Just Shy of Harmony

by Philip Gulley

  Most people would have been thrilled, but Jessie was miserable. She didn’t believe in the lottery. She thought it was a tax on idiocy, so when she won that money she believed God was giving her a platform. She went to the statehouse so the governor could present her the check, but when the TV man told her to smile and shake the governor’s hand, she tore the check in half and scolded the governor for duping the ignorant poor.

  The state mailed her letters asking her to take the money. She tore the letters up and mailed them back. That was last year. Jessie had hoped God might reward her faithfulness and make life a little easier for her and her husband, Asa, but that had not happened.

  Asa and Jessie Peacock farm south of town. Last summer the hog cholera came through and killed all their pigs. Then it didn’t rain for two months, and their crops dried up. This past winter Asa took a job in the county seat, working nights on the kill line at the poultry plant. Worried, frantic chickens would hurl toward Asa on the conveyor belt. He would grab every fourth one and lop its head off. “Nothing personal,” he told them. “Just doing my job.”

  But Asa was troubled. When he was a little boy he had a pet chicken, Mr. Peeps, who had followed him everywhere and slept in his bed. Asa was grateful Mr. Peeps wasn’t alive to see how far he had fallen.

  Asa wasn’t averse to killing the occasional chicken for his own consumption. It was the wholesale slaughter that troubled him. The ruthless organization of it. He worried the chickens wouldn’t forgive him.

  He began to have chicken nightmares. One night he dreamed he was riding on a conveyor belt, and a giant chicken grabbed him by the feet and lopped his head off.

  He told Dale Hinshaw about his nightmares one morning at the Coffee Cup.

  “Sounds like post-dramatic stress syndrome to me,” Dale said. “You see it mostly in war veterans and schoolteachers, but occasionally with poultry workers.”

  The next Sunday during church Asa prayed for God to stop the dreams. But that night he dreamed he was back on the kill line and, just before he killed a chicken, the chicken looked deep into Asa’s eyes. He saw the chicken’s lips move and heard the chicken cry out, “It’s me, Asa. Mr. Peeps. Don’t you remember me?”

  In the dream, the other chickens crowded around Asa’s feet, pecking his ankles.

  Asa woke up sweating and lay awake for quite some time. He heard the downstairs clock chime two o’clock, then three. Then he fell asleep.

  In the morning his ankles were sore. He pulled off his socks. His ankles were covered with little red marks. He went downstairs to the kitchen, showed Jessie his ankles, and told her about his dream. He asked her what she thought.

  “I think you should quit.”

  But he couldn’t. They needed the money. Instead, Asa gave up sleep. At night he worked at the poultry plant; then he’d come home and work the farm.

  By June they were down to three hundred dollars in their savings account. Then Jessie got another letter from the lottery people asking if she’d changed her mind. This time, she didn’t tear it up. Instead, she stuck it on the front of the refrigerator. The letter said they had until the end of August to claim the money. She’d open the refrigerator to get out the milk, and her eyes would fall on that letter. Five million dollars. She’d think about Asa working two jobs and not sleeping.

  She pondered if winning the lottery was God’s way of helping them and that maybe she’d been too hasty in refusing the check. She wished she hadn’t torn the check in half on television. She would have to eat a lot of crow if she cashed the lottery check now.

  She wondered if this was God’s way of humbling her.

  Then, one July morning during the haying season, their tractor broke down. Asa had to borrow a team of mules and a wagon from their Amish neighbor to finish bringing the hay bales to the barn. There was a creek that ran between the house and the barn. Asa would guide the mules over the bridge toward the barn and up the earthen ramp into the barn.

  His great-grandfather had built the barn. It had his name over the doorway—Abraham Peacock—and the year the barn was built—1898. Over the fireplace in their house was a picture of Abraham Peacock standing in front of his new barn, looking prosperous.

  Over a hundred years later, the barn was still standing. Asa loved that barn. Loved the animal smell and the swirls of hay on the floor. When he was a boy, he and his brothers would make forts in the loft using hay bales. They’d tie off ropes from the beams and swing down from the loft. The old ropes still hung from the beams, rope icicles reaching to the ground.

