Chapter One
Under the Wheat
Down in D-3 I watch the sky gunning through the aperture ninety-odd feetabove my head. The missiles are ten months away, and I am lying on myback listening to the sump. From the bottom of a hole, where the weather isalways the same cool sixty-four degrees, plus or minus two, I like to relax andwatch the clouds slide through the circle of blue light. I have plenty of timeto kill. The aperture is about fifteen feet wide. About the size of a silverdollar from here. A hawk just drifted by. Eagle. Crow. Small cumulus. Nothing.Nothing. Wrapper.
Hot again today, and the sky is drifting across the hole, left to right, a slowthick wind that doesn't gust. When it gusts, it's usually from Canada. Fierce,with hail the size of eyeballs. I've seen wheat go down. Acres and acres ofuseless straw.
But sometimes it comesout of the southeast, from Bismarck, bringing ten-mile-highanvils with it, and you find yourself looking for funnels.This is not tornado country to speak of. The tornado path is to thesouth and west of here. They walk up from Bismarck and farther south andpeter out on the Montana border, rarely touching ground anywhere near thislatitude. Still, you keep an eye peeled. I've seen them put down gray fingers tothe west, not quite touching but close enough to make you want to find a hole.They say it sounds like freight trains in your yard. I wouldn't know. We arefrom the coast, where the weather is stable and always predictable because ofthe ocean. We are trying to adjust.
I make five hundred a week doing this, driving a company pickup from hole tohole, checking out the sump pumps. I've found only one failure in two months.Twenty feet of black water in the hole and rising. It's the company's biggestheadache. The high water table of North Dakota. You can dig yourself a shallowhole, come back in a few days and drink. That's why the farmers here haveit made. Except for hail Mostly they are Russians, these farmers.
Karen wants to go back. I have to remind her it's only for a year. Ten moremonths. Five hundred a week for a year. But she misses things. The city, hermusic lessons, movies, the beach, excitement. We live fairly close to a town,but it's one you will never hear of, unless a local goes wild and chainsaws allsix members of his family. The movie theater has shown Bush Pilot, Red Skiesof Montana, Ice Palace, and Kon Tiki so far. These are movies wewould not ordinarily pay money to see. She has taken to long walks in theevenings to work out her moods, which are getting harder and harder for me topretend aren't there. I get time and a half on Saturdays, double time on Sundaysand holidays, and thirteen dollars per diem for the inconvenience of relocatingall the way from Oxnard, California. That comes to a lot. You don't walk awayfrom a gold mine like that. I try to tell Karen she has to make the effort,adjust. North Dakota isn't all that bad. As a matter of fact I sort of enjoy thearea. Maybe I am more adaptable. No, scratch that. I am more adaptable.We live close to a large brown lake, an earthfill dam loaded with northern pike.I bought myself a little boat and often go out to troll a bit before the carpool comes by. The freezer is crammed with fish, not one under five pounds.
There's a ghost town on the other side of the lake. The houses were built forthe men who worked on the dam. That was years ago. They are paintless now,weeds up to the rotten sills. No glass in the windows, but here and there a ragof drape. Sometimes I take my boat across the lake to the ghost town. I walk theovergrown streets and look into the windows. Sometimes something moves.Rats. Gophers. Wind. Loose boards. Sometimes nothing.
When the weather is out of Canada you can watch it move south, coming like agiant roll of silver dough on the horizon. It gets bigger fast and then you'dbetter find cover. If the cloud is curdled underneath, you know it means hail.The wind can gust to one hundred knots. It scares Karen. I tell her there'snothing to worry about. Our trailer is on a good foundation and tied down tight.But she has this dream of being uprooted and flying away in such a wind. Shesees her broken body caught in a tree, magpies picking at it. I tell her thetrailer will definitely not budge. Still, she gets wild-eyed and can't light acigarette.
We're sitting at the dinette table looking out the window, watching the frontarrive. You can feel the trailer bucking like a boat at its moorings. Lightningis stroking the blond fields a mile away. To the southeast, I can see a grayfinger reaching down. This is unusual, I admit. But I say nothing to Karen. Itlooks like the two fronts are going to butt heads straight over the trailerpark. It's getting dark fast. Something splits the sky behind the trailer andbig hail pours out. The streets of the park are white and jumping under theblack sky. Karen has her hands against her ears. There's a stampede on our tinroof. Two TV antennas fold at the same time in a dead faint. A jagged Y oflightning strikes so close you can smell it. Electric steam. Karen is wild,screaming. I can't hear her. Our garbage cans are rising. They float past thewindows into a flattened wheat field. This is something. Karen's face is closed.She doesn't enjoy it at all, not at all.
