by Dale Peck
I thought the guy who built your car was Donnie Arnold.
The father shakes his head.
I don’t even know anyone named Donnie Arnold. Donnie Budget, Dale. He built my car. Donnie Sutton worked for Uncle Wallace.
The girl watches their banter. They remind her of the twins, and she tries not to laugh. She closes the grill, takes another look at the car. Looks like a Lincoln to her.
The father sees her looking at the car.
Oh no, not that car, ma’am. That’s a Lincoln Town Car. I had a man named Donnie Badget rebuild me a 1931 Chevy street rod. Real pain in my ass but he did a nice job, pardon my language. Won a prize at every car show I’ve taken it to.
He grins then, easily, and she grins back at him. The way he calls her ma’am reminds her of her customers at the restaurant, the ones who start out calling her ma’am and end up calling her honey by the end of the meal and press their tip in her hand rather than leave it under a saucer. This is for you, honey, such men say, surrendering a few wrinkled singles as if they were gold coins. Don’t spend it all in one place.
Throughout his father’s speech the son has looked around the farm. He turns all the way around, takes in the dairy barn and barnyard across the road, the garden, the garage. He spends a particularly long time examining the house, as if appraising it. She can see his eye following the line of the eave, up and around each dormer, and as his eye passes over her own bedroom window she wonders if they’re just a pair of house hunters up from the city. If her grandfather were around he’d chase them away with a stick. But then she thinks, how would they know about Donnie?
Her eye is caught by the eaves again—the flaking paint, a gap where the gutter is coming unstuck from the side of the house—and then she realizes the father is holding out a picture.
There it is, at the Sedgwick County Car Show. That’s the Audience Favorite trophy next to it. That’s Sedgwick County Kansas, he adds.
She looks at the picture, but between the distance and the heat waves rising off the closed barbecue she can make out little more than a shiny blue blur. She really has to get lunch going.
She nods at the Lincoln again.
You drove all the way from Kansas? To find Donnie?
Well, actually we come down from Rochester. Every summer we have a family reunion at my uncle’s house, that’s my mother’s brother’s house up in Rochester, but this year Dale and I thought we’d come down here. Check out the old farm, see if we could track down any of my old acquaintances. Dale here actually thought Donnie was dead, but when we saw Flip Flack at the Greenville barbershop he told me Donnie worked for you, so I guess he was mistaken.
The girl smiles.
Well, he works for my father, but he’s been here so long he seems like family. He’s still going strong, she adds. I wish I had half his energy.
It’s a beautiful farm you have here, the father says, glancing around casually. Not like the son, who seems to study everything, but like someone who already knows what he is looking at. He looks back at her. It’s a hard life, dairy farming, but it’s a beautiful farm you have here.
For the first time the father’s words carry a hint of something other than history, a tinge of loss or maybe even regret, and despite her duties and distractions the girl’s curiosity is piqued. It occurs to her that she should shake their hands, but hers are covered with grease from the grill. She tries wiping one palm on the other but it doesn’t really help.
Christine said she sent you over to Walsh’s.
The men look at each other.
Walsh? the father says. I think she said Ives. Junior Ives?
On 81, the boy says now, about two miles east of Oak Hill?
That’s Junior Ives. I didn’t realize Donnie was there.
He wasn’t.
I think he’s at Walsh’s. It’s off 32, almost all the way to Cairo.
Now that they are talking directions, the son seems to be asserting himself.
Can you tell us how to get there?
The girl is about to, but then she sees the asparagus wrapped in her mother’s bandanna. The men have aroused her interest to say the least, but if she doesn’t get the skewers ready lunch will never be done on time. And she’s already messed up enough for one day.
It’s kind of hard to find if you don’t know the roads, she says, reaching for the asparagus. But he should be here in about an hour for lunch.
My father used to work with him, the son says then. On a farm over in Greenville.
Wallace Peck, the father says. Did you know him?
She shakes her head.
