Friday, about 6:00 pm. The laundry has been hanging on the line all day, waiting for my return. But first supper and washing dishes. And then out to collect the underwear and sheets, shirts and socks. On the light colored items (but not the dark--or perhaps I could not see them) were dozens of tiny gnats, flying dots so small that I had no sense of their wing span or body shape, only of little flying bits of dirt that oppress the face and spread themselves between where you are and where you want to go. As I shake the white towels and sheets--which serve as giant aircraft carriers, floating in a sea of air while anchored by wooden clothespins--these little creatures of God immediately lift off their movable runways, far more flexible and cunning than any man-made flying machine. These innocent bombers ask nothing of me but tell me nothing either. Another small reminder of Nature's indifference.
* * * * *
Saturday, 4:54 pm. Barry Lopez writes that "the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes." My inner directions will always be defined by one farm’s geography. I see myself standing on the hill, looking south, the summer wind blowing against my face. East is Howard, once an example of minimalist self-sufficiency in rural America. The town still has two grocery stores, a cafe, a hardware store, two banks, a drug store, several government appendages (the county court house, USDA offices), a post office, and a barber shop. But the “burg”--my father’s phrase--is exhausted, an impoverished town barely able to keep breathing. Though I was fascinated by the court house’s Italian-style clock tower aspiring above Howard’s canopy of maples and dying elms, my favorite view was always to the west: perhaps eight miles distant lay the first outcroppings of the Flint Hills, vast bluestem pasturelands. During the summer, the hills looked blue, filtered by a dusty haze and the shadows of a setting sun. As for north, my private compass inevitably points toward “out north,” the family’s name for the eighty acres of farm land my father had inherited, six miles north of the farm where we lived. I loved those August trips "out north," riding on the farm wagon pulled by Bert and Jim, Dad's last team of work horses. Was that really me who played in the fields, using the sorghum shocks for tents, sharing the mysteries of the temporary darkness with the field mice and spiders? How is it possible that boy became me?
* * * * *
Saturday, 5:12 pm. My first garden was begun in the spring of 1952. I was seven when my Dad paced off the northeast corner of the family garden for my efforts. Of course it was still his garden: he did the plowing, he bought the seed, he told me what to plant and how deep. But it was my garden--my small hands had cradled the seeds. Shortly after my Dad and I finished planting, the '52 flood arrived, Rock Creek, a quarter mile southwest of our house, stretching beyond its banks to cover my dad's cropland. The flood in my garden was much smaller but just as ruthless, washing away the rows of planted seeds. My first lesson in gardening.
When I left home for college, my gardening career took a 15-year vacation. There were a few brief encounters with seeds and soil, but only when my wife and I moved to Iowa did I resurrect an interest in things growing. As Thoreau once said, "I was determined to know beans," though I could remember nothing from my younger years about gardening, at least no details. Except for a love of dirt, every move had to be relearned: How deep should I plant potatoes? What causes black spots on tomatoes? Does it damage green beans if picked while wet?
* * * * *
Sunday evening. As I was weeding the flower bed, I looked up and saw three or four gnat communes, hovering above the sedum and phlox. The late afternoon sun, a golden green, reflected off their nervous little bodies, tiny yellow diamonds jiving in my back yard. It was like being visited by ghosts, these see-through torsos, the size of a restless 10-year old child. But like good ghosts, the gnats said nothing. I could simply sit and breathe, deferring to them as they remained indifferent to me. I didn't want them to leave, nor did I want the light to leave. But I terminated the moment, turned back to my weeds. Later, when I looked up from the earth, I already knew the light was gone. The ghosts were gone as well.
This morning, as we were preparing to leave for our annual trip to Kansas, my daughter and I were alone, together, standing on the dance teacher’s porch, patiently waiting for someone not home, not able to answer any of our needs. As it began to rain, I looked across the street, attracted to the black green shadows of the street's pine tress when I suddenly became aware of gnats, dancing in the rain, following a choreography to music beyond my ears. A ballet unfazed by a summer shower. I asked my daughter, a dancer, if the gnats get wet when they must perform in the rain on an open-air stage. She gave me one of her looks. "Why don't you walk out there and find out?" A good question, I told her. Why don't I?
