Ordinary Love and Good Will

by Jane Smiley

  2. October

  I admit I like to be prepared for things. A life without money is predicated on anticipation (although, maybe, it is shaped by the unexpected). More that is unexpected happens when you are married, more still when you have a child. Mostly these unexpected things leave me confused and slow, which is what happens when the day rolls around for slaughtering the summer’s lambs. I feel less than no compunction about slaughtering the lambs, because in fact they are no longer cunning little lambs, they are now stupid, homely sheep. A sheepskin, a leg of mutton, these are things of beauty to me. A flock of sheep trampling each other in a panic is not. They often panic. They often trample. My ram and my six ewes, which I got from a number of different sources, are unrelated to one another and produce healthy, mixed-breed lambs. Inbred animals are subject to parasites, disease, and immune system problems that I might not be able to control with garlic wormers, nutritious feed, and sanitary pasturing practices, so my lambs have no future in my flock.

  I get up feeling good on the day I am to slaughter the sheep. Liz is perky, too, because there will be a lot of work to do. We throw some logs into the range, savor the morning chill. I am standing on a chair, rummaging through upper cupboards for my .45, a World War II service revolver I found at an auction, and for the box of shells I bought last fall, when Tommy comes weeping into the kitchen.

  Tommy is nearly eight; he has been present for eight sheep massacres, and cognizant for at least four, so it takes a while for me to understand that it is the death of the lambs that has upset him. When I do understand, I admit, I slam my fist down on the table, angered rather than gladdened that he has grown up enough in the past year to imagine the sheep’s point of view. He sniffles over his breakfast. I shout, “Well, you are going to help! That’s the lesson here. If you eat something, you have to help produce it. Do you want to be a vegetarian?”

  He shakes his head. “Do you like lamb stew? Or trout? Or sausage?”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “Well?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Want to what?”

  “Watch you kill them.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Mr. John Doe, a guy who buys a steak at a grocery store. Don’t know where it came from, don’t know what it means to eat it. You want to be like that?”

  “No, Daddy.”

  “We took good care of those lambs. They ate good grass and had plenty of fresh water, and now they won’t know what hit them. This is a good life for a lamb, Tommy, all the way to the end and past it.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  I stand up from the table. “Come on outside.”

  We shear the lambs first, getting a few pounds of lovely soft wool, and then I shoot them in the head and cut their throats to drain out the blood. We do a good job—quick, competent, without arousing much fear in the lambs. I even take each one around the corner of the barn, out of sight of the others, to do the deed. By mid-afternoon eight lambskins are pegged to the back of the barn, and the cuts of meat are ready for my friend, Martin Summerbee, who picks it up, wraps it, and freezes it over the winter for me in exchange for half of it. Tommy has been so obedient—holding the lambs during the shearing, helping me hoist them by the feet and catch the blood after they are slaughtered—that I have forgotten, or dismissed, the morning’s disagreement. That is a Saturday. On Wednesday he arrives home from school with a note from Miss Bussman, the second grade teacher. It reads,

  Dear Mr. Miller,

  This noontime, while the other children were at lunch, Tom went into the cloakroom and found some toys, two dolls that are owned by another child, Annabel Harris. He twisted these dolls until they broke apart, and tore some of their dollclothes. Annabel is aware that she should not have had the dolls in school, but Tom did take them out of her schoolbag. He says that he is sorry for what he calls “the accident.” I have told Mrs. Harris that the dolls will be replaced. One is a “Jem” doll and one is a “Kimber” doll. I would like to speak with you about the incident. It has been most disturbing.

  Sincerely,

  Leona Bussman

  Liz, reading over my shoulder, is the first to finish. She makes a little sound, between a cry and a groan, very soft, as she reads, but says nothing afterward, only turns back to the sink, where we have been washing clothes. Tom sits at the table, absolutely still, not even kicking his leg or tapping his finger. I read the letter again, and say, “Were you that upset over the lambs, son?”

  “What?” His surprise at this connection is genuine and total. If he doesn’t make it, should I?

