Whether anyone is reading this is beyond my ken. Two weeks of teaching time. One week of class left, sort of. This must mean good-bye. Good-bye is a loaded word with layers of lost meaning. The most common of our phrases often carry layers long forgotten. The Good has been traced to God, and the Bye has been connected with roads, traveling, and journeying. To say good-bye can be taken as a prayer, as an invocation, or as a blessing: God be with you on your journey. Or should I say pilgrimage? Pilgrimage is a better fit because I see life as a pilgrimage, as essntially a spiritual journey from the Here to the There, and once There on to the Next. On this pilgrimage some folks join us on the going. Some travel with us for a great long time, others for the briefest of moments- a quick passing and then gone. In a few rare instances paths reconnect, but this is seldom. Under Mary Ann's tutelage we have pilgrimaged for 16 weeks and have shared a bit of each other's lives. We may or may not meet again. Mutual paths may take us from from each other only to recross at the most unimaginable opportunity. Should that happen, we will rejoice at the meeting. Should it not, we have the joy of remembrance.
This all sounds like a good-bye (or is it God's Speed) but not yet. I'll keep poking away at this blog until I realize no one is reading it and then it shall fade into the internet ether. I'll leave the blog open ended.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Exerpt from "Century Farm"
Following is an exerpt from my novel in progress, "Century Farm." I welcome comments.
Steve Bauer selected the light blue silk shirt from the closet and slipped into it, allowing it to caress his arms and torso, thankful of the long-gone girl friend who had introduced him to the joys of silk clothing which stood out as a harsh contrast to the flannels and denims worn by his neighbors. The oven timer shattered his moment of bliss declaring that the Schwann’s Beef Stroganoff in Burgundy Wine Sauce was thawed and cooked, the thirty-year-old oven still holding a constant and reliable temperature. He was careful, as always, when removing the flimsy tray, to avoid all spills, leaving the oven as spotless as when Mrs. Milliken, whom he had hired to clean the house, scoured it out the last time.
To Mrs. Milliken’s mind, it was unfair to Steve that he paid her to do such little work. His was the last remaining house she cleaned, her body could no longer keep up the schedule of two per day, and not only was her body giving out, so was the population. Half of the houses she once cleaned twenty years before were either abandoned or leveled to give way to crops. As she drove the six miles to Steve’s each Thursday, her memory saw the cheery houses where now corn or beans flourished. Like many of the old-timers she longed for the days of young womanhood when the farms were small and the families large. When she was in a foul mood, she would silently curse those who, in her opinion, had driven off the good families like the Kosbergs, the Ritters, the Beckmanns, her Uncle Jacob, and others, buying up their farms as cheaply as possible, taking advantage of their misfortunes, bulldozing the homes, barns, and sheds into a hole like an unmarked grave, laying topsoil back on thus obliterating all trace or memory of their inhabitants as if they had never existed, never worked the land, never supported church and school and had been neighbors and friends. Now she drank her coffee alone and it left her with a bitter taste combined with bitter words against men like “King” Karl Rauchenbart. Mrs. Milliken lacked both the education and the sophistication to understand the industrialization of farming practice, of the rise and fall of commodity prices, the cycles of boom to bust, and all other aspects of economic theory that coldly eliminated the need for neighboring farms. All she knew was that her days and nights had become lonelier and lonelier.
Mrs. Milliken began cleaning the Bauer place a month after Steve’s mother, Tillie, had gone into the Greenview Center Nursing Home. Steve had met her one morning at the coffee shop and had asked her if she still doing housekeeping.
“Not so much as I used to,” she answered.
“Think you could do our place, at least as long as Mom is in the nursing home?” She agreed not only to provide weekly cleaning but also to do his laundry. Steve slipped the house key off the ring and gave it to her, not that a key was needed as the house was seldom, if ever, locked.
Over the past months she began to notice changes in Steve’s life—not that it was her place to voice her concerns to him. The changes were subtle ones like fewer dirty socks and underwear in the laundry or fewer dishes needing to be washed, signs telling her that he had stopped setting a proper table and had begun eating his defrosted meal straight off the disposable cookware. Had he been her own flesh and blood, she would mention it, and in strong terms—but he wasn’t and so she didn’t. That didn’t, however, prevent her from worrying about him, fearing he had begun the decline, the long decline she had seen in many of the single men of the valley—men made single from lack of choice, or divorce, or death—men still sufficiently virile to begin new families, men with many long years ahead of them provided they might receive the proper womanly care, but lacking the tender nudging of a wifely hand would steadily meander down the short road of eccentric decay until they were shells of the men they were or would have been. She had seen it in men who went about mostly unshaven and musty smelling as if they had been left too long in the back closet. She didn’t want Stevie, as she had always known him, to end up like those men, like the way her younger brother Earl did when his wife left him, taking their three children with her back East to the suburbs of Chicago. Earl had gone from strength to weakness to death before his time, sapped by the loneliness, the hard work of trying to keep the farm going by supplementing the meager income through driving long-haul truck routes, through smoking too much, solitary Jack Daniels vigils, and the emptiness that only a meaningless life can provide. When the years of eating his own fried food clogged his arteries and he lay in the hospital bed and she sat by his side, holding his hands and silently praying for her brother (the only other one who came to pray was the preacher and he did so because it was part of his job description) she knew the Lord wouldn’t hear her prayers for healing because Earl’s spirit fought against such prayers, deflecting them away from their heaven-bound goal. She knew Earl would die because once his life had become a solitary act, the meaning was gone and he had been dying day by day, trudging on out of habit neither fearing nor welcoming death as relief from suffering, but simply as one more dull event.
When she felt the lightness of Steve’s laundry bag, and the small amount of living going on in the house, she recalled Earl in the hospital.
Her observations where close to the mark and while Steve was blind to path his life was taking, others weren’t. Karl Rauchenbart, the largest landholder in the Little Sioux River Valley, had also seen these symptoms and saw the opportunity before him.
Steve sat down to settle into his stroganoff when the flash of light reflected off a vehicle pulling into his drive caught his attention. As soon as he saw the highly polished Dodge Charger pickup stop by the house, he knew who it was for there was no mistaking Karl’s truck; it was too polished for a regular dirt farmer. Karl liked his property kept clean and so it was the duty of Old Man Bert Hansen to clean Karl’s truck every morning. Hansen had been old as long as most could remember. At one time his family had owned the farm across the road from the Bauers. The Hansen place had never been prosperous. All held together by chewing gum and baling wire, as Butch, Steve’s father, would say, with equipment bought second-hand at auctions and left to rust in the open yard for lack of storage. The place had been littered with dogs, cats, and the eleven Hansen kids, of whom Bert was smack in the middle. With no hope of inheriting the farm, Bert let himself out for hire to whichever farmer could pay. Bert became sort of a migrant within the valley, having worked for most of the bigger farms, always trying to save enough money to get his own place, but like Sisyphus pushing the rock, each time he neared his goal life entered, like the time his niece found herself pregnant and needed cash to get a fresh start in Omaha, or his sister Eileen’s health insurance failed to meet all the expenses, or any other time someone needed a bit of help, always promising to pay it back but never getting around to it. Bert worked on, finally settling in with Karl Rauchenbart when Karl was beginning his steady and focused climb to wealth. Karl provided Bert with a small house in Goethe (pronounced to rhyme with growth) that had been acquired through a sheriff’s sale and a steady income. It wasn’t long after his hiring that Bert evolved into Old Man Hansen, and quickly became a familiar sight around Karl’s several farmsteads. Even though arthritis and years of hard labor bore mightily on him, Old Man Hansen had become the faithful handy-man, errand boy, and general laborer who made sure that Karl’s vehicles (especially the one Karl happened to be driving that day) maintained their show-room polish against the prairie’s dust and grime.
Steve stepped out of the house as Karl stepped from the truck, Karl’s polished rattlesnake skin cowboy boots ill-matched to the worn jeans stretched over his wide belly.
“Hullo, Steve. I’m not interrupting anything am I.”
