EMMETSBURG: Twenty-five

Lavender. John awoke morning with a start, as if sleep had been a hypnotist's trick broken with a snap of the fingers or a secret word. It was as if no time passed at all. As if he simply closed his eyes, and when he opened them again it was morning. For a moment his injured hand was numb, laying beside him as though it was made of lead.

He languished in that odd moment before the pain returned as an avalanche. It came like a shock, as though powerful hands dug into the healthy flesh of his palm and was now tearing his hand in two. John nearly shouted, but feared waking Anna, still sleeping soundly beside him. He twisted and strained until the muscles in his shoulders cramped, until the pain drove him from bed onto the hard floor.

His mind spun from pain such as he had never known before, thoughts muddled as an opal. Then, just as sudden and terrible as it came, the pain abated. John knelt and let his head fall back. He gave a long heavy sigh and felt fully spent for the pain. There were tears in his eyes and upon his cheeks.

He grabbed a pair of brown slacks from the basket near the door and staggered out into the dining room. There was a sound from the bedroom. John turned as Anna mumbled something in her sleep and turned away to the window. Morning light filtered through the lace curtains, painting Anna and the room in quiet lavender hues. John lay the trousers on the floor and stepped into them. He pulled them up careful not to use his injured hand.

John went quietly up the stairs. A swift breeze rushed through the window beside the stranger, lifting the curtains and holding them in a bowl above the bed. The air tasted of dust and morning dew and carried the layer scents of hay and wood smoke. John sat in the chair beside the bed and studied the man for a time, as if he was some interesting and mysterious new species.

The stranger was on his back, turned slightly from the window. His brow was furled, but more as if he was suffering a terrible nightmare or burdened by something than from physical pain. One arm was hidden beneath the blanket. The other was across his chest, gripping the blanket tightly.

The stranger stirred slightly, then threw his head back in a silent moan. It caught John by surprise, but he reached out and laid a hand on the man’s arm and chest. He turned his face to John. His eyes opened grudgingly, straining to focus.

“Relax,” said John, affirming a hold on the stranger’s arm, fearing a repeat of the night before. “Can you hear me?”

The man nodded slightly. His eyes darted around a room that was still only vague and indiscernible shapes.

“Everything’s fine. Had a bad accident.”

“Don’t recall,” said the man, staring at the ceiling as though struggling to comprehend.

“Took a bad hit to the head and ended up in a creek. Took three of us to pull you free.”

“My automobile?”

“Wrecked. Afraid she’s gone.”

“She?” He looked at John’s hand upon his chest.

”Smashed up.” John let go of the man’s arm and patted it reassuringly. “Main thing is getting you on your feet again.”

“Can’t pay you.”

“Don’t recall asking.” John held his injured hand as he moved a bit on the chair. “Name’s John Perkins.”

“Louis,” the man replied, as if it had just occurred to him. “Louis Stanton.”

“Where you from, Louis?”

He was clearly perplexed by the question, and troubled at not remembering. Louis looked to the window and then back to John. “Can’t say for sure.”

“It’ll come you,” John rubbed the man’s shoulder and stood. “The wife and I have to run an errand. You best stay in bed. Misses Perkins will cook you something when we get back.

“Could use a bite.”

John started to ask him something, but didn’t know quite how to frame the question, or whether he should ask it at all. He started for the stairs then turned.

“You, uh, you said something last night.”

“Did I?” Stanton replied. John wasn’t sure he was telling the truth. “Can’t recall.”

“Nothing?” asked John, almost accusingly.

“Last I recall I was making my way through the storm next thing I know I wake up just now.”

John wasn’t convinced. “Ever met a fella named Bert Himmel.”

“Never heard that name before.”

“John nodded and decided not to press the issue further, at least not for now. “Well, get some rest. We won’t be gone long.”

John began down the stairs. He paused to study a step that seemed to give a tad too much. Louis spoke once more, but it sounded different somehow, as though his voice was far away and more a quality of the wind through the window.

“You’re a good soul, John Perkins.”

When John turned back Stanton was sound asleep, leaving John to wonder if this wasn’t some sort of trick. He had a mind to shake the man, if only there was something to accuse him of. He was lost in the many permutations of that thought when Anna appeared at the bottom of the steps, startling him.

