I reached into my suitcase for the flask of White Label I always carry when I travel and pulled it out and raised my brows. “A bit early, isn’t it?” Sally asked.
“It’s never too early; only too late.”
Sally shrugged. “Why not?” I poured two drinks in cloudy glasses, added a dash of water to hers and handed it to her. “Here’s to nostalgia,” I said, and drank mine down, then asked Sally about her parents.
“They still live on Maple Street,” she answered. “Dad’s retired, works the garden in summer and carves hunting dogs on hickory slabs in winter. Mom’s still Mom. I’ll tell them you asked.”
“Do.”
“How long will you be here, Marsh?” Sally asked softly.
“A couple of days, at most.”
“Not long enough.”
“For what?” I asked.
“To get to know you again.”
A melancholy something in her face made me remember Billy. “You remember my brother, Curt?” I asked.
“Sure. A nice guy.”
“You know anything about his son? Billy?”
Sally frowned. “I’ve heard some stories. Why?”
“Where’d you hear them?”
“Around.”
“Where, Sally?” I repeated.
“Why, Marsh? What’s happened?” The words were singed with alarm.
“Billy was found dead this morning. In City Park.”
“How awful. What was it? An overdose?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“Well, that’s what I heard. That Billy used drugs a lot. He acted like it, that’s for sure. Talking to himself, stumbling around, sleeping all night on the square.”
“What else did he do?”
“I heard he burned a flag during the Pancake Day parade a few years ago, for one thing. And then there was something about him and Tom.”
“Tom who?”
“Tom Notting. Your brother-in-law.”
“What about Billy and Tom?”
“I don’t remember, exactly. Something about his job. The assessments or something.”
“What else did you hear?”
Sally squirmed uncomfortably. “I don’t know, Marsh. Why? What does it matter now that Billy’s dead?”
“What, Sally? There’s something on your mind.”
“I … it’s just something about Billy and some woman.”
“What woman?”
“It must have been a lie, Marsh.”
“What?”
Sally took a deep breath and looked at me. “I heard he and Carol were seeing each other. Carol Kline Hasburg. I heard Carol left Chuck for Billy Tanner.”
I shook my head dumbly, my thoughts on my encounter with Chuck Hasburg that morning on the square. “That can’t be,” I said. “Carol’s old enough to be Billy’s mother.”
“I know.”
I was surprised, but not totally. In matters of sex anything is possible. “Have you seen Chuck since you got back?” I asked Sally.
“A few times. We went to dinner, once. He wanted to do more, but I didn’t.”
“He seems in pretty rough shape.”
“He is. But so is everyone here, Marsh. You won’t believe the stories you hear. Wife beatings and child abuse and muggings and all the other things that come with hard times. Chaldea’s on edge, Marsh. They say it’s worse than the Depression.”
“You ever ask Chuck about Billy?”
“No. And he never mentioned him.”
“Did you talk to Chuck about Carol?”
“A little. He just said she left him because he was drinking and because he lost his job.”
“Have you seen Carol?”
“No. I called but she’d heard I’d been out with Chuck and refused to see me. You know, Marsh, all that time we doubledated Carol and I were never really friends.”
“Why not?”
“Too much alike, I guess. Too dependent on the same things for survival.”
I stood up. “Listen,” I said. “I’m going out to the farm, Uncle Raymond’s place, where we used to park. You want to come along?”
“I’ll go wherever you want.”
She gave me that look, the half-smile, the cocked head, the wide eyes, that always made me pleased to please her. I reached for Sally’s hand and pulled her out of her chair and her touch warmed embers that had been cold for years. I flicked off the lights and we started down the hall. Not for the first time Sally Stillings linked her arm through mine.
