Bottomland

by Michelle Hoover

  “The soldier?”

  “Ach, du verstehst,” he said. “Dieser Mann, ein Teufel.” With a flip of his wrist, he broke the rabbits’ necks.

  In the backyard, the girl gathered wood and Schmidt laid the rabbits on a stump. He took out his knife by the blade, offered the handle. I had skinned rabbits plenty. Never had a taste for it. Still I wondered at how easy the coat pulled. How the innards rose when you split the stomach. Save it for the foxes, Father would have said, drawing them out. It’d been a while since I’d done such a thing. Weeks since I’d had a good bite. I tore back the skins, threw the innards to the ground. But even foxes seemed a waste of innards now. Everything I cut away, the head, the feet, it only made the meat less. Still Schmidt seemed mighty pleased. “Gut, gut,” he said.

  We made a fire in a pit in front of the house. The smell of roasting meat brought the boys to the fence. The dead German, he was nowhere. I wondered if the boys’d had time to lay him out, cover his face. If I hadn’t been eager for food, I might have done so myself. But maybe after what Schmidt said, the German wasn’t worth even that.

  “Hey, Hush,” Critters yelled out. “You K.P. now?” The rabbits turned on sticks over the fire. I held another by its hind legs, threading it. When the boys showed, Schmidt seemed some worried. But with a nod from me, he waved them through the gate.

  “This is fine,” Bullet said.

  “That’s it, Hush.” It was Stan this time. He squatted next to me as I fixed the rabbits. “That’s how you do it.”

  We sat on logs around the fire to eat. The girl had joined us, edged close to her father and her face hidden. All but two eyes, she was, and Schmidt put an arm over her shoulder. She looked out from her blanket, studying us.

  “What’s up with the girl?” Stan asked.

  I shrugged. It didn’t feel right, telling something like that. Something about what a soldier might have done to a girl if he was hungry enough. A German soldier too.

  “Haven’t seen a girl in months,” Stan said. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a tin of mints, offered them to her. With his grin, he moved himself closer. I jerked him back.

  “What’s with you?” Stan barked.

  “Leave her be.” I pushed at him.

  Stan was on his feet. “Not so hush now, are you?”

  “Hey,” Critters called, palms out. Schmidt reared up. The rabbits spit and burned on the fire. Critters passed me a stick, passed Schmidt another, then Stan. “These are the old man’s rabbits. He’s sharing.” Schmidt sat, pinching his knee. Stan bit the meat right off. “Hess,” he whispered. “You’ve got some German in you yet.”

  Critters cleared his throat. “If the war’s done, we have us some celebrating.” He took a bar of chocolate from his bag and broke it into bites. “Peace!” he said, handing them out. “Thanks to the blondie on the fence.”

  That small piece of chocolate, it melted away in my hand. All day we’d heard our guns, but now Fritz stayed quiet. Still, done seemed different. Stan sat there, brooding. He wasn’t even close to grinning now. The others licked their fingers. Schmidt brought out a jug of schnapps, tin mugs from the Huns. We raised our drinks. With a nudge from Bullet, Stan raised his too. We were soon enough blurry. Schmidt took the girl under his arm again and Critters, he started to sing.

  There’s a long, long trail a-winding

  Into the land of my dreams

  Where the nightingales are singing

  And a white moon beams.

  It grew darker than it’d been. The fire flared and dropped off easy. We were close to nowhere. We were closer to shadows. The sky above was black and clean, the fire cracking. Soon Critters’ voice settled, the rest of us quiet. In the low light, we were noses and cheeks. Only the girl was different, being a girl. But as the fire settled and the rabbits were bones, she wasn’t so very much. We sat loose and head-heavy on those logs.

  When at last we turned to make bunks, Critters was the first to take to his feet. “Hey, Stan,” he said. “Hush didn’t mean it, right? It’s just a girl.”

  I hit my fist to Stan’s shoulder. He hooked an arm around my neck, like Ray had always done. “We’re all right,” Stan said. I smelled the schnapps on his breath. “War’s near to over, Hush. We’ll be the best now.”

  That night, we made our beds in Schmidt’s barn and surely did sleep. I unlaced my boots. Didn’t take them off. We’d beaten the Germans to a frazzle. Heard told, even the prisoners didn’t care a fig for the war anymore. But it was days more for us to be brought in. My feet would have to keep until we got back.

  As I drifted off, I could taste those rabbits. I could even dream them. Stan, he lay next to me and whistled as he snored. We’re all right, he’d said. With the smell of meat on my fingers, I slept with my hands against my cheek to keep that smell close.

