Then again, perhaps I’m trying too hard. Searching for something that isn’t there. I have now and then overtly plumbed Tom for certain introspections, and it rarely pans out. It seems he reserves his periods of reflection for the purposes of sussing out a means of designing a reverse-threaded cable reel. After Arlene came home from the hospital I dropped in one day to see how things were going. We were in our customary places at the dining room table again, the cats and dog flopped here and there, a sunbeam refracting through the fermentation jar and glinting off the barrel of the miniature cannon on the sideboard. The conversation meandered from general catch-up to hog-raising tips (“four pounds of grain for one pound of gain,” Tom says) to a review of typographical and historical errors Tom has marked in the previous day’s edition of the local newspaper (“That should be FDR, not Teddy—they got the wrong Roosevelt!). He was also pleased when I noticed his crisp new copy of The Practical Pyromaniac peeking out from beneath a National Geographic.
It was a nice little visit, the kind you tuck away and cherish for its very comfy informality. And yet I was also thinking of how on any given day these visits might come to an end, and was hungering for some deeper wisdom. I waited until the time seemed right, and then:
“All these years, Tom—you have any regrets?”
“Well, sure,” he said.
And then nothing more.
Once when we were still a family of three, Anneliese and Amy and I were hiking in rural Panama when we happened upon a sculpture garden open to the public. Amy skipped eagerly from piece to piece as we followed. At one point the trail passed through a tunnel-like arbor. Amy was running ahead when I raised the camera and snapped a photo. The shutter caught her mid-stride with one leg pushing off, one leg reaching forward, her hair frozen in a jounce, and her body leaning toward the light at the far end of the arbor. The image delivered a metaphorical whack that even today leaves me afloat.
Then today I look up from my desk in time to see Jane run barefoot up from the pole barn where she has been adventuring, her braid bouncing as she leans into the turn up the sidewalk toward the house. She too is bent forward in a headlong posture, and just as her face passes from view I freeze-frame her in the same position as her sister in Panama those years before. In all cases we view our children along a vanishing perspective, an obvious truism that not unimportantly nudges us to, as the writer Jim Harrison has put it, view ourselves walking away.
And so it is, if forced to choose only one portrait of Thomas A. Hartwig, it would be that in which he is departing the camera. He is diminutive in the composition, stumping shin-deep through a sea of crabgrass that anchors the bottom third of the image. This is a color photograph, and by the pale green blades you can tell summer is waning. In the way they twist, you can see the wind is up and hectic. Tom is ambulating toward his silo, visible as a whitewashed concrete column standing bulwark against a thin-clouded sky. The camera was set beneath the surviving giant oak tree; a few blurry branches drape leafily into the upper foreground, establishing a sense of depth and pointing generally toward Tom in his position just off center and to the left. You can see the crack that nearly felled the silo—it runs from the ground to the eaves—but the thirteen hoops are all snugged tight, and you get the sense it’ll stand as long as man and tectonics allow.
The semi is shooting out from behind the silo, the blue blur of the cab conveying speed even as it is held frozen on film. It’s a tanker truck, the fifty-foot flying cylinder of the trailer zooming at a counterpoint right angle to the silo, which stands stolid on a foundation sunk twelve feet in the ground. The roadbed is set just slightly lower than the crabgrass plain, so that the semi-tractor wheels are obscured by fence-line brush and the sleeper cab rises over the near horizon like a predatory dorsal fin, the effect being that of a shark nosing through the kelp shallows.
Tom is simply walking. A little bowlegged, his arms loosely hung, elbows everted. And in this shot he looks sturdy. As if he could last. As he has.
All told, the state took fifteen acres from Tom and Arlene Hartwig, although you might as well call it thirty-seven once you count the landlocked patch on the far side of the concrete. “It did more to ruin this place than anything,” Tom says. “Before, we were half a mile from the nearest neighbor. Peace and quiet. They wound up takin’ it by eminent domain. You think you own something? You have the use of it . . . but if it comes right down to nitty-gritty, you don’t own it.” One day when I took Tom a copy of the Eau Claire Leader describing the interstate opening ceremonies, I asked him what it was like that first day when the traffic came through. “To tell you the truth, I really didn’t notice it that much,” he said. “As far as the noise, well, you’d had two years of construction here, so you were pretty well tuned to the noise.” Then a smile began to work its way across his face. “I did always say I woulda loved to have taken a big manure spreader up there to the overpass and when the politicians went through, just back up and let’er rip!” Later, Anneliese asked Tom if he ever got hotheaded about what was being done. “Nah,” he said. “You got to adjust, because you can’t change it.” I take another look at Tom’s eyes in the solo portrait. I see resignation and resolve in cohabitation, and no contradiction in it. I see more than a little of my old friend Montaigne, as well, specifically in terms of what Sarah Bakewell writes of Montaigne’s commitment to “amor fati: the cheerful acceptance of whatever happens.” Twenty-three thousand cars a day is a drag, but, hey—you got a free broom and a pocketful of stories. Tom Hartwig has not only transcended the intrusion of the highway, he has transcended the intrusion of bitterness.
