by Jane Smiley
I stood in the hall for five minutes. During that time, the phone rang four times, each time for six or more rings. Outside, a lawn mower clattered around the corner of the church. There was a window in the swinging doors down the hall. I saw the face of the church secretary, whom I had avoided coming in, look through it and take note of my presence.
That was the thing. Henry was not only my “pastor,” he was Henry. His voice wasn’t a low murmur, for one thing, it was flat and somewhat droning, with an edge of unsuccessfully suppressed emotion. He was fifty, but seemed thirty and just starting out, as if his experiences had taught him very little.
I looked around, wondering how to get out without anyone’s seeing me, and he came through the swinging doors. He wore grass-stained shorts, and I realized that the sound of the lawn mower was gone. It was Henry who’d been cutting the grass. He came toward me with an earnest smile. His face was red and sweat ran off his upper lip. I stepped back, setting my shoulder blades against the stippled concrete-block wall. Henry came on. When he got to me, he said, “Ginny!” and seemed to press me toward the door of his office. It seemed like he pressed me, but perhaps it was only me, resisting. He said, “Now, Ginny, you mustn’t worry. Harold Clark—” Just then the phone rang again, and he leaned across the desk to pick up the receiver. His back was to me. I walked, then ran, to the exit. I couldn’t do it. He was too much himself, too small for his position, too anxious to fit in to our community, too sweaty and dirty and casual and unwise. I started the car and drove out of the parking lot. In my rearview mirror, I could see him waving to me from the door I had come out of.
That night after supper, I called Rose and got her to meet me on Daddy’s porch. We sat together on the top step, and it took me a while to say anything. Long ribbons of clouds floated a ways above the western horizon, and the cornfield on the other side of the road rolled to meet it. A wash of pale pink seeped upward from the lower margin of the sky and rimmed the clouds with fire. Above them, clear blue shaded to lavender. Rose bent down and brushed some dirt out of the corner of the step below us. I said, “Rose, don’t you think we should talk some more? What’s next?”
“We’ll see.”
“I’m afraid to see.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“I guess I’m afraid of anything having to do with Daddy, actually.” Rose laughed, then she said, “Did we treat him badly?”
“I know people think we did.”
“But did we? Do you think so?”
I thought about the storm, the fight, his cursing me, and then, clearest of all, that moment when he came close to me and lowered his voice, tried to wheedle me. Even then, five days later, it gave me a shiver, as if water had trickled down my back. Threats I was used to, but this—
I said, “I don’t think so, no.”
“Well, then. Stick with what’s true.”
“What’s true?”
“He went out into the storm because he was stubborn and childish.”
The clouds had drifted lower on the horizon and now blazed up as the sun dipped behind them. I said, “I don’t understand Daddy. I just don’t.”
“You’re not supposed to, don’t you get it? Where’s the fun in being understood? Laurence Cook, the great I AM.” She laughed again.
“I want to.”
“I don’t. Anyway, I understand him perfectly. You’re making it too complicated. It’s as simple as a child’s book. I want, I take, I do.”
“That’s not enough for me. I can’t believe it’s that simple.”
“It is.”
“I can’t imagine it. We’re his children!”
“I’m telling you, if you probe and probe and try to understand, it just holds you back. You start seeing things from his point of view again, and you’re just paralyzed.” Her voice dropped. She said, “That was his goddamned hold over me, Ginny! For all those years! He talked. He made me see things from his point of view! He needed someone! He needed me! I looked so good to him! He loved me, my hair, my eyes, my spunk, even, though it made him mad, surely I understood that, too, how he had to get mad at some of the things I did! Ginny, you don’t want to understand it, or imagine it. You don’t you don’t you don’t.”
But I wanted to.
I said, “We’ve got to talk to him about it.”
Rose whooped.
I tried to summon some authority, but my voice trembled. “I mean it.”
Rose said, “Be realistic.”
“I have to hear what he says.”
The upper sky was now black, but the lower sky was still misted with light.
I thought about what she had said. This did sound strangely like Daddy and cast a reflective credibility backward, over everything else. But it didn’t change my mind. I said, “I’ve still got to hear what he says.”
