Until he stopped at Bennie’s on the way home from work one evening, the face in the window had faded from Will’s memory. “Hey, Bennie, a shot of liquor if you will, my man.”
“It’s not Jameson, but it’s the best I can get.”
“They got guns past the English. You’d think Irishmen could get a good whiskey over here.”
“Thought this prohibition might slow my business, but I’ve never done so good. Kinda late for leaving work, isn’t it?”
“Lots of late nights these days. Besides, Mary’s not home tonight. She’s interviewing for the principal’s job at her school.”
“That’s man’s work.”
“Usually, but they like her. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. Of course, she may not get it.”
“Been a little excitement around. Did you hear a vagrant’s been hustling folks for money? He comes to their houses at night. Scares them.” A customer called for a beer. “Hold on. I’ll be right back.” Bennie walked down the bar to serve the man.
Will sipped on his whiskey. Not smooth like a Jameson, he thought.
Bennie set a beer on the bar and served two shots of whiskey on his way back toward Will. “Well, this guy came in the other day and bought a bottle of rotgut. He scared Simon Pettigrew sober. Simon thought the guy was an apparition, that the guy came to haunt him. Why, I haven’t seen Simon without a bottle since I came to town. The guy is ghastly. Has no face.”
Will knocked his drink over when he grabbed for Bennie’s arm. “Whatta you mean?”
“He’s repulsive. A wounded vet, I’d guess. Lots are coming back maimed. Must have been terrible over there.”
* * *
For the rest of the week, Will couldn’t keep the face from his mind. Then he was startled to see it again at his window late one night, after Mary had gone to bed. This time Will didn’t go out the back door but sneaked around from the front and caught the intruder as he slithered around the house. When he tried to avoid him, Will grabbed his arm. “Who are you? What do you want?”
The man pulled, but Will didn’t release his grip.
“Let me go. I’m not hurting anyone.”
”You’re trespassing. I could call an officer.”
“Please don’t,” he whimpered. “Don’t want trouble. I need money — for food.”
The moon broke from behind a cloud, and Will cringed when he saw the emaciated and broken figure before him, the left side of his face little more than a tin can with a painted eye overlay. And his right side had skin flaps protruding from a sunken cheek and a depressed jawbone. Will looked away. “Are you back from the Great War?”
“Not so great. You can see that.”
“Why’d you come here? I saw you the other night.”
“Are you O’Shaughnessy? Jesse’s brother?”
“You knew Jesse?”
“I was in the 85th Division. He was captured. I never saw him again.”
“Come in the house. Tell me everything.”
“Not now. I need money.”
Will released the stranger’s arm and turned toward the front door. “Wait here. I’ll get some food.”
But when he returned, the creature was gone.
* * *
Will didn’t hear more from the stranger, but he wondered and worried. What did he know about Jesse? How could he make it through the winter?
And winter arrived early that year. A January blizzard hammered Southwest Wisconsin on November 1, 1920. Will struggled home through the snow, glad that Mary had decided to stay at the school superintendent’s house for the night. His mind was on Michael, how they had built snowmen and dug tunnels through deep snow like this. By the time Will got to Bennie’s, he was plumb tuckered out, but it wasn’t just the strenuous walk that weighed heavy on his soul. He needed a drink. The room was full. “Bennie, pour me a whiskey. I’ve got a terrible thirst.” He pulled off the scarf that Mary gave him last Christmas and tossed his mackinaw on the side table. “I must be outa shape. Trudging through this snow is worse than pitching hay in a hot loft. My body’s not ready for this weather.”
Bennie poured a shot of whiskey.
“Have you heard more from that vagrant?” Will said.
“I haven’t seen him, but there are rumors. Don’t know though.”
Rich Turner straddled a chair alongside Will. “You talking about that war beggar? Poor bugger. I heard you saw him.”
“Not lately,” Will said. “He came to the house this summer. Wanted food and money but left before — ”
“You didn’t recognize him?” Bennie said.
“Should I have?”
“Some say he’s Jesse. Your brother Jesse.”
“No.” Will reached for his coat. “He said that he knew Jesse though.”
“What does your dad say?”
“He’s worried about Jesse, but he hasn’t mentioned a maimed vagrant.”
