A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [91]
“He said you whores had sent him out into the storm and that he wished he’d had sons.”
“We didn’t! We tried over and over to get him to go home! He cursed us! When we—”
He squeezed my hand. “I didn’t believe him, Ginny. I knew there was more to it than meets the eye.”
“I know he was drunk. He always fools me, because when he gets drunk, it’s just a change of mood. He doesn’t stagger around or slur his words or anything. Then I fall for it. I forget he’s just drunk.”
“I don’t think you have to excuse him because he was drunk.”
Shame is a distinct feeling. I couldn’t look at my hands around the coffee cup or hear my own laments without feeling appalled, wanting desperately to fall silent, grow smaller. More than that, I was uncomfortably conscious of my whole body, from the awkward way that the shafts of my hair were thrusting out of my scalp to my feet, which felt dirty as well as cold. Everywhere, I seemed to feel my skin from the inside, as if it now stood away from my flesh, separated by a millimeter of mortified space. I listened carefully to Jess’s talk, and found it unquestionably sound and full of concern through its every vibration, but this wasn’t reassuring. My body told me that my shame was a fact awaiting his discovery. He said, “Please do tell me what happened.” He smiled, and suddenly, belatedly, my longing for him woke up, but now it was attached to my shame like its Siamese twin, and the longing itself was newly but fully shameful, and I remember thinking of our talks, the kiss, the lovemaking, and saying to myself, the good part is over already.
I found a flat, steady voice to speak in, and I used it. I told him about Daddy’s taking Pete’s truck and all the aftermath of that; what Daddy had said and how Rose and I had replied; I even told him what Rose had told me later, and how I did not believe her, but didn’t not believe, either. He watched me attentively, his usually expressive features still and serious, but his eyes burning into mine. Without speaking, he drew everything out of me, and after it was over, I knew that I was somehow at his mercy, not because he had exerted power or claimed me, but because in spite of my shame I had exposed myself to him in every particular.
He drained his coffee cup and said, “Oh, Ginny.” He said, “Oh, Ginny, they have aimed to destroy us, and I don’t know why.”
I had forgotten in my own recitation his old grievances against Harold and his mother. I said, “Maybe they have, Jess. Maybe they have aimed right for it.”
Ty came in about five-thirty. The sun was well up by that time, and the sky clear and crystalline. Before he had a chance to question Jess Clark’s presence, I said, “Jess, tell Ty,” and he told Ty where Daddy was, and who was with him. Ty said, “I wondered where he’d got to. I drove every little road, tractor path, and drivable gully between here and Cabot. There weren’t too many of those after this storm.”
I got up and poured him some coffee, then asked, “Did you look at the crops?”
“Things look okay, but this was a gully washer for sure.”
“Where’s Pete?”
“I don’t know. We had a little disagreement.”
This alarmed me. “What do you mean?”
“Pete said Larry would turn up and he wasn’t going to waste his time on him. That was how we resolved it.”
Jess said, “Then what did you disagree on?”
“Pete wanted to shoot him.”
I smiled, thinking this was a joke, but Ty didn’t smile back. I said, “Really shoot him?”
“Really shoot him. But I think