William Krueger: Ordinary Grace

His room in the church basement wasn’t much. A bed. A chest of drawers. A nightstand and lamp. A mirror. A squat three-shelf case full of books. He’d put a little red rug on the cement floor of his room that added a dash of color. There was a window at ground level but not much light came through. On the other side of the basement was a small bathroom which Dad and Gus had put in themselves. That’s where we found them. While Gus knelt at the toilet stool and puked my father stood behind him and waited patiently. Jake and I lingered under the bare bulb in the middle of the basement. My father didn’t seem to notice us.

“Still ralfing,” I whispered to Jake.

“Ralfing?”

“You know. R-a-l-f,” I said and drew out the word as if I was vomiting.

“That’s it, Captain.” With some difficulty Gus stood and my father handed him a wet cloth to wipe his face.

My father flushed the toilet and walked Gus to his room. He helped Gus out of his soiled shirt and pants. Gus lay down on his bed. He wore only his undershirt and shorts. It was cooler in the basement than outside and my father drew the top sheet over his friend.

“Thanks, Captain,” Gus murmured as his eyes drifted closed.

“Go to sleep.”

Then Gus said something I’d never heard him say before. He said, “Captain, you’re still a son of a bitch. Always will be.”

“I know, Gus.”

“They’re all dead because of you, Captain. Always will be.”

“Just sleep.”

Gus was snoring almost immediately. My father turned to where we stood in the middle of the basement. “Go on back to bed,” he said. “I’m going to stay and pray for a while.”

“The car’s full of puke,” I said. “Mom’ll go berserk.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

My father went up to the sanctuary. Jake and I went out the side door. I still wasn’t ready to call it a night. I sat on the front steps of the church and Jake sat there too. He was tired and leaned against me.

“What did Gus mean?” he said. “Dad killed them all. What did he mean?”

I was wondering about that too. I said, “I don’t know.”

The birds had started to chatter in the trees. Above the hills that rimmed the valley of the Minnesota River I could see a thin line of vermilion in the sky that was the approach of dawn. And I saw something else. On the other side of the street a familiar figure separated itself from the cover of the lilac bushes that edged our yard. I watched my older sister sneak across the lawn and slip into our house through the back door. Oh the secrets of the night.

I sat on the steps of my father’s church thinking how much I loved the dark. The taste of what it offered sweet on the tongue of my imagination. The delicious burn of trespass on my conscience. I was a sinner. I knew that without a doubt. But I was not alone. And the night was the accomplice of us all.

I said, “Jake?” But he didn’t answer. He was asleep.

My father would pray for a long time. It was too late for him to go back to bed and too early to fix breakfast. He was a man with a son who stuttered and another probably on his way to becoming a juvenile delinquent and a daughter with a harelip who sneaked in at night from God knew where and a wife who resented his profession. Yet I knew it was not for himself or for any of us that he was praying. More likely it was for the parents of Bobby Cole. And for Gus. And probably for an asshole named Morris Engdahl. Praying on their behalf. Praying I suppose for the awful grace of God.

She wore a white terry-cloth robe and her feet were bare. On the table in front of her sat a cup of black coffee. Against the cup she’d propped a pamphlet. In her right hand she held a mechanical pencil. A stenographer’s notebook was open on the red Formica tabletop. Beside it lay half a cigarette smoking in a ceramic ashtray on which the four presidents of Mount Rushmore were embossed in gold. Periodically she put her pencil down and took up the cigarette, inhaled thoughtfully, and slowly released a plume of smoke that hung over the kitchen table.

“Nervous as a loose shutter in a storm,” she said. She mulled the words as she watched the smoke gradually dissolve. Satisfied she took up her pencil and wrote in the notebook.

This was during the period my mother was enamored of the work of Ayn Rand and had decided she too could be a world-famous author. She’d sent off to a writers’ school in New York City for a test that would confirm she had the right stuff.

Jake ate his Sugar Pops and watched the diver he’d pulled from the cereal box slowly sink in a glass of water. Moments later it returned to the surface, lifted on an air bubble created by the baking soda he’d put in a tiny compartment on the diver’s back. I ate a piece of toast covered with crunchy peanut butter and grape jelly. I hated the crunchy kind of peanut butter but because it was on sale my mother had dismissed my complaints.

My mother said, “The cat crept across the floor like. .” She took up her cigarette and thought deeply.

“An assassin stalking prey,” I said.

“Finish your breakfast, Frankie.”

“Like a robber after some money,” Jake said. His eyes never left the diver in his glass.

“Thank you, I don’t need your help.”

She thought a moment longer then wrote on the pad. I leaned over and saw that she’d written. . like love entering a heart .

My father came in. He was dressed in his good black suit and white shirt and blue tie. “The service is at noon, Ruth.”

“I’ll be ready, Nathan.” She didn’t look up from her pamphlet.

“People will start gathering much earlier, Ruth.”

“I’ve been to funerals before, Nathan.”

“You boys, you see that you look sharp.”

“They know what to do, Nathan.”

My father stood a moment and stared at the back of my mother’s head then walked to the door and went outside. As soon as he was gone my mother closed her notebook and laid the pamphlet on top. She stubbed out her cigarette and said, “Two minutes, then breakfast is over.”

An hour later she came downstairs wearing a black dress. She had on a black hat with a black veil and black pumps. She smelled of bath powder. Jake and I were dressed for the service. We had the television on and were watching a rerun of The Restless Gun. My mother was beautiful. Even we her thoughtless sons knew that. Folks were always saying she could have been a movie star. Pretty as Rita Hayworth they said.

“I’m going to the church. You two be there in half an hour. And, Frankie, you see that you both stay clean.”

We wore the only suits we had. I’d tied my tie and I’d tied Jake’s. We’d washed our faces and wetted our hair and slicked it back. We looked presentable.

As soon as she was gone I said, “You stay here.”

Jake said, “Where are you going?”

“Never mind. Just stay here.”

I left through the back door. Behind our house was a small pasture. When we’d first moved in, a couple of horses had grazed there. The horses were gone now but the pasture was still filled with grass where wild daisies and purple clover grew. On the far side stood a house set off by itself, an old yellow structure surrounded by willows. A wood fence separated the backyard from the pasture. I crept through the wild grass. Like an assassin stalking prey. I sidled up to the fence which was a slapped-together affair full of gaps where the warped boards refused to meet. I put my eye to the space created by one of those refusals.

The house belonged to Avis and Edna Sweeney. Avis worked at the grain elevators at the edge of the Flats. He was a toothpick of a man with a huge Adam’s apple. Edna was a blonde with a bosom like the prow of an aircraft carrier. The Sweeneys had a nice yard with lots of plants and flowers and Edna did the yard work. She did it dressed in tight shorts and a halter top that barely contained her breasts. I don’t remember how I discovered the delight of Edna Sweeney but I was much addicted to the sight of her dressed that way and bent to her labor. I spent a lot of time that summer with my eyeball glued to a gap in the fence.