“You going doesn’t mean you approve of Chip’s choice. It means you’re his mother and you love him,” Jim said, so angry his knuckles showed white where he was grabbing the chair back. “I know you hate this war, but you love our son. He loves you and he needs to see your face before they send him eight thousand miles away. All those e-mails he writes, can’t you see he’s scared?”
Susan bit her lip but finally agreed to go. Jim left Blitz in charge of the farm. For once in a blue moon, they’d had the right mix of rain and sun; the wheat crop should be outstanding, if the weather held, and Jim knew he could trust Blitz to make the right decisions if it didn’t.
They spent two nights on the road, going south through Kentucky to see the caves. Susan stayed in the truck, reading a history of pacifism, making pointed remarks about turning their son’s dangerous situation into a pleasure trip. They camped out to save money, and Jim was grateful for his daughter’s presence in the tent, which precluded any pretense of marital intimacy.
Lara was both nervous and excited at the prospect of seeing Chip as a soldier. Her mother was so upset by his enlisting that Lara couldn’t talk about it at home, but at school she’d become something of a vicarious heroine for having a brother in the military. Of course, Janice Everleigh was milking his enlistment all she could, acting like they were married or something—she went around the halls in his baseball-letter jacket, her face radiant. Overnight, she’d gone from girlfriend of a loser who fought in school and got kicked out to the lover of an American patriot.
When they got to the fort, Lara didn’t recognize Chip at first. He looked so strange, not like himself, in his uniform, with his hair shaved close to his head. Then he caught sight of them and ran through the throng of soldiers and families, his eyes wet, and Lara could see he was homesick and excited that they’d come.
“You’re not mad at me, are you, Dad?”
“Just scared, son. If you’re doing what’s right for you, how can I be mad? And I’m proud of you for doing it in the service of our country.”
Susan only said, “Oh, Etienne, I’m so sorry,” which could have meant anything.
During the ceremony, Chip held himself rigidly erect, along with the other recruits, but Lara could tell from the way he licked his lips that he was scared. It was only then, glancing at her parents, that Lara saw her mother wearing a prominent button that read MOTHERS AGAINST WAR.
“How could you?” she whispered to Susan, furious. “Take it off!”
“How could he?” Susan whispered back. “If I have to see him carrying those dreadful weapons, with his beautiful curls shaved off, he can see me supporting him with this badge.”
The next day, Chip left for advanced infantry training in Oklahoma. Lara, angry about Susan’s button, refused to speak to her mother during the drive home. When they reached the farm, Susan threw herself into K-PAW work, while Lara tended the organic-sunflower seedlings in the greenhouse.
For the first time, on her fifteenth birthday, Lara was allowed to drive the combine. When she finished her part of the field, Curly grinned at her and said, “How drunk was you, Lulu, to make those big curves in the field? Or is that one of your art projects?” But Blitz clapped her on the shoulder and said she’d done well for a beginner.
Two weeks later, Gina built a new bonfire to celebrate Midsummer Eve. Susan went to the ceremony without even mentioning it to Jim, relations between the two had become so strained.
In the weeks before that fire, Lara had watched Susan growing herbs in the X-Farm greenhouse, Saint-John’s-wort, heartsease, lavender. She had dried them and tied them up in bundles with red and gold thread. Lara was having her own fight with Susan, about the fate of the X-Farm. She was curious about the bundles of herbs but too angry with her mother for tying up the organic greenhouse with them and neglecting the sunflower crop—which was overdue for transplanting to the field—to talk to her about her herb bundles.
Still, at ten o’clock Lara followed her customary route along the tracks to watch Gina and Autumn set the fire alight. Hiding behind the Fremantles’ big hay barn, Lara watched a parade of women file through the old apple orchard, each carrying a lantern. They were silent until they reached the fire, when they stood and faced it and began singing, the music sweet but distorted by the crackling of the fire. Lara could see her mother, her face alight with eagerness.