Nine
The highway south of town ran to the Missouri border in just twelve miles. In my day, the stretch just past the city limits had doubled as the drag strip, where kids staged their chopped and raked machines, sounded their glass packs and Hollywoods, then strained the capacities of their Hookers and their Bardahl and their Wynn’s. I had never been enthralled with either cars or combat, so the legend of Highway 5 was merely that to me. But there were a few blood spots down there on the pavement, and more than one Chaldean grave was occupied by a boy who’d blown a tire or a piston or a nerve trying to make himself the top street dragster in the county, or trying to prove he wasn’t chicken.
Our farm lay across the highway east of the drive-in movie, just past the International Harvester dealer and Mickey’s road-house and the new old-age home. I turned left onto the chalk-white gravel of a secondary road, rose over the first hill, and looked for the turn. As I slowed the car Sally reached over and rested her palm on my thigh, then scooted closer to me. It was the way we’d always ridden, flank to flank, flesh to flesh, over the thousand miles of youth.
The entrance strip was overgrown with milkweed and foxtail and goldenrod, but beneath the tousled weeds a faint track led off the county road and into the field, then up along its edge toward the old farmhouse and outbuildings, which rested atop the slope at the far end of a field of picked corn. The gate was hooked with a circle of barbed wire. I got out of the car and lifted it off the gatepost, then drove through the opening. As I went back to relatch the gate I noticed a curtain fall back across a window in the large white-frame farmhouse on the other side of the road. I waited a minute to see if anyone was coming out, but the screen door remained closed. I fastened the gate behind me, then drove toward the top of the hill.
Sally was humming an old song about fools and love as we wobbled up next to the abandoned farmhouse. I stopped the car and we got out. The sun was bright and warm. The ground was gnarled with acorns and walnuts and even hedgeballs, and the leaves on the trees on the far ridge were leaking color. Sally leaned back against a fender and raised her face to the sun. “Remember how we were, Marsh?”
“I remember.”
“It was so crazy, what we went through. I used to go home from here and cry and cry and read the Bible and pray to be forgiven for what I’d done or let you do. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“Did you feel it, too, though? The guilt?”
“Some.”
“Were you afraid? Of getting me pregnant?”
“Sure.”
“We were lucky, you know.”
“I know.”
“What would you have done if you had?”
“Married you, I suppose.”
“You say that with such dread.”
“It would have been much more dreadful for you, believe me.”
I left Sally at the car and walked toward the farmhouse.
The corn crib was empty, waiting for the product of the dry drained stalks that rose out of the field behind the house. A dozen sparrows scratched and pecked for leavings among the wire and wood of the crib walls. Beyond the crib the barn listed eerily, its sides weathered the color of dead flesh, its doors gone, its rafters sagging from the weight of time and hay. An old manure spreader was parked beneath the mow, rubber tires flat, spiked spreader coated with the black waste of many springs. As for the house itself, the doors and windows were splintered and punctured, half the roof had collapsed, and the stucco walls crumbled l
ike the sides of arid sand castles. The porch gave way perilously as I walked across it toward the door.
Inside, someone had removed much of the flooring, leaving only dirt and joists and framing-boards. Strips of wallpaper flapped like thirsty tongues down the walls. The cupboards were bare and dusty, the linoleum cracked and buckled, and over it all were bird droppings and cobwebs and the fine powder of crop dust. The northwest corner of the house was missing entirely, as though blown away by a bomb. The opposite corner was strangely clean, as though a nest for something large. I went back to Sally and the car.
“I thought maybe Billy had been living there,” I said to Sally. “But it must be someplace else.”
Sally nodded absently. “It’s so pretty out here,” she said, then came to my side and slipped her arm around my waist. I draped an arm over her shoulder and we started to walk, our city shoes slipping over weeds and clods, our city clothes gathering burrs and dust. “Are you going to sell this place, Marsh?” Sally asked as we strolled toward the barn.
“How do you know about that?”
“Everyone in Chaldea knows about that.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “Curt and Matt want to sell; Gail doesn’t. I guess I’m the swing vote.”
“Which way are you leaning?”
