A Farmer

by Jim Harrison

  Swede immigrants were a trifle happy and dopey having escaped an essentially feudal situation, Arlice's husband had said. Maybe that's true Joseph said but there's not much in the way of economics to the whole thing. Sure we got cheated. If you hauled your crop to the railroad siding without first agreeing on a price you would be gypped. But we had the Grange and could hold out and there wasn't that much trouble until the Depression and then those who held extra-big mortgages and bought too much equipment or specialized in a single crop took a nose dive. The man said it must have been bleak. Joseph said it probably was bleak as hell but we didn't really have the advantage of knowing anything else. I'm not bleak now and neither is Arlice. But Arlice escaped it he said. Well my students continue later in life being pretty much the way they were in school. I bet it was bleaker in the cities. A lot of country people never owned a stock and when they tightened their belts they still had their land and animals and dancing, games, church, and parties.

  When they left the man accepted with delight a dozen ducks and partridge to take back on the plane to New York. Once for Christmas Joseph had sent Arlice and her husband air freight a whole saddle of venison in dry ice with all of the empty spaces in the box filled with mallard, grouse, woodcock, and a few rabbits. Within a month Joseph received by parcel post a new set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He revered it in private for three years then took it down to the school where the children were advised that they must wash their hands before they used it.

  Something disturbed his field of vision; at the far end of the pond where it seeped from the marsh a muskrat raised its head from the water and studied Joseph and the horse, then slowly submerged. Within a few seconds the muskrat appeared again peeking around the end of a log and wrinkling its nose, the better to pick up scent. The horse shook its head to rid itself of flies and the muskrat disappeared abruptly with a splash of its tail. They were a foolish, curious sort of mammal, but quickly replaced any severe predations by having another litter in the spring.

  The marsh was saturated with life and, other than spring when there was a certain comfort in rediscovering that the earth was alive, he liked it best in early autumn when the birds went into a frenzy of regrouping in flocks to fly back south. There would be great clouds of blackbirds, starlings, and smaller groups of songbirds swooping about making a deafening chatter. Their movements were not unlike the uniform dartings of a school of minnows. The birds would wait for a favorable wind, say a front moving in from the northwest from Manitoba, and one day they would be gone save for a few addled stragglers.

  Joseph rejected an impulse to circle the marsh and take a look at the coyote's den. The day was beginning to warm and it would be noon anyway before he made it back to the farm. He mounted awkwardly and realized he would have a sore ass, not having ridden this far in years. He idly hoped that the coyote would mate and the species would spread so that he might hear their howling on still nights. He had heard coyotes howl only once when he and the doctor had fished the Yellow Dog in the Upper Peninsula and he had thought it a wonderful sound, nearly as fine as the wail of the common loon, a cry so forlorn and pure it seemed from another planet.

  Joseph slumped deeply in the oversized bathtub which had been a gift from Arlice and the only noticeable luxury in the house. It had come only a few months before Carl died and he had steadfastly refused to use it preferring the metal tub that had always been placed in the middle of the kitchen floor on Saturday afternoons, with big kettles of water heating on the wood stove. Carl had said he would feel foolish in such a tub and his mother had amended that he was generally a bit silly on Saturday afternoons anyway, the sole even mildly critical statement Joseph had ever heard her address to him. He said you're right but continued bathing in the kitchen. Carl had caused a similar sort of problem in the thirties when the Rural Electrification Act brought power down their road and he had announced sententiously one evening at dinner that he wouldn't allow a hookup. It had taken a week of constant badgering by Joseph, his mother, and the doctor to get him to reconsider, and then he forbade any outlets in his bedroom, the barn, and the outbuildings. Carl thought of electricity as a fire hazard, ignoring the doctor's point that it was far less so than the kerosene lantern he used to milk with on dark winter mornings and evenings. The bedroom was a puzzle until he extended his edict to all the bedrooms: they were for sleeping not to dawdle around reading in. He was glad, however, to attend a succession of endless gatherings to celebrate the arrival of power.

