Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [72]
Awkwardly, Bill put his arms around her.
“You don’t make over me anymore,” she said.
“You just wait till we get to the ocean,” Bill said, petting her. He felt like a fool. The muscles in his arms were so rigid he thought they were going to pop. His mouth was dry.
That night Bill slept fitfully. He could not get used to a foam rubber mattress. He had a nightmare in which his mother and Imogene sat in rocking chairs on either side of him, having a contest to see who could rock the longest. Bill’s job was to keep score, but they kept on rocking. His kids gathered around, mocking him, wanting to know the score. The steady, swinging, endless rocking was making him feel seasick. He woke up almost crying out, but awake he could not understand why the rocking chairs frightened him so. He told himself he was an idiot and eventually he calmed himself down by thinking pleasant thoughts about Stephanie and the blond-headed boy. He imagined what they were doing in the van with the red heart on the ceiling. Later, he dreamed that he had a job driving a van across the country. He wore a uniform, with a cowboy hat that said KOOL-II on the front. He drove the van at top speed and when he got to the ocean he boarded a ferry, which turned out to be a destroyer. The destroyer zoomed across the ocean. Imogene did not show up in the dream at all.
When he woke up he looked at her sleeping, with her mouth open and a soft little snore coming out. He recalled the time in the Andrew Jackson Hotel in Nashville when he watched her sleep for a full hour, wanting to remember her face while he was overseas. Then she had awakened, saying, “I knew somebody was watching me. I dreamed it. You liked to stared a hole through me.” They had not been married long, and they had stayed awake most of the night, holding each other.
Now Imogene’s face was fat and lined, but he could still see her young face clearly. Her hair was gray and cut in short, curly layers. Each curl was distinctly separate, like the coils of a new pad of steel wool.
Bill bent down close to her and bellowed, “Rise and shine!” Then he sang, “You’re an angel, lighting up the morning.” Imogene woke up and glared at him.
“I can’t wait to show you the ocean,” said Bill. He pulled on his clothes and slapped his cap on his head. He looked out the window to see if KOOL-II had left. He had.
“KOOL-II’s done gone,” Bill said.
“She was a nice girl,” said Imogene, getting up. “But taking up with that boy like that, I just don’t know. There’s so much meanness going on.”
She put water and bacon strips on the stove and started dressing. Bill turned on the portable television. The Today show was in Minnesota. Jane Pauley was having breakfast with a farmer, who said that in fact it was possible to make a living as a dairy farmer these days.
“You have to like cows first,” he said. He said he didn’t name his cows anymore. He gave them numbers, “like social security numbers,” the man said, laughing.
“How could you keep a cow without a name?” asked Bill. “How would you talk to it?”
“He’s a big-dude farmer,” said Imogene. “He couldn’t remember all their names, he’s got so many.”
The farmer’s wife claimed she was not a working wife, but Jane Pauley pointed out that the woman worked all the time making butter and cheese, dressing chickens, raising children, and so forth.
“That’s fun work,” she replied.
“If it don’t kill you,” said Imogene.
One of the farmer’s seven children said he would be going to college. This day and age you had to be a businessman to be in agriculture. There was a lot his father couldn’t teach him about the farm.
“Can you see us on TV, having breakfast and talking?” asked Imogene.
“Shoot,” said Bill. “I’d be embarrassed to death. I’d go crawl in a hole.”
The show switched to the original Little House on the Prairie, also in Minnesota. Tom Brokaw was interviewing Mike Landon. Mike Landon was telling how back then everybody lived mainly in one small room and they were forced to live together, to cooperate, to work together. You couldn’t hide. Nowadays