A Thousand Acres: A Novel

by Jane Smiley

  “Don’t you make me out to be crazy! I know your game! The next step is the county home, with that game.”

  “I’m not making you out to be crazy, Daddy. I want you to go to your house, and for things to be the way they were. You’ve got to stop drinking and do more work around the place. Ginny thinks so, and I think so even more than she does. I’m not going to put up with even so much as she does. We do our best for you, and have stuck with you all our lives. You can’t just roll over us. You may be our father, but that doesn’t give you the right to say anything you want to Ginny or to me.”

  “It’s you girls that make me crazy! I gave you everything, and I get nothing in return, just some orders about doing this and being that and seeing points of view.”

  Rose stood like a fence post, straight, unmoved, her arms crossed over her chest. “We didn’t ask for what you gave us. We never asked for what you gave us, but maybe it was high time we got some reward for what we gave you! You say you know all about Ginny, well, Daddy, I know all about you, and you know I know. This is what we’ve got to offer, this same life, nothing more nothing less. If you don’t want it, go elsewhere. Get someone else to take you in, because I for one have had it.” Her voice was low but penetrating, as deadly serious as ice picks.

  Now he looked at me again. “You hear her? She talks to me worse than you do.” Now he sounded almost conciliatory, as if he could divide us and conquer us. I stepped back. All at once I had a distinct memory of a time when Rose and I were nine and eleven, and we had kept him waiting after a school Halloween party that he hadn’t wanted us to go to in the first place. I had lost a shoe in the cloakroom, and Rose and I looked for it madly while the other children put on their coats and left. We never found it, and we were the very last, by five or ten minutes, to come out of the school. Daddy was waiting in the pickup. Rose got in first, in her princess costume, and I got in beside the door, careful to conceal my stockinged foot. I was dressed as a hobo. Daddy was seething, and we knew we would get it just for being late when we got home. There was no telling what would happen if he learned about the shoe.

  It was Mommy who betrayed me. When I walked in the door, she said, “Ginny! Where’s your shoe?” and Daddy turned and looked at my foot, and it was like he turned to fire right there. He came for me and started spanking me with the flat of his hand, on the rear and the thighs. I backed up till I got between the range and the window, and I could hear Mommy saying, “Larry! Larry! This is crazy!” He turned to her and said, “You on her side?”

  Mommy said, “No, but—”

  “Then you tell her to come out from behind there. There’s only one side here, and you’d better be on it.”

  There was a silence. Rose was nowhere to be seen. From upstairs I could hear Caroline start to cry and then shush up. Mommy’s head turned toward the sound, then back. He said, “Tell her.”

  She said, “Virginia, come out from behind there. Out to the middle of the room. He’s right. You shouldn’t have lost your shoe.”

  I did what she said, five steps. I kept my gaze down, on the fringes of my hobo pants that we’d cut earlier in the day. My hands were covered with the makeup I’d rubbed off my face, so they looked strangely red and black. When I got to the middle of the room, he grabbed my arm and pulled me over to the doorway, leaned me up against it, and strapped me with his belt until I fell down. That was what a united front meant to him.

  I said, “Daddy, if you think this is bad, then you’d be amazed at what you really deserve. You don’t deserve even the care we give you. As far as I’m concerned, from now on you’re on your own.”

  Rose flashed me a look, perplexity mixed with vindication. She said, “Your house is down the road. You know where it is, and you can get there. I’m going inside, out of the storm.”

  Daddy said, “How can you treat your father like this? I flattered you when I called you a bitch! What do you want to reduce me to? I’ll stop this building! I’ll get the land back! I’ll throw you whores off this place. You’ll learn what it means to treat your father like this. I curse you! You’ll never have children, Ginny, you haven’t got a hope. And your children are going to laugh when you die!”