  Joseph looked at the scar running down the inside of his leg from thigh to ankle. In places it zigzagged like lightning and at the knee the scar formed a knot, then continued rather thinly on down to his ankle where it made a left turn across the bridge of his foot. What a mess, he thought, but a mess appeared to be the rule of late. He smiled thinking of a banker in town, a friend of the doctor's. A few years back the banker's daughter had returned from college for summer vacation with a potter's wheel. She dug up clay and made three rather homely ordinary pots on the wheel, and growing tired of the difficulty, gave up the hobby. But one fateful Saturday when his golf game had been rained out, the banker tried his hand at the wheel and at present hadn't left it alone much except to sleep and eat. The banker took an early retirement which had been encouraged because his appearance had become shaggy and his behavior odd. He bought a kiln for his garage and when it hadn't met his standards he built a larger one outside. He spent a lot of time driving around in an old pickup digging up different sorts of clay. His wife and children abandoned him in disgust to his garage studio. Everyone felt sorry for them for having a lunatic husband and father. At first no one bought any of his pots and vases except the doctor who did so mostly to spite everyone. One day the banker stopped by the farm looking for clay. They had a drink and a chat and Joseph ordered a vase for Arlice. And Arlice who knew about such things had declared the vase first-rate. Joseph envied the man his obsessiveness about his pottery and glazes. The doctor had thought it sad that the man hadn't found what he loved to do until his mid-fifties though that was better than never finding it.

  Joseph heard a car drive into the yard and his heartbeat quickened at the idea it might be Catherine. The image of her two appearances in his dreams made him giddy and he stood in the tub feeling hollow and vulnerable.

  “Joseph?” It was her.

  “I'm in the bathtub. Just a minute.”

  But she appeared at the door. “Daddy knows. When I started to leave just now he said I know where you're going, I heard you and Robert talking.” She looked pale and distracted with all her whimsy gone. He was disappointed that she failed to resemble his dreams though it was difficult for him to admit it.

  “I know. He came over here yesterday. We talked about it and at first I thought he was going to shoot me.” Joseph laughed, toweling himself and trying to figure a way to change her mood.

  “He said you weren't going to marry me and I was playing a fool.” She burst into tears then and the tears quickly became deep sobs. “I still thought you might marry me but he said it would never happen. Joseph, I've given you the best single year of my life.” She collapsed against the doorjamb.

  “Oh bullshit.” He yelled it but caught his profile in the mirror and that somehow slowed him down. “What the fuck were you going to do this year, fuck Robert? Look what I've done to my life.” He grasped her shoulders and shook her to force her chin up. “You're playacting again for Christ's sake.”

  She escaped him and threw herself sobbing onto the couch in the dining room. He hurriedly put on his pants wondering if she truly felt he would marry her or whether it was simply her best act yet.

  “You know, Catherine,” he began on a gentler tack, “we care a lot for each other and you have to think we've had some fine times together. But I'm a goddamn gimp forty-three-year-old schoolteacher farmer and you're lovely and bright and seventeen and want to be an actress. We can still be lovers when you go away. I mean when you come back.” She sat up and smoothed back her h
air; behind her tears the idea clearly appealed to her sense of drama.

  “Well he seemed like he was trying to be mean, then he was nice saying I'd get over it, but I won't.” Her chin still trembled and Joseph wondered how close her emotions were to the surface of her skin.

  “He loves you. He just doesn't want you to marry an old man, which is sensible for any father.” Joseph sat beside her and drew her to him as a father might but his intentions were owned by his dreams.

  “I know I've caused him a lot of trouble,” she snuffled. “I want us to be lovers like we were at first.”

  Now they lay back on the couch wordlessly agreeing that the nonsense was over, however real and unhappy. But the phone rang and Joseph jumped as if stung by a wasp.

  “Hello!” He nearly shouted into the phone.

