Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (most life changing books txt) 📗

“Because it isn’t something that interests me. I only thought it up to have something artful to do.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“I know.”

“It’s just sometimes I get afraid that I’ll become bored with everything, and that nothing will be able to satisfy me. You must feel like that at times.”

“I did some in the winter. But not now.”

“I was thinking that earlier tonight.” She put her arms around him. “But I don’t now. You don’t pay enough attention to me, I guess.”

Then she added, “If we weren’t together, what do you think would be different about you?”

“I’d be miserable and stupid.”

“No, I mean objectively.”

“I’d probably still have three cars, but I wouldn’t take the time to mow the yard.” Then their clothes came off and the evening fell away to libertine delights and sensations well beyond any regard for efficiency, a shameless display of even their most hidden, wanton desires.

ELEVEN

July’s idea was that he’d work as a farmhand for their neighbors, baling hay, cultivating and such. He had a keen interest in knowing exactly how each phase of the farming operation was carried out, as well as a belief in the possibility that the way the men lived their lives might offer him an insight into a better way to live his own. So while he was driving their tractors he’d also be stealing glimpses into their souls.

Mal accused him of a kind of elitism. “You imagine yourself mingling with the common people, or thinking of them as being very quaint.”

“I don’t.”

“Then how can you take that kind of interest in them? Why should you care at all for seeing into their homes?”

“I’m interested. I want to know what they’re like.”

“Why do you think they’re not just like everybody else? What could possibly be different with them?”

“They’re more isolated—and a lot of them always have been.”

“That’s it. You think of them like children. You suppose them to be nobly simple.”

“Nothing of the sort. I’m just interested. I wonder if I could get a job with some of the Amish.”

“See!”

“See what? You must admit they’ve probably got the right idea. If we just would live like that, we’d be better off.”

“But they can’t be said to be ‘in society.’ They’ve merely retreated from it.”

“There’s no way you can escape being in society, unless, I suppose, you lived by yourself in a submarine. Look, no automobiles, no electricity, no television, no movies, no smoking, no drinking or taking drugs, plain-dress code and a community to livein. Reduce the number of anxiety-producing elements and you reduce the anxiety level.”

“They live with plenty of anxiety, you can bet on that. That much isolation breeds anxiety.”

“You can’t say that. You don’t have any way of knowing.”

“They can only live the way they do because there’s the rest of the world to take care of what they don’t do.”

“Which just proves they’re in society.”

“Well, if everybody lived like them—they just couldn’t. For one, there’s not enough land. There’d be no jobs.”

“Now you’re asking them to live in a way nobody can be asked—to live in a way where if everyone else were just like them the world would be better. Certainly we’re no models ourselves.”

“We make no pretensions.”

“Who said they do?”

“Well, they just seem to imply it, by being so . . . different, and pious.”

“That’s just because their living code is a little stricter than ours.”

“A little! Besides, you couldn’t ever give up listening to music, or reading—reading, how would you like to be told what you could read and what you couldn’t?”

“Who said they do that?”

“I’ll bet they do.”

“I didn’t say I believed in all their personal religious beliefs—only that their basic way of life was good.”

“Way of life, can’t be separated from the beliefs that give rise to it.”

“Now you’re just arguing to be arguing, Mal.”

“I guess you’re right. But I do want to go to the movies tonight.”

“All right. But I think we should fix up a wood-burning heater to burn some of these dead elms . . . to save on the fuel bill.”

July’s first job was with a baling crew, consisting of fourteen or fifteen boys mostly his own age or younger and two older overseers. They accepted him immediately but with great reserve, and only murmured pleasantries like probing fingers whenever he was around. There was never an introduction of any kind, and he had merely been told by the boss on his first day, “You work with them,” indicating five of the boys who were getting into a one-ton truck. And although it seemed everyone knew his name already and where he lived and that he was married, it was left up to him to listen for their names as they spoke together, because, as he guessed, it was assumed that he knew theirs.

Right away there was a keen sense of challenge. Several of the boys were clearly bigger and tossed bulky bales about with an obvious disregard for their weight, and though no hostility was ever shown and it was obvious that allowances were to be made for his lack of experience, still he felt that even the man on the tractor was anxious to see how he would work out and if he was just a weakling.

“Here, use these,” said one of the boys beside him on the wagon, and handed him a pair of thin leather gloves. July looked quickly around, suspecting a special advantage had been turned his way, and noticed that the rest were wearing gloves and that his own hands were cut mercilessly from the rope and the clover ends. He soon discovered it wasn’t the weight of the bales so much as their bulky shape that made them hard to handle and exhausted him to such a degree. Three-fourths of his energy was working against itself. Also, he discovered arms could do very little work as compared to legs and back. By the beginning of the