Covered wagons must have gone this slow, the boy thinks. Third gear, hauling a full load—a half ton of tarp-covered manure capped by the fifty-pound bundle of Flip Flack—and his uncle’s 1934 John Deere can do no better than three, maybe five miles an hour; certainly no faster than a man walking. He tries to imagine crossing the continent at this pace, the mountains and rivers, endless plains yielding to relentless deserts. Gold Rush? Gold Crawl is more like it. He’ll take a brand-new Chevy any day of the week.
The four-cylinder engine protests its heavy load with a sound like a match dropped in a bottomless bag of firecrackers, an endless series of tiny explosions that vibrate their way into the boy’s body through his numb bottom and out his tingling ears and fingers. If he concentrates on the noise itself it seems deafening, but long hours mowing fields and hauling loads of hay and manure have taught him to tune it out. Now he inches his way west on 38 in a bubble of sound, peaceful, protected. Though the soundless world is visible all around him, it seems to exist at a conceptual remove, like a three-dimensional silent movie. Inside the bubble there is nothing but the boy and the pedals and knobs and wheel of the tractor, and Flip Flack. Or Flip’s voice at any rate, which, though muffled, is still perfectly audible.
I wish Kenny wasn’t working road crew this summer. That means I’m gonna have to do all his chores and mine too. I practically do as much as he does anyway, so that means I’m gonna have to do twice as much as I do now. Two times. I don’t know why Kenny wants to work road crew anyway. All that stinky old smelly old tar. I’d rather clean up after the ladies any old day, wouldn’t you, Dale?
A pair of passing crows seems almost to leave contrails in the sky, a honeybee bounces along like a poorly flicked yo-yo bobbing at the end of its string. The muggy air is bright blue, so thick with moisture that the tractor could be a boat on the river. Chicory blossoms seem almost to be floating at the end of their stems like water lilies. The fluid sunlight pulses through the trees like liquid amber, outlining everything, separating objects one from another. Each tuft and wisp of vapor, each twig and leaf takes on a gilded edge. The film of sweat that covers the boy’s body seems part and parcel of the same effect, as if the boy is coated in a residue of sunlight. As if he has been dipped in it. Though it is only the second week of June, the thermometer read 94 degrees at the noon meal, and the radio said the humidity was about the same.
Kenny says he don’t want to be a dairyman at all, Flip goes on. Says it ain’t no kind of life for a man in this day and age, being chained to a udder. Our dad says real freedom comes from knowing your place but Kenny still says he’s gonna do something else with his life, be a carpenter or maybe even join the armed services. Something that won’t tie him to one place. Dad said dairy farming was good enough for three generations of Flack men, it should be good enough for Kenny, but Kenny said carpentry was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for him. I thought Dad was gonna pop him sure. Your butt’s sweating.
The boy nods his head; then, when his brain catches up with Flip’s words, squinches a little on his perch. The tractor’s seat is bare metal, its cushion—leather, vinyl, cloth, whatever it might have been—long since worn away. Sitting on it in the summer is like simmering on a hot stove, and he himself has seen the sweat drip off Donnie or his uncle through the tiny holes drilled in the seat. The holes, as fine as those on a spaghetti strainer, are arrayed like a Jewish star. He doesn’t know if they were drilled there to let the sweat out or not.
Kenny says he’s taking off after the letter ceremony next week. You lettered, right? Are you going to the ceremony?
The boy nods his head. The letter ceremony. It is why he is driving this load of manure to Shepherd’s Bush. He is trying to earn enough money to buy a letter jacket. He finished the year with eight medals to his credit, and by the time his sophomore year begins in the fall he wants them all on his chest, spangled and loud.
Ew, gross. Looks like you peed your pants.
I wouldn’t talk, the boy calls back. You’re sitting on a pile of shit.
The last half mile of 38 to Shepherd’s Bush is one long if not particularly steep incline, and when the tractor reaches the top it’s nearly crawling. It takes the two boys almost three hours to unload the half ton of manure by the resort’s kitchen garden, and Flip continues to talk the whole time. For the most part the boy lets him prattle without answering, occasionally identifying tender shoots of basil or onion or kale in response to the younger boy’s inquiries, asters, vinca, yes, Flip, those are morning glories, but they bloom all day. The boy finds Flip’s garrulousness soothing, comforting even, the absolute lack of anxiety the ten-year-old has about his family, his future, everything else he doesn’t know. When I grow up I’m gonna do exactly what my dad does, Flip says, I’m gonna milk cows and live in our same house, and the boy has no doubt that he will.
