Plowing

This time I’ve got it adjusted perfectly — not too deep, just the right pitch. The ground is moist but not wet. Chocolate soil shears off the disks smooth and easy, laying in rowed humps like a child’s braided head.

The Massey knocks and rattles, lugs low against the strong pull of the earth. I’m thankful for power steering as the tractor bounces, and I back up often, looping around. After an hour my shoulders and neck ache from constantly twisting sideways, watching.

It’s supposed to rain tonight. I’ve been plowing since I got off work. This needs to get done or everything will be thrown off. Squash bugs, worms, beetles will take all.

I hear Alice yelling. She is four and demanding to ride. It’s not warm enough for her to be barefooted and wearing shorts. Her upper lip is slick with snot. Her feet are smudged, shins spotted in bruises like dappled bananas. I take the tractor out of gear and lift her to my lap. “Go faster,” she says. I try to explain. She wants off. On my next pass I notice that she has tied the dog to her wagon with baling twine.

Before dark I finish and back the plow under a sweetgum, unhitch, block up the tongue with cinder blocks. I park the tractor in the barn and gun the motor before killing it — it’s what people do. Alice runs up asking what took me so long and when are we going to eat and when is Mommy coming home. I explain, yet again, that Mom is at a seminar and will be home Saturday night. “Oh,” she says. “I’m hungry.”

We have macaroni and cheese for supper. Fran had said it would be a big hit and was right. We do dishes, pajamas, brush teeth, pee.

“Daddy?” Alice looks me in the eyes with her serious, extra-genuine expression. Her neck recoils like a cautious turtle’s. “Mommy always reads me a Mabel story.”

I read for perhaps 10 minutes (miniature people have given Mabel special gifts), before noticing her breathing. Steady, raspy exhalations sound like her mom’s yoga noises. I watch her little chest rise and fall and remember this from a song Uncle Oscar used to sing:

Don’t that road look rough and rocky?

Don’t that sea look wide and deep?

Don’t my baby look the sweetest,

When she’s in my arms asleep?

Uncle Oscar died of cirrhosis of the liver when I was a teenager. Daddy died when I was 29. Big Henry. I think he would have liked Alice. Maybe we could have worked things out. I don’t know. We were far apart. I have a book on fathers and sons that Frannie gave me but . . . nothing seems to change — he’s dead, I’m alive. Now I’m reading a book about cowboys driving cattle from Texas to Montana. They have to deal with Indians and robbers, grizzlies, and blizzards. They drink whiskey and play poker and fight in whorehouses over beautiful women. In one section, a woman gets kidnapped by a very savage Indian and repeatedly raped by grotesque, drunken sidekicks.

Frannie is at a seminar for survivors of that kind of trauma. Sometimes, when she comes home late having seen 10 clients, she is tired, stressed out, used up. I ask if she’s had a good day. She lies, says “OK” and asks about mine, goes outside to feed and turn out her horse.

When she comes back in her eyes are usually red. “You all right?” I try to sound genuine, soften my face.

“Yes.” She won’t look at me and starts to put on her pajamas. When I watch her undress, I wish she would leave the pajamas off, climb on top of me, grunt and groan and hoot and holler.

Beside me, she breaks the silence. “I hate this.” She pinches her eyebrows together with her thumb and forefinger. “Coming home feeling this way.”

Now her mouth stretches into a clown like frown. I hand over the box of Kleenex.

Unprompted, she begins talking about job stress and pressure and being a mom and a wife. I am a problem solver and try to step in and arrange priorities. This never seems to work. Her anger swings toward me. Can’t I be more of a dad? Does she have to do everything? Is sex all I think about? Is she obligated?

I defend myself. All I did was try to help. You don’t have to jump down my throat. Eventually, I blame her pathetic father. All roads lead to Rome. Then the kitten noises start and I know that the end is near. “

I was just a little girl,” she screeches. Her voice sounds odd and distant, coming not from her throat but deeper down and further away.

I usually end up watching David Letterman.

Right now, the 11 o’clock news is on. I have to get up early and take Alice to daycare. Fran’s never been gone for this long. Maybe after work I’ll rent some movies. Saturday, there’s a spring fair at Silk Hope — Old Fashioned Farmer’s Day. We might check it out.

 

Joe has already strung the drop cords out when I drive up. His Skil saw and level are on the plywood floor. He packs a golf ball-sized chew in the corner of his jaw. His shirt is off, though it’s a cool April morning. “What’s happen ing, Dick!” With Joe, everybody is Dick.