EMMETSBURG: Twenty-two

John pulled the box from the shelf, panicking a fat brown wolf spider whose web collapsed as the box ripped it apart. John mused as it drew is body and legs tightly into the silky-white web cone between the shelf and the foundation wall. John momentarily weighed his own existence between the creatures before returning to the box. He set the box on the bench and carefully peeled open the old green rag covering it. The box was dusty and dulled from the years. John opened it with his finger tips, wincing slightly as that tiny bit of pressure tugged at his sutured flesh.

Inside the pistol appeared pristine and new, a testament to the meticulous and reverent care of the former owner. Within the box lay his grandfather's six shot forthy-four caliber 1847 Colt Walker pistol. The barrel was long, with a polished brass trigger guard and a deep brown walnut grip. The trigger guard bore a deep dent, the consequence of a rebel musket ball at the battle of Cold Harbor. John lifted the pistol gently and weighed its full four and a half pounds in his good hand.

There was a history to the Colt. His grandfather had carried it as a cavalryman with the Sixth Iowa in the War Between the States. He returned home to Emmetsburg the day Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. It was the elder Perkins who laid the pistol in that box, intending to put it away forever. It passed to John's father in Eighty-eight, and then to John when his father passed in twenty-two.

It was the first weapon John had ever fired, back when he was barely able to hold it steady with both hands. He could plainly recall his father behind him, helping to steady the pistol that threatened to tip a small and wiry boy onto his face. And he could plainly recall how frightened he became as the bullet exploded from the barrel.

John pushed out the cylinder and looked through the six empty chambers. He snapped it back into place and scooped out four heavy lead bullets from the box. Quickly, like a child downing some disagreeable medicine, John shoved the bullets into his pocket. He returned the pistol to the box and closed the lid.

Awful things, these, John thought. They were brutish and un-elegant, the same way a hammer served a function but held no true beauty. They were utilitarian, a kind word that described a tool invented for the singular function of killing. John said a silent prayer and crossed himself quickly before tucking the box under his wounded arm.

The evening air was noticeably cooler when John climbed from the cellar. It wasn't really colder. It was that he felt a bit colder for the gun and for the thoughts that accompanied the gun. A part of John felt stunted or dumbed simply for possessing the thing, as though any modicum of wisdom and wit had abandoned him for the implied power and ready violence. His faculties and wisdom seemed suddenly a burden, and flimsy. The gun allowed him the power to react without thought, and gave license to squander negotiation and reason for animal impulse.

John startled Anna at the bottom of the stairs, Just as she was coming down from seeing to the stranger. She slipped on the last step. As John reached to steady her the box crashed to the floor, and out tumbled the pistol. Anna's eyes widened, and she looked to John with alarm.

“Didn't mean to startled you,” he scooped the pistol back into the box as quickly as he could, feeling suddenly awkward and foolish.

“Oh, my god, John!” Anna gasped.

“Just for tonight.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“I'll put it someplace safe.”

She nodded reluctantly. John started for the bedroom. Anna caught his arm. She searched his Irish green eyes a moment.

“Are we terrible?” she asked, with fearful and anxious eyes begging to be rescued.

John's expression held the weight of a mathematical equation. “I'm bound to see him get better, but I have to think of you too.”

She nodded and stroked his arm. Anna understood well enough. Not happily, but she understood well enough.

“How is he?”Asked John.

“Goes in and out,” she replied. “Something, gibberish. Makes no sense.”

“Best I look in on him then,” said John.

EMMETSBURG: Twenty-one

“Heavens, John!” she gasped, at barely a whisper, so as not to wake Mrs. Conlon. She went to him and reached out for his hand without actually touching it.

“Been quite a day,” he said, looking past her to the bedroom door. “Maybe we should...”

“What happened?”

“Not as bad as it looks,” he couldn't quite look her in the face. John forced a smile through a surge of pain, not wishing to alarm her. He knew full well, however, that she could see through his pretend bravado and plastic male ego. “Some unlucky soul put his auto into the creek on the way to Mallard.”

“Dear!” she gasped. John waved his hand in the air between them.

“Took some to get him out,” he said.

