A Thousand Acres_A Novel

by Jane Smiley

  And then there was the willful positive thinking, the self-induced illusion that everything would turn out fine, when we had all kinds of evidence that it wouldn’t. If I was angry at myself for dopily accepting everything that had come to me, I was angry at Ty, too, because every fear I’d had of trying something new, of resisting, of creating conflict was a fear that he’d encouraged. I associated this with his father, with all his family’s decades on the farm, never losing any ground, but never gaining any, either. It may have been impossible that someone as hesitant as myself could be seen as potentially wild or impulsive, but in our house I supplied the zip—the hint of the unpredictable, even if it was only an attempt at a Chinese recipe taken from the “Today” section of the Des Moines Register. I told myself that it wasn’t what Rose and I were going to try with Daddy that Ty objected to, but the fact that we were going to try anything.

  I knew that I shouldn’t be mad at Ty for being what he’d always been, patient, understanding, careful, willing to act as the bulwark against my father, but I was mad at him.

  Jess Clark thought Rose and I were taking exactly the right line.

  The fact is that the same sequence of days can arrange themselves into a number of different stories. On the one hand, we had my father’s story—the incidents were the occasions of his increasingly erratic behavior, and the representations of that were here and there; the kitchen cabinetry buckling and swelling in the driveway, his impounded truck at wherever the state troopers kept such vehicles, the front right fender, it turned out later, smashed flat against the wheel, the hollowed-out headlight, the bumper twisted up under the right front quarter panel, even the ditch grass and weeds pinched in the cracks. And there was the couch that finally came, white brocade, about as inappropriate a couch for a farm living room as you could imagine. Then there was the trail of clues to our arguments about him with Caroline—a flurry of phone calls, followed by that number never appearing on our bill again, the item in the paper that appeared innocent but was intended to humiliate and succeeded in doing so, followed by a big bill, over a hundred dollars, for the Cuisinart Rose ordered from Younkers and had sent with the equally humiliating card—“Nice to read of your good news, Rose Lewis and family.” It was an involving story, frightening and suspenseful, full of significance, if only to our family, and mystery, too, since Daddy only acted, and never revealed his motives. It was a story the neighbors surely followed with relish, eager for clues to what was really going on, and ready to supply any memories or speculation that would explain unaccountable twists in the narrative.

  But really the story of those days was the story of Jess Clark, of the color and richness and distinctness his presence in the neighborhood gave to every passing moment. When I think of him, or of that time, I think vividly of his face and figure, of how startling it was, for one thing, to see someone nearly naked in running shorts with no shirt in a world where men wore work pants, boots, and feed caps on the hottest days. I think of the muscles of his legs, defined by years of roadwork into sinuous braids of discrete tensions. I think of his abdomen and arm and back and shoulder muscles, present in every man, but visible in Jess, like some sort of virtue. But the fact is that it’s impossible to think of him by himself, apart from everything else. What concentrated itself in him diffused through the rest of the world, too. I always expected him to manifest himself at any time, because everything I saw around me had gotten to be him—it reminded me of him, expressed him, promised something about him. When he showed up, things were complete. When he didn’t show up, they were about to be.

