The Horseman's Graves

by Jacqueline Baker

  McCready watched him run and then he turned grudgingly to the man frowning darkly from the porch steps and he said, “Ah, to hell with it,” and slammed into his car and roared out onto the road and past Ronnie, yelling, “When you’re all dead in the river, don’t come crying to me.”

  After McCready had gone, Ronnie slowed, walked, looked back to see Leo in the distance, sitting smoking calmly on the porch.

  Leo lifted his hand in a belligerent wave, so much disdain in such a simple movement.

  So McCready had not told him, then. And Ronnie said, “Be damned if I’ll be the one to do it. I’ll be goddamned.”

  When he saw his father’s wagon approaching, infinitesimal on the horizon, he ran again.

  FIFTEEN

  The truth was, through all those days and weeks following the drowning, no one really had thought much about Leo. Everyone supposed he had holed up in that shack by himself while Mary walked the river, just as he had in the months before his marriage to Cecilia and after her death.

  He still turned up at church most Sundays, but he was alone now (no one could figure how Mary got out of going with him). He came in by himself, just as he used to in the old days, usually a few minutes late, but he did not now look to the left or to the right, but walked with a distracted air straight to his seat in the front, and sat through Mass, fidgeting and tapping his fingers and shifting his feet, and going through the motions, and then, during the recessional hymn, he would suddenly rise and walk out, before Father had even left the pulpit.

  He’s in a hell of a hurry to get home to an empty house, not? That is what people said of him. For it was not long before some were wondering, yet again, what exactly Leo was up to. It would have seemed that by then, after all that had happened, people would have learned to leave him alone. But there was just something about Leo. No matter how much they might have hated him, or were disgusted by him, no matter how angry he made a person, they were still curious, too. And, more than that, they had begun to feel—though they never would have admitted as much to each other, perhaps not even to themselves—they had begun to feel kind of sorry for him, too. It was a feeling that increased as Leo aged, and though he was not yet an old man, not even middle-aged, he looked much older. Since the girl’s drowning, his skin and hair had greyed and dulled and his dark eyes had receded even farther into his skull; he was missing a few teeth now, whether by rot or accident, and at times he would slump into a defeated kind of slouch. No one would say humble; rather, it was as if his body was emptying of everything that had been holding it up and, hollowed, was folding in slowly upon itself. Leo had crossed into the realm of the aged; and where they had all formerly scorned and despised him, now they pitied him. But it was a pity without compassion, and so everyone still kept their distance, as they always had.

  People would ask Mike Weiser about him from time to time and Mike would say sharply, “But what business is it of mine? It’s no more mine than yours.” Which was true. Cecilia lay under the crabgrass and orange sandflowers in the cemetery at Knochenfeld. And Cecilia’s children, the ones whom Mike and Marian had taken, seemed to have no recollection of Leo as their father. Only sometimes, when they eyed him in church, they got a kind of funny, uncomfortable feeling in their stomachs, and a strange, creeping sense of familiarity, as if Leo were a bad dream they’d once had (and the eldest of the three was secretly convinced that between Leo and the Kristkindl, who made the rounds at Christmas, tormenting children, there was some definite connection).

  So, what business of Mike’s, indeed? Was he Leo’s keeper? But they kept on asking and he kept on answering until he got so tired of it he figured if he could give them all an answer they might finally leave him alone about it. So one afternoon Mike took a drive out to Krausses’, whether from grudging obligation or genuine concern, Mike would not have liked to say for certain.

  This was not long after Easter, just a month or two after the drowning of Elisabeth Brechert. So Mike thought to use for an excuse—not that he needed an excuse, but with Leo one never knew—that he had come to pay his condolences. He toted along with him a pan of creamed chicken and some fresh baking from Marian, who had said, in answer to Mike’s look of surprise, “Make sure you put it into Mary’s hands. I’d see that sonofabitch starve before I would drop him a filthy crumb. If he eats of it, all I can say is I hope he chokes. You make sure and give it to her.”