“Oh. John,” she touched her breast, her face now as pale as fresh laundry, “you'll be the death of me.”

They went down to the kitchen where Anna still had a few chores to finish. John slid a small wooden stool over by the door with his foot and sat down. The light was fading quickly now. Anna was all but lost in shadow at the other end of the long and narrow kitchen. The back door was open. A heavenly breeze carried the sounds of the first crickets.

John reached up and turned the light switch by the door. It took a moment before the heavy copper filament in the clear bulb on the ceiling began to glow. Its feeble light painted the kitchen in bright and dark patches of Amaretto hues. The filament flickered gently, giving motion and life to the shadows. That flickering grew the pans and utensils hanging from the ceiling into strange and abstract shapes.

Anna ladled the last of some chicken soup she'd made for Misses Conlon into a small bowl. She scrubbed the cooking pot clean and set it aside to dry. That done she fished out a clean spoon from the cupboard in the corner and knelt on the floor in front of John. Anna rested the soup bowl upon John's knee.

“You'll tell me everything,” she said, turning the spoon in lazy circles through the clear golden soup. It was more stock than soup. Bits of pale white chicken, orange carrot, together with green pieces of parsley and rosemary floated in the translucent golden mixture. Flat oblong drops of clear chicken fat lay upon the surface, supporting touches of white salt and black pepper.

Anna could see that the whole thing had shaken John terribly. She always knew, despite his best and bravest efforts to conceal any evidence of weakness of misgiving. With a sigh she brushed the bottom of the soup against the rim of the white ceramic bowl and waited for a drop of soup to fall. She lifted it carefully to his lips. John slurped up the mixture, fresh with the perfumed chill of rosemary.

“Now don't you worry,” she reassured. Anna knew he was already worrying over money and bills.

“Reckon we'll get by,” he conceded.

“We'll do fine.” She fed him another spoonful of soup. “Most important thing is to get you healthy.”

“Looks worse than it actually is,” he lifted the hand. As it was, that simple act brought a sickly sour pain, as though if not for the bandages one side of his hand might simply fall away.

“What'd the doctor say?”

“Said I was luck I didn't lose it altogether.”

She shook her head scoldingly. “I figured as much.”

“Anyway,” he downed another spoonful, “seems some boys got hurt last night at the mill.”

“Jesse and Mabel Soper's oldest, I hear.”

“Sister Dougherty said they came up short for beds and asked if we could look after this fella for a couple days, till he's back on his feet.”

“I trust your decision.”

“I'm glad,” he replied. “They brought him to the house already.”

“He's there now?” There was a hint of alarm in her voice.

“He took a bad whack to the head,” said John. “He'll be out for a while. Don't worry. It'll all work out just fine.”

They took forever walking home. The sun had already set behind the homes and trees to the west. The crickets came out in full chorus, filling the evening with their song. Anna was holding tight to his good arm, holding it as though it was the only thing tethering her to the earth.

A shooting star spanned the darkening sky to the east. Anna missed it. John didn't say word, instead he made a wish that all of these hard times were merely a dream, as if that could save him, as though he might learn something of all this after awakening. He wished all that had happened with Anna, all the pain and mourning, the ultimate disappointment might never have happened, and that they would go on about there lives happily. He wished, he wished, and then went inside to get cleaned up.

.

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: 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.

EMMETSBURG: Thirteen

Back outside the silvery sun overwhelmed a light breeze off the fields. The breeze was fat with the mineral scent of the previous night’s rain. The Sheriff was doing his best to wave off the fight. He retreated to his car with the farmers in tow.

Ernie Vogel grabbed the door before the Sheriff could close it and held it fast. The argument had devolved terribly for the short spell John was in the store. It had taken on a decidedly bitter tone. Ernie, who was usually a bit on the reserved side, looked at the edge of madness, as if he might attack C.W. at any moment. The others looked the same, like a nest of cottonmouth’s ready to lash out in blind and desperate rage. The two men wrestled slightly a moment with the door.

“I’ll defend my property if that’s what it comes to!” Ernie snapped.

C.W. leaned out, his furled brow painted with beading sweat that ran in dirty cascades down his rough cut face. “Fellas, how are you gonna feel if some poor soul gets sick off bad meat because you don’t trust the test?”

