by Annie Proulx
Corn and wheat farms spraddled out to the horizon, fields cut by white ruler roads edged with farms, everywhere the corners square, the partitioned earth hypnotic, the only relief in converging lines of perspective and distance and the angled flight of birds. Miles of cropland rolled between the rigid farmhouses. Far away he saw a tractor drawing multiple plows in black, contoured furrows as though the driver lay his pattern of curves and bends against the image of a sinuous river held in his mind.
The scale of the farms bothered him. The home place would be a joke to these birds, his twenty-acre field a turnaround space. As he drove he imagined the kind of place he half-planned to find and settle on, not like the home place with its steep rough fields and sour soil, its invading brush and trees, but not like these unrolled landscapes with their revolving skies. He hadn’t known Minnesota was so level. But it was not a quiet landscape. The rise and fall of wind made the land seem to move in slow shudders.
His own place would be a small farm, maybe two hundred and fifty acres, gently swelling earth like the curve of hip and breast, good pasture. He saw his Holsteins grazing, up to their hocks in good grass. The soil would be crumbly and stoneless. There would be a stream with flat rich bottomland on each side for corn and hay crops, and a woodlot, say fifty acres of tall straight hardwood, a sugarbush, low-branched sweet trees on a south slope. On the height of his land he imagined a stand of evergreen, and in the dark spruce a spring welling up from the earth’s pure underground water. Get a tractor, good machinery. He’d make it pay. His hands gripped the steering wheel, he looked in the rearview mirror seeing his steady eyes, the black springing hair. His strength pressured up in him, waiting to be used.
A few miles north of Rice he slowed down when he caught the hitchhiker’s silhouette, flaring bell-bottom pants and jaunty cap. The sun baked the hood. He was feeling good moving out again after the greasy shop, in the mood for company. He pulled up. The echo of the engine’s smooth beating sounded sweet to him. The sailor was a big, sandy-headed man, a potato face and needle eyes, his mood to talk entering the car before he did.
‘You’re a sight for sore eyes,’ said the man. ‘I been standin’ here and shufflin’ along and standin’ some more for about two days. I Jesus Christ swear I got to look like trouble, must put the fear of the old Harry in drivers. Ain’t this a nice spring day? Everybody picks up a serviceman, I get rides from Norfolk to here took me two days, three rides, but not in Minnesota! No sir, not here in my goddamn home state where Suspicious is everybody’s middle name. Goddamn scandahoovians. One guy slowed down, come on the brake so’s the gravel sprayed up a little, but the minute I put my hand on the door handle and he looked over at me he took off like there was a big prize for whoever got to Little Falls first, and he was in the back row.’
‘You headed for Little Falls?’ asked Loyal.
‘General direction, yes. Right on the spot, no. I’m goin’ to pay a surprise visit to my better half, to my little missus up in Leaf River, north of Wadena. About four people live there, and when I’m around I’m one of ’em, milk cows, cut hay, fight with the neighbor. When I’m not around I want to know if anybody is takin’ my place. Where I been I seen too many dear Johns came slippin’ in like the old knife and I got to thinkin’, what about Kirsten, see I know about the scandahoovians ’cause I married one, I think, what about Kirsten and Jugo. Jugo lives the next farm down, we work together, hay, fence, help out, whatever you have to do, I got a broken harrow Jugo lends, he’s got a hay rake the teeth fall out, he takes mine. So she writes to me, tells me Jugo’s wife died around the end of March, nice woman, good-lookin’, good full woman, I could of appreciated that. She was bit by a skunk, says the letter, tryin’ to clean out behind the woodshed, died from rabies. Doctor couldn’t do a thing for her. So I start thinkin’, what’s Jugo do when the axe handle breaks? He comes over and takes mine. What’s Jugo do when he needs some twenty-penny nails? He comes over, sees if I got any. What’s Jugo do when his wife passes on? Maybe he comes over and helps himself to mine since I’m not around. So I got a week’s leave and only three days is left.’ He broke off the flood of words and pointed at a shambling figure on the shoulder of the road. ‘Hey, pick up that guy. He’s o.k., I talked to him yesterday, and won’t nobody pick him up until hell freezes sideways. He’s a Indian, but he’s o.k.’
Loyal thought hitchhikers were coming out of the woodwork on the first warm day. He’d driven a thousand miles without seeing anybody thumbing, and here were two of them within a couple of miles.
