Local Knowledge

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  So I decided that there was something a little feminine about him, with his finely chiseled features and delicate hands. I concluded that he was actually too handsome for his own good: those startling blue eyes, the ridiculously long lashes, that wide, ironic grin. In fact, he was really not at all my type. I prided myself that I was just about the only girl in the school who didn’t make a fool of herself over Luke Barnett, who didn’t squeal with delight when he’d cross the finish line in first place, race after race. Though as a tough, competitive runner, he helped lead our usually hapless team into the interleague semifinals that season.

  That was the same year my plump obscurity metamorphosed into a generous reapportioning of flesh, a sudden rise of curves, a flow of limbs and hair and obliviousness that made me, for a year or two at least, a beauty. Or so I was told, because I could never really see it myself, except in the frank leering of boys or the sideways measuring looks from girls. I think sometimes that it was Howell Barnett who first caught a glimpse of it and who—with an ambiguous smile that remains in my memory—helped loose some pent-up urge within me to shrug off my parents’ confining expectations, to push free, to emerge as something wholly other than anyone, least of all myself, expected.

  Everyone we knew back then seemed to be struggling financially. The dairy industry, once the backbone of our local economy, had turned to larger, more mechanized farm machinery, not adaptable to our hilly terrain, and the bulk of that business was slowly moving northward to the big cooperatives upstate. One spring, a freak blizzard in early May froze the delicate blossoms in fragrant bloom, wiping out an entire apple and pear crop and forcing Powell’s Orchard, a third-generation concern and the largest in the county, to shut down. Like any impending death, no one wanted to face it, or to call it by its real name. And because the attrition was gradual, it was possible to pretend that the slow periods in the store were seasonal, that the FOR sALE signs dotting our back roads had sprouted up as arbitrarily as mushrooms in the thick summer heat and would disappear just as suddenly with the first real frost.

  “Dandridge Alden’s last check bounced,” my mother, who handled the store’s accounts from our kitchen table, told my father one night over dinner. It was early September, the year after Howell Barnett died, and I was too immersed in my own preoccupations to understand the gravity of her statement. At that point the Alden Dairy still had a herd of several hundred Holsteins and a primarily local distribution. A glass quart bottle of their 100% homogenized milk with its cartoon logo of a smiling green cow sat on the dining room table at that very moment beside the paper-napkin rack.

  “Not like him,” my father said, looking over at my mom and frowning. “He’s always been such a stickler.”

  “I’ll call them tomorrow and straighten things out. But I thought you should know. They’ll be putting in their winter feed order soon.”

  “Right.”

  “You don’t want to lose him to the True Value like you did with the Thornsteins.”

  “And I don’t want to lose the shirt off my back handing out credit right and left either!”

  “Well, it may be one or—”

  They both appeared to realize at the same moment that I was there, listening, my gaze moving back and forth between them as they conducted one of their increasingly frequent arguments. I could remember years during my childhood when their voices never seemed to rise above a murmur. Now I was being treated to these sudden blowups several times a month, and, frankly, found this hothouse atmosphere a lot more interesting.

  “County fair starts Saturday,” my father said, taking me in with his welcoming gaze. So much else about him appeared tired and gray to me, prematurely aged, but his eyes belied his seeming passivity. My mother and I, at least up until then, were God’s proof to him that the world indeed had some good in it. And though he was generally terse and unbending, I never once doubted his deep, almost religious love for us. He was a man, hating all forms of confrontation, about to be forced into the fight of his life. I’m not sure how thoroughly he grasped what was happening, how the darkening heavens crested above us like a tidal wave. “Want to help me canvass with our circulars?”

  He put this to me as though he were offering me a treat, and for many years it had seemed that way to me as I proudly accompanied him from booth to booth, passing out Heinrich Hardware promotional flyers. Now, though, it wasn’t just that I’d reached that age when the thought of tagging along beside him across the very public fairgrounds made me queasy with embarrassment. That summer, I’d started spending more and more time with Ruthie Genzlinger, whose older brother Kenny had just received his driver’s license and who could occasionally be pressured into driving us down to Northridge, where the high schoolers congregated in the parking lot behind Letham’s Pharmacy. Though I’d been falling in love on a regular basis since I was ten or so, my passion for Kenny occupied me in an entirely new and obsessive way. His wavy black hair, the slightly close-set dark eyes, his eager bark of a laugh, even his horsey teeth with the buckling incisors—every piece of him was precious to me, jewels that I hoarded and sorted through again and again behind the locked door of my imagination.

