A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [124]
I allowed, “The church supper was embarrassing.”
“Not everyone thought Harold was right to speak out like that.”
I gauged this. Finally, I said, “Do you mean that a few disagreed with Harold, or most people, or just how many?”
“Well—”
“Actually, I can’t believe anyone thought it was right of Harold to speak out like that.” I felt myself heating up. “He set that up! He came over here especially to set it up, and he was gleeful about it—”
“In his present affliction, I don’t think—” He turned the handle of his cup toward me and began again, “I’d like to be a peacemaker.”
“Why?” I tried to make this sound as flat and purely interrogative as possible, but he took it as an accusation. He said, “No one else seems to have. As your pastor and your father’s pastor—”
“I mean, what purpose is served by making peace?”
“Oh.”
Apparently he hadn’t really considered this. I waited for him to think of something.
Finally, after glancing at me two or three times, he said, “Wouldn’t you prefer it yourself? I’m enough your friend to know you thrive in a happier atmosphere than this. I’ve never seen you to seek a quarrel. That just doesn’t seem like you.” He liked this line, and warmed to it as he spoke. “You look unhappy. You look drawn and tired.”
The irrefutable evidence of appearance.
“Are you watching us? Me? Looks aren’t everything.”
He laughed again, then sobered up. His voice was solemn when he said, “You don’t have to watch to see.”
My friend? Could I rely on him to see what I saw in our family and our father and Rose and myself? That seemed like the one test of friendship.
He said, “Families are better together. Working together.”
“Is that an absolute?”
He paused to inventory the families he knew, sipping his coffee, then said, “Maybe not quite an absolute, if we’re talking absolutes.” He smiled. “But the exceptions are extremely rare. I know I’m a conservative on this score, Ginny, and that hasn’t always been to my advantage. But in all my years in the ministry, I’ve only seen one divorce I agreed with. One single family breakup.” He paused the way he liked to pause in his sermons, preparatory to driving home a point he was especially fond of, then he said, “The kind of life people lead in this county is getting rarer and rarer. Three generations on one farm, working together, is something to protect.”
“That seems true in theory.”
“Helen and I chose to come here partly because we want to help preserve a way of life that we believe in. Some of my best memories are of making hay with my grandfather when my uncles were young men. They worked like one body, they were that close.”
“Do they all still get along?” I smiled frankly and disingenuously.
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“Well, of course there are spats. Man is fallen. And maybe there’s a value to being yoked to your enemies. You have more opportunity to learn to love them.” He beamed, having solved the puzzle I’d proposed.
I said, “How many haven’t spoken to one or the other in more than ten years?”
Henry licked his lips. “I don’t know. Listen—”
“Come on, Henry. Fess up.”
“You’re asking whether my family is holy, as if only perfect virtue on my part permits me to advise you. That’s a commonly held fallacy, and even ministers fall for it, but—”
“I just don’t know why you’re here. Who sent you, what you want me to do, what you think I’ve done, why you came here instead of going to Rose. Are we friends? Have you had us over for a barbecue? Do you call me to chat from time to time? Do you solicit my advice on your problems? No, no, and no. I don’t want you coming out here for a purpose. I don’t want to be on your rounds.”
“There are pastoral duties—”
Problems. Barbecues. Chatting. There was something I wanted from him after all, wasn’t there? My heartbeat quickened and my palms got damp. I said, “Just tell me what people are saying about us.”
“Ginny.”
“I want to know. I really do.”
“People don’t gossip as much as you think.”
“Yes, they