Ordinary Grace

“Lise is fortunate to have Jake as a friend,” Brandt said. “N takes B-five.”

  “Jake seems pretty happy with the arrangement. C takes B-five.”

  “Lise has no other friends. Really she has no one but me. And I rely on her for so much. I wonder sometimes what will happen to her when I’m gone. B takes B-five. Check.”

  “That’s years away, Emil. And she has family besides you.”

  “They ignore her. They’ve ignored her all her life. Sometimes I think that when I came home blind they were ecstatic. It created a situation that bound their two misfits together in a controllable fashion. Here we reside inside this fence, which, for all intents and purposes, is the extent of our world. And you want to know the odd part of it, Nathan? We’re happy. I have my music and Lise. Lise has her garden and me.”

  “I thought you said happiness was fleeting.”

  Brandt laughed and said, “Trapped with my own words. But if you look at the board carefully, Nathan, I think you’ll see that I have laid a trap for you there.”

  My father spent a few moments studying the game and then said, “Ah, I see what you mean. Clever, Emil. I resign.”

  They continued to talk and I watched Jake and Lise in the garden and listened to Ariel clicking away on the typewriter in the study, and the world inside that picket fence seemed like a good place, a place in which all the damaged pieces somehow fit.

  • • •

  In the early afternoon my father got himself ready for the burial of the man we’d all begun calling simply the itinerant and I told him I wanted to go along. He asked my reason and I tried to articulate my thinking although the truth was that I didn’t really know. It simply felt right. I had been the one to bring the body to light and it seemed fitting that I be there when it was delivered into a darkness eternal. I tried to say as much but knew even as I spoke that I was saying it all wrong. In the end my father studied me a long time and finally allowed as he saw no reason for me not to be there. His only requirement was that I dress as I would for the funeral of someone we knew which meant my Sunday best.

  Jake was odd about the dead man. He wanted nothing to do with the burial and went so far as to accuse me of using the whole episode to my advantage. “You just like being a big man,” he said looking up at me from the card table he’d set up in the living room where he was at work on a paint-by-number. The picture on the box cover showed a rocky beach in an idyllic place that was maybe Maine and looked inviting but it was clear that Jake’s rendering, despite the guidance of lines and numbers, would end up a good deal less than he or anyone but a moron or a monkey would have hoped for.

  “Fine,” I said and I dressed alone.

  My father drove the Packard to the cemetery which was set on a hill on the east side of town. The hole was already dug and Gus was waiting and Sheriff Gregor was there though I didn’t know why and moments after we arrived Mr. van der Waal drove up in the hearse and my father and Gus and the sheriff and the mortician slid the coffin from the back. It was a simple box of pine planed and sanded smooth and it had no handles. The men lifted and carried it on their shoulders to the grave. They laid it on wooden two-by-fours that Gus had arranged across the opening along with canvas straps for the eventual lowering into the earth. Then the men stood back and I with them and my father opened his Bible.

  It seemed to me a good day to be dead and by that I mean that if the dead cared no more about the worries they’d shouldered in life and could lie back and enjoy the best of what God had created it was a day for exactly such. The air was warm and still and the grass of the cemetery which Gus kept watered and clipped was soft green and the river that reflected the sky was a long ribbon of blue silk and I thought that when I died this was the place exactly I would want to lie and this was the scene that forever I would want to look upon. And I thought that it was strange that a resting place so kingly had been given to a man who had nothing and about whom we knew so little that even his name was a mystery. And though I didn’t know at all and still do not the truth of the arrangement, I suspected that it was somehow my father’s doing. My father and his great embracing heart.

