She belted out her laugh then, and Brian didn't know if he should join or not. He tried to smile sympathetically.
"Is your father still alive?"
"Yeah. He's a soil tester for the state. Lives up in Fort Dodge."
"He sold the farm, then."
"Lost it. Phagocytosis."
"Pardon?"
"It's a biological process, honey." Mary Beth swerved to avoid a woodchuck crossing the highway. "You've got a cell, right, and it reaches out with these arms of cytoplasm to surround a smaller cell or a solid particle. And once it's surrounded, inside the cell's membrane, it can be broken down by enzymes. It's a kind of eating."
"Oh."
"Daddy had a pretty small operation and he never really understood that if you didn't get bigger you didn't survive. So this big agribusiness outfit, the company that makes Justine's cat food but they own all kinds of stuff, they start buying out all the small farmers that surround Daddy. He's the only one who won't sell. Redneck pride. So once they're all around him they lay siege. For three years he sets a price for his crop, very small margin of profit, and they undersell him. They can afford to take a loss for a while, they've got the capital behind them, they've got the cat food and the dog chow and turkeys at Thanksgiving and who knows what else. They starve him out and the farm goes back to the bank. They'll wait till the price drops down some before they buy it from the bank. Phagocytosis."
"Where'd you get all that?" said Brian. "The cell stuff."
"You're looking at a former biology major. Parents sent me up to the Ag School in Ames, got me started in animal husbandry. I guess they didn't know what else to do with me since the marriage proposals hadn't exactly come flying in."
"You graduate?"
"Fraid not. Me and this girl who was my best friend transferred to the University of Iowa our junior year. Thought there had to be more to life than the good earth. The University already had a shady reputation in certain quarters, and while I was there it finally started to deserve it."
"When was that?"
"'Sixty-nine. The campus action wasn't all that much compared to some places, but for Iowa it was a regular Sodom and Gomorrah."
"And your parents?"
"Daddy came to visit after I'd been there a month. Looked around and said come home with me now or don't come back at all. Maybe some kids were living together. Maybe there was a political slogan scratched on a wall. I don't know just what it was. But I wouldn't leave and he cut off the funds. Had to drop my classes but I stayed on in Iowa City. Got involved in some things." Mary Beth smiled. "You might say I switched from biology to chemistry."
"They disown you?"
"You got it. Complete with a we-shall-not-be-held-responsible notice in the local paper. Mama snuck a letter and some cookie-jar money past him once in a while, but that was when she'd already took sick. All I ever got from Daddy was the word through the grapevine that he thought I was just a big slut who'd never amount to a thing." Mary Beth shook her head and smiled. "Imagine that. A girl who's more popular on campus than the goddam homecoming queen. If only he could see me now."
"What do you do now?" asked Brian. "For a living?"
She had been hinting around at it for a while, talking about all the business she'd done in Iowa City and all she had to do ahead of her. He'd been wanting to ask.
"I sell drugs, honey," said Mary Beth. "You're riding with the one and only Midwestern Connection." And laughed so loud the cat woke up.
The farmhouse was not nearly so run-down as he had imagined. Some high weeds around the porch, board windows, dust in the kitchen sink. Most of the furniture was still inside. The real decay was in the cornfields, the stalks bent and broken, tangling with each other. The rows that Mary Beth had talked about were overgrown into a solid jumble of vegetation.
"They can afford to plow it under and let the soil recover fora year or two," said Mary Beth. "Daddy couldn't."
She had brought a candle in from the car and found some more over the kitchen sink. It was a little spooky in the house, so unnaturally dark for the time of day, everything fuzzy with a layer of dust.
"Haven't been here since I was a sophomore in college. Seven-eight years. Surprised the bank hasn't changed the lock." Mary Beth handed Brian one of the candles she had lit. "Listen, honey, I think I want to poke around here a little bit. If you don't mind? I won't be too long, and then I can get you another hundred miles down the road. That okay?"
"No sweat."
"And what I thought was, since you said how you been up so long, it would be a chance for you to cop some z's. I'm sure they didn't move my bed from upstairs. Give you a chance to stretch out."
Mary Beth directed him to the bedroom then and headed off through the house. He could hear her bare feet, flap, flap, flap as she padded across the parlor.
The room was upstairs. Justine was already curled in the middle of the bed when he found it. He tossed her on the floor and lay down. There was a canopy over the bed and pictures of kittens with huge tear-shaped eyes on the wall. Brian kicked off his sneakers. The cat jumped beside him, was thrown off, jumped up again. Brian let her stay. He closed his eyes.
He felt like he was still moving, traveling over the highway at sixty. He flashed onto glimpses of whiteline zipping under, his stomach clenched for curves that never came. He started down a long slope, the back of his head floating, started coasting, coasting…
A twitch in his stomach brought him near to waking. The candle had gone out. Justine had left the bed. He thought he heard someone else in the room, breathing. He kept his eyes shut. He was lying on his belly with one hand across his heart and the other guarding his crotch. Flap, flap, flap. Mary Beth was standing by the bed watching him, he could smell her, feel her warmth. He waited. He felt his buttocks tighten automatically but managed to keep his breathing regular.
The bedsprings strained as she eased herself down beside him. She was stroking his hair, lightly, on the very edge of sensation. Allowing him to play possum if he wanted to. It was a road story coming true, she wanted him to make love to her. She wanted more than that, he figured, but she would settle for a roll in the dark and a wave good-bye on the highway. He breathed in her warmth and he got hard, knowing it would happen if he wanted it to. That he would be in control, she had come to him. He was set to open his eyes, to wake fully and roll over when a voice inside held him down. It reminded. him of the way her feet flopped when she walked, remembered the rolls and puckers and dimples of her, remembered the way she looked sweating buckets through her thin shift. It was a Russ Palumbo voice, an after-school sneer in the hallway. Anybody want to fuck that, it said, hafta be deaf, dumb and blind. Woman escaped from the Humane Society. The voice was as strong in him as the warnings from priests and nuns had once been, stronger. His cock backed down a bit, softened. Half-and-half, the kind he woke up with in the morning.
"Honey?" she whispered.
"Brian?"
He made his decision, let the voice make it, and stuck with it. Stuck with it even when she stroked his hair hard enough to make it an open question. He held himself still and the bed gave a mournful groan as it tilted back level and he heard her flap out of the room.