserved to be exterminated, that at least he lived long enough to perform his life's work, wouldn't you have enjoyed his pain and wished him more? There has to be remorse. There has to be making amends to the ones you destroyed, otherwise the books are never balanced."

  "But this is Harold, not Daddy."

  "What's the difference? You know what Jess told me? Once Harold was driving the cornpicker, when Jess was a boy, and there was a fawn lying in the corn, and Harold drove right over it rather than leave the row standing, or turn, or even just stop and chase it away.

  "Maybe he didn't see it' "After he drove over it, he didn't stop to kill it, either. He just let it die."

  "Oh, Rose." The tears burst from my eyes.

  "Daddy killed animals in the fields every year. Just because they were rabbits and birds instead of fawns-I don't know." She looked at me and smiled slightly. "when Jess told me, I cried, too. Then the next day I helped Pete load hogs for the sale barn. I thought about Daddy saying, that's life. That's farming. So, I say to Harold, gee, Harold, you should have checked the water tank. That's farming.

  They made rules for us to live by. They've got to live by them, too."

  I looked around the room. Again, there was a soothing quality to what she was saying, reassuring simplicity. I said, "Would you tell these sorts of things to the girls?"

  Her scissors made two crisp sounds in the cotton fabric. Then she let go of them and looked at me. She said, "If Daddy got to them and hurt them in any way I would help them learn about evil and retribution. If he doesn't, then they can have the luxury of learning about mercy and benefits of the doubt."

  "You make it seem simple." I thought for a moment. "No. I don't mean that. I mean, you make it seem easy.

  "Ginny, I know what I think because I've thought about it for a long time. I thought about it in the hospital, after the operation. You know, Mommy dying, and Daddy, and then Pete being such a mean drunk, and having to send the girls away, and then losing a part of my own body on top of it all. In the face of that, if there aren't some rules, then what is there? There's got to be something, order, rightness. Justice, for God's sake." She cut up the long side of the shirt.

  "Listen, I can't tell you how it makes me feel that Daddy's taking some sort of refuge in being crazy now. You know who they blame, don't you?

  But it isn't even that."

  "What is it?"

  "Now there isn't even a chance that I'll look him in the eye, and see that he knows what he did and what it means. As long as he acts crazy, then he gets off scot-free."

  Linda slammed open the screen door, pulling Jess behind her. She said, "I ran all the way to the gravel road, Mom." I saw by the color of Jess's face, gray under his tan, that she had told him. I sat up and put my feet on the floor. Jess looked from Rose to me, then me to Rose, then he wiped his face with his T-shirt, revealing his perfect stomach and chest. Rose carefully folded the fabric and the cut pattern pieces into a small square and Jess stepped into the room.

  Rose said, "Linda, go pour some lemonade for everybody, then go back outside, because we have some grown-up talking to do." Linda resisted, standing still, for just the merest moment. Rose said, "We'll sew this afternoon."

  "No matter what?"

  "No matter what, at least for a little while."

  "I'm going to make myself some sandwiches and take them outside."

  After a moment, Rose said, "Okay." I looked away from them, finding Rose's customary briskness especially irritating in the circumstances.

  Linda said "Okay" in return, but didn't move for a second, as if unsure what to do now that she'd gotten permission to do what she wanted. "Go on," said Rose. "I'm thirsty."

  Jess sat with his head thrown back against the wall behind the chair, staring at the ceiling molding, it looked like.

  Linda brought the glasses of lemonade in on a tray, doing it right, and offered the tray to us each in turn with a little, "Would you like some lemonade, Aunt Ginny?"

  "Thank you, Linda." I gave her a particularly warm smile, and she smiled back, relaxing a little.

  "You're welcome, Aunt Ginny."

  Rose said, "You've got spills on that tray. Be careful."

  She went into the kitchen and shortly thereafter banged out the back door. I sipped my drink. Rose said, "It's none of your business, Jess. Just stay out of it."

  Jess didn't say anything.

  "He humiliated you. Not only that, he set out weeks ago to humiliate you. He intended to humiliate both you and us, and to do it in public.

  The fact that he's had an accident doesn't change that."

  "I know." Jess's voice was low and rough, so unfamiliar to me that I didn't know how to interpret the tone.

  Rose said, "I know what you're feeling. I really do, even if you don't. You think you're feeling sorry for him, but really you're feeling that you can finally get to him, that he'll soften toward you.

  If you help him, then he'll be grateful, and then he'll give you what you want. Well, he's never going to do it."

  I said, "I don't know-" She continued speaking to Jess. "Ginny is eternally hopeful, you know. She never cuts her losses. She always thinks things could change."

  I said, "Harold could change. He could, you know, have remorse.

  Sometimes that happens when, you know, people lose things." I'd almost said, see the light. I felt my face redden.

  She continued to watch Jess, to address only him. "Not if you forgive him first. Not if you go to him. Not if you act like your mother did, Jess."

  I said, "Rose-" When her face swiveled toward me, it was lit up with conviction.

  "He should know about how they were together, because that tells how Harold is and how he's going to be."

  Jess muttered, "I know how they were together. She was pretty long-suffering."

  Rose exclaimed, "She always apologized, even when Harold was in the wrong! Even when he'd been yelling at her or had flown off the handle at her for no reason! She apologized. She told me once, she said, 'Rose, it doesn't do any good to hold out against him. He can hold out longer than I can. And then, he talks about it to everybody. He tells everybody I'm not speaking to him and makes a joke out of it. I think it's just better to wait till he comes around and thinks better of his actions." But he never did! She didn't make him, so why should he?

  Guilty conscience?"

  Jess was staring at her.

  I thought Rose should settle down, but she wasn't saying anything untrue. She wasn't even exaggerating. I said, "He didn't really act like he valued her, Jess. When she found out I was marrying Ty, she said to me, 'You've got to play hard to get, Ginny. If your mother were alive, she'd tel
l you the same thing. I've never played hard to get, and I regret it. I don't mean with the young men, either.

  You've got to find a way for it to be hard for your husband to get you, too.

  Jess said, "This is different."

  Is it?" said Rose. Now her voice was low but penetrating. Her stare was like a small room he surely couldn't get out of. In spite of everything, a part of me watched with interested detachment the way she surrounded him and captured his agreement. I recognized her intensity from all the years she had turned it on me. "He rejected you. He sent you away. He's been after you for fourteen years, gonna do the same thing to you that you did to him. He set you up when you got here, and then he got his revenge. What kind of guy is that?

  If you really think he's going to come around and have remorse, then give him some time to think about it. Give the cure some time to work.