Driftless (52 page)

East of the barn, July moved a section of electric fence, closing off one paddock and opening another. He drove his herd down the narrow lane between the single strands of bare wire and into the new section of pasture. There, alfalfa rose, uneaten, nearly to their knees. From a distance they seemed to be wading in a green pond.

After cleaning out the barn, scraping the manure off the concrete, hosing it down, sweeping, and throwing lime, July went to the house, showered, and dressed in a clean pair of gray pants and a blue cotton shirt.

At the kitchen table, he drank a cup of reheated coffee, fried an egg, and ate the last piece of Violet Brasso’s peach pie. He thought about finding the cow lying by the creek and tried again to push the image out of his mind. The look of death was always disturbing, and he guarded against it. There were many things to do today and it was necessary to keep moving.

He needed to take a load of corn to the mill. The elevator was sticking out of the crib from the last time he’d used it, looking like a tin dragon guarding a keep of yellow gold. He pulled the inverted-pyramid-shaped wagon—the gravity box—around the barn with his Minneapolis-Moline G750.

The tractor was more than thirty years old, which in the modern farming world was something of an antique. Once considered powerful, it had since fallen into the medium range and was in danger of slipping into the small category—shrunk by the trend toward ever larger and more powerful equipment. Still, it possessed a mechanical charm for July, and he had, so far, put up with the inconvenience of hard-to-find replacement parts. The six-cylinder, Oliver-built engine burned liquid propane instead of diesel fuel or gasoline, a somewhat novel feature dating to the gas rationing days of the Second World War. Sporting the optional dual- speed power takeoff and three- point hitch, the tractor was rated at sixty-one horsepower at the drawbar and seventy for the power take off.

July parked the gravity box beneath the neck of the elevator. He backed the tractor near the elevator, climbed down, and coupled the PTO shaft protruding from the rear of the tractor to the conveyor shaft of the elevator. The heavy machinery locked together with a confirming metallic snap. Then he engaged the PTO, commanding a loud clattering as the shaft transferred its turning to the chain- driven elevator.

A cool breeze blew out of the north and he found the grain shovel in the barn. Wanting to keep his shirt clean, he tossed it inside his pickup and put on the long denim coat hanging on the milk-house wall.

The prospect of rain increasing, he quickly shoveled corn into the clattering elevator, thankful for the lightweight plastic body of the shovel. The dried ears rode up the slats of the conveyor chute and dropped into the gravity box, and he watched for the level to rise above the top. When it did, he climbed out of the crib and into the wagon to kick the ears into the corners until there was room for another eight or ten bushels.

Letting himself to the ground, he noticed a pocket of sky that seemed unusually blue in contrast to the growing gray.

The corner of his denim coat brushed against the whirling PTO. The six-sided shaft collected the material, folded it over, and wrapped it up, yanking him down. At the same rate of turning, he moved from alarm to injury, to mutilation, and then to death. The coat was finally ripped from his shoulders and his body fell to the ground.

FINDING JULY

A
S JACOB BOLTED A CARBURETOR TO THE CYLINDER HEAD OF A gasoline-powered electric generator, Winnie’s car drove by the front of the shop. Several minutes later it went by again. He washed his hands and shouted into the craft room.

“I’m leaving, Clarice. Will you close up?”

“Of course, Mr. Helm,” she shouted back.

“Stop calling me
mister.
”

“Yes, sir.”

Outside, Jacob saw the yellow car disappear around the corner, heading for Thistlewaite Bridge. He ran to his jeep.

A mile down Highway Q, Winnie pulled onto the shoulder and got out. Jacob stopped behind her.

“Are you following me?”

“No,” he said. “Well, yes. I saw you drive by and I was ready to leave and wondered where you were going.”

“You can’t follow me around, Jacob.”

“I know that. I do. Where are you going?”

“I’m taking a quart of blackberries to July Montgomery. He probably hasn’t had time to find any.”

“That’s just where I’m going. I need to talk to him about something he left at the shop.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes. Go on, I’ll follow.”

