The Master Butcher's Singing Club

ELEVEN. The Christmas Sun

THE SNOW FELL as a bitter powder all December, light dustings that did not soften the earth’s iron. The sky was clear. Day after day the sun rose, attended by two fierce sun dogs, glittering with collars of rainbows, cold fire. Where the snow was blown aside, the old plow marks and grooves in the earth sprouted a miserable stubble of wheat and cornstalks. In some places, where the crops had entirely failed, the dirt had drifted up against some lone tree or the occasional fence line. The dirt went so deep it would not be lost, it would always be there, but already it was clear that a great deal of the life was sucked from it. In higher places, the soil had leached an anemic whitish gray, like an old man’s pallor. The stuff mixed with the snow to make a gritty and punishing substance that polished the paint from the houses in Argus, and painfully scoured the cheeks of schoolchildren, who walked to school backward with their arms tucked up in their sleeves, in little groups, taking turns as lookouts. Snow is a blessing when it softens the edges of the world, when it falls like a blanket trapping warm pockets of air. This snow was the opposite — it outlined the edges of things and made the town look meaner, bereft, merely tedious, like a mistake set down upon the earth and only half erased.

TANTE DID NOT GIVE UP when the suit betrayed her, she couldn’t, not even when that first day she was nearly run over in it. Not even when she was sneered at and glared through in the county offices. She made the rounds. She went back to the bank so often that the tellers rolled their eyes at her approach. She even considered for a brief, mad moment approaching the owner of the pool hall and asking if he needed someone to clean. She got as close as the back entrance. But the smell of stale beer, sweat, piss, and worse, as well as the knowledge of what she’d find there for trash, was too revolting. What awful something might be hers to scrub and wash, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t overcome even the phantom of her disgust. So she went on searching. And to its credit, the suit held up. The fibers of the weave did not wilt or fray. The suit carried itself around her like a shield. Even when she’d failed for the day and dragged herself toward home, and some scrap of a meal, the suit rallied her and stiffened her resolve. Instead of starving that night, she went to her brother’s and straightened her back before she entered, swept in as she always had, snatched the food as though it was her due, grandly, because she had to claim it without humility, or she could not claim it at all, not in front of Delphine, whom she both depended upon and hated.

Ever since the hill, Tante had found that Fidelis was more sympathetic to her ideas about bringing the boys back to be raised in Germany. She couldn’t help pointing out that Fidelis’s sons had gotten themselves into tremendous danger. What might happen next? It could be worse! And they were boys, hell-bent, saint-worshiping, furiously happy, danger-loving boys, no doubt about that. They would get into trouble if they could. Tante felt it her duty to tell Fidelis that she doubted that, even with Delphine there for part of the day, he could keep a close enough eye on his sons. They were not safe. They were running wild and swatting themselves with the sign of the cross. And with the wages he had to pay in the shop he could barely keep shoes on their feet. You could see the newspaper linings inside of their old boots. She went on in this way until Fidelis left the room, but she could see that she’d made an impression of some sort. She played on his guilt over what might have happened, what came so close. Markus buried in the hill.

In the suit, the sun glancing off it in the afternoons, a heavy set of woolen underwear beneath keeping her snug, Tante made her way through the town, thickening her skin for the inevitable refusals. She went out. She asked for work. And then one day she actually got hired.

The place had just opened, whatever it was. At first it was hard to tell what exactly was sold there. A jumble of baskets and tobacco cans spilled out onto the sidewalk. A wide front window held bolts of new fabric and neatly cut piles of old, a large tin sieve with half-moon handles carved of horn, some handmade lace, rickrack, ribbons, and a brand-new sewing machine. A placard on the door said merely Notions. Tante stepped close, entered. On the other side of the half-painted, half-scraped door, there was a battered dressmaker’s dummy, more bolts of fabric — all sorts, from wools to calico — and a display of brilliant hat trims. There were also baskets of dyed feathers, ten kinds of machine lace, a fur collar that would have looked very fine sewed to her old black coat. There were used mason jars, odd pieces of silverware, rolls of chicken wire in a corner, a perfectly good rake hanging on the wall. Squash, cucumber and pumpkin vine seeds. Scrap paper. The variety of things for sale was bewildering, cheerful, a bold mishmash. Tante walked around the small shop once and then addressed a stern and orderly-looking woman behind the counter, asked her usual question. Whether there was work to be had. The woman walked out from behind the counter, hugely pregnant, and said, “I got to stop for a while. Can you sell?”

“I can sell!” said Tante, her voice stout and grim.

“Then just a minute,” said the woman. “I’ll get my boss.”

She went behind a muslin curtain, spoke to someone, and then out walked Step-and-a-Half.

At first, Tante didn’t register the situation, and she gave Step-and-a-Half the irritated once-over, the condescending twitch of her mouth, that, at best, she gave her at Waldvogel’s when Step-and-a-Half claimed her scraps. And she waited, staring past the saleswoman, for the boss to appear. Then she looked back at the woman behind the counter, and at Step-and-a-Half, who was regarding her with a tigerish amusement.

“Well?” said Step-and-a-Half.

“I’m here to see the boss,” said Tante, her eyes flicking all around the little room.

“You’re looking at the boss,” said Step-and-a-Half.

Tante heard that. Her head swiveled, and the complicated knots of her hair fairly writhed at her sharp movement. She thought that she couldn’t have heard right, and gave a short, barking laugh.

“What do you mean?”

“This here is my place.”

The woman behind the counter blew the air out her cheeks impatiently. “Well you said you was looking for work, didn’t you?”

Tante still couldn’t take it in, but she nodded dumbly in the affirmative. Then cleared her throat and said in meek puzzlement, “Yes.”

“Can you sell?” Step-and-a-Half asked the question now.

Somehow an affirmative answer emerged from Tante.

“And do you know a damn thing about all this stuff?” Step-and-a-Half swept her arm around the festooned store walls. The supercilious grandeur that had always seemed absurd when she was a scrap hauler now seemed more appropriate for the owner of sumptuous bolts of fabric, the huge variety of extraordinary pickings and leavings stacked in piles and lovingly displayed on nails or set off in a celebratory way on shelves.

Though she still had not emerged from her shock, Tante took up the challenge. “I know much!”

“And do you have to wear that thing?”

Step-and-a-Half nodded at the metal-buttoned suit, but Tante reared back and folded her arms and shut her astonished mouth. Her need for work smacked up against her pride and drove hard against the impossible image of this tattered and flamboyant scrap hauler now mysteriously turned respectable business owner. And potential boss. Things were turned right over in her mind. Her social pride was upset. And yet she could have stood that. It was the slight of her clothing, the specific suit, which she yet wore with honor and offended loyalty, that she couldn’t bear.

“This is a good suit, and most costly,” she informed her. Step-and-a-Half waved away her stiff words and kicked her foot at a graceful, womanly, black enamel electric Singer with delicate gold flower trim and an optional wood cabinet that fit beautifully beneath.

“If you can work the thing, you can sell the thing.”

“I’ll learn to work it,” was Tante’s promise. She couldn’t take her eyes off the gleaming instrument, the very latest model, streamlined and yet familiar. The whole room seemed to narrow to that machine, as though a spotlight were turned upon it. All else fell into blackness and insignificance, even the idea of working under Step-and-a-Half, a surprise so grave that the potential humiliation hadn’t even sunk in or truly registered with Tante. The lustrous, compact little businesslike machine with its sparkling needle and shining chrome flywheel was enough, for the moment, to still the larger picture. For it made sense of her dilemma. Tante touched the cool curve where the arm accommodated the cloth, ran her hand curiously over the carved oak of the cabinet.

