A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [4]
The Clark brothers were both good-looking, but with Loren you had to gaze for a moment to find the handsomely set eyes and the neatly carved lips. His pleasant disposition gave him a goofy quality that was probably what most people mean when they use the word “hick.” And maybe he’d gotten a little thick in the middle, the way you do when there’s plenty of meat and potatoes around. I’d never even noticed it, till I saw Jess for the first time at the pig roast, and he was like this alternative edition of Loren. Jess was about a year older than Loren, I think, but in those thirteen years they’d gotten to be like twins raised apart that you see on TV. They cocked their heads the same way, they laughed at the same jokes. But the years hadn’t taken the toll on Jess that they had on Loren: his waist came straight up out of his waistband; his thighs seemed to bow a little, so you got the sense of the muscles inside his jeans. From behind, too, he didn’t look like anyone else at the pig roast. The small of his back narrowed into his belt, then there was just a little swell, nicely defined by the back yoke and the pockets. He didn’t walk like a farmer, either, that’s something else you noticed from behind. Most men walk in their hip sockets, just kicking their legs out one at a time, but Jess Clark moved from the small of his back, as if, any time, he might do a few handsprings.
Rose noticed him, too, right when I did. We put our casseroles on the trestle table, I looked at Jess turning from talking to Marlene Stanley, and Rose said, “Hunh. Look at that.”
His face wasn’t smooth like Loren’s, though. There’s where he had aged. Lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes, framed his smile, drew your attention to his nose, which was long and beaky, unsoftened by flesh or years of mild, harmless thoughts. He had Loren’s blue eyes, but there was no sweetness in them, and Loren’s dark brown ringlets, but they were cut close. Nicely cut. He was wearing fancy sneakers, too, and a light blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Actually, he looked good, but not like he was going to quickly ease any neighborhood suspicions. Everybody would be friendly to him, though. People in Zebulon County saw friendliness as a moral virtue.
He gave me a hug, then Rose, and said, “Hey, it’s the big girls.”
Rose said, “Hey, it’s the pest.”
“I wasn’t that bad. I was just interested.”
“The word ‘relentless’ was coined to describe you, Jess,” said Rose.
“I was nice to Caroline. Caroline was crazy about me. Did she come?”
I said, “Caroline’s down in Des Moines now. She’s getting married in the fall, you know. To another lawyer. Frank Ras—” I stopped talking, I sounded so serious and dull.
“So soon?”
Rose cocked her head and pushed her hair back. “She’s twenty-eight, Jess,” said Rose. “According to Daddy, it’s almost too late to breed her. Ask him. He’ll tell you all about sows and heifers and things drying up and empty chambers. It’s a whole theoretical system.”
Jess laughed. “I remember that about your father. He always had a lot of ideas. He and Harold could sit at the kitchen table and eat a whole pie, wedge by wedge, and drink two or three pots of coffee and one-up each other.”
“They still do that,” said Rose. “You shouldn’t think something’s changed just because you haven’t seen it in thirteen years.”
Jess looked at her. I said, “I guess you remember that Rose always offers her unvarnished opinion. That hasn’t changed, either.” He smiled at me. Rose, who is never embarrassed, said, “I remembered something, too. I remembered that Jess used to like his mom’s Swiss steak, so that’s what I brought.” She lifted the lid on her dish and Jess raised his eyebrows. He said,