* * * * *
Tuesday evening. Yesterday, my daughter and I drove to Kansas. We stopped once for gas in Missouri, then pressed on, driven by my intent on getting back to the farm. I occasionally glanced at the scenery, but most of my attention was on the road and responding to Kristin’s twisting questions and observations. We always converse more in the car, on the long trips, then we ever do at home. She worries that I will fall asleep if she doesn't keep me talking. Once, during a momentary break in the conversation, approaching the Flint Hills, it occurred to me that I never see gnats when driving on highways. All that life out there. Invisible.
It has been good to see my folks again. Both are in their 80s. This year my Dad retired from full-time cattle trading, a career that had replaced farming shortly after I left for college. A few livestock remain on the farm, but his days of serious gambling are over. He always claimed he would never retire, but I find him accepting his new role with surprising grace. Each day Dad drives in town, where he will collect the Wichita paper, buy a few groceries, drink several cups of coffee (his smoking days long since over), and sit with other old men, talking enough to keep themselves alive.
My preference would be to avoid going in town. Although I lived here for 18 years, I don't know anyone anymore. But I always go with Dad. I shake a few hands, respond with my best smile when someone confesses he didn't recognize me, fumble for a name to go with a face suddenly 30 years older than I remember it, drink several cokes, and listen, an eavesdropper to conversations I understand only in form, not in detail. As usual, it's tough for me to relax. I've always felt uneasy with the idea of leisure. And so I tread water, keeping close to a friendly wall, and wait for Dad to clear his throat, place the palms of his hand flat on the table, and rise, letting me know it's time to move on.
A frequent destination is the barbershop. The barber has been cutting hair on Howard's main street for over 50 years, but I don't think I have ever sat in his chair. As a kid I always went to Cooley's Barbershop, underneath the bank. Two generations of Cooley barbers are long since gone, and some time, I don't recall when, my Dad started coming here to have his biweekly hair cut.
The barber is an friendly fellow, never lost for words. He knows a lot about a lot of people. And, unlike the Cooley barbers, he's an avid story teller. We have barely sat down before he’s sharing a joke about an old farmer meeting an alien from outer space. The alien has a mechanical animal which will “eat up whatever the farmer is trying to get rid of.” The farmer asks the alien if the robot eats rabbits. The alien says "Yes," and the robot swoops across the farm, eating all the rabbits within a few minutes. The farmer asks about mice and obtains the same results. The farmer then asks, "You don't happen to have one of them robots that will gobble up all the niggers, do you?"
Besides the fellow sitting in the barber's chair, there are four other men in the shop. No one laughs hard, but some chuckle, and one young fellow repeats the punch line to himself, perhaps making sure he will not forget it. After studying the wooden floor, I look up, searching for familiar pictures on the walls. Behind the barber, covering part of his mirror, is a photograph of the battleship he served on during WW II when he was in the navy. I know he saw action in the Pacific and attends reunions of veterans. As on previous visits, I try to imagine what life must have been like in the Pacific in '44 and '45. As on previous visits, the imagination falters.
On another wall is a picture of the barber, thirty years ago, when Kansas celebrated its centennial. The round, brown-framed picture shows him dressed in western garb, a silver badge on his vest and a large black hat balanced above a full, enormous beard. The portrait resembles a photo from the 1880s. But everything is too smooth, too arranged, amusing but not the real thing. I'm reminded of the only surviving photo of my own grandfather, my mother's father and sheriff of this same county, photographed as he held a shotgun, apparently prepared to use it, but there is a slight smile on the edges of his closed lips. The stance was posed, yet the real man survived the occasion, speaking to a grandson he would never know.
What does my Dad think about the joke? Is any part of him embarrassed by his friend’s bigotry, saddened by an exhausting racism that still runs through the veins of bleeding Kansas? I don't know. And it would prove too painful to ask, certainly the answers too painful to hear. By some inexplicable segue, I am reminded, sitting in this barbershop, of the gnats in my backyard. I see those creatures, flying with such abandon and yet a mysterious self-control. I wonder how they learn to stay together? How do they know what to do? I look at the barber and wonder, how do I know what to do? What should I say? What do I tell my daughter tomorrow, as we drive back home? When will she learn about barber shops in Kansas?