EMMETSBURG: Twenty

John stood in the rutted dirt street in front of the house. He was still in his dirty and blood-stained clothes. He’d washed a bit, but still looked a sight. His hair was wild and askew, and John felt about as tired as he could recall. There wasn’t a bone in his body that didn’t ache, either from the battle at the creek or from utter and complete exhaustion.

The late afternoon sun silhouetted his little wood frame house against a darkening eastern sky so that the place shone like polished ivory. Indeed, the house seemed almost comically small before the big old Willow in the back yard. A fat brown rooster sat on the sun-warmed sidewalk beside the house, keeping a watchful eye over several snow-white hens pecking at the grass nearby.

The front door was open so that it was possible to look directly through to the back door and out into the yard. To the left of the door was the small window of the bedroom where John and Anna had made love the night before. Sheer lace curtains that Anna had sewn by hand hung over the window. To the right was the sitting room window, which was half obscured by a small green bush. John had neglected it a bit and the bush had grown wild. Above the sitting room, the second floor window was covered by more of those same drapes Anna had made.

John stared into the window of that upstairs room for the longest time. A thousand thoughts seemed to flow from that window, finding him alone and terribly conflicted. Amid that forest of thoughts logic and morality tested one another, teased and hunted by John’s latent fears. Everything had transpired so quickly, giving him little opportunity for bearings. He was reacting, moving blindly in a moment that seemed fraught with uncertainty and perhaps danger.

A fresh wave of thick liquid pain tore his attention from the window. John closed his eyes and pursed his lips impotently against the worst of it. He extended the arm in a pale attempt to mitigate that pain. But it was a force, like some new element, like the boiling sea pouring in to fill the halves of a continent suddenly ripped in two. John dropped his head and cradled his arm tightly until the worst had passed.

Anna was up the street, where she helped most days to care for the Widow Conlon, who'd lost her husband a few winters back to the influenza. The Conlon place was at the end of the street, and was far bigger than John and Anna's place, by comparison. The house was long and painted a fading pale yellow, that paint now peeling in places. With a row of windows along one side the place always reminded John of a boat, like vagabond version of Noah’s great ship. Widow Conlon’s roses were in full bloom along the side of the house as splashes of fiery red amid wild tentacles of deep green.

The Widow and the late Mr. Conlon had been blessed with a large family, but they had all moved off to lives and families of their own. Not that they neglected Mrs. Conlon, by any means, but they certainly appreciated Anna's help, paying her decently for her blessing, at least in regards to what they could afford these days.

The pain had subsided a bit by the time he reached the house. John went quietly up the old wooden steps and paused at the warped screen door. He reached up and glided his fingers through his hair, sweeping it to one side. John patted down the back and sides, as though that might make him appear less shocking and pitiful when Anna saw him.

He opened the door to the enclosed front porch. It was cooler inside. Not by much, but enough to notice. It was dark and quiet, the air filled with scent of decay and neglect, of old wood and dust, and of stale air that seemed to have been trapped in that house for many years. Strongest of all was the peppery warm scent of Anna's homemade chicken soup, still warm on the stove. Layered and infused upon those smells were decades of meals prepared in the kitchen, of children and the sweat Mr. Conlon earned each day from more than forty years at the mill.

He could hear Anna's muffled voice upstairs in Mrs. Conlon's room. His footsteps creaked upon the uneven wood floor. He paused at the stairs and listened for a moment. The sound of her voice seemed as powerful as any medicine he might have taken to quell the pain in his hand. She was reading a Bible passage. He might have believed it was being spoken by an angel.

“… came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and… “

He went quietly up the long straight stairs to Mrs. Conlon's room. The room was at the back of the house. The light through yellow flowered curtains at either end of the long hall was shallow and pale. He stopped short of the door and listened as she finished the passage. By the way her words trailed and softened he guessed the widow was asleep. With that Anna blew out the candle beside her bed, placed the Bible on the nightstand and went quietly into the hall. Simply the sight of his bandaged hand sucked the air quickly from her lungs

EMMETSBURG: Nineteen

John stood in the cool and quiet of the dark lobby. He was alone, but for Sister Dougherty at the desk near the door. He studied her there for a moment, lost in a Bible passage. She was the first girl John had ever seen naked. Not like a womanly, arousing naked, but that awkward and confusing naked of pre-pubescence. She’d always been sweet and sensitive, but with a captive wildness behind her fiery Irish green eyes. One might have guess she might have given into that wildness and run off to the big city or some farther and more adventurous horizon but it wasn't long after her father passed in a long and wasting illness that she gave herself to the Lord. Now there she was chaste and pure and a Nun. Funny how the rivers of life flow, he thought. She looked up from the Bible and smiled warmly at John, as if the same thought had come to her.

