The Complicated Calculus (and Cows) of Carl Paulsen: Chapters 4–10

So after a week’s gone by and it’s looking more and more likely that Andy Olnan might actually be viable (as a friend, at least), I casually mention him at supper.

“I assume Spud and his wife had kids,” my father says.

“How come you called him Spud?” Ellen asks.
My father smiles. “He tended to be a bit on the pudgy side. All the way back to grade school. I don’t think he minded it all that much.”

I also heard she’d gotten involved in some sort of fringe religious group.

I just don’t find them all that stimulating to talk to. At least not for very long.

I tell him about last night’s supper conversation with my father though I of course leave out the “diddlysquat” part and I don’t refer to Andy’s dad as “Spud.” Despite what my father said, maybe the Olnans are sensitive about it, so why take the risk?

It’s the first day of lab, and after some endless and mind-numbing lectures along with required tedious note taking, we’re finally getting around to doing some actual experiments.

I watch Andy Olnan, sitting two people over from me, and the way he leans back in his chair, his eyes half-closed and his arms folded casually behind his head, looking like he might start whistling at any moment.

But before long I realize that Mr. Osterman is watching me watching Andy, even as he drones on and on.

If he eventually locks eyes with one of us, he’ll have an excuse to stop everything and say something about how he would appreciate everyone’s undivided attention, his way of shutting us down without necessarily embarrassing us.

We’re supposed to be looking at some rocks that Mr. Osterman has given us and then answer a bunch of questions: Look carefully at your specimen.

Identify the striations you see, noting color and texture.

But mostly she and I talk about everyday things, like I'm washing clothes today, so be sure to throw your dirty stuff in the hamper, though at first even that wasn’t such an everyday thing.

Up in my room I finish my cookies, get out of my school clothes and into my chore clothes, and wonder what choreless Andy Olnan must be doing at this very moment: playing video games, maybe, or watching television, probably eating potato chips and drinking a Mountain Dew, while I’m trudging out to the barn to do the same thing I’ve done almost every day for practically my whole life.

It’s always the same ones who want to be first and the same ones who like to be coaxed.

“I better go,” Andy said. “Before my sister has a conniption. See you tomorrow.” Conniption. Now that was a new one. I wanted to remember it to try out on my father, see how he’d react. Sorry, Dad, I don't feel like doing the milking today, I’m in the middle of a conniption.

Andy saunters down the hall, waving people out of the way as he pretends to push a mop, yelling, “Coming through!” in Mr. Lindstrom’s irritatingly nasal voice.

It isn’t enough to just have a spontaneous conversation about them. It becomes, as Mr. Osterman might describe it if he was participating, a scientific inquiry.

Ted concurs with his findings.

I could tell by the tentative way he cut into the cake, making Anna’s slice way too big and mine just a sliver, and how he forgot to take the vanilla ice cream out of the freezer and we had to sit and wait for it to soften enough to scoop onto the cake.

Would we just sit there in my room or his and talk about homework and Kent Neustad and the daily drudgery of everything just as we usually did?

But would he think my party was pathetic, hokey, something only a friendless loser would do?

It would all be very polite and cordial.

“I’d say he’s a little smitten with her, if you ask me.”
“Smitten?”
“I think he might have a little crush on her. Kinda cute, don’t you think?”

“I know what you mean, though. My dad keeps talking about getting rid of the farm, even though we’ve had it forever. He doesn’t really care what I think. He just wants to do what he wants. But what are you going to do? Parents are, well, parents.” That was profound.

She seems a little frazzled, talking a mile a minute and apologizing as she dumps the noodles into the boiling water.

And finally, in addition to blessing this food, oh Lord, please bless our guest at this table, Carl, for his friendship and for joining us at our table in worship and in fellowship and continue to guide us on our journey towards purity and obedience and give us the strength to resist temptation and evil.

And most important, it gives my father a chance to be an expert on something other than dairy cows, and maybe that will help him get out of his funk.

“There’s hail,” I try. “And what if it doesn’t rain? Or it rains too much? There’s weeds.”

I’d point to our mother, and say, slowly, enunciating every syllable as if I were teaching her a foreign language, “This is our mother. Moth-er.”

For once I was out with it. No cajoling necessary. If ever there was a time for honesty, and to be quick about it, it was then.

I felt like the song belonged to both of us. And when he sang it, he was singing it only for me. I didn’t have to share it—or him—with anyone. Like something out of a sappy movie, I know, but I couldn’t help it.

I tried to sound nonchalant about it, even though I’d never felt prouder in my life, not when I scored my first A in algebra, or figured out on my own how to drive a tractor.

Then she gently pries open my right eye and looks at it for what seems like a long time.

Joni lets out an exasperated sigh and puts the phone down.