Emmetsburg: Sixty-one

Pale. It was a larger than usual rabble in front of Himmel's General store in Mallard. There was a tension to the tight clusters of men. It was the weight and the ominous uncertainty born from men's convictions. It was, in a very real sense, a war council.

The day was overcast and humid. An unseasonably cool wind came out of Canada, bringing a weight to the day that gave some the sense of impending calamity, and others the feeling of a funeral, like the injustice of a child's burial in which there are no decent resolutions.

In the distance, a muddled pillar of smoke rose to meet those shrouded gray clouds. Now and then the men collected in front of Himmel's would look to that smoke with something approaching resignation, but more akin to guilt. They knew. If they hadn't known then, they all knew now, and by being here shared in that common action. Invariably, when they looked, their eyes drew a line to what they knew were the smoldering remains of C.W. Saunder's home.

Myron Himmel knew as well. He knew more than the others and felt doomed for his part in the crime. Standing in the road, in the shadow of the church across the road, Myron wondered if the path to redemption was in throwing himself upon the alter and confessing his crimes before Jesus Christ, or whether seeing this through was the surer path.

It wasn't simple enough to choose sides. The sides had been chosen for him. It wasn't simple enough to paint one side good and the other evil. Each side was right and wrong in equal proportions. It was just that as each side dug in their heals harder and harder, each side abandoning the foolish notion of compromise, the fight became more about ego and past transgressions than about a mutually beneficial resolution. Each side demonized the other in ever darkening degrees so that now all that remained was to vanquish and destroy the other side. All this for the words of fools and the specter of fear in men’s hearts.

Avery came up and stood beside Myron. Neither acknowledged the other right off. Their gaze was fixed upon the smoke rolling lazily skyward from C.W.'s house. An hour ago that smoke had been black and boiling. It was a softer gray now, just a bit darker than the clouds that consumed it ultimately. Avery looked over at Myron, trying to figure what was going through his mind. It didn't take a lot of figuring.

“It's a hard thing,” said Avery

Myron didn't answer right away. Avery could see that the boy was tearing himself to pieces, which was dangerous at a moment like this.

“Took a big step today,” said Avery. He looked up the road again. “They have to know that we are serious.”

“Don't know, Mister Lysander.”

“What would your father have done?”

Again, Myron didn't answer right off. He'd come upon a single thought in answer to Avery's question. It was the clearest and steadiest he'd had since his father'd passed. The boy looked to the ground, changed deeply by the morning's events. If he had looked over at Avery that moment he would have seen the man for what he truly was. He might have, but Myron never looked over.

“Don't think my dad would have gone for all this.” Myron could almost hear his father's voice.

“Knew your dad a lot of years, boy,' said Avery, with a scolding quality. He wasn't about to allow any of this to unravel. “One thing he wouldn't stand for was bad men taking advantage of poor hardworking folks. He wouldn't let some bureaucrat destroy lives with the stroke of a pen. Am I right? I am, ain't I?”

Myron squinted, still struggling. He replied, but certainly unconvinced. “Suppose.”

“Alot of us took a big risk coming out to stop those inspectors from ruining everything your father worked and sweated his whole life to build. We didn't have to do that. Not one of us asked anything in return, but that don't mean you don't have some responsibility here too.”

Myron chewed his lip, more confused and conflicted than ever. He looked over at Avery, his head still hung heavily. “Heard the Governor might call out the National Guard. They say maybe Hoover himself might get involved.”

“They don't dare.”

“After this morning?”

“They brought this on themselves,” said Avery. His hand slid along the boy's shoulder to hold him by the back of the neck. It wasn't enough to hurt him much, but enough to hold the boy's undivided attention. Avery leaned close. From the corner of his eye he could see Big Bill Connolly headed his way.

“Remember this, if you don't remember nothing else,” Avery's voice was filled with venom. “You are in this with the rest of us up to your neck. You best remember that if one of us goes down we're all gonna swing by the neck if it comes to a real fight.”

