A Thousand Acres (1992 Pulitzer Prize)

by Jane Smiley

  He was often the one to run into town if they needed something, and he had gotten into the habit of doing all the food shopping, since neither Harold nor Loren ever remembered to accommodate his vegetarianism.

  That would be nice, I thought, just to see him ambling down the sidewalk, just to watch him from a distance, his ligure imbedded in its surroundings. One of many, a manageable size. He didn't appear, but thinking of him sparked the voices, and I gave into them, sliding farther down into the seat. The effect of sliding down, of relaxing, was to arouse me slightly. I closed my eyes.

  Daddy ordered the full hot dinner special-roast beef with gravy and mashed potatoes, canned string beans, ice cream, three cups of coffee.

  I had grilled cheese on Roman Meal bread, potato chips, pickle, and a Coke. We sat across from one another, and I saw him eyeballing my plate. He said, "That all the dinner you're gonna eat?"

  "I'm not hungry for some reason."

  "Hmmp."

  "You really shouldn't be eating all that. That's too much. It's a hot day."

  "You said it wasn't hot before."

  "Daddy, if you got more exercise, you'd feel better. A little walk down Main Street from the chiropractor to the cale wouldn't bother you.

  "I can walk it. I don't want to. I walked plenty in my time, and now I want to ride."

  "Did Dr. Hudson talk to you about exercise? It's importantHe waved me off with his fork.

  "Then I hope you don't get your license taken away.

  He drank from his coffee. "You shouldn't talk to me like you do.

  I'm your father."

  "I try to show respect, Daddy."

  "You don't try hard enough. You think because I gave you girls the farm, you don't have to make up to me any more. I know what's going on."

  "That's not true, Daddy. We do our best." I smiled. "You're not the easiest person to get along with, you know."

  "I don't like it when people are lazy, or when they don't pay attention. This is a hard business, and takes hard work."

  I continued to smile. The second half of my sandwich lay on my plate, and I was hungry for it, but instead of eating it, I made myself say, "I don't think you can say that we're lazy. Anyway, I don't think you show us any respect, Daddy. I don't think you ever think about anything from our point of view."

  "You don't, huh? I bust my butt working all my life and I make a good place for you and your husband to live on, with a nice house and good income, hard times or good times, and you think I should be stopping all the time and wondering about your, what did you call it, your 'point of view'?"

  I felt myself redden to the hairline, and pushed my plate away. "I just want to get along, Daddy. I don't want to light. Don't light with me?"

  "You know, my girl, I never talked to my father like this. It wasn't up to me to judge him, or criticize his ways. Let me tell you a story about those old days, and maybe you'll be reminded what you have to be grateful for."

  "Okay." I was smiling like a maniac.

  "There was a family that had a farm south of us. The old man was older than my dad, and he'd come in and drained that land down there, him and his sons. He had four sons, and when the youngest was about twelve, he came down with that polio thing. This was a long time ago, before I even went to school. Well, that boy was all crippled up by the time I remember him, but he didn't stay in the house, nosiree. The old man got him out there and made him plow his furrows as straight as the other boys, and he whipped him, too, to show him that there wasn't any way out of it. There were a couple of daughters, and one up and left home when she was about sixteen, calling her father all kinds of a bully and slave driver, but the thing is, that boy did his share, and he respected himself for it. It was the old man's job to see to that."

  "How do you know?"

  "What?"

  "How do you know he respected himself for it, that that was what he needed?"

  "I saw it!" He was beginning to huff and puff.

  I said, "Okay, Daddy. Okay. I don't want you to be mad. Let's go down to the Supervalu. You need some coffee at your place, and I need some things, too. I don't know whether these building people expect to eat with us or not."

  "You girls should listen to me.

  "We'll try harder, Daddy."

  It was easy, sitting there and looking at him, to see it his way.

  What did we deserve, after all? There he stood, the living source of it all, of us all. I squirmed, remembering my ungrateful thoughts, the deliciousness I had felt putting him in his place. When he talked, he had this effect on me. Of course it was silly to talk about "my point of view." When my father asserted his point of view, mine vanished.

  Not even I could remember it.

