A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [47]
Rose said, “Mommy put rosemary in potatoes. I remember because I paid attention to the name of it. It’s good on meat, too.”
It was exhausting just to hold ourselves at the table, magnets with our northern poles pointing into the center of the circle. You felt a palpable sense of relief when you gave up and let yourself fall away from the table and wound up in the kitchen getting something, or in the bathroom running the water and splashing it on your face.
The funny thing was that this discomfort was not new, but I recognized it newly. Normally I would have attributed it to the heat or the work of having a big dinner on the table by one o’clock or some argument between Pete and Daddy or Rose being in one of her moods. I would have accommodated its inevitability and been glad enough to get home and have Ty say, “Not too bad. Food was good. That’s what’s important.” Normally I would have reacted like any farmer—trying to look out for the pitfalls and drop-offs ahead of time, trying to be philosophical about them afterwards. We only did this sort of thing three times a year (at Easter we went to the church supper).
But now I saw with fresh conviction that it was us, all of us, who were failing, and the hallmark of our failure was the way we ate with our heads down, hungrily, quickly, because there was nothing else to do at the table.
Daddy spoke up. “Corn down in Story County was all ripped to shreds by that storm.”
It was a freak storm that had dropped golf-ball-size hail in the late afternoon, then turned around and come back through, from the northeast, about four hours later. It had passed south of us, so that all we saw was the lightning in the distance. Wednesday. The thought occurred to Rose and me simultaneously and we looked at each other.
Ty said, “You hate spending the money for hail insurance, but there must be guys kicking themselves down there now.”
Pete said, “You can’t prepare for a storm like that. The paper said that was a really oddball storm.”
Daddy set down his pork bone and wiped his fingers on his napkin. He said, “You don’t have to prepare for a storm like that. A regular storm will do plenty of damage if there’s hail.”
Obviously.
Pete turned red.
Rose said, “What were you doing down in Story County, Daddy?”
Daddy dished himself potatoes and then spooned a dollop of hot pepper pickles next to them. He picked a slice of meat off the serving plate.
I said, “When was that, Thursday? Wasn’t that storm Wednesday afternoon?”
Daddy said, “No law against taking a little ride now and then.”
Rose said, “With this gasoline shortage, there might be one one of these days.”
“Well there isn’t one now.” He spoke sharply. They glared at each other. Pete said, “We ought to be saving our gas. It’s going to be the end of the month soon, and Jimmy Carter hasn’t done a thing about those truckers striking. If we ran alcohol, we wouldn’t have a thing to worry about.”
Daddy said, “We aren’t going to run alcohol.” He clearly meant it as the last word on the issue.
I said, “Daddy, did you go all the way to Des Moines?”
“What if I did?”
Now the glare was for me. It shone into me like a hot beam of sunlight. I couldn’t think of anything to say. What if he did? What if he did?
Rose said, “Caroline was wondering, that’s all.”
“You girls talk plenty on that long distance.”
He hated the idea of us talking about him, probably because he knew that we always did, couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop it. I said, “She was worried about it, that’s all.”
“I didn’t say I did go to Des Moines, did I?”
I said, “No.”
“Well, then.” He helped himself to the peas.
At bedtime, Ty said, “You women don’t understand your father at all.”
I had washed the sheets that day, and I was making up the bed. I said, “Flip that corner over the mattress, would you?” He tucked the corner of the contour sheet, then smoothed out the lumps. He was wearing only his underwear, ready to climb into bed. His shoulders were wide and muscular. His upper arms were casually brawny, split in half, white and golden red, by a sharp tan line. His