Part III: Motherland
LEE
I
I thought he was dead. My brother. Lying there by the reaper with his eyes closed and his arm strung up. A line of blood down his arm and it hardly looked an arm. Dead after the reaper jerked and I’d been leading it. Dead as I carted him back to the house. The field was longer than it once’d been, the furrows hard for walking with double the weight. But weight it was and would be, even when he opened his eyes.
We’d tied the reaper behind both horses. Old Buck in front and Miss Telly behind. Buck was straight and narrow an animal as he was old, Telly small for a draft, jumpy too. “Buck will lead her just fine,” Ray said. Telly and the reaper both, he meant. Even if Buck didn’t care to be led by me.
The reaper ran on a bullwheel Father had fixed. “That old one,” he said, “it was no more than a scythe on wheels.” Mechanization, Father said, though I thought the word wrong. Mechanization was for steam. That bullwheel ran smooth, so Father left us to drive it alone. Ray was twenty and one, age-wise. I had passed all of sixteen myself. I was bigger by a head, maybe more. But alone meant Ray would ride the machine. He’d straddle the wheel and clear the cutter, while for me, I sat the horses in front as I’d always done. Father had already given Ray a wooden pole with a sharp point for the job. “Just keep them straight,” Ray told me. “I’ll do the rest.”
“He won’t even have to do that much.” Father grinned and set his hat on his head. “Boys.” I had never seen Father with a face like that.
The north field was level plenty. Still it curved at the far edge to make way for the river. That would be the trouble. But I wasn’t thinking of troubles then. The sun was low but rising. The soil caked our tongues. It would be hot as fry, but it wasn’t so hot yet. In the house, Mother was baking her egg and butter crust. I counted up to twenty the times we passed the house, smelling that, while Ray was at the cutter. Ray, he never would give me a chance. “Elliot doesn’t know fields from fish,” he was saying. “Doing nothing, that’s what Elliot wants.” I cocked my head to listen for hoppers, a kind of singing. When I slept, they sounded just the same. Nan said night hoppers were different from the day. Why, at night they weren’t even hoppers at all. But I knew some creatures sing different in the dark. It was a matter of being by yourself. Who you were then and who otherwise. In bed with the ceiling low and the lanterns put out, Ray slept next to me only an arm’s reach between us. But he slept so quiet, I had plenty of time for believing I was alone.
“With Elliot, we could have gotten it done in months,” Ray talked on. “Then I’d be free for cards, harvest or not.” Ray’s voice, it was a hard thing to listen to. To ease against it, I fingered a stone in my pocket. I’d found it the day before when one of the cows kicked it up. I don’t normally take to stones. But this one showed bright against the dirt, even at dusk. It was smooth as the river, the shape of an egg and nearly the color. What so white a stone was doing in the pasture, I couldn’t figure. While all the rest were muck-colored, broken in their rocklike shapes. I cleaned it nice at the pump, carried it back to the house. Must be others like it, though I hadn’t found but the one. I watched Telly’s hooves for kicking up more.
A musk of flowers and reeds, and I knew we were close to the river again. The water was high and rushing. The sun had fallen to clouds, those clouds spitting. Buck was slagging, while Telly was near to nipping his backside. With one hand on both reins, I managed the turn. My other hand was in my pocket, thinking of stones. How that egg-shaped one could be by itself mixed in with the others. How there must be more. Ray was going on. “I told him I didn’t care if we finished it or not. I’ve got a right to go when I want.” The rain made a low kind of steam on the ground and the horses stumbled. Could have been Buck, though with a jerk of her head I knew it was Telly. She was tired of backsides. I tightened the reins. Tried to get the other hand out of my pocket, but the hand stuck. The reaper jumped with Ray riding it. Ray’s voice jumped too, the hoppers gone quiet, and behind me something cracked. I pulled the reins short. When I looked, Ray’s pole had caught in the cutter and snapped. The ropes on the bullwheel puckered. Ray stood to fish his fingers under, trying to loosen the pole. Then the horses started again. As if told to, they did, and the ropes on that wheel pulled straight. Ray’s fingers caught. I jerked the reins, but Ray was hauled up and flying over the wheel.
