Hoffert - Prairie silence: a memoir

For my mom and dad who probably got more than they bargained for and who love me all the same

D o you think its weird that I want to drive a grain truck for a while? my friend Melissa asks me over the phone.

A grain truck? Seriously? I tap my keyboard as I talk and notice that it is filthy, embarrassing almost. The keys are sticky and filled with crumbs. The entire board is splattered with coffee drips. Disgusting, I think.

I visualize Melissa, who is working in San Francisco, in a loft with high ceilings and little geometrical work stations lined with Macs. I imagine people wearing dark-rimmed eyeglasses, suit coats, torn jeans, and sneakers, popping their head into her office and flashing white smiles against tanned skin. Melissa herself is covered with tattoos and wears only eighties-vintage clothing, an appearance probably more reflective of her passion for music and pop culture than her day job at a publishing house.

In contrast my office is in a closed, dark corner of a building in St. Paul, just across the river from my home in Minneapolis. My walls are neutral. My plants are dying. My view is a parking lot. Your very own office? Our baby girl is so important! my mom would exclaim, not noticing the depressing vanilla walls, crusty plants, or uninspiring viewthrilled by the fact that her baby girl has somehow managed to find herself an executive position with all of the perks. And standing in my office she would grab a piece of paper and ask me about my job again, even though it has been several years since Ive been here. I have to get it right, honey. Everyone always asks me. I just tell them you do something with computers.

Ma, I work on a computer. Everyone does. Ive told her.

Yes. Seriously, Melissa continues, breaking into my thoughts. I was thinking I could come homemaybe just for a few monthsand drive truck through harvest. I could live in that old farmhouse on my parents land and then figure out what to do afterwards. She pauses. You knowI think Im just ready to get out. Im ready to leave the city. Plusseriouslyhow hard would it be to learn how to drive the truck again? I drove when I was fourteen!

I am, I realize, slightly impressed that my modest friend used to drive a grain truck as a kid. As a child I drove tractors but never trucks. My dad propped me behind the wheel of his John Deere tractor when they were short of hired men. I pulled the coulter chisel, a giant rake-like appendage, to loosen the soil before plowing. But I never had to drive a truck, where you had to be tall enough to reach the clutch while managing the long stick shift.

Oh, my God. Youd be fine. I give her the old youd be fine hand wave, as if she can see me. Pick it back up in no time, I say.

Melissa and I are both children of the North Dakota prairie. She grew up in a tiny town, Northwood, population 959, near the northern border of the state. I grew up on a farm eight miles outside of Wyndmere, population 533, on the southern border at about the same longitude as Northwood. Both small towns have a railroad that runs through the center, a grain elevator, a gas station, a Catholic church on one side of town, a Lutheran church on the other, and a few bars in between. In fact, our hometowns fit the description of most North Dakota small towns.

I can see you driving a grain truck. I continue, savoring the vision of my thirtysomething frienda tattooed San Francisco DJ with dyed black hairdriving a grain truck down gravel roads. Then I imagine all of usthose who left North Dakotacoming back, settling in with the farmers, filling the small-town bars at night, Schmidt beer in hand, talking about literature and the grain markets.

You can? Melissa asks, in her typical soft and humble way, as if her ideas are never good until someone else agrees.

Yes. In fact, maybe we should buy a little farm together. Drive truck for some cash. I grab a tissue and start working on a coffee blot on my keyboard while I consider our long-term options. Yeah. Maybe you could start a band and play in the bars at night. I mean, what else is going on there? Umnothing. Youd probably be a hit! Then, after harvest, we could take a road trip. Tour North Dakota. Ill be your crew. I pause, not quite sure if crew is the word I am looking for; I am not into the music scene and feel immediately not so hip. OrIll do something. Carry your guitar? Play the drums? I dont know.

Would you? Really? Youd come to North Dakota to be my roadie? she laughs.

Yes! I will. Why not?

I think of my family farm during harvest right then, how harvest nights in the middle of the country seem almost cosmopolitan: bright, moving, awake, and alive. The moon glows like an orange pumpkin in the sky. Trucks light up the yard as they come in from the fields to empty their bounty. Once drained, they return to the dark night for another hit of golden crop from the combines. All of this activity stirs the crisp, corn-filled air, which makes it smell like someone is baking sweet corn muffins from somewhere deep within the earth. All the while, real cooking is happening inside, where Mom is making hamburgers and fried onions for my dad and brother, who will come in exhausted and dirty well past ten oclock.

You know, Mo, I think you should make the move. I turn my keyboard upside down and watch the crumbs fall out like dirty snow. I think we should.

Melissa and I both left North Dakota after college and moved to the city where we hoped to find something that existed beyond the prairie. At the time, this something was unspeakableour shared secret. But now that we are in our thirties, it just might be time to return homeat least for a sabbatical of some sortand confront the reasons we left.

Yes! I think it is time to change our lives! Melissa cheers in her calm way.

I know. I could really use a break from work. From life. From the traffic and the busyness. I mean, how long can we go on like this? I am being dramatic now, resorting to our college chatter. It is easy to fall into this lingo with Melissa. In college we spent long nights together in her small, carpeted apartment, talking about our lives. She played her electric guitar without an amp. I sat across from her on her ragged couch, chewing sunflower seeds and spitting them into a blue mug. The next morning we would do the same. She sat in her ripped pajamas, picking at her electric guitar, and I drank coffee from the same blue mug. I often crashed for the night at her place, too tired to drive across town to my own bed in a small house I shared with three other women. I am about to remind her of this, of our time together, when someone pops a frenzied head in my office.

Hey, ah, you got a minute?

I keep my eyes on the intruder and switch to my I-am-at-work-and-trying-to-be-professional voice, which I can barely pull out for Melissa. Excuse me, Melissa. Can I interrupt you for just one minute? Yes. Sorry. I have a colleague at my door and have to run. Lets talk soon and seriously consider ourI look at the person standing in my doorour future business proposition.

She gets my drift. Oh, sure. Yes. Call me later.

After I deal with the person who wants to know if I can set up a meeting to discuss something we had just discussed, I look out of my window. I notice the landscape: the parking lot, the cement, the buildings, the way my eye is stopped by a delivery truck, blocking my view of the earth.