  When Mike pulled into the yard, it was so eerily still, he thought at first there was no one home. Even the few remaining bottles and jars hung motionless from the branches of Cecilia’s old cottonwood tree. Mike climbed out of the car and looked around, hearing a meadowlark call from somewhere beyond the granaries, once, twice. He had just reached out to open the car door, when he saw Leo’s old mule emerge from behind the barn where she grazed fruitlessly in the dirt. So he dropped his hand and sighed and walked up onto the porch. He tried to peer through the screen door into the dark kitchen, but he could see nothing. He raised his fist and knocked. Waited. At first he heard nothing and he thought that perhaps no one was home after all, but then some rustlings came from inside and also a kind of a strange sound, almost like a squawk, as if Leo had some animal living in there, and, in truth, Mike would not have put it past him. He waited, but no one came and so he banged again and then opened the screen door a little and called hello.

  He said later that he should have known better, that he should have just climbed right back into his car and gone home. He did know better, of course, but he had come all that way, and he was there now (and he was curious, too, he had to admit it). So he called out again and then he stepped into the shack, dark as always—in spite of the brightness of the day—with the dirty yellowed sacking pulled across all the windows, and he stood there, blinking into the dim, sulphurous room.

  “Just a minute, just wait.” It was Leo, his voice coming muffled from behind the closed door of the far room.

  So Mike stood looking around the filthy room, barren almost, but for the kitchen table and two chairs, the dirty pots stacked up in the basin, and the old black-and-white photograph of Gus in his coffin. He stepped closer to it, looked at all the faces there, as if there might be some clue, though to what, he could not say. To what? But there seemed to be something there, in the twist of Old Krauss’s mouth, the twist in all their mouths. The hardness there, the mystery. What was it?

  A thump came from the far side of the room, and he turned away from the photograph. He listened, more thumping and then some rustling, a heavy scraping against the floor, as if Leo were moving furniture, and then Leo pulled open the door and stepped into the kitchen, looking glint-eyed and rattled. Mike thought how odd it was to see Leo like that, nothing ever seemed to make him nervous. So, maybe because of Leo’s uncharacteristic nervousness, maybe because that picture of Old Krauss dead and the kids there all around him had given him an uneasy feeling, maybe just because he was finally tired of it all, tired of Leo, Mike felt a deep regret at having walked into Leo’s business yet again, walked into God knows what, whatever Leo was up to now, and not even wanting to know either, not even wanting to wonder, just wanting to get the hell out now that he’d gotten in. They stood there like that a minute, with the dim room between them and neither knowing what to say, until finally Mike spoke.

  “So, Leo, how are things?” he said edgily.

  “It’s good, things are good.”

  Mike cleared his throat, shifted his boots against the creaking floor. He said, “In spite of everything, I guess?”

  Leo just kind of frowned at him, as if he had no idea what Mike was talking about. Then a light seemed to go on for him and he said quickly, “Yah, yah, in spite of that, sure.”

  Mike nodded. He began to clear his throat, realized he’d just done it. “And Mary,” he said instead, “how is she?”

  Leo wiped a hand across his forehead, as if he was sweating. “She’s good, yah. Good.”

  Then, while they stood there, that strange, muffled squawk came from
the other room and Mike glanced past Leo’s shoulder and Leo said quickly, “Well, good to see you, then. Goodbye.”

  Mike stared at him, tried to pretend he hadn’t heard anything. “All right,” he said, “give my condolences to Mary.”

  “Yah, yah,” Leo said, practically herding him out. “Goodbye.”

  Mike opened the screen door, feeling terribly uneasy but curious again, too, God help him, and relieved, yes, that too, relieved just to be stepping back out of that dark, suffocating house—how did anyone live in there?—stepping back into daylight and air and life, away from whatever it was that Leo was up to, whatever he was trying to hide, but that couldn’t possibly be any of his—any of Mike’s—business anyhow.

