(2) Prequel: Sentimental Education
Several things happened all at once: a charge of physical joy spread from his rectum, where Jim’s cock moved inside him, though his bowels and stomach, his back, his arms, hands and fingers, his neck, face and brain. “Oh-my God!” he said, as quietly as possible, at the same time wanting, in his astonishment and gratitude, to grab a piece of Jim-an arm, hand, or even his shirt-but with it all, feeling he didn’t know him well enough, was even a little afraid of him, and, concurrently, thinking this idea was funny, if he only had the breath to laugh at it.
They had known each other for three hours.
At exactly the right moment, Jim Kelly lifted himself out of Jack, and lay down beside him putting an arm around his shoulder, gently, with no possessiveness. Jack curled a little in the hollow Jim made for him with his tall body, no longer afraid, feeling a little like Jim was the older brother he had always wished he had, without questioning why. There was a stickiness between his legs, and on the canvas floor of the tent beneath him; as he pulled up his pants, he thought irrationally how he’d like to take a bath in it, if only it was large enough. He closed his eyes, without feeling the least bit sleepy.
“Surprised?” said the voice behind him.
Jack could feel the sound echo in Jim’s chest. There wasn’t much point in lying; 18-year-old boys don’t call on the divinity very often. “Yeah-just a little.” Now he could laugh. He sat up. “C’n I ask a coupla questions? Like, how’d we get in here right after supper?” He didn’t need to ask about the orgasm-if he had known what to call it. An orgasm is an explainer, not a question-maker.
“I came up behind you, put my arms around you, and walked you to the tent and pushed you inside,” Jim said, with a smile.
Jim Kelly had arrived mid-afternoon, before Jack had returned from his excruciating visit to the many still-living sheep. Jim’s horse and two extra mules were loaded with many gasoline cans, two shovels, and two picks. By the time Jack got there, he had supper started.
“Oh yeah…right. That question don’t count. Does everone do that as good as you?”
“No.” Jim sat up, too-even sitting, you could tell he was over 6’5”.
“Does everone like it as much as me?”
“No.”
“Figured both of those. What was that slippery stuff you put on me and you? Looked like a tuba toothpaste.”
“Not toothpaste. It’s called K-Y Jelly.”
“What’s it for?”
“What’s it-whatdaya think it’s for?” said Jim, laughing.
“Oh. That’s it, huh? So… you carry that stuff everwhere you go, or was you plannin’ on meetin’ me here?”
“Well, I sorta figured an 18-year-old kid stuck for a week with 42 rotting sheep could probably use some distraction.”
“Could probably use some…you talk like a teacher.”
“I am.”
“What do you teach?” Jack said, smiling.
Goddamn. That smile, Jim thought, would fly this kid to the moon. “ 8th grade,” he said, poking him in the ribs.
“8th. Oh. 8 was the last grade I had…You got someone already, right?”
“Yes. Another schoolteacher.”
“Where?”
“Denver.”
“DENVER? ‘Fuck you doin’ here with me and these dead sheep if you got somebody in Denver?”
“I owed Aguirre a favor…from what he did for my folks.” Jim was 35. His folks, if they still lived, would be older than Aguirre. Jack laughed.
“Aguirre the favor giver-outer. I mean, he’s okay, but he ain’t the friendliest guy I ever met. What the hell did he ever do for your folks? And how’d he get you to come up here with half the summer gone to help me burn sheep?”
“He told me what blue eyes you had, and them long lashes, and sweet mouth-”
“FUCK he did! What’d he do for your folks, that you owed him?”
“Usual thing-they needed money, and he loaned it to them. Aguirre and my folks were almost friends…well, they never paid all of it back. They’re dead now, both of them. So I said to him, ‘If you EVER need somethin’ done, just holler for me.’ He calls, and says he’s got this kid killed 42 of his sheep…”
“The hell he did!”