“Best take it easy with that hand,” she said. Her voice echoed slightly in the emptiness of the lobby.

He sort of shrugged and picked at the edges of the bandage, biting a little into his wrist.

“Any news on that fella?” he asked without looking at her. He was lingering. The loss of blood had made him queasy, and John in no particular hurry to be in the harsh sunlight washing the street outside into oblivion.

“You did a real good thing, John, helping that boy out the way you did.”

He raised his bandaged hand and frowned. “Got a souvenir.”

“Your reward will be in heaven.”

John shook his head. “Won't fix my roof.”

“The Lord provides.”

“How is he with a hammer and nails?”

“He was a carpenter,” Sister Dougherty quipped, quickly changing the subject. “Doctor says he took a pretty good wallop, that fella. He'll be shaky a while, but the best place for him is at home in bed.”

“Questions is, how does a fella like that end up wrecked in a creek way out in the middle of godforsaken Iowa.”

Sister Dougherty came around the desk and took John by the arm. She led him slowly across to a bench and together they sat. It had all the hallmarks of scoldings he'd gotten from Sisters back in grade school. It was silly, but John couldn't help from feeling that way. He looked at the floor and out into the street, anywhere but in Maribel Dougherty’s eyes. She still held his arm, gently stroking it with her fingers.

“Lot's of lost folks in the country these days,” she said. “Times like these get folks all mixed up.”

That's when he knew this was something more. John looked up into her eyes at last. “Except you didn't sit me down for a Civics lesson, now did you?”

“John Perkins, we been friends just about our whole life.”

“Reckon we have.”

“Doc Gross wanted me to ask a favor of you.” Sister paused, forming the words properly. John knew in an instant what she was about to ask of him. He was already weighing all of it, though his answer was already assured. He thought of Anna and what he would say to her.

EMMETSBURG: Eighteen

John squinted against a scalding pain as the young nurse cleaned the gash running across his palm. It was about as much emotion as he cared to show. She left the room for a moment and John studied the wound. He could see deep into his hand, past the bulging yellowing fat pads, the sinewy red muscle, bluish veins and glimpses of gleaming white bone. He’d come as near as he cared to losing the hand. He counted himself as lucky, still it was just about as good as John could expect with his luck.

He was more concerned with infection. Bad enough and he’d lose his hand for sure, and then where would he and Anna be? He’d seen enough of that in the war to know it was the danger. He’d seen men die by infections from wounds much less severe. When a bug got in the wound and took hold there was just no stopping it.

It took all of twenty stitches to close the wound. The nurse wrapped up his hand so much that it just look sort of silly, as though she'd accidentally covered a baseball with the hand. Down in the lobby Sister Dougherty gave him a sympathetic smile.

John sighed, realizing that his hand was all but useless, holding it up and turning it before his eyes. That wouldn’t do, of course. It meant that he would have to sit still a while, and that was just something John couldn’t stand. Couple days at most and it would have to come off. Fresh air and a bit of cautious use, he thought would do the trick, at least that what the most stubborn part of him wished to believe. What the mind believes and the heart concedes are as different as night and day.

It didn’t hurt, at least not as much as John feared that it might. Of course it was still a fresh wound. He’d taken a kick from a horse as a boy, busting three ribs. It wasn’t until they started to heal that the pain grew almost unbearable. For now there was just a warm sensation, and the feeling of two self-determined slabs of meat moving against one another. And there was also a sense that the assumption of his body’s inviolable space had been breached, like the betrayed body of a woman.

EMMETSBURG: Seventeen

The hospital was downtown on Broadway, just past the sparkling marquis of the Iowa Theater. The hospital wasn’t much to look at. The hospital was a simple rust-red brick building built after the war to replace the older smaller obsolete clinic. The new building was modest in size, with around 20 beds, and a modern surgical theater.

