A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [108]
The thing about anhydrous is that it does the damage almost instantly. After two minutes or so the corneas are eaten away. There isn’t much the doctors can do besides transplants, and those don’t work too well. But they kept Harold in the hospital, his eyes patched, for a week, on account of the pain.
This would have been the Thursday after the Sunday of the church supper, three days after Jess Clark moved into Daddy’s house. Feelings were still running high. When I came home from dropping Pammy, Ty was standing in the kitchen. He whirled to face me and said, “Harold Clark’s had an anhydrous accident. He’s blind now,” as if to say, was I satisfied?
“My God.”
“He can’t farm any more, that’s for sure.”
“Where’d you hear this? What happened?”
“Dollie got us down from the Harvestore. Loren took him to the hospital.”
“Then we don’t really know—”
“Shit, Ginny!” he shouted in my face. “We know! The water tank was empty!”
“Maybe the doctors—”
“Stop it!”
“Stop what?”
“Stop being this way, this quiet reasonable way! Don’t you care? The fucking water tank was empty! You know what it means as well as I do!”
I said evenly, “It means he’s blind.”
“Don’t you care? This is a friend of ours! What happened to you? I don’t know you any more.” He headed for the door.
I followed him, my voice rising, “What’s wrong? What am I saying that’s wrong?” He got in the truck and drove off, his tires squealing on the asphalt.
The fact is, I was too astonished to think anything. The imagination runs first to the physical, doesn’t it, so that no matter what, you recoil from the pain, imagine yourself blind, your tissues resonating from the power of what has happened. I actually don’t remember how I imagined the accident then, when I hadn’t learned any of the details, but it entered my life with a crash and I do remember my hands trembling so violently as I tried to do the dishes that a plate broke against the faucet and I had to stop and sit down. Then I remember almost throwing up sitting there.
I got up and hurried down to Rose’s place. I burst in with the news, and Rose at once sent Linda out to play, to watch for Pete, to see if she could see Jess down the road. “He’s running,” she said to me as Linda ran out, “I saw him take off about a half hour ago.”
I said, “My God. Can you believe this?” I stepped over the pattern pinned to the fabric on the floor and fell into an armchair. Rose knelt down and resumed setting the facing pieces on the fabric. “Rose?”
“What?” She sounded annoyed.
I didn’t dare say anything else. I guess what I thought was that I’d offended her somehow. I always do feel a little guilty when I break bad news to someone, because that energy, of knowing something others don’t know, sort of puffs you up. She picked pins out of her tomato pincushion and poked then into the oniony tissue paper, then sat back on her heels and cocked her head, surveying the fabric. She was wearing a ponytail. She lifted her arms and idly pulled her liquid dark hair out of the elastic, then made the ponytail again, more tightly. The hang of her blouse revealed that she had not bothered with her prosthesis that morning. She said, “Well?”
“Well, it just struck me so vividly, that’s all. It’s every farmer’s nightmare. I almost threw up.”
“The actual event is shocking. I admit that.” She picked up her scissors and looked at me. “But I said it the other night. Weakness does nothing for me. I don’t care if they suffer. When they suffer, then they’re convinced they