This Side of Jordan

by Monte Schulz

  “Maybe we ought to stay in here,” said Alvin, looking at himself in the silvered mirror over the dresser. “We could throw down some blankets and sleep on the floor.”

  Her eyes looking boozy now, Rose replied, “I don’t guess Calvin’d appreciate that much company tonight.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” said Rascal. “Actually, I prefer the outdoors. There’s nothing like fresh air, I always say.”

  “It’s freezing in the barn,” said Alvin, sitting down on the bed next to Rascal. “Probably catch cold out there if we don’t get our toes chewed off first by the rats.”

  The dwarf stiffened. “Rats?”

  “There’s always rats in an old barn, crawling around in the hay. I saw one this afternoon, in fact.”

  Rose twisted her head back toward the dwarf. “This boy’s just pulling your leg. Ain’t no rats in my uncle’s barn.”

  “You calling me a liar?” said Alvin. Of course, he hadn’t really seen a rat, but then again who was to say there weren’t any hiding in the straw? Frenchy was always finding rats up in Uncle Henry’s hayloft. He’d kill them, and cut off their tails for fish bait. Frenchy said, “The fish ain’t been born who can tell the difference between a rat’s tail and a fat worm flopping off a hook.” And he was right, too, because they caught a lot of catfish using rat tails.

  “Although I am not afraid of rats,” said the dwarf, “it is a well-known fact that they carried the Black Plague throughout Europe in the Middle Ages and were nearly responsible for the destruction of our entire species. They’re very dirty creatures. I wouldn’t care to be bitten by one while I’m sleeping. Rabies, I hear, is a dreadful disease.”

  “It kills you in a day or so,” Alvin said. “You choke to death from foaming out of your own mouth, like a sick dog.”

  “There ain’t no rats in the barn!” Rose repeated. “I swear I’d sleep out there with you myself if it wasn’t for Calvin. And I wouldn’t be scared at all, so don’t you be.”

  She sat down on the bed, sipped again from Chester’s flask, and curled up with her back against the headboard. Rascal gently slid over beside her and took her right hand and traced his forefinger once more across the middle of her palm. Feeling a little queasy, Alvin got up off the bed and went to the open window, prepared to lean outside and upchuck if necessary. His forehead felt slightly feverish and he guessed another sweat was coming on. Turning about, he found Rose staring at him while the dwarf stroked her palm. What kind of girl was she? Could he yet kiss her?

  “Where’re y’all headed from here?” she asked.

  Alvin shrugged. “Maybe the Dakotas, California. Who knows?”

  “You go where Calvin tells you to go, don’t you?”

  “Only when there’s money involved.”

  “Oh yeah?” Her eyebrows arched in surprise at his answer. “What made you decide to stop in Harrison?”

  He felt insulted again. “Why are you such a busybody? Who told you to come out here and lie around in this bed all afternoon, huh? Something tells me you take orders pretty damn well yourself.”

  Rose grinned. “Well, of course I do, sweetie pie. Been doing it my whole life. Daddy tells me to clean out my closet and throw away my old dolls, I go do it. He tells me to shine his shoes and wash his shorts, I do it. He tells me to sit in his lap and sing ‘Good-bye Liza Jane,’ I sit there and sing till he tells me to stop. Nobody in Kansas takes orders better than Rosa Jean Harper.”

  “Aw, quit your sniveling,” said Alvin, shaking his head. His opinion of her was diminishing by the minute. “I ain’t never got a break from my daddy, neither, but it don’t bust me up none.”

  “Did he tan you?” Rose asked, after sipping again from the hipflask.

  “’Course he did. What of it?”

  “My daddy calls me his little princess whenever he’s squiffy.”

  “Your lifeline indicates royalty in a previous lifetime,” said Rascal, taking her free hand once again. “Perhaps the servitude you provide in this life offers atonement for sins of indulgence committed in another.”

  “Probably,” said Rose. “Some days, I feel awful bossy. It’s just that I can’t seem to find anyone to boss around in Harrison, is all.”

  “I’ll be your slave,” offered Rascal. “Command me!”

  “All right,” said Alvin, his fever rising now, “choke it. She knows you ain’t on the level.” He walked over to look in the closet. Maybe there was something he could steal.