  Harold Clark began talking frequently and openly about changing his will. Harold was the sort of man who prided himself on knowing everyone, which meant joking in a familiar fashion with men, women, boys, and girls alike. Not long after my father’s accident, I was taking Pammy and Linda for an afternoon swim in Pike. I was to drop them and Rose was to pick them up. Halfway to Cabot, I realized that my fuel gauge was on empty, so I pulled in at the Casey’s on Dodge Street there and got out to pump some gas. I didn’t notice Harold’s truck, but when I went in to pay, there were Harold and Loren stocking up on doughnuts and slices of pizza. Loren was paying, and Harold was back by the cooler, picking out a drink. He was laughing, and his voice rang around the room. “Yeah, Dollie,” he was saying to the woman behind the counter, “I’ve got myself into a fix now. One farm, two boys. Two good boys is a boy too many, you know. Pretty soon there are two wives and six or eight children, and you got to be fair, but there’s no fair way to cut that pie. One farm can’t support all them people, so some who have the get-up-and-go get work in town, but you don’t want to cut them out just because they got some spirit. So the wives start squabbling. That’s the first thing, ain’t it?” By this time he was back at the counter, and he fixed her with an impudent eye. Dollie had gone to eighth grade with Harold, so she looked right back at him, and said, “What you know about wives, Harold Clark, hasn’t ever impressed me much.” He laughed as if this were a compliment and went on, now seeing me and including me in his audience. “But the best thing is, I’ll be dead when all this happens, and when the Good Lord says, ‘Harold, take a look at the mess you left,’ I’ll say, ‘I was just trying to be fair. I had two good boys and I followed Scripture, because didn’t You Yourself say that everybody gets the same day’s wage, whether they show up late to the vineyard or early?’ And He’ll say, ‘Yes, I did,’ and I’ll say, ‘Well, there You have it, blame Yourself.’ ” Harold laughed a full roaring laugh, Loren smiled, and Dollie cocked an eyebrow at me. After Harold left, she said, “It’s a crime the way he talks in front of those boys. And only in front of them. When one of them isn’t along, Ginny, he don’t say boo about his will or after he dies or anything. He talks about buying stuff like he’s never going to die.”

  “How are you, Dollie?”

  “My granddaughter’s going to Soviet Russia on a church exchange trip, did you hear about that? Six church members and six 4-H-ers. She’s the youngest. She’s going to take along some project she did on hog scours. Bob Stanley rigged it up through Marv Carson, somehow. Marv knows Senator Jepsen now, through some bank thing.”

  “Hmm.” I must have sounded preoccupied. She looked at me sharply as I turned from the counter, and said, “Those Clark boys should know that Harold’s all talk. They shouldn’t be counting any chickens. My guess is he don’t have a will at all, and certainly no provisions for paying off any taxes.”

  I thought she must be telling me this as a sideways compliment to my father, to our whole family, for being prepared. Or else as a veiled insult. It was hard for me to tell what the neighbors thought of us. I said, “If I’m talking to Loren or Jess and it comes up, I’ll tell them, Dollie.”

  “Somebody ought to. But you know, Loren is like Harold’s shadow, and I don’t really feel comfortable with that older one. I’ve known him since he was a little boy, but when he comes in here, I always mistake him for a tourist. He’s just not familiar any more.”

  Pammy opened the door and said, “Come on, Aunt Ginny, we’re boiling.”

  Then the Clarks’ deep freeze gave out, and Jess brought over packages of steaks and chops for us to keep until they could get the repair man out from Sears. Ty was sitting at the table, eating his breakfast. Jess asked how Daddy was, if we’d seen the truck, then said, “You’d better go downstairs with me, Ginny, and show me where to put these so they don’t get mixed in with your things.”

  When we were leaning into the freezer, he kissed me on the ear, and whispered, “Meet me at the dump tomorrow afternoon. Harold is taking your dad to Zebulon Center for some extension program, and Ty is going along to the auto parts store.”

  I stepped away from him. “He told me.”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  I turned from the freezer and walked up the cellar steps. My luck held. The kitchen was empty; Ty was out starting the truck. He waved to me as he turned toward the road. When Jess came up from the cellar, I said, �
�Want me to help you bring the rest of the stuff over?”

  I could hear Harold yelling as soon as I opened the door to get out of Jess’s truck. He shouted, “Who told you to leave the sprayer in that field?” and then something unintelligible. Loren came around the corner of the house, and I realized I was standing and staring. I smiled, and he smiled sheepishly back at me. I followed Jess into the house. Through the kitchen window on the barn side of the house, I could see Harold heading toward the barn, kicking at some dirt or gravel in his path, but then, when Loren appeared again, carrying a socket wrench, Harold spun toward him with his hands out, as if he were going to strike him or strangle him. Loren set down his tool and kind of deflected Harold’s progress toward him. Jess said, “Fuck this!” and went out of the kitchen. Soon he appeared with the other two, and shouted, “Harold! Dad! Hey!” He grabbed Harold by the arm. I found a brown paper sack and started filling it with the white packages of meat that were wedged into the refrigerator. The freezer stood open, pulled away from the wall, stinking of that sour frozen smell, and, faintly, of meat and blood.

