Ordinary Grace

26

My father went from the church to our house and when he could not find us there returned to the front porch. A wind had risen out of the southwest sweeping in thick clouds the color of soot. He saw us coming from the church parking lot under that oppressive sky and he eyed us with concern.

“We were looking for Gus,” I lied with amazing ease and Jake made no attempt to contradict me.

“I’m going to Emil Brandt’s house,” my father said.

“Can we come?”

“You both stay here.” His tone told us he would brook no argument. “Wait for Liz. She should be arriving soon to fix you something to eat. Your grandfather will probably come with her.”

“Will you be home for dinner,” I asked, “and will Mom?”

“I don’t know,” he replied brusquely. “We’ll see.”

He hurried to the Packard and backed out of the gravel driveway and drove fast up Tyler Street. As soon as he was gone, I bounded off the porch and headed for the river. Without asking where we were going Jake came running behind.

Beneath that sky which had turned cast-iron black the Minnesota River ran dark as old blood. I raced along the water’s edge breaking through bramble and ignoring the suck of mud and whenever possible keeping to the sand flats on which I could make good time. I heard the desperate wheeze of Jake’s breathing behind me and somewhere in my thinking I realized he was struggling to keep up but I had something more important on my mind and Jake for his part made no complaint.

We reached the narrow trail that led through cottonwoods, across the tracks, and up the slope to the old farmhouse home of Emil and Lise Brandt and we followed it. At the gate in the picket fence that surrounded the Brandt property we stopped. Jake doubled over struggling to breathe and I was afraid he might puke. When he caught his breath I thought he would in his usual way chide me for my disobedience. Instead he said, “What now?”

In so much of what had occurred I’d been informed only because of artfulness, because of heating grates and furnace ducts and my own willingness and ability to be a shadow against a wall or a fly hovering beyond a screen. I wanted to know everything the adults knew and everything they were thinking and I believed it an absolute wrong to be kept in the dark like a child. I was not a child nor was Jake any longer.

I looked past the vegetable garden Lise Brandt had planted and with our help had expanded. Across the long open yard stood the farmhouse. I had it in my mind that we would rush the house and skulk along the perimeter until we were positioned under an open living room window and could easily hear the voices inside. If we were quick and careful I believed it could be done.

I unlatched the gate and was about to lead the way inside when the back door of the farmhouse shot open and Lise Brandt stormed out. She was dressed in dungarees and a T-shirt and her hands flew in the air before her angrily signing words for which she had no voice. She hurried across the yard toward the garden shed so caught up in her rage that she didn’t see us and she vanished inside.

Jake whispered again, “What do we do?”

I eyed the house and thought that if we ran for it immediately we might reach it before Lise came out of the shed.

I said, “Let’s go,” and I bolted.

Which turned out not to be the best plan I’d ever devised.

We were only a few fast strides beyond the garden when a banshee scream came at our backs. The sound was so awful I would gladly have kept running but Jake stopped dead in his tracks and turned. Caught and cowering I turned, too, ready to face the wraith that was Lise Brandt. In her right hand she gripped a gardening tool, something with crooked tines, and she threatened us in such a way that it appeared she had claws. I was certain she was about to tear us apart.

In the instant she saw Jake she changed. She rushed to him and began gesticulating and speaking quickly with what sounded to me like half-formed words. She shook the claw tool at the house and I couldn’t tell if she was about to attack something there or if she was going to break into tears.

In the end it was tears. The first and only time I ever saw Lise Brandt cry. And it was the first and only time I saw something else. Lise Brandt who’d gone ballistic whenever I’d seen her touched put herself into my brother’s arms and let him hold her while she wept.

He said to me, “She’s upset because ever since Ariel died Emil has ignored her. He’s gone all the time to our house and now Mom’s been here all day and to Lise it feels like she’s lost her brother and her home.”

I’d picked up none of this during her tirade but somehow Jake had caught it all.

Lise finally pulled herself from his arms as if suddenly realizing what she’d allowed and Jake spoke to her: “You were going to work in the garden. Can we help?”

She handed him the claw tool and although she didn’t smile she seemed happier.

I stood under the brooding sky and looked toward the house and knew that whatever was occurring inside my chances of overhearing were shot now. I followed Lise to the garden shed where she chose a hoe from the wall and gave it to Jake who passed it to me. For herself she took a trowel and we all trooped together into the garden.

We hadn’t been long at work when I heard the front door of the farmhouse open. A moment later both my parents appeared at the side of the house and came to the garden.

“I thought I told you to stay home,” my father said. He wasn’t happy but neither did he sound angry.

I couldn’t think of a lie quickly enough so I told the truth. “We wanted to know what’s going on.”

