“Blake, take me fishing tonight.” Katie stood next to my chair, bouncing up and down, her sausage curls unfurling with each bend of the knee. “Pleeeeease.”
I slowly scooped fried potatoes into my mouth. My hands were so stiff and blistered that I could barely hold my fork. I had spent all of the previous day clearing a pasture of sagebrush, using a grub hoe. Today would be more of the same. It was a tedious, grueling job, not one I enjoyed, and for the first time in months, I was regretting my decision to leave school.
“Nah, Katie. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be able to take you tonight.” I poked another bite of potatoes. “I won’t be home until dark. Besides, I’m going to be pretty worn out.”
Katie clenched her fists and punched downward, stomping one foot. She had just come off a week-long bout with the flu, and although she was still weak, and chalk-white, she had never been patient with inactivity. Mom came in from the barn, lugging two full milk buckets. She kicked the door shut.
“Mom, Blake won’t take me fishing tonight.”
Mom stood up, sighing, and looked at me with a raised brow. I ignored her, going back to my breakfast.
“You really shouldn’t be going out yet anyway, Katie,” Mom said, but it was clear that she knew that this line of reasoning would not work with her headstrong young daughter. “Maybe you ought to wait and ask him again when he gets home,” she added, to my relief. I hoped that by evening, Jack and Dad would be back from Belle Fourche, where they had taken a load of grain the afternoon before. Then she could pester one of them.
“We’ll see how I’m feeling when I get back,” I said, which barely pacified my sister. But Katie was soon occupied with something else, and as I prepared to leave, she was filling a bucket from the well to go water her garden. I carried the bucket for her, and studied the twisted, withered plants that bent with their own weight. Katie began pouring the water, holding the bucket awkwardly in her tiny hands. The water poured unevenly, but she didn’t seem bothered by this, moving down the line.
“Everything looks great, Katie. Looks like you’re going to have a good crop this year.”
She blushed.
As was usually true, I felt better about the job ahead of me once I got out into the open air. It wasn’t as hot as usual for July. I rode at a leisurely pace, studying the thick grass. We’d had a fairly cold, snowy winter, which meant a big spring runoff. The country had not looked this good for several years, with bright green grass and fat, healthy livestock.
My horse Ahab and I wandered along the river, following a two-rut dirt road until we came to the crossing, where the ruts descended at an angle down the slope into the muddy waters of the Little Missouri. I had to coax Ahab down the bank, as the black mud was moist, and slippery. He eased into the river, which just washed his belly. He hesitated midstream, and I found myself kicking him, harder than necessary.
George’s body had still not been found. And each time I crossed the river, I was well aware of the possibility that my brother was probably hung up beneath that rush of muddy water somewhere. The image gnawed at me whenever I crossed. And although I always glanced quickly to each side, my heart would rise into my throat, hoping that I wouldn’t catch sight of a bobbing foot, or a patch of hair poking from the water.
In the tradition of our region, we did not speak of George, and a debate raged within me about whether this was the right thing to do. I thought of him every day. Often. In the morning, I would sometimes look at his empty bed before I was fully awake and wonder why he’d gotten up so early. But the time I felt his absence the most was when I was out in the open, where the silence was magnified.
It wasn’t until a few days after the fire that I remembered the bundle of papers I’d discovered under George’s mattress. One day I tucked the papers under my shirt and snuck off to the barn, making sure I wasn’t followed. I climbed into the hayloft, settled into a comfortable spot, and piled the papers on my lap. On top was a thin paperback book—a book about the fundamentals of baseball. I leafed through it, studying the sketches that displayed proper technique for fielding a grounder, and the correct batting stance. I was drawn to sketches of a hand gripping a ball, with the fingers in different positions along the seams. This chapter explained all the various twists and downward turns you could accomplish with these grips, and by flipping your wrist at just the right moment.
I was surprised I’d never seen George reading this book, and wondered why he’d kept it hidden, as we all knew how much he loved baseball. But when I got around to the remaining papers, the reason became clear. I unfolded what turned out to be letters, which were stacked in chronological order. They were from a man named Stanley Murphy who lived in St. Louis, Missouri. And he was a baseball scout.
It seemed that George had met an assistant of Mr. Murphy’s in the fall of 1914, on one of George’s trips to Omaha, where Dad sometimes traveled to sell calves. That year had been the first that he’d allowed George to make the trip for him. Mr. Murphy’s assistant had given George a tryout, and George made a big impression. In the last letter, dated just two weeks before George’s death, Mr. Murphy spoke of George’s pending trip to St. Louis. “You’ll notice I have enclosed a train ticket. That’s how much faith I have that we’re going to like what we see.” The yellow ticket was still tucked into the folds of the letter—its price, $2.10, prominently displayed in one corner.
I sat with my eyes closed, trying to comprehend what these letters implied. There was no one I knew who seemed more suited to living on the ranch than my brother George. I thought. I thought he loved it out here. Like everyone in our county, I had expected George to take over the ranch when my folks were too old or too tired. No other possibility had ever entered my mind. And I didn’t understand. The mystery haunted me enough that for a short time, I considered going to St. Louis myself. After all, Mr. Murphy had never met George. I could pretend to be George. They would eventually figure out that I wasn’t, of course. But by then, maybe I would understand the attraction.
