Sleet: Selected Stories

Her husband just stared at her. “So hardened,” he thought. “She can’t even cry.” A crying woman is very practical. You can comfort or even forgive a crying woman without losing your dignity. It can even be a somewhat pleasant experience to pour your comfort into the mold of a crying woman. But a laughing woman! A laughing despair! These are simply not legitimate. With a laughing woman there’s nothing you can do … except let her go on laughing … pull the blanket back over your head … turn on your side … go back to sleep.

The Stockholm Car

When you’re the child of a small family farmer, your back grows crooked already at an early age from you trying to bear as much on it as the grown-ups. It’s only fitting that we bear their burdens, seeing as we already wear their outgrown clothes and speak their castoff words. Our haunches burn from the strain of trying to keep pace with their long strides. It’s not easy walking in these grown-up shoes, no sir. But it’s what we’ve got to do, ’cause being children is a choice we’ve never really had.

There’s not much room in our lives for child’s play. Like hired help, it’s a luxury our fathers can’t afford. This is why we’re raised right from the cradle to work the farm. Visitors to the house lean in over us, whispering, “Now this little guy’s got some horsepower in him!” or “There’s as fine a pair of milking hands as I ever saw on this girl!” So on those blue moons when we do get to play, we pretty much find ourselves acting out scenes of farm labor, hitching each other up to the wagon, carting endless loads of hay to barn and stable, or just squatting and grunting in quiet obedience — this being the first quality we must learn to master, obedience to the small fields of sandy soil, to the mossy tufts of meadow grass, to the First National Bank. Whoever’s turn it is to drive the team always makes sure to work the whip with a relish, and that’s a lesson we can appreciate, ’cause it reminds us of the need to get on with our young lives.

We hurry home from school to a thousand chores awaiting us: potatoes to be scrubbed, stakes to be driven, carrots to be scalped, cows to be led to bull. Every potato harvest sees the outbreak of another two-, three-day illness that unfits us for school, a seasonal ailment that never fails to afflict the children of smallholders that time of year. When we go back to school we run into accusations from the kids whose fathers work in factories or run the large farms, their whispers so overdone the teacher can’t help hearing how they have seen us squatting out in the potato fields as they walked by on the road. But this just isn’t true. We lay down flat between the furrows and hug the ground at the first sign of any of those other kids coming down the road — I mean the ones that actually get to be kids — so there’s no way they could’ve seen us. Otherwise I guess it’s true enough. We can never hide the symptoms of our ailment, as our hands are dirty all fall. No matter how hard we scrub or scour them with a hard-bristled brush, the October soil clings to the folds of our knuckles, staining the roots of our nails.

So no, we’re not like other kids. But that’s not really the idea anyway. The idea is that we should stop being kids as soon as possible. If ever one of the regular kids stops by and asks us to play, we just get red in the face. We might take them out behind the stable for a while, ’cause no one can see us back there as we play their childish games. We’re no good at those games, of course. We get tangled up in the jump rope or flick the marbles way too far. So it doesn’t take long for our new friends to grow weary, call us clods or ignoramuses, and then leave us on our own for good. And true enough, that’s just what we are. Or it’s how they make us feel. So we’re relieved to see them leave, even if we understand they’ll never be back.