Emmetsburg:Sixty

Emily drew the waist of the dress into her hands and hesitated a moment. She lifted away the dress and let it fall to a small bush behind her. John looked at her. Not with lust, but with admiration. Starlight fell across her breasts, shone upon the smooth slope of her belly to where it lost in the tangled triangle of dark pubic hair. She swam nd luxuriated in his gaze.
“Married.” she said, almost as a disappointed sigh.

“Matter?”

“Just if you’re running from…”

“Just as soon leave it be,” he said, then tempered the words. “If that’s all right.”

“Don’t mean to pry.”

“Just wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Fair enough.”

“And you?”

Emily sort of laughed darkly to herself. She played with her hair a moment before tying it back. “Wouldn’t have called it a marriage. At least not in the biblical sense.”

“Where is he now?”

In hell, if there is any justice in the world, she thought to say. Instead she shrugged and sat and leaned back on her elbows, as if she and John had been lovers forever. The conversation stirred memories Emily would just as soon have buried for good.

Was there any real justice in the world, she wondered, or were such things illusions for gullible hearts that still clung to ideas like god and fate and love? She wasn’t enough of a hypocrite to abandon such things. No still beating heart rightly could. But she didn’t entertain those thoughts either.

As for love, she saw it not as a goal or a treasure to be cherished. Rather it was more a weakness, a flaw of the heart that allowed the unscrupulous to delude the needing heart against the stubborn human mind that it was capable of anything purer. Still, in quieter moments Emily understood that her hypocrisy was complete. The conflicting thoughts brought a sudden wave of emotion. Tears threatened her eyes.

“I love looking at the stars,” she said, hoping to divert her thoughts. Something in their eternity settled her a bit.

“That so?” he replied. He was thinking of Anna. It tore at his heart what she must be thinking at this moment, wondering where he had gone off to

“Makes the problems in the world seem so small.”

“I reckon.”

“Ask you a question?”

“Might cost you,” John smiled.

“Take wooden nickels?” she teased.

The rising moon scattered across the flowing waters. Her gaze fixed upon that scattered light, as if some wisdom could be gleaned from its study, or that it might wrestle free deeper thoughts she was incapable of reaching on her own. John was thinking the same thing.


“What do you figure this is all about?” he asked.

“Ain’t a proper question,” she answered.

“Don’t follow.”

“I ain’t seeing the world through your eyes, and you can’t see through mine.”

He nodded at her reply, a bit disappointed he couldn’t come to it himself. It only seemed to confirm the words.

“That’s a curse, I suppose.”

“Don’t know,” she said. Her voice was almost lost to the crickets and the river. She looked away. There were campfires among a bank of trees a ways off. “Works out about the same either way.”

“Think?”

“Maybe. Who knows?”

“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully. She didn't hear. Didn't seem like there was much else to say. The moment fell away from them to hang heavy in the growing humidity. There were bigger thoughts here that neither was in the mood to pursue much, at least not with someone else. Emily chuckled, breaking the moment.

“Didn't figure on pondering the heavens when I came down here with you, John.”

John smiled a little sadly. Not quite meeting her eyes, but more looking past her. “Hot night.”

Emily stood without replying and pondered the river. She went to the edge. Her toes sank in the cool silky mud. The water rushed in around her feet chasing the heat of the night from her body. John closed his eyes.

“You asked what this all means,” Emily swept a foot through the water before her.

“Uh huh.”

“I'm looking at this here river,” she said. Her voice felt distant, even to her. “Been running forever. Be running after I'm dead and gone.”

Doesn't frighten you?”

“The word or forever?”

“Take your pick.”

The answer was simple. It was perfect. Emily swept a foot back and forth in the water.

“Think I'll go for that swim,” she said.

John nodded in a nondescript manner. Emily took a long cleansing breath and released it. She waded into the river waist deep. John watched as she slid forward and pushed gently into the dark river. Caught by the current she slipped from view and was gone.

John stood and walked slowly up to the truck, pausing to study the contours of a leaf for a moment. Emily's mom and pop were seated precisely where he had found them earlier. John gave a polite nod. The old man looked away and spat into the dust. His wife remained a statue to the injustices of her life. She was a lifetime away, playing at the world the little girl in her dreamed once.

