A Thousand Acres

by Jane Smiley

  Jean Cartier had told us that he didn't expect the hearing, which was before a judge rather than a jury, to last more than a morning and an afternoon. The suit, Jean felt, was relatively clear-cut, especially in light of the fact that the harvest had been successful, and had looked right, too. Our neighbors hadn't helped us, we'd finished in good time, and being a little ahead, we'd gotten a slightly better price on our corn than some others. There was no gainsaying now that Ty was a superior farmer. We had gotten a good enough price on the first part of the corn harvest that Ty had been able to make a payment on the outstanding loan to Marv Carson two days ahead of the due date.

  That might have been the reason why Marv was sitting on our side of the courtroom, way at the back. He was the only spectator.

  At ten a. m Martin Stanley, the bailiff stood up and announced that the court was in session, Judge Lyle Ottarson presiding. Judge Ottarson, Mr. Cartier had told us, was from Sioux City. There was a family farm in his background somewhere. "He knows the lingo," was what Mr. Cartier had said.

  The first person called to the stand was my father. Standing, walking, he was still himself big and strong and hunched forward, his head swinging around like the head of a bull, and with just that suspiciousness, too. Ken LaSalle straightened his path to the witness stand. He focused on Monica Davis, the clerk, long enough to swear to tell the truth. Ken asked him the first question, whether he had in good faith formed a corporation and relinquished his farm to his two older daughters, Virginia Cook Smith and Rose Cook Lewis, along with their husbands, Tyler Smith and Peter Lewis? To this, Daddy answered, "By God, they'll starve there. The land won't produce for the likes of them. Caroline!"

  Ken said, "Mr. Cook-" "Caroline!"

  Caroline sang out, "Yes, Daddy?"

  Judge Ottarson said, "The witness will please refrain from addressing-" "Caroline! It'll gag 'em!"

  The judge leaned forward and tried to catch Daddy's eye. "Mr. Cook?

  Larry?"

  Daddy swung his head around and caught his gaze.

  "Mr. Cook, please answer the questions. You can't talk to Ms. Cook just now. Do you understand?"

  Daddy looked at him without answering. The judge said, "Proceed, Mr. LaSalle."

  "Larry?" Ken got up close to the stand. "Larry? Did you sign the farm over to Ginny and Rose?"

  "I don't care about going to jail. If they want to send me to jail, I don't care about that."

  Ken said, "Nobody's going to jail, Larry. This isn't that kind of trial. We're talking about the farm. Your farm, that your dad and granddad built. We want to know what you did with it."

  "I lost it. It's well lost. Caroline, please forgive me!"

  The judge said, "Mr. LaSalle, try once more.

  Ken nodded. He tried a firmer, more commanding voice. "Larry!

  Listen to me! What happened to your farm? Who did you give it to?

  Think about it."

  Suddenly, Daddy shouted, "She's dead!" He gripped the arms of his chair.

  The judge said, "Who's dead, Mr. Cook?"

  "My daughter." He sounded conversational, almost meek.

  "Which daughter? All your daughters are in the courtroom, sir."

  "Caroline! Caroline's dead. Where is she? Have they buried her already? I think they stole the body. I think those sisters stole the body and buried her already."

  While he was saying this, Caroline was rushing to his side. She took his hands and put them on her shoulders, then she said, "Here I am, Daddy. I'm not dead at all."

  He said, "Somebody take her pulse."

  Rose let out a bark of laughter, which she quickly stifled. I was amazed, though. Amazed and horrified and excited, the way you always feel at a wreck.

  Ken LaSalle held up a sheaf of papers, and said, "Judge, here's exhibit A, the contract in question. I'll introduce it in lieu of the witness's response.

  Daddy said, "Could be they killed her. That day after church. She didn't show up to get her share. And then, when I went down to Des Moines to find her, she wasn't there, either." He turned to look at the judge. "You're a judge. I'll swear to that. I swear that maybe they killed her and buried her."

  Caroline said, "I'm right here with you, Daddy. You live at my house now. You can live there always. As long as you like."

  The judge said, "Who killed whom, Mr. Cook?"

  "Those bitches killed my daughter."

  "What are the names, sir?"

  Now I sat forward, feeling the curiosity to hear uncoiling within me.

  Would he really say her name, with her living and breathing right in front of him? The photo of that nameless baby crossed my mind. Maybe there was another one after all, one that came before me. It wasn't impossible, and not unlikely, either, that I wouldn't know about it.

  Another something less said about the better. He was still looking at the judge. He said, "She was the sweetest, lightest, happiest little girl. All day long she was singing some little song.

  Just like a little bird."

  "Who?" said the judge.

  He couldn't see her. He said, "Well, Caroline, of course. He looked over her shoulder toward Ken LaSalle. He said, "Help me up, boy.

  Please. I can't do like I used to, these days." He reached out his hand. When Ken took hold of it, Daddy stepped down the little step.

  To Caroline, he said, "Excuse me."

  Rose leaned over to me and said, "Ten to one, this is an act."

