A Far Piece to Canaan (24 page)

I couldn't believe it. I didn't expect that kind of stuff from Ben. I stared at the fire and thought about what he said. “What would you do about it if you were me?”

Ben stretched and yawned. When he did, he looked like a big cat. “I'd forget th' damn rabbits. Fred'd be my best friend if I was you, and a bunch of rabbits ain't worth losin' a friend over. 'Specially if he's a best one.”

We talked a little longer, then I took off for home. On the way, I got mad at Ben and everybody else. I hadn't done anything wrong! Fred stole the rabbits and lied, not me. If somebody stole Ben's pumpkins or Dad's tobacco, they'd know whose side I was on, but nobody give a shit about my rabbits. Okay, fine, they could just be that way!

I stayed mad all that night and lay in bed and ate the last of the Santas. The next morning, which was Christmas, I unwrapped the present. When the brown paper come off I forgot about being mad. It was a walnut box and carved like the stocks of Ben's guns. There were birds and deer and squirrels and some animals I had never seen in real life, like moose and bear. It was polished so good the shine seemed to go way down in it. I took it to the living room to open the box and everybody gathered around.

“My goodness,” said Mom. “What a beautiful box! What's inside?”

I lifted the lid and inside was a pair of bedroom slippers, only they wudn't like any other slippers I'd seen. The outside was mink and muskrat and the inside was rabbit. The bottoms were real soft leather and everything was lashed together with rawhide.

“Samuel, who . . .?” said Mom.

Dad shook his head. “It's Samuel's secret as long as he wants t' keep it.”

I
was hot, sweaty, tired, and hungry as I drove back to my hotel. I took a shower, slowly turning the tap to cold. When I got out, a crisp, frosty, fall-in-New-Hampshire sensation invigorated me and with it, my appetite. I headed for the hotel's restaurant.

The restaurant was spacious, with white tablecloths and uniformed waiters. It was still early and there were only a few diners, one table being occupied by a family. I was thirsty and ordered a beer. As my thirst slaked, I became aware of things occurring at the family's table.

The two adults were early middle-age and with them was a girl who looked to be in her late teens. I didn't catch all the conversation, but I could tell they were arguing. From their accents they were not of Kentucky.

Suddenly the man opened up on the girl, who was trying to defend herself but couldn't because the man wouldn't let her. The mother proved an unsuccessful diplomat as the man railed on. I could make out a few words, “expect,” “pregnant,” and “Ronnie.”

Suddenly, the mother threw up her hands. “I can't stand this,” she said loudly, “I'm going back to the room.” In a few minutes the table, thankfully, was empty.

By the time my steak, baked potato, salad, and another beer arrived, the argument at the table had evoked memories of Dad and Ben. I learned a lot about parenting from them. Ben was my friend but he had advised me in some ways like a father. He didn't become angry with me. Frustrated, perhaps, but he listened to my arguments. Dad was a little more volatile in his approach to rearing his most difficult son but was also willing to consider my thoughts when they differed from his. He never hit or ridiculed me. They let me make mistakes, provided logical guidance, then let me learn from my mistakes. In some of my darkest moments, their views, taught so long ago, allowed me to persevere, to think my own thoughts and stick to them until I was proven wrong. Their simple lessons continued to influence me as a father.

Raising daughters isn't easy. Everything goes well until they turn about twelve, then they discover, or perhaps are discovered by, the opposite sex. My traumatic introductions to the maturing female brain came at 1 a.m. one morning when sixteen-year-old Penny hadn't arrived home from a date with a seventeen-year-old “hunk” who was the star running back of her high school football team. He was supposed to have had her home by midnight! Nora tried to keep me calm.

“Samuel, they're only an hour late and I know this boy's mother. He's a good kid. They'll be home soon. They simply lost track of time.”

I squirmed about on the living room couch where we were sitting, Nora stroking my hand. I was mad and getting madder. “When she gets in, she's grounded! For a month! And when I get my hands on that kid she's with, he's gonna be the only one-legged high school running back in the nation!”

