Blue Shadows Farm: A Novel

48. What Now?—Summer 1919

Summer 1919 The rest of the summer of 1919, Abe Starkweather crawled out of bed each morning with no direction for the day. His head was clear, and his headaches had disappeared, especially the headache he had every Sunday morning after an all-night drinking bout at the Link Lake Tap. Faith tried to cheer him by baking his favorite wild-berry pie and cooking meals fit for a threshing crew. But nothing seemed to pull Abe out of the dregs of despair and disbelief. Well into August, he had not yet accepted the closing of the saloon. People talking to him, which happened seldom as he spent little time in Link Lake, thought a close relative of his had died since he seemed deep into grieving and loss. In a way, that was the case. He and a bottle of beer, well, several bottles of beer, had become close friends; they were closer to him than his own wife. Abe continued to fix fences, dig postholes, and supervise the occasional load of gravel he sold from his pit. Those who came for the gravel, now with Model T trucks, wondered why he wanted to inspect every shovelful of the material. But he did. It seemed an 280 48 What Now? 281 What Now?—Summer 1919 obsession. Some, who knew of his previous drinking habits, whispered to each other that this strange behavior resulted from being cut off from drink. When someone asked him why he inspected it so closely, he snarled, “My gravel, ain’t it?” A few people, those who knew of his father’s interest in Indian artifacts, thought maybe he was looking for arrowheads. But those who thought about it for a minute knew there were likely no arrowheads twenty feet underground—which was the depth of the gravel pit in many places. Abe did meet occasionally with his old drinking buddies—they tried gathering for morning coffee at the Link Lake Eatery. Somehow , coffee seemed a poor substitute, or no substitute at all, for a good stiff drink of bourbon or a tall glass of Blatz beer from the tap. At one of these morning gatherings, Abe’s old friend Noah Stringfellow said, “I just heard from my uncle Joe in Illinois. He said you can make beer out of potatoes.” “Is that right?” Abe asked, trying not to show too much interest. “You happen to have the recipe?” “Well, I do. You want a copy?” “I might. Never can tell when it might come in handy,” Abe said. Noah Stringfellow, a rather heavyset man who helped out at Link Lake Motors, pulled a stub of a yellow pencil from his pocket, wet the end with his tongue, and scratched some words on a paper napkin. Abe glanced at the napkin, then stuffed it into his pocket without comment. The group went on talking about other matters. When Abe got home he said to Faith, “Think I’ll wander out to the potato patch to see if them early spuds are ready for diggin’.” “Don’t you think it’s a tad early?” Faith said. “Well, we’ve had good rains. They been growin’ good, and you’ve done a good job hoein’ out the weeds. Think I’ll try ’em.” Abe had never shown much interest in their ten acres of potatoes. True, he assisted with the planting. But Faith was in charge of the potato patch, as she was of all the rest of the farming operation. Faith didn’t remember that he had ever offered to do any potato digging without her first nagging him to get at it. “Where’s the six-tine fork?” Abe said when he got up from the dinner table. Faith smiled. She, of course, did most of the work around the barn, forking the hay, forking out the manure, forking oat straw for bedding. Of course she knew where to find the fork. “Hanging just inside the south barn door,” she said. Abe wandered off to the barn, found the fork, and headed up the long lane to the potato patch. He dug potatoes that afternoon until several bushels lay on the ground, waiting to be put into boxes and hauled to the farmstead. “Wonder if you could give me a hand with the taters?” Abe said when he returned home. He had a pleasantness to his voice that Faith hadn’t heard for...