by Dale Peck
His uncle’s handkerchief is too wet to do any good but he uses it anyway, and after he’s swiped at his forehead he holds it in his hands.
Well listen. You know how your dad wasn’t the first man your ma was married to? Duke and Jimmy?
Ma wasn’t married before she was married to Dad. Dad says that makes Duke and Jimmy bastards.
Right. Well, your dad was married before he married your ma. He was married to a girl named Nancy Mitford. He married her right out of high school, was with her a good six, seven years before she left him.
If his uncle had told him to get to work he would have. But he doesn’t. He just stands there wringing the handkerchief in his hands. The boy wishes his uncle would tell him to get to work but he doesn’t, and so he says, Dad says Duke and Jimmy are double bastards because they don’t even have the same old man. Jimmy’s last name is Dundas just like Grandma and Grandpa but Duke’s last name is Enlow. We don’t even know anybody named Enlow.
Mitford, Dale. Your dad’s first wife was Nancy Mitford.
Dad says Ma ain’t nothing but a whore.
Don’t you talk about your ma that way, unless you want me to wash your mouth out with lye.
The shovel is shaking in the boy’s hands. He has to drop it to the ground for fear he will strike his uncle with it.
And?
His uncle catches his breath before replying, one hand reaching for the diggers in the hole.
What do you mean, Dale?
You said and. You said Dad lost the farm and Nancy and. And what?
His uncle shakes his head.
It’s not important. Nancy’s long gone, your dad’s built a life with your ma now.
You said and, Uncle Wallace. You said it.
His uncle shakes his head. The boy remembers how his uncle had shaken his head at the old man when they first came to the farm. That shake had meant no but this shake means something else. His uncle lets go of the diggers, reaches instead for his handkerchief. He starts to wipe his forehead with the back of his hand, then stops when he sees the boy holding out the napkin that has been in his front pocket all day.
You said and, Uncle Wallace.
His uncle takes the napkin, wipes his forehead, eyes.
They had a son, Dale, he says. Lloyd and Nancy had one son. There is still something incomplete about this information, and the boy waits until his uncle puts the napkin in his pocket and says, Named Dale.
The boy doesn’t understand at first.
You mean I’m—
No, no, you’re Ethel’s son all right. But there was another Dale before you. Another Dale Peck. Nancy took him away with her when she left and when you was born your father give you the same name.
All of a sudden the boy is out of breath. He feels like he has carried two full milk pails the length of the alley, only to discover the vat is missing from the vat room, and the barn missing when he turns around. Shaking with his burden, all he can do is nod at his uncle, and then he takes his shovel and goes to help Donnie dig out the old posts, and the work is so exhausting, the wet earth so heavy and full of stones, that he barely has time to think of this other Dale, the first one. The old man’s firstborn son.
Most of the old posts are so rotted that their trunks can be twisted off by hand, but his uncle wants each post’s root dug up and the hole filled in so that one of the ladies doesn’t break a leg on her way to the barn. The boy goes at it methodically, driving his shovel through the root and grinding the fibrous wood to bits, then shoveling dirt into the holes and tamping it down with his bare feet to make sure the earth is packed solid until at one point Donnie calls out, It ain’t a cemetery, Amos. Pick up the pace a little, it’s after six.
In the silence after he speaks the boy can hear the lows of the ladies on the other side of the barn and the house and 38. It’s another half hour before all the old posts are out of the ground, and even as the boy lets the shovel fall from hands almost as blistered as his feet his uncle is putting a pair of pliers into them.
Gotta get the wire off the posts.
The boy and his uncle work at opposite ends of the barnyard fence, Donnie in the middle; and so it is Donnie who an hour later says to the boy, Aw Jesus Christ, Amos, I don’t believe it.
The boy ignores him. He opens the pliers wide and closes the sharp metal shears at the back of the pliers’ jaws over the wire right next to the staple. He squeezes and twists and just as the wire snaps Donnie slaps the pliers out of his hand. They skitter into the mud and disappear like his apple three hours ago.
What the hell do you think you’re doing Amos?