‘You know him?’
‘Naw. He walked past me yesterday afternoon, stopped and talked for a while. He just got out of the Army. He’s some kind of different, but he comes from right up the road here. He’ll liven things up. That’s the reason you pick up hitchers, right? Liven things up, tell a few stories, show you where they’re tattooed sometimes.’ He winked at Loyal, the little left eye disappearing behind the fatty eyelid, the sticky lashes.
Loyal slowed as he came up to the man, looked at him in the rearview mirror. He saw black hair combed like Clark Gable’s, a broad face with the skin tight over the cheekbones, a tweed jacket, dirty jeans and a pair of snakeskin boots.
‘Looks more like a lawyer with that coat than a Indian to me,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’ The Indian got into the backseat, nodded two or three times. His cheeks were smooth and he smelled of some spicy after-shave lotion. But there was an animal feeling in the car. The Indian’s black eyes went to the sailor. ‘Heyo again,’ he said.
‘Goes to show that you never know how things is goin’ to turn out, Skies. This here good Samaritan is anonymous so far.’
‘Loyal,’ he said. ‘Loyal Blood.’
‘Third Mate Donnie Weener,’ said the sailor, ‘and he’s Blue Skies, no shit, that’s his name.’
‘Skies for short,’ said the Indian. ‘Don’t sing the song, please.’
The thought occurred to Loyal for the first time that the pair might be in cahoots, close as a pair of nickels in a pocket, tight as two corks in a bottle, as single-purposed as a pencil sharpened at both ends. He didn’t like the Indian sitting behind him in the backseat, didn’t like the way sailor Weener had one arm over the back of the seat, and was half-turned toward him as if he was getting ready to grab the steering wheel. He pulled out onto the highway, steering north, but all the sweetness had gone out of the day from the minute the Indian got in.
The Indian said he was heading for the White Moon Reservation, fifty miles south of Cork Lake.
Weener said he would drive if Loyal wanted, but Loyal said no, he’d drive his own car. He kept the window open against the heat that began to shimmer up from the road.
‘Damn nice farmland,’ said Loyal, looking over the richest soil in the world, a million years of decomposing grass layers, unrolled in earthy floors on each side of the road. The farms by in great squares, each with its phalanx of windbreak trees sheltering the house.
‘These fields is so level,’ said the Indian, ‘you can stand on your running board and see from one end to the other. But you oughta see it if the floods come, if the river goes over the banks. Everything, it’s like a mirage, houses, tractor sheds sticking out of the water, it’s like the ocean, no place for the water to go but spread out. A little wind riffles it you see it move along for a mile.’
‘Must be some kind of mud,’ said Loyal.
‘I known people fell in it and never get up.’
‘That’s right,’ said Weener. ‘Drowned in mud, choked in mud, find you in the fall plowing like some old stick.’ He told jokes. The Indian sat quiet in the backseat, chain-smoking.
Late in the morning they could see thunderheads bunching up behind them in the southeast. Loyal pulled into a Texaco filling station in Little Falls around noon.
‘Fill ’er up?’ The attendant rubbed at the windshield with a dripping rag. His arms were too short to reach the center of the glass. His shirt pulled out of his pants, showing a hairy bel
ly creased with grimy lines.
‘Yeah. And check the oil and water.’
Loyal paid him with a five but before he could pull back onto the highway the sailor told him to wait a minute, opened the door and got out.
‘Tell you what,’ said Weener in a quick gabble, ‘I’m just gonna run over to that café and get some grub. We can save time, get some ham sandwiches and beer and eat it on the road. I’ll get it. My contribution.’ He ran across the street and into a storefront café. Raised letters spelled out THE LONE EAGLE and below an eagle and an airplane were painted on the glass, flying toward a setting sun.
Loyal and the Indian waited for a few minutes at the pump. When a truck drove in behind them for gas Loyal parked on the street where Weener could see them when he came out. They sat in silence. After a while the Indian opened his suitcase and took out a notebook. His fingers flivelled the pages. He scribbled.
‘What the hell is takin’ him so long? He’s been gettin’ them sandwiches half an hour,’ muttered Loyal.
The Indian turned a page. ‘Gone. See him come out the side door right after he went in the front. Ducked up the street.’