It was dark on the porch. I could no longer see Rose, so perhaps that is why I could so clearly sense her mulling this over. Finally, she said, “Okay. We’ll see what happens at the church supper. Maybe there will be some kind of opportunity after that.”
28
THE CHURCH HELD A POTLUCK every year on the Sunday after the Fourth of July, to celebrate the anniversary of its founding in 1903. We dressed in our nicest casual clothes, baked our noodle-hamburger casserole and our brownies, and went together, the two families. Rose made us stand up straight so she could survey us before we got in the car. “Respectable to the core,” she declared.
I have to admit that the sight of Daddy startled me. In only five days, he had been transformed. The sight of him stopped me in the doorway of the church hall, so that Rose, coming behind, ran smack into me. I said, “Look at him.”
“Well, I didn’t expect Harold to wash and iron his clothes the way we do. He’s obviously worn the same thing since Monday night.”
“But his hair’s all standing on end. Doesn’t Harold have a comb he can lend him?”
Rose stepped around me. “For that matter, why don’t they go over to Daddy’s house and pick up some of his stuff? It’s none of our business. It just goes to show you.”
“What?”
“How much we were actually doing for him. Namely everything.” Her voice was bitterly triumphant, and she marched into the hall with her pan of brownies, smiling and greeting everyone in the room.
But it wasn’t only the clothes. At first I thought he must have dropped some weight, or that he was ill from the storm, but it wasn’t that. It was that his whole demeanor was a tad abashed, even submissive. It was not like anything I had ever seen, or thought possible, with Daddy. Ty came in from parking the car. I said, “Look at Daddy. Does he seem different?”
Ty stared at him for a moment, then said, “He looks his age, if that’s what you mean.” Then he glanced coolly at me and went to join some of the Stanleys by the soft-drink table.
Harold Clark was talking to Mary Livingstone. I saw his eye fall on Rose, then he turned and looked around until he saw me. He smiled. I smiled back. A moment later, Harold went over to Daddy and stood with him, talking to the people that Daddy was talking to—Henry Dodge, Bob and Georgia Hudson. I noticed Pete, standing alone against a wall, drinking a Coke. He looked like he’d rather be drinking a beer. I remember that his eyes scanned the crowd with predatory detachment, though at the time I only wondered whom he was looking for. I took my casserole to the table, raised the lid, and inserted the serving spoon. The table, as always, was disproportionately laden with desserts. Someone had made a chocolate cream roll, decorated with fresh cherries. That was the most ambitious dish.
Daddy went from group to group, saying something with an air of deferential sociability. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, and I longed to hear what he was saying. Harold followed him, too, his protector. Daddy had never been the mixing sort. He’d always stood in a convenient corner (convenient to the food) and waited for the other farmers to join him, to seek his advice, or try to impress him, or join with him in a duet of ritual complaints about the weather and
the government. I watched him, but he didn’t acknowledge me. Rose was more brazen. She joined one of the groups and listened, smiling, as he talked. She didn’t move away until Harold actually caught her eye and glared at her. A few minutes later, she wandered past me. She said, “Get this.”
“I’m listening.”
“This is a quote, word for word.”
“Okay.”
“Terrible conditions. Their children put them there. I saw it myself. Their children put them there. Their children put them there.”
“What was he talking about?”
“The county home. Considering that Marlene Stanley’s ninety-six-year-old mother has been in the county home for ten years, I thought it was especially thoughtful of Daddy to mention it to her.”
“Well, everybody here has got some relative in there.”
“That must be why their eyes are glazing over. He’s going on and on about it. The same six sentences over and over.”
“What else?”
“About the children stealing the farms.” She rolled her eyes and shrugged. I looked up and saw Daddy staring at us as if he had just noticed us for the first time. I mentioned this to Rose, and she turned and stared back at him. I said, “Let’s not.”
“Let’s not what?”
“Let’s not look like we’re plotting against him.”
“Why not?”
“It makes me nervous. I want to talk to him.”
“Go do it, then.”
“Okay.” I took one or two steps toward him, and he turned away, toward one of the church ladies, who was handing him a drink. He smiled at her and thanked her, ducking his head as if truly grateful. I was amazed. I took another two steps, but he clearly backed away. I saw that I was going to have to sneak up on him unexpectedly.