  “Envy doesn’t become you,” replied the dwarf, putting his back to the farm boy.

  “I told you both, it’s Calvin my daddy don’t trust,” Rose said, re-adjusting the pillow at her back. “Says he’s a shady character. But I think he’s just more polished than people around here, and I like that. Makes me feel polished, too. Like a real lady. My daddy’d like his daughter on a leash that’s just long enough to wait on his customers and get the cleaning done upstairs and down. He’s scared of somebody like Calvin coming along and sneaking off with his little girl.”

  “Where’s your momma?” Alvin asked, kicking over a stack of empty hat boxes.

  “She run off with a shoe salesman when I was four. Daddy called her every name in the book. Of course, I say if it makes him feel better to think of her as a whore, so be it, but I guess he’s still plenty sad about her. Every one of us got feelings, and when you get treated bad, it hurts, no matter how much you go around telling people it don’t.”

  The dwarf said to Rose, “Did you know that once you were a handmaiden to Cleopatra, serving her in a slave barge on the Nile after being led into captivity from Babylon the Great where you had been a queen?” His eyes were wide as saucers. “It’s truly amazing to chart your palm. An honor, if I do say so myself.”

  “Calvin wants to bring me with him when y’all go tomorrow,” said Rose, closing the hipflask. “He knows my daddy’s giving me hell. Said if I go with you, I’ll eat steak every night of the week. You think I ought to believe him?”

  Alvin was beginning to feel sick and stupid. Rose and the dwarf talking like they were stuck on each other didn’t seem right, like they were lying about things and spreading gossip. Aunt Hattie told him once that talking behind people’s backs was like whispering secrets in the devil’s ear.

  “Is Calvin Coolidge III a gentleman, in your opinion?” asked the dwarf, releasing Rose’s hand. “Is he honorable?”

  “Well, he kissed my hand before lying down here next to me. He even asked permission to take his clothes off. I liked that. It shows class.”

  “A man well-bred is rarely ill-led,” said Rascal.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Don’t pay him no mind,” said Alvin, frowning at the dwarf. He went over to the Victrola and spun the record. “He’s just spouting off.”

  Rose shrugged. “Well, I just wish my daddy understood that a girl can’t spend her whole life washing floors and sewing on buttons.” She straightened up. “Do either of you fellows know how to dance?”

  Alvin wandered back over to the window for some fresh air. “Dancing’s for sissies,” he said, sticking his head outside. The stuffy room made him feel faint. He needed to lie down.

  “I had lessons when I was six,” said Rascal. “Miss Angelina taught me all sorts of fancy steps. I was her star pupil. I believe I even won an award once.”

  “I can do a swell Charleston,” said Rose. “Watch!” She hopped off the bed and began dancing furiously in the middle of the room. In mid-step, her stocking feet slipped on the throw rug and she tumbled forward, landing on her face and slamming her chin hard on the wood floor. “Oww!”

  She rolled over, bleeding from a gash on the jawline. “Goddammit!”

  Rascal slid down beside her and cupped his hand over the wound. Alvin remained at the window, more amused than worried by her injury. The dwarf reached back and dragged a corner of the sheet off the bed to use as a compress against Rose’s bleeding chin. “Hold it here.”

  After placing Rose’s hand on the sheet
covering the cut, Rascal dashed out of the bedroom. His tiny footsteps pattered through the house into the kitchen. The screen door swung open and closed with a bang. Alvin shifted his position to catch sight of the dwarf at the pump, working it quickly, a long white rag wadded up beneath the spout. Water gushed out onto the rag, soaking both it and Rascal. The dwarf stopped pumping and ran back toward the house. Then the door opened and shut with another bang and a moment later the dwarf burst into the room, dripping water all over the floor.

  “Here,” he said, removing the sheet from Rose’s chin and replacing it with the wet rag. The girl moaned in pain. Rascal said, “We have to get you cleaned up. Infection is an ugly consideration with any injury. I once got lockjaw from a rusty nail in my closet and couldn’t speak for a month.”

  “Who was sorry about that?” asked Alvin, feeling nasty now.

  “It hurts,” Rose moaned, as the dwarf swabbed the wound and the skin surrounding it. “Oww!”