Emmetsburg: Fifty-nine

Emily stood and started for the river with the coffee pot. There was a narrow trail through the trees along the bank. Emily turned for him, beckoning with a smile that was somewhere between seduction and eternal disappointment. She disappeared through the trees into the darkness. John followed, finding her at the bank.

She was silhouetted against the inky darkness of the river. Off in the distance heat lightening flashed silently. There was a storm off towards des Moines, seemingly another world away. Fireflies filled the warm night air. It was a shade cooler here by the river, the trickling obsidian waters whispering lazily by. She crouched at the river's edge and dipped the pot in the water.

“Don't know if your dad knew what to make of me when I pulled up,” John searched for something to say. “Strange fella showing up unannounced.”

“Papa had himself a stroke last year. Ain't been himself since. Then we lost the farm. Think that was the worst for him.”

“And you?”

“Ain't never been able to call no place home for very long.” Emily stood, holding the pot with both hands. She shrugged. “Can't miss what you never had, right?”

She was close to him now. Emily looked up at John, sort of mulling him over in her mind. John found he suddenly had the urge to kiss her. In fact, hungered for her lips as he had never hungered for a woman before. His desire for her raged beyond all control. If only he could muster the courage, If only she offered some sign that she felt the same he would have happily tumbled to the ground with her, pushing up her dress, devouring and tasting her. He would make passionate love to her love, spilling over and into her all his desire, grief and anger.

“Didn't much have a taste for coffee,” he said.

“I figured,” she replied softly, at hardly more than a whisper.

John gently lifted the pot from her hands and set it on the ground. He reached up and cradled her face, surprised at the coolness of her soft cheeks. Emily's hands went to his sides.

¨Could you love me?¨ she asked. Emily pressed her belly against John. She marveled at the perfection of that fit. She warmed with the mutual rush of excitement. Emily found eternity in his eyes. But there are different views on eternity.

As for John, he found more than one answer to his question. There was, almost overpowering all reason, the answer of the moment and his body. It was a moment filled with excitement and discovery, as if her body and the unpredictability of her movements, of the promise of furtive breaths, the taste of her lips, of moans and cries of ecstasy were a new culture and mysterious land begging to be explored. And there was the moment of his soul and of Anna. In each answer there was Louis's insinuation, and this moments demand for greater context and importance. His reply belied John's strident revolt against that larger question.

“I could.”

She might have kissed him. John was far too terrified to undertake that himself. She would have kissed him, but there was something behind the words. Not reluctance, necessarily, but a shadow of something else. Emily couldn't say exactly, but it was as though, to John, she wasn't a destination, but a waypoint on a greater journey. And that was something she did not care for anymore. It was a need she recognized within herself better.

Emily touched his face. John turned and kissed the palm of her hand.. His lips lingered there, where he breathed in the perfume of her palm. They remained frozen there for a time, almost as if consoling one another over the loss of a friend, or over the passing of an opportunity. Slowly they drew apart and faced the river.

Emmetsburg: Fifty-eight

She was so very different from Anna. Long brushed autumn hair was drawn back smartly from her narrow features. Even in this light John was aware of the subdued nature of her blue eyes, which seemed to catch fire the moment they met John's, as if she recognized him from somewhere without knowing where exactly. There was the slightest tension to her brow. It betrayed some distant tragedy, some scar that had healed itself mostly.The woman paused. She looked at John a little strangely, as if she was about to greet him by name.

She appeared so terribly familiar to him as well. It was an impossible notion.. Still, even John could not readily dismiss the idea. He found himself smiling at her without hardly realizing.

“Mama, you sit,” she brushed back a lock of hair.

She laid a hand on the old man’s shoulder. Her eye’s held John’s, with a beckoning sort of sexuality.

“Don’t mean to be a bother,” he said.

“No bother, stranger,” she paused near enough to John for him to become aware of the scent of a cigarette on her breath. His gaze fell to her partially bared breast, something she seemed not to particularly bothered by.

John followed her to the fire. His attention was fully on the motion of her shapely hips and buttocks beneath the dress' thin material. He mapped those subtle movements, mapping the figure beneath She paused looking back over her shoulder, and smiled coyly. She continued again, the dress flowing in perfect harmony with the crackling fire.

