Charity

by Paulette Callen

  Except for his shoes, Tori looked clean and scrubbed. His fly-about hair was plastered to the top and sides of his head with oil. He looked like a boy playing at being a man. Torvald Halverson was what folks called simple. No one could say what was missing in Tori. He could read and write. He could follow orders. He could be left alone with farm chores: the animals would be well looked after, everything kept clean and in good repair. He was scrupulously honest and could be sent to town for supplies and return with an exact accounting of purchases and change. But without a specific task at hand, he would most likely be found just sitting and smiling to himself. Lena had often wondered if her brother was a saint or an idiot. Growing up, he had endured teasing from other children and remained good natured and pleasant. The only one who had never teased him, even among their own siblings, was his big sister, Lena, and his devotion to her was canine.

  Lena had found a good situation for him. Ole and Agnes Peterson gave Tori a little pocket change, a room in the back of their house, all he could eat, and Agnes washed and ironed his clothes. In return he worked hard doing everything they asked of him.

  But the Petersons were not young. When they died, Tori would be on his own again. The Peterson place would go to their son-in-law who was not likely to keep Lena’s brother on.

  Lena tried to hold off that worry till the time came. By then she hoped Will would have enough business to take Tori on himself, and she could look after him.

  “Have some coffee. Here, sit down.” She pulled out the chair and pushed him down into it.

  He drank his coffee the same way Lena sometimes drank hers, pouring some in his saucer to cool, putting a spoon of sugar in his mouth and sipping the cooled coffee from the saucer.

  Lena sat down again. “It’s supposed to start at ten o’clock. But I don’t know. I just can’t seem to...” She was at a loss to describe her feelings—knowing her duty was to be by her husband, but not being able to face a courtroom and the hungry eyes of the curious.

  Tori’s eyes were full of sympathy. “You look nice, Lena.”

  “I don’t...I don’t think I can go, Tori.” Her elbow rested on the table and she put her head in her hand to keep from crying.

  “Well, I’ll go. You don’t have to. I’ll go for you.” He slurped the dregs from his saucer. “That’s it then. I better get these shoes cleaned, huh?”

  “Have you had anything to eat?”

  “Ja, Mrs. Peterson fed me good before I left.” Tori went out in the shanty and scraped his shoes, then brushed them thoroughly. When he finished, he came back for some more coffee.

  “Well, I better go now.” It was 9:30. “Don’t worry, I’ll tell Will you’re okay, and I’ll be right back to tell you everything. Don’t you worry, now.”

  He patted her back awkwardly and left her sitting at her kitchen table, unable to speak, tears rolling down her cheeks, sucking the tip of her finger.

  Two hours later, Lena still hadn’t moved. Her coffee was cold, the stove had gone out, pages had been turned in her Bible, but she couldn’t concentrate. The door was opening again. She hadn’t even noticed who came up the driveway. Probably Tori with his sympathetic eyes, which she appreciated and couldn’t bear, telling her the latest bad news. She didn’t look up.

  “Hey, Duchy, what’s for dinner?”

  Will stood in the kitchen, his hat in his hand, grinning.

  Lena didn’t believe her eyes. She sat still.

  “Well, I guess we’ll have to go to Olna’s to get us a bite to eat then.” He slapped his thigh with his hat and chuckled.

  “Oh, Will!” She hurled herself at him. He lifted her off the floor and waltzed her around and around the kitchen. “They let you go?”

  “Nope, but I can walk around a free man until the trial.” Only then did Lena notice the two men, waiting patiently in her shanty, both grinning from ear to ear. “Oh, for heaven’s sake! Tori. Pard? Come in here.”

  “Pard spoke up good to the judge and got me off on bail. The judge said he didn’t usually post bail in a case of murder, but Pard said it was all...ehh...circumstantial. And what with that and me being a married man and Pa’s funeral this afternoon, he set the bail.”

  Lena’s eyes fluttered nervously between the lawyer and her husband. “How much bail?”

  “Thousand dollars.”

  Lena felt sick. She lowered her head and stood close to Will, speaking softly, “We don’t have any money.”

