Emmetsburg: Sixty-eight

J.L. sat down across from John. Their eyes met, and for an odd moment John was certain he knew the old farmer. As if there was something deeper that connected all things. John looked away first.

“Say Grace?” he asked.

“Good Lord’s tired of listening to my prayers,” J.L. replied. “Never seems to get’ round to them anyway. Reckon a lot other folks need prayers answered more than me.”

“Offended if I don’t?’

“More offended if you made a lot of promises you had no intention of keeping.”

John winked and smiled so hard he almost screamed, so hard that tears nearly came to him. He felt suddenly filled with light, and almost felt it would burst from his chest “Maybe I ought to quit while I’m ahead.”

J.L. smiled just as hard. “Maybe we both ought to.”

John pulled apart another biscuit and pressed the corner into the warm yellow yoke. He hadn’t realized quite how starved he was before that first bite. John washed it down with a bit of bitter black coffee.

“Hell of a thing,” John lamented.

“What’s that, son?’

“Hardest thing about loving someone that much. Brings a mighty burden on which one goes first.”

“Yep,” J.L. nodded slowly, chewing a bit of slightly over-salted pork. He lifted his cup and stared into the mirror-black liquid as if he was staring down a dark well. He almost took a sip, then set it back down.

“Wasn’t my choice,” he said.

John mulled the answer over a bit of egg and biscuit. He touched the handle of his cup with one finger and turned the cup slowly.

“What if you’d gone before her?”

“Think there was a time when we were young,” J.L. began. “I was pretty selfish about that. Those long empty hours in the fields I’d start wondering if I dropped dead that moment if she’d remain true to me. I ab-so-lute-ly hated the idea that she’d find another fella to fall in love with.”

John mopped up the last of the egg with a biscuit and chased it down with another sip of coffee. He leaned back in the chair a bit and patted the table with his hand in approval. J.L. winked proudly.

“Not too bad, eh?” he boasted.

“Fit for a king.”

“That it is,” J.L. Smirked, snapping his fingers below the table, like he was calling a dog, “Here, King. Come on, boy!”
John genuinely liked the old guy. He was a rare soul, a mile post on the treacherous journey through the world. John said a silent prayer for having had the blessing to know him, if only for a moment. Likewise, he felt lucky for the all too brief wisdom that made him appreciate that knowing.

J.L.’s bad hip had stiffened a bit. He stood with a groan and hobbled with the dishes over to the sink. He almost fell towards the counter, as if those few steps were a terrific distance to overcome.

“All right there, J.L.?”
“Bum hip acting up again. Time to time. Don’t get old, friend. The body starts failing about the time you start realizing what a damn fool you were when you were young!” He forced a pained laugh.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said John.

He stood and rubbed his belly. John looked off through the window, in the direction of Emmetsburg, still a good hour or so away. Sunlight still held the yard, in stark contrast to the ever darkening clouds besieging it. A flock of black birds raced through the yard for shelter. They tumbled through the open door, losing themselves to the shadows, appearing as chunks of black coal thrown there.

At that moment John came to a quiet decision. Or maybe it had come to him. He came to this thought concerning his fate, and that was he’d just be running from one fate into the arms(or teeth) of another. As for this one, and any other fate he might have wished for, there was always Anna. Furthermore, could he rightly dismiss Louis’s predictions as coincidence, or was it rather his own flawed understanding of just what Louis had said? Maybe it was John who was crazy or delusional?. Perhaps he was dreaming or that all this was some quirk of conscience.

Emmetsburg: Sixty-seven

“Didn’t catch your name,” said John.

“My god, where are my manners?” he smiled, still working the handle of the old square coffee grinder around and around. “J.L. Swanson.”

“John Perkins.”

“Irish lad,” the farmer observed

“Grandparents were born in Cork.”

“Great great grandfather carried a musket under George Washington,” said J.L.

“That so? What’s the J.L. stand for?”

“James was my father. Grandad Laughton proved himself under General Taylor against Santa Anna in Forty-seven. Took a Mexican Bayonet through the hip at Fort Texas.”