If I’d been quicker about it, I could have stopped them. The horses wouldn’t have started. The rope would have stayed loose, and Ray’s fingers wouldn’t have caught. But Ray was already on the ground, his arm hung up in the ropes and strange behind him. His hand was tied good. Bloody as gutting a thing and not even a hand anymore. He lay there white, his eyes dark. Looking at me and waiting for something. Then his head fell back. I jumped to the wheel. Worked him loose. He was an empty sack on my shoulder as I carted him home. It was long and slow over that field, the house a far shot, and raining enough to drown us. If it wasn’t for Elliot, I thought, because now Ray was quiet. If it wasn’t for rocks being in a place where they shouldn’t. Father would paddle whip me good. What were you doing? he’d ask. Only hours before he’d been grinning. Boys, he’d said. Not for years would Father say that again, but my brother would say plenty. About keeping your mind to how a thing worked. About what a man without a hand could and couldn’t do. The way he looked at me before he was dead did. And the way he looked at me after said it too.
If a person asked, I’d tell them war wasn’t any different. Brothers by the dozen, accidents too. When I found myself laid up in France, they said I was wounded. I didn’t remember that. About the hospital, I remembered plenty. One bed after the other, all of us at arm’s reach, some sleeping, some not. At night the nurses kept the hall lit and there wasn’t a quiet to be had. Not with so many of us. Shudders and howls. Most of the boys worse the better they got. In the daytime they made notes on my chart. Did I see flashes? Hear ringing sounds? Doc said I was on the mend. With my feet red and hot enough to burn, he said that was what mending felt like. I said, time to go then, if I’m mended. Not yet, he said to that.
I was in La Fauche, Base Hospital 117. The light outside the windows was cold and clear. Must have been after harvest, but I couldn’t see more than fences in the yard. At home, I’d surely missed it. The doctors didn’t bother about harvest. The stink of us, a high taint they called disinfectant, that’s what they bothered about. Our bed frames were hollow as tubes, our pillows blocks. Those pillows carried the sweat of every worry in our heads. Morning and night, an old man mopped the floor, leaving behind his piney scent. I’d been in the woods, an infantryman in the 88th near Hagenbach, border of Germany and France. It was late October then. The mud in the woods nearly finished my feet. Boot rot, they called it, but it felt something worse. We had crossed the lines, the boys wild for a taste of something better than beets. Then the blast hit. I hadn’t seen one man from our squad since.
“Private Hess, your dinner.” The nurse spun a table to my chest. She had the accent of a Brit. Her hands were small, warm as a loaf. The food should’ve had a smell, but didn’t. Some kind of chicken, a helping of pea-like shapes. The English tea, it was a brown stir of water, though I’d taken some liking to it. The nurse’s hair was plain and brown too, her face milky. She wore it short and close to her face, the way Esther did. That smile of hers, it was hitched at the corner. Same as Esther’s too.
“Be good,” the nurse said. “Try to eat this time. Otherwise they’ll never send you home.”
I couldn’t tell her. Since the blast, I didn’t have the stomach to eat peas or anything else.
They kept us on a straight watch. 06:00 to wake, noon for dinner. At 14:00 there was exercise and 18:00 another tray in our laps. Lights out wasn’t very dark. But I’d never thought sleep was good for much. The boy next to me favored talk. “Hush,” he whispered. “You’ve got to hear this.” Squire was his name, his bed nearest. He had a mother who wrote him every day
but Sunday, though he couldn’t write back. His arms were as dead as drowned pups. Nurse said she’d do a letter for him. He couldn’t even look her in the eyes. But to me, he told plenty. About a cousin he fancied. About a cellar back home, so dark he never went close. There was a Jerry he shot in the stomach. Couldn’t finish him off. He talked about that. I thought to tell him about our farm and how I missed harvest. How with a man gone, Father and Ray might have it some hard. But I was the one who’d made Ray less than he’d been, and I stood for the draft to make things right. Can’t shoot with a busted hand, the corporal had told my brother. Can’t even hold a pistol. But this one here. The corporal had looked at me. He’s big as a horse. We’ll take him, old enough or not.
