Bottomland

by Michelle Hoover

  TUESDAY MEETING

  COUNCIL OF NATIONAL DEFENSE

  SEVEN IN THE EVENING

  THE ELLIOTS

  At the riverbank, I turned at last to see Tom standing alone on the porch. I waved, but he ducked inside. A strange boy, but strange didn’t mean badness. He could hardly rope a calf, least of all harm a girl, and surely Dora kept him in line. But if there were men like Tom Elliot after the war, how many worse had come home?

  When Patricia saw me across the fields, she gave a sad shake of her head. The Clarks might have made for an easier visit, the group of them being the more talkative, but as a family of women—three rabbity sisters and their mother, their father an invalid in his bed—talk was often all they did. Agnes ran ahead of Patricia to the chicken pen, a coat across her shoulders and my dress dragging behind her. Off to the east, Ray worked the horses, bent to press the blades of the harrow to level the fields. I thought of the broken chair, the way Ray had so easily snapped the leg in two, despite his ruined hand. The girls must have propped the chair up to block the door, or someone had, making it difficult to leave the room or enter it. But who did they want to keep out—or in? At night, Father always locked the main doors both inside and out. He kept the keys on the hook by his bed, and I carried the same in the pocket of my apron. Through the fabric, I felt for their dull weight. Across the pasture, Patricia called my name, the sound like a swarm of insects. A grunt from the fields, and there was my brother bent over his work, his shoe coming down on the harrow’s spine as if he had hit a stone. He had no time to search for the girls, not when they’d only run off on a stunt—or so he believed. Now Ray moved like a dark shape in those fields, driving the horses as hard as he could.

  “Someone must have taken them,” Patricia said. “That’s what I think.”

  She scurried about the kitchen, gathering plates. I kept my tongue. Already the house had fallen into disarray, the beds from the morning unmade, the wash only just drying, and still the door open at the top of the stairs. The boys would come in soon from the fields though dinner would be late. Ray had insisted we finish the day’s work and have our evening meal as if nothing had changed. “They’ll be home before nightfall,” he said. Now the sun had dropped low behind the washhouse. Another hour, and the light would be gone altogether. Patricia stared out the window, worrying the rings on her fingers. “It’s terrible. Terrible.”

  “Oh, come,” I said.

  “There was that twelve-year old girl in Le Mars,” she went on. “Alta Brown, Braun, something or other. They found her near those railroad tracks for the Illinois Central. Neighbor thought she was a store dummy lying there ’til she found out it wasn’t. One day the girl was in her bed. The next, gone.”

  “You can’t believe every story you hear.”

  “But it wasn’t a story,” she said. “They printed it in the newspaper.”

  “Well.”

  “And what about Villisca? A whole family killed in their sleep. By a minister no less.”

  “This isn’t Villisca,” I said. “It isn’t anywhere close.”

  “It most certainly isn’t.” Patricia dropped a clean set of plates on the table. “You can never be sure of a place. That’s all I’m saying.”

  My knife slipped on a potato skin, a bloody gash. I wet my finger in my mouth.

  “And that window in their room . . . ,” Patricia started again.

  “That window isn’t much larger than my hips.”

  Agnes rushed in, my dress pinned so it drooped like an apron. I didn’t have the heart to tell her to go to her room to find something else. “Myrle could have gotten through.”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “And Myrle is far too timid.”

  “Someone came through that window,” Patricia groaned. “Some strange little man.”

  “No one would have seen him,” Agnes added.

  “Stop it, the both of you. I don’t see the use in talking this way.” My finger pulsed, the taste of blood in my mouth. I bit it until it bled again. “As far as we know, the girls lost track of time and are staying in town.” But there was no place for the girls to stay overnight, even I knew that. They had never kept away from home for so long.

