Emmetsburg: Seventy-three

John wheeled suddenly and brought the pistol up to the Deputy’s nose. The blood drained quickly from the kid’s face. It was then John found his conscience again. But he had come too far to turn back now.

“Need you inside,” he said quietly.

“Jesus H., Mister Dugan.”

“Have to do this, son. I’m sorry”

“Please don’t pull that trigger, okay?”

“Won’t if I don’t have to,” John replied.

John motioned with the pistol and glanced back along the mostly deserted street. There were a couple of soldiers at the corner, but they were too far away to notice what was happening. The boy slid past John into the cool and quiet of the courthouse.

“Lock the door,” John said coolly.

The boy complied, fumbling nervously to wrestle a string of keys from his belt. They rattled loudly in the emptiness. He glanced back at John, feeling for the right key among the others. He pushed it into the lock and turned the key until the bolt slid into place with a resounding clunk.

Emmetsburg: Seventy-two

John swung the truck around in the street and pulled quickly to a stop in front of the courthouse. He pulled a cap tightly over his eyes against the rain, and stood in the open door contemplating the pistol that lay on the seat before him. Wasn’t so much as a decision, but a reaction that he swept it into his hand.

The wooden stock felt cool and smooth in the palm of his hand. There were no longer opportunities for recriminations or hesitation. He left the truck and strode forcefully up the long walk, the pistol held tight against his right leg. John’s expression was cut from stone, darkened beneath the brim of the cap. Lost in shadow were the unblinking pools of his eyes, their gaze distant.

Fate was as terrible an enemy as he had ever known. John was at war again, climbing from that putrid trench into the face of coughing pot-a-pop pop-pop of German guns. Fear fled from him, replaced by complete emptiness, as though he was merely a passenger in some transient shell. He was no longer a living soul but a whisper that would disintegrate at the moment of death, the billions of particles scattered again to the universe. He wasn’t any longer a future, but a moment, and end to a past. He was blind to the world, distant from its continuance, and yet he saw everything clearly, as if he could see forever for the first time.

A lone deputy stood in the door way, huddling against the rain and cold that came with it. The pudgy-faced kid was puffing on a chesterfield cupped in one hand. He was a doughy kid with dirty yellow hair, combed back tightly and held in place with copious amounts of Palm-aid. John knew him from the drugstore around the corner, slurping root cream sodas and Made-rite sandwiches. He couldn’t recall the kid’s name. It didn’t much matter.

The kid hardly noticed John at first. His attention was lost to the stormy sky through the leaves and branches of an old Maple out front. His view was partly obscured by a cloud of gray-white smoke hanging in the air before him. John was halfway through the door when the kid caught sight of the pistol at John’s side.

The boy had long been the butt of jokes in town. He had been for far so long that it boiled quietly inside of him, waiting to erupt at the proper moment.. That he had been left behind and left out of the happenings outside of town only tore at the young deputy all the more. Worse, that he had not reacted sooner when he spotted the gun in John’s hand would haunt his thoughts forever.

Emmetsburg: Seventy-one

The faces reflected a darkening sky, growing dark as night. There were 500 in all, town folk and farmers in an equal mix. There were men and women and boys. They blocked the approaches and stood across the golden dirt road, and down in the ditches in ranks 10 deep. Their hands were filled with pipes, sticks, vegetables rocks and rotten eggs. And there were those with guns, but for now they kept them out of sight.

The first rain began to fall as two ash-gray government sedans, a dozen State police cruisers and three olive green army transports appeared in the distance. A theater director could hardly have been more pleased. The vehicles pulled off the road fifty or so yards from the crowd. A Sergeant jumped from the truck and waved at the anxious looking recruits in the back.

“Come on boys!” he shouted. The men climbed down with truncheons and Enfield rifles, bayonets already affixed. Almost fifty men in all, the soldiers quickly formed neat ranks and came smartly to attention. The ranks spanning the road six deep. Behind them the State Police gathered up, looking more like a street gang bent on revenge with a rival gang. A fair number still bore the scars and wounds from the fight at Stan Pickett’s farm. The rest took it just as personal.

Off from the crowd, sort of hidden behind a tractor Avery huddled together with Stan Pickett, Ernie Vogel and Myron Himmel. It wasn’t about liberty or the Constitution or any lofty ideals. Avery could feel the circle of the law and government closing in around him and his sick cows. Moreover he found he couldn’t sell the cows off without a certificate of inspection from the government. It trapped him. In that trap was Avery’s family and future and he was damned if he’d let it go without so much as a fight.

From the pocket of his jacket Avery took a Colt pistol. It was wrapped in rag. He peeled open the rag, cradling the weapon in one hand.

“Jesus, Avery!” Ernie gasped, looking wildly around. Stan Pickett took a deep breath, his jaw tightening. Myron was silent, his gazed fixed on the revolver. It sent a shiver down his spine. He looked quizzically up at Avery

“You handled yourself pretty good with that shotgun the other day,” said Avery.

