In town she asked first at the depot, trying hard to look unconcerned, as if she meant only to round up her sons for some chore they’d ducked out of. She put on a smile and cocked her head and set her hands on her hips.
“They ain’t been around here,” Wheatfield said. “And if they was, I would of put them right to work.”
“Send them straight home if they show up,” Gretta told him, then turned away to avoid his eyes. It was a temptation to give in, to go back to the house and cry until she couldn’t cry any longer, and then go to sleep, only to wake in a few hours to find her boys returned, home from some adventure—like their expedition upriver last summer in a neighbor’s leaky rowboat. Instead she walked to the mercantile, where she hovered in one of the side aisles, telling herself that Eli may in fact have gone off to Fargo with Mr. Goldman this morning. And who was to say Danny hadn’t chased after him and ended up going along? That wasn’t such a stretch, was it? As she feigned interest in a display of serving bowls, leaning close to inspect them, she felt herself being watched. Sure enough, when she glanced up at the counter Mrs. Goldman was there, watching her, lips pursed. A tiny woman with stingy, birdlike features.
“You tell your son that Anton left without him, that he waited fifteen minutes past leaving time. It’s a long drive, you know, and he got a late start.”
Gretta nodded. “I’ll tell him.”
“Was there something else?”
“No, no. I was only looking at this bowl.”
“That’s from England, of course. Real bronze, hand-hammered. And the price you see is firm.”
“Thank you,” Gretta said.
She stopped next at the barber shop, then at the pharmacy, and finally on a whim at Two Blood’s gun store, where he opened the door and stepped aside to let her in. She knew how much her sons liked this place—the guns, of course, and the tobacco smell, and the old, dusty buffalo head presiding from the wall above the counter. He offered her a chair next to his worktable, but she said no, she had to be getting home.
“I only stopped to ask if you’d seen the boys,” she told him.
His face was so furrowed she couldn’t imagine he’d ever been young. He said, “I don’t sleep so good anymore. I was sitting here this morning, early. Smoking. Saw your boys walking past on the street.” He pointed out the window.
Gretta’s hands went cold. Her throat tightened. “What time?”
“Eli came first, and then the small one a minute later. This was before the first light. They carried blanket rolls, both of them.”
“They didn’t say anything?”
“They didn’t see me. I had no lamp burning.”
“You must have wondered what they were doing.”
Two Blood smiled. “Boys have their reasons.”
“Do you think they were heading for the depot?” Gretta asked.
“That might be so.”
“You could have stopped them, talked to them, asked them where they were going,” she said, knowing he would have done no such a thing.
The old man shrugged, a fluid roll of his shoulders.
At home Gretta thought to look in the chifforobe, and when she found her husband’s rifle missing, also his winter coat and hat, she realized there was no choice but to go looking—and that meant a trip to St. Paul, where Ulysses still had a sister living, and a brother-in-law. Or did as recently as a two years ago, when they’d last heard from them at Christmastime. In July Gretta had written to Florence, asking if she’d seen Ulysses, but so far had heard nothing back.
Panic twisted in Gretta’s stomach, and she sat down at the dining-room table to calm herself, making fists to keep her fingers from shaking. Her lungs had risen into her throat, and though she needed air, she couldn’t seem to take any more in.
“Think!” she said aloud, then pushed away from the table, went into the kitchen, and drew a tall glass of cold water from the pump and forced herself to drink it all down. She took a breath and blew it out. At the China hutch she took out the silver candlestick-holders her mother had received as a wedding gift, and she set them on the table. They were fashioned in a plain, heavy style, and whenever Gretta polished them—at Christmas and Easter—their weight in her hands summoned to mind her mother’s silvery blonde hair, always pulled back in a tight bun on holidays, and her father’s eyes, which even at family gatherings seemed to search out windows and doors, a route of escape. There were other things, too, that she could sell—her lace handkerchiefs, the blue pitcher painted in the royal Danish pattern, her grandfather’s brass letter opener. The local undertaker, Burlingame, had a pawn exchange at the alley entrance to his store, and though Gretta had never sold him anything, she’d heard that he was more generous now that a new funeral man had set up shop in the town five miles east. She gathered her things on the table and wrapped each up in dishtowels, then put on her best coat and regarded herself in the mirror that hung in the front room. With the panic rising in her belly it was hard to stand up straight, but that’s what she did—pushed her shoulders back and stepped up close to examine her face. She brought her lips together in a line and pushed the bottom one out in a way that suggested confidence. She studied her brow, which was neither too thin nor too thick, and then her nose, which she had often been told was well formed. She collected a fallen lock from her forehead, tucked it behind an ear, and took a step back for a full view. Her black wool coat was smooth, with no obvious creases or wrinkles, and tailored well to her shape. Her hands looked chapped, though, and so she went to her room for the balm that Ulysses used on his fingers in the winter.
