The Hoosiers - Big Hark
When Derek said he was sure about wanting the divorce, Rachel asked for time alone to pack. One day, she said, would do it. She waited for her day, and when it came, she put all her possessions into boxes and shipped everything to her parents, Jerry and Marcie, in Indiana. She didn’t have much to send. The Manhattan studio where she and Derek lived was small: they shared a bed, some linens, a sofa, some plates. Rachel never much cared for the sofa, and the sadness and regret she felt about what she had done with Derek’s black-haired Milanese baritone, Luca—the boy with the German Lieder and Italian aftermath—compelled her to leave everything else behind. Derek accepted the whole lot, wedding rings included, and refused only the bed. They’d get rid of that together, he said. No one should have it now.
Jerry looked out the kitchen window at the snow-covered fields that once belonged to his father. He sipped his bitter black coffee and admired the view. Adam Brown, Jerry’s neighbor, was a good steward of the land. He was growing corn this year. Jerry imagined millions and millions of seeds in the earth, each of them pulsing and throbbing and beating like tiny yellow hearts. If Brown ever wanted to sell so much as an acre, Jerry had the first right of refusal. This knowledge gave him comfort.
You always made me feel welcome in your home, Marcie, Derek’s letter said. You accepted me as family, and I loved you like my own mother. I thought you should know that.
Rachel’s face was hot. Her cheeks were red. Her eyes were pink and swollen. She carefully placed her head against Marcie’s remaining breast and wept and wept and wept. It hurts, Mama, Rachel said. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. Marcie held her child’s head and rocked her slowly back and forth, back and forth, just like she did when she was a baby. She closed her eyes tight and breathed deeply through her nose. I know it hurts, sweetheart, Marcie said. I know, I know, I know.
Once, when Jerry was a wee little boy, his Papa came early in the gooey black morning wakeup time and asked for help with an important chore. We’re going to plant a shade tree, Son, his Papa said. It will grow up for us fast and live for five hundred years.
Marcie gave Rachel a week-long slumber party. They wore their pajamas during the daytime and watched MGM musicals as they styled each other’s hair (Rachel’s brown and curly, Marcie’s the silky silver of post-chemo new growth). They ate cookies and ice cream and drank colas and wine. They played Scrabble and went shopping and gossiped about where the New York movie stars liked to eat brunch. When Jerry came home from work at night and went straight to the garage or more often the attic, Marcie would ask Rachel to model the clothes they had bought that day. Put on again that cute black pair. You know which ones. Yes, the really cute ones—yes, the darling little ones with the kitten heels. Oh, and if Daddy wants to mope around by himself, then we’ll just let him.
As a boy, Jerry would play hide-and-seek among the Norway spruce that lived on the north side of the house next to the burn pile. There were sixteen in all, each of them planted in one of two perfectly parallel east-to-west rows. The trees were bushy and green and as big around at the bottoms as tractor wheels or maybe even barn doors. Their branches were droopy, and you could lift them up—lift them like the hems of the hoopy skirts that the Valparaiso ladies wore during frontier days—to find hidey-holes down there underneath. The American sycamore in the front yard was supposed to be base. Run to it and yell olly-olly-oxen free. It was just a baby back then, but Papa said it would one day soon grow to be a giant. It would be one hundred feet tall.
At night, when the house she grew up in settled into stillness and quiet, Rachel would wipe the bears and bunnies off her bedspread and peel back the pages of her Lowell High School yearbook. Look at the pictures! Look at the captions! Most likely to marry, the yearbook says, Derek Brown and Rachel Anderson.
The first thing Jerry did when he got out of the service was move into the attic. His Mama prepared his bedroom for him—kept it the same as it was from before basic training—but his bedroom did not have a locking door. The attic had a locking door. He lived inside the attic and came out only at night to dump the Chesterfield ashes and butts he was keeping in an old steel coffee can. He ignored his Papa when asked if we wanted to listen to the Boilermakers on the radio. He ignored his Mama when she said it’s time to go to Mass. After six months, Michael’s Papa kicked down that attic door. I don’t care what you do to yourself or to me, the old farmer cried, but I will not let you kill your mother this way.
There are six grounds for divorce in the state of New York: conversion of a legal separation, conversion of an informal separation, abuse, abandonment, imprisonment, and adultery. Discreet as he was, Derek filed in Indiana. Indiana is a no-fault state, and for that Rachel was grateful. Indiana doesn’t want to know what kind of whore you are. Indiana doesn’t care.
The front yard tree looks bare and sickly in winter. From far away, it seems so sad, so all alone out there on the plain by itself. From far away, you cannot see the windbreak or the house or the Andersons inside of it. All you see is a craggy black outline set against a gunmetal gray December sky. Up close is not much better. From up close, you can see how the bark looks like peely, peely paper. Pull off a layer to reveal the next. Look at the blotches! Such a swirly complexion of creams and grays. Think about afflictions and poxes.