“I don’t know, Mister Lysander. That was the Sherriff. These fellas are soldiers.”

“They’re gonna come in here, to our town and our homes with guns and the long arm of the federal government. “We’re gonna let them know we mean business. You,” Avery said with emphasis, “are gonna let them know.”

Avery looked at each man. He could count fully on Stan Pickett. The inspections had devastated him, bad enough that Stan was of a mind to up and abandon the farm and leave to the bank, worthless as it was to him now. Stan was less filled with hate than betrayal and a sense that a great injustice had been done him and his family. That sense of individual injustice demanded revenge in damn near every thought Stan had since that day. He’d been along with Avery and Myron and Ernie when they’d set fire to C.W.s house. When revenge was the measure no amount of pain exacted was ever enough.

Ernie Vogel remained the biggest question for Avery and the others to consi8der. He’d just seem to sort of get swept along in all this, as if he was a leaf stuck to a boot. He was sort of there, but not entirely. Moreover, he wasn’t as easily swayed, but was more easily pressured. Given all that, Avery wasn’t about to make enemies or burn any bridges. Ernie was the sort one kept very close at times like this.

“All you have to do is fire one bullet over their heads,” said Avery, holding the pistol out to Myron. The Boy didn’t take it at first, but looked to the others for some clue for what to do next. “One shot, boy. That’ll show them we mean to take this farther than they are willing to go.”

“And if these boys shoot back, Avery?” Ernie interjected.

Avery shot him a cold stare. Stan pursed his lips and shook his head. He didn’t much like Ernie, and trusted him even less. Avery shoved the gun at Myron until the boy took it, cradling the weapon awkwardly.

“Got newspaper people here,” Avery said. “They’d be fools to fire on American citizens, and they sure as hell won’t shoot a boy.”

“Seem pretty confident, Mister Lysander.” Myron studied the gun in his arms.

“Damned Boston Massacre,” Ernie grumbled.

“If you ain’t got the stomach for this Vogel.”

“I had the stomach when we put the torch to C.W.s place.”

“You stood and watched!”

Enough bickering!” Avery exclaimed. “We’re all in this up to our eyeballs. And if one hangs we all hang. Bear that in mind boys.”

Emmetsburg: Seventy

About ten minutes out of town John passed a line of army trucks and State Police cruisers. He slowed to a crawl, the lines of uniformed and sullen faces like fence posts. John absorbed each one, and could feel time, the moment and the future bending back to meet one another. He would be back here, John knew now. This was his fate, whatever shape that was about to take.

The storm was nearly upon the town, the sky fully reflecting the mood of the men. Upon the road, maybe a quarter mile or so further a fair size crowd had gathered in a farm yard. The men stood up front in ragged and tense ranks. Their hands were filled with clubs and stones. John had seen their expressions upon the faces of men resigned to battle in France. They were cold, stony, empty faces, with dark distant eyes that drew in everything but saw nothing.

There were more soldiers in town. Not a lot. Not enough to make the town seem occupied, but enough gathered near the town hall and at the train station to give John the cold impending sense of approaching doom. Sandbags and a machine gun nest looked out along main Street. Time suddenly seemed compressed, betraying its intimate relationship with fate. He felt pulled and transported from one moment to the next. Life became more and more out of his control, as if he was hardly more than a passenger, an unwilling victim, a leaf whipped by a storm.

The first fat drops of rain were falling as John whipped the truck around the corner and skidded to a stop in front of the house. He threw himself from the truck towards the front door as orange fingers of lightening charged across the sky over head. Thunder shook the world as he tore open the front door and went inside.

John stood in the dining room. There was a Bible, a bottle of brandy and a single glass on the table. The house was silent, the light as murky as a dungeon, What light remained was sluggish and jaundiced, giving the place a forgotten, abandoned sense that made the place seem totally unfamiliar. That light declined steadily with the encroaching storm, the darkness punctuated by glimpses of lightening. In the next room the bed was still made, as if it hadn’t been slept in. a pillow was crumpled on the floor beside the bed. John groaned without realizing, a consequence of his shameful heart.

“Anna!” he shouted, but the storm had come up so that his cry was lost to the fury. The fury paled in comparison to fate screaming in his ear. It spun him around, calling his attention to miniscule details; the curtains pressed flat to the screen, Anna’s hand print in the quilt upon the bed, the Iris’ in the yard dancing wildly in the storm. It was as if fate was attempting to confuse him, to fool him with the delusion of other trails than the one already chosen for him.

John found tears in his eyes. He swept them from his cheeks and looked quizzically at his glistening finger tips, as if they were someone else’s tears. They came from someplace unknown and apart from John. Like a perfect moment of beauty, true innocence, the sudden epiphany that all things are bound intimately together, or the emotive harmony of a symphony, it was the power of fate and the moment that carried him to tears..