  “I already promised Ruthie I’d go with her.” I’d been yearning for the moment when I could sit in the cab of the Genzlingers’ wheezing pickup with just the gearbox separating me from my own true love. To be denied this seemed heartless and cruel. Something of my desperation must have come through in my voice.

  “Can’t you hook up with Ruthie after you’ve given your father a hand?” my mother asked.

  “I don’t want to force anybody,” he said, getting up from the table. I saw how the cords on the back of his neck stuck out when he leaned over the sink. I sensed even then how difficult my growing up and away from him was going to be. My parents’ mistake was in wanting nothing more from me other than being alive. Being theirs. I was taller than either one of them by that point. This precious gift, left on the doorstep of their middle age, taking on size and shape, becoming human, secretive and judgmental. I think they were both silently afraid that if they made too many demands or imposed discipline too strictly, I might very well be whisked away again. My birth had made them believe in the unfathomable workings of fate, if nothing else, and it resulted in them being overly diffident and accepting. I loved them, yes, but that wellspring was already tainted by a confusing sense of my own power over them.

  “No, I’ll help,” I conceded. “But I did promise Ruthie. So I’ll meet up with Dad there, if that’s okay.”

  There were more rides that year. More booths selling grinders and funnel cakes, corn dogs and cotton candy. There was a three-story Ferris wheel and a crazy-eight roller coaster. The atmosphere was different, too, more carnival than fair. Though fewer than in previous years, there were still stalls of animals, and the large 4-H exhibit tent, but the bleachers in the judging arena were nearly empty, and the farmer leading his prize pig around the rink appeared to be embarrassed and maybe a little angry by the lack of attention. He was red-faced, muttering under his breath at the large, slow-moving sow.

  “Guy looks just like his porker,” Kenny said. Ruthie had gone off to buy us a roll of tickets, and, as I leaned against the fence next to Kenny watching the proceedings, I was reveling in my moments alone with him. I laughed at his comment, delighted that he had deigned to address me, though I hadn’t put much thought into what he’d actually said. Encouraged, I suppose, by my reaction, he cried, “Oink, oink, oink!”

  I looked up at him, the hands cupping his mouth, the large wrists shooting free of the too-short sleeves of his jean jacket, the close-set eyes squinting in the sunlight, and I felt my adoration, like a trick of the heat on macadam, puddle and waver.

  “Oink, oink, oink!”

  “What are you doing?” I heard someone say behind us, and I turned around to see who it was. I knew Paul Alden, of course. He was in Kenny’s class, two years ahead of me in school. They were both seniors, therefore rarified creatures, whose d
aily lives and deeper aspirations I could only guess at. Like every class, the seniors had their own finely calibrated pecking order, and though I believed fiercely in Kenny’s perfection, I was aware that Paul ranked far above him in social status. Paul was a natural athlete, one of the school’s few real stars, and a double threat: a hard-charging fullback in the fall and a slugging left fielder in the spring. He was part of the big, rowdy Alden family. The Alden family, who always seemed to travel in a pack, surrounded by a posse of acolytes and girlfriends, lesser beings who fed off their good-natured hosts. Kenny, on the other hand, was pretty much a loner. He spent his afternoons rebuilding car engines in the Genzlingers’ collapsing horse barn.

  “Hey. We were just joking around,” Kenny said, stepping back from the fence and facing Paul. If I was startled that he’d included me in his questionable behavior, I was proud that he seemed willing to defend himself against Paul, who had at least twenty pounds on him. There was something else in his stance that I didn’t understand until later on.

  “Okay,” Paul said, looking past Kenny to me.

  “Hey there,” Ruthie said, flushing with pleasure when she saw who had joined us. “I got thirty tickets. Why don’t you come along, Paul?”

  “Sorry. I got to go help out with the hayride. My dad’s running it this year.”

