by Amy Espeseth
My mom reaches out and stills Aunt Gloria’s drying hand. ‘Glory, she’s got enough on her heart right now, worrying over Peter like she does.’ The cat keeps busy washing her pelt, each scrape of the tongue revealing maple-coloured fur underneath its regular orange coat. ‘Esther came up in an old time, that’s all; she can’t be held accountable for all the wrongdoings of the past.’
‘Marie, please let me hold some grudges.’ Aunt Gloria laughs. ‘A preacher’s wife can’t be too perfect, you know.’
Crouched under the table, pressing the warm cat against my tummy, I learn a lot about Grandma and our name. How Grandma’s name wasn’t always Esther. How Grandma had a part-Indian momma who gave her an Indian name before the momma died. How Grandma’s daddy got her a new, German momma who gave her a new, German name. And how Grandma won’t ever talk about being no Chippewa, Cherokee or Sioux; she won’t allow being no mixed-breed squaw at all.
Mom is putting away the big cooking pots now. ‘Glory, if it wasn’t for Esther and her mommas, whichever one she cares to claim, this family wouldn’t know the Lord. Your Ingwald wouldn’t have become a preacher, and you pair never would have met. So your Ingwald wouldn’t even be your Ingwald, and you wouldn’t ever have become my Glory.’
They’re both laughing their quiet lady laughs, and Aunt Gloria puts her arm gently around Mom’s waist. At the sink together, Mom’s soft hips and Gloria’s narrow bones lean on the counter, aprons wicking up splashed dishwater. They just rest together silently and still for a little while.
‘I wish we had what you share,’ Gloria says and starts wiping the dishes again.
My momma tilts her head but don’t say a word. She reaches for a plate.
Gloria speaks quiet. ‘Just watching him look at you — love you, want to touch your arm — makes me lonesome. That was so long ago for me, but I remember what that’s like.’
Mom bites her lip and looks at her hands.
The cat leaps from my arms and scuttles away from the table. Gloria straightens quick, like being woke from a dream. They stack the plates in the sideboard.
I can imagine forgetting the names of the states or even forgetting part of the Lord’s Prayer, but I can’t imagine forgetting the name my momma gave me. Aunt Gloria and Mom are finished washing up, and they brush by the table on their way through the kitchen.
I can see my mom’s right knee, its purple scars running down the front and sides, like runs in stockings you can’t ever fix. Right after Reuben was born and she was learning to drive, she was hit by a milk truck that ran a stop sign; she never did walk quite straight again. I guess it all just goes to show, don’t it, that you don’t always know what’s there until you look underneath. And, sometimes, you’ve got to look real close.
The dishes are washed, dried and put away. The men are snoring on the couches and the women are now talking with Grandma by the fire. Since no one has thought to give us kids something to do, we’ve found some things ourselves.
Naomi and I are in the haymow at the top of Grandma’s barn. We scratch away at old straw and pigeon droppings to get down to the wooden rafters. Peeking through the cracks below us, we can see long lines of Samuel and Reuben tinkering with a snowmobile deep in the stone foundation of the barn. Hushed, their voices are barely separate; they’re making some sort of plan — I can feel it in the lean of their bodies — but I couldn’t say what’s coming.
The haymow has a door that slides open into nothing. Swing through that gate, and I’d step out into air; only swallows would swoop around my flailing arms as I fell like a stone for fifty feet down. I reckon that the hay chute used to butt up against that door, and bales would ride up or down the slide in style. Snakes, rats, toads and whatever else got itself wrapped up in the hay would worm out of the itchy bales and discover that they had themselves a whole new life high up in the barn. Sure, they might have lost a leg or tail in the transport, but I believe that didn’t slow them down none in discovering their new world above the trees. Whatever they suffered on the way, thanks to the ride, they were born again.
Being trapped in a hay bale after having my leg ripped off by the baler seems to me a pretty horrible way to travel. It seems as if much of nature gets about trapped. Look at seeds: a winged maple seed floating on a breeze has a hard core weighing down one end, and inside that weight is the seed. He’s squished up inside nothing bigger than the end of my pinky, a big maple waiting to spread his branches. Trees look to me like they have faces etched in the ridges and scars along their bark. Walking in the woods, I came across a white birch tree with a pin-oak twisted through its branches. Maybe they once were sisters who couldn’t abide being apart, or maybe they were brothers who couldn’t bear being together.
