Greenville (29 page)

Yep.

Boy, why don’t you sit on that end by Christine and Carly. We’ll put Donnie there next to Dale Jr.

Oh God please, the son says. Coming from your lips that makes me sound so
old
.

The girl smiles.

We do have a brother. Brian. He lives down in the city too. In Queens. She looks at the table separating the son and his father, set with empty plates and full dishes of food. Oh.
Duh
. Eat, please, she says then. Come on, it’s getting cold.

Thank God for Tommy. For a moment it looks like nobody is going to touch the food, then he reaches across the table and grabs a kebob. Grabs
two
kebobs. In a moment there is the pleasant sound of forks scraping dishes, things being passed. Bowls empty, plates fill up in hourglass exchange.

The girl puts the asparagus in a bowl and brings it to the table when she sits down. The son is just to her left and she hands it to him.

Asparagus?

Love it, he says. He spoons all of two pieces on his plate, where they lie gray and limply crisscrossed like shoelaces that have come untied.

The girl pushes at her hair.

Please, eat up, she says.

Just want to make sure there’s enough to go around, the son says, passing the bowl to Donnie.

Eh? Can’t stand asparagus, Donnie says, handing the bowl on to Christine, who spoons some onto her plate without looking and hands it off to Carly.

So Donnie Badget, the father says then. My God.

Sutton.

What’s that, Dale? Oh right, Sutton. You’re confusing me. Donnie Sutton, he says again. It must’ve been forty-five years since I seen you.

Donnie is holding a beef kebob in both hands as if not quite sure how to eat it.

Yep, he says, raising one end of the skewer and then the other, like a seesaw, or scales. The girl is about to tell him to just bite it when she notices the son fastidiously removing the meat and vegetables from his own skewer. He removes them one piece at a time with his fork, straddling the tines over the skewer and sliding the pieces of food off the end. Tomato, pineapple, beef, pepper, onion. He slides the bits of food off his skewer and aligns them as though he were setting up a chessboard.

So Donnie, the father says now. You certainly have a nice situation for yourself. Steady work, surrounded by pretty girls. He grips a piece of chicken with his teeth and slides it off its skewer. Meals included. Aunt Bess never fed you this good.

Donnie is working a cherry tomato off his skewer with his fingers. Been here twenty-five years, he says distractedly. Bess’s been dead going on twenty.

She was a good woman, Aunt Bessie.

Yes she was.

The father sets his skewer on his plate. You remember when they got married? Everybody in the neighborhood come around in the middle of the night, gave them a twenty-one-gun salute,
BOOM
!
BOOM
!
BOOM
!
BOOM
! the father says, making the sound of gunfire so loudly that everyone at the table jumps. He laughs a little. I never been so scared in all my life. I thought the world was coming to an end.

Well, who do you think rounded everyone up?

No kidding, the father says. That was you? I thought the Russians were coming.

Would you like some asparagus, Mr. Peck?

Oh, please, please, call me Dale. Thank you, honey, I will.

It’s just there to your right.

Thank you, honey, he says, spooning half the bowl absently on his plate and passing the rest on to her. Here you go. So Donnie, he says then. We drove by your house, saw two names on the mailbox. You living with someone?

You ever know Geraldine Murphy? Donnie says. She lived over in Westerlo, married to Adam Murphy?

Questions and answers come slowly, naturally punctuated by chewing, swallowing. The girl is relieved that everyone is getting along, but vaguely disappointed too. It is not exactly as
dramatic
as Donnie’s entrance into the kitchen might have promised. No tears, shouts, revelations. Just bits of biography salting the meal like a condiment.

She looks around the table again, makes sure everyone is eating, then allows herself to begin.

Adam died of liver cancer, Donnie is saying now, oh, gosh, a long time ago. Geraldine and I been together a while.

Married? the father says.

Yep, finally. Lived together a pretty long while first.

Any children?

She’s got two from her first marriage and then we got two boys of our own.

The father nods his head. He puts his fork down, then picks up his half-eaten kebob with both hands.

Donnie Sutton, he says just before grabbing a piece of chicken in his teeth. The name seems to start and stop his memory. He chews, swallows. Still bringing in the cows. What are you, Donnie, seventy-five years old?

