A Thousand Acres

by Jane Smiley

  Away from the farm, it was easier to think of how people went on from these sorts of troubles, it was easier to see a life as a sturdy rope with occasional knots in it. Every life I knew of in Zebulon County was marked by conflict and loss. Weren't our favorite conversations about just these things-if not how some present tangle was working itself out, then how past tangles prefigured the present world, had made us and our county what it was? And didn't it always turn out with these conversations that the fact that we were prospering, getting along, or at least feeling our life strong within our flesh proved that everything that had happened had created the present moment, was good enough, was worth it?

  I came to the grove of trees and stood in the dappled shade. Just there, I realized that I had been sensing another presence, perhaps hearing steps or the silence of the meadow birds. For some reason, when a man's ligure stepped up to the edge of the water and threw a handful of stones into it (I could hear the plinkety-plunks even from that distance), I was not surprised by the fact that it was Pete.

  I stayed in the grove, though, unwilling to let my privacy vanish.

  He watched the water for a few minutes, the turned and walked toward me. I thought of escaping.

  But of course I didn't. The lesson I could not seem to learn was how to refuse the gifts I was to be given.

  My feelings about Pete hadn't lost the shimmer left over from the Monopoly tournament. On the contrary, it was easy to see how, over the years, Pete's reponses to Daddy had been more honest than Ty's, destructive but at least not duplicitous, impolitic but passionate, angry but never self-serving, and almost noble in the last four years, after Rose's revelations about what Daddy had done to her. Didn't the fact that she had told him itself constitute a recommendation?

  He saw me and paused, smiled for me, came on. When he was just within earshot, I called out, "Playing hooky at the swimming hole?"

  He came up to me saying, "I took the alternate route back from Mason City. I suppose you might swim here if you were ready to take your life in your hands."

  We turned together and walked back down the path I'd come, toward my car. I said, "Where's the truck? I didn't see anyone when I drove in.

  "There's an old quarry road that runs in up on the north end. The gate's down, so you can get right up to where it disappears into the water. Must be where they took the stone out in the old days."

  "Somebody in Ty's class in high school drove a car into the quarry once.

  "Hmm. Well, plenty of things have been driven into this quarry over the years. I guess it's like windows in abandoned buildings.

  You hate to see that surface go unbroken."

  "What's Rose doing today?"

  "Haven't you talked to her? Something with the girls. I forget what.

  What are you doing up here, anyway? I haven't ever seen you around here before."

  I liked talking to Pete like this, taking an interest, as if we were friends. At home, our relations were circumscribed by work, and other things, too, I supposed. I said, "I just wanted to go somewhere wet.

  I remembered this place as different, though. Blue."

  "Some days it is blue, but there's a lot of runoff from the rains. I wouldn't swim in it blue, either, though. I'd imagine that the bacteria level's pretty high. Jack Stanley's got that feedlot back up the creek there." He pointed toward the northwest horizon.

  "The high school kids swim here."

  "Mmm. Slurp slurp. Must be okay, then."

  I laughed. But the reason I was there included Pete, too, didn't it?

  He was named in the suit. I felt that awful self-consciousness returning, chasing out the momentary ease I had been enjoying. The rope of my life, coiling into this knot, then out of it, seemed again more like a thread, easily broken. Even if I didn't tell Pete about the legal papers, that moment of ease was gone. So I said, "I was running away from the suit, actually."

  "What?"

  "Caroline is-well, I mean, Daddy, is suing us to get the farm back.

  That abuse or mismanagement clause."

  "Huh."

  He sounded speculative, hardly interested. We walked on, passing my car and turning west along the south end of the quarry. I said, "It just made me so mad. I had to go somewhere. I felt like all this was giving me a fever."

  He didn't say anything. We walked along the path, which followed the cyclone fence. Bindweed petered out, replaced by ground-cherry.

  Bunches of milkweed were beginning to blossom white along the fence line. I said, "I can't believe the way all of this has blown up.

  I mean, I didn't have a good feeling about it when Daddy first came up with the idea, but I can't say I sensed any of this coming."

  Still we walked. I stopped for a second and wiped the sweat off my forehead with the tail of my shirt. We were completely out in the sun, now. When I caught up to Pete, he said, "Ginny, what do you think Rose wants?"

  "I don't know." What I meant was, I thought I had known, I thought it was obvious, until he raised the possibility of doubt. "A stake in something of her own. A life she can call her own, maybe.

  It seems fairly clear. For the girls to be all right, too."

  "What do you want? You're the oldest, but Rose always seems like the oldest."

  I said, "For all this to be over. That's all, at this point. For these feelings to end."

  "Huh."

  The path narrowed and he went ahead of me. He was wearing cowboy boots, the ones he always wore off the farm. He had two or three pairs, and the high heels made his legs look long. He was in better shape than Ty, although not without a little thickness at the middle.

  When the path widened, I jogged a little to catch up to him. I said, "Why do you ask?"

