Ordinary Grace

  “All right,” my father said.

  “And your two boys as well,” the sheriff added, “if that’s all right with you. I’d like to get a complete statement from them about their altercations with Engdahl. And I think we’d all be interested in hearing what Engdahl has to say for himself. On a lot of fronts.”

  We started up the trail that led through the cottonwoods but Doyle hung back. The last I saw of him that morning he was headed downriver toward the Flats.

  19

  At home we found Gus with my mother which was odd. Though she tolerated his presence my mother didn’t care much for Gus. She often told my father that his friend was crude and vulgar and an influence on us boys that we would all come to regret. My father acknowledged the truth of much of what she said but in the end always defended Gus. I owe him my life, Ruth, he would say but I never heard him say why.

  They sat at the kitchen table both of them smoking and when we walked in my mother stood and looked with hope toward my father. He shook his head. “We didn’t find anything,” he said.

  “They’re looking for Morris Engdahl,” I said.

  “Engdahl?” Gus swung around and eyed me. “Why Engdahl?”

  “I told him about the quarry and about Luther Park.”

  My mother put a hand to her mouth and spoke from behind her fingers. “You think he might have done something to Ariel?”

  “We don’t know anything,” my father said. “They just want to talk to the boy.”

  We ate. Cold cereal with slices of banana chewed and swallowed in an awful silence. Near the end the telephone in the living room rang and my father leaped to answer.

  “Oh,” he said. “Hello, Hector.” He bowed his head and closed his eyes and listened, then said, “We have a situation here, Hector, and I can’t make the meeting. Whatever the group decides is fine with me.” He hung up and came back to the kitchen. “Hector Padilla,” he said. “There’s a meeting this morning to talk about the migrant worker shelter.”

  The phone rang again and this time it was Deacon Griswold calling to say he’d heard about Ariel and if there was anything he could do just let him know. And it rang again a few minutes later and it was Gladys Rheingold saying that if Ruth wanted company she’d be happy to come over. And it rang and rang after that with offers from townspeople and neighbors who’d heard about Ariel and wanted to know if they could help. And finally it was the sheriff saying he had Morris Engdahl at his office and would Dad and we boys come down there.

  “Mind if I tag along?” Gus said.

  “I don’t suppose it’ll do any harm,” my father replied. Then to my mother he said, “Would you like me to call Gladys?”

  “No,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

  But it was clear to me that she wasn’t fine. She looked sick, her face drawn and ashen, and she was smoking one cigarette after another and drumming her fingers on the table.

  “All right,” my father said. “Frank, Jake, let’s go.”

  We left, all of us except my mother, who sat staring at the kitchen cupboard with cigarette smoke above her head as thick as if she herself was on fire.

  • • •

  The sheriff sat with his arms folded on the table. Engdahl sat across from him slumped in a chair in a manner that was clearly meant to communicate his disrespect. He looked bored in a calculated way.

  The sheriff said, “Is it true you threatened these boys?”

  “I told them I’d kick their asses, yeah.”

  “I understand you assaulted Frank last night.”

  “Assaulted? Hell, all I did was grab the little puke’s arm.”

  “And might have done more if Warren Redstone hadn’t been there?”

  “Redstone? I don’t even know who the hell that is.”

  “Big Indian.”

  “Oh. Him. We had some words, and I left. That’s all.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “I don’t remember. Around.”

  “Alone?”

  “I ran into Judy Kleinschmidt. We kind of made a night of it.”

  “Did you go to Sibley Park and do a little partying with some kids there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you see Ariel Drum?”

  “I saw her, yeah.”

  “Talk to her?”

  “I might have said something. Hell, I talked to a lot of people there.”

  “I heard you got into a tussle with Hans Hoyle.”

  “Yeah. Traded a couple of punches, nothing serious. He called my car a piece of shit.”

  “Watch your mouth, Morris. What time did you leave the party?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Did you leave alone?”

  “No. Judy was with me.”

  The sheriff nodded to one of his men and the deputy left.

  “Did you go straight home?”

  “No.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “I’d rather you did.”

  Engdahl thought a moment then shrugged in a what-the-hell way. “I went to the old Mueller place out on Dorn Road,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “The place is empty and there’s a big pile of hay in the barn and I had a blanket in my car. See?”

  The sheriff took a moment to put two and two together. “You and the Kleinschmidt girl?”

  “Me and Judy, yeah.”

  “How long did you stay?”

  “Long enough.” Engdahl grinned and showed his teeth.

  “Then what?”

  “I took her home. Then went home myself.”

  “What time was that?”

  “I don’t know. The sun was about to come up.”

  “Anybody see you arrive?”

  Engdahl gave a quick shake of his head. “My old man had a snootful last night and was sawing logs on the sofa. Wouldn’t’ve heard a bomb go off.”