“Not at all. Come on up.” Steve opened the screen door to the porch, and waited for Karl to use the door to pull himself up the three steps to the porch. Nearly out of breath, the visitor fell gracelessly into the chair Steve offered.
“It’s been a while since I’ve sat up here. The old place looks pretty much the same,” he said, patting the arm of the worn wicker chair. “Yes, Butch and my boy Cal used to play ball together back when Goethe still had its own high school.” He paused, cast a long view out of the porch, past his truck, and into the fields. “Dan’s been doing a pretty good job on the fields—not too much burdock, but the beans by the road look like he forget to get the spray arm down on the turns, but Dan always was a bit sloppy when it came to the turns.”
Steve didn’t respond. Dan Tillison, paid the cash rent on time, faithfully and without complaint.
“But I guess Dan can afford to be sloppy since you haven’t raised his rent in five years.” The first jab went out. Karl couldn’t have been more clear in his contempt of either Dan’s farming practices or Steve’s lackadaisical approach to farm finances. Steve’s stomach churned as he tried to hide the tightening of his jaw muscles. When his breath began to quicken he forced himself to breath through his nose, slowly, struggling to maintain control as the memory of seeing his father face down this same man twenty years earlier when Karl sat in that same porch chair.
That summer day had been a hot one, a scorcher. The ten year old Steve had been trying to find a cool spot to get out of the heat and out of the house. His older sister, Stephanie, and their mother were up to their ears in some kind of girl stuff and he didn’t want to be anyplace near it. “Let’s try by Sterickiana,” he said to Link, the farm’s collie. Sterickiana was the name he and his former friend Ricky Jones called a patch of marsh caused by the confluence of drainage ditches that straddled Bauer and Jones farms. He and Ricky had found it two years before and claimed it as their own country. They followed the letter of the law (as the boys interpreted it) in creating their own nation—they wrote up a 99-year lease and solemnly had both fathers sign it. Ricky’s aunt Beth ter Horst happened to be Notary Public, and she duly notarized and witnessed the signatures. With the 99-year lease in hand, the boys drew a flag on an old pillowcase and declared Sterickiana (named for each of them; it would have been Rickosteria, but Ricky had lost the coin toss) a free and independent country with themselves as co-kings, sharing power equally and able to declare war on their worst enemies which then consisted of Stephanie and Brandon, Ricky’s older brother. Shortly after the founding of their nation, the Jones family sold their farm to Karl Rauchenbart and moved to Minnesota, leaving Steve sole ruler and only citizen.
When he neared the marsh, the wind shifted the remnants of the flag that had been nailed to the electrical pole that rose from the midst of the ruins of their fortress, a mighty stockade created from parts of old stoves, refrigerators, and other junk that had been dumped in the marsh to get it out of the way. Weeds had taken nearly all of it back, growing through all their hard work. Link’s tongue hung almost to his paws by the time they got there and the dog headed straight for the slivered bit of creek that trickled from one dinner-plate sized pool to the next. Steve felt the dryness on his tongue as he watched with envy the refreshment Link gained through the cool of the water. He sat on one of their ramparts—a toppled Frigidaire with all of its guts removed and he fiddled with a broken fan blade he had picked out of the dust. He threaded stick through its hole and tried to spin it in an effort to cool his face, but the stick broke and the blade fell back to the ground.
“Come on, Link.” The dog, who had found cool shelter beneath the dismembered hood of an old Chevy, reluctantly obeyed and walked beside his master back to the New House. Steve scuffed his feet along the tractor path, raising small brown clouds of the loess around his feet. He’d catch it from his folks for coming back so filthy, for sure, he thought, giving him one more reason to delay going into the house.
He hadn’t paid attention paid attention to the dust cloud raised by a truck speeding down the road until the wind carried it into his face, the grit stinging his eyes and drying all memory of moisture from his mouth so that even his teeth felt dry and he imagined the inside of his mouth to be that of a skeleton—teeth rattling loose in their desiccated sockets. He would get to the barn as quickly as he could with the promise of a long drink out of the hose that was used to wash down the pens becoming his light in the darkness, drawing him, pulling him to salvation and life. Hold on, he told himself, don’t give up now, you can make it. And so he trudged on firm in his convictions.
He was so focused on getting that drink of water that he didn’t see the shining pick-up in the drive, even though he walked within ten feet of it. Link noticed it, however, and marked the driver’s side front wheel with his liquid canine signature.
The cold water revived both his spirits and his curiosity for when he had slacked his thirst, he remembered the truck. It was odd, a truck being that clean, in the drive, at that time of day. His first thought was of a salesman, but as he neared the house, he heard the familiar rumble of Karl Rauchenbart’s voice, familiar through hearing it in church each Sunday. Karl and Donna sat two pews behind Steve’s family and Karl sang out with a deep bass that had frightened him when he was little. He saw both Karl and his dad sitting on the porch, side by side, and looking out past Karl’s truck, past the barns, and into the fields. Karl’s deep voice carried most of the conversation, and Steve couldn’t make out what was being said. He only heard this low rumble that Butch occasionally interrupted with a single word sentence. From his hiding place, Steve heard the chairs shift against the porch floor, a deep grunt given out, and Karl saying, “Well, you think about it, Butch. I believe it’s a sensible way to go.” The porch door opened and then slammed shut behind the two men as Butch walked Karl out to his truck. Now Butch did the talking, but Steve couldn’t hear it. When the conversation continued through the truck’s open window as Karl started the engine, Steve tried to push his hearing where his body couldn’t go, but the effort failed. He remained hidden and continued his observation as his father stood his ground in the middle of the drive, arms crossed against his chest, and his eyes following Karl’s truck retreat down the road. Butch planted himself on the spot for he didn’t move a muscle for what seemed to Steve the longest time. He was about to go out to his dad when the porch door opened and slammed again. This time Tillie came out, paused on the porch step and hurried over to her husband’s side. Steve didn’t move; he kept watching, sensing that this was one time not to interfere.
“Butch,” he heard his mother call as she halved the distance between them. Butch turned and revealed a scowl on his face of brows furrowed deeply and lips tightly pursed. Steve had seen this look only once before when his father had directed it a man who had wronged Tillie that caused the man to shrivel. It was a scowl Steve wasn’t supposed to have seen, a grown man’s scowl set against all odds of survival, yet determined to persevere regardless of the odds, the scowl of a focused warrior ready to fight to the uttermost breath, a scowl of a man who had faced down death and hell in the blizzards that wailed across the prairies, in the droughts that pulled the moisture from the eyeballs of new born calves, in the steady decline of markets and was now marshalling forces against the threat to the very land beneath his feet.
Butch dropped the scowl the moment he saw Tillie, his face sagging into familiarity. She went to him and then, on the open driveway, in front of God and everyone, the two embraced, not in passion, but in support knowing that four feet anchored to the ground were mightier than two pair of feet. Steve watched and his breathing stopped for a moment—his hand went to cover his mouth, to hide the astonishment of seeing his parents embrace for so long and so openly because they had always been private in their affections. He knew better than to rush out to them and shatter the moment.
The longer he lay hidden, the longer he watched, and the more the guilt developed. He felt he had committed some grave sin in watching, knew he shouldn’t desire entrance into their secret conversation that was being carried out in whispers beyond his hearing. He knew the wrong he was doing, but still he held his post.
Whatever intimations of the passions between a man and woman might have fleetingly passed over his imagination as he watched his parents’ long embrace, they vanished the moment the pair separated, turned, and walked to the house. They had aged rapidly in those moments on the driveway, as if seasons and years had passed, and they had become old people; no longer quite his parents, but closer to being grandparents. An unseen tidal wave of age had rolled off the back of Karl Rauchenbart’s truck and had overwhelmed them so that they hobbled more than walked to the house, leaning on each other for support. They stopped at the porch steps. Tillie was about to return to the kitchen when Butch reached out, took her hand, and pulled her back into his arms.
“Tillie, I love you,” he said and kissed her cheek. The kiss opened the gates to the tears and she began to sob, burying her face into his neck. His thick, calloused hands gently stroked the back of her head as he whispered, “Shh,” into her ear.