The boy launches himself at Donnie’s waist. Donnie grabs him by his shirt and belt and throws him backward and the boy lands on his bottom in the mud, feels some of it spill like thick cold water into his drawers. He is scrambling for a second lunge when his uncle says,
All right, all right, what’s going on here?
Will you look at this, Wallace. Amos cut the wire off the posts, it’s in pieces. It’s ruined.
The boy bites his tongue because this is indeed what’s he done, and as soon as Donnie says it aloud he senses he’s done something wrong.
That right, Dale?
Wasn’t that what I was supposed to do?
Jesus, Amos. Donnie reaches a hand into his breast pocket and pulls out a handful of rusty bent staples, which he throws into the mud. You were supposed to pull the staples off the old posts and leave the wire whole so we could restring it on the new ones. We’re gonna have to buy a whole new roll of wire now.
The logic of Donnie’s argument shames the boy—and the fact that it comes from Donnie’s mouth makes it that much worse. How could he have been so stupid? He watches mute as his uncle digs into the same pocket that had produced his quarters earlier in the day. Now he pulls out a few wrinkled bills and hands them to Donnie and his voice seems to sink into the mud like the pliers.
Best see if there’s anything in the milk can. I’d just as soon not put this on credit.
The milk can is in the vat room. It contains the change their neighbors leave for a quart or two of fresh milk. It is his uncle’s equivalent of the shoe fund: he uses it for incidentals, spare parts for the milking machine, patches for a leaky tire, chicken feed, and occasionally he takes a quarter from it to buy the butterscotch candies he likes to suck on in the afternoons.
Milk can’s empty, Donnie says. I used it yesterday to gas up the tractor.
His uncle frowns. He takes the napkin from his pocket but it is nothing more than a wet ball, and he throws it on the ground. The boy stares at the white spot on the dark earth because he finds it hard to look at his uncle. He would like to crawl under the mud himself. But how can he be expected to know about moving fence when he doesn’t even know the old man was married before he was married to his mother? That there is an earlier incarnation of him out there somewhere—a first try, perhaps even a better one. Someone who knows how to take down a fence without cutting the wires like they were so many lengths of spaghetti.
He has to clear his throat before the words will come.
You can use my shoe fund, Uncle Wallace.
His uncle looks down at him with a funny expression on his face. He has seen the first Dale, and the boy wonders if he is comparing them in his head. Wonders how he measures up.
That’s all right, Dale. I’ll charge it, pay it off next time we pump the vat.
No, Uncle Wallace, it’s my fault, I want to pay for it.
His uncle shakes his head then, but he is pointing to the house.
Go on then. But hurry it up so Donnie can make it to the supply store before it closes.
It takes Donnie an hour to return with the wire. During that time there is nothing to do but gather up the staples, the ones the boy left on the old fenceposts and the ones Donnie threw on the ground, and try to ignore the confused lowing of the ladies across the road. As the boy works the sun sets behind the same hill the old man had driven over the day he left him here, an
d the boy lets himself imagine the red spots of the taillights glowing like an animal’s eyes even though there had been no taillights left on the truck by then, and from there it is easy to imagine that the old man wasn’t driving back to Brentwood but instead to retrieve his other son. His firstborn. The first Dale Peck. The ladies’ calls float up the hill, gaining volume and depth until they seem to roll over him like snowballs in reverse, chilling his skin inside his clothes—Duke’s clothes, Jimmy’s clothes. He roots around in the mud with his bare feet until he finds the pliers and washes them off in the trough. He washes his face too, to soothe the burning in his cheeks and forehead, and when he sees his dim reflection in the rippled water of the trough he has to wonder if this, too, belonged to someone else before it belonged to him.
He hears his uncle’s voice behind him.
Don’t let him get under your skin, Dale. He’s just frustrated because he ain’t got nothing of his own.
It takes the boy a moment before he realizes his uncle is referring to Donnie. He takes a last look at his face, then swats at the flecks of mud on his chest and the clots on the seat of his pants, and even though he knows he shouldn’t he says,
Neither do I, Uncle Wallace.