  “Oh, great!” Ruthie said, walking beside Paul as we all moved off toward the crowded north end of the fairgrounds, with its flashing colored lights and the jangly music of the merry-go-round. “We’ll come by there later.”

  I’m not sure at what point we stopped being a threesome, when it was that Ruthie drifted away and I found myself being strapped into a seat on the Ferris wheel, thigh to thigh with Kenny Genzlinger. We rose up into the bright fall afternoon, above the barbecue smoke and the clanging of bells, the bouquets of helium balloons and menageries of cheap stuffed animals, higher and higher into the rocking, deepening blue until, alone at the top, Kenny kissed me, his breath full of onions and his tongue a slippery frog that made me gag.

  “Ruthie says she thinks you like me.”

  “I never told her that.”

  “Well, I like you, Maddie. I think you have the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen.”

  Ah, Kenny! If only he knew how often in my daydreams about him I’d put those very words in his mouth. But now they meant nothing to me. My love for him had turned to a lump in my throat. I’d claimed my prize, but it was like winning some huge stuffed panda with plastic button eyes. I felt weighed down by disappointment and shame. He made a grab for my hand as we disembarked, but I shook it free.

  “My dad,” I said. “I should find him. I told you I promised him …”

  “Meet us at the hayride at six!” he called after me as I disappeared into the crowd.

  I found my father talking to a John Deere sales representative, who was pointing out the finer features of one of the ten or so tractors they had arranged around their booth, one of the largest at the fair, hung with red, white, and blue bunting and snapping with American flags. We had eight acres climbing up the hill behind our house. A few generations back, they had been farmed. Two fields were still cleared and open, though covered in meadowsweet and goldenrod, their boundaries marked by jagged stone walls. We had a busy coop of chickens and a family of nasty geese, but I know it was my father’s secret dream to get that land back under the plow. Farming was in the blood of many of the men I grew up with, the same way the sea calls to fishermen, I suppose.

  “Here’s my girl,” Dad said as I came up, clasping his hands behind him and rocking backward on his heels. We rarely touched and never kissed, but I knew how to read his pleasure in seeing me, in my keeping a promise, however belatedly. “Mr. Schnarr here was just showing me their new PowerTrack model.”

  “Give it some thought, John,” the man said, stepping back and sideways so that my father wouldn’t notice the way his gaze slid down my body.

  “Sure thing, but it probably won’t be this year,” Dad said, as we turned away. “Having a good time? Do you want something to eat?”

  “Ruthie and I had a grinder. Where are the flyers, Dad?”

  “Oh, I passed some out. Different kind of crowd this year, though. Not really our customer base, anymore, I’d say.”

  We walked side by side down the midway, jostled by the growing crowds that were lining up at the food booths for an early dinner. The air was thick with the smell of deep-fat fryers and burning onions, and a sickly sweet crosscurrent of honey-roasted nuts. The sky was turning pink above the whirling rush and whoop of the rides. The path was sodden, flecked with discarded ticket stubs and other trash. I hadn’t wanted to be seen with my father earlier that day. Now I longed to tuck my fingers into the crook of his elbow the way my mother did when they walked into church. I was suddenly afraid of losing him. My heart had shrunk back down to a normal size over the course of the afternoon, and I’d come to realize that he was all I really understood about love.

  The midway ended at an open field where stacks of hay bales formed a low platform, the staging area for the hayride. I could see the crowded wagon moving across the far edge of the field, being pulled by two plodding drays. My father joined the group of men who were gathered by an empty second wagon: Paul’s father, Dandridge Alden; and Paul’s brothers, Ethan and Bob; and two other men I didn’t know. Except for Bob, who was a class below me in school, they were all smoking in a tense, concentrated way.

  “When?” my father asked as I came up behind him.

  “… we had her on the respirator … ,” Ethan was telling one of the other men.

  “My boy’s in the EMS now,” Mr. Alden told my father. “They got the call around three or so, right, son?”

  “Yessir,” Ethan replied. “The kid called it in. Luke. Thought she was dead this time, I think. Sat up front with me in the cab. A real cool customer.”

  “Well, he’s been through a lot,” my father said.