‘Ruth.’ Naomi is crouched near a green tarp.
Shoving aside the rocks at the front corners of the old cloth, I smell oil and dust. When we’ve pulled it halfway back, we see two oil cans. Stacked in the rusty cans are rocks; Naomi reaches into the nearest to grab one. The rock looks like a glob of concrete, but as she lifts it, it separates into two: inside there are dark, maroon ridges with creamy swirls. These are agates, Grampa’s agates that Grandma said he found down by the river. He cracked them for her, hauled them up the ladder, and they’ve been safe and waiting in the haymow all along.
Each one is different: some, swirls of maroon and cream; some are castles of pink and green ice. Even though they’re all cracked, we can’t tell from the outside what’s going on in there until it’s pulled apart. Naomi’s wearing mittens, but my hands are cold and rough. Rocks carry with them something of their family and home, but they also seem to leave behind sandy pieces of themselves wherever they travel.
Naomi takes the first agate she touched and slips it into her coat pocket. Those rocks have stayed hid up here for longer than we’ve lived. On the back of my coat, she wipes her hands clean of grit.
‘Grandma will let me.’
I suppose she will.
I make sure Naomi climbs down the ladder first, pretending it’s because I’m still half-lame. Soon, I’ll tell her, but I want to decide when. She doesn’t wait at the bottom.
As I haul myself lower — rung by rung, trying to tread gentle on my sole — I think about the smallish creatures that keep changing and I wonder about the trees and the rocks that never seem to change. Like a hurry-up tadpole frog, I used to pray to become a woman. Now that I have bled brown for three days, I pray that God will make it stop. I pray for the peace I hold when I am walking in the woods under my trees. I want to be as silent and still as a stone, as hard as a rock. Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee. Let the water and the blood, from Thy wounded side which flowed, be of sin the double cure, save from wrath and make me pure.
8
RIGHT AFTER SUNRISE, AND UNCLE PETER’S MUSCLY BACK IS to the door when I slide into his shed. A pale axe handle is pinched in a steel vice bolted onto the shop bench. His big hands are shaping the wood, rasping away whatever can’t fit his grip. A decent hickory handle allows the guiding hand to slide free, up and down without hitching; he could afford them store-bought, but a good man shapes his own. I’m thinking he just might not see me. Crinkly wood shavings pile near his boots on the concrete floor.
‘What can I do you for, Ruth?’ He doesn’t even turn around, just keeps pulling the rasp along the handle, drawing the metal through the wood.
‘I won’t be in your way.’ I really won’t; I’ll sit on a bucket and pick my scabs or any old thing. ‘Mom’s cleaning.’ I bite my lip and wait. The wood shudders, almost trying to twist away.
Uncle Peter keeps working and then hunches his shoulders. I can stay. He still hasn’t turned around. There’s two ways here: keep still until he forgets me, or get him talking and wanting me to stay. I’ll try quiet first, just sit here and watch the man work.
Seems like I never get to see him: never
at church, not at Grandma’s, not nothing. That shiny truck of his only shadows our driveway if he’s helping Reuben run the trap line or if he happens to need to ask Mom about something. He missed Thanksgiving and he wasn’t even out hunting his own land. Uncle Peter sat alone in his house or maybe in a broken-down trailer with some lipsticked woman eating microwaved turkey-meat dinner. And me, I was stuck inside mashing potatoes and washing dishes. Even before she banned hunting, Grandma didn’t care much for me shooting. Thanksgiving is a day for hunting, and Uncle Peter could go if he wanted; he just won’t.
Uncle Peter don’t hunt, not since he was sixteen. He don’t talk about it much. No surprise as he don’t say much of anything unless asked; usually he just sets there smiling — hair combed tidy, shaved face shiny and clean — but always with those eyes on him like a beat dog.