  Caroline, Ken, and Daddy made their slow way down the aisle toward the door. Daddy was saying, "She was the littlest thing.

  Little knobby knees. Little bitty lingers, always braiding her doll's hair." All of a sudden, I shouted, "Daddy, it was Rose who had the velveteen coat! It was Rose who sang! It was me who dropped things through the well grates!" I was squawking, right out there in the courtroom, and everyone's head swung toward me. All but one.

  Daddy didn't pay any attention at all. The judge banged his gavel, my face flushed hot, and my throat seared. I whispered to Ty, "But it was." He shushed me. I felt icy shakes descend in waves through my body.

  The hearing went forward as if I hadn't spoken. Frank stayed in the room, I suppose to make sure there wasn't going to be any funny business. Various affidavits were presented attesting to how Ty and Pete, and later, Jess, and Rose and myself had conducted business on the farm over the summer. Receipts for sales, outstanding bills, my books, which I had industriously brought up to date, were all presented. Ty took the stand, told simply and carefully what he had done and why. Mostly his reason was that Daddy had done things that way, and he had gotten into the habit. Rose jiggled her foot constantly, and a joint in her chair squeaked with her jiggling. I watched it all, but mostly I continued wrapped in amazement.

  The strangest person in the room, apart from myself was Jess Clark, and my amazement gradually accumulated focus on him. It was, when I stared hard enough at his face, as if it were May again, and I were only just seeing him for the first time. I noted his hawkish nose, his blue eyes with their orbits of fine lines, his dry, neatly cut lips. He looked relaxed in the courtroom, purely a witness, curious but unimplicated in the developing drama. A stranger, he looked canny, almost calculating.

  With no one looking at him and no occasion to exercise his charm, his face was cool, without animation or warmth. His estimation of or feelings about what had happened weren't evident in any way, and something was aroused in me, an instinctive female reaction of caution, as if all that had happened was still before us, as if the sense that caution was in order wasn't, by now, the result of experience. This flutter of caution felt like deja vu, and I wondered if I had felt it before, if that hadn't been the very thing that spurred me forward. I thought, suddenly, of that girl whose boyfriend had stabbed her long ago in June, of how she had gone out to meet him, throwing caution to the winds.

  We had all done that, Daddy first, the others after. We had done it without knowing why, or maybe even that that was what we were doing.

  And then our cautio
us lives had grown intolerable in retrospect, and every possibility of returning to them equally intolerable.

  And yet, a year ago, I'd been happy enough, taken up with my little pregnancy project, managing the round of work and the irritations of Daddy's unreasonableness. Ty had been content enough with his patched-together hog operation, Pete had accepted the bargain of his life-routine frustration, occasional blowups, but at least some larger purpose to participate in. Jess, too, seven months before his return, must have felt that things were settled.

  Only Rose was planning for change. Brooding on her body, her voluptuous, furious, secret, waiting body, had become a habit of mine, a meditation that I hoped would move her appetite toward the sausages and sauerkraut, her hand toward ajar I had canned for her, but now I didn't think of that. I thought instead of that cell dividing in the dark and then living rather than dying, subdividing, multiplying, growing, Rose's real third child ("her only third child," a voice whispered in my head), the one who would not be parted from her. Her dark child, the child of her union with Daddy.

  I shook my head, and snapped back to the events in the courtroom.

  Caroline had returned and was stepping up to the witness stand.

  She straightened her skirt and sat down. She smiled at her lawyer, then at Ken LaSalle. The lawyer said, "Ms. Cook, when were your suspicions aroused about the plans going forward for the division of the Cook farm?"

  "I was suspicious from the first. The whole project was very untypical of my father."

  He asked her what she meant. They conversed in a friendly way about Daddy, portraying him as a "hands-on manager," a "lifelong farmer."

  "What was your response to the project?"

  "I made my reservations known."

  "How were they greeted?"

  "My sister Ginny Smith urged me very strongly to go along with the idea."

  "What did you think of that?"

  "I suspected her of ulterior motives. I knew she and Rose both wanted to get their hands-" Mr. Cartier objected.

  Rose said, "Oh my God, listen to this." The judge cast her a severe glance.

  The Des Moines lawyer tried another tack. He said, "Later, it was more than suspicions, right? Later you were really worried about your father's safety, right?"

  "They sent him out into a terrible storm Mr. Cartier objected.

  Hearsay.

  The lawyer tried again, "Mr. Smith told you that they had sent your father out into a terrible storm, did he not?" Rose leaned toward me and whispered, "Did he?"

  I let Caroline speak for me. "Yes, he did. It was common knowledge-" Rose sat back in her chair. "I'm not surprised."

  Judge Ottarson pulled his reading glasses down on his nose and skimmed a document on his desk. Then he interrupted her. He said, "The mismanagement or abuse clause in the preincorporation agreement that is the occasion for this suit refers, Ms. Cook, to the farm properties only. You may not introduce the subject of your father and his relation to your sisters into this courtroom."

  Caroline flushed red, and said, "But-" Her lawyer shushed her.

