A Farmer Read online

  He continued lamely for a while then told them to go back to their tests. Daniel, his most obtuse student, waved his arm frantically but Joseph would entertain no questions. Something in the corner of his memory nagged him. “Human beings scream.” Not really. Those photos in an old life that he could never dispel from his memory; they were not unlike his schoolchildren playing softball, but in the photos the children playing ball were lined up outside the gas chambers at Belsen. Dietrich who worked for the dairy in town said at the tavern that his people were filthy animals but Joseph said to my knowledge animals do not behave that badly. The Germans weren't going to eat the children and Dietrich was drunk and wept. Nobody wants to know those things so why make pictures out of them?

  After school Joseph drove directly to the log road that would bring him closest to the area the game warden thought most likely for the coyote's den. He was still troubled by children, though he readily admitted to himself they could be a source of anger and sometimes needed paddling. But a half-dozen times over the years children had come to school severely beaten and twice he had taken them to Dr. Evans who exploded with rage. But there was no one to protect children from parents with mental problems. Nothing in Joseph's mind approached the horror of a brutally beaten child. The worst case involved a broken arm and two cracked ribs on a hyperactive little girl of seven years. She claimed she fell down but Joseph knew her father, a mean-tempered sheep farmer. When Joseph saw him at the tavern he drew him aside and said your daughter won't admit you beat her because she loves you but if she comes to school all bruised again and says she fell down I will figure out a way to kill you. It will be easy. You'll be found in a field with your goddamn head blown off.

  Joseph took his gun from the trunk and walked off through the forest without changing his clothes. He laughed at what an odd sight he would present if anyone were around; a gimp schoolteacher in a sportcoat and his Sunday shoes and necktie shuffling through the woods with his shotgun. He heard the hammering sound of the pileated woodpecker, a bird the size of a crow but timid and wary of humans. Joseph read that the Indians had killed them for their feathers at one time. Maybe that's why they kept themselves from human sight; fear of their enemy had entered their genes and was transmitted over hundreds of years down to the present. He scrambled panting up a hill and along a ridge. Now over the tops of the trees he could see the small field in a valley a quarter mile away. On the other side of the valley was a rock outcropping covered partially by wild grape vines. Below the outcropping the grass was tall due to a seep, a small spring that kept the ground wet. Joseph became stealthy and moved slowly toward the edge of the field. When he was a hundred yards away from the outcropping but still inside the woods he blew the whistle lightly three times. It was eerie, as if some warlock were bleating, but sharp enough to carry to any predator within a mile.

  Joseph sat there until dusk, mindful that the coyote might have seen him and simply be wondering why a man would sit in the brush three hours blowing on a whistle. He stretched his mind for a fresh stratagem. He could tie a chicken to a stake out in the middle of the field. They had only three hens left but he could swipe one from Rosealee. It was dark and cold by the time he reached the car. On the way out he had managed to tear his trousers on a windfall and to get his shoes wet and muddy. A grouse had flushed and he had shot at the noise for no reason, fire belching from the barrel. He shouldn't have done it he thought driving home: perhaps the coyote would move his den. He would try the predator call for a week, each day from a different vantage and if it didn't work he could always resort to staking a chicken.

  “Yoey you're a mess. What happened to you?” Her eyes were wide with surprise. “Clean up and have some supper. Are you drunk?”

  Joseph laughed at his bedraggled appearance in the mirror. His wet shoes squeaked and he could see his knee in the hole in his trousers.

  “Rosealee called. She said you were out looking for a coyote. There aren't any coyotes around here any more.” She came to the bathroom door. “You're becoming a little crazy. You should get married.”

  She had roasted a mallard that one of his students had given to him. It was stuffed with rice and fruit and nuts and she had glazed it with plum jam. For a moment he was disturbed by how little she had eaten and how much she had been aging lately. There was a large vase of zinnias on the table that she had picked before the frost could ruin them. As he ate the duck Joseph stared at the zinnias as if he were seeing flowers for the first time. The light behind them cast a shadow and he thought that it was certainly the first time he had noticed flower shadows.

  Joseph spent a fruitless week on the coyote, reaching a point of despair where he thought he might shoot the damn thing if he did see it. One afternoon he cleared a sandy area and left a piece of chuck steak, but the next day there were only crow and raccoon tracks. He found the den at the far end of the outcropping but he couldn't be absolutely sure it wasn't a fox den. Finally on Saturday he staked one of Rosealee's chickens at the far end of the field about thirty yards from the woods and spent hours glassing the chicken with his cheap binoculars. Arlice had sent a fine pair of binoculars but he hesitated to use them for fear of damaging them. He saw no contradiction in this stupidity.

  The chicken flopped and squawked for an hour then nestled down quietly in the grass, probably, he thought, out of shock. Two red-tailed hawks circled high above as if intent upon a meal. Joseph rushed from his hiding place so the hawks would see him and leave. He had barely gotten back to the woods when he turned and saw a brown blur. The chicken was gone. Jesus. Why hadn't he used a solid stake instead of a stick? When he reached the place there was nothing but the small stake hole poked in the earth. He began laughing at the idea that he had been watched all the time. He searched the area near where he had been sitting. Fifty yards up the hill he found several scats that resembled dog shit. The coyote had obviously been watching him during the week. Joseph could almost see through the coyote's eyes as he laughed with the embarrassment of an amateur: the man sits there restless and stares for four afternoons. He leaves some meat which is not eaten because I'm not hungry. He leaves a lovely white chicken. He runs and waves at hawks and I circle around the clearing. As he walks back to his hiding place I run out and steal the chicken.

