Grandmother, Laughing
Page 19
I don’t know if it would have been your wish, but there are more things in this world than the eyes can see or what can be read about in a newspaper. I sat up with you in the hospital for four nights in a row and the doctor told me to get some sleep. So Lena stayed with you and I went home to bed. When the phone woke me up in the middle of the night, I felt like I had been ripped out of a dream I couldn’t remember. And then after I was dressed and waiting for Isaac to take me to the hospital, I suddenly felt like something was pushing and making me do what I did.
It wasn’t until late the night before the funeral that I was able to sneak into the funeral home to be with you alone. I had never undressed you in those forty-three years we lived together, at least not with the lights on, and then a coffin doesn’t have that much room in it, so it was scary and funny at the same time and I kept thinking that you were going to sit up and tell me to stop tickling you. And it’s not easy to dress a person who isn’t helping, especially when Funeral Home Fehr could have walked in any minute. But, Obrum, I thought I saw your lips smile just a little when the silk underskirt touched your skin.
The gun grease spots showed through the wedding dress but it was too late to rub them with bluing. And besides, God made poison ivy and He planted it in the same places He put the blueberry bushes and I know I shouldn’t say such a thing, but I have sometimes wondered if maybe God didn’t make poison ivy with its three leaves and white berries just before He made Adam out of a lump of mud and set him loose running naked through the Garden of Eden. At least, Obrum, if you had been God, that’s how you would have done it.
27
Koadel
The Schpikja House
Digging a grave in virgin prairie tests a middle-aged man’s endurance. I had considered borrowing a mower and hiring a backhoe, but that felt invasive. A niggling feeling crawls over my skin that this square mile of tall grass may be a shimmering mirage beneath the chemically manicured canola field that sane, sensible people see on the surface. Grandfather Obrum Kehler refused to put this land to the plough. Was he merely being a contrarian, spiting the mindset of the village, or did he have canny insight into the future? If this almost untouched square mile of prairie were known about, how coveted it would be by those who would plough it from the creek’s edge to the pavement of the next road, as well as by those who would raise money across the country to preserve this land in its natural state.
I gaze at my daughter, Michelena, as she brushes red paint on the narrow boards of the lawnswing, and think that keeping this prairie as our secret is the surest way to secure its survival. She laughed when I located an old grim reaper scythe in the ruins of the old barn and wielded it clumsily to cut the tall grasses between the graves that hold the remains of Grandfather Obrum Kehler and Beethoven Blatz. Before I took the scythe to the growth, Michelena insisted on identifying the plants on the gravesite. Holding the guide to prairie plants she had bought at McNally Robinson Booksellers in one hand, she caressed each grass and cooed in excitement as she named Indian grass and big bluestem, pale purple coneflower and rose weed, purple prairie clover and june grass. I became intrigued, noticing for the first time, really, the various shades of green, the details of the plants. Little bluestem and heath aster, prairie dropseed and white wild indigo, buffalo grass and blazing star. As I watched my daughter fingering the grasses, I feared to speak. I couldn’t help thinking of Grandmother Susch listening to Beethoven Blatz hearing the music of the tall grass.
I wonder if Blatz had heard the sound of a spade cutting through sod into rooted soil. Could he create that sound on a piano? The soil is dark, close to black, though not the ink-black of bagged potting soil. I think the digging might become easier as I get through the crust of sod, but the roots continue as I dig further down. The soil is fairly dry near the surface, held together by the network of roots sprawling down to the moisture in the soil below. My mind wanders as I dig and I ponder how this soil has never been disturbed since the glaciers retreated to leave behind Lake Agassiz.
“I wonder if these grasses have been here since the Ice Age,” I say to Michelena when she comes over with the water jug.
“Maybe they were already here before the ice,” she says.
When she finishes painting the lawnswing she insists that she spell me off. There isn’t room for both of us to manoeuvre spades inside the hole, so I climb out while I’m still able to.