  Rose pulled me into the house, slamming the door behind us. Ty and Pete were left standing out there. Through the window, I saw them sort of urge Daddy toward the truck, but he swung out at them, landing a punch on Pete’s cheek. Pete threw up his hands, then turned and came in the house, sputtering, “What an asshole! This is it. This is really it!” Daddy was now staggering down the road. Ty crept along a little ways behind him. There was lightning by now, and big crashes of thunder. Rose turned on the TV as if she were more interested in the progress of the storm than what we were going to do, or think, or be after this, but her hand was shaking so much she could hardly manipulate the dial. I turned back to the window. Just when I was thinking that Ty was getting pretty far away, the sky let loose a flood, not drops or sheets but an avalanche of rain that hid Ty and my father completely from sight, even hid the two trucks parked not ten feet from the window.

  The electricity went out.

  From upstairs, two small voices started calling, “Mommy! Mommy! Come find us!”

  Pete said, “Shit!”

  Rose said, “I hope he dies in it.” By the lightning flashes, I could see her making her way around the furniture to the bottom of the stairs.

  From upstairs came two sharp screams.

  Rose called, in a stern voice, “I’m coming! No more screaming!”

  Pete said, “You got any kerosene lamps? This could last all night.”

  Ty staggered through the door, his boots sloshing, every stitch of clothing sodden, rain streaming down his face and chin. He said, “I lost him. I lost sight of him. I’m surprised I even managed to get back here.”

  24

  EVENTUALLY, WE SETTLED ON THE PLAN that until the storm passed, Rose and the girls would stay at our house, Pete would go home and check on things there, and Ty would check at Daddy’s and then wait there if Daddy hadn’t gotten home yet. After the storm, they would look around, and if Daddy hadn’t been found in an hour or so, we would call the sheriff.

  Things were awkward between Ty and me. What I looked for him to say was that he didn’t believe anything Daddy had said, didn’t believe the unspoken gist of his denunciation, either—that I was a worthless and unlovable person. He said nothing about this, possibly because to mention it would give it more credence than it was worth. I wanted him to say that when he drove Daddy home from town, he didn’t know what Daddy wanted to say to me, but he said nothing about that, either, and I felt an irresistible temptation to imagine that Daddy was speaking for Ty as well as himself, that they had agreed on these things beforehand. I found his dry socks and his poncho.

  Of course I wondered why Daddy had chosen just those terms for me, whore, slut. Of course the conviction that he had some knowledge of my time with Jess Clark materialized, whole and fully armed, in my new awareness. Perhaps that was what he and Ty spoke of on their way home. Perhaps this was where the story of my father flowed into the story of Jess Clark. Certainly a child raised with an understanding of her father’s power like mine could not be surprised that even without any apparent source of information he would know her dearest secret. Hadn’t he always?

  I sat in the dark after Ty and Pete left. Rose was upstairs, talking to Linda and Pammy, getting them to go to sleep in spite of everything, since because of everything there was something intolerable about their inquisitive and fearful presence. I was still in shock, or maybe in suspension, waiting for the catalyst. It was easy to see, all of a sudden, that my life until now had been, at least, predictable, well-known. What I had had to do I knew I could do, whether I actually preferred to do it or not.

  Rose descended the stairs, carrying the kerosene lamp, which she set on the newel post at the bottom. She called up, “There. You can see a little light. It’s right at the bottom of the stairs like I said.”

&nb
sp; There was a faint “okay,” just audible over the sound of the rain. She came and sat down across from me. There was nothing to do, since we had already unplugged the appliances and the television. It was clear that we would have to talk about it. I wondered how she would start.

  I wondered, too, what Jess Clark would say to all this. It seemed like nothing could batter that out of me. Impossibilities disguised as possibilities floated out of the depths—Jess must have told, Jess must have entertained Harold and Loren with the story, and Harold told Daddy, even if Jess didn’t tell, he probably thinks about me the same way, no, he doesn’t think that way at all, he knows me better than that, he would stick by me if I asked him to—

  Rose said, “Well, the almighty has spoken. Trembling yet?” Her tone was drawling and blasé.