‘You mean we’re sittin’ here and he’s took off? Jesus Christ, why didn’t you say something?’
‘Thought you see him, too. Thought you had your reasons to sit here.’
Loyal got out of the car and went across the street. He was inside the café before he thought about the keys in the ignition. He ran back outside, but the car was sitting there with the Indian in the backseat. He went into the café again. A thin man whose lips curved down on one side in an expression of distaste was slicing a cake behind the counter. His thick hair was parted low on the left, the rest of it heaped into a massive pompadour on top of his head. His great glassy eyes were of a blue so pale they seemed colorless. He gripped a serrated knife with a broken blade. There was a pyramid of sandwiches wrapped in cellophane under a glass dome, red stripes of ham, grey tuna.
‘A sailor come in here fifteen, twenty minutes ago?’ said Loyal, swiveling his head to look at the car and the Indian. ’Big, heavyset fella. Named Weener.’
‘A sailor come in, don’t know his goddamn name. Right out d’odder door. People takun a short cut. I put sign on door, NO EXIT, but it don’t do no good. Still do it. Had enough. Like highway in here but nobody buy. Tonight I board a goddam t’ing up.’
Loyal looked out the window. The Indian was sitting in the car. He decided to get rid of him as soon as he could.
‘You give a guy a ride and he takes off. What the hell, give me two of them sandwiches. Give me one of the ham and a tuna.’
‘Ain’t tuna. Chickun salad.’
‘Yeah. Give me one of each of them. Two pieces of cake. You got Dr. Pepper?’ He’d feed the Indian, then get rid of him. No hard feelings that way.
The thin man wiped his hands on his apron and slowly laid the sandwiches in a white bag. He wrapped the slices of cake in waxed paper. He rang it up on an ornate old cash register that must have been in the café since Woodrow Wilson, Loyal thought.
‘Come to one sevendy.’
Loyal reached into his right pants pocket for his money and as be did he knew why sly sailor Weener had disappeared.
‘The son of a bitch took my money. He fucking robbed me.’
The thin man took the wrapped pieces of cake and the sandwiches out of the bag. He shrugged, not looking at Loyal.
The Indian was still in the backseat, his head down, intent. Reading something.
On the sidewalk Loyal plunged his hands into all his pockets feeling again and again for the thick wad of money, most of the six hundred dollars he’d saved over the winter, the grubstake, the new start, his traveling money. It was gone. He got into the car throwing himself back against the seat. The Indian looked up.
‘You know what he done? The sailor? Picked my pocket. He got away with all my money. He must of got it right after I paid for the gas. I worked in a stinking factory all winter for that money.’
After a minute the Indian said, ‘Never to keep more than a five spot in your pocket. Never keep all your money in one place.’
‘Oh, I ain’t that dumb. He didn’t get every penny. I got a hundred in my shoe, but he got all the rest. I could of lived a year on what he got away with.’ He looked up the street in the direction the Indian said Weener had taken. ’Anyway, I know where to find him. He told me he’s headed for his place in a little town up past Wadena, Leaf Falls. That’s where his wife lives.’
‘Leaf River, you mean,’ said the Indian. ‘But he don’t come from around here. Didn’t you hear how he talked? Not from around here. He told me he’s on his way to see his girlfriend in North Dakota. Said he had a letter she’s been real sick, but he thinks she got knocked up so he’s going to find out. He says.’
‘Thief and liar,’ said Loyal. ‘I bet you anything he’s not in the Navy, either. Probably stole that sailor suit. Just a thieving, lying bum on the drift. Probably stole that sailor suit. If I find him he won’t never tell another lie because I’ll rip his tongue out. I’ll take his brain out through his nose.’ He started the car and drove slowly up and down the streets of Little Falls, stopping and running into stores, the Black Hat Bar, the feed store, asking if anyone had seen the sailor. The Indian sat in the backseat, his index finger in the folded notebook. The heat was building up. The sidewalks slowly emptied, people drifting inside to cool shade, to sit on kitchen chairs and the old couches covered with pastel bedspreads.
The streets petered into empty dirt roads. At the end of a short lane they saw a sign LINDBERGH PARK. Loyal pulled in under the trees and shut the engine off. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. His hands and feet were swollen. The sweat trickled down the sides of his face, from the hairline down in front of his ears. The wind stirred and stirred. In the aspen grove the trees swayed, hissing like heavy surf on sea stones. The Indian began to sing.
