Authors: Vinita Hampton Wright
Dwelling Places (37 page)
She can't think more about any of this. She is learning how much she can think in a day, and it's not much. So she does mindless work and thinks for a few moments, and then she stops herself and finds more mindless work. She has devised her own way of coping, after all.
In the back of her thoughts, an old hymn scratches up memories of things she used to build her life upon. She tries to replace these unbelievable words with her own, with something she is more likely to trust. No such words are forthcoming, and so she allows the hymn phrases to tumble around some more. For the first time, she notices that the chorus ends not in answer but in question.
Is not this the land of Beulah? blessed, Blessed land of light, where the flowers bloom forever, and the sun is always bright!
Mack
He pulls into the narrow drive of the cemetery, at the bottom of the hill, where he can look up the rise and see his son. Sure enough, Young Taylor is stretched out on a lounger. He's having a smoke. The color of the cigarette tip matches the sky beyond, those ancient, fluid fires above the spent fields. Mack turns up the track that leads to his
father's and brother's graves. As he gets closer, Young Taylor makes a slight motion with his wrist, and in that second he becomes a snapshot of Alex, the younger Alex, before the hope left. Mack parks the truck and walks over.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Hey.” Mack looks around. “How did you get out here?”
“Eric dropped me off.” He wears a down-filled denim jacket, an old red scarf at his throat. His ears match the scarf. A small blanket they used to take on camping trips is wrapped around his legs. He looks to be here for a while.
“I think there's a wool cap in the truckâyou want it?”
“No.” Young Taylor takes a drag. It's one of those clove cigarettes. He holds it toward Mack. “Want one?”
Mack shakes his head. “You know those are twice as bad for you as the regular ones.”
“Yeah, but they burn twice as long, so I only smoke half as many of them.” He studies Mack for a second or two. “You're not going to tell me to come home, are you?”
“No, no. You've got a pretty nice view here.” Mack scans the rows of headstones, the cut marble and granite, the older, milky rectangles leaning over and barely readable, the occasional angel raising its wings above the dead grass.
“Quiet too,” says Young Taylor, resting his head against the chair. The tinted sky reflects against his face. “Once a person ends up here, he's through talking.”
“Is that why you come out here?”
“It just feels like a good place to be. Hard to say why.”
Mack stares at Young Taylor's silhouette. His son doesn't move at all, except to bring the cigarette up and back, in a slow, thoughtful motion.
“Is it okay if I sit here with you?”
“Sure.”
Mack gets the lawn chair out of the truck. He notices that his son is directly on top of Taylor Senior's grave. The family Taylors stacked
one on the other. It doesn't strike Mack as disrespectful, but fitting. He positions his chair on top of his brother's resting place and sits down. It feels a little bit as if he and Young Taylor are waiting in line, just one layer up from death.
“It just makes me think bigger, when I'm here.” Young Taylor turns to Mack when he says this, to see if his dad is listening.
Mack nods. “It can't help but work on your perspective, can it?” They sit quietly for several minutes, while the sky in front of them shifts its colors and changes shape. Beyond the hill and its resting dead lie fields that look more dead still. Mack knows that looks are deceiving, that even now the world beneath their feet is heating up, preparing for spring. He sits there on the slope and imagines movement far below, the anxiety of seeds waiting for their time, the sluggish awakening of worms and beetles.
He feels energy waken inside him as well, other things biding their time, sentences about to form, even the conversation that emerges now, phrase by phrase, between him and his son. He looks across at Young Taylor's still profile and is filled with wonder that they are here, underneath this dramatic sky and sitting atop centuries of gains and losses. The two of them hold the present moment, with all of its dreams on the verge of bursting out.
He realizes that he is breathing hard. He laughs a little, giving vent to the pressure that surrounds him, the noises and textures that fasten him to this place at this moment. He wants to reach over and touch his son, to steady himself, but instead he speaks.
“Probably every person should come sit here from time to time.”
Young Taylor grins at him. “What a world that would be.”
Mack laughs. “I don't suppose it will happen anytime soon.”
They settle back, as the earth tips forward. Mack feels the solitude gather at their feet and shoulders, and he knows that he can stay as long as it takes to do whatever is needed.
After a moment or two, he hears a familiar sound. It is the cold clatter of a car engine, and Mack gazes hopefully down the road as Jodie's dust rolls toward them.
How
Dwelling Places
Was Born
I grew up in southeast Kansas, surrounded by wheat, milo, corn, and soybeans. I was not a farm girl but one of the town kids whose father worked in a factory of a neighboring community. When I was a girl, my town was home to numerous businesses, churches, and community organizations. Many families were multigenerational, having descended from English, Italian, and German immigrants, many of whom had come to the area decades before to work in the coal mines. My father's grandfather was a miner; I can remember seeing a head lantern hanging on a hook in my great-grandma's house.
When I was grown, I left the hometown. By the 1990s, I was in Chicago, which has become my home. Then in the year 2000 I read an interview with Joel Dyer in
The Sun
magazine about the ongoing farm crisis. Dyer had published a book in 1997 (
Harvest of Rage,
Westview Press) that correlated the desperation of the rural poor with the growing militia movement in the heartland. He talked about the despair and depression that had become the normal atmosphere in many communities. He described the chronic financial stress and the growing number of rural poor. As I read his book, I recognized a lot of things. I remembered the Main Street my hometown used to
have, the family businesses that lined both sides of it when I was a little girl. (It doesn't even have a gas station now.) And I had witnessed, and been part of, the exodus of younger people to the cities, to find opportunities that no longer existed back home.
