Peace Like a River

by Leif Enger

  “We’re out of food, Reuben,” she answered.

  Having used great gestures describing the canoe I planned to purchase and the adventures we would enjoy thereafter, it irritated me that she would change the subject.

  “Well, let’s go get some then.”

  “We can’t.”

  I really did need it spelled out for me; the truth is, I’d been wondering when Swede would take the initiative and suggest we go up to the Red Owl for groceries. We often did the shopping, the two of us, pulling our painted wagon, Dad’s money in my pocket; in the winter we used a toboggan.

  “If we spend any more money right now,” she said, “we shall be broke.”

  Her emphasis on shall put me in mind, as it was certainly meant to, of Pastor Reach, whose inflections left you in no doubt of his good sense. I was smitten into silence while Swede stacked dishes in the sink and ran water on them and waited for me to make myself gallant.

  But I was more interested in canoes than gallantry. I was annoyed that we were out of money and Christmas almost here; also that Swede knew we were out of money before I did, and her younger than me. I was annoyed that I’d worked hard to earn twenty-five dollars and now would have to give my twenty-five dollars to Otto Schock, the Red Owl man. There was a lot to be annoyed about, and I could afford to grouse because Dad had eaten his small breakfast and thanked us and gone back straightaway to his bed of exhaustion. I stood festering in the kitchen. “You don’t want a canoe, then?”

  I like to believe we have all said things that approach this in stupidity.

  Swede didn’t answer but swabbed the dishes and rinsed them and laid them up to dry. Normally I’d have taken a towel and wiped them myself, but it’s difficult to do productive work and fume simultaneously—the labor dissipates your righteous steam—so I stood glaring at the back of her little blond head, which was tilted in thoughtful mien. Sensing she was going to say something sagacious, I started to leave the kitchen but was too late.

  “In Little Women,” she said—see?—“when Jo cut off her hair and sold it to pay for Marmee’s train fare—you remember?”

  Well, of course I remembered. After the shearing Jo had gone home and stunned them all with her sacrificial present, the profit from her bounteous hair, her one beauty, as her sisters so backhandedly put it.

  “If Marmee had begged Jo to go cut off her hair and sell it,” Swede hypothesized, “I wonder how heroic a thing it would have been.”

  I didn’t say anything. But I thought: Aw, crumb.

  Here are some of the things we bought, Swede and I, having propped Dad in bed with a cup of beef tea: Aunt Jemima syrup in a brown bottle, twenty pounds of white Robin Hood flour, a sack of raisins and another of currants, two gallons of whole milk, a three-pound can of Hills Brothers coffee, a box of chocolates, free, Otto Schock swore, of clandestine jellies, and a Christmas turkey, purchased live from the poultry-man on the edge of town, who had me hold the bird’s legs as he beheaded it—how they flailed and pounded in my palms; that creature just flung me all over the yard. Strangely it was the coffee Dad seemed most happy to see and which, brewed, caused our home to feel again like a place where we might live right-side-up. Dad hummed “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen,” as he measured grounds into the basket and lit the gas; the pot ticked as it heated; and as it perked a smell came forth like the sunlit hillsides of Mexico, a smell like morning camps described by Theodore Roosevelt in his days as a rancher in North Dakota. Then Dad sat at the kitchen table with a white ceramic cup all asteam and his King James before him and, seeing me, reached out to seize me at the muscle.

  “That’s a hero’s arm,” he declared. “Thank you, Rube, for stepping in. I’ll get strong now—look here,” and he shadowboxed a moment where he sat, his hands quick again like Davy’s.

  “I know it,” I said, for his eyes were clear and his voice had unmuddied and found its register again.

  Then somebody knocked, and when I poked my head out the kitchen Swede was admitting a man in a gray pinstripe suit. His hair was brown and flattened round his temples as if he’d just removed a fedora. He had a slick ID card in his hand and he was sniffing our newly rejuvenated air.

  “Is that coffee fresh?” he asked.

  It has been a defining trait of our family: The moment some simple but meaningful treat is prepared, a good fish soup or the first pot of coffee in weeks, up trots some uninvited person with an appetite.

