Willie

A Hiram Falls farmer tries to make sense of his life after the death of his son, a broken hip and the passing of his wife.

Note: This was the third character sketch from my novel Hiram Falls and was presented on stage in 2019 in performances of ‘Winter Tales’ by The Vermont Stage Company. The audio is one of the live performances by actor Bob Nuner. I’m posting it here to give you a sense of the tone of the upcoming novel, Hiram Falls. For the story of how this photo helped me re-start the writing of the novel, click here.

Willie’s kitchen is nearly dark, the cold January dusk overtaking the room, overtaking Willie as he sits in his chair beside the wood stove. The fire is down to embers. Willie is sleeping again. It’s his after-lunch routine now: drift in and out of naps, dream, awaken, remember, sleep again. Used to be he’d catch a nap after lunch — 30 minutes tops — and then bound out to the barn or the fields for one chore or another. Not now. He is awake again. A memory overtakes his mind.

The Tunbridge Fair. September long ago. At the cow barn by the bridge, he was gazing in at the clusters of cows and heifers and families getting ready for the judging. Deep into the barn was Lucas. And Gert. Lucas, barely a teenager, all decked out in his white pants and shirt with a black bow tie and a number pinned to his chest, brushing out the cow’s tail one last time, trying to look all calm, in control. Gert reached out to fix Lucas’ hair. “Ma!” he snapped. She looked over at Willie and winked.

Oh, how he misses them.

A rush of wind rattles the window. It’s too damned quiet, he thinks. Too damned quiet. None of Lucas’ and Pam’s boys rushing around underfoot. No Pam telling them to take their energy outside. No Lucas coming through the doorway after milking wondering what was for dinner, or going on about his plans for the lower field.

No! he thinks. No! Don’t be going there.

He snaps on the light on the reading table and sees the plate with a piece of sour cherry pie, minus a small bite, the fork on top. Barb had brought it a few days back. Why the hell does she use margarine? he thinks. He knows it’s long past time when he can say anything about it, what with her coming up once a week for the last two years bringing him a casserole or pot of beans or a pie or some groceries he might need. Gert’s best friend; did the same thing after Gert passed but not this long. Guess she needs company as much as I do, he thinks.

He rises from the chair, stiffly, carefully, his body trying to adjust to the notion of being upright, of moving forward. He reaches over for the pie plate, walks over to the trash, slides in the pie and puts the plate and fork in the sink along with the others.

He flips on the kitchen overhead. The light pierces off the white walls, all bare except the one by the kitchen table. Here’s what’s on that wall: An old wall clock with a second hand—his mother bought it with some of the sweet corn money when he was a teen; still keeps time to the minute. On the left are dozens of photos from over the years, some tacked, some held by yellowing Scotch tape; his father in the barn with him and his brothers; his Mom in the garden; Gert picking apples—her smile so sweet; Lucas and Pam on their wedding day, the banquet out in the orchard; school pictures of their boys, all gussied up; and his favorite, he and Lucas side by side in the barn, him looking over at Lucas’ wide grin, cows staring in the background. On the left is a bulletin board jammed with notes and reminders curled towards the tacks, unheeded and forgotten. Under the clock, front and center, is the calendar, stuck on May from two years ago, the May when everything went wrong.

He looks down at the kitchen table. It is stacked with mail and threatens the small space where he eats; flyers from the hardware store, newsletters from the Farm Bureau and the milk co-op; catalogues for tractors and seeds and even women’s clothing; sales appeals to him and Pam and Lucas and, even, Gert. How can they not know? he thinks.

It ticks him off. It ticks him off that he’s let them collect there, let them pile up because of his own inertia, his own laziness. He looks up at the calendar. It gives him a twinge every time. The first May after Lucas and Pam took over the farm; the first month he was finally able to walk since his accident that winter, that freak moment when he slipped on the black ice outside the barn and fell so hard, so completely, it crushed his hip, leaving him unable to do the milking, do the chores, run the tractor, do anything; the injury that forced Lucas and Pam to agree to take on the farm full-time.

