Those Across the River (18 page)

“What for? Ain’t no work.”

“Not now, but hard times come and go . . .”

“Ain’t been no hard times like these. These is the end times.”

“Maybe. But if not, and work picks up, you’ll be glad to have a daughter who can get herself hired anywhere she wants, and not just in a mill.”

“Please, Daddy,” Sarah said from the kitchen. Quietly. Barely as loud as the rain outside. Oh, God, to be shut up in the house with this man smoldering all day like a fire that might lick out.

He grunted.

“The other students would appreciate it, too. She’s so good at math she helps the others solve problems. Sarah really has a gift. She could be anything she wanted, a doctor, a journalist. She would have a good chance at winning a scholarship if you wanted to send her off to a women’s college . . .”

“Now, just hold on. I ain’t sendin her to no damn college while the other kids walk aroun bare of foot. They out back in the rain right now stickin their feet in the mud gettin ground itch is how much sense they got. We ain’t for college, and college ain’t for us. Besides which, I don’t know if you got your head out a your books to see, but we got bad news aroun here. Niggers is killin our kids. Comin right up an killin em on they own land. Now, I ain’t no cripple an I ain’t no woman an I ain’t no Yankee”—he looked at me for that—“and I ain’t scared to shoot the head off nobody comin aroun if I don’t know em. Sarah’s watched over here. Don’t seem she’s so watched over at that school with jus you, or gettin there, or comin back.”

“I understand your concern. But I promise you I won’t let anything happen to her. Or anyone get to her. They’d have to go through me first.”

That struck him as funny and he laughed in a gravelly little chuckle. It was the first appealing thing I had seen this man do.

“I know,” Dora said, “there’s not much of me to go through.”

“No, you ain’t much,” he agreed, still chuckling.

Everybody was quiet for a while, letting the rain do the talking, until at last Mr. Woodruff said, “Alright, damnit, you women gonna worry at me like a tick. Go on back, Sarah. But you, you gonna keep her outta trouble, you hear? I got your word?”

“Yes.”

“I do, now. I got your word.”

We stood up to leave, and I saw that I would be the one opening the door.

“Thanks for the hospitality,” I said, tipping my hat, for which Dora elbowed me soundly in the ribs once we were back outside in the warm rain.

T
HE PEOPLE OF Whitbrow wouldn’t have to wait long to find out why Estel’s shovels had been stolen.

I heard the knock coming from the front door downstairs and I knew it was bad news. Bad news knocks hard. I swung my feet over the edge of the bed, still blinking in the sunlight, and checked the clock. Almost nine thirty. “I’m coming!” I yelled, and I jerked on some pants and went down. When I opened the door I saw Saul Gordeau panting and sweating so it was clear the boy had been running.

“Been knockin for a while. You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Sheriff wants all able-body men to go to the schoolhouse, Mr. Nichols.”

“My wife, is she alright? What’s happened?”

“She ain’t hurt or nothin, but you best go to her. She’s there, too. Bring workin clothes. I got to tell Mr. Noble.”

And he ran off.

For just two or three seconds, watching the soles of the boy’s shoes flash as he sprinted to the next house, I was abundantly grateful not to know what it was about.

 

 

 

I FOUND EUDORA sitting under the maple tree outside the schoolhouse. I went straight to her without stopping to talk to any of the others gathered there. No other women were being let as near the scene as she was, but she had already been inside so nobody insisted when she refused to be moved farther off. She just sat there holding a leafy branch like it was the only thing that could protect her.

Crows were cawing loudly all around. One walked around near us, quite fearless, looking like a tiny Burgermeister in black velvet pants. I offered her a hand to help her stand, but she shook her head, trying to smile though her face was puffy and red from crying and her eyes were too wide.

“I can’t move just yet, Frankie, okay? I just need to sit here until I have enough strength in my legs to get up and then I’ll help. I’ll help, I swear, just not yet, okay?”

“Shhh,” I said. “You don’t have to do anything. Shhh.”

