| This is the black band.
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The growling sound of a throat being cleared made them all look up to see Emil, the waiter, standing beside the table. Now that they constituted a “party” according to his definition, he was prepared to take their orders. He did not appear to be happy about it, however. He didn't bother even to ask, as he had on earlier occasions, “What today?” His bulky presence, he seemed to imply, was inquiry enough. “What day is it?” Joel asked blandly. “Tuesday,” Tony Todd said. “Soup,” Joel said, “Extra crackers.” “Same,” Moody Mahan said. Tony echoed, “Same.” They watched Emil recess to the kitchen. “He doesn't do the cooking, too, does he?” Moody asked. “Some, perhaps,” Tony said. “But mostly it's his wife, Florence.” “I've never seen her,” Joel said. “Neither have I, but she's rumored to be the guilty party.” Joel and Moody resumed their attention to Tony's hat. Moody was a clerk at the bank. Joel and Tony had invited him to join them two months before, in order that they might deserve a table at lunch. A friendship had grown among them. They were all in their mid-twenties, had similar interests, and roomed with Mrs. Larsen. None of them were Swedish, either, which gave them a special bond in New Stockholm, dominated as it was by that Nordic race. Moody, an Irishman with dark red hair, came originally from Shamrock. He often contributed observations about differences between the Irish and the Swedes, which, Joel came to think, were endless. “There's to be some construction on the east side, I understand,” Tony volunteered cheerfully. “A seed-and-feed.” There was no response. Joel and Moody continued to stare intently at the object resting on Tony's brow. It was Moody who broke silence at last. “What's that?” Tony blinked at him blankly. “What's what?” “That on your head.” “Oh, I'm sorry. It's new. I forgot I had it on.” He leapt to his feet, plucked the derby from his head, and brushed the crown gently with the palm of his hand before placing it delicately on the hat rack. Then he seated himself again. “Fenstermacher just got in an order of them. They're all the fashion in Chicago now, they say.” “You don't say,” Moody said. “Interesting,” Joel said. There was a pause. “Seed-and-feed, eh,” Moody said. “Where at?” “Other side of the livery.” “About time,” Moody said. “Can't everybody catch the morning sun.” “It's not just that,” Tony said. “There's soggy ground on that side too, not as bad as that bog west of town, but impossible to lay a foundation on. They're starting to work on drainage.” Moody nodded. “Difficult to keep blocked, I suppose,” Joel said. “What is?” Tony said. “The lid.” “Not really. It's especially hard felt. Care to examine it?” “No, no. I'll take your word.” “The problem around here,” Moody said, “is there's no place to drain it to. No river, no creek, even. The Iota is a good eight miles away, isn't it?” “More,” Tony said. “What'll they do with the water, then?” “Dig a ditch, I suppose.” “Eight miles?” “What else can they do?” Another pause. “Hard to keep clean?” “What?” “The topper.” “Nah. Just take a stiff brush to it if it gets dusty.” Emil had brought their soup, by then. They crumbled the crackers into it to make a semi-solid mush, and then began to eat. “How do they get the water out of the boggy ground, into the ditch?” “Tile,” Tony said. “Buried just a couple feet down. Water seeps into the tile, flows into the ditch. It's simple.” “Could be,” Moody said. “I'll believe it when I see it.” They resumed devotion to their soup. “Expensive, I'd guess,” Joel said. “The tile?” “The hat.” “Not really. I get a discount, of course.” “Takes the right shaped head, though,” Joel said, “to carry it off. Looks fine on you. Not for me, I think.” “Me neither,” Moody said. “Don't suit me.” “Not my style,” Joel said. “Chicago ain't New Stockholm, is it?” Moody said. “The soup is especially good today, don't you think?” Tony asked. “It takes on a some flavor with age. A little, anyway.” He smiled, and the others nodded their agreement and went back to eating. “I think I'm going to run over to Strattleburg on Sunday, to see Lily.” “Train don't get there until almost noon.” Moody said. “Then comes back this way at four. Not much time.” “I thought I'd take the carriage, leave early. It should be dry enough by now.” “It's thirty miles by road. You've got to go north fifteen and west fifteen, more if the bridge over the creek is out. It's even longer going by way of Shamrock, west and then north, because the road winds along the river. And none of the roads is that fast.” “I was thinking perhaps the hypotenuse.” “Cross country?” “Why not? Nothing but pastureland, that I know of. And pretty flat at that, until you get to the bluffs of the Iota. Unbroken sod can't be much worse than the ruts and mudholes on the roads. I think I can find my way around the ponds.” “And ford John Creek?” “There have to be some shallow spots. I'll follow along until I find one. You want to come along? It'll be an adventure“ “Too much of one for me,” Joel said. “If it was so easy, someone would've cut an angle before this.” “You'd better leave your hat behind anyway,” Moody said. “Why so?” “You'll lose it in the high water on the Jack.” The Following Sunday at seven in the morning, all three were in Tony's surrey, bouncing along in the dirt road headed north out of New Stockholm, behind a pair of shiny roan trotters. All three wore derbies. Joel had got his on Wednesday. Moody had followed suit on Thursday. By