A Farmer

by Jim Harrison

  The children spread out across the pasture picking milkweed pods. There were only thirty of them in grades one through twelve, the entire school. Joseph sat in the middle of the field directing operations, perched on a rock pile. The youngest children were unhappy because those in the upper grades beat them to the pods. They wept piteously. It was a hot day in September and Joseph's handkerchief was damp with his own sweat and the tears of the little ones. A group of high school girls approached and announced that Marcia had to pee. Marcia was a trifle slow and giggled all the time. She was fat and never wore socks with her usually filthy flour-sack dresses. Her people were poor. Joseph waved them off toward a basswood swale. The older boys were in the far corner of the pasture dragging full gunny sacks. They had been scuffling all day to see who filled the most sacks. The milkweed pods were needed for life preservers for the war effort. Or so he was told. The war was in its fourth year and Joseph was sure it would never stop.

  His sense of clear-headed strength persisted into the early morning hours. He knew he needed it for the massive assault on his senses that was coming in the next two days. At least there were only five seniors this year. Once on a trip to Detroit there had been twelve and three of the boys had got so drunk that Joseph had called Dr. Evans long distance the next morning fearing alcohol poisoning, when two of them continued with the dry heaves. The doctor prescribed a large creme de menthe on the rocks and it had worked too well; the second night the same boys threw cherry bombs from the hotel window and launched a small rocket that had hit the window sill and reversed into the room, doing moderate damage. Luckily one of the arresting officers was also from northern Michigan and was understanding about the peculiarities of a “senior trip” as a sort of rite of passage during which even ordinarily calm students had a tendency to go nuts.

  He picked up Karen first, at dawn, and was appalled to see Bruce standing with her in the driveway, a goose protecting a gosling that no one wanted. Joseph put her small cardboard suitcase in the trunk and was irritated to find Bruce staring at him sternly. He would have it out with this asshole when the occasion arose. Bruce made sure that Karen had taken her Bible and they were off. Karen was in her best clothes which emphasized her large ungainly figure. She sat in the back, probably assuming that he would prefer to sit next to someone else.

  Everyone was ready and waiting except Catherine. Lisa loaded with perfume and her face swollen with sleep; Daniel in a cheap new suit beaming like an idiot with his parents standing beside him and tears in his mother's eyes (he had never been away from home before); Robert standing alone in his red jacket, new saddle shoes, and charcoal gray trousers holding a paperback book and Orin's leather suitcase. They had to wait ten minutes for Catherine, and everyone fidgeted as the major came out to apologize and began talking about fishing with Joseph. When Catherine came running out and claimed the seat next to Joseph the major said, well, keep track of her, with just a trace of irony.

  “Oh god you're wearing suspenders,” Catherine said and they all laughed.

  Joseph sadly lost most of his newfound sense of ease within the first hundred miles. Catherine was by turns possessive, bitchy, conspiratorial, and Joseph noted by the reaction of the others that their secret was now fully in the open. Catherine fiddled with the radio until he had to firmly shut it off, then she let her hand rest on his thigh which caused Robert, sitting on the other side of her, to stare out the window in embarrassment. The blood surged to Joseph's face and he sensed deeply what a complete fool he had been to have an affair with a student. But then she twisted to talk to those in the back seat with her skirt hiking up her thighs and he felt a helpless pull of lust again, mixed with despair over so foully complicating his life. He would have gladly shoved her from the speeding car.

  His spirits lifted somewhat after he began an aggressive dialogue with Karen about birds and was amazed again at her knowledge. She told how she had gone up to Grayling with her father to look at cattle and had been lucky enough to see a Kirtland's warbler, a bird whose sole habitat, other than its winter migration, was a county in northern Michigan. Ornithologists estimated that there were less than a thousand of them. When they stopped for gas Catherine had insisted on getting in the back seat out of disgust for the turn in conversation. Robert joined her and Karen and Daniel moved to the front seat. Lisa was sleeping and snoring loudly. Robert complained but Joseph said to leave her alone.

