Smoke (35 page)

There it is rolling out to meet the horizon, a prickling, fuming boneyard. His old stamping ground. Home. Buster looks at his boots, his arms outstretched. He opens and closes his hands. He's here inside it again—solid, strong. Healthy—if not handsome. He scans the property and finds his father's old horse, Darlene, beside the stripping barn drinking from a bucket. Will his father ever understand the heartsore that being burned is, or that Doc John's stories and all they represent are just as important now as family ever was, for they make the quiet violence of this small-town existence concrete? Real. They make sense of malicious gossip, petty turf wars and rifts in friendship. And, if all goes according to plan, the stories will have provided the inspiration to return him to his rightful place at the centre of it all. Who is his father when he isn't in the fields, Buster wonders. When he's alone? Is he afraid of anything? Is he ever afraid of himself?

Buster remembers his father fishing with him at Long Point, how he took him and Hank and Donny to watch smelt run on Erie shores. He taught them to sit patiently for hours, to show no fear of bumblebees and so avoid being stung. But it has been through the suckering and the seeding and the priming, through every season, that his father has proven himself. Buster leans back. The kiln is warm and he welcomes it, even in the heat of harvest. I can't stay thinking what a raw deal I've been dealt forever, he thinks. Any burden will only be carried for so long before it drops.

Jelly Bean stands, removes Isabel's apron and sits once more with it folded across her lap. Her turquoise halter top fits tightly over her chest. The straps of her brassiere don't align with the straps on her halter and have slid down one shoulder. Buster has seen the way some of the other boys watch her, as if hers is a body housing infinite possibilities for all of them. The sting of a sharp metal wire tightens around his gut and he hoofs a rock with the toe of his boot. Thinking about Jelly Bean with someone else is unbearable, cuts into him in a thousand invisible ways.

Hank emerges from the kitchen full of rich, fatty flavours. He stretches and makes his way down the patio steps, towards Susan who is sitting by the stripping barn, drinking a glass of lemonade. Hank's stride is determined. He is going to get to the bottom of things for once and for all. Hank is definitely finished with games. In front of Susan he is animated, waving his arms about his head, shouting as she tries to
shush
him and drag him around to the side of the barn, out of view.

Buster wipes the dirt from his jeans and walks over to the barn to spy on them. When he is close enough to see and to hear the argument, whatever has transpired is already winding down. Susan is crying, wringing her hands. “I can't tell you!” she hollers. “I just can't!” Hank storms off into the field and both Susan and Buster watch him withdraw. Once it's clear that Hank is not about to turn around, Susan bends over and vomits. She straightens again, wipes her mouth and eyes with the backs of her hands, and returns to the others who are meeting up at the tying table. Percy, Bob and Donny head into the field and Buster turns to catch up to them. He waves at Jelly Bean as he goes. It's true that she wants to produce beauty, he thinks. She could probably make a diamond of a lump of coal. She doesn't avoid life the way he does. She runs at it, makes it brighter, bolder. She wants beauty by her own design. Besides catching the bandit what does he want?

 

Another kiss that opens possibility.

Skin as smooth as the ribbon on his fedora.

He wants change.

T
HE HANDERS LIFT THE TABLE,
move it around to the other side of the kiln and begin the process of handing and tying all over again. They work fast. This year tobacco is also being tied by Tom's hired man Simon Vandemaele, who strings it expertly onto long sticks. He stands beside his wooden horse at the side of the table before a thirty-inch-long slat of wood, the stick, suspended on another wooden horse. Tying is highly skilled and Tom trusts only Simon and Isabel to do it properly. This is a point of pride for Simon, who is wearing brown leather wristbands. Isabel sometimes tapes her wrists, though she hasn't today. Each time Simon receives a hand— stems first—he ties it onto one side of the stick, wraps the string around the next hand and flips that one over to the other side. All day he ties and flips. Ties and flips. It requires a keen eye, agile, quick fingers and sturdy wrists.

