HUMPED FLOORS

      RUSSELL (RUSTY) SMITH NEEDED SOME WORK DONE ON HIS house. The paint had peeled, especially around the upper windows, and the roof leaked in two places. But the retired farmer had long ago stopped climbing ladders. After sixty years of milking cows, carrying sacks of feed, and jumping off tractors and wagons, his knees had given out. He also had problems inside, where the hardwood floor in the guest bedroom buckled into hills and valleys. To make matters worse, his wife’s sister had called, announcing her intention to visit at the end of next month, and after hanging up the phone his wife, Maxine, had instantly reordered her collection of things to worry about, placing house repair at the very highest peak of concern.

      Rusty called all the lumberyards—even in Kendall, more than fifty miles away—and was told there were no construction crews available. He called all the listed carpenters and contractors.

      “This is always the worst season,” said Rodney Whisk at Whisk Lumber. “Everyone puts off construction until frozen ground is just around the corner. There’s more building now than you can shake a stick at.”

      “I need someone,” said Rusty, flipping his spent cigarette to the asphalt and grinding it beneath the pointed toe of his cowboy boot. He tried to keep from reaching again into the pocket of his insulated vest, failed, found another cigarette, and lit it from a disposable lighter.

      “Everybody works for the big boys now,” said Rodney. “Pete Hardin was in last week looking for someone to finish the addition on his house. He finally hired some Amish.”

      “Don’t want Amish,” said Rusty. “Don’t want to encourage them to keep moving in.”

      “Appears they don’t need any encouragement,” said the lumberyard owner as a tractor-trailer load of Canadian plywood backed toward them from the street.

      “The wife doesn’t like to drive at night,” said Rusty. “Afraid of hitting ’em.”

      “They finally put electric lights on their buggies.”

      “Didn’t do it until they forced ’em.”

      “They’re hard workers,” said Rodney. “Give them that.”

      “Never said they weren’t. Never said they weren’t. Just think they make poor neighbors.”

      Rusty paused to remind himself why he had a right to complain about religious groups and anything else. He had grown up in an always-hungry family that never took charity. His father never held a steady job for more than three months, never owned his own home, and didn’t live past the age of forty. Rusty had dropped out of school in the eighth grade to work as a farm laborer, as did his younger brother.

      From one rented room to another, Rusty had worked seven days a week, fourteen hours a day, year in and out. He had worn other men’s clothes, slept on cement floors, and hidden rice in soiled pockets of his overalls. He’d plowed with horses, shoveled manure, butchered animals, and cleared timber. He had worked for some of the most miserly farmers in the area—well known for their cruelty to family, animals, and themselves.

      When he was old enough to be legally employed, he had worked nights as a grinder in the foundry. At thirty-eight he finally made a down payment on his own farm and a year later married a school-teacher. Then for the next thirty-five years he farmed with a moral ferocity that more resembled mortal combat than work, until he had paid, in full, for every blade of grass and splinter of wood on his property. Meanwhile, his wife had raised their two daughters, who eventually attended the state university, married young men from the suburbs, and provided his two grandchildren with lives of nurtured indolence.

      Rusty Smith had the right to talk about other people. In a culture that valued work, he was a living testament to that virtue, a gnarled emblem of relentless toil.

      He continued, “The Amish don’t pay gasoline taxes but use the roads and leave horse manure all over them. Their steel wheels cut deep into the cement. They don’t use electricity, so the rest of us have to pay higher rates. They don’t follow the same school laws. They get special privileges when it comes to having outhouses. Hell, for ten years my neighbor tried to build a hunting shack, but they wouldn’t let him unless he put in a complete sewer system. They say crapping outdoors is part of their religion.”

      Rusty rarely talked about anything, but this was one of the few issues he had well rehearsed. “Amish don’t believe in owning cars, but they sure like to ride around in them. They don’t believe in owning phones, but they sure like to use them. They don’t believe in medical insurance, but they run to the hospitals in every emergency. They don’t believe in owning power tools, but they sure like to borrow them.”

      “Do they borrow your tools often, Rusty?”

      “Not mine.”

      “You’re a hard man,” said Rodney, “and I’d like to talk to you more, but I’ve got to check over this plywood before they unload it.”

      “Suit yourself.”

      Rusty returned to his dual-wheeled pickup and began the drive back to his farm. Well, it really wasn’t a farm anymore, he reminded himself. Two years ago he had sold the land to Charlie Drickle & Sons. All his equipment had been auctioned. Now he just owned the house, the barn, and four acres. Drickle had wanted the barn, too, but Rusty refused, even though it stood a long ways from the house. “I’ll build you a big garage,” Drickle said.

      “Not the same thing,” said Rusty.

      At home, Rusty went directly into the basement. He always changed clothes down there to keep the smell of the farm out of the rest of the house. There was a shower next to the washer and dryer. After stepping out of his city clothes, he put on a pair of forest-green coveralls that zipped up the front and exchanged his leather cowboy boots for insulated rubber.

      It was the only place in the house where he smoked, and he squatted onto his old milking stool and lit a cigarette. His knees hurt. From above him came the sounds of Maxine and the vacuum cleaner. The humming and bumping gradually moved north. Running out of electric cord, she turned off the cleaner and returned south to retrieve the plug from the socket.

      The telephone in the kitchen rang and her footsteps reversed, then stopped directly above him. Though he could not understand individual words, the fleeting sounds of occasional laughter led him to suspect the caller to be one of the girls, Maxine’s mother in Milwaukee or her sister in Chicago. About 90 percent, or more, of their calls could be traced to these sources. Rusty lit another cigarette as he listened to her pull a chair out from under the table and sit on it. Her voice lowered as she settled into the conversation, and the silences grew periodically longer as superficial greetings ended and more vital communication began to flow.

      Rusty didn’t like talking on telephones. His circumstances had frequently made it unavoidable, yet he could not remember a time when he had ever