Dairy Queen Read online

  Through the grimy old windows in the loft I watched him stomp over to his Cherokee and really gingerly start the engine and drive off with just his fingertips on the steering wheel because his hands hurt so much. And you know, I felt bad. I really did. Because now I was stuck finishing up the haying all by myself.

  Which I did, leaving the loaded wagon in the loft and taking our other even crappier hay wagon, and I had to keep jumping in and out of the tractor so I could load, and then leave that wagon in the hay loft too so I could go milk.

  The good thing was that at dinner that night I got to tell Dad and Mom and Curtis all about Brian quitting, though I downplayed what a jerk Brian was because Mom always gets on our case for trash-talking other people. Dad still got really mad, though, and you could tell even Mom was upset about how Brian had walked out in the middle of a job like that. The two of them had one of those conversations with just their eyeballs, trying not to talk in front of us, and Dad called Jimmy Ott right after dinner, shutting the door behind him so we couldn't hear what he was saying. At least Mom made a big deal about me bringing in the rest of the hay by myself, saying over and over how great that was. That was okay, actually, getting all that praise and recognition finally, just because Brian bailed.

  4. Amber

  Amber usually works Thursday nights, but this night she was off and I was completely psyched. Amber Schneider has been my best friend since forever, since I was in fifth grade and she was in sixth. Amber is really, really funny and really tough. I can look tough if people don't know me, but Amber just is. She's about the worst scorer on the basketball team and I don't think she could make a free throw to save her life, but she always started because her job was to guard the other team's top scorer, and she had this way of just really freaking out whoever that girl was, of messing with her, even though she almost never got called for foul. I couldn't really say what she did but she would stare at them, and say things under her breath when the ref wasn't looking. Once a coach told her she had to work on anger management, but it seemed to me she was managing her anger just fine.

  Plus Amber is big like me, which is nice. She told me once that I was built like a draft horse, which was a big compliment coming from her. Another time on a sleepover she did an imitation of me being carried across the threshold on my honeymoon, carrying me and everything, and I laughed so hard that pop came out my nose. That's why it's so much fun being her best friend, because I can be all goofy with her in a way I can't with anyone else.

  She always wants to do my hair. She does stuff to her hair all the time, like during basketball season she dyed it fire-truck red to match our uniforms. It was—well, it was really red. She wanted to dye mine too but I wouldn't let her. This summer her hair was orange like a traffic cone. That's what it said on the bottle, even: "Traffic Cone Orange." Sort of to warn you how orange it'll be. Her mom Lori turned their living room into a beauty parlor and thinks she's some sort of expert, which she is if you're sixty years old, which I'm not. Sometimes when Amber is cutting my hair, Lori finds out and says she should cut it, and they get into a big fight with me sitting there under the sheet and everything, and the last time that happened, last year, I finally just said we had a cow about to calve even though that wasn't true and I left. And I haven't cut my hair since. Now I just wear it back in a rubber band and try not to think about it. It doesn't help that Win and Bill and Curtis all have blond hair, and Bill's is curly even, but mine is just plain old straight brown. I asked Mom about it once and she just shrugged and said that it just shows there's no justice in this world, which wasn't quite the volume of sympathy I was looking for.

  ***

  Anyway, that night Amber was in one great mood. She works at this restaurant that does fancy wedding receptions and stuff. She can tell stories about weddings that would make you never, ever want to get married, but she's so funny about it that it doesn't matter. For example, the wedding she was working had been canceled that morning when the bride caught her fiancé messing around with the maid of honor, who was of course the bride's best friend. Every wedding Amber works is like a soap opera. Anyway, the bride showed up to cancel the reception, and then the groom showed up after her to try to get her to change her mind, and then when that didn't work he tried to get his money back from the restaurant, and then the best friend showed up too, I guess because she's a total moron, and the three of them had a huge screaming fight right there in the restaurant kitchen while Amber memorized every word.