In a bright flash of lightening John spotted the revolver on the kitchen counter, where he’d left it a few nights earlier. He considered it a moment. Louis words called to him, even as he lifted the gun in his hands. It was compelling, the gun. The cold steel was alluring, connecting with something as deep and primitive as his sex. John carried it back through the house, then abandoned it on the table, backing away from it as if the gun were the devil incarnate.

Outside the gray-blue storm clouds rolled and tumbled like a muddy puddle agitated by a child’s stick. That first assaulting torrent had abated somewhat. It was replaced now by a stinging rain, driven hard by bludgeoning gusts of wind.

There was a light on at Misses Conlon’s next door. John was soaked to the bone before he reached the house. He burst through the door, fighting to collect himself. A favorite book was open in the Widow’s lap, a yellow and green shawl covering her shoulders. She looked up, squinting through thick eyeglasses, not particularly shocked by John’s sudden appearance.

“Forgive me,” he said. “Have you seen Anna?”

“She was here, John,” he voice was weak and low, trembling a bit. “Poor thing was just worried sick…”

“I know, Misses Conlon,” he cut her off quickly. “Where has she gone to?”

“Why out to find you.”

“Me? How would she know where I was going?”

“She said she had some feeling you got mixed up with those fellers going out to meet the Governor’s men.”

“Obliged,” said John. He told himself to move, but something kept him there, like his feet were welded to the floor. He couldn’t take his eyes from Widow Conlon’s vibrant auburn eyes. He could feel them rooting around in his soul. Widow Conlon pulled the eyeglasses from her nose and pointed them at John.

“You love that girl,” she said sternly. “You love that girl all the days of your life.”

“Trying to,” John felt like a boy being admonished.

“It’s all you got. All any of us got. That girl loves you more than life, enough to overlook your foolish heart and enough to scold your stupid one. Ain’t no amount of riches or fame will ever compare.”

John hung his head and nodded. Widow Conlon’s voice softened, becoming more sympathetic. “Go find her. Those fellas out there mean to start a war. You save her from that.”

“What about tomorrow?” asked John. The Widow slid the glasses back onto her nose and pushed them up with the tip of her frail forefinger. She lifted the book and went back to reading.

Emmetsburg: Sixty-nine

John helped J.L. with the dishes. Only took a couple of minutes. Both men were quiet the whole time. John was lost to all that had happened, and all that was to come. The latter spun in his mind as a thousand different scenarios. Not enough, however, that he failed to note the smile painted on J.L.’s face.

J.L. was swimming in the moment. For those few minutes the loneliness and heartache that had been his constant companion since the passing of his wife retreated. It was a surprise of warm sunlight in a blizzard, or a drink of cool water in the desert. He granted himself the fantasy of a world much different than the one he lived. In that world his son had grown to a handsome man. It was he and not John standing beside him at that sink. And he believed it! He believed it all just as sure as he stood there. And he believed that any moment Bea would come in to lovingly admonish them for wasting the whole day inside. J.L.'s heart broke beautifully at the thought, and for just an instant he held a glimpse of how a body passes from this life, running through love and regrets like a child through tall grass. J.L. cleared his throat staving off a wave of emotion he would indulge later, and took the last plate from John.

“Didn't need to do that,” he told John, putting the plates up in the cupboard. John only nodded and patted him gently on the shoulder.

“Suppose I should be going. Much obliged for the food.”

J.L. nodded, wiping his hands clean on a rag. “Mind if I walk you out for a smoke? After all this time I still respect her rule about smoking in the house.”

Out in the yard both men found that the wind had turned. It came up strong across the fields, chasing away a mugginess that had amplified the morning sun. It smelled of rain and wet soil. Lightening flung itself at the freshly plowed fields. Took a few seconds for the adjoining thunder to shake the world with a low roar.

It isn’t fair to say that John felt like a condemned man. Better to say that he felt infinitesimally small. His steps weren't weighted and apprehensive, nor were his thoughts tortured. Better to say that they were insignificant, but then, with the simple-ness of a breath it was all lifted from him. He dug at a stone with the tip of his boot.

“Yep, best I get moving.”

“Where would that be exactly?” asked J.L.

He rubbed the man’s small shoulder. “We’ll see.”

Emmetsburg: Sixty-eight

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

“Say Grace?” he asked.

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

“Offended if I don’t?’

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

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

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

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

“Hell of a thing,” John lamented.

“What’s that, son?’

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

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

“Wasn’t my choice,” he said.

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

“What if you’d gone before her?”

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

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

“Not too bad, eh?” he boasted.

“Fit for a king.”

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

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

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

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said John.

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

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

Emmetsburg: Sixty-seven

“Didn’t catch your name,” said John.

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

“John Perkins.”

“Irish lad,” the farmer observed

“Grandparents were born in Cork.”

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

“That so? What’s the J.L. stand for?”

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

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

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

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

“How’s that?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lifetime, huh?”

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

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

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

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

“Good biscuits,” said John.

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