“Sit down at it,” said Step-and-a-Half. “Mrs. Knutson can give you the rundown.”

Charmed and fascinated, Tante sat down at the machine and accepted instructions. Even when the person she despised most in the town, Roy Watzka, stepped past her bearing in his arms a bolt of purple felt to place in the window, she hardly acknowledged him. She was learning to thread the needle.

THE COLD DEEPENED but the snow remained sparse, disheartening the sledders and the snow fort builders, though the skating was fine. The ice was dark and clear. You could see straight through the quartz gray surface into a frigid depth where leaves and air bubbles swirled, trapped in silver cracks. Franz had agreed to meet Betty Zumbrugge for a date once the school let out for Christmas holiday. On that first evening of vacation, she drove up to the shop in the big black car, parked it outside and kept the motor running, but did not come in. Franz took off his apron and hung it up. He’d told his father when he was leaving, but not with whom. Fidelis, peering out the window while he absently sharpened a knife, said, “That’s Zumbrugge.”

“It’s Betty,” said Franz.

“Why don’t she come in?”

“She’s picking me up.”

Fidelis looked hard at Franz, and his son flushed, but shrugged on his father’s worn old jacket. “Don’t get polluted,” Fidelis warned. Franz waved him off. He wasn’t much of a drinker. He went outside. There were swirls of snow in the air, bright flakes biting his cheeks. He jumped into the car and leaned his elbow on the window, held the hand strap on the passenger’s side. Betty turned the car around with a screech of the wheels and they barreled out to a little roadhouse that had once been a Prohibition blind pig. Betty jolted to a halt, laughing, and lighted a cigarette. For a while they sat together in the car just looking at the place.

“You ever been to one?”

Franz just shrugged. He never had been. The roadhouse was a low clapboard building with a thin porch tacked on all around. Betty told him about her family, her plans for nursing school, her sisters and their boyfriends, her father and his problems. Franz tried to listen with careful attention, but his mind kept drifting. At last, they got out of the car and walked up to the door of the roadhouse. They could hear someone playing a slow Canadian waltz on the accordion. Inside, the place was lit and warm, the walls full of advertisements. The chairs and tables were made out of thick, worn, battered wood. They chose a table toward the back of the room where they could see whomever came through the door, but not be spotted at once. They were served two neat whiskeys with chasers of beer.

The beer wasn’t much, but the whiskey, that was different. The taste was harsh and golden, the burn sweet. The stuff hit Franz’s stomach, bloomed through him with an amber warmth. He looked into Betty’s bright blue eyes and smiled at her with an indulgent pleasantness. In spite of her grown-up clothing and makeup and car, she seemed younger than Mazarine. He waited for a while as Betty told him something she obviously considered serious — her look was urgent and, once, she passed her hand through her careful yellow curls, messing them a little, so their smoothness divided into rings. They had another whiskey and the rings blurred into an icy halo. He refused a third whiskey, but Betty drank it, and then they walked out to the car.

The cold had deepened, and the skin of their hands and faces numbed in the wind, but the car was very modern and the inside heated up a little as they drove. Betty turned down a road where they would not be bothered — it dead-ended at a farm foreclosed last spring. Her father had foreclosed it, Franz remembered. She stopped the car and turned off the lights. Gradually, their eyes adjusted to the snow light outside the car and the world turned a distinct blue with black shadows pooling in the ditches. They could see the faltering sprinkle of town lights through a haze of windbreak, but all around them it was very calm. Betty pulled some blankets from the backseat, and said, “Let’s talk.”

“What about?” said Franz, reaching toward her. He held her face in his hands, kindly, as though he really meant to ask this question, but he was teasing her. Betty was serious.

“About us,” she said.

“Well, what about us?”

“Aren’t you going to kiss me?” asked Betty. “I’m starting to wonder what’s wrong with you.”

“All right,” said Franz. With his finger, he smoothed her lips, then he used his thumb to rub the lipstick off. He didn’t mean to keep her in suspense, but what he did seemed to mesmerize her and she tipped back her head. He put his mouth on hers and then he knew, right away, that he had made some sort of terrible mistake. He expected her to kiss like Mazarine, but it was all different. Her lips were plump, fruity, then wet. She opened her mouth so wide he had to creak his open, too, and when he touched her tongue it was a stiff, little, fast-talking tongue. He didn’t like her tongue, her teeth, the smoky way she tasted, the way she smelled, even though it was probably expensive perfume. There was too much of it, too much of her, and he fell away from her side of the car, dizzy. But she fell with him across the seat and then his hands were inside her coat. He was surprised to find that suddenly her dress was open, and without any warning at all his hands were on her breasts. Her brassiere was made of something warm and tight, a smooth fabric. He put his hands underneath and lifted it off and when her breasts filled his palms he drew a ragged breath. His hands stopped moving. He pulled her brassiere down and closed her coat, sat up and turned away.

“I’ve got to get out,” he said, opening the car door. “I’ve got to walk.”

Because of the scarcity of snow that year, he knew that he could get to Mazarine’s across the fields.

HE WAS HALF FROZEN by the time he reached the Shimek house, hardly more than a shack, really, with a boot-shaped tin chimney and an outhouse near the back alley. That part of the town was divided into blocks, cut with dirt roads, now frozen but usually all dust or mud. There were scraggly sweeps of woods all around Mazarine’s house, and her mother kept chickens and an old cow that gave a bit of milk. All the way there, outdoor dogs, mostly chained to their houses, took turns barking at Franz as he passed, so he was sure she’d have heard him approach and come to the door. But that was just the lingering effect of the whiskey, perhaps, a lapse in perspective. Franz was so filled with the mission of his walk, and the drama of leaving Betty, that he became convinced that Mazarine would know and understand that he was due to arrive, even though he hadn’t talked to her for weeks. She would be waiting. She would know all that had happened. Instantly, things would be as they were before. When he stepped up to the unpainted door, which was almost level with the ground, knocked, and waited for her to answer, he was slowly bubbling up inside with the excitement of a man about to be rescued.

Her mother opened the door and filled the doorway. She squinted at him, touched strings of gray-brown hair away from her face and groaned a little in recognition but said nothing. Shut the door and left him standing outside. After a while, he knocked again. This time, Mazarine opened the door. The dim light inside outlined her, slim in her summer dress, her hair as always alive and curving around her shoulders and trailing down upon her breasts. Her face was completely in shadow, but he could see that her features were calm, and, he thought, sad.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“To come in,” he answered, now understanding this would not be the way he’d imagined it, but very different, “just for a minute.”

Mazarine glanced behind, and Franz saw the great, naked white pillars of her mother’s legs in the gloom. Mrs. Shimek had hiked up her dress to sit on a wooden kitchen chair and watch the door.

“Please don’t come in,” said Mazarine.

“I’m half froze,” said Franz. “I walked here across the fields. It was maybe six miles.”

“Why were you out there?” Mazarine asked. A light wind came up, terribly cold, and swirled the hair around her shoulders. Oblivious to the biting air, she stared at him, waiting. She could smell the alcohol he breathed, and the thought of him drinking faintly shocked her, then wounded her. She’d never known him to drink, although some of the boys did. Mrs. Shimek cried out for her daughter to shut the damn door. Mazarine began to shut it once again on Franz, but in his desperation he stepped forward and she had to fall back a little and let him in. It wasn’t the first time that he’d ever been in her house, but somehow things looked worse. Maybe her father had really gone off on the boxcars the way he’d threatened. Or maybe her mother had gotten sick for real. Mrs. Shimek sat there, strangely monumental on the small chair, staring at him with a solemn, owlish opacity. There wasn’t another chair, he realized, so he just stood there as Mazarine walked over to the woodstove and stirred it up and put in two pieces of wood.