  Asa was urging the mules across the bridge toward the barn when the mules quit. He looped a rope around their necks and pulled, but they dug in. Jessie came out of the house and pushed the mules from behind, but they stood fast.

  Asa said, “Well, if they’re going to take a break, we will too.” They went inside to eat lunch.

  They ate lunch looking out the window at the mules.

  “Stubborn creatures,” Asa muttered.

  After lunch, he phoned Ellis Hodge, seeking counsel. Ellis Hodge was a fount of information.

  Ellis said, “Seems to me I read something in last year’s almanac about how to move a stubborn mule.”

  Asa loved the almanac. He had built a shelf in the living room to hold all his almanacs. While Jessie washed the lunch dishes, Asa pulled last year’s almanac from the shelf and began to thumb through it.

  “I’ll be,” he yelled to Jessie. “Did you know that if the north side of a beech tree is sweaty, it’s gonna rain?”

  Jessie hadn’t known that.

  Asa read on.

  “Say, here’s a good idea. It says to save your old rubber gloves and cut them up for rubber bands. Do you do that?”

  Jessie yelled back, “I don’t use rubber gloves.”

  Asa turned the page. “Hey, this is interesting. What do you do with the empty toilet paper rolls?”

  “I throw them away.”

  “It says here you should use them as sachets in drawers and closets.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.”

  “Did you know that if a chicken stands on one leg, the weather will turn cold?”

  “I had no idea.”

  “Yep, and if there are lots of dogwood blossoms, it’ll be a good corn crop.”

  “Imagine that.”

  “Here it is!” Asa shouted. “To move a stubborn mule, light a small fire underneath the mule and it will move.”

  He walked into the kitchen and asked Jessie where they kept the matches. She opened the cabinet over their stove and handed Asa an Ohio Blue Tip.

  They went outside. Jessie watched as Asa took an armload of hay from the wagon and piled it underneath the mules. He took the match from his pocket and scratched it on his zipper. He touched the match to the hay.

  The mules stood fast while the first wisps of smoke began to curl around their bellies. As the fire grew, they began to rock back and forth.

  “There they go!” Asa yelled.

  The mules lunged toward the barn, but not far enough or fast enough. They stopped just as the wagon was over the fire. The dry floorboards of the wagon began to kindle.

  Asa dashed to the barn for a bucket. He hurried to the creek to fill the bucket. The mules looked back, alarmed. They saw the flames and felt the heat, and their strength was renewed. They bolted for the barn, pulling the burning wagon behind them. The flames climbed up the ropes into the loft. Before long, the loft was ablaze.

  Jessie and Asa unharnessed the mules from the wagon and drove them from the barn. Then Jessie ran inside to phone the fire department. A while later they could hear the fire whistle from town sound over the fields. By the time the volunteer fire department arrived, the whole barn was aflame.

  When the pumper went dry, the firemen pumped water from the creek. It took them two hours to put out the fire. The only part of the barn left standing was the doorway. You could just make out the numbers—1898.

  Asa and Jessie stood before the smoldering r
uins, holding each other. That was the picture Bob Miles snapped to run in the Harmony Herald.

  “How did she burn?” Bob inquired, his pen poised, ready to write.

  Asa had seen what happened to people who did dumb things in Harmony. In 1913, his great-grandfather, Abraham Peacock, had driven a Model T through the Grant Hardware Emporium plate glass window while pulling back on the steering wheel and yelling “Whoa!” at the top of his lungs. He lived thirty more years and never lived it down.

  “I’d rather not say,” he answered Bob.

  Bob wrote on his pad of paper, The fire was of a suspicious origin.

  The next day was Sunday. Jessie and Asa went to town to church. Everyone there had heard about their barn.

  Dale Hinshaw, their insurance agent, reminded them to come by his office to put in a claim.

  “Just exactly how did the fire start?” he asked Asa. “I need to know for when I fill out the forms.”

  “I’d rather not say. Do the insurance people have to know?”

  “Only if you want your money.”

