Abbeville (21 page)

Before him stood Rose Stroeger and the Tragues, Henry Mueller, Fred Krull, Robert Hesse and his wife, even George Loeb. One bore a bowl of sweet potatoes, the next a tray of cranberries, then sweet corn, mince and pumpkin pies, and finally a large and proper bird.

Finally Rose stepped up to him and gave him a hug that loosened everyone's tongue. At some point Hesse, who had bought the Schumpeter Bros.' implement inventory, asked Karl to come to work for him.

“There's nobody the farmer of Cobb County respects more than you.”

“It's mighty kind of you, Robert,” said Karl. “But I don't have a taste for the business anymore.”

“You've got to do something,” said Mueller. “There are only so many bees you can swat.”

Karl looked over at the table laden with their offerings. In the middle was the scrawny, picked-over chicken. He pointed at it.

“I'm going to sell those,” he said.

This was the idea the rooster had brought him.

“Sell what?” said Hesse.

“People still have enough money to buy a chicken,” he said. “There's time for you to think about it,” said Hesse.

“I got to grant you this,” said Mueller. “A lot more folks will be in the market for a bird than for one of those big International Harvesters in Robert's lot.”

“It'll come back,” said Hesse.

Cristina pulled a chair in from the kitchen and squeezed it between the others at the table.

“Won't you sit down and join us?” she said.

“We'll all be together tomorrow in the church basement with the leftovers—like always,” said Rose. “Today you need to be a family.”

The others took her hint and began to leave until finally only old Henry was left.

“I held open the job tending the schoolhouse,” he said. “It ain't buying and selling chickens. And it don't pay much. But it's steady.”

All this talk of positions made Karl wary. When you had learned to give everything up, you had to be careful about taking anything back again.

“Thank you very kindly, Henry,” said Karl. “I would've mown that raggedy lawn anyway just because I have to look at it. But I'll give your idea careful consideration.”

“You do that, Karl,” Mueller said.

K
ARL TOOK THE JOB AT THE SCHOOLHOUSE
and submerged himself in it. From dawn until the children arrived and again after they left, he washed and polished and swept and scrubbed, from bell tower to basement. Anything human hands could accomplish without money, he did. Then each morning before the students showed up, he disappeared back into his house.

“Why don't you at least stick around and see their faces?” asked the cute young teacher who handled the lower grades.

“Little ones shouldn't be around convicted felons,” said Karl.

“Oh, pshaw, Mr. Schumpeter,” she said. “Seems to me everybody in this town knows you better than you do.”

When the children were all safely inside, Karl would come back out of his house and work on the school grounds in the cold. The swing set got new seats cut from Fritz's scrap pile. Rusted swivels shone in the winter sun. Come the first thaw, he would work the ground for landscaping—beds for wildflowers, holes for some nice trees transplanted from the woods at Otter Creek. From time to time
he would see a small face in the corner window where the teacher sent boys who were acting up, their faces all mischief and contrition. Karl always turned away.

With the spring the balance of his time shifted almost entirely to the grounds. Digging, raking, planting, weeding, mowing.

“Do you think you're Frederick Law Olmsted?” asked Henry Mueller.

“There's no reason these children don't deserve something as nice in its way as the park he made for the Exposition,” he said.

As the school year drew to a close, he came to the end of the large tasks he could do without resources. He knew that during the summer he would not even be able to busy himself cleaning up inside each afternoon, and there was only so much grass to mow, so many weeds to pull. So he went to Henry and suggested a reduction in the monthly amount he was paid.

“I have a better idea,” Henry said.

“I'm not one for charity,” said Karl.

“You know I'm not one for giving it,” said Henry. “What would it take to bring that old schoolhouse up to the level of the best in the county?”

“I haven't been to the other schools in the county.”

“Up to your standards, then,” said Henry.

They were seated in Mueller's parlor, which was much smaller than Karl's. This made Karl feel awkward, as if they should trade places now that Henry was the power in Abbeville. Not that Henry would go for it. He was a smart man. He wanted to live small.

“I'd have to work it out,” Karl said. “It would take some capital investment, though. Not so much. The boiler's good. The pipes are sound. The roof's okay, though it could probably use a layer of shingles. Better still, I could tear off the old first. They're two deep already.”

“You write it all down,” said Henry.

“I'll do that. Thank you.”

“And be sure to include the hours it will take of your labor.”

“No extra charge there,” said Karl. “I'd just stay occupied, the way I have been.”

“The town's been getting a free ride off you, Karl. I want you paid for
all
the work you do.”

“I still owe the town a debt,” said Karl.

“Everybody owed everybody. That was the mess of it. But if anybody paid, you did. Now the slate's clean, and we pay as we go. You count your hours into the plan.”

“Henry . . .” Karl said.

“Count them,” said Mueller.

No two-room schoolhouse ever had as beautiful a capital budget as Abbeville's got from Karl. He used some old ledger paper he found in a drawer at the bank and wrote it all out in his careful hand. Mueller barely looked at it before giving the nod, but Karl did not care. He would account for every cent he spent with the same attention to detail he had invested in the plan, because precision was a kind of atonement.

“By the way, Karl,” Henry said, “Maude has decided it's time to retire as postmistress.”

“That's too bad,” said Karl. “She's still got some tread on her.”

“Wants to kick back and sit on the porch watching the world go by,” said Henry.

“Well, she better have a lot of tread on her, then,” said Karl, “because it is going to be a while before much of the world passes through Abbeville.”

“I want you to take her place,” said Mueller.

“I'm going to be pretty busy.”

“Hellfire, man,” said Henry, “you can't turn down the government.” Karl looked at his hands.

“They got rules against it,” he said.

“It's Congressman Pease's appointment, and he got everything waived already. So I ain't asking you to break any law.”

