Bottomland

by Michelle Hoover

  A clank of metal from inside the Elliot barn. I opened the door. The barn was dark save for a lantern lit too close to the floor. Another fire flared from the back wall. When it flared again, I made out the shadow of the man in his mask. He cut a wide sheet of tin with his torch, awkward for him to hold both torch and tin at once. The threat of rain, it must have driven him in. I took another step. A growl stopped me short. Two of the Elliot pups itched in the corner of the closest stall, large as wolves. With their chins on their paws, they bared their teeth. At last Elliot turned off his torch.

  “Hess?”

  I stood with my hat in my hands and eyed the dogs. “Margrit sends her best.”

  Elliot stepped from the dark. His eyes were red, the skin of his chest blotchy where the mask had failed to cover him. He sat on a bale of hay. “Hess.”

  “I thought I might call over myself.”

  Elliot worked his mouth. I found my own bale of hay. It was shorter than his and closer to the man than I might have wished.

  “So you make yourself at home these days,” he said.

  “Home? Nothing of the sort.”

  Elliot checked the dogs with a glance. Outside, spots of rain stung the tin roof.

  “I know what you want,” said Elliot.

  “Is that right?”

  His eyes widened.

  “Margrit was worried. It seems our boys had a spat a few months ago at the old Aster place. Ray earned himself a black eye, though it healed well enough. I am afraid this is the earliest I have had a chance . . .”

  The man gazed at me. “Aster doesn’t live there anymore.”

  “Yes, but the boys have taken it as some sort of den. Your Tom never told you?”

  “Tom. What would he be telling me about?”

  I cocked my head. “About the fight of course.”

  “Who’s fighting?”

  “It might have been Ray who started it. It might have been your own.”

  “Tom signed up for the merchant marines. He left a month ago for training. It’ll be France next.”

  I leaned back from the stink of his breath.

  “What do you plan to do, Hess? Scout out my barn? Run your water through that?” His torch had dropped to the hay-covered floor. He tore off his gloves. Underneath, his fingers were the dark leather of summer, as were mine.

  “I have been meaning to talk to you. We could help shore up your side as I did my own.”

  “My southeast acres are mud.”

  “They would not have been if you worked with us.”

  His eyes flashed. I raised my palm.

  “I know you are short on help, especially now with Tom gone.”

  “You’ve got two,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “And not a one of them is going over there, is he?”

  “Ray registered last week, just like the others. We are hoping he will hear nothing until after harvest. And Lee is too young.”

  “That means no.”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “What I thought.” He lifted one leg after another from the bale, lowered the mask over his face. He fired the tank, his mask alight. His eyes behind it thought nothing of me and my two sons.

  “Joseph!” A voice from outside. With his torch going, Elliot was deaf to it. I caught his arm. The voice called out a second time.

  Elliot bounded after it and I followed. Mary stood on their front porch waving an envelope. On seeing me, she tightened her shawl and rushed over to meet us. “Julius!” she said. “We’ve got a letter from our Tom.” She seized my hand. The woman in the last month must have aged tenfold. Her hair had fallen loose, her eyes shadowed. She offered only a flicker of a smile. “Are your boys gone as well?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Lee is not of age.”

  “Of age?” The woman released my hand. She eyed her husband and touched her fingers to her cheek. “Why, I don’t even know what that means.”

  Elliot led her back to their porch. The letter she crushed in her grip. The rain swelled. She fell into his side as they hurried, covering the envelope with her shawl. I blinked against the rush. The rain soaked the roof of their house, the timbers dark. Elliot never looked back and Mary, she had not invited me in, no matter the weather. Now they shut the door between us.

  I stumbled home. Far off, the reaper stood motionless in the field. No sign of Ray or Lee with it. The horses stirred, strapped to the machine. I hurried to unleash them. The younger and smaller of the two appeared skittish, the river at her side gaining. As I led the horses to the barn, the young one strayed, brushing the flank of the male as often as she could. In their stables, I settled them both.

