Bleeding Kansas (17 page)

And then Curly's voice, thick with misery: “I promised Chip. I'm sorry, Jim, but I couldn't go back on my word. Do you want me to quit?”

A long pause, during which Lara held her breath.
Don't fire him,
she pleaded in her head.
Chip's disappeared. Don't get rid of Curly, too.
And then her hand came down on a can full of ball bearings and sent them flying around the barn, a cascade of balls that rattled and banged like a giant pinball machine. The lights came up in the barn, and she hugged herself, painfully exposed.

“Lara! What on earth—?” her father cried out.

“I'm sorry, Dad,” she wailed. “I wanted to know where Chip was. Did he join the Marines?”

“Did you know?” Jim yelled. “Are you another one who knew and didn't tell me?”

“Don't, Dad. I don't know where he went, I only wondered because he used to have those recruiting pamphlets on his dresser. And I told you and Mr. Drysdale that I thought Janice knew what he was doing, but she wouldn't talk to me. Is that what Chip did? Did he join the Marines? Is he in Iraq?”

He stared at her for a minute, frightening her with the ferocious look on his face. She didn't know that he wasn't staring at her but at himself: how could he be the least knowledgeable person in Douglas County about the people closest to him? He'd never noticed any recruiting pamphlets in Chip's room, but Lara had seen them. Blitz noticed that Curly was hiding news about Chip; Lara was sure Janice knew. Only he, Jim, had spent the week stumbling around like a blind drunk at the fairgrounds.

Finally he said, in a dry, small voice, “Lulu, don't stand there in the dark. Come on over here. And, Curly, I don't want you to quit. I couldn't take it if I had to have a stranger around the place right now. Just tell me everything you know.”

Curly shuffled his feet, his blond rooster's comb of hair drooping in his eyes. “I don't know much, Jim, honest, but he stopped by that apartment building out on Sixth Street on Wednesday afternoon—you know, that big complex where I been working for my cousin. He showed me his enlistment papers and said he was on his way to Fort Jackson. That's in South Carolina. He told me he'd be sleeping in his car to save money until he reports to the base. I give him a few twenties so he could get a motel room along the way. He made me promise not to tell you and Susan, said he'd call you himself when he got there.”

He glanced at Lara. “He said he'd've preferred the Marines, only they make you take a bunch of tests or something first and he wanted to get going fast as he could.”

“And did he call you or anything along the road?” Jim demanded.

Curly nodded miserably. “This morning. He called me from South Carolina to tell me he got there safe and sound and he starts his basic training Monday morning. He found hisself a pretty cheap room outside the fort where he's staying the night. I—I got the name wrote down someplace.”

He started turning out his pockets, looking for the scrap of paper with Chip's motel written on it.

Lara felt a cold knot in her stomach. Chip was going to be a soldier. They'd make him march around in formation when he never even liked to be told to make his bed or do his homework. No more hiding in the Fremantle house, smoking dope with Curly, or going to the Storm Door with his baseball buddies. He'd turn into a stranger, she wouldn't see him for years and years, and she'd be alone on the farm with Dad and Mom.

The loneliness terrified her. Mom was hanging out with Gina and the K-PAW people, and even Dad was acting strange, as though space aliens had come to live inside his body and make him walk in a funny, jerky way. What would she do? Who could she talk to?

Curly finally dug out the number, and Jim took it to the house so he could call Chip. Curly followed him, but Lara stood still next to the big metal planer, her teeth chattering.

Blitz came over and put his flannel shirt around her. “I know it seems frightening, but maybe it'll be a good thing for him. Boy doesn't know what he wants to do with his life. The Army might help him sort that out.”

Lara clenched her teeth to stop the sound. Blitz was trying to cheer her up, which he'd never done before, so she nodded to show she understood, at least understood the gesture, even if she didn't understand what he was saying.

I
N THE MIDDLE OF
M
AY,
the Grelliers drove out to Fort Jackson to watch Chip graduate from basic training. Susan hadn't wanted to go. She told Jim she couldn't lend her presence to an activity of which she disapproved so strongly.

“You going doesn't mean you approve of Chip's choice. It means you're his mother and you love him,” Jim said, so angry his knuckles showed white where he was grabbing the chair back. “I know you hate this war, but you love our son. He loves you and he needs to see your face before they send him eight thousand miles away. All those e-mails he writes, can't you see he's scared?”

Susan bit her lip but finally agreed to go. Jim left Blitz in charge of the farm. For once in a blue moon, they'd had the right mix of rain and sun; the wheat crop should be outstanding, if the weather held, and Jim knew he could trust Blitz to make the right decisions if it didn't.

They spent two nights on the road, going south through Kentucky to see the caves. Susan stayed in the truck, reading a history of pacifism, making pointed remarks about turning their son's dangerous situation into a pleasure trip. They camped out to save money, and Jim was grateful for his daughter's presence in the tent, which precluded any pretense of marital intimacy.

