Drowning Ruth

  Carl closed his eyes. He could feel the pinch of the cold metal as he squeezed the trigger, the noise exploding in his head, the recoil punching his shoulder. The blood would spread, red soaking through the blue and gold. Dark, wet red. He opened his eyes and aimed carefully. One shot, clean and quickly over. One shot to the head.

  But he did not pull the trigger. There, with the man in his sight, the compelling fury that had driven Carl out to the island so often, the fury that had taken him to Mary Louise, that had pushed him through the scrapbook, that had shoved him onto this roof, dissipated like gas. He struggled to retrieve it. He reminded himself of what this man had done, of where it had led, of Mathilda spent and bloody. But these ideas had no connection to the red-faced man in the greenhouse. Maybe, Carl thought, if he'd seen them together, seen this man's thick fingers on the translucent skin of Mattie's breast, he could have shot him. But it was too late. Now Mathilda and Clement Owens came together only in his mind, and his mind wasn't nearly strong enough to make him kill a man.

  He lowered his head and lay his cheek against the slate shingles. A moment before, he'd felt no fear, but now his heart began to flutter wildly, as if it had suddenly escaped confinement and was desperate to be away. He could sense the blood rushing through every passage in his body, making his ankles and his fingertips jump, and he pressed himself against the roof, willing himself still. For a few seconds, like a very young child, he even shut his eyes to make himself vanish.

  At last he heard the greenhouse door close with the brittle snap of glass, and then the door of the house open and shut. He raised his head and in less than a minute scrambled down the tree, stole across the yard and hurried back to his truck.

  From the cab, Carl watched the quiet facade of the Owenses' house and tried to stop shaking. Except that the brick looked warm and bright in the morning sun, it was no different from the way it had been three hours ago when he'd first seen it in the furry light of dawn, the lives inside undisturbed.

  Carl knew he'd done the right thing. He'd almost killed a man, almost changed everything, but then he hadn't. At this moment, life was as promising as it had been yesterday. Yesterday he hadn't seen that promise, but this morning he did. He'd teetered on the edge of disaster, but he hadn't fallen.

  Light-headed with relief, he started the truck and drove west on Wisconsin Avenue, where the sun flashed against a hundred windows and clanging streetcars and honking automobiles hurried him forward in an exhilarating rush over the river and into the solid, quiet residential neighborhood beyond. And then these houses, too, began to thin, and in scant minutes he was leaving it all behind, that city in which lives went hurtling on, and his rifle lay stiff and silent on a carriage house roof.

  On Blue Mound Road he had to stop. The tank was half full—he didn't really need gas—but he had to catch his breath and talk to another human being. He had to tangle himself in the lush world, the world in which he hadn't killed a man in a paisley bathrobe.

  “Hey,” he said to the attendant who came out to the pump—he couldn't help himself, “I nearly killed a man back there.”

  The attendant shook his head. “This road's treacherous. All them trees. You come up on a horse and buggy around one of them curves and one of you's a goner for sure.”

  Carl nodded. It was all right, better, of course, that the man didn't understand. Just so he was able to say it. He wanted to shout it into the dappled light with his head out the window as he flew along the narrow road—nearly killed him! nearly killed him!

  Not until he was turning onto Glacier Road did a doubt worm its way behind his ear. Had he been wise and good or only afraid?

  Carl knew he was a coward. He kept his terror secret from others, but he couldn't fool himself. Cowardice wasn't the worst thing. It was bad, though, when he didn't stand up for himself, when he'd sluiced the bloody floors for nothing after a day of packing, because Tommy Reinquist told him to and he was scared he'd get fired if he didn't, or when he'd let Mattie's father tell him how to treat a horse. No one was gentler with horses than Carl. He was trying to make it up to them.

  He'd been about eight, the day he'd clearly recognized his weakness. He and Hilda, who was only four then, a squat child with cheeks blistered by the January wind, a lazy eye and a running nose, were waiting for her father on the platform outside the feed mill, watching the big boys hoist sacks of oats onto their shoulders and load them onto the wagon. Carl remembered how much he'd admired those boys, and how he'd hoped that he'd be able to carry two sacks at once, one on each shoulder, like Gunther Sweitzer, when he was big. When Hilda whined about the cold, Carl scratched a picture of a fat goose in the snow with a stick to distract her. As he finished, she grabbed the stick away and scribbled the drawing over, tossing snow high into the heavy gray air and chortling. Then, solemnly, she handed the stick back, so he could draw something else.