Well, yes, that was before you were born probably. Let’s see, Uncle Wallace died in seventy-five or seventy-six, what year did I marry Pam, Dale?
Seventy-six.
Okay then, so Uncle Wallace died the year I married Pam, so he died in seventy-six, so he probably died before you were born. He had a stroke, it was terrible to see.
I’m twenty-one, the girl says after what seems like a respectful pause. She suddenly realizes she is unwrapping and rewrapping the asparagus, and sets it down on the picnic table again. Donnie’s been here since I was about three. She glances at her watch. He should be here in about forty minutes.
Twenty years, the father says, and again his voice deepens with emotion. I bet he worked for Uncle Wallace for at least that long. Longer even. My God, twenty years.
The girl nods now, remembering. Her words tumble out of her mouth as she tries to speed the conversation along. I know he worked for someone just north of Greenville for a really long time. Wait, isn’t that how he got his house?
Well, my uncle left him a piece of land when he died. He left a piece to Donnie and a piece to my Aunt Bess and then I guess the rest of it he just let be sold off when he died. He was going to leave it to me once but that’s a whole other story. He had a stroke and he lingered for about a year I guess, never did recover his senses from what I understand, and then he died. I come up to see him once, it’s a terrible thing to see an active man struck down like that. The father pauses for a moment, then goes on. Well, then Dale here come up last year. He come up with his friend and he talked to Flip Flack who was my neighbor when I was a boy. Dale says Flip told him no one lived on the farm for a long time but then I guess a young couple bought just the house. They tore down the barn even, I guess they just wanted a place to live. I thought they cut down all the elms in the front yard too, but Flip Flack told me that was the Dutch elm disease. Said they were gone before Uncle Wallace actually, which if they were I don’t remember from my trip up here to see him. The father pauses, then shakes his head. Nope, I seem to remember them being there, six of them right in a row, hundred-year-old elm trees. But Flip said they cut em down in seventy-two, seventy-three. The father shrugs. I guess the land was still for sale when Dale was here last year, but we just come from there and there’s a house up on the hill at the top of the pasture now, right where I always wanted to put one. Yes, ma’am, the father says, whoever they are they’ve got the best view of the Catskill Mountains in the whole county, up there on that hill.
The girl nods again. She reaches for the asparagus.
Well, he should be here soon. Not even an hour. I’m sure he’d love to see you.
The son has a look on his face, like he is trying to say something nice and doesn’t know how—not to her, but to his father. He looks at her hands fiddle with the asparagus, and all at once he says,
Well, if you could maybe suggest a place to eat, we could go have lunch and then come back. We stopped by the kitchen in Oak Hill but it wasn’t open yet. Do you know of someplace else?
Something in his tone. It’s almost plaintive—almost like his father’s, when he’d talked about the farm. Her eyes fall to the tiny pile of asparagus in her hands. If nobody is greedy there’ll be enough to go around.
Well, why don’t you eat with us? she says. It’s just shish kebobs, but there’s plenty.
Oh, we don’t want to put you out, the boy
says.
The girl looks at the asparagus again, wrapped up in her mother’s blue bandanna like a gift and capped by the shiny diamond of her wedding ring. It’s as if all her preoccupations—all her history—are contained in that little tableau. She’s not sure if she should cook it or bronze it.
It’s no trouble, she says, suddenly wanting to do this thing. I’m already cooking, all I have to do is put a couple extra plates on the table.
I feel like we’re imposing—
Pipe down, Dale, the father says then. I haven’t been asked to lunch by a girl this pretty in thirty years.
You’ve only been married to Pam for twenty-five.
Oh right. The father laughs a little. Has it been that long? Sorry honey, he says then, but the girl can’t tell if he’s talking to her or to his absent wife.
The boy asks to use the bathroom as they go inside and she directs him to the WC and then leads his father into the kitchen, where he immediately goes to the far side of the table and sits down.