  “You can say that again,” Mr. Alden replied, grinding his cigarette out under his boot. “Ethan gave him a lift back here. I asked him if he wanted to stay with us tonight, but he said he was fine.”

  “They pumped her stomach,” Ethan was saying. “I heard it wasn’t the first time.”

  “Don’t repeat rumors, son,” Mr. Alden told Ethan.

  Our little group fell silent as the wagon approached. It was one of the Aldens’ old rigs, a rickety affair swaying now under the weight of hay bales and paying customers. Ruthie was standing up in the back, chatting eagerly away at Paul, who sat slouched on the buckboard, the reins loose in his hands. Luke was next to him, an upright figure who, by his very stillness, stood out against the tumult and clamor of the fairgrounds, the lights brightening behind them as the evening came on. I believe it was the first time I saw them together, though I learned later on that they had been close for several months by this time. I’ve always had a hard time understanding what drew them together in the first place. They seemed so very different, even then.

  6

  “We’re all going back to my house to watch the game, do you want to come?” Paul asked, leaning over and glancing from Kenny behind the wheel to where I sat curled up against the passenger door in the front seat of the pickup. Kenny and I had begun to vaguely “see” each other, the way Paul and Ruthie were doing, though I’d long since recovered my perspective on the gawky, beak-nosed boy beside me. Kenny, on the other hand, was “totally gone” on me, according to Ruthie. He treated me with an almost laughable respect and seriousness, holding open doors for me, presenting me with a tacky velvet-covered heart-shaped Whitman’s Sampler, pushing the heat up full blast on the dashboard, as if I were some fragile, hothouse orchid. He obviously had no prior experience at dating and, I feared, was getting his tips on how to handle matters from his grandfather, Hans Genzlinger, the only other adult male in his household. Fortunately for me, old Mr. Genzlinger’s romantic bag of tricks was about half a century out of date. Kenny never again tried to kiss me, the way he
had on the Ferris wheel, and was generally too ill at ease in my company to engage in much conversation. So we did what Kenny was most comfortable doing; we drove around in his pickup, listening to Top 40 music on the radio.

  “Sure. Thanks. I mean, is that okay with you?” Kenny asked, turning to me. I saw Paul smile at Kenny’s tone. I knew Ruthie well enough at this point to guess that she was dishing her own brother to Paul, making fun of his puppylike adoration for me. It made me feel angry and protective. It was Ruthie, after all, who’d put poor Kenny in this pathetic position. If she hadn’t told him about what I considered my secret crush, he’d be back fiddling around under car hoods, where, at this point in his life anyway, he belonged.

  “Only if you want to, Kenny,” I replied.

  We followed Paul back to his house, his old VW wagon packed with his usual entourage of friends and hangers-on, including Ruthie and Luke. Everyone knew that Mrs. Barnett had been transferred to a mental institution in Albany, where she’d be staying for several weeks, and that Luke had turned down the Aldens’ invitation to move in with them for the duration. But I’d learned from Ruthie that Luke was still spending a lot of time at the house, occasionally sleeping over in the unfinished attic, where, in a youthful male chaos so extreme Mrs. Alden had long since refused to clean it, the three Alden boys resided.

  “He might as well be living there,” Ruthie confided in one of the many heart-to-hearts she insisted on having with me. But the sorrier I felt for Kenny, the less I found myself being able to abide his sister, especially her need to share with me every little thing that transpired between her and Paul. I knew all about the three times they’d made out in the back of his VW, and though he’d made no attempt to go any further than that, Ruthie was already considering the pros and cons of various contraceptives. From what I could judge of their relationship, Paul seemed more to be putting up with, than pursuing, Ruthie. It was she who was attaching herself to him, waiting for him after football practice, setting up situations where they would meet—like that afternoon in the parking lot behind Letham’s. She needed Kenny to drive her to these assignations, and because this generally allowed Kenny a chance to be with me, he was always willing. But I discouraged Kenny from getting pulled into Paul’s orbit. We always parked on our own, away from the crowd that gravitated around Paul. I didn’t think Paul was aware of any of this. The laughing, joking center of things, he seemed too active and involved to pay much attention to what was going on around him. But I know that Luke noticed; I was beginning to realize that there was very little that he missed.