I squatted down and held her head against my chest while she reached her shaking hands up to touch my arms. I held her head against me and kissed the top of it for a long moment and then I allowed myself to look up at what was happening.

People had war faces on.

Everything seemed tilted.

The men of Whitbrow had their sleeves rolled up and shirts tied around their faces so they could breathe while they hauled them out. More men were coming, saying “Jesus” and “Lord” and “I just don’t believe this,” and after each man said these things, he would roll up his sleeves, too, and find something to put over his face.

I put my shirt up over my nose without knowing why, but when I peeked in I was glad for the shirt, even though it wasn’t enough. Tyson was there in the schoolhouse. What little there was of him. Raw and picked-over. Crows on him.

He was not alone.

Paul Miller was there, too. Bloated. Wormy. Coming out of his suit. There were others.

It was hard not to be sick.

Someone had exhumed the dead of Whitbrow and tied them sitting upright to the chairs behind the tables. Twenty of them. Some of them recent, some very old; the parts of these that would not bend had been broken off and placed beneath the chairs.

Dora had seen this, and past the shock I felt a shiver of rage that someone had left this for her to see. She told me later that she fought a small battle with the crows to get them out. She had done this with a branch she pulled from a young tree outside. It had not been easy to convince the crows to leave that room of plenty, but she managed better after she broke one’s wing and then killed it.

It was then that she saw the writing. I looked up now and saw it. It was on the front wall behind where she stood to teach. It had been written in dark, moist earth above the blackboard. Like a lesson for a dead class.

 

 

I steadied myself on the desk and saw the muddy footprints on the ground. People had done this in their bare feet. Men, but also at least one woman or larger child.

This was so deliberate, and so deranged. I was mad. I used my anger to push myself off the desk, roll up my sleeves and get to work. There would be an awful lot of work for the dozen or so who had answered Estel’s call on blind faith. There was the removal of the dead. There was the placing of them in their boxes; these had been found stacked in a copse of trees not far away. There was the hauling of the dead back out to the cemetery. There was the sorting out of which bodies went in which holes; many of the older ones had to be guessed at. There was the shoveling under. Last came the cleaning of the classroom.

Many of those who helped got sick, but most continued even though their heads were light and their stomachs bounced. Pastor Lyndon did not speak as he worked. He became ill when, in the close heat of the classroom, the arm of a woman who was buried in 1910 came off in his grip and she fell.

“This is just the shell,” I heard him mutter to himself. “She has gone home to glory and left the husk behind. This is not her, it is not. She is with God and she sings.”

He had to run outside then, but he came back. Most of those who had to run outside came back, although a few did not. Pastor Lyndon worked as hard as any of us. When we got the dead back to the cemetery, some of my fellow townsmen looked as if they were waiting for the good reverend to speak. When we put the last one beneath the marker and tamped the earth down, many were no doubt hoping Pastor Lyndon would give them some words to seal the matter. To tell them it was done and they had done good work and they should endeavor to keep their faith while God tried them. Since he did not, but only wiped the grime from his brow like the rest of them and sat down among them, some closed their eyes, and I have to wonder if they were making up his words for themselves, perhaps something about the Philistines or the false prophets or the trials of Job.

Someone asked Old Man Gordeau if he was going to run the dogs after whoever had done this.

“Cain’t,” Old Man Gordeau said, his voice tight. “Sons a bitches burned em up. Roasted em right in the kennel. Goddamn them to hell.”

“You don’t believe in no hell.”

“I’m ready to build one to put them sons a bitches in.”

“You see em?”

“I don’t know what I saw.”

“Sounds like you saw somethin.”

“You’ll think I was shinin.”

“What’d you see, Gordeau?”

“Long hair. Some skinny-ass white woman with long hair. And a bare bottom, too. Least I think so. But she was gone so fast I’m not sure. I’m gonna put em in hell.”

And then he walked off and stared at the ground with his hands on his hips. He spat and watched it fall from his mouth. I had the curious idea that this was what he did instead of crying.