Back again, now, to the photo of Tom with his back to the camera. The man, the truck, the silo: That’s your story, right there in a picture. The man lost, the truck won, the silo is a battlefield monument.
And yet the man marched on.
I studied the photos for a long, long time. At midnight I stepped outside and a firefly split the air above my hair with such velocity I thought it was a tracer round. Spasmodically, I ducked. He was on a freight-train flight, poor fellow, borne on the bum-rush brunt of a pummeling wind and propelled at such a clip that his amorous beaconing lingered on my retinas not as blinks but as extrusions of neon. You wonder if his message was readable. You think of the sensible lady firefly discreetly glowing from the safety of the grass below, raising one skeptical antenna at the hot-rod tearaway before turning her attention to the windbreak edges of the lawn, where the lower lights go bobbing along.
Or perhaps—just maybe—she longed to join him.
At two in the morning I awakened and realized I forgot to secure the chicken coop. Crossing the yard in my rubber boots and cotton undershorts, I saw blinks in the weeds, which caused me to wonder where the windblown firefly wound up, and how it all worked out for him. The wind had calmed, although high above a ragged tissue of cloud scraped the face of a gibbous moon. The lunar glow was just sufficient to drape a milky wash over the shoulders of the land before me, but the far valley lay as a gulf of darkness. I closed the coop, then walked farther out the ridge until I could see the running lights of the semis slipping to and fro across the bottomlands, throttling through their all-night runs with a softly audible thrum. Down in the shelter of the semicircling ridge I knew Tom and Arlene were sleeping—as they have since the highway opened—above the tremor of heavy wheels.
For reasons both chemical and banal as well as foolish in the face of good fortune, I regularly descend into quasi-clinical funks during which my gyroscope goes wobbly and my soul assumes the character of a rain-wet corn husk. When I am at my worst, I have found two things help immensely: the arms of my wife, whose capacity for acceptance exceeds my ability to comprehend it, and coming to this ridge where I might stand beneath the infinite galactic spray and (Montaigne again) look narrowly into my own bosom.
The other morning I ran into my barkeeper friend Nolte at the local coffee shop. I told him how I had been walking out to worry beneath the stars, and I told
him about Tom, and how I had come to believe Tom’s life was a testament to equanimity, and that I was working on that. Nolte said, Perry, I think you’ve got the equanimity thing figured; it’s your equilibrium that needs attention.
Recently a friend gave me a listen to a song he’s been working on, and out there on the starry ridge that night it came to me. The first verse is unsparing, with lyrics that describe a man failing himself shamefully and—this is what bloodlets the soul—failing others. The song builds in such a manner that you feel yourself rising from your body, higher, ever higher, into the thinnest wintry air until you reach an atmosphere at which you can visualize your life adhering in transparence over the very curve of the earth. Just as you achieve weightlessness there arrives the lyric: And at once I knew . . . I was not magnificent.
And so it is I am soothed by the impossibility of all those stars. This is the universe suggesting that it is quite capable of absorbing my wobbles, and that if need be, it can spare the bulk of an entire galaxy to do the job. In the meantime, back on earth, I should keep plugging away. A great weight lifts, and the message beaming back from endless billions of howling, earth-dwarfing gas balls is that infinity resides also in the smallest speck of light.
I think of that firefly up there at altitude, swept along by forces he cannot control, appropriately bug-eyed, legs flailing, wings furiously fanning, and yet even in the midst of it all, still tending the hopeful glow of love. I think of Tom, weaving bulbs and wires through the spokes of that Harley, roaring into town and up and down the sidewalk, trying to catch Arlene’s eye with his spinning, flashing lights. I think of his hand, reaching for her brow. I think of Anneliese’s blue eyes, and when my floundering and flubbing leads to darkest hours how I long to look into them for the universe they hold. I think of my children, and what I owe them, and where that account might stand.
The light of a firefly is the size of a teardrop. We cannot defeat the cosmic wind. We are not magnificent.
But, by God, we try.
EPILOGUE
Somewhere in the universe the cannon shot still reverberates. The photographers are stowing their gear in the Rambler. Tom is back in the kitchen with Arlene. She is frustrated that she couldn’t get around out there. It makes me mad, she says. Since that last bout, I have no steam. I’m always tired.
From your chair you can see the traffic passing through a bracket formed by the barn and the casement of the kitchen window. The cars go dot, dot, dot, the semis are dashes. The RVs are somewhere in between. Someone drifts to the rumble strip, raising a serrated moan. The sunbeam crosses Cassidy the dog at a late-afternoon angle. An elongated strip of orange passes betwixt the brackets. Schneider National, says Tom. Out of Green Bay. You can feel the tremor through your boot soles.
We were told they would never be allowed to come in the house to use the phone, says Arlene. Her elbows rest on the walker. There is the faint hiss of the oxygen through the tube. That’s what they told us. But every time they wanted cement hauled down to the culvert they’d come up here. They’d use our driveway, and they’d use our phone . . .
If I had it to do over again, nothing would be allowed except with a court order, says Tom. Fight’em all the way, right from the beginning. Be the meanest S.O.B. goin’. He is in his familiar stance, legs crossed, wrists crossed, eyes cast at the floor. Now he looks up, says, And then you pay me.
