Lightning struck the Tollerud farm
Tuesday, about six o'clock in the evening. Daryl and his dad were
walking the corn
rows, talking, and the clouds were dark and strange but it wasn't
storming yet, and Daryl said, "If I were you, I'd take
Mother out to Seattle tomorrow and enjoy the trip and not worry about
this." Right then it hit, up by the house: a burst of
lightning and a slam and a sizzle like bacon. They ran for the house to
find her in the kitchen, sitting on the floor. She was
okay but it was close. It hit a crab apple tree thirty feet from the
kitchen window.
Some people in town were reminded of Benny Barnes, who was hit by
lightning six times. After three, he was nervous
when a storm approached, and got in his car and drove fast, but it got
him the fourth time, and the fifth time it was sunny
with just one little cloud in the sky and, bam, lightning again. He had
burn scars down his legs and his ears had been
ringing for years. After the fifth, he quit running. The sixth one got
him sitting in the yard on an aluminum lawn chair.
After that he more or less gave up. When the next thunderstorm came
through, he took a long steel pipe and stood out on
the hill, holding it straight up. He had lost the will to live. But
just the same it took him fifteen more years to die. It wasn't
from lightning: he caught a cold from the rain and died of pneumonia.
Daryl wished the bolt had come closer to his dad. His dad has a
character flaw that drives Daryl crazy: he hates plans. The trip to
Seattle was planned before Thanksgiving, letters were written
torelatives, calls were made; June 30th was the
date set to go, but the old man gets uneasy when plans are made and
feels trapped and cornered, even if the plans are his
own, so one night after chores he said, "Well, I don't know about that
trip to Seattle, I might be too busy, we'll have to see
about that," which made everybody else want to shoot him.
Daryl jumped up. "how can you say that? Are you crazy?" No, just
nervous about plans. Always was. To agree to do
something and have people expect you to do it: it bothers him. When his
kids were little, he'd tell them, "Now, I'm not
promising anything, but maybe next week sometime I could take you
swimming, up to your uncle Carl's, but don't count on
it, it all depends." As next week came around, he'd say, "I don't know
about that swimming, we're going to have to see
about that. Maybe Thursday." Thursday the kids would get their bathing
suits out and he'd say, "We'll see how it goes this
morning, if I get my work done we'll go." Right up to when they got in
the car, he was saying, "I don't know. I really ought
to get to work on that drain pipe," and even when he stuck the key in
the ignition, he'd hesitate. "Gosh, I'm not sure, maybe
it'd be better if we went tomorrow." He couldn't bring himself to say,
"Thursday we swim," and stick to it. Daryl and his
brothers and sisters learned not to look forward to things because Dad
might change his mind.
The old man is the same with his grandkids. He says, "Well we'll
see. Maybe. If I can." But the Seattle trip beats all. Ruby
got the train tickets and had all the bags packed three weeks ago, then
hesaid, "I don't know how I can leave with the corn
like it is." Ruby put her head in her hands. He said, "You know, the
Grand Canyon is a place I always wanted to see,
maybe we should go there." Shesighed, and he said, "You know, I never
agreed to this Seattle trip, this was your idea from
day one." And then Ruby went to Daryl's to talk to Daryl and Marilyn.
They sat drinking coffee and gettingmadder and
Ruby said, "Oh well, you have to understand Dad." Marilyn stood up and
said, "I do not have to understand him. He's
crazy. He doesn't just have a screw loose, the whole top has come off."
She is reading a book, Get Down And Garden, about getting tough
with plants. She has yanked a bunch of slow movers
out of her flower garden, the dullards and the dim bulbs, and it's
improved her confidence. Now she often begins sentences
with "Look," as in "Look. It's obvious." She used to begins with
"Well," as in "well, I don't know," but now she says, "Look.
This is not that hard to understand."
She said to Ruby, "Look. It's obvious what he's doing. He wants to
be the Grand Exalted Ruler and come down in the
morning and hear his subjects say, 'What is your pleasure, sire?' and
he'll say,'Seattle,' so they head for the luggage and
then he says, 'No, we'll stay home,' so they sit down, and then 'Grand
Canyon' and they all jump up. As long as you keep
jumping, he'll keep holding the hoopup there."
