Читать книгу The Fall of Alice K. - Jim Heynen - Страница 10

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Alice walked out into the parking lot behind church to look for her family. Instead of seeing them, she saw Lydia Laats, her best friend at Midwest Christian. Beautiful Lydia. Witty Lydia. Smart Lydia—and Alice’s only academic competition. The attraction was mutual. They sought each other out, especially when they were in school. To be in each other’s company was to be free from what both of them saw as the shallowness of so many of the other students. Alone together, they could talk about what they were reading without some airhead saying, “Geez, get a life.”

“Hey!” said Alice.

“Hey!” said Lydia.

They flung their arms around each other, Alice’s arms around Lydia’s shoulders and Lydia’s around Alice’s waist; then Lydia put her hands on Alice’s arms and held her away from herself. “Look at you, look at you,” said Lydia. “You look fabulous in that blouse and skirt. Blue is your color, girl. And your hair. I love it down like that.”

“Thank you,” said Alice, “but look at you!”

Lydia was about six inches shorter than Alice, but Alice always thought she was better proportioned with her larger breasts and more prominent hips—and she had a sophisticated European look about her, which should have been no surprise because her parents were born in Holland and lived in Canada before moving to Dutch Center when Lydia was a little girl. She was wearing a dark dress that had long triangles of bright colors shooting up from the hem and narrowing toward her waist. A delicate gold chain around her neck. Small teardrop gold earrings, dark eyeliner, and dark pink lipstick. Lydia didn’t get this look from studying the way other people dressed in Dutch Center.

“You’re the one who looks fabulous,” said Alice.

Lydia’s head turned. “Talk about looks, look at those two,” she said.

Two young men across the parking lot were staring at them. Strangers: no doubt early-arrival new students at Redemption College. Alice tried to read their thoughts, wondering if they were staring at her or Lydia, or both of them.

Alice had liked what she saw when she examined herself in the mirror before leaving the farm for church, and now it was more than a slight pleasure to be stared at by living creatures besides hungry steers or a resentful mother.

The two young men saw that they had gotten Lydia and Alice’s attention and shot them big toothy grins. They were both blond and handsome, but their grins looked practiced, if not just plain lewd.

“Here they come,” said Lydia. “You get the taller one.”

They approached at a quick pace, arms swinging and grins getting bigger. These two were more than confident, they were cocky: big-city boys ready to show their stuff to the small-town and country girls. They made Alice feel like a piece of divinity in a candy bowl.

The cuter one with the dimpled chin spoke first. “Hi there.”

The taller, athletic one with big teeth was right behind him: “Wow, you’re something.”

He was looking at Alice when he said that.

The two stopped only a few feet from Alice and Lydia and flung out the lasso of their smirky smiles, but it was the noose of their aroma that caught Alice’s breath short—something so sickeningly sweet that both Lydia and Alice’s nostrils flared in defense.

“Good grief,” said Lydia, “have you guys been at the cologne sample table at Walmart?”

The big-city boys, or whoever they were, withered like thistles under a good blast of 2,4-D. It felt great to see how Lydia had nailed them, but Alice was just a bit disappointed that she couldn’t hear what complimenting line might have erupted from their lips. The whole awkward scene with these wannabe Romeos was saved by the voice of Rev. Prunesma, who bounced across the parking lot with the whole Vang family following him.

“Alice and Lydia,” said the Rev, “I want you to meet the Vangs.”

“Nice meeting you,” said big teeth as the two walked away.

“Meeting us?” said Lydia, but the Rev was already upon them with the three newcomers.

“Hi! It’s you!” said Mai.

“You’ve already met?” said the Rev.

“Sort of,” said Alice.

Actually, Alice had known more than she had let on when she had met them at the scene of Ben Van Doods’s slaughtering pen. Alice knew the Vangs were living in a small house across the street from their church and that they were something of a church missionary project. They had come to Dutch Center because Mai had gotten a scholarship to Redemption College. The son, Nickson, would be going to Midwest Christian High School where Alice and Lydia went. Alice knew very little about the Hmong other than that they supposedly had a big thing about family—and that America owed them gratitude for taking sides against the Communists during the Vietnam War.

The Vangs and the Rev were within hand-shaking distance when Alice noticed the bumper sticker on a van a few feet away: “If You’re Not Dutch, You’re Not Much!”

Alice felt the sharp edge of the Rev’s sermon cutting into her again—and then she felt resentment. How would this stodgy Dweller handle the little bumper-sticker message to their guests? Some missionary project: to slap them with an insult right from the get-go.

The Rev saw the bumper sticker too, but Alice had already covered for him by standing in front of it and putting her legs together. Lydia picked up on what Alice was doing and sidled close beside her.

The Rev wore his big missionary smile, his glad-tidings smile, his everything-is-beautiful-in-its-own-way smile. His huge cheeks mushroomed with good will.

Before the Rev could say anything, Mai held out her hand toward Lydia. “Hi, I’m Mai,” she said.

“I’m Lydia Laats,” said Lydia. “I am so delighted to meet you.”

“And this is my mom, Lia, and my brother, Nickson.”

“Mai? Nickson? Lia?”

“You got us,” said Mai, and then she turned to Alice: “You know, if you told me your name out there in Dead-Hogville, I forgot it, silly me.”

“Alice,” said Alice. “Alice Marie Krayenbraak.”

“Wow, that’s a mouthful,” said Mai.

When Alice had first seen the Vangs sitting in their station wagon, they had looked small—but not as small as they looked now. Straightening up to greet them had been a mistake. Alice felt like a giraffe, but Mai’s eyes were so bright and confident that she could have been six feet tall.

“This is my mother, Lia, and this is my younger brother, Nickson,” she repeated for everyone. The Rev stood by, nodding.