“Don’t use it up,” said her mother.

Mazarine ignored her and spoke to Franz. “Come stand over here.” She beckoned him to the stove, and he understood that he was cold, now, deep down and not just surface, because he began to shake so hard his bones knocked inside as his body warmed. The whiskey had provided a false warmth and energy during the long walk across the fields. He’d tramped the iron clods, even run across the wavelets of windblown snow so fine and hard it resembled a fine plaster on the ground. Now his blood was cold and thin; his bravado sank away and he felt lost, foolish. The fire blazed up in the iron stove and the heat finally began to penetrate his clothing, then his skin. It radiated into him so that he almost controlled the shakes. From time to time, his body still shuddered. He stood there, silently waiting for what came next. Mazarine stood next to him. And her mother sat watching them from her chair.

Mazarine didn’t move once she found a still place inside of herself. What should she feel, she wondered, knowing it was odd that Franz’s presence in this house should leave her so indifferent. She couldn’t muster the correct gratitude for his return, if that’s what it was. He hadn’t said so. She couldn’t feel gladness, nor could she feel the proper anger. Her friends had said, “Don’t you just hate him now?” But she hadn’t. She’d felt patient, even when her first grief turned to the lassitude of despair, and she had shrugged off their avid sympathy. After she’d lain with her cheek against him on that November afternoon, and turned once, twice, and kissed him there long and smooth and slow, she had to erase him from her mind. She had bricked up all thoughts of Franz in a cold little room. He was nothing. Because the next thing she knew, he was with Betty. If she thought of those afternoons underneath the pine, she’d die of the shame of his abandoning her. So even though he stood right here, right now, she couldn’t really see him. Things were utterly changed, weren’t they? Shouldn’t they be? She poked up the fire and stood there, watching him for signs that would tell her what she should do.

There was no word spoken. Nothing but the fire’s simple crackle. As he warmed, Franz became increasingly unnerved by the dead silence, and once he felt capable of leaving he said, “Thanks,” in a subdued voice. Mazarine walked with him, the few steps to the door. As he reached out to open it, he asked in a low voice, “Do you want me to come back?”

The no came out automatically, her voice a white scratch on the tiny syllable.

* * *

JUST IN TIME, everyone agreed, the snow began to fall. It came in picture-postcard flakes that sifted down straight through a windless day. Everyone came out of doors, exclaiming with pleasure. The children caught flakes on their tongues and planned great doings, dug tunnels in the drifts, fought snowball wars. At last the sleds could be used. The Christmas trees had a backdrop. The carols and the church nativity scenes made sense. The wind so rarely stills on the plains that the singular piling of light flakes was a marvel. Fence posts grew caps. Tree branches were outlined and pine trees were dressed in puffy shawls. The people of Argus went out walking just to marvel at the odd shapes that the new snow gave everyday objects as it landed gently and stuck atop automobiles, doghouses, trash bins, bleak grape arbors, the statue in front of the courthouse, steps, and ornate railings. Argus suddenly looked sweet and amusing, like a village in an old fairy tale.

Clarisse, emerging from the back of the funeral parlor, had this very thought as she buried her hands in a knitted fleece muff and walked home. She thought of the house made of gingerbread, deep in the forest, the roof made of iced ladyfingers trimmed with sugar gum drops. She thought of the quaint Swiss hut pictured on the tin of chocolate she’d bought for herself. When she got home, she decided, she would treat herself to a great pot of cocoa. She would scald the milk and drizzle sugar into it, then shave the chocolate into the pan and stir until it melted. There might even be enough cream left in the bottle she’d bought at Waldvogel’s, from Delphine, to whip for a fancy topping. The question she now confronted was whether she should ask Delphine to join her, and maybe bring along some extra cream. She reached her house. Suddenly, there was more to think of. In the new snow leading up to her front door, there were tracks, great and solid tracks, a man’s tracks. And there he was, waiting on her porch.

AT LAST, on the strength of his associations, and after dogged application and reapplication to Judge Zumbrugge, Sheriff Hock had obtained a warrant permitting him to search the home of Clarisse Strub. He was a very neat man, meticulous and fussy about his surroundings. His house was immaculate; everything he owned was stored and filed, his clothing was neatly folded in his dresser or hung in his dusted closet. He kept his badge, well polished, in a small wooden bowl just beside his bed. He could have told anyone whether such a thing as a red tubular gleaming glass bead was wedged into the crack of the floor of his closet. He would have noticed. In contrast, Clarisse saved her precision for her calling and let her house go, kept her rooms in a state of feminine disarray. After Delphine had removed the dress from her closet, some time ago, she had swept the floor. But she hadn’t examined the cracks between the boards with a powerful lamp and a shrewd, scanning eye, the way Sheriff Hock did now.

“This won’t take long,” he said to Clarisse with a firm and even kind formality. “I apologize for discommoding you and impinging on your privacy.”

“With all due respect to your office,” said Clarisse, in despair, “go to hell.”

“I’ve been there,” Sheriff Hock said, looking up at her with deadening simplicity. “You put me there, Clarisse.”

“I didn’t mean to.” Tears started into her eyes. She held them back, then let go. Maybe, if he felt sorry for her, he’d leave. “I don’t want you to feel badly—”

“Then,” said Hock, setting down his lamp with a surge of unruly hope, turning toward her, “you must feel something.”

Clarisse stared at him, paralyzed, hearing fuzzy noises as though wires in her brain had just crossed.

“For me,” he pursued.

“I’ve always felt that we could be friends.” Clarisse felt her voice rising, higher, higher, toward a shriek. She tried to take a deep breath. She got some air, but a red tide was choking her. Sheriff Hock shook his head with sorrowing gravity and aimed his beam back at the floor. Clarisse watched him, thoughts swirling. Of course, he’d find a bead, a thread, a bit of cloth, something to implicate her. Then he’d have her cornered and she’d have to decide between him and a murder charge, wouldn’t she?

“Leave,” said Clarisse. “This is my room. Get out of here.”

Hock rose and though he didn’t move toward her she felt his energy, a menacing and self-righteous energy, surge at her in a wave. She stepped back. With a small, pursed smile and a low, disarming whistle, Hock turned away. Arms folded, lips set, Clarisse leaned in the doorway of her bedroom and watched the awful, strained, cheap, twill material that stretched across the buttocks of the kneeling sheriff. His belt cut into his belly. Above that, his torso filled his shirt in a way that made it look like it was wadded with heavy quilting, not flesh. But there was flesh beneath, a body, make no mistake about that! A body that had decided it owned her. Clarisse let her thoughts go. Why not just murther ‘m…. It would be so simple to slip a knife beneath those padded ribs. Her fingers shook slightly on the door frame.

“Please go away,” she whispered, and when he didn’t respond she said something that her mother used to say. “Don’t make me lose my temper.”

Hock glanced up at her. “Oh? What will happen then?” His voice was pleasant and indulgent.

“I don’t know,” she turned aside. “I have never lost my temper before.”

What would she do with him? Stuff him in her closet? Run away? Let him rot? She would have to disappear. Here it was the holiday season, her favorite time of the year, and really not a good time for her to leave Argus. She’d always enjoyed the bitter blue air of Midnight Mass, walking to the church, and it seemed unfair that she should be forced to miss out on a ritual that had been hers since childhood. Her fingers were still shaking so she flexed and rubbed her hands to still them. She watched the sheriff root through her underthings with a delicate hand that made her feel more perused and invaded than if he’d flung her panties due north.

