Jane Smiley - Early Warning

The screaming commenced. Debbie waited to see if Hugh would react, and somehow rise from his side of the bed and go get Carlie, but he snored again and then again. He didn’t even hear her, though to Debbie the crying was loud enough to rouse the neighbors, which, in the end, got her up.

She started on the left, lifting the bottom of her T-shirt and unsnapping the cup of her nursing bra. Her breast was enormous and hard; the nipple jutted forth, dripping milk. Carlie latched on with enthusiasm — she was starving after six hours. Her little hand, her right hand, waved around for a moment, then settled gently and appreciatively on Debbie’s breast. Carlie sucked with concentration for a few seconds, her eyes almost crossing with the effort, and then her eyes rolled up and caught Debbie’s gaze. She had beautiful big eyes, true blue heading for blue, not baby blue heading for brown. Debbie smoothed her forehead. Carlie sucked three or four more minutes, and then her mouth relaxed around the nipple, and she smiled a friendly smile. She had only just started doing that. Debbie smiled back and said, “Darling, darling, darling.” She made a kiss.

Carlie went at the second breast with more enjoyment and less desperation. Debbie had read that there were three milks — cream, milk, and water — but she couldn’t remember in which order they came. Carlie was looking at her and grinned again; then her hand slapped Debbie gently on the breast. She sighed a deep sigh, and Debbie did the same thing.

Was this the best part, the soporific effect of either the sucking or the milk or the rocking beginning to take effect? Debbie had to concentrate on the baby’s face or on the picture of Black Beauty above the crib so as not to fall asleep and, God forbid, go limp (though she never had). She herself yawned, and yawned again. Now Carlie let go, asleep. Debbie stood up slowly and carefully, leaning forward, placed the baby smoothly in the crib, wedged the rolled blanket behind her back, and covered her with the quilt her mother had given her, her own little quilt from twenty-nine years ago, faded but soft.

Hugh had pushed the covers down; she straightened them and got in next to him. He was lying on his other side now, apparently sound asleep. She settled on her back and closed her eyes, consciously picturing Carlie’s gay smile. Everyone she knew who had babies found it impossible to understand how they themselves had managed to survive bottles and formula and playpens and refrigerator mothers. They talked about it all the time. Lillian, Debbie knew, had done her best, given how she herself had been raised. That smile. That smile. Debbie slept.

—

FRANK WAS SITTING in his office, staring at rain falling on the Chrysler Building and pondering his favorite project, the supercavitating torpedo. It was pretty evident to the navy that the Russians were further along with their something than Frank’s company was. Apart from the extreme danger of the something that the Russians were pretty far along with — should they deploy it, a fleet of nuclear subs would become as fish in a barrel — the safest thing to assume was the thing that Frank always assumed, that the Russians would do unto others as they feared others would do unto them. The West was superior in almost every other weapons system, so it was all the more galling that the Russians might have pre-emptively mastered this supersonic underwater missile. Frank suspected they had uncovered a cache of Nazi documents that the Americans had not known about and kept them to themselves. Or perhaps there had been another Wernher von Braun, who disappeared behind the Iron Curtain without the Americans’ suspecting. Frank often thought about the war — not himself in it, but how the larger picture had played out. He had written in a letter to Jesse that he could not decide — had the outcome of the war been a close call, because of the V-2 rocket and the atomic bomb, or had it been a foregone conclusion, because of Allied intelligence, American manufacturing, and the overwhelming surge of Stalin’s armies from the east? And since you could not decide even now, more than thirty years later, whether the outcome of World War II had been a close call or a foregone conclusion, then you certainly could not foretell the outcome of the Cold War. As a result of these cogitations, Frank was on the verge of authorizing further investment in the torpedo, although his board was getting restive at the expense.

Wendy, his secretary, announced on the intercom that Gary Vogel was here to see him. It took Frank a second to remember who Gary Vogel was.

Gary looked like the long-distance trucker he had become — his hair was short, his paunch was big, and his demeanor was cautious. Frank had last heard that he worked for an outfit out of Omaha. Frank went around his desk, shook Gary’s hand, and said, “Sorry to hear about Uncle John, Gary.”

“Shit, it wasn’t a surprise. He kept arguing with the doc about going on oxygen, and I guess this saved him the trouble. Nice place you got here.” He walked over to the window and looked out at the Chrysler Building. Then he said, “You must be on the pricey side, rent-wise.”

“We got in early.”

Frank understood that this was not a social call, but he sat on the edge of his desk, mimicking informality — in any negotiation, it was better to wait until the other party committed himself. Gary said, “You know why I’m here?”

Frank remained silent.

“I’m no farmer, in case you didn’t notice.”

“I heard you’re driving big rigs now.”

“That’s what I hated about the farm. The view never changes, except for the worse.”

Frank smiled.

“But my dad loved it. So.” He walked over to the window again, stared at the triangles and the curves that always reminded Frank of papal headgear. “You know what they say, this acreage is available.”

“You mean your part of the land your dad and my brother have been farming.”

“That’s what I mean. The price of land is way up there now. We didn’t even tell my dad what a fellow from Des Moines estimated. Mom thought the shock would kill him.”

Frank said, “What did the fellow from Des Moines say?”

“Three grand an acre.”

“And you have—”

“Three hundred fifty acres.”

“As I remember, some of that is too hilly to cultivate.”

“Twenty-nine acres. Pasture and woodlot. Badger Creek cuts off the one corner — another two and a third acres.”

“You’ve had it surveyed?”

Gary nodded.

Frank said, “You want me to buy you out.”

“I do,” said Gary.

Everyone in Iowa scratched their heads at the pivot between the generations, and if Lois had pushed Roland Frederick down the basement stairs, as Frank sometimes thought she had, well, it was the practical thing to do and Frank respected her for it. He asked, “What have you said to Joe?”

“Ah, Joe doesn’t want to talk about it. Why would he? Everything is just the way he likes it now.”

“I don’t think we can give you three grand an acre. It’s not going to produce enough to pay off that kind of investment.”

Gary pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose, then folded it thoughtfully and stuck it back in his pocket. He said, “Frankie, you know that, and I know that, but there’s a lot of fellas in Chicago and Omaha who don’t seem to know that, and I’m not going to kid you, I plan to get out while the getting out is good.”

Frank said, “What’s your time frame?”

Gary said, “I don’t see myself investing in seed this year.”

“All right, then,” said Frank.

After that came the usual Iowa discomfort about saying goodbye. Gary and Frank exchanged a few niceties, but the door was conveniently near, and soon Gary was through it. Frank closed it behind him. It appeared as though he was about to invest in farmland. This was not a good idea, but when he caught sight of the Chrysler Building, now wet and shining in the late-afternoon sun, he got an idea, not one that Uncle Jens would have cared for, but one he thought might solve the problem, at least for a few years. He picked up the phone on his desk and dialed Lillian’s number.