There were some people by the soft-drink table, and I went and joined them, but only long enough to elude Daddy’s gaze. Then I scurried along the back wall of the room and ducked into a vestibule. I saw Rose by one of the front tables, looking around, but I didn’t catch her attention. I waited. After a few minutes that I spent smiling and nodding at the few people who noticed me, Daddy came near. I slid up next to him and said, “Daddy!” He froze, not looking at me, but searching the room for someone. The place was getting hot. Some men got up on chairs and pushed the windows to their widest. Henry Dodge brought in another fan, set it on a chair, and turned it on.
At last Daddy turned his gaze to meet mine. I was preoccupied with how I was going to phrase my question—Rose said, or did you, or I have to know, but all I got out was another “Daddy,” when he interrupted me and said, “Their children put them there. And the conditions are terrible.” His voice was not the usual aggressive rumble, but flatter, softer, more tentative. I looked him in the eye for the first time. He turned away at once, but not before I saw an abashed, questioning look. My voice vanished.
He walked away. After a minute, I went into the women’s bathroom, then I went and found Rose.
As soon as she saw me, she said, “Wait till you hear this. Mary Livingstone has been over to Harold’s twice. She thinks Daddy’s lost his mind.”
“I just talked to him. He—”
Rose muttered, “This enrages me.”
“What?”
“This ploy.”
“Rose, he—”
She lowered her voice, grasped the front of my shirt, and pulled me to her. “I know this. I know that his face is a black ocean and there’s always always always the temptation to drown in that ocean, to just give yourself up and sink. You’ve got to stare back. You’ve got to remind yourself what he is, what he does, what he did. Daddy thinks history starts fresh every day, every minute, that time itself begins with the feelings he’s having right now. That’s how he keeps betraying us, why he roars at us with such conviction. We have to stand up to that, and say, at least to ourselves, that what he’s done before is still with us, still right here in this room until there’s true remorse. Nothing will be right until there’s that.”
“He looks so, sort of, weakened.”
“Weakened is not enough. Destroyed isn’t enough. He’s got to repent and feel humiliation and regret. I won’t be satisfied until he knows what he is.”
“Do we know what we are?”
“We know we aren’t him. We know that to that degree we don’t yet deserve the lowest circle of Hell.”
It was incredible to me to hear Rose speak like this, but it was intoxicating, too, as sweet and forbidden as anything I had ever done. I couldn’t resist her. I said, “Rosie, I understand. I’m with you.” She planted a kiss on my cheek and let go of my shirt. I saw that some people were looking at us, including Ty, suspicious, and Pete, amused, from different parts of the room.
Some of the church ladies began calling out that it was time to eat, and everyone should line up. Just then, Jess Clark walked in. Harold saw him at once and waved him over. Pretty soon, Jess came toward Rose and me with a smile that I felt myself hook onto, the way you would hook a rope ladder over a windowsill and lower yourself out of a burning house.
He said, “Harold’s got this plan now, that we’re all going to sit together with your dad.”
Rose said, “Let me get everyone.”
Jess said, “I’m skeptical of this. I want to register that.”
“Why?”
“Harold’s not a peacemaker. I think he’s got something up his sleeve.” He shrugged. “But I always suspect Harold, and he’s perfectly innocent often enough.”
I said, “Shouldn’t we wait for Loren?”
“He went to Mason City for something. I don’t know what. He left while I was over by Sac City.” He turned to me. “Ginny, I went to see that guy, the organic guy. I just got back. It was amazing. He hasn’t used chemicals on his land since 1964. He’s seventy-two years old and looks fifty. They’ve got dairy cattle and horses and chickens for eggs, but his wife only cooks vegetarian meals. They get great yields! Just with green manures and animal manure. The vegetable garden is like a museum of nonhybrid varieties. We had carrot bread and oatmeal from their own oats for breakfast, and carrot juice, too, and he had twenty different apple varieties in his orchard. I mean it was like meeting Buddha. They were so happy! I wish you’d come.”
I didn’t say that I’d had plenty to occupy me here.
“I feel right now like Harold’s got to come around. If he doesn’t come around, it’s like looking paradise in the face and turning away from it. It doesn’t seem possible to do that.”
