The Farmer's Daughter

by Jim Harrison

  Chapter 3

  1985

  Age fourteen was difficult for Sarah because she was conclusively becoming a woman. There certainly was no turning back. She had become a real “looker,” slang for a real pretty girl in that part of Montana, or what boys called “a first-rate piece of ass,” before they actually had any idea what that meant. All of which made Sarah even more shy. When she was in the village with her mother or father adult men would look at her in an uncompromising way. At a 4-H club dance her partner pressed himself close and she could feel his hard member. When the club was having a swimming party at the Lahren ranch pond Herman, their host, tended to hang around leering. Sarah’s friend Priscilla who was short but stacked and vulgarly outspoken said, “That old fuck is a lech.” When Sarah and Priscilla were riding their horses and saw a quarter horse stallion mounting a mare Priscilla joked, “I’d hate to handle something that big.” Priscilla bragged that she had lost her virginity the year before at age thirteen to a friend of her mother’s but Sarah couldn’t believe that an adult man would tinker with a mere girl.

  Old Tim who was a true friend advised Sarah not to be so withdrawn and to carry herself as if she were proud of who she was. “Being pretty is the hand you were dealt,” he said. In truth, Sarah was no raving beauty but simply the handsomest girl in the area.

  Early on Old Tim had shown Sarah a miniature canyon on BLM land about two miles to the north. The canyon was sheltered and south-facing so that it could be fairly warm when it was only fifty in late April or early May or on cool windy fall days. There was a small, trickling spring that filled a miniature rock pool you could sit in on hot days. Sarah thought of this beautiful canyon as her thinking place and would ride there on Lad with Rover in tow when the spirit called her. Her parents were confident of Rover as a guardian. In the canyon Sarah would think religious thoughts sometimes about Indians. Would it be easier to be an Indian maid? Probably not. Why didn’t the Bible give a name to the virgin that was brought to King David to warm his bones? Was screwing the original sin Adam and Eve committed? Was Mary Magdalene beautiful? Did Jesus ever have sexual thoughts? Sarah had a crush on Montgomery Clift who she had seen in a movie called The Misfits at Giselle’s house, then she found out he was dead and was sad. Sometimes Sarah would take off all of her clothes except her panties and lie back on a large flat-top boulder. One afternoon Rover growled the peculiar growl she made when Old Tim was approaching, not the outright snarl she made sensing a bear or cow. Tim didn’t appear and she pretended she was asleep. If he wanted to sneak a look it was okay because she liked him. She even rolled over in case he wanted a butt view. Once when she visited his cabin and he was gone there was a lurid girlie magazine on his porch and she wondered at what age men get over this nonsense. After about fifteen minutes Tim called out, “Make yourself decent.” Tim only had two cows left for his own eating beef and he would borrow his own dog back to look for a missing one. Now Tim was blushing.

  “I got here a while ago and caught a peek of you. I had to take a walk and compose myself. I’m sorry.”

  “No crime has been committed,” Sarah said and they both laughed.

  “Mother told me sixty years ago to treat all females as if they were your sister. Even then I wondered how the human race could keep going.”

  “I’m not sure I like being an animal,” she said watching Rover keep an eye on a rattlesnake on a ledge of rock about fifty feet away.

  “You better get used to it,” he said.

  Four days before her fifteenth birthday Peppy up and left, as they say out west, as if someone abruptly got off a sofa and ran for daylight. Frank was gone to South Carolina where his son, whom Sarah called Brother, had been in an auto accident with two other drunken marines. Frank would be gone two more days and Sarah didn’t call him when Peppy left. Sarah had been out riding and when she got home there was a big fancy pickup in the drive and an older man coming out of their house carrying two suitcases. Rover was unhappy about this and Sarah held her back with difficulty. Then her mother came out in her best outfit carrying her pink overnight case. She gave Sarah a perfunctory hug.

  “I left you a letter on the kitchen counter. Someday you’ll understand this. Maybe you’ll come visit.” And then she was gone.