She had to contain herself, had to control the jolting of her heart, but the awful sense of outrage was too rich a soil. Instant, snaky, quick-growing weeds were bolting up inside her. She wrung her hands together, suddenly giving way. Catching hold of herself again, she calmly left the sight of the sheriff in her bedroom, and she walked down the stairs. She kept her hand on the railing, so as not to trip. Why should she be the one to trip and fall? Perhaps he would trip, Sheriff Hock. She imagined his huge bulk slipping and windmilling down the first flight, breaking in two pieces at the landing, and then in quarters at the bottom like a china pig. She almost laughed at the sight. The picture lightened her frame of mind. Maybe she’d step outdoors, have a rare smoke to calm herself. After all, what was there to find? The dress was gone — dug up and disposed of in a clever way. She congratulated herself, and then she thought of how, once ripped by Hock, the damn thing dripped beads. She remembered the broken threads, the thousands of broken threads, and there was suddenly an icy little whirl in her chest.

Clarisse walked rigidly down the steps to where she kept her cigarettes — in the kitchen, on a shelf, in a little airtight can right above the knives. And the knives, she stored them safely in a drawer where knives should always be kept — safe from little hands. Hers were the only little hands in the house. Suddenly she found that instead of removing a cigarette from the can, she was opening the drawer. Then she was examining her favorite knife, a long, slender carving knife. It was a beautiful, tempered blade with a slight curve to it. Clarisse tested the blade with her thumb, then removed a small whetstone from the drawer. Sharpening the blade was routine — she kept her knives very keen. She tested the edge again and it still drew no blood. She paused a moment, then leaned into the work and made the blade edgier yet. As she was sharpening the knife to a whisper, she thought how it was a shame that so many people — even her best friend, Delphine, and Sheriff Hock, for certain — underestimated her. She wouldn’t kill him, of course, but she could scare him off. He’d have to leave and once he was gone she’d bolt the doors. She’d get a lawyer, not one in Zumbrugge’s pocket. A real lawyer. Maybe one from Minneapolis. She’d tell all to her uncle, though she was ashamed. Together they’d make certain that a Strub was not threatened and chased around and made to endure invasions of personal underwear drawers. She would have to burn every slip, bra, and panty he had touched, Sheriff Hock, and they were nice things. She spent a lot of money on slips, especially, real silk.

She wished she had the red dress. She’d felt invincible that time she put it on and wore it to the wake underneath a somber black coat. That dress had given her the courage to accept that her father was gone. The rustle of blood-red beads had assisted her in saying good-bye to him. The knife wavered. The unholy nerve of Hock to corner her at her own father’s wake! Maybe, if only he hadn’t put his mouth on her, she wouldn’t have slugged him so hard. He had tried to take away the purity of her own grief, and no one knew better than she what a sacred and precious thing true grief was. He pretended he was comforting her. Well, maybe he actually believed that! Carefully, she straightened the blade and made certain she hadn’t put a small nick in the edge. But it was persnickety sharp now. She thought of Delphine, then of the Scottish play, a black primer for my quailing heart. She’d lost fear. She gave the knife an extra razor’s edge, imagining that it was by now so sharp the sheriff might not feel it, at first.

When she entered her own bedroom, and told him to leave again, she gave him fair warning. She kept the knife behind her back, but said, with only the slightest tremor in her voice, “I’m warning you, Sheriff Hock. If you don’t leave, I’ll have to hurt you.”

He stood. He had the nerve to smile at her, and then to try to engage her in a long look, to penetrate her defenses.

“I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down,” he said gently. “I warned you, too.”

He gave a small laugh, his lips budding modestly. “Why not me, Clarisse? There’s nothing unacceptable about me, I have a good job, prestigious even. I do not drink. I do not sleep with other women and I never will. Take a look at yourself. You’re pretty as an angel, but you’re an undertaker. Men are scared off by your line of work. Not me.”

Hock held his arms out, and his smile was feral, his eyes filled with an ignorant and innocent greed. When Clarisse did not step toward him, he dropped his arms slowly. He reached into his pocket and plucked out a piece of paper with one red glass bead folded into it.

“I found it here,” he said. “State’s evidence.”

“State’s evidence? Oh, for God sake’s, don’t be ridiculous. Let me see that.” Clarisse snatched at the paper with her free hand.

“Uh, uh, uh,” he gave an awful, playful croon. Then he tucked the bead back into the paper, folded the paper into the breast pocket of his shirt, opened his arms, and lunged.

Her arm thrust forward on its own.

He didn’t know what had happened, not at first. He turned away in shock, and in turning he even did some of the work for her. He wrenched around so that she could see in her mind’s eye the keen blade slide along inside of him, lopping apart viscera. The stuff that spilled out inside of him would kill him, but much too slowly. Quick is better, she thought, and she reacted only to her thoughts, which remained steady and rational. She had to use the knife as a saw. Fast as she could, she cut right across his midsection as he threw up his hand and tried to struggle away. She bobbed side to side without letting go the wooden handle. She had to use both hands and avoid his flailing clutch. He was tougher than she’d thought, but through her work she had developed a shocking strength in her grip. How very surprised he was to see the knife move along his belly with such speed, parting the threads of his shirt. Absurd phrases formed in her head. Her thoughts were strange and far away. He is distinctly not pleased! He was, she saw, extremely troubled at this unexpected development. His brows knit and he seemed unable to say a word. Just stared at her, mystified. He did not expect this, after all, and she had some sympathy — surprises were not for her, either, and this was a very big one.

“Sit down,” she said, her voice neutral and informative. “It won’t take long.”

He thumped backward, rattling her closet door on its hinges, soaking her silken slips and puddling blood in her shoes. Quickly, she snatched her favorites from beneath him. With a grim satisfaction she saw, too, that he had used his pocketknife to pry another red glass bead from a crack in the floor. So much for that! She plucked the bead up, showed it to him, opened her mouth and swallowed it. He looked very dull now, even stupid. After a while, checking his pulse, she felt it slow to a terminal pump and then with clinical care she watched the pupils of his eyes become stuck and unresponsive. Nobody home, she finally said. She realized she’d hardly breathed. Standing, she put one hand on her chest and the other on her abdomen, drew in new air from the lowest point of her midsection, just like in voice class. Thought of hiding him. But what was the point, anyway, of standing him up in her closet? That would hardly do the trick for long. She threw a tantrum — tears and wild, sobbing groans that she could hear from a place outside herself. The noises she made filled the room, alarming her. Shut up now, she counseled, or you’ll never stop. She crossed the hall to draw herself a bath.

While the water was running she removed the knife from the sheriff, washed it clean. She covered him with an old bedspread, reached past him into the closet. From under her bed she drew a large brown suitcase. After she was clean, she would pack.

The next day was Christmas Eve and as Clarisse soaked she made her plans. The thing now was to act, not to feel anything. She’d have to visit the bank during the day, of course, and then she thought with sudden approval that it was a very good time to take out her money. People spent so much at Christmas on unexpected or extravagant gifts. The problem was that people also often died around Christmas, and there might be emergencies at work. After Christmas, though, people usually waited until after New Year’s to die. “Except for you,” she called to the sheriff across the hall. “You couldn’t wait.” After the bank, she thought, she’d get herself organized, pack some more, lightly but sensibly, and plan her route. With some satisfaction she realized that, if she was very efficient and if all worked out properly, she’d be able to go to Midnight Mass just as she always had, and then she could snatch a few hours of sleep, before she left on the morning train.

