He said nothing.
“I can,” I insisted.
“Ben,” he finally replied, “whatever you do will be a help.”
After a while I said, “Harrison, how come he never fetched me home for a holiday?” I had to ask him twice.
At last he said, “Father believed that school would make you so different, you’d not be happy here.”
“That’s not true!”
“Said he’d build a big barn so you’d have something fine to come home to.”
Early next morning, in air cool enough for our breaths to cloud, Harrison and I pulled the ox team from the lean-to.
The lean-to was cut into a low hill and had been made quickly from already fallen trees so we could have a roof above our heads when we took up the claim. Later, after Father built the log house, we began to keep the oxen, mule, and cow there, but it was now in sad repair and leaked badly. No doubt that was why Father had been talking of a real barn.
That first day, we led the oxen to the west field, the section where Father had taken ill. Harrison hitched up the plow, which was not much, mostly wood, with just a repaired strip of iron for a blade edge.
I never saw anyone work so hard as Harrison. But big as he was, he had nothing on Father’s skill for plowing deep. And though that field had been plowed before, it was not yet kind. I had to follow behind and break clods with the ax.
Nettie stayed to home with Father and did chores, coming out only to bring us our midday food.
“How is he?” Harrison asked.
“The same,” she replied as though a lament.
By the end of the day, what we accomplished was hardly done proper, but it was something. Harrison said it was good enough to seed.
It was near dark when he and I returned to the house. Then, while the three of us sat around the table and ate our potatoes and milk, Nettie announced, “We can’t do it this way.”
Harrison lifted his head. “Do what?”
“Me tending Father all the days.”
“Why not?” Harrison asked. He was not angry. He just wanted to know.
“I’ll go mad,” Nettie told him.
He gazed at her.
“Or leave,” she added.
Harrison turned back to his food.
“We could take turns,” I said after a while. “Each day one of us will stay with him. That way it will be only once in every three days for each of us.”
“Fine,” Nettie said quickly.
Harrison looked at us. “All right.”
I said, “Each evening we can agree about what’s to be done and divide it up. I’ll be the one to tend him tomorrow.”
Harrison considered me for a moment, then reached out a big hand and gave my head a shake. “You are the smart one.”
Nettie nodded. “Always was.”
“Like Father used to say, you’re fit for more than here.”
My brother’s words made me think of Mr. Dortmeister, but I said nothing back.
Next morning, just before Harrison and Nettie left, she said, “Father needs to be fed and cleaned.”
“Cleaned?”
“When he fouls himself.”
I started to protest, but Nettie cut me short. “Ben,” she said, “this was your idea. And a good one.” Then they went. And there I was, alone with Father for the first time. Realizing that I had to clean him made me sick.
I remained at the table, only now and again turning to look at Father propped up on his bed. Once in a while his mattress crackled, an irritating sound. The truth is, I hardly had to look; he smelled that bad. And those eyes of his seemed to be looking here, there, everywhere.
I don’t know why, but all of a sudden I came to think of him as a cave — a deep, dark cave. And there was an animal — of some kind — inside it, inside him, hiding. It might have been a possum. Or a mountain lion. I could see nothing in that cave of him but those animal eyes. Yet I had to approach the cave. Had to go into it. I could hardly move from the table. I felt like a wheel without spokes.
I must talk about this matter of Father’s foulness. It needs to be said and understood, then be done with.
He, who had been a clean man, now had no control. Any skunk smelled sweeter.
That morning, when, for the first time, I approached him about this, I gagged. Once — as I set to the necessary work — I ran from the house and vomited. For there I was, nine years of age, having to undress my father and clean his privates both back and front. What shame I felt that he should be like a baby to me, who was his youngest son!
Aside from the filth, it was hard work, for it was then that I learned how truly helpless Father had become. I had to push and shove and twist him around. It was loathsome, painful work to make him decent.
And yet … and yet it is this I have to say: for all the horror of it that first time, cleaning Father was to become as normal and simple as grass growing. Indeed, we three never spoke of it again — nor will I here. But it took its place as part of our lives — day in and day out — as long as we were together.
The truth is, his filth proved that Father still lived. Thus it was to become not dirt but something of the life that we struggled to hold in this mortal world.
In this way did I begin to learn how heaven and earth do mingle.
Once I had cleaned Father that morning, I fed him — or tried to. As before, only half the food that went into his mouth stayed. His own tongue seemed too thick and heavy for him. He could not use it properly and appeared to chew it as much as the potato. Just to swallow was a struggle. I found myself with a spoon in one hand and a cloth in the other to wipe him again and again.
That done, I went about drawing water from the creek, hauling wood, splitting it, stacking it, making the house somewhat clean, milking the cow, working the small garden ground that was close by. I also brought in potatoes from the food cellar, cooked them, and at midday carried them out to Nettie and Harrison.
Harrison said, “How is he?”
“The same,” I replied.
Then I looked over the field, and I saw that they had plowed twice as much as Harrison and I had done.
