SHE HAS TAKEN A LEAVE OF ABSENCE FROM WORK; Nelson’s money has allowed that much. And so she walks the country roads with her dogs, talks to the farmers who drive slowly by in their pickup trucks. They always offer her rides, mystified that a person would intentionally, recreationally walk for miles and miles.
“Your dogs can ride in back,” they offer, removing broken-brimmed baseball caps from liver-spotted scalps and scratching white hair with work-mangled hands. “That don’t bother me one bit.” They stare at her through thick-lensed glasses scratched and scratched. Their foreheads, too, are etched with worry.
“No, thank you,” she says with a smile. “I’m fine.”
A few of them show genuine concern. “Hey, you doin’ all right? Would you like to come on over for supper?”
“Thank you for your kindness,” she says, kicking at the gravel, “but . . . I’m managing.”
“Well, all right,” they say. Or, “One of these days you’re gonna get caught out here in the rain.” Or, “You know where we are if you need the least bit of help. It don’t trouble me at all to plow your driveway or mow, but I don’t want to step on your toes.” They toss their hands up, resettle them on the steering wheel, guffaw, “All righty, then.”
She wonders if these men are capable of evil, were ever capable of evil. Finds herself wondering about their basements and attics. What they store in their barns. What they’ve buried out in their fields. She wonders how they treat their wives, daughters, nieces. Decides that most of them—perhaps every old-man-farmer she knows—are probably kind, gentle, mostly silent, boring even. Still. She sees their wives sometimes, stooped over in gardens brimming with vegetables and flowers, or standing to stretch their backs. Sees them at the clothesline, pinning up bedsheets to dry. Sees them collecting eggs from their chicken coop, eggs still warm from the breast feathers above them. And sometimes she sees these same wives, rocking a chair in a sun-drenched room, visible through a parlor window, and they are just staring out at the mailbox, or curling their white hair around an arthritic finger. Just staring off.
Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky;
All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.
Fading light, dims the sight,
And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright.
From afar, drawing nigh, falls the night.
Thanks and praise, for our days,
’Neath the sun, ’neath the stars, ’neath the sky;
As we go, this we know, God is nigh.
Sun has set, shadows come,
Time has fled, Scouts must go to their beds
Always true to the promise that they made.
While the light fades from sight,
And the stars gleaming rays softly send,
To thy hands we our souls, Lord, commend.
—“TAPS,” BY HORACE TRIM
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FIRST AND FOREMOST, I AM ETERNALLY GRATEFUL TO my agent, the maestro Rob McQuilkin, for keeping the faith. I am in your debt, once again. For her patience and kindness: Amanda Panitch. Everyone at Massie McQuilkin & Co. Special thanks to Megan Lynch for sound and thoughtful editorial advice. So pleased to be working with you now, and hopefully well into the future. Daniel Halpern, Sonya Cheuse, and everyone at Ecco. In England: Francesca Main and Lucy Cuthbertson-Twiggs. In France: Raphaëlle Liebaert, Camille Paulian, and Mireille Vignol. My friends at Villa Gillet in Lyon. In Italy: Patricia Chendi, Chiara Tiveron, Andrea Coccia, Claudia Durastanti, Giulio D’Antona. La Grande Invasione and Gianmario Pilo. In Spain: Luis Solano. In the Netherlands: the Crossing Border Festival and Louis Behre. All my foreign agents, publishers, editors, and translators, thank you for giving me an opportunity to see the world. Thank you for your curiosity and kindness. Please, come visit us in Wisconsin. We’ll have cold beer and good cheese awaiting you.
Thank you to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
For musical inspiration: Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld, Nick Cave, Chet Faker, Jim James and My Morning Jacket.
This was the first novel that I completed after moving back to my hometown of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, a community that has embraced and supported my career. I am thankful to: Nick Meyer and everyone at Volume One, in particular: Lindsey Quinnies and all the staff at the Local Store. Tina Chetwood. The Eau Claire Leader-Telegram. L. E. Phillips Library. Brady and Jeanne Foust. Local literati: John Hildebrand, Max Garland, B. J. Hollars, Eric Rasmussen, Michael Perry, Julian Emerson, Joe Niese, Allyson and Jon Loomis. Racy’s and the Nucleus, where many of these pages were written.
My friends: Josh and Charmaine Swan, Nik Novak, Marcus Burke, Scott Smith, Chanda Grubbs, Mike and Hilary Walters, Nicholas Gulig, Betsy and Sheridan Johnson, Chuck and Shannon Stewart, Sara and Chris Meeks, Bill Hogseth and Crystal Halvorson, Mike Tiboris, Tracy Hruska, Erin Celello and Aaron Olver, Ben Percy, Dean Bakopoulos, Noah Charney, Jason Gerace, Tara Mathison, Virgina Evangelist, Zac and Beth Gall, Aaron Rodgers.
A special thank you to the all the independent booksellers who have helped support my career, in no particular order and apologies to those I’ve clumsily omitted: Between the Covers (Harbor Springs, MI), Saturn Books (Gaylord, MI), Joseph Beth Booksellers (Cincinnati, OH), Boswell Books (Milwaukee, WI), The Reader’s Loft (Green Bay, WI), Anderson’s Bookshop (Naperville, IL), The Bookstall at Chestnut Court (Winnetka, IL), Parnassus Books (Nashville, TN), The Tattered Cover (Denver, CO), Apostle Islands Booksellers (Bayfield, WI), Prairie Lights (Iowa City, IA), Literati (Ann Arbor, MI), Watermark Books (Wichita, KS), Excelsior Bay Books (Excelsior, MN), Magers & Quinn (Minneapolis, MN), Arcadia Books (Spring Green, WI), A Room of One’s Own (Madison, WI), The Book Shelf (Winona, MN), Dulwich Books (London, England), Schuler’s Bookstore (Okemos, MI), Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore (Redondo Beach, CA).
To my family: my mom and dad, my brother Alex and sister-in-law Cynthia. Jim and Lynn. Reidar and Kaitlen. All my aunts, uncles, and cousins. My in-laws. But in particular, I feel blessed to have Henry and Nora in my life, and of course, nothing would be possible without Regina. Thanks for believing in me. I owe you the stars.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NICKOLAS BUTLER was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He is a graduate of University of Wisconsin–Madison as well as the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is the author of the internationally bestselling and prizewinning novel Shotgun Lovesongs and the acclaimed short story collection Beneath the Bonfire. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife and their two children.
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ALSO BY NICKOLAS BUTLER
Shotgun Lovesongs: A Novel
Beneath the Bonfire: Stories
CREDITS
Cover design by Allison Saltzman
Cover image © Corbis
COPYRIGHT
James Galvin, excerpt from “Dear Miss Emily” from X. Copyright © 2003 by James Galvin. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE HEARTS OF MEN. Copyright © 2017 by Nickolas Butler. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition March 2017 ISBN 9780062469700
ISBN 9780062469687
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