This Side of Jordan

by Monte Schulz

  “When I was a child,” replied Rascal, “we owned a stable of race horses down in Kentucky. People came from as far away as India to buy them from us for all the great competitions around the world. I believe we won the Queen’s Steeplechase on more than one occasion.”

  “I’d go swimming everyday in the summer if I didn’t have chores to do,” said Alvin. He splashed water in the dwarf’s direction, hoping to soak him. Half the time he and Frenchy went fishing, they wound up giving each other the works and riding home in Uncle Henry’s Chevrolet dripping wet. “My cousin and me’d go swimming in the Mississippi Saturday mornings and be back home for supper. Swam all the way across once, like Johnny Weissmuller. Dove off the Illiniwek Bridge, too. Just to scare people who never seen someone do it before.” Rascal waded across the creek to study a pool worn by erosion into the far bank. “Do you see these bugs here?” He flicked his fingers lightly on the murky water lapping against the bank. “If I had a jar, I’d collect some and take them with us. Do you know, none of them have ever been more than a foot or so from this spot in their entire lives? It’s a fact. They’re born, grow up, mate and perish right here in the mud by this little creek. What do you suppose they know about life?”

  “They’re bugs. They don’t have a need to know nothing.”

  “So you say.”

  “So I know.” Alvin dropped off the log into the cold creek water, making a big splash. He really wished Chester had taken him into town for a hotdog and a soda pop.

  Plucking violets off the embankment farther downstream, the dwarf remarked, “Are you aware that amphibians are the precursors of modern man?” He dipped his hands into the stream, letting the current wash over the pretty wildflowers.

  Alvin began kicking about, digging his feet in the sand. “Pardon?”

  “Well, millions of years ago, we crawled out of the primordial swamp to establish civilization, while our cousins, the amphibians, remained behind.”

  The dwarf released the wild violets into the stream and saw them float away into the splintered shadows. Alvin watched Rascal wade off down the creek, exploring the bank as he went, dipping his hands into the water when he saw something of interest, letting the sluggish current wash over his bare legs.

  His own two legs growing numb from the cold, Alvin sloshed his way back to the damp sedge and climbed up onto the grass. Threads of sunlight like silver spider webs shone through white poplar leaves. He felt drowsy now, and hungry. All he’d eaten were buns for lunch. Chester had refused to let them visit a café. Clearing a place to sit amid leafless stems of scouringrush, the farm boy told the dwarf, “I guess I wouldn’t mind lying in the mud all day. What makes us so smart? Maybe we ought to’ve stayed right where we were. Been better off. Most of us, anyhow.”

  “Evolution is not a matter of choice.” Rascal refastened the shoulder buttons on his romper. “Rather, I believe, it’s a form of destiny.”

  “Favoring frogs and salamanders, huh?” Alvin laughed. Aunt Hattie had always maintained that evolution was a hokum which denied God’s bitter miracle of life. She believed Noah strolled out of the ark on December 18th, 2348 B.C. and that’s when the modern world began. Who’s to say she wasn’t right? Nobody had even half the answers. Life was too damned confusing.

  “I collect them, of course,” said the dwarf, wading back toward the shore. “Studying one’s past is invaluable for understanding one’s place in the world. Do you think we’ll eat soon?”

  A dozen yards downstream, Rascal sat down in the soggy sedge and rinsed the mud from between his toes. Alvin climbed back up onto the rotting log. Balancing on one foot, the farm boy picked his nose. Meadowlarks chattered in the cottonwoods. Leaves fluttered down into the creek bed. Alvin walked to the end of the log and balanced above the stream. His sister Mary Ann could turn a cartwheel on a worm fence without falling off. Alvin searched for stream minnies in the creek bed. He watched the dwarf scramble up from the water and sit down in a pretty patch of blue verbena that grew near a thicket of sandbar willows where he put his shoes back on. Rascal said, “If I lived around here, I’d want to have lots of neighbors close by.”

  “You mean, shouting distance?”

  “If you will. Only through a life of society do men truly flourish.”

  “Not me,” said Alvin, turning a circle on the log, careful not to slip off. His bare feet didn’t offer much purchase on the damp moss. “I’d keep people about a mile off, so’s I wouldn’t have to hear ’em yammering all day long. Most folks talk too much.”

  “I can recite by heart the inaugural addresses of nine Presidents of the United States. Uncle Augustus taught me when I was only six.”

