by Nancy Hedin
I started toward the house.
“Lorraine, I love you. Your momma loves you too!”
I looked back at my dad, the person I loved most in the world. I waited. Finally, he was going to say it—that it didn’t matter that I was queer. He loved me just the way I was. I wanted him to say it. I wanted somebody to say it. After God, Dad was my best shot at having somebody who still loved me if I stayed queer. I waited. Nothing. Nothing changed.
Clean and dressed, but still pissed, I watched as Momma came barreling up the driveway. She flattened the pink plastic birdbath and two peony bushes before she threw the car into park. Her yelling was audible in the house as she opened the car door and swung her feet to the ground.
“Becky!”
Whatever had happened at that meeting, Momma looked to have gotten the worst of it. Her shoes were untied. A baggy roll of knee-high nylons sloshed around her grossly swollen ankles. I wondered if Momma and Pastor Grind had talked or wrestled. I wished I could have watched.
Scrubbed, dressed, and shiny again, Becky trotted out on the front porch. “What is it, Momma?”
I moved to the dining room window, where I could see and hear both Momma and poop head stink face Becky.
“Is your dad still in the barn? He’s going to want to hear this.” Momma huffed and puffed as she trudged to the barn. Her big hips moved under her church dress like a gunnysack of fighting cats. She had her notebook out. Momma motioned for Becky to follow her. Becky tramped behind like an obedient dog.
The urge to sneak out there and eavesdrop was strong, but I resisted. For the moment, I allowed myself the delusion that Becky might be in trouble instead of me. I did my Becky’s-going-to-get-it dance, invented that moment and performed to an audience of none. After that world premiere, I came to my senses. I paced briefly and then packed. It was clear that I needed to run away. A wave of tears stormed out of my head. Who would take care of the dogs, my mice, rabbits, barn cats, and chickens? I felt like I was going to be sick. Sure, I wanted out of Bend, but only long enough to become a vet and find love. I planned to come back and live on our land my whole life. What if Bend didn’t want me back if I was queer?
Tears and snot dripped on my T-shirts, sweatshirts, and jeans as I stuffed them in a bag and thought of never seeing home again. Our farm was one hundred sixty acres bisected by blacktop. Highway 12 was the equator. Like a cinched belt, it kept the north side of the farm with the big field and swamp-dimpled rolling hills of oaks, maples, and quaking aspen from sliding toward a smaller pasture, a corn field, and our share of the lake on the south side. Our house, the barn, grain bin, the pole barn, the garage that never sheltered a car, and the well house lay on the north side of the road. If I could have lifted the north side like a blanket and shaken it out, deer, raccoons, foxes, gophers, rabbits, mice, and maybe even a bobcat would have tumbled out along with the frogs, toads, garden snakes, and salamanders. I cried thinking about leaving behind those animals. I wondered how many I could stuff in my pockets.
I grabbed clothes without caring whether they were clean or dirty or even mine. My savings, which I kept wadded up in a dirty sweat sock I knew Becky wouldn’t touch, added up to four hundred dollars. I put it, sock and all, in the stuff sack. I swept my arm across the dresser in one direction and pushed my deodorant, shampoo, and field guides into my bag. Next, I cleared my family pictures into the wastebasket as I thought about the woods and fields.
I left my wildlife posters on the wall on my side of the room so Becky would have to look at them until she was sure I was gone for good. I imagined Becky would replace them with posters of Bible verses or pictures of Kenny Hollister.
I thought of my dad.
Pacing, pacing. Of course Momma wanted to see Becky. Becky would now be an only child once I’d been sent off to a deprogramming camp in some wooded enclosure hidden in the lower loop of the Bible Belt. What if I cracked under the pressure and agreed to marry some pimply boy who carried his inhalers in a quilted Guatemalan shoulder bag and wore a locket with a picture of his mother?
I took a deep breath. Nothing had changed, and it didn’t matter. I needed it not to matter. Dumb old Bend. Dumb old farm. I told myself that I could be a senior somewhere else and get a diploma. Maybe I didn’t even need one. Dad had never graduated, and he made a living. I hoped Jolene would remember me sometimes. I wished I had time to write a poem.
