Dwelling Places (34 page)

“Would you all do this for me? I feel like it would help.” Asking for help is not his habit either, but it won over Kenzie, who, even as wounded as she is, still wants to be helpful. Young Taylor shrugged, and Mack took that as a yes.

He has feared all day that Jodie will back out at the last minute. If she goes, it will be only for his sake, and these days he cannot measure the depth or intensity of her feelings toward him. He no longer assumes that she is committed to his well-being, and this has wiped out his equilibrium. Somehow, he stays in the house. He even sleeps in their bed, although he doesn't lie down until she is asleep, and he does not touch her. It stirs up all of his anger to be so close to her. His stomach churns acid, and he doesn't sleep for hours at a time. But they have decided that the last thing their daughter needs right now is seeing her dad move to the spare bedroom. Plus, Mack fears that if he walks out of their bedroom he will never again find its entrance.

He doesn't know how he keeps going about his business, putting in full days at the shop and dwelling in the farmhouse every evening, taking care to talk with his children. It's all he has, these moments full of awkward questions and answers or superficial comments about the day, but he just keeps talking and listening and trying to read these people who have managed to wander so far from him and each other.

It's as if his soul has its own agenda now. He goes through the motions of love and acts as if things will get better, which, as recently as a few months ago, would have felt hypocritical. But the efforts don't seem hollow to him. They are steps he must take, regardless of any immediate reward or relief. So he steps into each day and just keeps stepping.

Now the four of them step into a cold afternoon in mid-January. Mack notices the sky without really studying it. In the back of his mind float masses of chalky gray. He is ready for the sun to shine again, ready for color and the smell of soft dirt. The fields are still bright and expansive from the snowfall of two days ago. Even without direct sunshine the land's surface is as smooth and white as frosting on a wedding cake. In fields where corn stood during the past year, perfect lines of tan stubble push through the crust of snow and mark the memory of harvest.

In a land of long straight lines, Grace Methodist of Oskaloosa offers a large room filled with roundness—oval windows and pews that
curve to hug the front of the sanctuary. The old wood shines. The gently shaded stained glass tints the air with combinations of color that suggest holiness and perfection that reside not out in the elements but in people's hearts. When summer was laden with heat and maturing crops, the sanctuary air brushed silkily across bare arms and necks, and the polished wood of pews, altar, pulpit, and piano tickled a person's nose with the memory of resin, sawdust, linseed oil.

Mack and Jodie first came here to worship summer before last. It was a shift away from the friends and enemies of the tiny Methodist congregation in Beulah. The pastor serves both congregations. Reverend Maynor, with losses of her own behind her, has been ordained for five years, the last two of them served here. She lends a soft strength to the community in the way the church gives curves to the straight-edged fields beyond its property.

Now, in the dead of January, the dried-out Christmas greenery has been removed from windows, ledges, and railings, but still there is the scent of cedar. It is a golden room in the middle of a cold blue landscape.

Kenzie hasn't said much to either Mack or Jodie since the night they found out about Mitchell Jaylee. For the first time in her young life, Mack senses true defiance in his daughter. It doesn't present itself as open anger, only quiet obedience that seems to have no spirit left, and Mack approaches Kenzie as if she were a new acquaintance.

He and Jodie talked to the youth pastor at the Baptist church, who was almost as upset as they were, ashamed at not having figured out that something was wrong. Pastor Williamson showed them a video that Kenzie gave him to watch, apologizing for not having jumped on that issue immediately. Mack and Jodie watched about fifteen minutes of it, while Kenzie was out of the house. Reverend Francis struck them as most definitely crazy if not criminal, but they don't yet know how to suggest this to Kenzie. Pastor Williamson has offered to work on this part of it, and they are grateful.

They are also relieved that the situation with Jaylee did not go further. After talking with Kenzie, Pastor Williamson is convinced that
there was no sexual relationship, although it certainly seemed to be heading in that direction. Mitchell hasn't been seen in Beulah since the day he and Kenzie were to run away together. Jerry has tried to contact Reverend Francis's compound, but no one will return his calls, and given that Mitchell is a grown man, Jerry is not compelled to bother law enforcement officials two states away. This would not be the first time Jaylee shut up his house and disappeared for weeks at a time.

