The Return

by Margaret Guthrie

A chicken lasagna baked in the oven as Lydia tore lettuce and chopped vegetables for a salad. She was almost done when the doorbell rang. Margie went to answer it. It was Pearl, with a big smile. Grey hair peeked out from a bright red wool hat. A light brown coat with cape-like attachment over her shoulders emphasized her solidness, as did her feet-apart stance. But it was her assessing look that made Margie smile in amusement.

  “Our little Margie,” Pearl said, pressing strong hands on Margie’s upper arms. “You’re a Kinnen all right, your father’s child. Bigger than your sister. She’s a spitting image of her mother.” Pearl let go, smiled quickly, lowered her voice. “It’s almost scary, her looking so much like Brenda.”

  So what did that mean, Margie wondered, scowling a bit. This must be the third time she’d heard the remark. What were people thinking? Not knowing what to say, Margie kept silent as she watched Pearl with quick efficient movements shed her coat and hat then hand them to her. Margie took them to the hall tree and hung them up as Pearl, behind her, sat down on a foyer chair and took off her shoes. When Margie turned around Pearl had pulled out slippers from her large purse and put them on.

  “There,” Pearl said. “I hope you don’t mind. It just saves a bit of vacuuming. Just my little thing.” Pearl stood up and spread her arms. “Now for a real hug.” Margie stepped into the embrace, Pearl’s large breasts like a pillow that she could have leaned into if she were younger, still a little girl, and it touched a longing that brought tears.

  “Thanks for coming,” Margie said as she broke the embrace, a bit embarrassed at her reaction. “Lydia’s in the kitchen.”

  “Smells like something good,” Pearl said, and Margie let pass the notion that the good smell was Lydia’s creation. Lydia cook? She had to smile.

  “Mmm-hmmm.” Pearl thought about the years gone by, the two little orphans now the same age their parents when she last saw them.

  As they walked through the living room toward the kitchen, Pearl noted Emma’s rocking chair near the corner fireplace, and other furniture familiar to her visits with the Kinnens years ago. It seemed a bit odd, in a way. Most people had gotten rid of all their old heavy furniture. Surely the tenants hadn’t used it. They must have pulled it out from storage, or something. “Brings back memories,” she commented. “Your grandmother loved that chair.”

  “Yes,” agreed Margie. “She rocked us in that chair. We hope you’ll share your memories. There’s things we want to know,” Margie said, as they went on into the kitchen.

  Lydia had finished the salad and put it on the table. She too, enclosed herself in Pearl’s warm embrace for a moment and then introduced Sid who had come out to inspect this new presence. Pearl reached down and stroked his head, soon evoking a contented purr. “He’s yours forever,” Lydia laughed.

  As they sat down to eat, the trio looked through the bank of windows lining the kitchen and back porch, through tall oaks beginning to leaf, past the shed and small ancestral cemetery and watched the sun as it lowered in the sky. A gossamer pink curtain spread out over the landscape.

  “Just look at that, Lydia,” Margie said. “Something you don’t see in the city.”

  “And it’s so quiet at night,” Lydia added. “No city hum, no cars honking, no trains wailing through town, hardly any airplanes.”

  Pearl laughed. “I’m sure you’ll discover noises soon enough. Insects, for instance. You’d be surprised how noisy they can get in their eating and mating and whatever they do. And you’ll hear machinery out in the fields when it gets busy.”

  “At night?” Lydia asked, surprised.

  “Oh, yes. They can’t stop when it’s planting or harvesting time. You’ll see their lights, too.”

  They paused for a silent prayer, then passed food and filled their plates.

  “So what do they plant in the fields these days?” Margie wanted to know.

  “Oh, they’ll be planting corn in a few weeks, late April, early May. They may already be out spreading Roundup on the fields. That sits for a couple weeks before they spread nitrogen fertilizer.”

  “Nitrogen.” Lydia’s eyes widened. “The stuff Timothy McVeigh used to blow up the Murrah building?”

  Pearl nodded. “The same.”

  “Don’t they have to be careful? I mean, doesn’t it get into the air?” Lydia imagined all these farm people breathing the chemicals that helped them make a living, and then coming up with asthma and cancer. She wondered if there were any statistics on it.

