Fifty Acres and a Poodle

by Jeanne Marie Laskas

  We get back in the car, and on the way to the tractor store, Billy tells me about some of the people he has shot, most of them when he was a young man. There was, for instance, those boys who beat up his kid brother. That got Billy mad. “I knew where they was going,” he says. “They was going to a house of ill repute. And that’s where I found them. I said, ‘Hi, boys.’ And I shot each one of them. None of them died. I didn’t intend for none of them to die. I just intended to bruise them up real proper for a long time.”

  “Of course,” I say.

  “They healed up,” he says, sensing my concern.

  I wonder what Billy thinks when he watches Green Acres.

  When we get to the tractor store, Billy walks right up to the blue one, which I think is particularly ugly. There is not even a hint of charm to it, especially compared to our red 1958 Farmall. This one is sort of square and functional and a garish blue. I am told that it is a 1986 Ford 1710, diesel, with a roll bar, huge “Ag” tires, four-wheel-drive transmission, power steering, nine million pedals to figure out, and one amazing hydraulic front loader. You can make the bucket go way over your head with the tug of a lever, then make it tilt down and dump stuff with another tug.

  “It’s a bargain,” Billy says. The guy wants $13,000. Buying a tractor is like buying a car. At least on this level. The farmer down the road from us has a $75,000 tractor with an air-conditioned cab.

  Billy says I should try to drive the Ford 1710.

  “No thanks,” I say.

  “Get on there,” he says. “You gotta try it.”

  So, well, okay. I hop on. It’s a lot shorter than our red tractor. I don’t feel so high up. And the seat is, well, wow. The seat is quite luxurious compared with the bony seat on the red one. There’s a thin layer of grease on the steering wheel, human grease, I think, the grease of the farmer who once plowed his fields with this machine. Billy pushes some buttons, and the thing fires up like a dream. He shows me how to put it in reverse, how to back it up to a shiny yellow brush hog put there for demonstration purposes. I find this to be an amazingly complicated procedure, what with all the pedals I am told to push in an exact sequence. He teaches me about hydraulics. I find myself not caring. This is disappointing. I thought I was going to take to farm machinery. I really thought I was going to discover some great release of my inner tomboy.

  Instead, I think of Alex on this tractor. I think of how much he would love all these levers and pedals. I am so glad he likes tractor things so I don’t have to. Maybe I’ve been clinging a little too tightly to this idea of an inner tomboy. Who knows. Maybe I actually do have an inner princess that would like some attention. (As if.)

  Billy has a hard time believing that I can make a tractor-buying decision without first showing the tractor to Alex, but this is what I do. I write a check from a line of credit we got from Farm Credit, a bank serving local farmers. Alex and I have found that it’s awfully easy to get money if you are a city person trying to become a farmer. Bankers around here seem dazzled by the idea of customers who make a living outside of farm income alone. It doesn’t seem to matter that we have, well, no farm income.

  But we are thinking: sheep. We are thinking: cows. We are thinking of these animals as cheap labor, free grass mowers. But someone told us about the tax implications—for example, every farm thing you do is deductible—if you make even a tiny farm income, and so we have been thinking about livestock in a whole new way.

  As Billy drives me home, I thank him for all he has taught me.

  “It’s been my pleasure,” he says. “And when the tractor comes, you tell Alex I’ll come over and teach him how to run it.”

  I wonder if Billy is this generous to everyone, or if he’s taken us on because he truly worries about our ignorance.

  When we pull up to my driveway, we can see that Tim, the FedEx guy, is here. Hmm. I’m not expecting anything. I wonder what he’s brought.

  “Hey, that truck is sliding,” Billy says.

  “What?”

  “The truck!”

  I look and see that, in fact, Tim’s truck is sliding backward down a slope.

  “Oh God, he’s told me about those bald tires!”

  As we approach, Betty is out there barking like mad. Roo roo roo roo! Even Marley is pitching a fit. Woof, woof, woof! It’s “The truck is sliding!” in dog language. Tim is gunning the engine. The tires are spinning. The truck is on a slope that has turned into some sort of mudslide. Tim must have backed up too far over the edge of the driveway, where the stones stop, where the mud starts, where the hill starts. If it goes much more backward, it’s going to go kaput into the pond. This is obvious to me and Billy and Betty and Marley and, I hope, Tim.