The jeep and the yellow car continued for another mile and turned into the drive.

In the farmyard, a tractor could be heard running and the elevator clattering on the other side of the barn.

“I’ll check the house,” said Winnie.

Jacob watched her walk away and followed the worn path around
the barn. The clattering was louder here and he saw the gravity box parked in front of the crib, to the side of the MM. There was a space between the front of the box and the tractor, and he went through it.

There are some things, he later reflected, that change everything else. Their breaking makes no sound yet fractures the world. Afterwards, nothing can be restored to its original order. It’s Gone. But at the time, at the moment of domestic impression, Big Events don’t appear to have any power at all, a single leaf falling. They don’t seem as if they will be important. Their terrible reckoning is hidden from view.

He climbed onto the tractor and turned off the engine. The clattering died in a heavy denim flapping. He jumped down and stood over the mangled body. There was no question he was dead and no question he was July, doubled over like a fallen rag.

Jacob looked at the broken human form and felt, astonishingly, nothing. There was no mystery that required explanation. No laws had been broken. No dangers still lurked and no urgency spoke out of the vacant silence. Everything was done. July had been loading corn into his gravity box. His coat caught in the PTO. The shaft killed him. The look of resigned astonishment on the good side of his face was probably an accurate portrait of his last conscious moment; and even if it wasn’t, it didn’t matter. The thoughts passing through people’s minds at the gate of death are always concealed from the living, and there was little point in speculation. July was dead. It was an accident. He had been working alone and should have been more careful. Maybe he was tired or preoccupied. No one could know. People died, sometimes accidentally. The death had been brutal, but that’s the way with farming accidents. They were part of a hard life. The deflated, bluish look of the blood-drained body was normal. So were the open eyes. The look of death.

A pair of bright red male cardinals lit on the gravity box and hopped inside, disappearing from sight. A female joined them. The color of the dried blood, black and blue flies, and the scattered yellow kernels of corn lying among blades of green, green grass seemed almost beautiful.

When Winnie walked around the tractor, she pressed her hands against the sides of her face. Jacob unwound the denim coat from the PTO shaft and placed it over July. He put his arm around Winnie and turned her away, but she pushed him aside.

They walked to the house.

Jacob phoned for an ambulance. Winnie sat at the kitchen table with the crumbs from July’s breakfast staring back at her. Beside the crumbs, she put her box of blackberries.

Jacob was still perplexed by how little he felt. It was just like a normal day, like yesterday and the day before. He noticed the fingers on Winnie’s right hand rapidly tapping the top of the table.

“We’d better try to locate July’s family,” he said.

Winnie looked at him. “He doesn’t have any close family,” she said. “Maybe a cousin. At least that’s what he told me once.”

Winnie gripped her right hand with her left to stop it from tapping on the tabletop and then discovered that with her fingers in prison, other things were harder to contain. Without noticing how it happened, she had stood up. “Jacob, we’ve got to find someone to take care of the cows.”

“Everyone’s got some family, somewhere,” said Jacob.

“We’ve got to find someone to take care of the cows,” Winnie repeated.

Jacob walked through the living room and into the room July used for an office. Winnie heard him climbing the steps and walking around upstairs.

Then the house was quiet and Winnie cleared the dishes from the table. As she waited for the ambulance to arrive, she ran water in the sink and washed the frying pan.

She heard another sound, went upstairs, and found Jacob sitting on a wooden chair in a bedroom with a single bed. On his lap sat a shallow box of photographs and newspaper clippings. He was looking out the window, as though for the first time noticing that something had changed and that this day was nothing like the day before.

She walked across the room, stood next to him, and put her hand on his shoulder.

Jacob looked up at her. “I’ve known him more than five years, but
he was private.” He looked again into the box of photographs and newspaper clippings. “It says here that his wife was murdered many years ago, in Iowa. He never said anything about it. He never told me. Why wouldn’t he tell me?”

“Are you sure it was his wife?”

“Not many people are named July.”

