The Whistling Season

by Ivan Doig

  Rose happened to be passing the mirror on the dresser, and at my words, she drew to a halt and held Mother's gown up to her shoulders as she looked at herself reminiscently. "It was magical. I had the nicest white satin one," she said dreamily, "and Casper always looked his best in—"

  Silence came down on us like an eclipse.

  The back of my neck prickled. First I sent an inquiring look toward Damon, but he was staring at Rose in the mirror. She had put her hand to her mouth.

  The question leapt out of Damon. "Casper Llewellyn was your mister? The Capper?"

  He whirled around to face Rose, and I blindly took a couple of steps toward her, too. She had gone as pale as the gown she was holding. "Really, now," she tried, "couldn't there be more than one Casper Llewellyn in the world?"

  "He was! I can tell he was!" Damon's eyes went to the size of turkey eggs. My own probably were no smaller. "Rose, why didn't you ever—"

  The answer hit us both at once.

  "The long walk off a short pier," Damon went on relentlessly. "Rose, did they—were you—"

  "Tell us."

  That voice was mine, although I scarcely recognized it. Rose appeared to be as overwhelmed as I sounded. Hastily she laid the wedding gown onto the bed and backed away.

  "The 'leather trade'?" I pressed.

  Cornered and knowing it, Rose was oddly prim in defending her choice of words. She adjusted her sleeves at the wrists, much in the manner of Morrie, as she stipulated, "Casper traded punches with the best of them on his way up to champion. You could call it a bit of a fib if you want, but—"

  Damon still was working his mouth, but nothing was coming out now. I had to be the one to say it. "You're on the run."

  "Paul, Damon, please, it's not like that." She drew herself up, then slumped. "Well, it is and it isn't. Some people were after me, or at least the betting money they thought I had, and it just seemed best to, what shall I say, evaporate from that situation and come out here and—Paul?" She broke off fearfully, seeing the look on my face. "What is it?"

  "Where does Morrie stand in all this?"

  A tiny shade of relief passed over Rose, I saw, to have someone else brought into this besides her and her fight-fixing spouse. She pressed her lips together in quick thought. "Morrie, oh well," she gestured a little as if that would help with what she was saying, "Morrie is in the clear, never fear. He was just a, what would he call it, a general factotum. A hanger-on, the fight crowd would say. The thrown fight was something Casper and his manager cooked up."

  As if realizing that sounded too pat, she took some blame onto herself. "Naturally Casper let me in on it," she said tiredly. Rose sat down on the edge of the bed, fingering the lace of the wedding gown as though gathering something from it. "He knew I always could read him like a book, so when he came to me and said, 'Rose, boxing is a tough way to make a living but I know how we can make a killing,' I shouldn't have but I went along with it. When you think about it, didn't it serve the gamblers right for—" Listening to herself say this, she gave up.

  "Father is not going to like this," Damon supplied.

  He could say that again. There was a side of Father—maybe any man—that did not like to be made a fool of, even in his own best interest. If the sum of Rose's fibs upset him (and why wouldn't it?) and he felt compelled to go to the cemetery for another conversation with Mother's grave, he readily enough could come back with the opposite conclusion from last time, we all knew.

  Whatever Capper Llewellyn had been, Rose was a fighter who did not quit. Appalled as I was at the catastrophic story she had just owned up to, I had to admire the combative light that came into her eyes as she looked squarely at me and then at Damon, and at me again. "Conference? In the kitchen?"

  Wordlessly the three of us filed downstairs and to the waiting table.

  Having seen Rose at this before, I planted my elbows as if anchoring myself into the tabletop. Damon was restless in his chair. Together we looked across at the woman ready to be our prized new mother five minutes ago, sitting there now with her past spilled all over her.

  Rose scrubbed a thumb on a windmill in the oilcloth while collecting her thoughts. A serious indent took place between her eyes. Damon and I waited, skeptical, apprehensive, everything.

  When she had her words lined up, her voice dropped to the vicinity of the whisper she and I always used.