  “You were shaking. You could barely turn the TV knob before.”

  “Shit, Ginny, I’m still shaking. I wish I hadn’t stopped smoking. God, I want a cigarette.”

  “I want to throw up.”

  “Oh, honey.”

  “Just try to maintain the right attitude, or we’ll cry.”

  “I’m not going to cry, and you aren’t either.”

  “Say, ‘He’s crazy.’ ”

  “He is crazy. He’s bananas. You can always tell when they go on and on about some conspiracy at work. Or sex. When they bring up sex that’s a sure sign.”

  “Was this what you call foaming at the mouth?”

  “Remember that guy who used to pilot the spray plane when Daddy was having the crops sprayed from the air? He supposedly got very crazy as he got older. They used to find him in the crawl space under the kitchen, hiding out.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Marlene Stanley heard it from Bob, who knew that family up near Mason City. And he had this terrible rash. They didn’t know if it was some reaction to all those chemicals, or whether it was from crawling around under the house.”

  “You think Daddy’s having some reaction to chemicals?”

  She shrugged. “Remember last Christmas when Harold Clark was going on and on about how he didn’t expect to live five more years, and his dad had died at ninety-two? If you drive around, you can pass all the houses. This one lived to be ninety, this one eighty-seven, this couple ninety-three and ninety-two. That generation is gone, though.”

  “Grandpa Cook was only sixty-six. Daddy’s two years older than that now. And Grandpa Davis was seventy.”

  “Well, I don’t know if they were like the others. Don’t you wonder if they all didn’t just implode? First their wives collapse under the strain, then they take it out on their children for as long as they can, then they just reach the end of their rope. I used to fantasize that Mommy had escaped and taken an assumed name, and someday she would be back for us. You want to hear the life I had picked out for us?”

  Sure.

  “She was a waitress at the restaurant of a nice hotel, and we lived with her in a Hollywood-style apartment, you know, its own door, two floors, two bedrooms and a bathroom up and living room and kitchen down. Nice shag carpeting, white walls, little sounds from the neighbors on either side, sliding door out to the back deck. There had to be neighbors on both sides. I thought it would be scary to live on the end.”

  “I guess I never really thought about not living on the farm. Isn’t that funny? I wanted it to be different, though, in some ways.”

  “Ginny, you sound so mild. Aren’t you furious?”

  “What good is that? If it is some chemical thing, what good does it do to be furious? We still have to deal with it.”

  “It wasn’t any chemical thing twenty years ago.”

  “Well, he’s always had rages, I admit. Maybe I would have been more conciliatory tonight if I hadn’t suddenly remembered—”

  The phone rang, and I answered it, even though you weren’t supposed to in a thunderstorm. Ty wanted to know if Daddy had reappeared, if I thought the storm was letting up. I said, “No to both. Not there, either, huh?” Rose came over and sat down next to me on the couch. I hung up the phone. The light from the kerosene lamp seemed marvelously bright now that I had adjusted to it, and Rose’s face seemed to gather it and reflect it, her skin the warm glowing color of the light itself. In this forgiving radiance, the angles wrought by the chemotherapy only looked like youth, the largeness and depth of her eyes only looked like beauty. After I hung up the phone, she sought my gaze and held it, then said, in a tight voice, “Ginny, you don’t remember how he came after us, do you?”

  “I remember the shoe incident. I was remembering that when he was yelling at me, the way he made Mommy—”

  “I don’t mean when we got strapped or spanked.”

  “Came after us?”

  “When we were teenagers. How he came into our rooms.”

  I licked my lips and switched my legs so the right crossed over the left. I said, “We slept together while Mommy was sick.”

  “And then, that Christmas, we moved into separate rooms. He said it was time we had separate rooms.”

