Jane Smiley - Golden Age

Guthrie did wolf his food down — his plate was clean, and he was still wiping a piece of bread over it as he talked. He could eat anything in any quantity and never gain a pound, unlike Jesse himself, or Jen, for that matter. Jen said, “You want the last chop? It’s a little overdone.”

Guthrie said, “Like a hundred and fifty soldiers have been killed the whole time. That’s less than one-tenth of one percent.”

Jesse smiled, not about the troops, but because Guthrie had done the math. Guthrie had graduated from high school, just barely, having played on every team with tremendous enthusiasm but not much strength or skill. There was no sport at Iowa or Iowa State anymore that was just fun, because every team was expected to win and to bring in funding. Jesse had heard that the football coach at one or the other of the two was earning a million dollars a year, but the farmers at the Denby Café tended to exaggerate these sorts of things, especially if they themselves were not raking in a million dollars a year — those who were didn’t eat breakfast at the Denby Café. Perky hadn’t graduated yet, but he was doing somewhat better than Guthrie had, with a B average in all subjects, about the same as Jesse at the same age. Guthrie didn’t have Uncle Frank as an inspiration. College sounded boring to him, more classes, more reading, more papers that started with an introduction, continued with a main body, and then ended with a conclusion at the bottom of page two. He hadn’t applied to ISU or UI. When Jen brought it up (only in her Socratic, you-might-consider-this way), he said that there were four community colleges within forty miles — he would decide later. At least every other day, the two boys talked about the military.

When the war started, Jesse had gone to his box of Uncle Frank’s old letters and read a few about the Second World War. When he’d read them as a kid, they’d seemed weird and exciting: swimming beside a water moccasin in the Ozarks had seemed right out of the movies, not to mention the anecdotes about Anzio, the Rapido River, and Sicily. He didn’t think that Uncle Frank had been nostalgic for the war; he was too unsentimental for that. But he had appreciated the way that his life developed out of the war — the German papers he had translated, that he understood the dangers of the world and how they must be confronted head-on. Why had Jesse grabbed his soil testers and mapped his own little world? Because, if you were going to make it as a farmer, you had to do it right, and Uncle Frank was all about doing it right. After supper, while Jen and Felicity watched a rerun of Unsolved History concerning the death of Princess Diana, Jesse reread a letter Frank had sent him about the farm. It had come not long after Frank gave him the acreage that he’d bought from Cousin Gary. He wrote, “Dear Jesse, Imagine my surprise when I looked into it and found out that I could have gotten this three hundred fifty acres at half price a few years ago. I’m not telling you what Gary charged me, but I will say that in ’73, he would have charged me $750 per acre and been taking me to the cleaners. Anyway, the lesson for you, as a twenty-year-old owner of real property, is that land is only a commodity once in a while. Keep your eye on the price of gold, the price of land. Just telling you right now, land is about $1,600 per acre, gold is $144 per ounce. Get back to me in twenty years. Love, Uncle Frank.”

Jesse went into the kitchen and got the morning paper out of the trash. Gold was $355 an ounce. Land, he knew, was about twenty-two hundred. He passed through the living room and said, “Felicity, can I use your computer for a moment?”

Felicity nodded, her eyes glued to the TV set.

The computer was turned on; in fact, it was never turned off. A fire hazard? He searched about for an inflation calculator. When he found it, he saw that both his land and his fictional gold had lost plenty of value since 1976. His land should be worth almost five thousand per acre, and gold should be worth almost $450 per ounce. He stared at the computer for a long minute, then went to a site he enjoyed about wild plants and herbs. He must have gotten his taste for roadside chamomile from his mom, he thought.

That night, just after Jen got into bed, she said, “Honey, I have to tell you this. David is selling the farm.”

David was her brother. He had 640 acres up near Grundy Center, a whole section (worth, Jesse now knew, $1.4 million, or four thousand ounces of gold). Jesse frowned and said, “Why now?”

“Because the debt is driving him bananas. The buyers said they would take it and the equipment for the price of the debt, and he could keep the house and live in it and work the land for them. It’s some corporation. They will pay him to work the land.”

“So — he becomes a tenant farmer.”

Jen sniffed, was quiet, then said, though not resentfully, “Who isn’t, really?”

And, thinking of his own debt, Jesse said, “I don’t know.”

—

OVER THE YEARS, Richie had come to understand that the motto of the House of Representatives was “This, too, shall pass”—this campaign, this fund-raiser, this debate, this lecture from an irate voter, this two-year term, this bill, this item of paperwork that no one, least of all the congressman himself, had time to read. A year before, he had, indeed, truly thought his office-holding phase was also about to pass, but, alas, no. Enough of his constituents forgave him for his support of the Iraq Resolution so that he squeaked by. (And who was to say that Vito Lopez had not helped in that effort, just a bit? And, for that matter, Michael had, at last, contributed to his campaign, the largest legal amount.)

This latest “letter” that he had to read sat on his desk with a Post-it arrow and exclamation point from Riley. Richie tried not to understand what she was getting at. The letter was about funding for hightech solutions to low-tech threats: Iraqis would leave bombs along the roadside in cans, plastic bottles, the carcasses of animals, old cushions. American soldiers would walk or drive by, and the bomb would go off. The army maintained that they had foreseen this tactic all along; however, they now needed “tethered blimps with cameras” (almost forty million bucks), jammers against remote controls (no price tag), and seventy million more bucks for “new solutions” (read: “desperate measures”). The desperate measures were due for immediate shipment (after New Year’s, after Easter, maybe sometime next summer). Richie made no sarcastic comments in public. He only nodded and looked grave. Our soldiers were still dying, and Iraq had been conquered!

But Richie could not say that he had a solution, other than time travel. Sometimes, walking through the halls of the Capitol, he thought of The Terminator (who didn’t?) — Arnold Schwarzenegger returns from the future and guns down the Hammer and everyone else who asked Richie day after day if he was “on board.” Richie didn’t ask for that. He would settle for Galaxy Quest —just a few extra seconds to have changed one thing. But, he thought, what would that thing be? The moment he said yes when Congressman Scheuer asked him if he wanted to run? The moment he said yes when Alex Rubino said he should go over and work for the congressman, just to keep an eye on the old man? The moment he said, “You know, I think it would be interesting,” when Ivy made a face at the idea of his running?

It was worse because Michael showed him off now. He came to Washington at least twice a month and stayed at the Hay-Adams. Richie would go for breakfast or lunch, and they would eat so good-naturedly together, laughing at the same jokes, looking much the same (Richie had to make sure that he wore Michael’s least favorite colors on those days, just to be certain that they were not dressed alike). Twins weren’t supposed to look as much alike as they aged, but people would do double takes, even those who had known Richie for years. Richie always said, “I’m the left-hander,” to smooth over the moment. Michael seemed jolly and harmless and incredibly rich — no one in Washington objected to that anymore. Yes, he had a watch collection, something Richie, with his Timex, could not fathom. Yes, he now drove a Ferrari, but he drove it sedately. Michael grabbed his hand and smacked him on the shoulder when they parted.