Elaine Logan was there as well, her gigantic bosom unmistakable in the firelight. Her breasts were so heavy that even the largest sweatshirts pulled tight across them—her “shelf,” Curly called it. “Think about it, Lulu, you could rest your coffee cup on it,” he said, making her blush and giggle.
Ever since Elaine had been arrested with Gina and Susan, she’d started hitching out to the Fremantles’ two or three times a month. She’d pick up a ride as far as the train crossing at the county road behind the Grelliers’, then waddle and puff her way up to the Fremantle place. Once, when Lara was up on the combine, she actually saw Elaine let herself into the house.
Autumn or some other Wiccan had given Elaine a ride out tonight for the midsummer fire. Elaine was already slightly drunk when she got to the Fremantles’ and in a boisterous mood, hovering between hilarity and belligerence: she might do anything if she thought the other women were slighting or ignoring her. Seeing Elaine at the bonfire, face gleaming in the firelight, Lara hoped she wouldn’t take off her sweatshirt. It was pink tonight, with the Pink Panther outlined in dark sequins. She had her head thrown back, laughing loudly at something one of the women near her was saying.
Before choosing a roost, Lara had scouted the area but hadn’t seen any sign of Eddie Burton or the Junior Schapen. She lay in the high grass, watching the ceremony begin. Susan handed out her bundles of herbs; the women circled the fire, singing and tossing the herbs into the blaze.
Life at home had been so filled with fights lately that Lara had forgotten how exhilarating her mother could be when she was filled with enthusiasm. Seeing Susan so ardent made Lara wish she could get up and join the dance herself, but she knew she’d be self-conscious trying to move with all those naked women. Besides, if Jim came looking for her, the way he had in February, he’d be furious to find her taking part.
Lara felt these days as though she were teetering in the middle of a balance beam: keeping Jim happy meant making Susan angry. Taking Susan’s part meant upsetting Jim. It was too hard to deal with, so Lara mostly retreated to practicing the trumpet or working on the X-Farm. She had a big project, too, for the county fair, monitoring pest levels in the organic-sunflower crop against state standards for chemically farmed sunflowers.
She dozed off, thinking about her sunflower project, and was roused by the sound of sirens. Flashing red lights were creating a pulsing glow like that of the bonfire. Men in fire slickers erupted through the apple trees, carrying fire extinguishers and other equipment, followed by several men in sheriff’s uniforms, including Arnie Schapen. Their radios were squawking, and between that and the noise of the sirens Lara couldn’t make out what anyone was saying. She saw Gina, tall and slim, trying to argue with the men. Elaine joined them. Sometime while Lara had been napping, Elaine had taken off her sweatshirt, and her huge breasts surged like the ocean as she spoke. Then Susan came up—mercifully, with all her clothes on—and apparently began putting in her two cents. What was Susan saying? Lara wondered. “Don’t you know this area is the bastion of free speech in America? This is where your ancestors fought and died to keep America free.”
While Gina and Susan were arguing, the men were dousing the bonfire, using extinguishers and a dump truck full of sand. The truck had driven along the road and then cut across the field where Lara was lying. She hadn’t heard it coming and missed being hit by about a foot.
She backed away from the blaze and crept across the field to the road, then across the train tracks to her family’s farm. She didn’t want to risk being seen by Arnie or any of the other deputies.
It was while she was crossing the
tracks that she saw Eddie Burton. He was standing at the edge of the field she’d just crossed, staring at her. While she looked at him, he started moving his arms and jumping around. After a few seconds, she realized he was imitating the women at the bonfire. And then he started shrieking, “They had it coming, didn’t they? Firemen come. Those women had it coming to them.”
She was horrified that he’d seen her, but something kept her from being able to turn away from his grotesque pantomime. Suddenly, Junior Schapen appeared next to him. He put his arms around Eddie, almost as if he were embracing him, but Eddie pointed at Lara.
Junior started across the road toward her. The sight unglued Lara’s feet, and she ran through the corn. She could hear Junior pounding after her, trampling down the stalks, but she was slimmer and faster, and she knew her way through her own fields to her own farm. When she reached the main barn, she slipped inside through the loose board at the back. She waited there in the dark almost an hour, listening to rats and raccoons snuffling through the rafters, until she heard the pickup pull into the yard. She crawled back through the board, not wanting to risk running into all the machines in the barn.
