Audio: David Means reads.
They dropped late in the morning and then sat for an hour silently waiting for the kick in Billy’s boarding-house room, the grove of aspen trees on the edge of the field outside quivering in the summer breeze. The house was situated along the old road to the beach, not much more than ten miles from Lake Michigan. Inside, she sat looking at the poster Billy had tacked to the wall: a cartoon figure with a big leg extended, presenting an oversized shoe and, below the heel, the words “Keep On Truckin’.” She was waiting for it to move, which it did, eventually, dancing in a way that seemed remorseful, trying to lure her in, until it turned into an aberration that somehow mirrored Billy himself, thinning out into a slim boy, with a never-ending array of plans, brilliant with his own energies, performing a little gyrating dance—the heavy shoes falling away, becoming dainty little feet (because Billy did have small feet), the hand waving at her to come on in, to join the fun, the way you’d expect an older man to lure a girl in—and she was a kid that summer, just sixteen, and Billy was at least nineteen and, unbeknownst to either of them at the time, about to head off to war.
Billy held himself over her dramatically, tossing back his hair, gazing with his blue eyes, giving out a single hootlike laugh when he came. When he was in bed, and high, he was a gentle and beautiful boy, with a faraway look in his eyes, and irresistible sandy-blond hair, long and tangled. (Some said he looked a little bit like Jim Morrison, but, really, the resemblance lay in the way he moved, suddenly swaying his hips in his leather pants, radiating a charisma that seemed on the very edge of violence, launching into fits of jubilation.) Part of what held her in his thrall, she’d later think, was the way he seemed able to grapple time into submission by proposing schemes; he operated on constant speculation, always heading into the future, and that night after they made love, as they came down from their highs, he flipped onto his side and began talking about reality, about prospects for cash, about keeping their experiment—as he called it—in alternative consciousness up and running and financially viable.
She listened as plans emerged from Billy in soliloquies that sometimes lasted for hours: he rambled on about a sad gas station—the kind with old pumps and a grease pit—he might rob outside Alpena. A package store near Benton Harbor, set back among weeping willows, that was dying for a stickup. A blueberry farm near the Indiana border that would offer easy pickings if they were ever blighted with hunger. He spoke of these plans using the words he had acquired during his year at a prep school out East before he’d returned home to work for a year at Checker Cab. As he liked to explain it, he had come home and begged his parents to disown him, saying, Please, please, let me go, cast me out, I beg of you, go down to the police station and list me as incorrigible, if you do anything. I’ve always wanted to be incorrigible. Do it for the sake of our lineage, for the entire family right down the line. Cast me out in honor of the toil and tribulation of our forefathers. In honor of the original Miles Thomas, who never foresaw a guy like me, a long-haired hippie. Not in his wildest fantasies.
Beside her that night, in bed, he began to talk out his latest scheme: My Uncle Rex and Aunt Minerva were farmers, he said. But now they live in the city of Lansing. We’ll distract my uncle, get him talking, and I’ll go up and get the box of cash he has up there under the floorboards, the old farm money he just doesn’t have the heart to spend. Money that came from the soil, and all that, because he lost his farm a few years back and he’s still not over it, so it’s just sitting there, with no real use.
She listened and sank deeper into the bed, wondering how they’d pull up and away from the coziness of the room, with the darkness outside and dawn scratching at the horizon. Eventually, they found the energy, got up and pulled on their jeans, got dressed, and scrawled a note for the landlord: Dear Dan: Went on an adventure to re-establish our funds. We will be returning by evening, and upon our return we will be fully equipped to reimburse you for the back rent. Faithfully yours, Meg and Billy.
When they got to Lansing the sun still wasn’t up, and the heavy government buildings were straining to materialize out of the dark, their white limestone walls emitting an eerie iridescence while a few sad orphaned houses stood nearby, shabby and out of place, shedding shingles and curlicues of lead paint. Billy’s uncle lived in one of these, just down from the Board of Water & Light building, on a plot of land held above the sidewalk by a crumbling retaining wall.
