Kill the dove!

by Francis Kroncke

  Chapter 45: Jared on the farm

  Char leaves two days early to find some time to sit with her Mom and to prepare for meeting “Your daddy. He’s coming.” She knows that Jared wants to come to the farm because of the rural quiet. He’s told her often that that’s something he treasures. “That moment you find yourself in when talking with the animals or trying to insert yourself as an adverb among the corn stalks. Yeah, sounds nuts but it’s something lost in the city. I mean, even the monasteries in towns are different. There’s something about your family’s farm that’s like, face it, a holy place. I don’t know.”

  It isn’t that he wants to meet her dad again or Gary or even her mom, though Mom’s pies are spectacular. “Thick apple slices you can really chew, so sweet but not too sweet—mmm, hot brew and Mom Clark’s pies. Jesus, life can be good!”

  What he really wants is Char in a place he knows is specially hers. The farm is where he first saw her soul. “As she fits in the picture, I mean, not just a nurse—hell, you’d have to be there. Like when she walks around, her body’s different, it’s . . . right, shit, man, I can’t explain but the farm makes me feel good. I tell you, I think I can know what I need to know about her down there.”

  Jared realizes that he needs to know about the abortion, interpret his own dreams about that, ask her forgiveness, find a way to embrace her spiritually. Just as prison was that dark place Inside where his soul was savaged and ravaged, so he returns to the farm seeking its protection, its earthen goodness. At some level within, he knows that the farm is their personal Garden of Eden, and it is there that they must start over again, begin to look at one another, male and female, and imagine as he imagined within the Bright Cloud.

  When Char calls to say that Jared’s out of prison and wants to visit, her mom becomes distraught the moment she hangs up the phone. In other times, she’d be excited, anticipating some long overdue announcement. She’d even be thrilled to accept what the Church condemns, “We’re going to live together.” But now? What to anticipate but that these children have to talk—have that Big Conversation like so many returning veterans had with their wives after her father’s war.

  “How old?”

  “The child’s two. Today’s his birthday. Same as yours, isn’t that swell! Welcome home…daddy!”

  Whose child? (Is it really mine?)

  Mom fears for her daughter. She still hears the startling, “I am a lesbian.” It’s a word attached to Char’s radical actions and her own terror. Every night since that conversation she’s been praying an extra rosary. It’s still the only sacred gesture of blessing that she is confident will bestow protection on her bold, brave, fearless, but oh, so vulnerable! daughter.

  Denial now no longer necessary, Mom asks, “Child, how long has he been away? Does he know? When, how will you tell him, if he didn’t get your letters?”

  The roads in southwestern Minnesota cut through fields that offer the stuff of life to humans. “Minnesota soil is so rich that just standing in it makes you grow an inch,” is one of Jared’s favorite “on the farm” jokes. Today, as he watches the farm appear, turning right off the Interstate at Highway 75, he’s more than ever conscious of the fact that the farm is as much a state of mind, of soul, as it is a locale. It’s picturesque with a landscape dotted with old buildings and dilapidated signs, ones from the era of Burma Shave. It has its own cultural markers, such as the five or six bullet-blasted, paint-peeling signs offering something—tobacco or some brand name that’s been shot to hell. Farmers and hunters. It’s all that but more. It’s that the land exudes the virtues of human effort, of sweat labor. All in all, the farm demonstrates the Biblical admonition, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground. For out of it wast thou taken. For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Genesis 3:19.

  Say “farmers” and the word draws up a flock of images of nameless men and women. Here, they’re mostly Germans and Scandinavians with a splash of Scotch-Irish, who are born, live and die behind the plow: horse drawn, mule drawn, tractor drawn, all dropping their seeds and reaping their harvest of body and soul.

  They die, going to seed for the next generation, which eyes the fields just as they did. “They plow in such incredibly straight lines. I mean, it’s an art, really. You fucking better believe it! I once tried that and god, did they laugh at me. Like a kindergartner drawing lines with a big bulky crayon, I was zigzagging all over the field!”