I'm tooling around in third on the usual bad road, enjoying the lurches, rolls,and twists. I would not do this to my own truck. The fields I'm driving throughare wasted. Head-on with the sky and the sky never loses. I've passed a fewunhappy-looking farmers standing in their fields with their hands in theirpockets, spitting, faces frozen in expressions of disgust. Toward D-8, just overa rise and down into a narrow gulch, I find a true glacier. It's made out ofhail stones welded together by their own impact. It hasn't begun to melt yet.Four feet thick and maybe thirty feet long. You could stand on it, blind in thewhite glare. You could tell yourself you are inside the Arctic circle. What isthis, the return of the Ice Age?
Karen did not cook tonight. Another "mood." I poke around in the fridge. I don'tknow what to say to her anymore. I know it's hard. I can understand that. Thisis not Oxnard. I'll give her that. I'm the first to admit it. I pop a beer andsit down at the table opposite her. Our eyes don't meet. They haven't for weeks.We are like two magnetic north poles, repelling each other for invisiblereasons. Last night in bed I touched her. She went stiff. She didn't have to saya word. I took my hand back. I got the message. There was the hum of the airconditioner and nothing else. The world could have been filled with dead bodies.I turned on the lights. She got up and lit a cigarette after two tries. Nerves."I'm going for a walk, Lloyd," she said, checking the sky. "Maybe we should havea baby?" I said. "I'm making plenty of money." She looked at me as if I hadpicked up an ax.
I would like to know where she finds to go and what she finds to do there. Shehates the town worse than the trailer park. The trailer park has a rec hall anda social club for the wives. But she won't take advantage of that. I know theneighbors are talking. They think she's a snob. They think I spoil her. Aftershe left I went out on the porch and drank eleven beers. Let them talk.
Three farm kids. Just standing outside the locked gate of D-4. "What do youkids want?" I know what they want. A "look-see." Security measures are ineffect, but what the hell. There is nothing here yet but a ninety-foot hole witha tarp on it and a sump pump in the bottom. They are excited when I open theaccess hatch and invite them to climb down the narrow steel ladder to thebottom. They want to know what ICBM stands for. What is a warhead? How fastis it? How do you know if it's really going to smear the right town? What if itwent straight up and came straight down? Can you hit the moon? "Look at thesky up there, kids," I tell them. "Lie on your backs, like this, and after awhile you sort of get the feeling you're looking down, from on top ofit." The kids lie down on the concrete. Kids have a way of giving all theirattention to something interesting. I swear them to secrecy, not for myprotection, because who cares, but because it will make their day. They will runhome, busting with secret info. I drive off to D-9, where the sump trouble was.
Caught three lunkers this morning. All over twenty-four inches. It's 7:00 a.m.now and I'm on Ruby Street, the ghost town. The streets are all named afterstones. Why, I don't know. This is nothing like anything we have on the coast.Karen doesn't like the climate or the people and the flat sky presses down onher from all sides and gives her bad dreams, sleeping and awake. But what canI do?
I'm on Onyx Street, number 49, a two-bedroom bungalow with a few pieces offurniture left in it. There is a chest of drawers in the bedroom, a bed with arotten gray mattress. There is a closet with a raggedy slip in it. The slip hasbrown water stains that look like burns. In the bottom of the chest is amagazine, yellow with age. Secret Confessions. I can imagine the womanwho lived here with her husband. Not much like Karen at all. But what did she dowhile her husband was off working on the dam? Did she stand at this window inher slip and wish she were back in Oxnard? Did she cry her eyes out on this bedand think crazy thoughts? Where is she now? Does she think, "This is July 15,1962, and I am glad I am not in North Dakota anymore"? Did she take long walksat night and not cook? I have an impulse to do something odd, and do it.
When a thunderhead passes over a cyclone fence that surrounds a site, such asthe one passing over D-6 now, you can hear the wire hiss with nervous electrons.It scares me because the fence is a perfect lightning rod, a good conductor. ButI stay on my toes. Sometimes, when a big cumulus is overhead stroking the areaand roaring, I'll just stay put in my truck until it's had its fun.