  Agnes sat at the table, her eyes turned up in thinking. The girl was bookish and no taller than my waist, far too stunted for her eighteen years. When she spoke, her voice sounded clipped, as if counting off facts on her fingers. “There’s a trunk missing too,” she said. “The one we kept in the front hall. It’s gone.”

  “Father got rid of that trunk last year. I’m sure of it.”

  “And the chair?” Agnes asked. “I read a story like that. A man blocks the door with a chair after he kills his wife. That way, he keeps anyone from finding out until he’s miles off.”

  “For heaven’s sakes,” Patricia said.

  “You shouldn’t be reading such things . . .” But before I could finish, my brothers swept through the door, their shirts caked with muck.

  “Good Lord in Mercy.” Patricia laid a hand to her chest. “You near scared me to death.”

  “Wash yourselves,” I said.

  Ray grimaced. “Aren’t they back?”

  “We should have gone to town,” Lee complained.

  “Yes.” I sighed. “But Ray wanted to wait.”

  Ray sat at the table, leaning hard on his elbows. “We can go tomorrow, first thing, if they aren’t back. You, myself, and Lee.”

  Agnes pursed her lips. “Do we really need to tell everyone?”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  Father’s footsteps sounded in the yard. He opened the kitchen screen and sank into a corner chair. In his overalls and old leather hat, the one that smelled of smoke and damp, he gazed at the floor, his face hidden except for his beard. The cuffs of his pants were muddy from the river, a leaf sticking to the foot of his cane.

  “We’ll go to town at first light,” Ray said. “We’ll find them there, or someone will have seen them.”

  “I will go with you,” Father said.

  “It would be better you didn’t. With all the trouble . . .”

  Father raised his chin and Ray hushed. I set a cold plate of chicken on the table, a bowl of potatoes, and a loaf of our farmer’s bread. The boys eyed the chicken, hands in their laps. The sun was setting. Through the window, the light blazed on the horizon until it vanished. “It’s the only dinner we’ve got,” I said. “We didn’t have the time. Not with the girls . . .”

  Father snapped his cane. “I will go with you.”

  We held our breaths.

  “All right,” Ray let out.

  “Right,” Father said. His hand trembled and he clasped it with the other, as if praying.

  “Well now.” Patricia pushed at the meat with her fork, her voice strained. “Eat up, why don’t you?” We stared at our plates. The room seemed too full with all of us at once, the chicken an ugly cut of meat. Only Ray dared pick up his knife. A speck of rain struck the windows, the drops cold and sharp, then a rush. “Oh,” Patricia sighed. And soon she was sighing and more. “Oh, those girls.”

  That night we lay awake in our beds, listening for the sound of footsteps in the yard. Sleep, it seemed a hollow chore. I thought of how young Myrle had looked in her nightgown. Her feet left their wet prints, as if she’d just stepped from a bath, and she held something in her hand. Myrle never lied. She had never before hidden anything from us. Esther was different. The way she’d stood at the top of the stairs, as if a warning. Then the thudding sound that had woken me again: A door closed? A hammer fallen? The chair wedged beneath the knob? How easy it would have been to pull the nails from the window and pry it open. I could imagine doing so myself. What if I had stepped out of my room a minute sooner? What if I had never gone to sleep at all?

  It was months ago that Myrle had taken to her bed. She’d come down with a sickness,
or so Esther had called it—so sudden and without reason that we thought to fetch the doctor, but Ray insisted we couldn’t spare the expense. “She’s in one of her fits,” he said. I can’t say I didn’t agree. Myrle, our little bird. Once she almost cut off her hand while grinding feed in the shed. Why, if I had never snapped a finger at her, who knows if she would have reached her fourteenth year.

  She asked for the curtains closed, the door locked, a lantern lit in her room all hours of the night. With blankets to her chin, she stared as if death himself stood at the foot of her bed. That girl, so pale her veins seemed to ravage her skin, her white-blond hair unwashed and wet with sweat. She was little more than a gown and bones between the blankets. “You can’t go on like this,” I scolded her. But the loss of a mother can turn a girl inward, no matter the time since. Myrle twisted away.