  So you can imagine how completely happy Amber was to see me. She is one of those people who could describe tying her shoes in a way that would make you just about wet your pants, you'd be laughing so hard. So I was in a pretty good mood by the time we got to town, because even though my life pretty much sucks most of the time, at least I don't have my fiancé and my best friend trying to explain to me in the middle of a restaurant kitchen with everyone listening why it made perfect sense for them to be in the shower together covered in chocolate sauce. (I'm not so sure Amber didn't make up the chocolate sauce part, but she swears it's what she heard.) Plus she'd snagged a couple beers from her mom's fridge, and that was nice too.

  The whole way into town when she wasn't telling me about Mr. Chocolate Sauce I told her about Brian, about how he was so lazy and stuck-up and how he quit right in the middle of haying, and she made me tell her over and over again about him getting covered in barn dust and hay, and how he picked up the hay bales like he was an old lady or something, and she'd laugh her head off each time she heard it. I was still feeling pretty good from all of Mom's praise, but that made me feel even better.

  We went to the movies of course. I didn't have much money because I never do, but Amber never minds paying for my ticket or driving me around everywhere. The movie theater is about the only place in about three thousand miles to see a movie and it has eight screens, so that's where all the kids go, from Red Bend of course and Hawley and even places like Prophetstown and West Lake. The parking lot fills up really quickly, and sometimes the cops ask to see everyone's ticket to make sure they're not just hanging out, though I don't see why the owners complain because we're keeping them in business.

  Amber found a place over in the shadows and we sat on her mom's Escort shooting the breeze. After a while Kari Jorgensen ambled over and joined us. She's going to be a senior like Amber and on the basketball team too, and I've always really liked her even though she's a little too popular for us. Amber told her about how the Hawley coach sent Brian Nelson over and he hadn't made it through the day before he quit because it was "so, so hard," and Kari got a kick out of that.

  Just then a Jeep Cherokee pulled up under the very biggest light, music blasting away, and Brian and his Hawley football buddies and their skinny little girlfriends who are probably that type of vegetarian that doesn't even drink milk got out. Everyone else got quiet for a minute, which is obviously what Brian wanted or why else would he have parked there with his stereo going like that?

  Amber said brightly, "They are so hot," which made us laugh.

  So we sat there watching them in their letter jackets backslap each other as their girlfriends giggled like there wasn't anything in the entire world these girls wanted to do except tell these guys how absolutely wonderful they were. It would have made me sick, except Amber was whispering to us her version of what they were saying. When Brian would punch someone in the arm she'd say, "I want your body, dude," like it was Brian saying it. Then she'd have the other guy say, "Oh, Brian, let me snuggle against you," and on and on until Kari and I were almost dying because we wanted to laugh so hard but we didn't want to miss anything she was saying. And then, as Brian had his arm around one of the prettiest, skinniest girls and Amber was saying (as Brian), "I knitted this sweater myself. See the neckline?" they saw us.

  Actually, one of Brian's friends saw us first and pointed us out to Brian. Which meant Brian had told them about me. We certainly weren't the kind of girls they'd talk about or even say hello to if they could po
ssibly avoid it. Pretty soon all the guys were elbowing Brian and laughing and pointing at us like we were some kind of freak show. Amber said, "They want to ask us out but they're too shy," which would have been funny except it was so obviously not the case. Then we could hear them making mooing sounds. I didn't like that one bit.

  Then they started in: "There's Dairy Queen, Nelson! Go say hi to Dairy Queen!" The girls were laughing hysterically. And Brian was laughing too, looking over at me like I was the most disgusting thing in the entire world.

  Amber stood up. "Let's kick his butt."

  I pulled her back down. I would have loved to kick his butt, but we were outnumbered.

  "What, like you're the only person here from a farm?" Kari asked. She's so great. That cheered me up more than anything.

  Right then the cops showed up and everyone started going inside, including Brian and his moron friends, which didn't make me want to go inside too much.

