Читать книгу Kenny's Back - Victor J. Banis - Страница 5

It seemed that I had barely closed my eyes when Olsen tapped at my door to wake me. Homecoming or no homecoming, there was work to be done on a farm, even in October, and I had that to see to.

Usually we had the house to ourselves in the morning. There was always the aroma of fresh coffee from below as I cleaned up. It coaxed me along, hurrying me on my way. By the time I finally came down to the kitchen, Olsen would have our breakfast almost ready. There would be just time for me to wake up over the coffee before she set plates of ham and eggs and fresh bread in front of me, a small dish for herself; and then we would eat and talk, never anything too lengthy or serious. She kept up on how the farm was going, and I will give her credit, she knew as well as I did how much hay we would bring in this year, what prices it would fetch, which of the hands was earning his pay with good work and which ones wouldn’t likely be kept on another year.

Sometimes, too, I would hear of how things were going in the house: Mrs. Baker’s health, problems with the plumbing, whatever mattered in her world. It was a pleasant time of day. As mother and son, I suppose Olsen and I weren’t any outstanding success, but I often thought that as partners we worked fine.

I had forgotten though that before he had gone, Kenny had always been there with us during these early morning visits. If anything, he woke earlier than the two of us. It seemed almost as if he resented the time spent on sleeping, although I have never known a man who could fall asleep as quickly as he did, sleep as innocently untroubled, or wake as quickly.

He was there this morning, just the way it had been in the past. I heard his hearty laugh as I was coming down the stairs, too loud as usual, and sounding like he hadn’t one care to his name.

“Pity the poor rabbits,” I thought with a grin. “He’s sure to be out after them today.” The grin faded as I remembered that Kenny would be hunting something more serious than rabbits today.

I don’t know when I had seen Olsen in such spirits. I’m sure she had not looked so young in a long while. Kenny had told some joke or funny story, and the two of them were rocking back and forth in their chairs, their shoulders shaking with laughter. They were eating already, I noticed. I must have been slower cleaning up than usual, I thought, and shrugged away the slight flash of resentment.

“Good morning,” I greeted them, heading straight for the stove and the coffeepot. Olsen started to scramble up, but I shooed her back into her chair. “Sit. I’ll get it,” I said.

“You’re up early,” Kenny said behind me. “I figured you’d sleep till noon.”

It was an odd thing for him to say, odd even allowing for the time that had gone by. He couldn’t have forgotten all those mornings.

“My habits haven’t changed much.” I answered. I turned away from the stove and met his eyes, dark and intense upon me. He looked puzzled and, for just a moment, confused. But he came back with one of his “Fooled you, didn’t I?” grins.

“Haven’t they? You used to take sugar in your coffee and you’re drinking that without any,” he said.

He was right. It was a habit that I had changed, for no particular reason. But fast as his answer was, it didn’t altogether satisfy. Something had begun to trouble me—nothing that I could put my finger on, but it was there like a vague ache in your teeth that you can’t quite find with your tongue. It came and went away and came back again during the days that followed, and with each return it had grown stronger, and more definite.

For the moment, however, there was nothing more than a quick note of discord and then things were all right again and I was relaxing at the table. Olsen got up and fixed my breakfast, all the while keeping up with the conversation. It was easy talk, relaxed and friendly, and it skirted around the questions with which we were all still occupied.

Kenny seemed to me more relaxed than he had been the night before. I found myself wondering how he had slept, what memories the sight of his room might have brought back to him. Had he, like I, remembered those nights when he had left his room and come to mine? But I pushed that thought back to where it had come from. It was one thing to remember, and even to be wishful, but I was not blind. However relaxed he might be, however friendly, it was plain that there was no intimacy between Kenny and me. He talked as he might talk to an acquaintance of the past, but there was nothing more, and I had to face that.

I finished breakfast and lingered longer than usual over coffee. Finally, when it was well past time when I should have been at work, I stood up, hesitating slightly. Knowing Kenny, he was not the sort to loaf around or remain inactive. Even if he were, he had plenty of reasons for being interested in the farm and how it was coming along.

“They’ve just finished with the hay,” I said, concentrating my attention on the last sip of coffee in my cup. “I’m going out there now to see how it’s going. Want to come along?”

As soon as I had said it, I realized that he couldn’t come with me out to the fields, whether he wanted to or not. He was the son of the house by birth and by name, but it was a claim he had forfeited when he had gone, and it was a claim that right now was far from settled. His mother had yet to say whether he had any concern in how the farm was going or whether the hay was in.

“Thanks,” he answered without any hesitation, like he had already thought all this out for himself. No doubt he had. “But I think I’ll stay around the house today, kind of get the feel of things again. It’s been a while.”

I nodded and started for the door. “Does Pete still work the fields?” he asked after me.

I was glad he had asked after the old man. I think that one question did more than anything else to restore Kenny to the spot he had always held in my affection, and I was even smiling when I looked back at him.

“Not anymore,” I said. “He looks after the equipment and does chores for Olsen. You’ll probably find him in the barn if you go looking for him.”

He seemed to understand the reason for my smile. He grinned back at me as though to say, “I want you to like me.” For a brief moment the years had fallen away from us.

“I’ll track him down later, maybe,” he said.

“He’ll want to talk with you. He must have a real store of yarns saved up by now.”

I guess it sounded like I was criticizing him for having been gone, or at least reminding him of the fact. His grin faded, and our moment went with it.

“See you later,” I finished lamely, and went out.

“See that you’re back for dinner,” Olsen called as the screen door banged shut after me.