A week or so later, I wrote to Mr. Murphy. I explained who I was, and told him that George had drowned. I returned his ticket, and after pondering whether it was appropriate, I asked whether George had told him for sure that he was interested in playing pro ball. A month later, I received this letter:
I’m very sorry to hear about George. I believe he had a lot of promise. And I wondered why we hadn’t heard from him. I am returning the ticket. I want you to keep it. And if you ever wonder what being a professional ballplayer might be like, please write to me. I’ll give you a tryout. My condolences to your family.
Stanley Murphy
The letter disappointed me. He didn’t answer the most important question. I wanted to hear Mr. Murphy report that George had changed his mind, that he couldn’t stand the thought of leaving the ranch. I ended up stashing the letters in a coffee can, along with the ticket. And I buried the can in a corner of the barn.
“C’mon, boy.” I buried my heels into Ahab’s flanks, and he reared and heaved forward twice. His front hooves caught the bank with the second lunge, and the momentum carried him right up the slope, into the pasture, where he settled into a comfortable trot. A light dew brightened the grass. Blue-white clumps of sagebrush, immune to the moisture, squatted stubbornly, as unchanging as stone.
I came to the top of a ridge where the view always left me breathless, with our world opening up in front of me. I climbed from Ahab’s back and gazed out across the flowing sea of green. Only the distant, square brown outline of a homestead cabin, an occasional lone tree, and a cluster of cattle broke up the expanse of green. The deserted cabin reminded me of the day that the wife of the young couple marched up to our front door and defiantly dropped a basket of food my mother had prepared for them on the stoop.
“We don’t need anybody’s charity,” she declared, turning proudly on her heel. We knew then that they wouldn’t last.
The silence was so strong that when I walked, the rustle of my boots against grass sounded as if my head was right between my feet. I looked at the land around me, at the wheat field I had plowed the previous spring, and at the stack of hay George and I had pitched a month before.
Even before George’s death, every time I was in this pasture, I recalled an incident that happened when I was ten years old. One day Dad, George, Jack, and I were stacking hay in that pasture. It was a hot day, a rare muggy day in this dry part of the world. After lunch, Dad had shocked the three of us by suggesting we take a little break. We were even more surprised when he pulled a bat and ball from the back of the wagon, meaning that he had planned the diversion ahead of time. So we laid out a couple of bases, and George and I took on Jack and Dad.
The game started out light, with cutting remarks tossed between each pitch. George had his usual running monologue going, teasing Dad about his swing, which was pretty bad, and telling Jack he threw like a sheep. Jack laughed, and made a bleating noise. But after a few innings, something shifted. Both George and Jack had always been competitive. When we played against other local teams, they were both there to win. But their competitive natures showed in different ways. George was cool but relentless. He never appeared ruffled, and he kept the same patter going on the baseball diamond as he did in the fields. He talked to the first baseman after he’d gotten a single, he talked to the catcher when he was batting—always trying to bait them into an argument, trying to rattle them.
But Jack was out to prove something. Playing baseball didn’t come as naturally to him as it did George. So he clenched his teeth and turned each play into a personal war. He never spoke. He stood at the plate squeezing his bat until his knuckles turned blue, his lips pursed, eyes raging. And he fought. About once a year, he would get into a fight during a game, and someone would have to tackle him and calm him down.
But they had rarely been on opposite sides of the field. We usually didn’t have time to play outside of the local fairs. So as the game progressed, their competitive tendencies kicked in, and it was like the weather had changed. George’s banter became more pointed. Jack’s mouth tightened. The laughter stopped.
With Dad and Jack just a run down, George stepped to the plate with two out and peered out at Jack, who was pitching. “Hey, Jack, you got something between your teeth there.” He pointed to his own teeth. “Something stuck in there.”
Jack smiled at him and fired a pitch. I was catching, and I was afraid to get in front of the ball, he threw it so hard. But I blocked it and tossed it back.
“Really, Jack,” George continued. “Right in the front there.” He pointed again to his mouth. “Looks like…I don’t know…”
Jack threw again, his smile gone now, this time buzzing a fastball close to George’s knees. George dodged the pitch, chuckling calmly to himself. He turned and winked at me. “He’s getting rattled,” he muttered. I didn’t respond. I didn’t want Jack throwing one of his fireballs at me.
Jack took my toss back, and got set to throw again.
“Oh, I think I see what it is now,” George said just as Jack began his windup. “It’s chicken, Jack. You got chicken in your teeth.”
The words left George’s mouth just as Jack was about to throw, and when he let the pitch go, he threw it as hard as I’d ever seen him throw a ball. The pitch came in so fast that George didn’t have time to get out of the way, and it nailed him right in the ear. The crack of ball against bone flew across the prairie. And George went down.
Dad rushed in. I shouted, bending over my brother. And Jack rushed up to George, falling on his knees next to George’s head. George was conscious, holding his ear, growling in pain. Blood trickled between his fingers.
“I’m sorry, George,” Jack muttered. His face was so pale, I thought he was going to faint. The sweat soaked his shirt, and he ran his hand across his forehead so many times that the skin began to turn red. “I didn’t mean to hit you in the head. I was just trying to scare you.”
“Goddamit, Jack, I was just kidding around,” he muttered.
“I know,” Jack said. “Like I said, I’m sorry.”
