He’d never been to a farmhouse before, never had any reason to be on a farm. Of course Saul was as reticent as a doorstop, saying only that he had “an acreage” when Oliver had asked what he did for a living, and the rising and falling tilled brown field behind the house, stretching off into the fenced distance, looked like a combed wasteland, its potential life a blank. When one of the horses whinnied as Oliver followed his host across the ragged lawn, he nearly jumped out of his shoes. The beast had loped toward them like an escaped zoo animal, its long globby-eyed face and pointed ears towering above him. “Christ,” he said reflexively, and by the way the farmer’s shoulders spiked up, he could tell that sort of language wasn’t going to fly around here. “My apologies,” he stammered. “But can you get that thing off?”
“Oh, Dipsy?” Saul said, barely sparing a glance back at him. “He doesn’t see many strangers. But he’s nothing to fear.”
The horse had stopped in place, its tail whisking the air, its wet lips parting inquisitively, its teeth a row of overturned dominoes—not in the mood for trampling. Still, Oliver was shaken, his nerves jangled, and the lonesome landscape around them unexpectedly troubled him. Back in Fort Wayne he’d been a town boy, living in a great house, his father a banker, Eileen always at his side. They and everyone they knew had automobiles and paved driveways and closed garages from as early as he could remember. This place, these animals, the land: he was surprised to see they meant nothing happy to him. He’d held no longing for the outdoors. And as Saul creaked over the slat-board porch and reached for the door, Oliver saw the choice to come here as a mistake. He felt afraid.
“Come on in,” said Saul. “The missus has dinner on the stove.”
The missus, looking for the life of her just as winnowed and sun-cooked as her husband, wore a blue cotton dress without a hint of decoration. Martha, she was called, and it didn’t take much imagination to see that she made her own clothes. Next to the front window in the waning light stood a great foot-powered sewing machine, though it was clear they were otherwise wired for electricity. A single bulb already glowed in the kitchen where she stirred a pot of lamb stew, unmoved by the idea of making table for a total stranger. Still, she set out a fifth plate.
The old man hung his hat on an ice pick at the back door and then stepped outside, where he put his fingers into his mouth and whistled. After a few minutes of dusty silence, this brought two young men through the doorway, thin as sticks and feral about their mouths, dressed in scuffed brown work clothes. Their hands were as dirty and craggy as tree roots. They eyed Oliver with a glare that notched a few hairs above suspicion and just below violence, so he simply nodded at them, his mouth gummed up in silence. He’d been a talker all his life, something Eileen warned him would one day get him into trouble. Around these folk, he could see it was best to have nothing to say.
The boys pulled out chairs without introductions, and so he went along, trying his best not to look at them. They were all Bible people, clearly, eating only after Saul had finished a prayer, the evening’s entertainment a muttered discussion among the family on the story of Job. Luckily as a kid Oliver had been to church. He didn’t have any great insight, but at least he was half-familiar with the story. The man got a bad shake from God, he wanted to say, but clearly the real message was something else. The two sons appeared to interpret the fella’s trials in a way that got the old man’s back up, and in the end the mother put her hand on his arm and whispered soothing words. In no time at all the boys screeched their chairs out, leaving their dirty plates, and disappeared down the hall. Oliver listened to the creak and shuffle of their boots, and after a pinched quiet, leaned sideways in his chair to be sure they were actually gone and not standing in the hall loading pistols. Nothing was said about whatever had just happened, and all the better, as far as he was concerned. After another silence, a patchwork blanket was produced from a wooden cabinet. Martha gestured at the sofa. Lights were shut off.
With the woman washing dishes in the next room, he lay staring at the dark ceiling, sure that he was a fool, that he would never sleep, and then fell into a dream of the highway, of seasons and years passing with his thumb turned at the sky, of lights whizzing through the air that he couldn’t catch, of Eileen sitting cross-legged in their playroom back in Fort Wayne, unfolding a piece of paper, trying to show him something. He woke with a shudder, the morning sun breaking in at the window, an absurd rooster stabbing the quiet like murder.
He’d left his bag at the foot of the sofa. Inside, the letter to Eileen was unsealed. Either the glue had gone bad or one of these strange people had opened it, very carefully, and then slipped it back in his sleep. He had a distinct feeling it was the latter, but knew he wouldn’t bring it up. Let them read his letters. Let them think what they want of him. He just wanted a ride west.
Breakfast was served, eggs and coffee, and he was surprised to see that Martha had dressed and packed a little leather case at the door. Apparently she would come along. The boys, however, were still nowhere to be seen. He silently worried about the possibility that they would be outside glaring at him, spitting on the ground, their terrible stick arms folded up tight.
Within half an hour the three of them were in the truck, Martha in the center, the two horses staring through a fence at Oliver as they munched from a bale of hay. “I can’t thank you enough,” he said. “You’ve both been so kind.”
“Do unto others,” said Martha.
Saul said nothing, started the engine, and lurched them forward out of a craggy rut. Then came the highway, the winding mountain highway, a silence between them so long and definite that Oliver familiarized himself with the subtle whirs and growls of the engine as a man familiarizes himself with the notes of a song he is trying to learn. Later, as they descended into a grassy valley bright under the morning sun, his head felt as if it were floating a little above him, and he could hear something like the buzzing of bees all around, just as he had the night he read that newspaper. Then he discovered too late that he was speaking. “A few nights ago a man, a jet pilot, a man in the navy, he was flying over the mountains up in Washington State. Lights appeared in the dark, up there with him, right alongside. By the radio he called down to his base. Surely they must know what these lights belonged to, what type of aircraft was up here with him. But they didn’t. And when he looked again, he saw the lights were speeding up. They weren’t lights at all. They were silver disks catching moonlight. He counted nine of them flying smoothly in the sky, above the clouds, and then all at once they turned away, shrunk into the distance, no different from the stars.”
He waited for one of them to say something. Another farmhouse passed by and a narrow river gleamed snakelike ahead of them. “We know,” said Saul. “I never had any brother to visit. You were a sign.”
In any other circumstance like this he would have laughed, but here he couldn’t. He’d been seeing signs of his own. “A sign of what?”
As if Martha were having a conversation with someone else, she said, “We’ll leave Paul and Jack with the farm.” And then, tapping her husband lovingly on the arm, “They’re good boys. We raised them.”
“That’s right,” said the old man, his wild white hair catching in the open window breeze.