A metallic clang from the hog feeder brought on by an anxious pig ended the comfort Butch tried to bestow upon his wife. When she turned from him this second time, Steve saw the redness of her and her eyes and the tears still wetting her cheeks. Without bothering to wipe them off, she went back into the house, and through the kitchen window, he heard her sob. He waited quietly until he heard her opening and closing the cupboard and sliding items in the pantry and only then did he allow himself to relax and sit on the ground, leaning against the house. Now he wished hadn’t spied, hadn’t gained that glimpse into the adult world at so early an age. What he had witnessed made no sense to him but it made his mouth dry again with a parched taste that water wouldn’t erase. He wanted to cry, but he had no idea way. He snuffled back the tears, swallowed the sob that was attempting to form in the back of his throat with a gulp. Link came up and licked his face. Steve put his arms around the dog’s neck and tried to embrace him but the dog slipped out of the hold and ran off, letting the loneliness fall unimpeded atop the boy.
“Stevie!” His mother’s call broke him from the cold stillness his spirit had entered. “Stevie! Time for supper!” He ran from his hiding spot and into the kitchen where he grabbed his mother, hugging her tightly, burying his face into her chest, imbibing deeply the aromas of the kitchen that clung to her apron—lingering hints of bread-dough, onions, bacon grease, vegetable soup, coffee. He clung to her as she put her arms around him gingerly at first, then tighter. “Are you alright?” she asked.
He looked up at her.
“You’ve been crying, haven’t you?”
He shook his head in reply but the paths the tears had made tracking down his dirty face revealed the truth. He tried to hide his face in her apron again, vainly attempting to wipe off the evidence of his unmanly emotions. “I love you, Mom.”
“And I love you, too.” She bent down and kissed his forehead. Earlier in the summer she would have kissed the top of his head, but with the placement of this kiss she realized that in the near future their places would be reversed with him kissing the top of her head when manhood came fully upon him. He would become her protector, but not now, and at this briefest of instances, the old patterns still controlled the universe.
“Best you wash up before supper. And make sure you scrub your face before your father sees you.
##
Fewer words than usual were spoken over the supper table. Steve knew better than to ask questions. He knew the reply he would have gotten—a variation on the theme of children needing to be seen and not heard. If Stephanie had been there, she could have asked; she could have raised the issue without being shot down, being the oldest as well as being closer to their dad. But she was out with Merle, Karl’s grandson, as usual. Later that evening, on his way to bed, Steve stuck his head into her bedroom, curious about this hidden part of his sister’s life. Before today, he had accepted Stephanie’s dating Merle as a matter of the course of the world, but now, he began to wonder. With Tillie and Butch lost in their deep-toned and worrisome conversation Steve slipped into Stephanie’s room, turned on the light and furtively examined everything visible. He had no idea what he was looking for, but he was hoping for some kind of evidence. He was about to give up when he saw the corner of an envelope sticking out from beneath her bed pillow. With all the stealth he could muster, he tip-toed to the side of the bed. He heart beat quickly and his hands began to sweat, and being careful to touch nothing, struggling to keep his balance, he reached out with thumb and finger and pinched the envelope’s corner and eased it free. This must be the guilty love letter from Merle that he knew had to be in the room. As he began to slide his finger under the envelope’s flap the door suddenly opened.
“Steven Roy Bauer!” What do you think you are doing?” His mother’s voice froze him into a statue. “Get out of your sister’s room right now and get yourself to bed!”
##
The safety of his bedroom failed to block the murmurings—murmuring without and within. The indistinct sounds of his parent’s long conversation seeped through the walls and no matter how hard he tried to hear, no real words made it through the dry wall and wood paneling other than Butch’s angry comments about “no way in hell” and Tillie’s plaintive, “Why can’t he be satisfied with what he has?”
Steve guessed that it must have had something to do with Karl Rauchenbart’s visit, but he wasn’t sure. “King Karl,” Steve said softly to the dark. Yes, he knew the nickname the men used against Rauchenbart behind the man’s back. Everybody knew (or guessed) at how much money he had, and how he had taken over many of the smaller farms, especially in this corner of the valley. “Oh my God!” Steve sprang up, eyes wide open. “He’s after the farm! He’s after our farm…. And Stephanie’s boyfriend is his grandson… Jesus H. Christ!” At this last phrase he clapped his hand over his mouth and offered a silent prayer for forgiveness in taking the Lord’s name in vain.
He lay back down, hands clasped behind his head. He saw it clearly now. Stephanie was on their side, fraternizing with the enemy. He used that phrase, one he had picked up from the T.V. “I’ll have to keep an eye on her,” he planned in his mind as he began to doze off.
Steve brushed the dust raised by Rauchenbart’s departure from his silk shirt without thinking about it. His eyes were focused across the fields to the old farmstead, and the place was silent except for the continual hum of the wind. As he looked the muscles in his face tightened, beginning with the brow and quickly moving down, forming into the warrior’s mask his father had worn on the same sort of day. The muscles in his legs and arms began pulling together, tensioning up like an enormous clock’s spring, coiling tighter and tighter until they hung in the balance between breaking or exploding wild. With a sudden burst, Steve took off at a hard sprint, straight through the bean field, heedless of the rows he crossed and the damage done in his dash to the old place. He ran hard, breathing in the freedom of the open prairie, the freedom exercised by the hawks that perched on the telephone poles, the freedom of the deer to jump fences and cross boundaries, blissfully ignorant of the human’s property rights, the freedom of the ceaseless prairie winds which honored no legislative laws of ownership; he ran free until his breath gave out, leaving him panting an heaving, bent over and leaning against the cottonwood tree for support. There his breath caught up with him.
Steve had not been to the old place for several years. The cottonwood still clung to life with half of its branches dead and the other half green. It was still doing its work on the old house having successfully removed the majority of the additions to the original two room cabin built by Steve’s great-great-grandfather, Gunter Johannes Fredrick Bauer. Gunter had ridden the tide of the German migration to this corner of the prairie, astonished that land was here for the taking and all he had to do was endure hardship for five years and then the property would be his. This offer, along with the opportunity to finally marry his beloved Wilhemina and give legitimacy to their first born, Oskar, drove Gunter to leave his cabinet making job in Schleswig-Holstein and head for the American land of promise. When it came time to build his house he poured his skills into it, putting in far more care and devotion than necessary, building it not as a carpenter but as a cabinet maker, as if it was a jewelry box for a giant with all the mortise and tenon joints carefully fitted, using as few nails as possible under the fear that too much iron in the walls would attract lightning. This gave the two room house incredible strength and tightness against the weather. The cottonwood seemed to respect Gunter’s craftsmanship, leaving it in peace while it sent its branched through the later additions to their destruction.
Relaxed and calmed from his run, Steve entered the old house through the door that was still balanced on its hinges. Even though most of the windows had been broken and water stains darkened the floor and walls the old place was remarkably intact. “I thought the rooms were much bigger,” he thought, trying to remember the last time he had been inside—unable to recall any specific moment except that he must have been 11 or 12—a distant time and all the room large and frightening.
The two rooms were bare except for a few dried leaves that had been pushed into a corner by the wind. The floor remained firm under his step as he gave a casual inspection. Even when he bounced up and down a few times, gently at first without his feet leaving the floor and then more vigorously the floor refused to yield much.
A noise came from the attic loft. He carefully climbed the built in ladder. Mindful of the rungs, he avoiding stepping in the middle and kept his feet close to the stiles. He lifted the attic hatch and slid it back along the attic floor and it made a scraping sound. He poked his head through the opening, feeling the bravery of a child entering an unknown zone. A dim light filtered through the shutters that closed off the windows set in each gable end. Here, under the dust of the fine Iowa topsoil blown in by the wind, lay scattered remnants of a long forgotten life—a broken child’s chair, a table balancing on three legs with the fourth laying on the top waiting to be restored to its rightful place among its brethren, a small, narrow bed with a delicately carved headboard still made, the covers weighed down by the dust and dirt. A shuffling noise came from his right. He turned and at eye-level saw a sparrow, nearly dead from exhaustion or thirst or starvation. The bird had found its way into the attic but had never found the way out. The bird shifted weakly, tried to stand and stretch its wings, but it collapsed, looking straight into Steve’s eyes, it’s eyes growing pale and lusterless. With his free hand Steve cupped the bird and lifted it up; the bird too weak to react.
