William Krueger - Ordinary Grace

“How about you, Jakie? Were you scared?”

He didn’t answer her. Instead he said, “We weren’t supposed to be there.”

She laughed softly and said, “You’ll be lots of places you’re not supposed to be in your lives. Just don’t get caught.”

“I saw you sneaking in the other night,” I said.

The moment of her playfulness vanished and she looked at me coldly.

“Don’t worry. I didn’t tell anybody.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

But I could tell that it did.

Ariel was my parents’ golden child. She had a quick mind and the gift of easy charm and her fingers possessed magic on the keyboard and we knew, all of us who loved her, that she was destined for greatness. She was my mother’s favorite and may have been my father’s too though I was less certain of his sentiments. He was careful in how he spoke of his children, but my mother with passionate and dramatic abandon declared Ariel the joy of her heart. What she did not say but all of us knew was that Ariel was the hope for the consummation of my mother’s own unfulfilled longings. It would have been easy to hate Ariel. But Jake and I adored her. She was our confidante. Our coconspirator. Our defender. She tracked our small successes better than our distracted parents and was lavish in her praise. In the simple way of the wild daisies that grew in the grass of the pasture behind our home she offered the beauty of herself without pretension.

“A dead man,” she said and shook her head. “Do they know who he was?”

“He called himself Skipper,” Jake said.

“How do you know?”

Jake shot me a look that was a silent plea for help but before I could respond Ariel said, “There’s something you guys aren’t telling me.”

“There were two men,” Jake said in a rush and it was easy to see that he was relieved to have the truth spill from him.

“Two?” Ariel looked from Jake to me. “Who was the other man?”

Thanks to Jake the truth was already there in front of us like a puddle of puke. I saw no reason to lie anymore especially to Ariel. I said, “An Indian. He was the dead man’s friend.” Then I told her everything that had happened.

She listened and the pillowy blue of her eyes rested sometimes on me and sometimes on Jake and in the end she said, “You guys could be in big trouble.”

“S-s-s-see,” Jake hissed at me.

“It’s okay, Jakie,” she said. She patted his leg. “Your secret’s safe with me. But, guys, listen to Dad. He worries about you. We all do.”

“Should we tell someone about the Indian?” Jake asked.

Ariel thought it over. “Was the Indian scary or dangerous?”

“He put his hand on Jake’s leg,” I said.

“He didn’t scare me,” Jake said. “I don’t think he was going to hurt us or anything.”

“Then I think it’s okay to keep that part a secret.” Ariel stood up. “But promise you won’t goof around on the tracks anymore.”

“Promise,” Jake said.

Ariel waited for me to chime in and scowled until I gave her my word. She walked to the door where she turned back dramatically and gave a broad wave of her hand and said, “I’m off to the theater.” She pronounced the word as theatah. “The drive-in theater,” she said and finished by throwing an imaginary stole about her neck and exiting with a dramatic flourish.

My father didn’t fix hamburgers and milk shakes that night. He was called to van der Waal’s Funeral Home where the body of the dead man had been taken for disposition and where he discussed with van der Waal and the sheriff the burial of the stranger. He didn’t get home until late. In the meantime, my mother heated Campbell’s tomato soup and made grilled cheese sandwiches with Velveeta and we ate dinner and afterward watched Have Gun-Will Travel. The picture was snowy on the screen because of the poor reception in so isolated an area but Jake and I clamored to watch it every Saturday night anyway. Ariel left with some of her friends to go to the drive-in movies and my mother said, “Home by midnight.” Ariel kissed her sweetly on the forehead and said, “Yes, Mother dear.” We took our Saturday night baths and went to bed before my father returned and when

he came home I was still awake and I heard my parents talking in the kitchen which was directly below our bedroom. Their voices came up through the grate in the floor and it was as if they were in the same room with me. They had no idea I was privy to every conversation that took place between them in the kitchen. They spent a few minutes talking about the burial service for the dead man which my father had agreed to perform. Then they moved on to Ariel.

My father said, “Is she out with Karl?”

“No,” Mother replied. “Just a bunch of her girlfriends. I told her midnight because I knew you’d worry.”

“When she’s away at Juilliard and I have no say in the matter she can stay out as late as she wants but when she’s with us and under our roof she’s home by midnight,” he said.

“You don’t have to convince me, Nathan.”

“She’s been different lately,” he said. “Have you noticed?”

“Different how?”

“I get the feeling something’s on her mind and she’s about to speak and then she doesn’t.”

“If something was bothering her she’d tell me, Nathan. She tells me everything.”

“All right,” my father said.

Mother asked, “When is the burial for that dead itinerant?”

Mother used the word itinerant because she said it was kinder than hobo or bum , and so we’d all begun to use that term when referring to the dead man.

“Monday.”

“Would you like me to sing?”

“It will be just me and Gus and van der Waal at the burial. No need for music I think. A few appropriate words will do.”

Their chairs scraped on the linoleum and they drifted away from the table and I could no longer hear them.

I thought about the dead man and I thought that I would like to be there when he was buried and I rolled over and closed my eyes thinking about Bobby Cole in his casket and about the dead man who would be in a casket too and I fell into a dark and unsettled slumber.

In the night I woke to the sound of a car door closing on the street in front of our house and Ariel laughing. In my parents’ bedroom across the hall a dim light burned. The car drove away and a few moments later I heard the tiny cry of the hinges on the front screen door. The light in my parents’ bedroom blinked off and their door closed with a quiet sigh. Ariel came up the stairs and then I was asleep.

Later I woke to thunder. I went to the window and saw that an electrical storm was sliding north of the valley and although the rain would miss us I could see quite well the silver bolts of lightning forged on the anvil of the great thunderhead. I slipped downstairs and out the front door and sat on the porch steps. A wind cooler than anything I’d felt in days breathed into my face and I watched the storm as I might have watched the approach and passing of a fierce and beautiful animal.

The distant thunder was like the sound of cannon fire and I thought about my father and what he’d told Jake and me about the war, which was a good deal more than he’d ever shared with us. There’d been many things I wanted to ask and I wasn’t sure why I’d held back and though he’d done nothing to show it I knew my father was hurt by our silence which was the only return we gave for his difficult honesty. I’d wanted to ask about death and if it hurt to die and what awaited me and everyone else after our passing and don’t give me that crap about the Pearly Gates, Dad. Death was a serious subject on my mind and I wanted to talk to someone about it. Standing with my father and brother in the dirt of the garage I’d been offered the moment but I’d let it pass.