Lara was both nervous and excited at the prospect of seeing Chip as a soldier. Her mother was so upset by his enlisting that Lara couldn't talk about it at home, but at school she'd become something of a vicarious heroine for having a brother in the military. Of course, Janice Everleigh was milking his enlistment all she could, acting like they were married or something—she went around the halls in his baseball-letter jacket, her face radiant. Overnight, she'd gone from girlfriend of a loser who fought in school and got kicked out to the lover of an American patriot.

When they got to the fort, Lara didn't recognize Chip at first. He looked so strange, not like himself, in his uniform, with his hair shaved close to his head. Then he caught sight of them and ran through the throng of soldiers and families, his eyes wet, and Lara could see he was homesick and excited that they'd come.

“You're not mad at me, are you, Dad?”

“Just scared, son. If you're doing what's right for you, how can I be mad? And I'm proud of you for doing it in the service of our country.”

Susan only said, “Oh, Etienne, I'm so sorry,” which could have meant anything.

During the ceremony, Chip held himself rigidly erect, along with the other recruits, but Lara could tell from the way he licked his lips that he was scared. It was only then, glancing at her parents, that Lara saw her mother wearing a prominent button that read
MOTHERS AGAINST WAR.

“How could you?” she whispered to Susan, furious. “Take it off!”

“How could
he
?” Susan whispered back. “If I have to see him carrying those dreadful weapons, with his beautiful curls shaved off, he can see me supporting him with this badge.”

The next day, Chip left for advanced infantry training in Oklahoma. Lara, angry about Susan's button, refused to speak to her mother during the drive home. When they reached the farm, Susan threw herself into K-PAW work, while Lara tended the organic-sunflower seedlings in the greenhouse.

For the first time, on her fifteenth birthday, Lara was allowed to drive the combine. When she finished her part of the field, Curly grinned at her and said, “How drunk was you, Lulu, to make those big curves in the field? Or is that one of your art projects?” But Blitz clapped her on the shoulder and said she'd done well for a beginner.

Two weeks later, Gina built a new bonfire to celebrate Midsummer Eve. Susan went to the ceremony without even mentioning it to Jim, relations between the two had become so strained.

In the weeks before that fire, Lara had watched Susan growing herbs in the X-Farm greenhouse, Saint-John's-wort, heartsease, lavender. She had dried them and tied them up in bundles with red and gold thread. Lara was having her own fight with Susan, about the fate of the X-Farm. She was curious about the bundles of herbs but too angry with her mother for tying up the organic greenhouse with them and neglecting the sunflower crop—which was overdue for transplanting to the field—to talk to her about her herb bundles.

Still, at ten o'clock Lara followed her customary route along the tracks to watch Gina and Autumn set the fire alight. Hiding behind the Fremantles' big hay barn, Lara watched a parade of women file through the old apple orchard, each carrying a lantern. They were silent until they reached the fire, when they stood and faced it and began singing, the music sweet but distorted by the crackling of the fire. Lara could see her mother, her face alight with eagerness.

Elaine Logan was there as well, her gigantic bosom unmistakable in the firelight. Her breasts were so heavy that even the largest sweatshirts pulled tight across them—her “shelf,” Curly called it. “Think about it, Lulu, you could rest your coffee cup on it,” he said, making her blush and giggle.

Ever since Elaine had been arrested with Gina and Susan, she'd started hitching out to the Fremantles' two or three times a month. She'd pick up a ride as far as the train crossing at the county road behind the Grelliers', then waddle and puff her way up to the Fremantle place. Once, when Lara was up on the combine, she actually saw Elaine let herself into the house.

Autumn or some other Wiccan had given Elaine a ride out tonight for the midsummer fire. Elaine was already slightly drunk when she got to the Fremantles' and in a boisterous mood, hovering between hilarity and belligerence: she might do anything if she thought the other women were slighting or ignoring her. Seeing Elaine at the bonfire, face gleaming in the firelight, Lara hoped she wouldn't take off her sweatshirt. It was pink tonight, with the Pink Panther outlined in dark sequins. She had her head thrown back, laughing loudly at something one of the women near her was saying.

Before choosing a roost, Lara had scouted the area but hadn't seen any sign of Eddie Burton or the Junior Schapen. She lay in the high grass, watching the ceremony begin. Susan handed out her bundles of herbs; the women circled the fire, singing and tossing the herbs into the blaze.

Life at home had been so filled with fights lately that Lara had forgotten how exhilarating her mother could be when she was filled with enthusiasm. Seeing Susan so ardent made Lara wish she could get up and join the dance herself, but she knew she'd be self-conscious trying to move with all those naked women. Besides, if Jim came looking for her, the way he had in February, he'd be furious to find her taking part.

