Authors: Annie Proulx
There were drawings of birds in faded ink, a page much creased and dirtied as though the book had fallen open on the floor, trodden for days until someone picked it up. But most of the book was still empty, as if the Indian had recently started it to extend the paths of earlier volumes. Some of the page headings seemed useful enough.
Income
Expenses
Places I Been
Sights
Dreams
Birthdays & funerals
Tricks
Medicine Thoughts
Troubles
On the page for Birthdays the Indian had written: ‘My son Ralph born Aug 12 1938 died of diarrea Aug 11 1939.’ Under Sights he had noted only ‘bonfires beside the road’ and ‘little shining ones.’
Loyal crossed out the Indian’s notations. On the Birthday page he wrote his own name and birth date, then those of his family. He was thirty-six years old. Tentatively, barely pressing the pencil against the paper, he wrote ‘Billy,’ but erased it a minute later. Sitting in his underwear on the edge of his bed he wanted to write something about the watch, but on an empty page could manage only a stiff, insufficient sentence, ‘The watch I gave her.’
She had a junky little watch that would not keep time. He’d got her a beaut – half the winter’s fur from his trapline for a Lady Longines with a tiny face no bigger than a dime set with diamond chips to mark the hours. Six fox furs to Mrs. Claunch who sewed her a fur jacket for a Christmas surprise – ‘a chubby,’ Billy called it. She’d come into a place wearing the jacket, letting the watch slip down her wrist to show it off. Looking like a million. So careful of her things, keeping them polished and fine.
Then helping Toot with his hay. The old cock still hung onto his horses, Rainy and Cloudy. The horses would draw the wagon along the windrows and he and Ronnie would pitch the hay up to Toot who built the load, the sweat pouring down, the field crackling with heat. Mernelle tailed along behind them, twisting her pitchfork to gather the lost wisps of hay. Toot had promised her fifty cents for a day’s work. Toot and Ronnie unharnessing the horses while he pitched the last load into the hayloft, struggling with the wads of hay Toot had knitted into a puzzle. Only the man who builds a hay load knows where each forkful lies. The suffocating perfume of grass, the air shot with chaff and dust until his skin was on fire with itch. Mernelle running in to say that Billy was there with her car and they were all going swimming at Bobcat Pond.
He sees Billy, bending, the hairless legs taut, sees the flash of her
nails as she rolls her watch in a stocking and tucks it in the toe of her shoe, the shoes side by side, and over them her folded rayon dress and the thin towel from the soap flake box. And Mernelle, sloshing up out of the water, ‘Please, Billy, can I wear your watch while you go swimmin’? Please, Billy!’ The way she hesitated. But said yes. Mernelle cocking her arm at the sky while they swam out to the sunken rock shelf. The delicious water. He’d told her a pickerel almost five feet long hung around under the rock shelf. Her flesh, greenish under the water.
Later, Mernelle thrashing up to them and Billy’s low, clear voice, ‘Did you put my watch back in my shoe exactly like I had it?’ Mernelle like she’d been punched. Her arm coming up out of the water, the watch face already so fogged they couldn’t see the diamond chips.
Billy holding the watch loosely in her hand for a few seconds, while Loyal said never mind, that they could take it to a good jeweler, then Billy, looking straight at Mernelle and hurling it out into the pond. Never said a word.
Many nights that winter he wrote, sometimes only a few lines, sometimes until the wind shaking the window frame chilled his hands. Things he planned to do, song lyrics, distances traveled, what he ate and what he drank. When he turned the light out he saw the blue night fitted into the rectangles of window glass, the crumpled earth glowing with phosphorescent metals, the blurring wind and stars.
The Indian’s book. His book.
16
The Bigger They Are the Higher They Burn
1951 Fire Marshal’s Report.
Investigations Conducted by Earl L. Frank, Deputy Fire Marshal.
Case 935
Minkton Blood, Cream Hill, Vt. fire occurred December II, 1951. Property destroyed – Farm barn and nine cows. After considerable investigation Marvin E. Blood, the son of the owner, was arrested on the charge of first degree arson, a confession obtained, and he was sentenced to serve one to three years in the State’s Prison at Windsor. In his confession, he implicated his father, Minkton Blood, as having counseled him to burn the barn in exchange for a share of the insurance. Minkton Blood was arrested, a confession obtained, and he was sentenced to State’s Prison for not less than two years nor more than four years. At the time of the fire, insurance of $2,000 was collected on the property. Recovery of the money is being attempted.
