Charles D'Ambrosio - The Dead Fish Museum

“You don’t have any other clothes, do you?” the old woman asked.

“No, ma’am,” she said.

“Let’s go pull some stuff out of the attic,” Gen said. She drew a level line from the top of her head to the top of Kirsten’s.” We’re about the same size, I figure. You won’t win any fashion awards — it’s just old funny things, some wool pants, a jacket, a couple cardigan sweaters. But you aren’t dressed for Iowa.” She pronounced it “Ioway.”

“I’d appreciate that, ma’am.”

“Doing the kind of work you do, I don’t imagine you can afford the extras,” the old woman said, as they climbed a set of steps off the upstairs hallway. “But in this country we don’t consider a coat extra.”

She tugged a string and a bare bulb lit the attic. In the sudden glare, the room seemed at first to house nothing but a jumble of shadows.” I’ve held on to everything,” she said.

“I met a man in town today,” Kirsten said. “He said he knew you and Effie.”

The old woman slit the tape on a box with her thumbnail and handed Kirsten a sweater that smelled faintly of dust and camphor.

Kirsten held the woman still and kissed her on the lips. “He said to give you that.”

“Johnny?” Gen said. “He won’t come out here.”

Kirsten slipped into the sweater, a cardigan with black leather buttons like a baby’s withered navel, a hardened ball of Kleenex in the pocket. She had never known a world of such economy, where things were saved and a room in a house could be set aside for storage. This woman had lived to pass her things on, but now there was no one to take them.

“It was a combine,” Kirsten said. “It was this time of year.”

The old woman nodded.

“Your little girl doesn’t know she’s dead. She’s still out there.”

“How do I know you know all this?”

“I saw her,” Kirsten said. “And when me and Lance come to the door last night we never knocked.”

From a rack against the wall, the old woman took down a wool overcoat.

“You were waiting up for her. You wait every year.”

Gen stepped in front of a cheval mirror and held the coat against her body, modeling it for a moment.

“It wasn’t Effie’s fault,” Kristen said.

“He feels the guilt all the same,” the old woman said.

“He had to.”

“Had to what?”

“Live,” Kristen said. “He had to live his life, just the same as me and you.”

They set four places with the good plates and silver and flowery napkins in the dining room. There was a ham pricked with cloves and ringed around with pineapple and black olives and green beans and salad and bread. Effie fussed over his wife as if he’d never had dinner with her, passing dishes and offering extra helpings, which she refused each time, saying, “Help yourself.” Kirsten eventually caught on, seeing that this solicitude was the old man’s sly way of offering a compliment and serving himself a little more at the same time. The food was good; it all glistened, the juices from the ham, the butter running off the beans, the oil on the salad. Gen spent most of the meal up on her feet, offering, spooning, heating, filling.

Effie’s conversation made a wide, wandering tour of the land. Jesse James used to hide out in this country, he said. Then he was talking about no-till planting, soil that wasn’t disked or plowed.

“You got corn in just about everything,” he said. “In gasoline, sparkplugs, crayons, toothpaste, disposable diapers—”

“No, really?” Lance said.

“You bet,” the old man went on, “and paint, beer, whiskey. You name it.” He said one out of four hogs produced in this country came from Iowa — which he, too, pronounced “Ioway.” Hogs till Hell wouldn’t have it, he said, thundering the words. The topic of hogs led to a story he’d read about Fidel Castro roasting a pig in a hotel room in New York, and then he told about their travels, a trip to Ireland and another to Hawaii, which he pronounced “Hoy.”

After dinner, there was pumpkin pie — prize-winning, Effie announced, as the pie tin took center stage on the cleared table.

It was delicious, the filling warm with a buttery vanishing feel on Kirsten’s tongue. “What’s in it?” she asked.

“Oh,” Gen said, “cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, vanilla — but real pumpkin’s the key.” Gen, satisfied with the satisfaction at her table, smiled at her husband, who gravely put down his fork.

“When you come,” Effie said, “Momma said you mentioned our little girl.”

The old man looked across the table at his wife, checking her eyes, or the turn of her mouth, for subtle signs, searching for agreement. It was as if he found what he needed in the space between them, and spoke aloud only to verify that it was there, that someone else had seen it.

“Our little girl,” Gen said.

“Your daughter,” Kirsten said.

“I wondered if you were an old friend. Maybe from school. Most of them have grown and gone away. I used to see — it would have been so long ago, but. .” He trailed off, his pale blue eyes sparkling in the weak, splintered light of the chandelier.

Lance said, “Kirsten’s been to the other side. She’s seen it.”

“I would believe you,” Effie said. “Some around here don’t credit dowsers, but we always have. We never had reason not to. We always had plenty of water.” He cleared his throat. “I’d pay anything if you could tell us — something.”

“There’s the babies,” Lance said.

“I’ll help with those babies of yours. I’ll donate to your cause. Where you going after this?”

“We’re aiming west,” Lance said.

Effie squared his fork with the edge of the table. “Well?”

Kirsten was about to speak when she felt a hand slide over her knee, the fingers feeling their way until they rested warmly in her hand, holding it tight. She glanced at the old woman.

“It was only that picture on your wall,” she said to Effie.

The picture was the one every child drew a hundred times — the house, the leafy tree, the sun in one corner, the birds overhead, the walkway widening like a river as it flows out from the front door, the family standing on the green grass, a brother, a sister, a mother with her triangle dress, the father twice as big as everybody, the stick fingers overlapping — and that no one ever saved.

“It was just that picture,” Kirsten said. “I wish I could say it was more, but it wasn’t.”

Effie picked up his fork and pressed it against the crumbs of piecrust still on his plate, gathering them. He looked as though he had another question in mind.

“That was the last picture,” the old woman said.

“She just drawn it at school,” he said. “She put me and Gen in, her and her brother.”

“Stephanie,” Kirsten said, “and Johnny.”

The old man glanced at his wife.

“She spelled all the names on the picture,” Kirsten said.

Gen whispered yes, but it was Effie who had to speak up. “I never breathed right or walked right after,” he said. “Never farmed, neither, except for my little garden out back.”

“That was the best pie I ever had,” Kirsten said.

“Show your ribbons, Momma,” Effie said.

“Oh, no,” Gen said, waving her hand, shooing away the approach, the temptation of something immodest.

“Well, that’s right,” Effie said. “The pie’s right here, huh?” He looked around the table. “The pie’s right here.”

Kirsten hovered above the field and could hear the rumble of an engine and the crushed stalks snapping, a crackling noise that spread and came from everywhere at once, like fire. The stalks flailed and broke and dust and chaff flew up, and then, ahead, she saw the little girl running down the rows, lost in the maze, unable to search out a safe direction. Suddenly the girl sat on the ground, her stillness an instinct, looking up through the leaves, waiting for the noise to pass. Kirsten saw her there — a little girl being good, quiet, obedient — but when the sound came closer she flattened herself against the dirt, as if the moment might pass her by. When it was too late, she kicked her feet, trying to escape, and was swallowed up. The noise faded, and a scroll of dirt and stover curved over the fields like handwriting. Then it was gone, and Kirsten saw her own reflection floating in the gray haze of the vanity.