Nora laughed. “You men amaze me. From puberty, the only thing you have in mind is sex. You hatch an infinite number of schemes for sleeping with girls. Then, after trying to deflower every virgin around, you turn into puritan preachers the moment you have a daughter.”

I gave Nora a baleful stare. “I did not deflower every virgin around!”

Nora laughed again, slipped her arms around my neck, and planted a big kiss on my mouth. The kiss was nice. I kissed back and pretty soon we were necking. One thing led to another . . . then we heard the door close. This required some rapid rearranging of clothes before I confronted Penny.

“How come you're an hour and fifteen minutes late, young lady?” I asked.

Penny held up her hands. “Rita Adams' date's car went on the fritz and Charles and I had to take them both home. I tried to call but our line was busy. It was a long way to their houses, but it would've been twice as long for their parents, so I insisted that we take them. I knew I was supposed to be in by twelve but I thought I was doing the right thing. Did I do wrong?”

I reached over and picked up our downstairs phone. Our youngest daughter was talking to her friends. At past one in the morning! Nora gave me a shot in the ribs and I grinned, sheepishly.

“You did right, Penny. I apologize for doubting you. When you get upstairs, tell your sister Candy to hang up the damn phone and go to bed!”

Candy proved to be a handful. Boys again. Times changed, but I hadn't. I didn't have a problem with premarital sex (how could I?), but I did have problems with promiscuity.

Candy was not promiscuous, but her sexuality was being . . . expressed . . . by her senior year of high school. She and I had always had a close relationship and we frequently trout-fished together in the summers, even during her years in college. One day when we were fishing a beautiful stream and had caught several nice trout, Candy waded out of the river and sat down on a large rock. It seemed odd to me that she would leave the water when fishing was hot, so I swam over and sat down beside her. I said nothing.

“Dad, I'm pregnant.”

That is not an easy thing for the father of an unwed daughter to hear. Not me, anyway. I tried to think what to say, then I remembered Ben's technique. I didn't say anything, choosing instead to nod and let her tell me.

“You're probably wondering how this happened. I've been dating a boy named Boyd Iversen for about four months. He's a year ahead of me at Dartmouth . . . a senior. He's really cute and we've been sleeping together. I ran short of money and didn't buy my birth control one month, and, well, I'm pregnant.”

It was obvious some shoes had yet to fall, so I nodded again.

“When I told Boyd, he got really angry and said it was my fault. He's starting law school and says he doesn't want to be burdened with a child. He says I should have an abortion.”

My gut reaction to this news was to ask for Boyd Iversen's address and the whereabouts of the nearest sporting goods store that sold baseball bats. Instead, I nodded.

“I don't know what to do. I'm so miserable,” she confided as the tears and sobs came.

We sat on the rock for a long time with our arms around each other. I decided her statement about not knowing what to do was a request for advice. “Have you thought over what you might do?”

“I've barely thought about anything else the whole three weeks I've known. I don't love Boyd and he doesn't love me, so marriage is out. Everything comes down to having an abortion or a baby, then deciding whether to keep it or let it be adopted. I can't make up my mind.”

“Which way are you leaning?”

Candy clutched my arm so hard it was painful and tears streamed down her face. “I don't think I could live with myself if I had an abortion, Dad. I want to have the baby, but I don't know if I'll be able to give it up for adoption once it's born. My insurance only pays for part of this. I'll need help. I swear I'll pay you back. There's another thing, I'm going to be pregnant and hanging around the house. Your colleagues will know your daughter got knocked up.”

It was time to be a man. “Candy, whatever you choose, I'll support. As for my colleagues, they can go pound sand. If you decide to keep it, your baby will be my grandchild and I'll treat him no differently than any of my other grandchildren. As for what it costs, don't you worry. Half the money is going to come from young Mr. Iversen. You can tell him that from me. He either—in advance—pays half the calculated cost for the entire pregnancy and delivery, or I'll write a letter to the dean of his law school concerning the issue. He has three weeks to get me that check before my letter goes out. Does your mother know?”

“Yes. She thinks I should have the baby.”

I chuckled. “I'd have bet th' farm on that.”