“Wassup?” said Nickson and did a little hand wave that Alice recognized as the same one he had given from the passenger seat in their station wagon. He shuffled a little toward his sister’s side, grinned and nodded. He was maybe two inches taller than Mai, about five-five, but his shoulders were broad for his height. All of them had heavy eyelids that lifted their eyebrows high on their foreheads. The mother’s face was round, but Mai and Nickson were narrow faced with full lips.

Mother Lia held out her hand and looked somewhere in the area of Alice and Lydia’s knees. She was even shorter than her children.

“Thank you,” she said.

“So pleased to meet you,” said Lydia.

“Same here,” said Alice, “I mean to really meet you.”

Alice and Lydia stood in place as sentries in front of the humiliating bumper sticker, but Mai moved in closer to Alice and Lydia as if she thought they were the shy ones.

“Are you at Redemption?” she said.

“No, we’re still in high school,” said Lydia.

“We’re both at Midwest Christian,” said Alice.

“Oh, just like Nickson.”

Mai’s eyes looked past them and directly at the bumper sticker. She cocked her head. She read the bumper sticker aloud, but with a question-mark lilt at the end: “If You’re Not Dutch, You’re Not Much?”

There was a stiff silence.

Alice tried to take a breath but couldn’t. “We’re kind of weird,” came her voice from somewhere.

Alice looked down into Mai’s bright eyes and felt ridiculously tall and awkward, but Mai’s eyes did not shift and her friendly expression did not change. Their height difference didn’t bother her one bit, and neither did Alice’s blushing face.

“If you’re not Dutch, you’re not much? Not much what?” said Mai.

“Good question,” said the Rev—and they all joined in a relieved ripple of chuckles.

Alice saw a trace of farm dirt under her fingernails as they peeled back the edge of the bumper sticker with its white background and blue printing that imitated the colors of Delft china. “I’ll just get rid of that thing,” she said and gave it a quick yank. It stuck together on itself as she rolled it into a ball in her palm.

“Good job. Good riddance,” said Lydia, and gave Alice a gentle punch.

“Hey, that was the Vander Muiden’s van,” said the Rev in the voice of Jeremiah.

“Still is,” said Lydia.

The Krayenbraaks’ Taurus idled impatiently across the parking lot with Alice’s father staring in her direction while her mother stared straight ahead through the windshield. Aldah’s pink-lipped face looked out smiling from the backseat. Alice excused herself to leave the Rev to clean up the pieces of whatever had been started with the Vangs. Mai kept smiling. She held out her hand to shake Alice’s and Lydia’s. So did Nickson. Their mother smiled and held out her hand too.

Whatever the bumper sticker had meant to the Vangs, it didn’t intimidate them. Unless they really knew how to hide their feelings, it didn’t even phase them.

“That was an experience,” said Lydia as they walked away.

“Those two guys?”

“We can do better than that,” said Lydia. “I meant the Vangs. They’re interesting. Did you watch Nickson?”

“He seemed shy,” said Alice.

“He wasn’t shy about the way he looked at you.”

“Give me a break,” said Alice. “I must be over a half foot taller than he is.”

“We all look up to you, darling.”

As Alice walked toward the Taurus, she knew she and Lydia had entered a new circle of energy with the Vangs, a whole different kind of cultural fire than they were used to. These people, especially Mai, were fired up inside and wearing an invisible shield on the outside. They probably would have to tame down that foreign fire in Dutch Center, but the invisible shield? They’d need that.

When Alice got into the car, neither of her parents asked about the Vangs, but Alice sensed an unease. Even if both of her parents would argue vehemently that they held no prejudices against foreigners, Alice knew better. The Mexicans who had moved in to work at the dairies and packing plants attended a Catholic church ten miles from Dutch Center, so no one had to experience the strangeness of seeing them in the next pew. Out of sight, out of mind. Occasionally a missionary convert from Africa would appear in their church, but their visits were always short; and there were a handful of foreign students attending Redemption College, but few of them attended Alice’s church. The Vangs were a rarity, and seeing them no doubt stirred the calm waters of her parents’ habitual church comforts.

Alice could feel the space around her compact with silence in the backseat of the car with Aldah. It wasn’t the kind of silence that suggested her parents had quarreled about the way her mother stormed out of church. This was different—a pressured silence that was building up in the front seat. Alice suspected the silence had everything to do with the Vangs, but she wasn’t about to open the conversation on that topic. Instead, she would meet their silence with her own and simply stare out the window.

Which she did: in a casual analytic mode, she categorized the farms as they passed by. Successful farms. Teetering farms. Abandoned farms. Successful farms were like people wearing expensive clothing—not showy, just that confident look of neatly buttoned doors and well-groomed roofs, the kind of farms that would appear on the covers of farm magazines. The teetering farms were like people wearing mismatched clothing—a shining tractor next to a gate that nobody bothered to repair. The abandoned farms had no pretense at all, disheveled but carefree with their tall grass and their splintered doors wagging in the breeze like shirttails that someone didn’t bother tucking in. Abandoned farms were like homeless hitchhikers ready to take a ride from anybody who passed.

Alice knew that the Krayenbraak farm was a teetering farm but it didn’t have any mismatched clothing. Its troubles were hidden behind a facade of order and tidiness: no loose hinges, no loose barbed wire, no loose shingles.

Three miles from the Krayenbraak farm her father stopped the car at a “cornfield corner,” an intersection where the cornfields obstructed the view in all four directions. Alice thought for a moment that he was simply being his cautious self or that he might be stopping to appreciate the beauty of the flourishing cornfields, but then she saw her mother’s shoulders tighten and knew this was the moment they had chosen for the dam of silence to be broken.