Gladys Peacock, Susan and Simon began at six-thirty in the morning, shortly after the primers made their way into the field. Isabel and Jelly Bean have now joined them for a stint. They all stand in their plastic aprons and rubber boots, growing hotter by the minute under the heavy afternoon rays. Isabel ties a blue kerchief around her thick red mop. “It's like passing a baton,” she explains to Jelly Bean. “When you're good you don't have to look.”

Simon nods. “You'll get so your fingers know how many feel right.” He flexes one hand, opening it and wiggling long, bony fingers. Thick blue veins push out through the skin. The widest part of his fingers are their flat, rounded tips, as if they've been pressed with an iron. He is a tall gangly man from top to bottom, with a long neck and narrow torso. Jelly Bean thinks he looks something like the salamanders the local boys used to collect by the pond. She glances at her own small hands.

“The idea is to space leaves evenly in the kiln,” Isabel adds. “Like clothes in a closet. Any not tied or hung properly fall to the bottom and are wasted. Watch how we do it.”

Gladys passes to Simon alternating in an unblinking rhythm, and Susan passes to Isabel without breaking stride. There is an unselfconscious musicality and skill in their interlocking gestures, an enviable pace to the handing and tying and handing and tying, so that Jelly Bean wants to take her turn but is sure she'll fumble and drop something. When that slat is full—the tobacco tied on by the stems—it looks to her like a hula skirt made of leaves.

“Let's pick up the pace,” says Simon. He knots the string twice around the finished stick and breaks it with callused fingers while Isabel prepares another stick and motions to Susan, the hander at the front of the wooden horse, to pick up the full stick and lay it in the pile next to the kiln. Each time Susan does this she layers the stick of leaves in a pattern so the pile won't fall over.

Susan is sullen, her eyes obviously red from crying and lack of sleep. Only two nights before her mother had informed her father of her embarrassing condition. Len called Susan a whore and slapped her across the face. He ordered her mother to telephone their relatives in Leamington and arrange to have Susan sent by train immediately, before she drew any further attention to the family. Susan would be forced to give birth and then relinquish the child.

She waited until her parents stopped arguing and turned out their bedside lamps before slipping out of the house. She didn't know where she would go but there had to be somewhere. She wandered alone in the dark, through the fields and down the hill, and hurried along the side of Main Street. She was blind with grief. Did she want this baby? Could she love it? Would people ever let her live it down? The only person she could think to ask for help was Hank McFiddie, but she was certain that he'd reject her now too. She was better off to steer clear of all boys, anyway. Homegrown or otherwise. When Susan saw Isabel driving past in the red truck that Hank had taken her out in, she lay her head in her hands and began to sob. Isabel stopped, ordered the girl into the truck. Now Isabel has persuaded Tom to allow Susan to work through harvest in exchange for room and board.

The older women at the tying table take charge of the conversation and lead it in a most detailed and salacious direction. Simon throws in the occasional “Hmm” or “Right, I heard that,” but it's Isabel and Gladys who shock Jelly Bean with the level of gossip permitted. She is horrified to discover things she's never known about her neighbours; whose wife turned up at church with a black eye, who has been taken to the cooler in Woodstock for getting into a drunken brawl. Who is philandering and shouldn't be. She feels a bit guilty with her ear to the wall, eavesdropping and looking in at their lives. She is aware of Susan beside her and that something about the girl looks and sounds different today, blunted. It's also clear to Jelly Bean that Gladys Peacock has a bee in her bonnet.

“You girls hear what's going on with town council?”

“They've posted a reward for capturing the bandit,” says Jelly Bean.

“And the petition. You hear about that?”

Susan fights back nausea. The last thing she needs is to be reminded of her family. “Dad's pretty determined.” She doesn't look up.

“Do you hand on your father's farm too?” Jelly Bean asks.

Susan raises her eyes. “Why are you asking?”

“Just curious.”

“Find my life exciting do you?”

“What's got into you?” Jelly Bean whispers. “Usually you're so full of advice.”

The other women and Simon pretend they haven't heard this and Susan says nothing in response, even when Gladys and Isabel exchange knowing glances.

