A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [109]
“But this is Harold, not Daddy.”
“What’s the difference? You know what Jess told me? Once Harold was driving the cornpicker, when Jess was a boy, and there was a fawn lying in the corn, and Harold drove right over it rather than leave the row standing, or turn, or even just stop and chase it away.”
“Maybe he didn’t see it.”
“After he drove over it, he didn’t stop to kill it, either. He just let it die.”
“Oh, Rose.” The tears burst from my eyes.
“Daddy killed animals in the fields every year. Just because they were rabbits and birds instead of fawns—I don’t know.” She looked at me and smiled slightly. “When Jess told me, I cried, too. Then the next day I helped Pete load hogs for the sale barn. I thought about Daddy saying, that’s life. That’s farming. So, I say to Harold, gee, Harold, you should have checked the water tank. That’s farming. They made rules for us to live by. They’ve got to live by them, too.”
I looked around the room. Again, there was a soothing quality to what she was saying, reassuring simplicity. I said, “Would you tell these sorts of things to the girls?”
Her scissors made two crisp sounds in the cotton fabric. Then she let go of them and looked at me. She said, “If Daddy got to them and hurt them in any way I would help them learn about evil and retribution. If he doesn’t, then they can have the luxury of learning about mercy and benefits of the doubt.”
“You make it seem simple.” I thought for a moment. “No. I don’t mean that. I mean, you make it seem easy.”
“Ginny, I know what I think because I’ve thought about it for a long time. I thought about it in the hospital, after the operation. You know, Mommy dying, and Daddy, and then Pete being such a mean drunk, and having to send the girls away, and then losing a part of my own body on top of it all. In the face of that, if there aren’t some rules, then what is there? There’s got to be something, order, rightness. Justice, for God’s sake.” She cut up the long side of the shirt. “Listen, I can’t tell you how it makes me feel that Daddy’s taking some sort of refuge in being crazy now. You know who they blame, don’t you? But it isn’t even that.”
“What is it?”
“Now there isn’t even a chance that I’ll look him in the eye, and see that he knows what he did and what it means. As long as he acts crazy, then he gets off scot-free.”
Linda slammed open the screen door, pulling Jess behind her. She said, “I ran all the way to the gravel road, Mom.” I saw by the color of Jess’s face, gray under his tan, that she had told him. I sat up and put my feet on the floor. Jess looked from Rose to me, then me to Rose, then he wiped his face with his T-shirt, revealing his perfect stomach and chest. Rose carefully folded the fabric and the cut pattern pieces into a small square and Jess stepped into the room. Rose said, “Linda, go pour some lemonade for everybody, then go back outside, because we have some grown-up talking to do.” Linda resisted, standing still, for just the merest moment. Rose said, “We’ll sew this afternoon.”
“No matter what?”
“No matter what, at least for a little while.”
“I’m going to make myself some sandwiches and take them outside.”
After a moment, Rose said, “Okay.” I looked away from them, finding Rose’s customary briskness especially irritating in the circumstances. Linda said “Okay” in return, but didn’t move for a second, as if unsure what to do now that she’d gotten permission to do what she wanted. “Go on,” said Rose. “I’m thirsty.”
Jess sat with his head thrown back against the wall behind the chair, staring at the ceiling molding, it looked like.
Linda brought the glasses of lemonade in