Louis Stanton came around a little that evening when Anna went up to look in on him. It wasn’t much, but enough to take a bit of her chicken soup. He sort of looked at her through half closed eyes, as though she was an angel. She was quiet, cradling his head gently as she lifted the soup to his lips. He took a few spoonfuls and laid his head back on the pillow. His brow faltered with obvious pain.
The light from a small kerosene lamp on the shelf was soft, filling the room with the color of warm molasses. The small orange flame danced ever so slightly, throwing competing shadows against the sloping wall. Anna and Louis seemed suspended and eternal in the glow of the lamp, like subjects from a painting by Vermeer.
John was behind her at the top of the stairs. She’d heard him come up. She’d heard the old wood stairs creaking and groaning under his weight. Anna stood, still holding the bowl in both hands. She was radiant.
Anna turned away from Louis and met John at the top of the stairs. Her eyes met John’s, finding an emerging weariness for life; the collective shame, heartache and uncertainty that accumulates with a life. She also found not a small amount of trepidation about their love making the other night. It was, she recognized, a reticence to cause her any further pain. In the end a man is bound by his fears, and each man’s toleration is entirely his own.
John gently cupped her soft warm cheek. Their eyes held for a moment. She kissed his hand then carried the bowl down to the kitchen. John waited until she was gone before going to Louis.
Louis was already asleep again. John sat in the chair beside the bed and leaned back, draping an arm across the back of the chair. He sat there long after Anna had gone to bed. The room was dark, lit only by the pale blue-white light of a crescent moon. The most magnificent breeze came through the open window. The world felt at peace, and John basked fully in that sublime moment.
He breathed deeply and studied Louis’ face carefully. Stanton had drifted off to deep, deep sleep. His face was to the window. His breaths were slow and rhythmic. John folded his arms and felt his tired eyes brow heavy. He fought it as best he could, and kept telling himself he should get down to bed. Sleep won the argument a moment later.
John awakened with a jolt believing for an instant that he was tipping from the chair. He grabbed for the seat with both hands, the bisected halves of his injured palm tearing against the stitches. He groaned in pain. The groan was abruptly cut short when he noticed Louis. Startled, he retreated from the bed, tipping over the chair and stumbling backwards before catching himself against the book shelf.
“Jesus!” he laughed, chagrined. “Frightened me, Louis.”
But Louis’ gaze was far away. His eyes were wild staring past John. He was holding tightly to the edges of the bed, his body and head rising off the bed, hinting at an unnatural strength John felt utterly impossible to believe.
“Louis?” said John, inching forward when there was no reply. He’d seen men at the end of their lives refusing to concede to that dark and mysterious destination. He’d seen them do impossible things, seen them display amazing feats of strength in those final defiant moments, but nothing like this. John reached to him, stopping short of the bed.
“World is bigger than us, John,” said Louis with the same strange voice from the night before. John started for the bed, his face twisted as he struggled to understand Louis’ meaning.
Louis continued. “Day is fast approaching, John Perkins, you'll meet your maker.”
The words washed over John like an icy cold shower. He'd heard them, there could be no doubt. Louis suddenly threw his arms towards the ceiling, his fingers outstretched and rigid. He raised himself higher into a semi-sitting position, seeming to degy gravity. Tremors shook him, as if energy flowed through his whole body.
“Ain't the end of the world,” said Louis. “Anna will get by. All for the good, John, all for the good.”
It took a moment before John could collect himself. It all seemed like something from a nightmare, yet John felt sure he was very much awake.
“What about Anna?' John demanded. “Tell me waht's going to happen to Anna!”
Louis' eyes remained wide and unblinking, staring far off into another dimension where time and another world overlapped with this one.
“Sun rises and it’s a new day,” said Louis, “and all those who went before are dead and forgotten.”
John'd had enough and grabbed Louis by the collar, pulling him closer. Anger crumbled before rage until john was almost blind and capable of anything. He shook Louis hard, if though it might rattle him from this trance. He looked to the window and thought he might finish things for good. It would easy enough to explain. John could tell how Louis went mad from his injury and threw himself out the window.
“Enough of your damned riddles!”
“Be all right, John Perkins. Its all for the good.”
“What good?” John shook him once more. He growled through gritted teeth. “What the hell are you saying!”
“You got to die, John. Its the only way.”
“Only way?”