The coffee, the chops, the peacefulness of the kitchen, the warmth and familiarity of J.L. conspired to invigorate what had already been a raging hunger.

“Fought with Pershing in France,” said John. “Recognize a European flavor to the place.”

“My Beatrice, she was born in England. Reckon immigrants are a good thing for this country.”

“How’s that?’

“Remind us what we came here for. Keep us from getting too set in our ways. Tell us we're all one strange new country from seeming out of place.”

John smiled to himself. “Just as soon be set in my ways, if that’s all right.”

“Assume the whole country’d go for that these days,” J.L. fired back with a wink. He put the coffee pot on the stove and poured in the grounds. One by one he cracked three fat brown chicken eggs into the skillet then dumped the used eggshells into the coffee pot. J.L. scrutinized John a moment, just as John looked off through some tortured thought.

“Things can’t be so bad for such a handsome young fella. Got your whole life ahead of you.”

John shook the thought away, something about Louis and what might have happened had he just gone by that ditch. He forced a smile, looking past J.L. as bright sun poured through a gap in the storm clouds and set the farm yard and fields aglow.

“Few things to figure out,” he said softly. J.L. retuned to the skillet, pulling at the eggs with a spatula and turning the chops over. “”Said your wife had passed?”

“Lord took her 2 years ago this past May,” said J.L. with an appropriate mix of pain and joy and confused resignation. There was a sense of peace about it as well, as if it was less a parting than an interruption, as if she’d gone away to relatives and would be along shortly.

J.L. sighed heavily and pulled down a basket of fat powdery white biscuits from atop the icebox. He set the basket on the table near john and pulled away the small towel revealing the small mound of biscuits. As J.L. returned to the stove John took one of the biscuits, peeled it in half and took a bite. It crumbled between his teeth as pillowy bits that all but dissolved instantly in his mouth. They awoke a memory of Anna’s cooking. Instantly his palette deciphered the eggs, country lard, the flower and fresh country butter as deftly as a connoisseur might unravel the cask, soil and grape inherent in a rare wine.

“First year...” J.L. Began, the words trailing away. He paused, tensing a bit. John could see it in the man’s shoulders, a certain weight, a degree of disappointment (even injustice) no amount of faith in a creator could absolve. “Strange thing losing a spouse.”

J.L. was quiet again. He smiled to himself. The memories of Beatrice were impossibly entangled with so much more than her loss. He saw her face the first time they made love, the day she gave birth to their son, Jeremiah., passed now these 20 years. His memory too was married inseparably between church, Christmas’ impassioned arguments, the ebullience of Jeremiah's first love and the ensuing heartbreak, and the final agonizing breaths when the influenza took him. The memories might have easily carried him away. Instead he found John’s eyes. Indeed, J.L. was in fact saved by them. He saw something of Jeremiah’s searching and need in them.

“Forty-two years. Can’t hardly recall a time before I knew her,” he said, as the eggs crackled and spat from the skillet. J.L took a pinch of salt and a pinch of pepper and sprinkled them on the eggs. He smiled into the pan a little sadly.

“The key to perfect eggs is to season them before their cooked.”

“Lifetime, huh?”

“Heck, can’t even look into a mirror without seeing her there beside me.” He sighed deeply.

“How’d you get over that, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Don’t mind,” J.L. said simply. “Never get over something like that. But you get a little better at going through a day.”

He drew two plates from the cupboard. He placed a pork chop on each plate, then two eggs for John and one for himself.

“Good biscuits,” said John.

“Can’t take credit,” J.L. set a plate down in front of John with a well used knife and fork. John studied them, suddenly aware of details he’d never noticed before. Small, inconsequential things, like the harmony of light and shadow, and the drama where they met most assuredly. He measured the predictable rhythm of leaves pushed and pulled by the wind out in the yard, and the richness of colors around him. He was just as aware of the slight mustiness of J.L’s coveralls and his warm musk, reminding him of his grandfather. This sudden revelation, these colors came to him so powerful that it indeed seemed a confirmation of Louis’s predictions, and that, in fact, this was indeed the day he would die.