Saturday, when Fenstermacher's ran out, almost every male in town between 20 and 35 sported one. A mile north out of town, far enough to clear the bog on the west side, Tony turned the horses off the road, and the ride became even rougher. “This Lily better be worth it,” Moody said. “I think I'm getting some teeth jiggled loose.” He sat in the rear seat with Joel to give Tony elbow room with the reins. “Lillian Ries is a fine woman,” Tony said. “Ries?” Joel said. “Banker's daughter?” “His baby sister.” “You didn't say her full name before.” “You didn't ask. What difference does it make, anyway?” “He owns Strattleburg, is what,” Moody said. “Other bankers kowtow to him like he's some kind of god. My boss lowers his voice when he says the name.” “He was with August Waxwood on the train I took up from Iota Falls in January. How did you meet her?” “Labor Day picnic at Strattleburg last year. She was selling cake at a booth. I asked her to dance. Took the train to see her three or four times over winter, exchanged letters every week or so.” “Serious, then,” Moody observed. “Not solemn, though,” Tony said. “She not your Methodist, you know,” Moody said, leaning forward over the back of the front seat. “What do you mean?” “The family's like mine. Catholic.” “I don't hold that against you, Moody. And I don't hold it against her, either.” “In case you was thinking things might take a turn toward the grim, is all.” Moody could turn the blarney off and on like inside plumbing. “They got a Roman church in Strattleburg, too. No excuse to miss early mass, like me.” “I will keep that in mind.” “It complicates matters, is all I'm saying -- her money and her church. You may think you're wooing one young lady, but it's a whole tribe you're paying court to.” “If the matter becomes grave, I will count on you to help do battle.” “In desperate straits, you'll need more than one shanty Irishman to go up against a horde of snooty Germans with Mother Church at their side. There's some of them think they, single-handed, saved the world from domination by Martin Luther. They're a martial lot, them Germans.” The bantering back and forth between Moody and Tony left Joel Stevens in the back seat of the surrey losing the thread of the discussion and drifting into his own thoughts. Considering the circumstances, it was not unexpected that he would be thinking again of his cousin Adele. She was Catholic, too, but French, as was her father, not German. Her mother, his mother's sister Julia, converted to the faith as a condition of the marriage. Adele's father, whose name was Leclaire, worked for a mining company in Colorado. He'd lost his first wife to consumption. Julia had been hired originally to care for Leclaire's daughter, the golden-haired Adele. She was just six when they first met, with some hint of her later golden radiance, but she shattered the image with her blue, defiant glare. He was two years older, but immediately baffled by her. When they were introduced, he held out his hand politely, as his mother had taught him, bowed at the waist, and smiled. Adele, her long hair pulled back and tied behind with a pink bow, in a frilly white dress made for curtsying, instead frowned aggressively, took his fingers in both hands, and tried to bite them. He'd looked up at his mother for some explanation, but she'd simply smiled benignly. “Why don't you show Adele your castle,” she'd suggested. The castle was a toy that had given him hours of joy. It consisted of a wooden box that contained a spring mechanism, and a set of wooden blocks that could be assembled in various configurations on top of the box foundation to resemble a medieval battlement. Most importantly, a wooden ball could be rolled toward a target at the side of the box which, if hit, would trip the spring and blow up the castle in a spectacular way. Correctly played with, the toy provided a miniature drama, building toward what was for Joel a deeply satisfying climax. Adele, of course, refused to play with the toy correctly. Instead, she threw the blocks at the wall, singly and by the handful, making such a racket that both his own mother and Adele's appeared simultaneously in the doorway of his room in some alarm. Adele seemed unrepentant, but Joel, who had taken no part in the debacle except as an amazed spectator, was overcome with guilt. It was his mother who outlined the bounds of his complicity: “Joel, you're the older. It's up to you to guide your cousin in such things.” It was no use for him to try to explain that he'd had no chance to offer counsel in the matter of the castle blocks. His mother suggested the children go outside to play instead. It had rained just that morning, and the lawn was damp. More foreboding were the puddles that still glimmered at the edge of the vegetable garden. Sensing a challenge to his charge of responsibility, he held Adele's hand as tightly as he was able. “You're hurting me,” she complained. “Look, I'll show you the roses,” Joel suggested. “I've seen roses,” Adele said. “We have roses at home. We have a whole garden full of roses.” “Let's swing, then.” His mother had ordered a rope swing strung from a maple in the back yard when he was several years younger. He hardly used it any longer. Adele broke away from him, ran toward the swing, and climbed up on the wooden seat. “Push me.” He pushed. “Higher,” Adele said. He pushed her higher. “More, more,” Adele said. “You'll fall,” Joel warned. “Push me, or you're a pig.” He decided to teach her a lesson, and pushed as hard as he could, until the rope