“You die to save Bert Himmel's boy,” said Louis. “Anna be all right. Find herself a good man and give him a son. Life goes on, John. Sun rises, it’s a new day.”
John let go of Louis and backed away from the bed. He rubbed the tension and confusion from the forehead, pacing the room a moment. He stopped and turned to Louis again, taking a moment to find words.
“How do you...I don't understand.”
“Ain’t for you to understand, John. For you to go to your fate…”
“My death,” John interrupted.
“Your fate knowing it’ll all work out just fine.”
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
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.”
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.”
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Emmetsburg: Twenty-seven
John knew the spot. It was small place at the back of the cemetery set off quite obviously from the other graves. There all the stillborn and infant children were buried. It was as if they bore a separate caste from those who had lived and loved and dreamed. Their tiny plots and inconsequential gravestones were quietly succumbing to encroaching grass. A few had been recently adorned with toys and trinkets and candles. There were dried flowers on another. The rest were forgotten.
John didn't pull in all the way. It seemed more appropriate to get out and walk the rest of the way rather than to disturb the peace and quite of this place, as though there was a necessary reflection awaiting. As though there was something whose value was measured in unhurried steps and silence.
There are moments beyond word and description. Moments that pull the body to earth with an undeniable weight, like the roots of a great oak holding it firmly to earth. What words, after all, could appropriately describe the loss of child. When at last they came to that place, the inscription on the flat limestone marker was all that needed to be said.
DANIEL PATRICK PERKINS
born JUNE 11, 1929
died JUNE 12, 1929
John looked skyward and felt the fullness of the emotion, like a stone in his chest. Little Daniel had been born breach, strangled by the umbilical cord. He'd lived through the night, his final breaths fading like echoes across the sea.
How does a soul live only for one day, thought John? What god could conceive of so fundamental an injustice? Could not the universe exist and allow for the life of a child? It all called to mind for John the purpose and the very existence of the soul. It seemed to him that the very purpose of the soul was to live, and if nature eschewed waste, at least in theory, wasn’t the waste of a child’s soul the greatest of god’s hypocrisies? He looked to Anna for some explanation, but her expression was as heavy and distant as he had ever know.
She could feel his expectant gaze, but Anna was somewhere a man could never go. She felt herself pulled into the grave, filtered thru the grass and poured down to soak through the soil until she filled the small casket beside her child. And he was there, sleeping deeply as Anna pulled the boy to her breast. And there in that quiet place she cried out loud, her voice absorbed by the heavy earth so that not another soul in the world would hear.
John stood for longer than he thought he could bear. He stood for Anna, but remained unsure when she turned and quietly walked back up to the road. He followed, keeping a step or two behind her. Her gate was smooth and measured. She looked skyward and all around, as though contemplating the moment. She was so strong, he thought, but then it all fell to pieces.
Anna stopped without turning back. Her mouth fell open in a silent lament, and Anna gave a shuddering breath but held back tears. With that she thrust out an arm, grasping for some anchor, as though grief might sweep her from the earth and fling her out into space and freeze her in that moment forever. John rushed to her. He took her by the arm and led her up to the truck.
John didn't pull in all the way. It seemed more appropriate to get out and walk the rest of the way rather than to disturb the peace and quite of this place, as though there was a necessary reflection awaiting. As though there was something whose value was measured in unhurried steps and silence.
There are moments beyond word and description. Moments that pull the body to earth with an undeniable weight, like the roots of a great oak holding it firmly to earth. What words, after all, could appropriately describe the loss of child. When at last they came to that place, the inscription on the flat limestone marker was all that needed to be said.
DANIEL PATRICK PERKINS
born JUNE 11, 1929
died JUNE 12, 1929
John looked skyward and felt the fullness of the emotion, like a stone in his chest. Little Daniel had been born breach, strangled by the umbilical cord. He'd lived through the night, his final breaths fading like echoes across the sea.
How does a soul live only for one day, thought John? What god could conceive of so fundamental an injustice? Could not the universe exist and allow for the life of a child? It all called to mind for John the purpose and the very existence of the soul. It seemed to him that the very purpose of the soul was to live, and if nature eschewed waste, at least in theory, wasn’t the waste of a child’s soul the greatest of god’s hypocrisies? He looked to Anna for some explanation, but her expression was as heavy and distant as he had ever know.
