Bleeding Kansas (16 page)

When they got to the farm, she looked up at him, her amber eyes painfully large. “I'm sorry, Jim. I couldn't help it.”

“We've got to come up with that money somehow, Susan, so maybe you'd better pay attention to your sunflower crop for a while.” In the complicated mix of tenderness and anger that he'd been feeling for twenty-four hours, it was only harshness that he felt able to express now.

She stared at him, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. “I need you to understand how it happened, Jim. I didn't mean to get you in trouble or make a spectacle of myself.”

“I'm too worn out to listen right now. You go up and take a bath, get some of that jailhouse dirt off you. I have to go out to the wheat field.”

She flicked her tears away; he noticed she had dried blood on her hand and on the front of her blouse. He often wondered later if he'd taken her in his arms then if things would have turned out differently.

When he turned to go to the fields, he noticed a light in the combine shed. Blitz was there, underneath the combine. He was taking apart the clutch—the bearings and gears were laid out on a tray next to the clutch housing. Blitz had the radio tuned to a country-music station and was talking to the machine in time to the music: “Yes, this bolt done left you, broke your poor old Caterpillar heart.”

Jim didn't think he could stand it if Blitz offered him sympathy, or even commented on Susan's arrest, but when Blitz heard him come in all he did was pop his head out from the engine to say, “Should have done this before harvest last year. Three bearings are just about shot to hell. I don't know why Reba here didn't freeze up on us in the field.”

Blitz called the combine Reba after his favorite country singer. He talked to her as if she were a horse, slapping her side when he eased her out of the shed. Lara once told him she was surprised he didn't give Reba sugar cubes to suck on, and he laughed and said, “She takes oil right from my hand, she's such a good old girl.”

Blitz had shown up on the farm sixteen years ago, in the middle of a blizzard. He was driving from Abilene to Olathe, where he had a lead on a machinist's job, when his pickup got stuck in a drift. He'd seen the spotlights at the train crossing, a faint orange against the blizzard's whiteout, and when he made for them he found the Grellier farm just beyond.

Jim had been in the equipment barn, trying to salvage the gearbox on his grandfather's diesel truck, when Blitz staggered in, his black beard a mass of white crystals. After he'd caught his breath, he explained that he needed a tow, but could he sleep in the barn until the storm passed? Of course, Jim and Susan put him up on the spare bed on the sunporch. In the morning, Jim found him in the barn, machining a new gear for the old diesel truck. When the snow stopped, Blitz went on to Olathe, but he returned a few weeks later. He wondered if Jim didn't need help.

It was the first winter after Jim's grandfather had died, and Jim was overwhelmed by the job of running the farm on his own: he'd welcomed Blitz like a savior. It was Chip, just learning to talk, who gave him the nickname. “Blitz, him come in blitz,” he crowed, trying to say “blizzard.” The memory twisted Jim in half. Why hadn't he known then that nothing was too hard to handle if your boy was shrieking with delight at the world?

Blitz handed him a long screw. “Bolt's frozen on. Can you undo it?”

The morning moved through a soothing rhythm of repairs, Jim replacing the fan belt on the tractor while Blitz machined new bearings for the combine, Jim putting new siding on the X-Farm greenhouse, where he checked on the seedlings, while Blitz hammered a bent disk on the corn-head shredder.

Jim knew Lara had been looking after the seedlings, but he hadn't paid enough attention to how they were shaping. He checked the moisture, but Lara had been keeping up with the watering. They'd joked about her taking over the place a few weeks ago, but maybe she really would want to now that Chip had made it clear he didn't: she had the knack and the patience to care for the plants.

You had to be a gambler and a conservative at the same time to be a farmer. Every time you put seed in the ground, you were betting against God Almighty and the politicians that the weather would be good, the pests controllable, the fuel prices low, the political situation overseas stable so you could sell your crop there. And you had to be conservative, willing to play by those out-of-date rules of hard work, sweat of the brow. Who would choose such a life? You only did it if the life chose you.

At noon, Blitz pulled a meat-loaf sandwich out of his lunch box for Jim. Jim ate half of it before he remembered that Blitz was a vegetarian. So Blitz had come out prepared to look after him. The thought was consoling. He punched Blitz on the arm.

By the end of the afternoon, Jim felt calm enough to go back into the house to face his wife. She was asleep, purple shadows on the delicate skin under her eyes. Jim sat on the bed, holding her hand, stroking her freckled forehead.

He heard a car door slam, then the kitchen door: Lulu was home. “Dad! Dad! Are you in the house? Where's Mom? Is she in jail? Chip got suspended from school for fighting Junior Schapen and Milt Riley.”

Lulu printed the file out at school and brought it home with her. Jim read it through slowly, his anger building again. The cornerstone of his philosophy: you can't farm in the valley if you're on bad terms with your neighbors. He worked hard to be a good neighbor, so why was Arnie Schapen determined to make war on him? Did he think he could drive Jim off the land or did he just like fighting, the way Junior and Chip—and Jim's brother, Doug, for that matter—seemed to like it?