When they’re finished the boy collects three dollars from the gardener. A letter jacket is fifty dollars, the boy thinks, pocketing two of the dollars and giving one to Flip, who sweeps out the trailer with a push broom. Three months of vacation, four loads of manure each month at three dollars per, a dollar to Flip, say, every other time, and … the math gets lost in his head. He spreads the tarp over the ripe-smelling planks and Flip tosses his broom and the shovels on top and climbs in. The trailer, almost as old and infirm as the tractor, bounces from one wheel to the other as they rattle back down 38’s smooth tarred surface, and once he’s got the tractor going the boy drops it into neutral and, freed of the gears’ restraint, the wheels pick up speed down the long hill. Flip lies down and lets himself be tossed from side to side, his laughter constant, punctuated only by cries of Faster, faster! The freshly hayed fields on either side of the road are studded with crows and seagulls massacring the field mice whose homes have been mown into bales. The crows and gulls straggle over the fields like two chess teams too busy to notice each other.
At first the boy doesn’t recognize the straw-haired girl with the baton walking between the road and the line of elms in his uncle’s front yard. She is walking away from him marching-band style, the baton resting on her shoulders like a soldier’s rifle. From the back she reminds him of Julia Miller. Sunlight streams through the leaves on the elms, which are still small and pale, none bigger than a silver dollar. In a few months they will be as big and dark as dollar bills, the shade beneath them as thick as pea soup, but right now the sun can still sneak through the half-grown, half-green leaves and glint off his sister Joanie’s hair, and the first thing the boy thinks when he realizes who it is is that Joanie’s hair isn’t blonde at all, but brown, hardly lighter than his. Then Joanie turns around, and almost immediately jumps up and down and points at him with her baton.
It’s Dale! It’s Dale!
The boy can’t hear her inside the tractor’s noise. He still hears nothing besides Flip’s giggles and screams as he rolls from side to side in the rattling trailer, but he knows that’s what Joanie is saying. He is thinking that the truck must have driven right past Shepherd’s Bush on 38 when he and Flip were unloading the manure and he didn’t hear that either. He would have thought he’d have heard it—would have thought he’d have sensed his mother’s approach like a cold wind on his neck. But he had no idea.
He’s so caught up in his thoughts that he nearly rolls past the driveway, and he makes the hard left without braking, nearly tossing Flip from the trailer. Then he has to slam right to avoid running into the back of the old man’s truck, and even over the roar of the tractor’s engine he can hear Flip’s body slam into the other side of the trailer. When he pulls up short he finds himself staring right at the truck’s broken taillight, and he turns and looks at the big sugar maple that stands across the road in the northwest corner of his uncle’s south pasture. Flip is lying in the trailer, his limbs askew, his belly still shaking with laughter, and when the boy cuts the motor a backfire makes Flip jump and scream and then giggle again, but to the boy the sound is nothing so much as the sound of his bubble bursting. Flecks of grass and manure cling to Flip’s sweat-wet cheeks and his eyes are closed. Seventeen months ago the boy had gazed at the broken panes of the garage door on Long Island without knowing why the sight filled him with a sense of loss, but as he looks down at Flip’s dreamy smile and quivering stomach he knows full well that he will never see him again, and his only consolation is that Flip is himself unaware of the impending separation.
That was fun.
Without the sound of the tractor’s engine Flip’s voice is more distinct but thinner, and quickly dissipates in the hot afternoon air. Giggles still bubble out of him like bubbles from frogs hidden under water.
I think I’m broken.
A shriek rends the air.
Dale! Dale!
Joanie jumps up on the trailer even as Flip sits up and they miss butting heads by inches. Joanie falls backwards but by then the boy is behind her and he catches her. The rubber tip of her baton hits him in the eye as she whirls around but he binds her to him in a bear hug anyway.
It’s Dale! It’s Dale! he hears behind him then, and he turns and sees Edi and Lois running down the hill, each holding the arm of a little boy he thinks is Lance at first, until Lance pushes open the door of the dairy barn behind them, and he realizes that Edi and Lois are carrying Gregory. When the boy left, Gregory wasn’t a year old, still more infant than child, but now, nearly three, he seems like a real person, his tiny legs leaping down the hill, one step for every three or four his sisters take.
Dale’s back! Lance calls into the dairy barn before sprinting after his older sisters and little brother. Dale! Dale! He runs awkwardly in a pair of shoes much too large for him, trips once, nearly falls, then keeps on running. Dale! You’re back!