THE INSIDE OF THE BARN had never been darker. They were down to dregs of kerosene and the murky light from the lantern illuminated little in the dark chill of the morning. Cow piss gushed. There was nervous stamping, an atmosphere in the barn, worse than it had been the night before. Mink felt his way into the milk room, bending for the pails, pouring the hot water from the kettle into the wash pail for Dub. A column of steam boiled up. He fumbled for the rag. The barn stank of ammonia, sour milk, cloying hay and wet iron. He heard the door swing open. Dub. The light of the second lantern spilled sullenly out of his hand.
‘Colder’n a witch’s patootie. Christ, why is it so cold so early? Feels like January. Five more months of this I’ll be hangin’ from my tail and givin’ the monkey laugh,
WAHOOHAHHOOHOO
!’ Dub gave the monkey laugh.
‘You do that fuckin’ noise again I’ll take a piece of stovewood to you. I’m pushed near as far as I can go this mornin’.’ There was a deadly silence while their separate rages churned and mingled.
‘You’re
pushed? Did I hear right? You are PUSHED? You old son of a bee, you’re the one doin’ the pushin’. You raise a hand to me and I’ll part your hair from ear to ear.’ The lantern shook in Dub’s hand. He hung it on the nail near the dead radio. The battery had been flat for a long time. He took the bristle brush and the pail of hot water, cooled now to warm, and began to work down the row of impatient cows, sweeping at their dung-caked flanks with the brush, washing the udders stuck with bits of chaff and manure. The light gave a dim radiance to his balding head, his lips moved. He seized the cow’s tail. She liked nothing better than to slap her stinking tail onto the side of his neck. This morning she kicked as he squeezed in beside her, then shifted her weight, pressing him over against the next cow. She’d been licking at her sides as far back as she could reach, and the hair was rubbed away down to the bleeding skin.
‘What the hell is the matter with you this morning?’ he muttered. He got the bag balm and smeared it on the sore. As he did every morning and evening he thought about the electricity, what they could have done with it. The cow on the end was blatting. Mink didn’t bother with names now, but Dub gave them all movie star names, and this one, a table-topped hulk with rolling eyes, was Joan Bennett.
‘You’ll get your damn water in a minute.’ Now he moved into the tricky rhythm of lugging Mink’s foaming pail into the milk room, pouring it through the strainer into the milk can, picking up the full pail of water from under the trickling faucet in the stone sink, and, with his hook, seizing the empty milk pail. In the barn again, he set the full water bucket in front of a cow, hooked up an empty from the next one and, on his way back to the milk room, swapped the empty milk bucket for Mink’s full one. It almost never worked out. The faucet would run slow and he’d wait at the sink while Mink
shouted for him to get a move on; or sometimes the cow would hold back her milk, probably at the feel of Mink’s leathery old hands, and Dub’d lean against the wall, waiting, listening to the shallow firping sound of the milk rising in the pail.
He’d think about a radio that worked with a plug and a wall socket, a radio that put out a good beat, and a light bulb to cheer the damn old brown dump up, the easiness of a milking machine and a water pump and the pipe running right along the wall in front of the stanchions, like Phelps’s place across the lake. The electricity was all around them. If only there’d been some little easy cheerfulness for him and Myrtle. He didn’t blame her for leaving. None of it, not a thing, had gone right. The power lines came within twenty miles south of them, across the river on the east, up over the border, and west, well, thirty, thirty-five miles. He’d believed that crap Loyal used to give the old man, that stuff about the electricity coming in right after the War. ‘First priority to farms.’ He’d read it out of the paper. That was a laugh. First priority to towns, any town, to garages, stores, knickknack shops. Six years after the War and they still hadn’t made it here. Now a new War coming along. Korea, whatever the hell that was. And if stinking MacArthur had his way, they’d be fighting China. It could be another hundred years. The herd had gone down because Mink wouldn’t let the AI man on the place. Should have done what Uncle Ott did, getting rid of his farm right after the War, buying another one, a good one over in Wallings, a farm with power lines. He had electricity, he’d improved his herd, had got as bad as Loyal used to be talking bloodlines and production. But now he was milking fourteen cows that averaged out over a thousand pounds of 4 percent milk a month and he was making money. Sprayed the DDT, no flies in the barn. Had a new maroon Henry J. in addition to the pickup, a 47 Ford with less than fifteen thousand miles on it. Dub would not have bought the Henry J. himself. If he had Ott’s kind of money he’d of gotten a Buick Roadmaster, the big 152-horsepower Fireball engine and Dynaflow Drive. The AI man and a little electricity could of saved him and Myrt.
