Tom

The Honest Season

Chapter 8: Tom

They met at a dance in Sidney in the fall of 1988. The dance was at the Richland County Fairgrounds, the metal building, the building that held the livestock show in July and the 4-H exhibits in August and the community dances on Saturday nights from September through May, the building that smelled like straw and animals and the particular sweetness of a concrete floor that had been cleaned with bleach and that held, beneath the bleach, the memory of every animal that had stood on it and every dancer who had danced on it and every event that the building had contained in its steel walls and its metal roof.

Ruth was twenty. She was Ruth Lindquist then, Arvid's granddaughter, daughter of Harold and Vivian Lindquist, who farmed 960 acres south of Culbertson, the original Lindquist place, the place that Arvid broke in 1938 and that Harold expanded in 1965. She was twenty and she was home from college — Montana State, Bozeman, where she was studying agronomy, the science of crops, the formal version of the knowledge she had been acquiring informally since she was old enough to ride in the tractor cab, since she was old enough to hold a handful of soil and feel its texture and begin the lifelong conversation with the ground.

Tom was twenty-two. He was Tom Enger, Carl and Maryann's son, the only son, the son who would inherit the operation, the son whose future was determined by his birth the way the crop's future is determined by the planting — the seed goes into a particular piece of ground and the ground determines what the seed becomes, and Tom went into the Enger place and the Enger place determined what Tom became, which was a farmer, which was a mechanic, which was a man who worked with his hands and with the ground and who understood both.

He asked her to dance. This is the fact. The fact is simple and the simplicity is deceptive because the simplicity contains the entirety of what followed — the marriage, the children, the thirty-three years, the barn, the wrench, the Tuesday in January, the everything. He asked her to dance and she said yes and the yes was the beginning of the everything and the beginning was a two-step on a concrete floor in a metal building in Sidney, Montana, on a Saturday night in September of 1988.

He was tall. Six-one. He had the Enger build — broad shoulders, long arms, the frame that was designed for work, for lifting, for the reaching and the pulling and the turning that farm work required. His hands were large. His hands were already calloused at twenty-two, already marked by the tools and the work that he had been doing since he was fourteen, the calluses that would deepen and harden over the next thirty-three years until his hands were instruments, were the specialized tools of a man who fixed everything and who fixed it by touch, by feel, by the sensitivity that lived beneath the calluses the way the topsoil lived beneath the stubble — protected, insulated, more alive for being covered.

She felt his hands when they danced. She felt the right hand on her back, the pressure of his palm between her shoulder blades, the pressure that was firm without being forceful, the pressure that said: I am leading but I am not pushing, I am guiding but I am not controlling, the distinction between leading and controlling that some men understood and some men did not and that Tom understood at twenty-two because Tom understood tools and a partner is not a tool, a partner is a hand holding a tool, and the hand must be respected.

His left hand held her right hand. The grip was dry, warm, the grip of a hand that did not sweat, that did not tremble, that held her hand the way it held a wrench — with confidence, with the certainty that the thing in his hand was the right thing and the holding was the right holding and the work they were doing together, which was dancing, which was the two-step, which was the movement of two bodies in coordination, was work, was the same kind of work that farming was, the coordinated effort of two people moving in the same direction at the same speed toward the same destination.

They danced three dances. The two-step. A waltz. Another two-step. The music was a four-piece band from Glasgow, the kind of band that played the Richland County Fairgrounds on Saturday nights — guitar, fiddle, bass, drums, the instrumentation of rural Montana, the sound of the country that was not Nashville country but was actual country, the sound of people who lived in the country and who played the music that the country produced, the music of distance and wind and the long drive home and the work waiting in the morning.

He drove her home. He drove her home in his truck, the Ford F-150, the truck that was not the Peterbilt, the truck that was his personal vehicle, the truck that smelled like diesel and hay and the aftershave he had put on for the dance, the aftershave that was Old Spice because Old Spice was what Carl used and what Tom used and what every Enger man used, the scent of a family that did not experiment with cologne.

He parked in the Lindquist driveway. He did not get out. He did not walk her to the door. This was not rudeness. This was the custom. A man drove a woman home and the woman got out and the man waited until the woman was inside and the light came on and then the man drove away, and the not-walking-to-the-door was not indifference but was respect, was the giving of space, was the understanding that a woman who had just danced with a stranger did not need the stranger standing on her porch.

"I liked the dancing," he said.

"I did too," she said.

"Can I call you?" he said.

"You can call me," she said.

He called on Tuesday. She remembered this. She remembered that he called on Tuesday and not on Monday because Monday would have been eager and Thursday would have been indifferent and Tuesday was the day that said: I am interested but I am not desperate, I have been thinking about you but I have also been working, the balance between interest and independence that Tuesday represented.

They went to dinner on Friday. Dinner at the Stockman in Culbertson, the bar that served steaks and burgers and the particular menu of a small-town bar in eastern Montana — fried food, beef, potatoes, the food of farming, the food that fueled the work. They sat in a booth. They ate steaks. They talked about wheat and soil and the Enger operation and the Lindquist operation and the things that farmers' children talk about when they meet, which are the things that their parents talk about, which are the things that the land talks about, which are yield and moisture and price and the particular quality of the light in September when the wheat is golden and the combine is running and the world is the most beautiful and the most exhausting it will ever be.