‘Can’t sleep, can’t hunt.’ That’s all the explanation I’ve ever heard him give. Other folks say the law won’t let him hunt. My daddy says Peter hears it again almost every night: the shot rings out; the bullet smacks the body; the man crumples to the ground with a scream. And those who saw do not speak: there is a silence that hurts his ears. For a while there are no voices. There is no sound. It is a frightful, still blackness.
‘Uncle Peter.’ My bucket creaks, and I stare at the floor. ‘Can you tell me — not if you don’t want to — but will you tell me why you don’t hunt?’
The rasp stills for a moment, and the man sighs. Silence hangs heavy in the shed, and I regret my question. I don’t mean to cause him pain. Pushing up from the bucket, I start stammering about leaving. He looks straight at me and halts me by raising his hand. I hush. I settle again.
His voice is strained. ‘Ruth, I’ll tell you once.’ And he does.
And in my mind’s eye I see.
They rumble at night so we can’t sleep, harvester machines in the close cornfield: stripping ears from arms, kernels from ears, trampling and breaking the now brittle stalks. The fields are stripped almost bare. Only a few rows remain, a couple three sacrificed to lure in the hungry and plump up the deer before hunting season. The red, purple and yellow leaves have left. Naked and plain, the trees stretch branches like antlers against the sky.
When crossing a fence — even just a barbwire fence crossed a hundred times before — a guy’s got to have a plan. Rifles are a heavy load, so crossing a fence has rules. One man relieves himself of his gun: his friend holds it for him while the man goes beneath and between the wires. The next fellow does the same: his friend holds his rifle while the fellow scales the fence. If there is a third man, all the better: he can hold all the weapons while the others cross and then hand them through before he makes his own way. Along with setting your rifle on safety — or, for some, walking unloaded — sharing the burden don’t make it easy, but makes it near enough to safe.
They are hunting. My daddy is only fourteen, but farmer-strong with callused hands and a long-looking squint. Peter is sixteen and taller still, but thick with the hay-throwing muscles that hurtle the football like a college-bound boy. The neighbour boy, John Magnusson, is sixteen too. Known for his lanky legs and meanness, he is the only son of an unhappy man. There are rows and rows of broken cornstalks with a few sections standing strange and alone. What snow has come has melted in patches, but this has already been a light year. Mostly frozen mud makes their way hard, pulling at their tripping boots and scraping their shins, and it has been a long, cold day.
John scratches his nose with red, gloveless hands; he wants to make the most of the weak light and make a final push through the woods his family and mine share. Daddy and Peter agree: they might as well try and not come home empty-handed. Toward the trees they walk, across the field that joins Grandma’s land with Magnusson’s. Up over their left shoulders they can see Magnusson’s barn. The silo is painted with an American flag. There is no smoke coming from the house’s chimney. Toward the woods, they are walking without talking. John walks fast with those long legs and leads the way, while Peter and my daddy bring up the rear.
John hits the fence first and scrambles through easy, even with his gun strapped across him. He pauses to lift up the top wire for Daddy as Peter reaches out to take his brother’s gun. Daddy is already crouched to go through but — reminded — he straightens and turns to hand Peter his gun. Daddy bends and starts to clamber through again, and his jacket back snags on a barb. He is caught, but only by fabric, and with a rip he keeps moving. But Peter has already moved forward to hand John Daddy’s gun; John holds out those cold hands, touches the wooden stock and the gun drops onto the frozen ground. Knocked off safety, the gun discharges and the bullet sings past Daddy’s ear and into John’s stomach.
And there is blood on the snow. John screams once only and there is blood melting the frost on the dirt. John is struggling to get up and Daddy is holding him down, flat on his back. They hear their friend holler and watch the entrails bulge. There is so much blood.
Folks say that Peter don’t hunt because he killed that Magnusson boy. People talk and reckon he is a felon and the law won’t let him hunt. Now he killed him, but he didn’t do wrong and he wasn’t charged. All the boys were guilty of being in a hurry for the hunt. Uncle Peter quit the day John Magnusson died. No more football, so no more waiting on maybe-someday college. No more killing, so no more waiting on hunting seasons. He didn’t even graduate high school; instead, Peter joined the navy so he wouldn’t have to handle a gun daily. When he came back from the navy — even with farm prices falling through the floor — he bought the farm off old Magnusson. The man didn’t have no heir. Peter still plants corn in that field. Around and around, he rides that rusty tractor: tilling the soil, planting the seed, and cutting down the crop. He don’t leave no corn for nobody.
