Early Warning

JOE AND HIS UNCLE JOHN kept arguing about what to plant, how much to plant, whether to leave some acreage fallow. Joe had seen a picture of stored corn reserves in a Time magazine, and the picture spooked him — hills and billows of grain just sitting there. The article said there were something like a billion bushels in storage, and no market — maybe no future market until 1980, not for seventeen years. Joe remembered the old saying “The best place to store corn is hogs, and the second best is whiskey.” His dad had made use of the first option, though not the second. However, Joe didn’t have hogs anymore — they were too much work for one man with no one to help him. Yes, the government had bought the surplus corn in the winter; a few of those billion bushels no doubt had belonged to Joe Langdon and John Vogel. John had no doubt that the government would pay for it again this year, store it again, and come up with something to do with it — rocket fuel, maybe. In the fall, the Canadians had sold almost seven million tons of wheat to the Russians — a first, as far as anyone knew, but secret deals happened all the time, didn’t they? Wheat wasn’t corn, however, and Joe hadn’t paid too much attention, though everyone sitting in the Denby café had been pretty hot under the collar, half of them wondering why the Canadians would feed the enemy (“Well, the Cuban missiles weren’t pointed at Montreal, were they?” said Bobby Dugan. “Every man for himself, and why not?”), the other half wondering how the American government had been so stupid as not to get in on the deal (“Food is food; if they’re starving, we’re no better than Stalin was, not to sell it to them”). At least the government was consistent, thought Joe. It would be a sign of craziness to feed them with one hand and blow them up with the other.

But that didn’t solve his problem about what to plant. He found himself longing for oats, but there wasn’t even a pretend market for those, and how would he harvest them? Corn was the tall, golden darling. Those broad leaves rose, stretched out, and soaked up the sunshine, and one kernel planted turned into hundreds harvested — and there was your problem. Plenty of soybeans in those storage bins, no two ways about that, but Joe decided in the end to plant more beans this year than corn. They were starting to make stuff out of beans — not just oil and feed, but paint, plastic, and fiber. John thought beans were a passing fad, though the fad hadn’t passed in fifteen years. Joe knew he could press the point, and John would yield.

—

AS SOON AS she came back from Caracas, Andy made her first appointment with Dr. Smith, whose office was in Princeton. Dr. Smith’s house on Green Street in Princeton was much more difficult to get to from Englewood Cliffs than Dr. Grossman’s office on West Seventy-eighth Street, but the inconvenience of the trip was part of its appeal.

Dr. Smith was taller than Andy, with eyes so blue that they were used-up-looking, as if Dr. Smith were on his way to becoming an albino, but his gaze was keen, and he had a beaky nose and muscular wrists. He shook her hand and looked her up and down, then led her to his therapy room. His fee was twice Dr. Grossman’s. She had not fired Dr. Grossman, or vice versa. Dr. Grossman thought that her issues with her father were on the verge of being resolved. Lars Bergstrom had always been a quiet man, but powerful in his way. If they could get to the heart of Lars’s pattern of withholding affection and approval from Hildy (the child Andy) and Sven, there would be real improvement.

Dr. Smith said, “You may notice that I don’t have a couch. Adults should sit up. If you need to lie down, or wrestle with some objects, or hit things, that’s what those two mats in the corner are for. This room has been soundproofed. You are free to misbehave, and also to behave.” Andy looked around. The office could as easily have been a public bathroom — that was the thought that came to her. He asked her if she had ever seen a psychoanalyst or a therapist before. She shook her head no. He asked her how she had found him. She said in the phone book. That struck him so that he barked out a laugh. He said, “Well, I’m in there, but no one ever admitted finding me there before.”