An April Love Story: A Cooney Classic Romance

  “Would you believe I can’t wait to get home and use this stuff?” said Lucas.

  “I believe it. I’ve actually been hefting this manure fork and thinking what relief it’ll be to use it.”

  “You’ve come a long way, baby,” said Lucas.

  We paid, took our purchases back to the VW, carefully locked the doors, and began wandering again. I bought a newspaper to see what was happening in town. “We could see a movie,” said Lucas. “I used to love movies.”

  But there wasn’t a decent movie playing.

  “Then I vote for an indecent movie,” said Lucas.

  But none of them had matinees.

  “Then let’s check out the college,” said Lucas. “I’m sure those are the dormitories, those brick buildings up on the hill.”

  It was a beautiful site, and the wind covered us with fresh, cold, clean air that was exhilarating to feel and to breathe in. When the path got very steep, I didn’t have to reach for his hand, he took mine. He even slowed his normal walk so I didn’t have to trot.

  I was having a totally good time.

  Classes were in session at the college. We walked down halls, hearing scraps of lectures. The place smelled of books and teachers and tests and unwilling test takers. By instinct Lucas found the library and we went in.

  But it turned out that this library had closed stacks: if you didn’t have student identification, you couldn’t get at the books.

  I guess for Lucas it was symbolic. He could have a good time, but only up to a point. And then the door his parents and mine had constructed slammed on him.

  No college for Lucas. No future for Lucas. None of the things he’d dreamed of, none of the goals he’d prepared for.

  When we left the library the good mood was gone. Lucas walked fiercely, feet stomping, face set. He strode down the steep hill, away from the campus, back into town. I couldn’t go as fast without running and I didn’t want to run after him, like a little girl tagging along.

  I wanted to say that I understood. That I knew how much our parents were demanding of him. Knew what he was giving up.

  But if he had wanted a speech from me he wouldn’t have stormed on ahead. I could call, yell for him to wait, and he would, he was too polite not to. If I said that walking faster than me was rude, he’d apologize, and he really would be sorry that he hadn’t thought to slow down.

  But then I’d know the only reason we were walking together was for courtesy’s sake.

  I did fine in school, but I was not, like Lucas, someone who loved school for school’s sake. I too wanted college, but I was just as attracted by the boys and girls who’d be there with me (not to mention the running hot water in the dorms) as by the prospect of learning.

  In my heart, I knew I’d be perfectly happy with an interesting job in a big bustling office in a city. I didn’t need college the way Lucas did.

  I stopped walking and just watched. He hadn’t even noticed that I wasn’t there. Too wrapped in his own thoughts. I didn’t blame him—they were heavy thoughts, and no doubt he needed to be alone with them.

  But it hurt.

  Half in the sun and half under the weeping branches of a huge, gnarled, old cheery tree was a stone bench. I sat on it, feeling unspeakably tired and depressed. From blurry eyes I saw Lucas hike out of sight. I sat, mopping my tears with a handkerchief (we didn’t use nice, convenient disposable paper tissues, not old-back-to-the-land us) and thinking how useless it was to have this crush on Lucas. Maybe I should tell him Julie liked him. Maybe that would be doing them both a favor.

  That’s when you know you’re pretty far down. When you actually consider enlisting another girlfriend for the boy you love.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, head swirling with contradictory thoughts and hopes. An hour at least. Finally I stood up and headed for the lot where the VW bus was parked. Lucas was sitting motionless in the driver’s seat, patiently waiting for me.

  With no sarcasm, he said, “Have a good time?” I supposed he thought I’d been shopping or sightseeing.

  “No.” I climbed into the passenger side.

  He hadn’t expected that answer. He looked at me, waiting for more explanation. I didn’t give him one. I wouldn’t have known how. I closed my door, but I didn’t put enough strength into the motion and the door just bounced against the catch.

  “Didn’t close,” said Lucas, and he leaned way over to reach across my lap, grabbed the handle, and jerked the door shut with a slam. The brush of his arm set off so many thoughts in my head I could hardly breathe. Lucas took my seat belt while he was leaning over and fastened it around me.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Any time.”