Arlene chuckles. All we got was a push broom . . . and that was wore out! They’re both grinning now. Rueful, sure, but with a twinkle.
Weaahhl, we were too trusting, says Tom.
Yah, says Arlene.
They stop now, considering. In the parlor a rainbow dot slides across the plaster, thrown by the little geegaw turning. You hear the cuckoo clock ticking, the pendulum squeaking. The dog shifting, snuffling, rolling her belly hopefully to the sky. The rubber thrumming on concrete. The oceanic wash: Whoosh. Whoosh. Whish, whoosh. Whoosh.
You cannot tell if they hear it. It is not possible to say if it registers.
We are suckers for final scenes. The neat package, the knotted ribbon, the credits rolling over nothing but an echo. If you leave right now, the room will fix itself in black and white and stay that way forever.
But you linger. Listen to the clock, listen to the cars, listen to the ringing phone.
Tom lifts the handset, passes it to Arlene. Hello, Arlene says. Ahh, he is, just one minute. She passes the handset back to Tom. He listens a bit. A keyway? Yah, I can do it. Yah, I have that. Nah, just bring it on over.
WHEN THE PAGER WENT OFF this morning I threw my kit in the pickup truck and drove jouncing out the driveway past the PIRVATE DRIVE sign. At the top of Starkey Road I pointed the bumper downhill and accelerated. Right around NO PAIN, NO GAIN I got off the gas and tapped the brakes a bit lest the commissioner be hiding in the weeds. At the yield sign I checked both directions, then got back on the foot-feed. As I maneuvered the grump-making chicane, something outside the driver’s-side window caught my eye: a change in contour, an earth-tone flash.
I swiveled my head. Fresh gravel, freshly graded. Swiveling my head back, I ducked and checked the mirror. The moat is partially filled, the apron widened to a car’s width.
It ain’t the straight shot, but it’s a shot.
I’ll tell Tom, next visit.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FIRST AND FOREMOST, TO MY PARENTS—anything decent is because of them; anything else is not their fault.
Anneliese, who walked me to Tom and Arlene and is walking with me still. Amy and Jane, forever in the cozy kitchen of my heart.
John and Julie, for the focus. Mills, for friendship. Our Fall Creek neighbors, for being neighborly. Alissa, for reminders. Blakeley for the road. Karen for math with a heart. Krister for pixel panics, Dave for mainlining our onlining. Carissa, in the spirit of pink ponies. Jay Moore for the mornings. Jennifer Barth for cutting but not running. Lisa B. for goodness sakes, how long now? Jason Sack and Dan Kirschen. Scranton crew. Rob and Meriah Frost and family. Emmy and Deb, with respect and thanks. The people along the road who have given me and my family shelter and quiet—the names are adding up, and you know who you are. Dan and Lisa for the shack in the woods. The Long Beds for sharing the stage, Dean Bakopoulos for sharing the terrors. Racy’s and Mister Happy for key privileges. Matt Marion because he hangs in there with me. Ben in Ohio, always on duty. TFD and Emergicare, for letting me carry a pager and visit the ditches.
Brad and Donna for support and the view from here.
Our Colorado blendeds and extendeds. Gene and Paula, because you’re always here even so far away.
Anthony Shadid, who wrote things that mattered.
And because we never forget the old school: Frank, the Joynt and kitchen table crew, Mags, and the place some call Nobbern.
If I missed you on the page, I got you in my heart.
And hey: Vern.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MICHAEL PERRY is an amateur pig farmer, an active member of the local rescue service, and a contributing editor to Men’s Health. He lives in rural Wisconsin with his wife and two daughters, and can be found online at www.sneezingcow.com.
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ALSO BY MICHAEL PERRY
BOOKS
Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting
Truck: A Love Story
Population: 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time
Off Main Street: Barnstormers, Prophets & Gatemouth’s Gator
AUDIO
The Clodhopper Monologues
Never Stand Behind a Sneezing Cow
MUSIC
Headwinded (Michael Perry and the Long Beds)
Tiny Pilot (Michael Perry and the Long Beds)
ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHERS
JOHN SHIMON AND JULIE LINDEMANN have been my friends since the day we met in prison. I hope you will go to www.shimonlindemann.com and learn more about their work.
&nb
sp; CREDITS
Photographs copyright © J. Shimon & J. Lindemann
Cover design by Jarrod Taylor
Cover photograph © J. Shimon & J. Lindemann
Author photograph by Andi Stempniak,
Leader-Telegram, Eau Claire, Wisconsin
COPYRIGHT
VISITING TOM. Copyright © 2012 by Michael Perry. 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 ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Perry, Michael.
Visiting Tom : a man, a highway, and the road to roughneck grace / Michael Perry.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-06-189444-2
1. Hartwig, Tom. 2. Perry, Michael. 3. Perry, Michael—Friends and associates. 4. Farm life—Wisconsin. 5. Farmers—Wisconsin—Biography. 6. Wisconsin—Biography. I. Title.
CT275.H388P47 2012
977.5′043092—dc23[B]
2012001356
Epub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780062097798
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