  The door opened, and Jess manhandled Harold into the kitchen. Harold’s face was purple. Jess said, “Now sit down!” and half pushed him into a chair. Then he said, “I told him to leave the sprayer in that field! It was my mistake. Now leave him the fuck alone!”

  I thought Harold would turn and explode at Jess, but instead he sniffed a couple of times and gazed at him. Finally, he said, without looking at me, but in a chipper voice, “Ginny, I got quite a temper and that’s the truth. I apologize.”

  Jess was filling a bag with the last few packages and some colorful blocks of frozen succotash and spinach from the grocery store. He rolled his eyes. “You should go out and apologize to Loren is what you’d better do.”

  Harold pulled out a yellow handkerchief and wiped his nose, then shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket. Now he looked at me. I was standing with the chilly bag in my arms, ready to get out of there. Harold leaned toward me and confided, “I gotta say, Ginny, that everything about that boy gets me these days. I’m the first to say he don’t deserve it, but I just look at him, and it makes me mad. The way he walks, the way he talks. He’s getting fat, too. Hell, the way he says yessir and nosir and jumps when I get on him. That makes me the maddest. This time last year, he couldn’t do no wrong for me, now he can’t do no right. I expect it’s Jess’s fault.”

  “No, Harold,” said Jess, “it’s your fault, because you give in to it. If you know how you feel, you ought to control yourself.”

  “Ginny, I admit I ain’t so good at controlling myself.” He said this as if I was to absolve him of the necessity of doing so, with a smile or a joke. Harold was actually grinning at this point, looking right at me. I said, “I guess I agree with Jess, Harold. I guess I think you could control yourself if you really wanted to.”

  Harold got up and headed for the living room, still smiling. He said, “Well, you ain’t got any kids, so you don’t know what it’s like.”

  Jess shook his head in exasperation and we scurried out. Loren had left in his pickup, I suppose to get the sprayer. We got in Harold’s truck and slammed the doors. I said, “I’d like to know what’s going on with Daddy and Harold.”

  “I don’t know about Larry, but Harold’s just showing off, same as always. I wonder if he’s really as angry with Loren as he makes out. He loves to act sly for the sake of acting sly.” He started the engine.

  “I’m beginning to think there isn’t any reward for putting up with all of this.”

  “A big farm and the chance to run it the way you want is a reward.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  He pulled onto the blacktop. “No, listen. I got some stuff in the mail. Did you know there’s an association of organic farmers in this state? Guys who’ve never gone to chemicals, or who stopped using chemicals ten or fifteen years ago. It’s pretty inspiring. And in spite of no publicity and ridicule and stiff opposition, it’s a pretty lively and growing association. There’s a guy over near Sac City that I thought I’d go visit, if you want to come along.”

  I rolled my eyes. Jess laughed and leaned toward me. I could smell the fragrance of him. I pressed my lips together. “You were having a lot of doubts a few days ago.”

  “That was before I found out about this. Ginny, this is important! This is something that brings both halves of my life together.”

  “Harold isn’t going to let you farm organically in his lifetime.”

  “We’ll see. He’s pretty high on me now, and I haven’t held back with him, saying what I think he’s doing wrong. He listens to me.” We stopped in front of my back door. There was no one around. I said, “You are so unrealistic. I’m beginning to think that’s one of your virtues.” As he went through the door, he pinched me lightly on the rear. I laughed, but said, “No, really. You’ve changed us all now. You’ve come along and just turned us all upside down, and it’s because you only do what you don’t know you’re doing.” I put the bag I was carrying in his arms and started clearing breakfast dishes off the table. He stood there for a moment—I could feel him there—then ran down the cellar steps. The house seemed to float on him, on his being there. To work at a daily task and sense this was a goading, prickling pleasure for me, invested significance in the plates I was rinsing and the leftovers I was scraping into the garbage can.