‘You think this is funny?’ shouted Loyal. ‘You think it’s something to sing about to see a man robbed and trying to get his money back?’
‘I’m singing The Friendly Song. It goes “The sky loves to hear me.” I want to be friendly with the sky. Look over there.’ He pointed to the southeast where the sky was a bruised blue with purple swellings like rotten spots in peaches. Loyal got out of the car. In a minute the Indian, singing under his breath, got out as well. The aspen leaves, green wet silk, tore loose from the trees. The Indian caught a cluster, rubbed the new leaves, as soft as the thinnest glove leather, between his thumb and forefinger.
The wind strengthened in logarithmic increments as they stood watching the sky. The clouds churned, their undersides studded with globes the color of melon flesh. A spatter of rain and branches hurled down, and something twisted in the wet grass with a doomed persistence. It was a bat, injured in some way, gnashing its needle-like teeth. Hail pelted the bat, stung their arms and rattled on the car roof like thrown gravel.
‘See that,’ said the Indian, pointing. A monstrous snout dangled from the cloud. There was a howling roar. The yellow air choked them.
‘Tornado,’ said the Indian. ‘The sky loves to hear me,’ he bawled. The snout swayed like a loose rope and came across the immense landscape toward them.
A setting moon as white as a new time shone in Loyal’s eyes. Enormous toasting forks loomed over him. He heard the cries of geese flying north. He thought he was on the farm, crushed under the stone wall and stretched out his hand to ask Billy to help him.
With the morning light people came. They lifted him in a blanket and laid him on a mattress in the back of a pickup truck. Someone put a paper bag on his chest. On the way to the hospital, the wind of passage beating coldly on his bare feet he began to move his right hand painfully. After a long time he brought it to his head and felt the wet pulpy mass. There was something in his left hand. Hard, smooth, like a blunt cow’s horn. But he could not find the strength to bring it up where he could see it. The trees flared above like flames and
the ocarina fell from his hand.
‘A tornado can do freakish things,’ said the doctor. He leaned at Loyal. The close hair stubbled a head that resembled a truncated cone, ears like cupped hands. An ugly son of a bitch, yet the brown eyes behind cow’s lashes were kind. ‘You hear about straws driven six inches into a burr oak and houses shifted two feet without breaking a teacup. In your case it seems to have taken your car and pulled off your shoes and stockings as neat as could be. You’re lucky you weren’t in that car. We’ll probably never be sure exactly what injured you, but in a manner of speaking, you’ve been partially scalped.’
There was no sign of the Indian.
9
What I See
Loyal, going along the roads, the shadows of white poplars like strips of silk in the wind; pale horses in the field drifting like leaves; a woman seen through a window, her apron slipping down over her head the hairnet emerging from the neckhole, the apron faded blue, legs purple mosquito bites no stockings runover shoes; the man in the yard nailing a sign onto a post; RABIT MEAT; a plank across Potato Creek; a swaybacked shed, the door held closed with a heavy chain, white crosses, windmills, silos, pigs, white poplars in the wind, the leaves streaming by as he drove. A fence. More fence. Miles and miles and miles of fence, barbwire fence. Three girls standing at the edge of the woods, their arms encircling masses of red trillium, the torn root bulbs dangling. Sigurd’s Snakepit, OVER 100 LIVE SNAKE’S SEE THE GILA MONSTER 7 FT. ANACONDA COTTON MOUTH COACH WHIP BULL SNAKE’S RAT SNAKE, and old Sigurd in his long, long overalls and his leather coat standing, beckoning, calling, with a bull snake around his neck, his mouth flickering with promises. A Boston fern in the window. A sofa on the porch. A newspaper on the sofa. A man sleeping under a tractor in a black strip of shade. U.S. POST OFFICE. Take Home Kern’s Bread. Black oak, shellbark hickory, shagbark hickory, black walnut, black maple, Kentucky coffee tree, highbush blackberry, Appalachian cherry, chinquapin oak, moss, winter grapes, creeping savin, white pine, a burial mound in the shape of a bird, white cedar, spruce, balsam, tamarack, prairie chickens. Seed clover. A cow lying in a sea of grass like a black Viking boat, a table with a white cloth under an apple tree and at the table a shirtless man with a mahogany face and soft white breasts.