Drowning Ruth (4 page)

DECEMBER 4, 1919—WOMAN MISSING

Mrs. Carl Neumann of Glacier Road, Nagawaukee, has been missing since the night of November 27, according to her sister, Miss Amanda Starkey, also of Glacier Road. Anyone with knowledge of her whereabouts should contact the Nagawaukee Sheriff's Department.

DECEMBER 6, 1919—MISSING WOMAN FOUND DROWNED

The body of Mrs. Carl Neumann was found yesterday evening trapped in the ice on Nagawaukee Lake by Mr. C. J. Owens of 24 Prospect Avenue, Milwaukee, and his son, Arthur, 5.

Mrs. Neumann had been missing since the night of November 27.

DECEMBER 7, 1919—FUNERAL FOR MRS. CARL NEUMANN

Funeral services for Mrs. Carl Neumann are planned for 6:00 pm tomorrow at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Nagawaukee. Mrs. Neumann is survived by her husband, Carl, recently serving in France with the 32nd Division, a daughter, Ruth, and a sister, Amanda Starkey. Miss Starkey has requested that, instead of flowers, donations be sent to the Precious Blood Children's Home in Oconomowoc.

Carl Neumann had promised to take care of Mathilda and now he would need taking care of. In late December, more than a year after the war had ended, he finally wrote to say that they were sending him home. “I can't believe,” the final paragraph began, “that in a month or two, I'll hold your warm, sweet self again, my little Mattie-bird.” There was more, but Amanda, blushing, folded
the letter hurriedly and stuffed it back into its flimsy envelope. From New York came a final telegram: “
HOME FEBRUARY
12
STOP
3:35
TRAIN
.” Amanda was a little surprised. Surely, the letter she'd sent had reached him by now. Surely, he knew how little was left for him in Nagawaukee. But here he was coming just the same.

“He'll take a train to Paris. And then another train from Paris to the coast. And then he'll get on a ship, a boat bigger than a house.” Many times Amanda had traced for Ruthie Carl's route across a world too vast for such a young child's comprehension. She had held Ruth's tiny finger and pulled it around the globe. Ruth only wanted to make the globe spin, but she was interested.

“Where is my daddy now?” she asked every night when Amanda tucked her into the bed they were sharing.

“He's having his breakfast now—a nice soft-boiled egg.” Amanda had been surprised at how easily Ruth accepted the notion of the time difference, as if she thought the most outlandish things were likely to be true in a place as far away as France or on a boat big enough to sail the ocean.

“And what else?” Ruth asked.

“And a piece of fish. With bones. You wouldn't like it.”

“And then what will he do?”

“I don't know, Ruth. Go to sleep now.”

Amanda regretted having told Ruth anything about Carl. With every word he came nearer and grew larger.

Who knew what “my daddy” meant to Ruth? There was a father in “Hansel and Gretel” and a Papa Bear in “Goldilocks.” Neither of
them was much good. I didn't think Carl was much good, either, I can tell you that.

Carl and Mathilda met on the Fourth of July when Mattie was seventeen. She'd insisted on going to Waukesha for the parade. Margaret Schwann was going. Harriet Lander, Will Audley, Fritz Kienast—all of them were going. It was a party, so she had to go too.

“You'll go, won't you, Mandy?” she begged. She knew my father wouldn't let her go to anything like that without a chaperone.

We were late and the street was crowded, but Mattie pushed to the front of the sidewalk. She was standing on her toes, waving a little flag in each hand, and the red, white, and blue ribbons in her hair were rippling in the breeze, when Carl marched by, beating a drum for the Bayside Meatpackers Band.

He was good-looking, I'll give him that. He had a fine-boned, boyish face, an easy, swinging gait and brown hair that fell into his eyes—the kind of looks a girl can make a lot of, if she's so inclined. He almost lost step trying to keep her in his view, and I knew, as well as she did, that we would have company at our picnic dinner.