George had some trouble with his balance for a few weeks after that, and he sometimes couldn’t hear very well from that ear. That was the last time we took a break to play baseball.
But the incident told me something about the relationship between my brothers. George had always been protective of us all, but particularly Jack. The buffer George provided between Dad and the rest of us was particularly thick in Jack’s case. I don’t think I realized how much this meant to Jack until that day. It was the most frightened I’ve ever seen him.
I climbed back on Ahab, and we passed through the field where we had planted oats the previous two springs. This experiment—Dad’s idea—had raised a few eyebrows around the county. The general feeling was that we didn’t get enough moisture to support an oat crop. And I could tell by Dad’s pinched brow when we checked on the oats that he wasn’t entirely sure himself. But he had proven to be a prophet, as we’d been blessed with consecutive wet springs. The extra money provided enough to buy the McCarthy place—three thousand acres added to the six thousand we already had.
I arrived at the big meadow, which formed the northwest corner of our property, and I went to work. I let Ahab drift, free to graze, while I wrestled with the grub hoe, which consists of two handles leading down to a blade across the middle. I hacked away at the solid, twisted plants, trying to break through the hard gumbo to their roots. I rested every now and then, breathing hard, gazing at the scene around me. At my back, the ground was clear except for the drying clumps of sage that I’d extracted from the hard ground.
By mid-afternoon, I had cleared several acres, and my hands were sore and bleeding inside my gloves. My back felt like a clenched fist. The corn bread and jerky Mom had packed were gone, as were the dried apricots I’d pilfered from the root cellar. I watched the sun closely, wishing it would sink a little faster. I even took a guilty break, pulling George’s baseball from my saddlebag. I threw it at the trunk of a cottonwood a few times, but I got tired of fetching it when I missed. So I started winging rocks instead, winding up and kicking high with my left leg before letting each stone fly. I had been practicing a lot, so I was getting pretty good, and I hit the trunk more often than not.
I had painted two stick figures on the back barn wall—one right-handed—one left-handed, along with a rectangular strike zone between them. And I threw George’s old worn ball against the gray planks almost every evening, studying his book until I learned to throw a respectable curveball. Occasionally, the old milk cow complained from inside the barn, telling me she needed some sleep.
Around four o’clock, I heard an odd sound from the direction of Hay Creek. I stopped hoeing. But after waiting a moment, and hearing nothing, I went back to work. A minute passed, and I heard the sound again. It sounded like a cow. The third time, I decided I’d better check on it. So I called Ahab, and we sauntered toward Hay Creek. I dismounted and led Ahab cautiously along the creek’s edge. The ground was soft in places, but I didn’t see anything. We strolled along the bank for several minutes before a low moan filled the air, growing into a rich “mooo” that climbed higher and higher upon itself. The sound was coming from behind us, so I turned Ahab around and stalked, still cautious, toward the noise.
At a sharp bend, the ground pulled at my boots, and I led Ahab away from the water, around a stand of willows. Behind the willows, a cow held her head just above the mud, where she had sunk to the base of her neck. I approached, leaving Ahab behind. The cow’s head dropped to the ground, weak from the strain of her cry. Her tongue hung loose and dry. Her eyes were wild. The thick gumbo behind her was stirred up and thrown around in a way that indicated she had escaped one trap, only to find herself closer to the water, in still softer mire.
I didn’t even think for a moment that I had any option about what to do with this cow. I knew it would take several hours to free her. But the value of every single head of livestock to the operation of a ranch like ours was immeasurable. It meant a source of calves for the next several years. It wasn’t just one cow.
So I filled my sheepskin flask in the creek. The cow rolled her head away from me as I came closer. Although she fought, she was weak, and I cradled the weary skull in my lap and poured water into her mouth. But this made her choke, a deep hollow wheeze that shook the ground around her. I realized that if I didn’t keep her head upright, I could drown her.
I tried pouring water into my cupped hands, but it leaked through my fingers faster than I could get it to her. I tried my hat, holding my hands underneath, but the water also seeped through the straw. Finally, I swung the saddlebags from Ahab’s back, emptied them, and laid one in front of the cow’s broad, panting nose. I placed my fists in the center of the bag and leaned into it, forming a hollow, which I filled from the flask. The cow pushed her nose into the water, and emptied it in seconds. I trotted back and forth, wearing myself out trying to keep the leather bowl filled. The cow sucked it dry faster than any man could run.
After many trips, I decided she’d had enough. I rested for a few minutes.
The cow faced the creek, so I positioned Ahab on the opposite bank. She didn’t have any horns, so I had to tie a rope around her neck. I tied the other end to Ahab’s saddlehorn.
“Okay, old girl. Get ready.” The cow gazed up at me, her eyes startled, her breath racing. I smacked Ahab’s flank and yelled. He plunged forward, the rope twanged, and the cow squeezed out a strangled “Maaaaaaw.” She rose like a mythical creature, the black mud flying, her bawl climbing. But she managed only a few feet of progress before she was exhausted. And she sank back to her chest.
Ahab was spooked, and straining at the rope, so I grabbed his reins to calm him, talking softly in his ear. “Easy, boy. Whoa. Easy. Easy.” I stroked his neck, holding the reins taut a foot below his nose.
