Emmetsburg: Twenty-eight

John and Anna were quiet all the way to Mallard. Each remained left to his or her own thoughts. Each let the chill and heaviness of the cemetery evaporate away in that silence and the morning air. Anna noted the anguished expression painting John’s face. She laid her hand gently on his leg and smiled, relieved to see his expression melt away.

There was a crowd gathered outside Bert Himmel’s store, but it was on a different character than the day before. John steered the truck off the road. It skidded to a stop, crunching upon loose gravel. The store was closed, which was unusual. John immediately felt his gut tighten as he recalled Louis Stanton’s apocryphal words the night before. As if in a trance John slid from the truck and went up to the door. He peered through the dirty window into the dark store and checked the knob.


Avery and a half dozen of other locals were gathered in the lot. There was Ernie Vogel, Bog Bill Connolly, Jesse Laughton and a few others whose names John could not recall right off. They stood in a loose circle. The men were in an intense discussion, though from a distance John couldn't hear what they were saying. He went over. Avery took note of John’s bandaged hand.

“Avery, what’s going on?”

“Didn't ya hear?” said Avery replied. “Old Bert passed on last night.”

The words hit John like a sucker punch. Enough that he wasn't sure he'd heard right. He spied young Myron, being looked after by a couple of the fellas a short distance away.

“How's that?” asked John.

“Closed up early yesterday, complaining he wasn't feeling right. Laid down for a nap and never woke up.”

“Doc said it was his heart,” said Ernie Vogel.

It took a moment for the news to sink in, like it was a foreign language that needed to be deciphered. He thought of Stanton and thought it was all just too far-fetched.

“Was a good man,” said John.

“Yep.” Avery removed a cap and swept perspiration from his forehead. Both men just sort of labored in the moment. John nodded thoughtfully.

“How’s the boy taking things?” John nodded towards Myron.

“Hard thing for a boy to face. We’ll look after him.” Avery sighed, rocking on his heels. Both men looked off along the road as an old black jalopy crested the far hill, trailing golden dust against the watercolor blue sky. “Worst of all, C.W. was out yesterday to deliver a notice of inspection for his herd. Left it at the gate where his wife found it this morning. Don’t think he ever saw it.”

“When it rains it pours.”

“His boy came to us this morning wanting to know what we could do to stop the inspection.”

John nodded and kicked at a stone. Avery’s intentions went beyond the humanitarian. He was stirring up a fight, and using Myron Himmel and his grieving family for kindling to light that fire.

“Mind if I speak to him?” John asked.

“Best you don’t right now,” said Avery.

John might have insisted, but there was something strange in Avery’s tone, a dangerous insinuation that caused John to think better of pressing too hard. Not that he had anything physically to fear from Avery. But Avery Lysander was a man who negotiated with his own morality as matter of course, and John had learned to deal cautiously with such men.

“Guess I’ll be going then,” he said with a quick handshake. He turned, shaking his head at all this. He was better than half way to the truck when Avery caught him alone in the road.

“Say, John,” Avery began. John sort of squinted as though trying to see through Avery to some deeper hidden intention. “Some of the fellas and me are gonna head out to meet these government inspectors tomorrow. They’re going out to Bert’s place. Damned if we’ll let them take advantage of a widow with mouths to feed.”

John knew what he was asking, and had his fill of such things long ago.

“Want no part in any trouble, Avery.”

“No trouble.” He gave a dark and sinister wink. “Unless they start it first.”

“What then? Besides, what good will I be with a bum hand?”

“Just want them government people to know we all stand together.”

There was danger behind those words. There was action ruminating and growing in the shadows, away from the prying eyes of the law and of less forthright folks. There was evil in that intention because it wasn’t going to be an honest fight. Instead it would be conniving, like being tricked into a dark room before getting pummeled from every side.

John could feel Avery’s eyes at his back. It added a definite weight to John’s steps as he crossed to the truck. Anna watched him through the small dusty window of the cab and could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’d seen his mood quite so dark. One was the night his mother died, the day her father passed, and the stock market crash of Twenty-nine, when it seemed the whole world might come apart. The last was the day little Daniel passed on. John went around to her door and leaned at the window.

He took a breath and let it out slowly, and kicked at some stones. A shiver ran through him. John found her eyes at last and half a mind to tell her about what Stanton had told him the night before. Seemed foolish to bother her with something he might have imagined, misunderstood or concocted from the delirious ramblings of an unconscious man.

“Bert Himmel passed away.”

Anna didn’t really know him that well but knew how John always spoke well of him. She touched John’s face. Her heart went out to rescue him.

“Are you all right?”

“Guess he went in his sleep.” John breathed heavily, mulling over everything and nothing. “Government inspectors are going out to Bert’s tomorrow and check his cattle for tuberculosis.”

“How can they after…?”

John shrugged, and studied the closed sign in the window. The word seemed so lonely and final now.

“Some of the fellas are going over there to make a show.”

“That what you were talking about over there?” Anna asked. John didn’t answer. “John Perkins, those boys mean trouble.”

“Told him I wanted no part of it.”

“I know you better than that.”

He looked past her, through the truck, following the ribbon of road disappearing in the distance. He sort of smiled.

“Maybe better than I know myself.”