Set in the American Midwest at the start of the 21st century, a family shattered by heartbreak must decide if pride and fear will outweigh forgiveness and their faith in one another. From a southern Illinois farming community to St. Louis and Chicago, the farmer will try to honor his wife's dying wish and reconcile with his estranged, adopted children. But is his own grief too great to repair the damage? A tale about perseverance and the power to move forward through pain, The Farmer's Story explores how the journey to reconciliation can strengthen each of the ties that bind us.

The Farmer's Story

By Kathryn J. Simpson

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 Kathryn J. Simpson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-3463-8

Chapter One

October 2002

The farmer stares at his two worthless children. Both of them are adopted, and today he is convinced that's the explanation.

His son, John, gazes across the yard at the barn with a moody smile on his face. He has a sketch pad in his hands, scribbling on it with a stick of charcoal. There's a 35 mm camera around his neck through which he occasionally looks, though he seldom takes a picture.

The girl, Marie, holds a book in her hands and writes across the dust jacket with a ballpoint pen. She takes furtive glances at the farmer and her brother, hoping neither notices. The farmer does, though, and hates it. He hates both of his children. He'd probably shoot them like lame calves if his wife hadn't forbidden it years ago. To him, they are more weight for him to carry, and his strength is about at the breaking point. They arrived early this morning unexpectedly, and have spent the day staring at Carolyn and at the floor in equal amounts, as if either could offer some explanation for the oxygen tank, the rows of pill bottles, or her decimated body. The farmer's rage at his adult children's ninth-inning appearance is not tempered by the fact their presence comforts his wife. Too little, too late, he thinks over and again. Too little, too late. It beats in his head like a pulse. He tells himself if Carolyn doesn't fight the cancer off another day, there's a good chance he'll be asking the coroner to take three bodies away instead of just one.

He clears his throat and spits toward the fence.

Marie looks up from the dust jacket, now covered with her tiny, square handwriting. "Did she just call for us? Was that her?" she asks.

"That was a cow," the farmer says.

Marie is disappointed. She wants her mother to need her now more than ever. She wants to play some vital part in this snail-paced nightmare. Most importantly, she wants any diversion possible to stop her father from staring at her. When she squints, he looks like a lizard in a denim shirt and work boots. His cold eyes are almost black in the shadows of his ball cap, and she forces her body not to squirm. She badly needs a drink. She bends back over the book and wills her mother to call her name, to give her an excuse to get away from these two men who will soon be her only family.

John is sketching his mother's deathbed covered with a combination of cigarettes and corn silos. He glances at the barn and begins to add the slight figure of his father to the corner of the charcoal bedroom, hands jammed into pockets, a scowling face.

He loves his mother and never wished this gruesome death upon her, but he doesn't understand why she won't stop breathing. Why she prolongs her pain. He suspects it is a knowledge he and she share—that when she's gone, the fine tether that binds her remaining children to her husband will be broken, that the farmer will finally drop his charade of concern for two people he would have returned to Korea for a refund if the adoption agency had allowed it more than a decade ago.

Marie's pen clicks shut, and she clears her throat.

"I think I'll get supper started," she tells them.

"Don't cook for me," the farmer says and starts across the yard toward the barn. "Chores to do."

In truth, the farmer has no chores. Maintenance of the farm is kept up by Pete Grady's boy, and it has been since Carolyn took to her bed with the cancer this second time. The lie was said to rescue him from the company of his children—two people who will believe the lie entirely, because they have no reason not to.

But the barn is always a comfort. It's a musty tomb, even on the windiest day, kept alive now by barn swallows and a gopher snake that dines on mice. Ever since he was a boy and the farm was owned by his father, the farmer has loved this barn above all other places in his world. He smokes here and drinks what used to be an occasional beer. He is not an emotional man, but most of the happiness and grief he has acknowledged he has done so here.

He came here after the deaths of both his parents and then the tiny child that Carolyn carried for only six months back in 1962. They lost three more pregnancies before they finally agreed, in this very barn, to go ahead and try for adoption. The possibilities it offered made Carolyn teary-eyed with hope for weeks, and his own skin had prickled with heat rash at the thought they might finally be able to raise a baby—any baby—together. Before they had both just felt too old and used up. Before Carolyn's heart had been broken too many times to recover. How he'd wanted to raise children with her. No amount of paperwork or money seemed too daunting. He just wanted her to be happy.

When they got the approval letter from the Korean agency in '71, they shared a by-god champagne toast in the hay loft. Not just one baby, but twins! The farmer had thought then everything would be all right, everything had finally come together. They made the long trip to Korea that fall to pick the children up, Carolyn laughing at him gently every time he jabbed a diaper pin into his clumsy, old fingers. She insisted they name the boy John, after the farmer, and name the girl Marie, after Carolyn's mother.

