Rock Island Line

by David Rhodes

  But as she watched, Eleanor became increasingly amazed at what was happening within the excited hunt, and could not move her eyes away. Della was carefully, quietly taking up four-and five-leaf clovers and passing them unnoticed over to be stuck in the dictionary. Everywhere she turned would be another, as though she did not have to look, but merely reach her hand down and one would crop up to be tugged out of the ground. Even in places where the children had already searched. But they were not noticing. Della was finding them and pushing down the clovers around them so that they stood out; then she would walk away, and later the children would find them and begin screaming, “I got one! I got one!”

  Eleanor, inside her heavy dress beneath her old face, thought, I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s uncommon. What can it mean? Does it mean anything? No one can be that lucky. She merely knows how to hunt for them and is practical—No! It’s uncommon.

  Della was finally forced to take hold of one first-grade child (the only student left who had not found a clover himself and was on the verge of tears) and lead him over to a place where she had several located and waiting; and even then he stepped on one and only found the other by Della suggesting he not stoop over, but get down on all fours—helping him in such a way that both hands were on either side of a five-leafed one as big around as a golf ball. He picked it and took it over to the dictionary. “Here’s another one,” he said in an unconcerned way, but watched the older girl press it into place and gave a little jump when she slammed the book shut.

  Della said it was time to go in, and then hollered that it was time, because sounds travel poorly through children. It was only then that she noticed Eleanor’s eyes bent upon her. She told the older ones to monitor a study time, and together she and Eleanor watched them clear the yard and disappear into the building. Della turned to her, smiled and began to speak, but was interrupted.

  “Magic,” said Eleanor. Then she paused, took off her hat, patted her hair and put it back on. Della looked away and wondered if she were going to finish, or begin, or if the word was at the tail end of a private thought and had escaped by mistake. Some old people she had known had been like that.

  “Sometimes I’ve wondered if there’s anything reasonable about magic,” Eleanor continued. “I mean, if it’s real.” Then she bent her eyes down on Della again.

  “Well, I don’t know if it’s real or not. . . . Maybe. . . . What do you mean by magic?”

  “You know, magic. Not black magic or superstition. White magic. Is there such a thing as white magic?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Anyway, I’m sure there is. Its study is not for evil purposes. It reveals luck. It’s a kind of preparation that makes you lucky. Do you know anything about it?”

  “What kind of study?”

  “I don’t know for sure. Yes, incantations and such.”

  “I guess I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Forgive me,” Eleanor said, and stepped several feet closer toward the schoolhouse, her shoes hidden in the clover. “I’m not being precise enough.” Then she began again. “When I was young—much younger than you . . . How old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  There was a pause. Eleanor began again. “Actually age means nothing to me. Understand that no one ever ceases being . . . expectant of life. Now tell me quite simply, how were you able to find those clovers so easily?”

  Then Della understood the reason for Eleanor’s concern with her. Her eyes lit up, she smiled and made a motion as if she were going to clap her hands. “Oh, that,” she said. “That’s just me and finding things. I’ve always been able to do that. Wilson always says that he can never—”

  “Do you mean you knew, when you came out here with them, that you would be able to find them so easily?”

  “Well, yes and no. First of all, I guess I never think about it. Then there have to be some to find. Once Wilson lost one of his nails he uses for putting tobacco in his pipe and was so sure it was in the store that he made me look for it there. It’s a very special nail. But I knew it wasn’t there. And it wasn’t.”

  “How did you know? And aren’t you saying that even before you came out with the children, you had a fairly good idea that there would be some of those four- and five-leafed clovers out here?”

  “No, no,” exclaimed Della. “I know what you’re thinking now, and it’s not true. I know it looks that way, but it isn’t. I assure you, it isn’t. It’s only my way. I find things. It’s the way I’ve always been. When I was a little girl, I found things. If you were me, everything would be common and very ordinary.”

  “This seems so odd, Mrs. Montgomery, to be talking like this, if you know what I mean, about such things. But, truly, you must sometimes feel that there are great forces. Yet what must it be to feel that and still know the way you do about, well, magic. It must be a mystery partially revealed.”

  “No, no, you didn’t understand me.”

  “Yes. You were trying to tell me that life for you is dull, and that’s not true, but I know why you’re trying to say it. You think I’m foolish.”

  “No. I think there is only the feeling—the feeling of mystery about what you know nothing about. Those things you understand are no good to you for that feeling. I imagine, Eleanor, when I watch you drive up, what it must be to control such an animal, and how proud you must feel knowing you can do it without any help. And what it must be to be so tall and straight.”

  “It doesn’t seem the same thing. Those things are . . . ordinary.”

  “Do you mean to say—” Smiling.