  “I thought maybe you were still upset about the lambs, and so you thought this would be a good thing to do, to get back at me, or maybe just to express your anger.”

  “I don’t care about the lambs. We kill the lambs every year.”

  “Then why would you do such a thing to somebody’s toys? I’m surprised at you. It sounds from the note like you planned it for when the others were away.”

  “I knew she had those dolls.”

  “But why did you do it, Tommy?” Liz speaks softly from the sink. He gives her a long, careful look, then returns to looking at his foot. We wait. The kettle on the woodstove whistles, and Liz snatches it off the heat as if shushing it. We wait until he says, “She’s a nigger.”

  Liz has a tone of voice that reminds me that her family once had money, a tone that suggests that it is unbearable to hear some things, and so they have not been heard. She uses it now. She says, “Pardon me?” There is no maternity in it, and it is meant to force the shame of repeating the unspeakable upon the perpetrator.

  “She’s a nigger.” This time he speaks casually, and the toe-tapping, wiggling, sniffling, and fidgeting of little boyhood suddenly resume, like music after a long rest. My reach is enormous. My hands seem to myself to arc across the room and grab his shoulders like a bundle of sticks. His head snaps backward as I pull him to me, and then I do something I promised him two years ago that I would never again do, which is to lay him over my knees and whale the tar out of him. The words pop out in time to the blows: “NEVER. USE. THAT. WORD. IN. FRONT. OF. ME. AGAIN.” At the end of one sentence, he slides off my lap, reduced from a little boy to nothing, weeping, clutching his bottom, gasping for air. But that image isn’t as vivid as the other, his nonchalant defiance, and so it is all I can do to prevent myself from kicking him where he sobs under the table. Liz steps over to him in a businesslike fashion, takes his hand, and pulls him up. “Go to your room now,” she says, “and we’ll talk about it later.”

  It has been maybe ten minutes since he handed us the note. All the issues—the sheep, the dolls, the racial slur, his careless attitude, my violent reaction—seem to lie on top of one another, each discrete, none resolved, and each leading to the others in a way that prevents resolution, or even discussion. It would be wrong to provide him with an excuse for either the damage he has done or the language he has used, but his transgressions do seem to lie between my insistence that he help with the sheep and this spanking, expressing something about the triumph of my will on both these occasions. I was unprepared. The result is awkward confusion.

  Liz says, from the sink, “I hated hearing him say that, but I don’t know if it warranted violence.”

  “Maybe he’ll never forget, at any rate.”

  “But we don’t even know if he understands why you attacked him. You were so quick!”

  “Everything about it was quick. Simultaneously, I was hearing that word, I was seeing the way he sat there, I was hearing him say that word in front of strangers and feeling their disapproval of us and this setup we have, I was imagining that little girl finding her broken dolls, I was imagining her showing them to her parents and what they would think of us, I was remembering being in the army, I was remembering that Faulkner story where they lynch the guy and seeing my own son in those characters.” She smiles and comes over to me, puts her hand in my hair. This enables m
e to say, “I blew it, didn’t I?”

  “I don’t know, Robert. I don’t know what the right reaction is. Maybe the right reaction is the most natural one.”

  “I’m not inclined to think so.”

  Liz drops into a chair by the table. The fact is, this has exhausted us, but we still have to finish the washing, string lines over the range and hang the clothes, clean up after the washing, feed and water the animals, milk the goats, make dinner, clean up from dinner, make sure that Tommy does his homework, bring in wood, stoke the fire so it will last until morning, heat water for washing, warm our beds with bricks so that we can stand to get into them, and check the animals one last time for the night. I say, “Let’s phone out for a pizza.”

  Liz says, “Let’s phone out for a phone.”

  “Let’s phone out for a road they can deliver it on.”

  “Let’s phone out for a town with a pizza parlor in it.”

  “No,” I say, “I guess I’d really rather have Chinese.” Our laugh supplies just enough energy for us to hoist ourselves out of our chairs and get to work.

