Universal Harvester(24)
Irene Colton had lived away from Tama before; she wasn’t entirely rootbound. In 1957, she’d won a scholarship to Ottumwa Heights College. It was during her senior year there that she met Peter Sample. He was changing trains on the way home from Chicago, where he’d spent the week at a cattlemen’s convention; every weekend she picked up one shift at Henry’s Drive-In. It was Sunday. He sat at the counter and ordered a hamburger with coleslaw and mashed potatoes, but when he got out his Bankamericard to pay the bill, Irene pointed at the CASH ONLY sign on the counter. He was embarrassed, but she reached into her apron. “It’s on me,” she said; her smile looked genuine because it was.
A week later her manager brought her an envelope addressed to her; tucked inside a greeting card with a picture of Omaha on the front were three one-dollar bills. Greetings from Omaha, it said on the front, and, inside, in admirably neat handwriting: “Thanks for lunch. Hope to see you if I pass through again.”
Idly, just for fun, she wrote back to him at the return address on the envelope, thanking him; “Everybody loves the story of the Omaha man who sent me three dollars,” she said. About a month later, she got another letter, and when she answered that one he wrote back again. His letters were all substance, but light fare: pleasant, harmless, transparent thoughts from a young man who lived alone and worked around cattle. He spoke with the assumed familiarity of the irredeemably local: the guy who owns the Texaco opened up a used-car lot behind the station, I’m thinking about buying a station wagon from him; the city bought a new snowplow and the chief of police personally drives it; the Dillow family is selling their house, it’s hard to believe, their name goes back around here for generations. It felt like he needed somebody to talk to; reading his gentle unburdenings made her feel like she was doing somebody some good, which she liked.
In college she’d known plenty of boys who had Peter Sample beat for worldliness, even though he’d seen more of the world than they had; but she reckoned this in his favor, not theirs. His courtship was obvious and awkward, and felt of a piece with the small-town manners she’d learned as a child: the easy touch of the everyday, the pervasive mild formality. In the autumn of 1963, he visited Tama, taking an extra day on his way to a conference he didn’t really need to attend. Her family liked him.
She’d worked all summer doing clerical work for a dentist; it didn’t seem like a great use of her education, but she wasn’t sure what else she was supposed to do with her life. So when Peter’s visits began to observe a predictable quarterly pattern, following the seasons, Irene was receptive. One spring he brought a carton of frozen steaks packed in dry ice: “I get them at cost,” he said, not wanting to seem extravagant. Still, her father relished making the same joke at the table several times over the next month: “I feel like the president!” he said.
Over Christmas 1965 he stayed two whole weeks at the Hotel Toledo; he’d made senior accountant at the stockyard and had plenty of time on the books. On the Sunday before Christmas, he joined the family in worship at Grace Evangelical. The services were mild and gentle, wholly devoid of proselytizing, and he didn’t mind them at all; the choir sang “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior” while the ushers passed the collection plate. Irene stood singing with a soft, contented look in her green eyes, holding the hymnal open but never looking down to check the lyrics. Peter took note. She’d mentioned Bible camp in talking about her childhood, but only in passing.
He was conscious of not wanting to wear out his welcome at the Colton household, so he spent many hours alone in his room that December; it had a television, but he didn’t like to watch much television. Instead, he sat and thought, in a nice old chair that came with the room: he thought to himself about what he was doing in Tama, and what he ought to maybe do next. He tried to diagram the natural course of events between himself and Irene. He wrote down a few notes on hotel stationery, rough projected timelines extending into the future, but these do not survive.
Over time he became a familiar face in Tama. He’d stay for a weekend at the Toledo every few months, visiting the Coltons, going to church on Sunday morning with Irene; her mother and father stayed home except for holidays now, but Irene loved how the light came through the stained-glass scenes in the high church windows, and Peter didn’t mind. He stole glances at her when she bowed her head to pray, her eyebrows knitted in concentration; and he wondered to himself about the substance of her silent prayers, though he never asked. He did not pray himself but sat respectfully. Before heading home, he’d treat the whole family to dinner out.
Around town, he developed a reputation for being a little stuffy; his manners had been formed in a vanishing time. There was speculation, if not outright gossip, about whether he’d take Irene away somewhere, but he held to his pattern for over a year, nearly two. In December 1967, after knowing her for four years and having become a seasonal fixture at the table in her parents’ house, he proposed marriage at the dinner table in front of the whole family, and she said yes.
“We don’t have to leave Tama right away,” he told her the next morning when they went for a walk; he knew it would be hard for her to leave. She was thankful for a husband-to-be who was considerate and understanding, who also came from a small town. But when they explained the plan to her parents at dinner that night, her father grew stern.
“That’s a waste of money,” he said to Peter, as if there were no one else in the room.