Emmetsburg:sixty-six

There was a wagon parked in the road, hitched to a weathered brown mare. The mare looked every bit as old and wise as the owner. A simple silent language passed between them as the farmer struggled a bit into the wagon. The horse watched and waited patiently before starting up the road almost before the famer had a steady hold on the reigns. They were a poem together, each part integrally and intimately in precise sync with the other.

John followed the farmer up the road, where they turned into a small driveway. It felt like entering another world. It was a small sheltered yard. The little wood-frame house was nearly hidden beneath the branches of full trees. There was a tool shed and long chicken coop out back. A Model T and small tractor were parked together between the house and coop. Through a gap in the trees, upon a hillcrest perhaps a quarter mile away, a weathered red barn was silhouetted against the building storm.

John climbed from the truck and stretched his back with a groan. The farmer unhitched the mare and patted her hip. She sauntered over to deepening grass in the yard,dipping her head and nibbling until she found the tastiest spot.

“Hell of a place to sleep,” said the farmer coming around the front of the truck.

“That it is,” John agreed twisting and stretching the knots and ghost pains from his body..
They went inside through the back door, into the kitchen. The place was neat and had been well kept. There was a tiredness to that neatness, as if the farmer’s care was starting to fray at the edges. Early morning light charging through the windows warmed and brightened the room, giving life to the wooden floor and the oval red rug in front of the basin and counter.

John sat at a small blond wooden table. In the center, hanging neatly off one end was a pretty white lace doillie. It was inlaid with with green and red flowers. The craftwork was flawless, and reminded John of his grandmother’s work, despite a few stains discoloring the fabric here and there. Those stains were set into the weave as though they had been there for years, or had been drawn into the design from the beginning.. In the center of the table, beside a vase of fresh bright and blue wild flowers was a small oriental tea cup partly filled with salt and a teaspoon.

The farmer built a fire in the belly of the black iron stove. The umber scent of soft wood catching flame warmed the room. There was a heavy iron skillet on the stove top. The old man scooped a spoon full of thick pale white grease from a ceramic pot and pushed it around the inside of the skillet until it melted clear. From the ice box he took a couple cooked pork shops and set them on the counter. The kitchen suddenly filled with their pepper and herb smell.

A cool comfortable breeze moved through from the front of the house. It carried with it a certain emptiness, as though reminding those in the house of someone’s absence.. It carried the scent of timeless memories, and of a lifetime John could scarcely fathom. He watched the old man grind coffee beans, fascinated, as though he had known him forever.

Emmetsburg: Sixty-five

Pale-green. Two hours out of Emmetsburg John curled himself tightly on the seat, and pulled the shirt over his shoulders. It wasn’t a good sleep, by any stretch. He had to turn into the seat against the heavy scent of oil and engine grease. He was outrunning that storm just building from clear blue sky most of the evening. When he pulled aside it was still behind him, but coming up steadily.

Just around dawn when he was awakened by an insistent tapping at the window. His eyes opened grudgingly to the face of an old farmer. The fellow had a long narrow face dominated by a red round nose and full gray eyelashes like long wispy reeds of grass. Furled, they cut dangerously deep lines in his broad forehead. Not in an alarming way, but with a wistful sort of scolding of a patient grandparent. Behind him an old gray mare was hitched to a small covered carriage.

“Down on your luck?” said the old timer through the window.

John sat up and pinched his nose, pulling sleep from his eyes. It took a moment to answer. Not that the fellow seemed in all that much of a hurry. John rolled down the window and replied before his eyes could fully focus.

“Headed home.”

“Ain’t in some kind of trouble?”

“Not with the law or the lord,” said John.

The old farmer almost smiled and looked up the road. It seemed to rise into the dark blue storm clouds to the east. The storm had passed to the north a bit, marching steadily southward in proportion.

“Leaves only money and family.” The man smiled warmly. “Reckon I’ll take my chances with the Lord.”

“Expect I should be getting off your land.”

