Lois Shelton wanted me to apologize for her absence.
She's singing tonight and couldn't be here.
But she wanted me to tell everyone to stay for brownies
and lemonade after the reading.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm pleased to introduce our guest writer this evening, Erin
McGraw.
Her first collection of short fiction Bodies
At Sea was published this fall by University
of Illinois Press.
Her stories and articles have appeared
in California Quarterly, the Laurel Review, Beloit Fiction
Journal, the North American Review, Crazy Horse,
the Georgia Review, and other magazines.
She currently holds a Wallace Stegner Fellowship
at Stanford University, and has taught at DePaul University
and Indiana University.
Other honors include the 1987 General Electric
Award for Younger Writers and a National Society of Arts
and Letters Career Award.
Her collection, Bodies At Sea, demonstrates
her incredible range as a writer.
The stories are quirky, sensitive, funny, disturbing,
and vastly different from each other.
There are no bounds to Erin's imagination,
to what she will tackle.
I look forward to her next book.
Bodies At Sea incidentally will be for sale
after the reading at a discount.
So pick up a copy, Erin's tired of lugging them around.
[LAUGHTER]
For a note of humor at dinner, Erin
was asked about her experience of the recent earthquake.
And she confessed that when it happened
she was in the fitting room of Victoria's Secrets.
[LAUGHTER]
The store was moving around like an ocean and everyone
had to clear out.
Fortunately, Erin was semi-clothed.
Her friend was not.
Her friend, after the earthquake was all over,
went back in and bought the green satin pajamas.
Now there's a crazy world to write about.
On that note, I give you Erin McGraw.
[APPLAUSE]
I didn't realize it's not safe to tell any stories around
here.
Thank you, Melanie.
And, thank you very much, Kate.
That was a beautiful reading.
Thank you to the Poetry Center.
Thank you to Writers At Work.
Thank you for being here.
It's a tremendous honor, always that people
are ready to hear my stories.
We have busy lives, I have a busy life,
and I'm so grateful that you're here.
Is this all right?
Do I need to wrestle with the microphone too?
OK.
The story I'm going to read is called Until It Comes Closer.
And, I will just go ahead and tell you in advance
that it's in dialect.
This is not my reading voice.
It's the voice the story calls for.
Until It Comes Closer.
Sometimes I still wait for my sister to come back.
Days I get up and expect any minute to see her.
I'll find myself watching the road staring behind the baking
soda or up over the closet door.
I had dreams that she comes home all alone.
The two of us looking at each other in a morning cold
and still.
For a while, other people came.
Neighbors dropped by at all hours with casseroles
then sniffed around the house in case
I had her hidden behind the curtain.
People who'd never in their lives done more than nod
in the church service showed up with covered dishes
at 7 o'clock in the morning.
They said ugly things, quoted scripture on shouldering
burdens as if they knew what they were talking about.
Then finally they got bored with having only me to look at,
nothing out of the ordinary.
"Don't you miss her?"
Mardis George asked.
And I wanted to say, "What do you think?
She was my sister."
But we make decisions and we steer by whatever lights
we see.
Mostly, I've gotten used to living on my own.
It's quiet and there are things to tend to.
I raked all the gutters and set out 25 tomato seedlings.
Time soon for squash and eggplant, all
the summer's busyness.
Now it's warm.
I've been keeping the shades up in all the rooms,
the windows wide, and I can see out in every direction.
The vines outside reach right into the rooms.
It's just sometimes that I wake up sudden as if I heard Martha.
Or someone will say something, like Louise
at the market wondering how I could bear to let her go,
she was such a sweet thing.
As if she was my pet.
What's worse is when the dreams come
and I see myself standing in a field, Martha being carried
away from me in a high wind.
I can't do a thing to save her.
I can see now how my mama knew this would happen.
When she was alive, she never took Martha out.
Never introduced her to anybody.
Hardly let her know she lived in the world.
Everything Martha knew was what she saw on TV.
I only wish mama had explained herself to me.
Because I saw how she packed Martha down
in her chair when she was getting ready to leave,
or picked Martha up and put her in her room
when folks came, and I thought she was ashamed.
I'd march into Martha's room and play with her
until people were gone even though she wasn't much fun
to play with.
What could she do?
She hardly knew anything.
And then come out after to glare at my mama.
Martha was five-years-old before she saw a feather first hand.
That's how long it was before anyone
thought to bring her one.
It was a pitiful thing.
She was right there in the middle of our lives
from the time she was born.
We could never all go out together,
somebody had to tend her.
But all we did was feed her and make sure she was warm.