  “Joseph, it's Arlice. What's wrong?”

  “Nothing, nothing. Let me call you back in a half-hour, OK?” He was frantic to get off the phone and glanced at Catherine who was busy taking off her skirt. She mugged at him crazily.

  “Fine. Be sure to call right back because I have to go out.”

  The receiver clicked and Joseph quickly took off his trousers. Catherine was sitting there with only her blouse on now and her penny loafers which she scuffed off. The gesture of the shoes and the white sleeveless blouse made her appear terribly naked. She lay back and unpinned her ponytail, drawing a foot up onto the couch. She wagged her knee back and forth and tapped the other foot. He stood there for a moment stunned at how lurid bodies could be in the clear afternoon light pouring through the windows. He turned to the dresser where Orin stared at them in his Air Force uniform, his hazel eyes too green in the tinted photo. The worn, flowered linoleum at his feet seemed to exude a fetor of kerosene mixed with sour milk, manure, rust, wet clothes, damp hay, though he had never noticed it before. Catherine held out a hand but her smile was frozen and thin with only the slightest suggestion of desire. Only her legs seemed to want him to come to the couch; her legs and sex were detached from her and he knelt down and put his face against them. She half crooned and half cried as Joseph was drawn surely back into his dream.

  “Hello Arlice.”

  “Christ, Joseph, I've been sitting here an hour. What were you doing? Is that girl there?”

  “What girl?” He was shocked.

  “Don't be cute, Joseph. Rosealee called me last night and I couldn't believe what she said only I have to. My god Yoey, why wait until now to fuck everything up?” Joseph felt poleaxed. He might have known that Rosealee would call Arlice. They had never lost touch. “Joseph are you there?”

  “Yes.” He tried to organize his thoughts but there were none. He glanced at Catherine who lay on the couch now completely nude. She had made them iced tea and was rubbing an ice cube on her belly and between her breasts, humming.

  “Well if you can't say anything for yourself I will. I know you're taking the kids to Chicago tomorrow. I'm flying out and I'll be at the Drake by dinnertime. We're going to get this straightened out. That girl told Robert and Robert told Rosealee that you were going to marry the girl. Are you crazy?”

  “No,” he said, pausing too long, “I don't think so. I really can't talk now.”

  “Look Yoey, I know you have that despicable little cunt there right now so you can't talk. But you call the minute you get into town and then send all the kids except her somewhere. I want to see what you're ruining your life for. I'm sure from what Rosealee says that I understand her type.”

  “You ought to.” Joseph was beginning to rebound in anger. Rosealee had once told Joseph how much Arlice liked the physical aspects of love though Joseph had already suspected as much.

  “You dear bastard. I love you. Promise to call?”

  “I guess so.” He sighed as she offered a final I love you and hung up. My god. He couldn't refuse to see her because she was the dearest human in his life other than Rosealee. For twenty years she had somehow represented both the treachery and glory of what he thought of as the outside world. Once after a few drinks he had teased her about the age and condition of her husband and had been met with a smile and, that's OK, I've no problem finding lovers.

  Outside of the novels he read, the word “lover” had always been mysterious to him. He felt that Rosealee and he were not really lovers but in the more mundane category labeled “going to get married.” Save that single insane evening there had been no adventures in the profane. But now he had managed to become a living, breathing, sweating lover without really trying. It simply had happened upon him on an otherwise average October day and now in the first week of June it had become much less than a mixed blessing. She sprawled almost obscenely on the couch but he scarcely could chide her. It certainly wasn't obscene to Catherine. Despite her sense of the mortality of their affair, he was her lover and she meant to enjoy, rather, savor this refuge from boredom.

  “This feels real strange,” she giggled. She had placed an ice cube on her sex and raised up on her elbows rolling her eyes in some Chinese self-torture. “Try it.”

  “Jesus, no thanks.” He stooped on the floor and pressed the ice cube firmly against her.

  “Put it in then put yourself in.” The idea swept her like a brainstorm.