Lara's face, usually round and soft with the residue of her baby fat, was pinched, her cheekbones sticking out from anxiety. “They were all laughing and talking about it at lunch, so I went to the computer lab and printed it out. Every time Junior or Milt Riley or his other friends passed me or Chip in the hall, they'd lift their shoulders up and scratch their armpits like they were monkeys.”

“Monkeys?” Jim was bewildered. “Were they trying to say you and Chip are related to monkeys? I thought the Schapens' church was against evolution.”

“No, Dad,” Lara said with exaggerated patience. “Thanks to Mom bragging to the whole world about your ancestor coming from France, everybody knows Grellier is a French name. They were saying we were surrender monkeys.”

“So Chip felt he had to fight them?” Jim asked.

“I guess.” Lara hunched a shoulder. “It was in senior English, so I wasn't there.”

“Where's Chip? Didn't he drive you home?”

Lara shook her head. “Mr. Meadows made Hector—he's the guard, you know—escort Chip out of the building. Melanie drove me home.”

Jim started to say, “You know you're not allowed to ride with underage drivers,” but bit the words off before they came out. Lara didn't need any more tension in her life today. Come to think of it, neither did he.

“Your mother's okay,” he said instead. “They let her off with a fine. She's asleep right now, pretty worn-out from a night in jail. Schapen was mad that they didn't charge her with a felony, so I guess he rushed home and got his ma to put this up on their website. It's mean, it's petty, but he only did it because he felt helpless. Can you remember that and try not to fight the Schapen boys yourself?”

Lulu gave a wobbly smile. “I guess.”

“You know, Lulu, I'm kind of worn-out myself—what with worrying about your mom, I didn't sleep much last night. All this anger swirling around is exhausting, too. You want to go into town, get ice cream or a pizza?”

“Everyone's staring at us, Dad, staring and talking.”

“I bet the people at Chill! never heard of Arnie Schapen or Susan Grellier; they'll give you your hot-fudge sundae without even looking up from the ice-cream bins.”

“Yeah, okay, I guess,” she muttered: good daughter making a martyr of herself for her desperate father.

Jim pulled a wry face and went back up to the bedroom to leave a note for Susan. She was awake, roused by the noise Lulu had made shouting through the house for Jim, but not moving. She looked at him dully. When he told her about Chip, she bit her lip and turned her head away from him on the pillow.

He took her hand again, but inside he felt a hard spot of resentment toward her: Arnie was a loose cannon, but Susan had played a part in starting all this, too. “Suze, can you lay off the anti-war stuff for a while until this school thing and Arnie's vendetta both calm down? Please?”

She stiffened, but after a long pause said, “I won't go on any marches or hand out leaflets until I've worked off the fine. I'll get to work on the sunflower crop tomorrow, but I want to go to K-PAW meetings, Jim. I think that's fair.”

It was fair, he supposed, but he wanted her to be generous, to say she'd leave peace work to the university people who had less to lose. He didn't know how to say that to her, though, so he finally just told her he was taking Lulu into town for ice cream.

When they got home, Lara was calmer. No one at the ice-cream parlor had shown any signs of knowing the Grelliers had the mark of the beast on them, so she'd been able to enjoy her hot fudge, and even wave at one of her classmates, who came in as she and Jim were getting ready to leave.

It was close to six when they got back. Blitz had left and Chip hadn't shown up. Jim tried to call his son, but Chip wasn't answering his cell phone. Susan had gone back to sleep and left a note asking them not to wake her. Jim challenged Lara to a game of miniature pool. She went to bed around ten, happier, but he stayed up, waiting for his son to come home.

He dozed off in the kitchen and woke with a start when Chip drove into the yard, his wheels spraying up gravel because he'd taken the turn too fast. Jim's neck and knees had frozen from sleeping sitting up; it was an effort and an agony to get to his feet. As soon as Chip came in, Jim realized he was drunk.

“Beer never solved any problems I heard of, except cash flow to the beer companies,” he told his son.

“Yeah, well, write that up on Arnie's website for him, tell him the cheese-eating surrender monkey likes beer, not frog wine,” Chip said.

“How come you let Junior get under your skin like that?” Jim asked.

“Jesus Christ, Dad, what planet do you live on? Here's Mom, hanging out with those dykes, letting Arnie arrest her ass because—”

“Chip, I know you're angry, and I know you're drunk, but do not talk to me in that language, and do not use it about your mother. Tell me a simple story about what happened today.”

Chip flushed and swayed, clutching the refrigerator for support. “It's her fault for giving me that stupid name. I've told her my whole life I hate it, and all she says is I'd like it if
you
hadn't encouraged me to hate it. Well, nothing would make me like being called after some stupid Frenchman who was too lazy to do a lick of work on the farm and then got shot because he was off running a school he had no business at in the first place.”

He raised his voice to a falsetto, mimicking his mother: “Etienne is a noble name, with a noble history in your family—the man who gave up his country to come to Kansas and fight for freedom. Chip! Chip could be a chip on your shoulder or a chip of paint, not a name you can be proud of.”