There was a big metal coffee pot on a smooth stone beside the fire. It was scorched black on the bottom, and part way up the sides. The rest of the pot was scratched dented and dulled by years of use. Three tin cups, just as dented as the pot, stood beside it, turned upside down on a log. There were two more dining chairs to either side of the stone. She lifted the pot. John went to the fire, hoping he wasn't being so obvious in his surprisingly sudden and intense attraction for her.

“Running?” she asked, almost matter of fact.

“Sorry?”

“Not that I care. I mean, it ain't none of my business. Just, I have a knack for picking out lost souls.”

“That so,” John replied, trying not to let on.

“Don't mean for the law, or nothing like that.”

“Didn't take it that way.”

“Everybody 'round here's running from something,” she shrugged, opening the lid on the pot and peering inside.

“And what are you running from?” John knelt by the fire.

“Me?” she laughed. There was a history in that laugh. She sat at the edge of one of the chairs. She looked skyward, following the sparks into the night sky. As a child she thought they were angels returning to heaven.

“Long story,” she said.

“Don't mean to pry.”
He held her eyes again. Or rather she held his, almost refusing to let them go. They warmed him, and made him feel electric. It made him feel like that first time with Anna. John felt younger for it, and innocent again, something he thought he'd lost in the war.

She took a deep breath, lifted her shoulders and let it out slowly. “Hust not in the habit of airing my laundry to strangers.”

“John,” he replied almost immediately. “John Perkins.”

“John,” she repeated thoughtfully, holding the word and pondering it. “That's agood name. I'm Emily. Emily Bauer.”

She extended a hand as he came over. Emily was relieved that the glowing fire concealed the blush in her cheeks. He took her hand in a gentlemanly way, almost bending to kiss it, but thinking better of that. She liked him, and found she could hardly keep from smiling herslf. He was a brief and gentle current upon a sea she felt lost upon. He was her savior of the moment. He was an elixer but not a cure.

As for John, he could feel himself getting swept away with her. He wished to fall to her, take her into his arms and kiss her. She was a fresh country for a man who believed he had lost his. Her eyes fell to the gold band on his finger and lingered here.

“Got my own long story,” he said.

“That's your business.”

Emmetsburg: Fifty-seven

John headed south out of town. Not far, but towards a dark line of trees that marked the vermillian river. He could make out the tangerine glow of a dozen or more fires, widely scattered among the trees. Most likely, John guessed, it was folks coming up out of Oklahoma and Kansas ahead of the hard times. He figured he could just as easily content himself among souls as lost as he felt.

The day had faded when John pulled the truck up to the nearest fire. It was farthest from the others and much smaller by comparison. It illuminated a tiny shack with bits of wood, pieces of fabric in the crudest fashion The roof was an old olive drab army tent strung between the shack and an even older Model T. A simple three-drawer bureau, small cot, wash basin and metal post bed were almost lost to the shadow of the tent and open end of the shack. Dining chairs and a table were arranged beneath the stunning canopy of stars on a round handmade bed. Banks of gray-white wood smoke held to the branches and leaves above the makeshift camp. Close by the fire crackled in an odd rhythm to crickets and the flickering dance of countless fireflies.

Behind this ramshackle transient home a line of laundry was strung between two trees. Stockings, under garments, a woman's blue blouse and some old gray rags hungs haphazard from the line. It hung precisely where the bank dipped towards the river. The laundry was still wet in places, and was wrinkle where it had been twisted and wrung dry by hand.

There was an elderly couple on a pair of wood stools in front of the shack. The woman's stool was a good deal shorter than his, as if there was some sort of pauper's heirarchy. She was in a long browm dress with white and gols little flowers. A hand-knitted men's sweater convered her disillusioned shoulders. The collar of the dress was turned up, over the collar of the sweater. She was small and frail, facing away from him, at the edge of her stool, as though she might suddenly bolt into the black night and disappear forever. He was seated almost unnaturally straight, as if he was posing for a photograph. His neat white button shirt was stretch across a slight belly, but loose across his straight and narrow shoulders. The light of the fire played upon the contours and interescting valleys of their faces. Those shadows hid the murdered pride of a man who’d done good honest work his whole life and now had nothing to show for it. He sat like a statue to a pauper king, with one arm laid across his lap. The other held an empty pipe at one knee. Behind them the river whispered steadily. Neither reacted as John leaned part way out the window.

