“I’ll keep after Orville and his readin’. You send for him when you’re ready. He’ll build you a real good fence. He is sure good with his hands and building things.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ackerman. I will.”
As his wagon rumbled down the drive, Hank called over his shoulder, “I’ll fatten him up for you, Will.”
Will nodded, grinned and waved back.
Gustie asked Will, “Aren’t they too young to sell?”
“He sells ’em but they stay with the sow until they’re weaned. People pick the one they want, he tags ’em, and they pick up the pig when it’s ready. He was just letting me have first choice. I drilled him a well last year. He paid half but he’s been short on cash so he’s giving me the rest in pig. Come on in. Lena’s just about got breakfast ready.”
Lena’s house smelled of perking coffee, toast, and frying ham.
“Look who’s here, Duchy!” Will hung his hat on the hook in the shanty before he entered the kitchen.
Lena bustled around her small domain. The table was already set for three. Gustie washed her hands in the sink. “Just sit down now,” Lena commanded. “We’ll eat first. Will has to go to the fair grounds and help stake out the horse race.” She was pouring batter into the frying pan. Gustie served the coffee all around and brought the platter of ham to the table, where a stack of toast was already in place. Will had already helped himself to a slice and was spreading it liberally with butter and chokecherry jam that was so deeply purple it was almost black.
When they were all three seated, Lena bowed her head for a silent grace. Will paused in his chewing and Gustie waited to take her share of the pancakes. When Lena finished her prayer and looked up, Will passed Gustie the meat.
“No, thanks.”
“I thought you liked ham,” Lena said.
“I’m afraid I just lost my taste for it.” Gustie raised her eyebrows and offered a self-deprecating half-smile.
Will chuckled. “Oh, ya, Hank’s pigs. Never seen the little ones before, huh?”
Gustie shook her head.
“They’re sure cute little buggers all right. But they grow up ugly. Mean codgers, too. Hang your leg over the rail of a pig pen, they’ll chew it off as look at’cha.” He chuckled some more over the rim of his coffee cup.
Lena sniffed. “Oh, don’t talk such foolishness. An animal is as good or bad as you treat it. When I was a little bit of a thing, we had a big sow.” Lena took a large bite of pancake. Some syrup began to drip down from the corners of her mouth. She caught the drips with her tongue, dabbed at her chin with her apron, and continued her story. “Named Emma. My Pa always warned me to stay away from Emma. But I didn’t pay any attention to that. I was always crawling around in the barn with the horses and the cows, so I didn’t see any reason not to crawl into the pig pen just the same. And I did—when nobody was looking. One day Pa said he found me...I don’t remember this...he said he found me sitting on her, straddling her you know. She was lying on her side and there I was pouring sand into her ears with a spoon. Didn’t seem to bother the pig. Pa lifted me out of there, and Emma got up and shook her head. All that sand came flying out all over. But Pa figured after that I was more harm to the pig than she to me so that was the end of my playing in the pig pen.”
“Well,” Will was grinning and his mouth was full. “I still say, the best thing about a pig’s the bacon.” Will pushed the plate of pancakes toward her. “Better eat now. The only thing you take with you is what you eat.”
Gustie reached for another piece of toast just as Lena jumped out of her seat, responding to a smell, so faint, still, only the cook would notice, like a mother hearing the least sound from her child. “Oh, oh. My potatoes boiled dry.” She grabbed a pot-holder and swung the heavy pot off the stove and over to the sink. She lifted the cover to inspect the damage.
“Burn ’em?” Asked Will. “Duchy makes good potato salad,” he said to Gustie.
“They’re not too bad, I guess. Most of ’em will do for the salad. The rest I’ll fry up for breakfast tomorrow.” Lena took her place at the table once more. “When the potatoes boil dry it means it’s going to storm,” she said.
Gustie smiled mischievously. “Doesn’t it mean you should have paid closer attention to the potatoes?”
Will laughed, sputtering through a mouthful of coffee, “She’s got you there, Duchy!”
“Nobody likes a smarty-pants.” Lena made a face at Gustie and they all had to laugh.
