We got some of the frozen meals Aunt Lula prepared for Dad for lunch. They were surprisingly good, but the fresh Iowa air had me eating like a horse.
“Your people won’t worry you’ve gotten lost in the corn?”
“I’m going to call to tell them I’m taking a few days,” I said, not asking if he wanted me to stay.
“Is that what you want, son?” he asked.
“Now that I’m home, I’m in no hurry to leave. I think I’ll stay a spell,” I said, giving him a chance to object.
“For how long?” he asked.
And I didn’t have the answer.
“As long as it takes?” I said, thinking of him being alone and in trouble in the last days or final hours of his life.
I wouldn’t leave my father to die alone.
“I’d like that, Bobby. I’ve enjoyed your company. Once you came… seeing you and knowing you’re going on, it makes my mortality easier to accept. I’d lost touch with that fact.”
*****
The next morning I stood on the back porch with my coffee. The empty silent fields were unsettling. They’d never been like this at this time of year while i was a boy.
The day I left the corn was waist high.
At this time of day as a boy, as I got ready for school, I remember standing in the same spot, watching my father or at least hearing the tractor he drove while tending his corn.
I was sorry there were to be no more harvests on the Sorenson land. I’d never given the corn a thought over the years. Now its absence was striking.
The lack of sound was remarkable.
Sorensons had grown corn for as long as they’d been in Iowa. We’d settled this land, cleared it, and grew corn. After all these years, for the first time I felt a connection to it. I’d always been my mother’s son, a Bostic.
Deep inside me the Sorensons’ love of this land was growing. I’d ignored it for years, but coming home, facing my father, reminded me of my roots.
I wouldn’t turn in my suit and microphone to come home to tend the corn. I wouldn’t know how. Men like my father were obsolete. Growing corn the way he did wasn’t profitable, no matter how rewarding family farming was to the family who farmed it.
Big corporations grew the corn now.
I knew the story. I’d reported on it.
A family farm goes under. The family ends up on the street. They’ve lost their home, their ability to make a living, their way of life. Now they’d need to fight to stay together.
“A family settles land, farms it for a hundred years, and now they’re thrown off by people who grow nothing but rich,” I heard myself saying in a story I reported.
It was a sad truth of our time. Money trumped everything.
*****
We sat at the table, after deciding to go to the diner when the mood struck. We’d settle for coffee right now. It’s how most of our days started, coffee and contemplation.
“Your grandpa gave me the history of the Sorenson farm before you were born. It tells about people you’ve never heard about, but we’re here because they were here first.”
“I was thinking about that when I was on the porch just now. Great minds think alike,” I said.
He laughed.
“And not so great minds,” he said with a smile. “I just want to make sure you have the history.”
“I’ll check to be sure. I plan to take all the journals. I’ll keep the history and the story about Sven with me. I’ll mail the other things before I fly home. They’ll be safe in the mail.
“Everything you’ve told me keeps running around inside my head like it wants to get out. I haven’t figured out what to do about it yet. You’ve given me a lot to think about, Dad. You’ve lived quite a life.”
“I don’t know about that. I put one boot in front of the other. Didn’t seem that complicated once I got moving.”
“No, that wouldn’t. It’s how you did it that amazes me. From Grandpa’s accident to losing Sven and Mama, a lot of men would have become bitter and useless.”
“It ceases to be about you when you truly love someone. You give all you can, then, you give a little more. In time it’s the love you remember, not your loss. For me anyway.”
“Fran and I were best friends. We made lousy lovers. I’d like to think I’ll love like you’ve loved one day.”
“It has no time limit. If you meet the right person, you’ll know it. Losing your mother so young, Bobby, it’s difficult to trust someone completely. The fear of losing them is rooted in the pain of losing your mama. It’s a hard pain to overcome. One day you’ll throw caution to the wind and allow yourself to love someone completely. That’s my hope for you, son.”
That hit home. Dad identified something I didn’t see.
“You lost both of your loves,” I said. “I can’t imagine that pain.”
“If it was just about me, yes, disabling pain, but it runs deeper than just me, Bobby. Let’s take a walk. I’ll show you something that explains what kept me here all these years.”
He sprang up, went out the door, walking toward the gate and into the field, where I caught up with him.