  Billy leaps from his police cruiser. “This way! This way!” he shouts, indicating to Tim to turn his wheel sharply to the left, which Tim does. The truck stops sliding.

  It lands, thunk, in a ditch. A really big ditch.

  Tim hops out of the truck in his little FedEx outfit, climbs up out of the ditch. He is blond and trim and clean. He is not the ditch type. “A ditch,” Tim says, looking at the ditch, Billy, the ditch.

  “A ditch is better than the pond,” Billy says.

  Tim looks at me.

  “It is,” I say. “Think of your packages.”

  Tim stands there scratching his brow, wondering now what.

  Without so much as a word, Billy heads over to the bulldozer and fires it up. He comes rumbling over.

  I grab the dogs and put them in the basement. I grab my car keys and move my car out of the way, making a clear path.

  Billy charges into the woods with the bulldozer, swings around, and threads that giant machine into a spot just behind the FedEx truck. He puts the bucket down, then inches toward the FedEx truck.

  I’m sitting in my car, watching this. My car phone rings.

  “Hello?”

  It’s Beth, one of the babes.

  “Hi!” she says. “Where are you?”

  “Actually, I’m sitting in my driveway,” I say.

  “Why are you in the driveway?”

  “I’m watching the FedEx truck,” I say.

  “Watching it?”

  “Oh, Billy is such a nice guy,” I tell her. “I mean, this is amazing.”

  Huh?

  “The bulldozer guy,” I say.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The bulldozer is lifting the FedEx truck,” I tell her. “Clear off the ground!”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The babes are learning not to ask for explanations.

  I tell Beth I have to call her back.

  Billy succeeds. He lays the FedEx truck ever so gently back down on the driveway.

  “Thank you!” Tim is saying. “Thank you!”

  They’re shaking hands, as I approach. I tell Tim I’m really sorry about the ditch.

  “Aw, it’s okay,” he says. “I got the baldest tires. And you know, I was only here to drop off supplies. I got some mailers with your name on them. I put them on the porch.”

  “But everything is back to normal?” I ask.

  “Thanks to Billy,” he says.

  “It was nothing,” Billy says.

  And we say our good-byes. They head out, one by one, their tires going crunch, crunch, crunch over the stone driveway. I am starting to hate that sound, the sound of people leaving.

  I call Beth back.

  “Is everything okay?” she says.

  “Oh, everything is back to normal,” I say.

  “Babe, normal in your life is getting really abnormal,” she says.

  “Do you think so?”

  “We still love you,” she says. “When are you coming to town next? Do you want to get together for lunch or something?”

  “Actually, I’m coming in tonight,” I say. “I’m staying overnight in South Side.”

  “Great! So are you free for lunch?”

  “I sort of doubt it,” I say. “I have to be at Shadyside Hospital at seven, and then I’ll proba
bly head back here.”

  “The hospital?” she says.

  “Alex has to get some test,” I say. “They said it’s nothing. I don’t know, some intestinal problem. They said it’s nothing.”

  “Oh. Well, all right. Call if you want to have lunch.”

  “Okay.”

  “And have fun with the FedEx truck or the bulldozer or whatever.”

  “Oh, that’s over—but, well, okay.”

  I click the little off button on the cell phone and head up to the house. I take a quick look around as if to check, as if I’ve missed something, as if there must be one bud on a tree, or a crocus sticking up, or the faintest haze of green on the forest’s tip. But there isn’t. This must be the slowest spring on record. I’m glad I’m going into town. I’ll see stores with displays of pink and green and purple. I’ll get in the spring mood. Maybe I’ll buy a bonnet. I would love to wear a bonnet. I wish people still wore bonnets.

  TWELVE

  THE WAITING ROOM OF THE GI LAB AT SHADYSIDE Hospital is packed with strangers at seven in the morning. These strangers calm my nerves, help me realize this is no big deal. This is a routine test that a lot of people get. This is just Colonoscopy Day.