  "Damon is all too right. This would not look good to your father at this late date. But when would it ever have? 'Housekeeper On the Run Seeks Hideyhole'? That kind of advertisement doesn't inspire much confidence, does it? Then once I was here, it never seemed to make any sense to tell on myself. And Morrie." Her hand came up from the table in a helpless little tossing gesture. "Paul, Damon, really, truly, I didn't set out to get your father to marry me, it wasn't like that at all. I'd had enough husband. But your father and I grew on each other and—" There was the helpless gesture again. "He is beloved to me, please believe me. I wouldn't hurt him for all the world."

  "Rose, can't you see?" I said numbly. "You can love Father to pieces, and there's still a problem here. Isn't the law after you?"

  "Of course it isn't," the prim defense again. "The gamblers were the only ones who ever figured out the fixed fight"—she fanned the air dismissively as if shooing those off—"and that was only because they were stupid enough to guess right."

  Hard as that was to follow, somehow it put a different light on things. Drumming in my head ever since the words the betting money came into this conversation was Aunt Eunices prophecy that household help always stole. But that had no way of coming true any further in this case, did it? Whatever temptation had done to her in the days of fight-fixing perdition, no one as clever as Rose could possibly be out to swipe a dryland homestead. Something else grappled in me. If Rose hadn't had one slip of the tongue, Damon and I and Toby—Toby!—would have gone right on prizing her to take Mother's place, and Father would never have need to doubt that he had given his heart to the right woman. Were all our fives supposed to trip over that? Honesty maybe was the best policy but was it ever costly.

  "Any of that, back there," Rose plunged on, "there's no chance of anything like it happening ever again. I know that wouldn't necessarily make it sound any better to some people"—we knew who she meant: Father—"what Casper, well, he and I were up to. But he paid for it with his last breath. And I climbed on that train for good, all that behind me. You have to believe me, on that." Did we? "Paul," she rounded on me, recognizing that of the two stones at the table I was the flintier, "the people in this room are the only ones who would ever let this out."

  Suddenly Damon clucked his tongue sympathetically. He appealed to me with an agonized gaze. I could not have put it into words then, but some part of me grasped that a scheme of necessary silence about Rose's past, if I would go along with it, would become an organizing principle for him from then on. He would do whatever it took leagues beyond any spitbath handshake there ever was, to keep utter secrecy for what he believed to be the right outcome. I could see in my brother's face that for him, Rose was too much to let go of.

  And what did he read in mine?

  I sat there with my brain nearly cracking, working so hard to think through what was right and what was simply righteous. Damon squirmed some more. How did the two of us get in this situation? The desperado Milliron brothers, One-Punch and Slick. There was the distinct possibility we were way, way in over our heads, plopped there negotiating a marriage for our father or not, a stepmother for ourselves or not. Yet the power of word had fallen to us, out of somewhere.

  High color in her cheeks, the warm brown eyes misty with all the emotion she had poured into this, Rose never looked more memorable as I studied her, trying to make up my mind.

  "You mean it, about putting all that behind you? You swear?"

  "I do."

  "Up, down, and sideways?"

  "May lightning strike me twice if I don't mean every word. Paul, what more can I say?"

 
Damon practically wheezed in relief. "That's settled, then. Don't you worry, Rose, we know to keep our traps shut. Right, Paul?"

  I nodded the slowest nod of my life.

  We still had to deal with the barn. Every now and then a raindrop big as a half dollar pocked the dust in the yard, just enough to make us put on our slickers but not delivering any true moisture, as Damon and I trudged there from the house.

  "Sonofabitching weather," I spat out. Damon kept watch on me from the corner of his eye.

  Neither of us spoke while we mucked manure out of the horse stalls and freshened up the straw on the barn floor and, last thing, climbed to the haymow. Damon pitched his hay delicately straight down into the manger and I did mine practically a stem at a time, all the effort in me still on the question of Rose and Father. Accuracy plainly was on both our minds when we met in the middle of the haymow and resigned from our pitchforks. I kicked together a mound of hay and sat in it. "Let's think this out, some."

  "We better," Damon agreed. "Capper Llewellyn, holy smoke!" He savaged the air with a pantomime left hook that would have sent any Capper opponent through the barn wall. "Practically in the family. How about that."

  "Damon, the man was some kind of crook."

