The Devil's bed

It was nearing evening when he pulled onto the dirt lane that led to the Thorsen farmhouse. He bumped over a set of railroad tracks, then crossed a narrow bridge that spanned a creek lined with cottonwoods. Beyond the creek, tall corn walled the lane, blocking Bo’s view of almost everything except the big red barn topped with a weather vane, the roof of the two-story white house surrounded by elms, and the blue sky that pressed gently against the land, holding all things in place like the hand of God.

Nell Thorsen was waiting on the porch. She was a small woman dressed in cornflower blue shorts, a white cotton shirt, and sneakers. Her legs were thin and tanned. Her hair had been recently done, short and silver. Although she looked out at the world through thick glasses, her eyes didn’t miss a trick. She was seventy-nine and gave the impression she intended to live forever.

“Right on time,” she said as she hugged him and kissed his cheek. She smelled of lilac bath powder. “I just finished setting the table.”

Nell had grown up on a farm in South Dakota cooking big dinner meals served at noon for the hired hands and the threshing crews. Ham and beef and salt pork, three kinds of potatoes, beans, squash, corn bread and biscuits, everything drowned in gravy. Her father died of a heart attack at fifty-one. By the time Bo joined the Thorsen household, Nell was cooking with an eye toward health. Meats were lean, vegetables profuse and al dente, potatoes served with butter sparingly. What she’d prepared for supper with Bo was chicken salad on a bed of lettuce accompanied by a section of cantaloupe and a croissant. She offered him iced herbal tea from a big pitcher moist with condensation.

The mantel above the fireplace in the living room was crowded with photos of the Thorsen foster children. There’d been nearly thirty in all. Occasionally when Bo visited the farm, he bumped into one of the others who happened to drop by. He was happy only Nell was there that day because mostly he’d come to be alone.

Nell asked about Tom Jorgenson and Annie and the First Lady. She mentioned the awful incident at Wildwood only to say that she’d got on her knees and thanked God when she heard Bo would be all right.

“I got the flowers,” he said. “They were lovely.”

“I’d have come to visit but my damn sciatica was acting up so I could barely move.”

Later, after he’d cleared the table and helped with the dishes, he took a walk alone along the creek. The summer had been dry, and the creek had narrowed to a thin trickle between flats of mud that had hardened and cracked. He’d spent a lot of time there when he was a teenager, wading in the water in search of crawdads and box turtles. Once he’d come out of the creek with a big black leech suckered to the skin between his toes. He was a kid fresh from the city then, and he had no idea what to do. He hobbled back to the farmhouse where Nell got the Morton’s box, covered the leech with salt, and simply plucked it off. He’d been impressed with her practical knowledge and her nonchalance.

He went back to his car and took out the book he’d brought with him, the one Kate had given him, then he went to the barn and climbed into the loft that was filled with hay bales. From there he could see a good part of the farm and beyond. In the pasture to the northwest, cattle grazed. Three miles south rose the water tower in Blue Earth. All around were other farms nestled among their own fields, neighbors all deeply connected by more than just those distant property lines, connected by the land itself and the life it dictated. When he’d lived with Harold and Nell, he often sat in the loft after his work was done. Sometimes he had a book and he read. Sometimes he just sat and drank in the beauty of the place. Sometimes Harold joined him and they talked. He’d been a gorilla of a man, a blond gorilla, with a chest that had seemed to young Bo big as the grille of a Cadillac. Mostly he was quiet, but when he laughed it was a huge sound, like the earth rumbling, and it always filled Bo with happiness. He’d never known his own father. The fathers of the other kids he’d run with in St. Paul were men careless in their parenting. Or worse, brutal. If it hadn’t been for Harold Thorsen, Bo would have grown up believing that being a man was a harsh and selfish thing.

“You up there?” Nell called from the bottom of the ladder.

“Yes.”

“Figured. I’ve got some coffee made if you’d like some.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Bo picked up his book and headed down.

Nell served the coffee on the porch where there was a small wicker table and two wicker chairs. It was a warm evening, early yet for mosquitoes.

“Were you reading in the loft?” she asked.

“Remembering mostly.”

“Good memories?”

“I was thinking about the time I stormed up there and threatened to run.”

“I remember that.”

“Harold followed me up. I figured he was going to-I don’t know-hit me or handcuff me or something. I told him he couldn’t keep me here, working me like a slave.”