Authors: Dale Peck
Here, you’re a fat old man, aren’t you? Yes, you’re my big fat baby.
Hercules lifts his head a little, licks the girl’s hand, then stretches out again. His tail thumps the ground in little puffs of dust.
The girl approaches the garden warily, as if she is sneaking up on her asparagus. As if it might shrink at her approach, a defense mechanism like a bull snake’s feigning death. Her dream flashes in her mind again and she shudders, almost afraid to unlatch the gate. When she does she disturbs a rabbit—in the carrots, thank God.
As she walks down the rows she can’t help but think the garden looks a little ragged this year. Just like the lawn. The earth under her bare feet is dry and flaky—it must have been a week since it was watered—and the weeds in the onions are taller than the onions themselves. The radishes weren’t replanted the last time they were harvested, and what was that, two weeks ago? She was home for dinner that night—it was the last time she was
home for dinner—but she can’t quite remember when it was. The two hollow rows look like a pair of parallel mole tunnels, half collapsed. Actually, she sees when she gets closer, one of them is a mole tunnel. Her mother would go
ballistic
if she saw that. The three of them used to be so diligent about the garden. She and Darcy and their mother. But it seems like her mother went at it half-heartedly this year, alone—planting late, tending haphazardly, not bothering with any of the flower borders she and the girls used to set down every spring. Now there are only a few marigolds that managed to reseed themselves from last year. The geraniums are still wintering on the sun porch and the pink and purple impatiens the girl picked up from Story’s nursery hang off the fence where she left them a month ago, stifling in their white plastic pots. The only thing that looks healthy are the wild pink roses that cling to the supposedly rabbit-proof fence—
not!
But her asparagus is fine, she thinks. A few scattered green tips actually poke through the straw bedding. Not as many as she’d like maybe, but when she peels back the straw she sees there are dozens more hiding just out of the sun. More than enough for lunch, especially with only five at table.
It’s a funny thing, harvesting asparagus. Delicate and brutal at the same time. Like an operation. First you peel back the straw carefully so you don’t snap the stalks in the middle, but then you drive a pair of garden shears right into the earth at the base of the plant to sever stalk from root. The metal blades grit against the grains in the dirt with a faint sound that sets your teeth on edge if you think about it, and the girl tries not to think about it, peeling and cutting, peeling and cutting, laying the
stalks out on the ground like a picket fence. It’s like an operation, she thinks, like cutting ribs out of the scarecrow’s chest, and suddenly the girl drops the shears to the ground and presses the back of her hand to her mouth. Her left hand, of course. The one with the ring. How
could
she have overslept, today of all days? Gone out to that silly movie with Justin and then slept straight through to ten o’clock as if she hadn’t a care in the world?
She gives herself a moment, half sadness, half reproach. She has no idea why she’s so upset. It’s not like it’s a serious procedure. What was the word her father used? Precautionary? Exploratory? But still. She could’ve at least dragged herself out of bed to have breakfast with her mother before she went to the hospital. When she’s caught her breath she takes her hand from her mouth, looks at the ring again. The finger it’s on is flecked with dirt. It doesn’t look elegant as much as it looks like a banded bird leg, a tag to remind her that no matter how far she migrates everyone will always know where she belongs now.
She takes a deep breath then, finishes harvesting the asparagus. One of her mother’s old bandannas is knotted and hanging on the gate, and the girl unties it as gently as if it were a snarl in her mother’s hair and smoothes it out and lays the asparagus in it and carries it up to the house that way, like a baby in its carrier. She sets the shears and asparagus down on the picnic table and is just checking on the coals when she hears gravel crunch in the driveway. Surely Donnie can’t be here already, she thinks, it’s not even noon. But when she glances at her watch she sees that it is in fact ten past, and then she looks up and sees a white Lincoln sitting in the driveway.
There’s glare on the windshield and she can’t make out who’s
inside. The license plate’s a kind of tan noncolor—not New York. She squints, but can’t make it out.