After Doc Fowler had delivered the news that it would be two years or so before Willie’d heal fully, he and Lucas and Pam had sat down and decided. Lucas was excited. Pam, a town girl, wasn’t as sure but she was all in if Lucas was. And she was. She learned how to bring the cows in, how to milk, how to run the tractor just in case Lucas needed help. All while dealing with the three boys. And doing the meals. A wonder that woman.

Willie opens the door to the mudroom, puts on his hat and gloves and coat and walks into the barn. The chickens squawk and scatter. He’d bought a dozen from Frenchie in late September, more for something to do than anything, an amusement. Each morning he wanders around the barn trying to figure out where they’d laid their eggs this time. Willie’s breath looks like he’s smoking. Ten below. He opens the barn door, gingerly climbs onto the ATV, starts it up and blasts outside. The snow is packed; it’s been cold and dry for a week. The headlight pierces the black, reflects off the snow as he heads out on the old cow path, almost by instinct, wind against his cheeks. It feels good. He heads to the lower field and follows the edge of the woods before curling back. Then, suddenly, he realizes he isn’t where he thinks he is, the darkness playing tricks, and he is exactly where he didn’t want to be, didn’t want to go, didn’t want to see. But there it is: the bull’s pen, the gate still open, even now, two years later. The memory floods his mind; unprepared, he can’t push it back. It’s like it’s all happening again, right in front of him.

It’s May 30th. 5:30 p.m. Late sun. He’s on the ATV — against Doc Fowler’s orders — his hip screaming, out looking for Lucas who hadn’t come in after milking, hadn’t checked in to see Pam at the stove fixing the three boys their supper. “I’ll check on him,” he’d told Pam ignoring her protests. In the barn he’d seen the cows still lined up for milking. He got onto the ATV and headed out thinking Lucas was in the fields, but then he saw him, piled in a heap near the gate of the bull’s pen, gate open, bull nowhere to be seen. He knew right away what had happened. He cursed his son yet knew he'd done the same thing countless times, gone into the bull's pen alone, gone in to fill the water bucket or put more grain in the bin. Why the hell did we keep that one? he thought. Knew right off that one was no good, the eyes, the wild eyes. Lucas had insisted. Wanted the meat. “Worth more than if we sell it,” he’d said. And there he was, his dear son, all crumpled up, not moving, right by the open gate.

He got down from the ATV, ignoring the searing pain in his hip as he hobbled over, got down on his knees and checked for a pulse that wasn’t there. When he checked again, desperate, he saw the wounds and knew. He struggled to lift his son, his arms nothing like they used to be, his legs with little strength at all as he dragged him to the bed of the ATV, slip-sliding in the mud, finally getting him onto the back and then racing to the barn where he covered him with burlap Blue Seal bags. He limped inside to get Pam. She was moving like she always did at dinnertime, filling each plate with food and plunking it onto the table, and she, holding the third boy’s plate, stopped and looked at Willie, frozen in horror at his expression, at the blood on his shirt, and dropped the plate, a loud clatter on the floor, and rushed to him and then past him and out the door to the barn and that's when they all heard her wail.

Willie knows now the memory has overwhelmed him, that he can’t stop it this time, so he gives in, lets it in, lets it take hold.

The burial in the family plot up back, the silence in the house that followed. His neighbors coming up to help out. Ernest leading the plowing and planting and later the first cut. Carrie and Barb making meals and planting the garden as Pam took over the milking and chores with help of her brother, Tom. Frenchie keeping the equipment running.

Then, late in August, after the second cut, Pam came in from the barn, the boys off somewhere in the woods, shaking her head saying, “I can’t do this anymore, Willie; I can’t do it.”