  Pard Batie stepped forward. “That’s been taken care of, Mrs. Kaiser.”

  “What do you mean, taken care of?” Nobody said a word. “Well, for heaven’s sake.” Oscar, Walter, Frederick. For once in their lives they did the decent thing. She could hardly believe it, but she was grateful. She and Will would probably spend the rest of their lives paying them back for it, but right now, she didn’t care.

  Pard stuck out his hand. Will engulfed it with his own and shook it heartily. “Will, I’ll be talking to you,” the lawyer said. “Come to my office on Monday. You come along now too, Missus.”

  Lena nodded.

  “Bye now, Tori.”

  “Bye now.” Tori grinned and nodded as Pard went out the door.

  Lena bustled. Will had asked for dinner. Here it was 12:00 and nothing ready. She tied her apron on, carried her Bible into the dining room with a whispered, “Thank you, oh Lord.”

  She came back into the kitchen and took the bacon out of the ice box and began to strip off slices and lay them in the skillet. “Oh, what am I doing?” she said aloud as the bacon lay there, silent in a cold pan. She reached for the box of matches that sat on the back rim of the cook stove. It was empty. “Gustie did our shopping. I forgot to tell her we needed matches.” She held the empty match box in her hand and began to cry.

  “Oh, now here.” Will reached into his pants pocket and took out a couple of long stick matches and handed them to Tori. “Dennis allowed me a smoke once in awhile. I still got these left.” As Tori slipped around Lena to light the stove, Will pulled her to himself. Her head hardly reached up to his chest. “See, I’m gone just a couple days and everything goes haywire,” he chuckled. “No matches. No nothing.”

  Lena raised her head, still crying. “It would have been nothing if it hadn’t been for Gustie! I had nothing here! You left me with nothing all right, so don’t go talking!” She made a fist and thumped him hard on his chest.

  Will took her blow and brought her in close to him again. “Sure, sure. I know. I know. There now, Duchy.” She sobbed until the grease began to pop, then she pushed him away. She didn’t trust Tori not to burn the bacon.

  “Oh, it’s all right. Go sit down now.” She took her handkerchief out of her pocket, blew her nose and wiped her eyes. “Tori, take the plates, will you, and set the table. You know where things are.” She waved in the general direction of the cupboards.

  She made the coffee and turned the bacon. She sliced an entire loaf of the bread and put it on the table along with butter and jam. “It sure smells good.” Will smiled at her. “Olna’s a good cook, but not like you, Duchy.”

  Tori nodded in agreement. “Nope, not like you.”

  She broke eggs into the sizzling bacon fat and fried them the way Will liked them—crisp and brown around the edges and soft in the middle—and slid them onto a platter alongside the bacon. When the platter was full, she brought it to the table. The coffee perked furiously and she moved the pot to the cool side of the stove to finish.

  “How’d you get in today, Tori?” Will asked between mouthfuls. “Ole bring you?”

  “Yup. Ole brung me.”

  Lena realized she had forgotten to wonder how Tori had made it in to town, but now she asked, “How’d you get home here? Pard?”

  “Pard’s buggy,” said Tori. “Sure is a nice one.”

  “Yup, that Pard—boy, he sure talks a good one.” Will made an enthusiastic
arc with his fork. “Don’t he Tori?”

  “Yup, he talks a good one.” Tori grinned at Lena reassuringly, his mouth full and his chin shiny with bacon grease.

  Lena poured the coffee. “When is the trial?”

  “In a month or so, I guess. Next time Judge Pike comes around. Pard says that’s long enough to make a good case. He says nobody’s much interested in prosecuting me anyway. Nobody thinks I did it.”

  “Well, I should say not,” Lena sniffed. She was nibbling a piece of bread and sipping coffee. She had no appetite.

  “Pard says he tried to get us a dismissal. Lack of evidence. But the judge wouldn’t go for it. Pard says Pike just wants a trial because he never gets to have one because nothing ever happens around here. He wants something just to chew on, you know. Give everybody a go. But nothing’s gonna come of it because there isn’t any evidence. Me walking out of a barn isn’t real evidence. That’s what Pard says.”