  He took great pains to keep Karen talking, to draw her out further, but when she did talk she was shy and kept her eyes cast down. She had seen a marsh hawk take a rabbit but the rabbit had been too heavy for the hawk to carry away so the hawk had fed on it boldly just a hundred yards or so behind their barn. When she lapsed into silence Joseph began a long monologue on the sea; a book he especially prized was Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, and the mysteries of the Pacific between Peru and Ecuador, and the distant Galapagos which fascinated him. The confluence of the Humboldt and El Nino currents was off Ecuador and that caused a prodigious upswelling of marine life. A man had caught a black marlin weighing nearly fifteen hundred pounds. Then he talked about the sea off Tierra del Fuego which had been called the “Serengeti of the marine world.” This had puzzled him until he remembered that the writer Ernest Hemingway had talked about the Serengeti with its vast game populations in Green Hills of Africa. He had liked that book and when he had insisted in a letter that Arlice read it she replied she wasn't interested in hunting stories. Joseph had been angry and had thought that at least in hunting you see things, you are not simply walking around scratching your ass. He paused in his talking to remember the name of the Hemingway novel about the love affair with the nurse named Catherine who was so unlike the Catherine he had dallied with. The book had upset him terribly and the night he had finished it he had had trouble sleeping. Karen said she had been angry when her brother, who was a notorious violator, and a friend had shot seventy ducks one day the fall before and had told her not to tell the teacher.

  By midafternoon they were checked into their hotel, a modest but clean place off the Loop. Daniel seemed the most dazed, and strangely hung onto Karen for authority. She had never received any attention from a man and turned a bit flirtatious which surprised Joseph. The Field Museum would still be open for three hours but Catherine and Robert tried to beg off. Lisa said she wanted to go to some stores. Joseph bought them maps feeling well rid of them. He told them to be back at six for dinner which was part of the package the hotel offered. The hotels were wise enough to offer their grubbiest for these senior excursions except to the teachers or chaperones whose return business they sought.

  They had a fine time at the Field Museum with Daniel full of admiration for Karen saying you know a helluva a lot. He had taken to holding her hand. Joseph remembered that he had to call Arlice and went off to a pay phone. He dreaded his confrontation with her and was frantic getting change when several people seemed to stare at him. Arlice wanted him to bring Catherine and Robert over for dinner but Joseph said they had to eat together at the hotel because they had already paid for it and besides he suspected they all wanted to go to a movie. Arlice merely said nonsense bring them by seven. At least she couldn't get murderous with him if Catherine and Robert were there. He rejoined Karen and Daniel who were looking at a huge dinosaur skeleton. Daniel was wondering aloud if their meat had been good to eat because there sure was a lot of it. Daniel packed the largest lunch in the whole school and willingly cleaned up the unwanted sandwiches of the others.

  Back at the hotel he was startled to see Robert talking with familiarity to a stranger, a finely dressed man in his mid-twenties. Catherine was cool but nervous with him when he said they had to visit Arlice but her interest picked up when he added that Arlice was having two old friends from her theater days over for her and Robert to meet. When he washed up for dinner some of the clarity of the evening before returned to him. He was disturbed by the luxury of his room but it occurred to him that this was the last trip of this sort that he would ever
take. He sat on the soft bed with his hands clasped wondering what Rosealee was doing. She liked teaching far better than he, worked with heart and energy. But he hadn't been all that bad for twenty years; sometimes he rambled on with such enthusiasm that the spread of it had to take someone in. The professor that summer at Ann Arbor had said that the only good teachers were those who taught with passion. Passion was commonly understood among even the stupidest of people. If you couldn't be passionate about the knowledge you were giving to younger, susceptible people, you should get out of the way for people who could be. Joseph had been impressed though it was obvious to him that the idea was more viable on a college level. Some of his farm kids were so exhausted from the work they did before and after school they could scarcely stay awake for their lesson. This had led Joseph throughout his life to regard knowledge, especially knowledge that couldn't be directly applied, as a secret vice, a source of beauty and enthusiasm that, however, didn't get the chores done or make the mortgage payment. But over the years a few students such as Karen had brought him a solid sort of pleasure and the sudden thought that Samuel was somewhere in Chicago brought him joy.