Now Kenzie and her mother sit mutely in the pew, a foot apart. They look shut down, and as Mack observes the other people who are gathering, the fear races through him again. He has no right to drag them through this, not now.

Rita is homebound, after yet another trip to the emergency room. Not from pneumonia but a fractured shin. She slipped on her own back step, taking out garbage that Mack would have hauled out if she had just waited another twenty minutes. He is slightly grateful, though, that she is unable to be with them this evening. She's shown no interest at all in the service, and he has run out of fight or patience where she is concerned. Amos cornered him earlier today, when Mack stopped by to take the two meals Jodie put together for her, and asked if Rita would like company, and Mack said, yes, she'd probably really like that.

Young Taylor does not sit with them but takes a place in the very back pew, close to the door, in case he needs to make a fast getaway, Mack guesses. He wears all black but no makeup. Mack turns in the pew once or twice to be sure he's not slipped out. The second time, Young Taylor, his arms stretched along the pew back, raises a forefinger in acknowledgment.

Ed and Lacy are here. They sit in the pew just behind Mack and Jodie. Of course they would be here, as they are always close by. Several members of Beulah Methodist are present; Mack doesn't know which “grieving families” they are connected to, but he does notice Jon and Annette Peters and remembers that Jodie used to go places with Annette. What Mack hasn't expected, though, is to see the
Lesters, Masons, and Kernbetters, neighbors who have farmed adjacent acreages during the past twenty years. The Masons were good friends of Rita and Taylor Senior. They smile at Mack and Jodie and sit a few pews away.

Three other families are making formal good-byes to farming. Two of them Mack and Jodie know, having followed their tragedies at a distance even while their own unfolded. The third couple live in the next county, and their loss is the most recent: they auctioned off their goods not quite three months ago.

Reverend Maynor has some opening comments, but they are short. The congregation sings a hymn, and a deacon offers a prayer. The man has likely never prayed at this type of service before, and he sounds a bit unsure. He keeps his thanks and requests general, but does say at the end, “Lord, help our hearts heal tonight,” and these words cause a shift in Mack's thinking. It is a personal, painful request, and he is unaccustomed to bringing raw emotion into a church building. By now, such pain comes up as normal when he sits in George's office. But the public feel of this church makes him wonder what in the world he is doing here, and he dreads what may happen next.

“I've asked a few of you to come prepared tonight,” the reverend says, smiling, “just to get things going. I'd like for us to spend some time telling stories. They can be any stories at all, but the important thing is that they are your stories. So Julia is going to start, and then I think a couple of others. Then we'll open it up to whoever wants to talk.”

The stories do come, one after the other. To Mack's surprise, only a few recount hard times—droughts, accidents, or sick hogs. But there are many more stories of kids, cats, and even calves, stuck in trees or muddy stream bottoms, of hilarious chases after persnickety livestock, of poison ivy making the rounds through three families in a week, of parties of women sweating in one another's kitchens, putting up pickles, green beans, corn, and applesauce.

He didn't expect the stories or the warm, at-home feeling their telling brings. He didn't expect to cry from laughing and for that to
feel good. He didn't expect any laughter at all, just some Scripture readings and admonitions to praise God and trust his providence. They have been sitting here for more than an hour now, and no one has read any Scripture at all.

Their neighbor Dave Kernbetter, who is going on seventy, clears his throat and begins to speak.

“Young Taylor was three years old and somehow got into my sweet corn patch. I guess he'd been in the truck with his mom when she brought lunch out to Mack and Taylor Senior, the next field over. I could see the adults standing around the truck with the hood up—always something breaking on the equipment—” Chuckles around the room confirm this. “Anyway, I guess while they had their heads together, Young Taylor got away and got into my field. But I didn't know he was anywhere around.