“I should be back here about noon. You two women be ready?” Will gulped the rest of his coffee. Will lived his simple philosophy, grabbing another piece of toast as he stood up. Gustie was amazed at the quantities of food Will Kaiser could put away in short spans of time.
“I don’t see why not!” Lena took the empty platters and her own plates to the sink. She poured hot water over them from her kettle on the stove. “It doesn’t take five hours just to bake a few pies. Don’t you be late, now. You’ll have to clean up before we go back. You can’t go looking like that. I’ve got your white shirt all clean and pressed for you.”
“Don’t you worry. I won’t be late.”
Will slapped her lightly on the behind and she chased him with her dishrag, swiping him across the back of his neck. He grabbed his hat, running and grinning on the way out.
“That man!” Lena was smiling as she came back into the kitchen.
Gustie carried her own dishes to the sink and was about to start the washing up when Lena stopped her. “Oh, no you don’t. Don’t go getting your bandages wet. I’ll do this. You peel apples. There’s a bucket for the peelings and there’s the bowl for the apples.” She nodded toward the bucket on the floor and the bowl sitting out on the counter.
Gustie tucked her skirt up, put the bucket between her knees and began to peel apples, clumsily, aware that her peelings were thick. They fell heavily, thudding into the bucket. A lot of apple going to waste. But it was the best she could do. She had seen Lena peel apples so fast and with such precision that the peelings floated downward in long translucent curls.
Lena read the dismay on Gustie’s face. “Don’t worry, we’ll take the peelings to Hank’s pig this afternoon. So we get it back in the end.” That didn’t make Gustie feel much better.
When the breakfast dishes were drying on the drain board, Lena began mixing up a bowl of pastry dough. To Gustie’s everlasting wonderment, Lena never measured anything. She dumped the flour in by the handfull, cut in random spoons of lard with a fork, sprinkled just enough water over it all so the pastry formed pea-sized pellets.
“Have you heard anything more from the sheriff or the lawyer?” Gustie had not spoken to Pard Batie herself since her return.
“No. Both of them say they are working on it, but I don’t know what they mean by working. I don’t see either one of ’em doing anything more than they ever did—sitting around, drinking coffee, shooting the breeze,” Lena replied as she scooped out a palm sized ball of dough, shaped it into a smooth round and somewhat flattened shape before applying her rolling pin. Lena put her arms and shoulders into rolling out the crust. Short, even strokes in every direction formed a round pastry. She sifted more flour through her fingers over it and turned it around 180 degrees and vigorously rolled a perfect, thin circle. “Everybody’s talking and seems to think it was some stranger, but I don’t know—there’s enough hard feelings in that family.”
“What kind of hard feelings?”
“Those two sisters, peeking over at one another all these years. And Pa Kaiser going back and forth between them.” Lena shook her head and frowned as she powered her rolling pin. “Once he went over to Julia’s and stayed there for over a month, but then he went back again to Gertrude’s house. I don’t know what she did or said to get him to go back. I’m not supposed to know about that, but Nyla told me. Oscar was old enough to remember it.” Lena ran a spatula bene
ath the circle of pastry dough and folded it neatly in half. She brought a pie tin to the board and placed the folded pastry so the fold ran directly down the middle of the pan. She unfolded it, pressed the dough into the shape of the pan, and with quick strokes of a sharp knife, cut all the way around the rim trimming the excess crust off and sliding the pieces over to the corner of her floured board. She began again with another scoop of dough from the bowl.
“Pa just walked over to Julia’s one day and kept going back there at night after he came home from work. But he went back all right—back to Gertrude’s, I mean. He was a weak man. Folks say that in the beginning he had courted Julia, but old man Gareis talked him into marrying Gertrude. Pa got his first well rig in the deal, so he went along with it. Fool man. Can you imagine marrying a woman to get a well rig? Good night!” She finished the second crust and lined the second pan in her same sure manner and moved on to a third. “Guess they thought nobody would ever marry Gertrude, and Julia was a pretty little thing in those days and someone else would come along for her. Only nobody ever did. She stayed an old maid all those years—except for that one month.”
