A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [157]
“I heard it was bad.”
“Bob Stanley shot himself in the head. Right out in the barn. Marlene found him. That’s been the worst.”
“They lost the farm?”
“He knew they were going to. That’s why he did it. Marlene’s working in Zebulon Center now, as a teacher’s aide in the elementary school.”
My mouth was dry. I took a sip of the Coke. I said, “What about you?”
“Those hog buildings killed me, that’s what it was. The winter was so bad after the trial—”
“The hearing. Nobody was on trial.”
“I was.”
We glared at each other, then veiled our glares.
He went on. “There was just one holdup after another with the buildings, and then I had to start over with all new sows, so that was a piece of change. I sold my place, but property values weren’t anything like they’d been, and what I got didn’t cover much of the loan, with the sows. Just got behind. And then more behind. The Chevy dealer made me a straight trade.”
“An eight-year-old sedan for a four-year-old pickup?”
“I wasn’t in a position to complain. Anyway, this is kind of a relief. And I’ve never been down there. Or anyplace else for that matter.”
I looked him over without shyness, with the inspecting gaze a wife earns after a certain number of years. I said, “You don’t look relieved.”
He shrugged.
“What about Rose?”
“I haven’t been getting along with Rose all that well.”
This was a touchy subject, so we watched two women come in the front door and order bowls of chili. Finally, he said, “She’s getting a crop in and out. She’s renting out land. When we split the farm, I took on the whole loan for the buildings, since they were on my land, so she was pretty unencumbered.”
“Except there’s nobody to farm the place.”
“It’s a big place.”
“A thousand acres.”
“All together,” he said, “yeah. My dad would have been scared of that much land.”
“There were bigger places than that out west even when he was alive.”
“You know what he used to say about that? He used to say, ‘Those places got the area, but they ain’t got the volume.’ ”
We laughed, uneasily but together.
I said, “It’s going to fall apart, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He said it reluctantly. “Yeah, it is. Rose swears she’s going to keep it together. She’s grim as death about it, and she goes around like some queen.” He glanced at me. “Well, she does. You should see her. Frankly, she’s your dad all over.”
I felt my face get hot.
He said, “I know what she says, Ginny, about your dad. She told me. She’s told everybody by now.”
It was clear he didn’t believe her. We watched a solitary man come in, dressed in a suit. He ordered a Big Single, large fries, and a water.
After a moment he said, “Maybe it happened. I don’t say it didn’t. But it doesn’t make me like her any more. I think people should keep private things private.” His voice was rising as if he could barely contain himself. I was tempted to nod, not because I agreed, but because I recognized how all these things sorted themselves in his mind, and I realized that with the best will in the world, we could never see them in the same way, and that, more than anything else, more than circumstances or history or will or wishing, divided us from each other. But the Ty I’d known was always on the lookout for agreement, reconciliation, so I didn’t nod, knowing how he’d take it. I kept private things private.
“Anyway,” he went on. “That’s the past. I signed the whole thing over to her, the land, the buildings, the hogs, the equipment. She’s sure prices are going to rise, and she’s going to be a land baroness. She’s got it all figured out, the way she always does, and it’s fine with me. I’m going to Texas, so—”
He looked at me.
“So what?”
“So, I want to get a divorce.”
I must have looked surprised, and I was, because the feeling of myself as a married person was something else that had lifted off long before. He stumbled forward. “It could happen in Texas. There might be someone there I—”
“That’s fine.”
“I haven’t—”
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t?” There was a little wounded surprise in this question that revealed something underneath Ty’s cool manner.