Once I hurried back to Father, I began to think that I’d been wrong to suggest changing our work each day. For what I saw was this: it would be better if it were me who always stayed home.
That night, as we ate our dinner, I said, “You two can do more work outside without me. I should be the one to be here.”
“That wouldn’t be fair,” Nettie said.
I answered, “But it’s true.”
“To stay in, day after day, would make me crazed,” she whispered.
Harrison studied me. “Is that what you really want?” he asked.
“The planting and fieldwork have to come first,” I reasoned.
Nettie said, “You have to promise to say when it gets too hard.”
“I will.”
“Well, then, if you want it,” she said.
Harrison nodded his agreement.
For Father and me, the next three days were much the same as our first. Nettie and Harrison tilled the fields. I stayed home and worked there but mostly looked after Father, feeding him, cleaning him.
It was like keeping watch on an empty box. At some points I took out my school reader and sat by the door and tried to study it. The task seemed to be from another life. Besides, I found myself continually looking around to Father. He gave nothing back.
Once or twice I thought — from his stillness — that he had died. Each time my heart froze. Then I saw that I was wrong and was ashamed of myself for giving way so easily.
Nettie had removed Father’s chair from the table. Now and again I would set it by the side of his bed and read him some passages from Pilgrim’s Progress. Mother had often read it to us. Father liked to listen. But now it was impossible for me to know whether or not he could understand the words.
It was during the fourth day when, as I sat reading to him, I observed that his eyes had shifted toward me. Aft
er a time I decided he was actually looking at me.
I looked back but, seeing nothing there, felt a rage of discouragement, which I hated.
For a while we stared at each other. “Do you know me?” I finally said. I spoke in that loud voice that was so unnatural and made me feel as though I were talking to a dumb beast. But when you talk to a mule, you know it is a mule. This was my father.
There was some fluttering of his hands, small movements of muscles in his face. And those eyes — empty, watery eyes — all they did was twitch. No more.
Frustrated, I got up and stood by the door to stare out. Our claim, which was all the land that I could see — three hundred and twenty acres — stretched before me. It was clear that day, the sky high with the valley clouds that were, as Mother once said, like featherbeds for angels. The eastern mountains — beyond some low hills — were streaked with snow. The western mountains glowered in shadow. Down by the creek I could just see the tops of the trees. In the first blush of spring, the leaves made a green mist. Birds, ever mindless, flew by. It was all open, free, and fair but without any shape or design that I could see. What, I wondered, would become of us?
I forced myself back into our house, so dim, closed, and bad smelling. Once again I took up my place by him.
“Father!” I shouted. “I am Ben, your son!”
He gave no more answer to my words than he had before.
“Shall I talk to you?” I said.
His eyes moved.
Not knowing what else to do, but wanting so much to find a way to fill the time, I began to tell him about Mr. Dortmeister’s school and all that was taught there. I even read Father some of my schoolbook. But his eyes did little more than dart this way and that.
I tried telling him some of his own favorite jokes, ones that he had told no one but me. I even made myself laugh. But I might as well have been counting seeds. He showed as much emotion as a stone in the field.
Feeling lost, I went out to the cow and talked to her and scratched her ears. Of a sudden she turned around and butted my face. That a cow could respond more than my father made my heart swell with pain, and in my anger I struck her on her rump.
Then I rebuked myself for such thoughts and actions and once again returned to the house and took up my place by Father’s bed.
His eyes had turned almost lively. He opened his mouth, and one of his strange sounds sputtered out. The spit came, too, and made his beard glisten.
I sat up and gaped at him, not certain if I was seeing something different. “Are you trying to talk?” I demanded.
When he made no further response, my momentary excitement crumpled to naught.
Frightened that I could find nothing more to tell him, I walked around the house, fetched some potatoes, and thought to cut them up. But I left them on the table and turned back to Father. I had come up with something to say.
“Nettie,” I shouted at him. “Nettie told me you were planning to build a barn! A real barn to show our luck had turned!”
The moment I said that, I realized how sinful I was being, as if I were mocking him. Of course there was no reaction. Not at first. But then his mouth opened and his eyes shifted. We stared at each other for a long time. How strange his eyes seemed. They were brown, flecked with tiny spots of gold, the pupils black and enlarged to let in such light as there was.
Again I had the sense that I was looking into a cave. What was I seeing inside now?
I leaned forward. Our faces were but inches apart. “Father!” I shouted. “Nettie told me you were planning to build a barn! A real one! Is that true?”
He gazed dumbly at me.
“Father!” I shouted again. “If you were thinking of a barn — close your eyes! Close your eyes!”
There was some movement of muscle and a raspy gargle from his throat. Something twitched around his mouth, too, but those eyes remained staring wide and empty.
Suddenly all my anger rushed together within my chest. It was as if I had been struck by a musket ball. Why had he done this? It was a cruel thing he had become, and I felt a hatred for it. He had abandoned us when we needed him. He had become a child when we were the children. He had failed us. Oh, I so wanted to strike him and make him feel my pain.