  Outside, I gazed at the house. No one was in the yard, not even at the windows. The rain had stopped, the clouds broken. A glare of sun struck the glass. Smoke rose from the back, though it was far too early for supper. I quickened my steps. In the kitchen, a confusion of voices. I tore open the door. Inside, my children crowded the table. Margrit hurried to the stove where a large pot of water boiled, her apron thick with flour and more.

  “Father!”

  Margrit looked up. “Oh God, Julius.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s Ray,” cried Agnes. “Lee carried him in.”

  My wife stood at the end of the table and rent a rag in half. Ray lay with his arm stretched over his head and bleeding. The flour from his mother’s baking clung to him. He kicked like a dog. The girls tried their best to hold his legs. Margrit grabbed hold of his arm and bound the rag tight, tearing off the end with her teeth. Lee hovered near the door. The front of his overalls were a bloody brown, his lips moving. “Thought Telly was all right. I thought she was.” Nan rushed from the stove with another rag and set to cleaning Ray’s arm. He swore at her. The rag turned dark.

  “Julius,” Margrit called. “Ready the wagon. We have to take him to the doctor.”

  “But what . . . ?”

  “Julius, now!”

  Ray was lucky, the doctor said. A crushed hand, lost to the ropes of the reaper’s bullwheel, when he could have lost the arm. Yet how opposite of lucky such a hand was for a farmer or his son. Lee finished most of the work for the two of them. His older brother might milk a cow and carry wood. He could only just grip an ax. Yet the finer things were beyond him, the turning of a bolt or the tying of wire. The reaper stood in the barn under its heavy canvas. The ropes were twisted and stained, and Lee more than skittish with the horses. Ray rarely spoke to Lee now. I suppose this was a blessing. What spiteful things the boy might have said.

  Throughout that fall and winter, I spent my evenings in the dugout. The door had long ago fallen into a heap at the threshold. The place smelled of earth and fur, some animal taken to sleeping in the corner. Still the roof held, the walls sturdy as stone. I braced myself on the wooden cot. It was nearly rotted through, only two planks to hold my weight. A discomfort, this. Yet I felt deserving of discomfort. My boys labored until dusk. Ray was more the stubborn in what work he could manage, and I was but an old man with little strength left to me and less the reason. Had the accident been a penance? For what crime? Nothing but a sliver of land. A muddy bank I wished to save from a relentless current. The whole of the harvest had been long, punishingly slow. Because of it, we had not the energy to channel the remains of the river. Nor the hands to have it finished. Even our Nan seemed less than willing to carry her share. Her mind was on letters, the war.

  “They took her Carl,” explained Margrit.

  “But the girl shouldn’t every minute be going on . . .”

  Margrit hushed me with a finger. “Don’t, Julius. Don’t you say it.”

  The Elliot boy was sent home. We knew little what to make of it. Even in the coldest months, he stewed in the corral with their horses. I raised a hand to him across the fields. He stood with his face pressed again
st the fence.

  Early into April, the snow lay frozen against the river-banks. We could not shake it. Our yard was polished with snow and ice, hard for walking. A new fall of snow drifted inside the dugout door. Only in sitting there as the sun set could I imagine that Margrit and I had just arrived. The land remained untouched, full of promise. Beyond the door, my wife arranged her ropes against the snakes.

  A break in the gravel. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Lee, pap.”

  The boy crossed the threshold and sat on the far end of the cot. His breath showed white in the cold. He gripped his hands though he wore gloves. Together, we looked out over the fields. Soon enough, there would only be snow and whatever moonlight it threw back, if there was a moon at all. The howl of the dogs sounded near and far at once.

  “Mrs. Elliot is sick,” said Lee at last.

  “Sick?”

  “She has a bad fever. The doctor says he’s seen fifteen cases like it.”

  “Mary is a good woman. I am sure she will pull out.”

  “I went to see Tom.”

  “He injured?”

  “Not to look at him.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “I think it injured him some, one way or another. He’s not telling.”