  He looked at me as if he couldn't remember where I had come from. I said, "Pete? Why do you ask about what Rose wants? She's pretty straightforward about it."

  "Is she?"

  The ease of our earlier conversation seemed to be gone, and I didn't say anything. He stared at me for another moment, then walked on. We were walking fast, approaching the southwest corner of the quarry, where an old implement that looked like it might be a harrow of some kind jutted out of the water. Pete stopped, picked up a couple of pebbles, and threw one, hitting a half-submerged tine with a ringing ping. I walked on, toward another grove of trees, then came back.

  Pete had moved to the edge of the water. I thought I would tell him I had to get to the grocery store. I looked at my watch. It was already nearly three. Ty, looking for his dinner, would have seen the papers by now.

  Pete said, "Sometimes, all I want is to hurt someone. Not even for any purpose."

  "That's understandable, when you've been hurt."

  "Maybe. You know what Ty says, about when the hogs get on one another and start lighting, how the underdog never lights back, he just looks for a smaller one? Ty always says, 'Shit rolls downhill."" I smiled.

  Pete stared past me. A breeze had come up, shattering the surface of the water into shards of light. I said, "Pete, are you okay? When I get away from the farm, I feel like all of this is going to turn out okay. Not the same as before, but okay. I mean, maybe that's the definition of okay. Jess would say change is good." I tried to say the name neutrally, glad I hadn't said it before in this conversation.

  It was important in all circumstances not to say it too often.

  "Oh, Jess."

  "Don't you like Jess?"

  "Oh, sure."

  Now we stood together in true awkwardness, Pete rolling stones in his hand and looking over the water, me not knowing what to do with my hands, looking at the distant white roof of my car. It was apparent that Pete, too, knew of my feelings for Jess, that this information had escaped from me somehow, though I had tried desperately to contain it.

  Pete wasn't even especially observant, nor very interested in me. It was terrifying to think of myself so obvious, so transparent. I remembered just then how my mother used to say that God could see to the very bottom of every soul, a
soul was as clear to God as a rippling brook. The implication, I knew even then, was that my mother could do the same thing. My lips were dry and hot, and I thought of right then just asking Pete what he knew, how he found it out-from Ty or Rose or Daddy orJess himself. Wouldn't it be a relief to have everything out in the open for once?

  But that question was easy to answer, too. And the answer was negative. The last few weeks had shown well enough for anyone to understand that the one thing our family couldn't tolerate, that maybe no family could tolerate, was things coming into the open. So I didn't ask Pete. I said, "I guess I'd better get to the store. It'll be suppertime before long. Ty will wonder where I am."

  "I've got chores to do myself. More and more I can't resist stopping here, though. It's such a weird place."

  We began back along the path to my car. A snake appeared, vanished, leaving the low sound of grass rustling in the air. I halted, Pete ran into me. That close, there was plenty we had to say to one another, but habit and probably fear prevented us. Later, it was strange to think of his body bumping me, how solid that was; the smell of his sweat mixed with the plant and water smells of that place; the sight of his face that close, his gray-blue eyes with their long pale lashes, turning toward me, holding me then releasing me.

  I barked, "Snake!"

  "Huh," said Pete, in that same oddly disinterested, curious tone, as if I see now, all he was doing by then was waiting to see what would happen.

  IT WAS APPARENT THAT Ty HAD EATEN and gone out againdirty plates in the sink, chicken bones in the garbage can, and the coffeepot warm on the burner. He had moved the legal papers to the kitchen table. I read them again and looked around for a place to put them. Finally, I opened the desk and stuck them in with the tax receipts. There were books to do-we were overdue on that.

  The last day of June had come and gone without our monthly accounting session, though I had paid the regular bills. I couldn't eat, so I began straightening the house up. It didn't take long-it was the one thing I still knew how to do.

  The building crew from Mason City had spent the week pouring the specially designed concrete subfloor for the breeding and gestation building, over which a slatted steel floor would be laid. An automatic flush system would eventually flush the slurry along the subfloor to the Slurrystore. You couldn't see the site from the house-it was hidden by the old dairy barn that would itself be converted into the farrowing and nursing rooms. The Harvestores now rose, blue and efficient, with clean lines and rounded edges, just south of the dairy barn, right beside one another. A cement mixing truck was parked permanently on the shoulder of Cabot Street Road, ready for the crew to progress to the subfloors of the grower and the finisher buildings.

  Another three-man crew had spent the week tearing out the dairy stalls in the barn. As hogs are far more inquisitive and destructive than dairy cattle, the plan was to install concrete partitions to about live feet, then wood frame walls above that.

  Eventually, every hog in every building would reside in an aluminum alloy pen with hot water heat in the floors, automatic feeders and nipple waterers for the shoats. There would be, as the brochure said, "several comfort zones to accommodate varying sizes of hogs."