“I’ve heard he’s living in an old miner’s shack down by Barreltown,” Rich Turner said.
“It’d be a terrible place now,” Bennie said. “He can’t possibly survive for long, not in this weather.”
Will knew there was no way he could get through the narrow roads to Barreltown in this deep, drifted snow, especially not in the dark without a sleigh. And his set in his garage with a bent runner.
* * *
At sunrise the next day, Will pounded metal. Not needing his sleigh to get around town, he had put off working on it’s broken runner, but now he felt desperate. Cold as it was, he was glad to have a wood fire heating the large room, but his mind was elsewhere as he worked. He wasn’t sure why he should worry about this man. He probably wasn’t even Jesse. Lots of maimed and dispirited veterans wandered the roads and looked for handouts these days. He could be anyone.
But what if he was Jesse? Will knew that he had to get out there, that he had to help if he could. He pounded on the metal with his sledge, but it bounced off the hardened steel. He had to calm down and get this runner straightened so he could to get it back in its frame. Why hadn’t he done this before?
While Will pounded, Mary stacked plant flats on the garage shelves. Will mumbled about the man as he pounded the bent runner, said that some thought he was Jesse. “But he couldn’t have been. I looked him straight in the face.” Still, the night was dark and the face grotesque. “How could I not recognize my own brother?”
“Why don’t you go get Frank and his sleigh?” Mary said, but she didn’t press when Will didn’t answer. Instead, she continued organizing the empty flats.
Will hoped he could repair the sleigh and get to Barreltown by noon. That would give him plenty of time to bring the man back to town before dark. “Doggone it, I can’t get this runner straight.” Will banged his sledge off the inflexible steel, sighted down its length, and banged some more. He looked again. “I should have taken it to the forge.”
Will worked and cussed under his breath for half an hour, and then he tightened the resistant runner in his vise, and pushed his weight against it. “There, maybe that will do it.”
He called to Mary who now busied herself outside the garage door. “You don’t really think it could be Jesse, do you?”
When she didn’t answer, Will supposed she hadn’t heard. “Mary,” he shouted, “this may be serious.” The sun climbed in the sky, but it seemed to be getting colder. Maybe a front was moving in. No one could survive long in this cold without a warm shelter. He took the runner from the vice and sighted down it again, but it still didn’t seem straight enough. He picked his sledge off the floor and was about to pound the runner some more when Mary snatched the raised sledge from his hand.
“Will, stop your fuming and go get Frank to take you to Barreltown. He’s Jesse’s brother, too.” She set the sledge on a shelf. “Even if the man’s not Jesse, he’s probably a veteran. We owe him something. The least you can do is help the poor man. The road to Frank’s should be open. The wind usually blows that clear.”
Will hadn’t seen Frank since Michael’s funeral, and not for long then. He wasn’t keen on asking his brother for help when he was not likely to get it anyway. But maybe Frank knew something that he didn’t.
As Will approached Frank’s barn he heard a frantic grunting and squealing. He supposed his brother was separating piglets from their mothers. The noise was almost as frightening as it was the day he tried to chase the hogs off Grandpa. Will backed away and waited until Frank ran the piglets into the shelter.
Frank set his pitchfork inside the barn and strolled toward Will. “Surprised to see you here. Did you come for another loan?” He smirked, but Will shook his head.
“I won’t be needing money anymore, not from you or anyone. I took more profit this summer than you’ll take all year.” Will strained to hold his broad smile beyond his comfort level. “Why, Grandpa’d be delighted to hear I’m doing so well.” He glared at Frank and directed a stream of spit toward his boots. “Maybe he wasn’t so good a judge after all. But that’s not why I’m here. It’s Jesse. He may be down at Barreltown. He might need help.”
“I saw him a week ago, before the storm hit.”
“He’s here?”
“Some of him is. Left a good part of his face in France.”
“You’re sure it was Jesse? Where’d you see him?”
“Here in my barn. My cows were restless at night, so I started looking around. I found a whiskey bottle and cigarette butts in the hayloft.”
“You’re sure he was Jesse?”
“I waited that night to see if someone might come back. Can’t have smokers in the loft. Only a fool’d allow that. Scared the daylights out of me when I saw him.” Frank shook his head and shuddered. “Looked unearthly. Never seen such a face.”
