A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [116]
“What’s Rose doing today?”
“Haven’t you talked to her? Something with the girls. I forget what. What are you doing up here, anyway? I haven’t ever seen you around here before.”
I liked talking to Pete like this, taking an interest, as if we were friends. At home, our relations were circumscribed by work, and other things, too, I supposed. I said, “I just wanted to go somewhere wet. I remembered this place as different, though. Blue.”
“Some days it is blue, but there’s a lot of runoff from the rains. I wouldn’t swim in it blue, either, though. I’d imagine that the bacteria level’s pretty high. Jack Stanley’s got that feedlot back up the creek there.” He pointed toward the northwest horizon.
“The high school kids swim here.”
“Mmm. Slurp slurp. Must be okay, then.”
I laughed. But the reason I was there included Pete, too, didn’t it? He was named in the suit. I felt that awful self-consciousness returning, chasing out the momentary ease I had been enjoying. The rope of my life, coiling into this knot, then out of it, seemed again more like a thread, easily broken. Even if I didn’t tell Pete about the legal papers, that moment of ease was gone. So I said, “I was running away from the suit, actually.”
“What?”
“Caroline is—well, I mean, Daddy, is suing us to get the farm back. That abuse or mismanagement clause.”
“Huh.”
He sounded speculative, hardly interested. We walked on, passing my car and turning west along the south end of the quarry. I said, “It just made me so mad. I had to go somewhere. I felt like all this was giving me a fever.”
He didn’t say anything. We walked along the path, which followed the cyclone fence. Bindweed petered out, replaced by ground-cherry. Bunches of milkweed were beginning to blossom white along the fence line. I said, “I can’t believe the way all of this has blown up. I mean, I didn’t have a good feeling about it when Daddy first came up with the idea, but I can’t say I sensed any of this coming.”
Still we walked. I stopped for a second and wiped the sweat off my forehead with the tail of my shirt. We were completely out in the sun, now. When I caught up to Pete, he said, “Ginny, what do you think Rose wants?”
“I don’t know.” What I meant was, I thought I had known, I thought it was obvious, until he raised the possibility of doubt. “A stake in something of her own. A life she can call her own, maybe. It seems fairly clear. For the girls to be all right, too.”
“What do you want? You’re the oldest, but Rose always seems like the oldest.”
I said, “For all this to be over. That’s all, at this point. For these feelings to end.”
“Huh.”
The path narrowed and he went ahead of me. He was wearing cowboy boots, the ones he always wore off the farm. He had two or three pairs, and the high heels made his legs look long. He was in better shape than Ty, although not without a little thickness at the middle. When the path widened, I jogged a little to catch up to him. I said, “Why do you ask?”
He looked at me as if he couldn’t remember where I had come from. I said, “Pete? Why do you ask about what Rose wants? She’s pretty straightforward about it.”
“Is she?”
The ease of our earlier conversation seemed to be gone, and I didn’t say anything. He stared at me for another moment, then walked on. We were walking fast, approaching the southwest corner of the quarry, where an old implement that looked like it might be a harrow of some kind jutted out of the water. Pete stopped, picked up a couple of pebbles, and threw one, hitting a half-submerged tine with a ringing ping. I walked on, toward another grove of trees, then came back. Pete had moved to the edge of the water. I thought I would tell him I had to get to the grocery store. I looked at my watch. It was already nearly three. Ty, looking for his dinner, would have seen the papers by now.
Pete said, “Sometimes, all I want is to hurt someone. Not even for any purpose.”
“That’s understandable, when you’ve been hurt.”
“Maybe. You know what Ty says, about when the hogs get on one another and start fighting, how the underdog never fights back,