  Later, when we have sorted through all the apologies and explanations and come to the real question, where did Tommy learn to call Annabel Harris a “nigger,” he says, “That’s what some teachers were calling her. I heard them. Miss Bussman, too.”

  “When did you hear it?”

  “One day when we had personal reading and I was going to the boys’ room. They were standing in the hall.”

  “When was it?”

  “Pretty long ago. Some fifth-graders said it, too. They were standing in the boys’ bathroom, and they said, ‘Did you see that nigger girl in the second grade?’ ” He glances at me and licks his lips. “That was the first day of school.”

  “Do you remember what the teachers said exactly?”

  “They were talking in soft voices.”

  There is something like ten dollars around the house, since I just paid my property taxes two weeks ago. Ten dollars may or may not buy replacement dolls. At any rate, there will be a lot of walking—to the school, to a phone so that I can call the Harrises, to some shopping center (the nearest is in State College)—and every trip will reveal to interested parties the defects of our way of life when it comes to coping with the unexpected.

  The next day I get to the school just as the bus of home-bound children is pulling away. I haven’t called ahead, and I want to be sure Miss Bussman is there. I find her straightening up the classroom. She is humming, but her manner hardens when she turns and sees me. She says, “Visitors should check in with the office.”

  “I’m Bob Miller, Tommy’s father.”

  Now she relaxes, but her inspection of me is frank, as if suppositions are being confirmed. It is Liz who should have come. I say, “I guess we haven’t met before. I don’t have a car, so we don’t very often get to the evening conference sessions. You know, where everybody gets to meet?”

  She sits far away from me, doesn’t smile or shake my hand. She is young, maybe twenty-five or -six. Last year Tommy’s teacher was about my age. She at least remembered a time when others had the ambitions I had, but this one doesn’t. She says, “Well, these actions of Tommy’s have upset the whole class. And they’ve upset me, as well.”

  “Mrs. Miller and I were very surprised.”

  “Well, to be candid, Mr. Miller, I wasn’t, really. Toward the beginning of the year, another thing happened, but I thought it had passed, and was forgotten. I was wrong, and I should have sent a note home to you then.”

  “What was that?”

  “Well, one day, apropos of nothing, Tommy just spoke up in class and said, ‘How’d this nigger girl get in here?’ I was shocked. And, actually, Annabel didn’t really react. I’m not sure she’s ever heard the word before, and I don’t know that she realized he was talking about her.”

  “I wish you had let me know.”

  She smiles a tight, uncomfortable smile. “Well, Mr. Miller, I actually wasn’t certain that you would care, I mean, that that sort of language would be unacceptable to you.” She gives me a challenging glance.

  “Miss Bussman, I can say with certainty that Tommy has never heard that word at home. In fact, he says he heard some of the teachers using that word early in the school year.”

  Miss Bussman’s wide blond face closes over, and she says, “That’s absurd, Mr. Miller.” I should have begun with the fifth-graders in the bathroom. We stare at each other for a second, then look down at the table. The knowledge that someone is lying has already soured this discussion.

  I gather my patience. The visceral knowledge that Tommy’s teacher is predisposed against him, for whatever reason, makes me a little breathless. I say, heavily, “Well, thank you for talking to me. You shouldn’t have any more trouble with him, and I’ll arrange things with the Harrises about the dolls.”

  “Mrs. Harris. Just Mrs. Harris.”

  “Fine. I’ll get her address.”

  “I have it.” She holds me at the door, rummages through her purse for an endless time. The walls of the schoolroom are awash in construction paper and bright sayings: “The only bad question is a question never asked,” “Have you smiled today?”, “Reading Is Fun!” She says, “Route Three. The number is 453-9876.” She holds my gaze, but there are no more even tight smiles; something has released the rein she was holding on her disapproval. Outside the school, my anger suddenly fires, not at Miss Bussman, but at Liz, for opposing home schooling and holding out for one more year.

