Now, dogs can’t see as well as nearsighted old people. And he surely couldn’t have smelled me over that long distance. But he came down the sloppy, raw roadway straight toward me. Two investigators began to wave their hands and call commands. Stop. Sit. Get that goddamned dog away.
I whistled. He stopped, he searched the wind with his muzzle. I whistled again. He found me and barreled in. We said hello a little. Then I pointed to an area we’d scooped through down to nubs of corn, and I told him to sit there and stay. The first few shovels of snow he saw powdering toward the south of us, he was up and ready to chase. I pointed at him and he saw me and he sat. After a while, he understood what we were doing, I thought. His big chest stuck out and his muzzle was raised as he watched us sift the snow. He knew this kind of work.
If you watched us from above, you would have seen the small men and women making themselves move slowly and carefully. There was the huge field out behind the barn. There were the little creatures hauling some of the millions of tons of snow. There was the dog, watching, like an expert consultant. There we were, scooping up ounces from the tons.
Fanny and Archie stood in the bulldozed road now, partway between the people in the hamlet and the people performing the actions that were required because it wasn’t safe to be a girl. The sky behind them and around us looked like somebody had poured milk straight down along it to the ground. The sun was in it, and I suppose it was strong and spring was going to come. But I didn’t warm up, even when I was shoveling. I stopped more than I should have, but my ribs were moving in sections again and my fingers had no grip.
I thought, We could dig here forever. Then I thought, No, only until full spring. All we had to do was wait. But we couldn’t. We wanted our girl back.
Everyone wanted someone back. It would be a hundred degrees of dry heat and I would be in an air-conditioned motel in New Mexico called the Arroyo, a little less than a year from now, and all those miles from the field we worked in that looked as big to me as North America, and I would still want our Hannah back, and so of course would Fanny. Mr. Tanner would be alone with only his church and his jokes and his heaven, wanting back his wife, who watched us now, wanting back the daughter we were reaching for under the snow. And Rosalie, who is a better cop than I am, would find me in my hiding place and get me talking on the phone.
Are you eating well? Are you sleeping well? She would stay on my trail. She would find me. She would call. And I would begin to suspect myself of counting on her. The phone would ring, and when I answered, I would hear the distance behind her voice and begin to regret it, and then Rosalie would say my name.
In this winter, though, in the field behind Randy Strodemaster’s house, I leaned on the shovel. I was looking at Fanny, who talked while Archie listened. I wouldn’t ask them where he had gotten her from, Virginia’s place or ours. Wait and see, I told myself. I knew I couldn’t. Look at me and these other people, what we were doing when all we had to do was wait and see.
I went back to work and then I had to stop again. When I looked toward the road, I saw Archie with his hands in his pockets. Fanny was gone, and so was her car. I wasn’t completely sure I could move anymore. I made my fingers close around the shovel. I made myself breathe the short, choppy breaths, and I scooped some snow.
I thought I should remember to tell the Tanners about the physics book in her shelves. I didn’t think of it, I would tell them. I would mention Rosalie and it would please them, I thought, knowing that a stranger had pondered so hard about their child. They would want to know it was maybe another clue. Rosalie had been certain Janice wouldn’t have taken physics, since she’d been less than capable with numbers. Strodemaster gave her the book, since numbers were what he knew — Rosalie was sure of it. Teachers do that kind of passing their books along to kids. The young are so lucky, I thought. We so love teaching them. I would want to ask Archie why a little girl would buy her underwear in a fuck-me clothing store for a man like Strodemaster. Maybe I would also ask Rosalie. I felt like I needed an expert to tell me about anything human, though on all other information, I was absolutely informed. I wondered where Fanny had gone. I wondered if Strodemaster’s wife had moved out because of something with him and his daughter. It could happen, I thought. I leaned over to spit onto the snow and moved it off behind me where somebody breathing hard was moving it farther away.
People were talking, but not very much, and I could hear the rushing sound of the big fire back near the barn. The dog sat very still, watching the hole slowly grow. He was getting ready.
Here’s what I thought. I thought about Ralph. I thought, Once upon a time.
I made myself work. I was like the others. Whether we believed in spring or not, we did not want to wait. If you watched us from above us, you would have seen it. Spring or not, ribs or not, fingers or not, we were going to move the entire field.
Girls by Frederick Busch. A Reader’s Guide
A Conversation with Frederick Busch
Q: Upon finishing the book, I recalled the first chapter, which I then re-read. I realized that it now felt like the “last” chapter. What was your plan with this design?
A: I first wrote the book going from the beginning of chapter two to the end. And I was dissatisfied — as I worked on the beginning — with plunging the reader too quickly into so much grimness. And although the first chapter doesn’t make you sing, it has a little bit of humor to it, and it seems to me to help set the scene for who this man was, and whom he became, and to give the reader … the slight sense there was hope for him after the events of the book.
Q: Why not bring Jack and Fanny back together? They clearly loved each other.
A: Because people who so clearly love each other nevertheless do not always know how to live together. That’s reason one. Reason two is the plot I created made it impossible to bring Jack and Fanny back together. The only way they can live together is for her to not think he killed their baby. The only way they can live together is for him to not know she killed their baby. Now how can you undo those two things? I wanted it to be a kind of paradox: He loves her so much he takes the blame for what she did, to the point where she can’t take him because of it. And she can’t take what it does to him: It makes him a very bitter and difficult man.
I loved Fanny, and I wanted him to stay with her more than my readers imagined … [the short story] “Ralph the Duck” appeared in 1989 … and became chapter two. And you see Fanny is a little softer in that story, a little less self-protective, more accessible to Jack. I wanted Jack and Fanny to have a possibility of happiness. But they kept returning to me, and the more I thought about them, the more I wondered, why had Jack made her cry? A lot of people noticed her sorrow, so I must have made her sad without intending to make her quite that sad. I learned from my readers who Fanny was, and I began to want to know about her sadness. Whenever a storyteller wants to know something, he or she tells a story to find out the answer.