C Hribal - The Company Car

“Maybe it’s just the morning sickness. It’s supposed to make you feel awful.” I was wondering two things: what it was like having a baby inside you, and how those pebbles had gotten on the roof. Balls and Frisbees were up there, too, but you could account for those. But the pebbles, and that baby that was now distending our sister’s belly—these were mysteries.

“Mom says she’s far enough along she shouldn’t be having morning sickness anymore. Christ, Emcee, she’s big as a fucking house. She looks like she doesn’t know what hit her.”

I didn’t know either, but I had an inkling. Those twin sons of a Catholic childhood, guilt and grief, had taken up residence in Cinderella’s heart. She had done something unfettered and free, something that she had wanted to do (though perhaps also the result of one of those “if you really loved me” scams), something that felt good (though from what Cinderella let drop in idle moments that wasn’t necessarily a sure thing, either), and the consequences had been almost immediate. God was punishing her. She had liked sex (maybe), or at least had thought it would get her something she wanted, and it had backfired. She would take it all back if she could, but it was too late. Those nuns had another success story: another woman—a girl, really—who was terrified of sex, of her own body and what it had done.

“She fell for that boy’s promises hook, line, and sinker,” we overheard our mother say on the phone to Matty Keillor. “Belief in a boy’s promises is a terrible thing.” I thought of Dorie right then—what had Calvin Brodhaus promised her? I didn’t want to think about it, but I did anyway. Especially when I heard that Dorie, too, had gotten knocked up—she was all of, what, seventeen?—and though she didn’t keep the baby (and Calvin was an SOB, disavowing any responsibility while bragging about how he did it), by the following spring Dorie was gone, off to Chicago, some said, and it would be a good decade and a half before I would see her again. The only thing she told me about that time was that she was young and stupid and that falling for a guy hook, line, and sinker was something she would never, ever do again.

Hook, line, and sinker—another of our father’s phrases. He said it without cynicism, without despair. If the bait was good, the fish bit. They might know a hook was buried under that worm, might know they were going to be reeled in, no matter. The attraction of the bait, the promise of what’s to come is too great. They block out consequences, the surety of their own death. They mouth the bait, suck it down, gorge themselves, and the hook buries itself deep in their gullets. It happens with people, too. We are driven like salmon up the river of our desires.

This may be a uniquely American phenomenon. Researchers have looked into the kinds of advertising that were used in the nineteenth century to lure people to the States: flyers that talked about gold lining the streets, posters claiming that farmers needed only to throw seeds at the ground, not even clearing it, and bumper crops of corn and wheat would emerge. Everyone was a millionaire, everyone owned his own business. Work was plentiful, land cheap and fertile, streets immaculate. It was a country without night pans, without offal, a nation of indoor plumbing and hot and cold running knockwurst. A place where every dream pursued was a dream realized. The researchers came up with the theory that America was settled by, therefore, and we are the descendants of, people disposed to believe the claims of advertising.

It was a two-way street for our father. For people to fall for something hook, line, and sinker you needed to offer them something they could believe in. Presentation was everything. You had to believe in the efficacy of what you were selling. Before you sold to anybody else, you had to sell it to, and believe it, yourself. Or at least believe that you believed. Our father had a phrase for that, too: word, line, and verse. You were swearing to the truth of what you were saying. You don’t believe me? God’s honest truth. You could look it up, word, line, and verse.

So it was with the stone soup. A part of us believed our father was cooking stone soup because a part of our father believed it, too. When we climbed down from the roof and came back inside along with everyone else, there it was, a pot of soup, and sitting on the counter was the stone, still steaming. We gaped.

“Just took it out,” said our father. “Wash yourselves, we’ll eat in a few minutes.”

Our father served us. “A key ingredient of stone soup is the stone itself,” he said. “You don’t get this richness without the granite. Limestone is good, too. So’s feldspar.” He looked around the table at us. “God’s honest truth. Word, line, and verse.”

“Wally,” said our mother. “Tell them.”

Our father kept ladling. “In the Second World War there was a soldier who got separated from his company. He ended up in a small village ravaged by the fighting as it had gone back and forth, and he had no food. There wasn’t much to be had in the village, either. He was hungry. Every door he knocked on he got the same answer: Sorry, no food. One woman gave him a big soup pot, however, and in the village square he built a fire and filled the pot with water. He washed off a chunk of rock that had been blasted from the village wall and put that in the pot. A woman came out to watch him. ‘What are you making?’ she asked. ‘Stone soup,’ said the soldier, stirring. ‘It’s a little thin, but a carrot might help.’ ‘I think I have a carrot,’ said the woman and brought one back with her. An old man came by and asked, ‘What are you making?’ and the soldier said, ‘Stone soup. So far I have the stone and a carrot, but some celery would be nice.’ ‘I think I know where I can find some celery,’ said the old man. And so it went. One after another of the villagers came by, asking the soldier what he was cooking, and to each the soldier said, ‘I’m making stone soup, and it’s good, but you know what would make it just a little better?’ and he would name another ingredient, and one by one the villagers, who could not feed the soldier or themselves, brought the necessary ingredients: flour, potatoes, tomatoes, salt, a chicken, onions, leeks, more carrots, garlic, pepper, a bit of bacon, a hunk of ham. To make room, the soldier took out the stone and kept adding ingredients, and the village and the soldier that night ate very, very well.” Our father looked around the table, pausing to fix each of us with his gaze. He’d been drinking while we’d been out; his gaze was a little wobbly, his eyes glassy. “That’s the way the story goes. Word, line, and verse. Now lately I’ve been hearing things about this family. Things about your sister. Things about my job. About my not having a job. Things I don’t want people repeating. What gets said in this family stays here. Nobody in this family goes it alone. We are Czabeks. Never forget that. What are we?”

“Czabeks,” we said.

“What was that name again? I don’t think I heard you.”

“Czabeks!” we said.

Our father went into the singsong of a drill instructor. “I can’t hear you.”

“CZABEKS!!!” we yelled.

“That’s better,” said our father. “Never forget that. We are Czabeks. Count on it. Believe it.”

“Hook, line, and sinker,” said Robert Aaron.

“Word, line, and verse,” I echoed.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” said our father.

I head down the field carrying a flashlight. I’ve drunk enough to have a buzz going, and I’m wondering if it’s going to be the same old same old when I rejoin my siblings. It’s already the same old same old with Dorie, but I’m not sure what to do about that.