“Guess we didn’t hear that.” said Andy’s wife. “Was there something you wanted?”
“Maybe I’ll pick up a case of beer for Duane. What kind does he drink?”
“If it’s beer he’ll drink it,” said Andy. “Blatz, Schlitz or Old Milwaukee? I guess we got some Bud around here too.”
“Any one,” I said, and Andy lumbered away to the back room where he kept his stacked cases of beer.
His wife and I looked uncomfortably at one another. She broke the contact first, darting her eyes away toward the floor and then out to where my car was parked. “You been staying out of trouble?
“Of course. Yes.”
“But you’re writing filth, he says.”
“He didn’t understand. I came here to write my dissertation.”
She bristled. “And you think Andy’s too dumb to understand you. You were always too good for us up here, weren’t you? You were too good for ordinary folk — too good to follow the law too.”
“Wait, hold on,” I said. “Jesus, that was a long time ago.”
“And so good you don’t think about taking the Lord’s name in vain. You haven’t changed, Miles. Does Duane know you’re coming?”
“Well sure,” I said. “Don’t be so bitchy. Look, I’m sorry. I’ve been driving two days and I’ve had a couple of funny experiences.” I saw her glance at my handkerchief-wrapped left hand. “All I want here is peace and quiet.”
“You always made trouble,” she said. “You and your cousin Alison were just alike that way. I’m glad neither of you was raised in the valley. Your grandparents were our people, Miles, and we all took to your father like he was one of us, but now I think maybe we got enough trouble without having you here too.”
“Good lord,” I said. “What happened to your hospitality?”
She glared at me. “You wore out your welcome here the first time you stole from us. I’ll tell Andy to take your beer down to your motor. You can leave the money on the counter.”
July 16
I knew he was Miles Teagarden when he first set foot in our store even though Andy says he didn’t know until he said he was Eve’s boy. He had that same look he always had, like some bad secret was on his mind. I used to feel, so sorry for Eve, she was straight as a die all her life, and I guess you don’t know what will happen to your children if you bring them up in funny places. But Eve never was to blame for that boy Miles. Now we know all about him, I’m glad Eve passed away before she could see just how bad he turned out. On that first day I just turned him out of the store. I said Miles, you ain’t fooling none of us here. We know you. Now you just get on out of our store. Andy’ll take that beer of yours down to your motor, I could tell he was in a fight or something — he looked weak or scared, the way they do, and his hand was still bleeding. I told him, and I’d tell him the same again. He never was any good, was he, for all those brains they said he had? He was just funny — just funny. If he was a dog or a horse you’d have penned him up or just shot him. Right off. Him and that sneaky look and that handkerchief around his hand.
I silently watched Andy load the beer into the back seat of the Volkswagen, shoving in the case beside the paper boxes full of notes and books. “Hurt your wing, huh?” he said. “Wife says you paid up there. Well, give my regards to Duane, and I hope your mitt gets better.” He backed away from the car, wiping his hands on his trousers as if he’d dirtied them, and I wordlessly got in behind the wheel. “Bye now,” he said, and I looked at him and then took off out of the dusty little lot. In the rearview mirror I saw him shrugging. When the curve in the road by the red sandstone cliff took him out of sight I snapped the radio on, hoping for music, but Michael Moose was droning on again about Gwen Olson’s death and I impatiently turned it off.
When I had got as far down the valley as the shell of the school where my grandmother had taught all eight grades I pulled over and tried to relax. There is a special feeling in the mind that represents the creation of alpha waves, and I deliberately sought that mild state. This time I failed, and I merely sat in the car, staring alternately at the road, the long green field of corn to my right, and the shell of the schoolhouse. I began to hear the buzz of a motorcycle, and soon I saw it flying down the road toward me, growing in size from the dimensions of a horsefly to the point where I could see the black-jacketed, helmeted rider and the blond passenger behind him, her hair whipping out in the wake and her thick thighs gripping him. At the curve by the sandstone cliff the sound altered, and then it died away altogether.
Why should your old sins be permanently pinned to your jacket? For all to read aloud? It was stupidly unfair. I would do my shopping in Arden, despite the inconvenience of making a ten-mile drive whenever I wanted anything. The making of this decision helped to dispel my temper and after a minute or two of further brooding I began to feel as though I might be producing an at least feeble tranquility.
Where, you might ask, was the clown, the reluctant wag I have proclaimed myself to be? My own abrasiveness surprised me. A woman like Andy’s wife would think the word “bitch” scandalous applied to any sphere but the canine. It was an emotional morning. My former thefts! Yet I supposed that it was too much to expect anyone to have forgotten them.
A hundred yards past the deserted school was the church: Gethsemane Lutheran church is a red brick building with quite a sturdy, pompous, peaceful air to it, probably conferred by the Palladian columns at the top of the stairs. For the sake of my grandmother, who was already very weak, Joan and I had been married in this church. (My mother’s idea.)
After the church the land seems to open up, and the corn takes over. I passed the Sunderson farmhouse — two pickup trucks parked on the high sloping lawn, a rooster strutting in the red dust of the driveway — and saw a burly man in overalls and a cap just coming out of the house. He stared at me and then decided to wave, but I had not generated sufficient alpha waves to return his greeting.
Half a mile past the Sunderson farm I could see my grandmother’s old house and the Updahl land. The row of walnut trees at the edge of the lawn had put on weight, and now they looked like a row of heavy old farmers standing in the sun. I drove by the front of the property and swung into the driveway, passing the trees and feeling the car jounce on the ruts. I expected to feel some strong upwelling of feeling, looking at the long white house again, but my emotions seemed flat and dull. It was just a two-story house with a screen porch, an ordinary farmhouse. Yet when I got out of the car I smelled all the old odors of the farm, a rich compound of cows and horses and fertilizer and milk and sunshine. This pervades everything: when people from the farm had visited my family in Fort Lauderdale, it hung on their clothes and hands and shoes. Smelling all this again made me momentarily feel thirteen years old, and I lifted my head, straightening out the kinks in my neck and back, and saw a heavy form moving down the screen porch. By his shovel-handed, lumbering walk I knew it was Duane, who had been sitting invisible in the corner of the porch just as he had been on that terrible night twenty years before. When Duane came out of the porch into the sun I tried to smile at him. What the first sight of my cousin had brought back to me was how much hostility there had always been between us, how little we had liked one another. It would be different now, I hoped.
Two
__________
“Have a case of beer, Duane,” I said, mistakenly trying for a bluff friendliness.
He appeared to be confused — really, confusion was stamped all over his big plain face — but his mechanism was set for holding out his hand and saying hello., and that was what he did. His hand was huge, a true farmer’s hand, and so rough it felt made of a substance less vulnerable than skin. Duane was a short barrel-like man, but his extremities might have come from someone a foot taller. As we clasped hands and he blinked at me, half smiling, trying to figure out what I meant about the beer, I noticed that he had obviously come in from a morning’s work: he wore heavy stained denim coveralls and workboots crusted with mud and excrement. He radiated all of the usual farm odors, compounded with sweat and underlain by his true odor, his inner smell, which is of gunpowder.