Oh gosh, my baton left a mark! I’m sorry!
Joanie is rubbing at his cheek and eye even as Edi and Lois come close, panting. They let go of Gregory and throw their arms around the boy. They’re still screaming Dale! Dale! in his ear, but Lois manages to squeeze in a conspiratorial whisper:
Joanie’s always carrying that thing around!
Dale, look! Lance is calling beyond their shoulders. Look, Dale, I got your shoes! They’re almost too small for me, look!
When he reaches the boy Lance squirms in between his sisters and wraps his arms around the boy’s stomach and jumps up and down so vigorously that one of the boy’s old shoes flies off his feet.
Dale, look! Joanie says then. She has stepped back a few feet, and now she releases her baton into the air, pirouettes once, and catches it.
Look, Dale! Lance says. Your shoes are almost too small for me now! I’m almost as big as you!
Lois has a boyfriend, Lois has a boyfriend! Edi says. She is holding Gregory in one arm now, and when the boy looks at his littlest brother Gregory turns his face and hides it in Edi’s wavy brown hair. Beyond them, Lois is dragging a startled-looking Flip Flack up the hill toward the dairy barn.
Don’t be shy, honey, Edi says to Gregory. It’s just your bother, honey. It’s your big brother Dale.
You took my drawers! Lance says, pulling at the boy’s cut-offs as if he might be wearing them now. You can’t wear my drawers, Dale, they’d be too small for you!
Flip is looking back at the boy with an expression of mock terror on his face as Lois drags him like a sled up the hill.
Dale, look! Joanie says. He turns, and she tosses her baton in the air.
Joanie was spinning her thing in the truck! Lance says. She hit me on the arm, look!
Lance holds out his arm and the boy pretends he can see a bruise. He licks his thumb and rubs the spot and Lance giggles and says, Gross!
Just say hi, Edi is coaxing Gregory. Come on, say hi to your big brother Dale. A muffled Uh-uh comes from her hair and Edi smiles helplessly at the boy. He don’t remember you, she says. You been gone practically as long as he’s been alive.
You took Jimmy’s football jersey too! Lance says now. You took everything!
Up until now the boy has felt like a spoon in a sugarbowl in the midst of his brothers and sisters, but now he speaks for the first time since he shut off the tractor.
What are you, the family record keeper?
No! Lance says, dodging the punch the boy throws at him.
You think you’re almost as big as me? the boy says. Come on, pipsqueak, let’s see what you can do. Put em up.
The five-year-old giggles and throws his arms around the boy’s bare stomach again, then steps back and looks up at the boy.
Jimmy said he was gonna kick your butt for taking his football jersey but I don’t know. You look different. Bigger. Thicker.
The boy is looking at Edi over Lance’s head.
Is Jimmy here?
Edi is rocking Gregory in her arms.
Oh, he’s with Ma and that uncle person.
Uncle Wallace.
Jimmy’s with them in the barn. Look at Joanie. She fixed her feet walking with that baton.
The boy turns and sees that Joanie is walking in the dappled light of the elms again. She walks in a straight line and stares fixedly at her formerly pigeon-toed feet, which now run as parallel to each other as the double yellow line on 38.
When the boy turns back to Edi, Gregory is staring at him with curious eyes.
Hey there, little fella. He reaches a hand toward Gregory’s cheek but before he can touch him his little brother blushes and buries his face in Edi’s hair again.
It’s okay, Edi says, and the boy isn’t sure to whom she is speaking. You two don’t hardly know each other, do you? She smiles at the boy, strokes the back of Gregory’s head.
What about Duke?
Edi nods toward the truck behind him. The slatted panels are up in back, encasing the bed like a giant egg crate.
Says he’s gonna join the marines. Says he ain’t even gonna finish high school, just join the marines and this family will never see him again.
By then the boy has scaled the panel at the back of the truck. The first thing he sees is Duke’s shorn head, gold fuzz glinting in the sunlight. Duke is sitting with his back against the cab, busily pulling slivers of wood from the bed of the truck, and his shaved head looks as bright as the rising sun to the boy. He glances over at Joanie. Never mind Julia Miller—how could he have remembered Joanie’s hair as blonde, compared to Duke’s?
He steps over the back railing and Duke says, Nice pants. Or should I say shorts?
The boy looks down at his legs. Although he never managed to outgrow them—Duke’s four years older than he is, after all—he did manage to wear them out, and Aunt Bessie cut them into shorts for him after the last day of school this year.