  “Hush, you coming?” Out on the road that morning, I stumbled to keep up with the boys. Schmidt had left bread by the door for breakfast, but we couldn’t find him in the house. Couldn’t find the girl. Before the rest of us woke, Stan had gone looking himself. “Nowhere,” he said, tucking in his shirt. “Not her old man, either.” Guns boomed in the distance. From our side, they were going some loud. Bullet had gotten us a truck. We could ride with the men coming in from the lines. The driver, he was a sergeant, Bullet said. He could just as well order us. And he’d fit us in if we could hang onto our seats. Bullet waved me to hurry, but I walked on dead feet. We’d have to hold on some good. That truck couldn’t take so many at once. I was closer then, I was closer than that. The guns went quiet. Critters let out a whoop. They all did, whooping, and I stopped and looked back. We knew what it meant. The sergeant whooped too as he started his engine. “We’re leaving ya,” Critters joked. “We’re on vacation now.” When he turned around, the truck jumped, the sergeant wheeling out of the mud. I was running as best I could. I could have been running on bread as much as feet. Another twist of the wheel and Stan waved his hat. “Hush!” he yelled. A sharp crack. A sound that snapped in my stomach. The truck broke skyward with a flash. I was thrown off my feet, the boys worse than that. The blast so loud it didn’t have any sound at all.

  “You can’t stay here all night.”

  The waitress stood over me, holding her coffee pot. My head had fallen, spit running from the corner of my mouth. I raised my eyes and the room was a twirl. When the waitress snapped her fingers, the room came back. Outside, the streetlights had gone out. An hour or two, maybe more I’d lost. Without her hairnet, the waitress was red-haired and pretty. She poured another cup. “That’s it,” she said. “I’m off my shift already. You drink that and get on with it, or Bill will show you another way to the street.”

  I stood, surprised to feel my feet under me, though they ached. The coffee tasted a razor, but it woke me up. I felt two places at once, the space in my head too big for comfort. I put on my hat and hurried out.

  It was terrible cold. The snow was blue underfoot, the sky black. I walked. There wasn’t a soul in the streets. That white space on my map with the name LAKE MICHIGAN, I could just as well have been walking on its surface if anyplace else. During the war, before rabbits, before those five days in the woods, I remembered standing on the German lines. We knew we were near the end. The Germans had pulled back. They weren’t so much for shooting us. Looking across, I thought I’d see what marked them as different. But the land on the other side didn’t show much. Grass and hills. A couple of shot-up houses, same as the villages where we camped. I don’t know why I’d imagined it a separate place. Our maps showed that line, how it cut the land off straight. Over there, that was where Father was born. That’s where he grew to a man. Must have been a drop of something in that water to turn Father so driven and a whole country to start a war like that. That drop, maybe I had it in me too.

  I puzzled over that. It was a kind of white space splitting me in half. Out by that fire, I picked Schmidt and
his girl over Stan. For only a minute I did. As if sides were required. Just a little thing, my pushing at him. But maybe little things were bigger than a person thought. It made a man believe in blood, good and bad.

  I had stepped on a boat and stepped off someplace else. That’s all I could figure. When I landed in France, the farm was so many weeks gone. I couldn’t get the distance straight. Step off one spot of land and step onto another, as if a person could drift anywhere on that ocean. And not one of the boys knew what our farm looked like. When I woke in the hospital, that was something I couldn’t get my head around. The boys were gone. I’d been missing for days myself, weeks even. Even if I couldn’t figure how. Everything went missing, I thought.

  V

  Morning in Chicago. At the telegraph office, I wrote home. no luck. coming back. I was dizzy with walking, my feet pins. I had one more house to check. I didn’t have much hope in that. As I headed out, the man in the office called my name. “You Lee Hess?”

  “Yes, sir. Yes.”

  He looked at me under heavy lids. He was holding the order I’d just filled, my name at the top in caps. The man was gray as a squirrel skin, too old for his face to show much feeling. “This young woman here says we have a message for you. Been waiting here a week, she says.”

  The man ambled his way to the back. The woman took his place, picking at her fingers. Those nails of hers, they were painted a bloody kind of red. “He’s getting it,” she said with a squint. “I remembered your name.”

  I took off my hat.

  “Lee Hess, I remembered it,” she went on. “That’s why I knew you had a message waiting.”

  “I should thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me, a name like that.”

  The old man returned. “Don’t worry about her,” he whispered. “She lost a brother over there.” He handed me a piece of paper. I was quick to fold it in half.

  “Aren’t you going to read it?” the man asked.

  “I’ll read it, sure.” I made for the door. The cold outside was roaring bright, same as in my head.

  “It’s XU,” he shouted after me. “That means they want an answer.”

  But I didn’t have an answer for them. Not yet.

  I knocked at the last boardinghouse. This one seemed different. Off on its own in the old town. The alley was a long block of bricks, not a window or door except one. A dog limped by the wooden steps, sniffing my leg. When I lowered my fingers to him, he bared his teeth. I knocked again. That telegram burned in my pocket. The girls might have come back, that’s what it said. If so, I should be some happy. But back felt like I’d wasted it. My alley nights, they were good for nothing much. Back meant I still hadn’t done anything right.

  The door opened like a shot. The woman clapped a hand to her chest. “Young man, you startled me.”

  “Sorry, ma’am.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  The woman was tall as a German and thick about the middle, a wisp of gray hair on her head. But that voice of hers, it was like Squire’s. Irish.

  “Are you crazy or something?” the woman asked. “You are, aren’t you? A crazy man.” She went to close the door. “I house girls here. Not men. And I don’t have anything else you’re looking for either.”

