Chapter 9 - The Long Shadow
The harvest of two thousand and two was the driest in forty years.
Up on the ridge, the shallow limestone ground baked until the fissures in the clay were wide enough to swallow a hammer. Ronald’s corn stood five feet high, its tassels bleached white by the August sun before the ears could fill, the leaves rattling like tin foil in the hot southwest wind.
We saw his blue pickup driving the section road every evening at dusk, moving at ten miles an hour, stopping at every corner while he looked out over the stunted fields. He didn't come down our lane. He didn't come to church on Sundays anymore. Judy went alone, sitting in the fourth pew with her back straight and her eyes fixed on the pulpit, her flowered hats looking smaller and more frayed with every passing week.
In October, the implement dealer in town told Nate that Ronald had put the three-hundred-acre ridge farm up for private treaty sale.
"He wants three thousand an acre," the dealer said, leaning against the counter while Nate signed for a carton of hydraulic seals. "Nobody’s touching it, Nate. The corporate buyers from Indianapolis took soil cores two weeks ago. They told him the limestone’s too close to the surface—it’s only fit for pasture or a subdivision, and the housing market’s gone soft since the factory closed."
Nate didn't say anything. He took his seals, paid with a check from our new account at the Farmer’s Mutual, and drove home.
That evening, after supper, we were sitting on the front porch watching the fireflies rise from the clover bottom. The air was cool, carrying the first sharp scent of autumn leaf-mold from the timber. Opal had already gone to bed, her small room dark, her breathing slow and regular through the open window behind us.
A pair of headlights turned off the township road and came slowly down the lane.
The truck didn't roar. Its engine sounded tired, missing on one cylinder, its springs squeaking as it navigated the fresh limestone gravel Nate had laid. It stopped fifty feet from the house, near the old pump Nate had restored with a new leather sucker-rod.
The door opened. Ronald climbed out.
He wasn't wearing his blue Sunday shirt or his clean farm boots. He wore an old pair of greasy work trousers, held up by suspenders that had lost their stretch, and a soiled denim jacket with the fleece collar torn away. He walked with a heavy, dragging limp—his left hip had been bothering him for two years, but he had refused to spend the money for the replacement in town.
He stopped at the foot of the porch steps, his hands jammed deep into his jacket pockets.
Nate didn't get up. He sat on the top step, his arms resting on his knees, his face in the shadow of the porch beam.
"Nathan," Ronald said. His voice was hoarse, like he hadn't used it for three days.
"Dad," Nate replied.
The silence sat between them for a long minute, as deep and wide as the valley itself. A screech owl called from the dead walnut by the barn, a shivering, lonely sound that rose and fell in the dark.
"The bank’s calling the note on Jeff’s house," Ronald said. His eyes didn't look at Nate; they were fixed on the clean white oak risers Nate had built into the porch. "The construction company went under in July. Jeff was three months behind on the interest, and they’re filing the notice next Friday."
Nate didn't move. "Jeff had twenty thousand from you, Dad. And he had that five-acre lot on the west corner."
"He spent it," Ronald muttered, looking down at his boots. "He bought that big truck and the pool for the kids. He thought the building would keep going. He didn't know... he didn't understand how fast things can turn when the rain stops."
He took a half-step forward, his hand coming out of his pocket. It was empty, the fingers curled like dry leaves.
"The dealer said you’ve got five hundred bushels of seed wheat in the lower barn," Ronald said, his voice dropping into that wheedling, shameful tone that Opal had spoken of. "Certified red winter. If I could get two hundred bushels... to put in the ridge pasture before the freeze... the bank might give me an extension on the operating line."
Nate looked at him. For a second, I thought of the card with the bluebird on it—the card that Nate had kept in his shirt pocket until the paper was soft as cloth. I thought of the eighty-hour weeks, the eggs for breakfast, dinner, and supper, the smell of grease on his skin, and the three hundred dollars we had scrounged from tip jars while his brother drove a forty-thousand-dollar pickup through town.
Nate stood up slowly. He walked down the three steps until he was standing on the gravel, level with his father. He was three inches taller than Ronald now, his shoulders wider, his frame hardened by two years of real labor.
"The seed wheat is two dollars a bushel over the market price, Dad," Nate said. His voice was perfectly clear, devoid of malice, but cold as a January pump handle. "That’s what it costs to clean it and treat it for smut."
Ronald looked up, his jaw slackening. "Nate... I’m your father."
"Arthur Becker was your father, too," Nate said. "And you charged him three percent on the money that was supposed to save this roof."
Ronald flinched as if he’d been slapped. He looked past Nate toward the window of the downstairs bedroom, where the white lace curtain was moving faintly in the draft.
"Is she in there?" he whispered.
"She’s asleep," Nate said. "She had a hard day stringing beans with Emily. She doesn't need to be woken up by people who don't belong on this creek."
Ronald stood there for another thirty seconds, his old body silhouetted against the headlights of his failing truck. The wind blew through his thin white hair, showing the pink, age-spotted scalp beneath. He looked small—not like the patriarch who had carved the meat at the head of the ten-foot oak table, but like a frightened boy who had wandered down the wrong lane with his clothes in a flour sack and found that the door had been bolted from the inside.
"I’m eighty rods short on the line fence between us, Nate," he said, his voice barely audible over the crickets. "The brush is taking the wire down."
"I know," Nate replied. "I’m putting in new cedar posts next week. Four-point barb. Tight enough to turn a sheep."
"You're going to make me look at that new wire every time I drive the ridge?"
May you like
"No," Nate said, turning his back and walking slowly up the steps to where I sat. "You won't have to look at it at all, Dad. Just look straight ahead, like you've been doing for forty years."
Ronald didn't say another word. He turned, dragged his heavy leg back to the truck, climbed in, and pulled the door shut with a hollow, rattling slam that echoed off the face of the barn. He backed down the lane with his lights flickering, hit the township road with a chirp of rubber, and disappeared into the dry, black night of the ridge.
