After They've Seen Paree

“What possessed you to buy that old cruddy diary,” her friend asked as they walked to the car?

“That’s why I like to browse thrift shops,” Ashley answered. “Why? This diary only cost twenty-five cents, and who knows, it might be interesting.”

Ashley was never sure what there was about the old diary. Later that night, sitting with a glass of wine, she let the pages open randomly and began reading.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

December 14, 1954

What do they want from me?

Today. I have to do it today. I know it.

I’ve run out of options, time, and excuses. I’m not sure, but I think Shakespeare wrote, “if something’s to be done, it’s best done quickly,” or roughly that. I know he was writing about an assassin, but it serves as a metaphor, symbolic for me killing dreams.

What, you didn’t expect a farmer to know about the Bard and metaphors?

For me, it won’t be a person. I will be slaying my parent’s dreams, guilty of murdering dreams in the first degree.

Leaving the warmth of the barn, I pulled my coat together against a frigid wind. I turned into the wind, brushing snowflakes aside. There’s nothing more desolate than a farm landscape in hibernation. Tree limbs are like pointed daggers, accusing the summer of abandonment and leaving town with the green leaves.

My melancholy was absolute and heart-breaking.

Our farmhouse looked depressing as I walked up the steep hill, carrying a pail of fresh milk. Breathing cold air. Exhaling frost. Soft glowing windows should have looked welcoming. Instead, I knew that man and woman sat waiting at the kitchen table. They’ll be devastated by my news. I imagine my father’s anger, if not rage. “How can you? This farm’s been in the family …” I could imagine him choking up now. “My father. His father. His father before that. And, you are going just to walk away from your birthright?”

I used each step up the long hill to screw up my courage, my determination.

I thought of the words to an old song said, how ‘ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree? Well, I’d seen Paree, and this kid wasn’t gonna stay down on the farm. But how will I tell them? Can I hurt them this way?

I woke up, determined to tell them before chores, but I didn’t have the guts.

My name’s Robert C. Marshall, Junior. Robby to you.

Earlier this morning, I was wrapping the pillow around my ears. It didn’t help. The wind-up alarm clock on my nightstand droned on, tick, tick, tick, tick. Pulling my blanket up for warmth, I cursed silently at the lack of central heating.

“Costs too much,” my father said. “Why pay for something like that? The kitchen stove puts out a lot of heat, and we’ve chopped a good supply of river maple.”

They didn’t have to sleep in this attic, though. I closed my eyes tight and shivered. Not much in the way of heat made it from the kitchen stove to my bedroom and, if that wasn’t enough, I heard ice pellets striking the window.

When the alarm changed from tick-tock to a frenzied ringing, I resisted the urge to throw the damn thing across the room. Instead, I hit the top of the alarm, a memory of rapping a bell on that counter, waking the clerk in the back room. It was the Hôtel Saint-Jacques. The buddy who told me about it was Andy, a corporal in my squad. “You have the address memorized,” he said. “35 Rue des Écoles. Any Paris cabbie can get you there.”

That memory, and memories like that, gnawed at me. Now it was the motivation to tell mother and father about my dreams.

I’m no stranger to early rising. During the dark, winter months, that damned alarm goes off at five in the morning. During the summer, even earlier. Early rising meant early to bed. What else is there to do on a farm? Sometimes I listened to radio shows like the Jack Benny show, The Life of Riley, The Green Hornet, and The Shadow. Truth told, I rarely able to stay awake to the end of the shows. Life on farms was never easy. Hard work and long hours leave us exhausted.

Guessing the temperature in my room in the high forties or low fifties, I raced to get dressed while talking aloud. “Twenty-nine years old in three days, and I’m still living in this attic.” I have plans but dread telling my parents.

I felt more warmth with each step down to the kitchen. Stepping into the light of the kitchen, mother turned. “Bobby. Thank God for another day. Pancakes coming up.”

“Fine day, my ass,” my father, Robert Senior, said. “Gonna be close to zero by dinner time. Gotta check what Cole McMartin has to say.”

Now, I’ve listened to Cole McMartin every morning of my life. Except for those three and a half years backpacking from Normandy to Berlin with a rifle in my hand. Waking on an Army base wasn’t this bad. Then again, maybe it was. Indeed, this was better than hearing the bee-stinging zing of bullets flying over a foxhole. So, thinking about it, perhaps this isn’t as bad

Oh, yeah. There was that other year and a half away when I was called back into the Army.