  He read the Twenty-Third Psalm and then he read from Romans ending with: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

  He closed the book and said, “We believe too often that on the roads we walk we walk alone. Which is never true. Even this man who is unknown to us was known to God and God was his constant companion. God never promised us an easy life. He never promised that we wouldn’t suffer, that we wouldn’t feel despair and loneliness and confusion and desperation. What he did promise was that in our suffering we would never be alone. And though we may sometimes make ourselves blind and deaf to his presence he is beside us and around us and within us always. We are never separated from his love. And he promised us something else, the most important promise of all. That there would be surcease. That there would be an end to our pain and our suffering and our loneliness, that we would be with him and know him, and this would be heaven. This man, who in life may have felt utterly alone, feels alone no more. This man, whose life may have been days and nights of endless waiting, is waiting no more. He is where God always knew he would be, in a place prepared. And for this we rejoice.”

  My father led us in the Lord’s Prayer and we stood in silence for a few moments staring down at the simple coffin which was pale yellow against the black of the hole beneath. And then my father said something that amazed me. He said, “It’s a good day to be dead.” Which were almost the exact words I’d been thinking. And he said, “Let this man in this place of beauty rest forever in peace.” Which was also very nearly what I’d been thinking. And he nodded to the other men and they each took a strap end.

  The mortician said, “Frank, when we lift, would you please remove the boards?”

  They lifted and I bent and slid the two-by-fours from underneath and the men slowly lowered the coffin. When it was settled they drew the straps back up and my father said, “Gus, would you like a hand?”

  “No, Captain,” Gus said. “I’ve got all day and I intend to take my time.”

  My father shook hands with the sheriff and with the mortician and we returned to our vehicles and left Gus to the duty of sealing the grave with the dirt he’d removed to create it.

  • • •

  At home my father said, “I’m going back into town. I have some details to take care of with Sheriff Gregor and with Mr. van der Waal.” He left again in the Packard. Jake was nowhere to be seen. From the church across the street came the sound of Ariel playing the organ and my mother singing. I changed my clothes and went to the church and asked about Jake.

  “Apparently Danny O’Keefe’s great-uncle wandered off,” my mother said. “Jake went to help Danny find him. Where’s your father?”

  I was surprised to hear that Danny had a great-uncle in New Bremen. He’d told me most of his relatives lived near Granite Falls. I said, “He had to go back into town.” Then I said, “You let Jake go out of the yard? He was grounded, same as me.”

  She was studying the music sheets in her hands and not really paying attention to me. They were working on a piece, a chorale that Ariel had composed for the Fourth of July celebration which would take place in another week. “His friend needed help,” Mother said. “I told him it was all right.”

  “Can I help them, too?”

  “Hmmmm?” She frowned at something on the sheets.

  Ariel sat on the organ bench and smiled at me in a conspiratorial way. “You should let Frankie help,” she said. “The search will go faster.”

  “All right, all right,” my mother said waving me away. “Go.”

  I looked to Ariel and asked, “Where’d they head?”

  “Danny’s house,” she said. “Fifteen minutes ago.”

  A
nd I was gone before my mother could change her mind.

  I ran to Danny O’Keefe’s house which stood at the western edge of the Flats and was in sight of the river. His mother was hanging laundry on the line in the backyard. She was a small woman not much taller than I with black hair and almond eyes and the shading and bone structure of the Sioux. Although Danny never talked about his lineage I’d heard that his mother came from the Upper Sioux community, which was along the Minnesota River well to the west. She wore tan Capris and a sleeveless green top and white sneakers. She was a teacher. I’d been in her fifth-grade classroom and I liked her. As I came into the yard she was bending to her laundry basket.

  “Hi, Mrs. O’Keefe,” I said cheerfully. “I’m looking for Danny.”

  She lifted a blue towel and pinned it to the line. She said, “I sent him to find his great-uncle.”

  “I know. I came to help.”

  “That’s very nice of you, Frank, but I think Danny can handle it.”

  “My brother’s with him.”

  I could tell that surprised her and for some reason didn’t seem to please her.

  I said, “Do you know which way they went?”

  She frowned and said, “His uncle likes to fish. I sent him to look along the river.”

  “Thank you. We’ll find him.”

  She didn’t look particularly encouraged.

  I ran off and in a couple of minutes I was walking the river’s edge.

