Jane Smiley - Early Warning

Farmers at various tables were shaking their heads a little — only a little, because nobody liked there to be a fight. Then Russ Pinckard, who was something of a joker, shouted, “All the Dugans being replaced by Hampshires? What’s the difference?”

Dickie flushed, but smiled. He said, “You watch for us on the TV, Pinckard! You heard of The Partridge Family ? Wait till you see The Dugan Family !”

“More like The Addams Family !” shouted Russ, and about half the assembled farmers laughed. Marie, who was carrying the coffeepot, shook her head and said, “Shush up, now!”

A hog-confinement setup at the Dugans’ made sense in a way, since the place was flat, the soil had never been much good, and the road to Usherton and eastward was right there. The Dugans had made it through the Depression, just barely, and there were so many kids now that they ran wild. On the other hand, Dinky Creek ran right through the back sixty acres, and from there into the river about three miles away, and to the east the landscape flattened and the river started meandering — good spot to deposit any hog detritus. But that was far away from Denby, and Joe had no doubt that the confinement builders would do something about the waste from hundreds of hogs, if not the sights and sounds.

Joe drank his coffee and talked about this new ethanol idea, basically adding corn-based alcohol to gas (“Drink it or drive it, your choice!” joked Russ Pinckard). What was the price of seed, whose ground was ready to plow, who had a new tractor and why, if the world was starving, wasn’t the price of corn and beans a little higher, and would a lawyer like Culver in the Senate really do what was best for farmers, or did he care, for that matter, and would Jepsen be any better? After an hour, he went out, got into Rosanna’s Volkswagen, and headed home. The weather was still cold and the ground still hard — the way it was in early spring when everything seemed held in place, and ugly, too.

D’Ory and D’Onut were sitting by the gate of the dog pen, staring at him as soon as he got out of the car. They knew not to bark, but they allowed themselves a little bit of a whine as he approached. D’Ory was graying around the muzzle, but D’Onut was young and slender, only two years old. When Joe opened the gate, D’Ory came out and D’Onut went over to her favorite tennis ball and brought it to him. She was such an avid fetcher that she never greeted him without an offering. When Jesse was home, she ran with him everywhere. She was a good gun-dog, and, even when Jesse was gone, lived in the hope that there would be something to fetch.

Joe never minded leaving the café. But now, following the dogs into the lowering steel-gray clouds, he felt lonely again. When he walked through the field behind the house, he could look in all directions and see nothing but his own two barns — the larger one, where he kept the workshop and the tractor at his parents’ old place, and the smaller one here, where he kept the seeder and the cultivator and the other implements. Walter and Rosanna had always said that after the Depression, or after the war, after something or other, people would start farming again — it was a healthy life and the best way to raise kids. But in Joe’s lifetime, no one had ever come back. That Jesse was taking a fifth year to complete his B.S. might be a sign that he wasn’t coming back, either. Joe didn’t know if that was bad.

A few days ago, Jesse had called from Ames, supposedly just to say hi, but after Joe talked to him (“Yeah, Dad, I got two A’s and two B’s, and Professor Holland says I’m doing really well on the scours research”) and Lois talked to him, then Minnie talked to him. She was sitting on the couch in the living room, and Joe stood quietly on the landing above her, out of sight, and listened. She said, “Oh, you mentioned her.” Then, “I know you did like her.” Then, “You hadn’t told her you were planning to farm? What did she think you were going to do?” Then, “Well, farm life is hard for some girls. It’s isolating. Not like when I was young.” Then, “Well, of course you’re disappointed, but it’s better to find out now.” Then, voice lowered, “Well, I’m sorry, Jesse. My heart goes out to you. No, I won’t say anything.” Joe had tiptoed up the stairs and gone into the bathroom, where he turned on the water and sighed several deep, deep sighs.

Now he stared out over the empty landscape, the fields still dark and frozen, the trees bare and shaking in the wind (a wind that was numbing the tip of his nose). The dogs had their noses to the ground — the ground was endlessly fascinating for a retriever, the tracks of deer, raccoons, mice, rabbits, birds, and even a turkey or two. Opa had raised them on stories of flocks of turkeys, flights of ducks, waves of prairie chickens, and even cougars slinking past the window in the night, heading for the sheep in the pen (always, according to Opa, to have a pleasant conversation about the meaning of life). Joe imagined D’Ory and D’Onut sniffing layers of tracks heading in every direction, from all past eras. But Joe was a man, not a dog, and what he couldn’t see, he couldn’t perceive. He was lonely, and he knew that his loneliness had nothing to do with Lois or Minnie. He looked at his watch: two-forty-five. He let the dogs lead him on.

—

WHEN MICHAEL DECIDED that he was getting married, Richie could hardly remember who the girl was, even though Michael swore he had met her — Loretta Perroni. She was just about to graduate from Manhattanville College, she was really smart, and her dad owned a hundred-thousand-acre cattle ranch in California. “Dark hair?” he said over the phone.

“Most of the time,” said Michael. “It was blond when I met her, but she dyed it back.”

“Long?”

“Really dark hair and blue eyes. She’s short. When you met her, you pretended to rest your elbow on the top of her head.”

Richie said, “You’re going to marry her? You’ve known her, like, three months.” Susan, the girl Michael had been in the accident with, had broken up with him once she was back on her feet, and Richie knew that Michael was lucky he wasn’t being sued. Michael himself had been shaken enough at the time to go with their mom to AA for a few weeks. It was Richie who had stopped double-dating, because he and Ivy decided to move in together — bed by eleven, because Ivy enjoyed her job at Viking and wanted to succeed. Her goal was eventually to have her own imprint. Richie spent half his day showing office space, and half his day writing ads, finding out the status of new construction, and servicing renters. Mr. Rubino hardly ever came in. He could take a four-hour lunch, or put on his sneakers and go for a run in the park. Sometimes he read two or three newspapers in one day. Michael was now a trader. It was said (by Michael) that Jim Upjohn loved him, that he had great instincts. Obviously, thought Richie, marrying into a hundred thousand acres was another of his great instincts.

The first thing that happened was that Loretta’s parents, Ray and Gail Perroni, flew in from California to meet his mom and dad. His mom took Mrs. Perroni to the house. His dad took Mr. Perroni first to the office, then to lunch at the Century Club. That night, Richie and Ivy were to drop by after dinner (the Waldorf), for dessert. Ivy said that the prospect of crème brûlée was her only incentive, since she disapproved of rich people, but Richie knew that she was dying to meet and observe the strange ducks from the West Coast (she had never met Loretta or traveled farther than Philadelphia).

At the Peacock Alley restaurant, Richie could see them all at the table, his parents and Michael sitting across from the three Perronis. It was a bizarre sight, because the older Perronis, slender and weathered as they were, were hardly tall enough for their feet to touch the floor. Ray stood up to greet them; he came to Richie’s shoulder and Ivy’s eyebrow. But his face was darkly tanned and deeply wrinkled from the middle of his forehead down, and his hands were square and strong and maybe as big as his head. He was wearing cowboy boots. Mrs. Perroni looked just as weathered. She said, “Well, you boys do look alike, don’t you? Had a mare foal out a pair of twins just this spring. I went out in the morning, and the mare was standing by the gate with the tiniest little filly at her side, so I went looking around for the placenta, because you have to make sure it’s complete, you know, and, oh, I found it, all right. Inside it was another little filly, but she was dead. They must have been identicals, which is rare in horses, because they had the same cowlicks. That foal could barely reach her mama’s teats, but she made it. She’s going to be a nice animal, I think.”