It was Dad—
Your Dad. Duke throws a sliver over the wall of the truck.
Anyway. Sorry.
No skin off my ass.
In the silence the boy can hear his siblings scatter like a flock of startled pigeons. He looks at Duke until Duke gets up and walks past him, throwing a mock punch as he goes. His fist touches the boy’s jaw and pushes it lightly to the side, like a revolving door.
Your Dad, Duke says again, and then he jumps over the back rail of the truck and disappears.
The boy scrambles after him. They walk around the side of the truck and up the line of honey locusts until they reach the woodshed.
Edi says you’re gonna join the marines. The boy points to Duke’s head. Looks like you did already.
Duke runs his hand over the top of his head.
Just letting everybody know. Letting everybody know that I’m out of here. Any minute now.
Just then Lois runs around the near corner of the hay barn, screaming, Daddy’s sleeping in the barn, Daddy’s sleeping in the barn! A moment later Flip rounds the barn’s far corner and speeds toward his house.
You talk funny! Flip calls behind him. Your daddy’s a drunk and you talk funny!
Duke watches the little blond boy until he has run all the way across 38 and inside his house, and then he runs his hand over his crewcut again and looks up at the hay barn.
Wish I had a match.
The boy looks up at the barn as well. It is easy to imagine it on fire, easy to imagine the old man rolling in his sleep, pushing the flames away as though they were an unwanted blanket. He can almost hear him mumbling, Goddammit, open a window, it’s burning up in here, and he has to fight back a laugh.
Just one match, Duke says, and spits on the ground. Poof. For the first time he turns and looks at the boy. They said I could sign up as soon as I turned eighteen. I fudged the application, figure by the time they find out I’ll be old enough anyway. I’m gone, Dale. O-U-T out of that fucking house, just like you. Out.
The boy doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then:
Edith’s husband died.
Edith. She’s our cousin. Uncle Wallace’s daughter. Her husband died in Korea.
That war’s over. Duke shrugs. And I’d rather die than live in that house another day. You lucked out, getting away when you did.
Dale! Dale! Lance is running down the hill. I touched a cow! I touched it right on the stomach. He holds out his hand for inspection. Look, I touched it!
Moo! Duke says, like boo!, and Lance jumps back, putting the boy between him and his half brother. He pokes a finger into the boy’s stomach, chest, shoulder.
You do look different.
They’re called muscles, Duke says. You’d have some too, if you stopped playing with Lois and Edi all the time. You should have some discipline like Dale here, or Joanie and her baton.
Lance blushes and starts back up the hill.
I want to milk a cow! Come on, Dale, show me how you milk a cow!
Duke is still looking at the hay barn as if wondering where to put the match.
I’m sorry about the pants, Duke. I tried to tell him.
Duke nods.
I heard you.
You were awake?
Duke doesn’t say anything for a moment. Just stares at the hay barn and runs his hand over his crewcut. Then:
I’m outta there a week from Monday. Ma don’t even know yet. As he starts back toward the truck he delivers another mock jab, this time to the boy’s stomach. Good luck with all that.
As the boy follows Lance up the hill he sees Lois and Edi swinging Gregory between them. The little boy is shrieking with delight. Then he sees Jimmy come around the corner of the hay barn, his hands thrust in his pockets. When he sees the boy he pivots on his heel, skirting the edge of the barn and staring at the ground as if he has lost something, or is watching out for snakes.
Hey Jimmy.
Jimmy waves at the boy but doesn’t speak, or stop. Lance runs back down the hill and grabs the boy’s hand, pulling.
Come on, Dale!
There are only a half dozen ladies in the dairy barn at this hour, all of them lying down and chewing their cud. There is no sign of the boy’s uncle or mother, however. They must be out looking at the fields.
Lance runs to the nearest lady, a Holstein with a white star emblazoned on her black brow. She stares at him without interest as he leans his full weight on her stomach and pushes at her.
Get up, get up!
The Holstein doesn’t stop chewing.
Get up, you lazy cow, get up!
She’s digesting her breakfast, the boy says to Lance. She don’t want to get up right now.
Breakfast! It’s almost dinnertime!
A cow spends half the day lying down, Lance. They have four stomachs, they digest their food very slowly. Come on, maybe one of the other ladies will get up.
Lance giggles. Ladies!