When a person can see for miles around them, it’s not often that something unexpected happens. And because you tend to feel as if you can’t be surprised out in the middle of nowhere, the unexpected scares you ten times more than it would if you were in an enclosed space, or in the woods, where you might be on the lookout.
So when a gunshot rang out from behind, my heart felt as if it would beat right through my ribs and dive into the creek. Ahab reared to full height, and I dropped to the ground, trying to make myself small. Ahab wanted to run, but the rope held him back, so he bucked from one side to the other, his hooves stabbing the earth in frustration each time he came down. On one lunge, I rolled to one side just before his front hoof plunked me in the hip.
I jumped up and groped for the reins, managing to catch one of them. But another shot sounded, and Ahab reared again, whinnying, trying to bolt, throwing his head from side to side. The rope jerked like a fish line, and I could hear the cow choking. I ran to Ahab’s flank, pulling the single rein as hard as I could to twist his head to one side. I yelled until my throat hurt, not really thinking about what I said, but hoping my shouts would give the sniper something to think about.
Finally, I was able to pull Ahab back just enough that I could slip the rope from the saddlehorn. Without the rope holding him back, he lunged and jerked the reins free of my aching fingers. He took off, kicking his hind legs high into the air.
I chased him for a few frantic strides, until I realized how useless that was. Then I stopped, staring after the dust, so caught up in wondering what to do next that I forgot that some bastard was out there shooting at me. Another shot rang out, echoing across the plain, and I fell to the ground. I scrambled back down into the creek bed, my heart pounding into the earth.
The cow rested her muddy nose on the mud, looking near death. I crept to the top of the bank, scanning the prairie for signs of life. I saw nothing.
“What are you doin’ on my land?”
A voice boomed from behind, and I went stiff, expecting a shot in the back. But nothing happened, and I turned slowly, peering across the creek to see the lean, craggy figure of Art Walters.
Now I’m always amazed at how a person can feel two things at once—two very opposite things at that. When I saw a familiar face, I was so relieved that a part of me could have hugged Art. But at the same time, it was hard to overlook the fact that he’d been shooting at me. But the second emotion was a lot stronger than the first, so I responded to that one.
“Art, what the hell are you doing?” I walked toward him, right through the creek, arms outstretched.
Art studied me carefully, eyes scrunched, still aiming the gun right at me. His thick handlebar mustache hung down over his mouth, tickling the barrel of his rifle.
As I waded through the creek, arms still straight out from my side, I didn’t even consider that he would shoot again. I shook my head, the boil rising in my blood. “Goddamit, Art, you just ran my horse off and scared the hell out of me, and I’m not even on your land. This is our land. What’s gotten into you?”
Art remained poised as he was, the gun on his shoulder, and to my complete shock, another shot rang out, and a puff of dust jumped from the ground three feet to my right.
I was paralyzed for a second, but as soon as I recovered, I rushed him. I lowered my head and ran straight at him, and I was just about to take him down when everything went black.
I think I was only out for a half minute or so, because when I came to, it only took me a few seconds to remember where I was, and what had happened. I was lying facedown, and I rolled over, ready to defend myself, but Art was crouching down over me, a wet kerchief poised above my face.
“You okay?” he asked.
My arms were wrapped around Art’s slight torso, gripping the front of his overalls as we rode his horse in search of Ahab. I could feel Art’s ribs, about to push their way through the threadbare cotton. My wet clothes were cool against my skin. There was a knot on my forehead, and a dull ache in my skull.
I was still angry, or maybe more exasperated, trying to decipher the contradictions of the man in front of me.
“Art, why in hell’s name were you shooting at me?” I asked. “You trying to murder me?”
Art didn’t answer right away, but after a deep breath, he turned to talk over his shoulder.
“I ain’t no murderer, Blake.” He shook his head, and kept shaking it, as if he needed to assure me, and keep right on assuring me. “Don’t be starting rumors like that.” The head continued to shake. “There’s been too much of that going on already.”
I frowned. “Too much of what?”
The head shook. “Rumors. Murders and rumors.”
Again I frowned. “Murders?” I asked. “What the hell are you talking about? I haven’t heard any rumors about any murders.”
Art shook his head. “I ain’t saying no more.”
I puzzled over this strange comment, reviewing the recent history of our little community. There hadn’t been anyone killed in our county for many years, and the only death I could think of that was even accidental in a while was George’s. And then it hit me. And a sudden anger rose up in me again.
“Art, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
Art’s head rotated again, back and forth, back and forth. “I ain’t saying,” he repeated.
“Well, what the hell is it that you ain’t saying?”
His jaw tightened, as if he was preparing to fight against any attempt to pry the words from his mouth. “I’m not gonna tell you what I ain’t saying.”
“Goddamit, Art.” I got worked up, wishing there was a way to force him to tell me what the hell he was talking about. But I knew nothing I said would prompt any more information out of him. “So what the hell…goddamit.” I thought about what people might say, and the only conclusion that made any sense was that there might be speculation about Jack. But it was just so absurd to me at that moment that I hardly even thought about it.
Then, out of the blue, Art decided to address something completely different. “Blake, I’m going to tell you something. Something important.”
“Oh?” I refrained from saying something sarcastic. “Okay.”
Art cleared his throat, in a great show of guttural gacking sounds. “Now listen here, Blake. I’m not a smart man. Everyone knows that.”
