"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
She stared at the floor, conscious of his eyes traveling over her hair, her face, the front of her dress, and felt like saying, with her father's fire, Are you the sort who'd take on a mother of four who's got another in the oven?
"Maybe I'll go see old Runyon," he said. "I doubt if he hunts, and they might like some of these there then.' He held up his hand. Another bouquet. He must have had them lying behind him.
"He'll be away at Father's. You could ask his wife."
"I will ask her."
"Well, thank you."
"You're welcome again."
She closed the door, her heart beating hard inside her dress, went to the rocker and took her sewing basket and threaded a needle with trembling fingers, and then worked a light bulb down into the toe of a stocking lying in her lap, which looked big as a floor. The stocking was one of Martin's that dated from Tim, and if it were worn any thinner she'd be darning air.
"Mom?"
The voice came from the boys' bedroom. She waited to make sure that whoever of them had called was awake. Boys' dreams. The frittering they should let be done.
"Mom?"
It was Charles, awake, so she moved her thighs to move the basket, stood, put it in her rocking rocker and went heavily over and set the door of their room ajar. "Yes? What is it?" Still the alarm in her voice.
"Is Dad home yet?"
"No. Now, go back to sleep."
"I thought I heard him talking."
"You couldn't have. He's not here.”
"Where is he then?"
"Oh . . ."
"Was somebody else here?"
"No, nobody. Go to sleep now. Good night."
"Turn on the light I can't see your face. I want to see it."
"It’ll wake your brothers, you fool."
"I'm awake." The voice of Jerome beside her. "Why don't you tell us a story, and maybe Dad'll be back by then."
Why did she lie to them? Why did Jerome always have an idea of what to do?"
"We'd wake Tim," she said.
"Tim?" Jerome said. "I doubt it. Tim sleeps like the dead."
Where had he picked up such an expression? But it was true, perhaps, metaphorically at least, and, in any case, she didn't care whether Tim woke; she needed the company of them all. She found the pin-up lamp inside the door and twisted its switch and light fell over the foot of Jerome and Charles's double bed; gray clipper ships sailing out over silver blue. She went to the cot along the wall in semi-darkness, where Tim lay, and covered him better, and then sat on the edge of the older boys' bed. "Now, then. What is it here?"
"Just a story," Jerome said.
"Where's Dad?" Charles asked. .
"At Father Schimmelpfennig's."
"What's the matter?" Charles asked.
"Nothing."
"Is something the matter with Dad?"
"No, nothing's the matter with him."
"Well, if he's at Father's, wasn't he home first to change?"
"Of course. You're right. That's right. He was."
"Was he in and out so fast you almost forgot?" Jerome asked.
"Just about." She bowed her head. Now What?
"Tell us about Grandpa Jones and the billy goat," Jerome said, and grinned at the story, which he knew by heart.
"No," Charles said, forgetting everything to rise above Jerome and see her more fully. "Tell about yourself, when you went to town on the pony you bought for Lionell, and it was snowing."
"I'll tell them both."
They struggled around in a noisy uproar of covers until they were sitting with their backs against the headboard. Jerome brushed his hair aside and she saw that the youthful blond was going from it, and that they both needed haircuts again. Their eyes were as luminous as their father's and fixed on her with his intensity for the sign that meant she'd begin, but a current of feeling scattered the order in her and she took them in her arms and held them against her. "Oh, God!" she cried.
"What?"
"Mom! What's the matter?"
She saw the pheasants' plumage catching the light from the kitchen as they swung from the wire, and that other light, the light she sensed above her, dimmed and for a moment was gone, and she felt that a shadow of harm would fall from her over Martin and the children and be lifted away, when it was lifted, by. hands other than hers. How could hands other than hers, which had helped shape them, hold them from harm?
There was a rustle from the cot across the room, and Tim sat up, his eyes startled and wide, and cried, "Mom! Hey, Mom, what are you doing with those two guys?"