“You!” I holler back. I raise my camper top and carry tools to the floor. Joe offers me a chew and I refuse. He sticks his nose close to the pouch, lifts up, says “ahhhhh,” like he’s some kind of satisfied. At least twice a day he does this to me. I haven’t had any since New Years. I just say no, though in the mornings, strapping on my toolbelt, I struggle; I can still feel the fat, spongy pouch in my back pocket, smell the pungent, syrupy leaves, draw on the soft nugget squished against my cheek. Oh, sweet nectar. I always kept an extra in the truck, just in case. It hasn’t been long enough.

“Where are the Dicks?” Joe asks.

“It’s a quarter till,” I remind him. “Nobody wants to work before starting time . . . but you.” I sip from my coffee cup — a brittle, plastic, insulated thing with a pushbutton hole to sip out of. I got it free, for a dollar, at a 7-Eleven. Routinely I scald myself, cheap java dribbling off my chin onto my pants.

“Saw 20 deer near Lindley Mill this morning.” Joe gets quite animated. He sweeps his arms, describing the location, movement. His eyes demand my eyes. I let him have them, nod my head occasionally, pretending collaboration. (It came over the hill. It jumped out of the creek. I saw him. He saw me.) I know this technique well. I used it on Big Henry for many years.

I hear Fred and Earl in the distance: Fred’s Olds 98 that he bought for $500. It sounds like a Harley and flakes of vinyl flap on the roof like tiny flags. “Drives like a Caddy,” Fred says. He is Earl’s older brother by five years. They grew up on a dairy farm working seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. When their father had a stroke, Fred sold the herd. They both live in trailers in a pasture across from their mom’s house and seem happy to be out of the milking business.

Fred climbs out of the Olds, yawns, stretches high. “Paaay daaay,”he sings.

“Eee hiiiii,” Earl seconds the motion. They poke around in the huge trunk, hunting nail aprons, hammers. Side by side, they could be twins — pug-nosed, flat-assed, thick-wristed boys. Men really, but they seem more like boys, laughing and teasing every day, pink-cheeked, almost whiskerless.

“Joe Joe,” Fred says. Joe is carrying a heavy load of studs to the deck.

“Dick Dick,” Joe calls back, dropping the lumber in a pile on the plywood floor. “Saw 20 deer about a mile from the mill”

“Any real cute ones?” Fred asks. We all laugh. Fred’s tack with Joe works better than mine.

By lunchtime the first-floor walls are up. We have a way of getting into a groove. Measuring. Cutting. Nailing. Talking. Toting. Sweating. Things fall into place. Maybe that’s why I do this. Big Henry wanted me to go to law school. He was against me marrying. “Too young,” he had said. “Your whole life’s ahead of you.” He couldn’t believe I would actually sell my inherited stock portfolio and buy 50 acres out in the boondocks. Really, I’m not quite sure why I did what I did. I like to think it was what I wanted. I was sick of expectations and bullshit and being judged every time I broke wind.

At work there is a logical sequence, a process of steps, a rhythm. Each day a stack of wood diminishes, walls go up, roofs go on. I go home tired.

Neville shows up at 3:30 with a case of beer. He has come to pay us — a gracious pimp. Not a bad pimp, actually. He keeps us in work, pays us on time, brings treats intermittently. “Already running rafters?” he wonders aloud, surprise in his voice clearly strategic. A well-placed compliment goes a long way. I’m a sucker every time.

We wind up the cords, get up tools and cover the lumber with plastic.

“What it is, Hank?” Neville tosses me a Bud.

“You,” I tell him. “It’s your world. I just live in it.”

He grins. He has been in the beer for a while.

“Save me a spot,” I say. Jive talking has always worked well between us.

“What’s happening this weekend?” he asks. I explain that Fran is at a conference, that I’m soloing with Alice. He shakes his head in mock disbelief.

Joe is showing Fred and Earl how to gig flounder. The brothers are going to Wrightsville Beach with some buddies for the weekend. Joe holds both fists high over his head then jams them toward the floor, quick and hard. “Watch out for your feet,” he cautions. “They look big under water.”

Fred and Earl sip at cans, studying him like an exotic animal.

“Your old lady’s at a conference?” Neville’s face is twisted.

“Yeah. Trauma and Recovery.”

Again, he shakes his head. We drink more beer. Joe demonstrates how to filet a flounder using a framing square and a scrap of plywood. The plywood is the flounder. He chops with the square, “Don’t cut its head off. Gotta have something to hold on to.” He chews tobacco and drinks at the same time. The brothers nod. They have received Joe’s wisdom.

 

On the way to get Alice I crank the volume up on a bluegrass tape. The song is a fast banjo and fiddle duet. They are kicking ass and I pound out the beat on the steering wheel — end of the week, paid, done. Friday’s are the ticket. I wonder sometimes what Big Henry’s Fridays were like? I can see his hair, silver as a coon’s, swooped way back, feet pointed out like a penguin’s. Wingtips. Always. He shakes his head, not unlike Neville, only he looks forlorn, somehow ashamed. Of me, I always thought. I let him down.