Finally we spilled into the street behind the last of the tottering Civil War veterans and picked our way through the horse manure to the park. It was hot, as it always will be in Waukesha in July, so it was no surprise that Mattie loosened her dress at the neck and pushed her sleeves up along her lovely arms. And if this caused her skin to brown, who cared? Not Mattie. To her credit, she didn't look often over her shoulder as we laid our food under an elm, but dished out the bratwurst and potato salad and talked and laughed with Margaret and Harriet and Will and the others as if nothing extraordinary would happen before they cut the cake.

And, in fact, for her, it was not extraordinary that a young man should spot her while marching by and sooner or later would wish to marry her.

On the morning of February 12, Amanda rose in the dark, started a fire in the kitchen stove, and went out to the barn to feed the animals and to milk. She swept the wagon bed and reminded herself to ask Rudy, the hired man, to lay blankets down, in case Carl wasn't able to sit up properly on the seat.

Back inside, as the sun seeped weakly through the skeletal trees, she smoothed the quilt on the daybed in the back room, conveniently off the kitchen. With his bum leg, he wouldn't be able to walk well at first. Certainly, he wouldn't be able to manage the stairs.

Oh, he would be helpless, all right. She plumped the pillows vigorously and then surveyed the room with satisfaction. Would the wound still need dressing? It was possible, depending on how many muscles the shrapnel had torn, how infected it had been, and how well it had been treated—Amanda had no faith in French hospitals. But then Carl was young and strong. He would heal quickly once she got to work on him.

The narrow room was a good place for an invalid, Amanda knew. Her mother had gone there to have her headaches. It was far from the bedrooms upstairs so that a little girl playing as quietly as she could might sometimes be quiet enough.

Mama had the apoplexy in August, the year Mathilda met Carl. I'm not blaming them, although I do know Mama disapproved. Her father had been a captain with the Union Army, she reminded us. Any daughter of hers could do much better than a butcher.

“He isn't a butcher, Mama. He's a meatpacker,” I said. Under the table Mathilda drove the toe of her boot into my shin. But I was only speaking the truth.

Anyway, as I said, I don't blame them, although their shocking behavior certainly didn't help. I blame the weather.

It had been hot all summer, hot and so humid that just walking, just lifting your arms up over your head to take a plate out of the cupboard could make you so tired you wanted to sit down.

That morning felt as if someone had tucked a wool blanket tight over the world. Mama woke up delicate, not ill exactly, but not strong either. She hadn't slept well—no one had slept well, for weeks, it seemed—and everything was a trial to her. The coffee tasted bitter; the clatter of the breakfast dishes hurt her ears; the oilcloth was sticky; the sun coming in the kitchen windows stung her eyes; her shoes pinched.

“One of you take the sheep down to the lower meadow this morning,” my father said, his head bent over his plate.

“I'll do it,” Mattie said quickly.

My father nodded. He sliced his egg and toast in half and then turned the plate to slice them again. “Someone has to stay with Mother,” he said, pushing a quarter of toast into his mouth. “She isn't well.”

I'd intended to do the shopping. We needed kerosene and brown thread and sugar, although I had hoped to go to town mostly to cool my face in the breeze during the buggy ride and to drink lemonade through a straw at the counter in Baecke's store.

My mother sighed and closed her eyes.

“I'll stay,” I said.

After the others had gone, I cleared the table, while Mama sipped her coffee. I was working the pump to get the water started at the sink when I heard her say, “I think I'll lay down awhile.” And
then crockery crashed to the floor behind me. I dropped the pump handle and spun around. Mama's cup and saucer were smashed, and coffee speckled the wall. She stood, holding her left hand in her right, and stared at me, bewildered.

“I don't know what happened. I just couldn't hold on to it anymore.”

“It's all right. I'll clean it up.” Already, I was reaching for the broom.

“But what happened? I don't know what happened.” She reached for my arm and leaned heavily on me as I helped her to the daybed.

“I'll just lay down awhile, then I'll feel better, don't you think?” She looked at me trustingly, hopefully, as if I knew something.

“Of course you will. You're just tired,” I assured her. And I believed what I said, because I'd had no medical training then.

