A Plausible Reason for Your Lousy Behavior

By Jeff Smith

1962. Spring, summer, and fall. The bay area and the Sacramento Valley beyond.

The Giants and the Dodgers go to the wire for the National League pennant and a chance to play the New York Yankees. Five years previous, their hated American League next-door neighbor.

Salvage work and farming are dirty and "get poor quick" occupations. Jim, John, and Frenchy weather accidents, prop up their aspirations, and wreak revenge, heading into an uncertain winter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781646540266

Jeff Smith

Jeff Smith is Professor of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and the author of The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music.

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Copyright © 2022 Jeff Smith

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2022

ISBN 978-1-64654-025-9 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64654-026-6 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Part 1

The Greyhound eases along the curb, hissing to a stop outside the station, the smell of brakes and clutch hanging momentarily in the dead air. The driver wrenches open the mechanical door, and half a dozen passengers step down into the valley heat. He follows them down, his tan Greyhound visor with the green plastic inset shielding his eyes from the glaring sun. He jerks open the luggage compartment under the bus; its door slams down onto the curb. Not even glancing at the ticket manifesto, he pulls out three or four beat-up suitcases and one duffle bag, half throwing and stacking them on the sidewalk, slams the luggage door back uptight, hustles back up the bus’s three steps, and pulls its door back shut.

On to Turlock, down 99. The hound fires up with a smooth growl, and the air-conditioning blows through the bus. One hard right turn up the block past the hardware store and back out on the road. L.A. by ten.

Out on the roasting sidewalk, the passengers gather themselves into couples, find their suitcases, and for a second adjust. The sun, seemingly perpetually straight up, broils everything. Finally, around nine, it will disappear. The parched rice and safflower fields stretch to the horizon in the simmering heat. Everything’s baked tan and white. There’s no sign of brown earth or green tree. The only vegetation are the weeds surviving along the dry irrigation ditches lining the fields. A lone Chevy Impala, wheel wells, and rocker panels coated with the white dust eases up the street, making up the lone breeze baking valley air.

The couples don’t head into the Greyhound station but down the side of the building, under a shading roof eave and out to the car parking lot, to their cars or to one awaiting them. The lone figure still out on the sidewalk studies his boots and his duffel bag, either awaiting orders to move out (which he realizes are never coming again) or more likely commiserating with all his worldy possessions (in the bag); but orders or not, it was time to move out, sweat starting to spread through his fatigues. He grabs the bag (not heavy) and takes a look around, though it’s all too familiar.

Why he ever figured this place as home is beyond him. Maybe that’s what you call it if you’re raised here. His old man, squatting in an old single-wide trailer, working for whichever of the local farmers that were caught shorthanded ’til they got tired of him or got caught back up. Their wives would occasionally drop groceries off, but with the Pall Malls and Wild Turkey, his few job skills and lousy habits were meeting on some skewed trajectory.

In a lull in the fighting outside of Quang Troh, he got word that the old man had finally passed on. He’d later find out somebody (probably following the smell) had found him with his pants half down out back behind the trailer, either relieving himself or God knows what.

A far as he could figure, he’d spawned in that trailer. No sign of a mother or brother or sister or anything, just the old man either out working with one of the farmers or staring at the little black-and-white TV someone had given him, smoking up the place and sipping at a bottle on his day off, which came frequently. Came from someplace back east, with no relatives or history the kid could recollect. Just that skinny frame and perpetual three-day shadow and inertia-less existence signifying part-time this or part-time that. But one of the farmers had bootlegged in a semi-drain field and running water. All the electrical ran overhead down along the never-ending dirt roads to the various farms. It was tapped into at every farmer’s need and convenience. So the trailer had everything a man needs, the old man would say, along with, We’re doing better’n most, a few hits off the bottle, and opening a fresh pack of smokes.