The hug I received from Candy nearly crushed my ribs.

I grunted. “Tell Mr. Iversen one last thing. Tell him if we ever meet, he had better be wearing pillows over his cast-iron jockstrap.”

Both of us laughed.

A week later, Candy miscarried. Still, she had made a life decision. And I had been a real father. I remember thinking that Dad and Ben would have been proud of me.

W
e finished stripping just before New Year's, and got on the first tobacco sale after the Christmas break. Dad and Alfred set Fred and me up on their worst baskets of burley so that the buyers would think it was given to us and maybe bring a better price. It was fun sitting on the baskets of burley. You could see the whole warehouse. The tobacco was in rows about four foot apart that stretched from one end of the building to the other and down these come the buyers. It was Fred's and my job to sit on the baskets twice, once when the government man came around and put his government price on it and once for the buyers. The government man didn't speak, he just grabbed a few hands of burley out of the stack, glanced at them, then threw them on top of the stack and wrote a number on a paper slip and walked on.

Finally, the auctioneer came around going a mile a minute, saying things couldn't nobody understand except the bidding price and who bought it. The buyers walked along behind, pulling tobacco from the stack, then bidding by making secret signs. The crowd was moving about half as fast as folks walk and it was hard to see how anybody made sense of the buying.

Old Alfred stood behind the basket Fred was on and when the buyers got close he yelled, “Bid her up, boys—hit's the young'uns.” The buyers eyed Fred, then me a little further down the row, and just kept moving.

Both our crops sold good and when we headed home everybody was rich and happy. We had to stop at two filling stations on the way for Alfred to pee though, and he kept saying he felt weak and it was easy to see he'd been losing weight. Dad told him to start eating better now that he had money, and Alfred said he wondered if that was why he was getting puny. Dad said sure, that if a person didn't eat, he'd get weak and lose weight and why didn't he kill a hog. Alfred said he didn't figure they needed any full hog and would just buy a few more salt butts.

It was a good winter, but a rough one. Nights would go down to four, five above and warm up in the daytime to the high twenties. It was bright and clear though, and I spent as much time outside as possible on the new sled I got for my eleventh birthday.

In February, the six gilts we saved from our last bunch of hogs found forty-six pigs. With the six sows we had fifty-two head of hogs. Alfred had great luck too. He was really happy, especially when the price of hogs jumped.

Winter just didn't seem to want to quit, though. In late March, when it was usually rainy, we had a cold spell that lasted until the second week of April. It was scary at the Mulligans'. Everybody was skinny and moved real slow. We caught a few rabbits, which helped, and Mamie cut the salt butts thin. They were ready to start eating the starved old hens when a miracle happened: spring! It come overnight. Birds sang, flowers bloomed, everything living felt happy. And Alfred bought his mules and equipment.

The late spring picked folks up and flung them into a new crop year. Everybody was behind and working seven days a week, daylight 'til dark. I didn't see a single neighbor until late May and the only reason I did then was because of heavy rain. I went over to the Mulligans'. It wudn't I wanted to see Fred so much as I didn't have anybody else to visit. I couldn't go to Lonnie's, Ben's was further than I wanted to walk in the rain, and I only spoke to LD if I had to.

It was a warm rain and smelled like spring rains always smell and trickled in little rivers two, three inches wide over the yellow dandelion and short young bluegrass fields. By the time I reached the Mulligans' hog lot, I was soaked. From the top of the gate I could see secondhand equipment everywhere. Next to the yard fence on Cummings Hill, two young mules swished their tails. They were big, boy.

I jumped down on the other side of the gate and knocked on the front door. Thelma Jean opened it about a foot.

“Whatchawant, Sam?” she asked, looking at me, skinny, dumb, and ugly.

“Samuel,” I said. “Is Fred home?”

“Reckon. Whatchawant?”

“T' see Fred!”

“Aw. Okay. Fred, hit's Sam!” she yelled.

“Samuel,” I muttered, and I could hear stomping around, then Fred come to the door. He was skinny like Thelma Jean but not quite as bad.