Her husband settled back against the headboard, pulling his shoulders back as if engaged in some gymnastics performance. He folded his hands on his stomach, a man pregnant with his own honor. Because I’m ashamed would sound idiotic. Because I’m afraid would sound cowardly.
“Because I’m a man of character,” he said. This, on the other hand, sounded terrific.
But as soon as the words passed his lips, his wife transformed before his very eyes into a tight bundle of laughter. Shaking in paroxysms of laugher she rolled around on the bed.
Her husband just stared at her. “So hardened,” he thought. “She can’t even cry.” A crying woman is very practical. You can comfort or even forgive a crying woman without losing your dignity. It can even be a somewhat pleasant experience to pour your comfort into the mold of a crying woman. But a laughing woman! A laughing despair! These are simply not legitimate. With a laughing woman there’s nothing you can do … except let her go on laughing … pull the blanket back over your head … turn on your side … go back to sleep.
The Stockholm Car
When you’re the child of a small family farmer, your back grows crooked already at an early age from you trying to bear as much on it as the grown-ups. It’s only fitting that we bear their burdens, seeing as we already wear their outgrown clothes and speak their castoff words. Our haunches burn from the strain of trying to keep pace with their long strides. It’s not easy walking in these grown-up shoes, no sir. But it’s what we’ve got to do, ’cause being children is a choice we’ve never really had.
There’s not much room in our lives for child’s play. Like hired help, it’s a luxury our fathers can’t afford. This is why we’re raised right from the cradle to work the farm. Visitors to the house lean in over us, whispering, “Now this little guy’s got some horsepower in him!” or “There’s as fine a pair of milking hands as I ever saw on this girl!” So on those blue moons when we do get to play, we pretty much find ourselves acting out scenes of farm labor, hitching each other up to the wagon, carting endless loads of hay to barn and stable, or just squatting and grunting in quiet obedience — this being the first quality we must learn to master, obedience to the small fields of sandy soil, to the mossy tufts of meadow grass, to the First National Bank. Whoever’s turn it is to drive the team always makes sure to work the whip with a relish, and that’s a lesson we can appreciate, ’cause it reminds us of the need to get on with our young lives.
We hurry home from school to a thousand chores awaiting us: potatoes to be scrubbed, stakes to be driven, carrots to be scalped, cows to be led to bull. Every potato harvest sees the outbreak of another two-, three-day illness that unfits us for school, a seasonal ailment that never fails to afflict the children of smallholders that time of year. When we go back to school we run into accusations from the kids whose fathers work in factories or run the large farms, their whispers so overdone the teacher can’t help hearing how they have seen us squatting out in the potato fields as they walked by on the road. But this just isn’t true. We lay down flat between the furrows and hug the ground at the first sign of any of those other kids coming down the road — I mean the ones that actually get to be kids — so there’s no way they could’ve seen us. Otherwise I guess it’s true enough. We can never hide the symptoms of our ailment, as our hands are dirty all fall. No matter how hard we scrub or scour them with a hard-bristled brush, the October soil clings to the folds of our knuckles, staining the roots of our nails.
So no, we’re not like other kids. But that’s not really the idea anyway. The idea is that we should stop being kids as soon as possible. If ever one of the regular kids stops by and asks us to play, we just get red in the face. We might take them out behind the stable for a while, ’cause no one can see us back there as we play their childish games. We’re no good at those games, of course. We get tangled up in the jump rope or flick the marbles way too far. So it doesn’t take long for our new friends to grow weary, call us clods or ignoramuses, and then leave us on our own for good. And true enough, that’s just what we are. Or it’s how they make us feel. So we’re relieved to see them leave, even if we understand they’ll never be back.
It’s only when we’re left to ourselves that we can play for real, and then our clumsiness and stupidity just sort of drift away. There’s only one game small farm kids really play, and it helps us deal with pretty much anything and everything without giving in to tears. What we do is play at being grown-ups, and by doing that we sort of forget that we’re expected to be that way anyway. And so we walk and eat and swear just like them. It might not be so nice or proper, but it’s needful. And like all things of use, the sooner we master it the better. The way we play the game is to think of these needful ways not as coarse or hard but as beautiful. And it’s really easier than you might think, especially in the summer when the other kids don’t come around and draw attention to the freedom we lack. We can see them from the fields, of course, riding by on the road in the distance, free as birds on their bikes, or swimming down by the docks like fish flashing free in the river. To our relief it never occurs to them to seek us out and try us with their freedom. Not that they wouldn’t realize from the start just how pointless it would be to try and tempt a dismal crew like us anyway, us with no bikes to ride or money to spend, and dogged by guilt the moment our splintered, dirt-stained fingers let go of a rake.
Still, small farm kids like us aren’t as hobbled as those freer kids might think. We imagine ourselves free and by doing that we become what we imagine. When we rake the roadside embankments we aren’t just out to scrape together some meager piles of straw. No, we’re hunting snakes, the most poisonous breeds of India or Africa. And when we’re out mowing the rye, we hold our breath as we hear the sputtering of the harvester behind us, our hearts pounding harder and harder the closer it gets, like it’s some kind of great beast fast on our heels, fixing to devour us. The final round is always the most exciting one of all, when all the rats left in the field huddle together in the small square of uncut rye, fearing, as we well know, for their miserable lives. As we bind and shock the cut grain with our fingers getting bloody at the nails, in our minds the rats turn into larger and more ferocious beasts, terrible creatures of the dark forest wilds, roaring tigers or mountain lions. But the fantasies we get caught up in the most come later, as the hay swells and swells under our trampling feet in the murky loft, pushing us ever closer to the long and dangerous nails sticking down through the splintered roof bottom. From overhead comes the hay that we must stamp down to make room for more, but we pretend it’s water. Shipwrecked on a stormy sea, we can sense yet another wave about to break over us in the dark, wave after breaking wave. But we always manage to cling to our lives, invincible, if not in the world’s eyes, then at least in our own.
So this is how we small farm kids swap our lean lives for large ones, as heroes in our own private dramas. And why not? The tighter our belts or shackles, the more powerful our dreams are of other lives shaped by freedom and honor. There’s no reason to pity us as long as we can imagine these things. Not until our private dramas stop playing and the dreams lose their hold on us is there any reason to speak of pity. Not until we recognize ourselves for who we really are will pity be a needful thing. And then tears may be all we have left.
Of course, every now and then we can’t help really seeing ourselves for what we are. We hear it whispered back at us in the schoolhouse after October’s potato harvest illness. We sense it during the eternal lunch breaks, as we hide our crude cucumber sandwiches behind our backpacks, or as we trail the rumors from mouth to mouth that our homes are infested with lice. But these are things you meet and move beyond. In the free rein of the hayloft or the barn’s dark and liberating cubby holes, we almost manage to forget them altogether. But then comes a time when forgetting isn’t possible. And I do mean a particular time when no amount of dreaming, not then and maybe not ever, can change how naked and unimportant we become in our own eyes.