  The man in the suit was named Andreeson. He was a federal investigator and had the boldness to state that he expected to nab Davy before the turn of the year. He used that word, nab, and I thought Swede might kick him or perhaps lurch suddenly with the coffee, for she was serving him a cup. I hoped she would—he was smug, clearly an enemy—but she set the coffee primly before him and Andreeson picked it up and sipped without acknowledging the hospitality and said to Dad, “He’s just a kid still, after all. Gonna get pretty lonesome this time of year. He’s going to make contact with you, Mr. Land. You want to do the right thing when he does.”

  “Which is?” Dad didn’t care much for Andreeson either. Andreeson could tell it and eased his tone a little.

  “I know you don’t want your son hurt. So when he calls you or writes to you or however he does it, just do what’s best for him.” Andreeson slipped a card from the vest pocket of his suit. “You can reach me here.”

  “I didn’t know you fellows were interested,” Dad said. It wasn’t impertinence, it was the truth. Until now we’d had speech with local cops, county cops, and state cops. Andreeson was our first fed. Naturally, I disliked him from the start.

  “We suspect he’s crossed state lines. That makes him our job.”

  Dad stood and remained standing until Andreeson had to also. Dad said, “Well, thanks for coming by.”

  “When he gets in touch, Mr. Land, you’ve got my number.”

  Dad smiled at the floor a moment—so thin you could see his strength was not his own—then looked up and replied: “Mr. Andreeson, you and I will not speak again.”

  That night Swede told me the story of how Cole Younger was brought in after the bank raid in Northfield—Cole and his brother James and a couple others. Twenty bullet holes they had between the four of them, eleven in Cole alone. They weren’t his first, either—why, he had seven or eight others healed and aching from previous encounters. What sort of specimen do you need to be to survive carnage on that order? But in they came at last, the bloodied Youngers, and Swede told me how they were paraded in chains through the streets, and how the citizens gathered in grief and outrage to watch them pass, flinging stones and horse manure; for the Youngers as I well knew had come to town with the James boys Frank and Jesse and in result a handsome, shy, and newly married bank teller named Heywood lay cold and suited in the parlor of his mother’s house. This was the question on the minds of the righteous: Which of these haggard devils had done for Mr. Heywood? The question was directed most pointedly to Cole, who’d been in the bank when the shots were fired.

  “Night before Cole went on trial,” she said, “the sheriff, Paxton, went in his cell. He gave Cole paper and ink, saying, ‘Sir, if you will name Heywood’s killer, I will personally solicit for your freedom.’” Swede was quiet, in the dark bedroom, and I imagined the tired and oft-perforated outlaw lying in his cell, knowing a word could condemn the guilty man and buy himself liberty at the same time. Putting myself in like position, saying it were I who’d been shot eleven times and, for example, old Raymond who’d put the lead to Heywood, I’d have broken three ink pens in my rush to impart the truth. Of course Raymond was only six, but big enough to have done the job.

  And what did Mr. Younger do?

  “In the morning,” Swede said, with great portent, “Paxton came for his answer. It was early—just sunrise.” She let this sink a moment so I could see what she was seeing: the sheriff standing at the cell door, his head bowed slightly, a fist at his lips. There’d be a pale-pink barstriped window; there’d be the dawn-lit
form of Cole rising to cross the cell. Yes, and I could even hear it happening: the sheriff clearing his throat, the chipping of some bird at the outset of day, the groan of the bunk as Cole heaved himself off and moved to the door with the folded paper.

  “He handed it through the bars and turned his back,” Swede whispered. “Paxton looked at the paper and it said, Be true to your friends—though the heavens fall!”

  Dazzled, I told her it was the best thing a mortal ever did. Immediately my conscience yelped. After all, a person has to remember Colonel Travis and his line in the dirt at the Alamo; a person can’t forget the pirate Lafitte, saving New Orleans in the War of 1812 when fighting for the British would’ve made him rich. Without such acts what good is history? But I mentioned none of this to Swede. She’d worked awfully hard to set that scene. What did it hurt me to be generous?