Lise Brandt remained on her knees furiously turning dirt with her trowel and clearly ignoring my parents.

“Let’s go home,” my father said. “We’ll talk there.”

Jake went to Lise but she wouldn’t acknowledge him. He laid the claw tool in the dirt near her and I set down my hoe and we followed my parents to the Packard parked outside the front gate. Emil Brandt stood on the porch of the house and although he was sightless he turned his head as we passed as if following our every move. The look and color of his face seemed to mirror the threatening sky and I knew that he’d been informed of everything. I hated him for that. What my father had refused to tell Jake and me Emil Brandt knew and, although I couldn’t say at all why, it felt to me like betrayal.

Not a word passed between us on the ride home. When we arrived I saw my grandfather’s Buick parked in front of our house. He came out to the front porch with Liz and they both looked concerned.

“We were worried when no one was home,” he said.

“Let’s go inside,” my father told them. “There’s something we all need to talk about.”

“I hate the Brandts,” I said as I lay in bed that night.

The clouds had let loose another summer storm. We’d closed the windows against the rain and the bedroom felt hot and suffocating. Jake hadn’t said much of anything all evening. My grandfather had blustered a good deal when he heard about Ariel’s condition and said if he could just get his hands on Karl Brandt he’d wring that boy’s neck. He used a few expletives which he was prone to do when angered and my father cautioned him that Jake and I were present and he said, “Hell, they’re not kids anymore, Nathan, and they damn well ought to hear how men talk.” And then he repeated his threat against Karl Brandt using even harsher language. Liz laid a hand on his arm but my grandfather shook it off and stood and wore the floorboards with his pacing.

Liz asked quietly, “Has anyone talked to Karl yet?”

“The sheriff,” my father said.

“What did he say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Before we convict him, maybe we should hear his side,” she offered gently.

My mother said, “The Brandts have always taken what they wanted. And thrown away what they didn’t. Why should Karl be any different?”

My father said, “I intend to talk to Karl and his parents.”

“We intend,” my mother said.

“By God, I want to be in on that,” my grandfather cried.

“No,” my father replied. “This will be between the Brandts and Ruth and me.”

“The sheriff is in there somewhere,” I said.

They all looked at me as if I’d just come in from Siberia and had spoken Russian and after that though it nearly killed me I didn’t say another word.

After we’d got ourselves ready for bed my father had come up and we’d talked.

“Maybe he forced himself on her,” I said, using a term I’d pulled from God knows where.

“I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen, Frank. People in love sometimes make bad decisions, that’s all.”

“So that’s why Karl killed her? He just made a bad decision?”

“We don’t know that Karl had anything to do with her death.”

“We don’t? That baby would have complicated Karl’s life enormously,” I said, nearly repeating words the sheriff had used that afternoon in my father’s office.

“Frank, you know Karl. Do you think he’s capable of doing what was done to Ariel?”

“You mean knocking her up?”

“Don’t ever say that again. And you know what I mean.”

“Jesus, I don’t know.”

My father could have cut into me for taking the Lord’s name in vain but he sat on my bed calmly and calmly tried to reason me out of my bitter rage.

“Killing someone, Frank, that’s not something most people could do. It’s so unbelievably hard.”

“You killed people.”

I thought he would tell me that it was war and a different situation but he didn’t. He said, “And if I could I would undo that.” He said this with such sad conviction that it kept me from going further though it was a line of questioning I deeply wanted at some point to pursue, those mysterious killings which Gus had once drunkenly alluded to and had spoken of again in the dark of the church sanctuary only a few days earlier.

“You’ve always liked Karl,” he reminded me. “We all have. He’s always been a decent young man.”

“Apparently not always,” I said. Which was an exact phrase I’d heard my mother use in response to almost the same statement my father had made during the discussion downstairs.

“I’m going to ask this of you. Of you both,” he said looking toward silent Jake. “Don’t make any judgments until after your mother and I have had a chance to talk to Karl and his parents. Don’t say anything to anyone even if you’re pressed. It would be a further tragedy to have vicious rumors spread. Do you understand me?”

Jake answered immediately, “Yes, sir.”

“Frank?”

“I understand.”

“And you’ll do what I ask?”

It took me a moment to make that promise but finally I said, “Yes, sir.”

He stood up but before he left he said, “Guys, we’re all moving in the dark here. Honestly, I don’t know any more than you do what’s right. The one thing I do know is that we have to trust in God. There is a way through this, and God will lead us. I believe that absolutely. I’m hoping you do, too.”

After my father left I said toward the ceiling, “I hate the Brandts.”

Jake didn’t reply and I lay alone listening to the rain against the windowpane and wondering if it would really be so hard to kill someone because right at that moment I thought maybe I could.