“No, he told me about the lightning storm, but he did manage to make it sound like,” Jim started laughing, “your fault. At the same time, he said how you were bitching something fierce about the smell, and asked would I come up here and give you a hand. I was set to get the bus out, next day.”
“You got a job in Denver, and everthing?”
“Yes, but it don’t start till fall. So anyway, there’s only my guy waiting for me.”
“Your guy...wonder if I’ll ever have a...guy.”
“Kid,” Jim leaned forward, thinking of kissing him lightly on the lips, but just touching his cheek. “I don’t rightly see how you can miss.”
“Miss? What’s to hit, around here?”
“More than you’d think. Just take it easy, and when you set your sights on someone, ease him along, quiet-like, slow.”
“Like you done to me?”
“Jack, that’s not fair. You didn’t require much easing.”
“No, I didn’t. I guess you could see I had things pretty well figured out…except for the-y’know-end thing.”
“Coming.”
“Coming…?”
“That’s what folks call the...fireworks at the end. You’re waiting for it, but you don’t know you are,” said Jim Kelly.
“’Kin say that again,” Jack felt himself blushing. He could just barely make out Jim’s light blue eyes. His red curly hair was a mass of gray against the shadows of the tent. He hoped, maybe, Jim wouldn’t see the blush.
Suddenly, Jack laughed, and recited: “Old Lady Kelly with the cast iron belly and the eyes in back of her head”-for which he found his face mashed into the canvas.
“Say uncle.”
“Aunt.”
“UNCLE!” Jack began to think he wasn’t going to be able to breathe ever again.
“UNCLE!”
“SO, that’s what I get for my pains. Where’d you get that anyway?”
“Had a teacher in 5th grade, Mrs. Kelly,-holy shit-kin to you?”
“No,” Jim laughed. “Well, probably somewhere in Ireland, yeah.”
“She always knew everthin’ goin’ on in the room, whether she was lookin’ at it or not, so we made up that poem about her. Old lady Kelly…” he started laughing again. Then, sober: “I wish I was a teacher...I mean, I wish I was goin’ to Denver, AND a teacher.” What, thought Jack, could Jim say? He wasn’t, and he wasn’t.
Jim started to say something, but changed his mind.
“So how’re we going to do this, tomorrow?” Jack said.
“You mean the sheep?” Jack nodded. “It’s not just tomorrow…probably at least the next week…”
“Christ Jesus.”
“Y’know why the trees don’t grow up there?”
“Cause it’s too cold…somethin’ ”
“That’s only part of it. The ground is thin; the rock is near the surface. Nothing for the trees to put down roots in. That means: no big grave-not enough depth. That’s why we gotta burn ‘em.”
“An’ I think it smells bad now…” said Jack to himself. He tried to think with practicality. “I been wonderin’-how we gonna dress? I’ve only got one pair of jeans, couple shirts…we’ll have to wash ‘em every night, and wait for them to dry in the mornin’.’”
“Not if we do it naked, with hats and boots.”
“Cold as hell!”
“Nope, not once you get digging, lugging wood and gasoline and sheep around, pilin’ ‘em up.”
“Yeah...would get warm...okay, I’m game. And we got them slings for them sheep? Good thing. Someone should come along and take a picture,” Jack laughed. “You and me, nothin’ on but hats and boots….’n we can wash us in hot water every evenin’.”
“The temperature will set a limit on our workday. Too cold early in the morning, too cold after the sun starts to set. Till the fire starts. And then: we stay there all night-at least one of us does.“ Jim lay down. “Sleep time. See ya in the mornin’”
Jack smiled “My momma always says that, even now. ‘See ya in the morning.’”
Jim resisted the temptation to tousle his hair, “”Night.”
“”Night, Jim.” Then: “Thank you for coming up here to help me get rid of 42 stinking sheep.”
“You are extraordinarily…welcome,” he answered. Jack giggled.
