Nathaniel (5 page)

“When are you going home?” Ryan Shields asked his cousin. After some initial suspicious circling of each other, the two boys had formed an alliance as the day had gone on, and after Michael’s mother had been taken upstairs, they had finally escaped from their grandmother’s living room. Now Ryan, ignoring the fact that he was wearing his Sunday suit, sprawled on the patchy green beneath the immense elm tree that shaded the yard between the house and the barn. He stared curiously up at Michael. Even though Michael was a year younger than himself, and three inches shorter, Ryan wasn’t at all sure he could take him in a fight. Indeed, an hour ago he’d given up even considering the possibilities, after Michael had rescued him from the clutches of his Grandmother Shields, who never failed to treat him as if he were still four years old.

From his perch on the rotting rope swing, Michael gave an experimental kick that barely set the device in motion. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I guess in a few days.”

Ryan frowned. “That’s what my dad said you’d do. But I think my mom wishes you’d stay here.”

Michael cocked his head. “Why would she want that?”

“Search me,” Ryan replied. “All I know is that they got in a big fight about it on the way over here. Well, it started to be a fight, anyway.” He paused and looked down, studying a blade of grass he’d plucked from the lawn as if it fascinated him. Not looking at Michael, he said, “Did your mom and dad fight?”

Michael shook his head. “Hunh-unh. At least not when I was around. Do your folks fight a lot?”

Ryan nodded. “Mostly about this place. Mom hates it here. Today, she said your dad was right to leave when he did.”

Suddenly Michael brought the swing to a halt, and joined his cousin on the ground. “Did she ever say how come Dad left?”

“Hunh?”

Michael, in unconscious imitation of his cousin, plucked a blade of grass and stuck it between his teeth. “I always thought Dad just didn’t want to be a farmer. But that seems kind of stupid. I mean, just because he wasn’t a farmer isn’t any reason not to come and visit, is it?”

“Nope,” Ryan agreed. “My dad doesn’t farm. What does that have to do with it?”

Michael rolled over and stared up into the elm tree, and for a long time the two boys were silent. When at last he spoke, Michael’s voice trembled. “Did—did you ever think about your dad dying?”

Ryan shifted uncomfortably, then glanced away from Michael. “Sure. Doesn’t everybody? Except—”

“Except what?” Michael asked.

“Well, I guess I only thought about it ’cause I knew it wasn’t really gonna happen.”

Suddenly Michael sat up, and his eyes fixed on his cousin. “I used to think about my dad dying when he went skydiving. That’s like falling. Do you think me thinking about it could have made it happen?”

“That’s crazy,” Ryan replied. “You can’t make something happen just by thinking about it. Besides, what happened to your dad was an accident, wasn’t it?”

Michael nodded, but his eyes were uncertain.

“Then it wasn’t your fault.” Suddenly both boys sensed a presence nearby, and looked up to see their grandfather looming over them. They scrambled to their feet, selfconsciously brushing the dust and grass from their clothes.

“That’ll make your mothers real thrilled with you,” Amos Hall commented. “What’s going on out here?”

“We were just talking,” Ryan told him.

“About what?”

The two boys glanced at each other. “Things,” Michael replied.

“Things,” Amos repeated. He fixed his eyes on Ryan. “You know what I was just saying to your grandma a couple of minutes ago? I was saying that I’ll bet those two boys are sitting out there discussing ‘things.’ And do you know what she said?”

Ryan regarded his grandfather suspiciously, sure he was about to fall into a trap, but in the end his curiosity got the best of him. “What?” he asked.

Amos grinned at the boy. “Well, why don’t you just go find her and ask her yourself? And while she tells you, you can help her with the dishes.” Then, when Ryan had disappeared through the back door of the house, he lowered himself to the ground and gestured for Michael to sit down beside him. “Everybody’s gone home,” he said, “so you can go back in without having to worry about them all poking at you and telling you how cute you are, and how much you look like your father, or your mother, or your Uncle Harry, if you have one. It’s all over.” He paused, then: “Do you understand?”

Michael hesitated, then nodded unhappily. “The funeral’s over.”

Amos Hall’s head bobbed once. “That’s right. The funeral’s over, and now we all have to get on with life. Your mother’s still in bed—”

“Is she all right?” Michael broke in.

