Mike shifted in his seat. “We’d heard you had some troubles, Leo,” he said carefully. “With the baby. How is she?”
Leo seemed to sink a little, at the mention of Cecilia, to soften. “She won’t give her back,” he said pathetically, as if he were a child. He stepped unsteadily toward them, eyes burning, and Marian clutched Mike’s arm, in spite of herself.
“He’s drunk,” she hissed.
“What’s that, Leo?” Mike said. “Who won’t?”
Leo stared at them, then rubbed a hand across his face. He pulled a small bottle of clear liquid from his trouser pocket, unscrewed the cap and drank from it, wiped his mouth again on his sleeve. He took a long time replacing the cap and putting the bottle back in his pocket, swaying a little on his feet. Marian squeezed Mike’s arm meaningfully, but Mike did not look at her. Leo put a hand out as if to steady himself.
“God,” Marian breathed, “is it turpentine?”
Leo looked up at them, squinting, as if he could not place them.
“He’s going to fall,” Marian whispered, and Mike put his hand on the door handle, as if to get out.
But Leo did not fall. He just stood staring, and when he finally spoke, it was the old Leo again, or a glimmer of him at least.
“Is it the baby you are wondering about,” he said slowly, “or is it the girl?”
“Well, both,” Mike said. What was the point in lying? “I wouldn’t mind seeing her, if she’s around.”
Leo nodded, grimaced or smiled, they could not tell.
“That’s right,” he said. “Everybody wants to. Do you think I’m a fool?”
When Mike realized Leo was waiting for an answer, he said, “No, Leo. I never said you were.”
Leo nodded again, as if he had just made a point. Then he said, “Anybody wants to see the girl, has to pay. It’s only fair.” Leo coughed again, viciously, and spat. “If I let you in for free,” he said, “then I have to let everyone in.”
He gestured behind the car, where others waited.
Marian started to speak but Mike shot her a look. “How much?” he said to Leo.
“How much have you got?”
Mike hesitated, dug his wallet from his pocket, pulled out some bills and handed them out the window.
Leo fingered them without looking. “Not enough,” he said.
“Not enough? Good God, Leo. How much are you charging?”
“You pay double. Once to see the baby. Once to see the girl.”
Mike opened his mouth, snapped it shut. He pulled some more bills from his wallet.
“What are you doing?” Marian said under her breath. “I’ve never seen you so stupid.”
Mike handed the money out the window and Leo took it.
“How long will it take?” he said, gesturing to the people who had gone in ahead of him.
Leo shrugged, but said nothing.
After a minute, Mike said, “Leo, if you don’t mind my asking, why that gun?”
“And why not?” Leo raised his voice. “What is it to you? None of your business whether a man protects himself. A man needs protection, not?”
Mike cast a glance at Marian.
“But, Leo,” Mike said again, “isn’t that dangerous? Are you … do you know guns?”
Leo stared at Mike a moment, swaying, blinked his burning eyes. He said, “It’s not loaded. Do you think I’m stupid? You think I don’t know better than to walk around with a loaded gun?”
And then he grinned blackly, and waved them on.
——
“Aren’t you coming with?” Mike said.
They had parked outside the barn and he had taken his hat and moved to get out of the car, and he noticed that Marian just sat there with her arms folded across her chest.
“No,” Marian said, “you go.”
Mike glanced at the dark barn, hesitated. “Are you sure?” he said.
“I saw her in there once already,” Marian said. “I don’t need to see her again. I know what Leo has done.”
“It might be better,” he said, “if there’s a woman. She might talk, then.”
“If you want to see so bad,” Marian said, waving her hand in disgust, “then go see.”