  I waited for him to start the engine, but he didn’t. “Something wrong?” I said.

  “Yes. I don’t much want to head for home.”

  “A few days ago you seemed resigned to the farm.”

  “I sort of am. I even sort of like it. But I want other things more.” He didn’t look at me when he said that. He looked wistfully up at the campus spread on the mountainside.

  “If this were television,” he said, “I’d tell my parents they’re crazy and I’d just leave. Stride down the dirt road to live happily ever after the way I chose.”

  “Television always ties up the loose ends so neatly, doesn’t it? Kind of makes you jealous that you can’t wrap up all your own problems between commercials.”

  He gave me a limp smile. “I didn’t know you had problems, Marnie. You’ve seemed pretty cheerful lately. Happy. I figured you settled into the routine and got to love it.”

  “I’ve settled into the routine, anyway. How could I not? There’s so much to do, and if you don’t do it right the first time, and do it efficiently, it’s just there waiting for you, like a repeat nightmare.”

  “Too true.”

  We made a list of chores we hated. It was quite a list.

  “Then you really aren’t happy,” he said. “It’s odd. I used to look over at you doing some chore like making soap and you and your mother would be laughing away, and I’d think, maybe it is all worth it when they’re so happy.”

  I wanted to laugh till I wept. I said, “You know that coverlet I wove?”

  He nodded.

  “I was so proud of that coverlet, Lucas. I made it all myself. Aunt Ellen did have to pull out a lot three times and start me over on the pattern, but still, I made it. And it looks good. And sometimes when we finish baking, and there are six sweet potato pies sitting cooling for Uncle Bob to drive over to the resort and I know that I did that and it’s my money that’s going to feed the animals this week—well, that’s pretty nice. And when you go out for chores and it’s chillier than you thought, and you come back in and put on the sweater that I knit, that’s pretty nice, too. And when I load the Fisher stove for the night and I think that you and I split that wood, I feel cozier than I would if I just turned up a thermostat in the apartment. I guess I’m happy about all that.”

  “Those are the good things,” he said, “You know, I truly thought we’d never be able to do anything. So we’d read a few books. There’s only so much you can learn from a guidebook. When we got to that farm and actually started doing it, I was sure we’d kill ourselves with those saws and axes and knives. I thought we’d get crushed beneath the trees we cut down. I thought the barn would fall in on us when we were trying to figure out how to shore up the hayloft. I thought the goat would bite me and I’d get rabies.”

  We were giggling by now, the very first time Lucas and I had ever really sat and laughed together.

  “The reason mother and I laugh so much when we make soap is because we’re both terrified we’re going to burn our hands off with the lye, only she won’t admit it, and so we have these nervous explosions of giggles whenever we get near the pot.”

  “Remember when you put the nail through my hand? I kept praying I’d get some terrible infection from it and have to stay in the hospital for weeks and weeks, eatin
g food off trays, basking under an electric blanket, reading armloads of library books, being hovered over by pink ladies.”

  “Using a real bathroom.”

  “Most of all, using a real bathroom.” We grinned at each other, and Lucas sobered up. “But we learned how to do most of it, Marnie. And every time I do something, whether it’s finding an egg one of my hens has laid, or building that greenhouse, I have this feeling of wonder—sort of, well, almost joy—that I, bookworm Peterson, can actually manage this stuff.”

  “Not only manage,” I said. “Do it as well as most people we could hire. Back home I couldn’t scramble an egg. Now I’m half supporting us with my baking.”

  We began listing the things we liked about the farm and, surprisingly, that was quite a list, too. The birds who came to our feeders and sang from our trees. The crisp apples fresh from our own trees. The warmth of the stove on a winter morning. The calm pleasure of two fathers whose lives had been grim before. The scent of fresh-baked bread wafting out over the yard. The overwhelming appeal of newborn ducklings.

  “But you’re not happy, Marnie?” said Lucas again.

