Sandy said, “Hack’s got a good idea there, Mr. D. Buy the dog. If you call up that rodeo, maybe they won’t kill him.”
Doug Whitenaur paused to think it over. “That’s Burkholder’s dog. I’d swear it.”
Sandy plinked a dime on the table. “There you are, Mr. D. For the phone call.”
EIGHT
Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail,
a swollen magpie in a fitful sun,
Half black—half white
Nor knowst’ou wing from tail
Pull down thy vanity
How mean thy hates
Fostered in falsity,
Pull down thy vanity,
Rathe to destroy, niggard in charity,
Pull down thy vanity,
I say pull down.
—Ezra Pound, from Canto LXXXI
Penny Hilyer pressed her hands in the small of her back and straightened. “Any more tomato plants want to get planted, I believe they’ll have to plant themselves.”
Beverly tucked a wisp of hair under her kerchief and smudged her sweat-dampened forehead. “You just take a seat in that lawn chair. I’ll be finished in a jiffy.”
“Oh, Ma, I hate to be so darn helpless.” And she did look awful helpless and awful uncomfortable as she waddled down the row. Some girls show early, some show late. Beverly had been lucky herself, but then, Penny had been such a small baby. “It’ll be over before you know it,” Beverly said.
“The last week of this month seems so far away. I’m so darn big! Some of the girls at the Lamaze classes are still slim and they’re looking forward to the baby and, my, they just couldn’t be happier. I’m fat and my feet hurt and I’m always bursting into tears.” She sat heavily and hoisted her legs with a grunt.
The early June soil was warm and loose under Beverly’s fingertips. She pocketed several small stones. She set the plant—this one already had a couple star-shaped blossoms.
Beverly loved tomatoes but the smell of the plants made her sneeze. She hoped they weren’t planting too early. Winter had stayed late this year. Still, it’s human nature to expect the usual and if everybody waited until absolutely all frost danger was past, nobody would have tomatoes until August.
The tractor muttered along in the river field. Beverly could see Mark and Lewis putting up the last of the first cutting hay. Most years, this time of year, rainstorms chased each other up and down the valley and it was very difficult to get the hay up dry. This year it had been hot and sunny. Many farmers were already predicting drought.
The river field was the brilliant green of pond scum. The tractor chugged along like some legendary creature, a centaur or a modest dragon.
Lewis hoped to make better than two thousand bales, most of it alfalfa with some orchard grass mixed in. Lewis had thought to hire somebody to help Mark on the wagon but Mark wanted to try it alone—pull the bale out of the chute, toss it back, get it stacked and return in time for the next. The dense grass had slowed their ground speed and, so far, Mark had managed.
The forsythias had come and gone, the dogwoods bloomed white or pink, the bees covered the honeysuckle.
Garden dirt always cracked her hands, so Beverly wore an old pair of Lewis’s work gloves in the garden. Now, she peeled them off. She walked the row, stepping heavily with her stout brogans around the tomato plants, ensuring root contact.
“I hope they’re done soon,” Penny complained. “We have a class tonight.”
“If they’re still in the field, I’ll drive you.”
“That’s not the point, Ma. That’s not the point! The husband is part of it all, don’t you see? It makes the birthing easier.”
Beverly hated the effrontery of new words. Birthing, indeed. “When I had you, I took the gas and your father waited in the waiting room and it never hurt you, not that I could tell.”
Penny’s eyes filled with tears. The corners of her mouth fell, “Oh, Ma …”
“Now I’ve done it! Honey, I didn’t mean anything. I think your classes are just fine. If Lewis and me were to have a baby today, I’d hope to do the same as you’re doing.”
“I know, Ma. I honestly don’t know what comes over me,” she said, wiping her eyes with the balloon sleeve of her cotton dress.
The pale blue sky floated a couple wispy clouds. The trees were tremendous with leaf buds. In the afternoon all the young lambs came up to the barn galloping through the pasture, dancing and kicking their heels.
“They’ve stopped the tractor.” Beverly shaded her eyes. “Looks like they’re putting the tarp over the baler.”