Mike did not want to go see. He would rather have started his car and driven back home with his wife, back to his house with the stained-glass windows, back to a quiet afternoon and a good supper of baked ham and boiled potatoes and creamed corn. He did not want to see, but see he must. He had some responsibility in all this, did he not? Was it not because of him that Cecilia had come, and therefore because of him that she had died? Was it not because of him also, then, that Leo had sought out and found another wife and brought her and brought this girl, too? Was it not because of him, then, that there was yet another Krauss infant in this world? By God, he could not walk away from it all now, no matter what he thought of Leo. And so he took his hat and climbed out of the car and slammed the door and stood there a minute in the dust, and then, finally, he went inside.
——
When he returned, not five minutes later, he got quietly into the car and started the engine and backed out of the yard and past Leo, who watched them go without acknowledgment, and onto the road and turned for home.
Marian, who had been watching him warily out of the corner of her eye, said, “And? Did you see the girl?”
“I saw her.”
“And did she say anything?”
Mike did not reply.
“Did she talk to you?” Marian asked again.
“Yah,” Mike said. “She talked.”
“Well, and what did she say?”
“She didn’t say anything at first. You know how she is. Then I told her the braucha was dead.”
“Didn’t she know?”
“No,” Mike said. “But she didn’t really seem surprised, either.”
“Well, no, the old woman must have been at least a hundred. Nothing very surprising in that. What did she say?”
“Christ, I don’t know.” Mike rubbed his eyes. “She talked about circles, or, something. God, she sounded as crazy as Leo. She said, ‘That is how it goes, then. She was right about that. Everything goes in a circle.’ She said, ‘Wait, it will come around again.’ And I said, ‘What will?’ And she said, ‘Everything.’”
“What does that mean?”
“That’s what I say. I have no idea.”
“And is she what Leo says, a saint?”
Mike shook his head. “No. Christ. She’s just a girl. Just a child. She might be a saint, having to live with Leo, but there is nothing miraculous about her, if that’s what you mean. The braucha taught her some things, she said, the old ways, the old brauching. But that is all.”
“But … healing that baby?”
Mike shrugged. “Luck, maybe. Maybe she would have gotten better anyhow. Who knows. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see what she did. The brauching works a little bit, I think. Sometimes. There’s some sense in it. And so maybe that’s all it was.”
“And the blood, what about that?”
Mike turned to look at her. “They are cut.”
“Leo is cutting her wrists?”
“Someone is.”
“Well, if not Leo, who, then?”
“Christ, I don’t know. I don’t even want to know.”
After a moment, Marian said, “But that night at the braucha’s, with Ronnie and Erv Rausch. There was blood, even then.”
“That’s right,” he said. “There was. Even then. Even before she was back with Leo.”
Marian looked out the window.
“But …” she said, after a while, “why would she do that?”
“God, how should I know? Why does anybody do anything? Attention, maybe?” Mike shook his head. “I think, in the end, that there isn’t really anything very special about her at all. Maybe that’s it. She knows it. She’s just a girl, just like any other girl, a little unhappier than most. But just a girl all the same.”
“Well, I don�
�t think that’s true. She was never that,” Marian objected, “she was never just a girl.”
Mike sighed. “But that’s the thing,” he said, “I think she was. I think that’s all she ever was.”
TWO
Father had sat all that Sunday morning in the rectory, a red shaft of light from the robes of St. James the Greater in the window-glass—his attribute, as always, a pilgrim’s staff and drinking bottle—fallen brightly across the Bible before him. It was a little game he liked to play, matching the colour to the passage. Green for most of Genesis; brown for Job and Leviticus and a good deal of Exodus; yellow for Psalms and Corinthians; orange for Judith; blue for Proverbs; purple for Ephesians and the Song of Solomon; red for a surprisingly large portion of the book, including all of Deuteronomy and Revelations. Of course, it made it difficult to read, that coloured light. He had been gradually edging the book to the right, as the sun came more fully around to that side of the church, but the red light had followed him and now the window blazed with the full force of the midday sun. He could see he would have to move elsewhere. Instead, he closed the Bible. He had been reading Judges again, the story of the Levite’s concubine. It had always troubled him. He could not make sense of it. But still, he felt drawn there; as often happened when something was troubling him, he sought not solace, but insight, in the Word of God. He had read it twice over, how the Levite’s concubine had run away, and how he had gone with his servant to her father’s house to bring her home again, how they lodged on the return journey with an old man. He read it again, but there was nothing, no guidance there, no enlightenment. He scanned down the page to the passages that troubled him most. He read silently, moving his lips, “While they were making merry, and refreshing their bodies with meat and drink, after the labour of the journey, the men of that city, sons of Belial, came and beset the old man’s house, and began to knock at the door, calling to the master of the house, and saying: Bring forth the man that came into thy house, that we may abuse him. And the old man went out to them, and said: Do not so, my brethren, do not so wickedly: because this man is come into my lodging, and cease I pray you from this folly.”
