Michelle Hoover - Bottomland

“What is it?”

“It’s Ray,” cried Agnes. “Lee carried him in.”

My wife stood at the end of the table and rent a rag in half. Ray lay with his arm stretched over his head and bleeding. The flour from his mother’s baking clung to him. He kicked like a dog. The girls tried their best to hold his legs. Margrit grabbed hold of his arm and bound the rag tight, tearing off the end with her teeth. Lee hovered near the door. The front of his overalls were a bloody brown, his lips moving. “Thought Telly was all right. I thought she was.” Nan rushed from the stove with another rag and set to cleaning Ray’s arm. He swore at her. The rag turned dark.

“Julius,” Margrit called. “Ready the wagon. We have to take him to the doctor.”

“But what.?”

“Julius, now!”

Ray was lucky, the doctor said. A crushed hand, lost to the ropes of the reaper’s bullwheel, when he could have lost the arm. Yet how opposite of lucky such a hand was for a farmer or his son. Lee finished most of the work for the two of them. His older brother might milk a cow and carry wood. He could only just grip an ax. Yet the finer things were beyond him, the turning of a bolt or the tying of wire. The reaper stood in the barn under its heavy canvas. The ropes were twisted and stained, and Lee more than skittish with the horses. Ray rarely spoke to Lee now. I suppose this was a blessing. What spiteful things the boy might have said.

Throughout that fall and winter, I spent my evenings in the dugout. The door had long ago fallen into a heap at the threshold. The place smelled of earth and fur, some animal taken to sleeping in the corner. Still the roof held, the walls sturdy as stone. I braced myself on the wooden cot. It was nearly rotted through, only two planks to hold my weight. A discomfort, this. Yet I felt deserving of discomfort. My boys labored until dusk. Ray was more the stubborn in what work he could manage, and I was but an old man with little strength left to me and less the reason. Had the accident been a penance? For what crime? Nothing but a sliver of land. A muddy bank I wished to save from a relentless current. The whole of the harvest had been long, punishingly slow. Because of it, we had not the energy to channel the remains of the river. Nor the hands to have it finished. Even our Nan seemed less than willing to carry her share. Her mind was on letters, the war.

“They took her Carl,” explained Margrit.

“But the girl shouldn’t every minute be going on. ”

Margrit hushed me with a finger. “Don’t, Julius. Don’t you say it.”

The Elliot boy was sent home. We knew little what to make of it. Even in the coldest months, he stewed in the corral with their horses. I raised a hand to him across the fields. He stood with his face pressed against the fence.

Early into April, the snow lay frozen against the river-banks. We could not shake it. Our yard was polished with snow and ice, hard for walking. A new fall of snow drifted inside the dugout door. Only in sitting there as the sun set could I imagine that Margrit and I had just arrived. The land remained untouched, full of promise. Beyond the door, my wife arranged her ropes against the snakes.

A break in the gravel. “Who is it?”

“It’s Lee, pap.”

The boy crossed the threshold and sat on the far end of the cot. His breath showed white in the cold. He gripped his hands though he wore gloves. Together, we looked out over the fields. Soon enough, there would only be snow and whatever moonlight it threw back, if there was a moon at all. The howl of the dogs sounded near and far at once.

“Mrs. Elliot is sick,” said Lee at last.

“Sick?”

“She has a bad fever. The doctor says he’s seen fifteen cases like it.”

“Mary is a good woman. I am sure she will pull out.”

“I went to see Tom.”

“He injured?”

“Not to look at him.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“I think it injured him some, one way or another. He’s not telling.”

“I never thought much of the boy.”

Lee strained his eyes as the room darkened. “There’s something else, see. Did Nan tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

He cocked his head. “They hung a man in Illinois. In Collinsville, near St. Louis. A whole mob of them did. For making speeches or the like.”

“St. Louis.”

“Near so.”

“That’s three hundred miles.”

Lee shrugged. “Name of the man was Robert Prager. A coal miner. He was from a place called Dresden.”

“Dresden? He’s a German.”

“They let Prager write a letter home before they did it.”

“A letter to Dresden. I don’t suppose he said much to explain himself.”

“It was those speeches that got him in trouble. But it was just talk. That’s what Nan says. Nothing worth hanging a man about. Still it’s in all the papers. No one will leave it alone.”

“Well.” A hollowness turned in my stomach.

“So I’ve been thinking. ” The boy swallowed. “They say Wilson might lower the draft to eighteen. Maybe this fall, maybe before that.”

“The fall is months off. The war might be over then.”

Lee shifted. The wind swept through the door and fell to a hush. The yelps of the dogs grew in number. “That’s just it,” he said. “Suppose it’s not.”

“No use worrying ahead of a thing.”

He shook his head. “I’m not worried.”

“Well then.”

“See, I got to thinking. With Ray hurt and all. ”

“You can stop your thinking about that.”

“. and Elliot the way he is.”

“The man will be fine come spring. We’ll fix the channel for him, finish our own.”

“But what people are saying, the way me and Ray aren’t over there. We’ve lost five boys from town. A sixth’s gone missing. And it’s only the start. Tom Elliot would never have been in Europe if it weren’t for us. Now he’s the worse, maybe his mother too.”

“Because of the Germans, you mean. That boy was eager enough to sign himself up. And Mary, that’s altogether different. I never heard of a homecoming bringing unhappiness to a mother.”

Lee shifted again. “Suppose I drafted early. Then they’d know we’re on the same side.”

I turned to see him. Oil clung to his skin with whatever contraption he was in the shed fixing. He was always at fixing something. Now another of my boys wished to go back the way I had come. “Lee. ”

“I’ve already decided, see. Every boy who’s worth his weight is going. Even Carl McNulty. Even after he gave Nan a ring. And now they’re all talking about who isn’t. With Ray out, it’s got to be me.”

“So you’re telling me, not asking.”

He scratched his head. “If you don’t want me to go, you can say. But if you want me to, you don’t have to say a thing. I’ll go to the office next week, sign my name.”

“Your mother will never forgive us.”

Lee was silent. The cold reached inside my collar, my sleeves. It seemed we could be anywhere. The solid earth lay both below and above our heads.

“Does that mean you want me to go?” asked Lee.

I could not speak. In the near dark, only the rising pitch of the wind and the wooden cot that creaked beneath our weight. All this time we had made what we considered right. We had worked the land. We had kept our troubles to ourselves. Yet keeping to ourselves no longer seemed an option to us. Even Margrit had said it: You keep to yourself too much .

“I am not saying go.”

“But you’re not saying don’t.”

I stood and peered out the door, my shoulder against the rotting sill. The two brothers who had the place built, I often wondered where they had taken themselves. To leave so much behind. To simply vanish. I turned and reached out my hand, my palm on my son’s forehead. Lee leaned against it. His skin blazed with warmth. “I am not telling you one way or another,” I said. Lee never moved. My hand trembled. “You may think it will fix everything, but people believe whatever is useful to them. If you are going, you go for your own reasons. I cannot keep you from that.”