A few hours later, Jack was awakened by Jim’s mouth whispering, or possibly kissing, at the back of his neck, and an arm around him again. All the parts of his body that had responded at the coda of the sex a few hours earlier remembered, and started anticipating. “Jesus God, am I gonna to be like this all my life?” he thought. Then he thought, no, because Jim would be gone soon enough. Still…there was the rest of his life. “Jim?”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Jim had moved back a little, and taken his arm away. “Well, don’t stop jus’ now,” said Jack, with a slight tremor in his voice.
Jim moved up against him again and Jack reached behind him and cupped Jim’s head in his hand. He felt Jim’s curly hair on his neck, then against his cheek. Suddenly, he turned his head and shoulders around and kissed Jim full on the mouth, his lips parted. “Mm,” said Jim, and returned the kiss, with the addition of an explorative tongue, in exchange for which Jack returned his own. Before this went any further, which it did, Jim broke free a minute. “You are...something else,” he said.
“What? Somethin’ else from what? Did I do somethin’ wrong?” He knew he’d mess it up, somehow. Jack the fuck up. He turned his whole body around to face Jim.
“NO! I’ll tell you later.”
Jim, facing him now, was undoing Jack’s pants again, muttering something about people who bother to put their pants on in the middle of the night, and ducked his head toward Jack’s genitals, his red hair visible only as a mass of black now.
“Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I want…a lotta this stuff, a long time, till I’m old, with a long, gray beard, or go bald…WHAT?” Everything Jim did felt good.
It was, Jack noticed, with that slight nervousness about that rest of his life he’d had earlier, even better the second time…but this time, he managed to keep quiet (after the initial “WHAT?”), except for normal, exertive noises.
“Jim.”
“What?”
“I love that.”
“You thought I didn’t know? That’s why you’re telling me?”
Jack shook his heard, aware that Jim could no longer see him. “Uh-uh.” Jim suddenly sat up, and kissed him.
“What’s your guy’s name?” Jack asked suddenly.
“Jacob.”
“That’s an Old Testament name…my momma reads from both,” he said, with a touch of pride. “Sounds sorta Jewish.”
“That’s cause he IS Jewish”
“I don’t know no Jews…got a feelin’ though, you probably could pick and choose, so he must be…a righteous man,” Jack put his hand to his forehead in bewilderment at his own speech, realizing it was a Bible word. All this time, he’d thought all he’d leaned from the Bible was profanity, which he used well.
“That he is.”
“How long since you seen him? How old is he? What color eyes does he have?”
“Too long-30-brown. Jim laughed. “Do you ever have the feeling-you don’t know how brown eyes work?”
Jack knew what he meant. He knew you saw through the center of your eye, which seemed to be black in everyone. But yeah, with the few brown-eyed people he knew, he did sometimes think: “How does that work?” He laughed. “Yeah, I do. What were you saying about me being ‘something else’ before?”
Jim thought how best to say it: “Most guys, especially young guys like you, don’t want to mess with kissing and hugging and holding and shit like that.”
“Why the hell not? They do it in the movies. I always thought-it looked great, if only the girls weren’t there all the time.” Jim laughed. “I never did it-kissing-before,” Jack said. There’d never been anyone to do it with. “It kind of came natural.”
“You get an A on natural,” said Jim.
So I didn’t fuck up, after all, Jack thought.
He thought a minute. “I get it. They want to pretend...it isn’t happening, huh?”
“I think…hell, you got that right, Jack,” said Jim.
One thing he hadn’t asked, nor did he need to, was if what he was doing was all right. If it had to be figured out why he was having sex with this great 35-year-old schoolteacher, who wasn’t even available, and a man, instead of some silly girl, or one he had to pay, someone else could figure it out. He wasn’t up to it, and didn’t think he ever would be.
It was full light when Jack woke. Jim was not only outside, but there were frying potato smells coming from the crackling fire. “Hey, potatoes in the mornin’, breakfast is served,” said Jack.
“Breakfast is SERVED?”
“Some servant guy in a movie said it. I thought it was funny.”
“Can you read good?”
“Yeah, okay. But there's not too much TO read though…Why?”
“You pick up things like a back hoe.”