I’m just seventy.

The father dispatches a tomato, a piece of pineapple, another piece of chicken.

Seventy years old and you look better than I do. I’m fifty-eight.

Yeah, I guess you was about thirteen, fourteen when you lived with Wallace.

I’m thirteen, Tommy says now.

So are we, Christine says.

The girl realizes the son has not touched his food in a few minutes. He is looking at the boy sitting next to his father. There is field dirt on the boy’s face, on his wrists above his washed hands. His undershirt is dirty too, and too big for him, as if it is a hand-me-down. The son is wearing powder blue pants and a cabana shirt, but he seems almost to be looking at Tommy’s clothes with envy.

Would you like more asparagus, Dale?

Hmmm? father and son say at the same time. And then the son, tearing his eyes from the boy: Oh, no thank you. I’m still trying to clean my plate. Is that Thousand Island dressing?

It’s the diet kind, the girl says.

Perfect. He pours some on his salad but doesn’t pick up his fork.

It just about broke my heart, the father is saying now. When I had to leave the farm. Biggest mistake I ever made in my life. I tell you, Donnie, two weeks after I left I called Uncle Wallace and begged him to take me back but he was a hard man, he wouldn’t do it. The father looks at the empty skewer in his hands, then licks it clean. You broke my heart, Dale.

What? the son says.

The father looks at his son.

That’s what Uncle Wallace said to me. You broke my heart.

Oh, the son says. His smile seems a little sad to the girl. I thought he broke yours.

The father doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then:

He did love me. He said I was the son he never had.

Donnie is nodding slightly.

I think he took it real hard that you left.

He wouldn’t even let me come visit, Donnie. Only other time I saw him was after he had his stroke.

There was that time when we were kids, the son says. After Mom died. You took us to the Catskill Game Farm.

Oh, that’s right, the father says. We did stop by, didn’t we? He gazes off in the distance. And he didn’t even invite us to dinner, did he?

The son shrugs. I think I tried to milk a cow.

The father’s eyes are still soft.

It’s a hard life, dairy farming. You were better off, believe me, he says to his son, as if he’d made some long-ago decision with his progeny in mind. He turns to the girl. What do you got, sixty, seventy head of cattle here?

The girl smiles, shrugs.

I think so? Eighty?

Probably pays just enough to keep it going, right?

It’s not making my folks rich, that’s for sure. But it sent three kids through college.

The father nods his head.

Yeah, if I’d’ve stayed on the farm I might’ve been happier but I never would’ve learned a trade. Would’ve been dirt poor
all my life, never had nothing to give you kids. You can’t imagine, Dale, the father says, returning to his son. I know we wasn’t the richest but you can’t imagine what it was like on that farm, up at four-thirty in the morning, in bed by eight, nine o’clock at night, carting milk buckets by hand, hay bales, wheelbarrels full of—

Wheelbarrows.

What’s that Dale?

It’s wheelbarrow. Not wheelbarrel.

There is a pause. The girl watches the father and son stare at each other for a moment. There is a half smile on the son’s face, the father’s too. She can see this is some sort of game they play, although she is not sure what it means.

Dale
, the father says at length, emphatically. Uncle Wallace used to pull rusty nails out of old boards and drop them in a
jar
. He kept half-a that tiny little house shut up to save on
heat
.

I know, the son says, winking at the girl. You already told me. Today in fact.

Well I just wanted to make sure you didn’t
forget
, the father says, a little indignantly, but then he laughs at himself. He turns back to the girl.

You said you had a brother?

Brian, yes.

Is he going to take over the farm?

Brian’s not really interested in farming actually. He lives down in the city, she says one more time. She turns to the son.
In Queens
.

The son smiles blankly.

I’m in the East Village.

I understand, the father is saying. That’s kids today. They don’t want to do what their parents did. They want a better life.

Brian’s not really sure what he wants to do. He’s working as a trainer right now.

The father nods. I make my living as a plumber, he says, turning back to Donnie. Living out in Hutchinson, Kansas.

