William Krueger - Ordinary Grace

On the day before we were to leave New Bremen my brother asked if I would help him and Lise with a project. She wanted to build a little wall around one of her flower beds using the rocks she’d pulled and piled when creating all her garden spots. Jake said it would be easier with three of us, especially because some of the rocks were big. I wasn’t excited about returning to the Brandt home but I agreed to give a hand.

We arrived after lunch and found Lise at work loading a wheelbarrow with the smaller stones from the huge pile beside the shed. The flower bed itself was in the middle of the yard, positioned in a sunny area between deep pools of shade that lay beneath a couple of tall hackberry trees. It was circular and at its center was a birdbath. Jake had explained that what Lise had in mind was to use the smaller stones to build the wall maybe a foot high and to put the large rocks inside, placing them carefully among the flowers so that the effect in the end would be a touch of wildness within the circular geometry of the wall.

She wore a loose short-sleeved yellow blouse and dungarees and tennis shoes and had soiled gardening gloves on her hands. It was hot and the blouse clung to her sides and back. We came from the river, through the gate in the back fence. She was intent on her work and didn’t know we were there until Jake circled so that she could see him. She clapped her hands together like a child pleased at a new toy and she signed something to Jake who signed something back and then he said, “Frank came too.” He pointed toward me and she turned and although she didn’t beam as brightly as she had with Jake she nonetheless looked pleased to see me. In her drone she said, “Thang you, Frang.”

We got to work. Mostly it was a question of transport, hauling the rocks from the pile to the garden thirty yards distant. Jake and I did this part while Lise constructed the wall. We filled the wheelbarrow half full because any more was impossible for us to handle and crossed the yard through the hackberry shade and dumped the stones in jumbles spaced along the edge of the garden. Lise carefully fitted the stones together with a bit of mortar that she’d mixed in a bucket.

We worked late into the afternoon. Toward the end I heard the swell of a piece I recognized as Rachmaninoff coming through the windows of the house and saw Emil Brandt step onto the front porch and sit down in his rocker and I figured he was playing a record on his stereo or maybe a tape on his reel-to-reel. Not long afterward the wall was complete. Jake and I were sweating like a couple of pack mules. Lise put down her mortar trowel and pulled off her garden gloves and said, “Wan pop?”

“Yes,” Jake and I answered together.

She smiled and made gestures to Jake who understood clearly. When she turned to go, he said, “She wants us to get the crowbar out of the shed. We’ll need it to pry the big rocks loose that she wants to put in with the flowers.”

“I’ll get it,” I offered.

The door of the shed was open and I stepped inside. Sunlight streamed in at my back. The shed smelled of damp soil and faintly of a mechanical odor like cutting oil. Lise kept the little place neatly organized. Clay pots and potting soil stood stacked beside each other against the far side. The tools of her yard work-rake, hoe, edger, clippers, shears, shovel, spade, pick, trowels-all hung neatly from hooks or nails set into a row of two-by-fours that ran horizontally along the inside of the wall midway between floor and roof. To the right was a narrow workbench with a vise and above the bench a Peg-Board that was hung with hand tools-hammer, screwdrivers, hacksaw, wrenches, chisels-and beneath the bench was a small cabinet with half a dozen drawers. The cabinet was honey-colored and decorated with hand-painted flowers. Leaning in one corner of the shed was a long pry bar and cradled across a couple of nails next to it lay the smaller crowbar. The crowbar I remembered well. That day in early summer when without thinking I’d touched her and she’d gone berserk, I’d’ve been dead if I hadn’t been so quick to dodge her wild swing. I reached for the crowbar and as I pulled it off the wall I cut my finger on the head of one of the nails. The cut wasn’t bad but it was bleeding and my hands were dirty. I took the crowbar out to Jake and showed him my wound.

“Lise keeps a box of Band-Aids in one of the drawers in the shed,” he said. “I don’t know which one.”

I returned to the honey-colored cabinet and began opening drawers. Mostly they held nails and screws and washers. But when I opened the middle drawer something else caught my eye. Amid a collection of bolts and nuts lay a delicate gold watch and a mother-of-pearl barrette.

Jake was stretched out on the grass. As I walked to him he glanced at my face and then he sat up. “What’s wrong?”

I held out my hands that were soiled with dirt and blood.

Jake looked at what I held in my palms, the little treasures that had gone missing with Ariel, and his eyes crawled up and met my gaze and I saw something in them that made me go cold.

“You knew,” I said.

“No.” Then he said, “Not for sure.”

He looked away toward the house where Emil Brandt rocked on the porch like a metronome keeping time with Rachmaninoff. I moved closer to him and leaned down. “Tell me.”

“I didn’t know,” he said.

“You said you didn’t know for sure.”

“I thought. .” He stopped and I was afraid he was going to commence to stuttering but he just spent a few seconds collecting himself and then he went on. “That day you told me Mr. Brandt killed Ariel I began to think about it, and I thought probably it wasn’t him.”

“Why not him?”

“Jesus, Frank, he’s blind. But Lise, she’s strong and can see, and she never liked Ariel. But I figured if she did it, it had to be an accident. Like when she almost hit you with this crowbar,” he said and picked up the iron tool. “You remember?”

“Yeah, I remember. But maybe it wasn’t an accident.”

Jake looked down. “I thought about that too,” he said.

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“She doesn’t have anything, Frank. Just this place and her brother. And maybe she thought Ariel was going to take that away from her. And what if people knew and she went to prison or something?”

“She should go to prison,” I said.

“See? I knew if I said anything you’d get mad.”

“Jake, this isn’t like she just did something a little bad. She killed Ariel.”

“Putting her in prison won’t bring Ariel back.”

“She has to pay for what she did.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean why?”

“Look around you. She almost never leaves this yard except to go down to the river sometimes. And she never has visitors except me. Isn’t that what a prison is?”

“She might hurt someone else. Did you ever think of that?”

Jake put the crowbar down in the grass and didn’t answer.

I stood above him pissed as hell and at the same time marveling. He’d once again seen something that the rest of us had missed, an awful truth that he’d held to alone. Even in my anger I understood what a terrible burden that must have been.

“Did you say anything to Lise?”

He shook his head. Then he said, “Seventy times seven, Frank.”

“What?”

He lifted his face in the sunlight. “Seventy times seven. It’s how we’re supposed to forgive.”

“This isn’t about forgiveness, Jake.”

“What’s it about then?”

“It’s the law.”

I heard the back door of the deck slide open and looked up and saw Lise come out carrying a tray that held three Coke bottles and a small plate of cookies.

Jake didn’t take his eyes off me. “The law? That’s really what you’re thinking about?”