Another Holstein obliges them for a couple handfuls of grain. She stands docilely at the trough while Lance tugs at her udders, and only her ears twitch when the little boy screams victoriously at the spoonful of milk he finally manages to squirt into a pail. The boy goes ahead and drains the Holstein’s udder, thinking he will serve all his siblings a glass of thick warm milk the way he once served them apples and bananas from Slaussen’s Market, and he is helping Lance carry the pail down the hill to the house when he looks up and sees his mother standing right in front of him on the driveway. She stands there in her brown dress, as thick and squat as a tree trunk shorn of its canopy by a bolt of lightning. She stands immobile, and for some reason the boy cannot imagine her walking to or leaving this spot. It is as if she had sprung up there from seed.
Ma, look! I milked a cow!
Lance runs toward their mother and she puts a hand on his head, but she is looking at the boy.
What’re you fooling around in that barn for? Those are your uncle’s cows, you don’t need to be messing with them.
I been milking them every day for a year and a half, Ma.
Don’t talk back to me. Get on inside and get your stuff. We have to leave soon.
Lance looks up at his mother’s face, then at the boy.
Look at my milk, Ma! I milked it right out of the cow. Dale didn’t hardly help me at all! Show her my milk, Dale!
I see it, honey, you did a real nice job. Dale was never one for helping his family out. Hurry it up, she says to the boy. It’s a long drive back.
Edi and Lois come around the side of the house, trapezing Gregory between them.
Higher! he screams. Higher, higher!
Lois, Edi! Lance says. Dale’s coming home!
Lois and Edi jump up and down, inadvertently shaking Gregory out of his shirt like a pillow from a pillowcase.
Yay! Dale’s coming home!
The boy looks down when he feels his mother pull the pail of milk from his hands. She would have walked three steps to get to him, but he didn’t see her or hear her. But now she has his pail in her hands and his hands are empty.
It’s now or never. I’m not driving all this way again. You want to be a part of this family you go pack your things. If not …
She lets the milk finish her sentence. It hangs in the air in a white bubbly arc, then falls to the ground, its wet shadow hardly darker than the earth it sinks into.
The boy looks at his four siblings jumping up and down, cheering. Even Gregory is jumping up and down, caught up in their enthusiasm. He looks back at his mother. Up until now it had seemed like him and her. Him versus her. But then he looks at his sisters and brothers again. Edi and Lois are trying to swing Lance now, but he is nearly as big as Lois, and Edi is calling for the boy to come and help. God, how he hates the fact that his mother comes with them. She is like the prickly rind on a pineapple. Why can’t his brothers and sisters come already peeled?
All the while she stands there holding the empty pail in front of her stomach with both hands. If only she would hit him, the boy thinks. If she would just hit him he would wrest the pail from her hands with the muscles he has built up from slinging hay bails and pails of milk and beat her into the ground, not like a fencepost but like a stake. He would drive his mother into the milky heart of this land he has come to love in lieu of himself, and that does not, he suddenly understands, love him back. If it loved him it would fold up around him and hide him until this woman was gone, but instead he feels its flat indifference all around him. The stillness of the earth reproaches him. You are not of this soil. You are not good enough. You never were. You never will be.
But she does not hit him. She sucks in lungfuls of the same air he is breathing and sprays them back in his face. She defies him to hit her. To hit his own mother. His hands curl into fists but even as they do, even as he imagines striking her down, he feels himself in violation of some fundamental law of the universe. It’s as if his image in the mirror had reached out and struck him. His hands unball, his fingers stick straight out from his palms like candles stuck into a cake.
His mother smiles.
Go get your things. Lance, go find Joanie and tell her we’re leaving. Edi, Lois, she says, louder, stop swinging that boy around before you pull his arms off. Come on, we’re going. Jimmy! she yells now. Jimmy, come on, we’re going!
She walks away from him, stepping in the milk-wet gravel and taking as little heed of the sliding pebbles as she does of him. She is reeling in her children like fish.
Tuck your shirt in, she calls when Jimmy appears from behind the hay barn. I didn’t raise you to be no ragamuffin.
She lets the milk pail fall to the earth like an empty candy wrapper, and continues heading toward the truck. It seems very important that the boy pick up the dropped pail, but once he has it in his hands he doesn’t know what to do with it. He would scoop up the milk if he could, but there is nothing left besides a few nearly translucent bubbles and a fast-fading crooked smear. He twitches back and forth between the barn and the truck, thinking again that his mother is reeling him in but that now he’s hooked on a second line. He feels the two hooks pull him in either direction, then all at once he jerks free and runs toward the house.
In the kitchen Aunt Bessie is going through the cabinets.
We’ll feed them eggs, his uncle says from the table. All kids like eggs, they’ll be fine, Bess, don’t worry.