“Too bad we ain’t got one of those here,” said Jack, looking at the mountain.
“Have to whack a road through all those trees…Well, the reason I’m up so early is you can’t cook much, and I have a lot of talking to do, so I thought I’d get an early start. And we’re going to be working our butts off, all day…You get to wash up, before we go.’’
Jack felt the weather through his coat. He sure didn’t feel like taking his clothes off yet, and the sheep were higher up yet than the camp. He held out his plate for the beans and potatoes, and a cup for coffee.
“Okay-shoot.”
Jim said they had to first ride up to the sheep, each with a shovel and pick tied on, and nose plugs (which won’t do much good, Jim said), remove their clothes, put them in a big plastic bag. Then they’d pace off about 50 by 50 feet, and dig as deep a pit inside the fifty foot markers as possible “Which won’t be very deep,” said Jim, annoyed. “That’s to give the fire a bed to get hot in, drawing the air from around it. That should take us the day. Then, we’ll attach the canvas bags to the horses and mules, and start foraging for wood.”
There seemed to be plenty of deadwood lying around when you needed it, but Jack had never needed near this much.
They would layer the wood loosely all over the square “sheep pit,” and keep layering it until it seemed like enough to keep going, with 100 gallons of gasoline, with 42 sheep on top of it.
“Later,” Jim said, “we should gather more wood,” he said, to make layers between layers of sheep, push some below, scatter it over them-this could be done before and during the burning-carrying and tossing more wood, squirting gasoline around.
“So, evening, three days from now, we should leave the place with the pit dug, the wood laid, and stacks of wood around the pit. Ready to start piling up sheep the next morning.”
“Ummm. I can smell them sheep cookin’ already,” Jack laughed, smacking his lips.
“It will be bad, and for a week after. You’ll feel the smell on your skin…”
“So why take our clothes off, if we’re not gonna touch the sheep today?”
“Cause I want to see how pretty you look working naked,” said Jim with a laugh.
“Shut up. I’m pretty skinny, but I’m not a tall bag a bones like you…”
“I just thought-since you can already smell the sheep from here,” (Jack sniffed, scowled, and nodded his head) “the smell of the damn things is going to get into everything we wear, if we’re anywhere close to them. That’s all.”
“What about the bones, later?”
“Scatter them. They’ll be clean enough. Or just leave them lay. Some archeologist, 500 years from now, will come across them, and have all sorts of theories…”
Jack sort of figured what an archeologist was, without worrying too much about it. After he washed the dishes, he brought the two big canteens to fill with water from the stream. When he got back, Jim was putting some familiarly evil-looking stuff between slices of: “Wonder Bread,” Jack read. “Hey-that’s SPAM! I know Spam. I wanna forget Spam, long as I can. Won’t the bread get hard in a day or two?”
“Jack, this bread…don’t know how to get hard.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“That’s pretty bad. Your momma make her own?”
“Sure does. Tastes great.”
“Well, you can hold your nose and eat these.”
“You don’t have t’worry none about me holding my nose.”
“Amen.”
By noon, after they had dug a little more than half the wood pit, and were sitting, naked, except for their boots and hats, on a thin blanket, eating their Spam sandwiches and drinking from their canteens.
Jim said, “All morning I’ve been thinking of a story.”
Jack was so tired, he couldn’t figure how Jim could hold a story in his head all morning. “How come the hair around your cock is red?” asked Jack.
“God! Because the hair on my HEAD is red! I had four Irish grandparents, and most of them had red pubic hair. Should I forget the story?”
The living sheep, oblivious of their dead relatives and associates, were moving slowly over the landscape, munching grass, apparently devoid of a sense of smell as well as fellow-feeling.
“No, I like stories…will I like this one?”
“Er, no, maybe not, but in a way it’s true, so I’m going to tell you anyway. It was written by a great writer, and it’s called ‘Sorrow Acre’.”
“‘Sorrow’ as in sad, and ‘acre’ like in ten times bigger than this pit?”