“Did he say he was Jesse?”
“Not until I leveled my shotgun at him. He shrieked like a stuck hog. I thought he’d collapse at my feet. He screamed, ‘Don’t shoot. I’m your brother. I’m Jesse.’”
“And you didn’t let him stay?”
“I couldn’t chance he’d burn the buildings in his drunkenness. Grandpa said he was no good.”
“Frank, he’s our brother. He fought for our country, for us.”
“I gave him a bucket of food and a ten dollar bill, but I suppose he drank it away. I said if he didn’t get off the farm, I’d fill his bottom with buckshot. Haven’t seen him since. Why’d he come here?”
“For God’s sake, Frank, he came home. I heard that he’s down by the creek near Barreltown, in Chandler’s old mining shack. It’s half collapsed. It can’t provide much shelter. He’ll never survive.” Will grabbed Frank’s arm. “We’ve gotta help him.”
Frank jerked away. “I don’t gotta do nothin’.”
“Even Grandpa would have helped a wounded veteran.”
“I’ll help, but don’t expect to bring him back here. Grandpa wouldn’t want that.”
“You’ll not have to keep him.” Will cringed at his brother’s callousness. “Hurry, I’ll help you hook your horses to the sleigh.” He knew that Frank wasn’t about to worry over his brothers. He followed Frank to his carriage house. “There’s an empty room over my shop. I’ll house him there.”
They pulled the sleigh into the yard and hitched Frank’s horses. Will tied Fanny to the sleigh, hopped aboard, and helped Frank up.
Will saw no sign of life as they approached Chandler’s shack. The deep snow between the roadway and hut was unmarred by footprints. “Maybe he’s not here after all,” Frank said. “Maybe you’re wrong.”
“I hope he’s some place warmer,” Will said as he trudged through the snow.
Frank followed.
Will yanked on the knob, but the door didn’t budge. On his second tug, the knob broke away from the lockset, and he flew backward into a drift. Will thrashed about in the deep snow. “Frank, give me a hand.” He reached out.
After Frank pulled and Will struggled to get upright, they kicked snow away from the sill and off the step, grabbed the door, and slammed it back and forth until it shoved the hardened pile aside. At first Will couldn’t see anything inside the shack, but when he shielded his eyes, he noticed an ember in the potbelly stove that cast a glow through the room. It was then he saw him, Jesse, collapsed across a broken cot. Will rushed to him while Frank inspected the room’s lone cupboard. “No food in here. I saw the spring running when we came in, so he has water.” He lifted a mostly empty bottle of rotgut off the shelf. “But it’s not water he’s been drinking.”
“Get the blankets from the sled,” Will said. “He’s cold as an iceberg. Hurry, Frank. We’ve gotta get him back.”
“Probably drunk.”
“Bring the blankets, Frank. His arms are blue.”
Frank tossed the whiskey bottle toward Will. “This’ll get a rise outa him.”
“You may be right. If we can get him moving, a little whiskey will warm his insides.”
They worked Jesse’s arms and legs and rubbed until the limbs showed color, but he remained unresponsive.
“We gotta get him to Dr. Ruggles.” Will worried that it may already be too late. He lifted Jesse off the cot and swung underneath his right arm. “Hurry up, get under his other arm.” Will remembered Jesse’s parting words the day he left for war, and he hated the thought that Frank’s heart seemed as cold as Jesse’s body. “Help me out, Frank.”
* * *
Three days later, after Dr. Ruggles said Jesse was well enough to leave the hospital, Will took him to the room over his shop. He brought linens, blankets, and towels from home and food enough to last the day.
The first evening Jesse was there, Will said, “It must have been awful over there.”
“It was Hell. I should never have been there.”
Will nodded toward Jesse’s face. “What happened?”
“We’d been shelled all day. Guys on both sides of me were lying in the mud — screaming and bleeding. I was scared.” Jesse’s brow creased, his lips tightened, and his voice wavered. Will could see the fear mount as his brother remembered. “We kept our heads down. Then they were in our trench.”
“Didn’t you have a weapon?”
“My rifle jammed.” Jesse grabbed Will’s shoulder. “My friends ran. I looked down the trench, and I was all alone. Like when I was shipped away. You and Frank shoulda stood up for me.”
Will winced.