The soil remains black down to about four feet before we encounter gravel and sand. At six feet the roots show little sign of having given up their downward search for moisture. Although the soil is damp, the summer has been dry, so we don’t encounter any ground water seeping up to fill the hole.
“Think we’re ready?” Michelena says as she scrapes the last loose sand from the bottom. I hand her my tape measure and she checks to see that the depth is uniform on all sides. “Looks good,” I say. She hands me the spade and I lower the stepladder. As she climbs out I study the hole. We have piled the dirt on Blatz’s grave and I am standing on Grandfather Obrum’s. Grandmother Susch said that when they buried Blatz, Grandfather had insisted that they carefully replace the sod after the grave was filled in. The same had been done for Grandfather’s.
“There’s only two of us,” Michelena says.
“Yes.” I reach for the spade. “We need a slide.” About two feet from the grave’s wide edge, I sink the spade through the sod. After I clear the surface, Michelena climbs back into the hole and with two spades the job is done quickly. As my daughter climbs back out, I think I see a woman dressed in black standing on the dirt pile, laughing. Before I can point, she’s gone, so I don’t mention it, but I feel lighter.
Still, wrestling the piano out of the schpikja house, down the makeshift ramp, and onto the fencepost rollers is unwieldy and tedious. We take turns moving the freed roller to the head of the piano, and after what seems an endless time we position the piano with keys facing the edge of the slope into the grave. We lay the loose poles behind the piano. Slowly we tip it onto its back until it rests on the poles. We remove the remaining poles and use them as levers to help the piano roll toward the slope. As it reaches the tipping point and the point of no return, the weight of the piano carries it slowly down the slope until it is stuck at a slant halfway down the hole. With the poles we rock the piano until it straightens out and lands on the bottom with a schtooks, and a clang of piano wires that echoes over the prairie.
After a hug and a deep breath we return to the car. I lift the urn from the floor of the back seat. Michelena pulls out her phone, swipes her finger over the screen, and taps. Klavier Sonata 14 in C# Minor op. 3 für Susch begins to play through the tiny speakers.
“I recorded it last night,” she says. “On my keyboard. It was simpler that way.”
“Thank you. Grandmother would have loved it.”
“After I’ve spent more time with the manuscripts, I will pitch a world premiere of the Beethoven Blatz sonatas.” Michelena turns away and starts slowly toward the grave. My eyes fill with tears as I follow with the urn. She lifts the piano lid. Using the cord attached to the urn, I lower Susch’s ashes into the piano. We hold hands quietly and I think of my father, Isaac, as we wait for the sonata to end.
In the silence we gently close the lid, slip on our gloves, and pick up our shovels. Random notes clang as clods fall on the keys, growing muffled as the space around the piano fills in and the keyboard is covered and stilled. When the mound of earth and sod is piled on the grave, I return to the car and pull out the pail with the plant. As solemnly as I carried the urn, I carry the plant. Michelena has dug a small hole at the peak of the pile. With my gloved hands I lift the plant out of the pail, set it into the hole, and gently hill the dirt around it. I grin at my daughter. The poison ivy leaves look almost pretty against the red and white lawnswing we now set on the grave.
The grasses around us rustle as a quavering woman’s voice coos like a mourning d
ove. The swing creaks in the stillness. Then, from near the creek, a dove mourns back. Our eyes meet as we hear a whispered “Holem de gruel!” and the swing trembles with laughing.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Sharon Caseburg for having faith in this novel when I had doubts; Patricia Sanders for diligent and thorough editing; Sarah Ens for meticulous proofreading; Lynne Martin for repeated close readings and conversations; The Manitoba Arts Council for support during the very early stages of the writing.
Earlier versions of sections of the novel have previously appeared in the journals Rhubarb, Preservings, Prairie Fire, Due West, a/cross sections: New Manitoba Writing, and Armin’s Shorts. Some of the characters and situations also appear in my stage play The Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven Blatz.
Table of Contents
Half Title
other books by Armin Wiebe
Grandmother, Laughing
Copyright © Armin Wiebe 2017
Dedication
2nd Half Title
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
Acknowledgements
Landmarks
Cover