Jane Smiley - Golden Age

He didn’t dare answer.

The fact was, Guthrie was in the neighborhood: he was spending time, and maybe living, with two friends from high school, Melinda Grand and Barry Heim. Melinda was a nurse’s aide at Usherton Hospital, and Barry was a long-haul trucker for the pork-confinement operation that Jesse’s father had hated so much. What did Guthrie do? Well, that was a good question. He told Jen that he was taking classes at Usherton Community College, in hotel management, and living on “savings.” The house that Melinda and Barry lived in was an old farmhouse north of town, overlooking the river, never good farm country, good for hiding something. Guthrie did not think he would be deployed again; he was glad to be home; he was twenty-five and looked fifty.

Even though it was time to get going on the farm work — at least to be fixing this and that, checking the soil moisture, thinking about seed (or listening to the salesmen give him their pitches) — all Jesse really wanted to do was drive past that dump Guthrie lived in and see what was going on. Except that the dump was located on a very un-Iowa sort of road, not the usual grid, but back up a long drive littered with junk — an old truck, old engine parts, a rusted cultivator, some tires, and that was only what he could see from the road. The roof peak of the house itself thrust up above the treetops, and it looked like it had shingles on it. He knew what people all over Iowa did in those types of houses: they cooked up drugs. Jesse stared up the lane for a few minutes and then drove on to Usherton to the feed store. When he got home in the late afternoon, and Jen told him that Guthrie had called and would be there for supper, Jesse felt anxious and guilty, as if his spying might be found out.

For a week, the weather had been suspiciously mild. Jesse was sitting on the front porch in the old rocker, nursing a beer, and watching the high wisps of cloud to the south turn gold and then pink. When he saw Guthrie’s car, a two-year-old Nissan, he couldn’t stop himself from wondering if old wreck or newish sedan was more suspect. When Guthrie got out of the driver’s side and looked in both directions before proceeding up the walk, he couldn’t not wonder what Guthrie was looking at or for. When Guthrie frowned, was that a bad sign? When he then smiled, was it a self-conscious or even a guilty smile? A foot on the bottom step; he looked thin. Was he fit, or was he eaten away? Jesse said, “Hey.”

Guthrie said, “Hey.”

Everyone said that when a boy went away to a war he came back a man. Guthrie had gone away twice, come back twice — did that double the maturity quotient? Everyone also knew that you could never see the boy in the man: every man looked more like his father and uncles than he did like his youthful self. Guthrie looked like a combination of Jesse’s dad and Jen’s brother David — which side did the premature worry lines come from? Jesse often missed Minnie, who would tell him. She had moved to the old folks’ home, and they hardly ever heard from her. He finished his beer and stood up, but he didn’t hug his son. Hadn’t seen him in two months, but to hug him could imply something that might offend.

They went in the house.

Jen might also worry about Guthrie, but, as an optimistic, active, fit, and healthy sort, she would almost certainly not have thought of methamphetamine, would only remember the best about Melinda and Barry — how cute they were in fourth grade or whenever — and so Jesse had said nothing to her concerning his anxiety. A scientific type of farmer, he told himself this was an experiment: If and when Jen expressed concern, then his own concerns would be justified, and they could, might, do something. What that would be, no one on the Internet agreed. Guthrie kissed his mom, went to the refrigerator, offered Jesse another beer, took one for himself. Jesse popped the cap. Guthrie said, “Corona? You guys are getting very snooty.”

Jesse said, “They just appeared one day.”

Jen said, “If you want to know the truth, Felicity left them the last time she was here.”

Guthrie said, “I have a hard time imagining Felicity tossing one back.”

Jen said, “She sips and savors, as if it were a nice Chardonnay.”

Guthrie said, “I believe that.” Then, “Listen to this. Grandma called me. She wants me to go with her to the Isle of Skye this summer.”

Jen said, “Near Scotland?”

“I guess. She is going for the salmon and the venison.”

Jen laughed. “Only Lois.”

Jesse said, “Are you going?”

“It is like forty degrees there.”

“Nice of her to ask, though.”

Guthrie’s cheekbones were a little sharp, his eyes a little wide. But he did not fidget. When they sat down at the table, Jesse thought, Please, don’t let me count his helpings. But he did — two of the mashed potatoes, one of the meatloaf, one of the green beans, one of the brand-new, spanking-fresh baby spinach from the garden. No dessert. Jen didn’t make cakes or pies. Jesse thought that his mom would be sad to know that she had had no lasting effect on their entremets and gâteau consumption; Jen had never opened the Julia Child cookbook his mom had left behind. She was coming here in a week for Easter — there could be leftover crème brûlée and they could maybe persuade Guthrie to get out of town. He leaned back, stretched, and groaned a little, in the great tradition of an aging, slightly overweight farmer, and said, “Anyway, how’s it going?”

“I got a job.”

“Oh, lovely,” said Jen.

“Maybe,” said Guthrie. “It’s part-time — manning the front desk at the Motel 6 on 330.”

“Are you in charge of bedbug patrol?” said Jen, good-naturedly.

“Bedbugs come after exposed wires and clogged drains. I guess new management has a plan, and part of the plan is easing out the eighty-year-old who’s checking people in now.”

Jesse said, “Then they’ll hire themselves some guests.”

“It could work,” said Guthrie. “At least it’s a start.”

“A start is always good,” said Jen.

Jesse said, “I could use some help in May,” but Guthrie didn’t appear to have heard him. His absolute resistance to farming remained in place.

Jen began clearing the table. They talked a bit about Felicity, but not about Perky. Jen cast no speculative glances toward Guthrie, made no observations about what he had and hadn’t eaten, seemed not to notice his foot tapping the floor. After supper, they watched an episode of something or other in the living room — Jesse felt his distraction and concern beginning to overwhelm him. Guthrie got up to leave; Jen went with him out onto the porch. They talked for a while, and though Jesse did attempt to enlarge his ears in order to hear them, he didn’t move from his spot on the sofa. He heard Guthrie’s steps, a moment later heard the car turn on and depart, looked at Jen when she came in. She looked back at him. She said, “It’s okay if his reintegration is slow. Slow is steady. Slow is stable. He’s had a few dates with a girl from the college. She wants to be a chef.” Jesse wished he could see Guthrie as Jen did, a system basically sound and stable, just needing a few repairs. He vowed not to drive by that house, that junk, ever again.

—

FELICITY WAS getting fond of the horse she had to muck out for, who was quarantined at the back of the barn because he had a very contagious ailment called, of all things, “strangles.” She gave him hay three times a day, changed his water, mucked his stall out twice, and did everything in a pair of overalls that she had to leave by the door, along with a hat, a hairnet, rubber boots, and a pair of gloves. As long as she was taking care of this horse, she also was not to go into any other part of the equine facility. For four weeks, until the horse tested negative for strangles, that was her job, because there had been an outbreak at the vet school two years earlier, and it had been a nightmare.