  He was curling white smoke out of a white chimney when he heard the man bellowing and the whip hissing and snapping. The horse that appeared around the corner, pulling a coal wagon, was obviously sick. Its head was low and its feet splayed, and its breathing came in sharp rents between the raw words and the whip.

  “I'll show you,” the man shouted, standing in front of the wagon seat, “I'll show you!” And then, while the whip coiled black through the air, Carl heard a barking laugh come from the dark opening above the man's red beard.

  Carl cringed and stepped back, as Hilda reached her hand into his. The horse, trying to plant its hoof, slipped on a patch of ice and fell to its knees.

  “No, you don't.” The man leaned back, hauling at the reins, seeming almost to pull the horse back to its feet with brute strength.

  But within seconds the horse was down again, one leg bent awkwardly out, and the man dropped the reins and threw all of his energy into the sizzling whip, bringing it down over and over against the horse's back and then reaching forward, hitting its neck, one stroke leaving a line of blood on the ear closest to Carl and Hilda.

  “Stop,” Carl whispered. In his mind he heard the command as a shout, but from his lips it came only as a thin, watery sound. “Stop it,” he said again. “Stop.” But he pressed himself tight against the wall of the feed mill, as if he were trying to push himself through it. “Stop,” he said, but he only said it to his boots and mouthed it into the wool of Hilda's cap as she stood, huddled against him, her eyes round with surprise.

  No one stopped the man. Not Gunther or the other boys. Not Hilda's father or Mr. Fry who owned the mill. No one stopped him, until Hilda stepped forward.

  Looking back at Carl once, as if to be sure she understood exactly what he wanted, she stepped stoutly to the edge of the platform. Then she screeched in a voice that sounded as if she were being turned inside out, “Stop! Stop it! Stop!”

  Her cries startled the man. He paused and the whip dropped limp against his hand. They brought Hilda's father and Mr. Fry and the big boys running. They changed everything, so that somehow now Gunther was releasing the horse from the harness, and it was the man who sank to his knees, sobbing, nearly tumbling off the wagon.

  “Wife run off yesterday,” Mr. Fry said to Hilda's father, and Hilda's father nodded, as if that meant something.

  But all right, Carl thought with a serene confidence he'd never before experienced. This time, what did it matter if fear had held him back? He was glad he'd left that man alive. If cowardice had kept him from firing his gun, he was glad he was a coward. In any case, he was finished with the Mathilda who'd tormented him. He'd pursued the trail she'd left to the very end and discovered only a man in his bathrobe, puttering among plants, a man who had nothing to do with him at all. He was in the clear now, free of the mysterious wife he would never know and ready to start fresh with the Mathilda he'd loved settled like a soft blanket at the bottom of his heart.

  When, after a nearly sleepless night, Amanda heard no sound from Carl's room that morning, she knew her confession had driven him away. Once she'd wanted him to go, she
thought bitterly. Now she couldn't blame him, but it made her sick to think that he'd left because of her, that she disgusted him, and, under the covers, she drew her knees to her aching chest and tucked her face, clotted with tears, against them. She wanted to be gone, if, having seen into her soul, he couldn't stand to be around her. Why had she been such a fool as to hope for his forgiveness and expect his help? Things had been fine, just fine, the way they were. If only he hadn't asked her, she thought, thrashing now from side to side in helpless frustration, tangling the sheet and the blanket. If only she hadn't trusted him with the truth. If only they could go back, she would've stuck to her story and she never would've nodded when he pointed to Clement's name.

  At last, she forced herself from the bed, washed her face at the washstand and pinned her hair severely. All right, she told herself, pulling the laces of her black shoes tight. All right. But she didn't mean anything by it but a rhythm to take her from one task to the next.