  “They wear masks when working with chemicals,” Pearl stated matter-of-factly. “And soon after spreading fertilizer they plant.”

  Lydia held a fork in the air, about to express her astonishment when Margie broke in with a new observation and the topic of health concern was passed.

  “But it looks like the fields are full of old corn stalks,” Margie complained. Lydia put her fork down and listened.

  “True, but the latest wisdom is to just leave them after fall combining to hold in the moisture. But the planter has a front end disc that cuts the stalks before the seeds are released. I’m sure any of the farmers would welcome you to come out and take a look at what they do.”

  “Sherrie said the same thing,” Margie commented. “I suppose we’ll have to sometime. But my memory of farms is mud and manure. Guess I’ve become too ‘citified,’ as they say.”

  “Well, you’ll discover that farming is a big operation. Huge, powerful tractors pull ever larger and heavier machinery. Pearl eyed the room they were in, measuring. “Wouldn’t fit in here. Imagine one planter doing twelve rows of corn thirty inches apart.” She stretched out her arms, looked from one end to the other. “For soybeans it folds up to plant rows fifteen inches apart.”

  “And those are the $100,000 machines?” Lydia wanted to know. “Well, tractors, $100,000, combines $120,000. Planters, I don’t know.” Pearl shrugged and reached for a roll which she carefully buttered.

  “How does one family finance a farm?” Margie asked. “Sherrie told us it takes 1,000-3,000 acres to make a go of it.

  “She’s right,” Pearl said. “And one family doesn’t do it alone. Not really. It’s fathers and sons or daughters. It’s intermarriages that bring farms together.”

  “Like the triumvirate,” Lydia put in.

  Pearl laughed, knowing just what she was referring to. “I guess Sherrie’s been educating you.”

  “She started,” Lydia admitted. “But we can learn more from you, I’m sure.”

  “Well, you know incorporating started years ago.” She paused and thought for a moment. “Probably close to fifty years. Farm families put their business into corporations for tax purposes. And over the years farms have gotten larger and larger because it took more acres to make a living, and now a farmer with a thousand acres has to have another job to keep it going.” Pearl was gesturing with her fork as if she might like to have a blackboard on which to scribble notes and figures and maybe drawings.

  “So the three families of That Night have taken over their parents farms...” Lydia saw the look on Pearl’s face and stopped to explain. “That’s how we’ve begun to refer to, you know, when everything changed.”

  “Yes, I understand,” Pearl said sympathetically. “But you understand that the children there that night are now two couples plus Jake. Jake’s wife wasn’t involved. In fact she’s not a local. But for the rest, all their parents are gone from the community.” She smiled at the sisters. Lydia noted how she deliberately included Jake and his wife, as if she and Margie had been excluding him. Had they?

  Lydia frowned, ate a few bites, then mentioned they had seen Jake in the gym and heard some of his complaints about his father having Alzheimer’s and his mother in Delora trying to care for him at the nursing home.

  “Yes, it’s sad,” Pearl acknowledged. “On the one hand you have to admire Jake for taking over his father’s duties. On the other hand some-times he us
es it as an excuse to complain.”

  “That’s an interesting thought,” Margie said. She wasn’t eating much, just picking, and thinking.

  “So do the Harris and Seward families share the expenses?” Lydia asked, getting back to the farm situation.

  “And the work,” Pearl said. “When they’re out planting they run the machines 14 hours a day. They change drivers every 4 or 5 hours. I imagine it takes a lot of concentration.” Then she paused, thinking. “Though now I believe they have GPS, that’s global positioning system,” she explained, “whereby they can set an exact path for the planter to go, and even pinpoint where each seed is to be dropped. All by computer in the cab of their tractor.” She chuckled. “Really, you need to ask the farmers. I’m only an elementary teacher. But your father, if he were alive, would have been up on all the new technology.” Pearl cleared her throat. “Anyway, when you see the green coming up it’s very beautiful the way the rows contour around the hills. I guess it’s science made into art.” Pearl cut a bite of lasagna. “They have a right to be proud of their work.”