Because this is Sunday, I am making better than twelve dollars an hour. I'mdriving through a small farming community called Spacebow. A Russian word, Ithink, because you're supposed to pronounce the e. No one I know does. Shadetrees on every street. A Russian church here, a grain elevator there. No wind.Hot for 9:00 a.m. Men dressed in Sunday black. Ladies in their best. Kidslooking uncomfortable and controlled. Even the dogs are behaving. There is awoman, manless I think, because I've seen her before, always alone on herporch, eyes on something far away. A "thinker." Before today I've only wavedhello. First one finger off the wheel, nod, then around the block once again andthe whole hand out the window and a smile. That was last week. After the firstturn past her place today she waves back. A weak hand at first, as if she's notsure that's what I meant. But after a few times around the block she knowsthat's what I meant. And so I'm stopping. I'm going to ask for a cup of coldwater. I'm thirsty anyway. Maybe all this sounds hokey to you if you're fromsome big town like Oxnard, but this is not a big town like Oxnard.
Her name is Myrna Dan. That last name must be a pruned-down version ofDanielovitch or something because the people here are mostly Russians. She isthirty-two, a widow, one brat. A two-year old named "Piper," crusty with food.She owns a small farm here but there is no one to work it. She has a decentallotment from the U.S. Government and a vegetable garden. If you are from thecoast you would not stop what you were doing to look at her. Her hands aresquare and the fingers stubby, made for rough wooden handles. Hips likegateposts.
No supper again. Karen left a note. "Lloyd, I am going for a walk. There aresome cold cuts in the fridge." It wasn't even signed. Just like that. One ofthese days on one of her walks she is going to get caught by the sky which canchange on you in a minute.
Bill Finkel made a remark on the way to the dispatch center. It was a littlepersonal, and coming from anybody else I would have called him on it. But he isthe lead engineer, the boss. A few of the other guys grinned behind their hands.How do I know where she goes or why? I am not a swami. If it settles hernerves, why should I push it? I've thought of sending her to Ventura to livewith her mother for a while, but her mother is getting senile and has taken towriting mean letters. I tell Karen the old lady is around the bend, don't takethose letters too seriously. But what's the use when the letters come in likeclockwork, once a week, page after page of nasty accusations in a big, inch-highscrawl, like a kid's, naming things that never happened. Karen takes it hard, nomatter what I say, as if what the old lady says is true.
Spacebow looks deserted. It isn't. The men are off in the fields, the women areinside working toward evening, Too hot outside even for the dogs, who aresleeping under the porches. Ninety-nine. I stop for water at Myrna's. Do youwant to see a missile silo? Sure, she says, goddamn right, just like that. Ihave an extra hard hat in the truck but she doesn't have to wear it if shedoesn't want to. Regulations at this stage of the program are a littlepointless. Just a hole with a sump in it. Of course you can fall into it and getyourself killed. That's about the only danger. But there are no regulations thatcan save you from your own stupidity. Last winter when these holes were beingdug, a kid walked out on a tarp. The tarp was covered with light snow and hecouldn't tell where the ground ended and the hole began. He dropped the wholeninety feet and his hard has did not save his ass. Myrna is impressed with thisstory. She is very anxious to see one. D-7 is closest to Spacebow, only a mileout of town. It isn't on my schedule today, but so what. I hand her the orangehard hat. She has trouble with the strap. I help her cinch it. Piper wants towear it too and grabs at the straps, whimming. Myrna has big jaws. Strong. Butnot in an ugly way.
I tell her the story about Jack Stern, the Jewish quality-control man fromSt. Louis who took flying lessons because he wanted to be able to get to adecensized city in a hurry whenever he felt the need. This flat, empty farm landmade his ulcer flare. He didn't know how to drive a car, and yet there he wastearing around the sky in a Bonanza. One day he flew into a gianthammerhead—thinking, I guess, that a cloud like that is nothing but a lot ofwater vapor, no matter what shape it has or how big—and was never heard fromagain. That cloud ate him and the Bonanza. At the airport in Minot they pickedup two words on the emergency frequency, "Oh no," then static.
