Heartland

Heartland

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A boy wandered out into the heartland one day, came out of the horizon
on a long flat road surrounded by cornfields and telephone lines. The
farmer saw him from a long ways off but he had the look of a boy not
needing to be found just yet.

The boy took his long time to meander up the road. The town was not
far off, signs along the way citing its virtues. Thick tequila dust
lined the western horizon, matched by coal-blue clouds in the
southeast. They would meet overhead in awhile, and blow dust up into
the heavens and throw down iceballs and light the fields on fire before
drowning them in rain, maybe even God would stick his finger down, pop
a hole in the clouds and stir things up.

The boy stopped at a John Deere parked at the crossroad and sat down
on a rusty blade. He was damned thirsty but didn't want to seem eager.
He could see the farmer aways off, knew he was politely going about his
business to give the boy his room. The boy knew it, knew they both knew
the truth, but out of courtesy, or pride, the boy wouldn't drop the
sham. He hated himself for that. Hated that he couldn't just drop the
performances. Jesus, he thought how damned silly that was. But the boy
couldn't help himself. He wiped the back of his hand coolly across his
forehead, stood up, and headed for the farm.

Always these goddamned performances.

The farmer was a father. That much was obvious. The boy could tell it
without trying. Fathers just had a look. They were harder on the
outside, but softer inside. Like all their outward idealism and love
and kindness had been passed on, drying up their skin but leaving a
soft glow inside, a glow that came out the eyes. Fathers always looked
like rough-hewn faces in a rock wall with soft glowing eyes that told
of warm furnaces beneath, below. But you couldn't hurt fathers, not if
you tried your whole damned life. They'd never let you know, and that
was the same - to you - as them not being hurt at all. You had to be
extra-perceptive to see it; just a slight wavering, a flicker in the
fatherly glow of the eyes, like a breath of wind threatening to whip
out the candle's flame. Fatherly furnaces never went out easy, though.
Not often.

Mothers were something else entirely. Mothers weren't so simple. They
made a whole lot less sense than fathers, by a long shot. They said
whole bunches of things that didn't add up. A father would say
something simple, but you knew there was plenty of thought and meaning
behind it, lot's of logic and thought, and sometimes love. Mothers,
though...well, they just said a lot, and none of it made much sense -
except to them, probably. Even then, the boy suspected all that changed
from one minute to the next. Mothers sound so damned convincing when
they talk, like that's the whole world in a nutshell and there ain't no
other way than that at all. But the next minute they're sayin'
something else altogether with the same conviction and swearin' to high
Heaven that it's the only truth. They boy had always wanted to ask
about the contradictions, thought of bringin' up the difference between
what Mother was saying now and what she was saying then. Ah, hell,
she'd just go off and make a scene anyway. Not much point, never was,
he thought.

Yup, this was a father alright, this farmer. He had the leathery skin
and the gently glimmering eyes. Had kids. A couple, maybe three, maybe
a fourth to come. No, not a fourth. There's a springy kind of look to
an expecting father. A jumpy exuberance, like the sound of a bird, a
washer, or a door slamming might be that new kid being born. Men were
always more romantic than women, by a long shot. This farmer had the
ease of motion, the relaxation of a man who has pretty much everything
he wants right now and ain't expecting much more just yet.

The boy shoved his hands in the pockets of his overalls and started up
the long dust road to the farm, where the farmer was working. The sun
was coming in in that strange late afternoon kind of way, where it's
past noon a piece, but still coming in kind of high, like a big open
window in the dusty sky. It filters strangely then, and you can see all
the dust and debris and bugs and whatever it is floats in the air out
here. That sun ain't coming in low, but it sure makes the sky bright as
hell for some reason, makes you squint hard, especially with the dust
coming in out of the west on days like today.

The farmer didn't really have to look up, 'cause he saw the boy coming
out of the corner of his eye. Not much happened out here, and it was
flat - hell, the flattest place on earth, he imagined - so any bit of
movement had a tendency to stand out real strong. Like one of those
yellow butterflies on a red barn wall; just stood out like that. He
reckoned the kid would make his way up if he felt like it, move on if
not. And if the kid did move on, well maybe the farmer would see to it
that something needed to be picked up in town, which would mean passing
the boy on the highway in the Ford.

It was about halfway up the drive when they seemed to begin thinking
of the same thing. It just sort of drifted in there, filled up their
minds slow and easy, and not at all in a bad way. They saw the kitchen
table covered in a well-worn tablecloth and plates being set out, and
the boy sitting down to eat with the farmer's family, and the meal
being set out: corn on the cob, drenched in butter that steamed off in
tasty-smelling wisps; two whole chickens, roasted in the oven and
smothered in two kinds of cheese, sitting in a thick kind of gravy; hot
bread, homemade and heavy, so hot it explodes with steam when it's cut
open and turns the butter to liquid as soon as you spread it on;
steamed wax-beans which only half the family seemed to like, but they
sure liked it a lot; and somewhere in the background the hot, deeply
sweet smell of a cherry pie or two just finishing up, which would mean
that by the end of dinner it - or they - would still be almost too hot
to eat, but that made 'em just about right. The kids would eat quite a
bit - they're big kids, bigger than the little boy who's their guest
this evening - and about halfway through the meal the conversation
would hit its stride and it'd seem like the family just got itself a
surprise new member.

It would be a good meal, and both the farmer and boy seemed to know it
in both their heads, and both couldn't help smiling about it before
they even met.

William Bourassa Jr. July 7, 2001