“She’s probably just tired. It was hot as blazes in there, so we put her to bed. When you go inside I want you to be quiet so you don’t wake her up. Go on in and change your clothes, and then come out to the barn. There’s still a lot to be done, and we only have a couple of hours of light left.” He stood up, then offered Michael a hand. For a moment, he thought the boy was going to refuse it, but then Michael slipped his small hand into Amos’s much larger one, and pulled himself to his feet. Still, instead of heading for the house, Michael hesitated. Amos waited for him to speak, then prompted him.

“What is it, boy?” he asked, his voice gruff, but not unkind.

Michael looked up at his grandfather, his eyes wide. “What—what’s going to happen now, Grandpa?”

Amos Hall slipped an arm around his grandson, and started walking him toward the house. “Life goes on,” he said, and then in a tone meant to be reassuring, “We’ll just take it one step at a time, all right?”

But Michael frowned. “I guess so,” he said at last. “But I wish dad were here.”

“So do I,” Amos Hall replied, but the gentleness had gone out of his voice. “So do I.”

Janet awoke to the setting sun, and for the first time since she had been married, did not reach out to touch her husband. The funeral, then, had accomplished that much. Never again, she was sure, would she awaken and reach out for Mark. He was truly gone, and she was truly on her own now.

She sat up and began tentatively to get out of bed. The nausea was gone, and the flushed feeling with it, so she put her feet into a pair of slippers and went into the bathroom, where she splashed her face with cold water. Then she went back to her bedroom, took off the clothes she had been sleeping in, and put on a robe. At the top of the stairs, she listened for a moment.

There was a murmuring of voices from the kitchen but only silence from the living room. Running a hand through her hair, she started down the stairs.

The family was gathered around the kitchen table, and as she came upon them she stopped, startled. It was as if they belonged together, the elderly couple at either end of the table, and Michael, so obviously
theirs
, between them. It must, Janet realized, have been what the family looked like twenty years ago, except that instead of Michael between them, it would have been Mark. And Laura.

Almost abstractly, she noted that there was no place set for her at the table.

Michael saw her first.

“Mom! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I was just tired, and it was so hot—well, I’m afraid your old mother had what they call a fainting spell.”

“Are you sure you should be up, dear?” Anna Hall asked, her voice anxious. “Why don’t you go back up, and I’ll fix a plate for you. It’s just leftovers from the reception, but we’re making do with it. Or I could fix you some soup. There’s nothing like good homemade—”

“I’m fine, Anna,” Janet insisted. “If I could just sit down, I’ll—”

“Get your mother a chair, Michael.”

As his grandfather spoke, Michael got up from the table, ducked around his mother, and disappeared into the dining room. A moment later he was back, bearing one of Anna’s needlepoint-seated lyre-back “Sunday” chairs.

“Now why can’t I ever get action like that at home?” Janet asked as she settled herself at the table. “It would have taken me ages just to get his attention, and then there would have been a chorus of ‘Aw, Moms,’—”

“Aw, Mom …”

“See what I mean?”

Amos glared at her. “Children do what’s expected of them,” he stated, his tone indicating that there was no room for discussion.

“Or perhaps it’s just novelty,” Anna hesitantly suggested. Amos turned, about to speak, but she ignored him, wheeling her chair away from the table. A moment later she handed Michael some silverware and nodded toward Janet. “Set your mother a place.” She shifted her attention back to Janet. “It’s a known fact that children behave better in other people’s houses than they do in their own. As for expectations,” she added, turning to her husband, “what about Mark? We expected Mark to stay in Prairie Bend forever, and you certainly made that expectation clear to him. So much for
that
theory.”

An odd look came into Amos’s eyes, one that could have been either hurt or anger. In the tense silence that followed, Janet reached out to squeeze the old man’s hand. “I hadn’t known Mark was supposed to come home after college,” she said. “What would a sociologist have done here?”

Though she’d directed the question at her father-in-law, it was Anna who answered.

“At first, after he … left,” she said in a near whisper, choosing her words cautiously, “we didn’t even know he’d gone to college. We didn’t know where he’d gone. All we knew was that he wasn’t here. But we thought he’d come back.” She shrugged helplessly, avoiding Amos’s silent stare. “By then, we just didn’t know him anymore. And you don’t need a degree to run a farm. I guess he was never interested in farming. Not this farm, and not his own farm, either.”

