A Farmer

by Jim Harrison

  “Please stop!” Joseph's eyes welled with tears of exhaustion and the pain of what the doctor said.

  “Fuck you. Why should I stop? So you can get off the hook? I'm an expert because my wife never even loved me, though other than that we had a good marriage even though one of us, I don't know which, couldn't make children. My sister's children were in Wales so it was grand to come visit because I liked your father and to see all you fine tow-headed children handsome and smart in that old run-down farmhouse. And the girls so bright I said to Carl these girls somehow have to go to college, let me help, and he just said no you help too much, they'd be better off married right away. It's pure and simple that old country bullshit. The Swedes are as formal and fucked-up as Japs, don't you know?”

  Joseph slumped deeply in the seat. Three poplar leaves torn off in the storm were pasted against the windshield; then the one whose edge was curled peeled and blew away leaving its imprint for a moment before the rain washed it away. The rain became intermittent; its sound on the roof had made the doctor talk louder. The wind swept water from the leaves down in fresh showers but it was apparent that the main part of the storm had passed and with the passing Joseph's pulse slowed, his intense nervousness lessened into simple despair. He kept thinking of returning to some pre-disaster state but his mind held out the image of the safe place of his youth. Back in a corner of the mow in the barn he had made a rude house with boards down in the hay. Then he covered this sunken house leaving only its entry clear. When he was unhappy he would hide there with his pile of rabbit and raccoon skins, two sets of deer antlers, the dried head of a large pike he had tacked to a board, and his favorite blanket from his early childhood. When his pain after the accident made his eyes water he would scramble up the ladder above the cows and hide there for a few hours and the pain always seemed to subside. Even Orin didn't know his place though he once had allowed Arlice to come with him but then later when his parents had been worried she was prevailed upon to tell his secret so he had to move to another corner of the mow. When an uncle had given them the cattle blanket to use while kneeling on the ice when ice fishing Joseph had recognized it as truly belonging in his hideout.

  The silence became uncomfortable and the doctor rolled down the window. Joseph opened his own and looked at the dark gray clouds still scudding along barely above treetops. The temperature had dropped abruptly and he shivered.

  “You know, Yoey, I always thought it was odd you couldn't better apply what you learn from all you read to your own life. But then I just now thought though I'm a doctor and know so much about the body I smoke all the time and drink like crazy. I eat stuff that drives my stomach in circles and gives me the shits. I learned from your dad that herring is good with onions and bacon and eggs and potatoes for breakfast. So I eat it on Sunday mornings and sure enough it's dinner before my stomach is calm enough to take a drink. Of course I'm seventy-three but I've been acting this way since thirty. So it's no wonder you don't know anything either. So we're both ignorant bastards but if you're going to be ignorant you should at least make your mistakes on the side of life. Maybe what you've done with Catherine I mean isn't bad. Maybe it's good for both of you. But what's bad is what you haven't done with Rosealee. What you left out.”

  “Maybe I'm having a nervous breakdown,” Joseph said haltingly. One of the sisters had sent his mother a subscription to the Reader's Digest for her birthday. Joseph barely ever peeked at it but late one sleepless night he had read an article about nervous breakdowns, then dreamed unhappily of pig brains when they butchered. How can brains do anything looking so gray and wet and unlike anything else on earth?

  “Oh bullshit. Maybe so, but what does it mean? Often it means people are forced out of ruts by seeing certain facts of life they can't take into their systems. They're overloaded. So I give some tranquilizers which they take to make these facts less painful.” The doctor got out of the car and leaned back into it to finish. “So if you got yourself a nervous breakdown it's about goddamn time. I probably shouldn't say this but right after the war Rosealee about cracked up because she discovered a letter this Italian woman sent Orin. So I told her he was away three years in battle did you want him to remain comfortless? I said to her I bet you get sexed up yourself and she started blushing and giggling. If I hadn't been a professional man I'd have had a go at it right there.” The doctor laughed. “Let's look at the river.”

  The path down the bank to their favorite stretch of river had been gouged by the rain and the clay was slippery. The doctor carefully made his way grabbing at bushes to avoid slipping but Joseph fell and nearly knocked the doctor off his feet.

  “You get your head that far up your ass and you can't even walk.” Then he laughed as Joseph tried to wipe the clay from an elbow. “You look like you shit your pants.” Joseph had slid on his seat in the clay.

  The river was high and turbulent, clearly unwadable. They looked at it dolefully and lit cigarettes.

  “So what should I do? I know I got to stop the nonsense with Catherine or I think I do. But maybe I fooled Rosealee too long and she won't take me back.”

  “That just shows how dumb you are again. Of course she'll take you back but you got to let her breathe. You hit her over the head with a club and you just can't pick her off the ground and say I'm sorry ma'am, I didn't mean anything. Give her a few weeks or a month. And not until you quit fooling with that girl. If Rosealee was fooling with someone you'd be loading your gun or beating her up, neither of which she can do to you. And besides I'm sick of talking about it because if you can't figure it out by now it's a lost cause anyway.”