Daddy couldn't stand to be in the same room with her.
He'd look at her his mouth going soft
and he'd start to rock himself and moan in a hushy voice
until my mama would hurry in and take him away.
And there would be Martha, her eyes big
wondering what she'd done.
He passed on when Martha was eight.
I was 13.
I came home and told her all about the funeral, the flag
and the guns.
How mama had looked tall and beautiful.
There had been a man there in a wheelchair
and I told her about him too.
How everyone had cleared a respectful space
at the side of the grave.
Martha looked up sharp at that and I told her
his pant legs were full and soft like they'd
been stuffed with cotton rags.
She dropped her eyes again and made me nervous,
so I kept telling about the funeral, remembering everything
for her.
But she didn't look up anymore.
It was after the funeral that my mama
had people come to look at Martha, who were scared frozen.
She'd never had to talk to anybody but us and the doctor,
had hardly even seen anyone else.
The milkman, the mailman, people on TV.
Then all of a sudden, mama was propping her up
in the living room and men in uniforms filed through to look.
One of them actually picked her up and turned her around
like she was a paperweight, until she began to bellow
and mama snatched her back again.
Mama began to stay up late every night with the typewriter,
tapping out page after page.
And Martha got so she shook all the time even when
I was just telling her about school like I'd
done every day for years.
It wasn't like it was secret.
Mama told me right out.
"I think Martha was hurt because of something they
gave your daddy when he was fighting," she told me.
"I'm trying to do something about it.
I'm trying to get some justice for your sister."
It didn't matter to me.
It wasn't going to get arms and legs for her
so I didn't see the use.
I spent a lot of time outside playing.
I can remember those days clear as clear.
They seemed to go on forever.
Mama typing through the nights.
The men coming and asking questions.
Do you get fevers?
Do you get blisters under your tongue?
Martha shaking like a chill at anything, even her own sister
coming through the door.
Then it was over.
We'd been getting letters from Washington so steady
I didn't pay them attention.
The eagle envelopes came as often as flyers from the IGA.
But when the last one got there my mama
knew it was different right off.
She grabbed it out of my hands and opened it
in front of the mailbox where anybody could see her.
She didn't move while she read it
but her mouth got hard as wood.
When she finally turned around and stomped back
into the house, I stayed with her close.
She got into the kitchen and stopped
to read the letter again then folded
it perfectly along the creases and put it back
in the envelope she'd half shredded.
She was standing with her back to me but she knew I was there.
"Go somewhere else," she said.
I didn't move.
She reached into the high cupboard above the stove
and pulled down a bottle.
"I'm warning you," she said.
Still not looking at me.
"You'd better make yourself scarce or you'll wish you had."
"Where am I going to go?"
I asked her.
Cocksure and dumb like kids are.
She turned around so quick her sleeves puffed up
with the breeze.
"You'd better find yourself a place sister,
and you might as well start finding it right now.
You just find yourself a hole and lay right down in it.
You'll need it.
I can promise you there's no one else will do it for you."
It was five years before she died, but within a year
she drunk herself down to a kernel.
Nights I'd come home and spoon the same food into three
mouths first Martha's, then mama's, then I'd
make myself eat some too.
We managed until Martha got an infection, her fever
up so high I could see the blood racing
under that silk white skin.
When the doctor came, he wrote out a prescription
and handed it to me.
"My mama," I started to say.
"Can't do a thing for herself," he cut in.
"You hurry now to get this filled.
I'll wait with your sister until you get back."
Mama stayed slumped in a corner the sofa
and when I got to the drugstore Bert filled the prescription
without any questions.
Martha and I survived.
We lived day after day.
What else was there to do?
I put one foot in front of the other.
I tried bringing her things from outside to look at,
little things leaves and stones.
But after a while I quit.
What good was it for her to have a stone if she'd never
felt water in a creek?
But I told her everything I knew about people and things
so she'd know more than what she saw on TV.
She got to where she asked questions
even though she hushed up whenever anyone was there.
People thought she was retarded on top of everything else
but she was just shy.
Smart too, as it turned out, smarter than me.
Because when I first came up with the idea of taking her
out, she said no.
She said it would change everything
and she didn't want people looking at her.
How did she know?
I thought it was just what she needed and said so.
"We'll just go by ourselves.
Take back roads."
I said.
"A wheelchair doesn't make much noise.
Nobody'll mind us.
You're a part of this world, Martha.
And it's not fair you don't know anything about it."
Well, I was right too and anybody could see it.
Once I had the idea, it was with me all the time,
bright as morning.