  The sheriff leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest and for a full minute sat in silence and appraised Morris Engdahl. Over the course of that minute Engdahl went from his slouch to an erect posture and then to a twitching of his shoulders in a nervous way and finally said, “Look I told you everything. I don’t know anything about Ariel Drum. I saw her at the party on the river, that’s all. Hell, I don’t think I even said a word to her. She was sitting on the other side of the fire and just staring into it like maybe she was too good to talk to the rest of us. She’s like that. Doesn’t matter she’s got a harelip.” He stopped blathering and shot my father a guilty look.

  The sheriff waited but once Engdahl had embraced silence he held to it.

  “All right, Morris. I’d like you to stick around until we find Judy and talk with her.”

  “Stick around? I gotta be at the cannery at four for my shift.”

  “We’ll do our best to get you there on time.”

  “Christ, you better.”

  “Say, Lou,” the sheriff said to the deputy who’d been with us on the river. “Put Morris in a cell so he can lie down. He looks like he could use twenty winks.”

  “You’re locking me up? I didn’t do anything. You can’t arrest me.”

  “I’m not arresting you, Morris. Just offering you our hospitality for a while. Just until we talk to Judy Kleinschmidt.”

  “Shit,” Engdahl said.

  “Watch your language,” the sheriff snapped. “Impressionable boys here.”

  Engdahl looked at me and if looks could kill I’d’ve been dead a dozen times.

  We headed home and when we arrived we found a cruiser from the New Bremen police department parked in our gravel drive. My father pulled up next to it on the grass and we went inside where Doyle sat at the kitchen table with my mother.

  “Nathan,” she said looking up at him lost and frightened.

  Doyle stood and turned to my father and held out his left hand. “Mr. Drum, I just want to show you something. Is this your daughter’s?”

  Doyle’s big palm cradled someth
ing wrapped in a clean handkerchief. With his right hand he drew back the corners of the handkerchief and revealed a gold necklace with a heart-shaped locket inset with mother-of-pearl.

  “Yes,” my father said. “She was wearing it last night. Where’d you get it?”

  Doyle’s face was cold as winter concrete. He said, “It was in the possession of Warren Redstone.”

  20

  Gus went with my father and Doyle to the sheriff’s office to discuss the locket. Jake and I stayed with our mother which was difficult. She communicated her fear through silence and random movements. She sat at the kitchen table and smoked for a minute then stood and paced and ended up in the living room where she picked up the phone as if to make a call but put the receiver back down and crossed her arms and stared through a window while the cigarette smoldered in her hand. From the kitchen I watched the ember crawl toward her fingers as she stood frozen in terrible thought or speculation.

  “Mom,” I said when I couldn’t stand it anymore and I was sure she would be burned.

  She didn’t look away from the window.

  “Mother!” I said. “Your cigarette!”

  She didn’t move or acknowledge my words in any way. I rushed across the room and touched her arm and she looked down and suddenly realized what was about to happen and dropped the cigarette and stamped the ember out leaving a black smudge on the honey-colored floorboard.

  I glanced back at the kitchen. Jake had been watching and I saw the frightened look on his face. It was clear that the house with Mother in it was a place oppressed by desperate worry and I didn’t know what to do or how to help.

  Then I heard the crush of gravel in the driveway. I went to the kitchen and looked out the window. Karl had pulled up in his little Triumph with Emil in the passenger seat. Above them loomed a brooding sky. Karl helped his uncle out of the car and led him to the kitchen door.

  “Mr. Brandt’s here!” I called.

  “Oh, Emil,” Mother said sweeping into the kitchen and drawing Mr. Brandt into her arms. “Oh, Emil. I’m so glad you came.”

  “I couldn’t stand waiting this out alone, Ruth. I had to be here.”

  “I know. I know. Come and sit with me.”

  She led him into the living room where they sat together on the sofa.

  Karl hung back with me and Jake. He asked, “Any word?”

  “They found her locket,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Officer Doyle. Warren Redstone had it.”

  “Who’s Warren Redstone?”

  “Danny O’Keefe’s great-uncle,” Jake said.

  “How’d he get it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “My dad and Gus and Officer Doyle went to the sheriff’s office with it.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Half an hour maybe.”

  Karl stepped into the doorway to the living room. “I’m leaving for a little while, Uncle Emil,” he said. “I’ll come back for you.”

  He took off in a hurry. He leaped into his red sports car and shot from the drive and sped up Tyler Street toward town. With my mother and Brandt in the living room and my father and everyone else gone to the sheriff’s office, Jake and I were left alone with our own concerns.

  “You hungry?” I asked.

  “No,” Jake said.

  “Me neither.” I sat down at the table and ran my hand across the smooth Formica. “How’d he get it?”

  “Get what?”

  “Ariel’s locket.”

  “I don’t know.” Jake sat down too. “Maybe she gave it to him.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe he found it.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You don’t think he hurt her or anything?”

  I thought about Warren Redstone and about how when we’d met him for the first time under the trestle with the dead man I’d been afraid for Jake. I thought about how we’d stumbled across him at his lean-to on the river when Danny was with us and how Danny had fled. I thought about his cold dismissal of me in the basement of Danny’s house just before we went to the quarry. And I thought about how, when he’d interceded for me the night before, there was something in him that had frightened even Morris Engdahl.

