A Season of Fire and Ice

by Lloyd Zimpel

  Given water, the dogs unfold their lengthy legs and greet the lads as if they are Beidermann himself: another benefactor would be greeted less cordially. I have seen recent evidence of their savagery: by the river where the twins, fishing, called me to see a small doe, legs torn off whole, her ass-end wholly chewed away, and her throat gone too. They are no better than wolves, these creatures Beidermann dotes upon, killer dogs, sure enough. I watch them slop up the water as the twins run off. Over the years I have shot a few of their kind who found their way too close to my cattle, and they ended their days nailed to a stump, to let the owners of others with a like propensity know where they can look for hounds left to run amongst my stock: nailed by the ears to the nearest cottonwood, by God.

  Some part of the audience has dribbled away as each speaker finishes, although none turns away from Banker Lovejoy’s threats and warnings, for fear he will notice and remember and perform one of his famous foreclosures, for all that the bank already has taken over more land than it can oversee.

  Now there are two score people left with Ma and me: August, having avoided banker and politician, comes up as Deitrich winds down: perhaps the boy hopes to draw a bit of cheer and optimism from the patriot’s bombast. this happy breed! our stalwart kind! But clearly he is running out of steam, and the audience is ready for the horse race soon to start at the south end of town, and the three-legged gunnysack races, and the endless egg-throw contest, going on to the north.

  August, standing between Ma and me, says, Did you give the twins that bunch of fireworks?

  I did, say I.

  You did? says Ma. I did.

  You gave them the ones you hid from them last year, say I. I gave them some from this year.

  She frowns. How many do they need? she asks crossly.

  August, doubtless sorry he has asked his question, draws back. On stage, Deitrich seeks a thundering conclusion, and he pulls off his stained gray derby, pretending that in his exuberance he will fling it into the midst of his few remaining listeners. A look of apoplexy is upon him. GALLANT SODBUSTERS! BRAVE VISIONARIES! HARBINGERS OF FORTUNE! &tc.

  Old Deitrich, I say to Ma, begins to sound like chapter titles in a school book—

  Yaaas, he surely does.

  This is not Ma’s voice. It is Beidermann, who leans in between Ma and me, and speaks loudly, above the claps of a half-dozen people relieved that Deitrich finishes short of seizure.

  Aha! say I. So here you are. I saw your dogs, left without water. We missed your horses in the parade. He is nicely dressed in a blue striped shirt and brown vest and britches, and expensive-seeming new boots, or old ones well polished up.

  Did you? he says absently, as if this is of no interest to him. But he pokes a thumb into my arm. Have you been listening to these boys’ speeches? says he, and goes on without waiting for my answer: Let me ask you something: it gets worse every year, does it not? Everybody giving themselves a pat on the back, telling each other how worthy they are. That old boy with the army sash must have been hit in the head with a cannon ball—

  Ma speaks up sharply. He has been through a lot, she says. And he has a right to make his feelings heard.

  Beidermann hesitates, as if he is reluctant to argue with a woman, and he turns his shoulder toward her. Now, behind the food tents, the pits of open coals are ready and slabs of beef laid down, and ropes of smoke with enticing odors drift our way. Around us, everyone heads in that direction. On stage Kuhn presents the ribbon for largest family at the fair to old Meyerhoff, who has increased his brood to fourteen since taking the award last year. Beidermann leans down to speak to me, quietly, as if he hopes Ma will politely not listen.

  All these pats on the back, says Beidermann, I fail to understand it. This whole crew here, none of ’em at all, did a thing to take personal credit for. They aint done a thing themselves. Misfits and failures, went bust in the East; come crawling out here from New York or Pennsylvania, their grandpas did, and maybe got as far as Illinois or Wisconsin, and went bust there too, and now these old boys, looking for a dollar in the road, turn up in Dakota scratching s--t with the sparrows, and get up on the stage and pat themselves on the back. By God!

  The critical Beidermann, I am reminded, comes not from the East, but down from the North, so may grandly exempt himself from those of us of Eastern ancestry.

