William Krueger - Ordinary Grace

“So tell me, Jakie, did he confess to killing your sister?”

Jake squeezed his face together and whether it was an effort to hold words in or to get them out I couldn’t say.

Doyle leaned down so that his face and Jake’s were separated by no more than the length of a Popsicle stick. “Well? Did he confess?”

Jake’s lips trembled and his fists clenched and he finally spat out, “He’s not a m-m-m-murderer. He’s just a f-f-faggot, wh-wh-whatever that is.”

Doyle’s eyes bloomed wide with surprise and he straightened up. “Faggot?” he said. “Jakie, you’re going to tell me everything.”

I lay in bed that night more confused than ever. Too many things had happened in the day-the altercation between Julia Brandt and my mother, Mother’s desertion of us, Karl Brandt’s astounding confession, and our buckling under the questioning of Doyle who’d hounded Jake and me until he knew the whole of what we’d heard-and I felt twisted and wrung out. I was almost able to make some sense of these things but something else had happened that day which was far worse and for which I had no explanation or understanding and that made me feel absolutely lousy. It was simply this: For a little while I’d forgotten about Ariel and I’d been happy. Jesus, Ariel was dead only a week and not even in the ground yet and I’d forgotten her. It hadn’t been a long lapse in grieving, only the time with Ginger French and fixing dinner with Gus and eating and talking around the table and laughing. Her death had come back to me the moment Karl Brandt’s tragic face appeared at the screen door. Still I felt like a traitor, the worst kind of brother Ariel could have had.

Jake said, “Frank?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“About what?”

“Karl. About him being a faggot and all.”

That was the word Doyle had kept coming back to when he hounded us, using it like the word was a nail and his voice a hammer.

“Don’t say that word,” I told him. “If you’ve got to say anything, say homosexual.”

Which was the term my mother employed occasionally in her discussions of artists. She never said the word in a derogatory manner and I knew she didn’t care if someone was inclined that way. Among my friends, however, fag was the word you typically used and you used it like a sharp stick.

Jake was quiet and I said, “Sorry, go on.”

Jake said, “He’s afraid people will make fun of him, and that’s why he never told anyone.”

“So?”

“I don’t like to talk to people because I’m afraid I’ll stutter and they’ll make fun of me. I feel like a freak sometimes.”

I rolled over and looked at his bed. The bulb over the bathroom sink was on and some of the light splashed off the wall in the hallway and fell into our room. Mostly all I could see was the gray outline of my brother under his sheet. There wasn’t much to him and I thought about all the times he’d taken crap from other kids when I was around and I realized it was probably only a small percentage of all the crap he’d taken over all the years for something that was not his fault and that he could not help. And I felt even more like a rotten brother and a rotten person in general, the kind who only let people down.

“You’re not a freak,” I said almost angrily.

“Do you think Karl’s a freak?”

I thought about that and decided there was probably something different about everybody and Karl’s way of being different was no worse than anybody else’s.

“No,” I said.

“Do you think he was telling the truth about him and Ariel?”

“Yes.”

We were quiet a long time. I didn’t know what he was thinking but I was thinking that I wanted desperately to be someone better than I was. Finally I heard him yawn and saw him turn toward the wall to sleep and the last thing he said to me that night was, “So do I.”

Friday was the day of the visitation before Ariel’s funeral. My father wanted us to look decent and he gave Jake and me money for haircuts and after breakfast we walked to the barbershop while he drove to my grandfather’s house to speak with my mother. Although I had no idea what he was going to say to her I figured it had to be about Karl Brandt. Maybe he was going to try to convince her to come home too. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. The house was a different place without her, and not necessarily in a bad way.

The morning was sunny and the day promised to be hot. We walked into the barbershop and found it already busy. There was a customer in the barber’s chair. Two others waiting. I didn’t recognize any of the men. Mr. Baake barely glanced our way. He pointed with his scissors toward a couple of chairs near the window and said congenially, “Have a seat, boys. May be a while.”

Jake picked up a comic book and sat down. I rummaged through the magazines until I found the issue of Action for Men that I’d started the day before. We sat down to read and the discussion that had been in progress among the men when we came in recommenced.

“I don’t believe it for one minute,” one of the waiting men was saying. “Why, I saw that boy lead the Warriors to two regional championships. Coach Mortenson said he’d never seen a more natural athlete.”

“I’m telling you,” Mr. Baake said. “The boy’s a fairy. Didn’t you ever think it was strange that he sings and acts pretty good?”

The man in the barber’s chair said, “John Wayne acts pretty good, too, but I don’t see anybody calling him a faggot.”

I looked up from the comic book. Jake looked up too.

“If that boy’s a flit then I’m a zebra,” the waiting man said. “And, Bill, seems to me a dangerous thing spreading a rumor like that. Can do a lot of damage.”

“Look, I got it from Halderson who claims he got it from a cop,” Mr. Baake said. “Cops know things, and they don’t lie.”

The man in the chair said, “Ouch.”

“Sorry, Dave,” Mr. Baake said.

The man named Dave said, “How about you finish this discussion when my haircut’s done? I don’t want to end up missing an ear.”

I put down the magazine and stood up. Jake followed my lead.

“We’ll come back later,” I said.

“Sure, boys. Any time.” The barber waved his scissors in good-bye.

Outside we stood in the shade of the awning that overhung the barbershop window.

Jake said, “What are we going to do, Frank?”

I looked across the square to the police station, wondering if Doyle was inside, wondering who else Doyle had told. “I don’t know,” I said.

“Maybe we should talk to Gus?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe Gus.”

Jake said, “I didn’t see his motorcycle at the church.”

Which didn’t matter. I knew where he was that day.

It was a long walk to the cemetery and we barely said a word the whole way. I was thinking how one bad thing seemed to lead miserably to another and how somehow I felt responsible for much of it. I hated Doyle who was not only a bully but a blabbermouth and I wished I was a lot bigger and could call him out. I figured we were going to have to tell my father everything and I wasn’t looking forward to that experience at all.

We found Gus’s Indian Chief parked near the little building where all the equipment was kept. The cemetery was large and I didn’t know exactly where Ariel’s grave was to be and we wandered awhile. The whole valley basked under a cloudless sky. The distant fields were vibrant green. The call of birds was everywhere. I was in a place I’d been many times before-on Memorial Day or attending a burial service for some member of the congregation and most recently for the burials of Bobby Cole and the itinerant-and I’d always thought of it as peaceful, beautiful even. But this time was different. I saw it now for what it really was, a city of the dead, and even though a wrought-iron fence was all that separated me at the moment from the rest of New Bremen I felt as if I’d stumbled a million miles from anything familiar or comforting. We passed Bobby Cole’s grave which was still mounded and upon which sat bouquets of wilting flowers. I came to the grave of the itinerant and remembered the day I’d helped lower him into the ground and how I’d thought then that it was a lovely spot, but now I decided there could be no such thing as lovely in a place where headstones grew.