  "Well, yeah. Except for that." He sobered. "Morrie found out they fixed that fight, right?"

  "For crying out loud, he'd have to. A person's sister can't be married to the lightweight champion of the world who throws a fight and gets knocked off for it and that person not find it out."

  "That's what I thought," Damon said defensively. "But then why didn't he—when I showed him my scrapbook—"

  "I don't know why that didn't set him off. I wish I did. But you heard Rose: he's in the clear. That's what counts." A thought occurred to me. "Where was the short pier, anyway?"

  "I think Chicago."

  "Lake Michigan, brrr. But there, you see? Morrie and the University of Chicago and all—" I peered intently out the loft door of the haymow as if I could see all this written on the clouds. It still was not raining to amount to anything, and at this rate it never would. "He's there, Rose tells him she needs his help because the gamblers are after her, they get away to Minneapolis. They hole up, but she still has to quit the country because the guys who took Casper on the long walk might track her down back there. Morrie watches over her while she waits to hear on her advertisement, then he comes along with to protect her. That's how it must have been."

  "You always hit the nail on the head, Paul," Damon marveled.

  We had been so busy at this we didn't hear the surrey until it was almost to the barn door. Toby came bounding out of the carriage, which told us even before he could shout it:

  "Paul, Damon! I can ride! My foot's all healed." He bolted for the haymow ladder to join us.

  Father wrapped the reins and swung down from the surrey, smiling up at Damon and me. "I hope you counted the raindrops for Morrie's weather ledger," he bantered to the two of us, just as if a little dry weather was the only thing doing mischief to his destiny.

  ***

  THE WIND CAME UP IN THE NIGHT AND THE HOUSE GROANED with it like an arthritic creature turning over. I writhed in bed. It had been an emotional day, there was no getting around that; but Damon and I had done what we hoped was the right thing, hadn't we? Rose had promised up, down, and sideways she was honest now, hadn't she? Morrie had been the noblest Roman of us all in shepherding her out here and sticking with her, hadn't—

  Somewhere in the dizzying revolutions of all this in my mind, I dropped off to troubled sleep.

  In the immense annals of my dreams, that night's even yet stands alone. Everyone in Marias Coulee, it seemed like, had come to gawk at a short pier. The pier was over the Big Ditch—my notion of a pier was rather approximate at the time—and a boxing ring had been set up on it. A figure in fighting trunks and gloves stood waiting at the far side of the ring, his arms resting on the ropes. And on the near side here Father was, in charge of sending out our boxers, however that came to be. I did not know whether to cheer or not when Eddie Turley, squinting like fury, advanced on the other boxer and was dispatched with one blow, wham! "Will you look at that!" people kept saying, and I was trying, but it was hard. Because whde all this was going on I was being quizzed by Harry Taggart, the school inspector. "Pay attention, bucko." I was trying to, in all directions. I had a black slate on my lap, and I chalked words onto it as Taggart reeled them off to me. Lux. Desiderium. Universitatis. "Nasty," I heard Taggart say, and I looked up to see Mdo, the next knockout victim, being dragged out of the ring feet first by Father. Where was Rose? How could she miss something like this? Suddenly Father hovered in front of me, looking distraught. "Paul, we need you in the ring. I know what I told you about fighting. But it would be just one punch." Taggart folded his arms and went into a huff. Damon came and put the boxing gloves on me, left one first for good luck, he told me. Anxiously looking past him, I could see the other boxer was bigger than I Was, but not as much as I expected. Damon gave me a. push out onto the pier and through the ring ropes. "The next challenger, Paul Milliron!" an announcer somewhere was saying. "Versus the lightweight champeen of the world!" His back to me, the champ shadowboxed at the end of the pier. He resembled somebody but I couldn't quite see who, until he threw a final flurry of punches and then did a very odd thing. He shucked off a boxing mitt, then the other. Still turned away from me, he dropped the gloves off the pier into the water. Where he got these I don't know but now he ever so casually slipped some gleaming things past his fingers onto either hand Brass knuckles.

  "Morrie?" something cried out in my mind, and I sat bolt upright in bed.

