This Tender Land

by William Kent Krueger

  After I’d finished, Mother Beal said, “Mighty appropriate, Buck, given our current situation. Good night, children.”

  Mrs. Schofield ushered her two younger ones into the tepee. Before I returned the Bible to Mother Beal, I saw pages in the very front with names and dates handwritten.

  “Our family tree,” the old woman explained. She scooted her crate next to the one on which I sat and drew a finger down each page, elucidating her lineage, from the first name and date—Ezra Hornsby, September 21, 1804—to the most recent names—Lester and Lydia Scofield, May 18, 1924. Among the things I learned was an explanation for the tepee. Her father, Simon Hornsby, had been an Episcopal missionary among the Sioux in the Dakota Territory, which was where she’d been raised and had learned the beauty and utility of that simple construct.

  I stared at those pages, which were a solid map of family, and I was envious. These people knew who they were, where they’d come from, and understood the larger fabric into which their lives had been woven. Me, I felt like I was dangling out there, a thread all alone.

  Mother Beal laid the Bible on her lap. “Where do you intend to pass the night?”

  I’d been so caught up in the flow of the evening that I hadn’t thought about it at all. “I guess maybe I’ll bed down in the tall grass somewhere.”

  “Maybeth, go get a blanket and give it to Buck.”

  “No, ma’am, I couldn’t,” I said.

  “You can and you will. Maybeth?”

  The girl went into the tepee and returned with a folded wool blanket. Before she could give it to me, her father stumbled into the firelight and sat down heavily on a crate. His eyes were dazed in a way I recognized, and the smell of whiskey was on him strong.

  Mother Beal said, “And what did you use to buy it?”

  “What?” he said in a terrible attempt at innocence.

  She stared him down and he lowered his eyes.

  “My mouth organ. A trade.”

  Mrs. Schofield came from the tepee and saw her husband bent contritely at the fire. I thought she’d light into him, but she drew him into her arms. He laid his head on her shoulder, as a child might with his mother, and closed his eyes. She gave Mother Beal a look I couldn’t, at that age, interpret but I have since come to think of as profound maternal compassion, a strength emanating from a deep well of endurance that, across my life, I’ve come understand was not particular to Sarah Schofield. I’ve witnessed it in other women who have suffered much without losing their hope or their gift for embracing with forgiveness those who are broken.

  “Let’s go to bed, sweetheart,” she said, and led him inside the tepee.

  “Maybeth, why don’t you help Buck find a soft spot for the night?” Mother Beal said. “I’ll wait here for you. Don’t be long.”

  We walked out of the firelight but not far because there was only a quarter moon in the sky and the night was rather dark. The high grass of the riverbank gave way to sand, and I found a spot a few dozen yards from the Schofields’ encampment and laid the blanket out on the beach. The stars were legion, and the Milky Way was a soft, blurry arc across the heavens.

  “I’ll stay a bit, if you like,” Maybeth offered. “It’s kind of scary out here.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “I didn’t think so,” she said.

  We sat on the blanket, and Maybeth crossed her legs and rubbed the patch that covered one knee.

  “I had a nice dress,” she said. “Blue. But I gave it away.”

  “Why?”

  “Janie Baldwin needed it more. She was picking strawberries from a garden in town, stealing them, really, and a dog attacked her. Tore her dress almost completely off her. The Baldwins, well, they’re worse off than we are.”

  “Your family’s nice.”

  She looked back toward the glow of the fire. “I worry about Papa.”

  I thought of my own father and how he’d made his living supplying the whiskey for men like Powell Schofield. I wasn’t sure what do with that.

  “There’s my star,” she said, pointing toward the upper glimmer in the cup of the Big Dipper.

  “Your star? You own it?”

  “I claimed it. There are more stars in the sky than people on earth, so there are plenty to go around. I claimed that one because if you follow the line that connects it with the one below, you’ll find the North Star. It helps me know where I’m going. What star is yours?”

  “The one below,” I said. “The one that connects and helps show the way.”

  We gazed at our stars until Maybeth said, “I better go back.”

  “Thank you for the blanket.”

  I thought she would leave then, but she stayed a moment longer. “How old are you?”

  “Thirteen,” I said. It was almost true.

  “Me, too. Do you know Romeo and Juliet? Shakespeare?”

  Because of Cora Frost, I knew about the playwright. I vaguely knew the story line, two people who were in love and it didn’t turn out particularly well for them.

  “Juliet was thirteen and Romeo wasn’t much older,” she said. “People married young back then, I guess.”

  Watching her across the fire earlier that evening, I’d thought about kissing Maybeth Schofield and had tried to imagine how that might feel.

  “Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say good night till it be morrow.”

  In the quiet after she spoke, I stared at the river, a ghostly, starlit flow before me, and thought again what it would be like to kiss Maybeth Schofield.

  “Buck?”

  I turned my face to hers, and she leaned to me and pressed her lips against mine for the briefest of moments. Then she stood and ran back to her family’s camp.

  I lay that night staring up at the two stars that would forever be connected in my thinking, filled with a fire that was completely new to me and whose burn was not pain but infinite pleasure. “Maybeth,” I said aloud, and there seemed such a sweetness on my tongue.