  All failures, says Beidermann. Shiftless ones, drunken ne’erdo-wells, dull ones and stupid ones, too scared or foolish to make a go of it back there. Some of ’em could not tie a knot, fell over their own feet when they went to turn around; but kept coming west, they did, until they got far enough west so they could pat themselves on the back and now they tell each other how great they are just for having sense enough to put one foot in front of another until they got here. Hell, some of ’em are even criminals, running from the law—

  Well, Beidermann, say I, it may be you are speaking of your own ancestors, but as for mine—

  By God, but it rubs me wrong, he says, folks taking credit for nothing. Look at the bunch of them—he waves his hand to take in the town—congratulating themselves for being forced further and further West, pushed back like the runt pig to the last shriveled tit that gives no milk.

  Come, come, Beidermann, say I. This is a picnic celebration, and if this is your Fourth of July antidote speech, well, there are no anarchists here to appreciate it—

  Yeoman of the plow! cries Beidermann. Christ, Praeger, you know as well as I do, next Fourth, one-third of the people here will be bust, and they will not even be sucking the sow’s hind tit, they will be begging off the wife’s folks back East. No wonder that oily banker is so suspicious about lending money—hardly anybody here knows enough to make a crop to bring in enough money to pay it back. Hell, they go and put ten cows on land that can not feed one—and they pat themselves on the back—

  August, at my side, now gives a loud laugh like a cough. Well, says he, I guess what you mean by all this bulls--t is that while us poor folks are sucking hind tit, you got yourself that rich bottom land and all that good hay so you are sucking front tit, eh? He smiles at Beidermann, mildly enough.

  Beidermann peers around me, as if August’s insignificant presence had gone unnoticed until this interruption. Now he throws back his head, enabling him to look down that great Roman nose, and with a little smile, says at last: You, being a Praeger boy, would recognize bulls--t when you see it, as you are all so full of it yourselves.

  Between the two, I stand with a hand on August’s elbow. These are sour words from Beidermann, and no surprise as he is a man given to them, but for all their familiarity, no easier to swallow. And yet he is our neighbor, our closest neighbor; the twins spend near as much time at his place as they do at ours. And if he is unconcerned with the possible grievous consequences of such unneighborly utterances, I am not. But I push my concerns aside, for I have seen the ugly aftermath of radical words exchanged between neighbors. All of us here, we Yeoman of the Plow have seen our fill of such consequences: men and boys dead, dogs poisoned, hay and barns burned: and this last spring, young Duycinck’s remains found afloat in the willows of the flooded Sheyenne below Fort Eden; flung into the icy flood I have no doubt by . . . someone . . . whose name will be revealed in good time, and he will prove to be a good neighbor of Duycinck, the two having argued over fence lines and so-called trespass. And this . . . someone . . . is a civilized man, educated at an Eastern university; but now in the end to be counted as one of Beidermann’s Eastern failures of the outlaw persuasion; for while this gentleman is clever at making his way, never bankrupt, meeting all payments, neither shiftless nor without good luck, yet he is fated soon to wear a hempen necktie. . . .

  But August has heard Beidermann’s vaporish rants before, and I will give my boy this: he has a sweet nature, for without rancor he replies to Beidermann’s aspersion: I mean only that you have no right to call people failures who have had nothing but bad luck, with drouth and storms and fires. Anybody can get behind when those things
happen, and if they live through them, then a pat on the back is nothing wrong. You have had uncommon good luck. Others have not.

  He speaks forthrightly, uncontentious in manner; and I would say, of the seven boys—counting even the twins, who are half August’s age—all will provoke a fight without half trying: only August turns away ire with a wry smile, a mild word, a dismissing wave of the hand. The boy has courage enough, but feels little need for its reckless display.

  Now Ma pushes past August and me and squarely eyes the stiff-necked Beidermann. Leo, says she into his face, Leo, you are nothing but a preacher who no one would ever give a pulpit to. You want us all to admit how worthless we are—in your eyes if not in the eye of God—and then you will show us mercy in saving us from our terrible sins. Well, we cannot all be perfect like you. Take my advice, Leo, and get yourself a church and leave people alone to have a good time on the Fourth.

  Stock still, Beidermann takes this in with squinted eyes and a small smile, but before Ma finishes suddenly he jumps as if tweaked in the hinder and cranes to see over my shoulder as behind me a long shout is raised, and Beidermann pushes past, running.