I shrugged. “I thought at first I’d sell, just take the money and sever all ties with Chaldea once and for all. But now that I’m here I’m not so sure. It would be nice to think that, come what may, there was always this place to run to.”
“I know what you mean,” Sally said. “When Eric moved out I came back here as quickly as I could. It’s strange. I used to complain so much about Chaldea when I was young, and now here I am. Freudian, almost.”
“Maybe just smart,” I said. “Statistics say it’s safer here than almost anywhere.” And then I thought of Billy, who had not been safe at all.
We strolled in the sun and silence for a long time, kicking clods, dodging cow pies, swatting flies, touching the soil and each other, afoot in a world that had no future, only past.
An engine throbbed behind us suddenly, too close to be a highway sound. A tractor was coming up the road we had driven in on, a big red one with an enclosed cab and tandem rear wheels and the pulsing sound of diesel strength. I couldn’t see the driver behind the reflection off the isinglass, but when he got to where we were, he braked and climbed down, leaving the engine purring behind him, a cat behind its tamer.
He was tall and angular, wearing overalls and work boots and a brown work shirt. His cap read Gooch’s Best.
“You’re on private property, mister,” he said as he approached. His teeth were brown and crooked behind the lipless tear of his mouth.
“I know I am,” I said mildly.
“Going to have to ask you to leave, then,” the farmer said. “You ain’t part of that oil outfit, are you?”
“Why?”
“Last time they was here they messed up part of the east eighty so bad with their Jeeps and such, I had to replant. Told them I’d get the twelve-gauge next time I seen ’em. Did take a shot at someone the other night. Don’t know who it was, sneaking around that way.”
“I’m not an oilman,” I said. “My name’s Tanner. My family owns this place.”
The scowl on the farmer’s sharp brown face fell away and his pose became extravagantly peaceable. “Well,” he said, thrusting a big hand toward me. “Pleased to meet you. Name’s Delbert Waiters. Own the place across the way. Farm this one on shares, as you likely know already.”
I nodded and took the hand and felt like I’d grabbed a pine cone. “Gail’s told me about you,” I said to the man. “Says you do a good job.”
“Mrs. Notting’s a real fine lady. Knows her farming, too. She’d be your sister, now, am I right?”
“Right.”
Waiters nodded now that the world was straight again, then looked curiously at Sally. I introduced them and Waiters bowed and actually tipped his cap. Sally blushed, and smiled, and Waiters turned back to me. “Used to watch you play ball,” he said. “Thought maybe you’d turn pro.”
“I wasn’t nearly that good.”
“Plenty good for Chaldea.”
“That’s not good enough.”
Waiters frowned and shuffled in the dirt, as though my statement had brought him an unpleasant memory. “Guess that depends,” he said, then looked again at Sally. “You used to do something at them games, too, didn’t you?”
“Drum majorette,” Sally said.
“Thought so. Used to throw that stick right out of the park there at the end, didn’t you?”
“The baton. Thank you for remembering.”
“There’s not so much going on here I’d have trouble remembering that,” Waiters said. “We ain’t had a ball club worth spit since them days anyhow. Play like a bunch of girls. No offense, ma’am.”
I laughed and waited for Waiters to go on his way but he made no move to leave. “Planned to look you up when I heard you was in town,” he said. “Since you’re here, maybe we could speak a bit.” He glanced at Sally and she got his meaning. A stone would have gotten his meaning.
“I’ll walk to the top of the hill,” she said. “There aren’t any snakes out here, are there?”
“Not any that’ll kill you,” Waiters said, his grin usable by a fiend.
“Marsh?” Sally said, her voice rising.
“It’s okay. I’ll come up there when we’re through.” I waited while she walked carefully up the hill, her eyes fixed on the ground as though it sprouted gold. When she was out of earshot I turned back to Waiters. He lifted his cap off his head and wiped his forehead on his sleeve and then replaced the cap. “That the lady you used to bring out here back when you was in school?” he asked suddenly.