He paused. I bit my tongue.
“But I watch. I pay attention to things. More than people think I do.”
I said nothing, letting Art set his own rhythm.
“I never thought for one minute that I could go nowhere else, or do nothing else.” Art cleared his throat and spat. “But some people…some people are too goddam smart. Do you know what I mean, Blake? This place, this land, it beats hell out of people. Have you noticed that, Blake? Beats the holy hell out of folks. Do you know what I mean?”
I didn’t really know what to say. This was a side of Art Walters that I’d never seen before, and I’d known him all my life. I’d never seen him, even with other adults, show any inclination toward carrying on a serious discussion about life. And I had a feeling that this was a rare occasion, that maybe nobody else had ever seen it before, either. It didn’t exactly explain why he was shooting at me, and yet I think in his mind, it did.
“I’m sorry,” Art said after a moment of awkward silence. “I’m outta line talking to you about this. That’s your business, and I ought to know better.”
“No, no. It’s okay, Art. Don’t worry about it. I’ll think about it. Really.”
“Will you?” he asked, and he sounded genuinely surprised.
“Yeah, I will. I mean it now.”
“Okay,” he said, and I could hear in his voice that this pleased him. I was glad I had managed to look past my anger, and figure out what he wanted to say.
Neither of us spoke again while we rounded up Ahab and went back to finish freeing the cow.
For the next two hours, Art and I tugged, rested, watered, and tugged, rested and watered some more. Art had plenty of experience pulling cows from the bog, so he was full of good suggestions, like stuffing grass under the cow’s nose to give her some strength but also to firm up the mud a little. We secured ropes around each front leg, with one tied to each horse, once we had the cow’s torso clear of the mud. I don’t know if I would have been able to get the cow out without him. The ache in my head didn’t get any weaker, but it didn’t get any worse either.
Once she was free, the cow stood unsteadily for a moment, her legs shaking. Then she lumbered across the pasture, giving a weak kick of her heels. We stood watching her, and I felt the warm satisfaction of pulling a life from the brink of death. But then I noticed her brand, which had been covered when she was in the mud. I started laughing.
“I’ll be damned, Art,” I said, pointing. “That’s your cow.”
Art squinted, checking the old cow’s flank, and turned, laughing, showing his toothless smile under that thick, drooping mustache.
By the time I returned home, the bottom of the western sky was smeared bright orange as the rest of the sky darkened to blue-black. The sound of the river brushed my ears as I rode back toward the house, almost putting me to sleep with its soothing flow. The wagon was out in front of the barn, so I knew that Dad and Jack had returned from Belle Fourche.
After feeding and combing Ahab, I went inside and sat up to the table, where a plate of food waited. I could hear Muriel playing outside, and I figured that Katie must be with her. Bob was wrapped in a blanket, curled up in a chair. Like Katie, he had been battling the flu. But unlike her, he didn’t show any sign of recovery yet.
Mom had torn the whitewashed flour sacks from the walls to wash them, and she scrubbed one against the washboard. Dad dug at his thumb with a pocketknife. From the moment I entered the kitchen, I felt tension, and I knew my parents had been arguing again. Ever since George’s disappearance, they had fought more than I could ever remember, sometimes raising their voices to the point that the only relief was to go outside.
“I was just about to come looking for you,” Dad said, his voice tight.
“Yeah?”
“How’d it go today?” Mom asked. But her voice was also strained, and I knew I was only being addressed as a diversion. A wisp of red floated from one side of her head.
“All right. I found an old cow caught up in the bog over at Hay Creek.” I decided not to mention what happened with Art, thinking it would only add fuel to a combustible situation.
“You got her out?” Dad pulled a splinter from his thumb, then studied both. I bit into a chicken leg.
I nodded. “It was Art’s. He helped me out. Where’s Jack?”
“He took Katie fishing,” Mom answered.
“Good.” I wiped grease from my chin. “What time did you guys get back, Dad?”
“Around three.” Dad sucked blood from his thumb. “What’s that?” He pointed at my forehead.
“Oh, nothing. Just banged my head against the hoe.” I touched the knot.
Mom squeezed murky water from a flour sack and shook it out with brisk, angry strokes. She hung it on the line she’d stretched across the kitchen.
“Did you stay at the road ranch, Dad?” I asked.
“Yep. That second Roberts gal, Sophie, I think it is…she ran off to Oregon to marry some older guy.”
“Really?” Despite her mood, Mom’s ear for gossip was strong.
“Is she the tall one?” I asked, knowing perfectly well that she was. Sophie Roberts, the second daughter of the couple that ran the ranch where people could bed down for the night on their way to or from Belle Fourche, had been a striking figure from the time she finished grade school. She had the kind of flour-white complexion contrasting her shiny black hair that, when she entered a dance, everyone lost a step.
Dad nodded. “God, son, you should see all the honyockers moving in. There must be twenty new homesteads between here and Belle, and those are just the ones I could see from the road.” He shook his head.
Mom dipped another sack into the tub of water. I was glad that Dad brought up this topic, as it was something my parents were in complete agreement about—empathy toward these newcomers. By this time, the prime land, along the river and bigger streams, had all been claimed. Everyone knew that these latecomers were working against odds they hadn’t anticipated, lured by ads from the railroads claiming five times more production from 320 acres than anyone could expect.
