Universal Harvester(21)

*

“Farmer?” Jeremy was saying, with an air that made him sound older than he was; it made his father feel proud. “He’s got one tractor, no help except one son, and he’s a farmer?” They had adjourned to the living room and were watching Blue Chips, which was a movie about basketball; Nick Nolte was trying to recruit a high school player from rural Louisiana. It was one of the most popular tapes in the store; they had to stock four copies just to keep up with demand. Even then, one went missing.

Shauna smiled. “‘Family farms,’ right?”

“Yeah,” said Steve. “Weird they wouldn’t make him a shrimp fisherman or something.”

“Rice, though,” said Jeremy. “Rice for export.”

Steve pointed at the screen. “Awful dry for growing rice.”

“There’s no way that’s actually Louisiana,” said Shauna.

“Tractor but no truck,” Steve said. He tried not to let his face show how much he was enjoying himself, from the dinner table through coffee afterward down to the present moment, gathered together on the sofa and chairs in front of the TV in the living room. “Just the one tractor.”

“These movies aren’t really for people who’ve been around farms,” said Jeremy, a little apologetically, and then the screen rippled.

It was a static shot: the frame held, impartial and austere, in marked contrast to the hand-held scenes in the shed. She was running. There was no need for anyone to give chase; it was the middle of the night on a long gravel driveway abutting a corn field, and the woman, fleeing, had only rough moonlight to guide her … where? Across the highway? Into the road? She ran, canvas hood in hand, growing smaller as she made progress, the sound of her footfalls fading into silence.

Steve Heldt leaned toward the screen, a helpless look on his face.

“That—that’s your mother,” he said.

“No, Dad,” said Jeremy.

“You think I don’t recognize my own wife,” said Steve.

“It’s not her, Dad.”

“What?” said Shauna.

“It’s her,” he said. He was rising involuntarily to his feet, his body drawn to the vanishing figure in the dark.

“No,” said Jeremy. He was reaching for the remote. “There’s a bunch of tapes like this. A couple, anyway. I’ve seen her before. It’s not Mom.” The screen popped white for a half second before the darkness became general. Steve kept his eyes trained on the screen, an unwilling cartographer of lost locales, invisible ink on a wrinkled map turning brown in the heat—look, there. Those landmasses out there in the middle of the water. These are new.

Shauna was at the wall switch. “Probably some kids with a camcorder,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s a different world now. Should I make some decaf?”

Jeremy’s thoughts were swimming in several directions. I like you and I hope you take care of my dad. He didn’t say it out loud, of course. But he felt it, raw and uncomfortable, as Shauna Kinzer restored order to a room that had, only minutes earlier, been under attack.





12

They had shredded wheat the next morning, at the same kitchen table where, nine hours earlier, they’d watched Shauna work, as if the damage that needed undoing had been hers to atone for. She’d stood, sometimes pacing, while the two men sat and listened; she’d spoken, not excitedly but patiently, gathering up the few available threads and spinning them together into a working theory about the strange scenes on the tapes.

She was magnificent. In the dark, she’d seen Steve in his half-crouch before the screen, desperate; in the kitchen, where they’d gathered, she buried that moment, using small talk and idle guesses for shovels. Jeremy broke in from time to time with rough descriptions of the other scenes he’d watched; she drew them all together.

“It could even be something to get people excited about a movie that hasn’t come out yet,” she said at one point. “I don’t know if either of you saw that Blair Witch Project but they had something like this on the Internet.” Both nodded back. She worked easily, gently, until the still-developing evening’s earlier act began to feel remote and distant. By 10:30 she had constructed a pretty sturdy comfort zone out of available materials.

“Sorry about last night,” Steve said to Jeremy now, not looking up from his cereal.

“First one of those scenes I ever saw, I’ll tell you what,” Jeremy said. “I couldn’t even sleep. Stayed awake all night. Nothing to be sorry about.”

Steve gave an almost wordless nod; there’s a noise some men make with their mouths closed when they’re ready to place a ridge-marker in a conversation but don’t know how. Most mornings the TV was on—news, weather. It was quiet today. The sky came through the kitchen window blue and grand and full of possibilities, which happens everywhere, but not every day: just some days.

“So I got offered that job with Bill Veatch,” Jeremy said. “I was going to mention it last night, but—”

“Well, congratulations,” Steve broke in. “Proud of you. They give you a start date? You need work clothes?”

“Slow down a little,” said Jeremy. “I told him I have to talk to Sarah Jane.”

“To put in notice, you mean.”