They’d talked and cried and talked some more around the kitchen table. “I’m sorry Willie,” she said. “I can’t be running this farm and taking care of the boys and keeping my spirits up all at the same time. Not sure I could do it even if you were healthy. Everywhere I look I see Lucas. In the barn, in the fields, in the kitchen, the bedroom. I’ve gotta be strong for these kids, Willie. I can’t do that here, can’t do it like this.

“My Mom and Dad say they’ll have us at their place. I’ll get work in town somewhere. But you have to promise me, Willie, promise me that you’ll come down regular and visit. The boys’ll need you. I’ll need you.”

He promised.

A date was set and came for the auction, the day when everything, simply everything, was all loaded up onto strangers’ trucks and vans and trailers and hauled away. The 73 cows went first in a fleet of 18-wheelers with fancy labels on their cabs. Then all the equipment that had helped them milk and care for the cows, plant the timothy and clover and alfalfa and winter rye, cut and rake and bale all the acres of hay, chop the corn and bring it to the silage pit, all loaded onto flatbeds and pickups. All gone. And the auctioneer took his cut out of the pile of cash and handed over the rest along with the bank checks, and drove away with a wave out the window leaving Willie in the barn doorway, the sun settling behind the trees and him standing there unable to stop the crying.

In the cold, in the dark, sitting on the ATV staring at the bull’s corral illuminated by the headlight, Willie feels the tears running down his cheeks, feels the deep hollow inside, feels the memory finally fade. If only I hadn’t busted my hip. If only I had made Lucas sell the bull. If only, if only, if only…

He catches himself. Finally. He wipes his eyes with his sleeve, starts up the ATV and flies across the field to the barn. In the house he goes over to the calendar, takes it from the wall, goes to the wood stove, stirs the coals and tosses it in. He watches as the pages curl, smoke and then catch; he adds a few logs and closes the stove door.

He walks over to the trash can, slides it to the edge of the kitchen table, reaches his giant hand behind the pile of mail and in one long motion sweeps the whole lot of it into the bin. “There,” he says out loud. “Hope some bills are in there, too.”

He looks at the clock. It’s 5:30. Eerie, he thinks. He opens the fridge and pulls out some milk and Barb’s tuna casserole and sits down at the kitchen table. A glass. No plates. Just a fork. He stares at the casserole. Nothing appetizing about it at all. Nothing. He stares at it, fork in hand, and wonders how he got to this point, only 63 years old, finally healthy again, just sleeping, eating casseroles, playing with chickens. What would Gert say? he thinks. What would Lucas say?

He wonders, again, whether it’s time to sell the place. Move into town. Be closer to the boys and Pam. He enjoys the visits, but always there. Not here. He misses them. Misses all the chaos and laughter, all the banter. But he misses the work, the animals, the purpose.

He downs the glass of milk, gets up and puts the casserole back in the fridge. Untouched. He sits down in the easy chair and pulls out the paper. Yesterday’s. It always makes him feel good to read the news a day late knowing that nothing was so calamitous that it ended the world.

It seems only a moment later that he sees the headlights move across the kitchen wall and then hears the sound of tires crunching in the cold snow as the car goes past the house and parks in front of the barn. He goes to the mudroom and sees another car come in. Outside, he looks down his long driveway; one more car coming in. What in tarnation? he thinks.

Pam gets out of the first car. Her three boys follow and bound towards him. “Gramps! Gramps!” they scream. Pam carries a basket and a smile. “Hello, Willie,” she says and gives him a long hug. “We thought it high time for us to come here for a visit. High time.”

It makes no sense to him. For a moment, he wonders whether it’s a dream. The kids rush into the house. The doors on the second car open revealing Pam’s brother, Tom, and his wife, Penny. And out of the third come his neighbors, Carrie and Ernest, and from the back, Barb, sweet Barb. Each carry baskets. “How ya doin’?” asks Ernest, his oldest friend, a school classmate.

What are you all doing here? Willie asks.