  “Be brave,” Rascal said, wiping off the blood that had trickled down her neck. “Is there any alcohol in the house?”

  “Of course not,” Rose answered. “Kansas’s as dry as Arabia these days.”

  “No hootch in the cellar?” asked Alvin. “You sure about that?”

  “My uncle never touched liquor in his life. He didn’t hold with drinking. He was a good Christian gentleman until the day he died.”

  “A regular flat tire, huh?” Alvin said, the smirk on his face growing minute by minute. Realizing there wasn’t a chance in hell of bedding down with her allowed him to say whatever he felt. He liked that. Speaking his true thoughts for once made him giddy. Love was for the birds.

  “Liquor leads men to ruin,” said Rascal, fashioning Rose a bandage wrap from the rag. “It lies at the heart of all our foibles.”

  “Women, too,” replied Alvin, “but at least the bottle won’t chew your ears off.”

  Rose said, “My uncle maintained that liquor was evil and he’d rather burn in hellfire than allow even a drop of the contentious fluid to touch his lips.”

  “Good for him,” said Alvin. He watched Rascal wrap the bandage around Rose’s jaw from ear to ear and pull it tight. Maybe he ought to choke her next.

  “Oww!”

  The dwarf tied it with a bow at the back of her head. “I’m sorry.”

  “I feel stupid,” said Rose. She stood up and checked herself in the mirror. “It looks like my jaw’s wrapped for a toothache.”

  “Vanity must always follow utility in the world of medicine,” the dwarf explained. “Have you a needle and thread handy? We ought to properly close that wound. Otherwise, you’ll have a scar for a souvenir.”

  “No, thanks,” said Rose. She took a step back from Rascal and covered her chin with the palm of one hand. “I don’t mind scars. I got plenty of them already. One more won’t spoil my beauty.”

  “Of course not,” said the dwarf, and he gave her arm a light pat.

  “I’m going to bed,” Alvin said, sliding off the window frame. “This is just too damned much excitement for one day.”

  “Calvin’ll be back soon,” said Rose. “Don’t you want to sit up a while?”

  “What for?”

  “I’m staying,” said Rascal. “Rose says I can hide under her bed and listen to the fireworks so long as I keep quiet.”

  “Calvin’ll break your neck.”

  “He won’t know I’m here. I won’t make a sound. I can play dead better than a dog if I have to. Ask Auntie. She called the funeral parlor one afternoon when I pretended to have a stroke. I held my breath for three minutes and made my face turn blue. She got so scared, I thought she’d have a stroke of her own.”

  Looking at Rose, Alvin said, “Well, then maybe I’ll join you under the bed and we’ll both spy on Calvin. I can keep pretty quiet myself.”

  “Nobody’s hiding under my bed,” Rose said. “I’d never allow it. Privacy’s important to a girl. Being men, you can’t understand that because y’all got to boast about what you do and who you done it to. We girls got too much dignity to go around sharing our most intimate, private activities with the whole world.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” said Rascal. “I wouldn’t think of intruding on your privacy.”

  “You little two-faced Judas!” Alvin growled. “Why, you just said you were going to hide under the bed and listen to everything she did.”

  “Only if I were invited to do so,” replied the dwarf, showing Rose his broadest smile, “and seeing as I’m not,” he got to his feet, “I’ll be on my way to the barn.” He took Rose’s hand and planted a kiss on the knuckle of her wedding finger. “I thank you for the opportunity of reading your fortune. Good night.”

  Then he walked out of the bedroom.

  Rose crawled up onto the bed and stretched her legs. Alvin heard the kitchen door open and close again. He looked over at Rose. She smiled. “Nighty-night.”

  He nodded.

  She whispered, “Don’t tell him I said so, but I think your pal’s the cutest little fellow I ever saw. If he were another foot taller, I’d bed down with him in a minute.”

  Stopping at the water trough to wash his face, Alvin worked the pump, studying the horizon for headlights. Chester had been gone quite a while now. Whatever business he had was keeping him longer than Alvin had expected. Of course, he’d probably eaten supper in Harrison, maybe steak and potatoes, pie for dessert, a beer in the basement of a scratch house downtown, afterward. Why the hell had he gone alone?

