A Star Tribune serialized novel by Richard Horberg
Chapter 6 continues
The story so far: Allen's retelling of a novel casts a spell over the students.
Allen said he didn't know if the story could happen that way. Privately, he thought that it might have happened in the past, but no more.
"Oh, I do," one of the girls said.
"I do too," another added.
"Just like 'Cowboy Jack,' " someone said.
"Cowboy Jack" was a popular song of the day. They sang it together, repeating the refrain:
Your sweetheart waits for you, Jack,
Your sweetheart waits for you.
Out on the lonely prairie,
Where the skies are always blue.
Everybody laughed and applauded.
When they finished for the night, Allen promised to come back the next evening to work some more on the float. After the others had left, he stood in the doorway of the barn for a moment with Lois, gazing out at the dark fields. The moon had risen higher and lost all of its color and warmth. It floated in the night sky like an alien object.
"That was a nice story you told," she said.
"I probably got it all wrong."
Lois appeared in no hurry to return to the house. He asked her if her father liked being a car dealer.
"I'm sure he does," she said. "Someday he'll probably build a museum for classic cars where this barn is. At least he talks about it."
They looked out at the fields in the distance, unchanged, Allen thought, since the beginning of time. He felt as if they stood at the entrance of a world which opened on the universe and revealed all its secrets. Timeless harmony with nature. "It's beautiful here," he said.
"Yes, it is."
"Your grandfather lived here?"
"And my great-grandfather too."
"Wonderful."
"Compared to us, though," Lois said, "they didn't have much. They didn't have half the things we do."
"Like what?"
"Oh, you know. Electricity, plumbing. Central heating, bath and shower. We're going to get television as soon as reception is available here."
"Good."
"You can come over sometime, Mr. Post, and watch it with us."
Allen said he might do that.
He walked home alone in the dark.
***
The next day Allen received a letter from his father — they came every Friday, written in pencil in a large scrawl on what looked like butcher's paper. Most of the letters were concerned chiefly with the wrestling and boxing matches his father attended at the Minneapolis Auditorium, featuring such local figures as Jackie Graves, the Flanagan brothers, Butch Levy and Leo Ryan, the trainer. Invariably he included a little information about Allen's younger brother, Bob, who was planning to get married next year. His letters always ended with the phrase, "May God bless you," which Allen thought strange because he had never heard his father talk about God in his life.
Allen also received regular letters from "Auntie," the only mother he had ever known, scribbled in pencil like his Dad's. After he left for Stone Lake, she and "Uncle" had rented their house out and moved back to southern Minnesota, where they grew up on adjoining farms. Although they had been enthusiastic about the move, Allen gathered from her letters that they did not much like life on the farm. "There's nothing to do but read the paper," she said, "and play cards." She hoped Allen would come out and stay with them for a week over Christmas vacation — and offered to darn his socks if they needed it.
He got letters from Greg Schmidt — marvelous letters.
And, finally, he got a letter from Mary Zane.
Her letter, in blue ink on blue paper, the lines slanting down from left to right, was not easy to read. But he savored every line, even those about the weather. On the little ranch or farm where she lived — she was not specific — she went out at 6 a.m. every morning while it was still cool to work in the yard. She was also breaking in a yearling. (He could imagine her on horseback.) In the evening she and someone named Jeanne (her sister?) went out shooting birds, even though she felt sorry for them and even though it was out of season. He didn't know what kind of birds she shot but she claimed they tasted good with pancakes. (Ugh.) There was also someone named Ole (a neighbor?) who had a Jeep, in the back of which she was sometimes allowed to stand with her gun, shooting birds on the run — which, of course, was illegal. She talked about the heavy rains that had fallen the previous week and how unpleasant it had been to go out late at night, from which he assumed that the little ranch or farm she lived on did not have indoor plumbing. Which might be why, he told himself, she made no further mention of inviting him to come out for a visit. If the place where she lived was so primitive, he wondered, how had she been able to afford nursing school in Minneapolis? Perhaps she had a scholarship.
He was disappointed to find nothing personal in her letter — nothing about her attitude toward him, no comments on the time they had spent together, no hints of her plans for the future.
There was, however, one nice paragraph, albeit short:
"Allen, it's wonderful out here. At night the stars twinkle with a myriad of bright, bright stars and at dusk the sky lights up with shades of purple, gold, magenta — surely the handiwork of someone greater."
Well, he thought, it was a start. She knew at least one word that he didn't. And at least she signed her letter "love, Mary."
He looked forward to hearing from her again soon.
Tomorrow: Chapter 7.
It’s too soon to tell how much the immigration crackdown is to blame.