  Later that morning, as she did the laundry in the cool cellar, she felt a little better. She thrust the lever of the washer back and forth, mercilessly agitating Carl's dirty shirts in their gray sudsy bath. All right. If he wanted to go, let him. She and Ruth would be just fine alone. Just fine. Better, in fact. But a dart of fear made her lose her grip on the handle for a moment. What would she say? If he didn't come back by supper, how would she explain?

  She'd say she didn't know where he went. That was the truth. Anyway, he'd been so strange the last few years, going off on his mysterious errands, emerging from the east woods when they'd thought he'd been in the west field, missing meals and acting excited or moping around so dull and distracted that Ruth should hardly wonder if now he just didn't come back. And Rudy, well, he'd believe whatever Amanda told him.

  If he did come back, how would they live? Amanda sagged over the washtub, beaten down by worry. How would he look at her without remembering what she'd done? How would she look at him, knowing that he hadn't forgiven her? Could they stand to hobble on, day after day, appalled by each other?

  She realized that he might try to banish her. He might see it as his right, his duty even. After all, could he permit such an influence on his daughter? Of course, she wouldn't go. She had as much right to stay as he did, she told herself, as she squeezed his shirts through the wringer, the farm was half hers. But what if he wanted to take Ruth with him somewhere else?

  Let him try, Amanda thought, feeding another shirt into the wringer's jaws as cold water poured over her reddened hands. Whatever else happened, she would never let Ruth go.

  Around ten o'clock, as Amanda was pinning the shirts to the line, a plume of dust floated toward her along the distant road. She fought down alarm, forcing herself to bend and shake and pin, shirttail to shirttail, arms hanging down, no surrender. She was ready, she told herself, snapping a wet shirt hard into the blue sky, ready for whatever he had to say.

  He made her wait. He went into the house and came out again, whistling. He went into the barn and came out again, singing. The next time Amanda saw him, she was looking out an upstairs window and he was cresting the hill in the combine. She put a few of Ruth's clothes and an extra dress of her own in her old carpetbag, and tucked in the dollar bills she kept in a coffee can. They'd be ready, if it came to that.

  At dinner at noon and at supper at six, he said only the things he might have said two days ago, before she'd ruined it all with her honesty. What had Ruth learned in school, he asked, and what had she sold at the stand, were the late raspberries still coming in, and it'd better not rain tomorrow. Amanda saw him smile at Ruth and at Rudy, but she avoided his gaze herself, keeping her eyes on the plates. But then, after supper, when they were all sitting in the front room—Ruth reading, Amanda mending, Rudy just sitting with his feet up on the hassock for half an hour before shuffling out to his den over the garage—an unusual thing happened.

  “Why don't we ever play these?” Carl said, opening the cabinet under the phonograph.

  “Ach, they're so old,” Amanda protested, not looking up from the sock she was darning, but he paid no attention, and cranked the handle until suddenly “Alexander's Ragtime Band” came bouncing and tumbling into the room.

  And then, an even stranger thing, Amanda thought later. Afterward, she could hardly believe it, but it happened just the same.

  “Madam, may I have this dance?” He bowed formally and held out his hand.

  “Carl …” She laughed uncomfortably, shaking her head. This was not what they did, how they were. What did he mean by it? Was he making fun? But he lifted her hand off the arm of the chair, and she let him pull her to her feet, let him steer her around the furniture, until she realized she was dancing just as much as he.

  “Pull that chair back, Ruth,” she gasped as she shrank against Carl to escape the smack of the newel post.

  When they saw that Rudy and Ruth were trying to polka to ragtime, they switched partners, so Carl could teach Ruth to turkey-trot. “This is the dance your mother and I used to do,” he said.

  They took turns choosing the records and winding the phonograph, until Rudy collapsed in a chair, fanning his craggy face with a Ladies' Home Journal, and Amanda, hearing the kitchen clock strike, remembered that Ruth had school the next day and must drink a glass of milk and go straight to bed.

  When the house was quiet, Amanda set out plates and bowls for breakfast the next morning, jigging a little as she moved around the table. In the front room, she found Carl tugging the davenport back into place.

  “Here,” she said, easily lifting her end and shrugging off the image of her mother frowning at her unladylike strength. Now that the odd dancing was over, she felt even more wary of Carl than before but wrestling the furniture helped. “That was a good idea,” she said, almost shyly, testing the waters.