“If its just the same,” he said, “I could use a spell beside your fire. Just to rest a bit and then I’ll move along.”

The old man nodded slowly without looking directly at John. When he spoke his voice was rich and deep. It carried a faded German accent heavily layered with an Oklahoma drawl. The words slurred a bit, enough that John thought it odd.

“Fire’s free.” The old man looked to the night sky.

John climbed from the truck. The grass was thin and dry beneath his boots. It crunched softly with each step. He went over to where the couple sat, looking back towards town and rocking on his heels.

“Obliged,” he said, respectfully.

“Afraid we don’t have much else to offer, stranger,” said the man.

“Times being what they are,” said John

“My apologies.”

“The fire just looked inviting. Got a bed roll in the truck. I’ll be moving on soon enough.”

“Suit yerself.”

The man’s wife looked up at that moment. It was the first John had seen her move. It was like she’d just come to life, out of a trance or a deep thought. “Suppose there’s a bit of coffee left.”

Her husband didn’t react, though john was certain the fellow’s brow furled just a little. John smiled, recalling how when things got tight at home he was the one who pulled back, who held tight to every crumb, while Anna would trade her soul over any insinuation of an inhospitable nature.

“Don't want to bother.”

“No bother,” she replied, without moving from the stool. Her eyes moved just a bit, noting the slightest frown from her husband.

A woman appeared through the laundry, coming up from the river. She came up like a breeze, a long green printed dress flowing after her. The dress had slipped off one shoulder, baring part of one breast. The color of her long hair was lost to the night, but the fire caught her eyes and burned deeply there. Her sudden appearance, the rhythm of her smooth movements was so harmonious John was left wondering if it wasn’t some sort of sign. He wondered if the sudden lingering meeting of their eyes did not foretell or promise something more.

Emmetsburg: Fifty-six

Vermillion rose from the umber haze and lavender dusk, like a ghost, like a destination; a concoction of umber shadows, like tombstones set against the dying horizon. Not that the town was John’s intended destination necessarily. Not that it wasn’t either. Outrunning fate, he figured, could entail the smallest of actions as well as the boldest. A body is always a heartbeat away from a thousand different fates.

There was nothing much to distinguish tiny Vermillion, save for the church, the college, a feed store and pale wood frame houses that almost appeared organic, as if they had grown from the table flat plain on their own, and were now being slowly consumed by the land once more. Some were refined, in a Victorian sort of way. Others appeared cobbled together. A few leaned precariously, or settled poorly, as if they were melting into their foundations. The town stood at the edge of time, still clinging to that other century as the new one struggled for purpose.

Side streets were unpaved and deeply rutted, and as still as a graveyard. Candlelight glowed faint from a handful of windows, but otherwise the place might have been deserted. An ivory moon grew from the eastern horizon, fat and squat. That moon only added to the emptiness of the place, and made it seem as if it was frozen in time, like a perpetual memory.

John went slowly through the town. The truck found uncomfortable paths among the criss-crossing ruts, or dipped and slid into muddy holes that might easily snap an axle, bust a spoke or shatter a tire. The rattling old truck and the engine’s pained assertions as it climbed over holes brought yelps and howls from a couple of dogs somewhere. It made him feel like more of an interloper, like an unwanted thread through the simple weave of the town. A mangy gray cat scuttled across the road, hissed at the truck then disappeared down an alley.

John stopped in the center of town, at something of a cross street. Like the dust coming to settle around the truck Johns rampaging emotions, which had carried him here, fell around him. They filled the cabin of that tiny truck, and gave a terrific weight to the warm evening air. To the west the day died quiet as a sliver of crimson, fading to a legacy and a promise to the coming day. Stars blanketed the sky, interrupted here and there by lazy pale yellow clouds still holding desperately to that last bit of daylight. Night deepened at the edges of town.

