It Means A Lot To Me

The first time I was ever invited to Benny's house, he was dead. Now the farmhouse loomed before me, a place I had never been, but one that held a broken piece of my life.

I had pulled up the gravel driveway in an old green '53 Chevy I had borrowed. Not air conditioned, of course, but beggars can’t be…you know. Feeling I was late and being apprehensive about meeting her, I drove too fast. The car had kicked up a dust storm behind me, and now, as it caught up and flooded in the open windows, the dirt stuck to my sweaty face and arms, and the scent of dry earth filled my nostrils. So much for my skipping lunch for a shower as preparation for meeting her.

Sarah stood there. Like a sculpture in front of the house, she stood perfectly still, unaffected, waiting for this relic of her husband’s history to emerge from the car.

-

Bennie and I had roomed together at college, the sounds of his drunken stumbling and my studying intermingling in the small space we shared. He drank and I studied. He wanted to be Hemingway, and, although I am sure Benny was an alcoholic, his excuse for drinking was that Hemingway was an alcoholic. How was he going to be a successful writer unless he drank himself nasty?

As unbearable as his drunkenness was, he was my friend. I could not have told you why back then, but I know I identified somehow with his confused bewilderment at being human. His conflict with life was also mine until much later in my life.

The unusual thing about it all back then was that he still got better grades than I did and, in fact, graduated with honors. Yeah, it was like that. He was brilliant. Too brilliant. He would attend lectures, and then go out at night to drink and shoot pool in some dingy bar in downtown Lawrence until long after I went to bed. Our room always smelled like old beer and cigarette smoke in the morning.

During the summer break, in time off from summer jobs, we might go riding around in his rattily '55 Ford sedan to get into mischief, like stealing watermelons, throwing them in the trunk, and then driving into a cornfield to hide among the tall cornstalks from the fast-approaching irate farmer. Or maybe we shot beer cans with the pistol he had in his glove compartment. He told me he shot up road signs when I wasn’t around to worry about getting arrested.

But he never invited me home. He would come to my parent’s house and have lunch or maybe even dinner with me, but I was never invited to his parent's farm. I figured he wasn't happy at home. I don't know; Benny never told me.

I felt a constant sadness for his pathos. I figured maybe it was because he didn't want to run the farm like his dad wanted him to, Benny’s soft hands a testament to the work he despised and refused to do. No, he just wanted to be a "stupid" writer. I wanted him to be a writer.

Near the end of our time together, he joked about how he had to “study for exams” in our room now because he had lost his driver’s license when the police stopped him for driving on the sidewalk. He didn’t seem to care.

After final exams, he somehow faded away out the back door of our camaraderie. The last thing I heard about him, from someone, after graduation was that he had become a journalist in Denver. I was glad to hear that; it meant he had begun.

-

Sarah was waiting for me leaning back on the porch rail, the rough wood pressing into her back, her hands clasped in front of her. She was a woman I had never met. As I stepped out of the car, I immediately felt the hot Kansas sun beating down on my neck. My body felt like it had spiked antennae, cocklebur-like, sensing details. I don’t think I have ever felt so aware, before or since. I noticed her walking towards me. I noticed her brown leather boots, one with broken laces, crunching on the gravel. I noticed how they kicked up tiny clouds of dust. Her approach seemed slow-motion.

"You must be Sarah," I said, extending my hand.

She said, “Yes. Hello, Tom. Thanks for coming.”

She took my hand, her skin rough against my own, calloused; her grip firm with the strength of a woman who had known hard work. Her smile polite. Her eyes surveying me.

She had a natural beauty. Even considering how handsome Benny was, he had been lucky. Sarah's face, though etched with the lines of a life lived outdoors, retained a youthful beauty. Her hair, a rich auburn shade, was pulled back in a practical braid. Her dress faded wildflowers.

"Thank you for coming,” she said, like she had forgotten she already said it. Maybe she was nervous. Maybe wondering if she should invite me into where it happened. To where I had never been invited.

She had invited me out to the farm, but I wasn't sure why. Was she going to cry on my shoulder? I knew he had committed suicide some time ago. Months? A year? I wasn’t sure when. And then she had gone to the trouble to find me. I wasn’t even sure how she found me. I didn’t live nearby. I was living in New England at the time, but I had decided that, while on a trip to California, I would stop in Jamestown, my old stomping grounds. I had plans to see old friends.

She got a message to me through one of them. Small towns work that way. But how she knew I was around just these few days? Small Town tom-toms, no doubt. She was obviously determined to speak to me.

The looming wooden farmhouse was as Kansas typical as any movie would make it. It was a two-story structure, painted a weathered white, with a gabled roof and a wide front porch supported by sturdy wooden posts. A porch swing swayed in the breeze, the old chains creaking with each movement. The windows were framed by simple trim, and a few flowerpots added a touch of color to the porch, their blooms wilting in the oppressive heat. A gravel driveway led to a detached garage, and a windmill stood sentinel in the distance, its slow-turning blades squeaking unenthusiastically.

She began walking around the outside of the house. She said, "Come around back. I want you to see the garden and our crops.”

A screened-in back porch overlooked a sprawling backyard, where a vegetable garden and a clothesline swayed in the breeze, the scent of sun-warmed tomatoes and clean linen mingling in the air. The land continued outward apparently forever, with rippling wheat elucidating the wind currents.

In a slow monotone, as she gazed trancelike out over the field, she said, "Forty acres. All ours. Fertile. Good. Good land." I knew she was telling me something, but what should I say? She seemed to be in reverie while I waited, wondering what was next.

Finally, she turned and, without a word, led me through the screened porch to the back door. I followed her into the house, the screen door slamming behind us with a metallic clang. The air inside was heavy. This was where he died, so being greeted by a sense of warmth and comfort would be an illusion. The floors were well-worn hardwood, the boards creaking underfoot with each step.