There’s a whole brood of em, Aunt Bessie says. There’s another one every time I turn around.
Uncle Wallace! the boy says. Ma says I have to go home!
Aunt Bessie turns off the water she is running over a sinkful of potatoes and turns around. She has a small wet brown potato in each hand, and she holds them up as if they were as useless as the dirt she pulled them from.
How does she do it Dale? she says, shaking the potatoes. Eight children! I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
She stops then, blinks. All at once her eyes are as swollen with moisture as the humid summer air.
What did you say Dale?
The boy looks at Aunt Bessie for a moment. Sees black shoes, a snood of graying brown curls, a plain blue dress filling the space between, belted loosely at her plump waist. Sees that she is cast from the same die as his mother and yet she is holding a potato up to him—holding two potatoes, and offering to cook them for him. He can feel them in his throat like stones. Swallowing them down is almost more than he can manage. Answering her is out of the question.
I want to stay Uncle Wallace, he says, turning from the sympathy in Aunt Bessie’s eyes. I want to stay with you and Aunt Bessie and help you run the farm but Ma says I have to go home and oh, Uncle Wallace! I miss my brothers and sisters. I miss them like crazy. Duke said he’s gonna join the marines but everyone else will still be there. Gregory don’t even know me. He don’t even know I’m his brother. I don’t know what to do, Uncle Wallace.
He stops then, and then he thrusts the empty pail toward his uncle.
She poured it out on the ground, Uncle Wallace. Just threw it out like it didn’t matter at all.
Throughout the boy’s speech his uncle has not looked up from the table where he is sitting. Then he stands so suddenly he knocks his chair over. His hand is shaking as he sets it upright and then he says,
Come on in here.
He walks out of the kitchen into the hallway. He starts to go into the living room but then he stops, whirls toward the storage room, then stops again, wavering between the east and west parlors as the boy had wavered on the hill between the old man’s truck and his uncle’s barn. The boy stares at him, afraid to follow until his uncle has made his choice. He doesn’t understand his uncle’s indecision, can’t imagine what hooks pull at his uncle nor why the context for the ensuing conversation is so important. All he knows is that the room on his uncle’s left belongs to the present, to the lived life of the house, and the room on his right belongs to the past, and when his uncle suddenly pushes into the right parlor the boy’s heart sinks, and he thinks he might as well go ahead and crawl into the back of the truck now.
But he manages to tiptoe in behind him, and his uncle shuts the door. The dust in the storage room is thick and warm in the light slanting through the unshuttered windows and reflecting off jars of pickles and jellies stacked on the sagging mantel. The jars were filled by his uncle’s first wife, Ella Mae, and they have sat there so long their labels are unreadable under a film of grime—Aunt Bessie will not open them, even when her preserves run out and she must buy some from the store. The boy sits on a pile of newspaper, still holding the empty pail in his lap, and his uncle lets his own hand cling to the doorknob a moment, then releases it and walks over to the window and stands framed by the light pushing through the remains of an ancient curtain. The sunlight is strong, slightly red, obscuring his uncle’s face in shadow. It occurs to the boy that it is late in the afternoon. In his lap, the empty bucket still exudes a milky odor. It is almost time to bring the ladies in.
All at once his uncle speaks.
Listen to me, Dale. I know you love your family, and you’re right to. They’re your family. But listen to me. There ain’t nothing for you back there, Dale. No future. You go back there and you’ll end up like … you’ll end up where you started from before you came up here.
For a moment the boy had been sure his uncle had meant to say he would end up like Lloyd. Like his father. It is something his mother has said to him many times.
But I can come back, Uncle Wallace. As soon as I finish high school. Three years and I’ll come back and we’ll run the farm together. It could be my last chance to see them, Uncle Wallace. My last chance to be with them.
But his uncle is shaking his head.
Didn’t you learn anything in your time here?
But Ma said it’s now or never, Uncle Wallace. She said she won’t drive up here again.
Light pushes through the closed dirty windows, as do Lance’s squeals, and the boy knows without looking that Joanie and Edi are holding his arms down while Lois torture-tickles him.
Dale! Lance is laughing and screaming. Dale, help!
When the boy hears his name his mind flashes on the other Dale. He is just a shadow now, something the boy can neither hold nor shake off, and he wonders how long it would take before he became just a shadow to his brothers and sisters if he stayed with his uncle. He realizes he is shaking his own head now. His uncle is still looking at him.
Didn’t I teach you anything, Dale? Anything at all?
