Lineage and Land

Lineage and Land

          Karen was looking the wrong way and didn't see the truck, hauling a trailer half full of fescue, pull up. The door slammed and she whipped around to see a man climbing out of a black, dusty and rusty Ford. He was laborer tan, his shirt too big, his pants too small and his hair too long. She could see his blue eyes from across the yard.

          Her Grandpa swung himself up out of his chair and off the porch.

          “Andrew,” he said, and they shook hands. Then Grandpa went into the elevator-operating booth. He walked like a boat rocking from side to side, and seemed always on the verge of toppling over. But he made it, and Andrew got back into his truck and pulled onto the elevator. Karen’s aunt offered her a glass of tea made with well water. She couldn’t stand that water anymore. It tasted like sweat and earth. She’d not noticed until they’d moved to Kansas City when she was six. Their new water was clear and fresh, and she’d never been able to go back.

          The family was gathered to celebrate a few birthdays before the school year began again. Her aunt sat down next to her on a wicker love seat. If they’d sat in the same spot forty years ago they wouldn’t have seen the edge of their land, but as it stood they could see the east and north borders. One was a highway, and the other a windbreak.

          “When do you think those trees were planted?” Karen didn’t look at her aunt, but at the trees that were so tall they seemed eternal. Hard to believe that at one time hardly

anything had been there except prairie grass and sod. Now even the crisp white farmhouse with green shutters seemed as much a part of the land as the hills.

          “Oh, probably before your great-grandpa Oscar moved this way” her aunt said.

          The family spoke in timelines Karen couldn’t follow. Everything was before great-grandpa did this, or after your aunt so-and-so had moved here, or before the house in town burned down. Karen only recognized a few and knew two by heart: after grandma’s baby died, and after she’d moved into the city. But she’d stopped asking questions, because they only lead to more explanations of lineage and land that she didn’t get. So she nodded and swung her foot a little, staring out over the field that went on for a few acres before it rolled down, then gently back up to that line of trees.

          Andrew and his truck happened to be right in front of those trees, and he was something Karen understood, all right. Even his wrists were toned. She could see them hanging at his sides as he looked up, watching as the fescue was moved from his truck to the truck that would drive to the Leton elevator 50 miles away. Karen’s cousin Jason and two other boys pushed the grain around in the second truck, making sure it didn’t just get in a pile and spill out the side.

          Karen didn’t usually have anything to do with the fescue season. She’d stopped concerning herself with such business entirely, as a matter of fact. Last summer she’d mentioned to her cousin that Grandpa probably didn’t pay him to sit around and drink a beer, so maybe he could find something to do. He’d had to tilt his head far back to see her from under his camouflage hat, but when he had, his eyes had been narrow and mad.

          “We get paid by the truck,” he’d said.

          Then he’d taken the last sip of his beer and stood up to walk back into the house, and that was the last time she’d said anything about it. But this was different. She took the extra glass of tea off the side table and strolled off the porch, past a couple dogs and through a garden of broken glass vases, rocks and a gazing ball. The fescue-moving process was loud and she had to tap Andrew on the shoulder to get him to notice her.

          He turned around quickly, in case something was wrong, and she held out the glass of tea with a smile. He took it from her without a word. His forearms were dirty, but his hands were clean. She watched him drink from the corner of her eye as she pretended to watch the seed fall. He drank the whole glass then handed it back. The seed had all been transferred and they finally shut off the machines. Karen turned toward him and stuck out her hand.

          “I’m Karen, one of the grandkids,” she said.

          “Andrew, nice to meet you.” He shook her hand, but shied away from looking into her eyes. Grandpa saved any awkward silence by appearing on Andrew’s other side.

          “A bit less than last year, Andrew, but I guess that’s to be expected.” He handed Andrew a check and bill of sale, then wiped his forehead with a dirty red handkerchief.

          “Thanks, Mac. Guess I did my best.” Andrew folded the check and bill in half and slid them into his back pocket. Then he shook Grandpa’s hand and started toward his truck. Karen watched him go, happy to get to see him climb into the cab, but disappointed all the same. There were only so many times you could meet someone, and have them leave your life forever in the next second before you started to feel a bit sorry for yourself. She’d been working as a receptionist for a law-firm in downtown Kansas City since she’d graduated college in May. She led ten minute lives with hundreds of people. But as the wheels of his truck turned to take him away, her Grandpa stepped in.