Holding the bird to his chest, he slowly descended the ladder. He could feel the pulse of the bird’s heart—first rapid from fear and then abruptly stopping. By the time he had gained the safety of the floor the bird had died, becoming a limp and lifeless thing. He took it outside into the fresh, clean air and understood the bird deserved a proper burial. Behind the ruin of the chicken coop he found a bare patch of ground and with his bare hands he scraped a shallow grave. He place the bird in the grave and eased the dirt back over the bird and with both hands laid flat upon the ground, he pressed down with all his weight. He pressed and continued to press far longer than was necessary. He remained in that position: on his knees with his hands out in front of him as if he were attempting some kind of peculiar push-up. But he didn’t want to push himself away from the soil, he wanted to feel it through his hands, to cling to it, to send his hands down into it like roots. The earth began to warm under his hands and he felt the individuality of the soil through his tender palms, the sharp point of a tiny pebble, the grains of an earthworm’s casting, the damp slime of a grub’s crushed carcass. Through his hand he began to share in that feeling that for more than a hundred years of struggle salted with harvests of bounty kept his family anchored here. Through the soil, the land beckoned him to share in its life and become more than simply one who lived on it without being part of it.
He would turn down Karl Rauchenbart’s offer despite having no logical reason for the decision. Logic had no place in a decision of such magnitude. Logic would follow the road into Goethe where his grandmother’s old house sat, vacant and awaiting a tenant. Logic would tell him that the little house on Monroe Street fit his needs far better than the farmhouse for it was smaller, more easily maintained, and closer to his commodity broker’s office. He could even, logic might argue, move his office into his grandmother’s house and off of Main Street, after all, most of the businesses had dried up on Main Street, and the storefront he rented wasn’t all that great to begin with. It was ridiculous, cold reason might add, to be wasting money in such a way; and while he was at it, he could go ahead and sell the farm to Karl, after all, the offer was a generous one being ten percent above market value. Logic would further point out that he really didn’t like farming all that much, and except for the tiny flower patch, he seldom got his hands into the dirt but lived more like a transplanted city dweller, keeping to the inside of the house except for driving in to work every day and coming back in the evening. Why, he was no different than those folks who moved out of Sioux City to get a place in the country—living on their five well-kept acres with the horse barn, twenty-five chickens, and a garden—pretending to be gentleman farmers, taking a space but never really fitting in, like fox-glove in the bean field, a weed, an alien species. Logic and cold reason would go along with Karl’s argument, laying out all the correct and indisputable points as to why Rauchenbart’s offer should be accepted and soon.
In the face of logic and cold reason Steve dug his fingers into the soil and held on.
Steve Bauer selected the light blue silk shirt from the closet and slipped into it, allowing it to caress his arms and torso, thankful of the long-gone girl friend who had introduced him to the joys of silk clothing which stood out as a harsh contrast to the flannels and denims worn by his neighbors. The oven timer shattered his moment of bliss declaring that the Schwann’s Beef Stroganoff in Burgundy Wine Sauce was thawed and cooked, the thirty-year-old oven still holding a constant and reliable temperature. He was careful, as always, when removing the flimsy tray, to avoid all spills, leaving the oven as spotless as when Mrs. Milliken, whom he had hired to clean the house, scoured it out the last time.
To Mrs. Milliken’s mind, it was unfair to Steve that he paid her to do such little work. His was the last remaining house she cleaned, her body could no longer keep up the schedule of two per day, and not only was her body giving out, so was the population. Half of the houses she once cleaned twenty years before were either abandoned or leveled to give way to crops. As she drove the six miles to Steve’s each Thursday, her memory saw the cheery houses where now corn or beans flourished. Like many of the old-timers she longed for the days of young womanhood when the farms were small and the families large. When she was in a foul mood, she would silently curse those who, in her opinion, had driven off the good families like the Kosbergs, the Ritters, the Beckmanns, her Uncle Jacob, and others, buying up their farms as cheaply as possible, taking advantage of their misfortunes, bulldozing the homes, barns, and sheds into a hole like an unmarked grave, laying topsoil back on thus obliterating all trace or memory of their inhabitants as if they had never existed, never worked the land, never supported church and school and had been neighbors and friends. Now she drank her coffee alone and it left her with a bitter taste combined with bitter words against men like “King” Karl Rauchenbart. Mrs. Milliken lacked both the education and the sophistication to understand the industrialization of farming practice, of the rise and fall of commodity prices, the cycles of boom to bust, and all other aspects of economic theory that coldly eliminated the need for neighboring farms. All she knew was that her days and nights had become lonelier and lonelier.
Mrs. Milliken began cleaning the Bauer place a month after Steve’s mother, Tillie, had gone into the Greenview Center Nursing Home. Steve had met her one morning at the coffee shop and had asked her if she still doing housekeeping.
“Not so much as I used to,” she answered.
“Think you could do our place, at least as long as Mom is in the nursing home?” She agreed not only to provide weekly cleaning but also to do his laundry. Steve slipped the house key off the ring and gave it to her, not that a key was needed as the house was seldom, if ever, locked.
Over the past months she began to notice changes in Steve’s life—not that it was her place to voice her concerns to him. The changes were subtle ones like fewer dirty socks and underwear in the laundry or fewer dishes needing to be washed, signs telling her that he had stopped setting a proper table and had begun eating his defrosted meal straight off the disposable cookware. Had he been her own flesh and blood, she would mention it, and in strong terms—but he wasn’t and so she didn’t. That didn’t, however, prevent her from worrying about him, fearing he had begun the decline, the long decline she had seen in many of the single men of the valley—men made single from lack of choice, or divorce, or death—men still sufficiently virile to begin new families, men with many long years ahead of them provided they might receive the proper womanly care, but lacking the tender nudging of a wifely hand would steadily meander down the short road of eccentric decay until they were shells of the men they were or would have been. She had seen it in men who went about mostly unshaven and musty smelling as if they had been left too long in the back closet. She didn’t want Stevie, as she had always known him, to end up like those men, like the way her younger brother Earl did when his wife left him, taking their three children with her back East to the suburbs of Chicago. Earl had gone from strength to weakness to death before his time, sapped by the loneliness, the hard work of trying to keep the farm going by supplementing the meager income through driving long-haul truck routes, through smoking too much, solitary Jack Daniels vigils, and the emptiness that only a meaningless life can provide. When the years of eating his own fried food clogged his arteries and he lay in the hospital bed and she sat by his side, holding his hands and silently praying for her brother (the only other one who came to pray was the preacher and he did so because it was part of his job description) she knew the Lord wouldn’t hear her prayers for healing because Earl’s spirit fought against such prayers, deflecting them away from their heaven-bound goal. She knew Earl would die because once his life had become a solitary act, the meaning was gone and he had been dying day by day, trudging on out of habit neither fearing nor welcoming death as relief from suffering, but simply as one more dull event.
When she felt the lightness of Steve’s laundry bag, and the small amount of living going on in the house, she recalled Earl in the hospital.
Her observations where close to the mark and while Steve was blind to path his life was taking, others weren’t. Karl Rauchenbart, the largest landholder in the Little Sioux River Valley, had also seen these symptoms and saw the opportunity before him.