  LATER oN, WHEN I LooKED BACK, what I remembered about that day was the morning, my fear that Rose sensed something between Jess and me, my argument with my father at dinner, the ceaseless thoughts of Jess Clark that were simultaneously bewitching and tedious, a kind of work that I could not stop performing. The afternoon slipped by me. It was true that when we went by the building crew and I said, "Want to stick around for a while and watch them pour the footings?" Daddy didn't answer. But in our life together, we had long passed the point of eloquent silences. When I slowed down to pull in next to my house, he waved me forward, down to his house, and when I pulled in there, he got out without a word. I could, of course, read by his demeanor that he was displeased, but how this displeasure would incubate I could not and did not know.

  At home, there was a definite sense of worthwhile accomplishment. The Harvestore man from Minnesota had a cup of coffee and left to go back to Minnesota. The confinement building man from Kansas was staying at the motel in Zebulon Center, and said that while there was a company policy against meals with the people they were working for, because it screwed up expense account tax deductions, he'd be llappy to make one exception and eat with us the next night, if we wanted. I told him we'd barbecue some of our own pork chops. It would be Tuesday, I knew, Daddy's night, but he might eat barbecued pork chops if a stranger was eating with us. Or he might not. It was a gamble. The Kansan was a pleasant wiry man, half a head shorter than Ty, who'd actually grown up on a wheat farm in Colorado. He kept looking out the window, across the south field. Once he said, "If this had been my dad's place, I never would have left. This looks like paradise to me, that's for sure.

  Ty said, "We try not to forget how lucky we are.

  We walked him out to his truck. A cool wind had picked up, damp and full of rain. The Kansas man said, "Think we'll get it?"

  Ty said, "Feels like it." Dark clouds were piling up on the western horizon; blinding streaks of platinum sunlight shot toward us over their humped crests. "There's been some good-sized storms this year, but mostly they've missed around here. I expect we're about due."

  "Now when I was a kid, we used to go tornado chasing."

  "I did that once."

  I turned and stared at Ty.

  "Damn risky thing to do, but farm kids are crazy.

  They laughed. The Kansas man got into his pickup and wheeled onto the blacktop, waving as he left. I said, "I guess he won't care that that motel doesn't have a cellar."

  "Doesn't sound like it."

  The weatherman said the storm would come through Mason City about midnight. We were, in fact, already under a tornado watch. I dished up a chicken stew I'd made in the Crock-Pot in the morning and told Ty a little of what had happened at the elevators and in between, about Daddy bringing up Skylab, but I tiptoed around the argument, knowing he would disapprove. He told me about the progress of the building. I listened for news of Jess Clark, but he didn't mention anything. It looked like a quiet evening. It may be true that just about this time, during our after supper conversation over the dishwashing, I did hear a truck stop at the corner, turn, and accelerate toward Cabot. It may be that I heard that, or it may be that it's inserted itself into those memories.

  At any rate, Rose called about nine and said that Pete's truck was gon
e and that they thought Daddy might have taken it, since he had a key from last winter, when his truck was in the shop. Five minutes later, they blew in the front door, Linda and Pammy in tow. Pete was in a father, and, though trying to calm Pete, Rose, too, was furious. She kept saying, "I can't believe this," and Pete kept saying, "If he wrecks that truck, I'll kill him. We ought to send the cops out looking for him, or he's never going to learn."

  Rose paced back and forth. "If they'd put him in jail for a night or two last week, it might have brought him to his senses. Now he just thinks he can get away with anything."

  Ty said, "Why don't I go into Cabot and see if he went there? He might have just gone to the Cool Spot."

  Rose said, "He's probably driving all over creation."

  After they left, Linda said to me, "Did Grandpa steal the truck?"

  "Not exactly."

  "Dad said he did."

  "Your dad is pretty mad. But we all own the trucks and things together. You can't steal what you own.

  "Mommy said that she wanted us to come down here, because she didn't want us to be alone in the house if Grandpa came back."

  "Your mom's pretty mad, too."

  Rose opened the screen door and came in. She said, "We might get quite a storm. I didn't notice it before." Her arms were crossed over her chest. She surveyed Linda and me. Pammy had gone into the kitchen, and in this little silence, I could hear the refrigerator door close.

