by Dale Peck
Dale!
It’s Dale! It’s Dale! he hears behind him then, and he turns and sees Edi and Lois running down the hill, each holding the arm of a little boy he thinks is Lance at first, until Lance pushes open the door of the dairy barn behind them, and he realizes that Edi and Lois are carrying Gregory. When the boy left, Gregory wasn’t a year old, still more infant than child, but now, nearly three, he seems like a real person, his tiny legs leaping down the hill, one step for every three or four his sisters take.
Dale’s back! Lance calls into the dairy barn before sprinting after his older sisters and little brother. Dale! Dale! He runs awkwardly in a pair of shoes much too large for him, trips once, nearly falls, then keeps on running. Dale! You’re back!
Oh gosh, my baton left a mark! I’m sorry!
Joanie is rubbing at his cheek and eye even as Edi and Lois come close, panting. They let go of Gregory and throw their arms around the boy. They’re still screaming Dale! Dale! in his ear, but Lois manages to squeeze in a conspiratorial whisper:
Joanie’s always carrying that thing around!
Dale, look! Lance is calling beyond their shoulders. Look, Dale, I got your shoes! They’re almost too small for me, look!
When he reaches the boy Lance squirms in between his sisters and wraps his arms around the boy’s stomach and jumps up and down so vigorously that one of the boy’s old shoes flies off his feet.
Dale, look! Joanie says then. She has stepped back a few feet, and now she releases her baton into the air, pirouettes once, and catches it.
Look, Dale! Lance says. Your shoes are almost too small for me now! I’m almost as big as you!
Lois has a boyfriend, Lois has a boyfriend! Edi says. She is holding Gregory in one arm now, and when the boy looks at his littlest brother Gregory turns his face and hides it in Edi’s wavy brown hair. Beyond them, Lois is dragging a startled-looking Flip Flack up the hill toward the dairy barn.
Don’t be shy, honey, Edi says to Gregory. It’s just your bother, honey. It’s your big brother Dale.
You took my drawers! Lance says, pulling at the boy’s cut-offs as if he might be wearing them now. You can’t wear my drawers, Dale, they’d be too small for you!
Flip is looking back at the boy with an expression of mock terror on his face as Lois drags him like a sled up the hill.
Dale, look! Joanie says. He turns, and she tosses her baton in the air.
Joanie was spinning her thing in the truck! Lance says. She hit me on the arm, look!
Lance holds out his arm and the boy pretends he can see a bruise. He licks his thumb and rubs the spot and Lance giggles and says, Gross!
Just say hi, Edi is coaxing Gregory. Come on, say hi to your big brother Dale. A muffled Uh-uh comes from her hair and Edi smiles helplessly at the boy. He don’t remember you, she says. You been gone practically as long as he’s been alive.
You took Jimmy’s football jersey too! Lance says now. You took everything!
Up until now the boy has felt like a spoon in a sugarbowl in the midst of his brothers and sisters, but now he speaks for the first time since he shut off the tractor.
What are you, the family record keeper?
No! Lance says, dodging the punch the boy throws at him.
You think you’re almost as big as me? the boy says. Come on, pipsqueak, let’s see what you can do. Put em up.
The five-year-old giggles and throws his arms around the boy’s bare stomach again, then steps back and looks up at the boy.
Jimmy said he was gonna kick your butt for taking his football jersey but I don’t know. You look different. Bigger. Thicker.
The boy is looking at Edi over Lance’s head.
Is Jimmy here?
Edi is rocking Gregory in her arms.
Oh, he’s with Ma and that uncle person.
Uncle Wallace.
Jimmy’s with them in the barn. Look at Joanie. She fixed her feet walking with that baton.
The boy turns and sees that Joanie is walking in the dappled light of the elms again. She walks in a straight line and stares fixedly at her formerly pigeon-toed feet, which now run as parallel to each other as the double yellow line on 38.
When the boy turns back to Edi, Gregory is staring at him with curious eyes.
Hey there, little fella. He reaches a hand toward Gregory’s cheek but before he can touch him his little brother blushes and buries his face in Edi’s hair again.