  He sorted through an envelope to make sure he had enough tickets for the ball game the following night. George Kell, Hoot Evers, Vic Wertz, Johnny Lipon. In the late thirties he and Einar and Carl had seen Hank Greenberg hit a bases-loaded home run. Einar had private theories about Jews and Hank Greenberg disturbed him. The Baptist minister had recently assured everyone that the Palestinian war and the return of the Jews to their ancient homeland meant the end of the world and the Second Coming of Christ was near at hand. Einar quite simply didn't want the world to end just when he was building up a first-rate dairy herd.

  We are such stupid bastards Joseph thought. The kids staring wide-eyed at the blacks in Chicago because there were none back home other than an occasional transient laborer in the summer. He wondered if they were all stupid because they never went anywhere, but people in Chicago were probably stupid in another way. How could he be messed up when everyone was apparently messed up? Messed up was the norm and the peace and mindful ease he sought were rare and only the doctor came close. Maybe it was because he was so busy healing and when he wasn't healing he was fishing, hunting, drinking, eating, reading, or playing pinochle. And thinking; but the doctor's thinking doesn't anchor him like a rowboat as mine does. He sails away from thought to thought scarcely pausing. Samuel might turn out like the doctor. The doctor thought the source of most unhappiness was that nearly everyone wanted to be someplace or someone else. At the end of his working day at the office and hospital the doctor always had a glass of fine bourbon which he sipped with such enthusiasm that it pleased Joseph to watch; then if there were enough energy left he would cook some strange sort of food, often with enough garlic to fill the nose.

  Joseph and Catherine and Robert walked the ten or so blocks to the Drake with Catherine petulant, slowing for shop windows that caught her fancy, and Robert distracted and restive. They saw a black man in a chauffeur's uniform walking a Borzoi and were thrilled because they had never seen such a strange-looking dog. Catherine asked the man what sort of dog it was and he said Borzoi as if only an utter fool wouldn't know. The man wore sunglasses though the sun had descended behind the buildings. They waited for a red light and Robert mentioned that he hoped he wouldn't have to stay too long because he had some things he wanted to do.

  “Look Robert, I thought you liked Arlice. If you don't want to see her I don't give a shit what you do. You can go down to the lake and drown yourself.” Joseph felt strained and thought how fine it would be to whap Robert over the head with his cane.

  “Oh god don't get so mad.” Robert looked down the street past the Drake to the park and Lake Michigan as if he were considering jumping in the lake. It was a warm, still evening and they could see a number of sailboats with slack sails, barely moving.

  “You're not going to meet Richard until nine,” Catherine said in what she assumed was a sophisticated stage voice.

  “It's not that I don't want to be with you people. You're fine but I've been with you so long and I want to see someone else.”

  Joseph shrugged and kept walking, then he turned and waved to Robert who stood there with Catherine, and looked so desolate that it drew on Joseph's sympathy. “I understand, Robert. Have a fine time and don't get lost. What you do is your business.” Catherine ran to catch up and took Joseph's arm. They paused for a few moments and watched Robert walk stiffly back down the street.

  The lobby of the Drake was so elegant to Joseph that it gave him tunnel vision. Impatient waiting for the elevator, it occurred to him he didn't know the number of Arlice's room. Then he was strident when he got the room number from the clerk, who was civil, being accustomed to eccentrics. Catherine made a convincing attempt at being blasé and grabbed Joseph's hand as he beat his cane noisily against the floor waiting for the elevator.