  Lena listened, secure for the moment in Will’s confidence, happy to see her nearest and dearest at her table. Her dark thoughts thinned to shadows.

  When Will had sopped up the last of the yellow yolk on his plate with his bread and washed it down with the last mouthful of coffee, he pushed himself away from the table. “Well, we’ve got to see Pa buried.”

  Lena felt the darkness thickening around her again. She slowly untied her apron, hung it in its place, and picked up her pocketbook and handkerchief and went with him. Tori followed.

  They trotted the ten blocks up Main Street to Gethsemane Lutheran, a plain white church with a steeple and a brand new bell. Inside, white walls contrasted with dark pews and an altar and pulpit in middle-aged oak. Gethsemane boasted one stained glass window above the baptismal font in the back of the church.

  In the tiny narthex, they came face to face with the casket, closed. There were candles set around it and a vase of spring flowers, which Lena supposed were from Julia’s garden.

  Lena assumed this funeral would be the same as every other at Gethsemane, and she led them to the pastor’s office. Good grief, they’ve squeezed everybody in here but Julia’s cat, she thought as she peered into the cramped room. Though all heads were bowed as Pastor Erickson intoned a prayer, Lena sensed an edginess in the room and felt that all of them were very much aware of their arrival.

  Not one to disrupt a prayer to the Almighty, she bowed her head, shut her eyes, and folded her hands reverently. Will lowered his head and clasped his hands in front of him, but he did not close his eyes. He was not a church goer. Lena went every Sunday without fail, and twice a week during Lent. The last time he’d been to church was for a funeral. He couldn’t remember whose.

  The prayer ended and the pastor said in his well modulated baritone, “Now if you’ll all gather in the narthex and follow the casket in during the first hymn.” He made his way through the family, none of whom seemed to know what to do next in spite of his instructions. “Glad to see you here, Will...Lena. How are you, Tori?” He shook hands firmly with each of them. “Our prayers are with you.”

  Will knew the man meant well, but he found his manner embarrassing. He wanted a drink. The minister disappeared to don his pastoral robes for the service.

  Frederick was the first to break from the flock of baffled Kaisers and step forward. He was the only brother tall enough to see eye to eye with Will. They shook hands. “Glad you’re out. They shouldn’t have arrested you in the first place. I guess Dennis didn’t know what else to do.”

  Everyone nodded more or less in agreement and the tension eased. Frederick held his arm out for Gertrude who ignored Lena and just patted Will’s arm mutely as she passed. Walter, the next to move, bleated a solemnity, and Mary smiled rather furtively at Lena as she followed her husband out. Oscar, grumbling his greeting in passing, was out the door with Nyla close behind him, leaving only Julia, who took Will’s hand and then Lena’s in turn quite warmly. “How are you, Dear?”

  “I’m fine now, Julia. Thank you.”

  Julia nodded and as she patted the top of Lena’s hand, Lena felt the wad of string that held the opal ring in place.

  The piano had already begun to sound. Mrs. Happy, wisps of her gray hair escaping in all directions from the roll she carefully tucked around her head every day, pounded out the opening chords of the Lutheran’s battle hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” A sound wave broke through the church as pews and bodies creaked and throats cleared; the congregation stood and began to sing.

  Six men bore the casket to the front of the church. Right behind it, Frederick, the only single son, escorted Gertrude at the head of the family. Then, following two by two, were Walter and Mary, Oscar and Nyla, Will and Lena. Julia and Tori brought up the rear. The family turned left into the two front pews. The pall bearers lowered the casket onto a wood platform at the foot of the altar steps.

  A decent number had turned out to pay final respects to Frederick William Kaiser—mostly older folks who had known him a long time—people whose first wells he had sunk in the early homesteading days. Younger people, friends and acquaintances of the sons, were divided about whether to show up at the funeral. Lena suspected most of them came out of curiosity. The church was nearly full.

  The service was simple and strangely empty of emotion. Will was the only one who appeared moved by his father’s death. Very early in the service he covered his face with one hand and Lena wondered if he was going to break down, but he did not. He carried himself with dignity, and for once she was proud of him.