“How are you feeling, Susan? Any queasiness?”

“No, just fine thank you Mrs. Peacock.”

“I've rarely had morning sickness myself. Maybe you'll be lucky too, dear.”

Jelly Bean's mouth falls open. She meets Susan's eyes but neither girl speaks. Susan has always appeared invincible, impenetrable. She's teased Jelly Bean about her own uncontrollable lapses. To think that Susan's body could betray her in a public way, that she could make a mistake, means that anyone can. Jelly Bean's shoulders drop, her face softens. A clean, transparent loosening happens inside of her and spreads like a cool stream of water. She's not only got the hang of handing to Isabel but she's actually pretty good at it. By four o'clock when Isabel removes her kerchief and announces that it's time for her to check on Lizzie and finish preparing supper, Jelly Bean's fingers are moving fast and sure for the first time in her life.

Walter is in the hardware store when Len Rombout pokes his head in the door. “My petition's been passed around,” Len gloats. “Looks as though Barbara Ann Scott will be leading the parade after all.”

“I didn't see any petition,” says Walter.

“Let Hazel know, will ya?” Len turns and is gone.

That evening Walter phones Tom. He hates to be the one to do it but he'd prefer Tom hear it from a friend. “If that's how folks feel,” Tom snaps into the receiver. “Then I guess that's the way it'll be.” He grumbles a few more words to Walter, it isn't Walter's fault after all, and he hangs up. He stands in the middle of the kitchen, stunned.

Buster and Lizzie are asleep and Hank has snuck down to the rumpus room, found Susan there and persuaded her to take a ride with him in his father's truck. They are parked by the river. Isabel moves in behind her husband, wraps her arms around his gut and licks his sweaty neck. He tastes of salt and a briny tang. Her belly, flatter than it has been in months, presses into his rear. She fishes in his pants pocket for a Zippo and dallies there a moment longer than is necessary. “It's not folks,” she says, having guessed the conversation from one end. “It's just Len.” She reaches around behind to the counter where she left an open package of cigarettes, lights one, inhales deeply and turns to blow the smoke down the back of Tom's neck, under his collar. “His nose is out of joint because we took Susan in.”

“If it's not one damned thing it's another. It's always something with him. Well he can shove it. See if that bastard ever gets so much as a hello from me again!”

“You don't mean that,” Isabel soothes. “You're a better man than that.”

A better man. No. Tom doesn't think so any more. Their livelihoods depend on tobacco, and the marketing board getting government support is a good idea but instead of making things better for the community it's become a great glass ceiling shattering down on him. He's been fighting someone or something all year because of it. He collapses his weight against Isabel's and is unspeakably tired.

“You know what's worse? The boys.”

“Thomas.”

“No, Hank's miserable here; I can see that. And I can't talk to Buster any more without it turning into a fight. I've tried. I'm through fighting, Isabel. In fact, Hazel can bring in someone else to lead the parade. Len can produce and sell as much as he wants, goddamnit. I'm washing my hands of it all.” He meets her eyes. “We can manage the costs of that surgery too. Tell Doc John if his offer to go with Buster still stands, we'll take it.”

The farm and everything it represents is Tom's right hand, his left hand, his entire sense of himself carried in both and Isabel knows it. The fact that someone has taken such a public swing at his reputation leaves her husband feeling as if he's holding air. “Len's all piss and vinegar,” she says. “Everyone knows that. It'll pass. As for Buster, he's been angry with both of us, not only you. This is not about you.” She means it when she says it, and hopes he is listening. It's time she ushered in a reconciliation. She blows smoke rings into the air and rubs up against him like any one of the farm cats rubbing ankles to be let into the house. “Lizzie adores you,” she says. “So does Hank, whether he wants to be a grower or not. So do I. And this surgery is the right decision. You'll see, it'll all work through in time. Buster's coming around. He's just stubborn. A lot like his father.” She presses her cigarette to his lips, nibbles on his earlobe and watches as he sucks hard, his cheeks hollowing.