  Amber and I ended up behind the bank where her mom works. We do this a lot, which tells you something about how concerned the Red Bend police are with bank security. The one time we saw a cop, he parked at the other end of the lot and fell asleep. That night we started out like we always do, talking about how we'd rob the bank, which Amber is great at because she knows so much about bank security from Lori. Then Amber started complaining about how Lori wouldn't sign the permission slip so Amber could get a tattoo, saying Amber shouldn't do something at seventeen that she'd regret later. This is about the meanest thing I've ever heard anyone say, because Lori had Amber when she was seventeen so it's like Lori was saying that her having Amber was a big mistake. I was really beginning to regret that Amber had only snagged two beers when she started talking about all the people in Red Bend who are gay.

  I know when you watch TV about half the characters are gay, and probably in New York or Los Angeles or someplace like that you could meet tons and tons of gay people, and I'm okay with that. Some folks around here say mean things, but, hey, as long as you drink your milk and don't call me Dairy Queen I don't care what you do. But I also know Wisconsin doesn't have any gay people. Or if it did, they all left.

  But Amber could see gay people anywhere, from the high school principal (who combs his hair over his bald spot) to his secretary (who has big hands) through everyone, pointing out why each one was gay. It's especially funny because her examples are so good, like the kid who polishes his belt buckle or the basketball player who wipes his hands on his chest before each free throw. If I challenged her she'd just say that they were in the closet or in denial, which is something you can't really argue with even if you knew what it meant.

  So she kept talking and then I kind of fell asleep, which isn't surprising considering how hard I'd worked all day, and Amber drove me home and I'm pretty sure I went to bed, but I don't even remember going up the stairs.

  5. Back to Normal, More or Less

  You'd think that someone who'd gotten up at five in the morning for the past six months would be pretty good at it by now. But Mom finally had to shake me awake because I didn't hear the alarm, and she gave me this look saying I shouldn't be out so late with Amber. She didn't say it out loud, but you could tell. When you teach school for as long as Mom has, you get those kinds of looks down cold.

  The cows weren't much happier.

  It didn't help that I couldn't stop thinking about Brian and his friends laughing at us. It was bad enough that we were from Red Bend and they were from Hawley. And that we didn't have any money and those guys were all loaded. Plus those stupid jokes I've heard a million times about how much farmers smell and how stupid they are, all those mooing noises. What really got me, though, was Brian's whole attitude, that working for us for even one day was the very worst sort of torture he could ever endure and only the threat of being benched would make him show up. Did our farm really suck that much?

  And the problem was, I couldn't help feeling that it did. Those guys were class A-1 jerks, but the barn really did smell. This morning especially, and the flies were awful too, because I hadn't been doing so good a job cleaning up all the cow poop. And when I turned the big fans on, the fans that suck air through the barn to cool it off, they were so caked with cobwebs and crud that it's a miracle they even worked. There was so much dirt on the screens that even if the blades turned, they couldn't draw too well.

  I hate it when people make fun of me and it turns out they're right.

  When I came in for breakfast, Curtis had on his baseball uniform.

  "Where's your game?" I asked.

  "Eau Claire," he said, not looking up.

  "Eau Claire?" I'd never played in Eau Claire. "You nervous?"

  Curtis shrugged. He sure had a lot to say.

  So they all piled into the Caravan—Mom and Curtis and Dad too, groaning about his hip like he was Joe Namath or something—and went to the game. It's been hard all these years for Dad to see our games with the milking schedule and all, but now that I was doing all the work he went to every single one.