After being compelled to think more thoroughly about the farmland I came from, I decided to set a novel there. I chose to make as its protagonist a man who had lost his farm. I would make him like so many men I'd known back home: a decent family man, a man of religious faith. And I would put him through these enormous losses and see how he might survive.
It's dangerous to write fiction out of an agenda. My early version of the story involved on its periphery the militia movement, which feeds on desperation and religious fundamentalism. The character of Rev. Francis is a vestigial reference to that movement, but I had to let go of the topic, because that's not how the story spun itself. I let go of, as well, the desire to present in detail the changes in our agricultural system that have exacted cruel costs from small farmers. I let go of everything but Mack's story, which took nearly five years to write.
Not long after I began working on the story, a cousin sent me a CD by Fernando Ortega:
This Bright Hour,
and the last track is his rendition of “O Thou, In Whose Presence,” an old hymn. I wept every time I heard the song, even though, as a person who had shifted to urban living as well as to a different faith tradition, I rarely sang or heard old hymns. But I recognized this particular hymn as the backdrop for Mack's story. Ultimately, the five verses of the hymn became the structure of the book. And just a few months into the writing process, I saw the film October Sky, about the boys in a coal mining town who escaped that existence to become, literally, rocket scientists. The film moved me because of my own roots. And when I saw the persona created by Chris Cooper as the father of one of the boys, I turned to my husband and said, “That's Mack.” Although I don't write characters to actual people, that persona gave support to the building of Mack: the expressions on his face and anguish in his eyes,
his sincere love for his family, and the underlying fear that made it so hard for him to hope.
This story could have been set in just about any farming community in the United States. I chose Iowa because it's but a few hours' drive from my home in Chicago, thus making research possible, even affordable. I chose Iowa also because of its mythic character in the American landscape; the Iowa farmer has become an archetype of strength, independence, faith, and fruitfulness. To explore loss most thoroughly, it's best to apply it to the heart of what has been lostânot just a family farm here and there but a core belief, an icon.
I chose Mahaska County because, when I drove around the state nearly five years ago, I was drawn to that area. I don't know if, statistically, Mahaska County is any worse off or better off than other counties, in terms of economy. Clearly, a lot of people are doing just fine, and the crops there continue to grow and thrive and offer harvests year after year. But in Mahaska County, as well as similar counties all over the nation, the rural community has had to deal with the forces that shape Mack's story.
While preparing to write this story several years ago, I studied a state road map and reviewed a library book that listed abandoned towns in Iowa, and I assumed that there was no Iowa town by the name of Beulah. Of course, it is dangerous to make assumptions, and shortly after the hardcover edition of
Dwelling Places
was released, a reader let me know that there still is a Beulah in Iowa, although in a different part of the state from where this story is set. I apologize to citizens of that town for co-opting the name of their home, albeit unintentionally. I chose the name of Beulah because of its appearance in a certain psalm; because the Pentecostal woman I was named after served for several decades as pastor of a church in Beulah, Kansas, just a few miles from where I grew up; and because, well, I really liked the sound of the name. The Beulah, Iowa, in this story is fictitious and not patterned after any specific town; at the same time it is very much like many tiny towns throughout Iowa, Illinois, and other farm
states. I had already decided upon the generic surname of Barnes for the family in this story when I discovered, in Mahaska County, the small town of Barnes City; it has no connection to the story of
Dwelling Places.
My thanks to the academics and journalists who have written so eloquently about farming in America, whose statistics, stories, and descriptions helped me flesh out this fictional tale. Thanks to the counselor for a farmer's hotline in Nebraska who could lend detail to the pain and depression faced by so many who are caught up in frightening change. Thanks to the former farmer willing to talk about the difference between “before” and “after,” and to the rural pastor who mentioned a service she'd witnessed once, that celebrated a farm family that had had to move on. Thanks to the café and motel owners, the fellow diners and guests who stopped to chat with this city girl passing through, who provided color and language to the story, though they were unaware of their help. Thanks especially to Brent Bill, who helped me get the farming details straight. Thanks to my husband, Jim, who not only endured my repeated trips out of state but came along once or twice and provided photos to help me in the writing.
I am ever grateful to my agent, Kathryn Helmers, who found a home for a story whose subject matter is not highly sexy or marketable, and to my editor Renée Sedliar and the entire Harper San Francisco team who were willing to make a home for
Dwelling Places.
This is a story of loss, but of faith, too. It is certainly not every farmer's story, but the journey of Mack and his family is the same progress required of any of us when life is not what we expected, and when the songs and prayers we have memorized since childhood no longer make sense.
VINITA HAMPTON WRIGHT,
a novelist and editor who conducts creative writing workshops at conferences and retreats around the country, is the author of the novella
The Winter Seeking
and the novels
Velma Still Cooks in Leeway
and
Grace at Bender Springs,
as well as numerous nonfiction titles. Visit the author online at www.vinitahamptonwright.com
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
V
INITA
H
AMPTON
W
RIGHT
FICTION
Grace at Bender Springs
Velma Still Cooks in Leeway
The Winter Seeking
NONFICTION
Simple Acts of Moving Forward:
A Little Book About Getting Unstuck
The Soul Tells a Story:
Engaging Creativity with Spirituality in the Writing Life
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DWELLING PLACES
:
A Novel
. Copyright © 2006 by Vinita Hampton Wright. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition OCTOBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061980213
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