Rhubarb Pie
By J. Terry Riebling
It was supper time, there was no
sunshine on this gray day. Jimmy sat, like he always had, across from her at the
now too large table. She saw him clear as a bell, every button and stitch, hair
and wrinkle around his eyes, sitting with his head down, napkin tucked into his
buttoned shirt collar, hands in his lap, chapped lips moving, silently blessing
the food. She could even hear him cracking his knuckles under the tabletop.
Fanny Lou hadn't known what she expected of her new husband, still didn't know
what she expected after years of marriage. Jimmy had the look of a stranger that
had come to the door looking for a meal and some work to do around the farm.
After birthing six boys and burying one, too many bad winters and too few
forgiving springs Fanny Lou was worn so thin that sunlight passed right through
her like lace curtains, without throwing even a shadow. She and Jimmy were too
far down the road to turn around, to take another road together, or to start
again alone.
Fanny Lou knew that the disagreements that had lead to arguments, and
arguments that had lead to fighting and her long silences were all but over and
done with. She hadn't the steam left to push it on another year, another week,
maybe another day.
Jimmy had always been different from the other farm boys. While they were
trying to get the girls down to the barn and up into the hay loft, Jimmy was
taking things apart and putting them back together again. Most times he put 'em
back better than they was when he took 'em apart. Jimmy just seemed to need to
be takin' things apart and puttin' them back together.
Jimmy was different from all the other boys back then, she'd seen it from
the start. As accustomed as she had become to Jimmy's need to take things apart
and put 'em back together, Fanny Lou had come to the place where she thought
that this was maybe the only thing that had ever mattered to Jimmy. After twenty
eight years of marriage Fanny Lou had come to wonder if there was more to her
than just another something Jimmy had to take apart and put back together again.
Fanny Lou took to Jimmy from the git-go. Moira, Fanny Lou's best
friend until she died in childbirth, had said it plain: " Jimmy wants to
know everything. He's just too darn snoopy for his own good. I'll bet he wants
to know which hand you use to wipe your ass and how many squares of paper you use. Won't believe you no matter what you tell him, he's gotta see for
himself"
"True enough" Fanny Lou said, "True enough."
Jimmy was smart, he'd asked questions, he was always looking for something
to take apart and put together better than it was. That's just the way Jimmy
was, always had been, man and boy.
For the life of him Jimmy couldn't even leave a scab alone to heal over
his busted knuckles or where he got burned on a muffler manifold. Jimmy had a
scab he was always picking at it, pulling off, looking close at the hardened,
brown and red flecked dead flesh as if it had come from some dragon lizard
or was the raw metal ends of an old busted bolt from the McCormick machine
that baled the hay.
Fanny Lou and Jimmy had married up right after high school. Fanny Lou
liked the fact that Jimmy's daddy had deeded over to him and his soon-to-be wife
over three-hundred acres of good land with a small house, well fenced fields,
and a solid barn. She also liked that Jimmy had had a full time job at the
J&M Machinery Company that had been waiting for him for three years. There
was nobody could fix farm equipment better or faster than Jimmy.
Jimmy was a proud man, not stuck-up, just proud of what he could do and
others couldn't. He made good money at J&M. The farm money, the money Jimmy
called Fanny Lou's money, was all put aside for some day down the road. On his
own time, when Miley, the owner of J&M didn't mind too much, Jimmy bought
old machines that was broke and he fixed them right up. He'd use a machine, and
teach Fanny Lou how to use the machine to make her work on the farm easier.
Fanny Lou worked the farm while he was working at J&M. She worked hard most
days, even into her ninth month with all but one of the boys. Nights and
weekends, Jimmy'd keep the machines in tip-top shape until somebody made him an
offer of a trade, hard cash and another broke machine to boot. The cash came in
handy but Jimmy was always looking to swap out one machine for another.
The older and more crotchety the machine the less money he'd ask in the deal.
One year, Fanny Lou couldn't remember what year it was, Jimmy came across
a steam tractor while he was off in the woods hunting deer for the larder. The
tractor was abandoned, left out there right where it had broke down so long ago
that nobody even knew it was there. A load of good, dry hardwood logs was
still in the bed next to the firebox. Jimmy asked around, nobody knew who the
owner was or had been. Jimmy laid claim to the machine, took his biggest tractor
and spent a week of weekends dragging the rusty, hulking machine back to his
barn.
It took two years of nights and weekend work to get it all apart and back
together. Jimmy liked this old steam powered machine, it challenged him like no
other machine he had ever opened up. It was important that it was a steam
tractor, steam power was dangerous. Jimmy liked that this machine was dangerous, that when he was done fixin' it up everybody'd know for sure that he
was the best tinkering mechanic in Zelienople. Jimmy went to the library in the
city but even there he couldn't find books or parts manuals to follow. As
he worked on this machine Jimmy spent most of his time figuring out just how the
mind of the man that made this machine worked. Folks that didn't know him
thought that that old steam tractor was maybe what got Jimmy started thinking
about how folks thought about things. Fanny Lou knew better. Jimmy had always
wondered about what was going on inside of people's heads. He wondered why a
preacher became a preacher and a doctor became a doctor. He had even said to her
once: " I figure that I could take apart a human person and put him back
better than he was but maybe the Lord don't want us messin' around with what he
made."
Fanny Lou knew that Jimmy had wondered about what went on inside her head
and her body as far back as she could remember. He was always asking her why she
didn't do something or think something like he did. He was always poking at her,
showing her, telling her over and over that things she knew just weren't the way
she knew they were. Somehow, without her notice, their disagreements about even
small things became arguments that, like a scab, he couldn't let be.