  This land brings good memories to Jared, about the Clarks and about his own soul comfort found here. Also some odd, funny thoughts: “Like, and listen—am I stoned?—when you crap, you know it’s good, you’re fertilizer! It’s really far out. Strange, that’s true, but it feels good in your gut.”

  Jared laughs as he remembers saying that to Bart and a group from the food co-op after one of his trips to the farm. Being back-to-the-earth hippies into developing an alternative economy—their being so much into organic farming, composting and all that smelly stuff—he hears, “Right on, brother! Right on!’

  Mystical, man, mystical. Jared chuckles softly.

  Cruising along, suddenly he feels frightened. His fingers grip the steering wheel, arms clench, body goes rigid as if prepared to fight off a force that could throw the car off the road. His legs are in flight mode. He’s sucking air. As he turns left onto the county road that marks a mile from the farm, he slows, shifts his aging Vega down to second, then first, does not heed its noisily metallic protests, its screeching whines, its sudden chokes and jerks. He ever so slowly creeps alongside the farm’s west pasture’s edge. His fear is not as if a gigantic bird of prey might swoop down and eat him, rather, he feels a bit like a pilot of an armored tank, maneuvering towards a target, armed to the teeth, waiting to launch a first strike.

  He stops the car but doesn’t pull off the road. Sits there for five, six, ten minutes. He rolls down the window, pauses, then yells, “It’s not her sin, man, it’s mine!”

  Fingers freed, body disarming, Jared shakes his head, pulls down the visor and glances at himself in the vanity mirror, hears within, Absolvo te!

  He starts rolling again.

  She sees him from afar. He’s a speck on the horizon, she knows it’s him for sure because she’s seeing with farmer’s eyes, spotting at long distance the advent of something new—a traveler, an animal, a gust of wind rising in the field. Just now he’s turning onto the dirt driveway, an eighth of a mile. She continues to steadily rock back and forth in August’s early morning warmth, a close warmth, heavy with moisture, the tears of clouds.

  She rocks, humming to herself, neatly dressed in a simple earth-tone skirt and blouse, loosely fitting. Her hair is long the way he likes, set with a twist of two Roses of Sharon: one lavender, a delicate pale bluish purple, the other almost pure vanilla white, a touch creamy, pinned by Mom over her right ear while sharing tea just after breakfast. At the moment upstairs, Mom makes the beds and keeps her men busy doing things, she ever the assistant preparing the scene, ready to help.

  Jared pulls up and parks by the weathered mailbox. On the porch, Char smothers a small laugh at seeing the Vega she thought long dead. Its mere presence reminds her of so many adventures and mishaps, breakdowns and long hours being patched back together by her father. But her merriment is quickly muffled by a creeping dread, a fear which she finds puddled upon her lap and seeping into her. This is something she hadn’t anticipated, thought she had under control.

  Her feet are like lead blocks, he rises above the car tall as ever, she watches him like a stalk magically erupting from inside the Vega, and all she can feel is her heart thumping and the pain of her breathing and the wetness upon her hands she wipes three, four times like a phobic patient. He comes towards her, is approaching, the strength in his long stride, the walk and dip of shoulder she knows so well, has dreamed so often, and is before her, she sitting, looking up, feeling so raw, so dissected as if her heart were on her chest beating like a drum announcing h
is arrival and he reaches towards her, she whom he has feared to meet, at once confident of what he has rehearsed, at the next moment blank of mind like back years ago on the stage, a second grader, awed by the audience, but her eyes save him—It is her—and all the rancor, all the flechettes of hatred he once clustered to throw at her, all the confusion from the past years drain away from him, vanish in the moment he is snared by her eyes: “jasper!” he has penned, pleased with the adjective that so accurately describes the change in her eyes during moments of passion. He reaches, she reaches, they stand and embrace, pull each other bone by bone, breath by breath, muscle by muscle onto each other, hugging so hard that they hurt together but do not let go, so deep that there is only dryness, meeting in the desert of their hearts, all his time Inside flashing in vivid colors before him, no sense of calendar, no markings of the loss, just deep blues and lightning silvers and dark, dark shades beyond the black of night—they burst into showers and brilliant sun, pressing cheek to wetted cheek and he’s heaving and she rocks with him, she whispers “Jared! Jared!” and he’s consumed, enveloped. They kiss, mouths coming like birds returning to the nest, bits of food they are each to the other, feeding. Only the ache, the steel hard ache of his straining muscles rouse him to the moment, and he releases her and she slips from him back into the chair and he, still tethered to her eyes, sits down at her feet, wraps his arms around her legs—they are still, together.

