was humming to herself while staring at one of the framed pictures on the kitchen wall, a mountain scene with a waterfall and deer drinking from a stream. Aldah could dream of being somewhere other than Dutch Center too.
Her sister sitting by herself humming at the kitchen table. It was a lovely thing to see. This was not the image and these were not the sounds of a troubled child who was afraid to go off to an institution.
Alice stood still and listened, trying to hear what song Aldah might be humming, but she was humming a medley of melodies. “Jesus Loves Me” elided with “Three Blind Mice” elided with “Away in a Manger,” and each stanza, if she was dividing them into stanzas, ended with the final notes of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”
Aldah hadn’t brushed her hair, and strands swirled in every direction, but she had taken the time to put on her glasses. Her humming continued, almost gleefully. Aldah had found a freedom to live happily in a little fantasy life, free from the other members of her family and even free from the television set. There was a beauty and independence here that an institution would destroy.
Alice did not want to disturb Aldah’s sweet contentment, but she couldn’t resist moving closer. Aldah turned and looked up at Alice and smiled. Alice put her hands on her sister’s shoulders and said, “Keep humming, my angel. It’s very pretty.”
Aldah did keep humming, louder than before, and when she got to “Old MacDonald,” Alice sang along with her sister’s humming: “Ee-aye-ee-aye-oh!”
Aldah giggled. “McDonald’s,” she said and giggled again.
“Yes, my angel. McDonald’s.”
10
Harvesting the battered corn could not happen until after several days of warm and sunny weather. At first, the shattered leaves looked like green tinsel, but warm weather made the frayed leaves curl and deaden into the familiar beige of what might have been ripe corn. The yellow-green husks turned color too, and the pulpy kernels oozed through the husks to turn the color of dried pus. A tornado would have been kinder. At least it would have picked up what it destroyed and taken it out of their sight. The corn leaves were like flesh that had been lashed until the skin split and dangled in strips, while the slender cornstalks stood like poles to which the tortured leaves and ears had been bound. The fields looked like they were infected. They looked like they had leprosy.
When the big equipment finally rumbled through the fields, disappointment carved its way onto her father’s face. They had silage all right, but Alice could see that too much moisture had been lost. They heaped the silage into huge mounds, but it was flaky and it didn’t have that pungent vinegar smell. It probably had little more feed value than straw.
For Alice, driving off for the first day of school at Midwest Christian felt like driving off to a much-needed vacation. Already the depleting life on the farm was fading and the delights of advanced placement classes awaited her. She felt as if she were dressed in new expensive clothing, though she wasn’t.
The cab of the 150 was a small chamber of peace as Alice drove toward Dutch Center. Better than church. Better even than the haymow where she could escape when she wanted to be by herself on the farm. In the haymow she could wallow alone and content among the hay bales reading or dreaming beneath the cooing pigeons in the cupola, but the 150 gave her a different satisfaction. It gave her privacy but also the good feeling that she was actively in control of something. When she tapped the gas pedal, it jumped. When she put her foot on the brake, it stopped. When she talked, it listened. She chose a long route to school just so that her anticipation of getting there would grow, turning down gravel roads that took her away from the hail-damaged fields and past the healthy fields of ripening corn and soybeans. She kept the speed at forty-five, just fast enough to hear the purr of the engine and the casual rustle of sand against the fenders. Driving to school in the 150 was a meditation.
The high school sat at the end of Midwest Street like a confused experiment in architecture. The original two-story redbrick rectangle rose from its center as a testimony to the school’s history, dating to the early 1900s when it was called Midwestern Academy and half of the faculty were ordained ministers. The Latin inscription over the front door in Gothic letters read “COR MEUM TIBI OFFERO DOMINE PROMPTE ET SINCERE.” The original structure told Alice that her forefathers respected education and wanted to give the halls of learning some dignity. Since then the school building had expanded randomly, a one-story yellow-brick wing here, a metal-roof Quonset extension there, and a separate hadite block building set back on the edge of campus where the band could sound off without disturbing students in the rest of the school. In comparison to the original structure, the assorted expansions looked like architectural slang, if not downright obscenities.
The 150 glistened along in its red glory and onto the student parking lot where Alice’s privacy was lost by faces whirling in her direction. Of course. The 150 was still a sneeze of bright color and people had to stare.
The first day at Midwest this year would be different from the first day last year. Last year she worked on her hair for an hour and spent another hour deciding what to wear, only to feel like someone who was trying too hard to be liked. This year she wore jeans and a blue shirt that hung loose over her hips, and she hadn’t thought twice about her long blond hair, which she had given a couple of quick brushes before putting in a clasp and letting the rich bulk of it stream in straight lines over her shoulders. This was the year for brainwork, not bodywork. This was the big one. These were not only the last months of the millennium, this was her last year of high school and her last year as a farm girl. She felt as if her life was a teeter-totter, weighted on one side by the farm and the other side by school. She intended to weight one side with books and let the other side fly into the air with its flaky silage.
Although the Dutch Center vicinity was considered a rural community, Alice was one of only a dozen students at Midwest who still lived on an actual family farm. At least she wouldn’t have to listen to hailstorm talk. Town kids could care less what happened outside their little worlds of Army Men video games and aviator sunglasses. At school, she could move inconspicuously into their company and leave the whole home scene behind: the money worries, her weird mother, the impending loss of her sister to an institution—all of it.
What Alice wasn’t expecting on the first day of classes was the onslaught from the coaches. They were after her for track, softball, volleyball, and basketball. The basketball coach, Miss Rettsma, who had as much muscle in her voice as she had in her arms, thought she had first dibs. Alice had been their team’s star forward last year, and Miss Rettsma thought Alice was the key to Midwest’s making it to the state tournament. Alice’s real reputation in last year’s season had come when the tips of her fingers nearly touched the rim of the basket just as the ball went through the net.
“She dunked it!” someone yelled from the bleachers—which was absolutely not true, but after that, every time Alice got her hands on the ball somebody yelled, “Dunk it, Alice!” And then, the boys barking, “Alice K.! Alice K.!” Alice knew she’d make a fool of herself if she really tried to dunk it, so she didn’t.
Why couldn’t they yell, “Quit wasting your time on sports, Alice. Study, Alice, study!”?
Alice didn’t waste words with Miss Rettsma. “I want to focus on getting ready for college.”
“You could get a sports scholarship to college,” Miss Rettsma said in a voice that sounded like a scolding. “You’re a natural athlete.”
“I don’t want to get a scholarship for what I can do with my arms and legs,” said Alice. “I want to get a scholarship for what I can do with my brain.”
There