The school bus stopped about a mile and a half away where the pavement ended. And he liked school well enough. The teachers he remembered were nice. And the lunches were good (especially those baked cheese sandwiches). But when high school started, so did trouble. First year was bad, and the second one worse. The snickering and whatever, behind his back this and that, well, he could take it. (Why wasn’t there any of that in grade school? he wondered later.) But the outright taunting got to be too much. He started fighting, and pretty soon he got good at it. I think I watched too much of the Friday Night Fights. The old man’d get so worked up he’d punch the air, right, then a left, then the big right hand, along with the TV boxers.

Then he was in trouble more often than not. But he still liked school, at least the school part of it, he thought, and especially shop and the teacher. Some sort of natural affinity due to your heritage, went Hiram. But since when was heritage a single-wide, choked-in cigarette smoke, and stale whiskey? he wondered.

But Hiram got him a summer job working for one of the local farmers, and they drove up one of those endless dirt roads, to John Henderson’s place.

The house had been a one story ranch style: front door centered, big living-room to your left, kitchen to the right, bathroom and bedrooms in the back. But John’s dad added a second story, and it projected out over the first floor about four feet on the front door side. It provided shade and cover: the posts supporting that second floor ran down to concrete, hidden by the porch running the length of the front of the house. All manner of boots, shoes, hand tools sat there; jackets and hats hung off nails pounded into the posts.

The five foot high walls carrying the second story roof were interrupted by two full height, eight food wide dormer walls. Each had its own window. They were coated with dust outside and covered with cobwebs inside. The clapboard siding had been re-nailed at least once; the porch two or three times; each time with bigger nails.

Hiram’s car coming up the gravel driveway got Linda’s attention, and she watched out of the kitchen window John coming out of the barn to meet it.

She recognized the shop teacher; his young friend she didn’t.

He’s growing into that skinny frame, she thought.

Something about him puzzled her.

Maybe he had an older brother, maybe, she thought. John’s probably looking for more help. God save us. He never should’ve leased those forty acres. They’re worn out, and the owner beat all the pumps and roads to hell. I told him not to sign the papers, but he wouldn’t listen. She sighed. He’s not listening to a damn thing I say. We can’t keep this place respectable. I can only nail so much siding back up. The electrical’s faulting out. The water pressure’s going south. I said we should ease back a little and fix what we got. He ignored me.

Maybe he wants to be like Poppa.

Good luck.

Frank’s built big and solid, not quite hulking. Wild brown-and-gold curls cover his head, arms, and chest. After three daughters, there’s lots of white in there too.

Lana made sure he shaved every two or three days.

Gad, if he got off the farm, somebody’d shoot him for an escaped impossibility, she thought.

With his eagle-beak nose, covered in a riot of golden fur, the effect was as much animal as human. If you saw the two of them together walking through town, you’d expect Lana’s holding tight some sort of choke chain hidden under Frank’s collar.

She’s pert and vivacious, partly because she’s always been and partly to make up for Frank’s rumbling. Her light-brown hair’s gone to gray now, which set her blue eyes off even more. The girls take after her a lot more’n Frank. (Thank God, he said more than a few times a day.) But they did get a miniature version of that eagle beak.

They’re more of a conglomeration, thought Linda, than a couple. I don’t know how he and Mom grew their place. She told me she knows more about depreciation, appreciation, amortization than any crooked accountant. Three sets of books, and the real one in her head. More about short and long weather cycles than an atmospheric scientist. More about the market than any sleazy stockbroker.

Big Frank distilled what Lana told him and made plans. Sometimes he’s farming like a man possessed; other times some acres just rested. But when he’s going full tilt, he fixes, borrows, rents, leases all the tractors and plows he needs. How he pays only Lana knew. And when he’s got the throttle down, he needs men; and somehow every hard case and derelict in a fifty-mile radius knows it and comes banging on his door. He bled more sweat and work outa ’em than’s possible. He’d berate, cajole, insult, and praise all through the scorching day, and they love Big Frank. He somehow punches all the right buttons. They got the tough love they needed and never got; a father figure to every wino and layabout; a gorilla covered in red-and-brown fur, matted with sweat, dust, and grease, wide-open brown eyes swiveling in every direction, looking down that eagle beak of a nose he’s so proud of.

