William Krueger - Ordinary Grace

Upstairs my father said, “I’ll call him first thing tomorrow and then we’ll work out a time with you. Avis, Edna, I often see couples who are in real trouble, who’ve lost the strong foundation of their love. Clearly you’re not among them. Avis, take Edna’s hand. Let’s pray together.”

Gus went quickly to where Doyle stood and grabbed the rags and stuffed them into the duct. In a harsh whisper he said, “What the hell are you doing, Doyle?”

Doyle easily shrugged off Gus’s anger. “Just curious,” he said and sauntered back to the card table.

We heard chairs scrape above and footsteps heading to the door and a minute later Tchaikovsky began again.

Halderson shook his head. “Who would’ve thought being a preacher could be so interesting?”

Doyle said, “Mark my words, boys. Avis doesn’t jump that woman’s bones, somebody else will.”

Halderson asked, “You got a candidate in mind?”

“I’m always thinking,” Doyle said. “Always thinking.”

Gus returned to the table but didn’t immediately pick up his cards. It was clear he was still upset with Doyle. He looked at me and Jake and his anger seemed to spill out at us and he said, “Thought you two were leaving.”

We started to back away.

“Hey, boys.” Doyle held up his cards. “Like we said, all this is between you and us, okay? No sense getting your old man worked up over a friendly game. Ain’t that so, Gus?”

Gus didn’t reply but his look told us it was so.

We walked back to the house and went inside and said nothing. In terms of what to do about Bobby Cole’s glasses we were no better off than we’d been before. But something amazing had happened in the basement of my father’s church. We’d been among men and shared something with them that felt illicit and although I understood that it was somehow at the expense of my father I was thrilled to have been included in that confidence, to be part of that brotherhood.

When Jake finally spoke it was clear that he had a different view.

“We shouldn’t’ve been listening. That was private stuff,” he said. He was sitting on the sofa staring at a blank television screen.

I was standing at a back window staring across the dark empty pasture at the Sweeneys’ house. There was a light in a back room which I thought might be the bedroom. “We didn’t mean to,” I said. “It was sort of an accident.”

“We could’ve left.”

“Why didn’t you then?”

Jake didn’t answer. The light went out at the Sweeneys’ and after that the house was totally dark.

Jake said, “What do we do about Danny’s uncle?”

I dropped into the easy chair my father usually occupied when he read.

“We keep it to ourselves,” I said.

My father came home soon after. He poked his head into the living room where we sat watching television. “I’m going to dish up some ice cream for myself,” he said. “You guys want any?”

We both said yes and a few minutes later he delivered bowls with a mound of chocolate in each and sat with us and we ate in silence watching Surfside 6 . When we were finished Jake and I took our bowls to the kitchen and rinsed them out and set them beside the sink to be washed and headed toward the stairs to go to bed. My father had set aside his empty bowl and turned off the television and moved to his easy chair. In his hands he held an opened book and when we passed through the living room and trooped toward the stairs he looked up from his reading and eyed us curiously.

“I saw you two come over to the church earlier. I thought maybe you wanted to talk to me.”

“No,” I said. “We just wanted to say hi to Gus.”

“Ah,” he said. “And how was Gus?”

Jake stood with one hand on the banister and one foot on the first stair. He gave me a worried look.

“He was fine,” I said.

My father nodded as if I’d offered a piece of sobering news then he said, “Was he winning?”

His face was a stone tablet absolutely unreadable to me.

If I’d been Jake I’d have probably stuttered to beat the band. As it was I collected myself and swallowed my surprise and said, “Yes.”

My father nodded again and went back to his reading. “Good night, boys,” he said.

The Fourth of July was my third favorite holiday. Immediately ahead of it was Christmas which took second place to Halloween. What made the Fourth special was what makes the Fourth special for any kid: fireworks. Today in Minnesota most fireworks with any real bang to them are illegal, but in 1961 in New Bremen, provided you had the money, you could purchase anything your heart desired. In order to buy fireworks I’d been saving everything I could of my earnings from the yard work I did for my grandfather. A couple of weeks before the Fourth a number of stands appeared in town festooned with red, white, and blue ribbons and selling a tantalizing array of explosives and every time I passed one of them and saw all the possibilities laid out on the plywood counters or in the boxes stacked in the shade of the canvas tents I grew eager with anticipation. I couldn’t purchase anything without my father being present to approve each item and I didn’t want to buy too early because the temptation to blow up my arsenal would be too great, so I window-shopped the stands and made a mental list of everything I desired, a list I revised a hundred times as I lay in bed at night imagining the big day.

Fireworks were an issue with my parents. My mother would have preferred that her sons have nothing to do with bottle rockets and firecrackers and Roman candles. She had a very real concern for our safety which she expressed to us and to our father in no uncertain terms. My father countered with the mild argument that fireworks were a part of the culture of the celebration and that as long as Jake and I set off our explosives under proper supervision our safety wasn’t terribly compromised. It was clear to us that my mother didn’t buy it but she understood that without my father’s full support she couldn’t stand against the uproar Jake and I would raise if she put her foot down absolutely. In the end she settled for a dour admonition directed at my father. “Nathan,” she said, “if anything happens to them, I’m holding you responsible.”

During the week preceding the Fourth of July my father was usually a wreck. The truth was that he hated fireworks even more than my mother did. As the Fourth approached and the occasional early report of a detonated cherry bomb or the rattle of a string of firecrackers broke the quiet in our neighborhood my father would become visibly upset. His face took on an expression that was tense and watchful, and if I was with him when a sudden pop of gunpowder occurred I saw his body go instantly rigid and his head jerk left or right as he sought desperately to locate the source. But he nonetheless defended his sons’ right to celebrate the holiday in the generally accepted manner.

Ten days before the Fourth, on Saturday when Jake and I had finished our yard work and received the two dollars each that was our due, we headed to Halderson’s Drugstore to slake our thirst with root beer. As we stepped into the shade of the awning above the front plate-glass window the door opened and Gus came out followed by Doyle. They were laughing and almost bumped into us and I could smell beer.

“We’re going to get some fireworks, boys,” Gus said. “Want to come along?”

My week of being grounded was over and I eagerly accepted the offer. But Jake looked at Doyle and shook his head. “No th-th-thanks.”

“Come on,” Gus said. “I’ll buy something for each of you.”

“No,” Jake said. He shoved his hands into his pockets and dropped his eyes to the sidewalk.