Steve sat down to settle into his stroganoff when the flash of light reflected off a vehicle pulling into his drive caught his attention. As soon as he saw the highly polished Dodge Charger pickup stop by the house, he knew who it was for there was no mistaking Karl’s truck; it was too polished for a regular dirt farmer. Karl liked his property kept clean and so it was the duty of Old Man Bert Hansen to clean Karl’s truck every morning. Hansen had been old as long as most could remember. At one time his family had owned the farm across the road from the Bauers. The Hansen place had never been prosperous. All held together by chewing gum and baling wire, as Butch, Steve’s father, would say, with equipment bought second-hand at auctions and left to rust in the open yard for lack of storage. The place had been littered with dogs, cats, and the eleven Hansen kids, of whom Bert was smack in the middle. With no hope of inheriting the farm, Bert let himself out for hire to whichever farmer could pay. Bert became sort of a migrant within the valley, having worked for most of the bigger farms, always trying to save enough money to get his own place, but like Sisyphus pushing the rock, each time he neared his goal life entered, like the time his niece found herself pregnant and needed cash to get a fresh start in Omaha, or his sister Eileen’s health insurance failed to meet all the expenses, or any other time someone needed a bit of help, always promising to pay it back but never getting around to it. Bert worked on, finally settling in with Karl Rauchenbart when Karl was beginning his steady and focused climb to wealth. Karl provided Bert with a small house in Goethe (pronounced to rhyme with growth) that had been acquired through a sheriff’s sale and a steady income. It wasn’t long after his hiring that Bert evolved into Old Man Hansen, and quickly became a familiar sight around Karl’s several farmsteads. Even though arthritis and years of hard labor bore mightily on him, Old Man Hansen had become the faithful handy-man, errand boy, and general laborer who made sure that Karl’s vehicles (especially the one Karl happened to be driving that day) maintained their show-room polish against the prairie’s dust and grime.
Steve stepped out of the house as Karl stepped from the truck, Karl’s polished rattlesnake skin cowboy boots ill-matched to the worn jeans stretched over his wide belly.
“Hullo, Steve. I’m not interrupting anything am I.”
“Not at all. Come on up.” Steve opened the screen door to the porch, and waited for Karl to use the door to pull himself up the three steps to the porch. Nearly out of breath, the visitor fell gracelessly into the chair Steve offered.
“It’s been a while since I’ve sat up here. The old place looks pretty much the same,” he said, patting the arm of the worn wicker chair. “Yes, Butch and my boy Cal used to play ball together back when Goethe still had its own high school.” He paused, cast a long view out of the porch, past his truck, and into the fields. “Dan’s been doing a pretty good job on the fields—not too much burdock, but the beans by the road look like he forget to get the spray arm down on the turns, but Dan always was a bit sloppy when it came to the turns.”
Steve didn’t respond. Dan Tillison, paid the cash rent on time, faithfully and without complaint.
“But I guess Dan can afford to be sloppy since you haven’t raised his rent in five years.” The first jab went out. Karl couldn’t have been more clear in his contempt of either Dan’s farming practices or Steve’s lackadaisical approach to farm finances. Steve’s stomach churned as he tried to hide the tightening of his jaw muscles. When his breath began to quicken he forced himself to breath through his nose, slowly, struggling to maintain control as the memory of seeing his father face down this same man twenty years earlier when Karl sat in that same porch chair.
That summer day had been a hot one, a scorcher. The ten year old Steve had been trying to find a cool spot to get out of the heat and out of the house. His older sister, Stephanie, and their mother were up to their ears in some kind of girl stuff and he didn’t want to be anyplace near it. “Let’s try by Sterickiana,” he said to Link, the farm’s collie. Sterickiana was the name he and his former friend Ricky Jones called a patch of marsh caused by the confluence of drainage ditches that straddled Bauer and Jones farms. He and Ricky had found it two years before and claimed it as their own country. They followed the letter of the law (as the boys interpreted it) in creating their own nation—they wrote up a 99-year lease and solemnly had both fathers sign it. Ricky’s aunt Beth ter Horst happened to be Notary Public, and she duly notarized and witnessed the signatures. With the 99-year lease in hand, the boys drew a flag on an old pillowcase and declared Sterickiana (named for each of them; it would have been Rickosteria, but Ricky had lost the coin toss) a free and independent country with themselves as co-kings, sharing power equally and able to declare war on their worst enemies which then consisted of Stephanie and Brandon, Ricky’s older brother. Shortly after the founding of their nation, the Jones family sold their farm to Karl Rauchenbart and moved to Minnesota, leaving Steve sole ruler and only citizen.
When he neared the marsh, the wind shifted the remnants of the flag that had been nailed to the electrical pole that rose from the midst of the ruins of their fortress, a mighty stockade created from parts of old stoves, refrigerators, and other junk that had been dumped in the marsh to get it out of the way. Weeds had taken nearly all of it back, growing through all their hard work. Link’s tongue hung almost to his paws by the time they got there and the dog headed straight for the slivered bit of creek that trickled from one dinner-plate sized pool to the next. Steve felt the dryness on his tongue as he watched with envy the refreshment Link gained through the cool of the water. He sat on one of their ramparts—a toppled Frigidaire with all of its guts removed and he fiddled with a broken fan blade he had picked out of the dust. He threaded stick through its hole and tried to spin it in an effort to cool his face, but the stick broke and the blade fell back to the ground.
“Come on, Link.” The dog, who had found cool shelter beneath the dismembered hood of an old Chevy, reluctantly obeyed and walked beside his master back to the New House. Steve scuffed his feet along the tractor path, raising small brown clouds of the loess around his feet. He’d catch it from his folks for coming back so filthy, for sure, he thought, giving him one more reason to delay going into the house.
He hadn’t paid attention paid attention to the dust cloud raised by a truck speeding down the road until the wind carried it into his face, the grit stinging his eyes and drying all memory of moisture from his mouth so that even his teeth felt dry and he imagined the inside of his mouth to be that of a skeleton—teeth rattling loose in their desiccated sockets. He would get to the barn as quickly as he could with the promise of a long drink out of the hose that was used to wash down the pens becoming his light in the darkness, drawing him, pulling him to salvation and life. Hold on, he told himself, don’t give up now, you can make it. And so he trudged on firm in his convictions.
He was so focused on getting that drink of water that he didn’t see the shining pick-up in the drive, even though he walked within ten feet of it. Link noticed it, however, and marked the driver’s side front wheel with his liquid canine signature.
The cold water revived both his spirits and his curiosity for when he had slacked his thirst, he remembered the truck. It was odd, a truck being that clean, in the drive, at that time of day. His first thought was of a salesman, but as he neared the house, he heard the familiar rumble of Karl Rauchenbart’s voice, familiar through hearing it in church each Sunday. Karl and Donna sat two pews behind Steve’s family and Karl sang out with a deep bass that had frightened him when he was little. He saw both Karl and his dad sitting on the porch, side by side, and looking out past Karl’s truck, past the barns, and into the fields. Karl’s deep voice carried most of the conversation, and Steve couldn’t make out what was being said. He only heard this low rumble that Butch occasionally interrupted with a single word sentence. From his hiding place, Steve heard the chairs shift against the porch floor, a deep grunt given out, and Karl saying, “Well, you think about it, Butch. I believe it’s a sensible way to go.” The porch door opened and then slammed shut behind the two men as Butch walked Karl out to his truck. Now Butch did the talking, but Steve couldn’t hear it. When the conversation continued through the truck’s open window as Karl started the engine, Steve tried to push his hearing where his body couldn’t go, but the effort failed. He remained hidden and continued his observation as his father stood his ground in the middle of the drive, arms crossed against his chest, and his eyes following Karl’s truck retreat down the road. Butch planted himself on the spot for he didn’t move a muscle for what seemed to Steve the longest time. He was about to go out to his dad when the porch door opened and slammed again. This time Tillie came out, paused on the porch step and hurried over to her husband’s side. Steve didn’t move; he kept watching, sensing that this was one time not to interfere.
“Butch,” he heard his mother call as she halved the distance between them. Butch turned and revealed a scowl on his face of brows furrowed deeply and lips tightly pursed. Steve had seen this look only once before when his father had directed it a man who had wronged Tillie that caused the man to shrivel. It was a scowl Steve wasn’t supposed to have seen, a grown man’s scowl set against all odds of survival, yet determined to persevere regardless of the odds, the scowl of a focused warrior ready to fight to the uttermost breath, a scowl of a man who had faced down death and hell in the blizzards that wailed across the prairies, in the droughts that pulled the moisture from the eyeballs of new born calves, in the steady decline of markets and was now marshalling forces against the threat to the very land beneath his feet.
