The High Divide

by Lin Enger

  “Well,” Mrs. Powers said, standing above them, palms pressed together. “Chicken’s done, I can smell it. Let’s put it to good use, shall we?”

  As usual, Eli took the breast meat, Danny the wings and legs, and though the bird was large and tender, the boys ate with little relish. They left their plates half full then barely touched the apple pie she laid out for dessert.

  “Is there something wrong, aren’t you hungry?” Mrs. Powers asked.

  Eli was tempted to say something cruel—about the food, her home, her person—anything to punish her for what she knew about their father and he did not. And when she said, “I suppose you’ll be leaving in the morning,” he told her there was a westbound scheduled to leave at ten, careful not to explain that he and Danny, with any luck, would be on the seven o’clock freight-hauler, the first train leaving in the morning, squirreled away in one of its boxcars.

  She took them upstairs to a bedroom overlooking the street, the room her sons used to sleep in, she told them, with a bed that had real springs. She pressed on it to show them how comfortable it was.

  “Bacon and eggs at seven sharp,” she said. “That should give you time to catch your train. Good night now.”

  They crawled into bed, exhausted but not sleepy, Eli’s eyes scraping like sandpaper every time he blinked, and Danny’s narrow face drooping. Outside, the wind had let up, but a cold light drizzle was tapping the window glass.

  “Do you believe her?” Danny asked. “You think he fought in the Indian Wars?”

  “She didn’t say anything about fighting.”

  “Custer, though.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you think he’d lie to us?” Danny asked.

  “He never lied. He just didn’t tell things.”

  “Why, though?”

  “It’s probably like she said, because nothing much was going on. Nothing to tell about.” Eli didn’t believe this, but in fact he had no idea what was going on during those years, down in the territories.

  “Do you think Mother knows about it? You think he told her?”

  “I do.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Truth is, we don’t know, do we,” Eli said.

  “I know one thing—if it was me, I would’ve told my boys. Wouldn’t you?”

  “I guess I would, yeah. Unless it was something I didn’t want to remember myself.”

  “You think he doesn’t?”

  “It might remind him of men he knew that got killed. Friends of his. He probably doesn’t want to have to think about them anymore.”

  Danny was quiet for a little while. “When we get back home,” he said, “I’m going to tell everybody that my dad rode with Custer. Everybody. Herman Stroud, too. He will leave me alone then, won’t he.”

  Eli held his breath, lines of heat burning through the veins in his arms and pulsing in his neck. Sometimes his brother made him crazy, saying things out loud that needed to be held on to. Some things required silence and thought—not talk—and Eli hated it when people didn’t understand that.

  “Won’t he?” Danny asked. “Herman?”

  “Listen,” Eli said, “I can take care of Herman Stroud and anybody else. Now be quiet and go to sleep.”

  Danny had been lying on his back, but now he flipped around. “Are you mad at me?” he asked. “Why are you mad?”

  “I’m not mad, I’m only tired. Now leave me alone, will you? Please.”

  “I was only saying—”

  “I know what you’re saying, Danny. As far as I’m concerned, you can tell everybody, Herman, too. But we have to go to sleep now, all right? We have to get up early, like I told you.”

  Danny sighed and shifted around the other way and retreated to the far edge of the bed. He fidgeted for a while, turning from one side to the other, but soon he was sleeping, his breath coming slow and rhythmic.

  Eli was exhausted, but his mind wouldn’t stop spinning, his thoughts leading him into corners he couldn’t find his way out of. If Mrs. Powers was telling the truth, and their father had gone out to Miles City after bones, why hadn’t he explained that before he left? If it wasn’t Mrs. Powers he’d come out here to see, but her husband instead, what had there been to hide? He remembered the words of her letter—a burst of sun in a long dry season—and tried to imagine his own mother widowed, and the loneliness she would feel. Possibly the letter carried less meaning than Eli had given to it. Or a different meaning. But whatever had brought his father out here, and wherever he was now, and whyever he’d chosen to leave without an explanation, there was now also the matter of the Seventh Cavalry and a whole secret chapter in his father’s life.