I noticed a tiny white dress draped over one of the kitchen chairs. “What’s that?”
Mom glanced up. “That’s for Jenny’s baby.”
I nodded. Jenny Glasser, Gary’s son Steve’s wife, had lost her baby a few days before. “When’s the funeral?”
Mom stopped what she was doing, her eyes shifting from side to side.
I studied her. “Mom?”
“Wait!” She held up one hand. “Quiet! I heard screaming.”
Muriel suddenly burst into the house. “Mom, Katie is running up the road. And she’s screaming.”
We ran outside, where we saw a shadow flying toward the house. I raced ahead to Katie, who collapsed into my arms. Her hair was matted against her head from the sweat. Even her dress felt moist. Mom and Dad arrived just behind me.
“What is it, honey?” Mom brushed the hair back from Katie’s sweaty forehead. “Is Jack okay? Where’s Jack?”
“Where’s Jack?” Dad asked, his tone more impatient than Mom’s.
But Katie was breathing so hard that she couldn’t speak. I carried her to the house and set her down in a chair. Mom knelt in front of her. “Katie, what happened? Where’s Jack?” Now her own tone was more urgent, more desperate.
“Give her a chance to breathe,” I said. “Give her some room.”
“What happened?” Dad insisted, ignoring me, moving closer to Katie.
“It’s George,” Katie finally said, coughing. “Jack found him.” She burst into tears, and the coughing intensified. We all stood, stunned, silent, for several minutes. Dad muttered softly, his head rocking from side to side, eyes to the floor. Mom’s eyelids clenched together.
My throat closed. I couldn’t have made a sound if I needed to. I found myself trying to imagine what George would look like after six months frozen underwater, but I stopped short of a picture, horrified that I would be thinking such a thing. Bob and Muriel started crying, and tears pushed toward my own eyes, but I blinked them back. I squeezed my eyes closed, wondering what Jack was doing. Was he fishing George from the river? If so, he’d no doubt need some help.
“Let’s go, Dad.” My voice was deep and thick in my throat, barely recognizable. I started for the back door. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Dad nodded.
We found Jack two hundred yards downstream from the crossing, sitting on the bank with his head on his knees, in his hands. One bloated leg, nearly bursting the seams of its overalls, jutted at an angle from the water, bobbing gently with the current. The boot was gone, the foot blue. Upstream, about ten yards, Jack and Katie’s fishing poles were planted in the bank. One of them jerked with the weight of a fish.
Dad prepared a lasso and inched down the steep bank.
“Dad, shouldn’t we just go in and get him?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, swinging the lasso above his head, then tossing it out over the rushing water. He missed the first time, but on his second toss, the loop flopped over the foot. I scooted down the bank behind Dad, sitting, and hooked my hands into his back pockets. He pulled. I pulled. Jack remained folded up on the bank, still hiding his face.
The body broke free. We strained, dragging my brother’s mutated form onto the bank. Our racing breath was nearly as loud as the rush of water.
George’s face was bloated beyond human proportion. His arms puffed from beneath his sleeves, bleached from months in ice. His skin looked like a cow’s bag—pale, almost transparent. Dad and I hauled the body further up the bank, struggling with the weight. Dad collapsed once we reached level ground. He rolled onto his back and stared up at the slate-gray sky.
As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t avert my eyes from my brother’s distorted expression. His eyes and mouth were wide open, his cheeks swollen until they nearly hid his ears. One hand was clenched into a fist, the other lay innocently open, its fingers sausage thick. In a way, his appearance was a relief, because it didn’t look like him. This wasn’t my brother. The river had swallowed up George and regurgitated this strange form in his place.
Dad and Jack were useless, I realized. Neither of them moved. Although his expression was as stoic and straight as always, tears ran down Dad’s weathered cheeks, something I’d never seen. I tried to keep the air moving through my lungs, recognizing that if anything was going to get done, I had to hold my emotions in check.
I cleared my throat. “Come on, Dad.” My voice broke. “We’ve got to get back to the house. Mom’s going to be worried.”
Dad had pulled his hands together against his chest, where they were clenched, as if ready to defend against an attack. His pinched, red-rimmed eyes met mine, and he nodded.
“Right. Okay, son.” He lifted himself to a sitting position. I helped him stand. “All right. Let’s get him on one of these horses.” He sniffed. “Jack, give us a hand here.”
Jack had still not moved. But at Dad’s command, after lifting his head and staring blankly for a moment, as if clearing his mind, he stood, his arms dropping to his sides. I got ahold of George’s arms, and Dad grabbed his legs. We hefted him up off the ground, and Jack stepped in, lifting the bulk of George’s torso. George’s skin was cold and soft, slightly sticky, like bread dough, and with his wet clothes and bloat, he was damn heavy. The feel of his skin made me feel cold myself, on the inside.
Getting George draped over Ahab’s back was difficult, as his torso did not bend. But we balanced him on his stomach, then stretched a rope from his hands to his feet under Ahab’s belly. I noticed that the flesh on George’s leg had torn where Dad roped it. There was almost no blood, and the tissue inside the cut was as white as the surface. We did all this wordlessly, avoiding each other’s eyes.