went slack at the apex of the arc and threatened to turn Adele upside down and throw her out. “More, more.” But Joel had frightened himself instead of Adele, imagining suddenly what might happen if he were to cause her to fly out and land on her head. When the swing slowed, he grabbed the ropes and held it still. “What are you doing?” “Let's go look at the roses, now.” “I don't want to look at roses. Roses are stupid.” And she leapt from the swing and ran toward the garden. Joel watched in horror as she splashed into the nearest and large puddle. He stood, struck dumb for a moment, then walked slowly toward her. “Come out. You'll get your pretty dress dirty.” She stood ankle-deep in the middle of the puddle and turned slowly, for the first time showing him her secretive smile, as though daring him to guess what she was thinking, and then squatted, plopping down in the mud. He had received the blame, of course, which is what she'd wanted. He should have hated her for it, but had been taken instead with a kind of perverse admiration. It was the sort of thing he'd never think to do, and he had started wondering for the first time what other unthinkable things there might be in the world. “What's this, then?” Moody Mahan said. They had come upon a road of sorts, wagon tracks really, traversing the grassland. On the far side of the trail was spread a field of corn stalk stubble. “Thought you said there was no farms this way,” Moody said. “I haven't been this way before,” Tony Todd said. “There's a farm here, all right. I wonder where the house is.” “Over that rise to south, I warrant.” “We can get around the field going north, probably.” “You think so?” “At worst we'll run into the road running east out of Strattleburg.” “That won't save much time.” Moody was set on cutting the angle. “We're already halfway, I judge,” Tony said. “We've already saved that much. Come on, Natty. Hey Poe, g'up.” The team trotted north on the wagon trail for a mile or so. Then the field ended, as Tony had predicted and they cut off again to the west across the sod, parallel to the northern boundary of the field. At the far corner of the worked land they spotted a plow abandoned in a little depression. “Tried to till too early,” Tony said. “Got stuck and gave up.” “Foolish,” Moody observed. “Very,” Joel amended. In the open prairie once again, they scared up a flock of prairie chickens, saw the yellow flash of meadowlarks with their piercing two-note cry, saw red-shouldered blackbirds perched on tall rushes in a curious sideways grip, and clusters of ducks bustling skyward, and then, directly ahead, spied what appeared to be a whirling white cloud, as though of a distant cyclone in a field of snow, and listened to the faraway honking of a multitude of snow geese. A slough of some size widened before them as they progressed, and upon it more geese than Joel had ever seen before. He had spotted the trailing flocks criss-crossing the sky over New Stockholm since early March, but never in such congregation. The startled birds had started rising, lifting in such mass as to seem to defy gravity, and wheeling in so large and stately a swirl as to suggest some cosmic event, the formation of a solar system, a galaxy. “My God,” Tony exclaimed, leaving his companions merely gaping, having stolen the only suitable response to the sight. “Late in the season, too,” Moody said finally. “This has got to be the tail end of migration. Imagine what the main mass must've been.” And they all tried to imagine, but lacked sufficient metaphor for the task. “They must have taken all the light,” Joel attempted. “Eclipsed the sun,” Moody agreed. “The grandeur,” Tony said, “the majesty --” No words were enough. They might have stayed there all day gawking, but Joel pulled out his watch as if mark the very moment in his memory. “Eight-thirty-three,” he said. “Local time.” “Lily,” Tony murmured, then flicked the reins to set the team prancing once again. The pond forced Tony to turn his team to the north again to clear it. What appeared to be grass, however, was interlaced with puddles and rivulets, which splashed and squelched under the horses' hooves. Tony aimed the carriage more northerly yet, but the damp ground could not be escaped. More alarming was that the surrey's wheels often sank into the soft ground, causing the roans, unused to such draft duty, to break their gait and strain at the hames. Then, crossing what appeared to be an innocent puddle, the horses sank to their knees, struggled forward, then stopped stock still, with the carriage hub-deep in black sludge. Tony slapped the trotters' flanks with the reins and called their names, urging them forward. The team struggled valiantly, then there was a sickening crack and the horses lunged on while the carriage rocked back. “Whoa,” Tony cried, and held back on the reins to keep the team from running away entirely. “What broke?” Moody said. “The leads?” Tony leaned forward over the splash board and peered down. “Doubletree. Snapped right in two.” “Can it be fixed?” Tony leaned back in his seat, thinking. “There's no way to piece it together,” he said after a few seconds. “We need a solid piece of wood of equal size.” “Where would we find that?” Moody asked. He and Joel were both scanning the horizon. There was not a tree to be seen anywhere. That seemed answer enough. “How far to Strattleburg?” Joel asked. “Eight miles at least,” Tony said. “Long walk,” Moody allowed. “We could use the horses as mounts,” Joel said. “Two of them, three of us,” Moody pointed out. “You