William Krueger - Ordinary Grace

“There he is,” Jake said.

It was on a slope on the far end of the cemetery beneath a linden tree. I could see a wheelbarrow and a pile of fresh dirt and Gus in a hole that was already knee deep.

Gus had once told us that he came from a long line of Missouri gravediggers. “Famous in that part of Missouri,” he said, only he pronounced it Missoura. “Folks would call on my grandpap or my dad to come dig the grave of a loved one. It’s not just digging, you know, boys. It’s carving a box in the earth that’s meant to receive and hold forever something very precious to someone. When it’s done right, folks look at it different from just a hole in the ground, and the time’ll come when you understand this for yourselves.”

Gus was a good storyteller but you never knew, especially when he was drinking, what to believe.

He wore a T-shirt soiled from the work and was so intent on his labor that he didn’t see us coming.

“Hey, Gus,” I said.

He looked up, the shovel gripped in his gloved hands and the blade cradling earth. He was startled and clearly not pleased. “What are you doing here?”

“Could we talk to you for a minute?”

“Now?”

“Yeah, it’s important.”

He added the dirt to the pile beside the hole and stuck the shovel there. He tugged off his leather gloves, stuffed them into the back pocket of his jeans, and stepped up to where we stood. “Okay,” he said.

But I didn’t say anything right away. I stared at the dirt Gus had already dug and I saw movement there, the crawl of earthworms. And then I stared into the hole where Ariel would be laid the next day and it didn’t look at all like a carved box and I felt like crying. Jake stared dumbly where I stared and I figured maybe he was thinking pretty much the same thing and I was sorry I’d brought him.

“Come on over here,” Gus said. He put a hand on Jake’s shoulder and turned him toward the linden tree and did the same with me. We sat on the grass in the shade and I told Gus everything. By the end he looked pretty unhappy.

I asked, “What should we do?”

“You’re going to have to tell your father,” he said.

I nodded and said, “I figured.”

“It’s not all your fault, guys. I should never have shown you that damn furnace duct.” Gus got up from the grass. “You two find your father, tell him everything.”

“He’ll be pretty mad,” Jake said.

“I guess he will. But it’s really Doyle he should be angry with.”

I said, “What about Doyle?”

Gus looked toward town. “I’ll deal with him,” he said.

Liz met us at the door and told us our father was no longer there and our mother was resting. She asked if we’d like something to eat, cookies and milk maybe. We said no thank you and left the shade of her porch and headed toward the Flats.

Liz called to us as we walked away and we turned back.

“This will pass, boys,” she said. “I promise.”

But I’d just come from the city of the dead where everything that was lost was lost forever and although I replied, “Yes, ma’am,” I didn’t believe her at all.

We walked to the Flats in perfect silence. The Packard was parked in the garage but my father was not at the house. We walked across the street to the church and found him in his office. He didn’t appear to be working on anything, just sat with his back to us staring out his window at the railroad tracks and the grain elevators. I knocked on the frame of the door and he swung around. Right off he noticed our hair.

“Was Mr. Baake too busy to take you today?”

“No, sir,” I said. “That’s not why we didn’t get our hair cut.”

“No?” He waited.

“We know about Karl.”

His face didn’t change. “What do you know about Karl?”

“That he’s a homosexual.”

My father worked at not showing his surprise but I could see it. “Why do you think you know this?”

“We heard him tell you.”

I explained to my father about the furnace duct. And then I told him about Doyle.

“Oh, dear God,” he said. “That poor boy.” He stood up and put a hand to his forehead. I heard a train coming and it rumbled by and all that time my father was deep in thought. When the freight cars had passed he leveled his eyes on us. “I’m not at all happy that you’ve been eavesdropping,” he said, “and we’ll deal with that. And I’ll have some words for Gus, too, but right now I need to talk to Karl.”

He left the church and we followed him to the garage. He dug into his pocket for the car keys. “You boys fix yourselves some lunch and get cleaned up and dressed for the visitation this afternoon.”

Jake said, “What about Mom?”

“She’ll be there. You worry about yourselves right now.”

He got in and backed the Packard out and headed up Tyler Street.

We had bologna sandwiches for lunch and then went to our room to put on our good clothes for the visitation. If my mother had been there she’d have insisted we take baths but I figured we’d just wash our faces and Brylcreem our hair and put on clean shirts and ties and that would be okay.

I was in the middle of tying Jake’s tie for him when the telephone rang. I went into the hallway and answered it. It was Officer Cleve Blake whom we’d met the night we picked up Gus at the jail after his fight with Morris Engdahl. He asked for my father.

“He’s not here,” I said.

“Your mother?”

“She’s not here either. What’s wrong?”

“Well, son, we’ve got your friend Gus down at the jail. We’re holding him for assault. He got into a fight with one of our officers.”

I said, “Doyle?”

“That’s right. He asked me to call your dad and let him know.”

“Can we get him out?”

“I’m afraid not, at least not right away. He’ll be our guest until municipal court convenes on Monday. You’ll tell your father?”

“Yes, sir, I will.”

I hung up and Jake said, “What’s wrong?”

“Gus beat up Doyle.”

“Good,” Jake said.

“Except now he’s in jail.”

“He’s been in jail before.”

“He didn’t finish digging Ariel’s grave.”

“Somebody will, won’t they?”

“Maybe, but I don’t want just somebody digging Ariel’s grave. I want Gus.”

“What do we do?”

I thought a moment then said, “We spring him.”

The Indian Chief was parked in front of the drugstore. Because I knew Gus was in jail I figured maybe he’d tracked down and attacked Doyle at Halderson’s. Jake and I kept on going until we reached the police department on the other side of the town square. I started inside but Jake held back.

“What are we g-g-going to s-s-say?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll do the talking.”

“Maybe we sh-sh-shouldn’t be here.”

“Fine, you wait outside. I’ll take care of this.”

“No, I’m c-c-coming.”

I wasn’t nervous at all. Mostly I was angry and desperate. But it was different for Jake. He came because I came and walking into the jail was clearly something he didn’t want to do but he was doing it and I thought again how there was so much to him that people who heard only his stutter didn’t understand.

There were two men inside. One I’d talked to on the phone, Officer Blake. The other was Doyle. Doyle wasn’t in uniform. He wore dungarees and a Hawaiian shirt red with yellow flowers. There was a purple bruise around his right eye leaking down his cheek, and his lip on that side looked puffy. He was drinking from a bottle of Coca-Cola. He made no comment, just watched us.

Officer Blake said, “You boys come to talk to Gus?”

When we entered he’d been pinning some papers to the bulletin board on the wall behind the main desk. He still held a couple of sheets in his hand and I saw that they were honest-to-God wanted posters.