Not only does Old Man Tollerud hate to commit himself to trips, he
also likes to stay loose in regard to drawing up a will
or some other legal paper that gives Daryl and Marilyn some right to
the farm that they've worked on for fifteen years. When Daryl mentions
it, his dad says, "Well, we'll have to see. We'll talk about it in a
few months." Daryl is forty-two years
old and he's got no more ownership of this farm than if he'd gone off
and been a drunk like his brother Gunnar. Sometimes
he gets so mad at the old man, he screams at him. But always when he's
on the tractor in the middle of the field with the
motor running. Once he left a rake in the yard with the tines up,
hoping his dad would step on it and brain himself.
Last April he saw a skunk waddling toward the barn and got a can
of catfood and lured the skunk into the tractor shed,
hoping his dad would start up the John Deere the next morning and get
asnootful. He fed the skunk day after day, waiting
for it to do the job for him. Sweet justice. Blast the old bastard with
skunk sauce at close range so nobody would care to
see him for about a year. Then the skunk started following Daryl, who
fed him such rich food, so Daryl quit and the skunk
disappeared.
Daryl got some satisfaction at the Syttende Mai dinner at the
Lutheran church in May, Norwegian Independence Day,
where his dad went through the buffet and loaded up and was heading for
a table when his paper plate started to collapse
on him. He balanced his coffee cup on his wrist to get his other hand
under the plate, and it was hot -- the meatballs had
sat in a chafing dish over a candle. The old man winced and looked for
a place to dump the load; then the hot gravy
burned right through the paper plate and he did a little tango and
everything sloshed down the front of his pants. Daryl
watched this with warm satisfaction.
But that was months ago, the satisfaction has worn off. The day
after the lightning strike, Daryl drove up to the house to
have it out once and for all. He practiced his speech in the pickup.
"You don't treat me like I'm your son at all, you've never
treated me like a son." He got to the house and found a note on the
door: "Gone to St. Cloud for windowshades. Back soon.
Clean the haybarn."
Clean the haybarn! He ripped the note off and wadded it up and
drop-kicked it into the peonies. He stalked to the end of
the porch and back and yelled at the door: "You don't treat me like I
was your son, you bastard, you treat me like I was a
--" And then the terrible truth dawned on him. His mother had said, "If
anything happens to us in Seattle, I left you a letter
on my dresser drawer. I've been meaning to give it to you for years."
So he wasn't their son. He was adopted. That's why
his dad wouldn't make out the will.
Daryl had wondered about this before, if he was his father's son.
He thought, "I'm forty-two, it's time to find out." He
walked in and climbed the stairs, step by deep purple step, and turned
and entered his parents' bedroom, the forbidden
chamber, and walked to the dresser and heard something move on the bed.
He turned -- it was their old tabby cat, Lulu, on
the bed -- his hand hit a bottle and it crashed on the floor. She
didn't jump at the crash, she sat up and gave him a long
look that said: "You're not supposed to be in here and you know it. You
ought to be ashamed of yourself. You're no good,
and you know it. Shame on you." He clapped his hands -- Ha! Git! -- and
she climbed down and walked away, stopped,
looked over her shoulder, and said: You'll suffer for this, you just
wait.
He picked up the shards of perfume bottle and opened both dormer
windows to air out the room. Unbelievable that his
mother would ever smell like this, it smelled like old fruit salads. He
dug down into the dresser drawer where he'd seen her
stick old pictures, under her stockings and underwear. There was a
book, Sexual Aspects of Christian Marriage: A
Meditation by Reverand E. M. Mintner, that he'd read when he was
twelve, and he dug beneath it to a packet of envelops
tied with a thick rubber binder, tight. He slipped it off: they were
his dad's pay slips from the Co-op; each envelope held a
year's worth; there were more than thirty envelops.
He sat on the bed, feeling weak. Of all his parents' secrets, this
was the darkest: how much money did they make? They
would no more talk about that than discuss sexual aspects of marriage.
