A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [117]
I smiled.
Pete stared past me. A breeze had come up, shattering the surface of the water into shards of light. I said, “Pete, are you okay? When I get away from the farm, I feel like all of this is going to turn out okay. Not the same as before, but okay. I mean, maybe that’s the definition of okay. Jess would say change is good.” I tried to say the name neutrally, glad I hadn’t said it before in this conversation. It was important in all circumstances not to say it too often.
“Oh, Jess.”
“Don’t you like Jess?”
“Oh, sure.”
Now we stood together in true awkwardness, Pete rolling stones in his hand and looking over the water, me not knowing what to do with my hands, looking at the distant white roof of my car. It was apparent that Pete, too, knew of my feelings for Jess, that this information had escaped from me somehow, though I had tried desperately to contain it. Pete wasn’t even especially observant, nor very interested in me. It was terrifying to think of myself so obvious, so transparent. I remembered just then how my mother used to say that God could see to the very bottom of every soul, a soul was as clear to God as a rippling brook. The implication, I knew even then, was that my mother could do the same thing. My lips were dry and hot, and I thought of right then just asking Pete what he knew, how he found it out—from Ty or Rose or Daddy or Jess himself. Wouldn’t it be a relief to have everything out in the open for once?
But that question was easy to answer, too. And the answer was negative. The last few weeks had shown well enough for anyone to understand that the one thing our family couldn’t tolerate, that maybe no family could tolerate, was things coming into the open. So I didn’t ask Pete. I said, “I guess I’d better get to the store. It’ll be suppertime before long. Ty will wonder where I am.”
“I’ve got chores to do myself. More and more I can’t resist stopping here, though. It’s such a weird place.”
We began back along the path to my car. A snake appeared, vanished, leaving the low sound of grass rustling in the air. I halted, Pete ran into me. That close, there was plenty we had to say to one another, but habit and probably fear prevented us. Later, it was strange to think of his body bumping me, how solid that was; the smell of his sweat mixed with the plant and water smells of that place; the sight of his face that close, his gray-blue eyes with their long pale lashes, turning toward me, holding me then releasing me. I barked, “Snake!”
“Huh,” said Pete, in that same oddly disinterested, curious tone, as if, I see now, all he was doing by then was waiting to see what would happen.
33
IT WAS APPARENT THAT TY HAD EATEN and gone out again—dirty plates in the sink, chicken bones in the garbage can, and the coffeepot warm on the burner. He had moved the legal papers to the kitchen table. I read them again and looked around for a place to put them. Finally, I opened the desk and stuck them in with the tax receipts. There were books to do—we were overdue on that. The last day of June had come and gone without our monthly accounting session, though I had paid the regular bills. I couldn’t eat, so I began straightening the house up. It didn’t take long—it was the one thing I still knew how to do.
The building crew from Mason City had spent the week pouring the specially designed concrete subfloor for the breeding and gestation building, over which a slatted steel floor would be laid. An automatic flush system would eventually flush the slurry along the subfloor to the Slurrystore. You couldn’t see the site from the house—it was hidden by the old dairy barn that would itself be converted into the farrowing and nursing rooms. The Harvestores now rose, blue and efficient, with clean lines and rounded edges, just south of the dairy barn, right beside one another. A cement mixing truck was parked permanently on the shoulder of Cabot Street Road, ready for the crew to progress to the subfloors of the grower and the finisher buildings.