Little Bluestem: Stories from Rural America

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  She came back, by phone, in May. Called to check up on me and after she found but way things were, she called to say goodbye.

  All the grass would be up in Tennessee. She would be standin’ in the first rush of it all, summer comin’ on down there, while up here I was still dealing with the wet cold sponge of spring. She had gotten out of the cold and the mud, out of the cramped house, out of the pen of Crazy Frank’s store. Me, I felt lost.

  I went outside again, remembering that first time in March with the oats. I squatted down, picked up a twig and started drawin’ in the dirt. Dirt and no mud, right by the house. Promising. The asphalt was getting’ soft, thinking about becoming dirt. Next year it would be even softer, hold more water, feel better underfoot. Next year.

  Next year I would start to take care, build more humus. Pour the manure to it. No fall plowin’.

  Suddenly it hit me: she on my mind, the softness of her especially, and me outside thinkin’ about dirt. I couldn’t stay with that one very long. The softness idea would drive me crazy. So I went back to taking the hit on the corn crop, and staying on swing shift, and to movin’ ahead with stayin’ on. All this in the full hint of warmness in the lee of the wind, on this day in early May.

  Here, looking out on things, I could see the future. Soon the stock would be out on the pasture I had leased. Soon the sheep would go, sold off to buy more hogs to hog down that disaster of a corn crop. Hogs was goin’ up that spring; figured I might do all right, pay off the corn expenses by the fall anyway. Standin’ in the midst of the promise of the season, thinking about what this place might eventually mean, I had no idea of the real foolishness that was all around me. Seemed like I couldn’t listen inside the trailer, or on the phone. Only out here. It was always here, thinking about other things, little things, that her voice would come, like a young bird’s voice, fragile in this time.

  When I looked up, Duke, my eight year-old Belgian gelding, was walking down the lane towards the water tank. Funny how he brought her back. Slow sure steps, the sun catching the edges of his clipped mane, and then I could see her. I could see her hand runnin’ the soft, rough stubble of the horse’s neck. Feelin’ the bristle. It was last fall when we roached him.

  Seeing his walk, but thinking of her. Now the tangle of it all was over. Not combed out or braided fancy for a show. Just lifted up and clipped. I could see her hand there, and the warm sun on my jeans just now couldn’t take away the new cold inside my gut.

  Outside, with room to think, I understood. The whole damned thing was clipped. Lifted up, clipped, and thrown away—a beautiful mane, a dazzling mane, roached.

  IDA’S CAFE