  Bertha doesn’t know whether she should, but she does, partly moved by curiosity, partly by concern, sidle to the screen door and peek, finds them in the embrace of stillness, and once sensed, savors the tender quietness. As she opens the door a crack, the top hinge’s squeak rustles through them and both turn towards her, “Mom!”

  Jared unfurls himself and steps up, greets her. They touch hands and he kisses her forehead, then swoops her up in a big bear hug, lifting her off her feet.

  “Oh, my . . . I didn’t even bake a pie!”

  He sets her down, full smile and a tender laugh.

  “Oh my goodness!” She blanches, watching the scar wave across his face as he smiles and unsmiles. She reaches out to touch him but hesitates to feel all that the slash might say—all the intimacy it demands be explored.

  Char has been too absorbed to notice but now does. “Jared, what happened?” All three are standing, poised as if waiting for the click! of a snapshot. “This? Err, see, it’s a long story. But don’t worry, I’m okay. Later, okay?”

  Char stands and crooks her arm with his as Mom says, “Come on you two, your dad and Gary want to see you.”

  Jared, oh, Jared, hug me, crush me, take me into your heart!

  After two handshakes, a round of coffee and some honey rolls, with nothing much said other than, “Glad to see you, boy,” and, “Welcome back, Jared,” with no discussion about prison, not even an observation by the men about the scar, now partially concealed by a month of whiskers, so no questions asked, Jared looks at Char: “Let’s go for a walk.”

  It’s a familiar route. Down the road a quarter of mile, right turn at the ruddy weathered barn, a relic of past harvests, and another quarter mile to the pond.

  They just walk. No words during the first several minutes, and then his dammed questions break-through and long-suffered emotions tumble, emptying his brain.

  “Look, Char, Sweetheart, you know I love you. I want to say that. Despite my insanity. Forgive me, please. I know I did that, said that. Jesus, this is harder than I thought. But you know that . . there’s just loads of stuff we need to talk about, but I’ve got to know, I mean, I know why you didn’t but it’s you, Char, I expected …” he chokes, throws up his arms, asks from within anguished abandonment, “Why didn’t you write? Why didn’t you try to contact me?”

  Finally! She was always certain that her letters didn’t get through. Sadly, she realizes that he doesn’t know. It’s her worst-case scenario.

  “Jared, I did.”

  “Did?”

  “Yes, months and months, but you didn’t answer.”

  “I didn’t?” Witson, you bastard! Liar!

  “And since they weren’t returned, I thought, you know, you just threw them away . . . or something.”

  Her words, her story, the truth of it he knows is undeniable. Them. “Bastards!”

  Certainly, it was part of Witson’s plan.

  “Aw, fucking Mother of God holy shit, the bastards!” He kicks the dirt, hard, scraping his toe, almost gouging out the leather tip. The hateful anger of his words, the lash of his arms as he spits Bastards! makes her realize—throws her into an instant panic—the gap between them, the one she knows they have to close. Admit it! It’s not just a gap but a chasm.

  Char watches Jared drift away as if on an ice floe, far out onto the thawing lake, trapped, caught—out of control. In a desperate effort to hold on to him, she blurts out, “You have a son! A boy, Jared. A son.”