  Rose said, "Yes, I am pretty mad, but you make it sound like I'm just mad, as if I were crazy or something. I'm mad at your grandpa, Linda, because of things he has done, not just to get mad."

  I said, "I realize that, Rose. But we don't know the explanation.

  There could be a reason. As soon as he does anything, you shoot first and ask questions later."

  "We were sitting right there. We would have taken him where he wants to go. He took the truck without asking. He snuck around."

  She addressed this to Linda, an admonishment, a moral lesson.

  "Rose, he thinks he has a right to everything. He thinks it's all basically his."

  "Yes, he does." She said this righteously, as if the mistakenness of this perception was self-evident.

  Pammy came into the room, and I said to the two girls, "Maybe there's something on TV. This could be a long night, with the storm and everything. We ought to have the television on, anyway." They moved obediently to the couch, and ended up watching the only thing we could get, which was a performance of the New York City Ballet on PBS.

  During the news they drifted off Pammy rolled back against the arm of the couch, her head flopped and her hair in her face. Linda lay against Pammy, breathing deeply, her mouth open. I set down my knitting and gazed at them, thinking how they often seemed bewildered and wondering if it had always been thus with them and, bewildered myself I had taken that to be a normal condition. Rose said, "Let's carry them up to bed for now anyway. If there's a warning, we can wake them up and get them into the basement, but it looks more like just a bad rain to me." After we came down, Rose stood at the door, watching the gathering storm and waiting for the truck.

  A pair of headlights turned off the road, momentarily crossed the back wall of the room, went dark. Rose stayed where she was and didn't say anything. I sat still. After a long, quiet moment, punctuated by the bang bang of two truck doors closing, Ty's voice, low and calm, said, "Ginny, come out here please."

  This was it.

  Rose pushed the screen door and I followed her. Our father was standing in front of the truck. Ty was behind him. He said, "Larry has some things to say. I told him he should tell you them himself."

  Daddy said, "That's right."

  Rose took my hand and squeezed it, as she had often done when we were kids, and in trouble, waiting for punishment.

  Daddy said, resentfully, "That's right. Hold hands."

  I said, "Why shouldn't we? All we've ever really had is each other.

  Anyway, what are we in trouble for? Why are you getting ready to tell us a bunch of things? We haven't done anything wrong except try our best with you."

  Rose said, "It's going to storm. Why don't I take you home and we can talk about this in the morning?"

  "I don't care about the storm. I don't want to go home. You girls stick me there."

  I said, "We don't stick you there, Daddy. It's the nicest house, and you live there. You've lived there all your life."

  "Let me take you home." Rose's tone was wheedling.

  I urged him. "It's been a long day. Go on with her, and then tomorrow we can"No! I'd rather stay out in the storm. If you think I haven't done that before, my girl, you'd be surprised."

  A wave of exasperation washed over me. I said, "Fine. Do what you want. You will anyway."

  "Spoken like the bitch you are!"

  Rose said, "Daddy!"

  He leaned his face toward mine. "You don't have to drive me around any more, or cook the goddamned breakfast or clean the goddamned house."

  His voiced modulated into a scream. "Or tell me what I can do and what I can't do. You barren whore! I know all about you, you slut. You've been creeping here and there all your life, making up to this one and that one. But you're not really a woman, are you? I don't know what you are, just a bitch, is all, just a dried-up whore bitch." I admit that I was transfixed; yes, I thought, this is what he's been thinking all these years, waiting to say it. For the moment, shock was like a clear window that separated us. Spittle formed in the corners of his mouth, but if it flew, I didn't feel it.

  Nor did I step back. Over Daddy's shoulder I saw Ty, also transfixed, unmoving, hands in pockets. Then Pete turned the corner and drove up in his own pickup.

  Rose said, "This is beyond ridiculous. Daddy, you can't mean those things. This has got to be senility talking, or Alzheimer's or something. Come on, Pete and I will take you home. You can apologize to Ginny in the morning." Pete turned out his headlights and got out of the truck, his voice, sounding flat and distant, said, "What's up?"

  "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 live 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 lire 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."