It’s okay, Edi says, and the boy isn’t sure to whom she is speaking. You two don’t hardly know each other, do you? She smiles at the boy, strokes the back of Gregory’s head.
What about Duke?
Edi nods toward the truck behind him. The slatted panels are up in back, encasing the bed like a giant egg crate.
Says he’s gonna join the marines. Says he ain’t even gonna finish high school, just join the marines and this family will never see him again.
By then the boy has scaled the panel at the back of the truck. The first thing he sees is Duke’s shorn head, gold fuzz glinting in the sunlight. Duke is sitting with his back against the cab, busily pulling slivers of wood from the bed of the truck, and his shaved head looks as bright as the rising sun to the boy. He glances over at Joanie. Never mind Julia Miller—how could he have remembered Joanie’s hair as blonde, compared to Duke’s?
He steps over the back railing and Duke says, Nice pants. Or should I say shorts?
The boy looks down at his legs. Although he never managed to outgrow them—Duke’s four years older than he is, after all—he did manage to wear them out, and Aunt Bessie cut them into shorts for him after the last day of school this year.
It was Dad—
Your Dad. Duke throws a sliver over the wall of the truck.
Anyway. Sorry.
No skin off my ass.
In the silence the boy can hear his siblings scatter like a flock of startled pigeons. He looks at Duke until Duke gets up and walks past him, throwing a mock punch as he goes. His fist touches the boy’s jaw and pushes it lightly to the side, like a revolving door.
Your Dad, Duke says again, and then he jumps over the back rail of the truck and disappears.
The boy scrambles after him. They walk around the side of the truck and up the line of honey locusts until they reach the woodshed.
Edi says you’re gonna join the marines. The boy points to Duke’s head. Looks like you did already.
Duke runs his hand over the top of his head.
Just letting everybody know. Letting everybody know that I’m out of here. Any minute now.
Just then Lois runs around the near corner of the hay barn, screaming, Daddy’s sleeping in the barn, Daddy’s sleeping in the barn! A moment later Flip rounds the barn’s far corner and speeds toward his house.
You talk funny! Flip calls behind him. Your daddy’s a drunk and you talk funny!
Duke watches the little blond boy until he has run all the way across 38 and inside his house, and then he runs his hand over his crewcut again and looks up at the hay barn.
Wish I had a match.
The boy looks up at the barn as well. It is easy to imagine it on fire, easy to imagine the old man rolling in his sleep, pushing the flames away as though they were an unwanted blanket. He can almost hear him mumbling, Goddammit, open a window, it’s burning up in here, and he has to fight back a laugh.
Just one match, Duke says, and spits on the ground. Poof. For the first time he turns and looks at the boy. They said I could sign up as soon as I turned eighteen. I fudged the application, figure by the time they find out I’ll be old enough anyway. I’m gone, Dale. O-U-T out of that fucking house, just like you. Out.
The boy doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then:
Edith’s husband died.
Edi’s—?
Edith. She’s our cousin. Uncle Wallace’s daughter. Her husband died in Korea.
That war’s over. Duke shrugs. And I’d rather die than live in that house another day. You lucked out, getting aw
ay when you did.
Dale! Dale! Lance is running down the hill. I touched a cow! I touched it right on the stomach. He holds out his hand for inspection. Look, I touched it!
Moo! Duke says, like boo!, and Lance jumps back, putting the boy between him and his half brother. He pokes a finger into the boy’s stomach, chest, shoulder.
You do look different.
They’re called muscles, Duke says. You’d have some too, if you stopped playing with Lois and Edi all the time. You should have some discipline like Dale here, or Joanie and her baton.
Lance blushes and starts back up the hill.
I want to milk a cow! Come on, Dale, show me how you milk a cow!
Duke is still looking at the hay barn as if wondering where to put the match.
I’m sorry about the pants, Duke. I tried to tell him.
Duke nods.
I heard you.
You were awake?
Duke doesn’t say anything for a moment. Just stares at the hay barn and runs his hand over his crewcut. Then:
I’m outta there a week from Monday. Ma don’t even know yet. As he starts back toward the truck he delivers another mock jab, this time to the boy’s stomach. Good luck with all that.