O, Myrt, I tried, he thought. He heard himself persuading her, persuading himself, after the piano-tuning school director turned him
down, ‘Mr. Blood, we’re sure you understand that you need perfect pitch in this business, and that it’s, it’s a calling that requires considerable strength on the tuner’s part, that he be
fully able,’
telling her that it was just for a few months until the old man could see they had to get out on their own, a couple of months to look around, find something else he could do. Dammit, he was as strong as an ox, could lift pianos with one hand, and had showed the son of a bitch, raising one end of the grand up eight inches and letting it drop with a tingling sound and the crack of the cover slamming.
It took less than a year. He’d tried for every job he heard of, but the War vets were pushing in and grabbing the best stuff. The hiring guys didn’t even look at a one-armed farmer. That good-sounding ad from over in New York state, even if it was a glorified hired man position:
Wanted. Married man, small family, work with purebred Holsteins. Ability to operate De Laval milking machine highly important. Working, living conditions better than average. Ten-hour day, six-day week. Potatoes, milk, coal, garden privileges. $150 month. Character and ability thoroughly investigated.
Myrtle wrote the letter for him, both of them pretending he could do what was wanted, not mentioning the prosthesis, and when the letter came back with a date for an interview, she went with him. It had been their only outing, riding the ferry across Lake Champlain, the bright wind swinging Myrtle’s hair and blowing the empty waxed papers from their sandwiches into the dark water to toss in the ferry’s wake. Donald Phelps. Black letters on a red mailbox. The smooth driveway, crushed stone on it. Fences taut as the lines on sheet music. Phelps in his model barn, showing him the layout, the fluorescent lighting, the four-cow milking parlor, the stainless steel milk room. He’d missed a beat when he saw the hook but he didn’t say anything. Very courteous. Donald Phelps was the kind to let you hang yourself.
‘Well, Mr. Blood, one thing we are doing with all applicants for this position, and we have had quite a few, is ask them to work through a milking with the De Laval so I can see how they manage. And I guess we’re at that point now.’ Looking at his wristwatch, the first farmer Dub had ever seen with a wristwatch. The milking machine’s gleaming parts lay in the stainless steel sterilizer. Dub stared at the coding tubes and pneumatic parts.
‘I can manage it.’ He laughed horribly. ‘It’s just we ain’t got the electric on the home place, so I ain’t had the chance to leant the tricks of it. But I’m quick, oh I’m plenty smart enough, and I can maneuver with one hand better’n most guys with two. I want this job and I’ll do my best at it.’ He gobbled, spit flew with the words. But it was no good. Phelps just shook his head slowly and opened the door into the sunny afternoon. Myrtle and Mrs. Phelps were standing in the yard, their arms folded against the wind. Myrtle was doing all the talking, telling her something, maybe about working in the doctor’s office, or the ride across the lake, maybe about the kid. She looked happy until she saw him, coming across the yard. The way he walked, she said.
Two weeks later he took the bus down to Groton, Connecticut, an all-day ride.
The Electric Boat company has immediate openings for experienced inside machinists, outside machinists, inside electricians, outside electricians, sheet metal workers, draftsmen. Six-day work week.
Twenty minutes to fill out the application form. The interview took less than twenty seconds. ‘Naw. Able-bodied
AND
experienced.
PREFERENCE
to veterans. You don’t qualify for this work. What in hell made you think you did?’
But he didn’t give up. The Elmore Grain company wanted a grain salesman, and he guessed he could do that, take the cash and throw the hundred-pound bags onto the back of the truck. He started the day after the big windstorm in November, people out sawing downed trees and working on washed-out roads, but Dub up at Elmore wrestling grain bags all day. He got back in time for milking. They let him go at the end of two days. The hook ripped three out of four bags, and the yellow grain trickled off the trucks and into the street, drawing flocks of birds and even a few barn rats.