She was sitting on the edge of her bed when a knock at the door brought her to her feet. She dried her hands on the bedspread, moved quickly across the house, and opened the door a crack, blocking it with the toe of her shoe. Mead Fogarty stood on the front stoop with his derby hat in his chubby hands.
“I hear that your sons are missing,” he said. “I might be in a position to help you.”
Gretta pulled back. The man wanted his money, that was all—unless he’d come to observe her pain, and to gloat.
“Let me inside, please.”
With no other choice, Gretta withdrew her toe from the door. Fogarty pushed forward, snagging the shoulder of his jacket on a nail jutting from the doorframe.
“Damn it!” he said.
“What do you know about my boys?” Gretta asked him.
He gave his chin a careless toss. “They’ve gone in search of their father, I imagine.”
“Have you seen them?”
“I haven’t.”
“You said you knew something.”
“No, I said I might be able to help you. Listen.” He lifted both hands, palms out. “We have to sit down and talk.”
She led him to the kitchen, where they sat across from each other at the table. Fogarty planted his elbows and grasped his hands together in an oddly formal gesture. He tipped back his head and looked at her along the uneven line of his nose. “I’ve lost my ring of keys,” he announced. “The ones to all the rooms in my building. And I’m afraid it’s your fault.”
God help me, Gretta thought. Fogarty’s red face was composed and serious, his plump lips neither smiling nor pursed. He coughed and swallowed, then reached into the pocket of his jacket for a tin flask, which he held aloft and squinted at.
“It’s been a trying day,” he said, and took a drink, eyes rolling back in his head. “I don’t often indulge myself—my wife would have vouched for me on that. But there are times a man requires help in what he needs to do.” He offered the flask to Gretta, who made a face.
“You were saying about your keys,” she said, aware of the clock ticking on the secretary and the growing number of miles separating her from her sons.
“Mrs. Pope, you so upset me the other night that I haven’t been thinking straight since. Owing me rent as you do, and then taking my generous offer so lightly. Last night, in fact, I was so distracted that I must have lost my keys while I was up at Lowman’s Bend, fishing.”
Gretta could not respond. The man’s mind and motivations were unknowable, absurd.
“I’m on my way to find them now, and I insist that you come along with me.”
She almost laughed, out of confusion. “I don’t have time,” she said. “Can’t you see that? I have to figure out what to do.”
Fogarty narrowed his eyes. His gaze fell on Gretta’s lips and then her neck, which Gretta moved to cover with her hand. “If you help me find my keys,” he said, “I will give you money for the trip you’re planning.”
“What trip?”
He took another swallow from his flask and offered it to her again. This time she accepted, wincing as the whiskey burned its way down her throat. Fogarty smiled, head cocked like a bird dog.
Be careful, Gretta thought, there’s no one looking out for you.
“When I heard your boys were gone, I knew right off I had to help out, it’s the honorable thing to do. On the other hand, one good deed deserves another, doesn’t it?” He smiled again, only for a moment. “I may be a homely man,” he said, “but I’m no fool. And I won’t be mocked like some rube. You’ve been telling me you know where your husband is, that he’s coming home soon. That is not the case, is it?”
“Not exactly,” Gretta said.
“So you’ve been lying to me.”
“I am trying to be optimistic.”