  Okay, I know that makes me sound like some kind of slave, and I admit that right at that moment I sure felt like a slave. But before you call the cops to come and arrest him and Mom for child abuse, I should explain that it was partially my idea to take over all the farm work. I mean, it killed me having to quit basketball, and spend all spring knowing track was going on without me. But I started morning milking—well, after Mom asked me to—in January when it got to be too much for Dad to even get out of bed. And then in February, right before our second Hawley game, February 23, Dad came in for dinner just gray, puking almost, from trying to move the manure spreader, and it really scared me, the sight of him so shaky and weak. That night we decided that since Curtis was too young, and Win and Bill were away at college and had basically quit the family though no one mentioned that part, and we sure couldn't hire anyone to do the work, that it was going to have to be me. But let me tell you, I certainly didn't think when I took this on that Dad would take so long to get a new hip and I'd still be at it five months later.

  So I sat there on the kitchen steps with Smut and my coffee, feeling really sorry for myself—a feeling I was pretty used to these days—and thinking about how I really needed to unload those two hay wagons. But I was about as interested in unloading that hay as I was in putting myself through the baler. Which, if you're wondering, is not very interested.

  Instead I started looking around the farm like, well, like I was seeing it from snotty Brian's point of view. The house wasn't so bad—we'd gotten siding back when Grandpa Warren was still alive, it really just needed a wash. But the milk house and toolshed were all peeling paint. The granary, the old chicken coops we haven't used in years, the corncribs, all looked terrible. The basketball backboard was just a splintery old piece of plywood, the hoop all bent and rusty from when Bill thought he could dunk. Not to mention all the broken-down equipment we never moved, or the weeds growing everywhere like we don't care. Which we don't. It's not just that we didn't have the time for cleaning up, or the money. It's that no one wants to do it, at least not recently. We could have been a "Save the Family Farm" poster only it would have been too depressing.

  So, right then and there, like a total moron, I decided to really clean out the barn.

  Which was so stupid. I didn't want to clean it. I mean, I wanted to see it clean, but I didn't want to do it myself. I hadn't even finished unloading hay and we'd be haying clover soon, and timothy, not to mention silage in August, and just general farm work was enough, thank you, not to mention stuff like my life and that stupid English class that I couldn't even manage to pass.

  But then all my anger at that stupid schoolwork I was going to have to do all over again, and Brian and his friends, and Dad, and the state our family is in, got funneled somehow into cleaning. I dug through the toolshed, looking for supplies. I needed rags and brooms and stuff like that to get the dirt and gunk off the walls, and maybe a scraper; I wasn't really sure. Plus the toolshed looked like it had been i
n a tornado. Grandpa Warren used to keep the place spotless—you could perform brain surgery in there if you happened to need to perform brain surgery on a lawn mower. If he saw it now it would kill him, but then, he was already dead. Dad used to care, but he's been too hurt to care, and Win cared a bit until he went away, but Bill and Curtis ... Someone needed to clean the toolshed too, but that wasn't going to be me. I knew that much. You had to know which little rusty screws to save and which ones to throw away, and I don't think even God knows that.

  So I dug around and got pretty rusty myself, trying to find enough cleaning-up stuff. Then I went to work in the barn, fighting off flies everywhere, trying to get the ceiling dusted, all the dirty old cobwebs knocked down. I didn't do a very good job—mostly I just got dust all over me—but after a couple hours I could kind of tell where I'd worked and where I hadn't. Finally I got bummed out and quit, just as Mom called all excited to tell me that Curtis had won his game. Which was just extra superduper, because as long as Curtis kept winning, it meant he'd be at practice every day, and at games every week, and I'd be stuck working by myself.

  That night at dinner I sat down starving, my hands all clean, and Dad handed me this big steaming bowl of puke. I'm sorry, but that's what I thought when I looked at it. Hot vomit. Curtis said grace—Mom gave him that job just to get him to say something but he's so quiet that I'm sure God can't hear him—and everyone else dug in: Dad because he made it, Mom because she's so happy not to be cooking herself, and Curtis as I said will eat anything.

  I sat there trying to think of the best thing to say. What someone like Oprah Winfrey on TV would say to be polite. "So ... what is this?"

  Dad glared at me.

  "It's good, honey." Mom smiled to Dad. "Very innovative." That's just the kind of word Mom would use too.