Jane Smiley - Early Warning

Oh well, four lambs was a good start. And a dog, maybe. When Nat died, and then Poppy, he hadn’t replaced them. The wind picked up as he headed back toward the barn. He hunched his head into his shoulders. Not much hair to keep him warm anymore, and his feed cap was worthless. He stopped, though, just to watch a goshawk dive straight down at the bare field, walk about for a minute, peck quickly at something, and then rise into the air with a snake in its talons, long and slender. Joe had never seen that before — in fact, it was maybe two or three years since he’d seen any hawk, longer than that since he’d seen a goshawk. He stood and watched as it rose higher, the snake writhing at first and then drooping. Soon, they disappeared into the clouds, and Joe headed back to the barn. What he would do there, he didn’t know — one thing a long cold spring was good for was making sure that every gear was greased, every joint was oiled, every belt on every piece of farm machinery was tight.

Standing in the doorway of the barn, looking at the four lambs and the rest of the empty, chilly landscape, a bright sky (though not sunny) arching over the spreading dark and waiting fields, Joe didn’t see a soul. The earth, in his experience, was a bigger place than most people could imagine. Sheep made him think of breeding, how the strain of Walter and the strain of Rosanna mixed with the strain of Roland and the strain of Lorena (a little inbreeding there, he knew). He shook his head — breeding was about profit, not love. He fiddled around the barn until late morning, so idle that he began to contemplate dogs. A pointer. A pointer arrowing across the fields after a pheasant or even a rabbit would be a beautiful sight, a luxury, and a friend. And, after all, a man whose land was now worth almost a million and a half dollars maybe deserved a pointer.

—

ON MONDAY, which was a nice day, Rosanna put on her socks and boots and a sweater over her housedress and walked out to the newly painted barn, where she knew she would find Joe. The corn ran in a long towering barrier on the south side of the barn, and the Osage-orange hedge, hardy as ever, hid everything to the east (though Rosanna could hear the ewe Joe had decided to keep and breed — Hasta her name was, for hasta la vista , Joe’s idea of a joke). The puppy was cute, too, a purebred golden retriever named Dory, or D’Ory, which meant “golden” somehow. When she opened the door, the puppy ran over and sat right down, because Joe had taught her that she only got petted if she sat. Rosanna leaned down and scratched her ears, thinking she had turned into a softy for sure, then straightened up and declared, “I want to learn to drive a car.”

Joe stared at her.

She said, “I mean it. I’ve been sitting inside my house for forty-five years. I can’t even remember why I didn’t want to go out. Something to do with looks, I’m sure — I was a very vain young woman.”

“Where would you go?”

Rosanna put her hands on her hips. “Wherever I feel like.” That must have been the right answer, because Joe smiled. “You could drive Lois’s car to start with — that’s an automatic.” Then he said, “Want to try it right now? She hasn’t left for work yet.”

Rosanna took the dare and followed him to his house, where he told Lois, “My mother wants to borrow your car,” and Lois, who was deep into making something complicated and French, must not have heard, because she only waved her hand. “The keys are in it.” They walked out the front door before Lois could come to and stop them.

Rosanna had been in Lois’s car a few times. It was a new Volkswagen, a small blue station wagon. Joe backed it around, drove it out onto the road, and parked it. Rosanna got behind the wheel, and Joe got into the passenger’s seat. He pointed to the ignition, the brake, and the accelerator. He showed her where drive was, where park was, and where reverse was, then said, “Still want to do this?”

Rosanna said, “Since we’re heading down the road toward Usherton, more than ever.”

“Well, wait until tomorrow to go there.”

“You’re not letting me do this because you want to get rid of me, are you?”

Joe laughed. “I have no hope on that score.”

She thought she might get to the corner, but in the end, she got them all the way around the section (admittedly, only four turns, but all left turns). She sat up, stared through the windshield, and drove past the boarded-up old school, past the road to John’s farm, past Rolf’s old farm with the house gone, past her own driveway, over the creek, left again. She was careful about the deep ditches to either side of the road (maybe she did stick too close to the center, but no one came along), and she eased slowly up to the stop signs, using her left-turn signal (no putting your arm out the window these days). Joe seemed relaxed — at least, he didn’t startle or gasp at anything she did. The panorama through the windshield was a strange new perspective for someone who usually rode in the backseat. When she stopped in front of Joe’s house, she said, “That’s not so different from driving old Jake to town.”

“I always wanted to do that.”

“I know you did. I wish I’d let you.”

It had taken half an hour. She left the keys swaying back and forth in the ignition (lovely word!), gave Joe a hug, and got out. Without daring to encounter Lois, she went around their house, then clomped through the corn back to her place, where she straightened the living room, did the breakfast dishes, and headed upstairs to look in her closet. If she was going to start driving into town, she realized, she would have to do something about her hair and her wardrobe.

LILLIAN THOUGHT it was funny that, after forty years or so, what pushed her aunt Eloise out of the Communist Party was Chairman Mao shaking hands with Richard Nixon. Janet told her about it when she came back to Virginia from her spring break in California. She was sitting at the table in the breakfast room. Lillian, who wasn’t at all hungry, set the scrambled eggs and toast on the table in front of her niece, then pulled the shades. It was a bright morning for the end of March, and Janet had flown into Dulles late the night before. Lillian had promised to take her down to Sweet Briar, and the weather was perfect for it — there would be magnolias all the way, she thought. Janet said, “I was there for five days, and we spent all of one of them taking boxes and boxes of literature to the dump. I suggested a used-book store, but Eloise didn’t want anyone falling for all the crap. As she said.” She picked up her fork.

“Otherwise, she seems fine?” Lillian could not imagine walking away from one’s entire life in that way — Eloise’s version of divorce.

“As in, does she have a brain tumor or has she lost her mind? I don’t think so, she seems great. She took me to a wonderful rose garden not far from her house. You can’t believe she’s only seven years younger than Grandma, or that she ever lived on a farm. She’s so lean and muscly, she dyes her hair faithfully, she walks or jogs several miles every day. I was impressed. And I think there might be some kind of boyfriend. He called her, but I didn’t meet him.”

They laughed together.

Lillian said, “What is she doing for money?”

Janet shrugged. “Who knows? I mean, when did she buy her house? She told me it’s paid for. She works at a cheese collective in Berkeley. She’s maybe thirty years older than everyone else, but she wears her sandals and her braid down her back, and she fits right in. She said to me, ‘Spender left, and I stayed. Koestler left, and I stayed. Mitford left, and I stayed. Then Sartre left, and I stayed, but I am leaving now. Did you see the look on Mao’s face? He might as well have been giving Tricky Dick a big kiss on the lips!’ She sounded personally insulted.”