  “It’s too hard, Lucas. They’ve gone overboard. I don’t want to put every ounce of my energy into being self-sufficient. A lot of it like the soap could be dropped without damaging the reasons we moved here. They’ve taken up everything at once, Lucas, and it’s just too exhausting.”

  “Chinese interpreter say, Lady still yearn for flush toilet.”

  We laughed. “Oh, do I!” I said. “But one of my spring campaigns is to dress up that joint a little. I’m going to paint it, and add some pretty curtains, and buy a rug remnant for the floor, and put on the wall that watercolor Connie did for me of her dogwoods.”

  Lucas began to laugh silently. His whole body laughed, trembling and quivering with amusement.

  “What’s so funny?” I demanded.

  “Oh, Marnie, if I couldn’t laugh at us I’d have gone crazy by now. I have this daydream, see, that I haul out every now and then and dust off. In this daydream I’m on a date. A real date. You know. With a girl and money and a car and a movie that we meant to watch, but didn’t. And when we were in the mood for talking we’d talk about literature and life and truth and adulthood.” Lucas shook his head, still laughing. “And here we are, you and I, talking about outhouses, the improvement thereof.”

  Did he mean this was the daydream? A real date, and I was it? Or did he mean he still had the daydream, and neither Marnie nor outhouses, the improvement thereof, qualified.

  “I dream about dating, too,” I said, keeping my voice even, seeing where the subject led us.

  “I’ll bet. You were ready to take the high school by storm when we left home. You still miss Joel?”

  I hadn’t even thought about Joel in so long that his name surprised me. “No,” I said. “There wasn’t much there, you know. A walk home. One kiss.”

  “No kidding. But you always come home from school demanding to know what the mail was. I thought what mattered to you most was hearing from Joel.”

  “He only wrote one postcard. And that wasn’t very enthusiastic. He found another girlfriend right away.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Lucas. He took my hand in a comforting gesture. I would have liked it better if he hadn’t sounded genuinely sorry. A boy who really thinks it’s too bad you lost your boyfriend probably doesn’t yearn for you as his own girlfriend.

  “How come you always leave me to walk alone?” I said, the words spilling out before I could realize what I was saying. “Why don’t you ever wait for me when we get off the school bus so we can walk up the lane together?”

  Lucas was totally astonished. “I’m sorry again,” he said. “I didn’t know that bothered you. I mean, you often have something pretty cutting to say to me. I figured you needed a rest from my company. We do see kind of a lot of each other.”

  I’d rather see more of you than of the barnyard, I thought. More of you and less of sweet potato pie. “I didn’t mean all those nasty cracks,” I said. He looked skeptical. “Well, I did mean them, back when I said them,” I admitted. Lucas looked back up at the college campus. “But I’m sorry for them now, Lucas. I just want to be friends, okay? I—I retract every insult I ever dished out.”

  Lucas smiled at me, his usual nice courteous smile. The one he directed equally at teachers, his mother, the geese, and me. “I guess I tossed out a few insults, too. It’s okay. Forget it.”

  We were silent for a while.

  “There are a few hours left before we need to head home,” said Lucas. “You want to go buy that paint? Or drive around and see what other stores there are? Or go to that amusement park, or what?”

  I took a plunge. “Is this a date?” I said. “Or just a ploy to stay off the farm for a while?”

  Lucas grinned. “It’s just a ploy to—”

  I felt tears coming into my eyes. Lucas broke off. When I finally looked at him, the silence had filled the car to the point of suffocation. We were as separated in our seats and seatbelts as if we’d been on opposite sides of a classroom during college boards.

  “It’s a date,” said Lucas.

  Chapter XII

  “TWEETSIE RAILROAD,” SAID LUCAS, turning into the parking lot. “You’d sure think they could have come up with a less ridiculous name than that.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I kind of picture a tiny yellow engine with a little plinking motor, pulling miniature cars up a steep mountainside.”

  “Sounds like Switzerland. Probably the meadows will be dotted with goats.”