  Why would he do that? Eli thought, lying in the dark room. Why would he do that to us?

  On the dresser beneath the gable window a loud clock tapped away the minutes like an impatient finger, and several times Eli climbed out of bed and tiptoed across the floor and put his face up close to the clock’s face to check the time. At ten-thirty he heard Mrs. Powers move lightly down the hall and climb into a squeaky bed. Then around midnight he heard what sounded like a quiet knock on the front door. Instantly Mrs. Powers was out of bed and padding quietly along the hall and down the stairs. A door latch sounded below. Then the melodic tone of her voice floated up in the stillness, though Eli couldn’t make out what she said. He climbed out of bed, crept into the hall, and paused at the top of the stairs, one hand on the rail. Below, in the kitchen, heavy bootsteps sounded across the floor, then stopped. In the same instant, a square of light rose out of the hallway floor. Eli bent down and knelt at the heat grate, put his face right into it and saw the kitchen table below, its oak surface gleaming in the lamplight. At the far edge of his view he could see a man’s knee and booted foot. A dark hat rested at the center of the table. Eli wondered for a moment if it was the one his father had worn on the foggy morning he walked away, but no, the brim wasn’t wide enough.

  “You’re pretty sure about about this,” the man said, his tone low and pinched, a voice Eli didn’t recognize.

  A large hand moved across the tabletop, and its fingers drummed against it for a few moments before the hand retreated. Mrs. Powers spoke softly. Eli couldn’t make out her words.

  “They might be telling you God’s own truth,” the man said, “and if they are, it wouldn’t be right to stand in their way. Least the way I see it.”

  For half a dozen breaths Eli heard nothing. Then it was Mrs. Powers again, but with more volume: “I take it you couldn’t get a telegram through,” she said.

  “I had Weldon give it a try. Had him try the depot there. But nothing doing. He’ll have to give it another go in the morning.”

  “The boys are leaving, though, right away,” Mrs. Powers said. “They plan to be on the ten o’clock, or so they say.”

  The man’s hand came back into view and his fingers drummed again. “Safe thing, if we go with your woman-feeling on this, is have them stay another day. Give us a chance to get that telegram through.”

  Mrs. Powers said something Eli couldn’t hear.

  “Or we just let them go. Seems they can take pretty good care of themselves, least the way you’re telling it.”

  A slim hand appeared, and it pushed the man’s hat toward him. Mrs. Powers said, “You have sons, Sheriff. Think if you woke up some morning and they were gone. Think how your wife would feel. And imagine someone had it within their power to give them back to you.”

  The sheriff reached out and picked up his hat, one long finger riding the middle crease. He said, “I can go upstairs now and wake them if you want, take them over to the office for the night, make sure they don’t run.”

  “No, no, we’ll let them sleep, they’re so tired. If you come back in the morning, early, that would be best.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “All right then.”

  Chair legs scraped and bootsteps moved across the floor. Then the click of the latch, the moan of hing
es, and a few moments passed before the lamp went dark. Eli got up and tiptoed back into the room and slipped into bed next to his brother. He didn’t wake him up, though, not yet, there was no point. Danny needed his rest, and Eli needed to think, figure things out, decide on a different way out of here—because when the sheriff returned in the morning and found them gone, he’d go straight to the depot and search the train. Which meant they needed to leave town on foot and try to catch up to the train someplace west of here. How far could they walk before six o’clock, if they left, say, at two? Ten miles? A dozen? How far was the next town, the next stop? And how persistent would the sheriff be in hunting them? Eli couldn’t imagine a pair of runaways causing the law in Bismarck to beat the bushes too hard or for too long, not once it was clear they’d gotten free of town. In any case, that’s what Eli had to count on.