His uncle doesn’t say anything so the boy keeps going.
I’ll pack my things as soon as we’re done here. He stares at his uncle’s muddy thighs. I guess Ma was right. I guess military school’s the only place for me.
His uncle’s legs stiffen in their muddy sheaths, and when his knees bend the mud cracks like the crust on a loaf of bread. He brings his green eyes level with the boy’s.
You’re not going nowhere. Anybody can make a mistake but there’s no place for self-pity on this farm. His uncle’s voice softens. I’ll get you those shoes, Dale. Next time we pump the vat I’ll drive you straight to town and buy you a pair of brand-new shoes.
The boy nods his head, unable to meet the watery intensity of his uncle’s eyes, so like the old man’s. He doesn’t understand how defeat has been rendered victory—cannot wrap his head around the mitigating factor that is his uncle’s love—and so he mistrusts his reprieve, and when Donnie gets back the boy launches himself into the rewiring of the fence to demonstrate his worth to the farm, prove he can earn his keep. The three of them rewire the fence by lantern light, and then, with Donnie helping, it only takes an hour to get the milking done. Even though the boy hurries it’s Donnie who ends up milking the sixty-first cow, and he tells the boy he’ll have to find something else to pull on tonight, and aims one of the teats in his hand at the boy and squirts his foot with a jet of warm milk.
It’s nearly eleven by the time they head in for dinner. The arc of the Milky Way bands the blue-black sky like a spray of water shot from a hose and the dew on the grass washes the mud off the boy’s feet as they walk down the hill. The dew is cold but it stings the blisters on his feet. At the bottom of the hill the little L-shaped house is dark save for the kitchen window, a square of light cut into the wall, a trapezoid where the light angles away on the ground. Dew-wet pebbles glint in the light.
Have to pick up those wire pieces in the morning, his uncle says as he pulls open the door.
Yeah, Amos. Maybe you can make yourself a pair of shoes. Steel toe, Donnie says, and the boy feels Donnie’s boot on his wet butt.
The boy doesn’t answer, just picks up Jimmy’s boots by their laces and lets them thump together to knock the dirt off them. The left one is still wet from being thrown into the ditch, and the boy winces in anticipation of sticking his blistered foot into the stiff leather six hours from now.
Inside, Aunt Bessie is looking at the Reader’s Digest at the table. There is a big pot of something on the stove and the empty can that had contained his shoe fund is missing from the counter. He looks around until he sees it by the door to the hall, right next to a pair of boots he doesn’t recognize. The boots are black and broken in but not worn out, and it looks like someone has run a brush over them to bring up the shine.
Kenny Flack came by while you were out in the fields, Aunt Bessie says, ladling what looks like beef stew into Uncle Wallace’s bowl. Said he thought they might fit you. Said it’d be another couple of years before Flip grew into them and they were just taking up space in his closet.
The boy nods his head, sits down at the table. Kenny Flack, Flip. The names bounce between his ears but his brain is blistered as his hands and feet, too tired to run after them and pin them to their proper faces. And anyway, the boy finds it easier to think of them as empty—easier to think they can be swatted away like flies when they buzz too close to his ears. Kenny Flack. Flip. The words flit through his head, as untenanted as the name Dale Peck has become since his uncle told him he inherited it from another boy.
His old boots are still in his hands and he starts to put them in his lap, then puts them under his chair. He looks at the new boots by the door, the empty can next to them, and then at the empty bowl in front of him, and when Aunt Bessie’s ladle interposes itself between his eyes and his bowl and empties its contents into the bowl he picks up his spoon, and as they eat Donnie tells Aunt Bessie how the boy cut up the fence wire and had to spend his shoe fund on a new roll.
Looks like Kenny Flack knew just what was going on out there.
The boy’s uncle doesn’t say anything during the meal, doesn’t mention the other farm, the first farm and the first wife and first child that went with it, the first Dale Peck, but it is all the boy’s tired brain can think about, and as soon as he’s finished eating he excuses himself and starts toward the stairs.
Don’t forget your boots.