When Lara finally went into the house, Susan was pouring out her woes to Jim. “I can’t believe Arnie would do such a small-minded, mean-spirited thing. He claimed we were violating some county fire code or other, he got the volunteer fire departments to come out from Baldwin and Eudora and had them put out our fire.”
“Susan, you can’t expect me to get outraged on your behalf. I’m tired of all this witchcraft shit. You’re on the board—” Jim broke off at the sight of Lara. “Damn it, Lulu! Did you take part in that damned fire?”
She shook her head. “I was just watching. Dad, Junior and Eddie Burton were there. They saw me, and Junior chased me home.”
She couldn’t bring herself to report anything else, how Eddie’d been behaving, the strange way Junior had put his arms around Eddie. Jim went out to look for Junior, but he told Lara that she had herself to thank for the episode.
“If you’d stayed home like I asked you, you wouldn’t have gotten such a scare. Maybe this will teach you that I have a good reason for asking you to do things.”
Lara bit her lip and went up to bed. Both she and Susan felt Jim hadn’t been sympathetic to them, but when Susan tried to share her own hurt feelings with her daughter, Lara scowled at her. “I wish you wouldn’t do weird stuff, Mom. That Elaine Logan, she was about the grossest thing I’ve ever seen. How can you want to be part of something she’s involved with?”
The next day, she put it all in an e-mail to Chip—at least, all but the part about Elaine’s giant breasts. She didn’t want Chip joking about them with his Army buddies. She told him everything else, the bonfire, how she’d sneaked out to watch it, how she’d seen Junior and Eddie, and Eddie had chased her home.
Then, next morning, Mom went over to talk to Gina about getting revenge on Arnie. She had some kind of goofy plan for Sheriff Drysdale to make the Schapens go through sensitivity training on other religions!!! Like Arnie and Myra and them would ever think anyone but them was right. And Gina said, “That’s an exercise in futility,” in that kind of snotty voice she uses to put people down.
Chip wrote back to tell Lara to mind her own business. His enlistment seemed to have evaporated his anger with their mother.
Mom works hard, Lulu, let her play however she wants to. Believe me, I thought I knew hard work until I joined up. If this is what adult life in the big outside world is like, maybe I’ll want to be a farmer after all. Whatever Gina wants to do, just ignore it because you’ll only get into water over your head. If she thinks she can take on Myra and Arnie, let her get burned all by herself, okay?
And for Pete’s sake, Lulu, KEEP OUT OF JUNIOR’S WAY. What him and Eddie do together is their business, unless they start setting fire to the house or trashing the fields, so don’t go spreading around stories at school, promise me. Junior is about the meanest person I know. After dealing with Junior Schapen, believe me I am not afraid of any Iraqi insurgents.
Chip had five days’ leave when he finished his advanced infantry training at the beginning of July. Most of his time he divided between Janice and Curly or hanging out with his friends from high school. His last night at home, though, he took Lara bowling, just her, not Curly, Janice, or his friends from the baseball team.
They had a pizza at Gianni’s, and Chip said, “Remember, Lulu, you’re the brainy one. Don’t do like me, running away from home by joining the Army. You can make your escape by running away to college. And don’t worry about me. I was the toughest guy in my unit in basic ’cause none of the others had ever spent seventeen hours on a combine under a hundred-degree sun. I know how to survive in the heat.”
He hesitated before adding, “Write me, Lulu. Write me every day if you can. I need to know you guys still remember me.”
It didn’t even occur to Lara to tease him about Janice, who probably didn’t know how to put a sentence down on paper. Instead, when his unit reached Iraq she sent him e-mails full of the ordinary news of the farm.
