Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [46]
Just as she was about to close the map, she noticed a marking at the top of the Schuler land, right next to the Lindstroms’. A circle with a line bisecting it. What did that mean? She turned to the legend and read aloud, “ ‘Well or cistern or spring. ’“ This country was dotted with springs that dug coulees out of the sides of the bluffs on their way down to the lake. Water was plentiful.
Arlene wiped at the kitchen counters and wondered what she should make for lunch. It was still the big meal of the day for her men. She could count on her dad coming to eat today. She had seen him out in the field, baling the hay he had cut a couple of days ago. It was a good day for haying—hot and dry. If the weather went right, he’d get another harvest out of the fields. It could be a good year.
He had been out there bright and early, considering that she had seen his pickup truck drive past their house at eleven o’clock last night. How unlike her father. He usually tried to watch the news if he managed to stay up that late, then went right to bed. Maybe he had gone to see the fireworks.
She didn’t think her husband would be back in time for lunch. He had told her he was off to Eau Claire to get a piece of something to fix the mower. She hadn’t really listened. She’d put something aside for him to eat when he got in.
Arlene went to the fridge and took out a pound of hamburger. She could always do something with hamburger. Once in a while Dad liked meatballs. That was one dish her mother had made that was German—meatballs in a sour-cream gravy. She checked and she had a little sour cream left in the container, enough to stir in and make it work. Seemed kind of hot to make the dish, but Dad always wanted something that would stick to his ribs.
One day, a few weeks back, she had tried to make him a salad. She had seen Martha Stewart prepare it on her television show and it had looked so good. Arlene couldn’t pronounce the name of it. Salad Neeswaws—something like that. Potatoes and green beans and tomatoes. She had all that coming out of the garden, so she thought she’d try it.
Her father had looked at it and said, “Nice salad, but where’s the dinner?”
She wouldn’t fix it again.
Funny how she had gotten stuck with her father. When she was a kid, Arlene had sworn she’d leave Pepin County and never come back. Then, in tenth grade, she had started going with Larry. They had married right out of high school.
Larry didn’t want to leave the area. There was no getting around that. He wanted to live on the family farm and work for the railroad. So they moved down the road from her parents and then her mother died.
She missed that woman like a comforter on a cold night. She actually didn’t think her father was going to last without her. What was odd was that they never had seemed to get along that well while her mother was still alive. She did everything he told her to do. But there didn’t seem to be much love.
Arlene had heard through the grapevine that her father had been in love with her mother’s sister. She had never asked him about the gossip. It was so long ago, it didn’t seem to matter anymore.
Arlene felt like she was getting to the age where she had started to redefine love. Lust had gotten her and Larry in trouble. She had been sure she was going to get pregnant before they got married. But love was gentler than lust. It lasted longer. It didn’t tend to hurt as much. It was about living together and doing the chores and fighting a little and mending a lot.
From the bread drawer she took out a box of Ritz crackers, left them in the inner wrapper, and smashed them with her rolling pin. When they were all crumbs, she opened up the wrapper and poured them in a bowl with the hamburger. Then she chopped up a little raw onion, dumped