CYPRIAN KNEW, but the knowing did not help him. Nothing was going to happen with Delphine. Christmas brought it all out in the open, which was not surprising. As both of them had long agreed anyway, that holiday was a booby trap. What made it worse was that Cyprian was trying to make it the first good Christmas ever. He had wanted to make up for the lack of Christmas in Delphine’s childhood. Maybe his, too. Their Christmases had never been anything more than occasions for their parents to get spectacularly drunk. There were no special dinners, no little gifts, no garlands, no paper stars or candles in the window. Only the cold iron stove the children tried to stoke all by themselves. There was no school to divert them and no teacher to feed them from her own lunch pail, just bumbling adults reeling in at all hours and falling full length on the kitchen floor.

Remembering this, Cyprian went out and bought a goose from a Bohemian farmer who’d fattened it on corn and grain. And Delphine made strings of popcorn and paper chains with the boys and got Franz to take a hatchet out to the woods and cut two young pines. She’d decorated one for Fidelis and the boys, and tied the other to the hood of the car and brought it home. She had candles, too, in little tin holders with small reflecting shields behind the flames. Each of the boys had gifts, and there was one for Cyprian and one for Roy. Although Cyprian tried not to wonder if Delphine had bought or made a gift for Fidelis, too, he couldn’t help it. He did wonder. A few days ago, he had even dug into her dresser to see if he could find a wrapped suspicious object, but he found nothing except her clothes indifferently folded, and then his own gift, which looked like a scarf. What he did embarrassed him. He’d thought he wasn’t the sort of person who would rummage through a woman’s things, but now it looked like he was. He’d gone out and bought her an extravagant ruby ring.

When he picked her up from work on Christmas Eve, she was brooding over something and said little on the way home.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Tired.” She told him that everybody had come in at the last minute for their goose or turkey or pork roasts or whatever they were having on the holiday, plus they’d wanted special cuts or trimmings of all kinds, and there were last-minute requests and then, too, she’d tried to make a stollen cake and that failed. After that she burned a batch of cookies for the boys. He tried not to think of Fidelis. Were those cookies really for him? Anyway, her tiredness was understandable, and he thought, trying to put it optimistically, it would make his surprise dinner for her all the better. He had just dropped Roy off at the back door of Step-and-a-Half’s shop. She had a room over the store, which she had leased with the stashes of money that, it was rumored, she had kept buried in tin snuffboxes under rocks, trees, signs, fence posts all along the roads she traveled, far onto the plains. She was hardly ever at the shop, so Roy often kept the fire going when the temperature dropped. Cyprian and Delphine would be alone.

“You’re going to like what I cooked,” said Cyprian.

“You cooked?”

Her voice was polite, but listless. Cyprian looked at her, folded in the seat next to him. She seemed small that night, almost delicate, although he knew she was sturdy and her fragility was only a trick of the light, moving across the planes of her face, and the reflected blueness of the winter sky and earth. She seemed lonely, but he really couldn’t figure it, for he was there, ready to cook for her and sing if she wanted and give her the ring over which the jeweler had sighed, upon selling at that price, saying it was his favorite piece, and he really shouldn’t, but he needed Christmas money, too.

“Come on,” said Cyprian coaxingly, “I bought us a special bottle of brandy, real old. We’ll toast the holidays to come.”

“Oh,” said Delphine — unpleasantly, thought Cyprian. “Our future.” There was a note of contempt or derision in her voice that stabbed at his cheer, but he willed himself to ignore it and went on with his mental planning. Instead of talking, he whistled an old tune he thought, vaguely, might be a Christmas tune.

“Why are you whistling that?” said Delphine after a while.

“What?”

“’Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory.’”

He said nothing, hurt.

“Oh,” she said after a while. Her dark mood surprised her. She couldn’t figure it. All day she’d struggled out of her low feelings only to sink back in. Now, she made a new effort, spoke kindly. “I get it… of the coming of the Lord. ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.’ The birth of Jesus. Sure.”

“Right,” he said shortly, pulling up the road he’d shoveled that morning. He got out of the car, slammed the door a bit too hard, and breathed deeply of the cold, still, blue air. The purity of it hurt his lungs. He breathed until he’d recovered his equilibrium and then he thought of his attempt at baking gingerbread. Surely that would, at least, make her laugh. But when she walked in the door, she only said, “God, burnt gingerbread!” She dumped her things on the floor, kicked off her boots, and groaned as she eased herself into the chair across from the Christmas tree.

“I feel old,” she said, really to herself. “I feel a thousand years old tonight.”

“You’re just used to a lousy Christmas,” said Cyprian. “Here.” He handed her a piece of the stone-dry gingerbread, with the burnt part scraped off, wrapped in a clean dish towel, then he blew up the fire in the stove and stoked it with two logs. He shut the door tight and opened the flue all the way so that the fire would roar up inside and make a cozy crackling noise. He took out his box of matches and lighted the candles on the window, the candles on the tree. She was quiet when he did this, and although he didn’t turn to look at her he was sure it was because she was finally appreciating his efforts, feeling the peacefulness of the night, maybe tasting her gingerbread, getting used to the fact that he was taking care of her. But when he turned around, he saw that she’d fallen asleep with the gingerbread, still wrapped, on her knees.

“Oh, the hell with it,” he said, loud enough to wake her, but she didn’t wake. He blew out all the candles and went into the kitchen and fixed what he hoped was a passable oyster soup. When it was nice and hot, he poured the milky soup into a shallow bowl, stuck crackers all the way around it, and then peppered it and laid a lump of butter on top to melt. He brought the bowl in to her and set it on the floor. Kneeling beside the chair, he kissed her cheek, waked her gently. When she opened her eyes, he saw that she’d really not been asleep, she’d been crying, which he didn’t need. Not that night. He gave her the bowl of soup.

“Thanks, that’s nice,” she had the grace to say. “Where’s yours?”

“I’m getting it.” He went back to the kitchen, ladled his own soup out, and carried it before him while he dragged along a chair so he could sit down next to her.

“Hey,” he said, even though he knew he was in dangerous territory, “you know what they say about oysters.”

He was relieved when she didn’t come up with anything sarcastic, and hopeful when she said, “This tastes good.”

Before he ate, he put his soup down and quickly relighted all the candles. They flickered and glowed, shadowing the walls, and made the room into, he thought, a very beautiful and secret-looking place. He sat down with her and sipped at the hot, briny soup, and said nothing. Perhaps the peace of the room itself would get her into the mood he was trying to inspire.

“Say,” he said, “how about that tree? You see I got tinsel?”

She didn’t say anything. He was getting angry now. He could feel that cold trickle up the center of him, that shiver.

“I’m trying to make you happy.” His voice was tense, ready to rise out of control, but she didn’t seem to care if she pushed him over his limit. She shrugged and looked away from him.

He got up, snatched away her soup, spilling some on her dress, and brought the bowls into the kitchen. “Steady,” he said aloud, to himself, in a low voice, but there was pressure behind his eyes. His skull seemed to press on his brain, like a too tight hat, and he thought for a moment he should just step outside again into the black cold, but he didn’t, and he made the mistake of walking straight back into the room and glaring down at Delphine.

“Why the hell don’t you just go back to them, then?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know. Him. Them.” He was so choking mad that if he said the man’s name he knew he’d explode. And yet he was helpless because had no right to explode. He took the little green-and-red-wrapped box from his pants pocket and, just exactly the way he didn’t want to do it, he flung it at Delphine with a light movement of scorn. “Here,” he said, “I bought you a present.”

The tiny box landed in her lap. She didn’t pick it up. But she looked at it for a while. He breathed hard, standing in the doorway, and bit his lip so that he wouldn’t shout at her to open it. Finally she nudged it, though gently, with a finger.