A hand full of overworked nurses and doctors supported by nuns from St. Mary’s staffed the hospital. They were even more beleaguered for the half dozen men hurt at the mill during the storm the night before. A powerful bolt of lightning struck the grain silo beside the railroad tracks just as the men dodged inside to escape the rain. The lightening ignited grain dust setting off an explosion that blew the men clear across the tracks. But they were alive, and, after such a calamity, the town could take a blessing from that.

John swung the truck onto Broadway, cutting off a wagon, and skidded to a stop in front of the hospital. He slid from the truck still cradling his wounded hand. The loss of blood made him lightheaded, but John failed to realize until he tried to stand. His legs obliged grudgingly. For a moment he swooned and staggered like a drunk before steadying himself against the truck. John slid around to the back of the truck and laid a hand on the man’s chest, relieved to find him still breathing.

Feverish white sunlight fell oblique through glass doors just inside the hospital’s dark lobby. John burst through the door, leaning precariously against it, and startling those inside. He was met instantly by Sister Maribel Dougherty, one of the nuns from Saint Mary’s. John had known her much of their lives. She rushed over to steady him, leaning to find him with fiery Irish brown eyes. the black and white habit pulled tight to her face only served to exaggerate the captive wildness of her eyes.

Sister Dougherty tried to steady him as best she could, though he was better than half again her size. There was a momentarily stab of dread should he suddenly give out and fall on her. John was soaked to the bone and covered from head to toe with mud. The brown stains on John’s face and hands were punctuated by bits of crimson from a dozen scrapes and small gashes. The front of his coveralls and shirt was so covered with blood that she first feared he had been wounded to the chest or belly. It was with only minor relief when he held out his badly injured hand.

“Dear God, John!” she exclaimed in a hushed manner. She cradled his hand, and could feel his silken warm blood flowing over her fingers.

“Bit of an accident, Sister,” he winced. “Got somebody in my truck who’s hurt awfully bad.”

The bleeding had slowed but not stopped. It fell in fat dark-red crops, patting on the speckled marble floor. Sister waved over a young nurse, who had appeared in the hall just at that moment and told her to tend to John right away . John pulled away and led them outside to the truck, where one of the old men was madly rubbing the mystery man's hand as the other looked on.

“Out cold,” said the old man as the nurse came around and peered over the side of the truck. The nurse was pretty and untested, with an innocence that bordered on ignorance; the two being cousins. Her auburn hair was all but modestly hidden beneath the nurses cap of her pristine white uniform. She was new to town, is all John new of her, from somewhere out East, and he didn't know enough to form any sort of opinion just yet.
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Sister Dougherty came up an instant later, struggling to see, short as she was. The nurse peered over the edge of the truck and gasped, backing away frightfully, as if she was surprised by a cobra coiled there.

“He’s a negro!” it was more an outburst of surprise than of bigotry, or anything else. One could almost see the embarrassment in her expression instantly.

Sister Dougherty pursed her lips and scolded, “Get your tail over here!”

By now the spectacle had attracted something of a crowd. They pressed in around the back of John’s truck. Old Doc Gross fought his way through to the truck, hobbling against a bad hip.

“Let me pass!” he shouted, pulling himself through the deepening mass of gawkers. “Give me some room here, Doctor coming through!”

He was big round man of some years, with wispy snow-white hair. His smock was a dingy gray, and opened to reveal a well-worn and wrinkled blue suit that might have seen better days during the Coolidge administration! A pair of wire rimmed bifocals teetered on his forehead. A stethoscope was stuffed haphazardly in the pocket of his smock.

Several of the bigger men from the crowd had already climbed onto the truck and were handing the man down to a couple of stretcher bearers. John followed, throwing his good hand on the shoulder of one of the men. As they passed Doc gross grabbed John’s injured hand and twisted it abruptly skyward. Pulling the eyeglasses down to his nose he leaned for a closer look at John's wound.

“Best come in side where I can look after that hand,” said the Doctor.

“Terrible wreck,” John ignored the doctor, straining to see as the unconscious stranger was carried quickly inside, followed by a curious throng. “Lucky to alive.”