  It was true that we had had separate rooms. Mine had been yellow, our old room, and Rose’s pink, the former guest room. I did not, in fact, remember the transition, which was odd, nor did I remember exactly wanting my own room. I said, “Well, of course I remember having separate rooms. I don’t remember why.”

  “He went into your room at night.”

  “What for? I don’t remember that at all.”

  “How can you not remember? You were fifteen years old!”

  “I’m sure I was asleep. Grandpa Cook used to prowl around looking at everybody. It was like checking the hogs or something.”

  “It wasn’t like checking the hogs with Daddy.”

  “What are you saying, Rose?”

  “You know.”

  “I promise you I don’t know.” And I didn’t. But I was afraid anyway. I was a captive of her stare, staring back.

  Rose inhaled, held her breath. Then she said, “He was having sex with you.”

  “He was not!”

  “I saw him go in! He stayed for a long time!”

  “Times always seem longer in the middle of the night. He was probably closing windows or something.” My voice came out conciliatory.

  “I checked my clock.” She looked flushed.

  “Oh, Rose. How am I going to believe that you woke up twenty-one years ago and saw Daddy go into my room and checked your clock and then saw him come out and checked your clock, and that constitutes evidence that he was—” Still staring at her, I jumped over this part. I said, skeptically enough, I hoped, “Anyway, Daddy may be a drinker and even a rager, but he goes to church—”

  “It’s true.” Now her voice was low, penetrating, demanding belief.

  But I felt stumped as well as dismayed. Sometime later, I said, “Okay, say it’s true. Did I ever mention it at the time?”

  “He threatened you. He made sure you wouldn’t tell me.”

  “How? I told you everything.”

  “He said if you told me, I’d be really jealous, and wouldn’t like you any more. You were fifteen. You didn’t have much spunk. You believed that.”

  “I told you this at the time?”

  “You never said anything at the time.”

  “Well, then.” I sat back, breaking away from her gaze, trying to summon some older-sister authority. I said, to the room, because I was afraid to look at her just then, “Why are you saying this?”

  “I realized that you don’t remember the other day, in Daddy’s living room.”

  I caught my breath in a little surge of angry frustration. “But it didn’t happen.”

  “But it did.”

  “Well, why don’t I remember? Do you think I’m lying?”

  “That’s the way it happened with me.” She might as well have been reciting a pickle recipe, her tone was that flat. I was certain I hadn’t heard her clearly.

  “What?”

  “Because after he stopped going in to you, he start
ed coming in to me, and those are the things he said to me, and that’s what we did. We had sex in my bed.”

  “You were thirteen!”

  “And fourteen and fifteen and sixteen.”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  She looked at me from a long distance. “I thought you knew. I thought all these years you and I shared this knowledge, sort of underneath everything else. I thought if after that you could go along and treat him normally the way you do, then it was okay to just put it behind us.”

  I stared at her. “What about Caroline?”

  After a bit she said, “I’m not sure. I mean, he told me that if I went along with him, he wouldn’t get interested in her. He presented it as a kind of biological fact. I suspect he never tried anything with her, mostly because she acts like she feels differently toward him than we do. She humors him and sympathizes with him. He doesn’t overwhelm her the way he does us.”

  “But he doesn’t overwhelm you! You stand right up to him!”

  “He likes that. All those dates and escapes when I was in high school? It made him think he had to subdue me. He liked it.”

  “You sound like you were trying to keep him interested!”

  “Well, I was afraid he’d try something with Caroline, and she was only eight or ten. But I was flattered, too. I thought that he’d picked me, me, to be his favorite, not you, not her. On the surface, I thought it was okay, that it must be okay if he said it was, since he was the rule maker. He didn’t rape me, Ginny. He seduced me. He said it was okay, that it was good to please him, that he needed it, that I was special. He said he loved me.”

  I said, “I can’t listen to this.”

  Rose sat quiet, looking at me. There were three quick thunderclaps, the heavy pressure of rain against the house. I concentrated on that.

  “Ginny.”