  The events of that day and the next morning seemed then like they would be only advertisements on the wall of a tunnel that led to the next afternoon. My father’s trip to the doctor, where his cuts and bruises must have been inspected, but nothing was said to me—I simply waited in the waiting room; even the receptionist was out of the office. Dinner with Ty, then the afternoon in the farrowing house, helping him with the last of the newborn pigs. You had to clip out their eyeteeth, which were sharp and would get sharper, and dock their tails so they wouldn’t get chewed on and infected. The sows didn’t love this, our handling the baby pigs, but in the first few days they were still amenable and almost sleepy. We castrated about twenty little boars. By suppertime we were stinking and drenched with sweat, and in spite of the fans the farrowing house was so hot that the air-conditioned living room gave me the shivers when I walked into it. Showers, then macaroni and cheese for supper, bed before dark.

  I lay awake in the hot darkness, naked and covered by the sheet. Every so often, I lifted the sheet and looked under it, at my blue-white skin, my breasts, with their dark nipples, the foreshortened, rounded triangles of my legs, my jutting feet. I looked at myself while I thought about having sex with Jess Clark and I could feel my flesh turn electric at these thoughts, could feel sensation gather at my nipples, could feel my vagina relax and open, could feel my lips and my fingertips grow sensitive enough to know their own shapes. When I turned on my side and my breasts swam together and I flicked the sheet for a bit of air, I saw only myself turning, my same old shape moving in the same old way. I turned onto my stomach so that I wouldn’t be able to look, so that I could bury my face in the black pillow. It wasn’t like me to think such thoughts, and though they drew me, they repelled me too. I began to drift off, maybe to escape what I couldn’t stop thinking about.

  Ty, who was asleep, rolled over and put his hand on my shoulder, then ran it down my back, so slowly that my back came to seem about as long and humped as a sow’s, running in a smooth arc from my rooting, low-slung head to my little stumpy tail. I woke up with a start and remembered the baby pigs. Ty was very close to me. It was still hot, and he was pressing his erection into my leg. Normally I hated waking in the night with him so close to me, but my earlier fantasies must have primed me, because the very sense of it there, a combination of feeling its insistent pressure and imagining its smooth heavy shape, doused me like a hot wave, and instantly I was breathless. I put my hand around it and turned toward it, then took my hand off it and pulled the curve of his ass toward me. But for once I couldn’t stand not touching it, knowing it was there but not holding
it in my hand. Ty woke up. I was panting, and he was on me in a moment. It was something: it was deeply exciting and simultaneously not enough. The part of me that was still a sow longed to wallow, to press my skin against his and be engulfed. Ty whispered, “Don’t open your eyes,” and I did not. Nothing would wake me from this unaccustomed dream of my body faster than opening my eyes.

  Afterward, when we did open our eyes and were ourselves again, I saw that it was only ten-fifteen. I moved away, to the cooler edge of the bed. Ty said, “I liked that. That was nice,” and he put his hand affectionately on my hip without actually looking at me. His voice carried just a single quiver of embarrassment. That was pretty good for us. Then I heard the breeze start up, rustling the curtains, and then I heard the rattle of hog feeders and the sound of a car accelerating in the distance. The moon was full, and the shadows of bats fluttered in the moonlight. The sawing of cicadas distinguished itself, the barking of a dog. I fell asleep.

  With Jess Clark in that old pickup bed in the dump the next afternoon, it was much more awkward. My arms and legs, stiff and stalklike, thumped against the wheel well, the truck bed, poked Jess in the ribs, the back. My skin looked glaringly white, white like some underground sightless creature. When he leaned forward to untie his sneakers, I felt my cheeks. As clammy as clay. Jess eased me backward. I didn’t watch while he unbuttoned my shirt. He said, “All right?”