  “That’ll earn you a living.”

  The dwarf pulled his legs up under his chin and rocked backward. “I’ve often thought I ought to be a newspaper man, perhaps a city editor. I’m sure I have many of the correct qualifications. I can read quick as the wind and my grammar is excellent.”

  “Why not just be President?”

  “I’ve considered it.”

  “You’d have to wear one of those tall black Lincoln stovepipes, you know? Think they got one big enough for that head of yours?” His laughter echoed loudly down the creek. He liked joking the dwarf. It passed the time.

  Rascal frowned. “There’s no cause to be cruel.”

  Tired of the creek, the farm boy paced to the end of the cottonwood log and hopped off into the long grass. He picked up his cap and went to put on his shoes. “I’m going up to the house and have myself a glass of lemonade.”

  “Wait for me!”

  Up on the Nebraska prairie, a light wind pushed across dry fields of Indian grass and flowering thimbleweed and bush clover, trading hay scents and dust. Overhead, the summer sky was blue and clear. The old gray framehouse was sheltered by a dense grove of common hackberry trees and a thick bur oak in the front yard. Red berries of a bittersweet vine draped the downstairs sleeping porch, and the backhouse under white poplars by the creek was shrouded at its rear in wild grape and poison ivy. A one-horse shovel plow and a Mayflower cultivator lay beside a dusty tractor near the barn, and a collection of milk pails and peach baskets were piled like junk next to a perforated bee-smoker beneath an old plum tree. Alvin thought maybe the fellow who owned the farm used to be more prosperous. Maybe life had given up on him.

  The gravel driveway out to the county road was empty.

  The farm boy listened to the bleating of sheep from somewhere across the fields. He walked under a sagging laundry line to the rear of the house where the kitchen door had been left ajar. His shoes kicked up dust wherever he strode. A familiar stink like rotten crabapples traveled here and there on the breeze. He brushed a curious bumblebee off his forehead and went over to study a tall wire birdcage framed in wood planks that stood almost as high as Alvin himself. There were still piles of dried shit on the dirt floor, but a foot-long section of chicken wire was ripped away near the bottom and he guessed some slick old fox had torn into it one night and had himself a snack.

  Chester had told them the fellow who occupied this house was an old pal of his from Black Jack Pershing’s army, but he also made them promise to stay hidden until he got back from town, so Alvin guessed it was another lie. Chester had driven the Packard up to the front door and invited himself inside for a drink of water. Hadn’t bothered to knock or call out. Just went in like that. He came out five minutes later, rolling a Walking Liberty half-dollar over his knuckles and whistling a tune. He said he was going downtown to fix himself up with a shampoo and shave, then settle some business arrangements for the afternoon. “It’s the roving bee that gathers the honey,” Chester had told Alvin as he got back into the Packard. Then he had driven off and left them.

  To Alvin’s eye, the house looked poor, or maybe the owner was just tired. Then again, maybe he was occupied most of the day smuggling corn whiskey and Chester had come to help him out of a fix. But if Chester had a plan doped out, he wasn’t sharing it yet. Since Kansas,
he’d just driven them around, visiting storehouses in small towns, cutting hootch in swill tubs, selling Scotch whiskey through the backrooms of pool parlors in old beer-jugs, and joyriding through the countryside in a hired liquor truck. For helping with the loading and unloading of whiskey barrels, and changing a flat tire now and then, he had paid Alvin fifteen dollars a week, and given the dwarf another thirty dollars for putting over a pretty fair applejack recipe and devising a scheme that involved the construction of pineapple bombs. There hadn’t been any further talk of bank robbery since Kansas. Chester hadn’t allowed it and both the farm boy and the dwarf knew how to hush up. None of them mentioned Charlie and Rose Harper at all. Lately, though, Alvin had been having bad dreams, and they weren’t just fever.

  The narrow sleeping porch was screened-in, but the back door leading to the kitchen was flimsy and rattled loose when the wind gusted. Alvin heard the dwarf thrashing up through the leafy milkweed above the creek, so he went inside.