Before I can buckle Alice in, she reaches for the knob and cuts the music off. “Gross, Daddy.”

I collect myself. “Did you have a nice day, Sweet Pea?”

“No. When will Mommy be home?”

“One more day.” I hold up my index finger. I try to kiss her on the forehead and she veers away.

On the way home she fights the relentless droop of eyelids, in vain. Wet strands of hair stick to the side of her face and tiny drops of sweat dot her nose and lip. I get 101 Dalmatians for her and The Last Picture Show for me. Again, we have macaroni and cheese. The mean lady in her movie scares her. Halfway through she is asleep so I plug in my movie, which I saw years ago, back when Cybill Shepard could act.

 

The ball fields at Silk Hope School are crammed with tents, red and green antique tractors bordering the fair like a downhome cross-stitch pattern. People browse the craft alleys, starting, stopping, waiting on reticent children dizzied by the pageantry.

“Where is something fun, Daddy?” Alice shows no interest in weaving or molasses making. Not soon enough, we find our way out of the vendor section. Alice points across the field. “Ponies! Ponies!” She wants me to gallop with her and I acquiesce.

A teenager reaches in his apron, trades me eight dollars for my ten, hefts my daughter onto Midnight; one of eight unlucky ponies destined to trod in a circle all weekend. Parents loop alongside some of the kids. Alice waves me off.

For an hour we watch the tractor pull, narrated by a gregarious MC named Leroy who knows everything about every tractor. We see four Belgium draft horses power a mechanical wheat thresher. At the old-timey saw mill run by a steam engine, we see Ernest and Beaumont Flitch. They run a modern saw mill near where we live. Ernest yells at Beaumont in public just like he does at the mill; she isn’t loading logs fast enough to suit him. Near them, people stare at the ground. Their son lingers under an oak, a gawky adolescent now, clad in camouflage with a dagger strapped to his hip. His eyes seem fixed on something far off.

After another ride on Midnight, Alice pulls me toward a drink stand. We pass the crosscut saw contest where a man and a boy pull and push. They look unhappy when a short, sappy section finally drops from the long log. Pairs of men whisper behind knuckles, anxious about their upcoming turns, planning strategies. Alice likes the smell of pine resin. I wish Joe were here. We’d be the last entry. No contest. The saw would sing in alternating swishes and afterwards we’d give Alice our blue ribbons, leaving the other dicks nudging their Cat hats and thumbing their scalps absent-mindedly.

Instead of going to the drink stand, Alice and I decide to eat under the big tent. On the way we hear over the public address system that paratroopers from Fort Bragg will be skydiving into the fair at two o’clock. I explain to Alice what will happen. Her eyes brighten. She can’t help smiling. “Parashooters,” she keeps calling them. She wants to ride on my shoulders.

At the big tent, I switch her to my hip.

“Pork or chicken?” A wide woman with blue hair and a gingham apron smiles at Alice, who presses her face to my shoulder.

“Barbecue plate, thanks,” I say.

“You having fun with your Daddy?” the woman asks. Alice puckers her bottom lip, lowers her brow, nods up and down. My arm is tired but I don’t want to put her down.

We sit at a long table with metal chairs and Alice drinks most of her Coke and licks butter from her roll. “I’m not very hungry,” she says. I eat barbecue, coleslaw, baked beans. I’m a clean-your-plate kind of guy; miserably full but don’t waste anything. Big Henry lives. I used to have to sit at the table until I had eaten everything on my plate, including broccoli and brussel sprouts.

Close to two o’clock we migrate to a roped-off area where the skydivers are supposed to land. An officer from the 182nd Airborne of Fort Bragg speaks on the PA describing terminal velocity. Alice is on my shoulders again.

Tiny figures jump from a plane, wearing different colored smoke flares, holding hands in the shape of a star. I hear “freefalling” over the PA. When the parachutes open I feel Alice’s little legs gripping me and shaking slightly. She taps my head, whispers “Daddy.” As the first of the divers nears, she squeezes tighter; I hear her sucking air. All of the men land within a 10-foot circle at the center of the roped-off area. The crowd responds with raucous, thunderous applause. Alice slides down and hugs my neck until I think I might cry.

 

In my truck on the way home, Alice has fallen asleep. She clutches a Dixie cup full of homemade ice cream I bought on the way out. I slip it easily from her little fist, legs jerking as if a string joined them to the ice cream. What I have is more like a shake now and I drink it fast. It is too sweet and I wish I had another.