          “Andrew ” He yelled and waved an arm, and Andrew got out to walk back toward them.

          “Andrew’s got some things he’d like us to have, why don’t you follow him to town and bring them back,” Grandpa said.

          She could have kissed him, but she just smiled and said, “Sure.”

          It took nine minutes to get to town and if you didn’t know any better you’d drive for fifteen minutes thinking you’d never found it. Blairstown, Missouri, population 165, consisted of one street of stores and seven blocks of houses. Karen rode as far back from the dusty wake of Andrew’s truck as she felt was safe. If she lost him she’d never find her way back amongst all the roads with only letters for names. He stopped in front of a navy blue house with two cars in the driveway and bushes nearly growing through the front windows. The grass had been mowed recently, at least, and the screen door wasn’t hanging off a hinge.

          “Is this your house?” They moved inside together. It was dark and close, with shag carpet and laminate wood paneling. He turned around as he picked up some mail from a rusty TV tray setting next to the door.

          “No. Used to be my grandpa’s, I’m livin’ out at the farm for now.” He began sorting through the mail with furrows between his eyes. He tossed down two glossy advertisements for sweepstakes, or vacations, and put the remaining mail in his back pocket along with the check. He stepped into the room and it was only then that Karen realized the place was nearly empty.

          “Where is all the furniture?” She looked up at him, believing for a moment that the place had been robbed.

          “Auctioned. He died last week, I thought you knew that.”

          She stammered and blushed. Next thing she knew he was handing her a cardboard box with a lid.
          “Here, this is the stuff Mac was talkin’ about. Things my sister and I thought they might like to have.”
          She took the box and looked up at him. He was standing with both hands idly on his hips where they looked unnatural.
          “Ok, well. It’s two rights and a left back out to the blacktop, correct?”
          “Yep.” He pushed his hair back from his forehead. “If you get lost, just stop and ask anyone you see. Everyone knows the way.” He nodded, and took a step back.
          “Right, well I shouldn’t have too much trouble. Nice to meet you.” And she left.