EMMETSBURG: Sixteen

The water rolled him over the car's submerged hood. At the last instant, before being flung down river John shot out his arm and grabbed for anything that would save him. His hand found a part of the shattered windshield. The jagged glass sliced diagonally through the center of his palm clean to the bone. The pain was immediate, John’s cry stifled by a wave that momentarily covered him. A torrent of satin red blood gushed forth instantly, sweeping away in spiraling eddies in the rushing waters.

The creek unleashed its full force on him now, as if the two were mortal enemies, as if the creek held some vendetta against him. Despite the pain John held firm to the window, and with a cry of determination that thundered among the trees, hauled himself out of the current.

With his good hand John reached up and grabbed a hold of the driver’s door and hauled himself over. His wounded hand gushed even more now. He pulled his fingers in towards the palm, hoping to stem the flow and felt one of the fingers sink into the squishy wet mix of exposed muscle, fat and bone.

He looked to the bank, hardly more than a couple feet away. It might have been distant land, an impossible land, he thought, draping his battered and exhausted body over the low flat roof. His head dangled over the front. It was then that John spotted the body inside the vehicle.

It was a colored man dressed in a pin-striped brown suit. His head and one shoulder bobbed just above the rampaging waters. He might have been unconscious, or dead for all John could tell. He was seated on the floor with his back to the car door. His head was back, pulling his mouth open. A bright red welt glowed from above his left eye, running down nearly to the jaw line between the ear and chin.

John had half a mind to swear. He looked back at the bank and thought of going for help. The creek swelled suddenly, tugging the front end of the Roadster sideways a bit before settling again. John had little doubt that another swell would drag the auto deeper and with it the poor soul inside.

His feet fought in the slick mud. He hooked the arm of his bad hand inside the car door and reached out with his good hand. John managed a hold on the man’s jacket but couldn’t muster the strength to haul him up but just a little. The dead weight and water was just too much, and John was already exhausted from his own fight with the creek.

John tried once more, growling and shouting at the strain, but just couldn’t budge the poor soul. Just then two old timers pulled up, and came scrambling down from the road. John was already losing his grip on the man and thanked God help had come.

“Lend me a hand here boys!” he cried.

“Somebody hurt down there?”

“Got a fella in a bad way here!”

One of the old timers climbed onto the car with surprising ease, while the other went back to his truck for rope. The pair were small men, but with hands and strength forged from lifetimes of back breaking labor. They made short work of John, hauling him up onto the dry bank. That done they went back down to the car.

With a length of heavy rope they lashed the car to a sturdy tree higher on the bank. With the car held firmly in place one of the men crawled inside and cinched another length beneath the colored fella’s arms and lifted him carefully out of the wreck road. They carried him up to the road. John, cradling his bleeding hand, followed close behind.

“Careful, boys,” said John, “see if he’s got anything broken.”

“Is he breathing?” said one of the men.

“Just barely,” said the other.

“Can’t see that anything’s broken,” said the first. “Sure is a beauty of a welt though.”

For the first time John got a good look at the man. This was the closest John had ever come to a black man, save for the porters on the troop ship out of New York, and a few African faces in Paris. The man's skin was soft and smooth as buttered chocolate. His face was long and thin, with barely a hint of stubble near the jaw. John thought he had a rather honest face. Indeed, it was almost angelic and other-worldly. It was a quality John found almost haunting.

His fine black hair was neatly trimmed and straight, combed and greased tightly from his brow. John doubted the guy was much beyond his twenties. He glanced back at the roadster and wondered what he was doing way out here, here black folks just weren't known much.

The man was dressed in a finely tailored brown silk suit. The buttons were gold. The white shirt was open at the collar, one of the ivory buttons missing, as though it had been opened in great haste. John doubted it was from the accident. The ends of a silk purple and red striped tie hung from one pocket. One of the man's dark brown alligator shoes was missing. Colored or not, he was certainly a man of wealth and class..

“What’s a sort like this doin' out here, dressed to the nines in a big expensive car?” asked the other.

“Some sort of gangster, or fugitive, I’d bet,” said the other.

His partner spit and said with a sort of smirk. “Now aren’t you one to go making up stories.” He noticed John’s hand, now staining the front of his coveralls red. “Best get you to the hospital too, son.”

“I’ll live,” said John. “Give me a hand getting him in the back of my truck.”