  Sarah let Rover in the house for the first time. Rover couldn’t handle it and curled up just inside the doorway. Sarah thought, Now I’ll get to go to school like everyone else and was quickly embarrassed by her crassness. How should I feel about my mother taking off? she wondered. She held the letter while drinking lemonade and waited for strong emotions but none arrived. “Dear daughter, I met Clyde last year at Giselle’s. He was one of her many boyfriends and now he’s mine to have and hold. Clyde is a big-shot rancher from up near Helena. I’m tired of working day in and day out. I’d be doing this here until I died. As the song goes, my love for Frank has died away like grass out on the lawn. I’ve been praying about this for months. Don’t be angry about this. Love, Mom. P.S. Take care of your dad.”

  Sarah thought it would have been easy to say no had she been asked to go with her mother. She couldn’t leave behind Rover, Old Tim, and Lad. She called Tim and he said he was sorry if she was. He said he would bring her down some dinner and keep her company. Tim and Peppy had never liked each other. In his code of the West no one should whine and complain both of which Peppy did in quantity. When Peppy would complain to him he’d only say, “Life is hard,” and walk away.

  Sarah took a shower and put on a discreet shorts-and-halter outfit, all that her mother permitted. It was fair to give Tim something to look at since he was making dinner. She went out to their small sunporch where she decided to re-read Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. She had two contradictory plans for the future: she wanted to live in the austere beauty of the desert in the Southwest but she also wanted to ride in subways in New York City like in Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer and the USA trilogy. She was sure she could manage both though it would be far easier to have a dog and a horse in New Mexico or Arizona. Her father was always reminding her that she would have to make a living and that though her reading was good for her she could make better money in the sciences. In truth she had thought this over. All the novels she read churned up her mind but it was the only way she had to learn about life outside her remote location. The sciences were pure like the desert she had never seen. When she assessed her abilities she couldn’t come up with any clear triumphs except a minor one. In the summer of her first year of 4-H she had helped Mrs. Lahren bring in the remains of a picnic while the rest of the kids were playing “cowboy croquet” (you concentrate on driving someone else’s ball off into the weeds). There was a crummy old upright piano in the parlor and she asked Mrs. Lahren for permission. Sarah was carried away by her first shot at a piano in nearly three years and she played Grieg, Liszt, and Chopin passionately, coming back to consciousness when the other kids were all clapping at the windows. She cringed with embarrassment but after that she had to play for a while at every meeting including some ragtime pieces her grandmother had taught her at which the ranch kids would throw themselves around with freakish abandon. Her second victory, small to her, was when at age twelve she took an obligatory test for the homeschooled demanded by the state of Montana and though she only scored average in the humanities and history she was rated second-year college in the sciences. It was the only time before or after that her father was absolutely effusive with her, swinging her around the kitchen in an energetic but clumsy dance.

  Tim arrived a little late with a bouquet of wildflowers and a pot of elk stew, her favorite dish. She had been present when he shot the elk down by her secret canyon, crawling behind him through the lodgepole pines until they came to the edge of a clearing. On the far side of the clearing were a dozen females and a bull elk with a moderate rack. Outside hunters were always after a bull but the locals shot females because the meat was tastier. When Tim pulled the trigger he said, “Sorry, girl,” and the elk dropped in it
s tracks. It was a very cold November day and when Tim gutted the animal she felt the warm odorous air rising up from the cavity, the overripe coppery smell of the intestines.

  Now she was at the counter heating up the stew and mixing up the salad. Tim had tuned in a country station and Patsy Cline was singing, “The Last Word in Lonesome Is Me.” She loathed the song for obvious reasons and Tim liked it because he was old and had absorbed his condition. She turned abruptly to see if he was looking at her and he was. He pinkened for a moment and then pretended to be interested in something out the window. She was amused by this newfound game of sexual dance though she had few opportunities for it. Peppy hated going into the post office for fear of getting yet another dire religious letter from her parents who doubted she would remain godly in Montana. Sarah would pick up the mail, if any, and the postmaster who was in his sixties would always flirt saying things like “If only I was younger I’d take you to Denver and we’d have a high time.” She wondered to what extent he meant it. Was he really hitting on a fourteen-year-old girl? What did Tim feel when he peeked through the trees and saw her sitting there in the miniature canyon in her panties? What if Montgomery Clift was still alive and asked her to take off all her clothes including her panties would she do it? Probably. Love made everything possible.