          When she returned thirty minutes later the bottom of her jeans was tan with dust, and her face was lined with make-up and tears. She knocked furiously on the aluminum screen door, her weight alternating between her feet in an unconscious dance. Andrew opened the door with haggard eyes, and a letter on embossed paper in his hand.
          “I hit a deer just outside town.” She started crying again as she spoke, and he looked at her like she might melt. He kept a hold of the screen door with one hand and the letter with the other.
          “How big was it?” he asked.
          “What?” Both her heels rested flat on the concrete slab that served as a front step. “Big enough, I guess ”
          “Ok, ok, stop crying. Come on.” He folded the letter and put it back into his pocket as he stepped out of the house and brushed past her.
          “Don’t you need to lock the door? Or at least close it?” She called after him as he reached one of the old cars and opened the door.
          “No one’s gonna take anything, come on it’ll be dark soon.”
          She walked across the yard to the other side of the car. It was a 1980's blue Cadillac with red interior. He sat down and reached right for the keys which were already in the ignition. She sat sniffling in the passenger seat as they backed out without a word.
          Her car was smoking when they reached it. She stood by the trunk with her hands in little fists under her chin. She was afraid to look at the deer. She could see its hooves between the wheels, and its antlers to the right of the car at an impossible angle. Andrew stood by her crumpled hood with one hand on his hip and the other holding his hat and scratching the back of his head.
          “That’s a big one all right.” He put his hat back on his head, then turned to her. “There’s some rope in the trunk, there. Would you mind?”
          She didn’t mind anything that gave her an excuse to look away from those hooves and antlers and she went to get into the trunk. But when she closed the trunk she saw Andrew carrying the dead deer toward her. Its head lay elastically over his right arm and its legs were in his hands, the body cradled between his arms. He was gritting his teeth against the weight and the muscles in his forearms bulged. He dropped the deer against the hood and looked up at her. She was white and had backed a few yards away from the car.
          “What are you doing?”
          “Takin’ it back. Jason hasn’t got a deer in three years, figure I’ll help him out a bit. Can I have that rope?” His chest rose and fell quickly, and he held out a hand. She threw the rope at him. He attached the deer to the hood, and told her to get in.
          “I can’t ride like that. I’ll have to look at it the whole time.” She had her head turned toward the safe side of the road.
          “Well I guess that’s what you get for killin’ it.”
          He was laughing at her. She walked to him, intending to scold him, but all she could say was, “I’ve never seen something die before.”
          “That’s alright, kid. I’ve seen my fair share, you’ll get past it.” He patted a hand against her shoulder and made to get into the driver’s seat. They drove back to her Grandparent’s farm like that, with the deer’s tongue lolling in the wind. But it got dark quickly, and for most of the ride she couldn’t see much.
          He turned up the drive, but stopped halfway. He turned to her and his face was tinted green from the dash.
          “I’m sorry I made light of your hitting that deer. I know it’s not fun.”
          “That’s alright,” she looked down at the box she held in her lap and slid off the lid. Lying on top was an old picture of people standing in front of a crisp white farmhouse with green shutters. The man wore a starched and pressed shirt, and the woman wore a 1950's housewife dress. The wind pulled her hair across one side of her face. The back read “Wanda and Gene MacCalmon, 1951.” It took her a second to realize they were her Grandparents.
          She gasped and put a hand against her mouth, reaching up to turn on the dome light. Andrew looked over at the picture in her hands.
          “Oh, yeah, my grandpa had that in his bedside table.”
          The picture didn’t list a holiday or anything specific. Karen thought maybe it was a Sunday and they were visiting family. Maybe they were smiling with the secret news of a baby, not knowing that it would be buried without a name 8 months later. Maybe they were laughing at a remembered joke shared in bed the night before, or they were headed to the fair, a parade, a dance. Maybe they were just smiling because someone held up a camera and asked them to.
          “I guess they were friends, then?” Karen couldn’t take her eyes off the picture.
          “Yep, Mac and my grandpa couldn’t work the threshin’ machines when they were younger ‘cause they had asthma. So they carried water together.” He was leaning toward her, looking over her shoulder at the picture. She turned her head toward him and found their noses almost touching.
          “How do you know all that?”
          “I was told, I guess. Ain’t much to do out here but tell stories.” His voice was plain, but hinted at something intangible and collective. He put his hand back on the steering wheel. He didn’t look at her, but he had become accessible, and the lights of the car barely lit the farm beyond his silhouette .
          “I’d like it if we could see each other again,” he said.
          “I’d like that, too,” she said.


*****


          Karen tapped her pen against her desk.
          “I can’t come down there tomorrow, Andrew, I have to work. You know that.” She spoke quietly. The partners were at deposition in the conference room, but the walls weren’t lead.
          “They can answer their own phones for a day, Karen, and your Grandma needs help with that corn, you know her wrist’s been hurting.” His voice crackled and she could tell he was in the car. Every time he went down a hill his signal faded and she had to piece together his sentences from static-laden fragments.
          “What happened to her wrist?”
          “You know, since she twisted it funny getting out of the car at church on Sunday.” He cursed and she heard the truck bouncing. He always went over bumps too fast.
          “You actually went to church?”
          “Hell no, I just heard about it from Steven over at the sale barn.”
          She sighed. Not sale barn talk. All they did was take shots of Jack and discuss cows.
          “Well, fine, but I still can’t come down, I’m accountable to people you know. I can’t make my own schedule like you can, I’m responsible to a clock, not corn.”
          There was sudden silence on the other end as he hung up on her. She stared in shock at the receiver and smacked it back down to the base. Just then the partners emerged from deposition, staring at her quizzically.
          “Did your farmer do somethin’ bad, Karen?” Mr. Mannon smiled and looked over his shoulders at the other partners who chuckled along with him.
          “He’s not a farmer.” She snapped. “He was going to college too, but he had to take care of things after his grandpa got sick. We’re buying a house here.”
          It was more than she’d said to them in all the time she’d worked there. She usually just said yes or no, because they usually only asked yes or no questions. They looked slightly startled, then broke into a round of chuckles again.
          “We’ll see, marriage changes everything you know.” Mr. Mannon patted his hand against her desk, and they all walked away.
          Louis poked his head around the corner when they were gone. He was grinning. Karen looked up from her computer screen and bit her lip against a smile as she saw him.
          “That was interesting.” He swung around the corner and rested his hip against the edge of her desk, crossing his arms over his chest and looking down at her. He wore a clean white shirt, suit pants and a tie. He was in his third year of law school and the word was that the partners were going to ask him to become an associate. He smelled like affluence.
          Karen blushed and spun her chair toward him, her pen tapping against her knee.
          “Yeah, well ... sometimes I forget who I’m talking to. I hate it how they call him my ‘farmer’ just because they can’t remember his name.”
          “I thought they called him your farmer because he was a farmer. They still call me the student, remember?” He laughed and his cheeks pinched into dimples.
          She smiled despite herself and tossed her pen at him.
          “Andrew is not a farmer. He just happens to be acting as a farmer right now. He thought about law school, too, ya know.”
          “Lots of people think about law school, Karen.”
          She was wavering between embarrassed and enraged when he reached down and touched her knee. He was looking into her eyes.
          “Have you heard from the schools yet?” His voice was conspiratorial.
          Karen inhaled slowly and nodded, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
          “My portfolio still needs work, I think. Next year.” She pressed a tiny smile and nodded. His eyes grew soft and her took her hand, giving it a squeeze.
          “I think you’re brilliant. The world needs writers, you know. You’ll get in.” He winked and kissed the back of her knuckles. She pressed that hand to her lips for the rest of the day.