  For several minutes the three ate in silence, Pearl in quick, steady motions like a teacher who had to get back to work, Margie and Lydia with more concentration on what they were eating. Silverware clanked on plates. Soon Pearl had cleared her plate and placed her knife and fork neatly across it.

  Margie got up and brought coffee and poured out three cups, which she distributed, then took the pot back to the stove. She had dessert to offer, but she, at least was not ready for that. It was as if, now that the basics were laid out they could get to the real issues that were smoldering underneath waiting to be brought up. Dessert could come later.

  “Sherrie was telling us about some of the changes since That Night,” Margie stated as she sat down again.

  “That Night.” Pearl tightened her hands around the cup of coffee and looked into it as if it might have something to say.

  “Thirty years has brought a lot of changes, girls,” Pearl said, shaking her head sadly. “I lost my Tom to a heart attack not long after Alice killed herself. Alice was Mike Harris’ mother,” she added for clarification. “Sometimes I think all the sadness in New Hope was responsible for her doing that. But...” She shrugged, sipped coffee, then fell into silence.

  “Stanley Seward’s mother also died?” Margie asked gently, wanting to get things started but not wanting to interrupt.

  “Oh, yes. She had cancer. Died a few months after...That Night.” Pearl gave the sisters a wry smile.

  “And then, some of them moved to Arizona?” Margie inquired.

  “Arizona was a relief from cold Iowa winters. People here got to going after corn was harvested, and came back before spring planting. Those without farm animals, that is. Your grandparents, after a few years, made a permanent move.”

  “We visited them a few times in Arizona. Too hot for me,” Lydia said. The visits had been brief, a quick flying in for a couple days and back. The last time was for funerals; first Grandma, then a few months later Grandpa who was lonely and passed on almost intentionally. A shiver came over her. Yes, people could do that, she was sure.

  Margie nodded toward the end of their property where the sun was still red on the horizon. “I remember when Grandpa owned all that land back there. He and Dad farmed it together in the summers when Dad wasn’t teaching. Then, afterwards Grandpa leased it out, I think, until he finally sold it. I wonder who bought it?” She was pushed back from the table, sipped coffee, let the cup warm her hands.

  “I don’t really know, Margie. So many farms have been sold, mostly foreclosed, but I haven’t kept track of where one farm starts and another begins.” Pearl gave the girls a look that was part sigh, part evaluation, part contemplation.

  “That Night, as you call it, was like a pebble thrown into a pond, with ripples spreading out and out.” Pearl sucked in her breath, gave them her teacher look, a pay attention look, a look beyond yourselves look. “That night hurt your grandparents, and you two, of course. It took away your parents, but after what happened That Night, Fred and Alice Harris lived a nightmare. Their son Dale came home in a coffin from Vietnam, their son Mike tortured himself with accidents and other illnesses. Ralph and Norma Reed agonized over what their daughters had done or not done and what kind of punishment they’d be dealt, or should be dealt. Edith Seward was slowly dying with cancer during that summer and fall, finally passing away in December. Her husband Leonard cared for her the best he could and Stanley went off to college.” Pearl paused and slowly folded her napkin, first in half, then in quarters and placed it beside her plate. “Then there was Jake and Mavis Jackson. Jake, Sr. we’re talking about now. When he found your parents he simply went to pieces, started drinking, and JJ, as he was called then, or Jake, Jr., the one you know, had to do all his work that summer.” Pearl smoothed the napkin with her fingers, as if there were wrinkles that needed to be ironed out. “Oh, what we learned from all this, about people’s private lives. I told Tom that we just never knew what went on behind closed doors, in the homes we thought we knew.” She sighed again. “We saw Jake slowly drowning, in a sense, destroying his liver and brain. They call it Alzheimer’s, but there was brain damage before that.”

  Lydia and Margie watched her and looked at each other. They had second cups of coffee, not caring that they might be up all night. But they were getting what they wanted, weren’t they?

