What This River Keeps: A Novel

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN I n the middle ofthe week, there'd been the excitement ofthe straw baling. Two days after Wayne had combined the whole wheat field in several hours, Charlie Wolfing baled the straw with the help offive gangly high school boys. They'd started in the morning and worked all day while Frank watched them from a lawn chair set under his oak tree. Catfish stayed with him and barked at the boys as they rode the wagons around and around the field. Charlie drove the tractor and baler while two boys stacked the load. Three others hauled the full wagons back to Charlie's with a pickup, where they unloaded it onto an elevator and stacked it in his hayloft before bringing back the empty wagons. Frank sat in his chair and counted the loads. Every hour or so Ethel brought him another glass oficed tea. The field was now an even blanket of wheat stubble, marked in regular patterns with tire tracks where the combine and the tractors had flattened the stalks. So there'd been that, and now he wanted to call Chub and head for the river. He wanted to see ifit looked different-see ifthose government assholes had been driving stakes down there. But then the green beans came on and he spent inordinate amounts of time helping Ethel snap them. And here she came with another brown sack filled. Over the barn the sky had darkened and she reported hearing thunder out over the woods. "I brung this many in, before 1got wet," she said, although it was clear to him that to bring any more she'd have needed another sack. And if there'd been more to get, she'd have gotten wet picking them. Her skin fit the muscles in her arms. They'd both been out in the sun so much their skin looked like tanned deer hide. His arms were starting to show red and black blotches, but hers looked fine yet. Weathered smooth but still strong, like a board on the west side of a barn. She put the sack next to the chair at the kitchen table and went to the sink to get a glass ofwater. She drank half, refilled it, and stood there looking out the window. From the cabinet over the sink she then took a large bowl and set it on the table. She unfolded a newspaper there and spread it flat. Finally she got another paper sack and placed it on the floor, open. He watched her from his chair in the other room. From this vantage point he could see both the tv and the kitchen. He watched her more than she knew. She'd stopped for almost two minutes while she drank her water and looked out the window. "You gonna help me with these ones?" she asked. He stood up, and when he did the little dog lifted his head from the rug. Frank motioned for him to come on and the pup stood up and followed him. He was a smart dog, Catfish. 128 What This River Keeps 129 Frank walked into the kitchen and pulled out the chair next to hers. For two days now they'd been sitting here snapping beans, putting the middles in a bowl and dropping the ends in a paper sack. They'd used this system not only this week but for about the last thirty summers. He didn't like kitchen work but damn-the TV hit its slumps in the afternoon and he got so disgusted he could hardly watch it. Golf and such crap on. "This about the end of em?" he asked. She looked under the table at the pup, already asleep on the linoleum floor. "I still want to know why that animal gets to come in here all the time." "Who, Catfish? He comes in because he's smart enough. He don't hurt nothing." She grunted. "We never had one smart enough, before. Course, we never let em try, either." He reached into the sack and piled some beans on the newspaper. He said nothing. She looked at him over her glasses. "Well. He lives in here practically like a human," she said. "Human bean?" he asked, holding one up. "I said, 'is this about the last of it: You never told me." She sighed. "Next week some may be ready but not so much. This is the last sackful." "You gonna can it...