*****


          “I can’t, Andrew. I can’t live there. Where would I work?” Karen lay on the couch in her apartment. The TV made the room blue.
          “There are offices everywhere, Karen. You could work in Holden, Suzanne’s looking to replace the girl at the bank.”
          “Suzanne who?” She sighed.
          “Suzanne Arnold, we went to high school together, you met her last Christmas.” She could hear the wind screaming around the corner of the house. He must have been in the bedroom.
          “Andrew, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to work at a bank, you know I only work at the firm because it provides so much fodder for my stories. I just don’t think I could be productive out there, you’d have me shucking corn every time I wanted to write.” She changed the TV channel and laughed at a commercial.
          “Fine, Karen, we’ll talk about it when I see you tomorrow.”
          “Fine.” She hung up the phone and changed the channel again.


*****


          “What do you mean you knew?” she asked.
          “I knew that was why you were calling. You never call during the workday. I knew,” he said.
          “Well ... do you hate me?” she asked.
          “I’ll never hate you. I knew it was coming,” he said.
          “Quit saying that. It sounds like I’ve been terrible to you for a long time. I haven’t been terrible, have I?”
          “No, you haven’t been terrible.”
          “I wish you would mean that, Andrew.” She said, placing her other hand on the receiver.
          He hung up the phone.