As the boy follows Lance up the hill he sees Lois and Edi swinging Gregory between them. The little boy is shrieking with delight. Then he sees Jimmy come around the corner of the hay barn, his hands thrust in his pockets. When he sees the boy he pivots on his heel, skirting the edge of the barn and staring at the ground as if he has lost something, or is watching out for snakes.
Hey Jimmy.
Jimmy waves at the boy but doesn’t speak, or stop. Lance runs back down the hill and grabs the boy’s hand, pulling.
Come on, Dale!
There are only a half dozen ladies in the dairy barn at this hour, all of them lying down and chewing their cud. There is no sign of the boy’s uncle or mother, however. They must be out looking at the fields.
Lance runs to the nearest lady, a Holstein with a white star emblazoned on her black brow. She stares at him without interest as he leans his full weight on her stomach and pushes at her.
Get up, get up!
The Holstein doesn’t stop chewing.
Get up, you lazy cow, get up!
She’s digesting her breakfast, the boy says to Lance. She don’t want to get up right now.
Breakfast! It’s almost dinnertime!
A cow spends half the day lying down, Lance. They have four stomachs, they digest their food very slowly. Come on, maybe one of the other ladies will get up.
Lance giggles. Ladies!
Another Holstein obliges them for a couple handfuls of grain. She stands docilely at the trough while Lance tugs at her udders, and only her ears twitch when the little boy screams victoriously at the spoonful of milk he finally manages to squirt into a pail. The boy goes ahead and drains the Holstein’s udder, thinking he will serve all his siblings a glass of thick warm milk the way he once served them apples and bananas from Slaussen’s Market, and he is helping Lance carry the pail down the hill to the house when he looks up and sees his mother standing right in front of him on the driveway. She stands there in her brown dress, as thick and squat as a tree trunk shorn of its canopy by a bolt of lightning. She stands immobile, and for some reason the boy cannot imagine her walking to or leaving this spot. It is as if she had sprung up there from seed.
Ma, look! I milked a cow!
Lance runs toward their mother and she puts a hand on his head, but she is looking at the boy.
What’re you fooling around in that barn for? Those are your uncle’s cows, you don’t need to be messing with them.
I been milking them every day for a year and a half, Ma.
Don’t talk back to me. Get on inside and get your stuff. We have to leave soon.
Lance looks up at his mother’s face, then at the boy.
Look at my milk, Ma! I milked it right out of the cow. Dale didn’t hardly help me at all! Show her my milk, Dale!
I see it, honey, you did a real nice job. Dale was never one for helping his family out. Hurry it up, she says to the boy. It’s a long drive back.
Edi and Lois come around the side of the house, trapezing Gregory between them.
Higher! he screams. Higher, higher!
Lois, Edi! Lance says. Dale’s coming home!
Lois and Edi jump up and down, inadvertently shaking Gregory out of his shirt like a pillow from a pillowcase.
Yay! Dale’s coming home!
The boy looks down when he feels his mother pull the pail of milk from his hands. She would have walked three steps to get to him, but he didn’t see her or hear her. But now she has his pail in her hands and his hands are empty.
It’s now or never. I’m not driving all this way again. You want to be a part of this family you go pack your things. If not …
She lets the milk finish her sentence. It hangs in the air in a white bubbly arc, then falls to the ground, its wet shadow hardly darker than the earth it sinks into.
The boy looks at his four siblings jumping up and down, cheering. Even Gregory is jumping up and down, caught up in their enthusiasm. He looks back at his mother. Up until now it had seemed like him and her. Him versus her. But then he looks at his sisters and brothers again. Edi and Lois are trying to swing Lance now, but he is nearly as big as Lois, and Edi is calling for the boy to come and help. God, how he hates the fact that his mother comes with them. She is like the prickly rind on a pineapple. Why can’t his brothers and sisters come already peeled?
All the while she stands there holding the empty pail in front of her stomach with both hands. If only she would hit him, the boy thinks. If she would just hit him he would wrest the pail from her hands with the muscles he has built up from slinging hay bails and pails of milk and beat her into the ground, not like a fencepost but like a stake. He would drive his mother into the milky heart of this land he has come to love in lieu of himself, and that does not, he suddenly understands, love him back. If it loved him it would fold up around him and hide him until this woman was gone, but instead he feels its flat indifference all around him. The stillness of the earth reproaches him. You are not of this soil. You are not good enough. You never were. You never will be.