EMMETSBURG: Fifteen

The current dragged him down, and spun him wildly as he banged and bounced painfully against all manner of things. Mud and debris obscured any light at all making it impossible to be sure if he was reaching for air or driving himself deeper into the creek, and towards certain death. In an instant he was sucked and tumbled beneath the front axle of the car.

John was caught, bent with his head towards the slick bank, and his back wedged up against the bottom of the auto. His legs kicked uselessly, and his fingers dug madly at a muddy back that came away in cloudy chunks through his fingers. They dissolved raging current, pelting his face like a thousand angry insects.

He fought harder, his cheeks puffed, eyes pressed tight in a vain attempt to hold back the air wanting to explode from his lungs. Something deeper inside came upon him. It was a stillness compelling not to fight any longer. He had seen it in dying men’s eyes during the war, and in the face of a young German boy as John plunged a bayonet into his chest in a fetid French crater. It was a voice that compelled a body more gently from this world. At the end of that voice was Anna's face. He could see her there, standing over his grave.

He could not. He could not bring that grief upon her again, and not so soon. He cried out, mud and water rushing into fill his mouth as quickly as the air left him. He knew he was losing the battle. Without air the creek would quickly overwhelm him. John twisted his body sideways, enough to get his legs around and push off the right front tire. His powerful legs propelled him out and into the torrent once more.

For an instant he was up, his face out of the water, gasping for air before being dragged down again. In that final instant before going under he spied the great roiling mass debris crushed up along the bottom of the bridge, and knew if he was carried into that he hadn't a chance.

EMMETSBURG: Fourteen

Rust red, the roof of the cab was now like the top of a furnace as the afternoon sun’s full fury bore down. Halfway to Emmetsburg John had more or less forgot about all the hubbub at Himmel's place. Tensions and emotions were running high these days, John convinced himself, but the bond between neighbors was stronger for the same reasons that drove those wilder emotions.

The creek was just ahead. He’d be home soon. With a bit of luck he could get up on the roof and patch a few places. Anna would be down at the Conlon place. He meet her there and take him time walking her home. John was lost in the perfect nature of that thought as the truck bumped and bounced along.The shade of the tree line was splashed across the road. John would be happy for the shade's cool respite, if only for a moment.

Sweat poured into his eyes and burned there. He reached up and swept it away with his fingers. He flicked it away, the drops falling fat and wet upon the dash and floorboards. From the corner of his eye John caught sight of something just off the road. Half hidden among the trees, tipped down into the rushing creek was the back of a car. It was cocked at an odd angle. The left rear tire was off the ground and cleaved by a ray of golden sunlight slicing the trees.

John ground to a stop beside the bridge. The engine was still sputtering as he leapt out and ran across the road. He stopped short of the steep and grassy bank. One slip and we might tumble into the creek and be carried under by the churning brown waters, where he risked getting caught beneath the auto or swept under the bridge and drowned. There was no sense in risking life and limb if the driver was finished or had abandoned the wreck and was already back in town. Of course there was no way to know for sure without getting down into the water.

The car had taken down a small tree. One branch jutted from beneath the auto where its feathery green leaves were tugged by the swift current. John tested his weight on the branch, keeping a hand against the side of the car for balance. The branch kept John clear of the water, but on the high side of the wreck making it impossible to see inside. He took hold of the tire and gave it a good hard shake. The front end was wedged into the creek bed and pinned against a tree. John stretched, going up on his toes in a vain attempt to see inside.

Suddenly the branch snapped. It gave a sharp clapping sound, like lightening close by. John twisted, flailing and toppled forward into the icy cold water clear to his chest. At the last instant he managed to grab hold of the running board, but it was tentative hold and not at all sure. His feet kicked madly, failing to find bottom.

He hung there for what seemed an eternity, his fingers burning for the strain as they held him from being swept away. The water was an immense force and John seemingly intent on dragging him under. He kicked hard one last time with a mighty cry, hoping to haul himself up onto the running board.

The river surged, slamming him against the car. One arm swung wildly, but now the force of the river was sapping his strength rapidly. John breathed deeply to rally his strength and focus and started to drag himself from the rushing waters, his feet digging at the mud and refuse at the bottom of the creek. John failed to notice the log tumbling at him until it was too late.

He cried out and braced for a collision that struck his back like a hammer on the right side of his chest, smashing the air from his body. His hands slipped from the running board. In an instant John was swallowed by those brown waters and carried under.