  Then he smiled slyly, comfortingly. I looked over at Mr. Cartier, who was watching with lively interest.

  The lawyer said, "Has the Cook farm ever incurred debt?"

  Caroline said, "No."

  "Is it now burdened with debt?"

  "It certainly is-" She wanted to go on, but she stopped, triumphantly, with a glance at Rose, then at me. After a moment, she turned her face stonily forward again, and smoothed her hair. Mr. Cartier declined to interview her, and she stood up. There was dead silence as her hundred-dollar heels clicked back to her seat, then a loud screech as she pulled out her chair. Marv Carson was called to the stand.

  Yes, he said, his bank was owed about $125,000 with the farm as collateral.

  Yes, he said, if all went as planned, the bank would loan us $300,000.

  He smiled proudly.

  He said, "This is going to be a first-class hog operation."

  Yes, he said, the Smiths and Mrs. Lewis were up-to-date in their payments.

  The Des Moines lawyer said, "Mr. Carson, many would consider it remarkably risky for a family operation to take on this kind of debt.

  Don't you?"

  "Oh, no. I feel good about it.

  The Des Moines lawyer raised his eyebrows.

  "Hogs are an excellent investment. Prout is going to be in hogs.

  The idea of being debt-free is a very old-fashioned one. A family can be debt-free, that's one thing. A business is different. You've got to grasp that a farm is a business first and foremost. Got to have capital Improvements in a business. Economy of scale. All that."

  Marv was grinning. Clearly, he considered that he was giving everyone in the courtroom a well-deserved lesson. He went on, "What I worry about is the delay, frankly. This delay is very bad for us. These buildings should be almost finished by now, and it's been almost two months-" "What a coincidence," muttered Rose.

  The Des Moines lawyer said, "Thank you, Mr. Carson, that's all for me," turned his back on Marv, and strode back to his table. Marv paused, startled. Mr. Cartier got up and had Marv elaborate on the costs of the delay. Mr. Cartier was very cheerful.

  Marv went back to his seat on our side of the courtroom. He was careful not to look at us, full of his role as "expert witness." But I realized right then that by watching Marv, just by watching him, you could tell where the money was, and where it was going to go.

  After a moment, Judge Ottarson lifted his papers and stacked them together meditatively, straightening the bottom edge against the dark wood of his desk, then both side edges. He pushed his glasses up his nose, then thumbed through the original preincorporation contract.

  He said, "I don't feel I need to take a recess to decide this matter.

  The arguments are fairly clear, and the plaintiffs have failed to establish either abuse of the property in question or mismanagement of its assets. The fact is, in this state, if you legally sign over your property, it is very hard to change your mind and get it back." He paused for a long time and seemed to be debating how to go on.

  Finally, he said, "Obviously, the mental condition of the chief plaintiff Mr. Cook, must also come under consideration. Were the property to revert to him, it's not clear, given the deep divisions in the family, who would farm it. But this is only a corollary consideration.

  The law is clear. I find in favor of the defendants, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Lewis, and Mr. Smith."

  We began to shift around, but he went on. He said, "I would also like to say to Mr. LaSalle, Mr. Crockett, Mr. Rasmussen, and Ms. Cook that there is merit in the argument of Mr. Cartier that this may have constituted a frivolous misuse of this court, and Mr. Rasmussen and Ms. Cook, in particular, should have bethought themselves before they decided to carry a family fracas this far. For that reason, the plaintiffs shall be required to pay fees and costs. This court is adjourned."

  Rose was smiling.

  Caroline's face was red and angry.

  One thing was surely true about going to court. It had marvelously divided us from each other and from our old lives. There could be no reconciliation now.

  IT DIDN'T SURPRISE ME that we couldn't tolerate the verdict. In the first place, there was no precedent to show us how to behave or what to feel. Nor did we do anything that we had not already planned to do-Ty and I went home to feed the hogs in our pickup, Rose went to get the girls in her car, and Jess drove Pete's pickup back to his place. I noticed that we each thanked Mr. Cartier rather hurriedly and then got out of there, as if we were ashamed.

  Ty and I drove home almost in silence. It was the nineteenth of October. The leaves on the trees were the same color as the leaves caught in the ditches and fence lines. The old cornstalks in the harvested fields were almost white by contrast. A few farmers were still out finishing the last of their beans. I could see, and almost hear, from long habit, the sere, reddish-black pods rattling in the breezes as we passed. Hogs and white-faced beef cattle
grazed the fenced fields, cleaning up after the combines. Here and there, a farmer was fall plowing. The stiff chill wind swirled the dry soil into the air.

  White farmhouses stood out crisply against the umber background, their front yards decorated with corn shocks and dark sun pumpkins.

  Last year, Harold and Loren had gone to Arizona for two weeks in October and November, in the cheap period before the season opened.

  This year, we'd heard, they were planning to move into town. Harold's eyes were still painful, and he didn't like to be left alone. A couple of women, sisters, had agreed to watch him during the day while Loren was working the farm, but they didn't drive, so Loren had decided to rent a place near the Cabot post office.