“So I'm chopping weeds out of my rows, and I see some stalks moving like there's an animal comin' right for me. I've got my old dog Patch there with me, and usually he'd take after anything that didn't belong there. But Patch just looks back at me, confused.” Dave stops while a laugh rumbles up from his gut. His wife Mary is shaking beside him and wiping her eyes.

“Then all of a sudden I see this little brown head of hair and a totally naked kid underneath it. It was hot as blazes, and I guess he'd been just wearing a diaper, but he must have lost that a few rows back. But—oh yeah, he did have his sneakers on. So there's Young Taylor, movin' ahead straight as a plowhorse, red as a little beet. He looks up at me, and I say, ‘Young Taylor, what are you doing here?' and I reach down to grab him, but he takes out and runs east, away from me
and
his folks. So all I can do is run after him. But a little guy with no clothes can travel pretty fast, you know.” The whole room is laughing itself to tears. “I caught up to him and grabbed him, and he screamed bloody murder all the way back to the truck. And I'm tryin' to figure out how I'm going to explain how come he's got no clothes on.”

Mack doesn't dare look back at Young Taylor. He hears little sobs beside him and sees Jodie pull out a tissue, her face red and bright
from laughing. She leans toward him suddenly. “We could never keep a diaper on him.”

Mack smiles and squeezes her shoulder. “Nope. We almost got him a leash after that, though.”

Reverend Maynor stands up, in the center aisle, the pulpit behind her. “We've remembered the history so many of us share. The good and bad times. Most of these memories have to do directly with your farms. You'll always have those memories and those stories. They will be part of you forever. But for the families we are honoring tonight, there will be no new stories connected with that livelihood.”

The room falls silent, as if she has mentioned something they have all agreed will not be spoken aloud. She is not daunted by this.

“The difficulty you face is that the life you had as farmers—all the wonderful and tragic moments that came with it—is over. This is the part that is not so easy to talk about. I remember when my daughter died in a traffic accident, six years ago, at age seventeen, I felt for months afterward that if I admitted out loud that she was gone for good, I would lose everything I had of her. I was afraid that the moment I said good-bye, all the memories would fly out the windows and doors and never return. I lived in fear of losing my memories. As you know, if you've lost a loved one, memories can be so vivid and close that they are almost like objects in the room with us.”

Mack thinks of Alex sitting by the stream in the dead of night, and of his father's boots in the museum.

“But the truth is, putting your grief into spoken words will not steal the rich history you have built. And until you put your grief into words, until you truly grieve and say good-bye, you won't be able to build new stories for yourself and your families. This is another reason we're here this evening. We're here to celebrate your families as the farm families they have been. But we're also here to say good-bye and help you move to the next part of your lives.”

She asks then that people speak, one at a time, and briefly, of what they must say good-bye to. Nearly a minute goes by, and the pastor remains steady. Finally, Adri Bart speaks up. She is in her early fifties
and looks as plain and strong as farm women tend to look. Her voice does not waver, but her hands shake slightly where they grip the pew in front of her.

“What I miss most of all is the spring planting. The world just feels new when it's thawing out from a long winter. Now we hardly ever hold the soil in our hands.” She sits down quickly, and others rise, one by one, and speak.

“Harvest is what I loved most. When you can pull in a good crop, nothing in life feels better. You've got the proof right there that you did a good job.”

“Now that we're in town, we've got a smaller garden spot. I hate not having half an acre to do with as I want. My favorite smell is green beans when I'm cooking them with ham and putting them up. I used to count jars by the dozens. Now I don't put much away at all. It doesn't feel the same, with that little garden patch.”

“Working with the hogs, believe it or not. I had hogs ever since I was seven years old. Used to show a sow every year at the fair. Then I'd cry when we'd sell her come winter.”

“I miss having the whole family around. It was so hard the day Frank got a job in town to bring in more money. I had three little ones at home. He worked in town during the day and farmed at night. I hated seeing him work to exhaustion. I hated that he didn't enjoy the farming, since he was always too tired to do it. But I really hated that he wasn't there with me during the day. I missed carrying lunch out to him or just going out to where he was and listening to him talk about how things were growing.”