  “I never thought much of the boy.”

  Lee strained his eyes as the room darkened. “There’s something else, see. Did Nan tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  He cocked his head. “They hung a man in Illinois. In Collinsville, near St. Louis. A whole mob of them did. For making speeches or the like.”

  “St. Louis.”

  “Near so.”

  “That’s three hundred miles.”

  Lee shrugged. “Name of the man was Robert Prager. A coal miner. He was from a place called Dresden.”

  “Dresden? He’s a German.”

  “They let Prager write a letter home before they did it.”

  “A letter to Dresden. I don’t suppose he said much to explain himself.”

  “It was those speeches that got him in trouble. But it was just talk. That’s what Nan says. Nothing worth hanging a man about. Still it’s in all the papers. No one will leave it alone.”

  “Well.” A hollowness turned in my stomach.

  “So I’ve been thinking . . . .” The boy swallowed. “They say Wilson might lower the draft to eighteen. Maybe this fall, maybe before that.”

  “The fall is months off. The war might be over then.”

  Lee shifted. The wind swept through the door and fell to a hush. The yelps of the dogs grew in number. “That’s just it,” he said. “Suppose it’s not.”

  “No use worrying ahead of a thing.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not worried.”

  “Well then.”

  “See, I got to thinking. With Ray hurt and all . . .”

  “You can stop your thinking about that.”

  “ . . . and Elliot the way he is.”

  “The man will be fine come spring. We’ll fix the channel for him, finish our own.”

  “But what people are saying, the way me and Ray aren’t over there. We’ve lost five boys from town. A sixth’s gone missing. And it’s only the start. Tom Elliot would never have been in Europe if it weren’t for us. Now he’s the worse, maybe his mother too.”

  “Because of the Germans, you mean. That boy was eager enough to sign himself up. And Mary, that’s altogether different. I never heard of a homecoming bringing unhappiness to a mother.”

  Lee shifted again. “Suppose I drafted early. Then they’d know we’re on the same side.”

  I turned to see him. Oil clung to his skin with whatever contraption he was in the shed fixing. He was always at fixing something. Now another of my boys wished to go back the way I had come. “Lee . . .”

  “I’ve already decided, see. Every boy who’s worth his weight is going. Even Carl McNulty. Even after he gave Nan a ring. And now they’re all talking about who isn’t. With Ray out, it’s got to be me.”

  “So you’re telling me, not asking.”

  He scratched his head. “If you don’t want me to go, you can say. But if you want me to, you don’t have to say a thing. I’ll go to the office next week, sign my name.”

  “Your mother will never forgive us.”

  Lee was silent. The cold reached inside my collar, my sleeves. It seemed we could be anywhere. The solid earth lay both below and above our heads.

  “Does that mean you want me to go?” asked Lee.

  I could not speak. In the near dark, only the rising pitch of the wind and the wooden cot that creaked beneath our weight. All this time we had made what we considered right. We had worked the land. We had kept our troubles to ourselves. Yet keeping to ourselves no longer seemed an option to us. Even Margrit had said it: You keep to yourself too much.

  “I am not saying go.”

  “But you’re not saying don’t.”

  I stood and peered out the door, my shoulder against the rotting sill. The two brothers who had the place built, I often wondered where they had taken themselves. To leave so much behind. To simply vanish. I turned and reached out my hand, my palm on my son’s forehead. Lee leaned against it. His skin blazed with warmth. “I am not telling you one way or another,” I said. Lee never moved. My hand trembled. “You may think it will fix every­thing, but people believe whatever is useful to them. If you are going, you go for your own reasons. I cannot keep you from that.”

  In the early dark the next morning, Margrit shook me from my sleep. Outside, a strange sun appeared on the horizon, our curtains colored with a furious light. My wife gathered her shawl to her throat and pressed her forehead to the window. She whispered my name.