And even though Martha kept telling me it wasn't smart
and it wouldn't work, she knew my mind was made up.
Eventually, she asked me to leave
the little window in her room open so she could get used
to the cool air on her face.
And I knew she was done fighting.
I started to get us ready.
I outfitted Martha's wheelchair with wide tires
like a bike's and I practiced pushing it up the valley
behind the house, loading it down
with encyclopedias that weighed more than Martha did.
I fixed her some new clothes, first she'd
had in Lord knows how long, and I bought us both ponchos.
I put together a lightweight kit for food
that we'd buy on the road, and fixed
a basket on the back of the chair for the flashlight, tent,
matches, and all Martha's supplies.
We were ready for things.
I got myself sturdy boots.
The day before we left I went to the bank and took out $750.
Lucille looked surprised when I told her how much I wanted,
and she handed the money to me slow, giving me
plenty of time to explain.
I put it in my purse and walked out.
What business was it of hers?
In the morning, I sat with Martha
and spread the map of Indiana in front of her.
It was our second map.
We'd gone over the first one so many times, tracing routes
and then changing our minds and trying to erase,
that it had disintegrated.
Martha didn't have the faintest idea how the maps connected
with roads or things to see, but she
could follow the spidery lines better with her eyes
than I could using my finger, so I made her Navigator.
I pinned the map down over her so she
could see how we followed the blue lines that branched up
the page.
I put sweaters on both of us and locked the door as we went out.
It was a pretty morning, the kind that feels clean.
Looking down at Martha I could see how tense she was.
She was pushing herself back against the chair
and her eyes were big and wild.
She had gone out a time or two into the backyard,
but in ten steps we'd be in land she'd never
seen in all her life.
"Where to, Navigator?"
I asked her.
It wouldn't have done any good to slow down then.
"North."
She muttered.
And I knew she didn't have any idea which of those valley
walls was North.
She wasn't even looking ahead, just staring
at the tree branches locked together up over our heads.
I started pushing up the hill to the North road
as fast as I could.
After the encyclopedias, Martha's weight
was nothing at all, no more than a handful of feathers.
These were the hills and woods I'd
run around since I was a girl.
These were the trees I'd climbed and hid in,
and secret places where I used to flush out rabbits,
and I kept pointing all of them out to Martha as we rolled by.
Places I'd been running and jumping in
since I was half her age, less.
There were no people nearby and the crunch
of the heavy wheels on leaves and twigs
was scaring away birds and animals.
It was probably just as well.
In that mild morning, light coming down easy on our heads,
Martha was squeezed back tight in her chair
and if she could have managed to say anything
I know she would have told me to turn around
right there on the spot.
I talked a blue streak.
I've never found myself with so much to say.
If we went back then, before we even left our own land,
she'd never go out again.
She would never see anything simple and skittish
as a squirrel firsthand, and maybe it was selfish of me,
but I couldn't stand that.
Just as Martha was starting to rediscover her voice
and little whimpers were bubbling out,
we cleared the top of the ridge and bumped onto the hard dirt
road.
"This is the way I used to walk to school."
I told her, and slowed down.
"The older kids used to stand right off to the edge
here and wait to scare the little ones on their way home."
"Did they?"
She asked.
"Scare you?"
"They never did.
I knew they were there."
I waited for Martha to say something else
but she stayed quiet.
When I looked down at her I thought maybe
she was just a hair less tense, at least
she didn't seem to be backed up so hard against the chair.
I slowed way down so the sound of the wheels
and the creak of the chair softened,
and I put my hand on top of Martha's head.
I was going to say something, find some words to reassure
her, I don't know what, but a mockingbird dropped like a rock
from a tree a few feet ahead of us
and Martha was plastered to the back of the chair
again even after it swooped back up
and started singing in that mean way they have.
"A mockingbird, that's all.
We'll see them all over."
I felt helpless.
For weeks I'd been telling her how if she stayed still
animals might come.
I'd been telling her how pure it feels
to have a chipmunk come up close, or a squirrel.
Now here she was terrified of a mockingbird.
"Martha, I thought it was going to fall."
She interrupted me.
"It came down so fast and I didn't
see where it was coming from and I didn't
know it meant to do that."
"They're like that," I said.
"Pretty, isn't it?"
"I can't tell.
I can't see it way up there.
I have to wait until it comes closer."
I wasn't about to tell her about mockingbirds.
How we could stay there all week and wouldn't
see any more of that bird.
Sweat was running down her neck and mine.
It was a good enough time to rest.
We stayed in the shady part of the road
and the bird kept singing away.
I don't know how long we were there.