“It’s pretty,” she said, “what is it, a ring?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice cracking a little, his anger changing all of a sudden to a longing so precise and painful he felt his heart squeezing, hot, in his chest, as though her initials were branded on it. The skin on his face prickled and he wanted to throw himself at her feet. She looked up at him from where she sat in the chair, the little box in her lap, and her foxlike face blazed in the light of candles. The flames jumped in her eyes and her hair sprang out in a dim aureole from her warm, flushed cheeks — she smiled at him but it wasn’t the smile he wanted, it was a weary sort of smile. He sagged a bit against the entrance and looked down at his feet.

As for Delphine, sitting there in the flare of Cyprian’s hopeful candles with the ring box in her lap, she thought back to their balancing act. The secretive light sent her into a strange, reflective, obstinate mood. Again, she saw herself walk out before the crowd in her long red skirt. There was the tea tray, set on her torso. She became the human table. Only in her mind, instead of chairs one by one men came out and balanced on her flint hard stomach. A stack of boys and men. Cyprian and Fidelis. The twins, Emil and Erich. Then Franz, and Markus, at last her father. All were precariously balanced on her phenomenally tough midsection. And she was down there, thinking what thoughts, feeling what feelings? What could she say? One word and they all might topple. One word could throw them off. So she didn’t say anything, but her arms and legs started to shake.

“Delphine,” said Cyprian, quietly now, his voice neutral and impassive, “why don’t you just go to bed?”

But she was still looking down at the little box. She was staring at it as though she could see through the wrappings into the velvet case. So he picked it up out of her lap, put it back in his pocket, and left her.

* * *

CYPRIAN GOT INTO THE CAR, sat for a moment gathering his thoughts and then he started the car up violently and roared down the road into town. He felt slightly better as he entered the pool hall, and much better as he made himself exquisitely drunk. He left the pool hall in the blackness before dawn, already feeling the whiskey fade. Immediately, he drove to the house of Delphine’s friend, Clarisse. He knocked too loudly, pounded really, with a drunken indignation.

Clarisse jumped off the couch where she was sleeping, ran to the door to shut up the racket. She opened the door suspiciously, blinking sleep from her eyes. She was wearing a flimsy gown in which she seemed quite bitterly cold. Her usually rosy face was pale, her lips almost blue. Shivering, she let him in. There was a large, packed suitcase on a mat next to the door, and a smart red hatbox sitting on a chair. While he stomped his feet and rubbed his hands, she took her time, walked away from him, as if she didn’t know he could see her ass and legs through the thin pink material. She picked up a fluffy blue blanket from her sofa, but didn’t wrap it around herself until she’d passed from his sight.

“Come on in,” she said, beckoning him toward the kitchen. He sat down at her table. Suddenly, she seemed all recovered — toasty looking. Her cheeks glowed and her curls gleamed. She spun around holding the blanket on with one hand. She said she’d make him some coffee. Once she prepared the coffeepot and left it to boil, she sat across from him, rubbed her eyes with soft little kitten fists. Yawning pertly, shaking her head as if to clear it, but really making her curls bounce charmingly, she said, her voice a dreamy pout, “So, what is it?”

“Merry Christmas,” he said as he slowly pushed, across her kitchen table, the tiny green box.

THE CRATE FROM GERMANY, which the boys had waited until Christmas to open, contained extraordinary things. For Franz, there was a coat made of top-grade wool, beautifully sewn and lined with the heavy sort of satin Fidelis remembered from his youth. The boys each had a pair of leather boots, and the boots fit, thanks to Tante, who had kept her mother updated as to the boys’ sizes in her letters. There were small things — carved and brilliantly painted tops, the books Max und Moritz and Der Struwwelpeter, and small horses with legs that moved. For the twins, vast regiments of soldiers in every pose and their equipment, too. For Markus, a thick hat and knitted sweater. Tante received an embroidered shawl, which she pretended was a scarf. A shawl was an old person’s gift. Fidelis, a meerschaum pipe and Turkish tobacco. Everything was packed in great wads of worthless old reichsmarks—a trillion to the dollar. On the top, there were a few precious newspapers which Fidelis and Tante fought over good-naturedly as they ate their burnt cookies and sweet stollen and drank cups of strong coffee.

After everything was opened and the songs were sung, after the candles were put out and the boys were immersed in playing with their gifts, Tante and Fidelis continued to sit together. They talked about how well their family was doing, at last, back in the old town. Pictures bloomed in their minds, and they looked silently into the air, half smiling. They remembered the brick shop building that their father’s father had built, with the stone rosettes placed under the eaves. Three stories, it was.

Here in North Dakota, the Deutsche Freie Presse or Die Rundschau very cautiously reflected general news from Germany. So it was good to get the local doings and goings on from an actual German paper in which people were named whom they both knew. Births, deaths, weddings. They started reading aloud to each other. Fidelis drew on the pipe, filled his mouth with the rich dark sweetness of the tobacco. He wondered if they could get together enough money, soon, to go back there to visit. Tante hid her sudden alertness and only mentioned, casually, that she thought it would be good for the boys to see their grandparents, see the way real Germans did things, stay for a few months, even, so they’d be able to speak the language later on.

Fidelis turned his massive head toward her, looked right through her with his hollow blue gaze. He knew what she was doing, all right, but he also knew that there was something in what she said. The boys were not being raised as he had been — no discipline, very little learning, and a wild sense of entitlement to freedoms that he never thought existed. And even now, they could not always understand him when he spoke at length in his language, and he could not match the fluency of their English. When he overcame his reticence to talk to them at all, and tried to speak, nothing he said came out right. Nothing they answered made much sense. He couldn’t keep track of their doings, nor buy for them the things they needed, nor keep them from getting into trouble and falling sick. It would be better if he had a wife, he knew that. But there was nobody for him. At least no one available. Sometimes when Delphine turned to look at him, boldly, her golden eyes held a meaning he didn’t dare read. Nor could he bring himself to examine the cipher of his own attraction to her. After all, she was taken. She belonged to Cyprian, the man who had saved his son.

“WHAT THE HELL is wrong with me?” Delphine asked herself on Christmas morning, ashamed to remember how she’d treated Cyprian the night before. “Maybe,” she amended, eating an oatmeal cookie as she sat before the tree, “nothing’s so very wrong. I’m just fed up.”

It was partly the fault of the Christmas tree — strung with long loops of popcorn and cranberries, tiny stars cut from tin and painted green and gold, paper angels with cottony down wings, frosted milkweed pods, twigs dipped in silver paint. The tree was very beautiful, loaded with these tiny decorations, and even without the candles flaring and although the morning light was stark and reflected a white sky, the charms of the decorated tree were so calming and reassuring that she found herself falling before it into a serene meditation. She had watched it last night, too, and had offended Cyprian.

She ate the corner of another cookie, her breakfast. The irritation that had flooded her the night before shamed her now that she could see what painstaking preparations Cyprian had made. She gestured at the tree with a piece of the cookie. “I should love him, right? That’s the message of the tree. But last night I was tired. Just tired of trying so hard. I guess this is what happens when you just don’t love somebody. Is it my fault?” The rest of the cookie went into her mouth. She chewed it up.

“You end up talking to a damn tree, that’s what.”

Delphine jumped up in gathered energy and dressed herself quickly, warmly. She bundled on her coat and boots and made ready to walk into town with her gift for Clarisse — a pair of expensive silk stockings. Delphine knew how much Clarisse liked having fancy stockings and showing off her pretty legs. She thought herself clever, too, for wrapping the stockings in a flowered head scarf and using a hair ribbon to tie the package, not that Clarisse often wore a childish hair ribbon. Maybe she could trim something with it, though. Damping down the fire, Delphine prepared to leave. She left the key over the door lintel, for Cyprian and Roy. One or another of them would probably beat her back home, she thought, ready to eat a late Christmas dinner.