  It was a fire. One that rose from a mound of sticks in a circle of snowmelt, high enough the men seemed but children around it. Their clothes were dark. Their faces nearly hidden by scarves. In their hands, they held torches. When they saw us at the window, they turned and headed down the road on foot. Only four stayed behind. The fire spelled a crooked letter K, an R, and a cross at the end. When I spoke the letters aloud, the word came together: kraut.

  In the light of the torches that remained, I could name them: Conners, Wilkerson, Elliot, and Tom.

  I turned from the window. Outside our room, Nan and the boys stood in the parlor looking out. Their bedclothes glowed. The boys held their guns.

  “If you’d only let us fight,” said Ray.

  I opened the front door and shut it behind me. From the porch, the fire looked higher yet.

  “Pay up, Prager,” they shouted.

  Wilkerson stepped up, hat in hand. Council of National Defense, he might have called himself. “We’ve heard there are un-American activities taking place in this house. Snatching land. Keeping your boys from the draft. Five hundred in bonds should prove it otherwise. Eight hundred the better.”

  I kept my fists in my pockets. “I will not pay. Not with your torches. Not at this time of night. The one boy I have of age has his deferment. As far as the land . . .”

  “We can’t scare him,” called a voice.

  Wilkerson caught hold of my wrist. Conners joined him. They dragged me from the porch and bound my hands with rope. When I struggled, the rope jerked up sharp. I dropped to my knees in the snow. “I’m not afraid.”

  A gunshot cracked. The men ducked. Ray hurried between the torches, a rifle in the hook of his arm. He swung the gun and the men fell back. Lee joined in, unbinding the rope. He held me so I might lean against him.

  Tom shouted, “You can’t even aim that thing.”

  “I heard about you,” said Ray. On the trigger, his good hand shook. “They say you went some kind of crazy.”

  Tom made a grab for the gun. Lee pulled him up short, and Ray pitched the barrel at Tom’s throat.
>
  “Stop it, the both of you,” I yelled.

  “You’ve gone too far, boys.”

  The group turned. Clark stumbled out of the fields. An ill man in his nightshirt and heavy boots, his cheeks slick, a coat loose on his shoulders. The others quieted. Ray lowered his gun. “My daughters saw the torches from our place,” said Clark. “Scared them to death.” He gave the men a sour look and took myself and Elliot aside. “Let’s go into the house and talk.”

  “Eight hundred for those bonds, Hess,” Conners spit. “And that’s to start.”

  Clark waved him off. “Get buckets for that fire or I’ll call the deputy on you.”

  The three of us climbed the porch steps, Tom and Lee following. Ray stood his ground. “I’ll keep a watch.” Margrit huddled at the door, waiting. The fire behind us had faded, buckets or not. She wiped a hand across her eyes. In the hall, Nan had gathered the girls, Myrle sheltered between them like the child she still barely was. As we passed, Tom gazed at her in her gown. Elliot jerked the boy by the arm. Nan rushed the girls up the stairs at once.

  In the kitchen we sat about the table in the lamplight. The men seemed rabid, a fever in them. I ached from the rub of that rope, blood in my mouth. Lee stayed quiet.

  “No more rough stuff, eh, Hess.” Elliot tapped his fingers.

  “Fires,” said Clark with a sigh. “That’s enough. Hess, the men just need to know you’re on their side. Everyone else has paid their bonds and more.”

  I bristled. “Those bonds were not mandatory.”

  Lee rubbed his neck.

  “Eight hundred,” said Elliot.

  Margrit stood at the stove. Already she had it filled with wood and started the kettle. Her smile was tight. “I don’t know what men like you would be doing out on a night like this,” she said. “Mary, now, she’ll never believe it.” Elliot cleared his throat. Margrit carried a tray of cups to the table. On the tray, a new lemon cake. Her knife shuddered as she sliced through it, scooped the pieces to our plates. “Ropes and torches,” she said. “It’s a hard thing when a wife is told something like that. A wife likes to believe better of her husband.” Elliot flinched. With a flick of her wrist, the plates fell in front of us.