I was uncomfortable, but I couldn't shift my weight
because the bird would hear me and that
would be the end of it.
For once I knew enough to keep quiet
and I watched the air dry the sweat on Martha's neck.
I thought my patience had given out half a hundred times
before that bird flew down to a lower branch
where we could almost see him.
The sun hit the feathers on his tail
and we could see them shine.
I knew it was the best we were going to do,
that bright purple and black.
But Martha was staring and quiet as a wall
so I stayed quiet too.
Then the bird jumped right down in the dirt
in front of Martha's chair and pecked around for something
to eat.
We could see his big cocky head and how
the white band on his wing folded into his body.
I'd never been so close to a bird.
For a second I forgot about Martha
and craned to see better.
The bird marched around in front of us
so I could see the hard scales on its skinny legs
and how its beak was dull yellow.
"Just look at that thing."
I couldn't help whispering.
It flew off then, pulled up straight as if by a string.
And Martha said, "I always thought
it would look like that."
After that everything got easy.
She asked me to pin up her hair so she could
feel the breeze on her neck.
We stopped to have lunch and by nightfall we'd
pushed maybe five miles.
There were trees I wasn't sure I'd seen before
and I couldn't tell her who lived in the houses and farms
we passed.
"Tomorrow," I said as I pitched our tent off under some oaks.
"It'll be as new to me as to you."
"That'll be good," she said.
We'd seen only one person all day
and that was across a wide field.
He'd waved to us and I stopped to wave back,
swinging my arm across the air as
if he was the person we'd hoped all along we'd see.
For one week, it was perfect.
In the mornings I'd get up first and find a store.
I had to get Martha milk every day.
And then I'd get Martha up put her hair up and sunblock on,
make us breakfast.
She didn't fuss like she did at home.
Most of the time she didn't say anything at all.
I'd be talking about the walk over,
the folks at the store, the funny little towns we were
skirting, and I looked to see her staring
at grass or moss on a rock.
"What is that?"
She'd ask.
"It's just moss.
You've seen moss before."
She glanced and turned back to the moss
and I'd feel ridiculous.
Who puts pictures of moss on TV?
We made about 10 miles a day.
We weren't in any hurry.
We were touring, after all, no timetable.
And pushing Martha up some of those soft looking hills
slowed our pace.
I opened my eyes wide for new things to show her
and I started seeing animals I'd never
been able to find on my own.
Muskrats, foxes.
"Look at the skinny little fingers on that thing,"
I whispered at Martha when we saw the raccoon.
"Look like they could pick a lock."
"I saw one yesterday when you were off at the store."
Martha said.
"I saw it wash its hands."
"Well, shoot.
You might have told a person.
You seen elephants too?"
"Don't think so," she said without looking away
from the raccoon.
"Saw a porcupine though."
"Maybe you should start pointing the things out
you see with those X-ray eyes."
"They don't come around so much when you're here.
You make too much noise."
By the end of the week we were pushing out of the hills
into the central flat of the state.
Martha kept guiding us straight North, I don't know why.
We could feel the air beginning to change.
The sweet breeze quit and the only birds we heard
were far away.
Hot damp air settled on our faces and shoulders
like wet flannel.
"You sure you want to go this way?"
I kept asking.
"We don't need to keep going the same way.
We can go East too, over to the river."
"I like this," she'd say.
"I want to see all kinds of country,
not just what you want to see."
But there was less to see all the time.
As the ground leveled around us, the trees gave out,
and we found ourselves looking across broad fields,
the corn barely as high as my knees.
You could see a person standing two acres away plain as day.
Martha and I couldn't have stuck out
more if we'd been billboards.
The farmers and their wives standing
at the edge of their land could watch our steady progress
all afternoon.
"If we went off to the East it would be prettier."
I told her.
"We could go down to the Ohio River.
You've never seen a big river."
"I've never seen corn," she said.
"Never even seen one of these farmhouses,
the way you keep backing away from them."
I'd been thinking she wouldn't notice.
I didn't see any point in going right up to people.
We didn't leave home to look at people.
I just wanted to make sure she saw things.
The rocks, and grass, and plain air that everybody else has
without even thinking about.
I thought that much was her due.
She could look at animals and they
wouldn't stare back at her.
You could trust them for common decency.
But we'd left the animals behind us
in all the thickets and bushes.
And ever since we come into this wide open land,
I'd had the feeling we were being
watched by bright greedy eyes.
As it was, we'd already been stopped once
when a car pulled over in a lady with hair
piled like a Church of Christer got out.
"Can I help?"
She asked.
Her eyes on Martha like they were nailed there.