Uncle Wallace, please. It’s not fair. You know I want to stay.
But his uncle just shakes his head.
You’re breaking my heart, Dale. You’re breaking my heart.
Suddenly the boy’s uncle is in front of him. He has the look on his face he gets when he is about to say something about the boy’s past but his words, when they come, reveal an equally unreal future. The smell of milk from the pail is strong between them, slightly sweet, slightly rank.
Listen to me, Dale. You’re like the son I never had. You’re like … you’re … It’s yours, Dale. Everything I have will be yours if you stay here. Stay here, Dale. Don’t break an old man’s heart. There ain’t nothing for you back there, just stay. Say you’ll stay and I’ll give it all to you. Ah Dale. You’re the son I always wanted.
And all of a sudden it occurs to the boy. He can stay. He doesn’t have to go back. He does have a choice. But as he looks at his uncle before him and listens to his brothers and sisters outside, he realizes he doesn’t want to make that choice himself. He wants someone else to make it for him. He wants it not to be his fault. Whatever it is, he doesn’t want to be responsible for it.
He didn’t even know me, Uncle Wallace. He didn’t even know I was his own brother.
His uncle looks at the boy for a moment and then he shakes his head.
Goddamn that Lloyd. First he took the farm and lost it and now he’s taking you too. I wish he’d never brought you up.
Uncle Wallace, please.
Come on then. You want to go, come on.
Uncle Wallace, no, I want to stay.
But his uncle is at the door. It slams open and then there is the sound of his boots on the stairs. The boy runs after him, still clutching the empty pail of milk.
Uncle Wallace, no, I’ll stay, I’ll stay.
His uncle has the pillowcase off the bed by the time the boy runs into his room. He grabs the boy’s running shoes from the floor, his shorts and team jersey from the back of a chair. He is reaching for the top drawer of the dresser when the boy remembers what’s in there.
Uncle Wallace, don’t—
His uncle pulls the drawer open so violently it nearly comes out of its slot, and the bottles of the old man’s medicine bounce off each other and off his cross-country medals so loudly that the boy thinks they will break, but they don’t. The shallow drawer hangs from the dresser like the cupped tongue of a cow reaching for a lick of salt or tuft of grass, and one of the bottles slides to the lower edge, Lance’s drawers half covering it like a sheet pulled back to identify a corpse. For a moment neither of them says anything, then:
They’re not mine, the boy says quietly, and his words sound like a lie even to his ears. They’re Dad’s, not mine.
His uncle is still staring at the bottles.
Yeah, but you kept em, didn’t you.
They’re Dad’s, Uncle Wallace.
His uncle drops the pillowcase to the floor.
I guess they are Lloyd’s. And I guess you’re Lloyd’s son after all. He doesn’t look at the boy as he walks out of the room. Go on. Get your stuff and get out of here.
The boy waits until his uncle’s feet have made it all the way to the first floor and the front door has opened and closed behind him. Then he packs. When he gets downstairs the first thing he sees is that Donnie has shown up. A string of a dozen shad lie on the kitchen table.
Well if it isn’t Amos, Donnie says, looking over his shoulder. Practically jumped into the boat, he says to Aunt Bessie then. He is standing at the counter on the other side of Aunt Bessie, and the boy can hear the sound of a knife squelching through fish flesh. Couldn’t hardly keep em out.
Well, thank goodness, Aunt Bessie says. I didn’t know how I was going to feed all those children. Dale! she says then, looking up and smiling brightly, as if the confrontation of ten minutes ago had never occurred. Come see what Donnie brought for you.
The boy thinks she means the fish, but Aunt Bessie is pulling a jacket from the back of a chair. She turns it around, shows it to him. It is gold felt with white leather sleeves, and on the left breast pocket is a dark outline where the letter G had once been stitched to it.
It’s his old letter jacket.
Saw it at the back of the closet the other day, Donnie says, his knife slicing through flesh and bone and clunking solidly against the cutting board. The smell of fish permeates the kitchen. Thought you might as well have it, Amos, since I don’t wear it no more. He whirls suddenly, his hands filled with bloody gore. Here you go, Amos, how bout a little caviar to go with your new—
He stops when he sees the expression on the boy’s face, the stuffed pillowcase slung over his shoulder. He looks at the boy, his hands filled with pinkish-white sacs linked together by spidery bits of tissue. With as much clarity as he has perceived anything else on this day, the boy realizes the sacs in Donnie’s hands are the fish’s ovaries, filled with roe.
Aw, Amos, you got to be kidding me.
