Canto Twelve – Mom Matters
“Honey, I’m not trying to be mean to you or anything,” Valerie’s Mom said so that Valerie was clearly meant to understand that she was about to be very mean, but she wasn’t trying to. “You have to tell us where you are going and what you are doing… and who you are doing it with.”
“Oh, Mom. I’m not a baby anymore! You need to trust me.”
“I do trust you. I just don’t trust everyone you’ve been hanging around with in town.”
“You don’t trust Mary Philips?”
“Oh, I trust Mary fine, I…”
“Is it Pidney you don’t trust? He’s a football hero, you know.”
“Pidney is fine too, I…”
“Ray Zeffer? You don’t like Ray Zeffer?”
“I’m sure he’s a fine young man, but…”
“Then you don’t like Danny? He’s practically my best friend. He ain’t a girl like Jane and Wanda, or my cousin Stacy, but I can actually talk to Danny!”
“Valerie Elaine Clarke! You are jumping to conclusions again. You need to let me talk.”
Mom looked out the kitchen window at the table in the yard where Daddy Kyle and Uncle Dash were in serious discussion. It was farm talk. But it did seem an awful lot like older brother, Dash Clarke, was seriously lecturing younger brother, Kyle Clarke, about something that was seriously upsetting to both men. Was that worry on Mom’s face? Valerie wasn’t sure whether it was worry for Valerie, or worry for Daddy Kyle. But she was sure it was worry-wart levels of worrying.
“You do realize,” Mom said, “that Conrad Doble is a lot older than you are.”
“Yes, Mom, I know.”
“And you know he was in trouble with the law? He was involved in that whole wolf-dog thing when those attack dogs killed poor old Mrs. White.”
“Yes, I know. But I don’t even like creepy old King Leer. I try to stay away from him.”
“He’s a part of that club thing that Mary Philips is stirring up again.”
“You mean the Pirates? We are a 4-H Club softball team, Mom. They want me to play second base.”
“It’s a long time before summer softball comes around. And you don’t understand what it was like before when those Pirates were making trouble in the 70’s.”
“Mom, Brent was the leader of the Pirates then.”
“Well, yes. And your cousin is a fine young man now. But the Pirates tell such weird stories and get into such weird situations.”
“Werewolves and an undead Chinese wizard, huh?”
“Now, you know I don’t believe any of those stories were true. It’s just that…”
“You know that Torrie Brownfield had that hair disease that made hair grow all over his body. He was an awful lot like a werewolf!”
“Okay, but that’s not what I’m trying to say right now. That Doble boy is not trustworthy. He is capable of some very bad things. Maybe even drugs.”
“Believe me, I know, Mom. But I can take care of myself. And Pidney and Ray have both told King Leer to leave me alone or they would beat the snot out of him.”
Valerie’s Mom gave a brief chuckle. “Pidney could do it too,” she said. “Doble would be black and blue all over. I have great respect for Pidney Breslow’s football muscles. It’s just that…”
“I know. When a girl reaches a certain age… You know I had this talk with Daddy too.”
“Yes, well…”
At that moment, Daddy Kyle and Uncle Dash came storming in to the kitchen, the screen door making a sound almost like a gunshot as it slammed closed behind Uncle Dash.
“That goddam agent lied to me, Dash!” Kyle shouted. “He promised me more time, and now he doesn’t even admit what he actually said to me before. He shook my hand on it!”
“But he’s a government man, Kyle! You should’ve known better than to trust the goddam FHA like that. They wanted a chance to foreclose from the very start!”
Mom’s eyes were large and frightened as she looked at Daddy Kyle for answers, and Valerie was sure her own eyes were also.
“Kyle?” Mom sputtered, “Is something wrong?”
“Oh, it’s the goddam FHA… er,” Kyle looked at both Mom and Valerie and appeared to finally register the big scared eyes. “Um, it is something we should discuss later. Not in front of the Princess.”
Uncle Dash suddenly quieted himself as well. “Yeah, um… we’re not done yet, Kyle. But I promised Dad I would look after all of it before he died. I am not going to go back on my word. We’ll find a way. I just wish you hadn’t accepted those last two loans.”
“It takes money to farm, Dash. You know I didn’t plan on the hail or the combine breaking down so soon.”