Tom laughed. His laugh was the thing. His laugh was the thing that Ruth did not expect and that she could not have anticipated and that changed the dinner from a meal into a beginning. His laugh was low, was a rumble, was the sound that a diesel engine makes when it is idling, the idle that is not silence but is readiness, the low frequency that says the engine is on and the engine is warm and the engine is prepared to do whatever the engine is asked to do. His laugh was that sound. His laugh was readiness. His laugh was the sound of a man who found the world amusing and who expressed the amusement through a sound that began in his chest and traveled up through his throat and emerged as a warmth, a vibration, the vibration that Ruth felt across the table the way she felt the vibration of the tractor through the seat, the vibration that said: this is running, this is alive, this is the sound of a thing that works.

She would hear that laugh for thirty-three years. She would hear it in the barn and in the kitchen and in the truck and in the bed and in the field. She would hear it when he told her about the calf that escaped through the fence and ran three miles down the county road. She would hear it when she burned the Thanksgiving turkey in 2004. She would hear it when David, at fourteen, backed the grain truck into the fence post and cracked the taillight. She would hear it and each hearing would confirm the thing that the first hearing established, which was that this man's laugh was the sound of home, was the frequency of belonging, was the vibration that anchored her to this place and this life.

She would not hear it again. This was the thing about the laugh. The laugh was gone. The laugh was as gone as Tom was gone, was as absent as his hands and his presence and the way he walked the fields at dusk, the dusk walk that he did every evening in the growing season, the walk that was not inspection but was communion, the walking of a man through the wheat he had planted, the man touching the heads with his hands as he walked, the hands brushing the wheat the way a man brushes the hair of a child, with tenderness that is not spoken but is physical, is the body's statement of care.

They married in June of 1990. They married at the Lutheran church in Culbertson, the church where Ruth would sit on Sunday mornings for the next thirty-six years, the church where Tom's funeral would be held on a Thursday in January three years ago, the church that held the beginning and the ending of the marriage in its wooden pews, the same pews, the same light through the same windows, the same hymns.

The early years were hard. The early years of a farm marriage are always hard because the farm is already established and the marriage must fit itself into the farm the way a new bearing must fit itself into an old housing — precisely, with no gap, with the tolerance that the machinery requires, the tolerance that the marriage must achieve or the machinery will vibrate and the vibration will become a failure.

They fought about money. They fought about money because there was not enough money and because the not-enough was chronic, was the condition of a young couple taking over a farm operation that was leveraged and under-capitalized and that required the income of two people and the labor of three and that provided the income of one and a half. They fought in the kitchen, at the ash table, with the ledger between them, the ledger that showed the numbers and the numbers were the argument and the argument was not about love or compatibility or the thousand things that marriages are supposed to be about. The argument was about whether they could afford a new set of openers for the drill or whether they could sharpen the old ones for another year, and the sharpening was the answer because the sharpening was $400 and the new openers were $4,000 and the $3,600 difference was the margin, the margin that was the space between viable and not viable, the space in which they lived.

They stopped fighting in the fifth year. They stopped not because the money improved — the money did not improve until 1998, when wheat prices spiked — but because they learned the thing that long marriages learn, which is that the fighting is not about the thing you are fighting about. The fighting is about the fear. The fear that the farm will fail. The fear that the marriage will fail. The fear that the work will not be enough and the enough will not arrive and the arriving will not come in time. They learned that the fighting was fear and they learned to be afraid together instead of being afraid at each other and the together-afraid was the partnership, was the foundation, was the thing that the marriage became after the fighting stopped.

Tom's hands. She returns to his hands because his hands were the thing she knew best, the thing she touched most, the thing she held every night in bed when they fell asleep, the habit of reaching across the mattress and finding his hand and holding it, not gripping, not squeezing, just holding, the way you hold a tool you are not using but that you want to know the location of, the tool that you keep in your hand because the hand feels wrong without it.

His hands changed over the years. The calluses deepened. The knuckles enlarged. The skin thickened. The scars accumulated — the scar on the left index finger from the table saw in 2001, the scar on the right thumb from the baling wire in 1995, the scar across the back of the right hand from the corn head in 2008, the scars that were the record of the work, the permanent notation that the body kept, the accounting of every tool that slipped and every wire that cut and every sharp edge that the hand encountered in thirty-three years of fixing and building and maintaining.

She knew his hands in the dark. She knew them by touch, by the geography of the calluses and the scars, the way she knew Section 12 by the geography of the low spots and the high spots. She could find his hands in the dark the way she could find the light switch in the kitchen, by memory, by the spatial knowledge that the body accumulates when the body lives in the same house for thirty-three years.

His hands were gone now. His hands were in the cemetery in Culbertson, in the casket, in the ground. The ground held Tom's hands the way the ground held the seed — in the dark, in the quiet, in the permanent stillness of a thing that has been planted and that will not grow.