And further on, the most troublesome passage, “I have a maiden daughter, and this man hath a concubine, I will bring them out to you, and you may humble them, and satisfy your lust: only, I beseech you, commit not this crime against nature on the man. They would not be satisfied with his words; which the man seeing, brought out his concubine to them, and abandoned her to their wickedness: and when they had abused her all the night, they let her go in the morning. But the woman, at the dawning of the day, came to the door of the house, where her lord lodged, and there fell down. And in the morning the man arose, and opened the door, that he might end the journey he had begun: and behold his concubine lay before the door with her hands spread on the threshold.” Father Rieger shifted the book out of the coloured beam of light. “He thinking she was taking her rest, said to her, Arise, and let us be going.”
Father Rieger closed the book. He did not need to read further, of how the man put the dead woman across his donkey and returned home with her. How, once there, he took a sword and divided the dead body of the concubine into twelve parts and sent the pieces into all the borders of Israel.
Father Rieger sat a moment, staring at the pages. Then he pushed the book from him, rose and took his hat from the hook on the wall. He locked the rectory door and then the main church door, something he did not usually do, and then walked down the road toward Krausses’. He did not bother with a horse or wagon, he knew he would not walk long.
He waved at the first wagon that approached and it pulled over. Father climbed up and settled himself onto the bench seat next to the driver, a young bachelor man Father recognized from the town parish, though he knew him not by name.
“Krausses’?” he asked, and when the driver nodded, Father said, “Drive on.”
Soon they joined the scattered procession of wagons and cars and horses and, after a long and uncomfortable wait in which neither of them spoke, they pulled into Leo’s yard.
The driver, the bachelor, wrote later, many years later, in contribution—along with three poems about wheatfields—to a community history book (and, though the poems about wheatfields were printed, Sister Bernadine, the editor, insisted the rest be omitted and the history book committee quite agreed):
Father’s face, this was Father Rieger, then, and not Father Huff who had that affair with Mildred Brunhauer, his face was all screwed up like he’d eaten a sour pickle. Leo was three sheets to the wind by the looks of things. He come over with a shotgun God knows why. It must of made Father nervous. Sure as hell didn’t make me feel none too good. I’d heard folks were coming by the hundreds, all day, but by the time we got there it was late and there was no one. Just Leo. He said to Father, “Thought you might have brought your girlfriend with you.” That was Ida Rhenisch. I was worried Father might go at Leo the way I’d heard he had at confession a few days earlier, for something Leo had said about the girlfriend, Ida. But he didn’t say nothing. He sat there looking sour. Leo said to Father, “That’s two dollars.” Father said, “You can’t be serious, that’s an outrage.” Leo said, “Two dollars, and a bargain at that price.” Father said, “I won’t stand for it.” Leo said, “You can sit, then, but you sure as hell aren’t going in.” Neither was I, at that jeezly price. Rob a crippled man blind, them Krausses. I went to turn the wagon around, but Father said, “Stop.” He reached into his cassock and pulled out some bills and handed them down. Leo took them. He waved us in. I don’t know if Father payed for us both or what. I never asked. When we got to the barn we climbed down. Leo said, “Come on, then.” He took us in to where the girl sat holding the baby in a corner stable. That was Mary’s baby. Mary was Leo’s second wife. Leo told the girl to hold up her wrists. She wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t even speak. We could see there was blood there, anyway. It was on her wrists. Leo told us how the baby had been brought back from the brink of death. That is what he said. He said the brink of death. He said to the girl, “Show them what you did.” She wouldn’t. She just sat there