Butch dropped the scowl the moment he saw Tillie, his face sagging into familiarity. She went to him and then, on the open driveway, in front of God and everyone, the two embraced, not in passion, but in support knowing that four feet anchored to the ground were mightier than two pair of feet. Steve watched and his breathing stopped for a moment—his hand went to cover his mouth, to hide the astonishment of seeing his parents embrace for so long and so openly because they had always been private in their affections. He knew better than to rush out to them and shatter the moment.
The longer he lay hidden, the longer he watched, and the more the guilt developed. He felt he had committed some grave sin in watching, knew he shouldn’t desire entrance into their secret conversation that was being carried out in whispers beyond his hearing. He knew the wrong he was doing, but still he held his post.
Whatever intimations of the passions between a man and woman might have fleetingly passed over his imagination as he watched his parents’ long embrace, they vanished the moment the pair separated, turned, and walked to the house. They had aged rapidly in those moments on the driveway, as if seasons and years had passed, and they had become old people; no longer quite his parents, but closer to being grandparents. An unseen tidal wave of age had rolled off the back of Karl Rauchenbart’s truck and had overwhelmed them so that they hobbled more than walked to the house, leaning on each other for support. They stopped at the porch steps. Tillie was about to return to the kitchen when Butch reached out, took her hand, and pulled her back into his arms.
“Tillie, I love you,” he said and kissed her cheek. The kiss opened the gates to the tears and she began to sob, burying her face into his neck. His thick, calloused hands gently stroked the back of her head as he whispered, “Shh,” into her ear.
A metallic clang from the hog feeder brought on by an anxious pig ended the comfort Butch tried to bestow upon his wife. When she turned from him this second time, Steve saw the redness of her and her eyes and the tears still wetting her cheeks. Without bothering to wipe them off, she went back into the house, and through the kitchen window, he heard her sob. He waited quietly until he heard her opening and closing the cupboard and sliding items in the pantry and only then did he allow himself to relax and sit on the ground, leaning against the house. Now he wished hadn’t spied, hadn’t gained that glimpse into the adult world at so early an age. What he had witnessed made no sense to him but it made his mouth dry again with a parched taste that water wouldn’t erase. He wanted to cry, but he had no idea way. He snuffled back the tears, swallowed the sob that was attempting to form in the back of his throat with a gulp. Link came up and licked his face. Steve put his arms around the dog’s neck and tried to embrace him but the dog slipped out of the hold and ran off, letting the loneliness fall unimpeded atop the boy.
“Stevie!” His mother’s call broke him from the cold stillness his spirit had entered. “Stevie! Time for supper!” He ran from his hiding spot and into the kitchen where he grabbed his mother, hugging her tightly, burying his face into her chest, imbibing deeply the aromas of the kitchen that clung to her apron—lingering hints of bread-dough, onions, bacon grease, vegetable soup, coffee. He clung to her as she put her arms around him gingerly at first, then tighter. “Are you alright?” she asked.
He looked up at her.
“You’ve been crying, haven’t you?”
He shook his head in reply but the paths the tears had made tracking down his dirty face revealed the truth. He tried to hide his face in her apron again, vainly attempting to wipe off the evidence of his unmanly emotions. “I love you, Mom.”
“And I love you, too.” She bent down and kissed his forehead. Earlier in the summer she would have kissed the top of his head, but with the placement of this kiss she realized that in the near future their places would be reversed with him kissing the top of her head when manhood came fully upon him. He would become her protector, but not now, and at this briefest of instances, the old patterns still controlled the universe.
“Best you wash up before supper. And make sure you scrub your face before your father sees you.
##
Fewer words than usual were spoken over the supper table. Steve knew better than to ask questions. He knew the reply he would have gotten—a variation on the theme of children needing to be seen and not heard. If Stephanie had been there, she could have asked; she could have raised the issue without being shot down, being the oldest as well as being closer to their dad. But she was out with Merle, Karl’s grandson, as usual. Later that evening, on his way to bed, Steve stuck his head into her bedroom, curious about this hidden part of his sister’s life. Before today, he had accepted Stephanie’s dating Merle as a matter of the course of the world, but now, he began to wonder. With Tillie and Butch lost in their deep-toned and worrisome conversation Steve slipped into Stephanie’s room, turned on the light and furtively examined everything visible. He had no idea what he was looking for, but he was hoping for some kind of evidence. He was about to give up when he saw the corner of an envelope sticking out from beneath her bed pillow. With all the stealth he could muster, he tip-toed to the side of the bed. He heart beat quickly and his hands began to sweat, and being careful to touch nothing, struggling to keep his balance, he reached out with thumb and finger and pinched the envelope’s corner and eased it free. This must be the guilty love letter from Merle that he knew had to be in the room. As he began to slide his finger under the envelope’s flap the door suddenly opened.
“Steven Roy Bauer!” What do you think you are doing?” His mother’s voice froze him into a statue. “Get out of your sister’s room right now and get yourself to bed!”
##
The safety of his bedroom failed to block the murmurings—murmuring without and within. The indistinct sounds of his parent’s long conversation seeped through the walls and no matter how hard he tried to hear, no real words made it through the dry wall and wood paneling other than Butch’s angry comments about “no way in hell” and Tillie’s plaintive, “Why can’t he be satisfied with what he has?”
Steve guessed that it must have had something to do with Karl Rauchenbart’s visit, but he wasn’t sure. “King Karl,” Steve said softly to the dark. Yes, he knew the nickname the men used against Rauchenbart behind the man’s back. Everybody knew (or guessed) at how much money he had, and how he had taken over many of the smaller farms, especially in this corner of the valley. “Oh my God!” Steve sprang up, eyes wide open. “He’s after the farm! He’s after our farm…. And Stephanie’s boyfriend is his grandson… Jesus H. Christ!” At this last phrase he clapped his hand over his mouth and offered a silent prayer for forgiveness in taking the Lord’s name in vain.
He lay back down, hands clasped behind his head. He saw it clearly now. Stephanie was on their side, fraternizing with the enemy. He used that phrase, one he had picked up from the T.V. “I’ll have to keep an eye on her,” he planned in his mind as he began to doze off.
Steve brushed the dust raised by Rauchenbart’s departure from his silk shirt without thinking about it. His eyes were focused across the fields to the old farmstead, and the place was silent except for the continual hum of the wind. As he looked the muscles in his face tightened, beginning with the brow and quickly moving down, forming into the warrior’s mask his father had worn on the same sort of day. The muscles in his legs and arms began pulling together, tensioning up like an enormous clock’s spring, coiling tighter and tighter until they hung in the balance between breaking or exploding wild. With a sudden burst, Steve took off at a hard sprint, straight through the bean field, heedless of the rows he crossed and the damage done in his dash to the old place. He ran hard, breathing in the freedom of the open prairie, the freedom exercised by the hawks that perched on the telephone poles, the freedom of the deer to jump fences and cross boundaries, blissfully ignorant of the human’s property rights, the freedom of the ceaseless prairie winds which honored no legislative laws of ownership; he ran free until his breath gave out, leaving him panting an heaving, bent over and leaning against the cottonwood tree for support. There his breath caught up with him.
Steve had not been to the old place for several years. The cottonwood still clung to life with half of its branches dead and the other half green. It was still doing its work on the old house having successfully removed the majority of the additions to the original two room cabin built by Steve’s great-great-grandfather, Gunter Johannes Fredrick Bauer. Gunter had ridden the tide of the German migration to this corner of the prairie, astonished that land was here for the taking and all he had to do was endure hardship for five years and then the property would be his. This offer, along with the opportunity to finally marry his beloved Wilhemina and give legitimacy to their first born, Oskar, drove Gunter to leave his cabinet making job in Schleswig-Holstein and head for the American land of promise. When it came time to build his house he poured his skills into it, putting in far more care and devotion than necessary, building it not as a carpenter but as a cabinet maker, as if it was a jewelry box for a giant with all the mortise and tenon joints carefully fitted, using as few nails as possible under the fear that too much iron in the walls would attract lightning. This gave the two room house incredible strength and tightness against the weather. The cottonwood seemed to respect Gunter’s craftsmanship, leaving it in peace while it sent its branched through the later additions to their destruction.