I finished tying the knot. Dad and Jack had already mounted their horses. I climbed up behind Dad, and held Ahab’s reins, leading him behind us. Ten minutes later, we approached the house. Mom stood on the stoop, both hands clamped to her mouth. Muriel clutched Mom’s skirt, and Bob stood behind her. Mom dropped her hands and moaned, disappearing inside the house when she saw the body, leaving the two little ones racing after her, clutching for her skirt.
Despite the long day, and my tired muscles, I had trouble sleeping. Although George’s bed had been empty for more than a half year, I kept waking up and looking over at it. And each time I managed to drift off, my dreams were invaded by wolves, tearing into George’s body, which we had laid out in the barn. Dad was certain that the stench wouldn’t get too bad before morning, but I was worried that it was already strong enough to draw the attention of some predators.
The wolves in my dreams were screaming, like humans rather than animals. The screams half woke me several times, until they sounded so real that I was fully awake. But in the time it took me to pass from being vaguely aware to waking up, I realized that I really did hear screams. I jumped out of bed, pulled on my overalls, and raced toward the barn. But halfway across the yard, I heard the screams behind me, in the house. Confused, I turned back, and went inside.
I smelled kerosene, and saw a muted light leaking beneath the closed door of the girls’ room. I opened the door carefully. Dad stood at the foot of Katie’s bed. Mom sat on the bed, bent at the waist so that her face nearly touched Katie’s. She held a wet cloth to my sister’s forehead and spoke gently. “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s going to pass. Just relax.” Her voice sounded soothing on the surface, but I could hear the fear in it. Mom’s hair drifted out away from her head in a tangle of copper and white flags. I saw the strain on her face. It scared me, as this fear was rare for Mom.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“We don’t know,” Dad answered.
“Should I go for the doctor?”
“Jack already left to see if Doc Sorenson is in Capitol.”
“Where’s Muriel?”
“She’s in our bed,” Dad answered.
I approached the scene, half not wanting to, preferring the thought of sinking back in my bed and covering my head with a pillow. Katie arched her back and screamed, her mouth stretching into a frightening rectangle. It looked as if the skin might tear around her teeth. I felt my own teeth clench together. One of Katie’s knees rose and fell time and again, thumping softly against the mattress. Her eyes, when they were open, darted around the room, without focus. It looked as if she could die at any moment, and I couldn’t imagine that life could be so cruel as to take another of us on the very day we’d found our brother’s body.
“How long has this been going on?” I asked.
“A couple hours,” Dad said. “We heard her moaning, and we came in to see what was wrong. She started screaming about a half hour ago.” Dad looked completely beaten down.
Katie screamed again, her head bent so far back that it looked as if it could break off. She panted frantically, her chest as busy as boiling water.
“Easy, baby,” Mom said softly. “Where does it hurt?”
But Katie couldn’t hear her, and I realized that her condition was worse than I thought. She repeated a staccato “oh, oh, oh” between breaths.
Katie screamed at regular intervals, her voice weakening each time. Dad brought a pot of steaming water from the kitchen. Mom dipped a cloth into the pot, wrung it, and laid it across Katie’s forehead. Mom tried to feed Katie a spoonful of hot tea with whiskey and honey, but she wasn’t conscious enough to drink. She knocked the spoon from Mom’s hand with a jerk of her chin. The sheets had turned gray with sweat.
The fits eventually drained Katie so that she fell into an exhausted sleep between each spasm. Her eyes would close peacefully, sending a shiver of fear through me each time. But after a minute or two the pain would wrench her from slumber, back to the struggle, and the pain in her face made me wince right along with her.
At four in the morning, she uttered her first words of the night. “Pull ’em in, pull ’em in,” she pleaded.
Mom panicked, trying to figure out what to pull in, what she could do to ease her daughter’s misery. She tugged at the blankets, then looked at Dad, puzzled and scared. Then she turned back to Katie and pulled her lips inside her mouth. Her brow pinched. Dad and I studied the floor.
“The fish?” Dad said. “She probably means the fish.”
“Or George,” I offered.
One of the last times that Katie and I played homesteader in our little prairie house, Katie approached me with her arms wrapped around the blanket-swathed figure of her favorite doll.
“Blake, honey,” she announced in a strong, steady voice, a voice very much like my mother’s. “We need to get ahold of the preacher.”
“Oh?” I answered. “What for?”
“The baby’s dead,” Katie said matter-of-factly. “We need to bury the baby.”
Katie was six years old at the time.
“I’ll put the baby in the barn,” she told me. “And I’ll send a note to the preacher. And then I’ll get some supper ready. Can you start on a coffin, honey?”
I guess we all knew, or suspected, how the night was going to end, although we tried to hope otherwise. We looked to the door whenever any small sound echoed through the night’s silence. But soon after she spoke, the final gripping vise squeezed the life from Katie. She died eyes, mouth, and hands open to the ceiling, her last sound so weak that it was little more than a groan, followed by a sigh.
Jack and Doc Sorenson arrived an hour later to find us in a silent vigil around the body. Mom wept, while Dad and I simply sat in exhausted amazement at what had taken place that day. I hurt so bad inside that I couldn’t hold my head up. It seemed that I’d been awake forever, and that a year’s worth of life had been packed into the past twenty-four hours.