  The effect is sudden and complete, like a scythe executing a corn stalk. Jared falls—thud!—one hundred percent deadweight. A motion that has no cascading parts, no knees first, waist second, arms third, head fourth. No cut and hack at the stalk. No second swipes needed. Just one swoop of graceful, soundless, death-cutter energy. The fall is smooth, swift, thud!

  Char’s nurse’s mind races, Code Blue! Code Blue!

  She kneels down next to him. Trickles of blood stain his twitching moustache, small stones pockmark his forehead and cheeks. Only his quivering lips assure her that he’s alive.

  She rolls him on his back and begins to dab, spit and dab, clean, clear away, smudge, finally raising some color to his cheeks. She holds a hand, then a forearm as he shakes and shivers. When he does come to, it’s an all-at-once resurrection like a child thrust wildly upward on the seesaw by an older, heavier sister. In a flash, he rolls left, anchors an elbow, for a wink steadies himself, then rights himself, flips up onto his feet as if performing a callisthenic. She stands, reaching for his hand, again. He starts to speak, totters, falls back down on one knee, head down, whoozy…minutes not timed, gets up, steadies himself with a hand on her shoulder, the other clenching hers.

  He towers above her. She sways into him, close hugging, just holding and holding on tight. Abruptly, he grasps her forearms and pushes them backwards, not in anger but to have a clear look at her. He steps back and echoes, questioning, calmly, strongly, “A boy?”

  Char breaks into a broad, beaming smile, nods yes! He beams back, eyes wild with glee, a tad stunned—this the look she was denied on their birth night, that idiotic, totally goofy, look-laugh-holler-craziness which two share when that which is greater than the sum of their parts emerges: their mutual passionate creation, flesh from their flesh, eyes from their eyes, heartbeat of their heartbeat. Jared grabs her, quickly lashes her to him, holds her arms around his back and spinning, spinning, jumping—a touch of the berserk: a mad but blessed touch that dismisses all and any pains which wait in queue.

  As they walk back it is with inward eye that they see the day and one another, each sending beams of light from within their hearts to join with the other in a hand-holding, arm-swinging walk along the path of forever.

  Towards their child, their son, their boy, they walk.

  “I haven’t named him.”

  “What?”

  “I—I thought about it a great deal, and I wanted to wait for you.”

  “But what do you call him, boy?”

  She laughs, “No, silly, I call him Sweetheart. Or Heart . . . he doesn’t know any difference. Besides, it’s a word of love, like you call me often, Sweetheart. Anyway, I knew someday I’d have to give him a male name, and you can guess how upset Mom and Dad are about this. ‘Child, you must get him baptized!’ They wanted me to name him Jared, but I wanted to wait.”

  Back at the farm, in her old bedroom, the new parents stand holding hands over their son’s crib, beaming love down to the sleeping child.

  “Just two, today! A toddler. Lucky you, darling, paroled just in t
ime for the Terrible Twos.”

  “I, I just can’t believe we have the same birthday! That must mean something?” He hears Matt chuckle, “Karma, J, deep karma!”

  Then the barrage: “Is he like me? What will my Mom say? Who else knows? What about the Sisters? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Later. We can talk.” She tugs on his right arm, indicating that she wants his full attention. “I wanted to wait and have you and me name him, okay?”

  For Jared this is a moment of rapture—gazing upon the face of Divine Love which is the mingling of Char with his soul, together forming the presence of this other who is not him or her but whose presence makes them family.

  Gazing down, totally awed, Jared is for a moment back inside the Bright Cloud and he hears a name that he echoes out loud: “Joseph. He’s Joseph.”

  The child wakes upon the sound of his name.

  Joseph: “It’s just so unreal,” four, five times he says this as he holds the child, lifts him up to eye level, kisses him on the mouth and cheek and neck and sweet powdered belly and pudgy feet. He nips him around the ears, whispering, “Daddy’s here, Joey. I love you, son!”

