A Little Off

Folks say that in farm country most people know which way is north and which way is west, and can tell you with reasonable accuracy no matter where they are, because that kind of orientation is important to a farmer and becomes part of them, bred into them. They don’t talk about the bad side of it, or how hard it is on people who have to get things right all the time.

When their father died, the Carson boys had some negotiation to do before they bought her a house closer to town where she would be happy and live out her days. They wanted to keep an eye on her, and didn’t want her always in the way of the oldest brother, Charles, who had inherited the large farm way out in the country where they’d grown up. He and his family were especially unable to have her around, although she didn’t make too many demands, but everyone recognized that, and worked together so that she’d have her own house and be able to come and go as she pleased. Kendrick, the third son, took an active role in finding her the house and felt that he’d done a pretty good job in helping her buy it, fix it up, and get it ready for her to live in.

It was an old house, about three miles from town, on about ten acres that she could let be wooded or rent out for hay. It had fine wood floors and old woodwork typical of old farmhouses in that part of Iowa, and you could look out at the horizon in all directions and have that kind of pastoral, rural view that made most Iowa farm folk comfortable; there was plenty of room, and nothing but crops and grass for miles in any direction. You could see people coming up the drive to visit.

Kendrick was visiting her one day in October, after she had moved in, when, stepping back out onto the porch, he had a strange feeling. He stopped and tried to discern what it was; finally it came to him. “Ma,” he said as she joined him on the porch, “it feels like your house isn’t quite square. I mean, it’s square enough, but it’s not set exactly on the north-east-south-west, if you know what I mean. It’s just a little off.” The more he looked at it, the more he was sure that’s what it was. He had no idea why, really; it was just a feeling.

It was a little while later that, at her request, Kendrick and Charles determined that the house was in fact one degree off the east-west line, and it was a while after that that Kendrick found out why. He was talking to Rufus, an older local guy who had helped his uncle build the house way back many years ago. They were planning out the foundation, Rufus said, and a large rock was in the way, and they didn’t want to move it, so they just moved the entire corner of the house over by a couple of feet, and that took care of it. There were other ways to deal with it, Rufus said, but his uncle just did what was easiest at the time. Sure enough, you could see the rock back there in the corner. It shouldn’t have been that big a deal.

But it was. Kendrick’s mother already felt somewhat uprooted from being taken out of the farmhouse that she’d shared with her husband, but became less and less able to settle in and be comfortable in this one, in spite of the fact that they made sure she had everything she wanted. Kendrick could sense agitation, unsettledness, and unhappiness in her, especially when he brought up the house. It was almost as if her husband would have picked it up and moved it a couple of feet, and the fact that she couldn’t do that now, by herself, was getting the best of her.

The following January was when it got to her the most, and one day she up and moved to Florida almost without warning. A guy named Steve, whom you could call her beau, persuaded her to come with him and stay down there in a condo. This was alarming to all the boys, but, she was a grown woman and could do as she liked. And it wasn’t so much that Steve was evil, or was going to ruin her; in some ways, they liked him as much as she did, and it was good for her to get her mind off her old marriage. Everyone could see that. But they also knew that if she was uprooted in an old farmhouse, things would get worse in Florida, and they did. It was the beginning of a long process that ended up with her being in the hospital, and them up home worrying and being pretty much unable to do anything about it; it also turned out to be more than Steve could handle. Kendrick blamed Charles, sometimes, for getting her out of the original house in the first place, but that wasn’t really his fault. And Charles, for his part, once told Kendrick, “You should have never told her about the house being off square,” but, she was bound to know that, or find it out. Some people said it was kind of a feeling anyway, deep inside you, when things aren’t right, and that would explain why she wouldn’t go back to the place, even after things in Florida had fallen so badly apart, and while she still could. The house in Iowa stayed shuttered, waiting for her, and Kendrick would go over occasionally to adjust the heat or take care of the place. He’d get that same feeling every time, and he wondered if his mother had that feeling from the start, or got it from what he’d said. There was no way of knowing; it was just one of those tragedies.