As I stuffed the last of my worldly possessions into my duffel bag, Becky came into her room. I slept there too, but everyone knew it was Becky’s room. Becky’s face was blotchy and red and her eyes were wet and leaky like mine. She mumbled something about Jesus and stuck her tongue out at me.
“Momma and Dad are waiting for you in the kitchen. You better get out there quick.” Becky had one of Dad’s pocket notebook pages clutched in her hand. She tossed it in the trash.
I dragged my overpacked stuff sack along the kitchen floor behind me. Its canvas gathered dust and buffed a bit of shine into the hardwood flooring. My mouth was dry and my throat felt like I’d swallowed my set of metal jacks. I wiped my tears onto my sweatshirt sleeve, pulled off my baseball cap, and sat at the table, sneaking glances at Momma and Dad through my overgrown bangs.
“Are you coming down with a cold? Is it sinuses?” Momma squinted at me. She fished bottles of aspirin and decongestants out of her purse and held them up to me. I waved her off.
Momma eyed my stuff sack. “If that’s laundry, it’s two days late or five days early depending on your perspective. Either way, I’m not doing it. You can start a load yourself after our talk. There’s a new box of Tide on the basement steps.”
Momma gave her notebook to Dad. I coveted Momma’s notebook. I was half-scared to read it, but I also believed that it had magical powers in it and that if I could write things in it, Momma would come to believe them.
After Dad took the notebook, Momma took up her other book. More precious than her notebook was her Bible. She ran her fingers over the brown pebble-grained cover. She shined the leather spine with the same mink oil I used to keep my catcher’s mitt supple and waterproof.
Momma loved the Bible. She had three of them: the King James, Revised Standard, and a stand-alone version of the New Testament. She chose which one she would fondle and quote from depending on the occasion. The King James translation of the Old Testament kicked ass and trucked no excuse for bad behavior. The Revised Standard translated the Proverbs and Psalms like cool medicine for broken hearts, and the New Testament fit snuggly in her big hand so she could whack me with it when I didn’t do what she told me. I was expecting a whacking.
Today, Momma petted her fetish, the Revised Standard Version, Red Letter Edition. She fanned her face with the tissue-thin pages. The God-breathed-word entered her nostrils and agitated her to blast forth, pronounce judgment. I wished that when Jesus proofread the New Testament—his words in red alongside the inconsistent stories of his disciples—Jesus would have said something loving about queers. If he had, maybe then Momma would have read it and believed it. And then, maybe her big precious book would have let her love me.
“Go ahead, Joseph,” Momma said.
Dad scanned the notebook. He wiped his face with the same red bandanna he’d used to clean the mud from my face. It left a smudge of mud and duck shit across his forehead. He stared at Momma, but she didn’t look at him. Momma licked her thumb and rubbed at a spot on the table.
“For Christ’s sake, Peggy, do we have to make a big deal about this?”
“Language, Joseph. Go ahead, dear, it’s all in the notebook there.” She folded her hands over the gold-embossed print of her Bible.
Dad stood and read mechanically from the notebook. “First of all, I need to say that I don’t want you teasing Becky. Your sister and the Hollister boy like each other. In the course of their prayer time together—” He frowned, sighed, and gave Momma a pleading look. Momma’s eyes were closed as she gently nodded to the cadence of him dutifully reading the script she had prepared
. She stopped rocking whenever Dad stumbled on the words or stopped like he couldn’t read another line.
Hollister boy? Prayer time? My head was full of bees. Shit! What about the kiss? What about Jolene?
“They’ve been doing it in the back of Kenny’s truck! If Becky gets herself a baby, she’ll forfeit that scholarship.” Dad dropped back into his chair.
As the last words gushed from Dad’s mouth, he slid the notebook across the table where it bumped against Momma’s Bible. That wasn’t what was written in the notebook because Momma opened her eyes, blushed, and glared at Dad.
The big F word, fornication. That was what the meeting had been about. Fornication. That was what Pastor Grind would have called it. Somebody knew or suspected that Becky and Kenny were already having sex, and they wanted our parents to know. If Becky got pregnant, she couldn’t win the scholarship.