Jerry did not care for his daughter’s new hairstyle. She looks like a boy, is what he said to Marcie when he saw it. It’s called a pixie cut, Jerry, Marcie explained. Why does she want to look like a boy, Jerry asked. She does not want to look like a boy, Marcie said. She wants to feel brand new.
You cannot tell it’s springtime by looking at the front yard tree. Its tiny little flowers cluster together and fool the world that views them. Lay upon your back and contemplate renewal. What evidence of life? What proof? Oh, you can hardly see them! How not like flowers! When they mature, they are sticky and smelly and red, but you’ll never see them down there on the ground.
Rachel got a job answering phones for the cancer clinic down in Hebron. She came in one day with Marcie for one of her appointments and filled out some forms while she waited. She used her married name on the application. The head receptionist looked at her cross-eyed when she did it, when she wrote down Brown instead of Anderson. She crinkled her nose and lowered her glasses and made a face that said I know what you have done, girly-girl, and you’re not fooling me. Rachel thought that the cancer clinic job in Hebron was exactly what she deserved.
The front yard tree’s leaves (when it gets its leaves) are big and broad and palmate. They have five little finger-like lobes. Their waxy green tops are darker than their bottoms. They love to block the sun. Watch them spread, spread, spread, and try! From a shady spot, close your eyes and sense the whole of the tree beneath you. Deep, deep, deep go the roots. Down, down, they go! Down into earth, down past the bones of Grandpapa and all the Andersons before him. Into and through Indiana! Into and through history! Backward. Forward. Push and pulse and throb and grow.
Rachel was two years old when Jerry put her Grandma in the ground. She never could remember what she was like, her Grandma. She knew her Grandpa much, much better. When she was little, Grandpa gave her kisses and bought her Drumsticks and sang her silly songs from way back in the olden-time days. Jerry and Marcie and Rachel moved to Grandpa’s house after Grandpa had his stroke. Rachel was nine then maybe, perhaps ten. Jerry sold most of Grandpa’s land to help pay for the two chubby nurses that came to take care of him before he up and died.
Salty hot sweat stung Jerry’s eyes so he took off his hat and ran his fingers through his shock-white hair. The vicious summer sun assaulted the old man with all its heat and power, all its energy and light. Jerry returned his cap to his head and surveyed the fields around him. Five acres is a bear to mow, even on a lawn tractor. It’s hot. Jerry swallowed the mucus in his mouth and tried to procure fresh saliva to moisten his arid lips. So hot. The fields around him spun slowly, twisting around the tractor and making him dizzy. His face felt flush. His chest felt tight. Oh sweet Jesus this is it.
All kinds of critters come out of the fields at harvest time. There are coyotes and foxes and raccoons and deer, but mostly just field mice and rats. Into the house they like to go! All night long you can hear the snap, snap, snap of mousetraps. Oh, listen to the smashing of tiny heads and tummies when the little vermin take their treats from the bait pedals. Try to fill up the house- holes with putty and foam, but the mice will just eat new ones. Snap, snap, snap!
The front yard tree sheds boring brown leaves in autumn. There are no colors. There is no grandeur. Go see the courthouse in Crown Point for grandeur. The Grand Old Lady there is surrounded by white ash and scarlet oak and poplar and sugar maple. The leaves drape the ground in majestic piles of orange, purple, red, and gold.
Derek’s letter said: My parents called last night to tell me. I am so very sorry for your loss.
The front yard tree’s fruit is round and woody. Oh, how the seed balls cling and cling! All through summer, fall, and winter—winter and deep into spring. The tight brown husks persist, keeping to their branches as they overwinter through The Region’s howling winds and bitter, unforgiving cold. Feel them dry up in the springtime! Hear them crisp and desiccate and distend and disgorge! Pretend the long furry flyaway seeds become parachute troopers when they alight from the ground or from their branches. Up and away they go! Fly away from the Andersons. Away! Away! Away! Make your finger a bazooka and give them cover as through the sky they sail.
Jerry and Rachel sat on the living room sofa and watched Purdue embarrass itself on television. Rachel curled her knees to her chin and softly sobbed as she had done earlier in the day when she couldn’t find a tablespoon to measure coffee and the day before when the cancer clinic ladies finally invited her to lunch and the day before that when she and Michael dropped off the rest of Marcie’s clothes at Saint Ed’s down in Lowell. Jerry spread his fingers wide and cradled the back of Rachel’s head, his palm resting on the ridge between her neck and skull. He pinched together his thumb and forefinger and gently tugged on a lock of his daughter’s shaggy brown hair. We’ll head into town after the game, he said. Seems you need another high and tight.
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Originally published by Thieves Jargon 2007
Big Hark is a writer from Chicago