  As all readily notice, the child loves the man. He’s wild at his father’s beard. Wrestles with his slightly curling hair. Finds on his tongue “Jey” and practicing “Da.” And Jared dutifully attends and cherishes all his fathering tasks—“Diaper duty again? I think I’ll go back Inside!”

  During their visit, at lunch, dinner, and in between family and neighbor visits, it’s heard a thousand times over, “He looks like . . . ,” and a few pressing, “When will you . . .” Fill in the blanks: Have him christened? Get married?

  At bedtime Char and Jared place little Joey in his crib, which was once his mother’s. They stand, arms around each other’s waists, adoring, at times rearranging the small mountain of pillows and long-retired stuffed animals that secure and protect him.

  Each knows that this child is the symbol of their time apart, that “never to be shared” Inside passage. Blessed, they know him as their bridge, bonding them together forever. As family they pray aloud, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep . . .”

  As they commune through prayer, Jared lays the hibakusha upon his son’s tiny chest. Char reaches to touch one end. “Like the Tree of Life,” she says, “a root, strong, gnarled but vibrant.”

  This is what the hibakusha is to her. This, it becomes for him. When touched by the child, it glows—just as it did when it led his father into the Bright Cloud.

  Amazing! As Jared lifts the hibakusha off his son, he is struck with a profound understanding—that a mission has been fulfilled, an obligation discharged, and an anointing made of a leader of the next generation. We have the same birthday! The hibakusha forever links Joey and Char to his time Inside. As they complete the prayer, “and if I die before I wake,” he’s senses that this is an exceptional moment. A flood of caged and chained down emotions burst upon him: fear, hatred, self-loathing, despair—and as quickly are lifted from him. In this moment he is free of the cage and the chains. He breathes a sigh of deep, center-of-the-earth deep relief. He hears, You can go now. She awaits.

  Overwhelmed, humbled, challenged, he looks at Char, feels her look deeply inside him. Although Jared wants to leave, this isn’t all that this day is fated to witness. Before the presence of Joey jolted everything a quantum level, his main intention was to come to the farm to have Char walk with him, from their past to their now. He had planned to ask her forgiveness, to tell her about the Bright Cloud, to see if somehow she already knew. Right now he is so full of love that he fears it will divert him from what he must do. He needs to break all his chains before he can begin to heal. There are some things that only she can heal.

  As little Joey falls back to sleep, Jared picks up Char’s hands, engulfs them and sighs, “I have to show you my prison heart!” They go downstairs, hand in hand. The living room is empty. No one else is around. Char flashes on her mother in the kitchen shooing her Dad and Gary away, “They need time, now, you two. So shoo!”

  Char listens—she had feared worse. He’s all choked up. “Will you forgive me?” She beckons him downward, locks her fingers around his neck, kisses him. “Yes.” Kisses him again. He kneels down before her, embracing around her waist, presses his head lightly against her stomach. Her hand upon his head. “Really, there is nothing to forgive. This was our path. How we were to learn about the sexual violence that curses us all.”

  He closes his eyes, hugs her harder. “You are simply an amazing woman—no, more, an amazing lover.” He frees her, stands up, cups her face in his powerful hands, “Your love sustained me through hell, I know that now. You are truly a daughter of the goddess!” He kisses her and kisses her and kisses her till she starts laughing, pushes him away, “Okay, okay. Stop! Obey the goddess!”

  Hand in hand, they walk over and sit down on a couch. He’s beaming: “Right. F…, oops, true, I do understand.” Then corrects, “No, not understand but feel. Together, we have some sight, but—I think we have to admit—we’ve been more like a blind couple struggling to find the bed together.”

  It’s an image that starts them laughing, but it is mirth edged with a trace of sadness. He sighs: “A bed, my dear Sweetheart, which we shall not share again. Isn’t that our fate?”

  She leans on him and lays her head against his shoulder. They sit together, mother and father. Hours are not counted. Summer night’s fireflies dance.