Pardon me honey, he says. I have a little gout in my left foot, it’s been acting up lately. He sits with his back against the window so he can watch her, his knees falling open, his stomach spilling between his thighs. With his thin white beard, he looks a bit like an off-season Santa.
Go right ahead, she says, puncturing the shrink-wrapped package of meat with a fingernail. Can I get you something to drink? Even as her nail pierces the plastic and drives a little into the top steak, she realizes she hasn’t washed her hands since she harvested the asparagus.
Well, thank you. I’ll take an ice tea with lemon if you have some. She can feel his eyes on her as she takes the meat to the sink, washes the dirt from it and her hands. When she glances at him out of the corner of her eye, the smile on his face is almost beatific.
Sure. Twins! she yells. I need you in here!
The son comes in from the bathroom, still with that slightly nervous look on his face. He hesitates in the door a moment, then makes his way to the table and sits opposite his father, turning the chair around to face her.
I love your house, he says.
Something funny about the way he says it. Wistful. Again she wonders if they just want to buy it, turn it into a weekend place. Sell off the cows, tear down the barns, parcel out the land to developers—do, she realizes, exactly what was done to the father’s uncle’s farm. But she’s too focused on the meat in front of her to give it more than a passing thought. She’s made kebobs a dozen times before, but it’s always been with her mother right there, not in a hospital drinking radioactive fluid. She shakes her head a little, focuses on what’s in front of her. How big should the pieces be? Should the chicken be the same size as the beef? Maybe it should be smaller, to make sure it cooks through?
It’s old, she says absently, the house. Then: Twins!
My Uncle Wallace had a old house too. They’re hard to keep up, these old houses. Uncle Wallace kept one whole half of his house closed off just to save on heat. The father laughs. You don’t need a plumber, do you?
The girl laughs too, even as she realizes the father must be a plumber.
No, I’m in Kansas now, the father is still saying. Been there for thirty years, don’t do that much repair work anymore. The real money’s in bigger jobs, I specialize in trenchless sewer line replacement myself. Are you familiar with that procedure?
The girl shakes her head.
I’m sorry, would you excuse me for a moment?
The girl goes to the living room, where the twins seem to have spread their collage materials over every available surface in the room and then abandoned the project. They sit side by side on the couch watching The Young and the Restless, the left side of Christine’s calf pressed into the right side of Carly’s as if they were Siamese twins, not just identical.
I need you in the kitchen, she says. Hello? Hello? Earth to Carly and Christine. I need some help getting lunch ready.
Christine looks up blankly.
What?
When Christine stirs, her calf flesh peels off Carly’s with the same sound the plastic wrap had made when the girl pulled it off the meat. There is an identical egg-shaped patch of red on each of their legs. The girl stares at the marks for a moment, loving her sisters fiercely, then rouses herself with a shake of the head.
Kitchen, she says. Now.
Kitchen, Carly says. Now. She blows her bangs off her forehead. I can’t wait till Mom gets home.
The girl hurries back into the kitchen. As she comes in, the son is registering the four corners of the room as if he is measuring it, taking stock of the crooked cabinets and warped floors, the mismatched chairs that crowd the table. The father sits with one arm resting on the table, smiling so pleasantly into the distance that she doesn’t want to disturb him She pauses in the doorway.
Sorry, she says then, then comes the rest of the way into the room. Sometimes it’s like pulling teeth with those two. You were saying something about pipes?
The father nods, his smile widening so much when he looks at her that she almost blushes.
Trenchless sewer line replacement. Are you familiar with that?
She shakes her head, picks up her knife, starts cutting the meat. She decides she’ll cut the chicken and beef the same or else someone will complain they got gypped.
Well, with traditional sewer line replacement you have to get out there with a backhoe and trencher and rip up the customer’s lawn in order to get the old line out.
Christine and Carly finally trundle into the kitchen, then stop when they realize there are strangers in the room.