  “How come you never got married?” she asked Tim.

  Tim winced and his soupspoon full of stew wobbled. He looked at the ceiling as if the answer were there. Meanwhile she was wondering if old men could still “do the deed” as Priscilla called it. Once in Lahren’s barn her clubfooted friend Terry had asked if he could see her breasts and she said, “No, stupid.” He got tears in his eyes and it quickly occurred to her that he might not loan her any more books so she raised her T-shirt and bra for a one-second flash.

  “Well, it’s a dumb story. When I was nineteen my dad was working me too hard and I ran off to Wilsall north of Livingston and cowboyed for a big outfit. As bad luck would have it I fell in love with the rancher’s daughter and we’d sneak off and smooch. After a few months I asked her to marry me and she said she couldn’t marry anyone who wasn’t going to inherit a big ranch like her dad’s which was about thirty thousand acres and a quarter of that fine hay land. Since our place back home was small I knew I was out of the running. She was pissed because she had two older brothers and likely wouldn’t get jack shit. I was heartbroken and went back home the next day. I decided to never marry if that’s how a woman can come to the decision so I’ve had girlfriends but never wives. Back when I was about forty I was calf roping at the Livingston rodeo on July fourth and won a hundred bucks so I went into the Wrangler to drink it up with my old friend Bob Burns and I’ll be goddamned if she wasn’t standing at the bar with her husband who was an electrician for the railroad. She said she had three kids and her dad’s ranch had gone under because her brothers had bought too many center pivots for irrigated hay. That’s the dumb story. Now I wish I had some kids but I don’t.”

  “That’s an awful story,” Sarah said, unable to continue eating for a full ten minutes, thinking that what she had heard was like a novel she was glad she hadn’t read.

  The next evening she cooked him the pancakes, sausage, and eggs he favored. It was warm and rainy and after dinner they sat in the living room drinking coffee with Tim putting a bit of whiskey in his. They were listening to the rain on the tin roof, a sound she loved. He was in an easy chair and she was on the sofa in a short skirt showing more than a bit of leg and wondering why she was doing so. Her father had called and said he would be home the next day.

  “Thanks for teasing me,” Tim said when he left. He poked her lightly in the ribs with a forefinger and laughed. She blushed with shame when he drove away though she was glad he had told Rover to stay with her because the dark is darker when you’re alone. She got out her father’s pistol and holster and practiced quick draws in the hall mirror. Tim had taught her but she wasn’t as fast as he was at age seventy-three. She went to bed and tried to concoct a fantasy where she was naked in bed with Montgomery Clift but with no experience she couldn’t make the fantasy convincing. What worked was the two of them necking in a phone booth at night in the rain.

  The next morning she was watering the plants in the greenhouse, a two-hour process, and getting ready to rototill the open garden when her father arrived to Rover’s howling. The dog’s fidelities were limited to Tim and Sarah and she would shy away if anyone else tried to pet her. Frank stood blank-faced in the greenhouse door. She tried to embrace him but he was stiff as an oak plank.

  “Your brother’s a goner, that’s for sure.”

  “He’s dead?” Her voice wobbled.

  “May as well be. He and his two buddies were driving at ninety on the way back to the base with the cops chasing them. One of the buddies is dead. The car rolled about ten times. Your brother fractured arms, legs, and pelvis but most important he has severe closed-head injuries. He didn’t recognize me and the doctors said he never will. He’ll be like that Denison boy in town, who sits on the porch in a wheelchair drooling.”

  “I’m so sorry. What happens now?” She began to cry.

  “Life in a V.A. hospital. How are you feeling about your mother?”

  “I’m not sure what to think. I can’t quite believe she went away.”

  “It’s the same with me. She called but it didn’t quite sink in. Of course I know I’m real slow emotionally. I couldn’t believe these two things could happen at once.”

  “She wasn’t too happy,” Sarah suggested. “She didn’t like it way out here in the country.”