"No, ma'am we're fine, just out walking," I told her.
"My sister and I are taking the air."
And Martha not saying a word.
"Well, isn't that fine."
"Well you must devote your whole life to her, poor thing."
And she stared and stared like she was memorizing.
"We work together," I said.
Ugly and fresh as cheese.
Mom had always told me that vinegar won't catch flies
and I was trying to get this woman with her hair and flower
dress to leave.
"Why, what could she--" But I was already pushing.
Shooting down the road so fast that I could have made sparks.
Telling Martha that there are fools everywhere
to pay her no heed.
Martha didn't answer and looking down I couldn't read her face.
We couldn't find nice places to sleep anymore.
The air at night was sticky and heavy in our throats
and there weren't any more closed in groves.
I'd walk a half mile off the road
and just put up the tent, as big and plain
as a thumb sticking up out of the ground.
I'd waken five times in the night
and there would be no noise around us.
I kept thinking there must have been a person out there.
We'd hear something.
The trilling of birds when the sun, if we were by ourselves.
But even Martha couldn't bring birds near us now.
And she acted like she didn't see any changes,
like everything was the same.
As long as we were alone, she talked a blue streak.
"That's some corn," she liked to say, jutting out her chin.
"He'd keep up like this it'll be harvest in July."
"You don't know what you're talking about."
I said.
"Might could be a farmer, got a feel for these things."
She banged against the back of her chair
happy as a pig in rain.
"You can't wheel a chair between those rows.
Where are you going to get a foreman?"
"At the getting place."
She banged again, grinning herself silly.
So we kept going.
Even in the morning, the sky was the color of cement,
and Martha's fine hair stuck to my fingers
when I tried to braid it.
We plodded through the landscape,
me wiping the sweat out of our eyes.
I don't know why I kept on.
I could have turned around any time.
I could have said we were out of money, it was time to go back.
But Martha was hell bent to go North as if something
was waiting for her there.
And it got so I forgot I could do anything
except what she wanted.
She said things I couldn't even imagine where she got them.
Squinting at the sunset she muttered, sailor's delight.
Or just looking ahead down the gravel access road,
Tinker's damn.
As if she was testing out the words, running her thumb,
allowing them to check for sharpness.
And I was steady and dumb as a mule,
pushing her one step after another,
not even seeing anymore where we were going.
It was the night we were just outside of Eminence
that I started to look around again
and by then it was too late.
We were in the tent early because it
had gotten too hot to push anymore
and there was no place for us to wait out the sun there
in the open.
So we lay quiet, the late day light
pricking through all the tiny holes in the canvas.
Martha was having trouble breathing,
and her skin had gone the chalky color of old milk.
"I think it might be time to go back,"
I said, looking straight up at the top of the tent.
"Things are just going to get worse.
This heat like it is, well, it's time."
"No," said Martha.
Her eyes were closed and her hair was wet at the hairline.
"We can't just keep going.
It's getting hotter every day and our money
won't last forever.
Besides, we'll be at the Capitol before the week is out.
We can't just pitch a tent in the street."
"I'm not going back.
There's plenty we haven't seen yet."
I couldn't figure out what she was expecting.
Every day now was like another.
The sharp gravel beneath us.
The fields unrolling without any relief.
Every once in a while a car sprayed by,
heads inside turning as they passed us.
"We need to change directions," I said.
"We can't just parade into the city.
We'll look in the morning to see where we can turn off,
which way to go."
"No," Martha said.
"We're going North."
Stubborn as a tick.
"Martha, it's blazing every day and there's
nothing to look at but the corn and the fertilizer markers.
What are you so sure of finding up this road?"
"I haven't seen everything yet."
She was keeping her eyes closed.
She knew I wanted her to look at me.
"We can go to the river.
You haven't seen that yet either."
She bunched up her face the way she
used to do when she was little, her chin jerking down
toward her throat, her lips skinned back from her teeth.
"I haven't seen everything on this road.
You keep turning the way we go.
You never ask me what I want to see."
She started to cry and she choked on the last words,
but she wouldn't open her eyes or even move her head.
"Martha, I ask you all the time."
"You don't.
You just wait for me to agree with you so I can get some more
birds to come down.
I hate birds.
They just fly off."
"So what is it you want to see so much?
Tractors?
Interstates?"
I was hot too and I wanted to shake her.
It was all for her, everything we were doing.
"Office buildings?"
"I want to see folks."
She sounded tight and shrill like an engine
running way too high.
"I want to see a farm and you keep me all
to yourself like some damn buried treasure."
"Martha Ruth--" I started.