  “I stood up. I’ve got to get out of here,” I said.

  Jake stood up too. “Where are you going?”

  “The river.”

  “Me, too,” he said.

  I went to the doorway and saw my mother and Brandt in deep urgent conversation. “Jake and me are going out for a while,” I told them.

  Mother glanced in my direction and then went back to talking with Brandt. Jake and I left the house through the kitchen door.

  The sky had changed. The gray had deepened to the color of charcoal and the clouds had begun to boil. An erratic wind had risen and within its gusts was carried the sound of distant thunder from the west. We crossed the backyard and the pasture where the wild grass and daisies rippled as if the skin of the earth was alive. We skirted the Sweeneys’ house where laundry hung on the line and I could hear the pop of bed linen snapping in the wind. We crossed Fourth Street and threaded our way between two fenceless houses and across Fifth. On the far side the ground sloped immediately toward the river. The slope was covered with bramble but a path had long ago been worn through the tangle of thorny vines and we followed it to a dry mudflat that edged the brown water and we turned northwest where two hundred yards away lay the long reed-covered stretch of sand on which Warren Redstone had constructed his lean-to.

  “What are we doing?” Jake asked.

  “Looking,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What if he’s there?”

  “Then he’s there. Are you afraid?”

  “No.”

  “Then come on,” I said and quickened my pace because I’d felt the first drops of rain.

  We didn’t bother trying to hide our approach but plunged recklessly through the reeds that grew higher than a man’s head. We emerged to find the clearing vacant. I went straight to the lean-to and ducked inside and saw immediately that the buried can had been removed. What remained was a small mound of sand beside an empty hole.

  “It’s gone,” I said and backed out and stood and turned and found Jake terrified and mute in the grip of Warren Redstone.

  “Little thieves,” the man said.

  “We’re not thieves,” I shot back. “You’re the thief. You took my sister’s locket.”

  “Where’s my can?” Redstone said.

  “We don’t have your can. The police do. And they have Ariel’s locket and they’re going to arrest you.”

  Redstone said, “What for?”

  “Let Jake go,” I said.

  Redstone did as I’d demanded, released Jake with a rough little shove in my direction. My brother stumbled to my side and turned and we both faced Danny’s great-uncle.

  “Where’s Ariel?” I said.

  He looked at me and I could not read his face. He said, “Your sister?”

  “Where is she?”

  “I haven’t seen her.”

  “You’re a liar. You had her locket.”

  “I found that locket.”

  “Where?”

  “Upriver.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass whether you believe me or not. I just want my can.”

  “The police have it and they’re going to put you in jail until you tell them what you did with Ariel.”

  “Christ, boy, the only thing in that can are bits and pieces of my life. Nothing important to anyone but me. Everything in there I found somewhere or someone gave me. I’m not a thief. And I sure as hell don’t know anything about your sister.”

  Redstone stared at me and I stared back and if there was any fear in me at all it lay so deep beneath my boiling anger that it had no effect. If Redstone at that m
oment had attacked I’d have fought him tooth and nail.

  Rain began to fall in drops so large and heavy they left dents in the sand. The wind was fierce and steady and the thunder that had been distant broke now above the town and although I couldn’t see the lightning I could smell the electricity of the storm. Rain ran down Redstone’s face like water down a rock and still he did not look away from me or move. I stood as unyielding as he although I knew that with his huge hands he could at any moment destroy me.

  Then we heard the sirens approaching.

  Redstone cocked his head and listened. From the direction of the slope along Fifth Street I heard the sound of car doors slamming and men shouting.

  I hollered, “Here! He’s here!”

  Redstone swung his dark eyes back to my face and there was in them at last something that I understood and that to this day makes me ashamed.

  He said calmly and without hate, “You’ve just killed me, white boy.”

  He turned and began to run.

  21

  The bulrushes shook as if a herd of elephants raged through and in a moment a group of men burst into the clearing. My father and Karl and Gus were among them and the sheriff was there and Doyle and a couple of deputies. They halted when they saw Jake and me at the lean-to. Halted all except my father who strode straight to us and stood eyeing us with confusion and concern.

  “What are you boys doing here?”

  “Looking for Warren Redstone,” I said.

  The sheriff came and stood beside my father. He said brusquely, “Where did he go?”

  I thought about Redstone’s parting words: You’ve just killed me, white boy. And I recalled the afternoon in the back of Halderson’s Drugstore and the drunken men with the look of murder in their eyes. I stared into my father’s face where rain ran off his brow in clear rivulets and I saw a fearful desperation there. I looked into the sheriff’s face and was met with a coldness, a hard determination empty of compassion, and although I didn’t see murder in either of these men what I did see was disturbing enough to make me hold my tongue.

  “That way,” Doyle shouted and pointed downriver toward the path Jake and I had hastily broken through the reeds and Warren Redstone in his own flight had followed.