  Alex and I take the two remaining seats in the waiting room. The TV is on, blaring a morning show.

  “Are you nervous?” I say to him quietly.

  “I can’t say I’m looking forward to it,” he says. “You want to go home and have waffles afterward? They said I’m going to be pretty much out of it for the rest of the day.”

  “Sure,” I say. “I’ll whip you up some waffles with, um, melted muskrat fat. It tastes like butter!”

  “Sounds good!”

  He refuses to get grossed out by my varmint food talk. I should have known.

  “Waffles with melted muskrat fat and seventeen-year cicada sprinkles,” I say. “Very crunchy.”

  “Mmm,” he says. “And how about some raccoon gut syrup?”

  Okay, I never should have started this. I should have known. I wonder if anybody in this waiting room can actually hear this conversation.

  A nurse pops her head through a window and calls some names. One by one people get up. When they call Alex’s name, he stands and walks toward the door to the lab, and just before he enters, he turns and looks back at me, flashing me the funniest face, a clown face, a clown hollering for help before he does some silly stunt into a ring of fire.

  I smile, blow him a kiss, and then settle into my chair, get comfortable. They said it would be at least an hour before he’s out of there. I’ve brought a book. I’ve brought magazines. I’ve brought a paper. There is plenty to do. I look at the TV. A commercial about fake eggs. I look around the waiting room. There are a lot of posters about colorectal cancer on the walls. There are also several huge underwater photographs of fish. The photographs were taken by one of the hospital’s favorite colorectal surgeons. It says so right underneath. I think that’s an interesting hobby for a colorectal surgeon, exploring a world where few people go and looking for exotic life forms.

  It is getting boring, waiting here. I really wish one of us in this room was brave enough to stand up and turn off the TV. The morning show is over, and now it’s Jenny Jones.

  Oh, here’s the doctor. Oh, good. Here’s news. He calls Mrs. So and So. She stands up and heads over to him. But before she is even out of our earshot, the doctor says, “Everything is fine!” And Mrs. So and So is led back to the recovery room.

  I think they should have these little meetings in private, I really do.

  The doctor calls another Mrs. So and So. “Everything’s fine!” And then a Mr. So and So. Everything is fine in his life, too. That’s three down.

  “Today, folks,” Jenny Jones is saying, “today I want to introduce you to some teenage girls who want to be supermodels but their mothers think they’re too fat. Come on out here, Miracle!”

  “Miracle?” an old man next to me says. “Her name is Miracle?”

  “Aw, she’s not fat,” says another.

  “But she has to work on her walk,” says the first.

  Suddenly the doctor is here again with news. He calls Mr. So and So. “Everything is fine!” He calls Mrs. So and So. “Everything is fine!” One by one these people are led back to the recovery room. I wonder why he’s not calling me. I look around at all the empty seats, feeling like a kid playing musical chairs, but in reverse.

  He calls the next person. And the next. Everything is fine. Everything is fine.

  Soon I am alone in this room.

  “I did not say she was fat!” says Miracle’s mother on national TV. “My boyfriend is the one who said she is fat. And he used to be a model!”

  I turn the TV off.

  I look at the fish pictures.

  I look at the platinum ring on my finger. I twirl the ring around. I love this ring. I love Alex. I want to get married. We should make wedding plans. We should just go ahead and do it. A wedding. I could do it. Even though I am not the inner princess type. Now that I think about it, that lady mistook me for a former Miss Delaware, and it sure didn’t take me long to get in touch with my inner former Miss Delaware.

  The doctor calls my name. I stand up. “Are you Alex’s wife?” he asks.

  “Fiancée,” I say. It’s the first time I’ve ever actually used that word in public.

  I look at him. He’s not saying anything. He’s not saying “Everything’s fine,” as he did with everybody else. The silence lasts four years, maybe five.

  “Tumor,” he says, finally. “We found a tumor.”

  It hits me like a punch.

  “Oh,” I say. “A big tumor?” It is the only tumor question I can think of.