And at the end of every blistering week, Lana put out a dinner spread that’s known all over the county; the men eat big and noisy, slurping, chomping, shouting; her three little daughters, shouldering platters piled high, weave through the masticating uproar, Seconds! Thirds! Fourths! Frank barbecuing piles of chicken over a fifty-gallon barrel sawed lengthwise in half, smoke and splatter erupting heavenward.

Gad, thought Linda, what got me going on that? Maybe that young man with Hiram.

The last of three sisters, all spaced about two years apart. All with their dad’s beak. All with their mom’s light-brown hair and blue eyes. Any other farmer in the valley would’ve been crying and whining. Too many acres to work, and no son in sight. Big Frank just doted on ’em and worked harder. He’d given each one the same speech when they finished high school: I don’t care where you want to go, but we’ll get you there and help out. You gotta get outa this God-forsaken valley ’less you get stuck here forever.

Linda remembered Lacey, her oldest sister, had a thing going for France, the provençal region, Van Gogh and the light and all that. (Lana named their first baby Lacey. A young Frank’s truck had broken down in Lacey, Washington; he proceeded to have himself one rip-roaring good time, met Lana in the midst of it, and the two of them escaped, with Lana’s father in hot pursuit. Hiding on a Greyhound bus, or so he claimed.)

France? Paris? He damned near snorted his coffee across the kitchen table. "Where they sit by the side of a sewer they call a river, eat slugs, and contemplate a philosophy that don’t make sense? Es forbotten!" He frowned at the thought and congratulated himself on the only German he knew.’

I don’t care if it’s Peking and Chairman Mao. Any place but Frog land.

So every two years they took turns refusing him. Lacey made it to Los Angeles and Occidental. Lucy, the second, got over to Cal Davis and picked up surfing and med school. Linda got as far as Sacramento State before the valley reeled her back in. She enrolled in the nursing program, but only lasted a year and a half. She missed the shimmering valley heat, the fog once in a generation finding its way over the coast range, the long horizon ending in the mirage of the Sierras; the endless baking summers, the dust; ringneck pheasants big as bombers exploding out of the brush, climbing to five feet of altitude and sailing downwind, chucking and cackling the whole time.

Frank, exasperated, gave her the speech again. This time he figured he got the right ammo.

Looky here. He plops down an issue of National Geographic on that same kitchen table. On the cover’s an Argentine cowboy, his face hidden mostly under his hat, a big wolfish grin plastered on his sunbaked mug. His chaps taper up to his crotch. Pride of the Pampas or something like that. This hombre needs a date with a girl who rides better’n him. A girl just learning to speak Spanish. A girl like you.

Linda giggled. Oh, Daddy, I’d be afraid for my virtue around some stud like that.

He gave a small snort into his coffee cup. He turned his head theatrically all around, on the lookout for Lana.

Ain’t no women in this family got any of that. Only person with less is this here farmer, who’d better get off his big fat ass and get back to work. A stray ray of sunlight shooting in the kitchen window had grabbed his attention.

Frank sighed. Something on that upper 20 he’s leasing. He finished his coffee and thought, I ain’t really got a brain up there. Just a rusty shed full of cabinets with glass doors on ’em. The dusty cabinets were full of alarm bells. They got gold titles written big on the glass: Lana, Girls, Lower Forty, Pumps, and Barns.

A glass door opened, and a bell rang. That stray ray had opened a cabinet door.

He looked over the table at his youngest daughter. Hell, maybe she’ll live here forever. That got him smiling, and he got up.

The following spring it’s Lana’s turn to sit at that table and snort through her coffee. Lois from down the road had stopped by to borrow her pressure cooker. After a short courtship, Linda married a high school classmate, John. Just frigging great, just wonderful.

The two gals were laughing pretty good. I think the men around here must be pretty interchangeable. Now Linda’s gone and married a tamed-up version of her father.

John and Linda grew mostly safflower, and had a couple fair years and a couple poor ones. Then he decided to double down and diversify; he’d leased more land than he could handle, the smart money said. But he was more than willing to work the brutal hours to prove the wise guys wrong. A handsome guy, you’d remark and pass on. He was built slender, but bigger than he