think we could ride one double?” “I'd have a hard time on one single,” Joel confessed. “They are not trained to carry a load anyway,” Tony said, with some disgust in his voice. “They've never had a saddle on them, let alone someone bareback.” The three men sat in the surrey, contemplating their situation. They were all dressed in their best Sunday suits, vests, silk ties, stiff collars, Chicago's most stylish derbies, simultaneously struck for the first time with the inappropriateness of their attire and the questionable wisdom of their trek. Suddenly, Tony turned and held the reins out to Joel. “Hold them still.” After Joel grabbed the straps, Tony started rolling up his pantlegs. “What are you doing?” Moody said. “We can't just sit here,” Tony said. He started to climb out of the carriage. “Where are you going?” “Back to that field. I've an idea.” “I'll go with you,” Moody offered. “Come along, then.” Moody looked down at his trousers, struck with sudden regret at having volunteered. Then he began to turn up his cuffs. It was just after ten, new stockholm time, by Joel's watch, that they were once again underway across dry ground, with a rustic doubletree from the abandoned plow replacing the broken one on the surrey. The effort to free the carriage from the mudhole had taken a toll on their haberdashery and their tempers. They rode silent, wet to the knees, mud-splashed, sullen. Even Moody Mahan, seldom at a loss for talk, sulked in the back seat, brushing with a handkerchief at the dark spots on his suit. At last they reached the east bluffs of the Iota, and as they topped the first real hill they'd seen on the journey, saw the broad valley stretched before them, and on the western bluffs some two miles distant, the town of Strattleburg draped on the slope. Not only was the river midpoint between the bluffs marked by the willows and boxelder that grew along its banks, but the town itself, having a decade head start on New Stockholm, was fringed with trees of every variety. It was not hard to imagine in some time not too distant, the houses being nearly obscured by the foliage. The sight cheered the trio, and they began again to talk among themselves with some civility. Their spirits were further raised after they paused on the far side of the wooden bridge to rinse the worst mud from their boots and to brush the dried mud from their derbies. Then they set out again, and arrived at the tracks just in time to wait for the passenger train to arrive, ringing, decant its passengers, and depart. Though no one mentioned the fact, it was nevertheless on all their minds that, if they had taken that train, they would have arrived in Strattleburg at exactly the same time that they did now, after their arduous odyssey. When the train pulled out, they crossed the tracks and trotted up the wide main street, taking some satisfaction from the appreciative looks of Sunday strollers whose eyes were taken by the still-lively step of the roans. Then they climbed to the crest of the hill just west of the business district, turned left and stopped two blocks further on before a large house that looked out on the whole town. Lillian Ries greeted them at the door with a nervous laugh, no doubt struck by the simultaneity with which they doffed their hats upon seeing her. “Darling Tony,” she said, and embraced him. “You didn't tell me you'd bring friends. We'll set extra places.” Tony introduced them, and Joel and Moody bowed. “Don't bother, Miss,” Moody recited by prearrangement. “Joel and I want to see the town. We'll take lunch at the cafe, then walk around and stretch our legs.” “If you please to,” Lillian Ries said. “But come by after your walk and we'll have some tea and talk.” “Of course.” The two nodded, bid goodbye, and walked back to the main stem. “Lovely town,” Moody said. “Main street a regular boulevard,” Joel said. They turned back east. Strattleburg opened before them, lush by the standards of New Stockholm. “She's pleasant,” Moody commented. “Very,” Joel agreed. “A bit plain.” “Perhaps.” “Plainer than I'd imagined.” “Eye of the beholder, I guess,” Joel said. “You don't think --“ “What?” “No, not Tony. He loves her, is all.” “Of course.” “Beautiful eyes. Which weighs greatly, I say.” “Very much so.” “All the same.” “I know.” Moody removed his derby, turned it in his hands, and snapped a finger against the crown to remove a small fleck of dried mud. “You think these things was ever the style in Chicago?” “So Tony says.” “Yes.” Moody replaced his hat and sighed. “Anyway, there's the geese.” “The geese. Yes, indeed.” And they strolled on into town. |
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“Damn fool is what I say,“ the stoker volunteered. His proclamation was made more emphatic by his shouting over the locomotive noise. “I heard he was making up to a hundred miles an hour, in fog, too.” “How's he gonna know they got a stall on the track ahead?” the engineer wanted to know. “It could've been a whole lot worse.” “The fireman could've got killed,” Jim agreed soberly. “Instead of jumping.” “What's he supposed to do?” the stoker said. “Way I heard, he's the one heard the caps blow. He's the one saw the signal lights. What's the other guy doing all this time, is what I wonder.” “Why is it the way you heard it makes the fireman the hero?” the engineer asked. “It was Casey who stuck with it, rode it down holding the brake. You think he didn't know what he was doing?” “Maybe he'd just rather be dead than shunting freight cars in a Chicago rail yard. That's where he