“A man?” Doyle stood up and took hold of my arm and forced me to come close to him where the smell of beer poured from his mouth, a stream on which his words were carried. He said, “What kind of man? Did he threaten you boys?”
I didn’t reply.
Doyle squeezed my arm so that it hurt. “Tell me, son. What kind of man?”
I looked to Gus hoping that he could see the pain on my face. But he seemed lost in the confusion of that moment which probably came not only from the confounding influence of the alcohol but also from the betrayal of the trust he’d put in me. He said, “Tell him, Frankie. Tell him about the man.”
Still I did not speak.
Doyle shook me. Shook me like a rag doll. “Tell me,” he said.
Halderson said, “Tell him, son.”
“Tell him, Frank,” Gus said.
Doyle shouted now. “Tell me goddamn it. What kind of man?”
I stared at them, dumbed by their viciousness, and I knew I would not speak.
It was Jake who saved me. He said, “A dead man.”
4
On a minister’s salary we ate cautiously but we ate well. That didn’t mean the food was good; my mother was a notoriously bad cook. But she was a savvy shopper and made sure there was plenty to sustain us. Most Saturday nights my father made hamburgers and milk shakes and we ate these with potato chips. Salad was the lettuce and tomato and onion we put on our burgers though sometimes my mother would cut carrots and celery into sticks. We looked forward to dinner on Saturdays which we sometimes ate around a picnic table in our backyard.
That Saturday things were different and they were different because of the dead man and because Jake and I had reported him. My father had come to pick us up at the police station where we waited with Gus. We’d answered the questions of the county sheriff who was a man named Gregor and who’d been called into town from the small farm he operated on Willow Creek. He didn’t look like a sheriff. He was dressed in overalls and his hair was stiff with hay dust. He treated us kindly though he was stern when it came to his admonition that the railroad tracks were no place for boys to play. He reminded us about the unfortunate Bobby Cole. He sounded truly sad when he spoke of Bobby’s death and I had the sense that it meant something to him and I was inclined to like him.
Jake stuttered horribly when he was questioned and in the end I told the story for both of us. I didn’t mention the Indian. I don’t know why. The sheriff and the men in the police station hadn’t been drinking and they seemed reasonable and I wasn’t afraid that they’d do violence if they picked him up. But Jake in his utterance in the back room of the drugstore had omitted the Indian and in doing so had lied and the lie once spoken had taken shape as surely as if he’d chiseled it from a block of limestone. To undo it would be to put on my brother’s shoulders the impossible responsibility of trying to explain why he’d dissembled in the first place. Since the moment when with astonishing clarity he’d spoken the lie, Jake hadn’t been able to say a single word without stumbling through a long preamble of unintelligible utterances that were an embarrassment to him and to all who were present.
My father when he arrived was fully informed. He and Gus stood together while our questioning was completed then he ushered us outside into the Packard. Although Dad had cleaned the car thoroughly after Gus puked in the back, there was still a faint unpleasant odor and we drove home with the windows down. He pulled into the garage and we climbed from the car and he said, “Boys, I’d like to talk to you.” He looked at Gus and Gus nodded and walked off. We stood in the open doorway of the garage. Across the street the church was bathed in the light of the late afternoon sun and its white sides had turned yellow as pollen. I stared at the steeple whose little cross seemed like a black brand against the sky and I was pretty sure of what was about to come. My father had never struck us but he could speak in a way that made you feel as if you’d offended God himself. That’s what I figured was our due.
“The issue,” he said, “is that I need to be able to trust you. I can’t watch you every moment of every day nor can your mother. We need to know that you’re responsible and won’t do dangerous things.”
“The tracks aren’t dangerous,” I said.
“Bobby Cole was killed on those tracks,” he said.
“Bobby was different. How many other kids have been killed playing on the tracks? Heck, streets are more dangerous. Me and Jake could be killed a whole lot easier just crossing the street in town.”
“I’m not going to argue, Frank.”
“I’m just saying that anything can be dangerous if you’re not careful. Me and Jake, we’re careful. That dead guy today wasn’t because we weren’t careful.”
“Okay, then this is the issue. I need to know that when I ask something of you you’ll give it. If I ask you to stay away from those tracks, I need to know that you will. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Trust is the issue, Frank.” He looked at Jake. “Do you understand?”
Jake said, “Yes s-s-s-sir.”
“This is what’s going to happen in order that you remember. For one week, you won’t leave the yard without my permission or your mother’s. Am I clear?”
All things considered I didn’t think it was such a bad deal so I nodded to show that I understood and I accepted. Jake did the same.
I thought that was it but my father made no move to leave. He looked beyond us toward the dark at the back of the garage and was silent as if deep in thought. Then he turned and stared through the open door of the garage toward the church. He seemed to come to some decision.
He said, “The first man I ever saw dead outside a coffin was on a battlefield, and I have never spoken of it until now.”
My father sat on the rear bumper of the Packard so that his eyes were level with ours.
“I was scared,” he said, “and I was curious and although I knew it was a dangerous thing to do, I stopped and considered this dead soldier. He was German. Not much more than a boy. Only a few years older than you, Frank. And as I stood looking down at this dead young man, a soldier who’d seen a lot of battle stopped and he said to me, ‘You’ll get used to it, son.’ Son, he called me, even though he was younger than I.” My father shook his head and took a deep breath. “He was wrong, boys. I never got used to it.”
My father leaned his arms on his thighs and folded his hands in the way he sometimes did when he sat alone in a pew and prayed.
“I had to go to war,” he said. “Or felt that I had to. I thought I knew more or less what to expect. But death surprised me.”
My father looked at each of us. His eyes were hard brown but they were also gentle and sad.