The car idles a moment, then shuts off. There is a little ticking noise as the hood immediately cools and shrinks, so distinct in the quiet afternoon she can hear the sound bounce off the wall of the dairy barn and echo across the yard. Then, slowly, the driver’s side door opens and a young man gets out of the car. Thirty-something, baby blue pants, short-sleeved brown shirt. Not quite old enough for such a car, she thinks. Her first thought is that it must be his father’s, and when a moment later the passenger’s side door opens and an older man gets out, she nods her head. The older man is a little shorter than the younger and big around as a barrel, and his calves where they stick out from his denim shorts are white as the base of the asparagus plants she just cut. But you can see the resemblance in the softness of cheeks and nose. A fringe of beard like Abraham Lincoln’s outlines the father’s jawline, the son wears a soul patch beneath his lip. But give the boy some time, she thinks, his face will get as florid as his father’s, as soft as a carnation past its prime.
Meanwhile, the coals aren’t quite ready, and she uses the ash shovel to spread them over the bottom of the grill to make them burn faster. She’s thinking she really should take the bucket down to the ash pile and dump it, but if she doesn’t get inside and cut up the meat and vegetables and get them on the skewers she’ll never have lunch ready for Donnie and the boy when they come in. But for the moment she’s stuck there waiting for the two men, who walk up the driveway slowly. Shyly? Nervously? She can’t really tell. The older man looks a little uncertain but even without her contacts she can see the big smile on his face.
There is a slowness to his step that seems unrelated to his weight, as if he is trying to set his feet down without hurting them, and she’s willing to bet he’s bald under his brown suede cap, which is
way
too hot for a day like today. The younger man does look nervous though, and he has a hard time holding to his father’s pace. He gets a few steps ahead, then drops back, then gets a few steps ahead again. He has a crewcut, and even though it looks cool she’s willing to bet it’s probably just because he’s losing his hair too.
Men
. Justin already frets over his temples, asking her if she thinks his hairline’s receding. Like the tide, she says. It’ll be gone in an hour. She can feel the sun beating down on her own head, and if she had a razor in her hand she’d shave her hair off in a heartbeat.
The men stop when they are a few feet away from her, on the other side of the grill.
Hi there, the father says. He has a deep voice, as friendly as his smile.
Hi.
The son sort of waves.
There is a silence then, and the girl realizes the car’s hood has stopped ticking.
We came by before, the son says after a moment. I think I talked to your sister.
The girl nods. She is putting the rack on the grill. It’s a little greasy, and she tries to handle it with only the thumb and forefinger of each hand. She should probably clean it, she thinks, but it’s late. The fire will kill any germs.
We’re looking for Donnie Badget, the boy says now.
No, Dale, the father says, turning to his son. I keep telling
you, the man who worked for Uncle Wallace is Donnie
Sutton
. Donnie
Badget
is the guy who built my car.
I thought the guy who built your car was Donnie Arnold.
The father shakes his head.
I don’t even
know
anyone named Donnie Arnold. Donnie
Budget
, Dale. He built my car. Donnie Sutton worked for Uncle Wallace.
The girl watches their banter. They remind her of the twins, and she tries not to laugh. She closes the grill, takes another look at the car. Looks like a Lincoln to her.
The father sees her looking at the car.
Oh no, not that car, ma’am. That’s a Lincoln Town Car. I had a man named Donnie Badget rebuild me a 1931 Chevy street rod. Real pain in my ass but he did a nice job, pardon my language. Won a prize at every car show I’ve taken it to.
He grins then, easily, and she grins back at him. The way he calls her ma’am reminds her of her customers at the restaurant, the ones who start out calling her ma’am and end up calling her honey by the end of the meal and press their tip in her hand rather than leave it under a saucer.
This is for you, honey
, such men say, surrendering a few wrinkled singles as if they were gold coins.
Don’t spend it all in one place
.
Throughout his father’s speech the son has looked around the farm. He turns all the way around, takes in the dairy barn and barnyard across the road, the garden, the garage. He spends a particularly long time examining the house, as if appraising it. She can see his eye following the line of the eave, up and around each dormer, and as his eye passes over her own bedroom window she wonders if they’re just a pair of house hunters up from
the city. If her grandfather were around he’d chase them away with a stick. But then she thinks, how would they know about Donnie?
Her eye is caught by the eaves again—the flaking paint, a gap where the gutter is coming unstuck from the side of the house—and then she realizes the father is holding out a picture.
There it is, at the Sedgwick County Car Show. That’s the Audience Favorite trophy next to it. That’s Sedgwick County Kansas, he adds.
She looks at the picture, but between the distance and the heat waves rising off the closed barbecue she can make out little more than a shiny blue blur. She really
has
to get lunch going.