would've ended up if he'd got out of it alive. He didn't have all that good a record anyway. The I.C. would've disciplined him for sure.” “You don't know anything about it. I knew Casey Jones when I was with the I.C. I've rode with him. He was a good man.” “I didn't say he weren't good,” the stoker persisted. “Being good don't have nothing to do with being foolish. Fact is, good men is more inclined to be so, to my thinking. Takes a little soot around the heart to give a man good sense sometimes.” “Well,” the engineer said, “what would you 'a' done under them circumstances?” “I wouldn't 'a' been in that position.” “You'd 'a' leapt, that's what. Just like that other stoker.” Jim was imagining how it must have been for the engineer, the first awareness that the signal had been missed, the reflexive grappling at the controls, the surge of hope that the train would stop in time, the certainty that it would not. What would he have done? At Shamrock, Jim swung out of the cab into the warmth of the morning sun. The sun on his back gave him a boost, he thought, got the sap running, gave him the feeling that there might be some hope after all. As the train pulled away, he strode up to a dray where a skinny chap and an older fellow in overalls were loading crates off the dock. “You wouldn't be going to the west side of town, by any chance?” Jim asked. The man sat a box down on the dray with a grunt, tipped back his cap, and wiped his brow with the back of his gloved hand. He was stocky, with a gnarly, unshaven face, and the squint of a man too proud or too poor to get spectacles. “These here goods is going to Joyce's grocery downtown.” “You know Jay Campbell's place? It's over west a ways.” “I know it. Four, five miles anyway, along the river.” “A stiff hike. I was wondering if I could catch a ride.” “This here ain't no buggy, you know,” the grizzled man said. “It ain't none of your cabs like they got in Des Moines.” “I know that. I was just thinking, if you were going that way --“ “The dray's for hire, I guess. After I get loaded, and unload again down at Joyce's.” “Tell you what, I'll help haul the crates to make up some of my fare.” “Suits me. But I'll tell you right now, you'd make as good time walking.” “I've walked enough for a lifetime. All the way from Ohio. If I've got a chance to ride, I'll take it. Two bits to boot.” “Two bits?” The fluty voice issued from the mouth of the skinny youth. “That's ten miles round-trip.” “I'm not going round trip,” Jim said, startled by the objection. “I'm going one way.” “But we have to get back, though, don't we? Five miles each way, wear and tear on the cart and on the horses, for a quarter-dollar?” “Now, Peg,” the older man said. “It's a fair offer.” “Fair, my left eye. He's looking for a free ride, is all.” “Why,” Jim said in amazement, “you're nothing but a girl.” “I'm sure I'm 'nothing but' to you, but I know a just price when I hear it.” She was, Jim guessed, no more than twelve, with auburn hair pulled up under her cap, a face like a child's fist, and a lanky body made shapeless by the coveralls she wore. “M' daughter, Peggy,” the older man said, the whine of apology in his voice. “She's got a mind of her own, she has. She don't mean no offense.” “I mean what I mean, is all,” Peggy said. “If you really walked all the way from Ohio, five miles will be nothing but a stroll.” “I'll be --” Jim stammered. “By Jesus, forget it, then.” And he stomped off, steaming. He was still hot a mile further on, trudging on stubbornly westward, but increasing aware of a sting at his left heel where a pebble from the gravel roadway had lodged. By the time he reached the west branch of the Iota River, he was limping. On the bank of the stream he sat on the grass, removed his shoe, and knocked out the offending stone. Then he took off the other shoe and both socks and let his feet dangle in the water. He leaned back, shielded his eyes from the sun in the crook of his elbow, and tried to cool down. He'd been foolish, he thought now, to let the girl's gibes prick him. She was just a child, after all, no matter how pugnacious. He grew drowsy. For a time he was transported back to Ohio, to the banks of Wills Creek, by the Salt Fork, where he had been whole and happy. When at last he heard the clump of hooves, the squeak of harness leather, and the crunch of iron tires on the gravel, it was too late to hide. He pretended instead to sleep. But it was no use. The noise of the cart stopped, and a fluty voice pierced the sudden stillness. “Sore feet, is it?” Jim sat up and shaded his eyes with his hand. “Stone in my shoe.” “You must've got tender since you walked out of Ohio,” the girl said. “Lost the callus, I guess.” “What're you doing here?” Jim asked. “Going home. We live down the road a couple miles.” “You mean you were coming this way anyhow?” “What has that to do with anything?” “It enters into the arithmetic, it seems to me.” “A fair price is a fair price.” “Now, Peg,” said the older man, who sat with her on the driver's bench. “We ain't on business, now. We can give the man a lift just for the charity of it.” “I'll pay,” Jim said. “Hop on, anyway,” the man said. “We'll talk about it.” Jim pulled on his socks and shoes and climbed up the bank dragging his laces. The girl gave the reins a shake and the team pulled forward toward the iron bridge. Jim barely had a chance to climb onto the low cart. “Timothy Mahan,” the older man said, half-turned in his seat, offering his hand as the dray rumbled across the bridge. Jim grabbed it and pumped, saying his