  The house was dark and cool. He listened to a mantel clock ticking in another room. Floorboards creaked underfoot. The pale lime-green kitchen smelled of coffee grounds and pipe tobacco. The latest issue of Farm & Fireside lay open on the table in the middle of the room. Filthy plates and cups were stacked in the sink. The ceiling was cracked and water-spotted. Window curtains were soiled. He looked in the icebox and saw only a bottle of milk and a chunk of cheese. Not much to eat. Except for a few canned goods and cornmeal, most of the pantry shelves were empty, too. Didn’t this fellow ever go to the grocery store? Probably he was a bachelor, or a widower like Uncle Boyd, Alvin thought, as he opened a cupboard next to the cook stove in search of a clean glass. No woman would let her kitchen look this sore. He found a glass and brought it to the sink and ran cold water from the tap, then had a drink. He felt strange being indoors without having been invited. He had already been partner to a bank robbery and the killing of a fellow and his daughter, and he felt sick and lousy about it. He hadn’t known any of that was going to happen. Over and over Rascal said it wasn’t their fault, yet even though Charlie Harper had stuck a rifle in his face, Alvin still felt awful guilty. If the Bible was true like Aunt Hattie claimed, then he was probably going straight to hell when all he had wanted to do was stay out of the sanitarium. He might’ve jumped off a train and joined some workers at a tent colony or hired himself a cheap boardinghouse room and slung hash in a buffet flat. It needn’t have amounted to much. Trouble was, he was getting sicker now and worried that sooner or later he’d have to see a doctor for the consumption, and he knew what that would mean. He supposed his daddy was burned up about him skipping out on his chores and all, while his momma sobbed after supper now and then. Alvin presumed his sisters were probably fighting over who’d be getting his room. He hadn’t meant to run off for good. That was certainly a mistake, but what was done was done. Now he wished somebody would come along and tell him what he ought to do next.

  He drank another glass of water, and belched.

  The dwarf was in the yard outdoors, fooling with the birdcage. Alvin could hardly see through the dirt-smudged windows, but he heard him plain as day. Rascal had crawled into the cage where the fox had torn a hole and was fiddling with the dangling perch, making it swing.

  A small door just outside the kitchen pantry led down to the basement and a quick peek from atop the stairs showed it was darker than a cow’s innards, so Alvin left the kitchen for the dining room, telling himself again there wasn’t no harm done just looking around. He wasn’t a thief. One day if he ever got healthy enough to work again, he’d own a house of his own, and if somebody ran in while he was away and didn’t do nothing except have himself a glass of cold water, why, that’d be all right. A mahogany sideboard across from the dining room table displayed a set of small porcelain jars with flowers painted under the rims and a silver tea service beside the jars. Dust covered everything and Alvin guessed the fellow didn’t drink much tea, nor had any use for little jars with flowers on them. He opened the top drawers to the sideboard and found white lace table covers and linen napkins neatly folded one on top of the other. He saw a fine set of silverware, too, then shut the drawer to prove he wasn’t tempted. He listened briefly to a pair of catbirds chirping in the hackberry. Wind clattered at the backyard door. The interior of the house smelled musty. Alvin went into the front room where the mantel clock was ticking.

  This reminded him of Uncle Henry’s parlor on the farm: a couple of shaded table lamps, two easy chairs and a fancy green velour Morris chair, an old phonograph console beside a long sofa, a Windsor upright piano, a blue Axminster rug in the middle of the floor, and a crystal set on an oak Bible stand near the fireplace. Alvin considered switching on the radio, but thought better of it. His sisters did nothing except listen to radio shows, hour after hour at home. They favored those fellows that sang and played the ukulele and cracked jokes. He didn’t care for none of that. He and his daddy and Uncle Henry only tuned in when there was a horse race or a boxing match. One night they heard Jack Dempsey knock a fellow out quicker’n lightning. Uncle Henry jumped up out of his chair and shook a fist at Alvin and his daddy, cackling, “Now you see it, now you don’t! Now you see it, now you don’t!” Alvin’s daddy had bet fifty cents on the other guy.

  He picked up one of the magazines piled on a walnut table and riffled through it. He stopped at a lingerie advertisement for Hickory Shadow Skirts and gave a good once-over to the smiling girl posed in her undergarments. “Begin to know the comfort, beauty, and style of Hickory. Ask for Personal Necessities by Hickory. At your favorite notion department.” Almost before he knew it, he’d torn the page out of the magazine, folded it up, and stuck it into his shirt pocket. Then he slipped the magazine under the bottom of the pile and pretended he hadn’t noticed it was there at all.