  Later I often found Esther in Myrle’s bed, whispering in her sister’s ear. Myrle’s eyes were open for the first time in days. A rash had spread from her cheeks to her throat, so fevered I yanked the blankets from her. Esther snatched them up again, as if I’d done something shameful—and for a moment I did feel ashamed, gazing at my sister, her nightgown thin over her breasts and stomach, the skin of her neck hot to the touch. Myrle, our beauty, even in her sickly state. Why, when she was born, none of us could keep our eyes off her, carrying her from room to room as if she were a pet.

  Mother would have done better. The moment she sensed the door at the top of the stairs was stuck, Mother would have come awake. Why, the house might be empty with every one of us in the fields, and several rooms off Mother could sense a window open just an inch. But I had gone back to bed as if sleep was what needed me most, and now my sisters were missing. Before she died, Mother had taken my hand and craned her neck from her pillow. “What a girl you are, Nan,” she said. “So tall.” Then her gaze settled and her consonants grew long, as if speaking two languages at once. With Father, German sounded a march, but Mother’s throaty vowels were bread and milk and eggs. “You might not have your own, my girl,” she whispered. “But those sisters of yours, they’ll be everything to you. And you’ll be everything to them.”

  The town had not seen us together for many months, not after what Governor Harding had done. Why, if German wasn’t to be spoken in public, if even God could not understand a prayer in the German tongue—as our governor had said in his speech—then Germans and their brood might not be welcome in public, not all at once. And when only one of our brothers could serve, we had caused plenty of suspicion. Though we were born in this land and a part of it, still Father and his accent made traitors of us. More than a year had passed since the war’s end, but the town’s sense of wrongdoing remained.

  “Well now,” Lee said. The wagon pulled to a stop. He stabbed a finger in his ear. Agnes tied the horses and held close to their collars. Ours was a small town—the main street was three blocks long, with a handful of crossings, all of them dirt. The market squatted under an awning bagged with rain. The town hall stood with its one-eyed clock, the door closed and locked with a bolt. Off the end of the row, the doctor’s house stood quiet, unused most months, a shop of trinkets at the other end. There was a trading post as well, open only on Wednesdays—and only, some said, when the man needed dollars for a bottle. Now even his windows were dark. The town was windswept, the buildings peeling paint. Still, this being a Saturday and harvest, a dozen or more children raced underfoot, men bent to haul their baskets to the market. Their daughters walked the street in their handmade hats, but none of them were my sisters. Not even close.

  Ray lifted his boots and landed in the street in a spit of mud. “Ready?”

  “I am staying,” Father said.

  I turned my head. “You’re staying?”

  He crossed his arms over his stomach. “If they see the wagon, they will surely come, and you will be off and I will have found them.” He seemed calmed by this idea. When he took off his hat, his forehead was smooth, only a tight red line from the brim.

  Ray held my arm. “Leave him be. It’ll be easier.”

  “Easier for who?”

  I headed to the market alone. A half dozen customers crowded the aisles, more than I had ever seen at once, though the shelves themselves were spotty with stock. After the war, the newspapers had predicted more of everything—hay and seed, canned vegetables, even meat—but not here. Few in town could pay the price. I stood at the door and wiped my feet. The place smelled of sour milk, and my sisters were nowhere about. Still, a group of women rushed toward me from the counter. I couldn’t back out the door in time.

  “Nan,” the first called. It was one of the Clarks, flanked by her younger twins. Their mother swept in and the girls followed, taking their plump little steps. “The hens,” Esther called them, and once at the county fair, my sister had ducked under their bench and pinned their skirts. The next day Mother visited their house to handle the complaint.

  “Aren’t they back?” Mrs. Clark asked.

  I shook my head.

  “But they must be somewhere. I can’t even imagine.”

  Her daughters reached for my wrists. “It’ll be all right.”