We sat around for some time with our muscles throbbing and our heads and stomachs sorely grieved, and then Sheriff Blake stood up to speak. He removed his hat, and for the first time I noticed how unflatteringly he was going bald; how much older and weaker he looked without his hat.

“If everyone could gather in and listen before you get to your homes. I know you’re tired. We all are, I guess. I want you to go home and get what rest comes to you tonight, and say your prayers and amens real good. Cause tomorrow, come mornin, right at sunup, I want all men who can handle a gun to bring their weapons to the town square. I know some of y’all got dogs, but leave em. We are goin into them woods past the river; we are goin quiet and we are goin in force. If there is squatters in them woods, we gonna find where they livin and give them some. I ain’t takin no badge this time, neither.”

His voice sounded sure, and he had said the right words, but he rubbed the front of his pants while he spoke.

Many of the men nodded.

“You damn right,” somebody said.

 

 

 

THAT NIGHT I had a Dan Metzger dream.

My dreams about the war come in several varieties, none of them pleasant, but some of the worst ones involve the death of my best friend, Dan Metzger, because they’re not just frightening; they’re heartbreaking. I can shake off the fear of death; I can even shake off the guilt of killing; but when I wake up from losing Dan again, I’m all hollowed out inside. I had such a dream one of the first times Dora spent the night, in my tight little bachelor’s apartment in Ann Arbor. I kept it together until I got to the kitchen, but then I cried for fifteen minutes after I broke a coffee cup. It says a lot for her that she didn’t run for the hills.

In this most recent dream, the shell walloped us and there we were crawling around, looking for his glasses, and him all busted up. Then some doughboys came and buried him right then and there, and I was trying to explain to them that his mother was going to be mad at me. What’s more, it wasn’t fair that Dan was in the hole because he never hurt anyone. Dan got his nose broken for telling on older kids who tortured a frog. Dan aimed up and shot over the Germans’ heads. Dan just wanted a wife who was nice to him, even if she wasn’t smart or pretty, and he was owed that. They just shoveled.

I woke up with Dora shaking me.

“Honey, honey,” she said, but so tired herself that her eyes weren’t open.

“I had a dream.”

“I know, my love. You’re home now.”

“Did I shout?”

“Yes.”

“What did I say?”

“You said, ‘Leave, go, let him up.’ ”

I
NEVER GOT back to sleep, then I decided that was all right and I got my service pistol out of the desk drawer and took it downstairs to oil it. When I say I took it out of the desk drawer, I should specify that I mean the desk drawer in the office, not the drawer of the nightstand. Eudora didn’t like guns in the house, but she was willing to tolerate them as long as the sanctity of the bedroom was respected. I had balked at that initially, but when she pointed out that I might wake up wrong from one of my nightmares and mistake her for Kaiser Wilhelm, I conceded.

It was good to clean the .45. It was good to keep my hands busy rather than dwell on what had happened the day before, or to consider the prospect of going into those woods. Drop the magazine out. Slide the rack back and check the chamber. Turn the bushing. Then say “goddamnit” under my breath when the spring pops the spring plug loose and it hits the kitchen floor. I was on my hands and knees looking for it with the oil lamp in my hand when I remembered looking for Dan’s glasses in the dream, and I wanted to curl up and sob, but I pushed that down and found the plug.

Several men were standing around in the town square when I got there at first light. Someone raised a hand to me as I approached and I saw that it was Buster Simms. People were standing near Buster because he was so big he made them feel better, as though he were too big to be hurt or to let hurt come to those who stood with him. His size made the lever-action rifle he carried look like a toy. I shook with Buster and Buster’s hand closed around mine like the larger of two nesting dolls. His grip was strong, but he held strength in reserve. Paul Miller used to shake hands putting some extra squeeze in it so it was clear who the bigger man was. When Buster shook he reined it in a little, as if the other man had offered him some fine porcelain thing that might crack if borne down upon.

Estel Blake came now and stood upon a bench so everyone could see him and he could see who had come. It was getting light enough to see the color in faces.