staring at him. Like she wished he was dead. So he showed us himself how she ran her hands over the child and how she put ashes on its forehead. He told us what she had said, a chant or a prayer or something. I can’t remember exactly. Leo said to Father that the girl had been resurrected. That is what he said. Resurrected from the frozen river. In case we had forgot, which we had not. He said, “Well, Father, what do you make of that, now?” Father just ignored Leo. He asked the girl her name. She told him. He asked her where was she from. She told him. He asked how old was she. She told him. He asked her mother’s name. She told him. So on and so on, until Leo said, is that all he could think to ask her? And Father said, no, he wanted to ask her about the blood, and Leo said, “It’s blood, what more do you want to know, do you want to know its mother’s name, too?” Father said, “How much does she bleed?” Leo said, “Does it matter how much? Is she more of a saint if she bleeds more?” Father went to the girl. He took her wrist. He wiped it with a hanky. Then he took the other one and wiped it, too. He looked at them a while. He said to Leo, “Do you take me for a fool? This girl’s wrists have been cut.” “What do you mean?” Leo said. “You know exactly what I mean,” Father said. “Look here,” he said. He held up one of her wrists and there was a long cut there, right across her wrist. Not deep, but enough to bleed. “She looks like she’s been hacked at with a dull knife,” Father said. He threw the hanky at Leo’s feet. It was bloody. “I knew you were stupid,” Father said, “but I never would have expected this, not even from you. Have you no shame?” Leo got all worked up then, too. He waved the shotgun. He said, “I never laid a goddamned hand on that girl, I never have, you ask her, I never touched her.” He said to the girl, “Tell them, you tell them.” The girl did not say nothing. Father said to Leo, “You, Satan, you will pay for this one day. You will pay for all of it. You mark my words.” He left and I followed hi
m out. None too soon for me. Leo chased after us into the yard. He said, “You make her give me that baby, then, if you won’t make her a saint, then you get that baby back.” Father ignored him, in spite of the gun, which I was having a hard time forgetting myself. It was Leo Krauss, you know. I climbed up on the wagon seat with Father. We drove away. Leo hollered after us, “Goddamn you, goddamn you.” I did not look back. I don’t know if Father went to the constable over in Triumph or not, it was McCready back then, useless as tits on a boar, but he might have gone to him. I don’t know. I was thankful to be getting out of there without a bullet in my ass. Crazy Leo Krauss. It was no wonder. Them Krausses were never nothing but a sack of shit in skin. But that’s how it happened. And you can print it just the way I wrote it, Sister Bernadine, though I know you will cross out all the cuss words.
THREE
Ron Wechter’s crop was mostly in before Lathias even arrived and so when that was finished, Ron walked him over to the machine shop and put him to work on a stubborn thresher they would need come harvest. Lathias looked at the thresher and said, “I don’t know threshers too good.” And Ron Wechter slapped him on the shoulder and said, “Well, you got ‘til August to get acquainted.” And he laughed at the look on Lathias’s face and said, “Don’t worry. I won’t keep you too long from the horses. I was young, too, once.” And he walked off, leaving Lathias alone at the shop with only the cats for company. Now and then he would hear one or the other of Ron’s daughters out in the yard, clucking at the chickens or calling to each other or bickering until they would see him there at the shop and then they would fall silent. And Lathias thought, My God, was it me, then? Was that my fault, too?
Sometimes the youngest girl, Millie, would come and stand in the doorway, leaning up against the frame and sucking noisily on a red stalk of rhubarb, her bare feet in the dust, and Lathias would not be able to look at her, for all that she reminded him of, and soon she would disappear, too, and he would be alone until Millie returned midday to summon him for lunch.
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