name. Then he set to tying his laces. “Thought you might be one of them Campbells,” Tim Mahan said. “There's a great parcel of them, I know.” “I was raised with them,” Jim said. “My mother was Jay's sister.” “That's the way it is, then,” Mahan nodded. “Still family, though.” “Still family.” Jim pulled the last bow tight and let his feet hang. “I got quite a tribe m'self,” Mahan said. “All gone off on their own now, 'cept for Peg. Don't know what I'll do when she goes.” “I'm not going for a while, Papa,” the girl piped up. “And when I get a job, you can come live with me.” “Ambitious one, she is,” Mahan said. “Wants to go to college, and all. You been to college, Mister Sherwood?” Jim shook his head. “I never saw the need.” “Nor did I. For teachers, maybe, and them that want to build bridges or buildings. But they got college for everything now, even farming.” “My brother Moody is a banker,” the girl said. “Well, not what I call a banker,” Mahan said. “He works in a bank over to Stockholm, counting checks and like that.” “That what you want to be,” Jim asked the girl, “a banker?” Peg Mahan huffed and pulled a wrinkle into the bridge of her nose. “Anything but. I don't know how Mooney can do it, taking advantage of people like that.” “Like what?” “Lending money, then taking a person's farm if he can't make the payments.” “Now, I don't think Moody does anything like that,” Mahan said. “Moody don't have a mean bone in him.” “He works for them that do, though,” the girl said. “I think you'd make a good lawyer.” The girl hawked and spit off to the side. “I'd rather be a sharp pebble in somebody's shoe.” “That you could do,” Jim said. The team wound along the river road, with the boxelder and willow brush off to the right, fresh-turned fields on the left. As they approached a lane, Tim Mahan said, “This here's our place.” “Drop me here. I can hike the rest of the way.” “Papa said he'd take you,” the girl said, driving on past the lane. “I'll pay then. Whatever you ask.” “Naw,” said Tim Mahan. “All this about money, it's givin' me the hives.” “That settles it,” the girl said. “You're a charity case.” Jim gave up then, and laughed out loud. “You're a real cocklebur, you know that?” “I'll settle for that,” Peg Mahan said, “if the pay's right.” “She gets it from her poor dead mother, is what,” Mahan said. “Squeezing nickels 'til they squeal. M' wife grew up poor and couldn't break the habit, even though we did well enough.” “Long as she shooed you away from the pool halls.” “Now, Peg, it ain't but a natural thing for a man to have a beer now and again.” “Again and again.” “She can't help herself, is what I think, sir. She's her mother all over. Are you married, Mister Sherwood?” “I am.” “Any children to speak of?” “One. A girl.” “Well, then, you'll be seein' what I mean. It is a man's conceit, when he gets married, that he will turn out a tribe that takes after him in all important respects, that they'll be just like him, with all the bad parts cut out. The surprise of it is that the wife has a hand in it, and all the wife's tribe as well, and you end up with offspring about as different from you and from each other as the laws of God and nature will allow.” “What did you expect, Papa? A batch of cookies all alike?” “Well, some small resemblance, at least. It's your mother, the miserliness. The always looking for a row, I suppose, is just Irish. I've cousins who look on a fight as entertainment. You've seen that, no doubt.” “I have,” Jim said. “In my family some have a voice and sing, and others don't and fight. But it's all the same to them. A fist in the eye is as good as a fine high note.” When the dray reached the Campbell lane, Jim jumped off while the girl turned the team. Then he grabbed Tim Mahan's hand to say goodbye, and pressed a quarter into it. “No, now,” Mahan objected, “I said --“ “If not for the ride,” Jim said, “for the entertainment.” “Take it, Papa,” the girl said. “He's too proud for charity.” And she gave the reins a shake and was off down the road again. Jim watched the cart go around the bend, then turned toward the farm place and started up the lane at a trot. The farm reminded him a little of the old Campbell homestead in Ohio, because of the woods, but the farmhouse was the same kind of frame building that had sprung up all over Iowa, built of straight pine imported from Minnesota or Wisconsin or someplace that had trees to spare. The barn, set off to the north of the house, was not as large as the one in Ohio, either. Other weathered outbuildings - a machine shed, a granary, a corncrib, a chicken coop, a pig house - huddled around the bare yard like stoic warriors sitting at council. Still, as he jogged toward the house, he felt in a strange way that he was truly going home. “Jimmy,” Ruth Campbell squealed, swinging wide the screen door and taking him in her arms. “What in the world are you doing here?” “My day off,” Jim said. He gave her a hug. “Had to come see my aunty.” “Where's that wife of yours? How's the baby? Why didn't you bring them along?” Ruth was shaking him gently by the shoulders like a mother upbraiding a child with mild reprimand. “The baby's fine. Too young to travel much yet, we figured. I caught the freight.” “I was just shelling peas for dinner. You can stay, can't you?” Jim nodded. “I'll take the afternoon freight back, about six. Where's Jay?” “Out in the shed with Henry, working on something. Joe's in the fields, tilling. What's your baby girl's name again? I keep forgetting.” “Ida.” “Ida, Ida. It's simple enough. I don't know