If she sent the boys off to school with fried chicken for their lunch he
poked at her: " You want folks to think we're too poor for a hot lunch at
school? Just what were you thinking, Fanny Lou?". If she gave them money
for hot lunch he poked another way: " You thinking we got money to
burn on school food? Damn it Fanny Lou, we grow our own food better than what
that school can provide, and it's free. Our boys deserve better than what they
get at that school. What were you thinking?"
Somehow it had slipped past her that Jimmy was always asking her what she
was thinking. It slipped past Fanny Lou year after year until it didn't slip
past anymore. Just like the snap of Jimmy's fingers, a habit that he had picked
up somewheres and used to make a point when he was talking, one day she was done
with trying to think like Jimmy. In no time at all she was done telling Jimmy
what was going on inside her head. Fanny Lou remembered that she was good enough
for Jimmy to marry, to lay under him whenever he asked, to have his six sons,
and to work his farm harder than any hired hand. She wasn't like a broke down machine that needed fixing. Fanny Lou had
been pushed as hard and as far as she was going to go. Fanny Lou wanted to be
just fine like she was and nobody, not even Jimmy, was going to make her think
any different.
The meal finished but for the rhubarb pie and coffee that she placed in
front of Jimmy, she cleared the table then sat back in the oak chair that had
been hers since Jimmy had brought the table and set of eight chairs home from an
auction. She waited for Jimmy to begin talking. It was always Jimmy that talked
first.
"Good pie." Jimmy allowed, " Better with strawberries, but
I guess you thought that I'd like it better with just plain rhubarb. That why
you didn't put some of them berries from the freezer in the pie?"
" I didn't think about strawberries or what you'd like at all, Jimmy.
It's my pie to make and your pie to eat, if you don't like it just don't eat it
no more."
" Now that's a fine thing to say. All's I'm askin' is why didn't you
put strawberries in this rhubarb pie and you turn your tongue into a whip like
you'd like to beat me."
"No Jimmy, that's not what you're askin' me. You're askin' me why
didn't I think out what would you like and I'm telling you I didn't even think
about it no more. I'm not going to think about it ever again. A pie isn't like a
machine that can be made better and better with just a new part and a new way to
make it run. A pie is what I make for you and a pie is what you eat if you like
it. You don't like it, don't eat it. Isn't much to me anymore.
Nowadays I'm thinking some about me, and what was took out of me all these
years while I was farmin' and cookin' and birthin' your boys. Always seemed to
me, now that I look back at it, that everything was yours. The farm, the
equipment, the boys, even me was yours. Nope, no more I'm thinking about what it
is that you want or need from me. I guess I'm just done got tired of you and
your farm and your pie and all. I'm wonderin' what happened to me all that
time"
Jimmy placed his hands on the top of the table, leaned forward until his
belly touched the table. " What're you trying to tell me Fanny Lou, that
your heart has gotten so hard and cold that you don't care about what kind of
pie I like anymore?"
" That and more, Jimmy. I don't care what you think, and I don't care
any longer what you think about what I do or don't do. I guess that maybe I'm
tired of being another machine that you'd like to take apart and fix up. Maybe
these old titties are ready for replacement after six boys, and maybe
my hair is too gray for what you see when you look at me and you'd like to try
out some red hair or some blonde hair just to see how I'd run then. But most of
all Jimmy I'm sick almost to death of you always trying to put new parts into me
that'd make me think like you do. I ain't going to do any more than I done so
far and that's the simple truth of it. My heart's not soft as it was maybe, so
don't expect too much from me here on out. "
" Soft? Seems to me that your heart's got as hard as a heart can be.
If your heart was a part in a broke down old machine I could fix it, but it
ain't just another part of a machine. It's the one part runs the whole machine,
ain't it? With a heart as hard as yours all that can be done is to find out who
made it and maybe put in another one, just like a busted part in a
combine."
" That's what you been tryin' to do for as long as I know you. I
think it's too late for that."
" Well now if you think that I'm tryin' to fix you like a machine
let's just see what I can do. Let's not just send this machine to the junk yard
cause the motor's busted.
Seems to me that what we need to do is to see who made this heart of yours
so hard." Jimmy snapped his fingers as if he were a magician making some
magic trick.
" Maybe your heart was made by some Navajo silversmith. Hammered it
out of sheet silver with a riveting hammer, formed bezels on an old iron mandrel
for garnets, cabochons or facetted, wouldn't make no difference."
" Jimmy....no. "
Or how's about this - maybe it was carved out of a hunk of jade nephrite,
a piece as big as a baby's head found in a stream high up where the water
courses cold through the granite veins of the mountain. Maybe your heart was
carved by an old Chinese man that used bronze, or copper, or iron tools. Maybe then he polished that hard piece of jade heart to a shining green
with sand, pumice, and lapidary rouge."
" Jimmy, you've missed the mark."
" Well it had to be made by somebody. I think I got it now. Your
heart was made by Indians in the winter when they couldn't hunt or gather much.
It was made by the old Indians in the cave down in Avella that you read to me
about from the newspaper. Them Indians wanted it to last so they made you a
heart of flint, chipped it sharp and clean with a shed deer's antler, tiny
flakes busted away from what might have made a good scraper, a knife, an
arrowhead."
" Jimmy, not Indians."
" Well someone must have made your heart . It's not a human heart any
more. Tell me. Who made your heart?"
" We did, Jimmy. You and me."
© Copyright, 2000, J. Terry Riebling.
All Rights Reserved.