Momma swooped up her notebook and clutched it to her breast. She looked at Dad for a split second and then she sighted me in. “What your dad means is that we want you children to graduate high school and not get into anything before you’re ready. Being a momma just out of high school is no picnic.” Momma knew this from experience.
Momma jotted in her notebook. “Remember once you marry them and have their babies, you’re stuck with them until death.” She jotted a note in her notebook. “You kids can love anybody you want.”
That pronouncement got my attention, but Momma immediately shut the door on any notion I had that it was okay that I loved girls. She looked straight at me.
“There’re lots of nice boys in this town.”
I looked at Dad. He glanced at me. I forbid my eyes to cry anymore. Did Dad feel like Momma? Did he view marriage as a death sentence too? Did he want me to notice the nice boys? I thought of the glass block, chipped, not perfect. He didn’t say anything. He just turned away and let Momma go on. The yard was his. We kids belonged to Momma.
Momma shook her finger at me and tilted her head down. “With loving comes hard work and sacrifice. I had dreams too. I wanted to be a nurse.” She rocked in her chair a couple of beats, lost in her thoughts. “We want you two girls to get your education before you take on all the burdens of this world and watch your dreams dissolve like mist.”
Marriage and parenting was Momma’s cross to bear, and by God she made sure the rest of us got a few slivers from that big wooden burden. Dad squirmed in his chair with slumped shoulders. My heart receded somewhere deeper in my chest, less exposed to the elements. The hate I felt for Momma had already gnawed a big hole in me, and I didn’t care. How was it that Momma had the right to deal out burdens and sacrifices for all of us? What did Dad really think? Was he satisfied with his sacrifices?
For the second time that day I felt kind of tender toward Becky. Becky could be a shit, but no one wants to be told there’s something wrong about them loving somebody.
After I was paroled from the table, I lugged my pack back into the bedroom. It wasn’t yet noon, but Becky was already in bed on the top bunk facing the wall, her red gingham-checked bedsheet snugged up to her neck. All I could see was Becky’s hair wrapped tightly around pink sponge rollers. I suspected that Becky was faking sleep. My hand hovered in the air near Becky’s shoulder, but I didn’t risk touching her. I rested my hand on the frame of the bed.
“You need me to get you anything, Becky?”
“I don’t need anything from you, you freak!”
“Glad to know you’re feeling more like yourself.”
Before I left the room, I fished the notebook page from the trash. Dad must have given it to her. It read, Gestation periods of rabbits, humans, and elephants. I crumpled it up again and replaced it in the trash.
I grabbed my work boots and gloves from the mudroom and went outside to wait for Twitch. I saw him talking with Dad in the barn. As I stretched in the sunshine, I gave the farm a pretend hug. It was good to know I could always take refuge with Dad and Twitch. I had escaped Momma’s and God’s wrath another day, but part of me knew it was only a matter of time before Momma took aim and fired again.
My dad and Twitch had been friends since they were just boys, and the way I heard it, they were virtually inseparable until Dad married Momma. Since then, they had remained good friends and rarely a day went by without Twitch stopping at our house, or Dad meeting Twitch someplace. That day the two men stood by the barn, yelled, gestured with their hands, and nearly looked at each other. Their odd deportment made me run to hear what they were saying.
“All I’m saying, you dumbass, is there’s more than one way to skin a cat.” Twitch spit chewing tobacco on the ground by Dad’s boot.
“That’s a fine expression for a veterinarian. Lorraine’s not working full-time for you or taking your money. I’m her father. I will take care of my children. If I wouldn’t let them take a government loan, why would I have either of them owing you?” Dad threw down his cigarette and rubbed it out with the toe of his boot.
Twitch waved at me and pointed his finger at Dad. “You are the goddamned stubbornest son of a bitch I’ve ever known.”
I guess Dad noticed me then.
“Jesus Christ, watch your language in front of my daughter.”
Twitch rolled his eyes and headed toward his Jeep. He looked in my direction. “Are you working with me?”
