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

centered around the weather or the particular difficulties of the day ahead—the heat, working for such and such who might be hard to get along with, and for the most part composed of short, biting comments. Everybody’s as a rule thinking about sleeping. But nobody talks of it because that makes the day get longer.

“Then later on, when the noise of the machinery and tossing a few bales around has had a chance to jar you into being awake, nearing eleven, they all seem to want to talk out what happened the night before, and even the less memorable events get told—some at length, some only scantily, depending on who’s talking and their own bent for that kind of thing. A lot of interest seems to be focused on sex at this time, but it never gets really bawdy until the afternoon.

“By lunchtime the talk is more about our cars and movies, famous basketball players or what a person might do if he had a lot of money. Lunchtime itself is pretty solemn—at least the first quarter of the hour; then it loosens up and everyone’s truly gregarious—even more so than just before quitting, which is friendly but a little selfish too, because all you can think about is getting home or wherever you’re going.

“If there’s ever any trouble or arguments it’s always in the middle of the afternoon—say around three or four o’clock. Swearing and general hostility seems to be able to slip in naturally, ‘fuckin’ this,’ and talk of perverts and minority groups, and ‘that son of a bitch couldn’t figure his way out of a grocery store.’ It also tends toward a more vulgar view of the relationship between men and women, and gives way to that considerably. I guess it’s usually the hottest and most miserable then, and it’s difficult to get up the emotional energy to be charitable. It’s during these times that I always think of all the other things I should be doing with my life and how I need to read more and get among a better class of people: that’s my own way of participating in the mood.

“Then as we can feel the air get cooler, and see the boss is beginning to think about calling it a day and getting into some more comfortable shoes and sitting under his elm tree at home with a breeze blowing on his face, drinking ice tea made by leaving glass jars with tea bags and water in the sun—then a surge of vitality and good-heartedness begins to come. We start thinking about how close we are to being done if we can finish up a particular field, what entertainment the night holds, and a long-range excitement seems to take over: joy in being alive—pride in working—that sort of thing. Then it’s all waving and shouting and roaring the engines of our cars when we leave. The drive home is an unbelievable merriment, usually speeding, and with no regard for any seriousness but the immediate sensation of well-being.”

“But what do you talk about just before you leave? No, don’t drop your head now, I’m almost finished.”

July reorganized himself and Mal continued to sketch him against the porch railing.

“Well, for instance, Bonesy might say to me—supposing we were working behind the baler at the time, and about every fifteen or twenty seconds another bale comes issuing out of the gate, ‘So, how do you like being married, July?’ And I might answer, ‘Oh, it’s all right if you like that kind of thing.’

“ ‘We all like that kind of thing,’ he continues, ‘It’s the matter of the same kind of thing day in day out that some don’t agree on.’

“I suppose.’

“I really thought Jack and MacLean was going to get into it yesterday, didn’t you?’

“ ‘No. Jack ain’t one for fighting, I don’t think.’

“ ‘He looked pretty mad.’

“ ‘That’s a whole lot different thing. You ever been inside that tavern in Kalona?’

“ ‘A couple times. It ain’t much of a place. Closes at six o’clock. Too many old geezers in there. Why?’

“ ‘Just wondered.’

“ ‘Didn’t you say you had a ’32 Ford?’

“ ‘I still have it. Everything in it’s original.’

“ ‘Did you do it yourself?’

“ ‘No. My dad did it.’

“ ‘Boy, I really like old cars.’

“ ‘So do I.’

“ ‘They’re just so much better than the newer ones. There seems to be so much more sense to them—everything is so obvious as to what it’s for. You should’ve seen this old Cadillac I had once. Man, driving that down the road really made you feel like something. Steel gray mine was, and I got some of those real wide white-walls and put them on, and a big old spotlight just outside the vent for bushwhacking.’

“Then we might talk a bit about going fishing somewhere or buying a motorcycle, drinking beer, the fact that marijuana grows wild but is illegal, what drug fiends must be like, or the loose morals of hippies living in overcrowded houses with mattresses on the floor, or the government. As it gets later, both of us might start feeling pretty good about each other and make plans to go swimming together at the reservoir, or go to a drive-in with you and his wife. But we sort of know even when we’re talking that we won’t.”

“There, all finished,” she said, and turned her pad so he could see his own likeness in it.

When the baling crew moved on toward Hills, July quit, spent a whole week around the house with Mal, sleeping outside nearly every night, and hired himself out to help cultivate, driving the fat-tired tractors down between the rows of corn and beans and digging up the weeds with curved, flat metal fingers.

This job was altogether different from haying, and being entirely alone for long, long stretches at a time reminded him of something out of his distant youth in Philadelphia, and before. The ability to be with oneself, he decided, was something that reached further back than anything