CLARISSE WASN’T HOME and her door was locked, but Delphine knew her friend kept an extra house key underneath an iron boot scraper. Sure enough, Delphine rocked the heavy thing aside and drew the key from beneath it. She let herself into Clarisse’s house through the rattly glass-paned back door, into a tiny mud porch. The porch, littered with boots and newspapers, led into the kitchen, always much tidier than Clarisse’s other rooms. That her friend might be sleeping late occurred to Delphine as she entered, and so she called out from the kitchen. Then she walked over to the stairway that led up to her friend’s bedroom, and called from the bottom step. No answer. She thought of walking upstairs, but that seemed presumptuous, even though at one time she’d had the casual run of Clarisse’s house. I’ll just leave the gift on the table, thought Delphine, maybe write a note to go with it.

She put the package on the white painted surface of the kitchen table, and was rummaging in her pocketbook for a pencil and a bit of paper, when she saw something that arrested her attention. A small box lay opened on the kitchen table, its candy-striped ribbon flung aside. A small wad of cotton batting lay tumbled from it next to the sugar bowl. Something about the box was immediately upsetting. She stared at it until she realized that it was the same green-and-red box that Cyprian had tried to give her. Just the same, down to the candy-striped ribbon. Whatever it had held — a ring, she’d guessed — was gone of course. There was just the box lying on the tabletop, spilled open. Delphine eyed it for a moment, and then thoughtfully hefted the gift she’d brought Clarisse, as though all of a sudden it weighed a great deal.

Walking out, Delphine locked the flimsy door and replaced the key underneath the boot scraper. Making her way through the back lot into the alley, she saw the car that she shared with Cyprian — the DeSoto. The car was parked to one side of the alley and covered with a new, frail dusting of snow. All was white, all was still. Up and down the block, nothing moved. A holiday inwardness, a sweet pause had gripped the houses. Plumes of smoke poured from the chimneys, and the windows were icily blank. Delphine drew from a corner of her pocketbook her few keys, which she kept on a little brass ring. She unlocked the car door, got into the cold car, pumped the starter button with her foot. Then she drove out of town, back up the farm road, and parked the car where it could be seen by anyone who passed.

Inside the house again, she shook snow off her coat and draped it across an armchair, set her boots neatly beside the door. She tossed the gift for Clarisse back underneath the tree. In the kitchen, she built up the fire in the stove and warmed her hands while she waited for her tea to boil. As she turned her hands back and forth in the heat, she puzzled things out. There was only one thing to make of it, at last. Failing with her, Cyprian had driven to her best friend’s house last night and given her the ring. She nodded as she concluded this. Delphine poured herself a cup of tea, stirred in a dollop of honey, added a bit of thin cream, and went back to sit in the chair before the Christmas tree. What might it mean, she wondered, that the car had still been parked in the alley? A moment later, her face stained red with heat, embarrassment. It occurred to her that the car was still there because the two of them, Cyprian and Clarisse, had been, at the very moment Delphine had entered the house, upstairs in her best friend’s messy bedroom. Half asleep in Clarisse’s musty sheets. Waking to hear Delphine’s voice at the bottom of the stairs. She could practically see the expressions on their faces! And she could picture the relief when they heard her walk away. Her lip trembled. More than anything, Delphine hated feeling stupid. And then, quite suddenly, she laughed at herself.

Wasn’t this the perfect solution, if she looked at it objectively? Wasn’t this exactly what she’d have wanted if she could have solved the impasse she and Cyprian had found themselves in the night before? She did not love Cyprian, and even though his sudden defection stunned her, it was definitely better that he found someone else. A burden had been lifted. She already felt lighter. The scene with the man in the park, he and Cyprian twining almost invisibly in the dark, flashed before her. If that happened, she thought, so be it. Certainly not her problem anymore. The situation even contained an element of its own revenge. Delphine knew herself well enough to understand that, contradictory though it was, she’d need to comfort herself occasionally with the thought of the difficulty that Clarisse faced in loving Cyprian Lazarre. And vice versa, she thought, too, recalling the red bead dress.

CLARISSE ALWAYS LEFT out things that had more use in them. Carelessly packed in boxes, sacks, or tied in old skirts, they made a tumbled pile on her back porch. Step-and-a-Half was prompt and regular in her visits to gather what was left. Sometimes the castoffs were of a quality that she could sell, like the glitter dress all hung with red beads. She’d found the dress some time ago, wrapped with newspaper, tied with string. The dress had some dirt on it, as though it had been in the ground and dug up, of all things, but the garment was perfectly fine once Step-and-a-Half aired it out, picked away the grains of dirt, sponged down the fabric with a fine soap. Step-and-a-Half had got three dollars for the dress from a lady who came traveling through with her husband, a man who dealt in scrap metals. No, Clarisse had been a lucrative source, a discarder of valuable rubbish, although sometimes Step-and-a-Half wondered whether some of the things — the hats, the shoes, even items that Step-and-a-Half ended up using herself — might have belonged to the dead people Clarisse fixed up in Strub’s basement.

Just after dawn, on the back porch, Step-and-a-Half found a trove. Pots, pans, a whole set of kitchenware, a very good carving knife. Step-and-a-Half gathered up her finds and brought them back to the little room behind her shop that she used for sorting her pickings. She scoured the knife clean and placed it among her own cooking implements. Then she went through the rest of the objects, frowning with critical attention and testing the strength of handles and weighing the heaviness of the pots in her hands. After she had decided what to do with all she’d found, Step-and-a-Half treated herself to a breakfast of chicken wings, a pile of hardtack, and a wrinkled carrot. As she chewed, she assessed the bolts of fabric that surrounded her — the calicos and broadcloth, the light and heavy woolens. She wanted to give a present to a person she thought deserved it.

Once she’d finished her meal, Step-and-a-Half pulled forth a length of heavy cotton printed with stripes, but then shook her head and replaced it. She turned aside from the flowered prints altogether after a few moments of thoughtful attention. No, they weren’t at all right. The wools were better, warmer, for skirts. The linen would do for a blouse. That way the top could easily be washed, and the linens wore very well, she was told. She tested a heavy butter-colored fabric with the tips of her fingers, and then smiled at the texture of a very pale blue. This blue was the color of the palest sky on a cloudless November day, a watered blue just a shadow brighter than gray. And the subtle plaid in the brown woolen, just the slightest hint of gold and yellow in the blue and green weaving, would be perfect for Mazarine’s hair. She nodded, putting the fabrics on the broad table fitted with a yardstick tacked tightly to the near edge.

The Christmas sun came bitter through the window, just a ray or two played across the frozen fronds of ice. The little potbellied stove cast out a steady heat from the tiny room just in back where Step-and-a-Half did her account books and wrote out new orders. For a collector of scraps and town remnants and discards, Step-and-a-Half had extremely fastidious personal habits. She was, in fact, the influence on Roy that had caused him to clean his jail cell the year before and effected such a surprising alteration in his standards. Around Step-and-a-Half, Roy had to blow his nose on a real handkerchief, wipe his lips on a real napkin, and excuse himself when he made rude noises. Fortunately, she herself was a snorer and used to vast sounds occurring in her sleep — the windows rattled in the store when they slept there, he on the floor and she in the little cot bed, but they dreamed in black unawareness.

Step-and-a-Half lowered her eagle’s face to glare at the fine expanse of the cloth now. She adjusted the angle of the fabric just so, then hefted an extremely sharp pair of shears with painted black handles and made the first cut, which she followed with a steady concentration until she’d lopped off the perfect length. She folded the soft plaid wool, then measured and cut the two pastel linens. Last, in a kind of reckless gesture, she swore hard and swiped down, from a side shelf that featured her most luxurious materials, a figured midnight blue satin that she herself found irresistible. Every woman who spent any time at all in the shop, poring thoughtfully over fabrics, stopped before this fabulous satin and fantasized, she could see, herself in a gown made out of it. An evening gown — though where could it be worn, here, in this town? A nightgown, then. Something so warm and cool at once, so understated, so exquisite that fingers couldn’t help extending and stroking and figuring and then, with a regretful sigh, rejecting.