I’m really not sure about this, she told Billy as they swung up the driveway and spotted a brutal-looking farm implement, hook-shaped blades attached to a long wooden handle, leaning against the side of the house. She stared at it and glanced around for signs of movement. Billy looked the house over, took a drag on his cigarette, and began to explain: We’re not going to steal, if that’s what you’re thinking. You’ve got to understand that. We’re not the types to go in and take something from old folks, not at all. We’re upstanding end-of-the-era hippies who just need some help, that’s all, so look at it like that, Meg, look at it like a simple thing, like seesawing, or jumping jacks, or doing cartwheels. We’re not going to upset the status quo, because money passed between family members sustains stability.
Billy would’ve gone on that way if she’d let him, waxing philosophical, bending the truth, trying to fit the round peg of their need into the square hole of his uncle’s life, so finally she said, Let’s go on in and say hello, and she got out of the car, closed the door softly, and went up to the front porch.
At the front door, he had his knife out and was sliding it around the latch, flicking it urgently, until there was a click and the latch gave, opening into a stale darkness, a vestibule filled with the smell of wet wool, rubbing ointments, dust, moth flakes, and furnace oil. A door led to a large hall with a stairway that went up past a stained-glass window. They stood for a moment at the foot of the stairs, listening to the silence of sleeping inhabitants, until Billy called up, saying, Uncle Rex? Aunt Minerva, Uncle Rex, Aunt Minerva? From upstairs there came a grunt, the clearing of phlegm, a cough or two, more grunting, and then a voice that said, Who’s that? Who’s there? It was a tart, central-Michigan, farmhand voice, confined within the nose. (Meg didn’t know it at the time, but she was hearing the intonations of a widower, the voice you’d hear from someone interrogating himself in the mirror with total contempt: a voice that made complete sense when the old man finally came down the stairs, dressed in a tattered old maroon robe, and presented a toothless mouth set in a gaunt face. Staying on the bottom step, he looked at Billy, coughed twice, and said, What the hell do you want from me?)
Billy tossed the hair out of his eyes and said, We were just in the neighborhood and thought we’d pay a friendly visit to say hello and see how you were and how the crops are this year.
A look of thoughtfulness entered the old man’s face, and while his lips mulled his answer he went to the window, parted the curtains, and gazed up at the sky visible between the buildings.
Since when did you ever give a damn about farming?
I’ve got farm blood and a farming soul, Uncle Rex, Billy said. So get the coffee going and then come back to the parlor and fill me in on the details, give me a complete crop report, the whole thing, right down to the latest commodity update, or whatever. I’m eager to hear. Meg wants to hear, too. There’s nothing like farming. It’s the only respectable profession left, that’s for sure, and there are plenty who are returning to the soil, Uncle Rex. You know me well enough to know I’ve got farm blood. I’ll buy that farm back, rebuild it, and get it up and running again. You won’t have to do a thing but sit in your chair on the front porch and give me occasional advice.
Uncle Rex went down the hall to the kitchen and began banging around making coffee while they stood in the parlor amid the clutter of knickknacks and tchotchkes, old souvenirs from across the country, spoons and miniature statues, a plate that said “Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln Birthplace” above an etching of a log cabin; another plate that said “Virginia” below a gold-leaf miniature of Monticello; a horseshoe from Wisconsin with the words “Good Luck.” At the windows, heavy drapes held back the dawn light. A velour love seat, two small straight-backed chairs, and, in the corner, against the wall, a pump organ.
Billy looked at the pump organ, said, Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Then he sat down and began pedalling, filling the bladder with air until the instrument was wheezing and panting. He continued pumping, throwing his head back dramatically, holding his hands up above the keys until finally he unleashed an organ riff, da da da, da da da dadada, and began singing the Doors’ song “Touch Me,” twisting himself down on the little stool, wagging his head around, consumed with the music.
The percolator is going, the old man said, materializing suddenly in the doorway. The coffee should be ready shortly.