  Then I thought about Albert and Mose and Emmy, and once again I was afraid, terrified that maybe I’d lost them forever. It wasn’t just fear that stabbed at me, but guilt as well because, for a little while, in the company of the Schofields, I’d forgotten them. What kind of brother was I?

  * * *

  MORNING CAME EARLY in the newly dubbed Hopersville. When I rolled over in my blanket, I could smell the cook fires already burning. I sat up, looked at the river, a broad reflection of a rose-colored sky, and I knew what I had to do that day.

  Mrs. Schofield had her own cook fire going. A black pot half-filled with water hung over the flames, and a sooted coffeepot had been set among the embers at the fire’s edge. No one else seemed to be up yet, and Mrs. Schofield sat alone with a steaming blue enamel cup in her hand. She smiled at me.

  “Are you always an early riser, Buck?”

  “When I have things to do,” I said.

  “Do you drink coffee?”

  I didn’t, but I was almost thirteen, old enough to marry, at least in the old days, and I figured I must be old enough for coffee, too.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “Grab yourself a cup from that red crate in the back of the truck.”

  The tailgate was down and on it sat the red crate, which contained cups and plates and flatware, and pots and pans. The rest of the pickup bed was jammed full of everything the Schofields had brought with them from Kansas. I took one of the cups from the crate, and Mrs. Schofield filled it from the blackened coffeepot. The brew was bitter and not at all to my liking, but I smiled as if it were ambrosia and thanked her.

  “So you have a plan, Buck?”

  “There are some friends I have to find.”

  “Around here?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I hope.”

  “Where are you going to look?”

  I’d thought about that much of the night. If the cops had somehow apprehended my family, they were near enough to Mankato that I thought that’s whe
re they might have been taken for processing. I intended to visit the police department and find out for sure. Beyond that, I didn’t have much of a plan.

  “Around,” I said.

  “Big place, that. Might they be here in Hopersville?”

  “I doubt it, ma’am. If they’d heard me playing my harmonica, they’d have come running.”

  Mother Beal emerged from the tepee, her long gray hair all mussed from a night’s sleep. So early in the morning, she looked like an old tree bent and battered by a storm. She straightened her back and it was like firecrackers popping. When she saw me, she smiled.

  “Sleep well?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thanks again for the blanket.”

  “It’s what people do, Buck. Help one another. My, my, that coffee smells wonderful.”

  Maybeth was up next. She must have brushed her hair before she came out because it was long and soft and didn’t look at all slept on.

  The sun had just risen. The light of the new day broke through the trees and I saw Maybeth drenched in gold and my heart leapt.

  “What can I do, Mama?” she asked.

  “We’ll need oatmeal and molasses,” Mrs. Schofield said.

  Maybeth headed toward the truck and Mother Beal said, “She might need some help, Buck.”

  We stood at the dropped tailgate, and Maybeth said, “I dreamed about you last night. Did you dream about me?”

  “Yes.” It wasn’t exactly a lie because, although I hadn’t actually dreamed about her, I’d certainly thought about her a good deal and had imagined more kisses.

  “That box,” she said, pointing. “Could you pull it out here?”

  It was corrugated cardboard, filled with canned goods and jarred preserves of all kinds, none of it store bought.

  “You made this stuff?” I asked.

  “Mostly Mama and Mother Beal, but I helped. Most of it came from our garden in Kansas.”

  She drew out a jar of amber-colored liquid, the molasses.

  “And that box.” She pointed toward another, and when I pulled it onto the tailgate, she took out a round box of Quaker Oats.

  The twins had risen by then, but it was a while before Mr. Schofield made his appearance. By then Mother Beal had said grace and we were eating. Without a word, Mr. Schofield sat beside his wife and she ladled out hot cereal for him.

  “Buck,” he said, “I wonder if I could have your help today.”

  “Whatever for?” Mother Beal asked.

  “I’m going to give a shot to fixing that truck engine.”

  I saw Mrs. Schofield and Mother Beal exchange a look, but they said nothing.

  “I don’t know a lot about engines,” I said.

  “Me neither, Buck, but if I don’t get her running we’ll never make it to Chicago.”

  I thought about Albert, who could probably have worked magic on the broken engine, and that made me think about the mission I’d set for myself that day, one I was afraid might be hopeless.

  “Powell,” Mother Beal said, “maybe Buck has other plans.”

  “No, ma’am,” I said. “I can help.”

  But it was a doomed effort from the beginning. After a couple of hours that served only to set the man to using language that would have done a sailor proud, he gave up. Engine parts lay scattered on the ground, and I thought that if ever there’d been a shot at fixing the truck, it was gone now. Mr. Schofield looked at the result of our labor, shook his head, and said, “I need a drink.”

  Without a word to his family, he walked away under the trees.

  “Maybeth,” Mrs. Schofield said.

  “I understand, Mama.” Maybeth moved to follow him.

  “May I help?” I offered.

  Mrs. Schofield gave a nod.