Now Aunt Bessie is clutching the jacket to her chest.
Dale, don’t. Don’t. You’ll break his heart.
The boy thinks it should be a struggle to keep his voice level, but it comes out as flat and smooth as the frozen river.
Tell Uncle Wallace I’m sorry.
As he is about to climb into the back of the truck Aunt Bessie runs out the back door and presses the jacket into his hands. Donnie says you should take it anyway. She kisses him on the cheek, then runs back into the house.
When he mounts the back of the truck he sees first the back of his mother’s head in the cab and then, beyond her, through the front and rear windows of the cab, Jimmy leading the old man down from the hay barn. The old man is batting at Jimmy’s hands but lets himself be led like a half-trained puppy.
Duke sits at the head of the truck, his half siblings arrayed on either side of him like a family sitting down to dinner absent table or food: Edi with Gregory in her lap on his right, Lois beside her; Joanie with baton on his left, Lance next to her. The boy sits down next to Lois and she rests her head on his shoulder.
I’m glad you’re coming home Dale, she whispers in his ear. Joanie and Edi didn’t miss you as much as I did. I’m your littlest sister, I missed you the most.
The boy puts his arm around her back and squeezes.
I missed you too.
The door cracks open and the old man climbs into the cab. As the door slams closed Jimmy climbs over the back wall of the truck.
Your father, is the first thing he says to the boy in a year and a half, is a drunk.
Muffled yelling comes from the cab of the truck.
Jimmy takes his place opposite the boy but doesn’t sit down. Instead he leans over the railing and looks out at the pasture, where the cows are making their way toward the barn for the evening milking.
Moo, Jimmy calls to the cows in the fields. Moo-oo.
Lance giggles, stands up and joins his half brother at the railing.
They don’t moo, the boy says then. They low.
Jimmy turns around.
They what?
Low. It’s called lowing. He makes the sound as best he can, and one of the cows rewards him with an answer even as the truck’s engine turns over.
Lance giggles. Me-aw! he says, sounding more like a donkey than a cow. Me-aw!
The truck lurches into reverse, nearly knocking Jimmy over. He catches himself, then sits down heavily.
Stupid cattle.
They’re not cattle, the boy says. They’re cows. Cattle are food.
You still eat them, Jimmy says. After they’re done giving milk you eat them. Your uncle told me.
Uncle Wallace never ate one of his own cows. He has special instructions with the butcher.
Jimmy makes a move as if to get up but Duke stretches out his boot and puts it on Jimmy’s ankle.
I’d think it over, Jimbo. Looks like Dale’s put on twenty pounds of muscle in the last two years and you’re the same momma’s boy you always been.
Jimmy looks at Duke and then he looks at the boy and then he settles back against the side of the truck.
Me-aw! Me-aw, me-aw!
Lance crawls across the truck as it starts up the hill away from the farm. Me-aw! He crawls away from Jimmy until he is next to the boy, and then he lies down with his head on the boy’s lap.
I’m glad you’re coming home, Dale.
The boy tousles Lance’s hair.
Will you go to work at Slaussen’s again? If you do go back to Slaussen’s I like bananas the most, followed by oranges and then grapes and then apples. If you go away again will you take me with you?
The boy looks down at his little brother. For the life of him he can’t imagine what expression must be on his own face. He tries to smile but all he can manage is a nod.
Lance smiles up at him for a moment, and then his face clouds.
Guh, he says. Guh, guh. The boy doesn’t understand until Lance reaches up and traces the outline on his chest.
G, the boy says then. It’s a G, Lance. He pulls the right half of the jacket over the left, covering up the shadow of the letter.
Lance nods thoughtfully. Then all at once a smile splits his face. G! G stands for Gregory, Dale? Is that what it stands for?
The boy looks down at Lance, who stares up at him guilelessly.
Did you get it because you missed him? Why didn’t you get an L? I really missed you and my name starts with L. L for Lance.
L for Lois too, Lois says sleepily.
The boy thinks of the letter ceremony he won’t be attending, the medals he left upstairs on his cousin’s dresser, in his cousin’s bedroom. He places his hand against the worn patch of felt on his chest, and thinks it is like a missing puzzle piece where his heart should go.
Over Lance’s head the boy can see Jimmy staring at him. When he sees the boy looking he looks down at his chest, and the boy turns and looks at Gregory, who has fallen asleep in Edi’s arms.
They were all out of L’s, the boys says, turning back to Lance. He pulls him all the way onto his lap. But I missed you too.