“Hell, I know you didn’t, Kyle. We will find a way.”
Uncle Dash looked grim. Daddy Kyle looked sad. Valerie walked up to him and hugged him around the middle. She didn’t know why, but she knew it was a very important thing to do just then. And Mom was looking at her and nodding ever so slightly. Not everything Valerie did was wrong.
Catch a Falling Star 
The Real Magic in that Old Home Town
Rowan, Iowa… Not the place I was born, but the place where I got to be a stupid kid, and have the lessons of the good and god-fearing life hammered into my head hard enough to make a dent and make it stay with me for more than half a century. I got to go to grade school there. I learned to read there, especially in Miss Mennenga’s third and fourth grade class. Especially in that old copy of Treasure Island with the N.C, Wyeth illustrations in it, the one Grandma Aldrich kept in the upstairs closet in their farm house. I got to see my first naked girl there. I learned a lot of things about sex from my friends there, and none of them were true. I played 4-H softball there, and made a game-saving catch in center field… in the same game where my cousin Bob hit the game-winning home run. But those were things kids did everywhere. It didn’t make me special. There was no real magic in it.
Being a farm-kid’s kid taught me the importance of doing your chores, every day and on time. If you didn’t do them, animals could get sick, animals could die, crops could be spoiled, the chickens could get angry and petulant and peck your hands when you tried to get the eggs. Cows could get grumpy and kick the milk bucket. Cats could vow revenge if you didn’t direct a spray or two at their little faces as they lined up to watch you milk the cows. And you never knew for sure what a vengeful cat might do to you later, as cats were evil. They might jump on the keyboard during your piano recital. They might knock the turkey stuffing bowl off the top of the dryer when Mom and Grandma and several aunts were cooking Thanksgiving Dinner. And I know old black Midnight did that on purpose because he got to snatch some off the floor before it could be reached by angry aunts with brooms and dustpans. And all of it was your fault if it all led back to not doing your chores, and not doing them exactly right.
But, even though we learned responsibility and work ethic from our chores, that was not the real home-town magic either. I wasn’t technically a real farm kid. Sure, I picked up the eggs in the chicken house at Grandpa and Grandma Aldrich’s farm more than once. And I did, in fact, help with milking machines and even milking cows by hand and squirting cats in the faces at Uncle Donny’s farm. I walked beans, going up and down the rows to pull and chop weeds out of the bean fields at Uncle Larry’s farm. I drove a tractor at Great Uncle Alvin’s farm. But I didn’t have to do any of those things every single day. My mother and my father both grew up on farms. But we lived in town. So, my work ethic was probably worth only a quarter of what the work ethic of any of my friends in school was truly worth. I was a bum kid by comparison. Gary G. and Kevin K, both real farm kids and older than me, explained this to me one day behind the gymnasium with specific examples and fists.
Being a farm kid helped to forge my character. But that was really all about working hard, and nothing really to do with magic.
I truly believe the real magic to be found in Rowan, Iowa, my home town, was the fact that it was boring. It was a sleepy little town, that never had any real event… well, except maybe for a couple of monster blizzards in the 60’s and 70’s, and the Bicentennial parade and tractor pull on Main Street in 1976, and a couple of costume contests in the 1960’s held in the Fire Station where I had really worked hard on the costumes, a scarecrow one year, and an ogre the next, where I almost won a prize. But nothing that changed history or made Rowan the center of everything.
And therein lies the magic. I had to look at everything closely to find the things and strategies that would take me to the great things and places where I wanted to end up. I learned to wish upon a star from Disney movies. I learned about beauty of body and soul from the girls that I grew up with, most of them related. And I invented fantastical stories with the vivid imagination I discovered lurking in my own stupid head. I embarrassed Alicia Stewart by telling everyone that I could prove she was a Martian princess, kidnapped and brought to Earth by space pirates that only I knew how to defeat. And I learned to say funny things and make people laugh… but in ways that didn’t get me sent to the principal’s office in school. Yes, it was the magic of my own imagination. And boring Iowa farm towns made more people with magic in them than just me. John Wayne was one. Johnny Carson was one also. And have you heard of Elijah Wood? Or the painter Grant Wood? Or the actress Cloris Leachman?
Yep. We were such stuff as dreams were made on in small towns in Iowa. And that is real magic.
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