“People do it all the time.”
“Do they? Do you really think they do?”
I didn’t answer. We got into the line. He went on, “Yes, I guess I did, back in the drinking days. Hmm.” But his whole demeanor said those days were gone now, nothing. I laughed to see him so joyful.
Carrot bread and oatmeal might have been welcome at that buffet table. It was barbecued ribs, scalloped potatoes with ham, three kinds of potato salad, four meat casseroles, green beans with cream sauce three ways, two varieties of sweet corn salad, lime Jell-O with bananas, lime Jell-O with maraschino cherries, somebody’s big beautiful green salad, but with a sweet dressing. Jess took baked beans and some leaves of salad, then fell upon the carrot-raisin slaw and helped himself to half of it. He skipped the desserts.
Daddy was already sitting at the table. His plate looked like mine—ribs, potato salad, corn, macaroni and hamburger, more ribs. I said, in a friendly voice, “Well, Daddy, it looks like we picked all the same things.” He ignored me.
I sat between Pammy and Jess, across from Daddy, far from Ty. Rose sat on the other side of Jess and Pete at the end of the table. As soon as I sat down my heart began to pound. Some people we didn’t know began to pull out chairs, then they saw Harold looking at them and they backed away. Though we were uncomfortable enough to trade a few uncertain smiles, we settled ourselves, addressed our plates. I glanced at Ty’s face, at his plate, the wife habitually noticing what the husband was eating. He, too,
had some of the carrot slaw. I looked at my own plate, the ribs looked good but would be messy. I poked my white plastic fork into the corn. All of this comes back to me as vividly as if these were my last impressions before an attack of amnesia. Harold’s voice rose above the noises of the crowd, and he said, “Hey!” and Jess Clark’s foot came down upon my own under the table, and his head snapped up.
I looked around. I had not noticed that the table Harold had chosen for us was right in the middle of the room, but it was.
Harold spoke up, as if he were making a long-awaited announcement, and said, “Look at ’em chowing down here, like they ain’t done nothing. Threw a man off his own farm, on a night when you’d a let a rabid dog into the barn.”
People at other tables pretended not to notice, except that Henry Dodge looked undecided about whether to get up from his seat or not.
“Nobody’s so much as come around to say I’m sorry or nothing. Pair of bitches. You know I’m talking about Ginny and Rose Cook.”
The minister decided to push back his chair. From across the room, Mary Livingstone’s voice came, “Pipe down, Harold Clark. You’re talking through your hat, same as always.” Henry Dodge stood up. Harold didn’t say anything for a few moments, so Henry sat down again. Then Harold said, “I got their number. Nobody’s fooled me.” He leaned toward me. “Bitch! Bitch!” Now Jess stretched out his arm, his hand open at the end of it, and pushed Harold’s face backward. It was a strange gesture, violent and gentle at the same time. Harold, who had years of work behind him and was a strong man, couldn’t be pushed far. Daddy sat there with a kind of bemused look on his face. When a momentary silence fell, he said, “Their children put them there. I saw it myself.”
On the other side of Jess Clark, Rose heaved in her chair and said, “Daddy, just shut up. This has gone far enough.”
Pammy took my hand.
Henry Dodge stood up again.
Harold jumped up, knocking his chair backward with a crash. He stretched across the table and grabbed Jess by the hair and pulled him out of his seat, then, with his other hand, he grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. Jess said, “Shit!” Harold jerked him across the table. Styrofoam glasses of pop rolled every which way. He yelled, “I got your number, too, you yellow son of a bitch. You got your eye on my place, and you been cozying up to me for a month now, thinking I’m going to hand it over. Well, I ain’t that dumb.” His voice rose mockingly, “Harold, you ought to do this! You ought to do that! Green manure! Ridge till cultivation! Goddamn alfalfa! Who the hell are you to tell me a goddamn thing, you deserter? This joker ain’t even got the guts to serve his country, then he comes sashaying around here—” At this point, the minister had managed to get behind Harold and grab him. Jess socked his father across the face, and Harold fell back against the minister. Daddy shifted his chair out of the way and looked straight at me. A look of sly righteousness spread over his face.