  They stopped at a bar and restaurant in Tustin and the doctor true to his form ate a T-bone and a pile of raw onion. Joseph only poked at his food because of the Dexedrine so the doctor speared his steak and finished it. Joseph felt dazed but somehow bursting with talk that he couldn't give voice to.

  “I'm going to pay for this but it tastes good.” The doctor wiped his chin and belched. “For years I've expected to die of a heart attack but as you can see it hasn't happened. I'll no doubt rot on the hoof like an old cow. I had some good fishing this month, then I had to tell these parents their little daughter had leukemia, and you know I couldn't fish then worth a shit, though in all these years I've told hundreds they were going to die. Children are different. They die like beautiful dogs who don't know what's happening to them except it hurts. Over in the Ardennes there was this boy in the grass who looked like he was sleeping. Our messenger. I said wake up wake up we got to get out of here but then I couldn't see in this wheat field that his leg was blown off and he was dead. And just an hour before we had found some wine in this French farmhouse and drunk it. It was good wine. But even that was easier than those parents and the child because she wouldn't live until eighteen like my friend the messenger. She will die at seven and when her parents die in who knows how many years their hearts will still be busted by it. This isn't good after-dinner kind of talk but I was thinking when I came out to the farm and you lay there on the table all bloody I could see right away at least you weren't going to die.”

  Joseph had a disturbing vision of himself lying on the table with his leg wet and twisted askew. So many times in the years later he had wanted to say it doesn't matter it doesn't matter I'm still just me when his parents were being overweaning. At least Arlice never mentioned it, they just continued playing and doing chores like always. Once when Charlotte had looked at him and burst into tears he had comforted her and said I feel fine. Joseph thought, we really can endure anything short of dying. Even Mother who kept reading and talking to her friends and ordered seed for the garden and made herself a summer dress on the sewing machine, though she knew summer was totally out of the question because she would be in a grave.

  “You're a lot of fun to fish with.” The doctor waved his hand in front of Joseph's face and Joseph ducked as if attacked. “My god I'm sorry. Let's go back and fish in the lake. We can put on poppers and catch some bass. That i
s if you aren't tired of this. I'd like to think it was doing me good but I'm fucked-up enough so I can't tell. Arlice once said after Rosealee chose Orin, I'm sorry Joseph but when you're upset you've got to talk. That pill makes me feel like I am going to jump out of my tired skin. What you said before about Dad and my sisters upset me but it was true. But he couldn't get to Arlice. She charmed him silly and I suppose it was because we were so close to each other and she was so pretty. Even I her brother knew she was that pretty. I was sad when she married. I couldn't bear to look at the man and when she divorced and married again I hated that man too even if he was better than the first.” Joseph laughed realizing he was talking too loud. He remembered his anger when he found Arlice parked in a car with her worthless boyfriend. Her blouse was off and Joseph had pulled her boyfriend through the open car window. And Arlice had kept yelling it's OK it's OK.

  “You probably get Arlice confused with Rosealee. Sometimes when you talk it uncaps the well so it won't blow up. You know these psychiatrists are probably worth it because they are someone to whom the troubled person can say anything. Once after we had been married for years my wife said at breakfast, I'm so sorry we can't have children, and we both broke down on the spot partly out of relief that we were admitting what we had been thinking about so long.”

  They paid the check and left. Joseph was deep enough in thought to stumble on the steps. “I used to think it would be fine to have children but then I thought I probably wouldn't make much of a father if they turned out to be girls. Just like my dad, do you think?”

  At the lake they could see that the storm had passed through by the water in the rowboat which they bailed out with a rusty coffee can. They took turns rowing while the other fished. The lake was flat calm and they caught small bass and bluegills along the edge of the lily pads that skirted the shore. They saw a blue heron and a family of common loons with a half dozen young birds following the parents keeping well ahead of their rowboat. They were both mildly drunk but placid. Joseph felt sleepy and relaxed with his brain clear enough to work a way out of the mess.

  “Tough shit. The big ones don't taste good,” Joseph said. The doctor had lost a large bass when his line had wrapped around a log.

  “Don't care. Bass are like beer you know, I don't want them unless there's nothing else around.”

  A water snake swam past the boat; the doctor poked at it with the tip of his flyrod and the startled snake turned and hissed. Then it continued on its way, leaving an S-shaped miniature wake in the water.

  “Is there a pill that would allow me to keep up with Catherine?”

  “Not likely. It would be a bad pill to have within reach. If our bodies could keep up with our appetites we'd be a mess, don't you think? There are all these young men wanting to meet a nymphomaniac but they would properly get over that in a few hours. After a certain amount of affection everyone wants to lay back and think it over. Even the Queen of Sheba I expect. If you get into the wilderness and there's too many trout it's no fun after a little while.”