Twenty
TAPS
THE DAY AFTER the county fair ended, Lara e-mailed Chip:
I see it’s like a hundred and twenty in Baghdad, and it’s about that hot here, so the animals at the fair really suffered. Robbie Schapen camped out all night with his dairy cow; he even played his guitar to her. Pretty funny, huh? Mom’s pie only came in second this year—she didn’t really pay attention to her baking, but I got first place for my dress and my organic pest control project. Junior took part in the hay bale tossing contest, which was a laff riot, because he’s so full of himself.
Curly, who’d taken Lara that evening, had said, “Junior and his old man are the kind of guys who love themselves so much they eat their own shit and like it.” Lara added that in quotation marks, making sure Chip knew it was Curly speaking, that she wouldn’t say something so dirty, even if every time she thought it she started to giggle. She knew it would make Chip laugh, although, come to think of it, Curly had probably said it to him a million times.
“Anyway, when the platform was fifteen feet high, Junior tossed the bale and it landed on his head. It knocked him out, but even Big Arnie could see it happened because Junior was hotdogging. They stopped the contest for a bit while they made sure Junior was okay, just a little concussed, but given that his head is pretty solid ear to ear they really should have checked the hay bale for damage.”
She was hitting the SEND button when the doorbell rang. Lara couldn’t place the sound at first, because in the country no one ever went to the front door or even rang a bell. Not just at their house, but every house in the valley, people always went in through the kitchen, and kitchens opened onto the yard—it’s the way farmhouses were built.
Lara didn’t even realize her house had a doorbell until that moment. When she heard the shrill sound, she thought it was the old black telephone, the one Gram used to have in her bedroom, because she couldn’t abide the new, lightweight plastic ones.
Lara went down the hall toward the back bedroom and then heard the sound again coming from the front door, except, of course, the front of the house was at the back, at the bottom of the big staircase, which the family also never used. She ran down the stairs, her hand automatically caressing the eagle head carved into the newel-post at the bottom. She could see the outline of two men’s bodies through the white-glass panel, but she couldn’t wrestle the door open, it had been locked for so many years.
“Come around to the kitchen,” she shouted through a crack along the panel.
She ran through the cold front room. It had been her parents’ bedroom when Gram and Grandpa were alive, and then Gram’s bedroom when she got too frail to manage the stairs, but they never used it now. She ran into the dining room and then the kitchen, where she stood waiting for the men. As soon as she saw them, in their formal chocolate jackets, covered with medals and gold buttons, she knew Chip was dead. She
didn’t say anything but started screaming “Dad! Dad!” and ran to the barn, to the combine shed, to the cornfield, before remembering her father had announced at breakfast he was working the oat field, two miles distant.
She was so distracted that she started to run along the train tracks that marked the south boundary of the farm, as if she could run in her flip-flops all the way to the Wakarusa River where the oat field lay, but Blitz, who’d been irrigating the corn, caught sight of her. He came after her in the small Cub tractor and scooped her up.
“It’s Chip,” she panted. “I need Dad, they’re from the Army, they’re at the house.”
Blitz turned the Cub around, heading toward the house.
“No, no,” she shouted, pounding his side. “We have to find Dad.”
“I’m going to do that, Lulu, but I want to get the pickup.’”
When she kept pounding him and screaming, he stopped the tractor and grabbed her arms. “Listen to me, Lulu. We will get there faster in the truck than in this thing. Stop your yelling. Your dad needs you to be strong for him, you hear me?”
When they got back to the house, the two men in uniform were still standing outside the kitchen door. One of them was holding his hat, turning it around and around in his hands.
Blitz went up to them. “You here about Chip? Chip Grellier?”
And the one playing with his hat said yes, he was Captain Wesson, was Blitz Chip’s father?
“Mr. Grellier is in another field, about twenty minutes from here. You sit in the kitchen and wait. This here is his daughter. We’ll find him.”
It was funny, in hindsight, that Lara hadn’t tried to find Mom, who was just across the tracks in the X-Farm. Maybe Blitz thought of it and decided it would be better to get Dad first. It wasn’t until they found Dad and were driving back in the pickup, the three of them squeezed into the front seat, that Dad asked Blitz where Susan was, did she know about Chip?
Bleeding Kansas Page 16