True. But I’d be living instead of just existing, Arlette would be living with me, and Henry wouldn’t be the sullen, anguished, difficult boy he had turned into. The boy who had gotten his friend since childhood into a peck of trouble.
“Well, what do you want to do?” I asked. “I doubt you made this trip with nothing in mind.”
He appeared not to have heard me. He was looking out across the fields to where his new silo stood on the horizon. His face was heavy and sad, but I’ve come too far and written too much to lie; that expression did not move me much. 1922 had been the worst year of my life, one where I’d turned into a man I no longer knew, and Harlan Cotterie was just another washout on a rocky and miserable stretch of road.
“She’s bright,” Harlan said. “Mrs. McReady at school says Shan’s the brightest pupil she’s taught in her whole career, and that stretches back almost 40 years. She’s good in English, and she’s even better in the maths, which Mrs. McReady says is rare in girls. She can do triggeronomy, Wilf. Did you know that? Mrs. McReady herself can’t do triggeronomy.”
No, I hadn’t known, but I knew how to say the word. I felt, however, that this might not be the time to correct my neighbor’s pronunciation.
“Sallie wanted to send her to the normal school in Omaha. They’ve taken girls as well as boys since 1918, although no females have graduated so far.” He gave me a look that was hard to take: mingled disgust and hostility. “The females always want to get married, you see. And have babies. Join Eastern Star and sweep the God damned floor.”
He sighed.
“Shan could be the first. She has the skills and she has the brains. You didn’t know that, did you?”
No, in truth I had not. I had simply made an assumption—one of many that I now know to have been wrong—that she was farm wife material, and no more.
“She might even teach college. We planned to send her to that school as soon as she turned 17.”
Sallie planned, is what you mean, I thought. Left to your own devices, such a crazy idea never would have crossed your farmer’s mind.
“Shan was willing, and the money was put aside. It was all arranged.” He turned to look at me, and I heard the tendons in his neck creak. “It’s still all arranged. But first—almost right away—she’s going to the St. Eusebia Catholic Home for Girls in Omaha. She doesn’t know it yet, but it’s going to happen. Sallie talked about sending her to Deland—Sal’s sister lives there—or to my aunt and uncle in Lyme Biska, but I don’t trust any of those people to carry through on what we’ve decided. Nor does a girl who causes this kind of problem deserve to go to people she knows and loves.”
“What is it you’ve decided, Harl? Besides sending your daughter to some kind of an… I don’t know… orphanage?”
He bristled. “It’s not an orphanage. It’s a clean, wholesome, and busy place. So I’ve been told. I’ve been on the exchange, and all the reports I get are good ones. She’ll have chores, she’ll have her schooling, and in another four months she’ll have her baby. When that’s done, the kid will be given up for adoption. The sisters at St. Eusebia will see to that. Then she can come home, and in another year and a half she can go to teachers’ college, just like Sallie wants. And me, of course. Sallie and me.”
“What’s my part in this? I assume I must have one.”
“Are you smarting on me, Wilf? I know you’ve had a tough year, but I still won’t bear you smarting on me.”
“I’m not smarting on you, but you need to know you’re not the only one who’s mad and ashamed. Just tell me what you want, and maybe we can stay friends.”
The singularly cold little smile with which he greeted this—just a twitch of the lips and a momentary appearance of dimples at the corners of his mouth—said a great deal about how little hope he held out for that.
“I know you’re not rich, but you still need to step up and take your share of the responsibility. Her time at the home—the sisters call it pre-natal care—is going to cost me 300 dollars. Sister Camilla called it a donation when I talked to her on the phone, but I know a fee when I hear one.”
“If you’re going to ask me to split it with you—”
“I know you can’t lay your hands on 150 dollars, but you better be able to lay them on 75, because that’s what the tutor’s going to cost. The one who’s going to help her keep up with her lessons.”
“I can’t do that. Arlette cleaned me out when she left.” But for the first time I found myself wondering if she might’ve socked a little something away. That business about the 200 she was supposed to have taken when she ran off had been a pure lie, but even pin-and-ribbon money would help in this situation. I made a mental note to check the cupboards and the canisters in the kitchen.
“Take another shortie loan from the bank,” he said. “You paid the last one back, I hear.”
Of course he heard. Such things are supposed to be private, but men like Harlan Cotterie have long ears. I felt a fresh wave of dislike for him. He had loaned me the use of his corn harvester and only taken 20 dollars for the use of it? So what? He was asking for that and more, as though his precious daughter had never spread her legs and said come on in and paint the walls.
“I had crop money to pay it back with,” I said. “Now I don’t. I’ve got my land and my house and that’s pretty much it.”
“You find a way,” he said. “Mortgage the house, if that’s what it takes. 75 dollars is your share, and compared to having your boy changing didies at the age of 15, I think you’re getting off cheap.”
He stood up. I did, too. “And if I can’t find a way? What then, Harl? You send the Sheriff?”
His lips curled in an expression of contempt that turned my dislike of him to hate. It happened in an instant, and I still feel that hate today, when so many other feelings have been burned out of my heart. “I’d never go to law on a thing like this. But if you don’t take your share of the responsibility, you and me’s done.” He squinted into the declining daylight. “I’m going. Got to, if I want to get back before dark. I won’t need the 75 for a couple of weeks, so you got that long. And I won’t come dunning you for it. If you don’t, you don’t. Just don’t say you can’t, because I know better. You should have let her sell that acreage to Farrington, Wilf. If you’d done that, she’d still be here and you’d have some money in hand. And my daughter might not be in the fam’ly way.”
In my mind, I pushed him off the porch and jumped on his hard round belly with both feet when he tried to get up. Then I got my hand-scythe out of the barn and put it through one of his eyes. In reality, I stood with one hand on the railing and watched him trudge down the steps.
“Do you want to talk to Henry?” I asked. “I can call him. He feels as bad about this as I do.”
Harlan didn’t break stride. “She was clean and your boy filthied her up. If you hauled him out here, I might knock him down. I might not be able to help myself.”
I wondered about that. Henry was getting his growth, he was strong, and perhaps most important of all, he knew about murder. Harl Cotterie didn’t.
He didn’t need to crank the Nash but only push a button. Being prosperous was nice in all sorts of ways. “75 is what I need to close this business,” he called over the punch and blat of the engine. Then he whirled around the chopping block, sending George and his retinue flying, and headed back to his farm with its big generator and indoor plumbing.
When I turned around, Henry was standing beside me, looking sallow and furious. “They can’t send her away like that.”
So he had been listening. I can’t say I was surprised.
“Can and will,” I said. “And if you try something stupid and headstrong, you’ll only make a bad situation worse.”
“We could run away. We wouldn’t get caught. If we could get away with… with what we did… then I guess I could get away with eloping off to Colorado with my gal.”