Billy got up and went to him, told him to sit, and then said, What about the farm? Give me the lowdown, please. I need to know everything so I can go and help. I’ll hire out the combining to Hank. I’ll get the whole thing operating, and then I’ll come and get you and Aunt Minnie and bring you over, he said.
Your aunt’s dead, the old man said.
What? Aunt Minerva’s dead?
She died peacefully in her sleep. Last year. I woke up and she was gone.
When, exactly, was this?
I believe it was last July.
Jesus, no one told me a thing, Billy said. I’m sorry. Really, Uncle Rex. I’m out of the loop. I didn’t know or I would’ve come and said a few words at the service or something.
There wasn’t any service, he said. Her ashes are upstairs in the bedroom.
Well, in that case, you just go ahead and give me the skinny on the farm, Billy said. Just lay it all out, Uncle Rex.
The old man cleared his throat and began to speak, going into detail about his farm and its operation and the price of feed corn on the Chicago exchange, and the crooked Detroit bank, and the seven-year drought, starting back in ’51, that caused a plague that spread over the land. As he spoke, a wistful tone entered his voice. You’ll want to rebuild the barn, make it a post-and-beam mortise-and-tenon with queen posts, and don’t put a ridgepole in to support the rafters, you won’t need that, and put plenty of ventilation louvres along the forebay walls, and get one of those steel Martin silos in, too, and maybe a manure-cleaning system, and clear out the burdock growing through the windows, and the stalls will need new railings, and the corn crib needs new chicken wire, and the old wind pump needs lubrication and a new valve, and the tractor needs a new camshaft; you’ll want to intercrop carrots in with the rye and barley, get them in close to protect the young seedlings; and so on and so forth, while out in the kitchen the percolator sputtered.
When Meg got back from the kitchen with the coffee, the old man was sitting alone in the parlor expounding on soil types and the history of soil itself, the glacial loess deposits and how Paw Paw soil was better than the upstate junk spodosol, with a pure O horizon, the best you could hope for. Then he talked about soybean rust and luck farming, as opposed to chance farming, as his father had called it. If someone had been there taking notes, they might’ve reconstructed the farm in its entirety, from the foundation of the farmhouse itself to the rafters of the barn and to the fields, which the old man insisted were square and stately, just outside of Paw Paw, in parcel No. 55, State of Michigan, Van Buren County, a farm that sent its produce to the granary in Dowagiac, which in turn was freighted to the exchange in Chicago, just one more load from the hinterlands thrust into the great maw of commerce. From the way he was talking, it seemed he was determined to unfold the entire history of agriculture from the first primal seed on, because he was still speaking as they left the house, mumbling something about cut nails, circa 1850, and then a few words about the use of clapboard peaks as a way to ward off shingle damage. His voice was bright, happy to be drawing upon past experience, making something from words, at least, detailing the material of his former life while they went out to the car, got in, started the engine, and drove up the wide Lansing streets.
He was still talking while in the car they pried open the cash box and saw the tightly bound stacks of green, neatly arranged, with tags on them that named the years they were earned. Hard-won money that he’d hoarded and hidden away from his creditors at the bank.
That’s wholesome cash, Billy said. It’s money that won’t mind being spent. It’s not from a downer source. It’s not factory money, or slave money. That green came out of the soil itself, the bountiful fucking fruit of Mother Earth. That’s money that came out of sun and sky. There’s no guilt in this money because it’s devoid of weight, he said, as she counted it carefully, leaving the tags on each stack in case they wondered what year they were spending. No, that’s money that came from sunlight and air and dirt, nothing else.
Back in Billy’s room that night, they were speculating about Uncle Rex. Was he still there, ten hours later, in that house in Lansing, continuing to lay out the statistics and data of his farm? Outside, the wind was lifting through the fields, turning up the silvery leaves on the aspens. In the clouds to the west, heat lightning fluttered and laced. All day the heat had thickened. It would break soon. In a few minutes, most certainly, they’d be in the middle of a storm. Everything would cool down and shift.