  “She was a pain in the ass these last couple of years. When she wasn’t working she was frantic and when she was working she was complaining.” Tears were forming in his eyes.

  “We’ll figure things out.” Now his body softened when she embraced him.

  “We’ll have to.” He went outside and cranked up the rototiller. At lunch he acted as if nothing had happened.

  Two days later at midmorning when he was rigging up a three-way tow hitch on the pickup, she asked him what he had in mind.

  “It’s your birthday and Grandma called when you were giving Lad his oats. She reminded me to get you your own vehicle on your birthday. You’ll need it for school this fall.”

  She was nearly dizzy while she got ready, partly at the idea of her own car but also that five years of homeschooling was at an end. Perhaps in reaction to her mother she wasn’t a complainer but she devoutly hoped for something fresh in her life aside from the once-a-month 4-H club meeting.

  Chapter 4

  “Before we visit car lots we’re going to a doctor to get you a pill,” Frank said halfway to Bozeman on that fair May morning.

  “Dad, I don’t need a pill. I’ve never even had a boyfriend.”

  “Everyone can get carried away,” Frank said as if the subject was closed.

  “Mom said I never could have the pill because it causes bad behavior,” Sarah said idly.

  “Forgive me but there were many times when your mother didn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground as they used to say back in Findlay.”

  “I suppose that’s true. Her preacher said that there should be a prison camp for all gay people in California.”

  The visit to the gynecologist was unpleasant though the doctor, a woman in her fifties, was quite nice and said, “You have a gorgeous body, young woman. Out in the backcountry where you live you’ll have to carry a pistol against cowboys.”

  Sarah thought the stirrups were a hundred times worse than a dentist’s chair. She recovered in two hours of wandering car lots with Frank though his questions to salesmen were so thorough it made her back teeth ache. They had to double back three times before they reduced the possibilities. It came down to a choice between a red Toyota and blue Subaru, both four-wheel drive which her father thought obligatory for mud season and winter weather. Finally Frank wrote a check and hooked the Toyota up to the tow bar.

  “I had planned on us
having a look at the university and then a steak dinner but Old Tim wanted to bake a cake and grill an elk loin for you. I know the old fool is sweet on you. Evidently men never get over women. Back at Purdue my philosophy professor said the hardest thing for people is the unlived life.”

  “Dad, for God’s sake, he is just my best friend.” Sarah blushed over her little games which boys referred to as prick teasing. She figured that if it wasn’t Tim it would be someone else but he was the only man around. Sarah wasn’t mentally comfortable with the biological aspects of life. Everything comes on so fast. It was one thing to have a fantasy about the deceased Montgomery Clift which was as safe as your favorite pillow but she in no way had any desire for reality to intrude. She had developed the soul of a solitary during her homeschooling and her life had been without the dozen adolescent crushes that trail one from childhood through puberty, the terrifying lack of justice in having an infatuation with someone who hasn’t quite noticed that you exist. Her taste for love was more spiritual but not the way Peppy would prate at her about how one’s body was a holy temple of God. It was comically shocking that despite her beliefs Peppy had gone off and fucked a geezer rancher she had met at Giselle’s. Sarah only liked to study nonhuman biology. For the time being she preferred the idea of physical love to stay bathed in mist. Just last week at 4-H club, on a warm afternoon, a Mexican man had shown up at Lahren’s trailering a cutting horse stud up from Kingsville, Texas. Mr. Lahren was going to board the horse for a rich cousin from Bozeman. Both man and horse were the most beautiful creatures of their kind that Sarah had ever seen. The Mexican man was quite shy and just nodded at everyone then worked the travel kinks out of the stud in a corral. The horse was wild but everyone agreed that the Mexican sat a horse better than anyone. The boys stood back more than a bit jealous and when the man dismounted and led the horse into a box stall in the barn the girls flittered around him like fireflies with hot butts. He bowed to them all and carried his saddle and bridle toward his truck stopping at the entrance to the barn where Sarah stood having held herself back from the gaggle, looking at his chest and the muscular arm that held the saddle over his shoulder. He paused in front of her and smiled.