  The thoughts of the congregation rose to mingle in the rafters with the hymns, liturgy, prayers, and the scent of burning candles—surmises about who was responsible for the body of the old man lying, somewhat prematurely, in that wooden box; the belief that Will could not be guilty; the conviction that it must have been some stranger passing through—someone who had gotten off the train, found the empty barn to hide out in and rest. Maybe tried to get some money off Pa Kaiser, when he, perhaps, heard a noise and went to check the barn. There was a struggle, perhaps. The whole thing could have been an accident, but the fellow—the stranger—had got scared and run, took the next train out. Folks accepted the fact that they might never know for sure and took comfort in the conclusion that it could not be one of their number.

  Will himself had come to the same conclusion. At first he had blamed himself for being so drunk he could not prevent the killing. But soon enough he realized that, had he not been drunk, he would not have been in the barn in the first place, and therefore, could still not have prevented it. Will was accustomed to sleeping off his drunks in there. Neither Lena, nor any of his brothers knew that. Getting to the barn before he passed out somewhere else saved him a night in jail. Will was not a man for introspection, and once that last idea had formed, he felt simple grief, unmixed with regret.

  Lena maintained her composure until Magda Nilsen stood up to sing “The Old Rugged Cross,” a hymn that always made Lena cry. Except today. Magda’s throbbing soprano filled the church solemnly with the opening lines:

  On a hill far away

  Stands an Old Rugged Cross

  The emblem of suffering and shame.

  But as she launched into the next stanza:

  How I love that old Cross

  Where the dearest and best

  For the sake of lost sinners was slain.

  Her exaggerated vibrato supported by an overlarge bosom that heaved and rolled with religious fervor under dangerously taut gray silk, began to massage each word, as if she had been there, only yesterday, at the feet of her bleeding Lord. By the time she reached the first chorus:

  And I’ll cling to the Old Rugged Cross

  Till at last my life I lay down.

  I will cherish the Old Rugged Cross

  And exchange it someday for a crown.

  Magda was perspiring, her chubby hand beat emotional time in the air, and Lena had th
e giggles.

  Lena, a devout Christian, was smothering herself in her hankie. Will knew very well that his wife was not choking on grief. He put his arm around her and pulled her head against his chest, and they both, somehow, got through three verses, three choruses and a key change into the fifth chorus finale, when Magda, finally spent, puffing, and thoroughly satisfied, sat down.

  Pastor Erickson, furiously polishing his glasses, stepped up to the pulpit for the benediction. He hooked the wires carefully over his ears and kept his head down for just a moment before he raised his head and his hand: “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:”

  Lena wiped her eyes and controlled herself. She liked the benediction. She liked the minister’s hand raised in blessing over the congregation. She bowed her head, angry with Magda and whomever it was who had asked her to sing. Probably Nyla. She wouldn’t know any better, the dumb cluck.

  “The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.”

  On cue, Mrs. Happy, all stops pulled, hit the chords of the closing hymn. The congregation rose and began to sing, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.” The pall bearers moved to the front and hoisted the coffin upon their shoulders. They were followed out by the pastor and the family in the same order as they had come in.

  Beneath a lowering sky that made Lena think of dingy, un-carded wool, they slid the coffin onto the bed of a small wagon pulled by a single black horse and driven by Rudi Molvik, the undertaker.

  Except for Mary and Nyla, who went back to Ma’s to prepare a lunch for the mourners, the family squeezed together on the slat seats of Gertrude’s wagon, Oscar driving, his mother and Walter in the front, Will, Lena, Julia and Tori crammed onto the second seat and holding on while they bumped along behind the hearse. No one spoke. Lena wished she’d worn a hat.

  The cemetery was a fenced acre of land donated to the town of Charity by the Hansmeyer family. About two-thirds of it had been consecrated for Protestant burial and one-third for Catholic. Lena had never understood why the Catholics needed their own specially prayed over soil. When you got right down to it, Lena thought, dirt was dirt.