76. Dusty

We sit on the tailgate of my pickup truck, passing a bottle of bourbon back and forth. I watch her tip the bottle back against her soft lips and grin at her. “I thought you said you didn’t like bourbon.”

She gives me a reluctant smile. “It’s growing on me.”

“By the sip?”

She laughs. “Maybe.”

We sit and listen to the birdsong, clear and pretty, wafting through the breeze. From this spot, we can see the little pond at the base of Bo’s field. It’s adjacent to Marnie’s and pretty as a picture. So is she, wearing a classic black dress that’s way too fancy for the back of my old truck.

“Funerals are hard for me.”

She has her face turned towards the sun. Her eyes are shut, letting the warm sunshine melt the melancholy away.

I glance down at the bottle and set it to the side. “Yeah. Me, too.”

She looks at me, letting out a shaky breath. “That was a rough one.”

I nod. “The worst kind.”

“Julietta and Jim Lind came over to talk to me.”

I grimace. “I saw that. Julietta used to teach Sunday school to Runner.”

“She was fine, I guess. That Jim, though.”

I nod. “You saw that cane? He used to use that to whoop on his kids.”

She looks at me in horror. “He’d hit them with the cane?”

“Right on the back of the neck. Runner said he worked for Jim one summer and was so scared he’d get caned, he quit after one month.”

“I don’t blame him.”

“Me, either.”

I plant my hand behind her and lean back.

“Julietta wanted to unburden herself. But if that was an apology, it needed work.”

“An apology for what?”

She shakes her head. “I suspected Jerry was the father of my mom’s baby, but they confirmed it. And I guess they weren’t too nice to her about it.”

“Sounds about right.”

She glances at me. “That fucker called my mom a gold digger.”

“Want me to get revenge?”

She laughs.

“Old Jim’s too old. That wouldn’t be a fair fight, but I bet Jerry could throw a punch or two.”

She purses her lips. “He’s pretty old, too. Does he have any kids?”

“Yeah. Steven. He was in my dad’s class.”

“Is he an asshole, too?”

I think about that and shrug. “A small one. A very tiny asshole.”

She laughs, leaning into me. Silence settles between us. After a while, she looks back at me. “I’m glad I know, I guess, because I realized something.”

“And what’s that?”

Her fingers trace the seam on my pants. “I wanted to know why my mom never came back to Silver Bend. I thought maybe the town betrayed her in some way. But now I know it wasn’t the town, it was just one family.”

“One shitty, bitter family.”

She nods against my chest. “I wish I could have talked to her about it. She carried that by herself. My dad didn’t even know the details. The way they treated her… nobody deserves that.”

“Not everybody has a big heart like you, Marnie. Some people just like to assume the worst of other people.”

“Well, fuck those guys, then.”

I laugh. “Yeah. Fuck ‘em.”

She takes a deep breath and lets it go. We both watch a meadowlark land on the nubby end of a goldenrod. It dips under the bird’s weight. Its warbled song fills the air.

“Can you picture it?”

I murmur, pulling her closer. “The wagons would have probably come from over that way. To the east.”

“You’re talking about great, great grandpa Novak?”

I nod. “Gus said they took the train to Chicago and bought their gear there. Wagons. Tools.”

“Were they farmers before?”

“Yeah, back in Germany. Potatoes, mostly. When they moved here, they switched to corn and wheat.”

I point to the little ravine where the old sod house stands. A testament to time. A testament to survival. “If you squint, you can almost see it. The way it would have been.”

I look down at Marnie. I can almost see the long line of ancestors marching step by step to get to this moment, this place. And through a series of bad decisions, I happened to step into that path. That’s the best kind of bad.

For that miracle, I am grateful.

I am in awe.