*****


          Most of the family was down in the barn watching the ribs cook. They were gathered at the end of August to celebrate the same birthdays. The fescue season was late. The farmers just kept waiting for it to mature like it should, watching the skies for rain, or wind, or a swarm of something that might thoughtlessly ruin the year. But maybe it was something in the ground, or this year’s seed, because things just wouldn’t do what they ought. Most people had brought in loads that were green and just a little wet, but some had persisted and waited until nearly September.
          Karen sat on the porch and watched the sky. The clouds had been threatening all day and now they were rolling, ominous and weird, at speeds you could measure with the naked eye. The sun was close to gone, and the land had put on burnt and patient airs for the show. But everything was to be disappointed as the clouds congregated over the faltering sun, and she could see that it was raining a ways to the north.
          A rusty Ford turned up the drive and she knew it was him before he was halfway up the lane. No one else drove so fast over those roads. She hated that truck.
          “I thought he might come by today. Would you like me to hide you?” Her aunt was amused.
          Karen smirked and shook her head.
          “I think we can handle it. We’re both adults.”
          They hadn’t seen each other in almost a year, not since she’d broken off the engagement.
          “How’s that guy you were seeing? The law student? Lois, or something?”
          “Louis,” Karen rolled her eyes at her aunt. She knew damned well Karen had not been dating a man named ‘Lois.’
          “We aren’t seeing each other anymore, actually.” Karen stood even as she spoke. Her aunt knew they weren’t seeing each other anymore, and she knew that they weren’t seeing each other anymore because he’d left her for someone else. Funny how things worked out that way.
          Karen stepped off the porch and put her hands in her back pockets as she watched Andrew climb out of the cab. If anything his wrists looked even stronger. She walked up to him as the wind pulled her hair across her face.
          “Hey, how are you?”
          He wiped his hands on an old blue handkerchief that he stuffed back into his pocket and shrugged his shoulders.
          “I’m alright.” He glanced at her as he spoke, then turned and walked away as Jason came out of the operating booth. Karen took a step back, looking anywhere but at him.
          The conveyor belt was busy moving seed from one truck to another. Three boys Karen didn’t know shoveled it around and her cousin Jason stood with Andrew, watching. A strong gust came along and carried a cloud of seed into the air where it spun and frolicked wherever it might. Karen looked over in time to see Andrew watch the seed spin away. His hat was pulled back a bit on his head showing sweaty bangs, and a leather-worn brow. But his eyes were bright, watching that seed spin off, carried away where it wasn’t useful to anyone, and overhead the sky grew darker. When it was about to storm out there it seemed like the earth started to hide and everything was hushed, dull and electric. He was the still point of that still moving wind, watching that seed just go.
          “I’m sorry, it didn’t look like very much.” She wasn’t even sure he would hear her over the machines and wind.
          He turned to look at her , but didn’t say anything. Jason turned his head and went back inside the booth. She came closer and tried a smile that failed miserably.
          “Did you have a good year?” She looked up into his face as he watched the seed move.
          “Everyone had a bad year.” He sniffed once and pulled his hat lower over his eyes.
          “Oh, that’s frustrating, isn’t it?” She asked.
          “No, that’s life.” He took a flask out of his back pocket and drank from it.
          The storm broke with a crack of thunder, and the boys and men scurried to cover up both trailers full of Andrew’s fescue before the seed got soaked and ruined. Everyone else ran inside the house carrying plates of barely done ribs. The boys and men were soaked to the skin by the time they came inside and the rain was pelting the corrugated metal roof of the porch so loudly you had to shout to be heard.
          Everyone was laughing and talking too loudly for the small house. Karen escaped to the bathroom to wash her hands. She opened the door and stepped in on Andrew with his shirt off, rubbing his hair dry with a towel. They looked at each other, unsure what to do. Karen walked to him, as if pulled on a string through her chest, and ran her finger over a little scar on his shoulder.
          “When did you get that?” She looked up at him.
          “After you hit that deer. Ran into the door to the barn while I was carryin’ it. Remember?” He looked down at her with the towel still held in his hands.
          She did remember. Her fingertips pressed into his shoulder as she spoke slowly.
          “Well if you hadn’t insisted you could carry it by yourself ...” She started to smile.
          “I could carry it by myself.” His voice stopped her smile and he stared down at her, bewildered.
          “Go back to your family, Karen.” He turned away and began drying his hair again. She turned away.
          Back in the living room everyone was laughing and teasing Jason about the time he’d gotten arrested for trying to steal part of a billboard. There was no place for her to sit.
          “He told me it would come right off ” Jason pointed a finger at Andrew who was walking back into the room. Andrew stepped over people to punch him in the shoulder and denied his participation in the whole affair as he found a spot on the floor. Karen leaned sideways against the doorframe and watched. Eventually they all moved to the table, and her aunt asked what was wrong, and Karen said nothing, and the rest of the meal she tried not to look at him. He ate too fast and got barbecue sauce all over the corners of his mouth. He held his fork with all his fingers on one side and his thumb on the other. And it came out at supper that he’d recently lost more than six hundred dollars playing blackjack at the river boats and was not sorry for it. Karen pushed back from the table and excused herself with burning lungs and a chest full of cement.

         She stepped off the porch and the night was loud with crickets and frogs after the rain. She tilted her head back and looked up at all the stars she’d never see in the city. Their blank canvas of the past was crowded with the pinprick lights of memory. Maybe they drank it in with the minerals in their water. Maybe it soaked into the ground with all the power, need and yearning they poured into it year after year. She lost herself in the cosmos until a hand fell on her shoulder.
         “I miss you.” She knew it was him.
          His hand tightened around her shoulder as if it wanted to pull her back. She turned and he was staring at the sky. The stars reflected in his eyes and he looked calm and masterful. He wasn’t lost. He was of the earth and the stars were merely his ornaments.
         “I could live out here with you.” Her voice rose a pitch and she twisted her fingers up in his shirt, turning her hand like she was opening a door.
          “I know you could.” He said.
          The wind pulled up a corner of the tarp over his trailer, and the rain began to fall again.