Good living, Donnie says. It’s hard to tell if it’s a question or a statement.

Well, you know, when I graduated from high school I had to choose. Carpentry or plumbing. I was good at both. I supposed I liked carpentry a little more but I figured people always need a plumber regardless of the economy. It’s seen me through. I’m mostly into pipe bursting now. Are you familiar with that procedure?

Pipe bursting?

Trenchless sewer line replacement.

Trenchless?

No trenches.

Dad, the boy says.

What, Dale? Sorry, he says to the table. I’m a little hard of hearing. What did you say, Dale?

I was about to say that you’ve already told everyone about pipe bursting.

Well, I haven’t told Donnie.

Donnie, the son says. You don’t happen to need a new sewer line, do you?

What? Donnie says. He looks completely confused. My sewer line’s fine?

I’m not selling it to him, Dale. I’m just explaining to him how the procedure works.

Father and son look at each other for a moment, and then the father laughs.

Pardon me, the father says to the girl. I get a little carried away sometimes. A man likes to talk about his work.

The girl smiles.

My grandpa and my dad and Donnie can talk about the farm for hours.

Forever
, Carly says from the other end of the table.

The father nods. He is staring so intently at the girl’s face that she has to drop her eyes to her plate. Her asparagus is still sitting there, cut into bite-sized pieces but uneaten.

The girl almost jumps when she feels the father’s hand on her hair.

Here you are, honey. You had something in your hair.

It is the broken rubberband.

Oh. Thank you.

She takes it from him, holds it for a moment then drops it on her plate.

And where are your parents? the father says. Are they around?

Oh, she shrugs. My father had to take my mother to the hospital in Albany this morning. That’s the only reason I’m here really. I live with my fiance now, but 1 promised I’d look in on the twins, make sure the men got fed.

What? Christine looks up blankly at the other end of the table.

I’m sorry to hear that, the father says. I hope she’s okay.

Oh, it’s nothing serious, the girl says. Just one of those procedures. Precautionary, exploratory. She should be home tonight, but she packed a suitcase just in case. Said it’d be her first vacation since she married a dairyman.

The father and Donnie laugh a long time at that.

The girl smiles brightly.

Did I hear you say something about seeing your brother?

The father smiles back at her. My half brother. Now there’s a story. Dale should tell it, he’s the storyteller.

The girl turns to the son.

The son makes a little face. He looks at the girl, his father, back at the girl.

God, where to start. Okay. So my father’s father was married before he married my father’s mother.

She was called Nancy Mitford, the father says.

Right. My grandfather’s first wife. Nancy Mitford. Anyway, Nancy and Floyd, that was my grandfather, Floyd—

Lloyd, Dale. My father’s name was Lloyd.

The boy shrugs at the girl.

You see we have a bit of a generation gap in this family. Anyway, Lloyd and Nancy had a son together, and they named him Dale Peck.

The girl turns to the father.

Nope, not me. My father named me after his firstborn son.

The girl is confused. Did he die?

No, the father says. His mother took him. Nancy Mitford. She hid out in the fields one day, waited till my dad left, and then she took off. My dad was a incorrigible drunk, you see, I guess they couldn’t make things work out. So she left and took
her son with her, and then when my dad got married to my ma he named me after his firstborn son. My ma always hated the fact that he did that.

The girl is completely lost, but she just smiles. There is a pause, and then the son says,

Well, what would she have named you?

What was that, Dale? The father cups a hand over his ear.

What would your mother have named you? If your father hadn’t named you Dale?

Why, I don’t know, Dale. She named my older brothers Duke and Jimmy. James. I guess she would have named me something like that. Then my little brothers, Lance, he’s named after my great-grandfather on my dad’s side, and Gregory, he was named after the movie star.

Gregory Peck, the girl says.

He got hit by a bus, the father says.

Gregory Peck got hit by a bus?

No, my little brother. He was killed by a bus when he was fifteen years old. My mother looked me right in the face and she said to me it should have been you in front of that bus. Not my baby. Not my baby boy. My mother always hated me for being my father’s son, see, she wouldn’t have married him otherwise. My brother Lance, he named his first son after Gregory.