  He checked the clock again—twenty minutes past midnight—and dragged himself back into bed, heavy-limbed, exhausted at the prospect of staying up all night and having to keep his brother on the move until daybreak. He hoped the squall had passed through. His head hurt, right at the top, like it did whenever sleep wouldn’t come, and his eyes ached—but he knew it was important that he rest awhile. Ten minutes, he told himself. I’ll rest for ten minutes. He rehearsed in his mind how he’d wake his brother, whispering in his ear, and then lead him downstairs and through the kitchen, how they’d move quietly in their stocking feet, holding their shoes, and slip outside, bedrolls under their arms. Then the cry of an owl, close by, took Eli back to a morning last fall when he was checking his muskrat traps in the marsh outside of town, poling his flat-bottom skiff through heavy fog and coming face-to-face with a pair of glaring yellow eyes that hung in the mist above a giant lodge on which Eli had made an open set. A pair of wings lifted and flapped, and the owl rose into the air—but only a foot or so, because the trap chain grew taut and yanked the bird back to its perch. Eli had gone to fetch his father, and together they brought the owl back home, draping it first in burlap to protect themselves from its beak and talons. It seemed confused, stunned, like a man waking from a nightmare only to find that his dream has solidified around him. They opened the spring-loaded jaws that held the bird by just two talons and then pulled away the burlap and stepped back. The bird blinked but made no move to leave. For two days it remained in their backyard, standing immobile in the shade of the willow and ignoring the offered chunks of beef and chicken. Finally on the third morning—early, before sunup—Eli heard its cry. Through the small window of the sleeping loft he’d seen it lift away from the high branch of a cottonwood and flap eastward toward pinkening clouds.

  He woke in a sweat, hair matted on his neck and forehead, shirt soaked through at the chest and under his arms. For several moments all he could do was lie there, trying to locate himself, Danny breathing in his ear. Then he pushed off the quilt and swung out of bed and moved lightly across the floor to the dresser. It was dark outside, darker than before, and he had to put his eyes right up close to make out the narrow hands. Five o’clock sharp.

  Damnation.

  When he touched his brother’s shoulder, Danny twisted away, pulling the quilt close around himself. Eli crawled on top of him and took a grip on his small shoulders. “Listen to me,” he whispered, “we have to leave. He’s coming over to get us and send us home—the sheriff, do you hear?”

  They dressed silently, grabbed their bedrolls, and holding their shoes in their hands crept out of the room and down the hallway in their socks, the floorboards soundless beneath them—a well-built house, Eli thought—Danny holding to the back of his coat as they crossed into the kitchen and moved past the table to the front door, which Eli opened as gently as he could, the hinges muttering only a quiet complaint. Then they were outside in the cold air, putting on their shoes and running down the dirt street. Low, gray clouds moving above them. Needles of ice stabbing at their faces.

  “Here,” Eli said, and grabbed hold of the back of Danny’s collar as they went.

  The wind was bitter, hard from the northeast, and the sleet was coming stronger even as morning started to show through the ragged clouds that tumbled and pitched through the uppermost branches of the trees and along the rooftops. Eli’s shoulders and back were already damp, the icy rain penetrating his coat and shirt, and his feet, too, from splashing through puddles. He stopped beneath the canopy of an old boxelder tree that still had its leaves and pulled his brother close. There was a high fence beside them, and behind it a horse flapped its lips and bumped against the boards.

  “Where are we going? I’m cold,” Danny said.

  “Just let me think.”

  “The depot? We’re gonna catch the train?”

  “No.”

  The horse nosed the fence again, snorting, and a gust of wind almost knocked them over. It was too late to go anywhere tonight. They needed someplace to hide for a day at least, until it was safe to jump a train or walk out of town. When the horse bumped against the boards once more, Eli looked behind them at the pitched roof of a barn. “Here we go,” he said, “come on now,” and he started his brother climbing. The fence was six feet high but easy enough to scale, and they dropped down on the other side and scrambled through the muddy lot and let themselves into the barn, where the smell of hay was so sharp that Eli sneezed. He couldn’t see a thing, but going up on his toes, he was able to touch the ceiling.

