In Plain View

“Thanks for coming out to meet us, sir.”

I offered my hand as he slammed the door. Lowe was a perfect interview to get us started. He wore jeans, a Cubs jacket that had seen better days and a squared-off bill cap. His face and hands bore the weathered tan of an outdoor work life. Everything about him said farmer-pure, old-fashioned, regular guy. Whatever he had to say, people would believe.

“Beautiful view,” I said.

“Yeah,” Lowe replied. Midwesterners could pack more meanings into “yeah” than Eskimos had words for snow. This one meant, sad. What a shame.

Ainsley fumbled with the tripod behind us, trying to lock down an even footing for the shot I wanted. Not easy. The ground was all torn up by the cars, trucks and men that had been trooping around the day before.

Lowe kept his back to the camera and stared out across fields that came together like a quilt beneath the eternal-blue morning. It wasn’t the kind of sky that recorded well on video. The technology could never get the color right.

I stood beside him and gazed unblinking into all that color until vertigo brought me back to the earth. The view to the horizon held nothing but dirt and straw and the scalloped border of a tree line. I dug my hands into my pockets and tried for a happy quote. “Reminds me of ‘the pleasant land of counterpane.’”

Lowe looked at me, surprised. In a grave, rusty, morning voice he spoke the words,

“‘I was the giant great and still,

that sits upon the pillow hill,

and sees before him, dale and plain,

the pleasant land of counterpane.’

“My dad used to recite that one,” he admitted with a bashful crook of his head.

“Mine too,” I said. We were having a moment, so I didn’t mention that I was full grown before I’d understood the word was pane, not pain.

“Almost ready,” Ainsley said.

Farmer Lowe and I chatted about hay harvest and dairy feed, while the Boy Wonder locked and loaded. By the time we got to bovine hormones, Lowe was at ease; I was on suppressed impatience.

“Ready,” Ainsley finally called.

Interviewing is part skill, part talent, part luck of the draw. When it works, you become the glass through which someone else is seen. Sometimes, you blend transparently. Sometimes, you reflect. Sometimes, there’s an invisible wall. I ran down the establishing facts with Lowe quickly.

I could feel his resistance before I asked, “Were you the one to find the body?”

“No.” Lowe studied his boots. Kicked over a clod of dirt. “The authorities knew before I did. I got a call from a neighbor who’d driven by, saw all the commotion.”

“About what time was that?”

“Neighbor called as I was finishing my pancakes.”

“Could it have been that neighbor-over there?” I looked across the field, beyond the fence and the line of shrubs even farther back.

The buildings appeared exactly as they were yesterday, the perfect icon of farm, like an illustration from a kid’s picture book. The second-story barn window stood open. No sign of binoculars watching.

“Old Mr. Jost? I couldn’t say,” Lowe mumbled.

Ainsley popped his head around the camera. “Has he even got a phone?”

“There’s a booth out back,” Lowe answered. To me he said, “The Amish don’t allow phones in their homes. It’s one of their rules. No wires to the outside world on their homes. They get around it by putting the phone in a separate little building, like a phone booth, that’s outside apart from the house.”

“An Amish family lives there?” I couldn’t help pointing. “In that house?”

“Yeah.” Lowe turned away from me and the relentless stare of the camera.

“What about cell phones?” I asked, thinking of the girl in the bush. “No wires on a cell phone. Do they allow those?”

“No. Don’t think so,” he snorted. “They’d have to charge it somewhere.”

“Oh yeah.” I laughed. Joke on me.

“Is that it?” Lowe’s reluctance suddenly took a shape I recognized.

Gently I asked, “Did you know the man who died?”

His chin dropped to his chest. There was silence for a good twenty seconds.

“Suppose it’ll come out sooner or later… Yeah, I knew him. Damn shame. Seemed to be getting along alright these past few years. Boy’s name was Tom. Tom Jost. He was adopted by my neighbor over there-” Lowe jerked his head in the direction of the farmhouse, “-years ago. Kid had a hard life and old Jost tried to do right by him. I respected him for that.” He half-turned his back to the camera, mumbling. “Some hard years for a while there. Teenage stuff mostly, not too bad. But Old Mr. Jost is religious, you know, so he didn’t see it that way. Boy left the farm, never came back.”

Except to die.

“Why’d he choose this tree?”

No answer.

“Do you know why Tom chose this tree?”

Lowe’s whole face tightened and I wished he’d have been facing the camera, instead of looking over at Mr. Jost’s farm. “Guess I do.”

“Why?” I whispered.

The quick glance he shot my way held all sorts of implications, but I needed words for the tape.

“This going to be on TV, Miss O’Hara?”

“Yes, we hope so.”

“The Amish don’t care to be photographed, you know.”

It was a warning. Stay away from Old Mr. Jost.

“Yes. I’ve heard that.”

Lowe turned and pointed a finger at the oak. “That tree is over a hundred years old, you know. The town moved the road for that tree.”

The morning sun was fully awake and the leaves on the sunny side were glowing.

“Seen a lot, that tree. It was worth moving the road around it.”

I nodded. “It’s a beautiful tree.”

“I suppose that boy would have found himself another tree someplace else,” he said and it was almost a question. The rest wasn’t. “There are things worth trying to preserve, Miss O’Hara. Even when you can’t.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer. He was speaking a local dialect of neighborhood history, a language I’d never understand without translation. I hesitated, searching for what to ask next and I lost him.

Lowe made his decision. He stuck out his rough, tanned hand and shook my own-goodbye. Interview over.

Damn. “Well, thanks for agreeing to meet with us, Mr. Lowe.”

“That’s no problem.”

“Can I ask you one more thing?”

“No.”

I’m not so young I can’t remember back to the days when shame was still serious business. As a kid, I remember people averting their eyes at something awful, instead of reaching for their camcorders.

How many times did I hear the words, hurry, don’t let anyone see. What will the neighbors think? Bad enough. But now the pendulum’s swung so far the other way nobody can turn on the TV or open a newspaper without somebody flashing their streaky underpants in your face. How is that an improvement?

The problem isn’t that it’s so painfully tacky, it’s that we have only so much time, so much compassion, for our fellow human beings. I want to focus on trouble that matters. Ending wars, and hunger, and the sickness we know how to cure if we’d only pay attention. If the freaks would stop distracting us.

Which is a long way of explaining that even though people like farmer Al Lowe made my job harder, I can’t say I always mind.