I tell her the story about the motor pool secretary who shot her husband oncein the neck and twice in the foot with a target pistol while he slept. Both ofthem pulling down good money, too. I tell her the one about the one that gotaway. A northern big as a shark. Pulled me and my boat a mile before mytwelve-pound test monofilament snapped. She gives me a sidelong glance and makesa buzzing sound as if to say. That one takes the cake, Mister! We are onthe bottom of D-7, watching the circle of sky, lying on our backs.
The trailer stinks. I could smell it from the street as soon as I gotout of Bill Finkel's car. Fish heads, Heads! I guess they've beensitting there like that most of the afternoon. Just the big alligator jaws of mybig beautiful pikes, but not the bodies. A platter of them, uncooked, dryingout, and getting high. Knife, fork, napkin, glass. I'd like to know what goes oninside her head, what passes for thinking in there. The note: "Lloyd, eat yourfill." Not signed. Is this supposed to be humor? I fail to get the point of it.I have to carry the mess to the garbage cans without breathing. A big white fireis blazing in the sky over my shoulder. You can hear the far-off rumble, like awhale grunting. I squint west, checking for funnels.
Trouble in D-7. Busted sump. I pick up Myrna and Piper and head for the hole.It's a nice day for a drive. It could be a bearing seizure, but that's only apercentage guess. I unlock the gate and we drive to the edge of it. Space-ageartillery, I explain, as we stand on the lip of D-7, feeling the vertigo. Thetarp is off for maintenance and the hole is solid black. If you let yourimagination run, you might see it as bottomless. The "Pit" itself. Myrna isholding Piper back. Piper is whining, she wants to see the hole, Myrna has toslap her away, scolding. I drain my beer and let the can drop. I don't hear ithit. Not even a splash. I grab the fussing kid and hold her out over the hole."Have yourself a good look, brat," I say. I hold her by the ankle withone hand. She is paralyzed. Myrna goes so white I have to smile. "Oh, wait," shesays. "Please, Lloyd. No." As if I ever would.
Myrna wants to see the D-flight control center. I ask her if she hasclaustrophobia. She laughs, but it's no joke. That far below the surface insidethat capsule behind an eight-ton door can be upsetting if you are susceptible toconfinement. The elevator is slow and heavy, designed to haul equipment. Thedoor opens on a dimly lit room. Spooky. There's crated gear scattered around.And there is the door, one yard thick to withstand the shock waves from theBomb. I wheel it open. Piper whines, her big eyes distrustful of me now. Thereis a musty smell in the dank air. The lights and blower are on now, but it willtake a while for the air to freshen itself up. I wheel the big door shut. Itcan't latch yet, but Myrna is impressed. I explain to her what goes on in here.We sit down at the console. I show her where the launch-enabling switches willbe and why it will take two people together to launch an attack, the chairsfifteen feet apart and both switches turned for a several-second count beforethe firing sequence can start, in case one guy goes berserk and decides to endthe world because his old lady has been holding out on him, or just for the hellof it, given human nature. I show her the escape hole. It's loaded with ordinarysand. You just pull this chain and the sand dumps into the capsule. Then youclimb up the tube that held the sand into someone's wheat field. I show her thetoilet and the little kitchen. I can see there is something on her mind.Isolated places make you think weird things. It's happened to me more than once.Not here, but in the ghost town on the other side of the lake.
Topside the weather has changed. The sky is the color of pikebelly, wind risingfrom the southeast. To the west I can see stubby funnels pushing down from theovercast, but only so far. It looks like the clouds are growing roots. We haveto run back to the truck in the rain, Piper screaming on Myrna's hip. A heavybolt strikes less than a mile away. A blue fireball sizzles where it hits. Smellthe ozone. It makes me sneeze.
This is the second day she's been gone. I don't know where or how. All herclothes are here. She doesn't have any money. I don't know what to do. There isno police station. Do I call her mother? Do I notify the FBI? The highwaypatrol? Bill Finkel?
Everybody in the car pool knows but won't say a word, out of respect for myfeelings. Bill Finkel has other things on his mind. He is worried about rumoredeconomy measures in the assembly and check-out program next year. It hasnothing to do with me. My job ends before that phase begins. I guess she wentback to Oxnard, or maybe Ventura. But how?