Relaxed and calmed from his run, Steve entered the old house through the door that was still balanced on its hinges. Even though most of the windows had been broken and water stains darkened the floor and walls the old place was remarkably intact. “I thought the rooms were much bigger,” he thought, trying to remember the last time he had been inside—unable to recall any specific moment except that he must have been 11 or 12—a distant time and all the room large and frightening.
The two rooms were bare except for a few dried leaves that had been pushed into a corner by the wind. The floor remained firm under his step as he gave a casual inspection. Even when he bounced up and down a few times, gently at first without his feet leaving the floor and then more vigorously the floor refused to yield much.
A noise came from the attic loft. He carefully climbed the built in ladder. Mindful of the rungs, he avoiding stepping in the middle and kept his feet close to the stiles. He lifted the attic hatch and slid it back along the attic floor and it made a scraping sound. He poked his head through the opening, feeling the bravery of a child entering an unknown zone. A dim light filtered through the shutters that closed off the windows set in each gable end. Here, under the dust of the fine Iowa topsoil blown in by the wind, lay scattered remnants of a long forgotten life—a broken child’s chair, a table balancing on three legs with the fourth laying on the top waiting to be restored to its rightful place among its brethren, a small, narrow bed with a delicately carved headboard still made, the covers weighed down by the dust and dirt. A shuffling noise came from his right. He turned and at eye-level saw a sparrow, nearly dead from exhaustion or thirst or starvation. The bird had found its way into the attic but had never found the way out. The bird shifted weakly, tried to stand and stretch its wings, but it collapsed, looking straight into Steve’s eyes, it’s eyes growing pale and lusterless. With his free hand Steve cupped the bird and lifted it up; the bird too weak to react.
Holding the bird to his chest, he slowly descended the ladder. He could feel the pulse of the bird’s heart—first rapid from fear and then abruptly stopping. By the time he had gained the safety of the floor the bird had died, becoming a limp and lifeless thing. He took it outside into the fresh, clean air and understood the bird deserved a proper burial. Behind the ruin of the chicken coop he found a bare patch of ground and with his bare hands he scraped a shallow grave. He place the bird in the grave and eased the dirt back over the bird and with both hands laid flat upon the ground, he pressed down with all his weight. He pressed and continued to press far longer than was necessary. He remained in that position: on his knees with his hands out in front of him as if he were attempting some kind of peculiar push-up. But he didn’t want to push himself away from the soil, he wanted to feel it through his hands, to cling to it, to send his hands down into it like roots. The earth began to warm under his hands and he felt the individuality of the soil through his tender palms, the sharp point of a tiny pebble, the grains of an earthworm’s casting, the damp slime of a grub’s crushed carcass. Through his hand he began to share in that feeling that for more than a hundred years of struggle salted with harvests of bounty kept his family anchored here. Through the soil, the land beckoned him to share in its life and become more than simply one who lived on it without being part of it.
He would turn down Karl Rauchenbart’s offer despite having no logical reason for the decision. Logic had no place in a decision of such magnitude. Logic would follow the road into Goethe where his grandmother’s old house sat, vacant and awaiting a tenant. Logic would tell him that the little house on Monroe Street fit his needs far better than the farmhouse for it was smaller, more easily maintained, and closer to his commodity broker’s office. He could even, logic might argue, move his office into his grandmother’s house and off of Main Street, after all, most of the businesses had dried up on Main Street, and the storefront he rented wasn’t all that great to begin with. It was ridiculous, cold reason might add, to be wasting money in such a way; and while he was at it, he could go ahead and sell the farm to Karl, after all, the offer was a generous one being ten percent above market value. Logic would further point out that he really didn’t like farming all that much, and except for the tiny flower patch, he seldom got his hands into the dirt but lived more like a transplanted city dweller, keeping to the inside of the house except for driving in to work every day and coming back in the evening. Why, he was no different than those folks who moved out of Sioux City to get a place in the country—living on their five well-kept acres with the horse barn, twenty-five chickens, and a garden—pretending to be gentleman farmers, taking a space but never really fitting in, like fox-glove in the bean field, a weed, an alien species. Logic and cold reason would go along with Karl’s argument, laying out all the correct and indisputable points as to why Rauchenbart’s offer should be accepted and soon.
In the face of logic and cold reason Steve dug his fingers into the soil and held on.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Why discuss the weather.
A brief excerpt from the novel in progress:
The common lesson of the land was one of begrudging acceptance of the circumstances that were beyond either control or reckoning. While the weather was the frequent topic of many conversations everyone knew the weather was merely the opportunity to have an exceptionally safe discussion. Neighbors could compare the amount of rain found in the rain gauges down to the quarter of an inch and some like Bob Higgins were known to always fudge the amount to their favor, no heated arguments would arise over the matter. Conversations about the weather taught acceptance, an unthinking, cattle-like acceptance that this is how ones’ earthly life is supposed to be spent. Like the children in the valley who learned early on to eat what was placed in front of them regardless of taste or texture of the plate’s contents, all learned to take whatever was dished out with thanksgiving.
The common lesson of the land was one of begrudging acceptance of the circumstances that were beyond either control or reckoning. While the weather was the frequent topic of many conversations everyone knew the weather was merely the opportunity to have an exceptionally safe discussion. Neighbors could compare the amount of rain found in the rain gauges down to the quarter of an inch and some like Bob Higgins were known to always fudge the amount to their favor, no heated arguments would arise over the matter. Conversations about the weather taught acceptance, an unthinking, cattle-like acceptance that this is how ones’ earthly life is supposed to be spent. Like the children in the valley who learned early on to eat what was placed in front of them regardless of taste or texture of the plate’s contents, all learned to take whatever was dished out with thanksgiving.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
bleeding wrists
My wrists are sore and bleeding. Not what you think. For my celebration of Easter my family and I ran a log splitter on Saturday and Sunday. A third stack of wood measuring 36 feet long, two feet wide, and six feet high now sits in the yard awaiting a conflagration. The soreness and bleeding, along with a collection of bruises, has been one the results. Hubris has its price and my hubris is that I can do nearly anything I set my mind to. Bullheadedness. Or being a stubborn Swede (not swede, which is a kind of rutabaga). Does this have any merit on writing? None, except one more major chore is out of the way so that more time can be given over to what is important.
Gad, I hope I don't come across like I'm complaining. Or whining about it. No need for that. But the statements of facts can come in the form of whining. As ... I tire. I must grade papers. The week-end vanisihed in a morass of home ownership.
Easter candy goes on sale tomorrow. Enjoy.
Gad, I hope I don't come across like I'm complaining. Or whining about it. No need for that. But the statements of facts can come in the form of whining. As ... I tire. I must grade papers. The week-end vanisihed in a morass of home ownership.
Easter candy goes on sale tomorrow. Enjoy.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Since I discovered that some folks have been reading this blog, I've decided to keep going. After all, an audience is an audience. And the audience is important. As a one time community theater actor I know how the audience effects the performance. What goes for actors goes for writers with the greatest difference being the time lag between the feedback. Actors feel the response immediately, writers must wait for little slips of paper or email responses (all too frequently polite no thank you). We keep on going regardless. Right now I'm going to stop because I wrenched my shoulder earlier this week and typing is painful. Who would have thought it was all so connected? "The foot bone connected to the ankle bone..."