Lara felt these days as though she were teetering in the middle of a balance beam: keeping Jim happy meant making Susan angry. Taking Susan's part meant upsetting Jim. It was too hard to deal with, so Lara mostly retreated to practicing the trumpet or working on the X-Farm. She had a big project, too, for the county fair, monitoring pest levels in the organic-sunflower crop against state standards for chemically farmed sunflowers.

She dozed off, thinking about her sunflower project, and was roused by the sound of sirens. Flashing red lights were creating a pulsing glow like that of the bonfire. Men in fire slickers erupted through the apple trees, carrying fire extinguishers and other equipment, followed by several men in sheriff's uniforms, including Arnie Schapen. Their radios were squawking, and between that and the noise of the sirens Lara couldn't make out what anyone was saying. She saw Gina, tall and slim, trying to argue with the men. Elaine joined them. Sometime while Lara had been napping, Elaine had taken off her sweatshirt, and her huge breasts surged like the ocean as she spoke. Then Susan came up—mercifully, with all her clothes on—and apparently began putting in her two cents. What was Susan saying? Lara wondered. “Don't you know this area is the bastion of free speech in America? This is where your ancestors fought and died to keep America free.”

While Gina and Susan were arguing, the men were dousing the bonfire, using extinguishers and a dump truck full of sand. The truck had driven along the road and then cut across the field where Lara was lying. She hadn't heard it coming and missed being hit by about a foot.

She backed away from the blaze and crept across the field to the road, then across the train tracks to her family's farm. She didn't want to risk being seen by Arnie or any of the other deputies.

It was while she was crossing the tracks that she saw Eddie Burton. He was standing at the edge of the field she'd just crossed, staring at her. While she looked at him, he started moving his arms and jumping around. After a few seconds, she realized he was imitating the women at the bonfire. And then he started shrieking, “They had it coming, didn't they? Firemen come. Those women had it coming to them.”

She was horrified that he'd seen her, but something kept her from being able to turn away from his grotesque pantomime. Suddenly, Junior Schapen appeared next to him. He put his arms around Eddie, almost as if he were embracing him, but Eddie pointed at Lara.

Junior started across the road toward her. The sight unglued Lara's feet, and she ran through the corn. She could hear Junior pounding after her, trampling down the stalks, but she was slimmer and faster, and she knew her way through her own fields to her own farm. When she reached the main barn, she slipped inside through the loose board at the back. She waited there in the dark almost an hour, listening to rats and raccoons snuffling through the rafters, until she heard the pickup pull into the yard. She crawled back through the board, not wanting to risk running into all the machines in the barn.

When Lara finally went into the house, Susan was pouring out her woes to Jim. “I can't believe Arnie would do such a small-minded, mean-spirited thing. He claimed we were violating some county fire code or other, he got the volunteer fire departments to come out from Baldwin and Eudora and had them put out our fire.”

“Susan, you can't expect me to get outraged on your behalf. I'm tired of all this witchcraft shit. You're on the board—” Jim broke off at the sight of Lara. “
Damn
it, Lulu! Did you take part in that damned fire?”

She shook her head. “I was just watching. Dad, Junior and Eddie Burton were there. They saw me, and Junior chased me home.”

She couldn't bring herself to report anything else, how Eddie'd been behaving, the strange way Junior had put his arms around Eddie. Jim went out to look for Junior, but he told Lara that she had herself to thank for the episode.

“If you'd stayed home like I asked you, you wouldn't have gotten such a scare. Maybe this will teach you that I have a good reason for asking you to do things.”

Lara bit her lip and went up to bed. Both she and Susan felt Jim hadn't been sympathetic to them, but when Susan tried to share her own hurt feelings with her daughter, Lara scowled at her. “I wish you wouldn't do weird stuff, Mom. That Elaine Logan, she was about the grossest thing I've ever seen. How can you want to be part of something
she's
involved with?”

The next day, she put it all in an e-mail to Chip—at least, all but the part about Elaine's giant breasts. She didn't want Chip joking about them with his Army buddies. She told him everything else, the bonfire, how she'd sneaked out to watch it, how she'd seen Junior and Eddie, and Eddie had chased her home.

Chip wrote back to tell Lara to mind her own business. His enlistment seemed to have evaporated his anger with their mother.

Chip had five days' leave when he finished his advanced infantry training at the beginning of July. Most of his time he divided between Janice and Curly or hanging out with his friends from high school. His last night at home, though, he took Lara bowling, just her, not Curly, Janice, or his friends from the baseball team.

They had a pizza at Gianni's, and Chip said, “Remember, Lulu, you're the brainy one. Don't do like me, running away from home by joining the Army. You can make your escape by running away to college. And don't worry about me. I was the toughest guy in my unit in basic 'cause none of the others had ever spent seventeen hours on a combine under a hundred-degree sun. I know how to survive in the heat.”