My daddy still hunts. Maybe he can because the boy wasn’t his friend or maybe because the bullet took a chance but didn’t cut him. Daddy says a guy’s got to learn to carry his burden and let others carry their own. Uncle Peter carries a too-heavy load. But Jesus himself will take up our infirmities; He’ll carry our sorrows. That ain’t something God makes His boy do, strikes Him or smites Him with our afflictions. Instead, that is Christ’s own nature: He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed.
Peter can’t sleep for the echoes that keep him awake at night: the sound of the shot and the sound of the fallen. And, mostly, the stillness after. Being tired is an awful thing. In autumn, we all just want to get some rest, lay down and drift off, not scared as children are. We will sleep only a little while, won’t be leaves afraid to let go, won’t be pumpkins fighting decay. Harvest ain’t death, just means little sleep. And harvest is over; now we rest.
Hot and wet is what I feel, not pain. My palms are slippery. I am shook from Uncle Peter’s story and look down at blood smeared across my hands. I was smoothing my fingers across the biting edge of the axe and almost sliced the tips. No cuts, but when I drew back my hands fast I dropped the axe and somehow sliced something. My hand is bleeding like a headless chicken, but I sure ain’t running around none. I just sit on the bucket, stunned by the hard pain beating in time with my heart and the blood running down my hand. I’m still not making a sound. But he knows.
‘Damn it, girl.’ Uncle Peter is wrapping a greasy rag tight around my hand quick. His voice is still low but sharper than usual. ‘Can’t even keep body and soul together.’ But it ain’t a rebuke on me; he tries to smile while he’s talking and wrapping. I know we both hear Grandma’s voice echoing in our heads.
Pulled to my feet and over to the workbench, and my hand is stretched beneath the light Uncle Peter uses to tie trout lures. He unwraps the towel to see what I have done to myself. He spits on my hand and wipes gentle: the skin is sliced clean off beneath my knuckle and a big flap of meat and fat is hanging off the side of my finger. The hurt starts pounding real hard
.
Uncle Peter holds his face an inch from my hand. ‘Should get some stitches, Ruthie. We got to take you to town.’ He looks straight in my face. ‘You know them stitches hurt worse than the cut. I got to take you in, but you’ll wish we hadn’t.’ He ain’t been scared until just now.
I shake my head. ‘No hospital.’ I don’t know what stitches feel like, but I know I don’t want no more metal in me. And I don’t want Grandma to find out I went to town.
He nods. ‘You sure?’ He angles his head at me like he’s trying to gauge my pain. ‘This is your choice, girl. I’m not about to make it for you.’
And I look at my hand and I think of the blood. ‘No hospital.’
Uncle Peter reaches beneath the bench and gets a shoebox holding aspirin, little scissors, needles, fishing line and duct tape. I hold my breath and look at the ceiling, the spiderwebs and nests and dark. He doesn’t use the needles though, just wraps it tight with gauze, putting it all back in place.
Grandma was a stickler about not needing no doctors interfering with her boys’ salvation. Growing up on a dirt farm, the boys had their share of knocks and bumps, but none was ever brought to — or born in, for that matter — a hospital. Grandma says Uncle Ingwald survived to be a man of God only by the grace of God. He had been scalded with boiling potato water as a baby, torn away half his ear lobe, and caught an exploding canning jar with his face all before the age of sixteen. Even being the youngest, Daddy barely made it, being sickly since birth and coming down hard with scarlet fever as a baby. When he was six, my daddy’s belly button swelled up and seemed like it wanted to pop right out of him, but Grandma and Grampa just wrapped cheesecloth around Daddy’s middle and prayed and fasted every day for a week until the infection passed. Uncle Peter had more of a safe passage through life. He came off the farm to enlist in the navy without a single scar and the Lord continues to watch his way for him whether Peter likes it or not. Grandma remembers everyone’s trials.