  “You mustn’t forget that Alice and Fred Harris lost a son in all this. Oh yes, Dale did a very bad thing, but he was their son. I don’t know how I can make you see how unbelievable the whole incident seemed to us. How can one acknowledge that your son killed the teachers they loved?” Pearl put down her cup and pushed back her plate just enough to lean her arms on the table. “After the funerals and people started back living again, Alice withdrew from almost everything. We didn’t really notice at first. But when classes started again that fall, Mike didn’t return. I guess people wondered about it, but then, later we heard that Alice was in a mental hospital and Mike and his father were just trying to keep the household together. I wasn’t in a position to be involved with the families. Tom and I lived in Delora, after all. And even though my classes are on the same floor as the high school, I didn’t have any interaction with those students. What information I got was from the other teachers, really.”

  “Mike knew what his brother had done?” Margie asked. She remembered the brief conversation in Sherrie’s office when Stanley Seward came in. She’d told him they’d like to know what really happened that night and he’d answered ‘don’t we all.’ She couldn’t believe he wouldn’t know, figured he was just evading the question.

  “Good question. He was there, but things were complicated.”

  “That’s the word Mr. Seward used, the one time we met him,” Lydia commented. “Complicated. After all these years are we still not going to be told exactly why Dale Harris attacked our parents?” Lydia’s voice showed her impatience, and she silently berated herself.

  “Give it time, girls,” Pearl pleaded. “Stories can be short or they can be long. But they all take some amount of time.”

  “I’m sorry, Pearl,” Lydia said. “I’m beginning to get a picture of the families involved as they were then. But Sherrie said something about Stanley sacrificing his career to come back and pull things together.”

  “Well, Stanley went to college that fall, 1969. He stayed through that year but came back to the farm after Edith died. If they’d had the treatments they have today she probably would have survived. Anyway, the church people tried to help but it was hard. Suddenly your grandparents needed help, then it was the Harris family with Alice’s problem and Mike, then when Edith died, it was Stanley and his father. Yes, Stanley came back, but before that it was the Reeds that stepped in and kept those families going. Those two girls, you see, took up the slack. Shirley Reed with Stanley, and Charlette Reed wi
th Mike. The three families almost became one and then separated themselves from the rest of us.”

  Lydia felt goose-bumps rise on her arms as she listened. She had not imagined that so many people had been affected—that the whole school, the whole community had been changed. All because of one person. “And Jake the younger,” Lydia began, “he got all screwed up, too. From what he told us the other day. I can almost be sympathetic. But I still get the feeling he’s got demons inside of him that are just barely contained.”

  “Maybe it was just as well we weren’t left here,” Margie said. “Maybe we didn’t miss too much. Or what we missed was worth missing.” She gave a contorted laugh. The evening was darkening and she got up to turn on the overhead light. Obsidian came out of a corner and asked to be let out. “You want him out, Lydia?”

  “Yeah, why not. He won’t go far, I think.” She got up and opened the screened porch door for him and he disappeared into the shadows. “How about some dessert?” she asked. “We’ve got some butter pecan ice cream.”

  “Sounds delicious,” Pearl said. “But let me help clear the dishes.”

  When they were all settled again, Margie asked her how many years it had taken to get things back to normal. “If they ever have,” she added.

  “Well, maybe when the Reed sisters got married. Maybe that’s what started the path back. Stanley had intended to go through college and get a degree, but that didn’t work out. And Shirley was going to be a nurse, but she didn’t follow through on that, either. So, she and Stanley got married, and they lived at the Seward place for a while, as I recall. I believe Charlette and Mike were already married by that time. They married right after she graduated from high school.” Pearl sat and pondered. Lydia noticed that the story was slightly different from Sherrie’s summary.

  In the silence, the refrigerator hummed and the radiators crackled as they heated, or cooled. Lydia felt the information sinking in, making her conscious of the question ‘why,’ that ‘why’ that her ghost mother was pestering her about. And still, she didn’t know how to ask.

  “Why did That Night happen?” Margie asked, surprising Lydia. It was as if their ghost mother couldn’t wait, had to switch daughters. Margie continued, “I mean, why did that guy Dale get so angry and do what he did? How could someone pound a person to death, and strangle?” Margie was thinking about Brad, whose temper sometimes erupted into hateful words, but mostly he would stalk off and sulk when he didn’t like something about her. She had never felt physically threatened.