  So he stepped out onto the porch and down the stairs, letting the screen door bang shut behind him, and he climbed into his car and breathed deeply, glancing once more toward Cecilia’s cottonwood, the sunlight glinting against the still bottles now giving the illusion of motion; and he looked toward the barn, too, and he looked around at all that slow ruin and decay, and he thought of Cecilia and of the girl and he felt a heaviness in his heart. He sighed and went to start the car and that was when he noticed the pan of creamed chicken and the buns still sitting there on the seat beside him, wrapped up neatly by Marian in a clean, white tea towel. So he sat there another minute thinking he should just go home, forget about all of it. But Marian had insisted he take the food to Mary. Another man might have dumped it in the ditch and washed the pans and returned them to Marian and said nothing more of the matter. But Mike was an honest man. He always kept his word. That’s what folks said about him. He knew it himself. And when folks said a thing like that about you, well, you had an obligation to live up to it.

  So he sighed again and he climbed back out of the car and took the warm pan and the buns and walked back up the steps and stood on the porch and lifted his hand to knock, and just then that muffled squawk came again, and it occurred to Mike—he could not believe he had not thought of it sooner—that it was Mary, that perhaps she was sick, and Leo not sending for the braucha or anyone to help, it would be like him. The same as it had been all those years ago with Cecilia. It outraged Mike, the very thought of it. So he swung the door open and stuck his head inside.

  And there stood Leo, his back to the door, working busily over something on the kitchen table.

  Mike said later that he just stepped inside, it was as if he was somehow compelled to, as if he could not stop himself, and it was as if time itself slammed that screen door shut on both of them and Leo turned and then they stood there facing each other and for some reason that Mike could not later explain, he thought of Cecilia, how he used to guide her small hands in the night, over his own face and over Marian’s, he thought of that, and when he thought it, everything suddenly became clear to Mike, so clear that he was amazed that he had not realized it sooner.

  He breathed then, “Jesus Christ, Leo, oh, Christ Almighty.”

  And he walked over, across the dark kitchen and past Leo and uncovered the thing that Leo was hiding and he stood there looking, and he said again, “Jesus Christ Almighty, Leo. Where did you get this baby?”

  SIXTEEN

  It was a long moment before either Leo or Mike said anything else or even moved, and that baby squirming there on the table between the two of them.

  Finally Mike said again, “Leo. Where did you get this baby?”

  As if on cue, the little thing screwed up its red face and began to howl, and Leo looked at Mike, as if he, Mike, should do something.

  “Leo,” he repeated, raising his voice, wanting to reach out and shake the man, feeling like a fool, saying the same thing over and over, “where did you get this baby?”

  Leo seemed to come around then, and he scowled at Mike, as if he could not believe the stupidity, and said, “Well, and where do you think? It’s mine.”

  The baby was screaming, and Mike shouted, “Mary had a baby? When did she have a baby?” And the baby screaming, screaming, and Leo not moving to calm it and so Mike yelled, “For God’s sake, do something.”

  Leo said, “What?”

  So Mike set the food he was holding down on the table and picked the baby up and juggled it a bit and yelled, “Did you feed it anything? Is it hungry?”

  “Well, and how should I know? Did it say it was hungry?”

  And Mike yelled, “Feed it something.”

  “What?” Leo said again.

  “For God’s sake, Leo,” Mike hollered. Jiggling that baby around, wondering what the hell to do. Then he remembered the creamed chicken. He picked up a dirty spoon from the table and wiped it on his shirt and spooned some of the rich cream into the baby’s mouth. The baby stopped howling for a second, then choked and spat and screamed with renewed vigour, its face turning an alarming shade of red. And Leo just standing and watching as if, really, it were none of his business after all.

  “Where’s Mary?” Mike shouted.

  “What, am I supposed to follow her around all day, to know where she goes?”

  It’s a damned good thing I’m holding this baby, Mike thought. It’s a damned good thing. But knowing in his heart he did not have it in him.

  “You don’t know where she is?”