  On Memorial Day morning Joseph walked out to the granary to check the harness he had packed in oil back in January. He remembered wiping the oil off his hands before he reached for Catherine in her absurdly diaphanous blue underthings. Part of the harness had come back with the oil treatment and appeared salvageable. His mind kept turning to the fact that after lunch he would have to pick some daisies and lilacs and visit the graves. It would be a hurried visit because he didn't want to talk to the people who generally spent the afternoon of Memorial Day walking around in hushed silence reminiscing in whispers about the lives of the dead. After he had cleaned the excess oil from the harness he lathered it with saddle soap, wiped away the foam, and hung the harness from spikes. The collars had proved too moldy to recover. He had sold Tom and Butch for a thousand dollars the month after his father died; many thought Joseph had been cheated but in grief he had wanted the horses off the farm. When the truck came and he loaded the team for the buyer he was unable to talk. The man noticed his discomfort and walked over to the fence pretending to look at the corn. Joseph spent a few moments pressing his face to each neck then moved quickly off the truck and walked to the house.

  What grand plans they had organized for the team after winning so easily at the local fair for two years. They marked the calendar with a dozen fairs throughout the late summer and were sure the prize money however meager would cover their expenses. Einar would loan them his cattle truck to haul the horses. Einar and Joseph held the ends of the eveners while Carl held the reins. They would swing around to the load in front of the full grandstand and Carl would quickly climb up and mount the seat on the stoneboat and when Joseph and Einar would drop the eveners so the hitch would catch, Carl would shout. But the horses were keyed to the clink of the hitch. Their great flanks would drop and they surged forward tearing clods of hard-packed earth from the track. When they finished the pull the grandstand would cheer wildly. The audience was silent until the pull was finished because the horses would stop if they heard premature applause. Tom weighed twenty-four hundred and Butch about twenty-two—they had fed Butch up that last winter but hadn't got a chance to weigh him. Carl had made extra money skidding logs that last winter but only because he wanted to keep the team in shape. Joseph thought it was a joy to see him have a sport other than fishing and hunting after so many years of hard work. Carl always treated fishing and hunting as basically food gathering which disgusted the doctor because Carl rarely admitted how much fun he was having. Einar wanted to buy the team when Carl died but Joseph said no he didn't want to see them in the county with their deep chestnut color and flaxen manes and fetlocks. The harness was thrown into an empty bin in the granary and remained there for a decade.

  Joseph looked up when he heard a car. It was Catherine's Jeep and his stomach churned. Oh god. Chicago was three days away and that had to be the end of it. But the major got out of the Jeep and Joseph remembered the doctor's warning. Holy christ I'm going to be shot. Or maybe he wants to go fishing I hope. Joseph walked out on the steps of the granary and waved. The major walked toward him; even in his late fifties he looked trim and official.

  “Fine Memorial Day. I was sorry to hear about your mother. But Catherine said she had cancer. Can I come in?”

  “Yes. Sure.” Joseph led the way back up the steps into the granary. “Watch where you sit, I've been oiling some harness.”

  “I bought that in Atlanta.” The major saw the jug on the windowsill.

  “Jesus I forgot.” Joseph hefted the jug. It was minus the half he had drunk that New Year's Day with Catherine. She had spit out her taste claiming she liked only wine. He handed it to the major. “Sorry I don't have a cup.”

  The major drank deeply, looked around the granary and drank again. “I was going to start by talking about fishing.” He handed Joseph the jug and Joseph's hand shook. “I see your hand is shaking. I know why. I know everything because I heard Robert and Catherine talking downstairs. You're not going to marry Catherine?”

  “I guess not.” It came out almost as a whisper. “It would be dumb. I'm not her sort.”

  “What is her sort?” The major raised his eyebrows. He fiddled with his hat which had fishing flies in the sheepskin band.

  “Well someone rich and educated, you know?” Joseph paused. For some reason his nervousness was dissipating. “Someone who is sophisticated and lives in a city and is closer to her age.”

  “I wanted you to know I wasn't fooled and I don't like to be fooled.” The major drank again. “I moved up here partly to get away but Catherine has had a good year. Maybe her best year yet. You must be in your forties and I don't know how you lead your life but I'd have to guess you aren't experienced in these things.” He paused and stared at Joseph who met his gaze directly.

  “No. I guess I'm not. It was the first time for me to do such a thing. I couldn't seem to help myself, even when I knew it was wrong.” Joseph drank then coughed. He was sure the major didn't have a gun
but was past caring.

  “I think you were wrong too. But I can't blame you because knowing Catherine I know it was probably less than half your idea. I can't say what's going on in her mind. You're decent, I know that. She's flighty like her mother and gets bored easily. If she were a normal young girl I might shoot you. Only she's not and I'm not fool enough to be blind to that. But I don't like to be fooled. There's nothing to do though.” Now the major was nervous and leaned forward. “Should you apologize or what?”