  “Can’t we just leave that part of the form blank?”

  “Not if you want to be paid.”

  “In that case, I don’t think we’ll be filing a claim.”

  That night as Asa and Jessie lay in bed, Jessie began to weep. “First the pigs, then the crops. Now we’ve lost our barn.”

  Asa held Jessie to him, stroking her head.

  “What a mess we’re in,” she sniffed. “If I hadn’t gone on television and ripped up that check and talked against the lottery, I could cash that check and we’d be fine.”

  “There, there, it’s not your fault. If I’d have told Dale how the barn burned, we’d at least have the insurance money.”

  “Foolish pride. That’s our biggest problem. Foolish pride.” Then she sat straight up in bed. “I don’t care what people think, I’m going to take that lottery money. I’m tired of you having those horrible dreams and working two jobs.”

  “Stop that talk. You were right not to take the money. We’ll be fine. The dogwood blossoms were heavy this spring. According to the almanac that means a good corn crop.”

  “You’ll have to forgive me for not putting much faith in the almanac.”

  They fell asleep. Jessie dreamed about cashing in her ticket and building Asa a new barn, having his picture taken in front of it, and hanging the picture over their fireplace. Asa dreamed about the mules lighting a fire underneath him while the chickens looked on, clucking their approval.

  The next morning they sat at the table, eating their breakfast and gazing out the window. Every now and then, a small plume of smoke would rise up from the burned timbers of the barn.

  Asa sighed.

  Jessie said, “Well, at least there’s lots of dogwood blossoms.”

  “Does that mean you won’t be cashing the check?”

  “Oh, I probably won’t.”

  They sat quiet. Jessie drinking her coffee, Asa reading the almanac.

  Asa spoke out of the stillness, “You know, honey, it’s easy to have convictions when times are good. But what really counts is if you can keep your convictions when times are hard.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  They finished their breakfast, washed the dishes, then walked through their fields. The corn was up past their knees.

  Asa said, “According to the almanac, corn should be knee-high by the Fourth of July.”

  “Seems I’ve heard that.”

  They’re praying for a good crop. But that letter is still hanging on their refrigerator, just in case.

  Six

  The Legacy

  It was early July, one month since Sam Gardner had told his father he was depressed. The day Sam dropped by, Charlie Gardner had been in his garage, fixing his wooden screen door. He’d laid the door flat across two sawhorses and was replacing the screen, remembering back to when Sam was a little boy and had pushed the screen out.

  He recalled getting mad and yelling at Sam to be careful, and Sam crying. Then he’d felt like a jerk, so he walked little Sam the four blocks to Grant’s Hardware, where they bought more screen and wood trim. Then he took Sam to the Dairy Queen and bought him an ice cream cone with sprinkles. Then he let Sam help him paint the door and taught him how to open it so the screen didn’t get pushed out.

  Thirty years and two screen doors ago.

  He’d been halfway through the latest job when Sam came by and confided about being depressed. Charlie had spent the next two days laboring over the door and worrying about Sam, mad at himself for not being more sympathetic.

  When Sam had told him about being depressed, he’d laughed. Laughed at his own son. He hated himself as soon as he did it. He hadn’t meant to laugh, but Sam’s candor had startled him and he’d laughed. Sam had been hurt, he could tell. He’d hurt his son.

  He’d felt terrible ever since.

  Charlie was proud of his boy. He sat in church on Sunday mornings and listened to Sam preach and marveled, That’s my boy. Where did he learn this? How did he get so smart?

  But he’d never told Sam he was proud of him. He wanted to, but he couldn’t find the words. On Christmas Eve the year before, he had hugged Sam. He’d almost told him then how proud he was of him, what with his mouth being close to Sam’s ear, but he didn’t. He just squeezed Sam a little harder.

  He knows I’m proud of him, Charlie assured himself.

  But for the past month, he had been watching Sam closely, looking for signs of depression. He’d gone to the library to read about depression. Miss Rudy, the librarian, had hovered about him, asking if he needed help looking something up.