  “No, please,” I said, “anything but goats!”

  We pulled a tarp over our purchases and locked the VW carefully. “Although potential thieves of manure forks are probably few and far between,” said Lucas. We climbed steep stairs, bought tickets, and went up more stairs to a wide, graveled area, featuring old-time stores, pretend horses tied to the rails with real kids riding them, and at the station, about to leave, the train.

  “I guess it isn’t miniature,” said Lucas.

  “Doesn’t seem to be yellow, either,” I said. It was a big, black steam engine, pulling several handsome cars. The engineer pulled its whistle and the air was filled with a huge whooshing TOOOOT that was as romantic to me as a sliver of silver airplane in the sky—a sort of carefree gypsy sound. “You can just feel yourself going somewhere,” murmured Lucas. We watched the train pull out. There weren’t many passengers, and all of them were crowded into the last car, which was the only one with glassed-in sides. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t like the open cars. The train chugged off.

  “I wouldn’t normally think of a train as pretty,” said Lucas, “but Tweetsie Railroad is definitely pretty.”

  We crossed the tracks and walked up a steep asphalt path to a large building with an open-sided snack bar. “Oh, good,” said Lucas, “I’m starved. You know, I was sure your mother would pack some enormous picnic basket for us to take along, so we’d have plenty of good, solid, nutritious food, and wouldn’t be tempted to waste precious quarters on greasy, junky, store-bought food. You could have knocked me over with goose down when she handed me a twenty-dollar bill and told me to buy whatever meals we needed. Why’d she do that?”

  Because this is a date that she arranged, I thought, and as you just reminded me, a real date includes money, a car, and a girl. For someone who is supposed to be such a whiz at adding things up, your track record is kind of poor, Lucas. I said, “I guess to give us a treat.”

  “It sure is a treat.” He got each of us a little tray of French fries and a small Coke.

  Down in Boone the wind had merely been brisk, an energetic, rather companionable, wind. Here it whipped through my jacket as if I were clad in a bikini. It was so cold it hurt. No wonder the train’s passengers rode in the enclosed car!

  We tried a little round table in the back of the snack area, but the wind seemed to be having a convention in that corner.

  We tried a ledge outside the
snack bar where the sun shone, but the sun was no match for that wind.

  Finally Lucas found a little pocket between two huge planters. We sat on the ground and let the wind whistle over us. Between wind whistles was the intermittent TOOOOT of the train now on the other side of the mountain. “I’m freezing,” I whispered.

  “You don’t have to keep it a secret. I’m sure everybody else is, too.”

  “I’m also not very comfortable.”

  Lucas sprawled himself a bit more, his back against the row of railroad ties that formed the planter. “Here. Sit in my lap. Body heat, you know. Very good source of heat. Free. Requires no splitting, cutting, or hauling.”

  So I sat in his lap, and Lucas opened his coat buttons and when I leaned back against his chest he partly wrapped me in his coat as well as my own. It required considerable dexterity to drink our Cokes from this position, but I had no complaints and if Lucas did he didn’t mention them.

  Those French fries—the first I’d had in over a year—were hot, salty, greasy, and absolutely yummy.

  “I can’t decide why they’re so good,” said Lucas. “Do you think it’s just that we haven’t had them in so long? That all the wholesome food we’ve been eating left our tastebuds wide open to the seduction of real honest junk food?”

  “Don’t you wish,” I said, referring to the position more than to the cuisine, “that we could eat like this every day?”

  Lucas assumed I meant the French fries. “No, actually, I don’t. I used to have such a rotten complexion, Marnie. I only liked my face from the eyebrows up, because my forehead was smooth. I used to keep my face in a book all the time because then all you could see of me was my handsome forehead.”

  “You do have a nice forehead.”

  “Thank you. I can’t prove it was the food, but my face cleared up when we got to the farm.”

  “I’ll eat your French fries for you, then.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t. When I’m on a junk food binge I don’t share with anybody. In fact, I think I’ll buy us another round to eat on the train.”