OneSunday little Daryl piped up at dinner and
asked, "Dad, how much money do you make?"
His dad has several different voices, a regular one ("So, how come
you went down there then when I told you I need you?
I don't get it") and a prayer voice ("Our Father, we do come before
Thee with blessed hearts filled with thanksgiving,
remembering Thy many blessings to us, and we do ask Thee now..."). When
he discussed money he used the second voice
and he said, "I don't care to discuss that and I don't want you to
discuss it with anyone else. It that clear?"
Oh yes. We don't talk about money, that is very clear. Except to
say, "I got this window fan for four dollars; it's
brand-new except for this scratch, and you know those things run ten,
twelve dollars." Bargains yes, but salaries no.
So here was the secret. He opened the first envelope, 1956.
Forty-five dollars. That was for a whole week. Not much for a
good mechanic. Forty-five dollars and five kids: it explained all that
scrimping, his mother darning socks and canning
tomatoes. When the old man forked over their allowance, he counted the
two quarters twice to make sure he wasn't
overpaying. It explained why he was such a pack rat, saving tinfoil,
string, paper, rags -- once Daryl looked around for a
string and found a box full of corks, another of bits of wire, and one
box with hundreds of odd jigsaw-puzzle pieces, labeled
"Puzzle:Misc."
It dawned on him that he wasn't adopted, he was their boy all
right. He'd inherited their frugality and stoicism. If his
paper plate fell apart, he'd try to save it, even if his hand was
burning. Same as his dad. they raised him to bear up under
hardship and sadness and disappointment and disaster, but what if
you're brought up to be stoic and your life turns out
lucky -- you're in love with your wife, you're lucky with your
children, and life is lovely to you -- what then? You're ready to
endure trouble and pain, and instead God sends you love -- what do you
do? He'd been worried about inheriting the farm,
meanwhile God had given him six beautiful children. What happens if you
expect the worst and you get the best? Thank
you, Lord, he thought. Thank you for sending me up here to the bedroom.
It was wrong to come, but thank you for sending
me.
He heard Lulu tiptoe in, and when she brushed against his leg he
was sorry for chasing her out. He scratched her head.
It didn't feel catlike. He looked down and saw the white stripes down
its back.
The skunk sniffed his hand, wondering where the catfood was. Then
it raised its head and sniffed the spilled perfume. It
raised its tail, sensing an adversary. It walked toward the window. It
seemed edgy.
"Easy, easy," he said. If he opened the window wider, it might go
out on the roof and find a route down the oak tree to the
ground. He was opening the window wider when he heard the feet
paddingup the stairs. He hollered, "No, Shep, no!" and
raised his leg to climb out the window as the dog burst into the room,
barking. The skunk turned and attacked. Daryl went
out the window, but not quite fast enough. He tore off all his clothes
and threw them down to the ground, and climbed
back in. The bedroom smelled so strong he couldn't bear it. The skunk
was under the bed. He ran down and got the shotgun
and loaded it. Daryl was almost dying of the smell, but he crept into
the bedroom. He heard the skunk grunt, trying to
squeeze out more juice. Daryl aimed and fired. Feathers exploded and
the skunk dropped down dead.
He carried it out on a shovel and buried it, but that didn't help
very much: the deceased was still very much a part of the
Tollerud house when his parents arrived home a little while later.
Daryl saton the porch, bare naked except for a
newspaper. He smelled so bad, he didn't care about modesty. Ruby said,
"Oh dear. Are you all right?" She stopped, twenty
feet away. She thought he looked naked, but he smelled so bad she
didn't care to come closer.
His dad said, "You know, Daryl, I think you were right about
Seattle."
And they left. They didn't even take clothes with them. They went
straight out the driveway.
That was Tuesday. Daryl has been living at his parents' house all
week. But life is good. I'm sure he still believes this.
Life is good, friends. It's even better if you stay away from Daryl,
but basically life is good.
That's the news from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, where all the women
are strong, all the men are good-looking and all
the children are above average.
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Lake Wobegon, MN
