Failure's Virtue

“Ah. This has to be the nicest day we’ve had here in Rolling Creek in… Well, I can’t really say in how long,” Ed Kramer said. He stopped his rocking chair long enough to tap his yet unlit pipe against the knee of his faded green work slacks. The sweet, aromatic tobacco filled the air around him like a spritz of perfume.

“Phuh.” This was Sharon, Ed’s wife. “I can tell you how long it’s been. Since that nice day we had a week ago. You’ve been saying the same thing every time a nice day rolls around since you retired three years ago. Nice days shouldn’t come as such a big surprise to you.”

Huddled together around a wicker bushel basket filled with sweet corn, the Kramer’s four grandchildren looked up and giggled as they continued shucking for the family’s Fourth of July picnic. They’d heard this conversation before.

Ed would tell Sharon that the weather did seem to have improved drastically since he gave up work on the farm.

“The weather hasn’t been any better,” Sharon would reply with a furrowed brow. “You just have the time to enjoy it now, that’s all.”

Then a broad smile would settle on Ed’s face, lighting it up like rays of sunshine thrusting their way through gray clouds. He would start rocking a little harder, taking in more of the creaky porch boards with each forward and backward motion. “And more time to enjoy my pretty bride of so many years.”

“Phuh,” Sharon would repeat. Then she’d not quite succeed in hiding a small smile.

If you asked those kids, they’d tell you they didn’t get near enough time with their grandparents.

Sharon and Ed’s daughter, Kathleen, felt differently, though. She had fled the family dairy farm to marry me, Ben Tyler. We live in Weaverton, a place just big enough to have the feel of a city.

“I married for greener pastures,” she enjoyed telling her parents.

“Very funny,” Sharon would say whenever she heard the joke. “But I still say if you wanted to escape the daily grind of caring for animals, you might have chosen a better way than marrying a vet. No offence intended, Ben.”

She did have a point there.

Sharon’s one of those women who can always be counted on to tell you what she thinks, although to her credit, she does show measured restraint to a point. After that, I guess she figures she can’t be held liable for pointing out the weird or imbecilic actions of those around her.

Case in point: the naming of our kids.

I loved the name Jacqui for our firstborn as much as Kathleen. Even Sharon seemed charmed by it. (The fact Jacqui was the first grandchild didn’t hurt, either.)

When Jace came along, Kathleen convinced me another J name would be cute.

“Jace, huh?” Sharon said. “That’s two J names, you know.”

“Yes, Mother,” Kathleen said, her eyes rolling up to the ceiling.

Jana caused a bit more consternation. “How am I ever going to keep from stumbling over all those J’s?” Sharon complained.

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll manage,” Kathleen said before flashing a too-quick smile.

But I almost didn’t bite when Kathleen suggested “Jaden” for our fourth child.

“Come on, Hon. Don’t you think we have enough J’s already? I mean, what’s your mother going to say?”

Have you ever heard of the cockatrice, the mythological reptilian creature hatched from a cock’s egg and able to kill with a glance? For some reason, it popped into my mind at that moment.

I figured I could handle four J names better than endure my wife’s mood.

Fortunately for Ed and Sharon, they also have a son, Mike, who thinks dairy farming is right up there, maybe even as good as rhubarb pie. “You get your fresh milk every day, you get to be out in the fields, and you get to see new life coming into the world,” he liked to say.

“Yeah, and you get scratched from the hay, butted by the calves, kicked by the bossies, and stinking hair and clothes every time you spend more than a minute in the barn,” Kathleen would shoot back.

“Hey, you chose your life. I chose mine. May you be happy where you’re planted.”

It was a regular occurrence to see Kathleen rolling her eyes whenever we visited her home.

Mike enjoyed talking about recent veterinarian procedures with me. Though I’m a small animal practitioner, I read up on recent treatments for large animals so I’ll have something constructive to talk with Mike about. He likes bringing up farming whenever it even remotely fits into a conversation.

“You shoulda seen the time we had with that heifer calving the other day,” he said as he set three burgers onto his plate. Our picnic had begun.

“Oh?” I said.

Kathleen rolled her eyes. “Come on, Mike. We’re eating here. We don’t need to hear about some hemorrhaging cow or how the vet had to push his arm all the way up her… all the way into her to grab the calf.”

Jace, our eleven-year old, perked up. This kind of discussion was definitely more interesting than the ones we had around our dinner table.

“For your information, Kathleen, I was going to tell Ben about a new technique the vet used to speed up the contractions.” He swiveled toward me. “The cow had been in labor for so long we were afraid she wouldn’t have enough energy to birth the calf.”

“Very interesting, Mike. Now are you going to use your vast knowledge to explain how the vet’s solution worked?”

Mike snatched up a burger and bit off a third of it. His brown eyes seemed a little darker glaring at my wife from his slightly down-turned head.

“Fine.” The word came out even lower than his normal bass. “I’ll tell Ben about it when you’re not around.”

“Gee, thanks.” I didn’t notice if Mike cringed at Kathleen’s tone. I did.
Her next words were as oozy as the butter drizzling over the hot ears of corn. “Hey! I have an idea! Why not tell the kids about the time you tried to pit yourself against electricity?”

