Drowning Ruth (24 page)

Carl was impatient with this sort of reminiscence. “But this time, Rudy, when they were living there, what did Mattie say when you told her it was time to move back to the farm?”

“Och, you know how Mattie was, Carl. Not even Mr. Starkey could get her to do anything she didn't want to do. ‘No, Rudy, we like it here,' that's what she said. And she and the little one did look good and healthy. In fact, I'd say she'd gained a little, rounded out some, so I knew nothing was wrong. Now if I'd of talked to Amanda, it might have been different. She's a good girl. She'll do what you say. But you know how Mattie was. She went and put her hands on her hips and shook that pretty head. She wouldn't hardly let me get out of the boat.” Rudy clucked his tongue and turned at last to hang the bridle on its hook.

Weak old man, Carl thought, letting a couple of girls tell him what to do. But he knew, in Rudy's place, he would have done the same.

When Rudy turned back to face him, there were tears in his eyes. “I know what I shoulda done, Carl—I've thought of it plenty of times before—I should of grabbed Ruthie. If I'da took Ruthie back before the ice come in, then they'd of come after her and none a this would of happened. I shoulda thought of that, I tell myself. Every day, I tell myself.”

“It's all right, Rudy,” Carl said, putting a comforting hand on the old man's shoulder. Amanda was right. No use crying over what couldn't be changed.

She wouldn't let him get out of the boat. That's what stood out to Carl when he thought about this conversation later. Why not? Why not give him a cup of coffee, a piece of kuchen? What were they doing on that island, Carl wondered, that they didn't want Rudy to see?

For a week or so it baffled him. He couldn't think of any explanation that made sense. And then he remembered Madame Poker.

It had hardly been a village, that place he'd stumbled on with McKinley and Sims one gray afternoon. A few dirty huts. An empty pigsty. A church without a steeple, one wall blown in. It couldn't have been much to look at before the war and now it was just a jumble of abandoned stone.

Or not quite abandoned. Henny Sims came running from behind one of the houses, buttoning his pants.

“There's a man in there! Jesus, at least I think it's a man.”

Just then an old woman appeared at the door, her back bent so far she had to crane her neck to look up at them, her gray hair standing around her head like a halo. She spoke French and McKinley translated.

“He's mine,” she said. “You can't have him. I'm keeping him. He's mine.” And then she lifted what Carl had taken to be a cane but was in fact a poker, and held it in both hands, point toward them, as if it could keep the three armed men at bay.

The Americans looked at each other and Sims shrugged. “He's not much anyway,” he said, “from what I could see. I think he's missing an ear, at least.”

“Let's let the fellow be,” Carl said, eager to get away from the place.

“All right by me,” McKinley agreed. “Anybody desperate enough to live with that oughta be allowed to desert.”

No one could be more unlike the crone than Mathilda, but Carl suddenly realized that she and Amanda and that old woman had all been up to the same thing. Although while poor Madame Poker was hiding a Frenchman, pushed by years of war to the brink of insanity and perhaps beyond, Mathilda and Amanda were harboring a plain old American shirker, a man who would let others, like Carl himself, go off and do the dirty work for him, risk their lives while he lazed about letting two women take care of him.

Carl made a fist around the silver pocketknife and slammed it hard against the table. They'd been hiding a shirker. A shirker whose initials were C.J.O.

It was an impossible leap and at the same time a simple step from the notion of a strange man hidden in the island house to the certainty that that shirker had loved Mathilda. Had she loved him back? Of course not. She had been kind to him, misguidedly thinking she was doing right, perhaps even hoping that someone would do the same for Carl if necessary. Of course she hadn't loved him.

But the thought itched and stung. Love made you do things, Amanda had said, and then you were sorry. What did she mean? He worried the idea, tugging at it like a hangnail little by little, until he drew blood, until he had to find out one way or another, until he found himself again in the island house, prying up the floorboards, opening the windowframes, rummaging through every drawer, searching for the evidence.

Finally, the force that had propelled Carl all afternoon began at last to ebb, and he fitted the drawers he'd spread around the bedroom back into the dresser. He felt spent, suddenly calm, knowing that he was wasting his time, that all had been innocent on the island, that there had only been an accident, an unlucky accident, one cold November night. He felt foolish now, as he always did after one of these episodes, and he glanced over his shoulder, superstitiously sensing that someone might be watching—Mathilda, maybe—and laughing at his frenzy. He left the house and rowed slowly back across the water, resting on his oars from time to time to let the fresh afternoon wind dry his skin. Poor Mattie, to have lost all these years and years of glorious summer days.

“Elbows off the table, Ruth,” Amanda said, passing a plate of white bread to the girl. “How many times do I need to tell you?”

Carl kept his eyes on his plate. He knew that he ought to correct Ruth more often, not leave it all to Amanda, but he hadn't even noticed the girl's elbows. “This ham is excellent,” he said.

“I'm glad you like it. I knew you'd need a good meal after those ditches.”

Carl shifted in his seat. “As a matter of fact, I didn't do the digging. Pass the potatoes, Ruth. We watered the new trees in the orchard today.”

Amanda's knife made a sharp click as she set it on the edge of her plate. “I thought I explained the importance of those ditches, Carl.” She tapped her index finger on the table top. “My father always made sure the ditches were clean the first week of June, and we're already into the third week now. What if we get a big rain? That field will be standing in water.”

“But what if we don't? Those saplings are just drying up out there.”