Penny wallowed to her feet. “I’ll bring the ice tea out to the barn.”
“Oh, I can do it.”
“Ma, I am not completely spastic or crippled.”
Beverly bit her too sharp tongue. Her daughter waddled (there really was no other word for it) away.
Tractor and wagon chugged toward the barn. Mark sat on top of the hay bales, legs crossed, like a mahout.
The oats and corn were in the ground. It looked like the best first cutting since the dry year of 1978, the young lambs throve and there were only two cases of mastitis in the ewes; so why did Beverly Burkholder have that awful feeling in the pit of her stomach?
Her daughter’s pregnancy was normal (knock wood), her husband had finally come to appreciate his son-in-law, even the Stink Dog (worked and exercised everyday by Penny) had regained her old vitality. So why did Beverly worry herself so bad? She got up during the night and crept out of the bedroom with a spare blanket for the couch in the front room, where she’d toss and turn the night away without Lewis ever noticing.
Not that he noticed whether she was in the bed or out of it.
The pot roast was nice and tender. She’d had to cut up the potatoes pretty good because this time of year some are sprouting and the ones that aren’t sprouting are full of black spots. Women who bought their potatoes at the supermarket didn’t have Beverly’s difficulties because the packers used (she’d heard) some sort of chemicals to retard potatoes’ sprouting instincts. Virtuously, Beverly forked a dark slice out of the boiling water. Beef, potatoes, and a fresh green salad: lettuce, beet greens, and some early radishes sliced thin. Just before she served the salad, she’d cover it with chilled Kraft blue cheese dressing, Lewis’s favorite.
When Penny set down the empty pitcher, Beverly asked her about class.
“Oh, Mark can take me. Daddy says soon as they get this load in the loft they’ll be coming in for supper.”
Both men’s clothing was covered with hay chaff and Beverly had them whisk each other with the little broom that hung right beside the back door for just that purpose. “I don’t see why you should make more work for me,” she said sternly.
Mark giggled and made a face. When he broomed Lewis, he whacked the back of the older man’s neck like a barber might.
Both men were loose and easy, a little bulkier in her kitchen than they needed to be.
“Now you-all hurry and wash. Penny’s got her class.”
“Don’t rush them, Beverly. It’s only half an hour to Strasburg. Let ’em digest their food.” Shoveling it in. Pot roast and meat gravy on the mashed potatoes. Plenty of pepper but no garlic. Every time Beverly used garlic it came through her pores for days.
“You should have seen ol’ Mark tossin’ those bales.” Lewis laughed. “You know, down on the east end of that field it’s a little sparse, so I put her in high range and the bales came humpin’ out of the chute and Mark was jumpin’ around back there on that wagon like a, like a … kangaroo.”
“They were coming quick.” Mark was shoveling food in no better than Lewis. Beverly thought Mark had had better table manners when he first came to her house. Then, he didn’t eat any more than a bird.
Beverly brought out some gingerbread and took the Cool Whip out of the fridge. “You know, Lewis,” she said, “the Stevensons have a Jersey heifer that’ll be freshening in August. If we were to have a cow again, I’d milk her and there’
d be plenty of good milk for the baby.”
Earnest. Penny leaned forward. “Ma, I told you I mean to breast feed.”
“Well, you aren’t going to breast feed forever,” Beverly snapped. In her day only poor folks breast fed their infants. Beverly blushed for her daughter.
Softly, Lewis said, “If you’re interested, I could just go down and take a look at that cow.”
“Never mind. Penny says she don’t care.” Spoken hotter than she meant to.
“Well, it would be nice to have real whipped cream again,” Lewis said, examining the tines of his fork.
“If we don’t need milk for the baby, a cow’s too much to fool with,” Beverly said. “Are you done with that gingerbread?”
Lewis scraped his chair back. Tossed his wadded paper napkin beside the plate. “I guess I’ll go take a look at the mastitis ewes,” he said.
“I’ll want to take a shower before we leave,” Mark said. He checked his worn wallet. The bills he counted were mostly singles. “Penny,” he said, “how about a movie afterward?”