“The test ain’t no good and you know it!”

“What you’re asking will be the ruin of our livelihoods and families,” Jesse Laughten's tone was urgent and almost pleading.

“What I'm saying is that we're all in the same boat,” said C.W. “They could come for my cattle just the same as any of you.”

“Then you ought be on our side,” said Vogel, gripping C.W.'s arm. C.W. grabbed the Ernie's forearm and held it firmly, staring directly into the man's eyes.

“I'm on the side of the law. I expect you fellas will be too.”

“Or what?”

“Or there'll be hell to pay.”

John watched all of this while leaning on the hood of his truck. C.W. Let go of Ernie Vogel's arm and sped away without another word. Avery Lysander, who had been standing off from an observing distance, like a hawk or a skulking coyote, spit and looked up at John. There was murder in Avery's eyes, of a calculated and scheming kind. He'd seen that fire before. It was a fatal determination. It was the look he'd seen in men's eyes as they threw themselves out of trenches into the blazing death of German machine guns. It was in the eyes of a young German soldier charging at John with an upraised trench shovel, knowing full well he stood no chance as John leveled his weapon.

“C.W. sure left in a huff,” said John.

“Says there'll be hell to pay,”

“Figure?”

Both men looked after the billowing cloud of dust rising behind C.W.'s Ford Coupe. As it topped the far hill the automobile appeared like a square little beetle chased by that dust. Avery slapped John on the shoulder and headed for his truck.

“Might find the bill comes due at his own doorstep,” said Avery. The words left John cold and fearful.

EMMETSBURG: Eleven

John was in no humor for any of this mess. He brushed past the group. His hand fell on Avery’s bony shoulder and gave it a friendly little pat. Avery nodded with a tip of his cap and winked knowingly at John.

“Come for the show?” Avery said. His hands were stuffed deep in the pockets of a pair of old brown suit pants with gold stripes. His tee shirt was thread-bare and creased across his slight belly by a crease stain.

“That what it is?” John remarked.

“Cheaper than the picture show,” said Avery.

“Reckon we’ll see,” said John. The words seemed to come out of nowhere, like they weren’t his. He brushed through the crowd and went inside.

It was musty and cool inside the store. It was dark inside, but for light filtering through dusty windows and all sorts of goods and tools situated chaotically in front of them. It took John’s eyes a moment to adjust. There was music playing behind the counter. It was low and tinny and barely discernable as a song, more so as the torn speaker buzzed and distorted badly. Burt Himmel’s eldest boy, Myron was stacking squat red tins of wash soap in a pyramid at one end of the counter.

The boy was lean and tall for his age, and the spitting image of his father. His hair was golden blond, and set to light by shocking blue eyes. John wasn’t quite sure but thought Myron had just turned 15, an enviable and lamentable age at the same time. It was an age where the innocence of childhood was being swept aside by the spectacle of awakening manhood.

He would grow into a stunningly handsome man, something already noticed by local girls. Evenings after school, or in the summer when chores were done, girls seemed to flock around the store just to get a peak or to flirt a bit with Myron. John smiled wistfully, running his fingers over the sharp teeth of a new saw hanging on the wall. He had never been burdened with such an affliction.

John knew the boy as eager and excitable, and not a little bit gullible. Not in a foolish way, but with a trusting and open hearted way. That dopiness helped him concentrate on chores and school rather than getting lost in his admirer’s eager affections. It was a quality fully inherited from loving Christian parents, good neighbors and a hospitable nature.

John liked Myron Himmel, and envied his youthful grace. He was the future and John’s own innocent past all at once. The boy was a specter as well, reminding John of every misstep, every lapse in judgment and mistake.

“Morning, Mister Perkins,” Myron looked back over one shoulder without stopping his work. “Anything I can do for you?”

“Pop around?”

“He’ll be right back. Something I can help you with?”

“Any more rolls of that tar paper around. I could use a length.”

“Storm last night tear you up a little?” the boy remarked.

“A little.”

“Whew, she was a good one.”

“That she was,” said John.

“How’s things up in Emmetsburg?”

“About the same, I reckon.”

“Misses Perkins is well, I pray.”

John gave a nod. “She’d appreciate the prayers.”