I saw Pete myself, when I went to take the Jeep out of the barn. He was repairing a halter, and I found myself thinking that he must be repairing it for Kenny. We only had two horses now, Jezebel and Ladyship, and those two did little enough to earn their keep. No one rode them anymore and even if they had been suited for work, we had no need of them for that purpose. Jezebel could still be ridden, if she had a mind to let you, which was always in question, but Ladyship had a game leg, and it wouldn’t have been worth the risk to her. Kenny had always liked to ride, though, even if he hadn’t been very great at it, and he would probably be doing so, soon again. “I guess you’re glad to see Kenny back,” I said to Pete as I climbed into the Jeep and started it up.

If he was, he didn’t show it. I suppose he was still sore over the greeting he had gotten. He continued to work at the halter, squinting to make up for his bad eyesight. “Has he seen her yet?” he asked. I knew who he meant, of course.

“Not yet.” I backed out of the barn and turned the Jeep around in the yard. When I glanced up, Ingrid was standing at the window of her bedroom, staring out. She had been there the morning before, too. Then, she had been watching for Kenny to arrive. Now she was watching for…for what? I didn’t know, any more than I could explain my own mood of things “going to happen.”

There was that meeting, of course, between Kenny and his mother, and we were all waiting for that. But there was something more, something I couldn’t understand but was sure the others felt too. The prodigal son had come home, the fatted calf had had her day on the table, but the electric atmosphere that had built up was still charging the air about the place with tension.

Ingrid saw me and waved, and disappeared from the window, and I drove off toward the back fields. I was luckier than most, I suppose—certainly luckier than Kenny, who faced a day of waiting around the house for something that might not even happen. At least I could keep busy and lose myself in hard physical work, as I had been doing for five years. Farm hands and farm managers don’t as a rule need pills for their nerves, and today I was grateful for that fact.

The farm year was almost over for us, and the work nearly done. We had even had a frost earlier, a light one, before the weather turned hot. But I was too well acquainted with the fickle nature of our weather, to think that it would continue to favor us for long. We had started the fall work early, for no better reason than that Olsen had informed me one morning, while rubbing a bothersome elbow, that she felt cold weather coming, and I had learned long ago to trust her intuitions.

There was the winter planting yet to be done, and then the work would be light for the rest of the year. The farm encompassed more than two thousand acres, most of it in this one location, but with two smaller properties nearby as well. That was a big farm and a rich one, even by the standards of the area, which were high. That meant a lot of farming, especially in the spring and the fall, but we worked mostly summer crops and, with Pete and another man working regularly on the repairs and upkeep usually reserved for cold months, our winters were easy ones.

That had been a necessary schedule when I had been in school and there was no one to run the farm, and we had stuck with it since then. Others argued that the farm could turn twice the profit, and probably it could have, but we did well enough as it was. Another owner, one interested mostly in accumulating wealth, could have done very well indeed by the Baker lands. There was a large piece of land, mostly untended, that could be turned into a highly profitable place too. In addition to that, there was another small farm that had been rented out in the past and had produced a small but livable income for the farmer tenants. They had moved from there the year before, and Mrs. Baker had shown little interest in replacing them, so that, except for keeping the house and the farm buildings in repair, we did little or nothing with that.

Mrs. Baker was old, of course, and no one imagined that she would live too many more years. She had all the income from the property that she needed or would ever need. Someday soon it would pass into other hands—maybe Kenny’s, maybe not. Whoever it was would be getting a lot, not a great fortune, maybe, but not a small one either.

I wondered if Kenny had thought much of that, and whether that had influenced his coming back. He had never given much thought to money when he was young, but a young man didn’t, usually, not until he had gotten old enough to appreciate its value. At any rate, Kenny had never been poor, not so long as he had been at home. People who have never had money, and those who have always had it, don’t as a rule attach much importance to it. It’s those who’ve had it and lost it to whom it means the most.

I felt guilty harboring such thoughts, and yet I found myself again and again wondering how Kenny had lived since he had gone from here. How hard had he had to work to earn what kind of living? How many things had he wanted that he’d had to admit he couldn’t afford and that there had suddenly been no one to afford for him?

Enough to make him think about the money in this land? Enough to cause him to remember that this could have belonged to him, and might yet? Enough—I tried not to think of this, but it came anyway, in the stubborn way that unpleasant thoughts have—enough to bring him home?

That was the question that was really bothering me, and now that I had faced it, it wouldn’t go away, but kept hanging around in my head no matter how hard I tried to lose myself in my work.

What had brought Kenny home? His mother? I tried to remember what it had been like between the two of them, whether they had been close, whether they had loved one another in the way that some mothers and sons love one another—but I honestly didn’t know. Somehow I had always thought of Kenny as loving everyone generally and no one specifically. Maybe that was because I had been afraid of realizing who and what he didn’t love. He had never said to me, “Mar, I love you,” and I guess for that reason I had never let myself imagine him saying it to anyone else.

But he had loved the farm. I couldn’t deny that. For all his carelessness and his chasing after things, I had always believed in his love for this land. He had taken to the tractors and the farm equipment the way some young men take to women or drink. He had romanced the sun through many a summer, and there had been more honest passion in the way he threw hay than had been evident in any of his little episodes with the girls around town.

Maybe this was what had brought him home. Or maybe it was just the fact that this was home. Kenny was the sort who had to have someplace to go. Maybe he had come to the point during those five years where there was no place else to go but home.

I’d have given anything to have that question answered, but there was only one person who could have answered it, and I wasn’t likely to put my question to him.