“Pease is mighty young,” said Karl. “What does he know about me?”

“What his constituents tell him,” said Henry. “If they could waive the rules against it, you could probably give him a run in the next primary.”

“Henry.”

Mueller looped his arm over Karl's shoulder, as if he might be the one planning to give young Pease a run.

“Trust me on this,” he said.

“Isn't you I don't trust,” said Karl.

“My nephew isn't going to give you any more trouble, That'sall over. He's got plenty of his own troubles to attend to, the way I hear it.”

Karl was silent.

“Then it's done,” said Mueller. “Maude will break you in on Friday. Monday it's all yours.”

“I don't know what to say,” said Karl.

“Let me help. ‘What does it pay?' That's what you should say, because sweet as Betty is, you got to start having your own. That's one determined daughter you've got there.”

“She likes to be a mother hen, all right,” Karl said.

“I wonder where she gets that,” said Henry.

A
S
K
ARL PURGED HIMSELF
through sweat, Fritz seemed to prosper. The talk of Abbeville was that when Karl went down and Ansel looked the other way with Fritz, it had strengthened Fritz's standing with his politician friends, who had been holding their breath since Ansel began frisking Fritz's business. Nobody knew that Fritz was bulletproof only because of Karl's plea bargain. It looked to the world like he had
enough influence to make even the county prosecutor back away. Fritz was a man to deal with, all right. So when there was money for roads again, he got more than his share. Little as this was, it still drove Betty to fury.

The first time the two brothers talked had been in January. Betty had come home that Friday for the weekend. The weather was cold enough that Karl had fired up the furnace to supplement the heat thrown off by the cookstove. A little snow had fallen. Not enough to shovel, but it had stuck on the trees and lawn.

Karl was in his rocker. The radio was tuned, for Betty's benefit, to a station playing swing music from the College Inn in Chicago. Karl was working on the mushy end of a cold cigar when a car came around the corner, its headlights flashing across the windows. Betty and Cristina came out of the kitchen.

“It's him,” said Betty.

Karl waited a moment and then stood. Betty went to the window.

“He isn't even getting out,” she said. “Look at him, just sitting there as smug as can be.”

“He probably knows that if he comes into this house with you here,” Karl said, “he risks leaving without his skin.”

“Don't let him make you go to him, Dad,” Betty said. “Don't you do it.”

“Betty,” said Cristina.

Karl went to the front door and pulled on his jacket. As he reached for the knob, Betty started toward him. Cristina stepped in between them.

“Don't say another word against him,” Cristina whispered. “He's your father's brother. That's what he is.”

The two brothers did not talk for long. Karl did not even enter the car. When Fritz pulled away, Karl stood in the road for a time, then trudged back to the house.

“What did he want?” Betty demanded.

“Betty,” warned Cristina.

“I'm just asking,” said Betty.

Karl walked past her and went to his rocker.

“He asked me if I needed money,” he said.

Cristina's hand on Betty's shoulder tightened.

“I told him that we'd get along just fine,” Karl said.

“Good for you, Karl,” said Cristina.

“He's having a hard time with this,” Karl said.

“He is!” said Betty, despite her mother's grip.

“By the look of it, he's got money coming in, but a lot more going out,” said Karl. “It's got to be weighing on him.”

“There's weight all around,” said Cristina.

O
N
R
OBERT
H
ESSE'S IMPLEMENT LOT
stood a rusted old Ford truck with rotting wood plank sides. Its passenger window would not roll up, so the seats were faded beyond color and sharp with mildew. Its engine had not started for years. Two of its wheels were missing, and it leaned to the left, where its axles rested on large cement blocks.

“How much do you want for it?” Karl asked Hesse.

“It ain't even good for parts anymore,” said Hess.

“If I can get it working,” said Karl, “I'll pay you a fair price.”

“I ought to pay you for taking a piece of rubbish off my property,” said Hesse.

These days things generally just stayed where they died, cars stripped down by the side of the road, half-tumbled-in chicken coops, barns without roofs. In some places whole building projects stood abandoned. You could see just where the money had stopped—the moment preserved, like Pompeii under the ash.

“I will pay,” said Karl.

Next he went to Fritz and asked if he could use his mechanics' tools.

“I'll have one of my crew fix the truck up for you,” Fritz said, so distracted he seemed barely present, as if fixing a vehicle were too small a problem for either of them to trifle with.

“I guess I'd rather do it myself,” said Karl.

“What do you know about automobiles?” “Where I've been, you learn them right down to the license plates,” said Karl.

Fritz froze like a rabbit sensing the shadow of an eagle. Then, whatever the predator was, it passed, and he looked at his wristwatch.

“Are you all right?” Karl asked.

“I'll have one of my boys go to the implement lot and tow it on over to the garage,” said Fritz.

“Don't bother,” said Karl. “Honest effort is what I need right now.” “You sound like that crazy socialist lady who used to visit you in prison,” said Fritz.

“Who told you that?”

“Harley tells everybody she was quite a looker,” said Fritz.

A few days later in the chill of a clear spring dawn, Karl went to the lot, mounted on the truck's axles two bald tires he had scrounged, wrenched the gearshift into neutral, and, with one hand on the steering wheel, began rocking it with his shoulder. Whatever lubrication the moving parts might once have known had long since fossilized.

The trick was to keep the front wheels straight, which was no small matter on the bumpy ground. Every time the wheels turned a little to the left or right, he lost momentum and had to redouble his efforts. Still, eventually the truck reached the road.

Just as it did, he felt something in his lower belly give way. He struggled to catch his breath, a tide of nausea coming over him along with the terrible thought that he might fail at even this simple task.

“What in the hell are you trying to do?” said Fred Krull, who had come up from the elevator.

“Taking some exercise,” Karl managed to get out.