1
Pierson, Illinois
1979
Fourteen-year-old Becky Farwell lay on the truck horn with her forearm.
“Daddy, let’s go!”
Engine running, she tilted the rearview to study her eye makeup, a wash of greens running dark to light from her eyelashes to eyebrows. Greens, of course, because the magazines said all redheads had to, even indistinct blond-red mixes like her own. What she really wanted was the set that gave you three kinds of purple, pale violet to dusky eggplant. Becky ran a quick calculation on how much she was owed by the four girls she did homework for—geometry and algebra, although she could stretch up to pre-calc too, even as a ninth-grader. Though for pre-calc all she could guarantee was a B, not that any of the girls complained. Sometimes she took payment in shoes, like the almost-new Tretorns she had on now, without socks because no one did. Becky flipped the mirror back with a snap. They needed cash too bad to daydream about makeup.
Getting squeezed at all ends. One of her father’s sayings that didn’t make sense but sure as hell got across how bad it was that spring.
After another minute she jumped down from the truck and went inside. Even though it was one of the first nice days in March, the front rooms of their farmhouse were dark and stuffy, closed in. Becky pushed up a window and propped it open with a can of beans. This morning’s cereal bowls were tumbled milky-white in the sink and a thin sticky layer of grease and dust filmed everything, but Becky had no time to wipe it up. In the family room, one patch of carpet stood out darker and new. Last week her father had pawned the TV set, all her mother’s jewelry (he thought all: Becky had hidden a few bits), and the blender. He wouldn’t tell her how much he’d gotten—it’s only temporary—but the crumpled receipt she’d found proved it was less than a hundred.
“Daddy?” she called, from the bottom of the stairs. Then ran up lightly, bracelets jingling. “We have to— Have you not even showered?”
For there he was, her bear-like father, curled on his side in bed. His silver hair mashed down low over his forehead, perspiration speckling his nose. Stomach flu, but there was no time for it. A buyer was driving in from Rockford, and her father was supposed to meet him at noon.
“You said just turn on the engine! Daddy, it’s already—”
He groaned and threw a hand over his eyes. “Show him the drills. The Lite-Trac air seeder, make sure he sees that one. And the spreaders, even if he says he don’t—”
“I can’t . . .” Becky looked wildly around the room. “How am I supposed to—”
“Tell him not the Masseys, or any John Deere. You can walk him back by the two Vicons, he’ll want those. But say no. Just drills, that’s our deal. Give me an hour. Most. I just need to— Oh, god—” He bolted from bed to bathroom, old terry-cloth robe flying, and Becky fled before she could hear anything.
On the highway, Becky knew exactly when and where to twirl the dials for music, sometimes switching from WXTV to WMMR and back again in the space of a single song. Why wouldn’t they play anything other than Crystal Gayle, for Christ’s sake? Or Kenny Rogers? She kept both hands tight on the wheel and eyes locked on the road lines, never went a fraction over 45 mph, not that their old truck wanted to. Nobody passing on I-50 gave a ninth-grader a second look, but she knew what to do if she was pulled over: start to cry right away, say that her boyfriend got dead drunk and she’d been scared and she was going straight home, swear to god, and she never would again, Officer, promise.
“Won’t save me a ticket but might keep them from arresting me,” her father mused, when he’d told her how to say it.
It was two exits, one roundabout, and four lights from the farmhouse to the showroom, and she sweated through each one. Worst part was the left turn across traffic into the showroom driveway. Becky hung there forever, blinker on, foot hovering between brake and gas. Eventually she made herself go, eyes half-closed in the turn, and bumped down the gravelly gully, Jesus Jesus Jesus, thank you.
One other truck idled in their small lot, facing the road. Shit: they were already here. Becky hopped out and let down the tailgate. She could only carry two boxes, would have to come back for the rest.
“Hello?” she called.
The Traskers ran their own farming equipment store outside Rockford and were here to buy up inventory as cheap as they could get it, then turn around and sell it at markup, a profit too ugly to think about.
“Vultures,” her father said, with a show of cheer. “Picking us dry.”
They all did it. A few years ago, he had been the one to drive out to Minter’s to sort through what was left.
“We’ll get it back,” he kept telling Becky, “in the summer.”
He used to say in the spring. Before that, it’ll pick up in fall.
“Good afternoon,” Becky sang out to the two men getting slowly out of the truck, a father and son, it looked like. She’d never opened the showroom on her own before, but had helped her father dozens of times. She unlocked the doors and used the boxes to prop them open, ran ahead to the fuse box and hit the lights for the office and front section, where the harvesters were proudly parked in a neat row, on the diagonal.
“I’ll put the coffee on—” she called back, staying ahead where they couldn’t see her. “Or there are sodas in back. Dad’ll be here any minute.”
The son was kind of cute. Becky took off her cotton pullover and checked to see if she’d sweated rings on her tank top. She should go sit in the office, she knew, in that lit-up glassed-in box where invoices and catalogues were stacked up, spilling across the desk, the chairs, the metal file. But instead she tracked the men, admiring the curls poking out from under the son’s cap, his thumbs stuck in his back pockets, the mostly clear skin on his soft cheeks. Becky fluffed her bangs and was so busy working on something clever she could say to him that the older man’s sudden presence made her jump.
“There you are,” he said low. Short and burly, bald head like a crop circle.
Becky caught a whiff of minted chewing tobacco. “He said to, um, show you the spreaders. I mean seeders. They’re just over—”
“Yeah, show me.” He grabbed her elbow and pulled her toward him. Becky grunted in surprise. “Oh shush,” he said, and the combination of his tone—don’t be silly—and her fear that the son might see or hear her (being silly) kept her quiet, even as he groped her breasts and ass, quick and rough, under the cover of the dark aisle full of pipe lengths and electrical cords. In less than a minute it was over, she was pushed away with a friendly sort of thump on the back and the man turned the corner alone, calling to his son, “This the only cultipacker, or do they have any better brands?”
Later, when her father had arrived and taken the man and son into his office, Becky watched through the glass. The son sat down before her father did. Her dad’s heartiness, his larger gestures, the other man’s crossed arms and unresponsive back . . . Becky had to look away.
For a long time she sat on a stack of wood pallets, picking at a scab on her ankle. A creaky old fan spun slowly up by the dusty rafters. “Bec? Hey, Bec?” her father called, leaning out the office door, unable to see her. “Grab two sodas for us, okay?”