19
OSAGE
The Neumillers are on the road to the farm the Joneses have moved to, near Osage, Minnesota. Their car, a '47 Chevrolet bought second-hand from Father Schimmelpfennig, is arranged as it usually is for trips of more than a hundred miles, with a steamer trunk wedged in the well between front and back seats and covered with blankets, so the boys can lie down and sleep if they wish, and pillows piled everywhere. Marie alternates between the front and the back, depending upon her whims, and Alpha, six months pregnant, sits in the passenger seat and orchestrates the moods of the children and the moodiness that comes over Martin when he has to drive with all six of them in the car.
Outside Valley City, out of the violet sky, snowflakes appear in a tentative stir, and beyond Moorhead come down in a flurry and form a shifting screen around them as the wind picks up and begins to wail across the flat-lands of the Red River Valley. Snow goes slithering over the road in snaking sheets and makes the slow-moving car appear to be traveling sidewise. In bordering fields billows of it rise like many-headed, amorphous ghosts and turn into a wind-carried curtain over fifty feet high, with edges that can't be seen and whirlpools and cloud fragments coiling inside, that comes sweeping over drifts where cornstalks show, past a telephone pole, a snow fence, and hits the side of the car. It yaws and shudders on bad shock absorbers. They adjust their winter coats.
Most other cars have left the road, but an occasional semi comes barreling past in the opposite lane, dragging behind it a long concussion of sound that for a moment knocks the snow aside. Jerome and Charles kneel, their elbows on the front seat, and cheer the trucks, and call out the names of towns—Dilworth! Glyndon! Hawley!— until Martin tells them to sit back and be quiet so he can concentrate on the road. He leans toward the wheel, as if the inclination can bring them to their destination quicker, and wipes at the icing windshield with the backs of his bare fingers. He scratches at it with his nails. Dorsals of snow begin to rise from the road like spines and fins of creatures rising from below, and thud under the tires.
St. Michael and the dragon. Alpha thinks. Er, George.
Tim lies down on the trunk. There's a heater fan below the driver's seat, which he's often inspected by laying his face on the fibery bristles of the floor mat, and he can hear its whir and tinny blades tinging against candy wrappers and cigar cellophanes. He feels the warm draft of it above the trunk. In half sleep he remembers waking like this with the sound of water sloshing. It lay in the floor well and spotted the dun fuzz of the seats. He rose and saw a gray plain of it as high as the car bumper in every direction, blended with a dim sky by a bright mist. "Where are we. Dad?"
"West Fargo, I think."
A man in fishing waders and a black slicker came floundering out of the mist, splashed over a guardrail, and leaned slipping on the driver's side. His eyes were wandering and hard. Tim's father cranked the window down past him.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Pardon?" The man's eyes wouldn't focus anywhere.
"What's this?"
"A flood. A flood. Go back. Sandbags gone." He slipped and almost fell, and shook his head to clear it.
"My Lord, man," Tim's father said. "How long have you been up?"
"Three days,” the man said, and slipped again with a splash.
Tim falls asleep.
Charles, angered because he can't see
the countryside, lies down on a pile of pillows and falls asleep.
Jerome feels like a sentinel guiding the car and keeps his eyes on the road until his father says, "Ah, thank God, here's the turnoff, isn't it?"
"Yes."
His father heaves a tremulous sigh and Marie cries out, as if to share his release, and throws her arms around him. The road swings away, fence posts, the clutch pedal making a wallop, evergreens across the window in spiky patches, and with muffled thunks and a slam that sends Jerome flying, the car goes backward into the ditch. Its nose points toward flake-streaked blue, the Minnesota sky, and it's balanced so precariously it rocks from wheel to wheel as his father grabs for the keys to shut it off. Marie is screaming.
"My stars," Alpha says. "Is anybody hurt in here?"
Nobody says they're hurt.
"Is everybody sure they're all right?" she says. "Move around a little. But don't jump up and down! We're on a seesaw here."
Marie screams and the boys say, Yes, Yes, Yes, sure, of course they're all right.
"Well, I'm not, not yet," Marie says. "Let me sit a minute till I stop shaking. I was sure we'd roll."
"We're lucky," Alpha says, and laughs.
