“S-s-s-see,” Jake hissed at me.
“It’s okay, Jakie,” she said. She patted his leg. “Your secret’s safe with me. But, guys, listen to Dad. He worries about you. We all do.”
“Should we tell someone about the Indian?” Jake asked.
Ariel thought it over. “Was the Indian scary or dangerous?”
“He put his hand on Jake’s leg,” I said.
“He didn’t scare me,” Jake said. “I don’t think he was going to hurt us or anything.”
“Then I think it’s okay to keep that part a secret.” Ariel stood up. “But promise you won’t goof around on the tracks anymore.”
“Promise,” Jake said.
Ariel waited for me to chime in and scowled until I gave her my word. She walked to the door where she turned back dramatically and gave a broad wave of her hand and said, “I’m off to the theater.” She pronounced the word as theatah. “The drive-in theater,” she said and finished by throwing an imaginary stole about her neck and exiting with a dramatic flourish.
• • •
My father didn’t fix hamburgers and milk shakes that night. He was called to van der Waal’s Funeral Home where the body of the dead man had been taken for disposition and where he discussed with van der Waal and the sheriff the burial of the stranger. He didn’t get home until late. In the meantime, my mother heated Campbell’s tomato soup and made grilled cheese sandwiches with Velveeta and we ate dinner and afterward watched Have Gun—Will Travel. The picture was snowy on the screen because of the poor reception in so isolated an area but Jake and I clamored to watch it every Saturday night anyway. Ariel left with some of her friends to go to the drive-in movies and my mother said, “Home by midnight.” Ariel kissed her sweetly on the forehead and said, “Yes, Mother dear.” We took our Saturday night baths and went to bed before my father returned and when
he came home I was still awake and I heard my parents talking in the kitchen which was directly below our bedroom. Their voices came up through the grate in the floor and it was as if they were in the same room with me. They had no idea I was privy to every conversation that took place between them in the kitchen. They spent a few minutes talking about the burial service for the dead man which my father had agreed to perform. Then they moved on to Ariel.
My father said, “Is she out with Karl?”
“No,” Mother replied. “Just a bunch of her girlfriends. I told her midnight because I knew you’d worry.”
“When she’s away at Juilliard and I have no say in the matter she can stay out as late as she wants but when she’s with us and under our roof she’s home by midnight,” he said.
“You don’t have to convince me, Nathan.”
“She’s been different lately,” he said. “Have you noticed?”
“Different how?”
“I get the feeling something’s on her mind and she’s about to speak and then she doesn’t.”
“If something was bothering her she’d tell me, Nathan. She tells me everything.”
“All right,” my father said.
Mother asked, “When is the burial for that dead itinerant?”
Mother used the word itinerant because she said it was kinder than hobo or bum, and so we’d all begun to use that term when referring to the dead man.
“Monday.”
“Would you like me to sing?”
“It will be just me and Gus and van der Waal at the burial. No need for music I think. A few appropriate words will do.”
Their chairs scraped on the linoleum and they drifted away from the table and I could no longer hear them.
I thought about the dead man and I thought that I would like to be there when he was buried and I rolled over and closed my eyes thinking about Bobby Cole in his casket and about the dead man who would be in a casket too and I fell into a dark and unsettled slumber.
In the night I woke to the sound of a car door closing on the street in front of our house and Ariel laughing. In my parents’ bedroom across the hall a dim light burned. The car drove away and a few moments later I heard the tiny cry of the hinges on the front screen door. The light in my parents’ bedroom blinked off and their door closed with a quiet sigh. Ariel came up the stairs and then I was asleep.
Later I woke to thunder. I went to the window and saw that an electrical storm was sliding north of the valley and although the rain would miss us I could see quite well the silver bolts of lightning forged on the anvil of the great thunderhead. I slipped downstairs and out the front door and sat on the porch steps. A wind cooler than anything I’d felt in days breathed into my face and I watched the storm as I might have watched the approach and passing of a fierce and beautiful animal.
The distant thunder was like the sound of cannon fire and I thought about my father and what he’d told Jake and me about the war, which was a good deal more than he’d ever shared with us. There’d been many things I wanted to ask and I wasn’t sure why I’d held back and though he’d done nothing to show it I knew my father was hurt by our silence which was the only return we gave for his difficult honesty. I’d wanted to ask about death and if it hurt to die and what awaited me and everyone else after our passing and don’t give me that crap about the Pearly Gates, Dad. Death was a serious subject on my mind and I wanted to talk to someone about it. Standing with my father and brother in the dirt of the garage I’d been offered the moment but I’d let it pass.
As I sat on the steps I saw someone dash across the yard from the back of the house and head toward Tyler Street and up to the Heights. We didn’t have streetlights on the Flats but I didn’t need a light to know who was sneaking away.
I stood up to return to my bedroom and looked one last time where the lightning stabbed the earth that rimmed and isolated our valley.
There’d been two deaths already that summer, and although I didn’t have a clue, there were three more yet to come.
And the next would be the most painful to bear.
5
My father had three charges which meant that he was responsible for the spiritual needs of the congregations of three churches and every Sunday he presided over three services. As his family we were required to attend them all.
At eight a.m. the worship for the church in Cadbury commenced. Cadbury was a small town fifteen miles southeast of New Bremen. They had a strong congregation that included a number of Protestants of different denominations who had no church of their own near enough to attend easily and preferred the more informal service of the Methodists to the religious rigor of the Lutherans, who were as ubiquitous in Minnesota as ragweed. My mother directed the choir of which she was quite proud. Every week she drew from the men and women of the Cadbury church choir a sound that was rich and melodious and a joy to the ear. In this enterprise she had help. One of the men possessed a beautiful baritone that under my mother’s tutelage he’d shaped into a fine instrument, and one of the women had a voice that was a strong alto complement to my mother’s lovely soprano. The music pieces that my mother put together for the choir and that relied on the strength of those three voices were reason enough to come to church. Ariel was icing on the cake. Her skillful fingers coaxed from the pipes of that modest little organ music that was like nothing the congregation of the tiny country church had ever heard before. Jake and I trudged along to every service and mostly did our best not to fidget. Because it was the first, the service in Cadbury was not so difficult. By the third Sunday service our butts were sore and our patience sorely tested. So the Cadbury service tended to be our favorite.