The farmer shrugged. “Weren’t harming anything. Didn’t mean to startle you. Just trying to be neighborly.”

“Much obliged.”

“Where’s home, if you don’t mind me asking?’

“Emmetsburg.”

The farmer nodded thoughtfully. His mouth twisted as he mulled a thought. “Big doings up there today.”

“You don’t say,” John yawned, stretching the sleep from his arms and fingers.

“Army moved in overnight. Hoover’s finest.” The man’s sarcasm was drier than a desert. “Heard through the grapevine some fellas might be up to some sort of insurrection of sorts. Show these federals a thing or two about messing with good hard working Iowa folks.”

“Sure hope your wrong about that.”

“Suppose we'll see. Welcome to come up to the house for some breakfast.”

“Could use a bite,” said John with a slight nod. “Don’t want to intrude.”

“Can’t speak to the quality. The wife was the real cook in the house. Since she passed I’m just pretending.”

Emmetsburg: Sixty-four

Blue. The wind picked up, coming straight out of the north. It was a cool wind, kicking up dust and made the deepening shade of the barn almost uncomfortable. A string of little white clouds grew as a breath along a front across that previously unblemished sky out beyond the lonesomeness of the General Store. It’d be raining by morning, adding a certain urgency to all this. Perhaps it was that urgency that helped wrestle loose the question John had been mulling for some time now.

“What do you figure this is all about?” he asked, his gaze drifting along the distant horizon.

“Nothin,’” The Indian’s reply was unequivocal.

“Nothing?”

“Grand scheme? Nothin’ but what you wish it to be about.”

John thought to reply. He almost said something smart, more because of the absolute sense of emptiness that whole idea carried. He almost said something, but the idea was just too much to dismiss or react too quickly to. Instead he let the moment slip away in solemn silence. Strange, he thought, that the idea that life really amounted to nothing in the end was both disconcerting and liberating all at once. He looked up at the old Indian.

“And fate?’

“Told you, it’s all about perspective. Want to have any say in your fate, got to change your perspective, that’s all.”

John nodded thoughtfully and climbed to his feet. His shirt had just about dried by now. His belly groaned. John remembered he hadn’t eaten since the day before. He reached into his pocket and found two bits there. He figured it’d be enough for a gas and a cup of coffee. John rubbed the back of his neck.

“One more question.”

“Told ya when you sat down, questions don’t cost nothing.’”

“Let’s say a fella knows the time and place of his own death, and he knows that something good will come of his death, but if he didn’t die those good things wouldn’t happen. If that was you, just speculating here, would you go to that fate.”

Without hesitation the man opened his eyes and looked up at John. His eyes were the most amazing green, like some sort of polished stone. His reply almost made John feel foolish for its simplicity, and selfish for its immediacy, as if John had completely overlooked something fundamental and unquestionable.

“Wouldn’t you?’

emmetsburg: Sixty-three

Olive. John settled down upon a patch of green grass beside the Indian. He settled back against the weathered boards of the old barn. They were smooth, worn to the grain from years of unrestrained wind and snow and dust. They bowed slightly as he pressed against them. John pulled at the collar of his soaking wet shirt, drawing in air to cool his chest. Running fingers through his thick brown hair, John felt cool drops of water run down the back of his neck. With a cleansing breath he looked out from the shadows of the barn, past the town, out into that languishing golden plain. The heat that had been his companion all through the day was now a distant country.

The Indian was almost painfully thin. His deeply tanned arms and legs were a bit too long for his clothes. He wore a dusty pair of black leather shoes without stockings or laces. The taunt flesh of his reddish-umber face was deeply cut, as if he was ancient or cut from stone. His hair was cut short and as black as coal, curling at his forehead, but trimmed close at the sides and back.

“Where ya from, stranger?”

“Iowa.”

“Come a long way to get to no place.”

“How’d you come to be here?”

My great grand-pappy fought with Inkpaduta against General Sully back in Sixty-four,” the man said, “when the government threw us out of our own lands. That’s how I come to be sittin’ on this here chair.”