I wasn't shown around the place, or maybe she offered and I declined. Some details are not so clear anymore. I didn't want to see the rooms where he had lived and breathed and ultimately chosen to end his life. I wanted out of the hurt, not more of it.

The door had led us directly into the kitchen, where a pot of coffee was smelling burnt, the pungent aroma enhancing the underlying scent of grief that permeated the house. The kitchen was spacious and functional, with a large farmhouse table that had seen countless meals and gatherings, the wood scarred and stained.

We sat at the table. She didn’t offer coffee. Or anything else. She obviously had something to say and small talk was not the thing.

I remember the oddest things. As we pulled up the wooden spindle-back chairs, their grating on the bare floor had seemed obscenely loud. I remember the water pump by the sink, and that the greenish kitchen cabinet doors were scratched and crooked. I guess I was looking for some details after all, that would tell me part of the story I was about to hear.

She said, “Benny talked often about you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I feel like I know you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, he really talked a lot about you.” She smiled. “He felt you had been his only friend.”

“Oh god, I hope not.”

“I have little doubt,” she said. “It’s true. He told me several times.”

I didn’t know how to answer that. I almost said, “You mean while he was drunk out of his mind?”

I said, "So where'd you meet Benny?"

"We grew up together. I mean, I lived down the road. You know the Harris farm?”

I didn't.

Her voice was flat. “I was a Harris. We got married when he came to run the farm."

I was confused.

I said, "I thought…I mean the last I heard Benny was in Colorado. Working for a newspaper."

"Oh, that didn't last long. He got fired in less than a year and then he came back here to run the farm."

"His parents? Were they glad?"

"Well. I don’t know. Nothing was said. They both died young. But, I mean, they lived here, too, until they went. But Benny and I ran the place. Right after they died, our first one was born, so they never met their grandkids."

Her voice caught on the last word.

"Grandkids?"

"Yeah, we have…or better, I guess it’s just me now. I have three kids. Two girls and a boy. They're upstairs now. I told them we needed to talk, but if you want to meet them,…" She trailed off.

I said, "No. I mean. I really don’t have much time."

"Well, sure. I guess I wanted you to know how he spoke of you.” She paused, seemingly trying to adjust her chair. But it didn’t move. “And how he died.”

She stared at me inscrutably. After a long silence, she said, “He shot himself in the head."

She paused again, the silence again stretching between us, broken only by the ticking of an unseen clock. I think she was waiting for my reaction.

I knew he had shot himself. That much I knew.

I said, “Yes.”

Now she spoke fast, like she had to dump it on me.

"You see, once a month he would put one bullet in his pistol, go in the bedroom over there…" -she pointed behind me– "…and lie down on the bed and spin the chamber. And pull the trigger. He would say it was up to the gods if he lived. And then he'd get up and we'd have dinner.

“Like nothing..."

I was speechless, my mind reeling, trying to process the horror of what she had just described. I closed my eyes. Actually, it’s strange how I can remember anything from that day other than what she had said just then.

I said, "Once a month. And you knew this? You knew when he would do this?"

"Yeah. He would tell me, so I could send the kids out to play." Her voice was barely above a whisper.

She thought for a while. “I guess…what I…I don’t know if I should tell you.”

I heard the clock again.

She said, “The last time…that last time, it was our anniversary. That day. That night we had a sitter. We were all dressed up to go out.”

A thousand nightmares ran through my mind; images of Benny, already dressed for his funeral, lying on that bed; the cold metal of the gun pressed against his temple; the deafening roar of the shot in the bedroom. The bloody aftermath. My mental pictures could be nothing compared to the images in her head, to the reality she had lived through.

I said, "When it finally happened, you must have been relieved."

"Yes…Yes, I was.”

She looked down.

“I had come to know I couldn’t fix him.”

She sighed.

“I was pregnant with our youngest.”

She looked at her hands.

“As soon as I can sell the place, we'll move to Ottawa where my sister lives."

We sat quietly for a bit.

She said, "I found some of Benny's old things." She gestured toward a box on the table, the cardboard dented and stained. "I thought you might like to have them. If you don’t, it’s okay. I’ll just trash them."

I stood up and opened the box’s interlocked flaps, the rough cardboard scraping against my skin. Inside were old notebooks, their pages filled with Benny's scrawled handwriting, the ink faded and smudged. There were photos too, of Benny and me at the University of Kansas, our young faces grinning up at me.

I closed all four flaps on the box and said, “No, but thank you for thinking of me. You can trash it.”

“Oh. Yes? Are you sure? If you’re worried by what I think….”

I shook my head, afraid to speak for fear I would cry.

Then I think we must have talked about her handling the farm alone and about her selling it, but I can't remember exactly. But nothing about her three young kids. I had not heard a sound from upstairs and wondered if her children were asleep or even existed. I didn’t ask how they could be so quiet. But thinking back on it, I figure they were listening to us the whole time. They would have questions for their mother.

As the sun began to set, the light slanting through the kitchen windows and casting long shadows across the floor, I noticed the stifling heat in the room. She seemed unaffected by it.

It was time for me to leave. I was exhausted. Sarah walked me down a dark hall to the open front door. The screen door creaked open, the sound echoing in the stillness.

"Thank you for coming," she said again. "It means a lot to me."

I nodded.

I drove away slowly, the gravel crunching and popping under my tires, so that the dust would not billow up and blow over her in a dirty cloud. I saw in the mirror she stood in the doorway until I turned a corner far up the road.

He had been thirty-two years old. She couldn’t fix him. She had to tell me every detail, because she

was looking for absolution, but I couldn’t offer it. I had forsaken him at graduation.