Kenny's Back. Victor J. Banis
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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1968, 2007 by Victor J. Banis
Originally published under the title Homo Farm under the pseudonym Victor Jay.
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
CHAPTER ONE
Kenny was back. I think the whole town knew it and waited for the event as breathlessly and fearfully as we in the pink house did. The October stillness that had fallen upon us seemed to grow more intense as the day approached, until all of Hanover hovered in suspended animation.
He planned it that way, of course—the drama of waiting, expecting, not knowing—so that his appearance, when it came, was as much a shock as though we had not known he was coming. It was his same sense of drama, undoubtedly, that dictated the manner in which, almost at the end of the day, he did finally appear. He could as well have called from the station or, more simply, let us know when he would arrive. And for our part, it would not have been hard to determine the hour. Not so many trains or busses stop at Hanover, after all. But, just as in the past, we followed his cue, and waited at the house.
He was there at last, strolling up the lane with an almost brazen nonchalance, as though five years and a storm of scandal and heartbreak had not passed since the last such stroll. It was a shock to see him wearing the faded Levis and the battered suede jacket, so shabby and unflattering, which he had worn constantly before, even when, as now, it was too warm for such garb.
It was staged, yes, and calculated to erase the time that had passed; and in that it was effective. Later I would see him at closer range and talk to him, and there would be time to see that things had, after all, changed. But for now, standing at the second story window, seeing his approach only in an accidental way as I happened to glance from the window, I fell victim to his ruse. And I admit it: I was as enchanted by him as I—and everyone—had always been.
If I had let myself, I would have burst from the room, run down the stairs and out of the house; I would have met him in the lane, and we’d have walked together to the house as we used to do, and talk of what he’d done in town, or the omens that the weather harbored. We might even have quarreled—we had done enough of that, too, in the past, although I was not alone in that distinction. Whom hadn’t Kenny quarreled with? With some, God forgive it, far more bitterly than with me.
I nearly did just that, run to him. I was to the door before I caught myself. It was my face that stopped me, or rather its reflection in the mirror: flushed red, my eyes wide and brilliant with excitement, my lips wet where I had unconsciously run my tongue over them, a sure sign of my nervousness.
I stopped short and stared hard at that excited face in the mirror, and knew it would never do to let him see me like this.
“Mar,” I said to myself, but aloud, “You stupid Swede, don’t be a fool.”
That settled me down a bit, long enough at least to take stock. I’d come in just before from the far fields, where the last of the hay was being baled. I was sweaty and dirty, and my damnably fair skin was burnt from the sun. I was shirtless beneath the dirty bib overalls, so big for me that they made me look more like a clown than a farmhand.
“Well, he won’t be expecting a Mississippi gambler,” I told myself, laughing at my own silliness. I didn’t add that, for all I knew, he wouldn’t be expecting me at all, or care whether I was there or not. I took time enough to put on a shirt under the bib, and I spit on my hand and slicked down the cowlick that he had teased me about in the past.
“Kenny’s here,” I told the reflection. Not, “Kenny’s back,” but “Kenny’s here,” and the reflection laughed at me silently.
Strange, that after that awful strained day of waiting, Kenny almost made it to the house without being noticed. I must have been the first to see him, at least the first of those who had watched all day. The alarm wasn’t sounded until I was halfway down the stairs from my room, and I heard Ingrid’s excited yell, “Kenny’s here.” The door slammed after her and I could picture her racing down the lane toward him, probably looking more like the girl of seventeen he had left behind than the young lady of twenty-two she had become.
She had reached him long before I came out of the front door and paused on the porch, looking across the big front yard toward them. He caught her up in his arms to kiss her, and swung her around lightly and easily.
“He’s still strong,” I thought with a smile, remembering how, even as a kid, he’d been stronger than he looked. He seemed taller than I remembered him. Somehow I’d always pictured him as never reaching any higher than my shoulder, and even at the distance I could see he was taller than that now. He was still thin, in that lithe way of his, not skinny or frail, but wiry and tight-fleshed, like a wildcat that hasn’t an ounce of flesh more than what he needs. He was a little paler, too, although still dark, with that raven-colored hair flopping over his forehead, and those eyes, so dark they looked like midnight, peering out below that.
They started across the yard together, Kenny and Ingrid, talking at the same time to one another, laughing as they had laughed together when they were kids. He still had that indolent grace to his movements, more pronounced now, I thought—but I reminded myself that he was probably nervous too. He’d have to be, no matter how hard he pretended. He’d always pretended, and when he was most scared, he’d act the surest and swagger the most.
There were a few of the hands about, but none of them knew him. The ones he had known had come and gone, and were replaced now by new faces. Except for Pete, who had come around the corner of the house. He stopped there, just waiting, but I knew that beneath the disinterested air he assumed, Pete was as excited as anyone. Maybe he wasn’t sure just yet, nearly blind as he was, but his face showed nothing, and he made no move to intercept the route that Ingrid and Kenny were taking across the yard.
“Here’s Pete,” Ingrid said, close enough by now that I could hear her voice. For a moment, I thought Kenny would ignore her comment. He had looked up just then to the porch. My mother had come out of the house too, standing beside me drying her hands on a dishtowel. He looked at her, still laughing at something Ingrid had said in a smaller voice. Then his eyes moved on to me and for a fraction of a second I thought the smile faded, to be replaced by an expression I couldn’t identify.
It was gone as quickly as it had come, if it had existed at all, ended by Ingrid’s voice. Kenny turned and saw Pete, and they veered in that direction, hurrying toward the old man. Kenny let go of Ingrid and clasped Pete’s hand, shaking it with warm enthusiasm—and I knew that things had changed after all in those five years.
Not a handshake, I thought, sharing the surprise and the hurt I knew Pete must feel behind that impassive face. Never a handshake. Even after he had grown up and become a young man, Kenny had never had but one greeting for the old fellow he had idolized so, who’d entertained him with his countless yarns. I tried to think what Pete must be feeling, after all those times of being embraced by those husky young arms, squeezed until, as he put it, his ribs creaked. And now, after five years to himself, with no one to listen avidly to his yarns, he had gotten a handshake from the boy he had loved as a son.
But he’s not a boy, I reminded myself. The five years between eighteen and twenty-three are long ones, and a boy becomes a man who shakes hands with people he used to embrace, and kisses girls he used to tease.
I almost turned and went back in the house. Suddenly I didn’t want to see how he greeted farmhands he used to Indian-wrestle with, and go bare-ass swimming with. But I stayed, because he had looked back in our direction and started toward us, grinning so that every one of those white teeth was shining in the sunlight. Ingrid was frowning, though. She knew he had changed too, I thought.
“Olsen.” He greeted my mother first, almost shyly, and then bounded up the wooden steps to grab her roughly in his arms.
“Welcome home,” she said with a break in her voice. “Welcome home, Kenny.”
I’d probably have been jealous before,