  I didn’t much like fishing but I knew a lot of guys who did and I knew where they fished. There were a couple of favorite places depending on what you were after. If it was catfish there was a long deep channel that ran behind an old lumberyard. If it was northern pike there was a sandbar a quarter mile farther on that half dammed the river and created a pool favored by those big fleshy fish. And of course there was the trestle half a mile outside of town. The north side of the river opposite the Flats was all cultivated fields with farmhouses hunkered in the shade of cottonwoods and poplars. At a distance ran the highway that connected the valley towns with the city of Mankato forty miles to the east. Beyond the highway rose the hills and bluffs that marked the extremes of the ancient Glacial River Warren.

  I rounded a bend and heard voices and laughter and on the other side of a stand of tall bulrushes I found Jake and Danny skipping rocks. The stones as they touched the brown water left rings on the surface like a series of copper plates. When they saw me Danny and Jake stopped what they were doing and stood with their backs to the sun and squinted at me from the shadows of their faces.

  “Find your uncle?” I asked.

  “Naw,” Danny said. “Not yet.”

  “Won’t find him standing here throwing rocks.”

  “You’re not our b-b-b-boss,” Jake said. He picked up a flat stone and flung it angrily. It bit the water at an angle and slid beneath without skipping once.

  “Why are you so mad at me?”

  “B-b-b-b . . .” His face twisted painfully. “B-b-b . . .” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Cuz you’re a liar.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know.” He eyed Danny who stood fingering a stone that he did not throw.

  “Okay, I’m a big fat liar. Happy? We should find your uncle, Danny.” I pushed past them and kept walking downriver.

  Danny caught up and sauntered beside me and when I looked back I saw Jake still standing where we’d left him, sullenly considering his options. Finally he followed but he stayed behind us at a distance. As much as possible we kept to the sand beaches and to the bare clay flats that had baked and cracked in the heat. Sometimes we had to break our way through stands of tall reeds and brush that grew right to the edge of the river. Danny told me about a book he’d just read in which a guy bitten by a vampire bat was the last human on earth. Danny read a lot of science fiction and he liked to tell you the whole story. He told it pretty well and just as he was finishing we beat our way through a stand of bulrushes covering a stretch of sand where we stumbled into a little clearing with a lean-to at its center. The structure was made of driftwood lashed into a frame with scavenged pieces of corrugated tin as roof and siding. A man sat in the deep shade created by the lean-to. He sat erect with his legs crossed and he stared at us where we stood on the far side of the clearing.

  “That’s my uncle Warren,” Danny said.

  I looked at Jake and Jake looked at me because we both recognized Danny’s uncle. We’d seen him before. We’d seen him with the dead man.

  Danny’s uncle called out from the shade, “Your mother send you after me?”

  Danny said, “Yeah.”

  The man’s hands were laid flat on his bent knees. He nodded thoughtfully. He said, “Any chance I could bribe you to tell her you couldn’t find me?”

  Danny walked across the sand leaving the prints of his sneakers behind him. I followed Danny’s prints and Jake followed mine.

  “Bribe me?” Danny said. He seemed to think about it seriously. Whether he was seriously considering the offer or considering whether the offer was serious I couldn’t say. In any event he shook his head.

  “Didn’t think so,” his uncle said. “How about this then? How about you tell her I’ll be around for dinner. Until then, I’m fishing.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “Fishing, Danny boy, is purely a state of mind. Some men when they’re fishing are after fish. Me, I’m after things you could never set a barbed hook in.” He looked up at Jake and me. “I know you boys.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “I heard they buried Skipper.”

  “Yes, sir. Today. I was there.”

  “You were? Why?”

  “I don’t know. It seemed kind of right.”

  “Kind of right?” His lips formed a grin but his eyes held no humor. “Was anybody else there?”

  “My father. He’s a minister and said the prayers. And our friend Gus. He dug the grave. And the sheriff. And the undertaker.”

  “Sounds surprisingly well attended.”