  The good thing about our reduced circumstances, going into Christmas, was that our expectations changed. They lowered themselves to a worthy place. After walking in on my gaunt father I didn’t think about Spartacus anymore; after the money was spent, I was glad it had bought coffee and flour instead of any canoe. Of course we missed the suspense associated with lumpy stockings; we missed the call of the parcels; we missed the Christmas spruce. Swede especially wanted a tree and at the last minute hung a few pathetic bulbs outside, in one visible from our kitchen window. It was an old hackberry stunted from bad soil. Even grass had a hard time in Roofing, but a hackberry’s tough and knobbly as an old man.

  Swede rose early and, gritting her teeth against the world, set about preparing more Christmas dinner than we could ever consume. We’d got that turkey I mentioned, him of the will to live; he went more than fifteen pounds. We had a heavy glass bowl of cranberries Dr. Nokes had brought over, along with a pie from Mrs. Nokes called a bob-andy pie, a creamy thing I have looked for since without success. We had sweet potatoes, though Swede in her exuberance went a little large with the brown sugar. All these things she went ahead with on Christmas Eve day because she simply could not wait for the twenty-fifth. “I need Christmas now,” she said, her hands cupped with bread crumbs disappearing into the bird.

  And so during the day our appetites rose; food appeared raw on counters and was pounded and rubbed, seasoned and put to cook. Our expectations were caught and surmounted by smells—an encyclopedic warmth of poultry, potato, ovened fruit, honey, yeast, coffee. Dad slept the morning through and in the afternoon woke agitated under the weight of smells. When he walked past me I heard his stomach growl—no, it snorted, like a buck in rut, the healthiest sound he’d produced in weeks. All that long afternoon we stalked the house while Swede fussed and the smells rose up and the sun sank down; and when finally the plates were arranged and the cider poured and Swede lit a candle and pronounced a call for Christmas dinner, two things happened.

  Dad laughed aloud for pure delight.

  And someone climbed up on our porch and knocked.

  Did you see that coming? You ought’ve, I would say; by now, you ought’ve. And yet so humble were our expectations for this Christmas—so glad were we to simply have our dad upright and able to laugh and his stomach to growl—not even uninvited guests could quench us. And Dad himself went to the door, and when he opened it in stepped our good friend Mr. DeCuellar with his resplendent wife, whose hair was done up in red and silver ribbons, and in they came shouting Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! and to me they handed a long box which turned out to hold a reflecting telescope of astonishing power; and to Swede they gave a pair of boots and a lariat with a ring of polished steel; and into Dad’s hand they pressed a key and told him to look, look out at the street. Four weeks ago, the traveling salesman Tin Lurvy had taken ill in a hotel room in Idaho; he had driven himself to a hospital in the wee hours, and though he parked safely his poor heart burst before he turned off the ignition, so that he sat there behind the wheel until dawn, his engine idling smoothly. And in his will Tin Lurvy left his house to an uncle and his car to a nephew, and to Jeremiah Land he had left his brand-new 1963 Airstream trailer, a twenty-footer with a kitchen and every necessary thing, a luxurious purchase Tin had saved toward for years. And the reason we didn’t know this earlier was that our telephone service had been cut off. I’d wondered, once or twice, why nobody called.

  I don’t have the gift to aptly describe the rest of that evening, except to say it was a Christmas Eve beyond all gasping wishes, and that even the absence of Davy seemed somehow more temporal and bearable because of the DeCuellars’ appearance and Tin Lurvy’s marvelous benediction. In fact, we moved our whole dinner out to the Air-stream, which Tin himself had never used; we lit the stove for heat and carried out the candle and the turkey and everything. And later, when the conversation was low and I had set up the telescope and was taking turns with Dad and Mr. DeCuellar looking at the moon, I asked Dad why he kept laughing—what a sound that was, his laugh, low and confident again, like your best friend’s laugh in the darkness when you’ve believed he was gone forever.

  And Dad said, Because I was praying this morning; and I prayed Lord, send Davy home to us; or if not, Lord, do this: Send us to Davy.