Kathleen has the ability to bring up past mistakes and paint them in tones as unflattering as a mud-stained John Deere tractor. I knew she only wanted to humiliate Mike in front of the kids.

Before I could change the subject, Uncle Mike snuck one furtive glance at his adoring audience before announcing, “I’d love to tell them that story.”

Kathleen pulled her head back as though doused with a bucket of water. Not many take her dares. I was interested to see how this would play out.

“It was,” Mike began, “a brilliant idea, if I do say so myself.”

There went Kathleen’s eyes.

Mike smiled.

“Kathleen and I used to have some friends we liked to play with on back that way about a quarter mile.” He waved his right hand with its dirt-packed nails in the general direction. “If we rode our bikes, it took us near twenty minutes to make it over to the Graham’s on the road.

“If we cut through the fields, we could make it in ten. But there was a problem: an electric fence ran between our property and theirs and Mr. Graham almost always had it on.

“We tried crawling underneath it, but always ended up touching it. Have any of you kids ever touched a live electric fence?”

All four kids shook their heads.

“You wouldn’t forget it if you did. Sends a jolt through you like hot sauce on spicy wings.”

“I used to lie in bed at night trying to figure out how I could disable the electricity. Finally, one night after reading an article about radiation poisoning, I had it.”

Kathleen and her mom and dad had stopped eating along with the kids.

“It was a proven fact radiation was much more powerful than electricity. Back in the Cold War Era—do they still teach you about that stuff in school?”

Jana and Jaden, our two youngest, looked a little clueless at Mike’s question, but the other two were with him like bats after night bugs.

“You know as well as I do, then, kids back then didn’t have to hide under their desks at school to protect them from electricity. And people who were smarter than you or I weren’t building fallout shelters for fear someone would turn on an electric appliance. No, it was the fear of radiation that had folks scared.”

“Okay, now here’s where my logic hurdled the space between the mundane and the magnificent.”

A prodigious sigh accompanied Kathleen’s heavenward glance.

Mike smiled and continued. “I knew that lead could stop radiation. So, it seemed logical to assume that something with that kind of power could most assuredly defeat electricity as well.”

Ed let out a snort at this point followed by Sharon’s free-galloping whinny.

Mike turned their way and winked before going on. “Manned with that reasoning, Kathleen and I confidently approached the fence the next day.”
“Hey,” Kathleen interrupted. “Don’t—“

“Please, Mom, let Uncle Mike tell the story,” Jace said, though without sparing her even a glance.

I saw my wife flush, but she stopped talking.

“I came armed with a lead sinker and, brave as our old bull Mitch defending his herd, I walked straight to the electric fence. With my arm stuck out as far as I could reach, I laid the chunk of lead on it.”

Mike stopped to take another bite of his burger. We all stared at him, anticipation holding our collective breath back a little. When confusion eventually spread over the kids’ faces, they started turning their heads to see what everyone else thought of this pause.

The instant it seemed someone was going to speak, Mike said in a voice so low we strained to hear, “It was then I learned one of the most important scientific insights of my life.”

Then, louder and with heightened tension, he said, “Electricity cannot be overcome by lead! My experiment made this truth clear to me by the shock that surged up my arm and knocked me backwards a foot.”

Sharon laughed and clapped her hands. I wondered if she had ever heard this little story of Mike’s before. By the look on my wife’s face, it was undoubtedly a true tale.

“My young friends, never forget this cardinal principle of discovery when you’re testing out a theory: no new knowledge is wasted.” Mike lifted his right index finger. “Thomas Edison himself, the man who won 1,093 U.S. patents, including the one for the light bulb, said this when asked about his many failed attempts to make the light bulb work: ‘I was glad I found 9,000 ways not to invent the light bulb!’”

Mike stopped there, a broad grin wrinkling his darkly tanned face.

“Good grief!” Kathleen said after two or three heartbeats. “Kids, do you want to hear how the story really went?”

“No,” they said in unison.

The next day, it was time to head home. I had to do surgery on a dog in the morning so I knew I’d have to hit the hay early. Kathleen was supervising the kid’s packing and there were more “Oh, Mom’s” than I cared to listen to. I climbed down the comfortably settled stairs and wandered to the front screen door. Ed and Sharon were on the porch. They hadn’t heard me. Ed was in the rocking chair, his unlit pipe cradled comfortably on his knee. Sharon had her knitting needles going like windshield wipers set on high.

Ed sighed. “Ah. This has to be the nicest day we’ve had here in Rolling Creek in… Well, I can’t really say in how long.”

Brow furrowed, Sharon answered, “It’s been one day by my count. You said that yesterday.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, and the weather’s no nicer today than it was then.”

“Guess I’m just happy to have the time to enjoy it again today.”

Ed stopped rocking and gazed out over the gently rustling cornstalks in the neighboring field. “And time to enjoy my pretty bride of so many years, too.”

I heard soft laughter and saw Sharon reach out her hand to Ed.

I turned away. Maybe Kathleen and the kids could use my help.