  Without turning to look I can tell anyone who asks what it is: the dependable event without which the Fourth would not be the Fourth: another damn grass fire.

  The fleet Beidermann is already across the road as August and I hasten after, a flurry of men beside us, to the large weedy lot between the livery and Schwantz’s store, above which a half-dozen ribbons of smoke spiral into the hot sky; no one needing to be told that fireworks have set alight the dry growth there, upon which a swarm of men with shovels and gunny sacks have descended, and as I come up Beidermann is dancing on the last of the sparks at the edge of a charred spot two rods each way.

  Beyond the stomping Beidermann I see three boys high-tailing it out of town, no doubt hoping to outrun the paternal switch. The twins, coming up, announce that these are the Anderson boys, who are a jolly trio, full of clever riddles—I have heard them stump the twins—and sly jokes, but always more innocent ones than the setting off of fires, for all that it is an accident.

  From the burned lot, Otto emerges bearing a shovel with which he knocks charred weeds off his boots. The shovel he returns to old Arno Gaustad, who stands under the flag pole at the post office as if he is keeper of the colors, which hang limply above his head.

  Good there is no wind, he says, with stiffened fingers tying the shovel to the side of his grandson’s wagon from whence it came, Otto having wrested it away to forestall him, limping and wheezing, from doing battle with the fire himself. However fit he looks and claims himself to be, at eighty-some years a man cannot jump around fighting fires without encouraging the Almighty to express His awful disapproval. Old Gaustad stays close to his grandson’s wagon, which is just as well, a horse being too much for him to ride these days; but there are years upon which he left his mark—and which left their mark upon him, namely, the skinned patch on the back of his head, where hair never properly grew again for all his years of trying, after a slab of skin the size of a lady’s hand was pulled clear off by a she-wolf into whose den the young Gaustad crawled halfway, thinking it empty. The terror-crazed animal soon clawed her way out over his back in a space big enough only for one of them—who was scared most we do not know—but her escape came at the expense of a little of his skin and scalp. He was just married then, and when he turned up at home bloody from head to toe, his wife surely had doubts as to the sort of fool she had picked herself.

  From that misadventure old Gaustad forever bears scars, but he has lived amongst us since as a dignified man, with a fading reputation as one bold enough to poke his bare head into a wolf’s den. His little fringe beard, now purely white, is neatly trimmed, by his wife, no doubt, if she can still see to do it, or perhaps by his daughter Ida, who married a Taubensee, whose son has fetched the lot of them to the picnic.

  Old Gaustad’s wife has claimed a straight-backed wooden chair by the watermelon tub, to keep count on those who come around for extra slices, swatting fearlessly at the paper wasps and bees come to sample the cut melons. One clouded eye she keeps peeled on her grandson’s wagon, now to see that the old man ties up the shovel properly. She calls him on any job done not to her liking; I have seen it. She has definite likes. She sits here without spectacles, although surely she wears them at other times, but is too vain to present herself in eyeglasses at public events; for all that she wears a faded wash bonnet.

  I think it has been last Fourth since I saw Gaustad; his place, his children’s places, and his grandchildren’s places being too far north for us to meet often. When he has twice tested the knots securing the shovel, I approach to shake his hand, and he confirms, yes, it was the last Fourth that we laid eyes on one another.

  By God, say I, to humor him, you have a better memory of that than I do.

  Well, why not? says he. I am a hell of a lot better looking too!

  He is not hard of hearing, and he tells me he gets around fairly good. His grandson, he tells me first off, has planted rye on a big spread added by purchase of a quarter-section from some Irishman who has returned to his wife’s folks in Indiana after one bad dry year; he tells this not to scoff at the unlucky Irishman, but to point out that not one dry year, nor two, nor three, has done in the two of us; although that is not his news: the planting of so much rye is.

  I suppose you heard those speeches, I say.

  I heard ’em all right, says Gaustad. I heard that Goddamned banker. I like to hear bankers talk. Some people do not, but I do. They always talk money, even when they talk something else. You listen close, you will find out something about your own money—that is, providing you got any. They know a lot about money that you and me never thought of.

  There may be something to that, say I.