Winnie noticed that several strands of tan thread in the seam of Jacob’s shirt were unraveling in tiny loops. She felt awkward with her hand on his shoulder and took it off, held it in midair, then after a brief crisis of hesitation put it back on his shoulder. It felt better there. Through the bedroom window she watched an old convertible pull into the farmyard, and went downstairs.

Winnie opened the front door and Gail Shotwell walked into the kitchen.

“Hello,” said Winnie. “I’m afraid we’ve never been officially introduced. I’m Winifred Smith.”

“I know. I’m Gail. Is July around?”

“I’m afraid I have something to tell you,” said Winnie.

Gail cast an impatient look around the room. Evangelists had trapped her before. “I don’t have a lot of time, Preacher. I’m just here to pick up a pie pan that I left with July a couple days ago. I’m sure I can find it myself.”

Winnie stood in the doorway of the living room, as though to block her from moving in that direction.

“Please, sit down.”

“I don’t want to sit down. What’s going on? What are you doing here? Where’s July?”

Noises could be heard upstairs.

“Is that July?” asked Gail.

“No,” said Winnie. “That’s Jacob Helm. We got here twenty minutes ago and found July by the corncrib. He was killed in an accident and we’re waiting for the ambulance. He’s dead.”

“That’s not true,” said Gail, confidently.

“I wish it wasn’t.”

Their eyes met for the first time and the confidence immediately drained from Gail’s face.

The house was quiet except for a faucet dripping into the dish-water. Gail sat down. “What’s Jacob doing upstairs?” she asked, and as though in answer something above them smashed against a wall.

“Jacob’s upset. They were good friends and he’s having a hard time of it.”

Upstairs, something else was thrown against a wall, accompanied by a curse.

“Men,” said Gail. “They always think they can grieve with their fists and feet.”

“We need to call someone to take care of the cows,” said Winnie.

“I’ll milk them,” said Gail. “And I’ll come back in the morning and milk them. Where did you say you found July?”

“He’s in front of the corncrib.”

“I’m going out there.”

“That’s not a good idea,” said Winnie. “His coat was caught in the power takeoff.”

“Oh,” said Gail, sitting back down. “Drat, I don’t think I want to see that.”

Then she began to cry and Winnie sat next to her.

The ambulance arrived and left with July’s body. The county sheriff’s car came later. Standing in front of the corncrib, Winnie, Gail, and Jacob told the two men everything they knew about July—everything they could think to say.

After they left, Jacob did not talk again. He set the shovel inside the crib, went to his jeep, and drove away.

Winnie wasn’t sure what she should do but decided to stay with Gail.

Gail found three bottles of beer in July’s refrigerator and drank them.

SELLING LAND

G
RAHM SHOTWELL PULLED A CULTIVATOR THROUGH A FIELD of soybeans. At first he only heard the name, the rest of the announcement obscured by the diesel’s exhaust. He turned up the radio and waited for the next local news cycle. Afterwards, he climbed down from the tractor and stood in the middle of the field, rubbing his hands through his hair and looking at the recently sprouted soybeans. A hot, dry wind blew out of the south and the ground was hard.

Rain was forecast and it might be a week, perhaps two, before he would have another opportunity. The field had to be finished. He walked around the tractor several times, climbed back into the cab, and continued. He didn’t know what else to do. It seemed he should respond in some way to the news but he couldn’t imagine how. Even sudden, deadening grief had to be absorbed within a nonporous routine.

When he finished harrowing the field, Grahm left the tractor next to the road and drove his pickup to July’s farm. Perhaps someone would know more about the accident than had been reported on the radio. There were several other cars there, but once he was in the farmyard he could not force himself to climb out of the truck and he drove back home.

That night he could not sleep and went outdoors before 4:00 a.m. Cora followed him a short time later and he told her to go back inside. He fed the calves, repaired a broken stanchion, ran feed into the bunkers, and milked his cows earlier than usual.

At ten o’clock he returned to July’s farm. A light rain fell from the sky. His sister’s car and Wade’s pickup stood next to the barn. They were still milking, and he worked with them until they turned the cows into the pasture and drove back to Words.