  We set off together, and in a bit Maybeth took my hand, and although there was still my family to be found, I didn’t feel alone anymore.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  HOPERSVILLE WAS ALIVE with activity. The hovels may have been makeshift, but the lives they housed were real and vital. Though a lot of the residents in that town of shacks were single men, there were a number of families in the encampment, and the sound of the children’s laughter was little different from the sound that might have been heard in a more settled place.

  Maybeth and I followed her father at a distance. He skirted a rocky, tree-covered hill that rose above Hopersville and followed the railroad tracks into Mankato. It was clear he knew exactly where he was going. We didn’t talk, but I felt a profound sense of sadness from Maybeth as she watched the hunched figure of her father. At a dirt road that intersected the tracks, he turned right and, a hundred yards farther on, disappeared into the kind of place I knew well. A lot of people would have called it a speakeasy, but my father had always referred to these places as blind pigs, don’t ask me why. Albert and I had accompanied him into dozens as he’d made his deliveries of bootlegged liquor. If Mr. Schofield was the man I was beginning to understand him to be, I figured he wouldn’t come out for a long while.

  Maybeth stood in the morning sun and stared at the shabby wayside. “I don’t understand.”

  “My father said that in some men it’s a kind of sickness,” I told her. “They crave the drink.”

  “That’s the real reason we lost the farm,” she said. “He blames the weather. He blames the banks. He blames everything and everyone but himself.”

  Her words were angry now, the sadness flown.

  “He’ll be a while,” I said. “I’ve got business in town. Want to come?”

  In Mankato, I found a newsstand and checked the morning paper. I figured if the authorities had nabbed my family, it would have made headlines. But there was nothing. Which didn’t necessarily ease my worry. I asked about the sheriff’s office and was directed to the county courthouse, an imposing structure with a tall clock tower atop which stood an immense statue representing Justice, a blindfolded lady holding a set of scales.

  Maybeth had been patient as I’d gone about my business and she’d asked no questions. But now she said, “What are we doing here?”

  At the edge of the walk that led up to the courthouse steps was a stone bench. We sat down, and I looked deeply into her eyes. “Can I trust you?”

  Her answer was to lean to me and plant a kiss on my lips, a long one this time.

  I told her my real name and all that had happened in the last few weeks, everything except for the killings. How do you tell the girl you love that you’re a cold-blooded murderer?

  “You think they’re in there?”

  “If the police picked them up, then maybe.”

  “Are you just going to walk right in and ask?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “They’ll be looking for you, won’t they?”

  “My name hasn’t been in any of the papers, so maybe not.”

  “Just by asking, you might give yourself away.”

  She was probably right, and I sat there staring at all that chiseled stone with no idea how to get at the answers inside.

  “I could ask,” she said.

  And I wanted to kiss her again. So I did.

  “It might be dangerous. You could get into big trouble.”

  “I want to help.” She stood up and smiled down at me. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back.”

  She walked to the courthouse and up the steps, and that huge hall of justice swallowed her whole.

  I waited a long time, nearly half an hour according to the clock in the courthouse tower. I was sure something had happened to her, she’d asked the wrong question of the wrong people, and now, like my family, she was a prisoner. And it was my fault. I stared at that stone fortress and could think of no good reason to keep myself free. I stood and marched up the sidewalk, up the steps, and was just reaching for the door when Maybeth came back into the light.

  She took my arm and we returned to the stone bench.

  “I talked to a woman who works for the police, but she’s not police herself,” Maybeth said in a conspiratoria
l tone. “She types and stuff. There’s something big going on. A manhunt she called it. But that’s all I could get out of her. Nothing about your family.” The fear in her face mirrored my own. “Are you the manhunt?”

  Manhunt, I thought, and jumped to the conclusion that my worst fear had been realized. They’d grabbed Albert and Mose and Emmy, and now they were looking for me.

  “I guess so.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I can’t just leave my family in there. I have to get them out.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. I have to think. Let’s walk.”

  We made our way along the streets of Mankato, I don’t know for how long, Maybeth silent beside me. I beat my brain trying to think how I could spring my family, but I always came back to the fact that I was nobody and had nothing.

  “I should go back,” Maybeth finally said. “Mama and Mother Beal will be worried. Come on, Odie.”

  “Buck,” I said. “My name is Buck now.”

  At the harshness in my voice, she stepped away. But instead of leaving, she took my hand. “When you don’t have anything else to believe in, that’s when you need to believe in miracles.”

  I looked at her patched pants, her scuffed shoes with their worn-down heels and twine in place of laces, her thin shirt faded nearly white from the sun. I thought about the farm they’d lost in Kansas and her father right now in a blind pig, probably drinking away what little they still possessed. The Schofields had lost everything, and yet Maybeth still believed in miracles.

  She tugged gently on my hand. “Come with me. We can figure this out together.”

  Where else did I have to go? So I turned with her, and we headed back.

  Before we got to Hopersville, however, we came across a monument to a legion of the dead. In a small grassy area, set behind the rails of an iron fence, stood a huge slab of granite, smoothed and shaped like the headstone for a grave. Into its face had been chiseled