  He went over to the staircase. There was a cob pipe left on the newel post, half-full of tobacco as if its owner had intended to bring it with him, but had forgotten. Alvin could hear a shade flapping at an open window upstairs. Family photographs decorated the stairwell, rising to a stained glass window at the top of the steps. As the farm boy mounted the staircase to study the portraits, he heard a squirrel land on the rooftop from one of the shady hackberry trees. Then the dwarf came into the house through the kitchen, letting the screen door bang closed behind him. When Rascal called out, Alvin went upstairs.

  At home, his bedroom was in the rear attic with a window facing over his mama’s vegetable garden toward the pinewoods north of York’s peacock farm. He’d painted a sign that ordered his sisters to keep out. Though Alvin protected his own privacy, an irresistible curiosity sent him up these stairs to the top where a short hallway led to three bedrooms and a toilet closet. He felt jittery. It was scorching under the eaves, airless and humid. Wind had sucked the bedroom doors shut, so the hall was dusky beyond the stained glass window. He paused outside the nearest door and listened to the window shade flapping in the draft. Downstairs, the dwarf was wandering room-to-room, calling out Alvin’s name as if they both belonged in the house. The radio came on, spilling orchestra music into the silence, then switched off again. Alvin opened the door in front of him and peeked inside. It was a young boy’s room, cluttered with cowboy paraphernalia and wooden aeroplanes and toy soldiers. There was a single bed and a nightstand and a writing desk beneath the window. On the wall above his bed was a large movie photograph of Tim McCoy from War Paint and several others of Douglas Fairbanks and Rod La Rocque and Rin-Tin-Tin and Mickey Mouse. The boy’s writing desk was covered with paper thumbnail sketches of automobiles. His bed was carelessly made and a pair of denim overalls lay on the floor by the closet. Alvin went to the open window and lifted the shade and took a look outdoors where he could see clear to the grassy horizon, miles and miles away. Nebraska seemed almost as lonesome as Kansas. Old farmhouses. Silos and barns. Dirt and sky. Wind probably most days. On the way here, he had seen a remarkable sight: fields of cornhusks unattended to, stalks wilting, wildrye and hound dogs chas
ing through the empty rows, ash barrels stuffed with fodder, the dust of wheel-worn roads blowing to heaven. No point in owning the land, his daddy once told him, if you aren’t willing to do nothing with it. Work it, or it’ll go tired on you. Won’t grow nothing, won’t feed your children. A man who won’t work his own land, deserves to live in a house built by strangers.

  Alvin heard the dwarf at the bottom of the stairwell, so he went back out into the hall. He knew it was wrong sneaking around like this, yet he couldn’t help himself. At least he hadn’t stolen nothing. Chester hadn’t told them not to go indoors. Besides, they’d gotten thirsty sitting in the creek bed and it was hot as blazes out. What did he expect? Alvin went down to the room at the end of the hall. Inside was nothing but a common iron bed with brass knobs and a mattress with a green blanket and a feather pillow, a plain oak bureau, and a small chamber-set table and lamp. No rug on the floor. Bare walls painted white. Like living in a stall, Alvin reflected, without the straw. There ought to at least be a pretty picture or two on the walls. He had a few swell boat pictures in his attic room and a racy tabloid photograph of Peaches on her honeymoon that Frenchy had gotten for him in Chicago. Alvin didn’t hold much for decorating, but he knew what he liked.

  Stifling a cough, the farm boy went back across the hall to the next room just as the dwarf arrived on the second floor landing. From the door, a smothering odor of sweet lilac filled Alvin’s nostrils. Inside, he found a shade-drawn bedroom jammed with lavender draperies and gilt curtain bands, a grand chamber suite in carved black walnut: bed, chiffonier, dresser, washstand and mirrored wardrobe, a marble top center table with an ormolu kerosene lamp, brass cameo miniatures, and a blue china vase stuffed with frayed peacock feathers. The bedroom walls were adorned with wire-hung paintings and floral lithographs and the floor covered by a crimson tapestry rug. Velvet pincushions and stuffed pillows were piled upon the bed under a fringed gauze turnover canopy. Awed by the elegant clutter, Alvin wasn’t sure he ought to go in. He’d never seen such a pretty bedroom in his whole life. Aunt Emeline had some fancy stuff all right, and so did Granny Chamberlain with her porcelain dolls and papier-mâché, but how a lady in a house as plain as this could fix out her room so swell, he couldn’t figure. No doubt somebody had some pretty high coin.