These are my sisters, the girl says. She points with the gristly knife. Christine, Carly.
Hello there, the father says. I’m Dale Peck. This is my son, Dale Jr.
The son stands to shake the twins’ hands. Christine almost giggles. Then he turns to the girl.
We never introduced ourselves actually.
We didn’t? the girl says, and then she gets it. Oh right. I’m Gloria. Gloria Hull.
Dale, he says.
He holds out his hand but the girl just waves her greasy fingers at him.
Carly, would you see if there’s some ice tea for lunch? Christine, I need you to cut onions.
Onions!
The son sits down again, slumping just a little, then sitting unnaturally erect.
Carly pulls open the fridge.
There’s no ice tea.
Well, make some, dummy. Yes, Christine, onions. Wedges, for kebobs. Oh, wait. First go see if there are any green peppers in the garden. I think I saw some yesterday.
Christine sighs dramatically, then trots down the side hall. Carly looks at the two men at the table, then up at the girl.
What should I make the ice tea in?
The fish tank, the girl says. A pitcher, duh.
I just thought—She looks at the men again.
You can always make more. Come on now, get a move on. Donnie and the boy’ll be here in half an hour.
Carly bangs cabinet doors as she rummages up a pitcher, a spoon, the ice tea mix.
So like I was saying, the father says over the noise. When you replace your sewer line the old-fashioned way you have to dig up the old line, completely destroy your lawn, driveway, utilities, whatever’s in the way.
The girl nods. My fiancé’s grandmother had to do hers last year. It was a mess. She had a beautiful blue spruce in her front yard, the roots got so damaged Justin had to cut it down. Justin’s my fiancé, she adds, and smiles.
I saw the ring, the son says, and the girl is about to hold it out to him when the father says,
Exactly. But with trenchless sewer line replacement, he continues, even as his son makes a sorry-for-the-spiel face, my men just dig one small hole at the beginning of your sewer line and another hole at the end, and then they pull a new pipe through the existing tunnel. You can pull it under anything, lawns, trees, swimming pools, garages, without disturbing what’s on top. With my equipment I can even send a camera
down the line, video the whole thing, show you exactly where the blockage is and how my drill bit is going to bore through it. Yes, ma’am. Plumbing’s coming into the future just like everything else.
For a moment the girl finds herself imagining it. The incision, the drillhead inching down the tunnel like a mole and flashing blurry pictures on a TV. She imagines it is not unlike what they are doing to her mother right now.
The father is still talking.
Now, you’ve got this rocky Upstate soil here, don’t you?
Hmmm? Oh, yes. Full of rocks. Stir it, Carly, don’t break the pitcher.
I know it. I know this land. My Uncle Wallace’s farm had that same soil. Backbreaking work just clearing a garden or laying a fence. He smiles again. Yeah, I’d have to charge you a bit extra for wear and tear on my drill heads, but I’d give you a good price. When I was finished you’d have a sewer line guaranteed for the life of the house and you’d never even know we’d been here. So when do I start?
She catches the son’s eye then, realizes he is as afraid as she is that his father is serious, but then the older man laughs.
Damn, I almost sold myself.
The father is still chuckling when Christine comes back in.
Peppers, she says, dumping them on the counter and then just standing there. Two green ones, one red.
You know how to use a knife, don’t you? Come on, you’ve helped me make kebobs before.
Who wants ice tea? Carly says.
I will, thank you, dear, the father says. Dale, want some ice tea?
No thanks.
Oh, that’s right. You never did like ice tea. Too Kansas for you. Too country. My son’s a city boy himself. Lives down in New York City, works as a writer.
The girl tries to smile as she cranks a can opener into the sliced pineapple.
My older brother lives down there. You’d think I’d go more often, but I never do. He wants lemon in that, Carly, I think there’s a bottle in the fridge.
Ah, the son shrugs, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
My son’s a very famous writer, the father says now. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. Dale Peck. Tell her the names of your books, Dale.