Gustie still struggled with her apples. At least ten of these apples were needed to fill one of Lena’s pies. “How could they live, so close together like that?” Gustie was all amazement at what she was hearing. She stopped peeling to flex her fingers which were beginning to cramp from her tight grip on the knife. “After he had lived with Julia? How could Gertrude take him back? How could Julia stay around after he left her and went back to Gertrude?”
“No place to go.” Lena answered her own question. “None of ’em. No place else to go. Gertrude sure couldn’t go anyplace. She already had two little boys—Oscar and Walter. Where would she have gone? Julia had no place to go either. So they all stayed together. One big miserable family. Then, after Pa went back to Gertrude, along came Will, and then Frederick, and Julia started pitching in and helping a little with the boys. Though to hear Ma tell it, she never did a thing. I don’t believe that. I think she did help. Especially with Frederick. Gertrude was getting too tired to cope with a new little one so late in her life. I guess she had no milk left. So Frederick was the only one of her babies to be bottle fed. Julia could have helped there.”
The tins were all lined with pastry and three perfectly formed circles lay folded in a row, waiting for the time when she would lay them over the apple-filled pans and close the crusts around the rims. She sat down and absently, without missing a beat in her story telling, began to slice the apples Gustie had peeled, letting the pieces fall in even layers into a readied pie tin. “Ma probably appreciated Julia’s being there, even though she will never admit it.” Lena paused and looked out the window visualizing the scene. “You know how I think it worked?” She pointed with her knife toward her imagined scene. “I think that neither of them really loved Pa. They sort of put up with him, you see, and they didn’t feel it so much when...well I don’t know.” Lena shook her head and went back to slicing apples.
When the pie pan was filled to her satisfaction, Lena went to the cupboard and came back with a tin of sugar and small boxes of cinnamon and nutmeg. She sprinkled the sugar and spices liberally over the apples, tossing them lightly with a fork to evenly coat all the pieces. “And it was Gertrude who had children. So she was more or less tied to Pa, you know. What a mess it would have been if Julia had had any. Whew! But she was lucky, I guess, that way.”
“Do you think one of them killed him?”
“I don’t really know. Oh, I’ve thought about it. But if they were going to kill him, they’d have done it, one or the other of them, when they were young. Not now, when they were all three of them old and one foot in the grave. Don’t you think? What’s the point? They’d stood it this long. Besides if anybody was going to kill anybody, I always thought it would be Ma killing Julia, or vice versa. Oh, shoot, I’m running out of sugar. Thought I had another whole can, but I don’t. Don’t know where my mind is lately.”
Gustie tilted her head. “You don’t?”
“Well, O’Grady’s is open till noon. Then everybody shuts down for the Fourth.”
“I’ll go get some. Anything else you need? While I’m there?”
Lena shook her boxes of spices next to her ear. “Nutmeg? And cinnamon?”
Gustie paused and turned back at the door. Lena was picking up the apple peeling where Gustie had left off. “Have you told all this to Dennis or Pard?”
“No. It doesn’t seem right to bring it all up. Like gossip.” She waved the idea away like a pesky fly, “Fiddlesticks! Folks don’t go around killing people over things that happened thirty and forty years ago. It must have been like they say—a stranger. More like an accident.”
Gustie didn’t feel like letting it go. “Who found the body?”
Lena stopped her peeling. “Well, I’m not sure.”
“Who saw Will coming out of the barn?”
“Oh, that was Alvinia. She don’t miss much.” Lena abruptly changed the subject. “It’s the strangest thing. You know, Kenny says we have a credit there. That he overcharged us on something or other, I don’t understand it. Some mistake. But whatever it was, it was in our favor. So you won’t need any money. He’ll just subtract it from our credit.” Lena shrugged. Gustie nodded.
When Gustie returned with Lena’s spices and sugar, she was surprised to see Tom back under the trees, and yet another wagon in front of the house. This is a busy place, she thought. The horses hitched to the visiting wagon looked familiar: dapple gray Percherons—not as well brushed as they should be, but well fed and healthy looking otherwise.