“Yes, that’s what made me think of it, mostly.”
“So is it made up, or real?”
“Both. Such things did happen, three hundred years ago, but the author wrote it like a story.” Jim paused, then began:
“In Denmark, at that time, the big landowners were the bosses and bigwigs in the church at the same time. They said…what was going to happen. There were judges, but they told the judges what to do, too.”
“Denmark. So it didn’t happen here.”
“No. But plenty worse things happened here.”
“Okay. Go on…”
“A young man was accused of burning down a barn of the biggest landowner of all, at some distance from his main house-sort of a second big spread. Two men who worked there and had a grudge against the boy said they had seen him do it. The boy maintained his innocence. There was no right way to know.”
“How old was he?”
“Um...I’d guess, a couple years younger than you,”
“So...”
“So the boy’s mother, a widow, came to the landowner, and begged him not to have her son sent away to prison, or killed. She said he would never burn a barn, and he hadn’t burnt the landowner’s. She had been crying for days, and he could hardly understand her. She was little and old. They were standing in his rye field, and this gave him an idea.”
“Rich men shouldn’t be allowed them things,” said Jack, with surprising acuity for his age.
“He says, ‘Anne-Marie, if you can mow this acre of rye,’ he made a circle with his hand, ‘between sunrise and sundown tomorrow, your son shall go free.’”
“No SHIT! But-one little old woman-a whole acre...”
“The landowner thought that people laboring for the person they love most could sometimes do extraordinary things, though the field would normally take three strong men a full day to mow. He was…curious. The boy was her only son, and she was determined to save him. Besides, maybe he was her only source of livelihood.”
“What was his name?”
“Um...Goske.”
“I shoulda known better than t’ask. But the boss guy-how could he be so mean and hard? Sound like my old…nevermind…” Jack looked solemn. “Go ‘head.”
“She kisses his boot to thank him-he’s on horseback-comes at sunrise the next day. You understand ‘to mow’ meant to take a sickle and cut all the ripe rye off, to harvest it a handful at a time.”
“GodDAMN…”
“She has a good sharp sickle, and all her friends follow her as she moves through the field, giving her encouragement to her, and right behind her walks a man chosen by the landowner, to see that she does the work right and isn’t helped.”
“Her friends couldn’t help none?”
“No. She had to do it all herself.”
“Okay. That’s about the worst fuck of a bastard I EVER heard of. He’s goin’ to take her son’s life, but he’ll switch for hers…GodDAMN.”
“So at noon, she’s a little more than half through. The rye field is full of people, watching, talking. It’s the first day of harvest, but nobody’s working. They’re all watching Anne-Marie.”
“Everone starts harvest on the same day?”
“Yes. They try to remind her to stop, to drink and rest, but she stops only a moment to have someone pour water into her mouth-grabbing the next handful of rye and cutting it off is all she’s thinking about. She’s smiling a little.”
“Why’s she smiling?”
“Oh, that’s the deep stuff. All through the story, the old man’s nephew hears this little French song in his head his aunt sang for him-and at the end, it makes him pity everyone: himself, the old lady, her son and the old landowner, his uncle. It sort of justifies what Anne-Marie is doing:
To die for the one you love
is a labor too sweet for words
Jack brushed his eyes, and croaked, “You mean, because she wanted to do it, because she loved him, it was the right thing t’do?”
“Maybe. Maybe everyone was just doing what he had to do, in the way their lives were set out.”
“But the old man, he could have changed it.”
Jim continued. “So her son walks with her all afternoon-they had let him out of the locked room he’d been confined in, so he could be with her. And just as the last rays of the sun are disappearing, she comes to the end of the field. She doesn’t know. She reaches for another handful of rye, but there’s nothing there. Her son takes the sickle from her hands, and holds her as she slumps to the ground. Everyone is yelling at her that she’s finished, that she succeeded, but only when her son says it does her face show any understanding. He buries his face in her hair, and her head cloth. Then a woman takes the old lady from her son, and looks at her. ‘She’s dead,’ the woman says. The boy starts sobbing.”