Though the pregnancy had overfilled her body, Penny’s eyes were more beautiful than ever—whites like new china, the blues of blue sapphires. “I don’t know. I get so tired. I was up at six this morning with Stink. She’s ready to trial. She’s so eager, she wears me out.”
Lewis out the door. Mark in the shower. Penny in her bedroom collecting the notebook and diaper materials for her class.
Four plates, four dessert plates, two coffee cups, two glasses for ice tea, silverware and pots. Beverly washed. The pot roast to the refrigerator. Plenty of meat for noontime tomorrow. The mashed potatoes were a waste. Wished there was something she could do with them but Lewis didn’t care for potato cakes and Beverly never baked potato bread.
She slipped a scrap of pot roast to the Stink Dog who’d come from behind the stove with a purposeful grin.
Once the kitchen was clean, Beverly turned on the TV set. The evening news. She left the sound off. There was plenty in this world she didn’t need to know. The pictures showed numbed civilians picking through the ruins of an airstrike. Some country, today. Beverly poured herself a glass of ice tea though she didn’t want it.
Mark and Penny were running late. Their VW putted off down the road and Beverly winced for Penny when they crossed that rough spot by the culvert.
Beverly Burkholder poured her ice tea back in the pitcher and rinsed her glass. She did something she did maybe twice a year and poured herself a glass of beer. One thing she didn’t like about beer was once you opened it you had to drink the whole bottle or it’d go flat.
The beers were Mark’s but Beverly didn’t think he’d mind if she took just one.
When she went out to the screened front porch, she carried a magazine as well as her beer.
The frogs were beginning to chirp. Tiny things, most of them not much bigger than your thumbnail.
She thumbed through the McCall’s magazine but nothing caught her eye. She set it on the white wicker table. That table had been Lewis’s mother’s. Idly, Beverly pulled open the drawer. The curled paper of pins she found sent a chill down her back like the woman, dead these fifteen years, had spoken to her. The grass in the front yard needed mowing. The lilac, done blooming, needed pruning before it made buds for next year. So much to do. So very much to do. Beverly Burkholder sipped at the beer and licked foam off her upper lip, neat as a cat.
She heard the water running as Lewis scrubbed up. Mastitis is one of the smelly diseases.
“Nice evening,” he ventured. After a bit he noted, “I’m gonna save both sides on that whiteface. She raises two big lambs every year and I’d hate to cull her.”
“You don’t want to keep any ewe who can’t raise twins,” Beverly lectured him. “Here,” she said. “I can’t drink all this.”
Lewis smiled his smile. He said, “It’s not like you, Beverly,” and took the bottle. “I guess the boys at the fire department won’t mind if I show up with beer on my breath.” He laughed. “A few of them will have six-packs in their car.”
Beverly did not like Lewis’s new smile. She thought it was long-suffering, all-accepting, generous, humorless, full of love and completely passionless. She said, “The fire department again, tonight?”
“You know we’re putting a new tank in the Seagrave pumper. Now that we got the old one out, we might as well sand right down to the metal and repaint it.”
“That’s three nights this week, Lewis. I suppose you’re going to have Mama and Daddy over for Sunday dinner?”
“Sure. You know how happy they are about the baby.”
“Lewis, Mama never cared about anything beyond her own front door in her whole life and Daddy is tight as an old man’s bowels. Why do you think I ran away with you, Lewis? Why do you think I married you?”
So Lewis sat down. And now he took a good drink from his beer. “I don’t have much time before I have to leave,” he said.
“That’s all right. I know how busy you are.”
“If I don’t go up there, Mike Pearson and his brother will do all the work. I hate to have other men doing my work.”
“I said I know how busy you are!”
“Maybe if I call, I can catch Mike before he leaves home. I guess they can get along without me once.” He laid down his jacket on the back of his seat.
“Go if you have to!” Beverly said. Beverly had a way of making one last circle around things once they’d been decided.
She could hear him on the phone, explaining. Why should he have to explain? Other men missed one fire department work session after another and never called to explain. Why should Lewis explain?