She could feel his expectant gaze, but Anna was somewhere a man could never go. She felt herself pulled into the grave, filtered thru the grass and poured down to soak through the soil until she filled the small casket beside her child. And he was there, sleeping deeply as Anna pulled the boy to her breast. And there in that quiet place she cried out loud, her voice absorbed by the heavy earth so that not another soul in the world would hear.
John stood for longer than he thought he could bear. He stood for Anna, but remained unsure when she turned and quietly walked back up to the road. He followed, keeping a step or two behind her. Her gate was smooth and measured. She looked skyward and all around, as though contemplating the moment. She was so strong, he thought, but then it all fell to pieces.
Anna stopped without turning back. Her mouth fell open in a silent lament, and Anna gave a shuddering breath but held back tears. With that she thrust out an arm, grasping for some anchor, as though grief might sweep her from the earth and fling her out into space and freeze her in that moment forever. John rushed to her. He took her by the arm and led her up to the truck.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Emmetsburg: Twenty-six
John pulled to a stop dead center of the crossroads at the edge of town. Leaning across the wheel he squinted east towards Cylinder. A golden morning sun hovered above the hills and fields to the east. It was fat and round, the heat, already becoming a presence. The sun was suspended, held aloft by arms of ochre dust rising from parched fields. A sweltering south wind painted a fine layer of sweat upon John and Anna's faces. John took a long breath and let it out dramatically through his nose. Anna knew immediately what he was thinking and touched his leg.
“Think maybe we ought to stop,” she said.
John was tortured at the thought and peered into the distance.
“Don't know.” he said simply.
“John,” she touched him again, firmer and more adamant this time. His gaze remained among the fields, lost there. Anna persisted. “John?”
“Maybe sometimes best just to let things be,” he said.
“Sometimes,” she said softly. “Sometimes best to put things to rest.”
John pursed his lips and felt the full weight of the moment.
“Just been so long, and the other night and all. Don't know if I want to risk that, Anna.”
She took his hand and lifted it to her lips. She breathed him in. He looked at her. figuring.
“I took that as a sign,” she said. “Time to say goodbye and get on with things, John Perkins. Start new.”
He conceded and yanked the truck into gear. Not a mile out of town St Mary's cemetery blanketed a rectangular patch of ground beside the road. It was a pretty little of green earth, such as it was, a solemn island bounded on three sides by unplowed fields. Nine tall firs separated that island from the world. Their mottled shade blanketed most of the cemetery, falling over ranks of neatly arranged stones. There was no fence or boundary. Instead it was as if those who resided there had reached some agreement with Iowa's endless farmland, or as if the land had given ground to those who lived and sacrificed and died here.
John guided the truck up to the gravel entrance and pulled to stop. They had not been here since the funeral. He leaned on the wheel and chewed his lip. There was a time when this place felt like a destination for John and Anna. Like a traveler might feel looking off along empty tracks leading to some unknown yet certain home. He looked at Anna, and pulled the truck forward when she gave a slight nod.
“Think maybe we ought to stop,” she said.
John was tortured at the thought and peered into the distance.
“Don't know.” he said simply.
“John,” she touched him again, firmer and more adamant this time. His gaze remained among the fields, lost there. Anna persisted. “John?”
“Maybe sometimes best just to let things be,” he said.
“Sometimes,” she said softly. “Sometimes best to put things to rest.”
John pursed his lips and felt the full weight of the moment.
“Just been so long, and the other night and all. Don't know if I want to risk that, Anna.”
She took his hand and lifted it to her lips. She breathed him in. He looked at her. figuring.
“I took that as a sign,” she said. “Time to say goodbye and get on with things, John Perkins. Start new.”
He conceded and yanked the truck into gear. Not a mile out of town St Mary's cemetery blanketed a rectangular patch of ground beside the road. It was a pretty little of green earth, such as it was, a solemn island bounded on three sides by unplowed fields. Nine tall firs separated that island from the world. Their mottled shade blanketed most of the cemetery, falling over ranks of neatly arranged stones. There was no fence or boundary. Instead it was as if those who resided there had reached some agreement with Iowa's endless farmland, or as if the land had given ground to those who lived and sacrificed and died here.
John guided the truck up to the gravel entrance and pulled to stop. They had not been here since the funeral. He leaned on the wheel and chewed his lip. There was a time when this place felt like a destination for John and Anna. Like a traveler might feel looking off along empty tracks leading to some unknown yet certain home. He looked at Anna, and pulled the truck forward when she gave a slight nod.
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