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
a synopsis for a book not yet written
Synopsis of Tamsin’s Twin by Thos. Sabel
Didymus Bosch, middle school English and History teacher in mid to late forties, dutifully and moderately successful with a 50- year old Cape Cod style house in a passable working-class neighborhood, a marriage of 20 years, two children (details on the children), realizes something is profoundly missing from his life. This sense of the missing thing gnaws at him, a gnaw he first tries to ignore. He has had intimations of this feeling many times before and had vainly attempted to fill the void through a collection of unfinished projects, some of which filled the house and raised his wife’s ire. In preparing to teach a unit on World War II he chances upon an article concerning recently released experiments by Dr. Josef Mengele that had been held by the Soviets and now released to the public. These experiments dealt with the feasibility of testing the psychic communication between twins in the hopes of finding the perfect method of sending communications between the German High Command and its officers. Curiosity drove him further to the lab reports. As he read them, images of a twin sister kept invading his dreams, thoughts and intuitions. He tried to drive the images away but they would not go. When he spoke with his older siblings about his supposed sister they gave evasive answers. His mother became angry with him for asking about such nonsense.
Their answers failed to satisfy which drove him to the country church where he was baptized and he sees that beneath his name another name had been carefully scraped off and another written in its place. When there, one a very old parishioner called him “Tamsin” and then excused herself. The pastor explained that this man suffered from the early stages of Alzheimer’s and occasionally made strange, incoherent comments.
Convinced he must have a twin he began the process of creating what she might have looked like by using photos of himself and having them feminized through computer manipulation, with these he created a photo album of her life. Then he began writing her letters which he kept hidden in a box. To receive the answers his letters sought he then began writing her responses, using his left-hand (he is right-handed) and mailing them to himself. Through their correspondence he creates her life, her travels, her memories. He even goes so far as to write a brief autobiography of her (which appears as an appendix to the book) He attempts to keep this under wraps by having Tamsin’s letters mailed to his school. His wife believes he is having an affair and begins keeping a closer eye on him, watching for clues of phone calls, hacking into his email, managing his time very closely yet none of these reveal anything. When she finally discovers the truth by finding the letters and realizing he is the author of both, she is convinced his is crazy and demands counseling, etc. She contacts his family. They respond in a curious, off-handed manner, not in the way experience taught her to expect. Instead of being the friendly and forthright family she has known, they become evasive. The truth is that when the mother was carrying Didymus she dearly wanted twins, was told she bore twins, planned for twins including redoing the nursery for twins. When Didymus was the only child born she was devastated and went into a deep depression, rocking the empty cradle while ignoring crying Didymus. The twin’s name was to be Tamsin. She had a nervous breakdown leaving Didymus to his older sister’s care until the mother returned after a three-month hospital stay. This is what the family is ashamed of.
Back to Didymus’ wife. She demands he put all this away. He follows her wishes, puts the letters away (but doesn’t burn them as his wife orders him to) and life goes back to normal, at least for a year. Then he receives an actual letter from Tamsin, wondering why he hasn’t written, urging him to come to her and help her because her memory, which he has been restoring, is fading. The letter fails to say where she is and so he has to find her by tracing her life through her letters as clues to where she has been. The choice for Didymus is to chose between his wife and the life he has known, and his twin who never was, but is. This is the turning point in the book. If he remains with his wife what has been missing from is will always be missing with no hope of being found. If he goes to seek his twin, all that has been known will be lost for the sake of what may or may not be. He may well be insane. (what if his wife’s lover has sent this letter in order to get rid of him, for she has taken a lover because of Didymus’ strange behavior. Yes, the lover sends it to get rid of him. We still don’t know if Tamsin is real or a figment of all imagination.) His quest takes him through her life and discovers his twin who never was, but is, has been an artist in Brown County, Indiana, Montreal, danced with the Winnipeg Royal Ballet, part of the Gimli, MB, art colony, in Niagra, NY, ultimately made her way to Europe where she has been living as an expatriot for many years ending up in Gozo, Malta. Didymus finds her strolling along the beach . The immediately recognize each other but are unsure. He tells her of her life, as well as his. She takes the letters and autobiography from him and read them while he takes in the island. With his encouragement she flies to their old home to regain what never existed for her, but did. Didymus remains on Gozo, filled with what was missing and now a citizen of the world.
Didymus Bosch, middle school English and History teacher in mid to late forties, dutifully and moderately successful with a 50- year old Cape Cod style house in a passable working-class neighborhood, a marriage of 20 years, two children (details on the children), realizes something is profoundly missing from his life. This sense of the missing thing gnaws at him, a gnaw he first tries to ignore. He has had intimations of this feeling many times before and had vainly attempted to fill the void through a collection of unfinished projects, some of which filled the house and raised his wife’s ire. In preparing to teach a unit on World War II he chances upon an article concerning recently released experiments by Dr. Josef Mengele that had been held by the Soviets and now released to the public. These experiments dealt with the feasibility of testing the psychic communication between twins in the hopes of finding the perfect method of sending communications between the German High Command and its officers. Curiosity drove him further to the lab reports. As he read them, images of a twin sister kept invading his dreams, thoughts and intuitions. He tried to drive the images away but they would not go. When he spoke with his older siblings about his supposed sister they gave evasive answers. His mother became angry with him for asking about such nonsense.
Their answers failed to satisfy which drove him to the country church where he was baptized and he sees that beneath his name another name had been carefully scraped off and another written in its place. When there, one a very old parishioner called him “Tamsin” and then excused herself. The pastor explained that this man suffered from the early stages of Alzheimer’s and occasionally made strange, incoherent comments.
Convinced he must have a twin he began the process of creating what she might have looked like by using photos of himself and having them feminized through computer manipulation, with these he created a photo album of her life. Then he began writing her letters which he kept hidden in a box. To receive the answers his letters sought he then began writing her responses, using his left-hand (he is right-handed) and mailing them to himself. Through their correspondence he creates her life, her travels, her memories. He even goes so far as to write a brief autobiography of her (which appears as an appendix to the book) He attempts to keep this under wraps by having Tamsin’s letters mailed to his school. His wife believes he is having an affair and begins keeping a closer eye on him, watching for clues of phone calls, hacking into his email, managing his time very closely yet none of these reveal anything. When she finally discovers the truth by finding the letters and realizing he is the author of both, she is convinced his is crazy and demands counseling, etc. She contacts his family. They respond in a curious, off-handed manner, not in the way experience taught her to expect. Instead of being the friendly and forthright family she has known, they become evasive. The truth is that when the mother was carrying Didymus she dearly wanted twins, was told she bore twins, planned for twins including redoing the nursery for twins. When Didymus was the only child born she was devastated and went into a deep depression, rocking the empty cradle while ignoring crying Didymus. The twin’s name was to be Tamsin. She had a nervous breakdown leaving Didymus to his older sister’s care until the mother returned after a three-month hospital stay. This is what the family is ashamed of.
Back to Didymus’ wife. She demands he put all this away. He follows her wishes, puts the letters away (but doesn’t burn them as his wife orders him to) and life goes back to normal, at least for a year. Then he receives an actual letter from Tamsin, wondering why he hasn’t written, urging him to come to her and help her because her memory, which he has been restoring, is fading. The letter fails to say where she is and so he has to find her by tracing her life through her letters as clues to where she has been. The choice for Didymus is to chose between his wife and the life he has known, and his twin who never was, but is. This is the turning point in the book. If he remains with his wife what has been missing from is will always be missing with no hope of being found. If he goes to seek his twin, all that has been known will be lost for the sake of what may or may not be. He may well be insane. (what if his wife’s lover has sent this letter in order to get rid of him, for she has taken a lover because of Didymus’ strange behavior. Yes, the lover sends it to get rid of him. We still don’t know if Tamsin is real or a figment of all imagination.) His quest takes him through her life and discovers his twin who never was, but is, has been an artist in Brown County, Indiana, Montreal, danced with the Winnipeg Royal Ballet, part of the Gimli, MB, art colony, in Niagra, NY, ultimately made her way to Europe where she has been living as an expatriot for many years ending up in Gozo, Malta. Didymus finds her strolling along the beach . The immediately recognize each other but are unsure. He tells her of her life, as well as his. She takes the letters and autobiography from him and read them while he takes in the island. With his encouragement she flies to their old home to regain what never existed for her, but did. Didymus remains on Gozo, filled with what was missing and now a citizen of the world.
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