I think he’s sitting in that parlor in that chair, rattling on. I’m sure of it, Billy said. We got him started, but it was just the beginning. Uncle Rex is a storehouse of wisdom and knowledge on the subject of his farm, he said, leaning down, plucking seeds, rolling joints atop the Hendrix album cover. His idea was to roll twenty fat joints and hand them around in the morning as a good-will gesture, to open up the hearts of his customers. He sprinkled and rolled, sprinkled and rolled, stopping only to lick the papers and to smooth and tighten, working with a fantastic efficiency, cuffing the loose weed with the side of his palm, keeping it neatly in the center of the album cover obscuring the circle with Hendrix and his band.
Yeah, for sure. Uncle Rex is still talking up a storm, but he’s closing in on the end now. He’s getting to the finest of particulars. He’ll be too tired to talk much longer. He’s building up to the grand finale. He’s talking about the financing. About the interest rates, farm subsidies, and the Nixon Administration. He’s talking corn prices in the month of May, the Year of our Lord Nineteen Sixty-one. That’s when it all came down for him. He’s talking up the numbers, big time, and the fact that he had to take out a second mortgage on the farm. Most likely, right about now, he’s getting to the part about walking his property line from point to point, and how he likes to stand there on the western side, at the windbreak of oaks, and connive over how he might force the Nugent farm into a buyout. The old fuck was always trying to buy the Nugent farm. He hated Nugent.
Billy went on like that, expounding on Uncle Rex’s story, until suddenly, through the rattle of his words, it became clear to her (and it did come on like that—a fearsome revelation, a sudden sharp insight that she would carry with her into the future) that he and his uncle had the same habits of mind, the same inclination to fall into a ramble, a widower’s intonations. It wasn’t just the drugs, either. Cosmic forces wouldn’t save him from the kind of fate his uncle had faced, and she felt sure he’d be there, one day, husky-voiced after telling his tale in the same way, going on and on about it for days on end after some fuckups came in to loot his cash box. Instead of farming, he’d be talking about drugs: the price of a lid in Bay City back in the day, dime bags and shortages in the Upper Peninsula; the problems of getting the Detroit supply line going during the aftermath of the riots; how hard it was, back in the mid-seventies, to get a dependable connection in Chicago. He’d be going on in that soft, speculative voice, landing hard on the specifics, the price of STP in the Keweenaw Peninsula; the Traverse City acid freak-out; the Grand Rapids meth crisis; the Gaylord sheriff’s department’s pot bonfire; and he’d mention her, too, little Meg Allen, who got slapped in the face by her mother and took off on an adventure, and he’d say that he had this old lady back then who was useful, businesswise, this girl, just sixteen and in thrall to his body and voice; a girl who made wild love and was pure as soap. Then he’d go deeper into his story, in the most spectacular precision, the way his tongue tasted when he was tripping and the various vagabond colors that came flowering up out of the quaking aspens as they lifted their wet leaves in the lightning.
On the bed that night, as Billy rolled his joints and kept on speaking, ignoring the wind that was swishing the curtains, bringing the smell of the trees and the lake inside, all this became clear. While the stacks of cash on the bed beside her ruffled and the tags—each with a date, 1955, 1959, 1960—fluttered. While his fingers busily swept the pot into little formations. While the breeze tried to brush the pot off Jimi Hendrix’s face and onto the bedspread, she imagined him alone in some dusky house, baking in an eternal heat, in Kansas or Nebraska, hiding out from the law, which had long since stopped looking for him, in an age that was cleaner and tidier, working himself into a fit over what had happened on this day, August 5, 1971. He was alone in that house, without her and without love, trying to reconstruct what was gone while those who had started him speaking in the first place, who had offered up the initial opening question, were long gone with his loot, the earnings of an entire life, heading west toward the California coast, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake, laughing at the image of him back there, somewhere, still rambling on about his life. ♦