I'd never heard her use language.
Then from outside the tent someone coughed.
Martha's eyes snapped open like a doll's.
The cough happened again and she smiled,
tears puddled in her ears.
"Come in."
She called, before I could even think what to do.
And I was sitting with my mouth open when a man stooped
his head into the tent.
He wasn't fully a man.
There were pimples ruining his mouth
and his hair stuck up on top like pin feathers.
But he was big, crowding us, and he had an unfinished look
to him like stacked lumber.
When he smiled he showed that two teeth were gone.
"Is this your land?"
I said.
"We won't harm anything.
It was just so hot and my sister's sick."
Martha, her ears still full of tears,
was smiling to beat the band.
But I could see the blood pounding at her throat.
"We're just out walking," I told him.
"We won't cause trouble."
"I know."
He said.
He shuffled in a little further, propped on his knees and elbows
so he was halfway in the tent with us.
His hands were big and loose as slabs of meat.
"We needed rest."
I said.
"My sister is delicate, can't abide the heat."
I watched him look at her.
With her skin so white and her hair,
she seemed to be giving off light
from the corner where I'd set her down.
"My name is Martha," she said.
"That's Janey, my sister."
He went a little further in grinning his gappy smile.
"Earl Hawkes."
He nodded a little at me then turned back to Martha.
"I've been watching you."
"I know," said Martha.
"I saw you on your combine three days ago."
"It wasn't a combine, that's a tractor."
"You were wearing a green cap."
"You got good eyes."
His big hands quivered under his chin
as he talked like the blood in them was running wild.
He smelled dusty and he filled up the tent with heat.
I could hardly breathe.
I thought sure Martha would keel over,
her shrunk lungs frantic for air.
"We can move on, if you want us to."
I told him.
His eyes darted back at me but he
couldn't keep from looking at Martha for too long.
"Oh no."
He said.
"I came to see you.
I wouldn't want you to leave."
"Yes," said Martha.
Then she said to me, "Prop me up," like she was some queen.
"so Earl Hawkes can see."
Her eyes were so bright they scared
me and I could feel Earl Hawkes watching me
as I took Martha and straightened her,
belting her up against her cushion.
They kept looking around me to get at each other
and I was thinking we ought to be in somebody's parlor
in a glider on the front porch, ought
to have cookies and lemonade.
"You've been following us," I said.
He grinned at his big hands.
"It wasn't hard.
But you keep a good pace considering."
"I saw you," Martha said "You squatted below the corn when
you thought I was looking.
Yesterday you disappeared right through the afternoon
and I didn't think you were coming back."
"Went to eat some lunch and got to talking.
But I found your trail quick enough."
"This soft gravel is good that way," Martha said.
"Holds a trail even in rain so long
as there not much traffic."
"I wanted to go another way."
I announced.
I needed to say something.
In the glare of their looking I felt blacked out,
like the people with no eyes in newspaper ads.
"I wanted to go down to the river."
"Janey likes nature," Martha said.
"She likes trees."
"I'm a farmer," Earl Hawkes said.
"160 acres corn and soybeans.
I'm fixing to add another 80 soon."
Martha nodded.
"Be fine if futures hold."
It was TV talk, language from the moon.
It was what the man said every morning on the farm report.
But we weren't farmers down in those soft hills
that lean toward Kentucky and we didn't talk much about futures.
"Tinker's damn," I whispered.
But I might as well have shouted,
it wouldn't have slowed them.
"Got a friend trying to raise cattle.
I keep telling him it won't go; this is land for crops, corn."
"You've got to pay attention to what you want to do,"
Martha said.
"You've got to do what you like."
"I like the look of things growing," Earl said.
"Planted right there in the ground."
"Nothing's prettier than corn coming up," Martha said.
I wanted to say she's 16 years old.
She'd never seen a farm a week before.
It didn't take any special genius
to see what she was thinking.
But she wasn't seeing him, how he looked at her,
his eyes rolling over her seed shaped body.
"My daddy says pigs," he was saying, "But I don't like them.
They can get away from you and it's hell's own job
to get a hog back."
"Feed price is up too," Martha said.
He stayed with us there, half in and half out until supper time.
It was so hot in the tent that sweat rolled into my eyes
and stung but Earl Hawkes and Martha didn't appear to notice.
They carried on about farming, living from the land.
"I quit school the second I could," Earl Hawkes said.
"It wasn't teaching me a thing I needed to know.
When I was in classroom on a good planting day
it was pure torture."
Martha tossed her head.
"I never went to school a day," she said, and Earl Hawkes
looked like he worshipped her.
