Chapter 2
Roy Carver, a broad heavy set man of twenty-nine, set a goal of achievement on his eighteenth birthday. He promised himself to own a full section of good farmland by the time he was forty, and he stood near enough to success that he was serenely confident of reaching his original goal. Roy owned five hundred-twenty acres, clear. The long hours he put to farming were to him a privilege instead of a chore. He loved to watch the soil turn as he plowed, knowing every single granule belonged to him, that his efforts on the flat, productive acres would yield a profit to be invested in even more land for greater profits. Roy was well satisfied with life.
Marrying Ellen Andrews had been a significant part of his overall plan, because any farmer needed a wife to cook and keep house, not that Roy couldn't have found at least a dozen other suitable girls who would have married him, because he promised a good, sound livelihood. He chose Ellen because she came from a poor family. Her father farmed a quarter of rented ground, and they never had much. Ellen, when she married him, had been anxious to get away from home. Besides being good-looking, she was also a good housekeeper. So far as Roy was concerned, the trade had been about even. Her looks and build for his aggressiveness and ability to get ahead.
As they sat to a dinner of salad, pork chops, milk gravy, and potatoes, Roy Carver's tiredness from having been in the field all day gradually disappeared as his stomach filled. Between big, satisfying bites, he talked of what he saw and what he did. "I got close to forty acres today, Ell. Best day I remember havin' in a long time. Everything clicked. Tractor run good, land plowed mild, and not a speck of trouble."
"Real good. What else is new?" Ellen asked politely.
Roy paused to take a big bite of potatoes and gravy and swallowed almost immediately. "This red tail hawk chasin' that rabbit and I wish I'd a had movie camera. This crazy rabbit took off across plowed ground when I jumped him, when he coulda gone the other way and run on solid dirt, only he didn't. Rabbits ain't too smart, I guess. Well, this old hawk he was circlin' around up in the air just waitin' for somethin like that, and when that old rabbit took off across that plowed ground, down come that hawk, shit-lickety-bang, like a rocket zeroed in on a target he couldn't miss. I wasn't over fifty feet off when he hit that rabbit, Ell. He had both claws drawed up like firsts and, powee! he hit that stupid rabbit right in back of the head, did a little dipsy-do turn in the air then lit on that rabbit with both claws diggin' in his guts. That bunny was a goner just like that!"
"Yeah. They have that stuff on Disney a lot."
"I never seen no hawk kill a rabbit on Disney."
"Well, eagles then."
"Sure. Eagles, maybe. But no hawks. We got no eagles around here. Dad used to tell about there bein' eagles, but it was a long time ago, before I was born even. I guess maybe Indians cleaned them out, gettin' feathers to make them war-bonnets. Indians never did have a lick of sense."
"Why?"
"Hell! If we let Indians stay around, all we'd have today would be buffalo's and rain-dances. Indians never did no gettin' ahead. All they got done was kill out our eagles and keep the squaws knocked up."
"They fought now and then," Ellen remarked.
"God damn, and didn't they! Scalped each other, skinned people alive! They was mean sonsabitches, them Indians. I'm glad the bastards is all on reservations. That's where they belong. It makes me sick, the way some of these perfessors and such go on about how we screwed the Indians. Hell, they had this country maybe fifty thousand years, and they wasn't a godam one could build a decent house to live in, and they wasn't interested in learnin' how. Beat them tomahawks, jig around in a circle makin' rain medicine, all that shit."
"You said beat tomahawks. You mean tom-toms."
"Well, they waved tomahawks, then."
"You couldn't beat a tomahawk. It's kinda hatchet."
"Yeah—yeah! I know! You don't need to say it again!"
"You're always taking me apart when I call something wrong, like when I say a tire is a wheel."
"Well, I don't keep on sayin' it! Not time after time."
"Sometimes you do, and you tell me it was a stupid thing to say, calling a tire a wheel."
"Well, it is stupid! Tires is made outa rubber. Wheels is metal."
"I know that now because you told me maybe a dozen times. Why wouldn't I know about tires and wheels!"
"Okay, Ell, now that's about enough outa you. How come you're walkin' around with your tail-feathers stuck up?" he demanded mildly. Roy didn't get excited very easily.
"Because I get lonesome talking to myself all day long, that's why!"
"Well, you got a good radio and a good teevee. Listen to them talk. Hey! What's the weatherman saying about rain? Did he say anything this afternoon like we might get a shower?"
"Clear and hot," Ellen reported resignedly. "For a while, I thought we might have an argument for once, fight like married people are supposed to. How come you never want to argue, Roy?"
He was nibbling the bone of the last pork chop. "Arguin's a waste of time. Nobody wins. I got better things to think about, besides what to say in an argument. No rain, huh?"
"I listened twice. They say this high is hung up over us some place so the low can't get in."
"Maybe tomorrow," Roy said philosophically, and belched comfortably. "Damn! I don't know if I can hold a dessert or not. What we got?"
"Rice custard."
"I gotta have some of that! We got cream, Ell?"
"I think it's still sweet."
"Get me a good dish of rice custard and pour some cream on top, ED."
At the refrigerator, she said, "I wish you'd call me Ellen instead of Ell or Effie. I hate Ellie. That's what everybody around home called me."