The boy turns toward his chair, but Aunt Bessie is pointing to the door. She has an innocent smile on her face, and when the boy doesn’t move her smile hardens slightly. She glances down at Kenny Flack’s boots, back up at him. They’re just shoes to her, a neighborly gesture, brotherly love, and the boy looks at them, sitting next to the empty can with their laces tucked neatly inside their hollow ankles. They’re a solid simple thing, but so was his life until a few hours ago. Now the boots seem more substantial than he is, but even so the boy is afraid to claim them, lest they too turn out to be an illusion.
Donnie and his uncle are looking at him now, Aunt Bessie sitting there with her spoon in her right hand and her paper napkin unfolded in her lap, creased into four panes like a curtained window. Under their collective gaze the boy can do nothing but pick up the new boots and turn toward the stairs. They’re a hand-me-down just like his other clothes, his name, his face even, but they’re also all he has, and he cradles them in his arms like a baby, and carries them up to his empty room.
4
The day after they restring the fence the boy steps off the bus in the shoes Kenny Flack has given him and sees a car parked in the driveway of his uncle’s house. Neither boy had said anything about the shoes that day, but when he ran into Kenny at lunch the older boy had introduced him to his friends. This is the boy who beat Billy Van Dyke in the four hundred yesterday, Kenny told his friends. He talks funny but he’s all right.
The car is a late-model Buick, its creamy underside separated from its red roof by a wide chrome dart, its polish unflecked by age or mud. It is all angles and lines next to his uncle’s bulbous black ’48 Ford, but all the boy thinks is, Town car.
The Buick turns out to belong to Mr. Baldwin, the gym teacher, a fussy man who wears brightly colored ties with his short-sleeved white shirts. He sits with his uncle and Donnie Badget at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in front of him, and as soon as the boy walks in his uncle says, Ernie here says you threw your shoes at him yesterday. Like to knock out his front teeth, Ernie says.
The boy sees Donnie looking between him and Mr. Baldwin, and his gaze seems to link them together, as if the boy is as much a townie as this teacher with the creases ironed into his shirt-sleeves.
Says you want to run track and field, the boy’s uncle says now, and Donnie shakes his head and looks down into his cup of coff
ee.
That’s not true, Uncle Wallace. He asked me and I said I had chores to do after school. I said I wouldn’t have time for his stupid track team.
His uncle nods his head, his lips pursed as if he is considering a business proposition. Donnie’s shoulders are shaking and the boy thinks he is laughing into his cup.
It’s true you do have your chores, his uncle says thoughtfully. But Ernie here makes the case that a boy should have a sport, especially one he’s good at. He looks up at the boy. I told him you could have an hour after school plus time off for meets. How’s that sound?
The boy looks back and forth between Mr. Baldwin and his uncle while Donnie stares at him with an inscrutable smirk on his face.
But there’s a uniform. Shorts, a tank top. He looks down at his new boots. And sneakers.
Mr. Baldwin covers his mouth with his hand when he coughs.
The school would provide those, of course. If he letters he’ll have to buy his own letter jacket, but we’ll get him started with the uniform. And shoes, as long as he doesn’t throw them at me. He smiles at his uncle. I think he shows a lot of potential.
Again, his uncle nods his head.
Thought that about him myself. I still do.
As he is getting into his car and the boy is about to head up to the dairy barn, Mr. Baldwin says, Nice herd of cattle you have here, and it takes the boy a moment to realize he is talking to him.
They’re not cattle. They’re cows.
Cattle are food, his uncle explains, already heading to the barn.
Donnie knocks against the boy’s shoulder as he walks past him up the hill. Played football myself, he says without stopping. When I was a kid. Always thought track was a bit of a sissy sport myself.
The boy doesn’t say anything, just starts to run past Donnie up to the barn, but his uncle’s voice stops him.
Donnie and me’ll get the ladies. You best go find that wire you clipped up last night. Gather it up before one-a the ladies pokes an eye out.
By then Donnie’s caught up with him, and he bumps the boy’s shoulder again as he saunters past.