Grief and regret tore his heart in two. John gripped the wheel tight in both hands and pushed himself hard against the seat. A long low groan escaped him as the realization of what he had done became apparent. He’d left her. How could he have left her? John covered his face and pressed his dirt and sweat streaked forehead to the wheel, still warm from his hands. Would pride and the great wall of shame ever allow him peace for that grievous act?

All of this, Louis, the storm, Burt Himmel and Anna, they all whipped like a cyclone in John’s thoughts. Made all the worse in his despair and physical exhaustion. All of it had whipped like a cyclone in his mind for days. It was made all the worse for his exhaustion. John knew full well there wasn’t enough gas to get back home, even if he’d been in a place to make that decision. Nor was there enough money in his pocket, even if he’d wished. John had painted himself into something of a corner. For better or for worse any decision would have to wait till morning when he was better rested and could see more clearly. There would be a chance then to make a better accounting of things.

Emmetsburg: Fifty-five

Black. Men contrive. They contrive to exalt their own deeds and conceal their misdeeds. It eventually occurs to a man, as he negotiates a path through a life that he does much more of the latter. It makes those contrivances less about some Biblical concept of evil than about the weakness and weariness of men's hearts when faced with the process of the world. A man will champion those sins to the grave, cocooned in a fundamental angst that he alone plays the fool in a universal lottery. And he’ll stay that course as long as it pays, or until those sins betray him.

It was no different for Avery Lysander. He wasn't an evil man. Was he weaker than most? Perhaps, but better than other men. As he stood before eight thousand farmers beneath the golden dome of the state capitol Avery knew full well his sins, and contrived fully to cloak them no man's land between freedom and the law. He would not be the fool, though he knew deep in his own heart that he was (not understanding that wisdom and humility are the surest paths from foolishness). That night, before a tense and agitated crowd he bandaged that fool’s heart in patriotism and the skewed permutations of liberty, despite that patriotism is a favorite hat and liberty is like capturing the sky in one’s hands.

He raged at them, in the face of a driving downpour. Avery beat the air with his fist and strained red-faced in order to set their souls on fire. Avery invoked God Almighty, charging that the government would come for each of them as a wolf in the night soon enough. Charges of Bolshevism and Communism were window dressing to the hole his words drove like a knife into each of their hearts. Men not easily swayed otherwise were driven to fear and consumed by it. Women prayed to God and Avery Lysander to see them through, like some modern day Moses come to deliver them to the promised land.

Thunder exploded, joining the stinging rain. It did little to dampen the spirits of the protesters, who dwarfed the nervous line of police guarding the gold-domed capitol building. All that held them back from overrunning the police and setting the place to flame was the thinnest veneer of civilization straining at the seams. Men contrive, but a frightened man is more than dangerous.

Communists! Bolsheviks! Avery's voice broke with emotion. The crowd rose along with him, rising up to the stormy sky to challenge the lightening and dethrone the thunder. Radicals! Subverting the constitution! He could feel them, that wild and angry and fearful crowd sweeping around him like a hurricane. Dear God, it was better than sex or any drug! It was more than power, as power is fleeting. Power are the walls of a besieged city. This, this was control. No, it was symbiosis. Their bodies were joined, merging cell to cell. Their souls were wedded in a wild orgy passion for every word Avery spoke.

Avery thought to turn them against the police. He would teach the government a lesson by tearing down the capitol. He'd fashion them into disciples, not soldiers, for ultimately a soldier wishes one day to return home. But Avery's disciples would fill the nation, sweeping aside dissent and anyone who might have the slightest suspicion of Avery's original sin.

Anyway, that's what Avery was thinking as he stood silent and nameless among the crowd. There were other speakers, men far more eloquent than he could ever hope. Before the governor and all the politicians in their tailor-made suits, their chamber maids and expensive brandy these men promised nothing short of revolution if the government continued down its treacherous path. It was a threat none of those manicured men with their crafted words and couched speech took lightly

When the rally ended Avery Lysander climbed back into his truck and started for home, content the tide was turning against the government, and that no one would discover his cattle were sick. He get them off to slaughter, feed his family and no one would be the wiser. Behind him the storm crept slow across the Iowa farmland. Ahead of him the day was drawing to an end.