“Father!” I screamed in annoyance. “If you mean yes, you must close your eyes!”
And then — he did.
When I realized he had given me an answer, I was so stunned I burst into tears.
I tore out to the field. “Father spoke to me!” I cried to Nettie and Harrison. “Father spoke to me!”
They stopped work instantly.
“What do you mean?” Nettie said as I ran up to them, breathless.
I managed to say, “I — I asked him a question and — and he said yes.”
Harrison’s eyes widened. “What was the question?”
“I asked if he was going to build a barn.”
“He said yes?” Nettie demanded. They stared at me in disbelief.
“Well, it was not exactly saying,” I admitted. “But he meant it, Nettie. He did.”
“If he wasn’t saying, Ben,” she wanted to know, “what was he doing?”
“He spoke with his eyes.”
The two of them exchanged looks. “Ben,” Nettie snapped with crossness, “what kind of fool thing are you trying to do?” It was the first harsh word that I’d heard from her since I had come home.
“He can talk with his eyes,” I cried. “He can! I saw him. He really did!”
“Never knew any living creature could talk with its eyes,” Harrison said.
I said, “Just come and see for yourself. Please.”
Nettie would have none of it. “Ben, we’ve work to do. How can you stand there and tell us he did things like that? It’s not natural.”
“But he did,” I cried.
“This something you learned in school?” Harrison’s voice was not pleasant.
I took hold of his arm. “Harrison,” I begged, “please come. Please.”
He shook my hand off, and they looked at each other a second time.
It was Nettie, as usual, who decided. “Just this once. But Ben, I’ll go hard on you if you’re fooling. I will.”
They left the oxen with the plow to show me they believed nothing of what I had told them. But still, they came back to the house and stood on either side of Father’s bed.
He was, as always, looking empty, though his eyes were moving, moving. For a while we gazed at him.
“He seems the same to me,” Harrison finally said.
“Wait,” I told him. Then I drew the chair up as I had done before. Kneeling on it, I leaned close. “Father!” I shouted. “It’s me, Ben!”
Father’s fingers twitched some. And his feet stirred a bit.
“Ben,” Nettie said, “this is foolishness.”
“Wait!” I shouted, but at them, not at Father. “Father!” I cried anew, and I stretched out my hand toward Nettie. “This is Nettie. If you know her, blink your eyes!”
His eyes shifted, his tongue flopped, and spit bubbled from his mouth. I wondered if I had been mistaken.
Harrison turned away. “I have work to do,” he said.
“Father!” I screamed. “Show Nettie that you know it’s her! That you know your daughter! Close your eyes! Close them to show you know!”
And he did.
There was a silence in the house as big as any sky. Nettie, her voice suddenly in tatters, whispered, “Ben, that doesn’t mean. It’s only wishing.”
I turned back to Father. “Show them again, Father!” I shouted. “Close your eyes to say you know it’s your Nettie standing there.”
Once again he closed his eyes.
“Oh, mercy … ,” Nettie murmured.
“Now blink if you see Harrison, Father. I want you to do it for him! Please! For Harrison. Tell him you know him. Go on!”
Father blinked.
Nettie gasped, covered her face with her hands. Harrison stared, his mouth agape.
I clapped my hands with glee.
And that was how I came to know that the creature within the cave was Father himself.
For dinner that night, I served up potatoes in our regular fashion. But while I’d been preparing them, I’d been thinking. Before we sat down, I said, “I think we should bring Father to the table.”
That startled Nettie. “What do you mean?” she asked.
Even Harrison looked queerly at me. “He can’t sit,” he said.
But I said, “We can tie him to his chair.”
Harrison turned to Nettie in dismay. Her face had gone a chalky white. “Ben,” she breathed, “that can’t be right. It can’t.”
“We’ll ask him,” I answered. Before they could object, I ran over to the bed. “Father!” I shouted — and by now you know that whenever anyone talked to him it was by shouting — “Do you want to come to the table? Do you? Blink your eyes!”
He did.
“There,” I said in triumph. “He said yes.”
They hardly knew what to say.
“Do you mind being tied?” I asked him. “Do you?”
He just gazed at me, eyes wide.
“There,” I cried. “He’s saying no.”
“Ben … ,” Nettie said, all flustered. “Are you really sure?”
“Yes!” I shouted. “Yes!”
Nettie hesitated no more. She pulled Father’s chair back to the table, then ran for some rope. Harrison, meanwhile, came to Father’s bed and, after stopping for a moment, picked him up, carried him over, then set him down. Nettie ran the rope about his chest and stomach. I tied it up behind.
Finally we three sat at our places. It was as if we had brought in a scarecrow from the fields and propped him up for company. But then Father opened his mouth and gurgled. I clapped my hands.
“Ben!” Nettie cried in fear.
“No, look,” I insisted. “He’s glad.”
She turned to look. Father was blinking his eyes.
Harrison threw back his head and let out a whoop.
I started to put Father’s plate before him, but Nettie snatched it back. “Ben, he can’t,” she pleaded. “It’s too hard.”