Janet’s fork stopped halfway between her plate and her mouth, and she stared at Anna.
“His
farm? What are you talking about? Mark never had a farm.”

“Of course he had a farm,” Anna replied, her expression clearly indicating her conviction that Janet must be suffering a momentary lapse of memory. Then, as Janet’s demeanor failed to clear, her eyes shifted to her husband, then back to Janet. “You don’t mean to tell me he never told you about the farm, do you?”

Janet, feeling a sudden panic, turned to Michael for support. Was the same thing that had happened when she’d heard about Mark’s sister about to happen again? “Did daddy ever say anything to you about a farm? About owning a farm, I mean?”

Michael shook his head.

“But that’s not possible,” Amos interjected. “You must have known. The taxes, the estate—”

“The estate?” Janet asked. What on earth was he talking about? Slowly she put down her fork, then looked from Amos to Anna. At last her eyes came to rest on Michael. “I think perhaps it’s time you went up to your room.”

“Aw, Mom …”

“Do as your mother says,” Amos snapped, and after a moment of hesitation, Michael got up and left the table. Only when his footsteps had stopped echoing in the stairwell did Janet speak again. When she did, her voice was quavering.

“Now what is all this about?” she asked. “I thought you meant that Mark owned a farm a long time ago, before I met him. But when you mentioned taxes, and the estate—”

“He’s always owned a farm,” Amos said. “It was a wedding present, just as half of Laura and Buck’s farm was a wedding present to them. Buck’s parents gave them the other half. They don’t live on it, but they still own it and take the responsibility for it. And if Mark had married a local girl—”

But Janet had stopped listening. “A wedding present,” she whispered. “But you sent us silverware—”

“Well, of course there was that, too,” Anna replied.

“But that was
all
there was,” Janet insisted, her voice growing shrill in spite of herself. “If there’d been anything else, Mark would have told me. Wouldn’t he?
Wouldn’t he?”

Amos reached out and took her hand. “You really don’t know anything about it, do you?”

Mutely, Janet shook her head.

“It’s forty acres,” Amos said. “It was deeded to Mark on your wedding day, and he’s owned it ever since. I know, because I was afraid he might try to sell it, so I’ve kept track. I always hoped he’d come and live on it someday, but I guess I always knew that wouldn’t happen. Not ever, not the way he felt. But he did pay the taxes on it. As far as I know, he never tried to sell it.”

“But what’s happened to it?” Janet asked. “And why haven’t I ever heard of it before?”

“I don’t know why you’ve never heard of it,” Amos replied. “But it’s still there. It’s yours now.”

For a long moment, Janet stared at her husband’s parents, her mind churning. When at last she spoke, it was without thinking.

“He hated you very much, didn’t he? All of you.”

Amos Hall’s eyes flashed with anger, but Anna only stared ahead, looking into space.

“Yes, I suppose he did,” Amos finally said, the anger in his eyes disappearing as quickly as it had come. “But he’s dead, now. All that’s behind us, isn’t it?”

Though she went to bed early that night, Janet Hall did not go to sleep. She sat up, staring out over the moonlit prairie, her robe drawn tightly around her as if it could protect her from her own thoughts. For a while she tried to concentrate on the stars, laboriously picking out constellations she hadn’t seen so clearly since her childhood, but then, as the night wore on, her thoughts bore in on her.

It wasn’t just his sister Mark had never mentioned.

There was a farm, too.

All along, there had been a farm.

Painfully, she made herself remember all the talks they’d had, she and Mark, all the nights—nights like this—when they’d sat up talking about the future.

For Janet, the future had always held a farm.

Nothing concrete, nothing real. For Janet, the farm of her dream was something from a child’s picture book—a small place, somewhere in New England, with a whitewashed clapboard house, a bright red barn with white trim, an immaculate barnyard populated with hens and tiny fuzzy chicks, the whole thing neatly fenced off with white post-and-rail. There would be stone walls, of course, old stone walls meandering through the pastures, but the borders, the limits of her world, would be edged in white. And there they would live, their small family, released at last from the congestion of the city, their senses no longer dunned by the smells of garbage and exhaust, the sounds of jackhammers and blasting horns, but expanding to the aroma of fresh-mown hay and the crowing of roosters at dawn.