  You damned right. Banker knows what a dollar means. To you and me a dollar means a mess of flour and sugar and beans, some coal oil, that sort of thing. Hell, that aint what it means to a banker. What one dollar means to him is another dollar—you damned right! If he has got one, he is bound and determined to make it two. One aint enough! Are you the kind of fellow who thinks like that? I sure aint.

  No, I am surely not, say I.

  Let me tell you something else, Gaustad says, peering up into my face. I like that old boy Karl Deitrich too. He knows how to get up a head of steam. He should have been a politician. Or a preacher. He would have made a good preacher—get the unbelievers to their knees straightaway. I know he was a sh--y land agent, but hell, he should have been a preacher. If he preached for the Methodists, I might go hear him.

  Arno, say I, I ought to get Beidermann over here to talk to you.

  Who is that?

  Beidermann, fellow moved in south of me a couple years back.

  The fellow with the team of big blacks? I know who he is. What about him?

  Well, he thinks different—

  S--t, lots of people think different, the whole world thinks different. The hell with ’em. I know what I think, and I lived longer than any of ’em.

  There is a wailing at his knees which comes from three of old Gaustad’s great-grandchildren, hauled up here by his grandson, all three crabby at being pulled away from the unfinished festivities, the pie-eating contest in particular; the grandson, the seat of his trousers stained with dirt and grass from his having been pulled down on the losing side in tug-of-war, waves to Grandma at the melons to get moving; they must leave. They have as long a ride home as anyone here, and had they left an hour earlier, it would still be dark by the time they reach their place; all chores to be done in lantern light: and so the two boys and little girl are sullen, close to tears in this cheery sunlight, fireworks popping, knowing they will fall unhappily asleep in the jarring wagon, to be wakened in the dark and sent to do the milking in the dismal barn, while the alarmed cows throw their heads about to see why they are being tended so late, in the shadows.

  I know how that is, coming home in the dark, but it
is our luxury that the Family Praeger need not hasten unduly, as the sober sided Henry, who, as he says, in thirty-two years has far and away had his fill of the dust and noise and foolish speechifying called the Fourth, stays home, probably reading, and does the necessary chores: feeding the calves and hogs, bringing in the bull, closing up the chickens; and we will find him with his history of Athens and Sparta and all that beside the kitchen lamp when we come up the dark lane under the stars.

  JULY 5. As I finish up yesterday’s chronicle in the heat of this morning, Ma comes to my desk holding the two cylinders of fireworks found in my vest; they are bigger around than my thumb and with their hen scratch printing look very foreign in her hand.

  What is your purpose in saving these? she says.

  I will ask you a question too, say I. What is your purpose in poking through my pockets?

  She does not answer that, but says, These look like something a person would use at a shivaree. She sets them at my hand and goes to leave.

  Wait, wait, say I. What was the gossip over those watermelons, then? About Beidermann and the Widow, was it? Tying the knot, are they?

  Women’s gossip, she says. I know you are not one to believe women’s gossip. Going out the door she says over her shoulder, But save those silly fireworks of yours, all the same.

  Beidermann and the Hard Words

  1887

  AUG. 2. An over-heated wind all day, and the dust that rides on it—not simple dust but dirt itself, the Earth itself. The rags Ma stuffs in door and window sills hold back only some; and grit in her kitchen, on the oil-cloth, pots, in the water-pail, a skin of it everywhere, near gives her fits. With grit in our teeth, we spit black.

  That wind is too much to work in for more than a few hours, in that the horses will stand tail to it, heads lowered and eyes hooded, tails blowing back across their rears. Among us it goes unsaid, though bursting to be said, there will be little crop anywhere this season in this part of Dakota; except in the small greener bottoms of the river where, for all that the heat goes as it does everywhere, yet the baking wind is less. Those fields are the lucky Beidermann’s, indeed, the blessed Beidermann’s, for it is as if the drouth chooses to pass him by; his good fortune being that the greater part of his land lies where the river still shows something more than a damp stain; at which our cattle contend with his along its snaking length, a hundred heads tossing and tails whipping against the flies that cover them like a coat of blacking wherever mud is not crusted, as it is on their legs and underbellies, baked there like armor-plating. Today, the twins peel off sheets of it from a skinny heifer before she summons strength enough to stagger free.