  “We should've been doing that all along. Saturday nights, at least. We should've had some kids over for Ruth.”

  “Maybe so,” Amanda said, smoothing the antimacassar on the davenport arm nearest her. She could feel the panic rise even at the suggestion. Didn't Ruth see enough of other children at school?

  “I decided something today,” Carl said, seating himself in an armchair and scraping his still boyish hair back from his forehead with his fingers.

  Now, Amanda thought, still pulling at the white embroidered edge—had it shrunk in the last washing?—he would talk about Clement and Imogene. He would tell her how she'd have to pay.

  “I'm going to get a job.”

  “What?” The antimacassar slid off the arm and fluttered to the floor.

  “My cousin Hilda's husband, he's first mate on one of those iron ships. He can get me a good place.”

  “Oh, a good place. That's good, a good place,” she heard herself saying.

  “You're right about us needing money,” he continued. “I've been distracted and useless for too long here. It's time I got to work.”

  “You're not useless, Carl.” So they'd pretend that she'd admitted nothing, that he was only taking the practical measures she'd been suggesting for a year. He was making this easier than she ever could've hoped. He was letting her run away again, and this time she wouldn't even have to move. But that wasn't, she saw now, what she wanted. She was bone tired of all this running and hiding, of living alone with a monstrous hump of truth strapped to her back. Seeing him sitting there, one hand unconsciously rubbing the hole in his thigh that she knew had never quite closed, she forgot the hysterical regrets of the morning. She wanted now what she'd wanted the night before when he'd stood in the doorway, pointing at the clipping from her scrapbook, and she'd realized that through some silent, miraculous communication of their spirits he'd come to understand her. Again tonight she ached to share with him the events that had pushed both their lives into such lonely paths. She would tell him everything, and then, please God, he would say it was all right; it hadn't been her fault; Mathilda would forgive. She edged toward the abyss. “And that's the only reason you want to go, the money???
?

  “Why else?”

  So he would make her say it first. All right. That was fair. She took a deep breath. She would go on. “I thought,” she said, staring bravely straight into his eyes, “what I said, about Clement Owens …”

  He threw his head back in a sort of half laugh, rose, and went to look out the open window. The weather had changed, Amanda noticed, newly aware of the cool current slipping in over the sill. Summer, worn out, had retreated in a matter of hours, and fall had marched triumphantly down from the north. The air was chilly, and the insects and the frogs, frenzied only the night before, were still.

  “It was so long ago,” he said to the dispassionate dark blue sky, “and now I can't even remember what she looked like. That's awful, isn't it? I've tried, but I just can't. Not really. Not more than a glint now and then.” He turned toward her and said with touching earnestness, “It's hard to know for sure from so far away, but I believe I did love her. And I think she loved me. But you see, I think she must've changed when I went away. I know she must've been lonely and angry with me, too. Yes, I know she was,” he insisted when Amanda shook her head. “She told me so, and she had every right to be, the way I joined up without even telling her because I was scared she'd say no. What I think,” he continued, and his words slowed as if he were deciphering a puzzle as he spoke, “is that it wasn't really my Mathilda who had his baby, but some other woman she became, some other woman I never knew. That's what I think. That's what I've decided,” he said, almost defiantly.

  Amanda felt as if she'd dropped into a bottomless pool and was sinking fast. “Carl, no!” she flailed, “Mattie never …” But she couldn't grab hold of the right words.

  He was sitting beside her then, and he caught the hand she was, without knowing it, beating against the cushion. “Listen, Amanda. Listen to me. I know it was my fault in a way. I didn't have to go so quick like I did. I didn't have to jump at the chance. You were right those times you said I wanted to go. I thought it was the thing a man would do, and I wanted to show her—to show everyone, even myself—that I was a man. I didn't think about what it would mean, how I would get so far away and not be able to come back.” He sighed and looked away. “All I'm saying is that I know what it's like to do something, and then later, the reasons why you did it seem foolish. I know how things can change in ways you never meant. And I'm sure that Mattie would come back, just like I did, if she could, if the baby hadn't killed her. I know she would.”