"Oh?" he says. "I'll have to walk to the folks now, I suppose, and have Dad or Lionell come out with the tractor to get us out of this. What is it to their place from here? A mile, would you say?"
"More like two, dear," she says, and laughs again.
"I better get going, then, before this storm gets worse."
She pulls out extra blankets and dispenses them. He eases out, letting in flakes that melt where they settle on the seat and dash, stops the car's seesawing, and slams the door. He waves, and then takes off in a trot down the road, and soon is engulfed as if by smoke. Alpha turns in her seat.
"You back there, all three of you, I want you to thank your guardian angles right now that none of you were hurt."
Guardian angel? Jerome thinks. Goodness, I haven't believed in a guardian angel since I was seven.
THREE
20
THE NEW HOUSE
One winter later, Martin's only consolation until the end of January was a line he'd learned in college when he took the role of Claudius in a classroom scene from Hamlet: "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions." And after January there was no consolation. The sorrows began even before they moved from North Dakota.
One morning he read a letter at the breakfast table with all of them present including Susan, the baby, who was learning to sit up and behave in her high chair. The letter was from his father, who'd incorporated his business and moved to Forest Creek, and was building a new house there; only the basement of it was completed, he said, so they'd set up temporary housekeeping in it, which was rough, what with Tom and Davey, though twenty and fourteen, at one another so much it made it seem the whole family was there; but the main reason he wrote was to say that Forest Creek had formed a consolidated school here with Pettibone, and now the school board was looking for a new principal. Alan Spear, that fellow they'd rented the tenant house from in '39 and '40, was president of the board and had said that Martin's qualifications sounded perfect. Would he apply?
He folded the letter and turned to her. Well?
Well? Since he'd gone back to teaching, wasn't he satisfied with the job he had? Oh, of course, but there wasn't much chance of getting ahead in North Dakota, especially in a village this size. Wasn't he the superintendent of the high school now? Yes, that was true. And didn't he make enough to keep them happy? More than enough. Then would it be wise to give up the job he had, and give up the house, and move to Illinois, where it was so hot and humid, when a job hadn't actually been promised him yet?
Didn't she like Illinois? Not especially. Well, they'd only been there in the summer and he imagined that was why. At first his father hadn't liked it either, but now he called it God's country, or had once. Then why did he come back to North Dakota so often? Well, North Dakota was his home state. And wasn't it theirs? Yes, sure, but his father had done so well for himself down there, and maybe they could, too. Wouldn't she like a nicer house? This was the house she'd always wanted; how could there be a better one? Well, his only reason for considering the idea at all was that his father was getting older and wanted the family reunited; she knew that, didn't she? Yes, she said. And anyway, he'd always felt they'd moved to Illinois themselves, back in '38 when the family moved, and they'd be in Illinois right now if she hadn't come walking across that wheat field with the telegram from Pynerson here at Hyatt. She knew that, didn't she?
Yes, she said.
He took her hand in his. Wouldn't she like it if they were in a bigger town where he could make more money and she could have more friends?
She bowed her head the way she did only when she was unhappy or very ashamed, as if she'd heard the news she'd waited for until this moment in her life. She said the one situation she wouldn't tolerate was living for any length of time with his parents.
Oh, of course not! She'd heard what his father had said about Tom and Davey and the new house, hadn't she? The situation in that basement wouldn't be fit for another footstool, much less them.
She couldn't impose four children and an infant on his parents, now that they were growing older and their own children, or at least most of them, had moved out and were living away from home; his parents were ready to return to the state that couples can share only twice in their lives—before any children are born, and after all of the children are gone.
"You'll take this job, I'm sure of it, so the first thing I want you to do after that is find us a place to live."
"I will, Alpha. Goodness gophers!"
He went to Illinois and interviewed with Spear and Spear said the job was as good as his. There were few houses to be found—nobody seemed to move in or out of the area much—but he finally came across a six-room, semi-furnished bungalow in Pettibone, with a yard of box hedge and flower-bordered paths (a quaint touch), which would be comfortable enough until he was established in the job; the rent was fifty-five dollars a month, and the owners of the house, an elderly and reserved but decent country couple, promised to sell any pieces of furniture Alpha might want for a matter of dollars. They were moving back to their farm outside Forest Creek and had all the furniture they wanted in the farmhouse there, they said.