“Carl, you have to think ahead on a farm. You can't just be running from one emergency to another. You'll never get anywhere that way.”

“What happened to that baby?” Ruth said suddenly. She held her fork in the air, a beet slice skewered on the tines.

No one responded for a moment, as Amanda and Carl decided whether they were relieved or annoyed to be distracted from their argument.

“What baby?” Rudy asked finally.

“More tomatoes, Rudy?” Amanda held out the plate.

“The baby we took to its mother,” Ruth said. “How did it get lost?”

“A lost baby?” Carl said. “Who loses a baby?”

“She must be talking about a lamb,” Amanda said.

“I'm not talking about a lamb. It was a baby and it was crying, so we brought it to its mother.”

“The stork brings the baby to the mother,” Rudy said.

“No,” Ruth said, “we did. Aunt Amanda and me.”

“Aunt Amanda and I,” Amanda corrected.

“Maybe you read it,” Carl said, “in a book.”

“That girl, always the book,” Rudy said.

“This wasn't in a book,” Ruth said. She pushed her beets around her plate, painting with their pink juice.

“Are you sure?” Amanda said. “Because I know sometimes when I read a story and then I dream about it, when I wake up, I'm not sure what I've read and what I've dreamed and what really happened.”

Ruth put her elbow on the table, her chin in her hand. She looked over her shoulder at the floor, away from the rest of them. “It was a real baby,” she said sullenly.

“I remember walking with you when you were just a bitty baby. You must have had colic something terrible, because you cried and cried,” Rudy said.

Ruth frowned at Rudy. “No, I didn't! I did not cry!”

Amanda's chair scraped back from the table. She grabbed Ruth by the back of the collar and stood her on her feet. “You apologize to Rudy this instant, Ruth Sapphira Neumann!”

Ruth hid her face in her hands. “I'm sorry, Rudy. I'm sorry I shouted at you.”

“That's all right, sweetheart.” He winked at her.

“Now you go to your room,” Amanda said. She followed Ruth out of the kitchen and watched her climb the stairs. “Ruth,” she said, when the girl reached the top.

Ruth stopped but didn't look back.

“I'll save you some pie.”

“Swim!” the little voice piped just beside my ear. “Swim! Swim!”

I opened my eyes to see Ruthie standing beside my bed, just as she had every morning for the past two weeks. “Let's go swimming,” she announced and clapped her hands.

“All right, sweetie. Shh, shh, yes, we'll swim.”

I pulled her into the bed with me. It was the middle of July now and so hot that even the sheet over my shoulder made me sweat and kept me from falling asleep at night. It seemed I'd closed my eyes only an hour before. “Let's sleep another minute.”

But Ruthie wouldn't stay still. She bounced on the mattress and wriggled in my arms and the word “swim” burst from her in a whisper every few seconds. Finally I gave up. At least the water would cool us.

“Be quiet, Ruthie. You'll wake your mother,” I said, struggling to pin up my braid.

“Shh, shh!” she said, jumping up and down on the bed and clapping her hands again.

I went to her and held out my arms, and she leaped into them with a final tremendous squeal. I carried her out of the house and down to the water.

We swam, although you could hardly call what I did in the water swimming, in our nightclothes, since Ruth had no bathing costume and mine wouldn't have fit me even if I'd thought to pack it along.

We played awhile in the shallows, me sitting on the lake bottom, letting the cool water lap over the tops of my thighs and around my waist, Ruth, squatting, getting her bottom wet but keeping her knees dry. I trailed my arms through the water and patted cool handfuls around my neck. Ruth splashed, wetting us both, thrilled with the sensation of flinging something her fingers couldn't hold and with the sight of the scattering droplets. Then she laid her palms gently on the water, testing the surface tension, before plunging her hands under, where she studied her fingers, which no longer seemed related to the ones she knew in dry air. She grabbed for pretty rocks and laughed when she came up with only a fistful of water, because the stones were so much deeper than they appeared.

Soon she would wander farther out, and I would have to scramble after her. By the time the water was above my knees, she would almost be swimming. I would support her tight little tummy with my palm, but she hardly needed my help. She kept herself afloat, paddling like a turtle, her neck straining to hold her chin above the water, her feet pumping wildly behind.

Always at some point she'd scoot away from me. She'd move a little distance and then stop, checking to see if I'd noticed. I'd look away, pretending I didn't see, until she made her way under the willow whose vines hung down to the water.

“Where's Ruth?” I called. And her laugh would come from the tree. “I wonder where Ruthie could be.” Finally I'd pull back the
drapery of leaves and grab her up and we'd struggle through the water to the shore.

This morning Mathilda was standing in the doorway. I set Ruthie down on the beach, and she went running toward her mother. Mathilda didn't look at her, though. She stared at me as I stood there, my nightgown plastered against my middle.

When I was fourteen and Mathilda was six, she burst into our room one morning as I was dressing. I had been careful around that time to be sure she was safely downstairs or fast asleep before I changed my clothes, but on that day she caught me. My nightgown was already over my head and my dress was all the way across the room. She stopped in the doorway, her eyes wide.

“Shut the door!” I said.

But she just stood there, staring. Slowly, she brought both her hands up to her chest and inscribed two little arcs in the air. She had no words to describe this impossible thing. I was no longer the sister she knew.

“Amanda,” Mathilda whispered now. That was all.

It was my turn to catch Ruthie up and hold her tight against me. I needed her to cover my bulging secret.