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By Root 917 0

farmers rarely do, and my father never again did after Caroline was born. For me, it was a pleasure like a secret hoard of coins—Rose, whom I adored, sitting against me in the hot musty velvet luxury of the car’s interior, the click of the gravel on its undercarriage, the sensation of the car swimming in the rutted road, the farms passing every minute, reduced from vastness to insignificance by our speed; the unaccustomed sense of leisure; most important, though, the reassuring note of my father’s and mother’s voices commenting on what they saw—he on the progress of the yearly work and the condition of the animals in the pastures, she on the look and size of the house and garden, the colors of the buildings. Their tones of voice were unhurried and self-confident, complacent with the knowledge that the work at our place was farther along, the buildings at our place more imposing and better cared for. When I think of them now, I think how they had probably seen nearly as little of the world as I had by that time. But when I listened to their duet then, I nestled into the certainty of the way, through the repeated comparisons, our farm and our lives seemed secure and good.

2

JESS CLARK WAS GONE for thirteen years. He left for a commonplace reason—he was drafted—but within a few months of Harold’s accompanying his son to the bus depot in Zebulon Center, Jess and everything about him slipped into the category of the unmentionable, and no one spoke of him again until the spring of 1979, when I ran into Loren Clark at the bank in Pike and he said that Harold was giving a pig roast for Jess’s homecoming, would all of us come, no need to bring anything. I put my hand on Loren’s arm, which stopped him from turning away and made him look me in the eye. I said, “Well, then, where’s he been?”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

“I thought he hadn’t been in touch.”

“He wasn’t, till Saturday night.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.” He gave me a long look and a slow smile, then said, “I notice he waited till we busted our butts finishing up planting before staging this resurrection.”

It was true that butts had been busted, since the spring had been cold and wet, and no one had been able to get into the fields until mid-May. Then almost all the corn in the county had been planted in less than two weeks. Loren smiled. Whatever he said, I knew he was feeling a little heroic, just as the men around our place were feeling. I thought of something. “Does he know about your mom?”

“Dad told him.”

“Is he bringing any family?”

“No wife, no kids. No plans to go back to wherever he is, either. We’ll see.” Loren Clark was a big, sweet guy. When he spoke about Jess, it was in easy, almost amused tones, the same way he spoke about everything. Seeing him somewhere was always a pleasure, like taking a drink of water. Harold put on a terrific pig roast—while the pig was roasting, he would syringe lime juice and paprika under the skin. Even so, I was surprised Harold intended to take a day off from bean planting. Loren shrugged. “There’s time,” he said. “The weather’s holding now. You know Harold. He always likes to go against the grain.”

The real treat would be watching Jess Clark break through the surface of everything that hadn’t been said about him over the years. I felt a quickening of interest, a small eagerness that seemed like a happy omen. When I drove the Scenic toward Cabot a little while later, I thought how pretty the river did look—the willows and silver maples were in full leaf, the cattails green and fleshy-looking, the wild iris out in purple clumps—and I stopped and took a pleased little stroll along the bank.

On Valentine’s Day, my sister Rose had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She was thirty-four. Her mastectomy and ensuing chemotherapy had left her weak and anxious. All through the gloomiest March and April in years, I was cooking for three households—for my father, who insisted on living alone in our old farmhouse, for Rose and her husband, Pete, in their house across the road from Daddy, and also for my husband, Tyler, and myself.