“This, Willie, is Saturday supper on wheels,” Ernest says, “but we’re staying to eat it with you whether you want us or not.”

“And we have some news we want to talk to you about,” Pam says.

Inside, the kitchen is jammed. Pam shoos everyone out and turns on the stove to warm things up. Willie stays with her.

“How are you doing?” she asks.

“Fine,” he says.

“Really?”

“I’m gettin’ by,” he says. “Gettin’ by. Truth be told, I don’t have enough to do. But how are you doing?”

“I’m OK, Willie. OK” She turns to look at him. “It’s nice to see you. Here. In this kitchen. In this house. It’s easier than I thought it’d be. I can feel him here, Willie, but it’s OK. It’s OK.”

She turns back to the stove and busies herself, almost like she’s never left. Soon she’s scooping out beets and carrots and potatoes into bowls, handing them to Willie to take into the dining room. She gets Carrie to cut the still-warm bread and Penny to put the butter out and Barb to pour milk in all the glasses and Tom to carve the roast. Then, like that, they are all seated at the long, dining room table.

“Say grace, Pam,” Willie says.

Pam clears her throat. “Let us give thanks for the food and company. Let us remember all those who’ve passed before. And let us embrace life’s surprises.”

The room erupts again with chatter, how cold the weather’s been, doings in town, new foals up to Bickford Farm.

“How’s the hip?” Ernest asks.

“Fully healed,” Willie says. “A little stiff when I get up in the mornin’ or out of that damn chair. But the pain’s gone.”

“What’ve you been doing with yourself?” Carrie asks.

Willie hesitates. “Been cutting a little wood for sugaring; may tap a few trees this spring. Been napping a lot; so, I guess not much.”

Lucas Junior looks up. “So, is ‘not much’ what a cow farmer does when he doesn’t have cows?” Only his brother Jacob laughs.

“Guess so, Junior. Us old farmers don’t quite know what to do with ourselves. It’s not easy to figure out what you can do when you can’t do what you’ve loved doing.

“And what have you been up to, Junior?” Willie asks.

“I made the 8th grade basketball team. I’m a starter,” he says. “Maybe you can come to one of the games, Gramps.”

“Maybe I could,” Willie says. He watches as Lucas Junior, head down now, pokes his food with his fork. Junior looks just like Lucas when he was that age. “It’s nice to have you here, Junior. And you other boys, too. I know how difficult it’s been. I know it’s not easy to come back here.”

After a bit, Tom breaks the silence by clearing the dishes; others follow. Soon the pies are laid out: apple and his favorite, sour cherry. Made with butter. By Pam.

“Before we have the pies,” Pam says, “we have some news, Willie. And an idea.” Everyone is quiet. “A couple of weeks ago, brother Tom was told he’s gotta leave his farm down in the valley. As you know, Tom’s been renting all these years, and some city fella bought the property out from under him. They’ve got three months to vacate.

“You know as well as I that farmers don’t have the cash kicking around to put a down payment on a farm. So it’s been pretty grim for the last few weeks.

“Then we had this idea. And the more we talked, the more I realized just how much I miss this big, drafty, old house, how much I miss working on a farm. How much I miss you. And as much as I love my Mom and Dad their house is no way big enough for me and the kids.

“So we wondered whether maybe you’d like some cows and some people around. And seeing how this house is so big and goes on forever we thought that maybe there was room for me and the boys and even for Tom and Penny, too, at least until they can find another house to rent.

“Maybe we can make this a farm again, Willie.”

“Now that you’re better,” Tom says, “we could run it together.”

Willie doesn’t know what to say. Or even how to say it. He stares straight at Tom; he knows him, knows what kind of farmer he is. Then he looks at Pam and then each of the boys, ending with Junior.

“You can teach me all you know, Gramps,” Junior says.

“That I could,” he says, with a hint of a smile. “And maybe this would be a good thing. Let me think on it. … Now how’s about us getting’ to them pies while they’re still warm.”