Frederick Busch - The Stories of Frederick Busch

Ian stood up to watch, then ran down to the gravel where cars were parked below the big house. He shouted, “Mommy, it’s the police. It’s the police, Mommy!”

Brenda went down to him, lighting a cigarette, then standing with it sticking out of her mouth, her lips curled hard to hold it. “It’s taxi, Ian.” She called back to his mother, “Has our Ian not seen taxis before?”

The driver let the man out at the second gate, the wooden one close by the stream that Brenda had told him was a dike and that his grandfather called a beck. But Ian’s mother had said he could call it a stream because that’s what they had in America.

The heavy man walked up, carrying a brown leather bag with two straps, rolling a little sideways when he walked.

Brenda said, “Ian, is that what your dad looks like?”

THEY WALKED UP the access road, following the rich brown mounds of horse droppings, going along the stone fences, and then through the rocky fields where there were no fences and the road took them high enough to look down steep grazing grounds with teeth of gray rock coming through the grass, and then, on their left, the hills going higher, green and gray, and then the moors beginning, ferny and darker with moss, wet, and beyond them the blueness of mountains, grainy and clear in the bright late afternoon. His father held his hand and he stopped them near a tiny fall of water which came over rocks into a small pool that drained beneath the road and ran on the other side down to the sheep below. His father said, “Are you tired?”

Ian said, “I came up here plenty of times.”

His father nodded. He pulled a thick-bladed weed up, peeled it back, wetted it, put the end in his mouth, and blew. Nothing came out. He said, “It used to make a whistle when I was a kid.”

Ian said, “It’s probably a different kind of plant in America.”

“Everything’s different here, huh?”

“And they call them different things. They don’t say boots, they say Wellingtons. Grampa got me these in Ulverston. We go shopping there. Will you get boots, Daddy?”

“You think I should?”

“If you stay here, yes. Do you have enough money?”

“Yes, love, thank you.”

“Because Grampa gave me some English money if you need it.”

“Thank you, love.”

“If you want to stay here and go for a hike or something.”

“Hey, I missed you a lot, Ian.”

“They have all these swamps here. Brenda calls them boggy.”

“Ian, I was really missing you. And Stu, and Mommy.”

Ian walked ahead of his father, past the waterfall. The boy said, “Come on, Daddy. Only next time you have to wear boots. Wellingtons. All right?”

THE GRANDFATHER SAT at the desk, writing with a black fountain pen on long white paper. The dust fell onto him and disappeared into his shadow, into the words that he wrote. Ian stood at the door, his hand on the knob, watching. The grandfather didn’t look up. He said, “Come here.”

Inside, where the books stood in all their shelves and the newspapers were curled on the table near the wide red-cushioned chair, Ian stood beside the desk and watched the dark hairs on his grandfather’s hands as they moved in the shadows. He said, “Hi.”

“Can you read what I’m writing?”

“I’m not old enough to read that kind. The letters are too scribbly.”

“I’m writing a book. What do you think of that?”

“Is it a good book?”

His grandfather looked over the heavy tweed on his arm at Ian’s face. He said, “Is that a good question?”

Ian looked up at him. He said, “That’s all I could think of.”

His grandfather stood up from his chair. Ian moved back. His grandfather waved his hand inside his sport-coat pocket and took out a puddle of coins. He held the palm up to his face, poked through it, pinched a big copper two-pence piece, and held it out for Ian to take. He said, “Damned good question. It’s all I could think of too.” He sat down, pushed himself closer to the desk, looked at the page, and then at the papers beside it. He said, “Say thank you and disappear.”

“Thank you, Grampa. Should I say disappear?”

The grandfather hugged himself and ducked his head and shook, and the sneeze belched out. He panted, then rubbed his arm over the page, making some of the words run. He wiped his mouth and hugged his chest for the next one.

AT DINNER IN the big house, they could hear Stuart crying in his room in the cottage. The grandfather brought the pork roast in from the kitchen. He said, “Anna, do you want to see to Stuart?”

Ian’s mother said, “No, dear. You ask me that nearly every night, and I tell you that he’s all right. That’s how he goes to sleep.”

The grandfather said, “Do you remember that ruckus, Harry?”

Ian’s father said, “It hasn’t been that long.”

Brenda smoked a cigarette and said, “Did you pick the wine?”

The grandfather said, “Absolutely. And with care.”

“It’s too dry.”

Carving, his grandfather looked up, raised his gray eyebrows, smiled. He said, “You’ve got the taste of a Yorkshire pig-farmer.”

Brenda said, “I’m the daughter of a Yorkshire pig-farmer.”

Ian said, “Brenda says she saw a pig eat a chicken once.”

“A pig will take a chunk from a fair-sized man,” Brenda said.

The grandfather passed a plate to Ian’s father. He said, “Let’s see a man take a bit of a pig, then, Harry.”

Ian’s mother said, “You have such elegance, Daddy.”

“Yes I do, don’t I? Sort of careless elegance. It’s what the landed gentry are supposed to show. But I wish I had a little more land and a little less gentry.”

Ian’s father said, “Should I cut your meat, Ian?”

Ian said, “Yes, please.”

Ian’s mother said, “I’ll do it. Pass my your plate.”

“Can Daddy do it?”

His father put his hands in his trouser pockets and sat lower in his chair.

Brenda said, “I wonder if anyone would like a cigarette?”

Ian passed his plate. His grandfather bowed low, sat up straighter, crossed his chest with arms, and sneezed onto the roast.

Ian’s mother said, “I think you’ve got a little less gentry, Daddy. God. I won’t want second helpings, thank you.”

Brenda held the cigarette with her lips and said, “I think the old boy’s allergic to horses.”

IN THE STONE BARN, half of its roof burned away and never replaced, hay stacked in the covered part, Ian, in the cool darkness, while sun ran like water into the open side, swam in the bales, jumped from one layer to another, wriggled between them, hid. Yellow seed popped into the air as he played, and each time he buried himself he came back up with more long stalks on his short-sleeved shirt and his arms. He chanted to himself, “Don-ta-don,” rolling and sidling, pulling hay away with his hands, then heaping it back over himself, “Don-ta-don.” He said, “Don-ta-don,” and was a diving thing, a creature of animal strength and warlike thrusts which hid and then revealed itself; fearless, it nevertheless sought the lower bales and the spaces between them nearest to the floor. And when the smell of strong cigarettes came up the dirt path behind the barn on the hillside, and when Brenda’s voice came, singing hoarsely and low, the creature went to ground.

She pulled a bale out by its strings and laid it along her right shoulderblade and flank. Bursting up from cover, the hiding thing called, “Yah- hah !” Brenda straightened, took the cigarette from her mouth as she eased the bale back down, said quietly, “Ian, I have asked you not to muck about in the hay. Now you come down off of there and help me scatter this to the rubbishy creatures, will you?”