  “Yes,” he says. “Quite big.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  He takes me back to Alex. A long shiny hallway that smells of glue. The doctor pushes back a striped curtain, as if presenting the results of his magic act. I half-expect him to say, “Voilà!” Alex is behind the curtain, asleep. He has tubes up his nose and a hospital gown on. Jeezus. He looks like an eighty-year-old man. It’s as if aliens have captured him, have captured us, have in the blink of an eye swooped in and taken us away from the life we thought we were creating. I take his hand. His same soft, strong hand. But not the same at all. Jeezus. This is not the same man. This is not the same man who was just talking about raccoon gut syrup. Or beaver butter. Or muskrat waffles, or whatever the hell….

  He opens his eyes.

  “Hi, baby,” he says to me. “They found a tumor.”

  “I heard,” I say.

  “Well, what do you think it is?” I ask the doctor, careful not to even bring up the C-word.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I did a biopsy. We’ll know more by Tuesday.” Then he goes on and on about how large the tumor is, maybe the size of a golf ball, about how, no, this is not a polyp but a full-grown tumor, a large tumor, and when polyps become tumors, they, yes, typically they become cancerous, and it appears this one has been growing for quite some time….

  “Well, this isn’t good news at all,” Alex says.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, sir,” the doctor says. And then he reaches out and grabs hold of Alex’s other hand.

  WE DRIVE BACK TO THE FARM IN SILENCE.

  “It could be nothing,” I say, finally.

  “It could be.”

  We are staring straight ahead.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “Sorry?” I say.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  I don’t think he has to apologize for having a tumor. There is little other tumor conversation between us.

  When we get home, I make an omelet. I skip the whole waffle plan. It feels like everything we ever said to each other before he walked into that GI lab is now stupid. Uninteresting.

  I make a huge omelet with big wads of ham in it. A hearty farm omelet. Alex had to fast for twenty-four hours before that test, so he’s got an appetite. I have none. I stir my
food. We sit in silence. All you can hear is silverware clanking. Bob is on the windowsill, sound asleep.

  “I’m so sleepy,” Alex says, halfway through his meal. “I’m still hungry, but I think I’m going to fall asleep on my plate.”

  “You should lie down,” I say. “You’re drugged.”

  “You’re right, dear,” he says. He looks at me, waiting for my smile. “I said, ‘You’re right, dear.’”

  I smile, but it takes effort.

  He leaves the table and lies down on the living-room floor. I don’t know why he picked that place. It seems as though any horizontal surface would suffice. Within seconds he is sound asleep. Marley sees him, goes over, and lies down next to his shoulder. Then Betty comes over, claiming his other shoulder. I clean up the dishes, and the next time I look over, I see Bob curled up at Alex’s ankles.

  All of them there, snoozing together. A unit. My family.

  I don’t quite know what to do with myself. I’m not going to call anybody and tell them. Because it could be nothing. It still could be nothing. We won’t know until Tuesday if it’s something. So still, technically, it is nothing. Why get all worked up over nothing? And anyway, this isn’t how I do fear. I don’t blab it all over the place. I get quiet. I get shy. I shut down. I go blank. I go inward.

  Where’s Billy, anyway? Aren’t those guys supposed to be out there? Oh, no. Friday. I think he had to dig a sewer line or something up at the high school.

  I look out at the hill. The hill of mud. I try to imagine it green. I try to imagine spring. Where in God’s name is spring? I should put the grass seed on. Maybe that would give spring a boost. I decide to leave everybody here snoozing and go up to Scenery Hill Hardware and get a broadcast spreader and three hundred pounds of grass seed. That’s something I can do. I need to do something.

  A broadcast spreader, it turns out, is a cloth pack you wear over your shoulders, with a crank at the bottom. It holds about twenty pounds of seed, and you turn the crank, and it sends the seed flying.

  “Well, I’ll take two,” I say to Jim, our hardware guy. He’s a handsome young man, maybe thirty. He has curly hair and a relaxed physique. He’s someone you automatically feel comfortable around. His German shepherd, Inga, comes to work with him.