  The Substance of Things Hoped For

  REMEMBER AUGUST SHULTZ, IN WHOSE BARLEY I MADE THE MOST PANICKED job a boy ever did of shooting a wild goose?

  At the bottom of a January cold snap we received a three-cent postcard from August:

  Hello All

  Old friend Speedy came by last night. I wondered if he would and By Goodness he did. Weaselly skinny but strong, sends regards, we were glad to have him, Birdie had kielbasa, it went fast!

  Aug & Birdie

  PS: Best to your friend Andreeson

  Do you think that put Dad in an excellent humor? Swede came from the post office in high color, flagwaving that card, which confirmed what she’d been feeling for weeks—that Davy was all right; that he was gone west in the persistent fashion of outlaws; that he remained the big brother who loved us all, Christmas card or no. Wickedly satisfying to Swede was August’s postscript; the hated fed must’ve made himself apparent to our friends in North Dakota, the louse.

  Well, Swede was ready right then to step into the Airstream and ride to the western sun. Dad himself was close to ready. The day after Christmas he’d begun preparing to leave. Understand, this was done on faith alone. Keep in mind we hadn’t yet heard from August Shultz; keep in mind we’d had no word at all, no hint of eye nor ear nor tingling spine as to where our boy was aimed. And yet Dad began to stock up. Cash was a difficulty, so he commenced to lay hold of unattached items around the house and sell them, doing so with an impish glee. His bedroom mirror went first, a useless piece of furniture given who owned it, and it brought three dollars, which turned into fifteen cans of pork and beans from the Red Owl. The beans went into the deep, mesmerizing pantry of the Airstream; a monstrous and comforting hole, you could stack food in there all morning. Dad next sold two pine dressers for five dollars each—he bought a case of Dinty Moore, two canned hams, some hash. He sold a creeper long used to get under the Plymouth and change the oil—one dollar, eight cans of chicken noodle. Each day familiar things went away from us; each day Dad, normally lackadaisical about commerce, tallied up the take and what food it might procure. Faith brought this about. Faith, as Dad saw it, had delivered unto us the Airstream trailer, and faith would direct our travels.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Dr. Nokes demanded. I think he feared the sickness had touched the part of Dad’s brain in charge of good sense. “What do you have for directions?” he asked.

  And Dad, eyebrows raised in delight with his forthcoming answer, said, “I have the substance of things hoped for. I have the anticipation of things unseen.”

  Dr. Nokes told him point-blank he was out of his mind. Dad laughed aloud. Ten minutes later with the doctor looking on he sold his own bed, minus the putrescent mattress, to a couple who appeared stuttering on our porch. They’d just bought their first home, a neat shack with red paint
faded to a newlywed’s blush; impoverished by this bold purchase they’d slept on the floor until the young man, killing salamanders with a spade in the dirt basement, found a mildewed linen bag strung up in the joists. The bag contained seven Liberty dollars. They loaded Dad’s bed on a creaking trailer and drove off, waving as if we were fond relatives. Dr. Nokes walked away in disgust. Chuckling, Dad spread the silver dollars before us to admire. He wrote a list and told us to pull the toboggan up to Otto Schock’s: noodles, tuna, bouillon, dry milk, salt, crackers, hard storage apples, chocolate bars. We elbowed and noogied all the way to the store. We were swept up, I tell you. Infected with something. Events seemed a wide water into which we’d stepped only to be yanked downstream toward some joyful end. We piled food into the trailer while Dad did the things necessary to go away for who knew how long: he drained pipes, rope-caulked windows, and otherwise buttoned down the house; while we watched from inside he dragged his mattress to a backyard snowbank and soaked it with kerosene and stood back in his canvas parka and threw on a match. It was well past dark and flames poured up showing the whole orange snowbound yard, the paintless garage, the fingery misshapen hackberry tree, the black straightup shape of Dad. How could we not believe the Lord would guide us? How could we not have faith? For the foundation had been laid in prayer and sorrow. Since that fearful night, Dad had responded with the almost impossible work of belief. He had burned with repentance as though his own hand had fired the gun. He had laid up prayer as if with a trowel. You know this is true, and if you don’t it is I the witness who am to blame.