“An admirable trait.” Fogarty pressed his hands together palm to palm beneath his chin. “But if your husband has taken a permanent leave, which I believe he has, it’s to your benefit—and mine—to reach that conclusion sooner, not later.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Because,” Mead Fogarty said, “I mean to take his place.”
Gretta stood up so fast the room went black, and she reached out to steady herself against the table. She wanted to run to her bedroom and shut and lock the door.
“I don’t expect this comes as a welcome surprise, anxious as you are right now. But I am a decent man, offering help you happen to need. I urge you to give it serious thought.” He got up from the table and gestured toward the door. “In the meantime, I need to find my keys. My rig is out front.”
“I can’t go with you—it wouldn’t look right,” she said.
Fogarty laughed. “It doesn’t look right either when a woman’s husband leaves her and stays away for months on end. Now take my arm, hold your head up, and come along. It’s only a mile north, and we’ll be there in no time. If folks happen to see you, fine. I’m good people.”
She refused his arm, but the tremor in the man’s bottom lip gave her courage, and she consented to follow him out of the house and into the street where he helped her onto the buckboard of his spring wagon, which was covered in a fresh coat of white paint. He tipped his flask for another swallow, then took up the driving lines. Gretta kept her eyes trained ahead as they drove north toward the edge of town, looking to the side just once, when a man’s voice called her name—“Gretta?”—a voice she knew and could not ignore: Otis Bending, an old carpenter who often helped Ulysses with his larger projects, the houses and barns. She lifted a hand and offered a flat smile she hoped he could see through, a smile that said, It isn’t what you think. Otis only scowled, his enormous hands hanging like spades beside him. Gretta felt cold suddenly. The sun had gone behind a bank of clouds, the dead scent of autumn in the air, dust and woodsmoke and dead grass. She imagined her sons walking along some strange road or hunched in a woods, sharing a loaf of her bread—or the pair of them in a train car, wrapped in their blankets and lying close together for warmth. Tears welled in her eyes, but she squeezed them back and dried her face with her sleeve. She couldn’t help thinking of the nights she’d climbed into the loft and touched their hair as they slept—Danny’s silken curls and Eli’s full, heavy ones, cool in her fingers.
Fogarty yanked on the driving lines and the young gelding veered left, plunging off the road onto a dirt trail. Gretta had to grasp the seat with both hands to keep from pitching off the wagon. “Whoa, easy there,” Fogarty said, flicking the lines and driving on, the wagon jouncing and squeaking in the ruts. They wound through a stand of cottonwoods, the blue stripe of the river glistening as they headed toward a place Gretta knew from years ago when she and Ulysses still fished together. Once he’d caught a catfish the size of a piglet and staked it over a wood fire, and she still remembered the tangy flavor of its gray meat.
“Where is he?” Fogarty asked.
“I don’t know.”
“If you want my help, I need to know where you’re going.”
“He might be in St. Paul, where he grew up,” Gretta said, unable to look at the man. She despised him for the power he had to question her like this. “I don’t know where else he’d go.”
“But he hasn’t contacted you?”
“No.”
Fogarty removed his flask again and drank, though it wasn’t easy, his hand bobbing at every jerk of the wagon. There was the dull ping of teeth striking tin, but he managed to fasten on with his lips and take a long pull. Thirty feet from the water he hauled back on the lines and yanked the hand brake. The gelding snorted and shook itself. Fogarty turned and raised a finger to Gretta’s face. He licked his bright lips. “I was faithful to my wife while she lived,” he said, “and I’ve been faithful to her memory since she died. I try to be a good man.” His cheeks were blotchy and his breath sour.
Gretta couldn’t speak.
“No doubt you’ve been holding out on me, keeping a tight grip on that rent money. But I’ll add to that.” He tapped an index finger against the chestpocket of his tight-fitting vest. “I have five dollars here. For you. I have to know, however, that my generosity will be met with a mutual feeling.”
Gretta’s hair prickled at the base of her neck. “Mutual feeling?” she said.
“A reciprocal goodwill.”
“Do you mean will I take your money?”
He reached out and placed his cool fingers against her forearms where she’d crossed them in front of her breasts. “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “Let’s find my damned keys.”