why I can't get it into my head. Getting old, I guess.” Jim looked at her. Her hair had turned whiter and thinner in the ten years since they'd been in Iowa, and her face was veiled in a net of fine creases, yet she was as lovely as ever, her eyes brimming with infinite compassion. “If you're old, I'm a toad,” he said. Ruth sat at the table and began shucking peas again, splitting the pods with a squeeze and popping out the tender seeds with her thumb. “Tell me about Esther. She still blue?” The peas dropped into a cream-colored ceramic bowl that was already half-filled. “How'd you know she was blue?” “She wrote me. I could tell she was down after the baby came. It's just natural. It happened the same to me, especially after Elizabeth. You've got to be patient with her.” “I try.” “See you do your share with the baby, too. That always helps. The rest, I think, is just time.” “I hope so.” “I've seen women get so down they just about went crazy.” Ruth stared intently at the pod she was working on. “They get to feeling worthless, like a pod with all the peas stripped out. I don't think a man can ever imagine.” “I don't suppose.” Ruth gave him a direct look. “The thing is, they're sore at their husbands for getting them in this fix. And they're jealous of the baby, too, who's getting all the attention now. It's a lonesome way to be.” Jim bobbed his head, not knowing what to say. “How've you been feeling yourself?” “Well, enough, I guess.” The truth was, he'd been feeling something like an empty peapod himself, and with nothing so tangible as the baby for a cause. Because it was without motive, the emptiness was for him unspeakable. Wasn't it crazy to feel something without knowing why? “I miss everybody.” “What do you mean?” “The way it was, I mean, with the family all together.” “So do I. We all do, I suppose. Families are a comfort. But you got a start on one of your own, now.” “Yes.” He shuffled, embarrassed by his mawkishness. “Guess I'll go see Jay and Henry, now.” Ruth smiled. “Maybe you can give them a hand. They've been wrestling with whatever they're doing all morning.” Jim found the machine shed easily enough by following the clang of metal hammering on metal, augmented by the kind of terse, violent outcries men utter to express frustration. The shed doors were swung wide and the front end of a manure spreader protruded from the building. Jim squeezed between the spreader wheel and the door frame. “Sounds like you two could use some help.” Jay Campbell and Henry Burgess looked up simultaneously, moving their heads only, their bodies still frozen in the attitude of men doing a rigorous task, bent against the back corner of the spreader, their hands positioned on the intricate mechanism that drove the rotary tines. “Damnation if it isn't a Sherwood,” Henry Burgess said. “Jimmy,” Jay Campbell said, grinning. “You're just in time. We are about two hands short.” Slowly the two men disentangled themselves from the machinery and stood erect, groaning as though their spines wanted to stay bent. Jay wiped his hand on his coverall bib and held it out. “Careful, I'm all greasy.” Jim grabbed the big hand in his own and squeezed. As usual, Jay's grip overcame his own, and Jim laughed. “I don't know that you need any help, with paws like that.” “He's got but one hand helping him, is the problem,” Henry Burgess said. Henry had lost and arm, a leg, and an eye to Confederate grapeshot. His eyepatch, wooden leg, and iron-gray beard gave him the aspect of an aging pirate. He held out his good hand and shook Jim's. “We haven't seen you in a while,” Henry said. “Where you been, in jail?” “Not yet,” Jim said. “Haven't been caught, so far.” “You still trying to push that engine of yours past a hundred?” “Ninety only. I think I can make it to a hundred, though.” “You'll 'a' invented the first flying machine, at that rate.” “It's time we took a rest,anyway,” Jay said. “Let's get out under the shade trees.” “I'm going to rinse off at the pump,” Henry said. “I got a banged-up knuckle out of that contraption so far. Makes a person want to go back to pitching shit the old way.” “Have Ruth put some iodine on that knuckle,” Jay said. “You don't want it getting infected.” “Don't worry. When you got only one wing, you see to it.” Henry hobbled off on his peg leg toward the pump by the house. Jay led the way to a boxelder near the shed where there was a grinder that looked something like the front end of bicycle, with an iron seat and a huge gray grinding stone for a wheel. Jay sat in the seat and began pumping the pedals. “Might as well get something done today, anyway. Hand me that sickle.” He pointed to a stump where a half dozen tools were arrayed, waiting to be sharpened. “You work while you're resting, too?” Jim asked. “You that far behind?” “At my age you just concentrate on finding some slack.” Jay laid the blade against the whirling stone, and a orange sparks sprayed off like a shower of meteors. “You walk all the way from town?” He yelled over the scrape of the grinder. “Caught a ride with your neighbor down the road. Mahan.” Jim shouted. “The draysman? He's a good man. If we knew you're coming, we'd 'a' met you at the train. What brings you, anyway?” Jim shook his head. Even if he knew for certain, he wouldn't have been able to call it out over the rasp of the grinder. Jay caught his look and pulled the sickle blade back. “What's the matter?” Jim shrugged. “Wife all right, ain't she? The baby?” “They're fine. I just wanted to see you, is all.” Jay let the grinder wind down. “The