  Alvin stopped pumping and wiped his hands dry on the tails of his shirt. A wind swept out across the fields of grass and chilled the skin on the back of his neck. He felt a peculiar vibration in his bones, but it wasn’t fever. Kansas spooked him. The wind carried a smell with it, musty, dry, dead. A spook’s breath, stale and dirty. Older than dirt itself. Without a doubt, Alvin believed Kansas was populated by ghosts and haunted like a vast grassy cemetery. He was scared that if he stayed too long, somehow he’d become fertilizer for the same grasses that whispered to him now in the windy darkness.

  The farm boy walked to the barn. He heard Rascal singing up in the hayloft. The dwarf loved music, although he could barely carry a tune. The top of his head bobbed just above a bale of hay where he danced in time to his own song.

  I found a horseshoe, I found a horseshoe.

  I picked it up and nailed it on the door;

  And it was rusty and full of nail holes,

  Good luck ’twill bring to you forevermore.

  It was an old railroad song Uncle Harlow used to sing whenever he came back from the depot. Rascal had mangled the tune such that he’d probably helped chase out the spooks. Alvin headed for the ladder to the loft. If not for the lamp hung there, the interior of the barn would have been black as pitch. The dwarf was on his hands and knees, digging into a moldy old bale of hay with a rusty screwdriver.

  “What’re you doing there?” Alvin asked, looking around. The wood at the dwarf’s feet was crisscrossed in scratches made by the screwdriver he was holding.

  “Hunting.”

  “What for?”

  “Rats.” Rascal jabbed at the bale of hay, stabbing randomly here and there. “They make nests in the hay. I have to flush them out and kick them in the head.” The dwarf stood up over the bale and jabbed furiously down into the top of it, zigzagging his attack from one end to the other. His tiny hand was a blur above the hay.

  “Get any of ’em yet?” the farm boy asked. He had never heard of anyone hunting rats with a screwdriver. Uncle Henry stuck them with his pitchfork and Frenchy shot one with a pistol after it chewed up his boot. Best was to smoke them out and club them when they ran for it.

  “I’d appreciate some help,” said Rascal, jabbing at the sides of the bale now. Sweat dripped off his forehead. “After all, they’ll bite you, too.”

  “There ain’t no rats in here.”

  The dwarf quit chopping at the hay. He twisted the screwdriver in his fist and looked up at Alvin
. “You lied?”

  “Sure I did.”

  The dwarf sat back against the bale. “Why did you lie?”

  Alvin shrugged. “I didn’t care none for how you were whooping it up with Rose, telling those stories and getting her going. It made us both look like dumbbells.”

  “The fool and the wise man often reflect a common image.”

  “Huh?”

  “Envy doesn’t become you,” said the dwarf, poking the screwdriver into the bale of hay. “Rose appreciated our attention. She’s sad and lonely. We made her smile.”

  “She’s just joking us, is all. I didn’t care for that, neither.”

  “Joy has its own rainbow. I’m satisfied that, however we did it, tonight was quite special for her.”

  “Says you.”

  “I do.”

  “I’m going to bed,” the farm boy said, with a yawn. He was sick of jawing over that girl.

  “You’re not planning to wait up for Chester? I’ll bet he has a story of his own to tell. Do you know why he went back into town?”

  “No, do you?”

  “Yes, but I’ll wait for him to tell you all about it. I’m sure it was very exciting.”

  “What if he don’t come back here at all? What if he throws us over and goes off by hisself?”

  “We’ll buy a train ticket to Wichita.”

  Now that was a spooky thought. A shiver ran through Alvin’s heart.

  “I ain’t never been there before. What would we do?”

  “I’m sure we could hire a decent flat in a roominghouse and find ourselves work with the cattle trade, no trouble at all. Uncle Augustus brought me out to the Dakotas one summer when I was a boy and I learned all about working on a ranch.”

  “Sure you did.”

  “Well, it’s the truth.”

  “You think Chester robbed the bank?” By now, of course, the farm boy knew his boss was some sort of gangster, because of the associations he seemed to have wherever they went. Alvin just wasn’t sure what all Chester did at night while they were sleeping.