Jack brushed his eyes again with his hand. He was quiet for a few minutes. “They really done stuff like that?”
“Yes, until reform laws were passed, and the rights of the country nobility to order everyone around went away.”
Jack was thinking. “If I ever did a big wrong thing-I…can’t think what it would be-I’d BEG my momma not to do it-I’d BEG her… Did her son tell her not to?”
“No, not at first, He wanted to live. But in the afternoon, when they let him walk with her, he started feeling how much he cared for her-and thought, like you do-why must she do it?”
“MUST she do it?”
“Yes. The story teller says, maybe it is Anne-Marie’s destiny to do this, to die for the person she loves. Just like it’s the landowner’s destiny to act like he’s an uncaring God.”
Jack wiped his eyes on his arm. “But why wasn’t it the landowner’s destiny to change his friggin’ mind?” He tried to laugh.
“The landowner said, ‘Anne-Marie would not respect me if I called off our bargain at the last minute…’ That’s the way they were, then. And the nephew thinking everyone should be pitied because it’s just the way life was planned for them-that’s just his way of making it okay for him to go on loving his uncle. That’s what I think, anyway.”
“Oh shit.” Jack took another bite of sandwich. It was like dust and ashes in his mouth.
“To die for the one you love
is a labor too sweet for words,” recited Jack, with no effort and little thought.
“Whadaya think, Jack?” asked Jim.
“Mm. I dunno ‘bout that. Maybe later sometime.” He laughed “Let’s do it tomorrow.”
“Got whiskey back at the tent,” said Jim, but he did not laugh.
“Now that’s a true blessing,” said Jack, getting up after one last swig at his canteen, and replacing his nose plugs.
A week later, Jim and Jack lay on and under their blankets, the fire shadow from the sheep, wood and gasoline fire flickering over their faces, as far away as they though it safe to be. The sheep, unwilling even to acknowledge the bodies of their fellows, had at first responded as every animal does to fire: they spooked. The first night, they’d used the dogs, their horses, and all their coaxing to get them settled down, as far from the pile as possible, but still within sight. They milled and bleated a long time, but finally accepted that this, too, was to be part of their world which would have to be ignored, like the rest of it.
Jack picked up the whiskey flask, and took a pull. “Man, if I ever come back here, there’s going to be plenty of whiskey with me, dead sheep or no dead sheep.”
“It helps deaden the smell, doesn’t it?” said Jim.
“And other things.”
“Like what?”
“Was that the very end of the story?”
“No. Later, the landowner had a stone set in the field, with a sickle carved on it.”
“Why?”
“Cause he was the kind of god,” Jim smiled, “who likes to do things right.”
“Right,” Jack smiled too.
“And for the rest of time, the field was known as ‘Sorrow Acre,’ long after the woman and her son, and the landowner were forgotten."
“Will you thank Jacob…is that what you call him?"
“All the time. Always Jacob.”
“Thank him for lending you to me?”
Jim laughed. “I’ll have to think about that…maybe I will.”
Jack cleared his throat. “When you and him …make love…d’you ever switch around?”
“All the time….about,” Jim said, casually, with a mischievous smile, “fifty different ways.”
“FIFTY DIFFERENT WAYS!”
“About…”
“I dunno...but I was wondering...”
“Were ye now?”
“Yeah.”
“If I’d like to get fucked in the ass? I’d love it.”
“Didja bring the toothpaste?”
“Toothp…oh yeah. Here ‘tis.”
Jack scooched down till his face was at Jim’s clavicle, and then reached up, kissed him thoroughly, at the same time feeling the cleft in his buttocks. When he ran into his big tailbone, he said, “You really are a bag a bones.” Jim was too interested to notice the insult.
It was fun that way too. But not as much fun, Jack privately thought to himself. Jack privately thought that might be everyone’s private feeling…but who was he to know?
“Jack.”
“What?”
