A Thousand Acres: A Novel Read Online Free

purchase, whether cold, out of savings and last year’s profits (in which case, he was doing better than my father thought, and better than my father), or by going to the bank. It may have been that Loren, who had taken farm management courses in college, had finally convinced Harold that a certain amount of debt was desirable for a business. My father didn’t know and that annoyed him. Harold, for his part, let no opportunity pass for praising his new equipment, for marveling at how many years of dust he had eaten, for announcing the number of gears (twelve), for admiring the brilliant red paint job that stood out so nicely against a greenfield, a blue sky. At the pig roast, Jess Clark and the new machinery were Harold’s twin exhibits, and guests from all over the area couldn’t resist, had no reason to resist, the way he ferried them between the two, asking for and receiving admiration with a kind of shameless innocence that he was known for.
    The other farmers were vocal in their envy of the tractor. Bob Stanley stood in the center of the group gathered around the table where Loren was slicing the pork and said, “We’re all going to be buying those things pretty soon. You got big fields that take days to work, you’re not gonna want to eat dust like you do now. And hell, you think we’ve got fuel problems now. Wait till you got a bunch of those monsters they’re gonna have in the fields.” He rocked back on his heels with a satisfied air. Daddy listened, but held his peace. He complimented Loren on the pork and looked Jess up and down suspiciously and ate a lot of fruit salad. It was generally accepted that Daddy and Bob Stanley, who was about Ty’s age, didn’t get along too well. Pete sometimes said, “Larry knows Bob wants to piss up his tree. Bob knows it, too.” Bob always had more to say—he was a sociable man—but it was true also that the other farmers always glanced at Daddy when Bob made some pronouncement, as if Daddy should have the last word, and Daddy liked to exude skepticism, which he could do with an assortment of heavings and grunts that made Bob seem loquacious and shallow.
    Toward dusk, I began going around and picking up paper plates, and I noticed a little group, including Rose and Caroline, as well as Ty and Pete, clustered on Harold’s back porch, with my father talking earnestly at the center. I remember Rose turned and looked at me across the yard, and I remember a momentary inner clang, an instinctive certainty that wariness was called for, but then Caroline looked up and smiled, waved me over. I went and stood on the bottom step of the porch, plates and plastic forks in both hands. My father said, “That’s the plan.”
    I said, “What’s the plan, Daddy?”
    He glanced at me, then at Caroline, and, looking at her all the while, he said, “We’re going to form this corporation, Ginny, and you girls are all going to have shares, then we’re going to build this new Slurrystore, and maybe a Harvestore, too, and enlarge the hogoperation.” He looked at me. “You girls and Ty and Pete and Frank are going to run the show. You’ll each have a third part in the corporation. What do you think?”
    I licked my lips and climbed the two steps onto the porch. Now I could see Harold through the kitchen screen, standing in the dark doorway, grinning. I knew he was thinking that my father had had too much to drink—that’s what I was thinking, too. I looked down at the paper plates in my hands, bluing in the twilight. Ty was looking at me, and I could see in his gaze a veiled and tightly contained delight—he had been wanting to increase the hog operation for years. I remember what I thought. I thought, okay. Take it. He is holding it out to you, and all you have to do is take it. Daddy said, “Hell, I’m too old for this. You wouldn’t catch me buying a new tractor at my age. If I want to listen to some singer, I’ll listen in my own house. Anyway, if I died tomorrow, you’d