  He didn’t want to tell Miss Rudy he wanted to read about depression. She’d think he was depressed and would march him down to the mental-health office over the Herald. She was pushy that way.

  Charlie had found an article about the warning signs of depression—loss of appetite, loss of interest in work, unusual irritability, diminished ability to concentrate, and difficulty sleeping.

  The next Sunday Sam had stood in meeting and told the congregation he wasn’t going to preach. The warning sign Loss of interest in work leapt to his father’s mind.

  He’d peered at Sam more closely. There were dark circles under Sam’s eyes.

  Difficulty sleeping!

  Charlie phoned Sam the next morning to meet him for lunch at the Legal Grounds Coffee Shop, even though Charlie didn’t like the Legal Grounds. They didn’t serve hamburgers or onion rings like the Coffee Cup. Instead, Deena served croissant sandwiches and spinach salads and vegetarian pizzas. But Sam liked it, and that’s what mattered.

  They’d met for lunch. Sam had been distracted. He’d pushed his salad around his plate. Even Deena Morrison had noticed.

  “Not hungry today, Sam?” she asked.

  “I’ve been a little off my feed,” he said.

  Loss of appetite!

  Charlie had encouraged Sam to take up a hobby—stamp collecting or gardening or maybe flying model airplanes.

  Charlie’s hobby was his red Farmall tractor. Years before, he’d driven past Ellis Hodge’s farm and seen the tractor sitting by the road with a For Sale sign leaning against the front tire. He’d stopped his car to look at it. It was a 1939 Farmall Model M, just like the tractor Charlie’s father had used on their farm. He climbed up in the seat, closed his eyes, and was transported to his youth.

  Ellis was asking two hundred dollars. Charlie went to the bank, got the money and paid Ellis, and drove the tractor home, with Ellis following behind in his car. Charlie didn’t tell his wife—he just did it. The tractor was in pretty rough shape, but he’d fixed it up. Took him two years. Then he fired up his rototiller and made a flower bed in his front yard; he parked the tractor in the middle of it and planted marigolds all around it. A monument to the Farmall.

  He likes to sit on his porch after supper and gaze at his monument. Three or four times a year, someone will knock on his door and offer to buy it.<
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  “It’s not for sale,” he tells them.

  His wife wants him to sell it, but he won’t hear of it. It would be like selling a child. Charlie loves his tractor. He drives it in the Fourth of July parade and in the Corn and Sausage Days parade the second week of September.

  The Fourth of July parade is the highlight of his year. The day before, he waxes the tractor and tunes the engine. He mounts flags on the fenders. He has his wife, Gloria, take a picture of him standing in front of his tractor. He pastes the picture in a scrapbook. Twenty-eight pictures in all, one for each year he’s owned the Farmall.

  In 1976, Charlie painted the tractor red, white, and blue for the Bicentennial. The newspaper from the city took his picture as he swung in place behind Harvey Muldock’s 1951 Plymouth Cranbrook convertible. Even though the picture was in black and white, it still radiated glory. He’d clipped the picture from the paper and mounted it in his scrapbook. During the winter, he takes the scrapbook down from the closet shelf and thumbs through it, reminiscing.

  He stores the tractor in Ellis’s barn through the winter. He visits it on Saturday mornings, then drives it home the first week of April. That’s the sign that spring has come, when Charlie Gardner drives his 1939 Farmall Model M tractor in from the Hodges’ farm west of town.

  Charlie had been hard at work getting ready for this year’s Fourth of July parade. He sanded the tractor down, borrowed Harvey Muldock’s air compressor, and sprayed a new coat of Farmall Red on it. It’s never looked better. Early of a morning, Charlie sits on his porch drinking coffee and watching his tractor.

  This is what Sam needs, he says to himself. He needs some beauty in his life he can lose himself in.

  On the morning of the Fourth, Charlie mounted the flags on the fenders and wiped the engine clean. At nine-thirty, he drove the tractor to the elementary school, where the parade was to begin. He took his place behind Harvey’s Cranbrook, just in front of the school band. It’s hard to hear the band over the tractor, which no one seems to mind.