“I loved that.”
“Shut up, ‘n stop makin’ fun of me,” said Jack, got up, and kicked him lightly through the blankets where he figured his left hip would be…then he kissed him, and went to put a few more pieces of wood on the sheep pile, and squirt more gasoline, high up, and underneath, where the wood bed was hottest. When he got back, Jim was a flickering mass of sleeping giant.
Jim left camp before Jack, promising to sing Jack’s praises to Aguirre. They embraced each other, Jim holding Jack’s head against his chest, and Jack encircling the same chest lower down with his arms. Jack laughed, “Everthin’ I do with you, I should do lyin’ down, cause otherwise, I’m always lookin’ at your chest.” Maybe someday... he’d move to Denver.
“..And maybe not,” he said, realistically, to himself.
“ If you ever figure out about brown eyes, let me know,” said Jim, as he rode off, leading the two mules he had brought.
“Will do,” said Jack. “Bye, teacher.”
“You are a labor too sweet for words, Jack,” he called back, getting the last word, after all.
When his mother met him at the front door at Lightning Flat, he felt keenly the sadness that had lain on him ever since Jim had told him the ‘Sorrow Acre’ story. He loved his mother dearly, but couldn’t do much to help her, for instance, against his dad. Impulsively, he gathered her in his arms and hugged her hard. “Hey, momma,” he said.
“MY! What got into you?” Jack thought there must be some way to control a blush, something he would master soon.
I had a…whatdayacallit...a catastrophe. Lightnin’ killed 42 of the sheep. A schoolteacher man came up to help me burn them, and he told me an old story about somebody’s mom, like you, but much older. I kept thinking, I missed you.”
“I guess we’re taking turns.”
“Turns?”
“Blushing.”
Oh God, she had noticed…
After a week, when Jack’s mother was changing the family sheets, she noticed, for the first time, that Jack’s bottom sheet was as stiff as a washboard…what was it she’d said that made Jack blush? Oh yes:
“MY, what got into you?”
Jack had told her a little of the ‘Sorrow Acre’ story. She liked the words Sorrow Acre, and had thought often of the old woman in the head cloth, who kept reaching for more rye, even after it was gone, to save her son, until she died. From the intensity with which Jack told her the story, and the way his speech changed when he spoke of Jim, she figured, he must be a pretty special person. Be that as it may, it did not seem to her, she thought, that picking the corn from even three acres in one day would do much to change the way of Jack’s life. God, let it be easier than I reckon it will be, she asked.
In February, John Twist came in with the mail and announced, “Jack got a postcard from Denver.”
“Oh, that’s where the schoolteacher lives, the one that helped him burn the sheep.”
“What’s his name?” asked John, suspicious as always.
“Ji-I’m not sure. What does it say?
“It says, ‘You’re welcome.’ And its signed ‘Jacob.’”
“That’s it…that’s his name. OH!”
“What, for Christ’s sake?”
“You didn’t say he got a beautiful postcard,” and she took it from her husband’s hand. Four white and gray horses pranced, pawed and floated in a blue and golden sky, yoked loosely together by an invisible bond, followed by an amorphous chariot, of pink and light brown, white. Below, a defeated green serpent writhed. ‘Chariot of Apollo, 1905-1914, Odilon Redon,’ she read.
“Well, that’s it,” said John Twist.
"Jack?”
“Yes, momma?”
“Didn’t you say that school teacher’s name was Jim?”
“Yes, momma.”
She handed him the postcard. He spent two minutes looking at the painting, before he turned it over. “Who’s Apollo? Oh-I remember-he’s the sun god, and he pulls it around the earth every day. Omygosh. It’s Jacob. ‘You’re welcome.’” Jack laughed, delighted, without giving any thought to the possible significance of his mother’s handing him the card with a question.
“He’s a friend of Jim’s,” said Jack, “He’s a teacher, too.” He looked up at her, with a slight effort not to smile too much, his great eyes brimming with mirth.