After a couple of minutes, I saw one lonely dead tree standing in the middle of the field. It wasn’t easy to see against the gray soil.
“I never could understand why you grew corn around this damn tree, Daddy,” I said, remembering how it stood out.
“It’s what’s on this tree I wanted to show you. My father showed it to me when I was a boy. It meant nothing then. It was interesting.”
“It means something to you now?” I asked.
He ran his hand over the dead tree.
“Come here,” he said in a secretive whisper. “I’ll show you what it’s all about.”
I stood beside him, watching him brush the wood tenderly. Then I realized something was carved into the wood.
“Closer,” he said, until I was bent over with my eyes inches from his hand.
It took a second for my eyes to adapt to the bright day and the faint carvings time rendered almost invisible.
“The journal tells the history of the Sorensons on this land. This tree stands as witness to that history.”
Like an ancient artifact my father would explain it to me as I tried to make out the carvings.
“Why’s my name with yours? I can read those two.”
“I carved your name here the day you were born. My great grandfather, Lloyd Sorenson,” he explained, “settled here in 1875. He carved his name on this tree the day his first son, Jack, was born. Jack, my Pa’s father, carved Pa’s name here after he was born. Pa carved my name after I was born. Like you, we’re all first sons. You were my first son. That’s why your name is here.”
I was speechless. These were all men who worked this land. My name seemed sadly out of place. I saw my connection to the first Sorenson who lived here. I did live here.
“Ralph and Junior?” I asked.
“No. This was between Pa and me. It was between father and his firstborn son. As far as I know Ralph and Junior aren’t aware of what’s carved here.”
“I didn’t live up to to expectations, did I, Dad?”
“I was the one who didn’t live up to expectations. I had to be forced into it. This is a history. It’s also a curse, son.”
“You were expected to be a farmer?”
“Right. Didn’t matter what I wanted. My life didn’t belong to me. It belonged to the Sorenson name. To the farm. When my brothers are gone, this land will go to the agricultural corporation. No one else will want it. This tree, the trees in the meadow, the graves, even the pond are destined to be plowed under.
“A corporation knows nothing about family. They know about corn. They care about corn. What began here over a hundred years ago will disappear soon. In ten years no one will know a Sorenson ever set foot here. History ends here.”
“That doesn’t upset you?”
“Among the things I can do nothing about. I’ve watched a hundred farms lost to corporate growers. Had your grandpa not been crippled, this farm would already be gone. It’s only because of how events unfolded that I’m still here.”
“I wouldn’t have made a good farmer,” I apologized.
“Your mama said, ‘Our son isn’t going to be a farmer.’ You did what you were expected to do, son. You did what I longed to do.”
“And the history of the Sorensons?” I asked.
“I’m where that story ends. It begins again with you. This tree, this land, has no meaning beyond the people who were here. Come on this side and I’ll tell you another story.”
Opposite the Sorensons’ names, he touched a spot with some carving. This was different. It was special in a way that was made significant by how he touched it.
I saw a heart. Looking closer, I read, ‘SG loves RS’ inside it.
“Once I knew Sven was going, I was a mess. I was afraid I’d never see him again. He sensed my apprehension. He brought me here and he carved this heart. I watched him carve his initials, ‘loves’, and then my initials.
“Sven traced the heart and our initials with his fingertips and he told me to do the same thing. I was overwhelmed that he could express his feelings so easily.”
My father grew silent, and ever so slowly his fingers traced the heart and what was inside. His voice grew shaky.
“Sven told me this. ‘No matter what happens, Robert, I’ll always be right here,’ he said, tapping his finger on my chest over my heart. ‘Always.’”
Tears ran on my father’s face like the pain was fresh.
Fifty years and his heartbreak had never healed.
“I don’t know about you, but all this reminiscence has made me hungry. Let’s go eat,” he said, walking away.
*****
Over the next ten days, I never felt closer to anyone than I felt to my father. The stories he told, his sense of humor, his ability to make me laugh, kept me enthralled.
On the morning of the eleventh day, I found Robert Sorenson, my father, dead. He’d died in his sleep.
I hadn’t heard a sound. We talked late into the night, as had become our custom.
He was fine when I left him in the kitchen to go to bed.