“Wake up, Hush. You listening?” Trouble was, I couldn’t keep straight one story from the next, mine or his. Squire repeated a second time. Sometimes a third. He’d have snapped his fingers if he could. At night, I had dreams. I was sitting with the boys in a barn. Me, Critters, Stan, and Sam Bullet. That was us. Our stomachs were full. Our heads soft. That barn had a fair shake of hay, the nicest bed we’d had in weeks. Stan was watching me, and Critters too. They called my name. Then the hay blasted to fire beneath us. When I looked, there was nothing but straw burnt up where the boys had been. The ends of my legs, where my feet had gone to nothing, they were burnt too.
Someone pulled at my arm. “Private Hess.” A doctor stood at my bedside, clipboard in hand. “Do you remember what day it is? Do you know where you are?” I said I knew the day just fine. It was November.
“Look out that window, Private Hess. Does it look like November to you?”
The nurse wheeled me out. The sun was hard on the grass. The garden beds, they were some full. I couldn’t figure that. “I can lower these footrests now,” the nurse said. I turned my head to see her, but felt dizzy fast. “You’ll be right as rain,” she went on. “Just a tingling in those feet of yours. Pretty soon you’ll be pushing this chair yourself.” But the doctors wouldn’t sign my release, that’s what I wanted to tell her. I thought of Squire too. How he might have made sense if I wasn’t the one to hear him. How I might have something more than boot rot. The nurse shook her head. “Nerves is all. That blast, it knocked you clear out.”
“What about the others?” I asked.
The nurse stayed quiet. “Tell you what,” she said. “We can go off when you’re feeling better. Have our own little adventure. The war’s over. Why, even this place, it’ll be closed in a month or two. Made into a boarding school. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“That would be something.” In truth I believed different. Those beds were no place for kids. Even with a man gone, he was still there. Even when they put another one in his place.
It must have been time for winter crops. That’s what I thought that night. End of November, it must have been. No matter that garden or the doc. At home the rush of work before the snow. The first frost would have killed a fair lot, and they’d be trying to save the rest. By now, Mother would have picked her turkey from the pen. She’d be feeding it meal to get it fat, worrying about her cellar shelves. How many more jars they could hold. How much we’d need to make three months, maybe four. Nan would be a help to her, but not the others as much. If I was there, I’d be a help too.
“Here you are, Private Hess.”
I woke, a ringing in my ears. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t pry that ringing out. The doctor was back, the nurse too. Even Squire was quiet in his bed, perched on his pillows, watching us. “Hey there, Hush,” he said. “You all right?”
“You asked for a map,” the nurse said. “Don’t you remember?” She gave me a piece of paper wide as it was long. The doctor didn’t seem happy about that. Still the nurse moved my tray to straighten the map out. “Look.” She pointed. “That’s France. We’re in the east, near the Belgium border. And there’s England across the Channel. In the south, near the Schonholz Woods. That’s where they picked you up.”
“That’s where they picked me up,” I said.
“That’s right.” The nurse smiled with her mouth closed.
“Right,” the doctor said, sharp. He signed a piece of paper on his board, tore it off. When he left, that paper sat on my legs, but I couldn’t reach it. I didn’t even try.
The nurse pointed again at the map. I couldn’t remember asking for maps. The shapes didn’t add up to nothing much. And there wasn’t one piece of land looked bigger than my thumb. “Private Hess,” the nurse said. She was watching me now too. She’d pulled up a chair, her hand on the rail. I blinked, trying to read the map again. There was France and Belgium, their borders a hazy green. Then Germany to the east, England at the center. But to the west, only a wide drop. “We’ve received a telegram for you,” the nurse said. “It’s about your mother.” Her eyes looked wet. “The doctor has signed your release. You can leave anytime you want.” She dropped her hold on the rail and touched my wrist. Her hand was some cold. This nurse wasn’t anywhere close to the same as Esther. Private Hess, she said again, but it was all a buzz. Hush. That’s the name the boys liked. But better than that, the one Mother had picked from the start.