  I moved quick, took the poster from my pack. “I’m looking for my sisters.” I unrolled the poster, trying to hold it straight. The woman studied their faces, pinching the poster between her fingers. Those hands of hers were small, square as a child’s. “I don’t want any trouble.”

  “I don’t mean trouble.”

  She threw a look at the stairwell. “They’re not here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You think I don’t know my own house?”

  I checked the number on the door. “But this is the last one. I’ve tried all the others.”

  “Then you’re out of luck.”

  She went to shut the door again, but I stuck in my foot. Those pins went deeper yet. “Ma’am.”

  “Young man, please remove your foot or I’ll call the authorities.”

  “Their names are Esther and Myrle. Esther’s younger than me by five years, Myrle’s two under that. You can see them on the poster.”

  The woman sighed. “I don’t need posters.”

  I leaned my shoulder against the door. My head was fevered. The snap of the dog and the smell of oil, a terrible roar at the alley’s end. A whistle then, but far off, as if calling the dog to come.

  “What’s wrong with you? You look like you’re about to faint.”

  “Sorry, ma’am.” The poster slipped from my fingers, but I caught it fast.

  “You can’t even hold a piece of paper. You won’t make it off this step.”

  “This is the last place.”

  She let out a sigh. “Come in, but stay to the parlor. I’ll get you a glass of water. Then you’ll have to move along.”

  She went off down the hall to the kitchen. Inside the parlor, I stood with my hat pressed to my chest, my heart going. There was whispering behind the kitchen door. When the woman came out, she left that door behind her swinging, but I couldn’t see inside.

  “You can rest your feet.” Her hand made a show of the parlor sofa. “But be quick about it.”

  I perched on the edge of a cushion. The sofa was white with daisies. The arms had tassels at the end. I felt white and hot, though the glass of water was cool in my fingers.

  “You’re not drinking very fast.” The woman lowered herself into the other chair.

  “Sorry, ma’am, I just . . .”

  “You’ve already said what you’re doing. But why do you think your sisters are here?”

  “They left our farm more than a month ago.”

  “And you haven’t heard anything.”

  I thought of the telegram but shook my head.

  She sighed. “Sit back, why don’t you? I can’t have a man big as you faint in here. I don’t know the first thing I’d do then.”

  “That’s all right, ma’am. I’ll be good to go.”

  “Some girls just need to be left alone.”

  I held my water and took a long drink.

  “Girls like the picture you showed me,” she went on. “It’s no use trying to get them to do anything. Not at that age. That’s something I know.”

  I took another drink. The room was worn but bright. Books on a row of shelves, a coffee table spotted with fingerprints. The woman eyed those prints and wet her thumb to clean them. When the factories let out, the place must have filled to the brim. A long coatrack hung in the hall, the rungs empty, but still the smell of girls, a fresh wash. And with the white sofa under me, the place was some comfortable. Above the fireplace, a frilly line of text in a frame:

  To be sympathetic without being sentimental.

  To care for the tired and sick.

  To be patient with the hysterical.

  To direct youthful gayety and extravagance.

  To help girls in danger of losing the heritage

  of womanhood.

  — Code of the Boardinghouse Keeper,

  Miss Edith M. Hadley, 1913

  The woman gripped her hands in her lap and stared at my glass, half full as it was. It took more breath than I had to drink it all at once.

  “I’ll tell you a story,” she started. “Last winter we had a man here who yanked a girl out by the hair. His wife, he called her. But she couldn’t have been a wife to anything, she was only a child. And you know what happened? She came straight back. All black and blue. I never have forgiven myself for letting her go. Then she packed up her things and went off. Without my knowing. Now when the man comes, she’s gone but he keeps coming. Even if I knew where she was, I wouldn’t let on. It was his coming after her that made her disappear in the first place. Now I’m not telling anyone anything, but chasing
after someone never works out like you think.”

  I looked at my feet. No use, she’d said. A person could leave well enough alone. Or a person could do otherwise. One way or another, it was a guess what was right. If Nan had been here. If my brother had been. They could tell me which. Up and down the stairs, I imagined one girl after another. Other girls with other names.

  “Why did they leave?” the woman asked.

  “Why?”

  “Of course, dear. It’s the obvious question. Surely you’ve thought about it.”

  I shook my head. I could figure washers on broken doorknobs, but the why was a blank space. To leave a place, that took some doing. It took something else too. A town with their dark looks and torches, a German at the fence. Something that got a person to running. The woman gripped the arm of her chair, waiting. I pictured Mother in the kitchen, flour on her apron. You should never have gone out to that field, working that machine, she said. I never should have let him send you. Later when I couldn’t let it go, when I turned it over in my head to try to change the way it went, she sat me on my bed. Things come at you, she said. You can’t always fix them. Your father will tell you different. But I say you have to sit and find some peace. Try to keep your mind on what is coming to you next.

  “What if they left for no reason,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else. I wouldn’t. “But what if now they get themselves into some trouble. What then?”

  The woman studied me. “A girl won’t leave without a reason. If it’s trouble you’re worried about, then you’ll know. All girls are the same when it comes to trouble. That’s when they go home.”