“Gave us all quite a scare,” said the boy. “Expect it did you too.”

“Expect it did.”

The moment fell like a weight around their necks. Myron pursed his lips and looked around the store. It was a relief to them both when his father walked in, pressing through the riled bunch at the door. Shaking his head, Bert Himmel wiped a good bit of sweat from his forehead with the old red rag from his back pocket.

EMMETSBURG: Ten

Bumping and banging along in that rattling truck it took the better part of an hour to reach Mallard. The town appeared quite suddenly, more as a crossroads, a meeting point for local farmers than a real town. There was a small schoolhouse church, the Savings and Loan, a scattering of houses and Bert Himmel's general store.

The store faced the church. It was a long squat wood frame, with a low flat roof. There was a couple petroleum pumps out front. At the corner, beside the telegraph pole was a white red and green Sunoco sign. The sign was competed with the church as the tallest structure in town, and could be seen for the better part of a mile in most any direction. There was trouble up ahead, and John felt a chill run down his spine. Not for anything specific just yet, but from a sense of impending calamity.

John steered around a horse drawn wagon and turned off the road at Himmel’s. The store had been there forever just about, and looked like something out of those languishing ghost towns out west. There was some sort of dust up near the door. A half dozen men, local cattlemen and farmers, mostly, had Mallard’s sheriff cornered against the wall.

There was Big Jim Connolly, who had lost his wife the year before during childbirth, and tended a herd of cattle with his two boys. Jesse Laughton from just the other side from Mallard, who had served during the war but hadn't left the States. Ernest Vogel was there. Tall and bent like a reed in a steady breeze, Ernie's wife, Jeanie, had just given birth to their third. Beside him was a fellow whose name John couldn’t recall, and several other fellows he didn’t know, all of who looked fit to burst. Some of their wives and kids were clustered near haphazardly parked wagons and beat up old trucks, looking every bit as fierce (maybe more so) than their husbands.

Old Avery Lysander was there, but just sort of observed beside the door. Avery seemed nice enough, at least for all the times he and John had spoken. He was a bit older than John, not by much, though he looked a good deal older. Nice enough guy, but there was something about him that John never quite trusted. The way he sort of leaned, lazy and bent, a brown wool newsboy cap pulled down to obscure his gaze, always reminded John of punks he'd seen trolling the docks in New York. Each had an angle, a w ay to get over on someone with the least amount of effort possible. This day, the way he was leaning up against a post, sort of half hidden in the shade Avery reminded John of the skulking blackmarket thugs in Paris back alleys during the war. They were all cut from the same cloth, he thought.

The Sheriff, doing his best in a rotten situation, was a hulk of a man by the name of Calvin Wilson Saunders, known to everyone as C.W. He stood head and shoulders above most of the rabble. With arms like trees and quite a reputation in these parts when he was a boy, Saunders might have brushed them all aside with hardly any effort. C.W. wore a simple brown-rimmed hat that threw a deep shadow across a round’s face deeply cut by the years. He wore coveralls and a blue work shirt, looking like he’d just come off the farm he ran himself just east of town. His face burned bright red, accentuating the stubbly growth of beard along his jaw. Saunders spotted John climbing from his truck. The middle-aged sheriff’s ponderous green eyes almost pleaded for rescue.

“Fellas,” John heard Saunders say to the men, “I appreciate what you’re saying, but it’s really for the best.”

“Ain’t for my best, or your best, or any of us!” one of the men grumbled.

“I know it ain’t right, Bill,” said C.W., laying a hand on the shoulder of the only man there how could give him a real fight.

Connolly looked uncomfortably at the hand on his shoulder. The two men were friends, but this threatened to unravel that bond completely. “What gives the State the right to come in and tell us how to run our farms.”

“Listen, boys,” Saunders fired back, folding his arms resolutely, “I’m in the same boat as the rest of you. I got cattle, but the law is the law.”

Saunders grew frustrated, felt trapped. Even the hardest man could see that he wasn’t too happy about the law either.

“Whose side are you on, Calvin?” said one guy, in a heavy Dutch accent.

Saunders nearly snapped at the guy, but thought better of it. “Now we can all argue this till we’re blue in the face, but that won’t change the law!”