  “The haymow,” he said. “That’s where we need to be.”

  “We do?”

  A cow bellowed at them right up close, and from a far corner a sheep bleated irritably. “This is perfect,” Eli said, “you’ll see. We’ll go up and make ourselves a little hay-fort.”

  As their eyes adjusted to the dark, they stepped past the reaching nose of the milk cow and past a stall that held a colossal sow with her rooting brood. Against the west wall they found a ladder of boards that rose into the mow. “Wait,” he told Danny, and he went up the ladder into the high, round-roofed space, dull slices of morning light squeezing in through the siding boards of the east pediment. The rich, dying smell of hay was so strong Eli could feel it between his teeth. The back half of the mow was filled nearly to the rafters.

  “Come on,” he said, pulling his brother up through the hole in the floor. “Come on.” He pushed Danny toward the pile of hay, and together they climbed, sinking in up to their knees and then deeper as they struggled upward. The hay was well packed, though, and they were able to reach the top of the pile and then tumble and roll down the other side, up against the barn wall. They took off their pants, coats and shirts and spread them out to dry, and unrolled their blankets and wrapped themselves up.

  They were barely settled before a man’s voice rang out from below: “There, you old devil, hold still a minute.” A pail clanked. Then the whacking thud of a man’s hand against the solid flank of a cow. “What’s wrong with you, anyway?” the man shouted. “Hold still now.”

  In the silence that followed, Danny whispered, “I don’t feel right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m itchy.”

  “It’s the hay.”

  “But my head too, like my skull’s getting brittle.”

  “Does it hurt yet?”

  “No.”

  “Look at me,” Eli told him.

  Danny turned to him listlessly, his face screwed up tight and his eyes clamped shut. Eli imagined the two of them stuck up here for days, his brother groaning and crying. “You’re going to be fine,” he said. “There’s not going to be any pain—not this time, do you hear?”

  Below, the man wrapped up his morning milking. His boots shuffled against the barn’s plank floor, the hinges creaked, and the door slammed against its frame. Eli let out his breath. “What are the songs Mom sings to you?” he asked.

  Danny was quiet, thinking. “Sometimes she just tells me stories,” he whispered.

  “What stories?”

  “Do you know the one about the day I was born?” He smiled, despite
himself.

  “The warmest day we’d had all spring, I know that. May twentieth.”

  “He wanted to take Mom fishing,” Danny said, “remember?”

  “Yeah, but he took me too. He drove us south of town, across that pasture and down along the river to Silver Lake, where he borrowed a rowboat from Jebson Mills.” The old bachelor, dead now, had lived for decades in a sod dugout above the water. Ulysses had rowed them across the bay—Eli five years old and Gretta very pregnant—pausing to catch walleyes as they went, four fat ones. Then on Mills Island they’d built a fire on the shore and fried the fish in lard. After, as they lay on the grassy bank in the sun, half asleep, Gretta sat up fast, set her hands on her belly, and said, “Here he comes.”

  “Because she knew I was going to be a boy,” Danny said.

  “That’s right. And Dad had to deliver you himself. I remember climbing up in a burr-oak and covering my ears to block out the sound of her screams. I remember Dad saying, ‘Gretta, I love you.’ And when I came back down, he was crouched next to Mom and holding you in both hands. You were squirming like a puppy but still covered with the caul, head to toe. We looked right through it and saw you. Dad used his knife to cut it off.”

  “Julius Caesar was born with a caul,” Danny said.

  That night when they’d rowed back across the lake, there were four in the boat, not three, and Jebson Mills had counted them a couple of times, pointing with his finger and shaking his head.

  “I’m lucky,” Danny said. He was uncurled now and lying on his back, one arm flung out in the hay as he stared up into the rafters of the barn, his eyes unfocused, mouth lax, his breath coming easily. Eli described to him how he’d looked after their father removed the slick membrane—wet hair matted, one eye stuck closed as though in a permanent wink.