Free The Farmer's Daughter by Jim Harrison Page B

angered Sarah because of her uncommunicative father. Frank and Rebecca had been talking and there was the idea that if Sarah would go to the University of Arizona Rebecca would finance it because Sarah could also house-sit. Rebecca was going to be spending a lot of time in Chile with a consortium of astronomers designing a new observatory facility. Sarah mellowed with a glass of wine and was startled when Rebecca said how much she disliked Lolly. “Lolly was always wicked and she and Frank were fooling with each other when they were only thirteen and now she’s got him. With women my brother is lame. I don’t see how you stand her.” Sarah told her that she had moved up the hill and was living alone with Rover and that she had rigged Lad’s corral so he could look in the window. She asked if she could bring them and Rebecca said of course and that half the people in Sonoita had horses in their yards.
    That settled that and Montana began to drift away. The sense of an idyll was broken in the middle of the moonlit night. She was trying to sleep facing east but the moon was enormous and not looking particularly friendly. She got up and drew the curtains but they were thin and only slightly diffused the light and actually made the moon look larger. Her life had been comparatively uneventful and now it was too eventful. In the dark she could perceive that what we have is the life of the mind and now it was whirling and humming like an old-fashioned top that you pumped. These so-called big decisions like coming to Arizona were essentially out of her control and had been made for her by Frank and Rebecca. Of course she could refuse but what were her options? She could wait for news of a full scholarship to Missoula or Bozeman. The principal had said there was a good chance but she had the feeling that she had painted herself into a corner in Montana. And maybe if she headed south the image of Karl would fade. And her disordered mind had its own sound effects. Wherever she drove with Marcia she was forced to listen to Patsy Cline and Merle Haggard on the eight-track tape deck. In the nighttime she could hear Cline’s clear voice singing, “I Fall to Pieces” and “The Last Word in Lonesome Is Me” and some Haggard line to the effect that the singer had turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole. Terry was always saying that our bodies were our prisons. What if she spent her life in a real prison for shooting Karl?
    One of Rebecca’s Labs, she couldn’t tell which, came into the bedroom, jumped onto the bed, and curled up next to her hip. Putting a hand on his chest and feeling his heartbeat calmed her as it did with Rover. She began to sleep fitfully but then after midnight when the moon had moved away from her window she awoke sobbing and screaming and the dog began barking. She was having a nightmare where Karl was eating her bare left foot and leg and the white bones were sticking out. He was moving upward in huge ripping bites. Rebecca came running and turned on the overhead light. Sarah was now weeping and thrashing around on the bed with her eyes wide open but not seeing. Rebecca dragged her off the bed into an upright position and walked her up and down the room until she recovered true consciousness but, doubting that it would work quickly enough, led Sarah from room to room in the house turning on the lights as they went, backing out of the darkish but moonlit patio when Sarah stiffened.
    It was the piano that worked and perhaps the sunburst color of the walls and the many potted desert plants. Rebecca put Sarah on the piano stool and asked her to play some Schumann.
    â€œSchumann’s too scary. I only play him in the daylight,” Sarah said, beginning to play Schubert. She played at least an hour by which time Rebecca and the dogs were asleep on the sofa. Sarah put an afghan throw over Rebecca thinking that she wished Rebecca were her mother but then it was