Step-and-a-Half cut a dress length off quickly, before she could argue herself out of it. She laid it on the counter along with some colored threads, pursed her lips, set examples of buttons against the plaid and the linens, and added those along with the rest in a little bag. Lastly, she put some ribbons in. Hair ribbons for a girl. She wrapped the package up in plain brown kraft paper and thin string, then bundled on her coat. Pulled on a man’s fur-lined leather hat, mitts, slipped her feet into rough boots, and banged out the door with the package underneath one arm. She was muttering, irritated with herself for thinking of this much too late. If she’d only thought of it yesterday, she could have dropped it off in the cover and comfort of her favorite time of the night.

DECEMBER’S FUGITIVE thaw turned into implacable cold; the wind brought on a headache as a person walked outside. In her room, far from the stove, Delphine slept under every quilt in the house and when she got out of bed she immediately put on a set of wool long johns underneath her skirt. She wore her coat in the house. Now, she was standing near the stove, bundled up, peeling potatoes for a potato pie. Thinking of browning a lump of uncased sausage she’d brought home from the shop. Maybe an onion, if they weren’t all sprouted. Suddenly the door banged open and then shut on an icy blast of air. Roy rolled into the house shedding his padded woolen coat and unwrapping two knitted scarves from his head.

“Murder and mayhem,” Roy announced in an aghast voice. “Terrible doings. Clarisse under suspicion!” He nodded to Delphine, as though, since she was Clarisse’s friend, she should know all the details. Then he continued to speak in newspaper headlines. “Whole town in shock. Sheriff found stabbed!”

Roy sat down at the kitchen table, his mouth agape. He shook his head in bewildered protest. “Hock,” he stated, as though trying to persuade himself. Then wonderingly, he said again, “Hock. Of all people!”

Delphine held up the peeler, riveted in shock. She stared at her father as though he’d suddenly spoken fluent French or grown a hoof.

“Of course, upon reflection,” Roy said, “when we say ‘of all people,’ so often the person is the logical person to become a victim after all. He was the sheriff. He was in love with Clarisse Strub. He was found with his pants down around his ankles, obviously planning to violate more than the privacy of her bedroom.”

Delphine waved the peeler in distress, still unable to speak.

“Hock.” Roy returned to his shocked attempt at self-persuasion. “Hock. Yes, Hock. Died in the Strub girl’s boudoir. They’re saying that the necessities of her profession drove her around the bend.” Roy’s face turned grim. “I concur, poor duck. Her uncle shouldn’t ever have let her take on clients. Sawing up the dead. Replacing their blood with vinegar! And she’s just a sweet young thing. You ever hear of a girl undertaker?” Roy’s hands twisted together, clasped as though in prayer. He bit his knuckle, and softly marveled. “A slip of a thing, yet she gutted him neat as a pig.”

“She didn’t use vinegar, and she was tough as an old rooster,” Delphine muttered, turning from her father, wildly revising the narrative she’d concocted after leaving Clarisse’s house on Christmas morning.

Roy glanced up at his daughter, then shook his head as if she had it all wrong. “She was a little duck,” he insisted, “and Hock entered the sanctity of her nest. I never saw it coming, never took it all that serious. Oh, Hock wrote songs for her that he’d even try on the rest of us, but it was all a romantic fairy tale. And then, under the pretext of an investigation he conducted ‘a search,’ had a warrant, everything. Now they think she”—Roy nicked his head in the direction of the pantry, the boarded-over cellar door—“killed them, too.”

There was something unsettling in the way her father gestured, Delphine thought, an awkwardness. As though he was suddenly struck with inspiration and acting a part, and poorly. But she attributed his clumsy insincerity to the strangeness of things in general, for the compound mystery was linked — the three who’d died in Roy’s cellar, Hock who was investigating their deaths, and then Clarisse.

“She didn’t hide, why should she,” said Roy, stoutly slapping his hands on his knees. “She had to protect her innocence, after all. The world is hard. Men are capable of the unthinkable. People saw her. She boarded the morning train with her big brown valise and a little round hatbox. Red. Ticket to Minneapolis.”

“I expect they’ll catch up with her there,” said Delphine, sitting down now across from her father, feeling tranced and dizzy. “They’ll arrest her. What then?”

“Don’t count on them finding her,” said Roy with a keen and prophetic glare over the top of his bulb nose. “I knew her grandfather and two great uncles. Slippery buggers. Once in the city, she is likely to go to ground, change her identity. She’s an agile survivor.”

“I thought you said she was a little duck,” said Delphine, but with small appetite for arguing.

“A tender female of a venomous species then,” said Roy. “How delicate, how winsome, the eight slender legs of the black widow spider. How fragile the lady scorpion’s barbed tail! And the mosquito, who stands on her head to bite. She’s hardly a wisp of air, barely a living thing at all, weighing zero, yet she can kill you with malaria.”

Roy continued in his meditation on the contradictions of the female sex, but Delphine had already stopped listening and gone to her room, where she piled all the quilts upon her bed and slipped underneath, to get away from Roy and yet stay warm enough to think.

AFTER A FEW DAYS of shock and strangeness, days in which people in Argus could talk of nothing else and strained after each detail, explanations stalled. Just as Roy predicted, Clarisse had disappeared. Sheriff Hock’s body was removed from the house, wrapped in a tarp, sealed, and driven to the coroner in Fargo. The house was locked tight. A deputy was appointed and the town’s life began to flow around the jagged events like water. The horror of what happened would be worn down by daily ordinariness. By talk. More talk. Years of talk and speculation. Eventually, the bloody mess in Clarisse’s closet would become a colorful piece of town history. She vanished, but with flair, she and her red hatbox and brown suitcase. She vanished right out in the open, just rode away on the train, apparently got off in Minneapolis, changed trains, changed names, changed her whole self perhaps. Because there was no sighting of her. No capture.

As for Cyprian, no one had seen him leave town. When questioned about her friend, Delphine did not volunteer the details of her Christmas morning visit, and no one asked. The presence of Cyprian’s car near Clarisse’s house had gone unremarked. That morning’s new snowfall had hidden Delphine’s tracks. No one had seen Delphine drive the car to her house. As she kept it parked where the corner of it could be seen from the road, no one even realized for months that Cyprian was not living in the house with her. Even Roy thought that Cyprian was consumed by some clandestine smuggling activity, and he noticed only how the winter dragged without the younger man’s presence. Once, Fidelis asked Delphine, with studied casualness, whether Cyprian had quit the singing club. When Delphine shrugged and told him, “Not as far as I know,” he shut up. Only Delphine was aware of the connection between Cyprian and Clarisse. For a while it ached in her thoughts, a sore place, a strange place right beside the black sinkhole of the murder of the sheriff. She examined and revised, reexamined and analyzed, submerged herself in all that she knew of her friend Clarisse, and still came up gasping for air. She missed Clarisse the way she would miss a leg or an arm — always and in all she did. Work was harder. Loneliness distracted her. She visited Aurelius and Benta. They sat and drank coffee together, but it was no good.

Delphine began to read with a mad attention when she wanted to talk to Clarisse. She saw that in her life there was a woman-shaped hole, a cutout that led to a mysterious place. Through it, her mother, then Eva, and now Clarisse had walked. If only she could plunge her arms through and drag them back.