This Will Be Difficult to Explain and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

him —and not to some cut-out version of himself, the way it had seemed to him before. Answering his questions too politely—as if she were practising for someone else.
    They have just taken the last exit heading out of Sioux Falls. There is still another twenty miles before they get to the old place, where Daniel’s mother still lives, eventhough he’s been after her for years to move into town. “Sure,” Daniel says. And tries to find some reason that this might be a good idea. “I was your age when I first learned,” he says, finally. Even though it’s not true. Then: “Why not? This ain’t Milwaukee, you know. In case you hadn’t noticed.”
    â€œI noticed,” Anna says. But not unkindly. She looks at him, interested now. Wondering what he’ll do next.
    He pulls off onto the side of the road. “Here,” he says. “Let’s switch.”
    DANIEL HAD NEVER HAD any intention of being an absent dad. He wasn’t the type. That was for guys who moved around a lot and couldn’t commit to things. But now, bam . Intended or not—here it is. His daughter beside him in the car, and not a single thing to say to her. Not even anything to point out on the road as they pass. The whole goddamn state, he thinks suddenly, looks pretty much the same, if you don’t get too technical. Usually, he likes it this way. Usually, he likes to get out past Sioux Falls and have the landscape suddenly fall away, as if it didn’t exist anymore—likes the way that there’s still some things that remain, like that, unchanged. Or at least that change so slowly that a man like him can keep up, and understand.
    That is not the case with, for example, Anna, who has grown so much in the past eight months that he found himself embarrassed when he went to meet her at the train. He went forward awkwardly at first, as if maybe shewouldn’t know him. As if maybe he’d have to wave his hands around to get her to notice him, and say something like, It’s me, it’s your dad . Maybe she wouldn’t even want him to hug her anymore. Daniel thought about that—too late, with a little flurry of panic in his chest—when he did hug her, and his arms felt long.
    It would be a shock to any man, he told himself, on the way out of town, to see his daughter tall, so suddenly, like that. To see his daughter looking suddenly like the sort of daughters other men had. Who snapped their gum, and wore lip gloss, and had breasts. There was supposed to be a progression toward these sorts of things.
    THEY ARE ONLY ABOUT seven miles from the Knutsen farm when Daniel pulls the car over. They can already see it, even from that distance. Or what’s left of it. A couple of years back the place was sold to a local developer and pretty much flattened—but Daniel always forgets. He always expects to see it anyway. For the tree line to appear on the horizon in the old, familiar way. But then it doesn’t.
    Once, the trees had been so thick the Knutsens had lost an entire herd of buffalo to them. They’d got separated up inside the woods and couldn’t find their way out again. The police and the fire department had to be called—just to get rid of them. It’s funny to think about that now. About how the buffalo had stood around all night, shivering in woods that don’t even exist anymore. Even so, Daniel keepsexpecting them. Right up to the last moment when he passes the raked gravel lot where the old farmhouse used to be.
    That had been the year Daniel was eleven. In fact, it was the afternoon of his eleventh birthday—after Daniel had had his presents, but before the birthday cake—that his father picked up the phone when it rang and said into it, “I could have seen this coming.” The buffalo had been at the Knutsen farm for only a month. Less—his mother said—if you calculated all the time that it took to get them