"Is that right?" he said.
"I'm a natural kind of person," Martha said.
"I don't need people telling me what I'm seeing."
"That's just what I tried to tell them," Earl Hawkes said.
"Didn't need a book to tell me how
to put a seed in the ground.
They like to drive me crazy with their charts and such.
Forgot it the day I left.
Been three years now and I'm doing all right."
"Some things you're born to," Martha told him.
"Some things you just feel in your blood."
What I felt in my blood was heat.
It was so dense and wet in the tent
that I felt like a cloud was building wrapping up
Martha and Earl Hawkes.
I blinked and blinked but I couldn't get it
so I could see them.
And they kept at it, like kin who've gone years without word.
Watch the squirrels you know when to plant.
Moon too.
Squirrels are better, more of them so they're steady.
"What about raccoons?"
I said.
"Why not just go up and ask them when it's time to plant."
I didn't want to have to just say
to Earl Hawkes don't pay attention to her.
I didn't want to have to say she's just a kid.
"We don't see raccoons down here," he told me.
"See the moon every place."
Martha said.
It was another hour before the sun finally set
and Earl Hawkes said, "I suppose I should
leave you to fix your supper."
"Yes," I said, quick before Martha could say anything.
The clothes were sticking to all three of us.
I'd been staring I don't know how long at the seam in Earl
Hawkes's shirt biting into the fleshy under part of his arm.
"I'd like to walk with you some tomorrow, if that's all right,"
he said.
His hands rose up, pressed down, rose again.
"Yes," Martha shot, glaring at me.
"What about your farm?"
I said.
"Doesn't it need you?"
"It does, but my daddy can help out for a few days.
And I'd sure like to walk with you."
"Come in the morning," Martha said.
"Come early."
We walked with Earl Hawkes three days.
He slept outside the tent.
In the morning of the first day he
was waiting before we were even decently dressed,
and Martha fidgeted and twisted while I sponged her.
Earl Hawkes was wearing his green cap
and watched while I carried Martha out and fixed her
in her chair, and then packed all our gear around her.
After I unhooked the brakes.
He tried to move in front of me as if he would push.
"I brought us this far," I told him.
"I imagine I can keep us going."
"You girls are brave," he said.
"No telling what kind of folks you might run into out
on your own like this."
"You are nearly the first folks we've seen," I said.
"Could use some crop rotation over there," Martha said.
"Look how puny those stalks are."
It went like that.
Martha chattered, busy as a gnat,
and Earl Hawkes couldn't keep his eyes off her.
I watched him.
How he agreed with everything she
said, every level of foolishness about farming.
She brought up fertilizers, and land lease,
varieties of weed killers.
His eyes went around and around her tiny body
and she grinned and tilted her chin up
and tossed her limp hair back.
16 years without ever stirring out of the house and now
she was talking about manure and preening for this farm
boy with big hands.
Earl Hawkes scratched his head and grinned at her.
He looked and looked.
He almost walked into fence posts twice for staring at her.
At lunch I made him go away.
I didn't want him sitting there while I fed her.
But he was back again in 20 minutes,
kicking at rocks with his dirty boots,
scratching at the ground like a chicken
and edging over to where we were sitting.
He wanted to know things and he wasn't shy about asking.
"You get sick much?" he said to her.
"Delicate," I said, "can't take a lot."
"Mama always said I ran like a watch,"
Martha said, and I was too surprised to say anything.
Who could have guessed she'd remember that.
"Your sister make all your clothes?" he asked her later.
"She buys them ready made and then stitches them,"
Martha said, looking up sideways at him.
"She's handy with a needle.
Only thing she never got me is a hat."
Earl Hawkes reached up and whipped off
his dirty green cap.
It said John Deere across the front, the stitching half gone.
"Here, you can have mine."
"Martha Ruth."
I said, looking at her grin under the green cloth.
But Earl Hawkes interrupted me.
"I want her to have it.
I like giving things to people.
I met a girl without a hand once gave her
an old awl we had around the place.
She got her hand blown off at the paint
factory where she was working.
Said the woman next to her got blind from paint in her eyes.
Besides--" he said, "Sun like this, you need a hat.
Maybe she won't be so delicate now."
They looked at each other until I pushed the chair again,
starting up so hard that everything
rattled and the wheels spit gravel behind us.
It was still getting hotter.
During the day the sun was dull and grayish
and my hands slipped on the handles of Martha's chair.
At night, the air was so wet that Martha awakened
at midnight soaked, and when I got up to sponge her off
I rocked on my feet and saw a quick flood of winking lights.