“A Kraut stood there and laughed. Then he pushed his rifle in my face and fired. A week later I found myself in the Kaiser’s field hospital. They did what they could.”
“I’ll do what I can now,” Will said.
“Like always?” Jesse laughed. “I don’t need that kinda help.”
But when Will had promised shelter, heat, and food, Jesse wavered. And when Will said he’d furnish booze money, Jesse decided to stay. “But you’d better not tell anyone,” Will said. “And except for the privy out back, stay in your room. It pains me to say this, but I can’t have you in my showroom.”
People’d think him wrong for doing it, but Will knew that if he didn’t give him money, Jesse would find other ways to get his booze. And that might cause more problems. Maybe he could control Jesse’s drinking with a few handouts. But he never discussed their agreement with anyone, certainly not Mary.
Throughout the winter, Jesse stayed in his room and away from Will’s customers. Will told himself their arrangement was working, that Jesse was safe and comfortable, and all was well. But he knew the cold weather was his ally.
As the weather warmed, Jesse strayed, but at first it was only at night after the shop was closed. Then Will’s worst nightmare struck like a summer storm which raced over the horizon. Mrs. Vanevenhoven sat in Will’s office waiting with her husband for Ed Spencer to change the oil in their big Ford Sedan. Will thought she was a prude and knew she was the town gossip, but Mary said to be nice. “After all, her husband’s a good customer, and she’s on my school board. We can’t afford trouble.”
Will didn’t want trouble either, so he talked about pleasant things: the warm weather, Mrs. Vanevenhoven’s spring operetta, the merits of their sedan. Then the storm struck. Jesse staggered into the room. Mrs. Vanevenhoven screamed. Jesse panicked, and in his stupor he stumbled toward the front door, right into Mrs. Vanevenhoven, who, in her fright, fell across her chair and sliced her head so severely that blood gushed over the floor.
Will grabbed a clean cloth, ran to Mrs. Vanevenhoven, pressed the fabric against her bleeding forehead, told her husband to get Dr. Ruggles, and screamed at Jesse to get the hell out.
The next day Mrs. Vanevenhoven and her husband drove to Hinton and traded their Ford for a Chevrolet Touring Car. Jesse never returned to the shop and wasn’t seen in town, and before the week was over, Board President Gable informed Mary that the principal position was awarded to an out-of-towner, a Mr. Hiram A. Smithers.
Will paced the floor. It wasn’t the car, but Mary’s lost opportunity. “It’s all my fault,” he said after he calmed down. Then he told Mary about his arrangement with Jesse, how that probably led to his drunken episode.
“I felt so sorry for him,” Will said. “To be alone with that terrible injury. And now he’s alone again, and I’ve cost you your promotion.”
“It’s okay, Will. You tried to help.” She lifted his face and gave him a smile that was like sunshine on a frigid day. “I wasn’t going to get that job anyway. You know that. They were doing me a courtesy by considering me, but they weren’t going to give the principal job to a woman. I knew that all along.”
Will wasn’t so sure.
* * *
Will headed for the Ashley Springs Community Bank with a bag full of money in hand. Business boomed all summer and his bank account grew each day. When he stepped through the door, George Tyler caught his eye and beckoned to him. “Will, come on over and step in my office a minute.”
Will followed George into the sparsely furnished room. “What’s the problem, my friend? You can’t handle all the money I’m bringing?”
“It seems you’re doing well.” George guffawed. “You didn’t rob a bank, now did you?”
Will shoved the money bag at George. “As honest a dollar as you’ll find in town. What do you have in mind?”
“I thought you’d like to know. We had to foreclose a small farm out on Hinton road. I’ll sell it cheap. Thought you might be interested. I know you’d like to return to farming.”
Will sat down. He hadn’t expected a chance to buy a farm, nor had he thought about it in a while. “I don’t know. It would get Mary closer to her home.” He considered it for a moment. “I don’t think I can. But keep me in mind, George. I’m going back someday.”
Will hoped that he hadn’t missed his opportunity. Every time he got near the country he felt farm life’s irresistible tug on his psyche. But he was beginning to realize that it’s more difficult to return to farming than to have stayed there in the first place. He’d never have known the attraction of wealth if he’d stayed home. But he wouldn’t have known the comfort of his good wife, either.