  He was appalled when Arlice opened the door and she was red-eyed and sniffling and two men stood behind her smiling. But she was gracious to Catherine, explaining that they had been talking about her first husband who had lost his life in Spain. She said when she introduced the men that they had been in the Shakespeare repertory company with her husband and they had spent the afternoon talking about old times and perhaps drinking a little too much. Joseph hastily poured a glass of whiskey and moved to the window which afforded a grand view of the park and Lake Michigan. It was easy to imagine that it was the sea. He drained the whiskey quickly to calm himself. Jesus, he thought someone had died and Arlice was usually so gay. One of the men gave Catherine some champagne and she sat with them talking animatedly. He felt a little ashamed when he suspected with relief that Arlice might be too upset to make it unpleasant for him.

  “Joseph.” Arlice beckoned to him from a door. He hadn't noticed that they were in a drawing room without beds. He followed her into the bedroom, first topping off his glass. “Well darling what have you got to say?” She came into his arms and he lifted her as he always did.

  “Nothing. I'm not going to say anything. You should know I'm not going to answer to you any more than you'd answer to me.” He went to the window for another view of the lake; it was nearly fishless, the sea lamprey having wiped out the lake trout. “But if you want to just talk, fine. I'll talk.”

  “She's rather pretty. Much prettier than I thought she would be. I somehow imagined you belting some fat farm girl in the hay even though Rosealee said that she was pretty.” Arlice sat on the bed holding her face in her hands. Then she flopped back with her hands behind her head. “I called Rosealee and she said you had told the doctor you would make up your mind before you came back. Is that true?” She rose to her elbows and her stare was cold, demanding an answer.

  “Yes. Of course.” Joseph was amazed again at what went on beyond his vision. He hadn't suspected that the doctor and Rosealee were talking about such things. But why not? “I've proven myself best at dragging things out.”

  “What do you think you'll decide?” Now she came to the window and stood beside him. They used to stand by the window watching the snow fall and guessing how deep the drifts would become. When he spent those months in bed with his injury she would come home from school and pretend to be a nurse, waiting upon him, bringing him cookies, chatting about school, and going over the assignments so he wouldn't fall behind.

  “There's nothing to decide. I always intended to marry her. In a way there's no choice. There's not much choice in what I'm going to do anyway because I have to make a living. Maybe I'll fall asleep and the goddamn tractor will tip over on top of me.” Nothing he said surprised him though he hadn't voiced it before. “I'm not exactly old yet.”

  “Who said you were?” she laughed. “But you do have a choice. Rosealee wouldn't want you to marry her because you had no choice.”

  “Oh bullshit. That's not what I mean. I meant what else do I know how to do? I taught and that's over and I know how to farm and that's fine. I jus
t won't be a real farmer is all. I'll put in one crop of wheat or corn at Orin's and ours and then I'll do what I want in the time left. Rosealee wants to teach in town.”

  Arlice hugged him again in relief. “Why didn't you tell her that? Was it that girl who made you wait?” She looked in a dresser mirror and began to repair her face. “If you knew that was what you were going to do it was cruel for you to make her wait so long.”

  “I wasn't sure.” He was becoming angry again. “Why the fuck should I be so taken for granted? You do what you want and you all had these grand ideas about what I should do from the beginning. I'm not you and you aren't me. Neither of us is Rosealee.” He was beating the cane against the radiator to emphasize his words. “Anyway I'll have to be an improvement over Orin but if I want to take off for a while in the winter I'm going to.”

  “That girl out there doesn't make you much of an improvement over Orin.” She laughed, recognizing that the side she had come to Chicago to defend had so effortlessly proved the winner. Joseph knew this but cared less. The warm still evening outside the window made him want to be at home or trout fishing or sitting on the porch swing with Rosealee with their laps perhaps covered with the glossy equipment catalogs that had been such an integral part of their lives. Any talk about the future was always full of catalogs and maps. Should it be a Massey-Ferguson, John Deere, or Farmall and was it to be Oregon or Florida or Georgia on their first trip to a coast.

  “I sure enough haven't piled up Orin's numbers. One isn't too many I don't think. I wanted to be carried away, you know? I didn't think of that when we started last fall but that was what kept me going. One night Rosealee and I got carried away for the first time since we were young. I mean we were doing something we didn't actually know we were going to do before we did it.”