They searched without success along the tight bend of the river where water eddied in a deep pool favored by the oldest of the bottom-feeding cats. On the opposite bank stood the charred ruins of a barn where nineteen horses had perished along with their owner, Bill Grandin, who went to sleep drunk one night in a straw-pile, smoking. Or so the story went. They squeezed through a thicket of red willow and they crept on all fours, parting the dead grass with their hands. They found no keys. After a quarter of an hour, Fogarty straightened up on his knees like a bear on its hind legs. He’d been nipping at the flask and now rose unsteadily to his feet and pointed at the ground beneath him. Looming above was a giant cottonwood, its bark coarse and green-tinted.
“Here’s where I had them last,” he said. “Or I think I did. Now where are they?”
Gretta got up and walked over to where he stood sweating and wiping his brow in the shade of the tree. She almost pitied him.
Fogarty said, “It’s unbecoming for a woman to chase after a man the way you’re doing.” Then he reached out and took her shoulders and pulled her close, locked her to his chest, his mouth grazing her ear and his breath hot against her neck as she tried to escape from his grasp. He slid his hands down the length of her back and took hold of her buttocks, squeezing hard. She tried to get a knee into his groin, but he anticipated this and lifted his knee between her legs and pushed up hard. And so she threw her weight forward, toppling him backward to the ground, she on top of him. The shock of their fall loosened his hold on her, and Gretta kicked free, the hard toe of her shoe connecting with his shin. She rolled away and got to her feet.
Fogarty was curled on his side, clutching his leg and whimpering, his face as flushed as a rooster’s comb. The flask of whiskey was lying in the grass beside him, and she picked it up and handed it to him. After a while he quieted and opened one eye, then the other. He uncapped the flask and put it to his mouth, tipped it up. “You’ve pushed me to my limit,” he said, squinting, as if he could read his own words in the air. “And you probably think you should still have your train money.”
Gretta stood above him. His thin brown hair had fallen all to one side and hung past his ear toward his shoulder. On his chin was a mud stain in the shape of a question mark.
“You owe me nothing,” she said.
“But you’d take it if I offered.”
“I have to find Eli and Danny,” she said, immediately hating herself for not adding her husband’s name—or maybe for realizing how close she was to giving up on him.
Fogarty cranked his neck a couple of times, blinked, and sat up. He fished out the bill from his vest pocket and showed it to her, fingers trembling. A five-dollar silver certificate, crisp and new and bearing the likeness of Grant. He waved it in the air. “Come here,” he said.
This time she was ready when he reached for her, prepared for what he wanted and resolved to take what she needed. As she had done now for weeks, she pushed her fear away like an unwanted memory. It was a trick of the mind, turning the feared thing into something else entirely—in this case, turning Fogarty into a little boy, stamping his feet against the ground and demanding a stick of peppermint. Trying to stand up, he slipped in the grass, then struggled up again and wrapped an arm around her, not groping this time but holding on for balance.
“Here, let’s sit down together,” she told him. “Maybe I could have a drink, too.”
He handed her the flask and she pretended to swallow, jogging her throat for effect. Then they sat down and passed the whiskey back and forth until it was empty. It didn’t take long.
“Let’s go over there,” she said, pointing to the edge of the river where the grass was less trodden. He stood up, stumbling, and she had to help him, allowing him to lean on her until he went to his knees and then laid himself down.
“There,” she said, forcing herself to pat his shoulder.
“Yes,” he sighed.
She sat down next to him and listened as he started talking—first about his lost keys and then about his hotel, and how the people who stayed there didn’t know a good place when they saw one. The sun was high, straight above them, and sitting out of the wind as they were, the day felt almost warm.
“Let’s just rest for a minute, I need to relax,” Gretta said.
Fogarty shifted his hips against the earth, spread his legs and smiled, his eyes closed. Five minutes later he was snoring, drawing air through his mouth in long rasps, as if breathing underwater. Gretta reached into his vest pocket for the five-dollar note, which she pushed deep into the side pocket of her coat. Then she set off for the walk back to town.