  “That’s what we all asked at the time. But when we found out Dale had used cocaine that evening, before the marijuana he shared with the rest of them, we could sort of understand his paranoia when Ed and Brenda came upon them unexpectedly,” Pearl said. She narrowed her eyes. Lydia interrupted before she could go on.

  “Jake said Dale went crazy, that when he and Mike and Stanley tried to stop him but they were like ants on a wild elephant.” Lydia felt unwelcome tears well up and swell her throat. In a softer voice she asked, “And why did they all run away and leave them to die?”

  Pearl nodded. “My husband told me that cocaine was used by the soldiers to make them aggressive in battle. Then after they get back to camp, they relax with pot.” She sighed. “Whether Dale knew what his buddies had given him, we don’t know. But his superhuman strength was probably from that cocaine. But also, some people get so angry without any help from drugs that striking out is how they relieve it.” Pearl looked down at her empty bowl, struggling with memories and attempts at explanations. “As for why they ran, I suppose they were scared to death.” Pearl made a guttural sound. “Not a good phrase,” she apologized. “Also, apparently they really believed Ed and Brenda were just hurt and someone would come and help. I suppose that’s why one of them, apparently Stanley, called Jake, Sr.” Silence fell on the room. Pearl had trouble finding the right words. “I can’t excuse anybody, girls. It’s just hard to tell you what an unbelievable thing it all was.”

  It was black outside now, and their reflections came back to them from the windows. Lydia imagined another woman there listening intently.

  “Anger was Alice’s problem, too,” Pearl went on. “Sometimes it made us uncomfortable. It wasn’t considered Quakerly. We probably didn’t handle it very well. In those days it didn’t occur to us that emotional outbursts could be a brain chemistry disorder.” Pearl sighed. “Maybe if we’d been more sympathetic we could have altered what happened. But we’ll never really know, will we?” Pearl didn’t look at either sister. It was almost like she was talking to herself. “Alice committed suicide about ten years after Dale’s death.” Pearl took a sip of water, as if to soften the abrupt way she had spoken.

  Lydia groaned. “Like a stone thrown into a pond, the ripples just kept going,” she said, getting up to refill her coffee cup. She brought over the pot, but neither Pearl nor Margie cared for any more. Lydia took the pot back to the stove and turned off the heat. She stood there awhile, tears hot on her cheeks. What happens, she was wondering, on the other side, when these souls are taken in. Is there a welcoming committee? Do they have arms to fall into? Is there hope there?

  Pearl began an apology. “This community is resilient, Lydia. Death happens. Those of us left move on. We have things to do, to learn. We have things to teach. New children come along. They have to learn to read and write and how to add and subtract and how to broaden their minds and question what they see and hear. That’s just the way it is.”

  Lydia sat down again, put her hand gently on Pearl’s arm. “Oh, Pearl, I’m glad you’re telling us these things. Yes, life does move on. So I take it that those three families plunged into farm work as one way of dealing with their losses. More land and more equipment to work the land and all that?”

  “That might be what happened.”

  Margie asked about the husbands who lost their wives, Mr. Seward and then Mr. Harris. “How did they fare? And what about Shirley and Charlette’s parents? The Reeds? What happened to them?” Margie paused and then added “Everyone has a story. Everyone has pain of some sort.”

  “Well, the young couples worked alongside Stanley and Mike’s fathers, and the Reeds for several years.” Pearl paused, fiddled with a spoon, frowned. “Charlette and Mike had a little girl before they were even married a year.” Pearl shook her head. “She was a little mother, all right. When Mike had that accident with his arm, right after his brother had left, and Mike was all worried about what had happened that night, Charlette was right there at the hospital, and helping out when he got home. Alice was not doing so well with all that was happening. Dale just couldn’t have killed anyone and Mike had no right to accuse him. So Charlette became Mike’s friend and companion.” She looked at the sisters, a twinkle in her eye. “Sex is a great healer, right? If it just didn’t have certain consequences.” Margie laughed. Lydia grinned.

  “At eighteen Charlette was a mother. Now she and Mike are grand-parents.”