Jim couldn't help smiling at Chip's mimicry. “It was Grandpa who nicknamed you Chip; he said you were a chip off the old block. I guess that made me proud, so it was what I always called you, not because I didn't like your Christian name.”

“Well, I hate it. And without even talking to me, she went and registered me for school in town as Etienne, so every time I start a new course I have to tell the teacher to call me Chip, and Mottled—Ms. Motley, my English teacher—she won't. She always calls me Etienne no matter how many times I ask.

“So today Milt Riley starts yelling ‘Hey, Frenchie' when I get to English class. And, honest, Dad, I tried to ignore him. But then fucking Junior Schapen says, ‘Frenchie, your ma's a heroine, ain't she? Will you sign my copy of the
County Herald
pretty, pretty please?'

“And then Riley says, ‘She ain't a heroine, Schapen. She's a fucking jailbird!' And I still didn't look up, until Junior says, ‘Come on, Frenchie, autograph the paper for me. I never met a real celebrity before.' And I told him not to call me a Frenchie, because our family was farming in this valley when his people were still humping cows in a shack in Europe!”

Jim sighed. “You couldn't just let it go, could you? So what happened—Junior jump you?”

“No.” Chip's voice was thick with resentment. “Mottled called out in that nasal voice of hers, ‘Etienne, your discussion is so lively I want you and Milton to come to the front of the room to share it with the class.' And then fucking Riley says, ‘Eh-ti-yen,' like making this huge point that my name is French, and he says I have such an interesting family history I should tell it to the class. And then he starts in on Mom, saying she used to be a Commie when she ran that stupid co-op market and now she's like a member of al-Qaeda, and that's when I lost it.”

“I see.” Jim rubbed his head, wishing he could rub one sensible idea into it, but all he felt was wool and numbness. “We're going to have to think of some way to patch this over until the school year ends.”

“I'm not going back to school. I'm eighteen. You can't make me.”

Jim squinted up at his son in the dim light. Chip wasn't only bigger than he was, he was angrier. Jim couldn't possibly make him do anything. “I hate to think a son of mine could be such a coward he couldn't face the consequences of his own actions.”

“Think whatever you like. I'm not going back to school.”

“Then you can start doing a day's work on the farm.”

“And be here day in and day out, with Mom getting wackier by the minute and you pretending nothing's wrong? Thanks but no thanks.”

“We're not going to figure it out in the middle of the night,” Jim finally said. “But you have to think about it, son, think about a plan for your life. You can't spend your nights at the Storm Door getting drunk and your days in bed. And if you give up on your education now, it'll be that much harder to finish later on.”

Chip stared at him, the night swallowing up the hot hurt in his face, then swung on his heel and went up the stairs to his room, thumping as loudly as he could in running shoes. The next day, he locked himself in, refusing to talk to anyone in the family.

On Wednesday, he got up early to drive Lara into school, not talking to Jim or Susan but telling his sister he was looking for a job. He didn't come home that night, didn't phone. On Thursday, Jim tried Curly and then Janice, but they both said they hadn't seen him—although Lulu told him from the way Janice was carrying on at school, she was sure Janice knew what Chip was doing. That made Jim try to talk to Janice again, as well as to her parents, but the Everleighs said they didn't want their daughter hanging out with a loser like Chip.

At that, Jim lost his temper. “Good. His mother and I don't think she's the right person for him, either. She's not a help in his life.”

At the end of the week, when Jim and Susan were frantic enough with worry that they'd reported Chip's disappearance to Sheriff Drysdale, Blitz, who had his own sources of information, dragged Curly out to the farm and made him talk to Jim.

Lara watched them from her bedroom. She saw Blitz go into the house, leaving Curly standing in the yard, shivering in his windbreaker. Curly was a small man with a shock of blond hair that grew in a natural Mohawk, so that even at thirty-two he looked like a teenager. Alone in the yard, he looked even younger. Lara saw her father come out of the house with Blitz. The three men went to the barn.

Lara slipped out of the house through the door to the garage. She hiked across the edge of the wheat field, crossed through the combine shed, and reached the back end of the barn. There were a couple of places where boards had come loose from the concrete foundation slab. She found a gap wide enough to slide through.

When her head and shoulders were inside, she could hear the murmur of voices but couldn't make out what they were saying: the men were at the front of the barn, on the other side of the tractor heads and machining equipment. Lara slithered all the way inside.

The board made a low snapping, singing sound behind her back, but no one noticed—barns are always making noises: the wind whipping around the sides, animals crawling along the rafters. The men hadn't turned the lights on, and Lara couldn't really see, but she tiptoed slowly forward, hands out, so she'd touch a piece of equipment before she tripped over it.

She heard her father smack his hand on something. “Damn it, Curly! When I called you on Thursday, couldn't you tell I was worried sick? I haven't slept for five nights. And when the sheriff talked to you, you lied to him! I don't even know what to say to you. You've been working out here for, what, nine years now? How could you betray my trust in you?”