  “No, life is not ordinary, Mrs. Montgomery, and I feel that I am making a spectacle of my own narrow nature. But before we stop—and I don’t wish you to do anything but answer—tell me of other things that you know about, like finding things.”

  “That’s all.”

  “I don’t believe it. I’ve always felt that you were very special.”

  “No, no, please—”

  “Stop. We will talk no more of it. There’s no excuse for leaving the children alone so long. It makes demands on them that they aren’t ready for. They can only be quiet so long—and they want to be good—but they are forced by their natures to become unruly, and the conflict isn’t good for them.”

  She turned and began walking toward the schoolhouse, through the clover, which hid her thin ankles.

  Wilson arrived at the schoolyard five minutes before four, and waited until the door was thrown open and students scattered across into the road like bats from the small mouth of a cave. Their noise followed them around the corner and they were hidden by the green-and-gold corn. Della fitted the key to its lock, turned it, tossed her shawl one final time onto her shoulder and came to the wagon. Wilson lifted her up and they set off toward home. The humidity, together with the afternoon heat, wrung beads of sweat out of their bodies and into their clothes. Wilson remarked that he felt “clammy” and that, breathe as he might, he could not seem to get enough air, because he was suffocating all over. White, soapy lather formed between their horse and her harness straps and breast plate. The sounds of her steel shoes on the dirt were perfect thuds—thud, thud, thud—accompanied by the creaks and shudders of the weather-swelled buckboard. Tiny chips of mud clung to the wheels and fell away.

  “What we need, you know,” said Wilson, “is one good gully-washer, and enough of this drizzling. It’s almost like not rain at all—just the air becoming so sticky and wet that loud noises shake water out of it. Oh, by the way, did you know that the amount of water in the air and on the ground never changes? I read that the other day. Doesn’t that seem amazing, that it’s always the same? But of course when you think about it, then you see it’s obvious.”

  “Obvious things are always the most amazing.”

  “Come on now, there you go again.”

  “Wilson, that’s different. There’s some truth in that. It’s not one of my usual generalizations.”

  “Oh no,” laughed Wil
son. “Just because it’s got some truth in it doesn’t mean it’s true. Besides, all generalizations contain some truth, or they’d be complete nonsense and you couldn’t understand them.”

  “What makes you think, Wilson, you can be the judge of how much truth is enough? That seems pretty presumptuous. Why does it have to be so hot today?”

  “That’s what makes it so hot, because it doesn’t have to be. There can’t be any reason for it. And even if there was a reason, it couldn’t be a good enough one.”

  “Poor Wilson,” said Della and laughed.

  “I don’t see what’s so funny,” said Wilson, looking as though he were trying to be brave about his suffering. “You shouldn’t belittle someone trying to find peace, and unable to because of the weather.”

  “Oh no,” said Della, laughing much louder now. “What a terrible thing I’ve done. If I only could have known. Wilson, can you ever forgive me?”

  “My own family, mocking me.”

  “I’m sorry, Wilson.”

  “My own wife yet. Oh, it’s terrible.”

  “Wilson.” Della was reaching over to him, shaking in laughter. “Please . . .

  “No,” he complained, “I’ll be all right. In time. I’ll forget someday.” They were driving into town now. Women were raking grass cuttings out of their yards and piling them along the road, watching the Montgomerys pass and listening to them. Della waved, and continued trying to appease Wilson, who was hot and would not forgive. After the Montgomerys’ voices were gone, still Della’s laughing cut through the sound of the wishing rakes. Pulling a stuck stick from hers, Mrs. Miller resumed humming.

  At home, Wilson opened up the store for Mrs. Wecksler and sold her some buttons and a spool of thread, though in her own sly way she complained of not having a better color selection to choose from, which Wilson accepted, but he got a little mad and indulged, after she left, in a prolonged moment of self-satisfying spite. He straightened a new display of pipes that he had bought from a salesman a week before—pipes that were made by a doctor and could be broken down into three parts. The doctor himself was pictured in the display, with a beard, and explaining that his pipe was a “remarkable scientific discovery—a modern, scientific adaptation of age-old principles, handed down from the aboriginal knowledge of good smoking enjoyment.” Then Wilson locked the front door, turned the sign in the window around so that it read closed and went back into his house. Up from the basement with a bottle of homemade beer, he sat at the table and talked to Della as she worried over a slow-bubbling stew and ate soda crackers one at a time.

  “Did that Byron Bernard come back and pay his bill yet?” she asked.

  “No, but he’ll come.”

  “I don’t trust him much. He’s supposed to owe money to a lot of people. Joan Taylor says Mark isn’t going to sell seed to him any more.”

  “I’ll bet he does.”

  “Why should he? Why should others have to pay for him.”

  “I’ll still bet he does. Anyway, it hasn’t been that long. Besides, he’s forgetful.”