  “She’s not here, what more is there to know?”

  And while they were going back and forth that way, the baby settled down and pretty soon its face calmed and its eyes glazed and it closed them and slept in Mike’s arms and Mike looked down at the little pink thing and then he calmed a little, too, and he said, “But for God’s sake, Leo. When did she have a baby?”

  Leo shrugged and said, “Not long, three weeks, maybe, less, more—how should I know?”

  Mike gritted his teeth, said again, “But nobody even knew. Did the braucha come? Did she see it? Or Father Rieger? Has it been baptized?”

  Leo frowned and shook his head. “No, that’s not for me, that church. I’m through with them.”

  “But you still come to church yourself.”

  “Yah, well, a man has to go somewhere, not?”

  Mike shook his head in amazement. “But,” he said, “you will have the baby baptized.”

  “No, he baptized Mary’s girl and look what happened.”

  Mike blinked, uncomprehending. “What?” he said.

  “Not a month later, drowned in the river.”

  “Leo, Father baptizes lots of people.”

  “Yah, so? And don’t they die too?”

  Mike just stood there, not knowing what to say. And so he looked down at the baby and said what everyone says: “Boy, or girl?”

  And Leo said, “Girl. Cecilia.”

  Mike just stared at him. Finally, he said slowly, “Mary named this baby Cecilia?”

  “No,” Leo said. “I did.”

  “You named Mary’s baby Cecilia?”

  “Yah, and why not? It’s my baby too.”

  Mike figured there was nothing more to be said to Leo, figured, at long last, that he had been wrong about him, all those years ago at the St. Valentine’s dance when he’d thought maybe Leo had a heart beneath those bones after all. Figured, in the end, that Leo wasn’t worth his time, so stupid and arrogant. Wasn’t worth anyone’s time or pity, either. He figured there was nothing more that could be said to, or done for, Leo, and so he just carried the sleeping baby into the other room and settled it into the apple crate there with some blankets and then he stood looking down at it a minute and feeling awful sorry for the poor little thing who did not know its own blood.

  When he returned to the kitchen, he said, “That baby will want to eat when it wakes, Leo. I hope Mary will be back soon.”

  But Leo, he just waved his hand through the air and said, “Ach, Mary.”

  So Mike crossed to the door and opened it and said, in spite of himself, “If she needs help, anything, she knows where to find us.”

  And he went to close the door softly behind him so as not to wake that baby, thinking, But God help that little thing,
who did not ask to be born at all, who might yet live to regret that it had been. But then he stopped, with one foot on the porch, because something had occurred to him, something he hadn’t thought to ask. He leaned back through the doorway and said, “But, Leo, I don’t understand. Why were you hiding it from me?”

  And Leo just stood there in his dark kitchen, with his long arms hanging at his sides and that photograph of Old Krauss in his coffin pinned crookedly to the wall at his back. He stood there, and then he shrugged and said, kind of quiet, “All the others,” and he looked out the window, squinted a little. Then he turned to Mike, shrugged again and said, “This one”—and he raised his hands in a helpless gesture—“I wanted to keep.”

  ——

  News of the baby travelled fast, as bad news always does. Almost everyone seemed to know that Leo and Mary had a baby and that the baby must have been born sometime in the days following the death of Mary’s daughter, Elisabeth (though how that was even possible, they could not imagine), and that Leo had named that baby Cecilia after his dead first wife and that Mary seemed to want nothing to do with the child, whether because of the name or the father or grief, no one ever did find out, and that Leo, for whatever reason, perhaps even of necessity—though that, necessity, had never meant much to him in the past—perhaps of necessity, had assumed care of the infant.

  But what, really, could be done about it? Mary had abandoned this child for her other child lost in the river. She still spent much of each day haunting the valley, anyone driving along the trails that ran past the river could see her sitting heavily on one of the rocks there. People had quickly become accustomed to her presence, and so they hardly noticed her, and it was only when an outsider came to town and asked about the strange woman alone at the river that they remembered.