“What?”
“You know. When you used to pull in here in that little Impala your daddy owned.”
“You mean you saw us?”
Waiters smiled. “Only way I knew it was ten o’clock. The brood mare and me, we got a big kick out of it.”
I scratched my head, amused at his reference to his wife, embarrassed at the ineptitude of my young scheming.
“We can go in the barn and set if you’d druther. Looks like you don’t get much sun doin’ whatever it is you do.”
“I’m okay,” I said. “What happened to the farmhouse, anyway? Looks like a bomb went off.”
Waiters shrugged. “Just blew up one night. Lightning, I reckon. Don’t know what else would of done it, other than a fallin’ star.”
I smiled. “My nephew Billy lives on the place, I heard.”
“Don’t know if he does or not. See him once in a while. He leaves me be and I return the favor.”
I nodded. “What’s on your mind then, Mr. Waiters?” I asked.
Waiters spat something into the weeds. “Well, sir, it’s like this. I own a hundred and eighty acres over yonder,” he said, pointing across the road, “with only a hundred and twenty tilled. Now, you know anything about grain farming in this part of the state, you know they ain’t many farmers that size still operating. All them abandoned farmhouses you see, like this one here, they was mostly owned by men with less than half a section under plow.”
“I know it’s tough to make it,” I said, not really knowing much of anything.
“When corn goes below three dollars and beans is less than six, like they is now and like they’ll stay so long as the politicos keep on the way they have, why the only way to make it work is with more acreage. Elsewise, be better off to burn the crop in the field.”
“And you’ve been making it work by what you got from your place plus farming this one on shares, is that right?”
“That’s right exactly. And you’ll sprout wings and fly before prices’ll get back to where they should, what with us canceling a bunch of the food stamps and pissing off the Communists and all.”
“The Communists?”
“Damn right. Those Reds can’t grow a crop any
more than they can yodel, so they got to buy from someone. Used to buy from us, gypping us in the process ’cause the folks in Washington are so damn dumb, but still we had a market. Now they go to Argentina and Canada, like we taught ’em to do during the embargo, and more and more men like me have to close the barn and move to town. Well, sir, it ain’t gonna happen to me. Not without a fight. And that’s what I wanted to say to you face to face. I got a hundred thousand worth of equipment to pay off, and ten thousand in fertilizer and almost as much in seed, and a note at the bank for more than you can count even with your shoes off, plus the brood mare and four kids still around home, though they’re old enough to be somewheres else, but it’s not gonna break me. Not if I can run my rig over here when I’m done workin’ my place. Can I tell you something, Mr. Tanner?”
“Sure.”
“When I started, this place of yours was all in corn. Yielded less than sixty bushels an acre in a good year. Well, I brought in some ammonia, and tried them herbicides till I found a pre-emergent that licked the pigweed and velvet leaf, and two years back I whipped the corn bores, too, and guess what my yield will be this year.”
“What?”
“Close to ninety. Not much for them slick-land places up north, but around here, hell, that’s a friggin’ bin buster.”
“I believe it.”
“You and your kin will make some money, too, you know. The deal’s half-and-half.”
“I know.”
“Okay. I ain’t beggin’ you, mister, but I’m tellin’ you the only way I can survive is by farming this place along with my own. I just hope you understand that. I also hope you know that the only way you’ll get me off here is at the point of a gun. And maybe not then if I see you coming.”
“I understand,” I said.
“Then I’ll leave you and the lady be.”
Without another word Waiters mounted his tractor and gunned the heavy engine and turned the rig around. Before he started out of the field he leaned out of the cab and shouted above the growling engine. “You ask around, you’ll hear that Delbert Waiters never lost a fight. You might remember that when you’re decidin’ what to do with this place. Wouldn’t want something bad to happen to anyone sent out here to drive me off. It’s a long way from help.”
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