Jewelweed

                  
Also by David Rhodes

                  
Driftless

                  
The Easter House

                  
The Last Fair Deal Going Down

                  
Rock Island Line

David Rhodes

milkweed

editions

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

© 2013, Text by David Rhodes

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Milkweed Editions, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Suite 300, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55415.

(800) 520-6455

www.milkweed.org

Published 2013 by Milkweed Editions

Cover design by Christian Fuenfhausen

Cover photos © Shutterstock

Author photo by Edna Rhodes

13 14 15 16 17
    
5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

Milkweed Editions, an independent nonprofit publisher, gratefully acknowledges sustaining support from the Bush Foundation; the Patrick and Aimee Butler Foundation; the Dougherty Family Foundation; the Jerome Foundation; the Lindquist & Vennum Foundation; the McKnight Foundation; the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Target Foundation; and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. For a full listing of Milkweed Editions supporters, please visit
www.milkweed.org
.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rhodes, David, 1946-

        
Jewelweed : a novel / David Rhodes. — 1st ed.

            
p.
    
cm.

        
ISBN 978-1-57131-883-1 (ebook)

        
I. Title.

        
PS3568.H55J49 2013

        
813'.54—dc23

2012027827
      

Milkweed Editions is committed to ecological stewardship
. We strive to align our book production practices with this principle, and to reduce the impact of our operations in the environment. We are a member of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the world's endangered forests and conserve natural resources.
Jewelweed
was printed on acid-free 100% postconsumer-waste paper by Friesens Corporation.

T
o my daughters, Alexandra and Emily, the two lights in the front of my boat.

W
hen the New Age is at leisure to Pronounce; all will be set right . . . & the Daughters of Memory shall become the Daughters of Inspiration
.

—William Blake,
Milton: A Poem

The Taste of Joy

Opportunities

Evolution

Loyalty in Lockbridge

The Wild Boy

Serving Time

Standing in the Middle

The Interview

Intimate Imperatives

Jewelweed

Finding Bee

Moving Out, Moving In, Moving On

Settling In

August

Searching for the Wild Boy

Inching Into the Present

Expectancies

Lucky

When Time Slows Down

July Montgomery's House

Making Ready

Burning the Past

The New Dress

Dawn

The Party

A Long Lament

Fortunes Never Spent

Weed War

Heresy

Coming Alive

Hunting the Devil

Undoing Destiny

Stepping Out of the River of Time

Catching Up

Two Lives Collide

Slippery Slopes

The Trial

Boy's Nature

Night Ride

Dart Ventures Out

Driving a Picture from the Past into the Future

Kevin and Wally

Grass Fire

Rooting Trees

The Bargain

Winnie in Her Garden

Strawberry Wine

A
blinding thunderstorm in central Nebraska thinned traffic along Interstate 80. A few semis moved through the downpour, their dimmed headlights reflecting from the watery road. Rain blew against trailer sides and black wiper blades whipped frantically across windshields, accompanied by the sound of water thrown from tires against wheel wells and the undersides of trailers. In the sky, crackling networks of energy ignited air bombs, exploding the dark open space with brief crinkled light.

Nate Bookchester needed to reach Omaha before daylight. After unloading he'd continue to Des Moines, then on to Moline. Never taking his eyes from the barely visible line between the road surface and the more darkly colored shoulder, he steered the hood of the Kenworth into the storm. Passing time seemed shadowy, suspended in the glow of fog lights.

The rain finally let up, and the CD player in the dashboard ended its story—an audiobook checked out of the Grange Library. He dialed down the speed of the wiper blades. A few wrinkled lines of lightning lit the sky, and the opened space seemed clean and bright. A cowboy with Colorado plates sped by on the left, spraying water, winking top lights, and pulling back into the right-hand lane. Red taillights bled in and out of veins of rainwater. Nate listened for several minutes to drivers jawing about the government, then turned the radio off, shut down the interior lights, and drove on in the dark. A highway patrol car sat in the median turnaround between the eastbound and westbound lanes, red and blue warning lights silently flashing.

Nate's son would soon have a parole hearing, and the thought made the muscles in Nate's neck tighten. This would be Blake's third review,
and based on the earlier two, Nate was pessimistic about his chances of getting out. The justice system seemed to resist letting anyone go after it had gotten hold of them. Or at least it seemed that way to Nate. Prisons were made like fishhooks: easy to get in, hard to get out. Without prisoners there would be no need for prisons, and a whole lot of folks—some of them very well paid—would be out of work. So before paroling anyone, the Department of Corrections set up hoops to jump through, and Blake had never been a cooperative jumper.

Nate took the last Omaha exit, stopped at a deserted stoplight on the overpass, and headed north. His worries about Blake had become so familiar that he often did not allow the habitual thoughts to begin their circular march through his mind, refused to let the words congeal, and simply endured the anxious sorrow without accompaniment.

Three loading docks stood empty at the back of the Omaha warehouse; Nate backed into the middle one. The overhead opened and a buzzer sounded as the trailer touched rail. He climbed out of the cab into a warm, drizzling mist. Inside the building, he signed the bottom sheet on the clipboard, unclasped the door irons, and stood aside as the forklift operator navigated inside, guiding the long iron prongs under the pallets.

The bathrooms on the other side of the building were in exceptionally good order. Nate washed, shaved, and changed clothes. He tried to leave the room as clean as he'd found it and shoved his dirty clothes into a bag. Just outside, the candy machine along the wall had cluster bars. He almost bought one, but settled for a paper cup of weak coffee.

After the trailer was unloaded, he asked the operator where he could find a decent place to eat.

“Heading east, not many open this early. If you don't mind driving, there's one maybe five, six miles out of town.”

“What's the name?”

“Margo's. It doesn't look like much, but they've got good food.”

The sun was just coming up and Nate drove directly into it, ignoring the lower gears and shifting quickly through the upper ones. Designed to pull between sixty and eighty thousand pounds, the diesel hardly worked enough to keep the radiator warm with an empty trailer, and the sides rattled and banged over the road.

Nate found the restaurant painted robin's-egg blue and sitting on the
edge of a cornfield, next to an elevator and a grain dryer. He pulled into the mostly deserted lot and climbed out of the cab. As his right foot touched the tarmac and his leg absorbed all of his two hundred pounds, his whole body winced. Circling the tractor several times until he could walk with more dignity, he noticed again that the pavement was dry. This part of the country had not seen any weather at all.