“Well, maybe we ought take it to a higher law,” said the Dutch fellow. Connolly shook his head at the ground. An oddly conniving smirk came to Avery Lysander. It went unnoticed by everyone but John.

EMMETSBURG: Nine

The emptiness of the road lent itself perfectly to deeper thoughts, and John indulged them fully. Where had life gone off to, John wondered, his brow furling unconsciously. Not as though he had wasted or squandered it in any way. He had lived life the best he could, and within his means, which weren’t much. There were no regrets over not living someone else’s life, because he didn’t know those lives. He knew the one he had and that was more than enough to worry about.

Sure he might have wished more for Anna, but more is an un-ending word. More doesn’t take stock of blessings. More is blind, and consumes without conscience and without end. With Anna, John could never have wished for more, nor would it ever have sufficed. He knew, however, that a day would come when their life together would come to an end, and knew on that day he would wish for more.

He topped a small bridge fording a creek. The trees and shadows all but hid the creek from view. In glimpses John could see that the storm had fattened the creek. It thundered across empty fields and rushed in muddy brown torrents, licking at the bottom of a bridge that should have cleared it easily. To the right tightly clustered trees clustered to the steep banks, obscuring much in midnight blue shadow. He thought for a moment he'd caught a glimpse of something down in the creek, but it was gone as he settled down from the other side of the bridge.

John looked off to the left where it spilled out and ran among the deep troughs of freshly plowed brown fields. The flood's swift tentacles mirrored the cerulean sky. He passed over quickly, giving any of it little more than a passing thought. There was nothing to the scene that seemed at all out of place.

EMMETSBUG: Five

The back door was still open. Slipping into the coveralls, John opened the front door and felt the cool damp morning air flood into the house. He pulled one suspender over his right shoulder and left the other one dangling at his side. He stretched and gave a satisfied yawn, drawing air that seemed to fill his body with renewed vigor.

The old wooden screen door was slightly bent on its hinges and stuck a bit against the stoop, requiring a bit of effort to push it open. It creaked loudly against the ancient hinges. John hesitated a moment before stepping outside into the cold wet grass. He yawned once more and stretched the last sleep from his body.

The town was quiet, mostly. There was the hum of activity at the mill along the tracks, a few blocks over. It sounded more urgent than usual, not not enough to cause John to take much more than a passing note. A rooster awakened down the street. The first golden light was catching the tree tops across the road. It sparkled upon the grass and everything as warm daylight spilled through the trees. The colors of the world were soft and dream-like.

The yard was littered with clumps of leaves and pieces of tar paper from the roof. A large branch was torn from a spruce along the creek. It had split from the trunk but was still partly attached by sinewy golden-white slivers. A clump of spiky green Iris' had been flattened by the downpour. Their long orange flowers had been battered, but they'd seen worse and would recover before long.

He went out a distance from the house. Patches of black tar paper had been torn from the roof exposing the dingy-blond wood frame in places. Wasn't as bad as he feared last night, but John hardly relished the thought of climbing up there to fix it yet again. He'd patched it up pretty good the previous autumn, one of those obligatory preparations for the long hard Iowa winters. He’d need more paper and some longer nails, which would tax their already meager finances. As a matter of course John wondered what would have to be sacrificed in its place. He was mulling over that problematic budget when movement in the house drew his attention.

Anna was just climbing from bed. She was nearly lost to the umber shadows of the house, like a figure from a Rembrandt painting, fading into murkiness. She was nude, her rust-red hair wild and tangled. For a moment she lingered in the bedroom door with her back to John, looking down upon the bed, as if it was the place of a crime or something terrible she wished to but couldn't ignore. She turned and, as if she could feel him watching her, found his eyes with a guilt-laden gaze before looking away.

Anna sipped on a robe and came slowly to the back door. She smiled reluctantly, and slid along the door frame. She stood straight again and pulled back the long hair from her face, drawing it to one side. In the same motion stepped down into the wet green grass. With an economy of gliding steps she found John and wrapped her arms around his waist. Anna breathed in the scent of his chest and the memory of last night.

“Sleep well?”

“You?”

“Like a rock.”

Emmetsburg

Emmetsburg

A novel of the Great Depression

By

W.C. Turck


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Copyright W.C.Turck 2009