  Joseph resumed his grouse hunting with vigor though he still consciously avoided shooting woodcock. Rosealee and his mother were pleased with his apparent return to normalcy. So was the doctor who had rather expected an occasional grouse for dinner. One evening the doctor stopped by and Joseph's mother set another plate for dinner. She had stewed a hen and made biscuits. Joseph did not know it but the year after his father died, the doctor and his mother had even discussed marriage one summer evening on the porch. Joseph presented the doctor with three uncleaned grouse he had shot that afternoon. The doctor liked to hang his birds a few days after the fashion of the English and French.

  “About goddamn time. I thought you were being cheap but then I called your mother and she said Rosealee said you were hunting a coyote. Why do you want to shoot a coyote?” The doctor had finished his second plate of the chicken and biscuits and worriedly contemplated a third.

  “I wasn't going to shoot it. The game warden said there was a coyote back near the lake that he tracked with his hound and he kept it secret so no asshole would shoot at it. I wanted to see a coyote. Never saw one before.” Joseph felt lame about his reason for not grouse hunting.

  “Did you see it?” The doctor took his third helping and drank deeply from a glass of beer. The meal was worth the incipient indigestion.

  “For about a tenth of a second. It took a chicken I baited it with. But it was like not seeing it at all.”

  The doctor told how he was once fishing in the Wind River area of Wyoming and he looked up and far above on the side of the canyon two dogs sat on a rock peeking at him from the brush that surrounded the rock. Only they weren't dogs, they were coyotes. They were curious about what he might be doing standing in a rive
r waving a stick.

  Joseph admired the frayed, energetic look owned by an active farm. Often the lawn wouldn't be trimmed and the house and buildings not recently painted but there was a peculiar grace in the battered implements, the huge manure piles, and great fertile fields. He despised the farms near town that had been bought up by the managerial class of the sheet metal company in the county seat. After the war the company had grown swiftly by manufacturing aluminum products for windows and house trailers. Those who possessed the best jobs bought the farms within a few miles of the county seat and let them lie fallow or turned them into pasture for their children's horses. Some of the land was sold to build look-alike homes for the workers. But the farm houses would be modernized and false shutters added. Sometimes white board fences would be built and the outbuildings painted a bright red. Maybe they were trying to make it resemble Kentucky or New England.

  When the county board held a hearing on the closing of his school Joseph had been asked questions by several of the new people. One asked how he could teach without a college education, to which he replied that he wasn't teaching the farm kids any college courses. The audience had laughed and the questioning became more pointed. Joseph had been angry and announced that he wouldn't answer any more questions because they had already decided to close down his school anyway. And he didn't care because he was tired of teaching. He was sorry for the students who would have a forty-mile round trip on the bus. They had to do chores in the morning and evening and would find it hard to compete with the kids in town. Then as an afterthought (he had had a few drinks) he added that they all struck him as pompous assholes and he was leaving the meeting in order to catch the second movie.

  This was shortly before Thanksgiving and during the brief vacation the county school superintendent had called him frequently to get the apology the board demanded. Joseph refused. Then the day after Thanksgiving the superintendent had stopped by in his deer hunting clothes. Joseph let him in the house only because the man had known his father.

  “Just out this way hunting and thought I'd stop by.” He refused a drink.

  “No you weren't,” Joseph said. “Your boots are dry and I heard you got a buck the second day of the season.” Joseph poured himself a drink. “You're out here trying to get me to apologize to those pompous assholes.” He laughed. “How much did your deer dress at?”

  “Just short of a hundred thirty, a little old for good eating.” He was pained, wanting somehow to trick Joseph into an apology, however mild.

  “There's no way,” Joseph said, reading his thoughts. “I only got six more months and I'm not going to kiss ass.”

  “It wouldn't be kissing ass to avoid trouble. You were out of line.”

  “I don't care. How could I say I'm sorry if I'm not? Even if I did they'd know I wasn't sorry so what's the point? You run the schools, don't you?”

  “What will you do if they say I have to fire you?” The superintendent had become profoundly uncomfortable.

  “I'm not sure. I got an old fishing friend who's a lawyer. I guess I'd sue on the basis that there's no rule that says I can't call an asshole an asshole. Tell them that. They never gave me a good reason for closing the school. We could always have another meeting and I could call them shitheads this time.” Joseph laughed loudly. “Why did you bother to put on those clothes?” He laughed again.

  “This is not really a laughing matter, Joe. I'm disappointed in you after all these years.” The superintendent stood flushed with impatience.

  “Oh go fuck yourself. I taught hard for over twenty years. What kids of mine that went to college did well, few as there were. Just get out of here. I don't have time for you or people like you.” He looked out the window at the softly falling snow. He couldn't remember when he had felt so utterly bored with life.

