William Krueger - Ordinary Grace

“It doesn’t mean anything,” I said. I’d been lying there awhile in my own bed with my hands behind my head staring up at the ceiling and thinking about the blonde with the red bathing suit and trying my best to recall exactly the image of her breasts when she bent over on the rock that afternoon.

“Is it something bad?”

“It’s nothing.”

“The way that girl at the quarry said it it’s something.”

I was surprised that Jake brought it up. Except for being worried about what punishment Morris Engdahl might be contemplating for us he hadn’t talked about the incident at the quarry. In a way I’d been glad. I’d been hoping the whole skag thing had gone over his head. It hadn’t.

I considered trying to detour his wonderment but I knew that when Jake was after something he stuck with it until he was satisfied and I was concerned that he might try getting the answers from our parents and that would be disastrous on so many levels that I finally settled on dishing him the truth. Or as much of the truth as I understood.

“It’s a girl with loose morals,” I said trying, I suppose, to frame it in a kind of Victorian way because it sounded not so terrible.

“Loose morals,” Jake said. He was quiet for a while then asked, “What did he mean when he said the rich boy was putting it to her?”

What the words brought to my mind was an incident I’d observed earlier that spring when I’d gone with my father to visit a member of his congregation, a man named Kaczamarek who had a large farm with lots of livestock. While my father stood in the yard and spoke with Kaczamarek, I wandered down to the pasture where there were horses grazing. As I watched, a roan stallion approached and mounted a black mare. His penis was the size of my forearm and it disappeared entirely inside the rear of the mare. When the mating was finished he slipped from her back and returned to his grazing as if what had occurred was of no great importance.

I tried to wipe that image from my mind.

“He meant they were making out,” I said. “You know, kissing and stuff.”

“Kissing’s not bad, is it?”

“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”

“Have you ever kissed a girl?”

“Yeah. Well, actually no. She kissed me.”

“Who?”

“Lorrie Diedrich.”

“What was it like?”

“It was quick. I didn’t feel much.”

“You didn’t kiss her back?”

“It was at the fair last year,” I explained. “She’d been licking a licorice ice cream cone and she had this black mustache. She looked like Groucho Marx.”

Downstairs I could hear my mother playing the piano, going over and over the music for Ariel’s chorale on the Fourth. She always got nervous before the performances she directed and playing seemed to help.

“That girl,” Jake said. “The one with Morris Engdahl. She was pretty. They were kissing like crazy. Is she a skag?”

My mother finished playing and the house lapsed into silence and the only sound came from outside where the crickets chirred a chorus that was probably part of some crazy bug mating ritual.

“Yeah,” I said trying to rid myself of the image of her breasts. “She’s a skag.”

Independence Day arrived with the concussion of early fireworks as if a great battle had begun. When I got up my father had already breakfasted and gone to his office in the church where he kept the windows closed and the volume on his phonograph turned up high so the music would drown out much of the boom and rattle. My mother was up earlier than usual, the result of her anxiety about the chorale performance that evening. She was pacing the floor in the living room with a cigarette wedged between her fingers and trailing smoke behind her. When she saw me come down the stairs she stopped and her blue eyes locked on me.

“Frankie,” she said. “I need you to go to Emil Brandt’s house. Ariel’s there. Tell her I have to talk to her right away.”

“Can’t you call?”

“I’ve tried. No one answers. I need you to go.”

“Can I eat something first?”

“Yes but quickly,” she said.

I heard the stairs above me creak and I looked back and saw Jake in his pajamas coming down after me. “I’ll go too,” he said.

“No, I need you to do something else for me, Jake.” She went to the dining room table and picked up a sheaf of papers. “Take these to Bob Hartwig’s house. He’s expecting them.”

Hartwig was the editor of the weekly New Bremen Courier .

“They’re the names of everyone performing tonight,” she said, “and a little bit of history about the piece and about Ariel and, oh, well, everything. I was supposed to have them to him yesterday but simply forgot. He’ll need them for the article he’s writing about all the celebrations today.”

“I’d rather go get Ariel,” he said.

“You’ll do what I’ve asked.”

My mother when she gave a directive was not inclined to look kindly on objection. Her accomplishments with the choirs in our churches and with the summer musicals in the park had become nearly legendary but they were achieved in large measure because she ruled with an iron fist. When Jake pouted at her order she leveled on him a death-dealing look.

I knew Jake was pissed and that later he would bitch and moan to me but to my mother he simply replied, “Yes, m-m-ma’am.”

We fixed ourselves cereal and Jake ate silently and glowered at me though I had nothing to do with his situation. For my part I kind of enjoyed his misery.

We got dressed and headed up to the Heights. It was a great day for the Fourth, sunny and with the promise that it would stay that way and already it was hot. At the old Sibley Road I turned to the right and separated from Jake to head toward the Brandts’ house which was half a mile distant. Jake slogged on up the Heights toward Austin Street where Mr. Hartwig lived. When I looked back he’d stopped and was throwing rocks angrily at a telephone pole and I figured that in his mind it was probably our mother.

Ariel had taken the Packard but when I arrived at the Brandt house I didn’t see it parked anywhere. I went to the garage and peeked through a window. The only automobile inside was the black Chrysler that nobody ever seemed to drive. I mounted the steps of the front porch and knocked on the door. No one came. I called out, “Ariel! Mr. Brandt!” I received no answer and stood on the porch deep in indecision. Considering the state my mother was in I knew that if I returned home without Ariel I’d be eaten alive. I knocked again and called once more and then thought that even if Lise couldn’t hear me she probably knew where her brother was and my sister. I realized that it would have been better for Jake to have come instead because Lise would be able to communicate with him more easily. But I was the one who was there so I opened the screen door and, entering the Brandt home, I stepped into one of the most bizarre moments of my life.

I hadn’t been inside the house enough to know it well and I found myself prowling like a burglar. I crept to the kitchen which was far cleaner and more orderly than the one my mother kept. I looked through the screen door into the backyard at the large lovely garden but no one was there. I returned to the living room and stood a moment knowing I should check the back room where Ariel transcribed the life story of Emil Brandt but feeling more and more certain that I was trespassing in an unconscionable way. I’d almost decided to leave and take my chances with my mother when I heard an odd utterance from one of the rooms far down the hallway. It was a soft guttural cooing and I wondered if maybe the Brandts had some bird in a cage somewhere.

“Is anybody there?” I called.