William Krueger - Ordinary Grace

“We intend,” my mother said.

“By God, I want to be in on that,” my grandfather cried.

“No,” my father replied. “This will be between the Brandts and Ruth and me.”

“The sheriff is in there somewhere,” I said.

They all looked at me as if I’d just come in from Siberia and had spoken Russian and after that though it nearly killed me I didn’t say another word.

After we’d got ourselves ready for bed my father had come up and we’d talked.

“Maybe he forced himself on her,” I said, using a term I’d pulled from God knows where.

“I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen, Frank. People in love sometimes make bad decisions, that’s all.”

“So that’s why Karl killed her? He just made a bad decision?”

“We don’t know that Karl had anything to do with her death.”

“We don’t? That baby would have complicated Karl’s life enormously,” I said, nearly repeating words the sheriff had used that afternoon in my father’s office.

“Frank, you know Karl. Do you think he’s capable of doing what was done to Ariel?”

“You mean knocking her up?”

“Don’t ever say that again. And you know what I mean.”

“Jesus, I don’t know.”

My father could have cut into me for taking the Lord’s name in vain but he sat on my bed calmly and calmly tried to reason me out of my bitter rage.

“Killing someone, Frank, that’s not something most people could do. It’s so unbelievably hard.”

“You killed people.”

I thought he would tell me that it was war and a different situation but he didn’t. He said, “And if I could I would undo that.” He said this with such sad conviction that it kept me from going further though it was a line of questioning I deeply wanted at some point to pursue, those mysterious killings which Gus had once drunkenly alluded to and had spoken of again in the dark of the church sanctuary only a few days earlier.

“You’ve always liked Karl,” he reminded me. “We all have. He’s always been a decent young man.”

“Apparently not always,” I said. Which was an exact phrase I’d heard my mother use in response to almost the same statement my father had made during the discussion downstairs.

“I’m going to ask this of you. Of you both,” he said looking toward silent Jake. “Don’t make any judgments until after your mother and I have had a chance to talk to Karl and his parents. Don’t say anything to anyone even if you’re pressed. It would be a further tragedy to have vicious rumors spread. Do you understand me?”

Jake answered immediately, “Yes, sir.”

“Frank?”

“I understand.”

“And you’ll do what I ask?”

It took me a moment to make that promise but finally I said, “Yes, sir.”

He stood up but before he left he said, “Guys, we’re all moving in the dark here. Honestly, I don’t know any more than you do what’s right. The one thing I do know is that we have to trust in God. There is a way through this, and God will lead us. I believe that absolutely. I’m hoping you do, too.”

After my father left I said toward the ceiling, “I hate the Brandts.”

Jake didn’t reply and I lay alone listening to the rain against the windowpane and wondering if it would really be so hard to kill someone because right at that moment I thought maybe I could.

In a small town nothing is private. Word spreads with the incomprehensibility of magic and the speed of plague. It wasn’t long before most of New Bremen knew about Ariel’s condition and the sheriff’s suspicions regarding Karl Brandt.

Karl’s friends were interviewed and the males among them revealed that Karl had said things lately that made them believe he’d been sleeping with Ariel.

Ariel’s friends confirmed that she’d been upset but whatever had bothered her she’d kept fiercely to herself. They all suspected it had something to do with Karl and a couple of them indicated they’d suspected the possibility of a pregnancy.

Karl Brandt’s parents, Axel and Julia, were keeping quiet and keeping their son out of public sight in their mansion on the Heights. My father tried his best to arrange the meeting that he believed was absolutely necessary to everyone’s understanding of the situation but he never got past Simon Geiger who worked for Brandt and who’d been tapped to screen all calls coming into their home. He tried the direct approach and with my mother drove to the Brandt mansion but was refused entrance. Though he believed absolutely in God’s good guidance my father was clearly upset at being stonewalled.

The sheriff was more forthcoming. He shared with my parents what he learned in his interviews of Karl Brandt which, because a lawyer was always present, wasn’t much. The young man would neither confirm nor deny his part in Ariel’s pregnancy and he was adamant in asserting that neither he nor Ariel had had any intention of getting married. He held to his earlier story that the night she disappeared he’d drunk too much and had lost track of her at the party on the river. The sheriff shared with my parents his own concern that Karl sounded as if he was repeating a script he’d memorized.

Emil Brandt seemed to have dropped from our lives. He’d been my mother’s constant companion from the moment Ariel vanished, but once my sister’s pregnancy had been revealed and the Brandt name had been dragged into the thick of things and the family had sequestered themselves, my mother’s affections shifted away from anything Brandt. Which left her adrift in a way. She seemed angry all the time. Angry at my father. Angry at the Brandts. Angry at me and Jake if we happened to stray into her path. And as always those days angry at God. As best we could we stayed out of her way.

Wednesday afternoon my father went to van der Waal’s to complete the arrangements for Ariel’s burial which was scheduled for Saturday. Jake and I were left home with our mother who sat in a rocker on the front porch smoking cigarettes in plain view of anyone who happened by and looking with a hard eye at the church across the street. Her hair was unbrushed and she wore slippers and her housecoat. Before he left my father had tried to talk her into dressing but had finally given up.

When Gus pulled into the church lot and parked his motorcycle I was in the garage with my bicycle flipped upside down working on removing the tube of a flat tire. Gus walked across the street so focused on my mother that he didn’t see me. There were cobwebs across the garage window and the panes were in need of washing but even so I had a pretty good view of the front porch and could hear what transpired there.

At the bottom step Gus stopped. “Nathan around, Ruth?”

“Gone,” she said and blew a flourish of smoke.

“Know when he’ll be back?”

“I have no idea. He’s getting everything ready to bury Ariel. Do you have news from your friend Doyle? Is that why you’re looking for Nathan?”

“I’d rather talk directly to Nathan.”

“If you know something, I’d rather you talked to me.”

Gus looked up at the woman rocking slowly in the shadow of the porch. “All right,” he finally said. He took the steps and faced her. “According to Doyle,” he said, “the sheriff had been hoping to find the instrument used to crack Ariel’s skull before she was thrown into the river. He believed it might be a tire iron and that Karl might still have it somewhere in his possession. But the county attorney has refused to petition a judge. Says there’s not enough evidence. The sheriff thinks it’s more a lack of backbone on the part of the county attorney.”

Smoke vined from my mother’s nostrils as she spoke: “Arthur Mendelsohn has always been a toad. He was a toad as a child and he’s a toad as a man. He would never stand up to Axel Brandt.”