I went back to work in the kitchen and, by the time I'd finished the dishes and started the bread, she was asleep. The wind was coming up, hot and steady from the west. I decided it was a good day to wash the sheets.

Her voice drifted up the stairs as I was pulling the cases off the pillows.

“I'm cold, Amanda. Amanda, I'm cold.”

“Mama, you can't be cold,” I called down. “It's a hundred degrees in here.”

“But I'm cold.” She drew out the last word until her voice quavered.

I took her summer shawl off its hook behind the door and carried it down to her.

“Why'd you take so long?”

“I was upstairs.”

She pursed her lips, annoyed. “Put it around me. My arms feel so weak.”

I spread the shawl over her, tucking it between her shoulder and the wall so it wouldn't slide off. Then I lifted her head gently and plumped the pillow under it.

“No wonder,” she murmured.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing.” She closed her eyes.

But then, as I turned to go, she spoke again. “I was just thinking it's no wonder that Joseph decided he didn't want you. You're so rough. Like a man, almost.”

Through the long window I could see the sheep, snatching at what little grass was left in the yard beyond the chicken coop. I stared at them, knowing something was wrong, not knowing what, until I remembered. Mathilda was supposed to have taken the sheep down to the lower meadow. Where was she?

I knew where she was all right. I didn't bother to take off my apron. By the time the screen door slammed behind me, I was already halfway across the yard.

The woods were buzzing and whirring, clicking and cooing with hot summer life. Sweat bees circled my head, and spider webs clung to my neck as I pushed my way down the overgrown path. I could feel the lake before I could see it, the coolness the wind carried off the water, the sense of space beyond the last clutch of honeysuckle and blackberry bramble.

Our boat was gone as I knew it would be, but I knew where the Tullys kept theirs, and I hurried along the shore to find it. It was buried in weeds, hardly touched all summer. I pushed it out into the water and scrambled aboard. And then I rowed, rowed hard toward my island.

I was looking over my shoulder, awkwardly, trying to gauge how far I still had to go when I caught a glimpse of her around the far side of the island. Just as I thought, there she was while the rest of us worked, out to her waist in the lake, the skirt of her bathing costume floating around her middle like a black wool lily pad.

I was angry, of course. I had half a mind to drag her into the boat and take her home dripping to get what was coming to her. But more than that I wanted to feel the lovely water around my own ankles. We could take care of the sheep later. It would be easy with the two of us working together. I was about to call to her—my lips were actually coming together to sound her name—when I heard her squeal.

He shot out of the water like a giant pike leaping for a dragonfly, spray shimmering all around. He splashed her as he fell back. Hooting in triumph, he struck his palm expertly against the water and sent a cascade that hit her full in the face. She shrank back for a moment, and I was prepared, old as she was, to hear her wail. But instead she laughed. She dug her hands deep beneath the water and threw at him as much as her hands could carry. She was no match for him—I could see that even as far away as I was. The water she splashed went in all directions at once. It would hardly have wet him if he'd not come closer, if he'd not let her splash him while he splashed her back, more gently now, but still wetting her thoroughly. And so they stood there, splashing each other like children, laughing and shouting, one to the other and back again, as if no one else existed in all the world.

Suddenly, I wanted to be away. I was desperate not to be seen, alone in my boat, watching them together. I struggled to turn around, nearly losing an oar in my confusion, but at last I was rowing. I pushed as quickly and quietly back through the water as I'd come, until the island blocked my view of them and theirs of me, and I was safe.

The moment I stepped back into the house I could tell something awful had happened. The door to the back room was open and from the kitchen I could just see the end of the daybed on which my mother's foot lay oddly twisted. I hurried in and found her, half on the floor, her eyes open wide and her mouth
moving, but no words coming out, only sounds, strange, terrible sounds, like the noises a giant baby would make playing with its tongue.

I dragged her back onto the daybed and covered her again with the shawl.

“Quiet,” I begged. “Please, please be quiet.”

And then I ran to the barn for a horse and rode as fast as I could to the west field to find my father.