But the ground also held the work that Tom's hands did. The ground held the fences he built and the bins he welded and the barn he maintained and the 2,400 acres he cultivated and the thirty-three years of labor that his hands performed on the surface of the earth that now held his hands beneath its surface. The ground held the work and the work was permanent, was the mark that Tom left, the mark that did not require a headstone or an inscription because the mark was the farm itself, the operating farm, the functional system of land and machinery and buildings that Tom's hands created and that Ruth's hands maintained and that Hector's hands served.

The ghost. Tom was the ghost. Tom was the ghost in the barn and the ghost in the kitchen and the ghost in the bed and the ghost in the field, the ghost that haunted every acre Ruth worked, the ghost that was present in every pass of the drill and every pass of the combine and every walk through the wheat, the ghost that she could not see and could not hear and could not touch but that she felt, the way she felt the weather change before the weather changed, the way she felt the soil temperature through her boot soles, the way she felt the things that could not be measured but that were real.

Tom at dusk. She saw him at dusk. She saw him walking the fields at dusk, the silhouette of a tall man in a wheat field, the man moving through the canopy, the hands brushing the heads, the walk that had no purpose except the purpose of being in the wheat at the end of the day, the purpose of touching the thing you grew, the purpose of the daily communion between farmer and crop that Tom performed every evening and that Ruth now performed every evening, the walk that she inherited from him the way she inherited the farm, by continuation, by the doing of the thing that the dead person did, the doing that was not imitation but was love, was the form that love took when the person you loved was gone and the only way to be near them was to do what they did in the place where they did it.

She walked the fields at dusk. She touched the wheat. She felt the heads under her hands. She felt Tom's hands in the wheat, the ghost hands, the hands that had touched these fields for thirty-three years and that continued to touch them through Ruth's hands, the continuity of touch that was the continuity of the farm, the continuity that the offer threatened, the continuity that September first would either confirm or end.

Tom would not have sold. Ruth knew this. Tom would not have sold for $4.2 million or $42 million or any number, because Tom did not think in numbers, Tom thought in systems, Tom thought in the order of the pegboard and the arrangement of the barn and the sequence of the season, and the selling would have been a disorder, a disarrangement, a breaking of the sequence that Tom could not have tolerated, the way a musician cannot tolerate a broken chord, the way a carpenter cannot tolerate an unplumb wall.

But Tom was not here to sell or not sell. Tom was here the way the weather was here — as a condition, as a presence, as the thing that Ruth worked within. Tom was the ghost and the ghost was the climate of Ruth's life, the background condition against which every decision was made, the persistent presence that colored everything the way the light colored the wheat, giving it gold in the morning and green at noon and amber at dusk.

She did not make decisions based on the ghost. She did not consult the ghost. She did not stand at the pegboard and ask the wrench what Tom would have done. She made her own decisions. She had always made her own decisions, even when Tom was alive, even when the marriage was a partnership and the decisions were shared. The sharing was a process of two people arriving at the same conclusion independently and the arriving was the decision and the decision was theirs, jointly, the way the harvest was theirs, jointly, the product of two people working the same ground toward the same end.

Now the arriving was hers alone. Now the conclusion was hers alone. Now the decision about the offer and the land and the future was made by one person, not two, and the one was Ruth and Ruth would make it honestly, with the season's teaching, with the ground's answer, with the knowledge that Tom was in the field and Tom was in the barn and Tom was in the kitchen and Tom was everywhere and Tom was nowhere and the everywhere and the nowhere were the same thing, were the condition of grief, were the condition of a woman who had loved a man for thirty-three years and who had lost him in the barn with a wrench in his hand and who continued to farm the land they farmed together because the farming was the marriage and the marriage was the farming and the two could not be separated.

She sat on the porch. She drank her tea. She looked at the fields. The fields that Tom walked. The fields that Tom planted. The fields that Tom died seven miles from, in the barn, at 2:15 on a Tuesday in January.

The fields did not know about Tom. The fields knew about seed and moisture and temperature and the three conditions of growth. The fields did not grieve. The fields did not remember. The fields did the thing the fields did, which was grow wheat when wheat was planted and lie fallow when wheat was not planted and receive the rain and endure the heat and produce the yield and the yield was honest and the honesty did not include sentiment.

Ruth's honesty included sentiment. Ruth's honesty included Tom. Ruth's honesty was the honesty of a woman who loved a man and lost a man and who continued to work the land the man worked because the working was the loving and the loving was the working and the two were the same act performed by the same hands in the same fields under the same sky.

She went inside. She washed her cup. She went to bed. She lay in the cottonwood bed. She reached across the mattress. Her hand found the empty space. The space was cool. The space was the size of a man. The space was Tom's and it would always be Tom's and the always was the thing, the permanent thing, the thing that the season could not change and the offer could not buy and the ground could not hold, because the ground held Tom's body but the ground did not hold Tom's space in the bed, the space that Ruth reached for every night, the reaching that was habit and was love and was grief and was the honest reckoning of a woman with the absence that defined her.

Rust breathed on the floor. The house creaked. The fields held their seed.

Tom was everywhere. Tom was nowhere.

Ruth closed her eyes.