  “It was fine. They buried him in a real nice place.”

  “No kidding? Well, I’ll be. A lot of kindness shown there. A little late, though, don’t you think?”

  “Sir?”

  “You boys know what itokagata iyaye means? You, Danny?”

  “Nope.”

  “It’s Dakota. It means the spirit has gone south. It means that Skipper’s dead. Your mom or dad ever try to teach you our language, Danny?”

  “Our language is English,” Danny said.

  “I suppose it is,” his uncle said. “I suppose it is.”

  “You got a letter,” Danny said. He pulled it folded from his back pocket and handed it to his great-uncle.

  The man took the envelope and squinted. He reached into his shirt pocket and drew out a pair of glasses with thick lenses and with rims that looked made of gold. He didn’t put them on but used the lenses instead in the way you might use a magnifying glass and painstakingly read the return address. Then he slid his finger under the flap, carefully tore it open, pulled out the letter, and read it with the glasses in the same slow fashion.

  I stood uncomfortably waiting to be dismissed. I was eager to be gone.

  “Shit,” Danny’s uncle said at last and crumpled the letter and threw it into the yellow sand. He looked up at Danny. “Well, didn’t I tell you what to say to your mother? What are you waiting for?”

  Danny backed away and turned and hightailed it out of the clearing with Jake and me at his heels. When we were a good distance away and the wall of bulrushes blinded his uncle to us I said, “What’s with him?”

  Danny said, “I don’t know him very well. He’s been gone a long time. There was some kind of trouble and he had to leave town.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Jake asked.

  Danny shrugged. “Mom and Dad don’t talk about it. Uncle Warren showed up last week and my mom took him in. She told my dad she had to. He’s family. He’s not really so bad. Sometimes
he’s kind of funny. He doesn’t like staying in the house though. He says walls make him feel like he’s in jail.”

  We walked back to where the river ran near Danny’s house and we climbed the bank and Jake and I went our way toward home and Danny went to deliver his uncle’s message to his mother. I wondered what exactly he would tell her.

  We reached our yard and Jake started up the front steps but I hung back.

  Jake said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Didn’t you see?”

  “See what?”

  “Those glasses Danny’s uncle had.”

  “What about them?”

  “They don’t belong to him, Jake,” I said. “They belonged to Bobby Cole.”

  Jake stared at me a moment dumb as a brick. Then the light came into his eyes.

  8

  That evening my grandfather came to dinner. He brought his wife, a woman who was not my mother’s mother, a woman named Elizabeth who’d been his secretary and then became more to him. My real grandmother had died of cancer when I was too young to remember her, and Liz—she insisted we call her Liz, not Grandma—was the only grandmother I knew. I liked her and Jake and Ariel liked her too. Though my father wasn’t fond of my grandfather it was clear that he felt differently about Liz. Only my mother had problems with her. With Liz she was polite but distant.

  My mother fixed cocktail martinis which my father, as always, declined and we all sat in the living room and the adults conversed. My grandfather spoke of the influx of Mexican farmworkers and how it was bringing an unwelcome element to the valley and my father asked how the farmers were supposed to get the work done without the help of the migrants. Liz said that when she saw the migrant families in town they were always clean and polite and the children well behaved and she felt bad that often the entire family, young children and all, had to labor in the fields to earn a living. My grandfather said, “If they’d just learn to speak English.”

  Jake and I often suffered through this kind of discussion in silence. No one asked our opinion and we didn’t feel obliged to offer it. My mother had prepared roasted chicken and stuffing and mashed potatoes and asparagus. The chicken was burned and dry and the gravy lumpy and the asparagus tough and stringy but my grandfather raved. After dinner he took Liz home in his big Buick. My mother and Ariel went to practice with the New Bremen Town Singers, a vocal group my mother had formed two years earlier. They were going to sing the chorale that Ariel had composed for the Fourth of July celebration. My father went to his office in the church and Jake and I were left to do the dishes. I washed and Jake dried.