“Ol’ Mike Pearson wasn’t much pleased.” That same smile. “I told him he’d just have to handle it by himself. He said you shouldn’t forget, the ladies auxiliary is making plans for a chicken barbecue opening day of trout season. Betty Pearson wants you to call.”
Beverly sighed. “Well, there’s another afternoon wasted.”
“You’re touchy tonight.”
“How would you know. You haven’t spent an hour alone in my company in weeks.”
The frogs chirped. The humans were silent. Stink scratched on the door and Lewis got up to let her out. Playing to her audience, Stink rolled around and rushed back and forth showing diligence in sniffing.
“Stink looks good.”
“You know Penny entered Stink in the Bluegrass?”
Lewis’s forehead showed mild surprise. “Good for Penny. I don’t expect Stink’ll do much, but it’ll be good for Penny to run her.”
“And Nop. Penny didn’t want to. I entered Nop myself.” That knocked the saintly smile off Lewis’s face in quite a satisfactory manner. Next instant, Beverly was overtaken by remorse. “It’s only thirty dollars entry fee, Lewis. It seemed important that somebody show a little faith.” She touched his arm. She might as well have been touching a block of wood.
“Nop’s dead,” Lewis said. Both words took enough space for full sentences. “Thinking Nop was alive made me the biggest fool I ever been. I hurt people because of that dog, Beverly. Ignored Mark, ignored my own daughter, Penny, ignored this farm—which is the only thing puts food on our table—ignored the fire department. Beverly, I feel real strong about this. After that business out in Ohio, I took a good long look at myself and I didn’t much like what I saw. I’d come to value that dog too much, Beverly, and it wasn’t the dog I was valuing so much as I was my own pride. That dog was going to make me a big man. Two in a row at the Bluegrass Trials. First with Stink and then, one year later, with Nop. Oh, I was full of myself, I was. I was wrong, Beverly. I thought I was right, but I was wrong.” He swirled the beer around in the bottle and set it down without drinking. “It’s gone flat,” he announced.
In a voice younger than her years, Beverly asked, “How about me?”
Lewis said, “If Penny wants to run Stink in the Blue-grass, that’s fine. But I want you to write them and tell them Nop is dead and gone and he
won’t be running in the Bluegrass or any other place.”
“Lewis, we haven’t been together as man and wife since you came back from Ohio.”
Lewis Burkholder was so disappointed. She didn’t understand him, didn’t understand the Big Lesson he’d learned either. He repeated his confession, watching her face, hoping to catch himself when he began to go wrong. He didn’t care for a woman drinking beer. There was something sloppy about it. He concluded, “And I was driving my own pregnant daughter and her chosen husband out of the house.”
“Lewis”—she shook her head—“you weren’t that bad.”
“Sometimes I think the best thing ever happened to me was losing that dog. Losing that dog was bettern’ losing Mark and Penny. You know what Mark said to me the other day? He said he was real happy on the farm and he wished his brother, Scottie, could see it once. I told you about Scottie.”
“Yes, Lewis. Lewis, when was the last time we went dancing?”
He thought. “Oh, it wasn’t so very long ago. Not so long ago.”
“Lewis, would you bring me another beer?”
“Beverly, I’m not sure Mark’s gonna like you guzzling all his beers.”
Her eyes gave him all the answer he was likely to get. He counted the beers in the fridge, four left. Even if Beverly drank them all, they wouldn’t do her too much harm. He tried to think if Beverly had ever been “high.” One time, when they were on their honeymoon, in a little Italian restaurant in West Virginia. Bottle of red wine. Big old streaky candle. Red checked oilcloth for a tablecloth. The food hadn’t been much, but the red wine had been sweet as her lips and … “Here.” He handed her the bottle uncomfortably.
She looked at him, nibbling the inside corner of her mouth. “Maybe you should go to the firehouse, Lewis,” she said.
“By God, maybe I will.” Proud as a schoolboy, he snatched his jacket and marched to his pickup and roared off and all four wheels left the ground for a moment at the rough spot near the culvert.
“Changed my mind.” That was what he said to Mike Pearson, all he said. And then he kept themat it until they had the tank well scraped and sanded though it took until well past eleven o’clock, about an hour later than Mike had wanted to work.