  “He wouldn’t be forgetful if you owed him money. Those kind of people always expect to be paid themselves right away—those stupids.”

  “Whew,” whistled Wilson, and ducked. “That one nearly hit me on the way out.”

  “Here, eat a cracker.” She tossed him a square, and it landed intact beside his glass of beer. He picked it up and nibbled on it with his front teeth.

  “Something very strange happened today.”

  “What?”

  “I’d taken the children out to hunt four-leafed clovers, and we were in the corner next to the beans—just east of the schoolhouse. Eleanor drove up in her carriage and tied Perseus and came over. Then she stood there watching, and right away I forgot about her being there at all, because more and more she comes in now. She doesn’t start right off talking, but sits in the back of the room just watching. Sometimes for hours. So I’ve gotten used to her. But today, after a while, I could tell by the funny way she was looking at me that something was troubling her. I could tell, but I didn’t have the least idea what it could be. Not the least—”

  “And she was amazed at your divinatory arts.” This was how Wilson always referred to Della’s talents.

  “How did you know?”

  “That’s easy. Just about every time someone looks at you in a funny way and you don’t have the least idea what’s going on in their heads, it turns out to be your divinatory arts.”

  “That’s not true. There you go again.”

  “Tell me any other time someone looked at you in a way you didn’t understand in the least.”

  “OK. Wait a minute. Let me think.”

  Wilson drank from the bottom of his glass, and confirmed again the fact that he had out of blind, inexcusable ignorance put in too much beer malt. It had the same bad taste as a very cheap wine, improperly fermented.

  “I know,” she began again. “That time Mike Brown came in and bought cheese and I knew he was worried, but I didn’t know he’d taken his wife to the hospital. And he didn’t tell me either—you found out.”

  “That isn’t the same thing. Sorry, you lose. He wasn’t even looking at you, and it didn’t have anything to do with you. Wait a minute,” said Wilson. He got up, poured the rest of the beer into the sink and went into the pantry, returning with the coffee grinder. He carried it, with the bean canister, back to the table. Wilson liked to grind coffee. “OK,” he said.

  Della bit off the corner of her present cracker. “I could tell she resented me—though I think she would have denied it even if she put the question to herself. But she talked for a long time about what she referred to as magic forces. Doesn’t that seem odd, Mrs. Fitch talking about magic forces? I didn’t know what to say.”

  “Why did you have to say anything? You always think you have to say something.”

  “Well, I couldn’t just stand there like a ninny. You can just say that because you weren’t there. It wasn’t as though she was talking to herself. Then it was that I seemed to feel the resentment.”

  “You just imagined that,” said Wilson, and emptied the little drawer from the bottom of the coffee grinder onto a page of newspaper spread across the tabletop. He repeated: “You just imagined that. Those feelings never existed in Mrs. Fitch. You thought so because you felt nervous, and feeling nervous makes you vulnerable to suspicious thoughts.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I’m sure of it.” Wilson put the drawer back, fed in another handful of beans and resumed grinding.

  Della put the cracker away and peeked in under the lid of the stew—then poked a fork into a potato and let the lid back down.

  “That’s enough coffee, Wilson.”

  “Just twenty-five more beans.” He began putting them in one by one. “Then let’s go sit outside.”

  “It’ll be time to eat pretty soon.”

  “Well, then, let’s go outside now.”

  “After dinner. Then we can sit till it gets dark.”

  “All right . . . but I’m going to get another dog.”

  A short silence ensued.

  “No. No more dogs. One is enough. No more dogs. We decided on that.”

  “I know we decided on no more normal dogs. But this one isn’t normal, Midget. This one’s unnatural. He’s a fishing dog. Lewis was in today and said that it’s his neighbor’s dog and that he sees it out with him all the time in the boat, sitting up in front quietly as can be—or along the bank. Not at all like our dogs. This one’s a coon dog too. He’ll put old Duke to shame.”

  “Then get rid of Duke.”

  “Get rid of Duke!”

  “We’re not going to have two dogs. The last time we had two dogs, they—”

  “That was different. It was Jumbo’s fault. She was never very moral or responsible—but that was because of her childhood. Anyway, you shouldn’t hold grudges. It’s unfair.” Wilson began putting in more beans, and a kind of hostility came into his
eyes as he began grinding, and a ripple of anger lined thinly across his forehead. I could have killed him, he thought. I could kill him now. He had no proof it was her.

  “I’m sorry, Wilson. Don’t think about it, please.”

  “When I think about it, it still makes me mad. He had no proof. It could have been a pack of other dogs. He didn’t see it! He didn’t see it and he couldn’t know. He had no right to shoot her.”

  “Don’t think about it.”

  “Damn it, I want to think about it, I tell you. I want to. I’m going to think about it until I can hate him into a little shriveledup bean and grind him up.”