  “No thanks.” He lifted the cube and began kissing her again but was repelled by the coolness. Death. Or it was against his nature? Then he kissed again, this time deeply rejecting his stodginess he hoped once and for all.

  “I got a real talent for coming here at the wrong time.” The doctor nosed the screen door then walked in.

  “That's OK. Everyone on the goddamn earth knows my business. Even Arlice. She called. Rosealee told her. Now she's coming to Chicago.”

  “Well you might guess that, wouldn't you? I'll have a drink.” The doctor sat down and glanced at Catherine who hadn't awakened. Joseph rose to cover her but suddenly felt it wasn't worth the effort. “You ever notice how many women surprise you when they're naked? Look at Catherine. She looks so slender in clothes but I must say she's beautiful without them. Of course I've seen thousands.”

  “You forget that I'm Yoey and a good boy.” He laughed, giving his father's precise intonation for Yoey. “I haven't seen many.”

  “Well I'm not sure anyone is good in that sense. Some just act directly on their impulses while most of us ruminate like cows with four stomachs and a big ass. By the time you get through digesting the impulse, the impulse is gone. Don't you think? That's quite an idea. I'll drink to that idea. Jesus, old Major was pleased with that trout. All those wars and it takes a brown trout to thrill the piss out of him.”

  The doctor's face became cloudy and distracted. He glanced at Catherine again, then sighed and finished his drink. Joseph felt suddenly uncomfortable and naked in his trousers and stood to put his shirt on. A bluejay in the elm was screaming at a barn cat on the front porch, but the cat dozed on in a patch of shade behind a honeysuckle bush. The blossoming bush was full of bees and Joseph wondered if cats ever got stung.

  “I guess I better deliver my lecture before she wakes up. I'm not sure I have a right to lecture you but I'm going to anyway. I have to step in here and tell you that you are being a number-one asshole. Don't you think so?” The doctor's voice was barely more than a whisper.

  Joseph nodded, his temples burning. He envied the cat now making its way across the untrimmed lawn to the lilac thicket, unhurried, though the jay was dive-bombing toward him, shrieking and fluttering. The cat slid gracefully into the green world of the lilacs and the jay appeared satisfied.

  “So I had to stop by Rosealee's and give her some pills so she could sleep. Oddly enough she thinks she has failed you, taking you for granted as being someone you have demonstrated you're not. Maybe that's a little true. It's our condition to be largely blind to one another unless jolted. You know why you like Catherine other than her obvious body there on the couch? It's because she is not even a person yet. You've given her nothing and even if you had there would be nothing there in return
. And it's because she hasn't anything to return yet except her body. Think of living with the major and that alcoholic wife. Who wouldn't turn to you?” The doctor got up and made himself another drink, placing the bottle on the table. “And you show all the signs of cracking up. You didn't bird hunt with any interest last fall and you've hardly fished this spring. And it wasn't your mother. The life is draining out of you. You're a strong person and when a strong person fucks up they do so with a vengeance.”

  “Look, you can ease off. I know you're right and I thought when I brought the kids back I would close up here and drive off somewhere and think it over.” The idea of driving off was an appealing lie. Joseph immediately pictured himself in some far-off place in a tent by the ocean where everything would be clear and definite as bad weather.

  “That's precisely what you can't do. What does thinking things over mean? It is a process by which you will attempt to get yourself out of the gun seat, off the hook. And it's too late to do that. Far too late. I don't mean your age but the other person.”

  “I know what you want is I should simply marry Rosealee. I can be the ghost of Orin and give her a wonderful life.” Joseph laughed and drank straight from the bottle but the doctor was angry.

  “Oh fuck the ghost of Orin. That's what's wrong with you in part. Orin is dead. Dead meat, deader than the major's fish, dead like you and I will be someday not all that distant from us. Rosealee is alive. She's three miles up the road and she is probably wondering why she gave her life over to a goddamn lunatic.”