When she somehow got pregnant in '77, Carolyn had been shocked and overjoyed, but the farmer had been cautious, wouldn't let her tell the twins anything until well into her second trimester for fear something would go wrong. But nothing went wrong. It was, in fact, such an uneventful pregnancy that Carolyn's own doctor called it a miracle. The farmhouse was finally really filled with the laughter of children, and he'd watch Carolyn fall asleep each night with a subtle, satisfied smile on her face. That happiness lasted for ten years.

Later, after everything had changed and the happy sounds of the farm had been shushed, the farmer again found the barn was the only place where he could express any feelings beyond rage—sometimes in the tiny office, often in the hay loft, and more and more frequently just leaning against the side of the John Deere. Now, with his wife lying in the dim house behind him and his wayward children standing in the yard beyond, he pulls the door shut behind him. He clicks on the lights and passes down the length of his tractor. There is a scent of oil and hay and various manures. It is stale and pungent all at once, and as usual, his sinuses cinch up until he sneezes hugely into his handkerchief.

He thinks how Carolyn used to tease him about his Sunday night dates with the barn—nights when he didn't work but would listen to a transistor radio and do some accounting or tinker with one thing or another. Now he absently wipes chaff and dust from the Deere's muted surface, his mind on a humid evening almost forty years ago, an evening when they were both young, long before they'd lost anyone, an evening when Carolyn had strolled into the barn with lemonade and a subtle smile.

The loft was good luck, she had told him then. She had smiled wider at his bewilderment and then kissed the hollow of his neck below his Adam's apple.

"The baby should come in early May," she had said. And the farmer had whooped and hollered and spun her in the air until they were both woozy, and even the dog had barked his congratulations.

"That first baby," the farmer murmurs, the dust and cobwebs forgotten, his arm resting on the cold tread of the tractor's tire. "So long ago. Five good dogs come and gone since then. And now this."

He stands there, as if carved from wax, for the moment unaware that he's crying.

Chapter Two

Marie and John stand in the yard for a while after their father's departure. They discuss dinner options and John agrees to get cream from the market in town for mashed potatoes.

"Maybe butter, too," Marie says. "Or not. Or maybe butter and beer. And cigarettes for Daddy."

"He can buy his own cigarettes," John says and closes the sketch pad. He scrounges for the keys to the rental car from his jeans pocket. "Do you want to go with me?"

Marie gives him a look that he can't quite decipher before she replies. "No," she says slowly. "I'll skip going into town. If Mom needs something, I want to be right here, you know?"

He nods and kisses her cheek before he starts across the drive. He takes an over-the-shoulder picture of his sister and the farmhouse as he walks away. He looks around, grinning, but she hasn't noticed. She's staring at the sky, looking for Venus. He calls her name and her eyes drift back to Earth.

"We won't have to stay long," he says. "He won't want us to."

"I know," she sighs, "but there'll be the funeral and guests and more cooking. You'd better get syrup, too. And clear nail polish. I found a run in my stockings. I don't think Mom has any clear polish."

It's weirdly warm and humid for early October, and the rental car is an oven. John drives with the windows down because he can't bear using the AC when he's not in the city. A bee hovers in the rear window, as frustrated with the day as John.

In town, people go about their business, oblivious to the prodigal son's return. He gives the steering wheel wave to the few he recognizes and wonders if any of them realize the wealth of their lives. Their mothers are probably alive, healthy, finishing their days as bank tellers or real estate agents. Maybe wearing Easy Spirits and control-top panty hose. Maybe at home going through their teenagers' drawers, looking for a secret stash of cigarettes or condoms. Or maybe fucking their friends' husbands in a rendezvous like Ed Harris and Amy Madigan in Places in the Heart.

"Always loved that movie," John tells the bee. "Don't tell Dad."

Sally Field had the part of the farmwife down perfectly, he thinks. Strong and feminine and brave. If anyone makes a movie of his mother's life, he wants Sally to play the part. And maybe Gene Hackman could play the farmer, and he and Marie could be played by Bae Yong Joon and Jun Ji-hyun. He saw Ji-hyun in a movie at the Gene Siskel Film Center, and that lady is awesome.

Marie could write the screenplay. He could do production design, pay off his credit cards and quit his job in Chicago. He'd move back here and set up a tiny gallery so that he could sell most of his pieces online and pay his rent with that. With his mother gone, it would be so easy for him and the farmer to finally start seriously ignoring each other for the rest of their lives. Living in the same town would be no problem whatsoever. At the most, they'd share a mechanic. John could use the town's backdrop to draw what he'd always loved best, and the farmer would never have to feign interest.

"Perfect," John says. "Except for the dead Mom."

He blinks and realizes he's already parked at the market, and the engine smells hot. Goddamned rentals, he thinks and doesn't bother rolling up the windows or locking the doors, even though his camera is still on the front seat. Not in Chicago anymore, after all. As safe as Anywhere, USA.