II
“Lee, ma’am,” I told the woman next to me on the Chicago train. “Lee Hess.” From the look on the woman’s face, she didn’t know what to do with a name like mine. Almost two years after the war and Dutchy by the sound of it. She squinted to fish me out. “I was with the 351st Infantry, in the 88th,” I hurried on. At that, she smiled.
It was late afternoon. I’d been traveling since dark the day before. “Two girls who’ve lost their mother,” the deputy had said. “Two girls like that.” A strange thing, that empty room of theirs. Stranger yet, that chair against the door. Without Myrle and Esther, the beds seemed cast off in so much space. There wasn’t any reason for the girls to leave, but Esther didn’t need reasons. I can find them, I’d told Nan, though her face said not. With all the work before winter, the farm couldn’t run more than two weeks with another hand gone. Her face said that too. Two weeks is more than plenty, I said. I didn’t have a dollar more to last longer. Now on that bench, my legs were a twitch from sitting, my back a rail. Out the window, there was never so much as a tree or post in the fields to catch a person’s eye.
“You’re going to ruin that hat,” the woman said.
I looked down. The hat in my lap I’d creased once and again. Like a fat piece of skin. Skinned and trying to be something. The woman said her name was Helen. She only gave her first.
“A man without a hat,” Helen said. “That’s not even polite. Not if you step off this train. Let me take it before you turn it to ribbons.” She pulled the hat from my fingers and rested it on her knees, working to smooth it out. That smile of hers, it was still there. Her hands were soft and white. The cheeks of a mother, that’s what she had.
“Sorry, ma’am.”
“I’ve been watching you. You haven’t eaten all this time.”
“I’m fine, ma’am.”
“No you’re not. I know boys. They have to eat every minute. And pretty soon you’re going to take a bite out of this hat.” She opened her bag to show a napkin, blue and stitched at the edges with birds. Inside, five rolls the color of wheat. “Here you are.” She dropped one on my knee. “I have too many for myself.”
I bowed my head.
“Don’t you worry. I had a boy your age, though he wasn’t so quiet. Sometimes I wish he had been. Slow down, I was always telling him. Try to listen. You’re a listener, I can tell. It will do you good, listening to people instead of always going on. Like me.” She laughed. “But if you aren’t going to say much, you should at least do me a favor and eat.”
I took a bite and tasted butter. Raisin bursts and poppy seeds.
“My, you liked that one, didn’t you? Here’s another.”
“No, ma’am. I couldn’t.”
“You can because you will. As I told
you. I had a boy like you. If he was still with me, I’d fill him till he popped.” Her cheeks fell. She hid a sigh behind her hand. “The 88th,” she said, but I wasn’t sure I was supposed to hear. “That sounds just fine.” She folded her napkin as if bundling a living thing. After that, she fell asleep or seemed to. I thought of her boy and the age he must have been. The war had taken nearly all of us one draft after another. All except Ray, but he got hit with something almost as bad.
Mother would have fixed me plenty of rolls. She’d have tied an apron to her waist and filled the stove with wood. I could have done that for her, filling the stove, but she always shook her hand at me and did it herself. Mother’s apron was white with blue stitches. It had flowers instead of birds. That apron of hers smelled of bread and something else. The smell of the river and the high cutting grass. I’d smelled it up close after the accident, when I sat at the table and she pressed my head to her chest. She wouldn’t let me go for days after that.
If Helen had asked, I’d tell her that’s why I was on the train. It was the accident that drove me to the war. It was the war Mother couldn’t stand. Somehow, some way, something got broke. That’s how I figured it. And when Esther and Myrle went off, it felt the same. It was me who broke it from the beginning. Me and the stone in my pocket. Now I was going to bring my sisters back.
The woman next to me woke with a kind of yip. “Ah, you’re still here,” she said. The train was moving again. Out the window, the fields whipped by like a wind. Helen looked as if she’d aged five years just by sleeping.
“Ma’am?”
“You don’t need to call me ‘ma’am.’”
“Sorry, ma’am. Do you know Chicago?”
“A nasty place, those factories. No place for a farm boy.” She yawned. “But I suppose they need them. The factories. My sister lives farther out of the city. That’s why I’m going. Otherwise, I’d never step foot. A boy like you, you’re not going there for work?”
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