Our third day with Earl Hawkes we took a rest
in the afternoon, because we were all three so hot that even
Martha could hardly muster energy to talk.
"Fry an egg on my head," she said, faintly.
But I don't think Earl Hawkes could have heard her.
So we sat in the weeds in the Queen Anne's lace
and dozed a little.
Martha had Earl Hawkes pulled the cap down so it rested right
over her face and I curled up in the shade of her chair.
I didn't intend to sleep.
I just wanted the land to stop wavering and dipping around me.
I couldn't keep Martha's and Earl Hawkes faces clear,
they kept blending together from all the sweat in my eyes
and their words floated to me in ways
that didn't make any sense.
Refrigerators, I thought I heard him say.
And then she said aluminum and veneer.
I heard her say, "It's a showcase design."
and that's when I closed my eyes.
I must have dropped off fast because I didn't even
hear the car coming.
I told myself I would just rest a minute
and there was the heat pressing me down
so that even the ants on my legs weren't bothersome.
The air was thick, heavy as an animal on my chest.
Falling asleep in heat like that is
like falling into a soft bag, dark and velvety.
I was only there a few minutes but it
could have been for hours.
It could have been until the world came down around me.
It took honking and the car fishtailing by for me
to jerk awake and see the people in the car all yelling.
I jumped right up and the road and sky were spinning.
And I couldn't tell just exactly where the ground was.
I grabbed at Martha's chair and closed my eyes for a second,
and then I saw colors, and lost Martha and everything.
When I opened my eyes again I was
flat on the Queen Anne's lace.
It was itching like fury on my legs,
and Earl Hawkes was there, and the car was gone.
"They just wanted some directions."
He said when he saw me looking at him.
From the ground his eyes were black and tiny as beads.
"He told them to go straight to hell,"
Martha said, giggling like she'd been drinking.
Her chair was turned so she was facing me,
and she had to squint into the sun.
The cap was on the ground next to her chair.
"They asked him what he was planning to do with me
and he and he told them to go on that they were seeing things.
And then they said I could be a good thing,
couldn't fight much, and he told them to go straight to hell."
Earl Hawkes looked proud.
He smiled and kept bobbing his head, his hands quivering next
to Martha.
"No call for them to talk like that."
He said.
"They didn't even know what they were seeing,
they were just talking."
"What were they seeing?"
I asked.
I wasn't thinking about my words.
I kept blinking in the sun's bright light
and I was trying to rub out the imprint of the weeds
on the backs of my legs.
Martha's giggle spilled out gale force.
Earl Hawkes kept bobbing and quivering.
Then I closed my eyes in earnest,
put my face right in my hands that were
too wet to bring any comfort.
There was dirt on them though, and the grit
was something to hold on to when every surface seemed
to be hot and slick.
"It's time to go back."
I said into my hands.
"We have to go home.
We should have done already."
"I knew she'd say that," Martha said, "I told you she would.
I could see it coming."
I rubbed my face with my gritty palms,
the dirt scraping over my skin.
It was the first thing that had felt right all day.
That night I listened to them after Martha
thought I was asleep.
She coughed twice.
I heard Earl Hawkes slide out the chair and unfold it.
And then I heard him feel his way into the tent.
Just don't let him get it wrong, I was thinking.
Because I wouldn't have any choice if he got mixed up,
came to me instead.
It was too dark in the tent to see anything
but it got hotter with Earl Hawkes there groping around
for Martha and I wished they'd just get it over with.
It wasn't like there was anything I could say.
I'd spent the whole afternoon trying to find words
but the only ones I could remember
were things I'd said to Martha before we even left home.
You're a part of the world too, I told her.
And it was all I could think when
I saw Earl Hawkes lean down to peck at her cheek
the time he thought I wasn't looking.
I stifled the urge to remind him to be
sure to get Martha's milk in the morning,
to make her drink a lot of water,
to brush her hair every day to make it shine.
I thought I would hear Earl Hawkes grunt
when he picked Martha up after he collected her pills
and clothes.
She was heavier than she looked.
But I didn't hear a sound.
Just the swish of them brushing against nylon,
and they were gone.
I stayed perfectly still, waiting
for the finger of cool breeze from the flap
that Earl Hawkes had left up.
I got up before dawn.
It took no time at all to leave, just folding
the tent and my own clothes.
Earl Hawkes had left me a knapsack
to carry things in since he had the chair.
Walking alone in the black air that was already thick as mud,
I felt too light like a dandelion seed.
My feet were almost silent on the gravel, and from a distance
I heard a warbler.
The light would come soon.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]