Dogwoods and redbuds have popped out along the countryside, azaleas ready to burst. When I was little I used to help Big Henry in the azalea beds. He showed me how to mix peat moss into the soil, build a berm around the shrubs, mulch with pine needles. We’d take breaks and have Cokes and licorice. Before supper we’d play catch in the front yard. He’d set his scotch and water by the lamppost, have a swig now and again. I’d try to sting his hand with my fastball and he’d mesmerize me with his underhanded knuckler.

Once at Pawley’s Island he took me to the Pier to see a large shark that had been caught. He held my hand and walked me up close, exposed the rows of serrated teeth. I studied the monster for a long time and when we finally left, we raced to the station wagon and I won.

My gas gauge is on E and I swing by Reems’ Gulf and Grocery. By the time I’m out of the truck, Robert is at the pump island. “How ’bout it, Shorty?” Robert calls me Shorty though actually, I’m average height. He must be in his mid-60s, paunchy, bald. His fingernails are caked in gunk. One of his bottom teeth is gold.

“Pretty good, Robert,” I say. “How ’bout you?”

He squeezes the nozzle and the pump clicks, one, two, three, four . . . “Doing all right for a old man, I reckon. But I got a bad place. Hurts like I don’t know what. Don’t know how I got it, neither.”

“Damn,” I say. He leans over and unlaces his left boot.

“The old lady says it looks like a snakebite. Curly says a spider. What do you think, Shorty?”

I think Robert’s foot has never seen sunshine. Webs of purple veins look on the verge of popping through skin as thin as an onion. Brown toenails point in different directions. He lays it across his other knee, leans against the truck for balance. “Now ain’t that something?”

“Yes, Robert, it is.” I want his foot back in the boot.

He opens his pocket knife, pokes around the perimeter of a cankerous-looking sore the size of a quarter on the ball of his foot. “Blame thing hurts like the dickens.” He pokes, grimaces, showing his shiny tooth. “What’s it look like to you, Shorty?”

“Doesn’t look so good, Robert.”

“Naw. It doesn’t, does it? Been soaking it kindly at night.” He opens the knife to a smaller, thinner blade, testing an alternative poking strategy. “But hell. I open at six ever morning. Seven days a week. Know what I mean, Shorty?”

“You should slow down some, Robert,” I offer.

“Hell,” he says, “people’s all the time wanting shit. Ain’t that right, Shorty?”

“Yep.” He grimaces, face gathered into a point, like a seal’s. The pump clicks off.

Robert is trying to put his sock on, teetering on one foot.

The storm door to the store cracks open. Curly pokes her head through. “Telephone, Daddy.” Her nasal twang makes her sound irritated. Curly has a wild, frizzy mane and a mustache she doesn’t shave often enough.

“Hey girl,” Robert yells back, but he is too late. Curly has already returned to her position on the stool beside the police radio.

“That dern girl.” Robert looks up from his brogan. “Need a ticket on that, Shorty?”

“Nah. Just put me down.”

Robert hurries toward the telephone moving like a wind-up toy, shoelaces whispering across the asphalt. I pull away quietly, not waking Alice.

 

A fantasy I play with is Big Henry meeting Robert Reems. “Dad,” I say, “meet the real thing.” It’s not much of a fantasy, really. I don’t know how he would react. I certainly don’t see them talking Dow Jones in a golf cart, or fishing with worms and cane poles on the bank of a pond. All my dealings with Big Henry are this way. I pretend. Right now I see him in the bleachers at the tractor pull, shading his eyes with a folded program, content as if he’d been drawn there, with the others, in crayon. I see him gabbing with overalled men reclined on chaise lounges beside their sputtering antique hit-and-miss engines, eating peanuts, sipping sodas. Alice holds his hand and he patiently explains to her how the motors work.

 

When I turn onto our gravel drive, Alice stirs, opens her eyes, frowns. “Are we home?” Her voice sounds like a duck. I smile, nod. I see Frannie’s car parked beside the pumphouse. She’s home early.

“Look.” I point for Alice to see.

“Mommy’s home!” she calls.

Frannie meets us as we come to a stop. Alice leaps into her arms. The two of them together are radiant — rosy-cheeked, shiny-eyed.

Frannie moves toward me, for a hug, I presume. “

We saw parashooters, Mommy!” sings Alice.

“Sounds like you guys have had fun!” Frannie matches her enthusiasm, winks at me.

I lift Frannie’s travel bag from the Toyota and she takes my free hand. Alice hangs on her mom’s hip, describing Midnight, the humongous bucking bronco pony she rode all by herself, two times. Walking to the house, Frannie slips her arm around my waist and leans her head on my shoulder.

When we kiss, her tongue rolls gently through my mouth. There is a look in her eyes. Her freckles seem perfect.