“You know what it means when someone says, ‘you’ve got a hard row to hoe?’” Her eyes were serious. She wasn’t smiling.
“ ‘Course I do…I’m not an id-” then he saw that she’d turned away, and was dusting something that didn’t need dusting. “Yes, momma. I do.” He thought of the “row” his mother had mentioned, the row of life, and thought, too of the word “mowing.” for some reason. In spite of the joyous laughter of a few minutes ago, Jack was not quite the happy fellow he’d been when Jim called back to him ‘You’re a labor too sweet for words, Jack,’ last September. Since then, there’d been nobody but-himself. Momma-she always knew everything. He knew of course about his sheets-well, he couldn’t do anything about that-how would it look if he got up every morning and washed them, hung them on the line? He supposed the postcard had helped. He had forgotten the blush, but even if he had remembered it, the feat would have seemed little short of miraculous to him. Momma: the only things she don’t know haven’t happened yet, he thought, with a ghost of his earlier laughter.. At least, there was someone close to him with whom he silently shared a bit of himself.
His pickup just barely made it to Aguirre’s trailer the next May, dying where he parked it. Standing against the wall by the steps was a beautiful Brown Man-not his skin-everything else. His hair, his eyes, his boots, his jacket-canvas?-with a darker brown collar, and the narrow braid around the base of the crown of his off-white hat. He had been looking out into space when Jack alighted, giving his truck a kick to let it know he didn’t like things that died, but when Jack started walking toward him, he lowered his head, so that his hat brim covered the visibility of his face-he didn’t want to be bothered. Could he think they were both here for the same job? Not likely. Jack certainly knew better. He looked out over the desolate landscape, the railroad tracks, and an old, rusted pickup truck (“At least mine’s better than that,” he thought.). Then he returned his eyes to the Brown Man, draped his body against the side of his truck, looked, and kept looking. He looked down and pursed his lips, then continued looking. The Brown Man wouldn’t know because he was looking at the sidewalk in front if him. He had an equally brown paper bag with him, probably holding everything he owned. Jack took out his razor, and began shaving in the truck’s rearview mirror, up around where sideburns would be if he had grown some, but he angled the mirror so he could look at the Brown Man, now sitting on the steps. Aguirre drove up, and went inside, without acknowledging either of them, sending the Brown Man scrambling to get out of his way. Shortly he stuck his head out, and told both of them to come in.
While Aguirre talked, the Brown Man-whose hair looked even nicer with his hat off-kept his eyes mainly on Aguirre, so Jack could look some more. Without long lashes, or a sweet-lipped mouth, his face was both young and beautiful. Did the Brown Man also look at him once? Jack wasn’t sure. He heard what he had suspected: he was asked to sleep in a pup tent, by the sheep, only eating his meals in camp. He nodded, displeased. At least, the two of them would be there all summer. Perhaps he would yet find out-how brown eyes worked…
Aguirre dismissed them without a word, and both stepped out onto the front steps. Jack, a step higher, sensed that both were not only about the same size, though the Brown Man was more muscular, but about the same age as well. “Jack Twist,” he said, holding his hand out.
“Ennis,” said the other, grasping it, finally looking into his eyes, friendly, if not smiling. A good-sized jolt went through Jack’s body; he knew better than to show it at all.
Ennis put Aguirre’s watch, which he’d been trying to put on when Jack stuck his hand out, in his pocket.
“Your folks just stop at Ennis?” said Jack, friendly, animated.
Ennis looked down, “Del Mar,” he said.
“Nice to know you, Ennis Del Mar,” Jack said, but this time the brown eyes looked into the distance. Suddenly the little song that echoed through ‘Sorrow Acre’ fell into his mind, for no reason at all:
To die for the one you love
Is a labor too sweet for words
He shook his head, literally, to rid himself of the verse, and started talking to Ennis about the bar he had seen down the street, when he drove up.
Author’s Note: The story, “Sorrow Acre,” is by Isaak Dinesen, in Winter’s Tales, copyright 1942.