job?” “It's fine, too, far as it goes.” “How far is that?” “Nowhere, that I can see. Back and forth. Like going in circles.” “It's what you always wanted, running a locomotive.” “I know.” “You got a lost look about you.” “I know where I am. Maybe that's the trouble.” “What's that mean?” “You ever get lonesome for Ohio?” “Sure. That old homestead was a load of work, but it was still a good place to be. I miss the hills and the woods. I don't miss trying to farm all the time on a slant, or pulling stumps, or the rest of it.” “I don't feel like I got any roots any more. It's like the north star has gone wandering.” Jay pulled his brows together and regarded Jim solemnly. “You got the frights, it sounds like to me.” “What's that?” Jay dismounted the grinder and laid the sickle back on the stump. “Just what I call it, for lack of a proper word. The frights. Ascared without knowing what of.” “How can you be scared of nothing?” “That's the thing. I had it, too, when I was young, in Indiana, just starting out, with a new wife and a baby on the way. I tried to lay it off to the wildness of the place, the razorback boar that got into our pigpen, the Indians that showed up from time to time. I got ascared, all right. And I backed down. I went back to Ohio. It took me a long while to get over the shame of it.” Jim shook his head, unbelieving. His father had told him Jay was a brave man, and he'd always believed it. His uncle had been his hero when he was growing up. “You never told me that before.” “It's not something a man goes telling everyone about. -- Here's Henry Back.” “The Missus says we still got an hour before dinner to get something done,” Henry said. He displayed a gauze bandage tied on his index finger. “Says I got to keep this clean, though.” “Keep a glove on it, then,” Jay said. “Come on. With Jimmy holding a sledge to the other end of that axle rod, we'll get that gear banged back on.” After Dinner, Jay sat swaying gently in his rocking chair on the roofed-over back porch while Jim squatted on the stoop. Joe had gone back to tilling, and Henry was looking after something in the barn. Jim could hear his aunt Ruth clearing plates through the screen door to the kitchen. “This is a good time of year to sit outside.” Jay said. “Not so hot as it is later.” “If you don't mind the gnats,” Jim said, fanning the insects away from his face.” “They're nothing to what the mosquitoes will be when they start coming. A person can't hardly sit still a minute, then.” Jay yawned. “Those baby peas and new spuds got me drowsy. I shouldn't 'a' ate some much of them.” “You still getting up before dawn?” “I am, though there's no great call to. Nothing but three cows to milk right now, and Joe could take care of them. But I wake up, and I've got to be doing.” “I have trouble sleeping through the night myself,” Jim said. “It's in the blood, I guess.” He was thinking of those early mornings when he woke up stinging with an urgency to get on with things, as though he was facing some absolute deadline and was running out of time. “Jay?” Jay's head jerked upright. He'd been dozing. “What?” “About what we were talking about before. How did you get over it.” Jay stifled another yawn with the back of his hand. “Time, mostly, I suppose. You see things different, later on. Like looking from a great distance. It don't seem to matter as much.” “You saying you just have to wait?” “Your daddy helped me see things better, too. He'd been in the war and he'd seen men stand and fight and he'd seen them run away. And he didn't hold the fighters in much greater regard than the runners. First and last battles he was in, way he told it, was both defeats, and ended in retreat. But they still done some good, he said. It was all a part of it, and he was in no way regretful of them.” “Except the last one ended up killing him, in time.” Monocacy, outside Frederick, Maryland, Jim was remembering, where his father's leg was shattered with a Minié ball. “It did, but he had some good times in between. Seventeen years. Lots of it painful, without a doubt, but some good, too.” “Must've been. He sired five of us kids during that time.” “He didn't give much credit to how he died, either. You've got to die of something, he told me. It might as well be something you're familiar with.” Jay had his eyes shut, now. Jim was remembering what he could of his father, wondering how much was what he really remembered and how much he'd been told about. He had a letter his father had written, and that seemed more substantial to him than many of his memories. His father's voice was in the words, and when he read them, it was almost like hearing his father speak. But seventeen years of off-and-on suffering was something that he could hardly imagine. “Where will I be in seventeen years, I wonder?” Jay was breathing heavily now, almost asleep. “Good 'n' bad,” he mumbled. “Run 'n' fight.” Then his chin dropped down onto his chest and he slept. In repose, his face was smooth, untroubled. He was crowned with white hair, now, that had been wine red once. A king asleep on his throne. Singers and fighters, Jim was thinking. Heroes and fools. On the way back to Nevada, Jim rode the caboose. The conductor and the brakeman offered him some vitriolic coffee and they sat facing him on the padded benches, still talking about Casey Jones. “He was to blame,” the brakeman said. “No doubt about that.” “All the same,” the conductor said, “he held on, by God.” “It comes down to that, I guess,” Jim offered. “It comes down to holding on. Nothing else to do.” |