She hadn’t reached the door before Lena opened the screen and flapped her hands as if she were shooing flies. “What’s the matter? Here’s your—”
Lena interrupted her with a hiss and more frantic waves of her hand. “Go home, now. Go on now.”
Before Gustie could get annoyed at being shooed off like a stray cat, there appeared behind Lena an old familiar face, impeccable, as usual, in a gray suit and a nasty smile.
“Well, Augusta,” he said.
Lena threw up her hands. “I tried. We didn’t tell him anything. Believe me. You might as well come in then. No sense standing out there in the sun. It’s going to get hot.”
Gustie nearly lost her nerve, but her left wrist began to throb, and she felt a sudden grounding in her own pain. She said, “I’d rather speak to him in private. Wouldn’t you prefer that, Peter?”
“Peter?” Lena eyed the man. “You said your name was Steven.”
He ignored Lena and continued to smile at Gustie. His way of smiling without showing any teeth made him look more sinister the more he smiled.
“It’s Peter,” Gustie said. “Peter Madigan. What’s wrong, Peter? So ashamed of your mission you couldn’t use your own name?”
From inside, the pleasant smell of apples was overpowered by acrid cigar smoke. She heard Walter’s gravelly laugh and placed the Percherons. They were his horses, part of Pa Kaiser’s big draft team used to pull the well rig around.
Maintaining as much righteous dignity as possible, the stranger said, “I think this would be better discussed in private.”
The two of them walked away from the house.
Lena spun around and shook her finger at Walter, “You dumb cluck! With the whole town not knowing who or where Gustie is, you have to parade him over here!”
“Well,” Walter said, gesturing with his cigar, “You being a friend of hers, I thought...”
“You thought! You thought, all right. My eye! Oh, sit down and be quiet. You make me tired. And put that cigar out. Who said you could smoke that thing in my house?”
Walter sat as he was told and looked wounded. Will handed him a tin ashtray for his cigar.
Lena watched through her kitchen curtains. She could see the discussion between Gustie and Steven—or Peter—or whatev
er the heck his name was, was heated even though she could not hear their voices. When Steven-Peter made a move as if he were going to strike Gustie, Lena said, “That’s it! Will, you better get out there right now! I think he might hit her.”
Will was up and out the door making himself visible very quickly. He ambled casually over to where Gustie and Peter Madigan stood arguing under the chokecherry trees.
“Everything all right out here?” he asked, cleaning his teeth with a toothpick.
Neither Gustie nor Peter Madigan spoke. She glared at the man, her jaw set, her face deeply flushed.
Peter, hoping perhaps to find some kindred male spirit in Will, said stiffly, “I have a right to see my sister’s grave, if she is dead, like Augusta says.”
Will looked down and stirred the gravel with the toe of his boot. “That right? Is his sister dead?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Gustie answered, her voice low and angry.
“You know where she’s buried?” Will tossed the toothpick away.
“Yes, I do, and he has no right to anything.” Gustie spoke quietly, but defiantly.
“I am not leaving here till I see it.” Peter Madigan said.
“Rot here, then.” Gustie turned away, and Peter grabbed her roughly by the arm. Will stepped in and with a grip that held the promise of greater strength lifted Madigan’s hand off Gustie’s arm. At the same time he gently rested his other hand on Gustie’s shoulder. She stopped her retreat.
“Maybe you should just take him to his sister’s grave, Gus,” Will said. “If he is the brother, he has a right to see it.”
“It’s a long way from here.”
“I’ve got plenty of time.” Madigan spoke more civilly, now that his wrist felt Will Kaiser’s iron grip.
Gustie felt beaten, trapped. Will let go of Peter Madigan. He kept his other hand resting lightly on Gustie’s shoulder and said, ignoring Madigan’s presence altogether, “I’ll go with you, Gus. Don’t you worry. I won’t let you go off alone with this piker. Then we’ll be rid of him. Whaddya say?”
Charity Page 15