We are in the D-flight control center. Myrna, with her hard hat cocked to oneside, wants to fool around with the incomplete equipment. Piper is with hergrandma. We are seated at the control console and she is pretending to work herswitch. She has me pretend to work my switch. She wants to launch the entireflight of missiles, D-1 through D-10 at Cuba or Panama. Why Cuba andPanama? I ask. What about Russia? Why not Cuba or Panama? she says.
Besides, I have Russian blood. Everyone around here has Russian blood. No,it's Cuba and Panama. Just think of the looks on their faces. All those peoplelying in the sun on the decks of those big white holiday boats, the coolies outin the cane fields, the tinhorn generals, the whole shiteree. They'll look uptrying to shade their eyes but they won't be able to. What in hell is this allabout, they'll say, then zap, poof, gone.
I feel it too, craziness like hers. What if I couldn't get that eight-tondoor open, Myrna? I see her hard hat wobble, her lip drop. What if? Just whatif? She puts her arms around me and our hard hats click. She is onestrong woman.
Lloyd, Lloyd, she says.
Yo.
Jesus.
Easy.
Lloyd!
Bingo.
It's good down here—no rules—and she goes berserk. But later she iscalm and up to mischief again. I recognize the look now. Okay, I tell her. Whatnext, Myrna? She wants to do something halfway nasty. This, believe me,does not surprise me at all.
I'm sitting on the steel floor listening to the blower and waiting for Myrnato finish her business. I'm trying hard to picture what the weather is doingtopside. It's not easy to do. It could be clear and calm and blue or it could bewild. There could be a high, thin overcast or there could be nothing. You can'tknow when you're this far under the wheat. I can hear her trying to work thelittle chrome lever, even though I told her there's no plumbing yet. Somemaintenance yokel is going to find Myrna's "surprise." She comes out, pretendingto be sheepish, but I can see that the little joke tickles her.
Something takes my book and strips off ten yards of line, then stops dead. SnagI reel in. The pole is bend double and the line is singing. Then something letsgo but it isn't the line because I'm still snagged. It breaks the surface, alady's shoe. It's brown and white with a short heel. I toss it into the bottomof the boat. The water is shallow here, and clear. There's something dark andwide under me like a shadow on the water. An old farmhouse, submerged when thedam filled. There's a deep current around the structure. I can see fence, tires,an old truck, feed pens. There is a fat farmer in the yard staring up at me,checking the weather. I jump away from him, almost tipping the boat. I amnot the weather! I want to say. My heart feels tangled in my ribs. But it'sonly a stump with arms.
The current takes my boat in easy circles. A swimmer would be in serioustrouble. I crank up the engine and head back. No fish today. So be it. Sometimesyou come home empty-handed. The shoe is new, stylish, and was made in Spain.I'm standing on the buckled porch of 49 Onyx Street. Myrna is inside readingSecret Confessions: "What My Don Must Never Know." The sky is bad. Thelake is bad. It will be a while before we can cross back. I knock on the door,as we planned. Myrna is on the bed in the stained, raggedy slip, giggling."Listen to this dogshit, Lloyd," she says. But I'm not in the mood for weirdstories. "I brought you something, honey," I say. She looks at the soggy shoe."That?" But she agrees to try it on, anyway. I feel like my own ghost, bumpinginto the familiar but run-down walls of my old house in the middle of nowhere,and I remember my hatred of it. "Hurry up," I say, my voice true as a razor.
A thick tube hairy with rain is snaking out of the sky less than a mile away. Isit going to touch? "They never do, Lloyd. This isn't Kansas. Will you pleaselisten to this dogshit?" Something about a pregnant high school girl, Dee,locked in a toilet with a knitting needle. Something about this Don who believesin purity. Something about bright red blood. Something about ministers andmothers and old-fashioned shame. I'm not listening, even when Dee slides the bigneedle in. I have to keep watch on the sky, because there is a first time foreverything, even if this is not Kansas. The wind is stripping shingles fromevery roof I see. A long board is spinning like a slow propeller. The funnel isbehind a bluff, holding back. But I can hear it, the freight train. Myrna isstanding behind me running a knuckle up and down my back. "Hi, darling," shesays. "Want to know what I did while you were out working on the dam today?" Thedark tube has begun to move out from behind the bluff, but I'm not sure whichway. "Tell me," I say. "Tell me."
Continues...
Excerpted from Borrowed Heartsby Rick DeMarinis Copyright © 2000 by Rick DeMarinis. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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