Jane Smiley - Early Warning

Two hundred twenty-eight thousand dollars! Walter would have been speechless, Joe thought. Hadn’t there been a year or so when Joe was about ten when their corn yield was thirty-five bushels and they were happy to get it? But the one thing Walter had never stopped saying, so that Joe had had to put his hands over his ears, was: Bigger yields, lower profits. You’ve got to sell it to someone.

Joe did not understand the purpose of going to church, at least these days. When the farmers talked to one another, they talked about bad times — lately, the way the Reagan administration was doing its best to put that gasohol idea to death, even though processing plants were already being built. When the farmers kept their mouths shut, their wives talked about what in the world they were going to do, and when they all shut up and listened to Pastor Campbell, the only good news he had to offer was about somewhere far away that they might get to or might not, depending not, Joe realized, on following the rules, but on whether God liked you. That’s why the pastor had pussyfooted around Marsh Whitehead so carefully — he had committed suicide, but there was no guarantee that God didn’t like that, because God worked in mysterious ways and thought mysterious thoughts, and that would be the only thing Pastor Campbell could say in good conscience to Sarah Whitehead and those three girls.

THE WEDDING, everyone knew but no one admitted, was very sudden. Lillian had never even heard that Jesse had a girlfriend, and maybe, Debbie implied, but only by raising her eyebrows, he still didn’t. However, the girl (her name was Jennifer Guthrie) wasn’t far enough gone to look obvious in her wedding dress, and Lillian was sure that, as the date of parturition approached, there would be some discussion of the eight-pound baby’s having been born six weeks prematurely. You had to say for Lois that she put on as good a wedding as if she had been hired by the bride and her parents for the purpose, and you had to say for Jesse that he looked happy, and you had to say for Jennifer that she was local and knew what she was getting herself into. Frank was saying that he remembered her grandfather, who had been six or seven when Frank was five, and who maybe was on the first football team ever fielded by North Usherton High School, and didn’t he marry Betty Prince, who was what passed for a cheerleader in those days? Lillian had no idea, but she could see that her brother Joe was more cheerful than she had ever seen him in her life, strolling around the Usherton American Legion Hall in a new suit, grabbing elbows and shaking hands, and laughing.

Jesse was a handsome groom, too — muscular the way a twenty-seven-year-old could be. Best to get married at your physical peak and have a year or so of feeling like you really were Warren Beatty and she really was Natalie Wood, and you could evolve into your humdrum paunchy selves a little at a time. Lillian looked over at Arthur, who was dancing with Andy. Andy had not evolved — she was more like a fly in amber — but she gracefully followed where Arthur led, and every time Arthur swung her around, he looked past her ear, caught Lillian’s gaze, and smiled. Lillian said, “Andy is a good dancer.”

“She’s pliable,” said Frank.

Lillian disapproved of the casual disrespect Frank always showed when he talked about Andy, but she had to admit that Andy didn’t seem to notice, or else seemed to think she deserved it. Lillian said, “She told me her brother broke his leg.”

“His sixty-year-old leg, on a black-diamond slope in Vail. Running the moguls. They had to helicopter him out, and it wasn’t easy. But he’s getting around. I think he abandoned his crutches after two weeks. Andy said that he doesn’t consider pain to be important.”

“Emily is cute.”

“Isn’t she?” said Frank. “She likes to stand there with her hands on her hips, giving you a disapproving stare. She reminds me of Mama.”

“She’s like Janet. She has high standards.”

“Indeed,” said Frank.

Lillian decided not to pursue this line of conversation. She said, “I would have loved to see Richie, and I’m sorry Michael and Loretta couldn’t come.”

“Loretta is calving again, you know,” said Frank. “And the yearling isn’t even weaned yet.”

“That’s very traditional.”

“Very California. Andy is all in favor. Richie has a new job, and he has to look like he’s paying attention for at least three months.”

“Our kids seem better prepared than we were.”

“Do they?” said Frank. “The older I get, the more amazed I am that parenthood is reserved for the young and foolish. Seems like a recipe for doom, if you ask me.”

“You never seemed young and foolish.”

Frank turned and regarded her. His suit fit perfectly, and he still had that predatory look. He said, “The less young and foolish you seem, the more young and foolish you are.”

“If you could give them one piece of advice, what would it be?”

“Don’t do what I did. How about you?”

Lillian looked at Arthur, who was spinning Andy around. She, of course, had a catalogue of worries, but they couldn’t be boiled down to a single thing to avoid. In fact, she was taken aback by Frank’s remark. Finally, she said, “Don’t wait too long to go to Paris?”

Frank laughed out loud in a way she’d hardly ever heard him, and she could not help being ignited into merriment herself. He said, “I think I’ll write that down.”

Just then, the music ended. Arthur escorted Andy back to the table, where she smiled, picked up her handbag, and wafted toward the ladies’ room. Arthur sat down and took a sip of his champagne, then a bite of the wedding cake. He said, “Well, I kept my ears open. You want the news?”

“So much,” said Lillian.

“Let’s see. They met at a party in Ames when Jesse was down there last fall, visiting his old roommate, who is now in the engineering school, and when they started talking, they realized that they remembered each other from the crèche at Sunday school, lo these twenty years ago, before her family switched to the Foursquare Gospel in Usherton, and she went to South Usherton High, because their house was just inside the boundary between the two districts. She went to Cornell College over in Mount Vernon and studied chemistry.”

“Due date?” said Frank.

“Hush-hush. Didn’t get that one yet,” said Arthur.

“Family income?”

“The farm is paid off,” said Arthur.

“Oh, stop,” said Lillian, then, “Good.”

“She has an aunt by marriage who once knew Frank here.”

“Who was that?” said Frank.

“Do you remember a Eunice someone?”

Lillian saw it — Frank turned pale. Then he said, “Maybe.”

“She’s at the wedding.”

“No, she is not,” said Frank.

“She is.”

Lillian thought Frank almost looked angry. Arthur seemed not to notice. He said, “To the left of the buffet, in the blue dress. Short, a little osteoporotic.”

They all stared. Andy, who returned, said, “What are you looking at?” Then, “Oh, Eunice. Poor Eunice. She is unrecognizable.”

Frank said, “But you recognized her.”

“She recognized me. She’s Betty Prince’s cousin’s second wife. He works for Monsanto. They came up from St. Louis.”

And now Lillian saw the really odd thing: Andy, the most dizzy, accepting, hapless woman in the world, drove her gaze into Frank like a knife, daring him to react. Arthur saw it, too. He and Lillian exchanged a glance and dropped their eyes. When they looked up again, normal life had somehow resumed. Frank said, “I should say hi, anyway.”