“That so?” John couldn't help a smile.

“Didn't happen here by accident.”

“No?”

“Ain't no accidents in God's great universe.”

“Figure?”

“Think 'cause you can't see the trail that it ain't there?”

“Time comes a man has to make his own path,” said John.

“Ain't likely.”

“I'm listening.”

“Perspective,” he replied, “that's all we got. Like a sack of marbles. Jostle the sack enough and sometimes you come up on top, maybe in the middle mostly. Me, I always seem to wind up on the bottom.”

“Tough luck.”

The Indian smiled. The first time John had seen him move more than flap his jaw. “Less pressure. What's her name.”

“Who?'

“Ain't runnin' from the law?”

“Maybe I am.”

“Naw, your an honest fella. Tell by your voice. Nothing hidden there. Just a little confused and scared, that's all.”

“Tell all that?”

“Better off alone, if it's all the same.”

“Not so sure,” said John.

“Born alone and die alone. All the rest in between is killing time, clingin' to shadows. Love is the biggest shadow of them all.”

“Never been in love?”

“I married this girl once,” said the Indian, after thoughtful pause. “Long time ago. Then she up and run off with this fella. Thought I'd about die. That's how else I come to be sittin' on this chair talkin' to you.”

“Just a couple of lonely hearts, huh?”

“Ain't so bad.”

John thought a long moment. He leaned forward, hugging his knees. He closed his eyes and saw Anna's face there. It tore his heart to pieces. He was mulling a question. John let out a cleansing breath, which did little for his tortured heart. He wasn't at all sure if he wanted to ask the Indian or mull it over himself. His eyes opened to study the overlapping lines of the man's face.

“Ask you a question?”

Emmetsburg: Sixty-two

Golden. It was shame that drove him west out of Vermillion. Not that John had much of an idea where he was headed, just as he had no real interest in where he ended up. So he went west, because it was as good a direction as any. He drove west across the dust choked emptiness of South Dakota.

The road was hardly more than a dirt track, running off into the distance, towards the indiscernible horizon, where perhaps a new fate awaited to replace the one he sought to escape in Emmetsburg. He drew to a stop at a crossroads. The earth and sky were blended, as if they were the base colors on a great canvas, the world and details to be supplied later. It was a continuum, as if the two were kin. All that could be seen were a line of telegraph poles, a single black wire connecting them until they were swollowed in the dust and haze of the plain. John weigh his options and decided to continue with the telegraph line.

He couldn't say how long he'd been driving. Not for sure anyway. He had an idea. He'd left Vermillion sometime before dawn, and he'd watched the sun march across the sky. John figured it was late afternoon, especially when he pulled up on the tiny little town, the shadows of the half dozen or some small buildings stretching across the road.

It was a stretch to call the place a town. To one side there was an old barn, that looked like it might have just been there forever. An old Indian leaned from a chair against the barn. He wore a white shirt and dark trousers. He was tall, his ochre skin stretched tightly over a slender frame. Beside the barn was a water pump. The barn faced a general store doubling as the town hall. There was a single Sunoco gasoline pump out front. Further along was a house, and a small Baptist Church.

John drew to a stop in front of the barn and climbed out, brushing the dust f rom his trousers and shoulders. The Indian didn't budge a muscle. His eyes were closed, but the precarious nature of his balancing act on the two back legs of that old chair made it clear he wasn't.

“Mind if I help myself to your water pump?” John said from the road. The toes of his boots met the edge of the barn's shadow. He remained there, as if that line marked some boundary.

“Don't cost nothing.” said the Indian, without hardly moving a muscle.

“Much obliged.”

Thank the good Lord.”

John stepped into the cool of the shadow. His eyes kept going to the Indian, even as he quenched his thirst and cooled his neck and face from the icy cold water from the well. John stood, the front of his shirt soaked and heavy from water. In the shadow of the barn it almost gave him a chill.

“Ask you a question?” he said.

“Those are free too.”

“Where is this place?”

“That depends,” said the Indian.

“On what?”

“On where you want to be.”