While he was in Illinois, he also found a mover, a trucker, actually, who did commercial hauling and had worked for his father on and off over a period of years, and the man offered to move him for such a reasonable price he couldn't refuse. He went back to North Dakota with good news for Alpha and the family, and a new house.
The trucker arrived ten days late. He was hauling lime for com and couldn't leave Illinois when he wanted, he said, and during the time they waited they lived out of boxes that had already been packed, and slept on mattresses from the dismantled beds—an adventure for the boys, but for Alpha barely endurable. She was pregnant again. Father offered a room in his house to her and the girls, but Alpha said no; she wanted to be with the children; she wanted all of them together for now.
Then the trucker finally did pull into the drive, and Martin saw he'd been a fool to attempt to save money by hiring the fellow; his two trucks weren't moving vans but open farm trucks fitted with cattle racks.
"Well, I hope it doesn't rain between here and Illinois," Alpha said.
The trucker and his driver were tired from the trip and slept on the floor overnight and shaved the next morning in a bathroom bare except for fixtures, while Charles and Tim stared at them as though they'd never seen a man shave. Hadn't they ever watched him, Martin wondered. He helped the truckers load the big pieces first.
"Take good care of my piano!" Alpha cried.
Father came over in the afternoon and supervised, and then Dr. Koenig and his wife showed up, then the Pflagers and the Runyons and the Ianacconas, and Wilhomena and Mrs. Liffert—then the Savitskys with baskets of chicken and potato salad for a
picnic, and by the time the trucks pulled out for Illinois, there were a few dozen townspeople, and at least as many children, in their hedge-bordered yard; the adults kept up a cheerful-seeming chatter, but the children—the Rimskys, the Schonbecks, Everett Ritter, Susie Eichelburger, Douglas Kuntz—stood off at a distance, silent and grave, as though Jerome and Charles and Tim were strangers who'd survived some sort of accident and were still touched by their brush with death, and were meant to be merely observed. And then Jake Ennis, Donny's father, drove up in the county road grader, hopped down from its high yellow cab, and came over and said thank you and then goodbye to Alpha and Tim.
Father had held a farewell party for Alpha and Martin two weeks before and most of these people had been there, and seeing them now was too difficult and complicated to be borne by somebody who could say goodbye only once, if then, like Martin. He looked over their heads toward Alpha. She was giving the baby to Mrs. Pflager, and then she went over and took Jerome and Charles by the hands and turned away, and he realized that she wanted to walk through the house one last time with them, which he saw as the perfect way to help bring this part of their boyhood to an end, and then somebody took hold of his hand and started shaking it again.
He got them into the car, at last, in a daze, and drove away from the house with their friends standing in the yard waving hands and handkerchiefs and crying, "Good luck! Good luck!" They were out of town and onto the straight-edge of the highway, and had passed the trucks burdened with their belongings and covered with tarps, when he said, to ease the silence among them, "Well, did you see anything in the house that we missed or left behind?"
"No," Alpha said.
"Yes, sir," Jerome answered. "There was a Fargo Forum right in the middle of the living-room floor."
"Hunh!" Martin said, and for some reason couldn't remove from his mind the image of that newspaper lying alone in the big empty house.
It was crowded with them all in the car, along with their luggage, plus the necessities to care for a one-and-a-half-year-old; the boys wouldn't sleep, or behave, and he swung wildly at them once in the back seat with one hand on the wheel, something he'd vowed never to revert to. Susan was wailing most of the way and was so restless it was a torture for Alpha, who was four months along, to have to hold her in her lap. And Marie wanted to be there also, since that's where Susan was, not knowing yet how to compete with a girl, and a younger one at that. They drove straight through and arrived in Illinois at 3 A.M., too unreasonable an hour to stop at his parents', and went to the house he'd rented in Pettibone.
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