  “They’re probably home,” another said. “You’ll open the door and there they are.”

  “So much fuss,” the youngest let out.

  “What if they were taken?” The oldest said this under her breath. “The men, they’re so desperate these days.”

  “I really must go,” I said. At my shoulder was the flat square of wall where Old Elliot’s sign had been, though different signs hung there now—one begging a price for feed, the other selling acres of land. I imagined the group of them, the Elliots and the Clarks, the Conners, Wilkersons, and others, huddling in Old Elliot’s parlor during the war. Something has got to be done, Elliot had said, and the women glanced at each other, wondering what that something might be. But our neighbors had plenty else to blame us for. Of the farms to the west of town, we owned the better land, the largest house, and the cleanest barn. Why, if we hadn’t given the Clarks half our seed three springs before last, they never would have survived the season. But there was always something to be done about kindness, especially a kindness that reminded a person what little they had.

  “Nan,” Mrs. Clark said. “You’ll let us know? If someone did something to your girls, the same could happen to any of us.” In the corner, a woman and her son had turned to listen. An elderly man set down his basket of apples, his head cocked. “Really, I must be going,” I said again. It was no use. In only hours, everyone in town would know the girls were gone, and now this knowing seemed worse than before. What kind of help would it be, if it only kept our names on their tongues?

  The door of the market banged closed at my back. At the window, the sisters pushed together to watch. I hurried my steps. Our girls could be caught up with the trinkets at the shop. They could have taken refuge in the church, the doctor’s. I searched the streets, ducked into corners, peeked inside wagons, and opened doors. The streets were sodden, the walkways splintered under the morning rush. When I spied one of my siblings, we raised a hand to each other and shook our heads before running off.

  “Well, look who it is.”

  I stumbled to a stop. Dora, my old school friend.

  “Don’t be so jumpy, Nan. I haven’t seen you in town in such a long while.”

  “No?” I asked. Dora studied me down her nose. I had seen her in town often enough myself, and even more across our fields. She was an Elliot now, after all.

  “My dear, you look terrible.”

  I touched the back of my hair. “Have you seen Esther and Myrle?”

  “Those two. Are you still after them like a mother?”

  “If you know where they are . . .”

  “Why ever would I?” She drew close to me and took my arm. She’d grown fat, her stomach taut under her dress, and I thought I might reach out to touch her, thr
ee months along she must have been or more—though I knew she’d been married less. It was a game we had played as girls, pushing dolls underneath our skirts, but never did we imagine forcing the man to offer a ring. “They’re terrible, aren’t they? Especially Esther,” she went on. “I didn’t want to say, but Nan, you’ve gotten so thin. What do you have of your own?”

  I drew in my chin. “If you haven’t seen them . . .”

  “No, I haven’t. But they must be somewhere.”

  I pulled my arm from her and she almost fell. “I’ve got to get back.”

  “Oh, Nanny, don’t be angry. I was just saying, isn’t it time you let go?”

  “Thank you, Dora,” I said. “I hadn’t realized I didn’t have that, something of my own.”

  “Nan,” she called again, but I was off. Still that swelling beneath her dress stayed with me, my feet on the stones seeming narrow and hard. We’d sat in the same grade together, Dora and I, the desks for the other children lined up at our backs. Only Carl McNulty sat in front with us, tapping my chair with his foot. In that single room, Carl needed the extra watching, or so the teacher had said. Dora and I had been the smart ones. The teacher had said that as well. Why, if not for the war, we might have become teachers ourselves. And Carl and I, we might have become more.

  When I found our wagon again, Father sat alone on the bench, his chin to his chest. “Nan,” he sighed, wiping his face.

  I took his hand. In the quiet between us, he squeezed my fingertips. “They didn’t come.” The morning was turning dark. Clouds thickened. Father dropped my hand. One by one, my siblings appeared without a word and climbed in. Ray snatched the reins and the horses lurched into the road.