On June 20^th in 1950, Cole McMartin, WMT, reported a new war starting in Korea. Sure enough, I was recalled to duty. I arrived at Camp Chaffe, Arkansas, on the 25^th of August, a hot day to be sure. Three-hundred and ninety days later, a lucky shot by a North Korean sniper ended my military career. I never knew whether to blame that sniper or thank him.

That was over two years ago. When I got back, I realized I hated this place more each day. This morning, working up the nerve to tell my parents about leaving the fare, my father dialed the radio, tuning out static, until a voice came out loud and clear.

“This is WMT Cedar Rapids with the latest new, crop reports and weather, Cole McMartin reporting.” When Cole McMartin started reporting the news, Robert Senior demanded complete silence.

My father held up his hand for quiet until Cole confirmed my father’s forecast.

“Didn’t I tell ya?” But Robert Senior was still worked up over another news item. “Damned Commies are gonna ruin this country. That Joe McCarthy can sure tell it like it is.”

“Come on, dear. Have some coffee and calm down,” my mother said.

I couldn’t take anymore and stood abruptly, almost knocking my chair over. “I need to get an early start on the milking,” I said, walking quickly as mother pleaded with me to stay for one of her hearty breakfasts.

In 1954 the average size for a farm was over two hundred acres. Robert Senior, his father, and his father’s father had been farming this hardscrabble eighty acres of river land two miles west of Center Point.

Walking to the barn, I wiped tears away, blaming the icy wind. I’m not one for introspection, but this morning’s different, I decided. Between snow squalls, I saw that snowy landscape, sloping down to the Cedar River. My thoughts were interrupted by a deep, drawn-out bellow. One of the dairy cows was letting me know it was time to warm my hand.

Who could blame her? Cold hands on warm teats must be seriously unpleasant.

I liked milking. Livestock generates enough warmth I could remove my coat, draping it on a nail. Sitting on the stool, milking pail tightly pressed between my knees, I began the rhythmic stroking, each teat yielding streams of fresh milk. Barn cats gathered at a distance, cats I’d never see during the day. They waited, hoping I would aim a squirt of milk in their direction.

Each of the five steps leading to the porch made it seem I was walking to place my head on the guillotine block.

I stepped into the kitchen after shaking snow off my coat. I knew mother was hurt, I didn’t stay for the breakfast she prepared. Even so, I was taken aback when I saw them. They both looked like they’d swallowed a lemon slice. I couldn’t read what was behind their eyes, but there was a chill in the air that had nothing to do with temperature.

It was time.

Damn it,” I yelled, louder than I needed to. “I’m almost thirty years old. I’ve fought in two wars and busted my ass working this damn farm, never once complaining. No, damn it, you have to hear me out.”

I watched their heads snap back in unison as if I’d slapped them. In thirty years, I never saw my mother flash the stink-eye. When I saw it this time, it almost stopped me. Almost.

“I love both of you, dearly. But I’ve seen Paree. I know the world out there. I had breakfast at the Hotel St. Jacques, lunch at the Musée d'Orsay, and strolled along the Seine at sundown, and finished with dinner at an intimate bistro, Le Bistort Du Périgord. Once seen, something like that can’t be un-seen.” I said, holding up my hand to keep them from talking.”

“Andy and Chuck, two of my buddies from Easy Company, rented a small house in Iowa City. As much as it must hurt, I’m moving in with them.” I pulled out my letter of acceptance, folded and unfolded it until it was almost torn apart.

“I’m starting at the University of Iowa this semester after the first of the year. I know it’s short notice, but I also know you can handle winter chores without me.”  

I stopped talking, waiting for the fireworks, mother crying, father raging.

Mom spoke first, in itself highly unusual. Robert Senior was always the talker. “Robbie, dear, sweet son. We’ve known this day was coming. We tried to keep it from you, sure you’d be disappointed. But you couldn’t disguise who you are, deep down.” She wiped away a tear. “It broke our heart to see you trying so hard to be something you’re not.

This wasn’t going according to the script.

“We didn’t know how to tell you, son,” my father’s gravelly voice covering up feelings.

 “Truth told,” he continued, “this damn place will never succeed. It’s never going to be a moneymaker the ways farms are growing large and corporate. We can’t compete.”

“What are you saying?” I could barely get the words out.

Mother was next. “We sold, son. The Wilson’s are taking forty acres, the Ransoms bought the rest, the river bottom. We kept just enough to tear this place down and build a nice retirement place. I have one question,” she said. “What will you study?”

“I’m going to be a writer,” I said.

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