William Krueger - Ordinary Grace

I hoisted the pick and chopped into the clay beside the boulder. Lise and Jake stood back and let me work. I broke the ground and worked my way completely around the stone and afterward Jake followed with his shovel and cleared away the big loose clods. We worked in this way for nearly half an hour while Lise stood by and watched. I was beginning to resent all this labor while she did nothing except shake her head as if our efforts didn’t meet with her approval. I was about to step away and say something when she tapped Jake’s shoulder and motioned us to stop. She laid her crowbar down and went to the shed and from a pile of rocks on the east side she took one that was roughly the size and shape of a loaf of bread. She brought it back and set it six inches from the boulder. She took up her crowbar and jammed the chiseled end under the big stone and using the smaller stone as the fulcrum of her lever she put the force of her whole body into prying the obstacle loose from the grip of the hard clay. Her face squeezed into intense lines of determination and I looked at her bare arms and marveled at how muscled they were and how the veins there ran in long thick tendrils under her skin. Jake and I dropped our tools and knelt on either side of the stone and gripped it and pulled with all our might. And finally the rock broke free. It was too heavy for us to lift so Jake and I slowly rolled the great pumpkin of a rock across the yard to the shed where it joined all the other rock and stone that Lise Brandt had cleared to have her gardens. When it was settled there Jake leaped up and cried out victoriously. Lise gripped her crowbar in one hand and shot her other hand into the air in a sign of triumph and sent forth a prolonged guttural intonation that sounded not at all human and that if I’d heard it alone at night would have made me freeze in my steps. But I understood what it was about and I joined in the celebration.

And that’s when I made my mistake.

In my excitement I clapped Jake on the shoulder in the way of comrades and then I did the same to Lise Brandt. The moment I touched her she swung around with the crowbar in her hand. If I hadn’t been so quick and leaped back out of reach, that iron bar would have crushed my skull. The sun in its setting had gone red and a long beam shot through a break in the branches of an elm and lit her face with a demon light. Her eyes held a wild look and she opened her mouth and began to scream in the way she had earlier when the fireman had restrained her.

I looked desperately to Jake and shouted above the screams, “What do we do?”

“There’s nothing we can do,” he said. He looked in pain himself as if Lise Brandt’s unfathomable misery were his own. “Just leave her alone and she’ll stop.”

I pleaded with her, saying desperately, “I’m sorry, Lise. I didn’t mean anything.” But she didn’t hear. I put my hands over my ears and backed away.

Ariel rushed from the house calling as she came, “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Jake said. “Frank touched her, that’s all. It was an accident. She’ll calm down in a while. She’ll be fine.”

“I’ve got to get out of here,” I said.

“Go,” Jake said. “Go.” And he furiously motioned me away.

There was a gate in the back fence and I pushed through it. Beyond was the thread of a path that ran down the hill toward the railroad tracks that lay between the Brandt property and the river. I fled the screaming but it followed me all the way down the slope and across the tracks and through the cottonwood trees and it wasn’t until I slid down the riverbank and was on the sandy flat that the terrible sound finally ceased. My heart beat wildly, not just from the running but from the panic of Lise’s awful scream, and I understood only too well why Axel and Julia Brandt had sent her into exile in a place that was far beyond the hearing of most people in New Bremen.

In the blessed quiet of evening I walked along the river toward home. Black terns cut sharp curls above the channel, snatching insects from the air. In the sky the clouds had gone the color of flamingo feathers. I came to the first houses of the Flats and heard Danny O’Keefe and some other kids calling out to one another beyond the cottonwood trees but I didn’t want to join them. I made my way across the dry mudflats and approached the sandy area covered with bulrushes where Danny’s uncle had built his lean-to. From deep in the tall reeds came the rustling of someone headed my way and I slipped into the cover of the bulrushes and laid myself down trying to be inconspicuous. In a few moments a figure passed a dozen feet from where I lay. I saw that it was Warren Redstone. He walked slowly toward Danny’s house, climbed the riverbank, and disappeared. I waited a little while to be sure he was gone for good then stood up and began to make my way through the bulrushes trying to move more quietly than Danny’s great-uncle had. Which turned out to be a good idea because when I reached the clearing where Warren Redstone had built his little lean-to I caught sight of a dark shape lurking at the makeshift structure. I crept forward and once again lay on the sand among the reeds, and in the fading light of evening I watched.

A man was crouched on all fours with his torso deep in the lean-to and his rear end outside. He spent a moment rummaging in the inner shadow then backed out and stood up. The light was dim and he kept his back to me and I couldn’t see who he was. It seemed to me that he was studying something he held cupped in his hands. He knelt again and crawled back inside and this time the beam of a flashlight shot into the dark there. I still couldn’t see exactly what the man was doing but after a couple of minutes he backed out and stood and brushed sand from his hands and from the knees of his trousers. He broke a few of the bulrushes and gathered them into a kind of broom and swept away all sign of his presence and kept sweeping as he backed to the reeds. He reached to his belt and a moment later the beam of the flashlight shot out and played across the sand as if to be certain he’d erased all evidence of his presence there. Then he turned and disappeared in the direction of town.

In the wash of the flashlight beam I’d seen his face. It was Gus’s friend Officer Doyle.

By the time I left my hiding place night was almost upon me. I went to the lean-to and tried to see inside but the dark was nearly absolute now and whatever it was that had so intrigued Doyle was hidden to me. I thought about erasing my tracks in the way Doyle had done but didn’t see any reason and as the bullfrogs began their deep-throated courting I headed home.

Emil Brandt didn’t return until the following Saturday, three days before the Fourth of July. He came from the Twin Cities where he’d been transferred to a private hospital for rest and care. Axel drove him to the farmhouse beyond the edge of town. My father was there to meet them and so was I. Emil’s eyes were sunken and his face drawn but he was smiling and Lise made a huge fuss over him and despite her own abhorrence at being touched she touched him lightly several times, her hands like butterflies lighting on his arms and shoulders. Ariel embraced him and held to him a long time and wept.

“I’m fine,” he said to her. And to us all he said, “I’m fine.”

Once he’d delivered his brother Axel didn’t linger. He thanked Ariel and Jake for all their help and then drove away in his big black Cadillac and I thought he seemed greatly relieved to be finished with his part in the drama. My father and Ariel told Emil to rest but Brandt insisted that life resume in its normal way and he signed to Lise giving her instructions to get the chess set and he and my father prepared to play a game.