  I dredge a quarter out of my pants and call the number. “Dr. Harris,” she keeps saying. “Dr. Harris.” I am not even sure she hears what I have to say, although she does tell me where her place is, about a mile out, southwest of town. From there to my place it is about five miles over roads, three over the hills. By the clock in the drugstore it is already four. It will be dark by six. One thing Liz and I have trained ourselves to do is wait patiently. The other one WILL get home. But I am not looking forward to the long, dark walk I will have to make on an empty stomach, turning over the mystery of my son’s misdeeds all the way.

  The house is a nice one, built in the twenties, it looks like, with mullioned windows in the front and a little stream, Laurel Creek, running along the western edge of the property. Dr. Harris, or someone, has planted a lot of flower beds, and though they are frosted this late in the year, they tempt me to veer from my straight, narrow, and chastened path to the front door. The front entrance is one I could envy—two sidelights and a fanlight above. When I ring the bell, the hall chandelier blazes up, and its glitter pours through the fanlight onto the front porch. The door opens. A pleasant voice says, “Mr. Miller? Come on in.”

  Immediately it is apparent that Dr. Harris has the touch. The front hall and the living room leading off it are bright, warm, comfortable, and stylish. The high ceilings, painted pale, peachy rose, the white woodwork, the pale green walls, the graceful dark shine of the banister curling toward the second floor, the lamps, lit. I have lived without electricity for so long that the silvery gold light of the lamps enchants me. The furnishings aren’t expensive, I would bet—the same mix of almost antiques and affordable new pieces that others I know around here have—but hers have been refinished and reupholstered to look bright and fresh. Plants and dried-flower arrangements are grouped about. In a southern bay window I hadn’t noticed from outside sit three gardenias. Two of them are blooming. I realize I am gawking. I look at Dr. Harris, who is dressed in peacock-blue sweatclothes. She is not pretty, but her face has a pleasant, knowing look. Her hair is pulled back, giving her head a sculptured quality. I wonder what she knows. I would give anything to find out that she thinks the incident of the dolls is just little boy mischief that could have happened to any girl, nothing directed at Annabel herself, nothing perpetrated by Tommy himself.

  I say, “I came to apologize for Thomas. If it weren’t such a long walk, I would have brought my son, but we don’t own a car.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Mill
er. If the dolls hadn’t been new for Annie’s birthday, she wouldn’t have had them at the school—” She pauses. “They’re silly dolls. Have you seen them? Members of a girls’ rock band. Worse than Barbie.” She smiles. “Maybe your son was esthetically offended.”

  “Thanks, but you don’t have to let him off the hook. I’m sure your daughter was upset, and I feel bad about that. Anyway, we’ll replace them, but I need to know about where you bought them, and I also need to ask your patience, because, since I don’t have a car, it might take me a couple of days to find a ride there.”

  “I got them at the Walmart in State College. If you want to just repay me—” Her voice trails off rather delicately.

  It is hard to judge what strangers might know about me. Among my friends in town I am somewhat famous, the object of teasing for the elaborate lengths I have to go to, to perform some very simple transactions. The fact, however, that they needle me (“Dear Bob, We are having a potluck this Friday. You and Liz and Tommy are invited. Let us know next week, as early as possible, why you didn’t come. Love, the Herberts”) shows that my habits entertain more than annoy them. A lot goes unspoken, and most of what goes unspoken is about money. I never have to say, as I say to Dr. Harris, “Well, actually, all I have at the moment is about ten dollars, but I should be getting more by the end of the week”—and, in a rush—”actually, I was going to ask you what you paid for them, so I would know how much money to get and take with me.”

  She is shocked, so she doesn’t know anything about me. I fill in quickly, “It’s not how it sounds. This is not a hardship, believe me, food out of the babies’ mouths or anything like that. I just don’t collect money. I get almost everything by barter. Someday I’ll tell you about it. But I don’t want Annabel to have to be without her dolls.”

  “They were thirteen apiece.”

  “Fine. I’ll try to have Tommy bring them to her next week.”