  “Grandparents?” Lydia asked. “Let me guess. That girl in your room. That’s not their daughter? That’s their granddaughter?”

  “That’s right, Lydia.”

  Lydia started figuring. “You mean Jennifer, who is about eleven, has a grandmother who’s about forty-four, and a mother who’s, how old? She must have been terribly young, too.”

  “Jennifer’s mother is about twenty-six,” Pearl calculated.

  “And where is she?” Margie asked.

  “In the east somewhere. There doesn’t seem to be much contact. We hear about her from time to time. There’s problems with drugs, I guess. With men.” Pearl looked sad. “Sometimes, we just can’t help.”

  Lydia didn’t want to change the subject, but just had to ask, “So why are those girls interested in ghosts? Jake seems interested in keeping the story of our parents’ murder alive. Although he calls it an accident. As does Mr. Stephens
on, by the way.” Lydia turned toward Pearl and asked if she knew that. Pearl just raised her eyebrows. “Anyway,” Lydia went on, “I think telling stories makes Jake feel important. I think he feels Dale there, maybe egging him on. I think Jake doesn’t really know what to do with That Night. Maybe it’s haunting him.” She didn’t mention the cold in the gym she felt, or the listening presence right here. Not with Margie present.

  Pearl smiled, slightly embarrassed, it seemed. “Actually, there are a few little strange things that go on in that part of the gym sometimes. The phone rings and no one is there. Dishes, or silverware get rearranged. Like someone playing tricks.”

  Margie looked shocked. “Ghosts don’t exist,” she declared. “Our mother died and is in...a better place. She’s not a ghost. That’s insulting.”

  “She’s just wanting some answers,” Lydia stated, not believing for a moment that she was in a better place. “She just wants to know why she got killed.” She wanted to explain about the energies, about karma, about our souls living on, never dying, but knew it would fall on deaf ears.

  “Well, I don’t believe it.” Margie got up and started clearing the table of ice cream bowls and coffee cups. She took the dirty dishes to the sink and ran water. Once again she was scrubbing out unwanted thoughts, unwanted images, unwanted tellings.

  “The thing is, there’s more than one, isn’t there Pearl?” Lydia searched Pearl’s face for some recognition and thought she saw it. “In the gym, there’s another restless soul, and he’s more unhappy than Mother. What was Dale like, Pearl? Other than being manic, or depressive. What troubled him so?”

  “It was the war. The draft. The confusion he felt, I’m sure. He was being pulled two ways. The military wanted young men and the media and politicians had ways of making the war seem right and just and necessary and anyone opposed was deemed traitorous, unpatriotic. Your parents and others spoke out against the propaganda. The young men of draft age listened to both sides. Dale wanted to do his part—he didn’t really want to be a killer.” She let out a soft sigh. “Ironic, isn’t it? He wanted to train for saving lives and they wouldn’t let him, so he ends up killing. He didn’t hate your parents. I’m just sure of that. He didn’t know what he was doing, was the way your grandparents saw it. And that was probably true. That’s why he couldn’t live with himself. So, if there are restless souls trying to understand, I guess he’d be one.”

  “You two are crazy, talking like that,” Margie burst in. She spun around and looked at them sharply. They looked back. “You’re being serious!” It was incredulous. “So you just feed those kids ghost stories? You just keep this thing going?”

  “Oh, Margie, honey,” Pearl said. “There still needs to be some resolution. There was forgiveness. Your grandparents were great. But can forgiveness be felt by the dead? Is there some way to reach them? I think Lydia would like to understand the rage that night. Maybe if she understands she can convey it to...”

  “Oh, right,” Margie said. “Well, I’ve had enough. I’m not going to listen to any more of this. Excuse me.” And with that she left the room.

  Pearl and Lydia looked at each other, raised their eyebrows. “I’m glad you talked, Pearl. You know, I’ve been having these dreams. I really wasn’t going to tell anyone. It’s private. But you seem to have a sense of this. Please, let’s talk again.”

  “Of course, Lydia.” It was Pearl’s time to put a gentle hand on Lydia’s arm. “But I guess that’s enough for one evening.”

  Chapter 9