Jack barely responded when he learned that Katie was dead. He turned and left the room, going directly to bed. Doc Sorenson examined Katie and determined that what we thought was the flu was actually spinal meningitis. He said that he couldn’t have done anything even if he’d gotten there sooner, which was a very small consolation at the time. But a relief nonetheless. He checked Bob, and determined that he just had a cold, and not meningitis. Dad thanked Doc for his trouble, offering him a bed for the remainder of the night. But it was only a few hours before his first appointment, so he had to hurry back.
Because of the state of George’s body, the funeral had to be hastily arranged for two days later. There wasn’t time to make Katie a funeral dress, and none of George’s clothes fit his bloated torso. So we wrapped him in one of his blankets, and we laid Katie out in her favorite frock—a calico with lace. Pastor Ludke from the Little Missouri Lutheran Church performed the service the afternoon after he had buried the Glasser baby.
The coffins looked strange side by side—one too large, to hold George’s swollen corpse, the other seemingly too small to hold any corpse at all. Pastor Ludke stood behind the odd pair, his thinning hair oiled in parallel lines across his scalp. His ruddy cheeks shone with sweat.
“We come to this barren world with high hopes,” he said. “And then the land takes our children from us, and we ask why. We ask how a just God could let this happen. And I say that perhaps it is a price of risk, of adventure. Perhaps if we remained safely in our old worlds, we would not have to pay this price. Perhaps God is telling us that the earth will not yield unto us what we ask without first asking that we yield unto Him. It is a question I have searched this book for answers to…” He held up his Bible. “And I have yet to find one that satisfies me.”
He bowed his head, showing a certain guilt about not being able to provide the kind of hope or comfort that someone in his position might be expected to provide. “Let us simply pray, then.”
Mom and Dad stood very close to each other, their hands only an inch apart, their brows low over their eyes. Neither of them shed a tear. No one in the crowd showed any sign of tears. Jack eased off to one side, as if he wasn’t invited.
I held my face still but felt the full force of a sadness and loneliness that were new to me. I had been to more funerals by this time than I had weddings, birthday parties, or Fourth of July picnics combined. I knew the routine. And I had always felt a little strange about the stoic demeanor that was common among our people. I had always looked around at the faces at these funerals and wondered how everyone could appear to be so unaffected, unmoved, by death.
I studied my father’s face. And I thought about his favorite bit of philosophy, the one and only phrase he repeated with a sense of religious conviction. “Always expect the worst, and you’ll never be disappointed,” he’d say. He said it about everything. I had never been comfortable with the phrase, and although I didn’t then, I now understand why. Because my father didn’t live by it. Although he did expect the worst, expecting the worst had never prevented disappointment. In fact, my father not only experienced disappointment, day after day, but he had built his life around it. And I see now that it was a common quality among our people, to live with a wary knowledge that things could always get worse. To not enjoy accomplishment because of the certainty of more disappointment. It was an attitude born of experience, as a bumper crop of wheat, and a bountiful year, could change to failure in the time it took for a hailstone to bounce off your head. We expected the worst because it often happened, and the disappointment was buried deep in all of us. For some, it served as a motivator. My father was a perfect example. He acted on the disappointment by working harder. It was all he knew.
On this day, I looked around at the faces, and for the first time in my life, I did not see stony, lifeless expressions. I felt the loss of my siblings. I thought of Katie’s pathetic garden, and her unwavering dedication to it. I thought about our little homestead house, which I had ceremoniously burned the day before. I hadn’t even bothered to clean out the trinkets before I doused it in fuel and held a match in it.
I thought about my brother, and realized to my horror that I had held some hope that he would show up again someday. Part of me hadn’t allowed myself to accept that he was gone. I pictured him in the barn. I thought of how he loved lingering there after we’d unsaddled the horses, telling jokes or wrestling in a pile of straw. I thought about him lacing a single to right. And as I thought about these things and looked at the faces around me, I realized for the first time in my young life that there was something behind those stoic expressions. I looked at the people there and realized that there was only one family among them that had not lost a child. The Purdys, who didn’t have children. The Glassers had just buried their baby that morning. And I saw in the eyes of these people a sympathy that only someone who shared their experience could see. I had never seen the pain because I had never felt it. I was now part of the community. I was one of them.
And I realized that despite the fact that our homes were so far apart, the open space between us was much smaller than I had always assumed.
I stayed and watched while Gary Glasser, Art Walters, and others lowered the coffins into the graves. The holes bookended the graves of my grandparents.
Dad stepped forward, reaching for a shovel.
“George, goddamit, we’ll take care of this,” Gary said. “Did I help you bury my granddaughter? You stubborn old bastard. We got it.”
Dad backed up, still watching our friends. He stood next to me, hands behind his back, jaw set. I studied him, his narrow face drooping, blue eyes squinting and moist.
Looking at his face, I wondered what could be worse than outliving two of your own children, watching the earth swallow them up when your own body was still strong, healthy, and full of life.
“You coming?” Suddenly Dad’s arm fell heavily across my shoulders.
“Nah, I’ll be along in a second,” I said.
I watched him walk away, his eyes lowered to his boots. Three men shoveled dirt, heavy scoops of soil thumping against wood. I stood between the graves, digging through my jacket. The smell of damp soil filled my nose. I gazed at the open pits, and before I turned to join the rest of my family, I dropped a fishhook into Katie’s grave, and the piece of chalk into George’s.