  “I'll give them your message, Joe. I'm sorry.” The superintendent opened the door.

  “What are you sorry for? That you work for assholes?” Joseph was laughing again. “I feel sorry for you but don't bother me again with this horseshit. I got six months more and I want them to be peaceful.”

  When the superintendent left Joseph's mother peeked around the door. “You shouldn't talk like that to an educated person,” she said.

  The issue was never formally dropped but Joseph received no more pressure from the superintendent. For the first time since Joseph began teaching no one from the county office visited the school during the Christmas pageant. Rosealee was a little disappointed because her sixth graders had painted an immense mural of the Holy Land though it had been more or less copied from a National Geographic. She wanted someone “educated” to see the mural. The local parents who bothered to stop by only joked about the blue horses and white camels and said the Christ child looked like an “aaa-rab” or, funnier yet they thought, a “nigger.” But Rosealee had more patience than Joseph with the stupidities of the parents which were passed on so comfortably year after year, from generation to generation. Rosealee accepted them as they were and made great efforts to register some change, however small. Joseph's tactic was merely to stare with unconcealed contempt. But they all knew Joseph was somehow one of them, no matter how strange and removed his behavior. They knew his parents and sisters, the dimensions of the family farm, who his relations were, how the family fared during the Depression and the war. Most of all they knew that Joseph was only accidentally a schoolteacher, that were it not for his withered leg he would be an average, unsuccessful farmer like his father: someone who tended to fish and hunt when he should have worked his land a bit harder. The older, more conservative farmers liked to make jokes about Swedish farm practices, though with the passing of years some of the best farms in the county were owned by Swedes who themselves made jokes about their poorer relatives.

  During Christmas vacation Rosealee was very happy to receive an offer to teach in town for the coming year with a rather hefty raise in salary. And Joseph got a letter that pointedly stated that his teaching services were no longer needed by the county. He was thanked in falsely hearty tones for his twenty-three years of dedicated teaching and if he wished he could come in to the office and fill out application forms for substitute work, though of course education rather than seniority would be the basis for hiring. Joseph was amused at the stilted texture of the language. He was also pleased that he would be able to withdraw the monies that had been taken out of his pay over the years for retirement. That would be enough to make a trip to the ocean.

  That evening Rosealee and Joseph drove to town to have dinner at a restaurant, an event that took place no more than twice a year. Joseph was pleased to get out of the house because his sisters were visiting with their families. He spent much of his time in the barn or in his workshop in the granary, but it was cold and his nephews and nieces drove him batty. He looked at them as awful city children and potential pyromaniacs intent on burning down the barn and abusing Catherine's horse. Only his favored nephew met his approval and they rabbit hunted for days on end until the freezer was overloaded. Joseph and his mother liked fried rabbit but his sisters thought it trashy.

  Rosealee acted restrained on the trip into town as if any obvious cheerfulness over the job offer might upset Joseph. But he was happy and mostly talked about the ocean. He had pretty much decided to see the coasts of Oregon, Washington, and California. Florida would be too hot in the summer. Maybe he would visit Florida in the winter if the money held out. He would fish and study the marine life all day every day. Only a tent, a Coleman stove, and a box of books were needed. He wanted to see a manta ray, thinking it the creature on earth least resembling any other creature.

  At the restaurant Joseph immediately noticed his main enemy on the school board, a woman about his age. She pointed out Joseph to her husband. The husband frowned. Joseph grinned at them maniacally and waved. Rosealee was embarrassed and studied the menu. The food was usually awful though described in glowing, ornate terms. Joseph didn't look at the menu because he always ordered shrimp and
a saltwater fish even though he knew both had been frozen for months. But they were from the sea, and had a salt smell to them, however vague. He always drank rum in this restaurant though he didn't care for the flavor. Rum was somehow exotic, coming from the Caribbean, a place he thought of in travel poster terms: white beach, deep blue water, fish, lovely women in scanty bathing suits. Hedy Lamarr or Dorothy Lamour lolling in the water drinking from a coconut.

  “Our mothers think you should farm.” Rosealee announced this from the blue, calling as she always did her mother-in-law “mother.”

  “What farm?” Joseph returned abruptly from the Caribbean and looked at his soggy grayish shrimp covered with its blood-red sauce.

  “Both farms. You could hire someone to help.”

  “Oh bullshit. It'd take fifty grand in equipment to even get started which is fifty grand more than I got assuming I want to try it anyhow. I almost would have to tie my goddamn foot to the tractor clutch. Tell them to mind their own business. They always use you to get at me.” Joseph scraped the sauce from the shrimp. It killed the smell of the sea he thought. The woman was staring at him again and he made a crazy face in irritation.

  “Well mother is heartbroken that nobody works it.” Rosealee was insistent.

  “Let her lease it. There's more profit in leasing it. I'm not going to be some gimp farmer to please them.”

  “I guess they think you'll fall to pieces without your job. You know, drink and not marry me.”

  “Who's talking about marriage? You can find somebody better when you take your new job in town.” He slipped his hand under the table and squeezed her thigh but she was morose and only toyed with her food.