He locates everything he needs in the market and adds ice cream, garlic, and asparagus. No fresh artichokes, though, and he gets cigarettes anyway, thinking this might be a good week to take the habit up again.

"Johnnie, it's good to see you." Ted Harvis owns the market and is running the ice cream over the cosmic red eye that sees all groceries, knows all prices. "Is your sister with you?"

"She's at the house now with Mom, getting ready to start dinner."

Harvis's eyes widen but only a little.

"Oh, I didn't think your mom was well enough to do much around the house anymore."

Heat stabs John's cheeks. There's no reason you should think that, you patronizing, bald fuck, he thinks, and then lies, "Mom's been feelin' better the last couple days."

"Well, that's nice," he says, but the words sound like sweat on a cold day. "I've heard lots of the terminally ill have an upswing before the end. Doctors call it a honeymoon. Happened to my aunt and to my wife's sister. They both had cancer, too."

John fidgits, pulls cash from his wallet and shifts his weight from foot to foot, but Harvis takes no notice of the time passing.

"Well, actually my aunt only had a bit of skin cancer," he continues while he bags the groceries with interminable slowness. "It was diabetes that finally killed her. Horrible way to go. Doctors started taking off her toes, and six weeks later, they'd amputated all the way to her left knee. She died three months after that. Suffered from horrible ghost pains."

"Ghost pains?" John's neck is beginning to itch and he holds the money out. He wonders, why is he still standing here?

"Imagining the limb's still there," Harvis says. "Actually made a movie about that back, oh, before you were born. Michael Caine plays a writer."

"And he had his hand crushed in a car accident," John interrupts in an effort to speed this up. "Doctors amputate it, and Caine keeps imagining the hand is coming to kill him."

"That's right!" The patronizing, bald fuck thinks they've bonded. "The Hand. That was the name of it. Pretty gruesome stuff."

"Yeah, well, I'd better get going before this ice cream melts. Thanks, Mr. Harvis."

"Call me Ted," Harvis says. He smiles wider, eyes flat, reminding John of a crocodile. "Give my best to your mother and your beautiful sister. You know, I haven't seen Marie in such a long time. We used to be quite close." He pulls John's change from the drawer one bill at a time. "We had good talks when she worked here."

John stares at the crocodile, his neck itching, one hand clutching the paper grocery bag, the other out for the elusive change Harvis holds just out of reach.

"I'd like to see her," Harvis continues, his tongue darting forward and licking the outside of his top teeth. "I'd like to hear what she's been doing since she moved, and I'd like to be a friend to her in this dark time. I'd like to comfort her."

John's shudder is automatic, and he snaps before he can stop himself. "Why don't you ask her out at the funeral, Ted? When Mom's honeymoon is over. The timing will be perfect."

Harvis's hairline flushes, and his lips press thin—a crocodile no more. "That's not what I meant, John."

"Isn't it, Ted? Isn't that what you meant?"

"Have a good day." He thrusts the change into John's hand. "My best to your father."

"Sure thing, Ted." But Harvis is gone, disappearing into the cereal aisle. John walks to the car, hoping the liquor store has started accepting debit cards. He may not have anything in common with his father anymore, but he knows they'll both be looking for beer before the night's over.

Chapter Three

At the exact moment her twin brother, older by exactly five minutes and forty-five seconds, shames the local grocery man's lust for her, Marie exhales an enormous cloud of musky smoke into the farm's twilight, hoping the wind will carry the scent up and out of her childhood bedroom. It would do no good to serve dinner to her mother with her clothes reeking of middle-class marijuana; however, being back in Deer City gives her the heebie-jeebies and she needs something to take the edge off her nerves. Marie's legs dangle from the window ledge, and the sun's descent to the horizon is marked by the peepers and cicadas making their homes across the farm's four hundred acres. She can see the light in the barn's tiny office and considers taking a drink down to her father. Fifteen years ago, she wouldn't have hesitated. Back then, it was just Johnnie that her dad had it out for. And why? Because of this farm, because of Mark, because of an accident.

Marie relights the joint for another drag, pressing her forehead against the windowsill for balance. The dusk-to-dawn light clicks on over the propane tank and she watches tiny bats swoop after moths and mosquitoes. There's a poem there, she thinks, but makes no move for her journal. Really, why bother? All her poetry sucks. Too maudlin. Too melodramatic. She hasn't been published since high school, and that was pure luck anyway. No, best to just sit and ponder why she ever hung a poster of Steve Perry over her bed. Granted, she thinks, Journey was great. So why hadn't she hung a picture of the whole band? Or had that ever even been an option? It's not like The Cars poster on the closet door.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Farmer's Storyby Kathryn J. Simpson Copyright © 2010 by Kathryn J. Simpson. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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