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By Root 1014 0

across from Daddy, far from Ty. Rose sat on the other side of Jess and Pete at the end of the table. As soon as I sat down my heart began to pound. Some people we didn’t know began to pull out chairs, then they saw Harold looking at them and they backed away. Though we were uncomfortable enough to trade a few uncertain smiles, we settled ourselves, addressed our plates. I glanced at Ty’s face, at his plate, the wife habitually noticing what the husband was eating. He, too, had some of the carrot slaw. I looked at my own plate, the ribs looked good but would be messy. I poked my white plastic fork into the corn. All of this comes back to me as vividly as if these were my last impressions before an attack of amnesia. Harold’s voice rose above the noises of the crowd, and he said, “Hey!” and Jess Clark’s foot came down upon my own under the table, and his head snapped up.

I looked around. I had not noticed that the table Harold had chosen for us was right in the middle of the room, but it was.

Harold spoke up, as if he were making a long-awaited announcement, and said, “Look at ’em chowing down here, like they ain’t done nothing. Threw a man off his own farm, on a night when you’d a let a rabid dog into the barn.”

People at other tables pretended not to notice, except that Henry Dodge looked undecided about whether to get up from his seat or not.

“Nobody’s so much as come around to say I’m sorry or nothing. Pair of bitches. You know I’m talking about Ginny and Rose Cook.”

The minister decided to push back his chair. From across the room, Mary Livingstone’s voice came, “Pipe down, Harold Clark. You’re talking through your hat, same as always.” Henry Dodge stood up. Harold didn’t say anything for a few moments, so Henry sat down again. Then Harold said, “I got their number. Nobody’s fooled me.” He leaned toward me. “Bitch! Bitch!” Now Jess stretched out his arm, his hand open at the end of it, and pushed Harold’s face backward. It was a strange gesture, violent and gentle at the same time. Harold, who had years of work behind him and was a strong man, couldn’t be pushed far. Daddy sat there with a kind of bemused look on his face. When a momentary silence fell, he said, “Their children put them there. I saw it myself.”

On the other side of Jess Clark, Rose heaved in her chair and said, “Daddy, just shut up. This has gone far enough.”

Pammy took my hand.

Henry Dodge stood up again.

Harold jumped up, knocking his chair backward with a crash. He stretched across the table and grabbed Jess by the hair and pulled him out of his seat, then, with his other hand, he grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. Jess said, “Shit!” Harold jerked him across the table. Styrofoam glasses of pop rolled every which way. He yelled, “I got your number, too, you yellow son of a bitch. You got your eye on my place, and you been cozying up to me for a month now, thinking I’m going to hand it over. Well, I ain’t that dumb.” His voice rose mockingly, “Harold, you ought to do this! You ought to do that! Green manure! Ridge till cultivation! Goddamn alfalfa! Who the hell are you to tell me a goddamn thing, you deserter? This joker ain’t even got the guts to serve his country, then he comes sashaying around here—” At this point, the minister had managed to get behind Harold and grab him. Jess socked his father across the face, and Harold fell back against the minister. Daddy shifted his chair out of the way and looked straight at me. A look of sly righteousness spread over his face.

When we left, Rose and me with Pammy and Linda by the hands, leaving Pete and Ty behind and taking the car, it seemed to me that we were fleeing. I kept saying, “Where are we going? Where are we going?” certain there was somewhere to go. But we went straight home, as if there were no escape, as if the play we’d begun could not end. Since then, I’ve often thought we could have taken our own advice, driven to the Twin Cities and found jobs as waitresses, measured out our days together in a garden apartment, the girls in one bedroom, Rose and I in the other, anonymous, ducking