"Ellen sounds like we just been introduced," he complained mildly. "Now, if I never had screwed you before, I might say, please could I have some, Ellen? But hell! We been married goin' on two years!"
"Another two, you won't even call me Ell. You'll just say, Hey!"
Roy grinned, eyeing the rich-looking dessert she set before him. "Damn, that looks good!" he exclaimed, and dug in.
Ellen watched him demolish the serving while she nibbled at an extra crust of bread. "Roy?"
"Yeah."
"Could we go over and see Bill and Francine a little while? Just an hour?"
Carver frowned. "Hell, Ell, it's damn near eight o'clock. We wouldn't no more'n get there it'd be bedtime and we'd have to turn around and come back."
"I know it's almost eight, but you stayed in the field 'til you couldn't see. You could slip on a clean shirt and pants. We wouldn't have to stay all night. Just an hour."
"What'd you want to see Francine about? Couldn't you call her up and get it said?"
"That's what you said last time! We haven't seen Francine and Bill since Lilah Gafford's card party, and that was almost two weeks ago. You know how I enjoy being around Francine."
"Sure, her and those silly dirty stories she likes to tell. Hell! I can tell you a dirty story, if that's what you want. How about that guy went into a bar, and the bartender said, man, you the ugliest one bastard I ever ..."
"I don't want to go to Francine's just to hear a story!" interrupted Ellen in an anguished voice. "I want to visit with another girl, see if she's bought any new clothes, find out what she did in town the last time she went! I've been stuck here at home all week, Roy Carver, and I'm getting tired of living by myself! The only time I see you is the two hours you're not working in the field or sleeping. Even on Sunday we never do anything. You've always got some machinery to fix or something. Please, Roy? Just an hour?"
Carver sighed deeply and pushed his chair back from the table. "Damn, that was good, Ell. Best rice custard you ever made. What was that you just said?" he grinned.
Later on, she stood in the doorway rubbing lotion on her hands, watching her husband's eyes half-closed by drowsy lids, as he fought to finish the farm reports in the newspaper. Desire for sleep finally won. Yawning, he got up, mumbled, "Well, I better turn in. I got a big day tomorrow."
For as long as Ellen could remember, the remark never varied a syllable.
She went outside in the warm night. The stars were out in billions. The moon hadn't come up yet. Slowly, she unbuttoned her dress, shrugged out of her bra, and stood naked on the exact spot where the callow boy had taken her on the grass that afternoon. While she got reasonable sexual satisfaction from him at the time, the furious intercourse had somehow failed to fill an imagined void that needed filling by someone who understood her. Gary whateverhisnamewas had been an unconscious rebellion against her spiritual and physical confinement on the farm, contained there by a man who knew fanning, and that Indians did very little of it. He liked pork chops and rice custard and going to bed early. Ellen picked up the green plastic hose, gasped slightly as the tepid water lying in the hose became replaced by a colder stream direct from the storage tank. Methodically, after her body was wet, she soaped all over. Afterwards, she played the lazy stream over her skin until she was free of suds. Ellen toweled rigorously and carried her clothes back in the house.
Roy snored gently. Ellen thought he was probably dreaming of a fifty-acre day when she stretched out beside him, hoping: her movements would wake him, knowing they wouldn't. "Roy," she whispered.
Nothing.
"Roy! Are you asleep?" When he was dozing, this never failed to get an answer. How in hell can I, you yellin' like that! This time, he didn't reply.
Ellen put her hand on his sex. He flinched involuntarily, mumbled something in a voice too sleep-fogged to be understandable, and turned over on his side with a heaving sigh.
She pushed against him, pressed the soft, water-limp cushion of her mound against his naked haunch, her magnificent breasts against his broad back, and Roy slept on. Ellen wanted to pound him with her fists. Instead, she flopped over on her back, hit both heels simultaneously on the sheeted mattress.
Her lips never moved, and the words formed only in her imagination.
Someday, you'll wish I was back if just to cook you some rice custard! Silently, Ellen Carver fumed.
During girlhood, during the times when they become women and discover sex and slowly gather together all the lore of womanhood, Ellen had understood that all men were pretty much alike. In dating the boys, she discovered this. Invariably, they all wanted to get hers naked on a blanket, or in the back seat of a car, or even in a cheap motel. Ellen resisted, not because she wasn't dying to go and make the big discovery, but because she realized that her looks and figure were her only commodities to trade for a good marriage, and Roy Carver got virginity on their wedding night. After the period of sexual acquaintanceship, while it was still new to them both, she and Roy did it about every night, except when she had her period. After about two months, the frequency dropped off to every other night. At the end of their sixth month, Roy halfheartedly wanted it about twice a week ... preferably, once.
This was the history as it went through her mind.
Her predictions were much more disappointing. She'd heard of men who had to have it twice every night, sometimes more. But not Roy. The way things were going, he'd quit entirely by the time he was forty, and her mother had once told her of lady she knew whose husband had completely lost his manhood at forty-five.
In darkness, she glanced at the deep-breathing bulk beside her, trying to visualize herself with the ability to live with Roy merely for the sake of living with him.
She couldn't. It wasn't enough.
"I'm glad I did!" she barely whispered, so only she could hear. What she referred to was her first promiscuity. Taking on the boy with the long hair had been her first offense against their marriage, and as Ellen turned over on her side, away from Roy, she promised herself very fervently it wouldn't be the last.