A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [158]
“If you’d wanted me back, you’d have come looking for me before this.”
“You don’t understand how full my hands were. I couldn’t leave the place for a minute. It was all getting away from me all the time—” He broke off. “Anyway, you walked out.”
“Your pride was hurt?”
“I hated all that mess.” His voice rose again. “I hated the way Rose roped you in—” He looked at me. “I thought you’d repent. When I thought about things at all, that was my bottom line. I still think—”
I flared up. “You were on Caroline’s side! You talked to her about me!”
He sighed, and looked at me, then said, “I was on the side of the farm, that was all.”
“What does that mean? You talked to her! She saw you as her ally!”
“What was I supposed to do? I didn’t call her! If she called me and asked me questions, I told her what I thought. I tried to tell the truth the way I saw it.”
“You didn’t know the truth.”
His face got red. “Look, the truth is, it was all wrong. For years, it was right, and we prospered and we got along and we did the way we knew we should be doing, and sure there were little crosses to bear, but it was right. Then Rose got selfish and you went along with her, and then it was all wrong. It wasn’t up to her to change things, to screw up the monkey works!” He took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “There was real history there! And of course not everybody got what they wanted, and not everybody acted right all the time, but that’s just the way it is. Life is. You got to accept that.”
“Rose didn’t ask Daddy for the farm!”
“But she was right there when he came up with that idea. She was all enthusiasm—”
“So were you!”
“I didn’t have any plans to ease him out! My plan was to—”
I slapped my hand on the table. Two kids behind the counter glanced over at us. Ty fell silent. I wanted to choose my words carefully. Finally, I said, “The thing is, I can remember when I saw it all your way! The proud progress from Grandpa Davis to Grandpa Cook to Daddy. When ‘we’ bought the first tractor in the county, when ‘we’ built the big house, when ‘we’ had the crops sprayed from the air, when ‘we’ got a car, when ‘we’ drained Mel’s corner, when ‘we’ got a hundred and seventy-two bushels an acre. I can remember all of that like prayers or like being married. You know. It’s good to remember and repeat. You feel good to be a part of that. But then I saw what my part really was. Rose showed me.” He opened his mouth to speak, but I stopped him with my hand. “She showed me, but I knew what she showed me was true before she even finished showing me. You see this grand history, but I see blows. I see taking what you want because you want it, then making something up that justifies what you did. I see getting others to pay the price, then covering up and forgetting what the price was. Do I think Daddy came up with beating and fucking us on his own?” Ty winced. “No. I think he had lessons, and those lessons were part of the package, along with the land and the lust to run things exactly the way he wanted to no matter what, poisoning the water and destroying the topsoil and buying bigger and bigger machinery, and then feeling certain that all of it was ‘right,’ as you say.”
He was looking at me, but his face was closed over. Finally, he said, “I guess we see things differently.”
“More differently than you imagine.”
“I didn’t remember you like this.”
“I wasn’t like this. I was a ninny.”
“You were pretty and funny, and you looked at the good side of things.”
I looked at my watch. There was another question I wanted to ask. I let this observation die away, then I said, “That night. The night of the storm.