She nods at the Lincoln again.
You drove all the way from Kansas? To find Donnie?
Well, actually we come down from Rochester. Every summer we have a family reunion at my uncle’s house, that’s my mother’s brother’s house up in Rochester, but this year Dale and I thought we’d come down here. Check out the old farm, see if we could track down any of my old acquaintances. Dale here actually thought Donnie was dead, but when we saw Flip Flack at the Greenville barbershop he told me Donnie worked for you, so I guess he was mistaken.
The girl smiles.
Well, he works for my father, but he’s been here so long he seems like family. He’s still going strong, she adds. I wish I had half his energy.
It’s a beautiful farm you have here, the father says, glancing around casually. Not like the son, who seems to study everything, but like someone who already knows what he is looking at. He
looks back at her. It’s a hard life, dairy farming, but it’s a beautiful farm you have here.
For the first time the father’s words carry a hint of something other than history, a tinge of loss or maybe even regret, and despite her duties and distractions the girl’s curiosity is piqued. It occurs to her that she should shake their hands, but hers are covered with grease from the grill. She tries wiping one palm on the other but it doesn’t really help.
Christine said she sent you over to Walsh’s.
The men look at each other.
Walsh? the father says. I think she said Ives. Junior Ives?
On 81, the boy says now, about two miles east of Oak Hill?
That’s Junior Ives. I didn’t realize Donnie was there.
He wasn’t.
I think he’s at Walsh’s. It’s off 32, almost all the way to Cairo.
Now that they are talking directions, the son seems to be asserting himself.
Can you tell us how to get there?
The girl is about to, but then she sees the asparagus wrapped in her mother’s bandanna. The men have aroused her interest to say the least, but if she doesn’t get the skewers ready lunch will never be done on time. And she’s already messed up enough for one day.
It’s kind of hard to find if you don’t know the roads, she says, reaching for the asparagus. But he should be here in about an hour for lunch.
My father used to work with him, the son says then. On a farm over in Greenville.
Wallace Peck, the father says. Did you know him?
She shakes her head.
Well, yes, that was before you were born probably. Let’s see, Uncle Wallace died in seventy-five or seventy-six, what year did I marry Pam, Dale?
Seventy-six.
Okay then, so Uncle Wallace died the year I married Pam, so he died in seventy-six, so he probably died before you were born. He had a stroke, it was terrible to see.
I’m twenty-one, the girl says after what seems like a respectful pause. She suddenly realizes she is unwrapping and rewrapping the asparagus, and sets it down on the picnic table again. Donnie’s been here since I was about three. She glances at her watch. He should be here in about forty minutes.
Twenty years, the father says, and again his voice deepens with emotion. I bet he worked for Uncle Wallace for at least that long. Longer even. My God, twenty years.
The girl nods now, remembering. Her words tumble out of her mouth as she tries to speed the conversation along. I know he worked for someone just north of Greenville for a really long time. Wait, isn’t that how he got his house?
Well, my uncle left him a piece of land when he died. He left a piece to Donnie and a piece to my Aunt Bess and then I guess the rest of it he just let be sold off when he died. He was going to leave it to me once but that’s a whole other story. He had a stroke and he lingered for about a year I guess, never did recover his senses from what I understand, and then he died. I come up to see him once, it’s a terrible thing to see an active man struck down like that. The father pauses for a moment, then goes on. Well, then Dale here come up last year. He come up with his
friend and he talked to Flip Flack who was my neighbor when I was a boy. Dale says Flip told him no one lived on the farm for a long time but then I guess a young couple bought just the house. They tore down the barn even, I guess they just wanted a place to live. I thought they cut down all the elms in the front yard too, but Flip Flack told me that was the Dutch elm disease. Said they were gone before Uncle Wallace actually, which if they were I don’t remember from my trip up here to see him. The father pauses, then shakes his head. Nope, I seem to remember them being there, six of them right in a row, hundred-year-old elm trees. But Flip said they cut em down in seventy-two, seventy-three. The father shrugs. I guess the land was still for sale when Dale was here last year, but we just come from there and there’s a house up on the hill at the top of the pasture now, right where I always wanted to put one. Yes, ma’am, the father says, whoever they are they’ve got the best view of the Catskill Mountains in the whole county, up there on that hill.