But she does not hit him. She sucks in lungfuls of the same air he is breathing and sprays them back in his face. She defies him to hit her. To hit his own mother. His hands curl into fists but even as they do, even as he imagines striking her down, he feels himself in violation of some fundamental law of the universe. It’s as if his image in the mirror had reached out and struck him. His hands unball, his fingers stick straight out from his palms like candles stuck into a cake.
His mother smiles.
Go get your things. Lance, go find Joanie and tell her we’re leaving. Edi, Lois, she says, louder, stop swinging that boy around before you pull his arms off. Come on, we’re going. Jimmy! she yells now. Jimmy, come on, we’re going!
She walks away from him, stepping in the milk-wet gravel and taking as little heed of the sliding pebbles as she does of him. She is reeling in her children like fish.
Tuck your shirt in, she calls when Jimmy appears from behind the hay barn. I didn’t raise you to be no ragamuffin.
She lets the milk pail fall to the earth like an empty candy wrapper, and continues heading toward the truck. It seems very important that the boy pick up the dropped pail, but once he has it in his hands he doesn’t know what to do with it. He would scoop up the milk if he could, but there is nothing left besides a few nearly translucent bubbles and a fast-fading crooked smear. He twitches back and forth between the barn and the truck, thinking again that his mother is reeling him in but that now he’s hooked on a second line. He feels the two hooks pull him in either direction, then all at once he jerks free and runs toward the house.
In the kitchen Aunt Bessie is going through the cabinets.
We’ll feed them eggs, his uncle says from the table. All kids like e
ggs, they’ll be fine, Bess, don’t worry.
There’s a whole brood of em, Aunt Bessie says. There’s another one every time I turn around.
Uncle Wallace! the boy says. Ma says I have to go home!
Aunt Bessie turns off the water she is running over a sinkful of potatoes and turns around. She has a small wet brown potato in each hand, and she holds them up as if they were as useless as the dirt she pulled them from.
How does she do it Dale? she says, shaking the potatoes. Eight children! I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
She stops then, blinks. All at once her eyes are as swollen with moisture as the humid summer air.
What did you say Dale?
The boy looks at Aunt Bessie for a moment. Sees black shoes, a snood of graying brown curls, a plain blue dress filling the space between, belted loosely at her plump waist. Sees that she is cast from the same die as his mother and yet she is holding a potato up to him—holding two potatoes, and offering to cook them for him. He can feel them in his throat like stones. Swallowing them down is almost more than he can manage. Answering her is out of the question.
I want to stay Uncle Wallace, he says, turning from the sympathy in Aunt Bessie’s eyes. I want to stay with you and Aunt Bessie and help you run the farm but Ma says I have to go home and oh, Uncle Wallace! I miss my brothers and sisters. I miss them like crazy. Duke said he’s gonna join the marines but everyone else will still be there. Gregory don’t even know me. He don’t even know I’m his brother. I don’t know what to do, Uncle Wallace.
He stops then, and then he thrusts the empty pail toward his uncle.
She poured it out on the ground, Uncle Wallace. Just threw it out like it didn’t matter at all.
Throughout the boy’s speech his uncle has not looked up from the table where he is sitting. Then he stands so suddenly he knocks his chair over. His hand is shaking as he sets it upright and then he says,
Come on in here.
He walks out of the kitchen into the hallway. He starts to go into the living room but then he stops, whirls toward the storage room, then stops again, wavering between the east and west parlors as the boy had wavered on the hill between the old man’s truck and his uncle’s barn. The boy stares at him, afraid to follow until his uncle has made his choice. He doesn’t understand his uncle’s indecision, can’t imagine what hooks pull at his uncle nor why the context for the ensuing conversation is so important. All he knows is that the room on his uncle’s left belongs to the present, to the lived life of the house, and the room on his right belongs to the past, and when his uncle suddenly pushes into the right parlor the boy’s heart sinks, and he thinks he might as well go ahead and crawl into the back of the truck now.