I nodded, but at the same time listed toward my dad. “What was that all about?”
“Tell me what you know about sheep,” he said.
“Well, sheep are ruminants with four digestive chambers. They need both pasture and hay. Ewes come into heat on average every sixteen days and there is a thirty-hour window for getting bred. Gestation’s about twenty-one weeks. Dogs and coyotes are their worst enemies. Farmers raise them for meat and wool.”
“That’s my girl. What kind of problems do sheep have?”
“Besides going astray?”
Dad frowned.
I listed the parasites and diseases I knew and even offered to get more specific about the treatment of worms.
He shook his head. “You’re a show-off! Go ahead and help Twitch. See if you can learn something from that old fool.”
I got in Twitch’s Jeep and asked what work he had for me.
“Well, I got a prize-winning ram in the back of my Jeep. What does that tell you?”
“It tells me you have some strange habits. You need to get out more. Most people collect stamps or coins or baseball cards.”
“Anybody ever tell you you’re a smart-ass?” Twitch spit some chewing tobacco out his Jeep window and wiped his chin.
“I’ve been called many names and smart-ass is one of the better ones. As for having a prize-winning ram in your Jeep, I’m guessing some farmer’s ewes are in heat and they want you to breed them with this ram’s special sauce.” I flexed my brain for Twitch’s benefit. “People raise sheep for milk, wool, or meat. Different breeds are known for their production and quality of product. The system of breeding is determined by the farmer’s goals for his flock. There’s pure-breeding, inbreeding, outbreeding, crossbreeding . . .”
“I’m impressed. Keep this up and you could actually become a veterinarian. Or a sheep.” Twitch poked me in the ribs. “Actually, you’re going to get some practice with crossbreeding sheep. That’s why I was over this morning. I talked Holcum into pasturing his sheep and goats at your place starting next month. I got your stubborn father to agree to it finally. You can meet some of your new tenants today.”
“Dad tell you all hell broke loose today?” When I was with Twitch my language matched his.
“Define hell.”
“Well, it seems that Miss Becky Tyler’s been seen fornicating with pigheaded Kenny Hollister. Pastor Grind told Momma, and there was a big family conference.”
“Who told Grind?”
“I don’t know. Never even thought about it.” It was a good question. Who had seen Becky and Kenny? Who had told Pastor Grind?
“Well, being seventeen, in love, and having my pastor a
nd my folks commenting on my business sounds like hell to me.”
I loved Twitch for lots of reasons, but could have loved him for that statement alone. I waited until I couldn’t wait anymore and asked Twitch about his fight with Dad.
“It looked like you and Dad were wrangling before we left.”
“Every month I ask the old mule to let you work with me full-time or let me help you pay for vet school. Goddamn it, I have a few dollars.” He looked over at me. “Does my cussing corrupt you?”
“Shit, no.”
“Jesus Christ, that’s a load off my mind.”
“Why won’t he let me work with you? He knows I want to be a vet more than anything.”
Twitch didn’t answer right away, which tipped me off that like most adults, he was thinking of a lie or at the very least a selective way of telling the truth.
“He’s proud. He doesn’t want to be beholden to me for anything,” he said. “He’s your dad, and he doesn’t want anybody else horning in on that.”
“Well, I don’t know why me doing what I want is any threat to Dad. You’re not too bad an influence.”
Twitch pulled his Jeep into Holcum’s sheep farm and parked by the barn. Ten black-faced, black-legged Suffolk sheep looked up from their pens.
“Take your gloves and notebook and check ’em for what ails them, write it down. I’ll be back in a half hour or so to hear your report. Then we’ll introduce them to Mr. Studley Do Right and get this party started.” Twitch checked his teeth in the side mirror, hitched up his jeans, and headed to the farmhouse. Mrs. Holcum answered the door, and Twitch went inside.
It’d been most of an hour before Twitch returned to the barn. I had checked those ten sheep stem to stern, wrestled that ram down a makeshift ramp out of the Jeep, and introduced him to his ewes in waiting. That horny ram had mounted nearly every ewe by the time Twitch returned and had his gloves on.