Early Warning

He got down. Then he said, “Really? Crazy? Like they went to a mental asylum?”

“No, like they whipped him.”

“Are you going to whip me?”

“Have I ever whipped you?”

“No.”

“Am I going to whip you?”

“No.”

Then there was a silence, and Jesse said, “When can I learn to drive the tractor?”

Joe laughed and said, “When you’re thirteen. Let’s see. That was summer, so Frank was thirteen and a half when he drove that car. You are eight and a half. So you have a while.”

“Five years.”

Joe allowed himself a smile, then said, “Good subtraction. You must be a smarty-pants.”

Jesse didn’t smile, only said, “When is it going to stop raining?”

“The weatherman says later in the week.”

“Is the corn ruined?”

“Not yet.”

“Are you worried?”

“I’m never worried.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Joe said, “something always works out on a farm.”

—

IT WAS Henry’s idea that Claire and Paul would take their two weeks’ vacation in England, where he was helping at a dig not far from York — he wasn’t an archeologist, but he thought all medievallit professors should get out of the library and into the dirt or the bog. He wrote to Claire that it was a beautiful spot — there was plenty to see, not only York Minster, but the Shambles, an old street still left from the Middle Ages, as well as a castle and several museums. She and Paul could also go for walks nearby, in the Vale of York, or a little farther away, in the Lake District.

Rosanna said, “Well, Granny Elizabeth would have loved that, though the Chicks and the Cheeks, as she never forgot to tell me, were from Wessex, which is way at the other end of England.” This reminded Rosanna of something, and three days later, in Claire’s mail came a little box, wrapped in white paper. When Claire opened it, inside there was a tiny lace handkerchief, quite discolored but lovely, of handmade crochet lace in a scalloped pattern. There was a note attached. Claire opened it carefully. There was her father’s handwriting: “Made by my great-grandmother, Etta Cheek, sometime around 1830. Saved for Claire, March, 1942.” She had never seen the box, the handkerchief, or the note. She was three years old in 1942. She burst into tears. She thought she could smell the scent of his clothes rising around her.

When she called the next day and asked, her mother said, “Oh goodness. That year, Frank was in Europe. We simply forgot your father’s birthday, so here is what Walter did. He went and found a box of different things, one for each of you children. He let everyone choose from the box what you would most like to have. Lillian chose a feather. Joe chose a sprig of something, thyme? Lavender it was. Henry chose a coin. And we put away a photo of your father and a couple of army buddies for Frank. This handkerchief went to you. We set it aside for safekeeping, and you know what happens when I do that. When you said you might go to England, it struck me that that was what was in that little box in my dresser drawer. I’m sorry it has taken me so long to…Oh, Claire, honey, don’t cry.”

But it was no use — Claire cried and cried. She wrote to Henry, did he remember that coin, but of course he did. It was an Indian-head gold dollar, he replied in a letter back. He wrote that he kept it with the Marcus Aurelius coin he’d found loose in a muck pit in Winchester. Once again, she opened out the tiny handkerchief. The very thin linen was four inches by four inches, and the crocheted border looked as if it had been made out of sewing thread in a pattern of leaves, like elm leaves. She smoothed them under her finger. That very afternoon, she took it to a picture framer to preserve.

Paul did not like the fact that their bed-and-breakfast had twin beds with footboards. He was too tall for footboards — he had to sleep on his back with his legs spread and his feet to either side of the footboard, or else on his side, curled up, and one time he stretched out and bumped his head on the headboard. And then, for breakfast, they served the toast cold, in a rack, unbuttered, and when you buttered it, it fell apart. Henry showed them around; Paul could not help correcting him — surely York Minster was York Cathedral? Were those really kings in the choir screen (though Claire could see that they had crowns on)? Was that window really about the War of the Roses? Had Henry ever read Richard III? Henry was polite every moment.

The third night, sitting across from her in his pajamas, on the other twin bed, Paul said, “I sound like an ass, don’t I?”

“I don’t think Henry is ever wrong about this sort of thing.”

Paul said, “He’s been very decent.”

“He likes you.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

She sat down next to him. The bed dipped almost to the floor. She said, “I can’t imagine why not.”

“I know I can be a jerk.”

“You don’t try to be a jerk. The jerkiness just pops out once in a while.”