  Cocoa didn't help, that shivery extra-early hour in the kitchen. Pressing my brow against the night-cold glass of the window as I tried to see out into the unfathomable world beyond Marias Coulee didn't either. The clouds had blown away and if I hadn't been so disarranged in my head I would have been tingling to see that the comet was back, lower in the sky but still a phosphorescent fireball against the dark. Its new tail swept behind it like a glowing gown. How was it possible for something a million miles from earth to be clearer than anything within my mental horizon? Morrie? He couldn't be—

  By then I had been up for what seemed an uncountable amount of time; when you break out of a dream like that in the small hours of the morning, sleep isn't coming back. My mind absolutely refused to clear. Blindsight, hindsight, perception by any other name, I had it to contend with to a desperate degree. How could Casper Llewellyn be dead, entombed in blackest newspaper headlines that I had seen with my own eyes in Damon's scrapbook, and yet be up and around in the recognizable figure of Morrie? Was I losing my mind? Had my dream habit finally delivered me to the crazyhouse?

  The kitchen clock chimed softly, and I took a frantic look at it. Half an hour, at the most, before Rose showed up for the day. I couldn't face her one more time blind to whatever she and the late Mr. Llewellyn—if he truly was late rather than current—amounted to. I had to know. I flung myself out to the mud room for the bull's-eye lantern.

  It took me a couple of shaky tries to light it, but my nerves steadied a bit as I started upstairs. The stairs were no problem, I had such long acquaintance with their every tread and creak. The tricky part waited at the bedroom. There I needed just enough fight to find Damon's scrapbooks but not so much that it would wake either of my brothers.

  I sneaked up on the bedroom doorway as though it might run off. With excruciating care I set the lantern down outside a corner of the door frame, its bull's-eye pointing to the floor so there was a cast of glow for me to go in on, like a throw rug of light. So far so good, but I was not really anywhere yet, was I. Damon's scrapbooks always were a logjam atop the dresser. I crept in, trying to breathe silently. Not for the first time was I grateful Damon was basically a hibernator; Toby was the concern. If he shot awake and asked what I was doing, and that roused Damon, and the racket brought Father up here grimly demanding explanations as only a father could d
o, everything was sunk.

  I was within a foot of the dresser when Toby snuffled, rubbed his nose with the palm of his hand, and yawned. Frozen on tiptoes, I waited. After forever, Toby turned over and went back to rhythmic breathing.

  One by one, I lifted the scrapbooks up to my eyes, peering desperately in the dimness to pick out the right one. Making out the typeface letters on the pasted-in newspaper articles was like trying to read an eye chart in a coal mine, but thank goodness boxing headline writers so loved K.O. in big letters. Mentally apologizing to Damon, I slipped from the bedroom with his prizefighting scrapbook.

  Back at the kitchen table, I paged madly through for any article with LLEWELLYN atop. Even so, I almost missed the pertinent one.

  Wolger Upset Winner Over 'Capper' in Last Round!

  My eyes swept past the headline. The photograph of the boxing ring at the end of the fight, the victor with an arm raised gladiatorially and the vanquished climbing down through the ropes in the opposite corner, his face half turned away, only puzzled me all the more. That indistinct figure in dark boxing trunks looked so much like Morrie—build, height, weight-but was the hair quite the right color? A black-and-white picture on newsprint isn't much for tint.

  I blew out an exasperated breath and sat there no less baffled than I had been. Any print put in front of me will find its way to my eyes, so before I knew it I automatically was reading down through the story of the fight and on into the fine print of the round-by-round scoring of the judges. Even below that, I saw, there was a crowd of type, about like there would have been for baseball box scores. What I did not know about prizefighting would fill a newspaper page, obviously. Father would not have been alone working the ring corner in the dream, I saw right away; it took quite a population of corner men and officials. Here were the judges' names. The referee. The timekeeper. Wolger's manager and seconds and trainer and so on, listed first now that he was the champion. Then like the lead sinker at the end of a futile fishing line, the paragraph clump of ex-champion Casper Llewellyn's retinue. I didn't really imagine a factotum brother-in-law rated inclusion, but my finger trailed down anyway. And stubbed against the last tiny irremovable engravure of type.