  Supposedly, it would take six months at the least and eight or nine at the most to complete all the buildings, but the plan was to move the first ten sows into gestation stalls by the beginning of August.

  Ty had written two checks so far-a $20,000 check to the Harvestore builder and a down payment check to the confinement system builder for $27,500. By the first of August, he would write another check to the Harvestore builder for $20,000 and another check to the confinement system manufacturer for 20 percent of the remaining building cost, or $49,300. If hog prices remained steady, and the sows weren't stressed by the new buildings or the noise from construction, and he managed to finish an average of six hogs from each litter to an average of two hundred thirty pounds each, he could expect his first check in late winter, for almost $20,000. But by then he would have written two more checks for $49,300, as work on the other buildings progressed. In a quieter time, these numbers would have made me gasp, lie awake at night, comb the books for savings here and there. With everything else that was happening, their effect was to make me merely giddy.

  Their effect on Ty was as strong-he had rigged lights around the gestation floor, and he and the crew worked out there until almost eleven. They were back the next day, although it was Saturday, and the next, Sunday. Each day they put in twelve or fourteen hours, and after the crew had gone home, Ty and Pete continued to work until it was dark. From time to time, I wandered out there and looked at the work for a few minutes, but Ty and I did not speak about it.

  Nor would he talk about the suit, even whether he had known it was coming. I was certain he had. When I said so, he just kept hammering nails into the forms he was setting as if I hadn't spoken.

  Over the weekend, they finished the Slurrystore, set the footings for the grower building, and carted away the innards of the old dairy barn.

  I served two big meals Friday, two Saturday, and three Sunday, because the cale in town wasn't open for breakfast. No one went to church.

  Rose came by each day and helped cook. They had been served with their own set of papers, but we didn't talk about it, either; there was too much to do and, maybe, too much to say.

  Anyway, the kitchen was like a steambath, too hot for getting worked up.

  Sunday afternoon, I was basting a turkey for supper and washing dinner dishes when Ty came in the back door and threw some dirty rags on the floor. I said, "What's that?"

  He said, "You tell me."

  I looked closer. Pink stripes. My nightgown, some underwear. I didn't have to look again to know what the rusty stains were. I hadn't actually forgotten them; it was more like I hadn't had the occasion to dig them up, and, as busy as we were, I had forgotten that they might be excavating that floor so quickly. I said, "Where was that?"

  "Where do you think?"

  Our gazes locked, and I wondered if I could bluff him, simply deny knowledge, and then I wondered if it was worth it. I dried my hands on a dish towel, wiped the counter with the dishrag for a moment.

  Finally, I said, "Floor of the dairy barn?"

  "I didn't think you would admit it."

  "Well, I did."

  "Then I guess we have something to talk about tonight."

  "I guess I don't think so.

  But by that time he was out the door. Though he certainly heard me, he could pretend he hadn't. I picked up the nightgown and threw it in the trash can. If he had found it six months before, it would have been an innocent thing, a testament to undying hope, evidence of bravery, however secretive, on my part, as well as of my commitment to our future. To a forgiving and affectionate man, these clothes would have seemed tragic at the worst, not for a moment guilty or injurious. But that was one thing about Ty. He knew how to make up his mind, and to keep it made up. I jammed the clothes farther down among the strawberry hulls and the turkey giblets with my foot. There was a difference in me, too. If he'd found the clothes six months before, I would have been ashamed at the subterfuge. Now I was only annoyed that I'd forgotten and left them there.

  Had there been no miscarriage, the baby would have been a week or two old now, a startling thought. I would have been eight months pregnant for the coming of Jess Clark, the ponderous focus of witty remarks during all our Monopoly games. A restraining influence would certainly have been exerted on me, on Ty, possibly on my father. With the future visible, growing, getting ready to present itself (assumed to be a boy until the last possible minute), it would have been unwise to question the past, a tempting of fate. There would have been no new buildings, because we would have taken a conservative fiscal line. We would have sought instead to present a different picture: live generations on the same land. In honor of my son, wouldn't I warm enthusiastically to such a picture? All the other mothers of sons ii, Zebulon County did.

  The fact w
as, in theory it was all still possible. If Jess were right and our well water was at fault, I could drink and cook with bottled water. And then there would be a grandson. Our neighbors who were now inflaming my father with phrases like "Some things just aren't right," would be saying, "Let bygones be bygones."

  Except our feelings stood around us like ramparts, and we could not unknow what we knew. For one thing, Ty clearly thought that some unacceptable true nature had been revealed in Rose and communicated to me. I was sure his real loyalties lay with Daddy, and I could readily envision him in long phone discussions with Caroline, uncomfortable, maybe, but dogged. I recoiled from telling himthe trust that would allow confidences had disappeared into formality. For another, there had been no sex between us of any kind since before the memory of my father had returned to me. Sex itself which I had rarely if ever actually enjoyed, seemed now like it would be too close to those memories for comfort.