“How are you, dear?” Aimee said, rising and looking into Kate’s eyes with an expression of exaggerated concern, as if her condition were a terminal illness.
They sat down, Aimee apologizing for the impetuous timing of her visit; she politely refused tea.
“I’ll come straight to the matter.” Aimee took one of Kate’s hands in hers. She was wearing lace gloves, soft as a second skin, but her grip was firm. “Although I hesitated,” she said, “given that you are—” She broke off and looked once more around the room.
“Has someone died?” Kate said. She thought of her mother, a telegram.
“Nothing so simple as that, I’m afraid.” Aimee turned her gaze back to Kate; her expression of sorrow had deepened.
“What is it?”
“I wouldn’t mention it at all, but if word somehow …”
“Word of what?” Kate’s mouth went dry.
“Miss Cross is a highly principled woman, as I’m sure you understand, but quite passionate in her convictions and not one to restrain her views.”
Kate stared at the feather curling down over Aimee’s forehead, not quite grazing her skin. Frank must have committed some indiscretion at the party, perhaps even an attempt with Miss Cross.
“I have to confess that Charlotte is a bit outspoken for my taste and lacks certain nuances of judgment. That is why I feared …” Another squeeze of the hand.
Kate’s heart began to flutter. “Feared what?”
“That you would hear of this eventually.” She took a deep breath. “Charlotte has spoken to me of Benjamin’s parentage. The boy meant no harm, I suppose.”
“He’s lying,” Kate burst out.
“No doubt, though he did show Miss Cross a photograph of your husband and a Japanese woman—”
“What photograph?” Kate cried.
“I gather it’s about so …” Aimee released Kate’s hand and arranged her fingers to describe a small rectangle. “Your husband was younger, though still quite recognizable, Charlotte says, and she thinks the woman is probably a geisha. Benjamin said that the woman is his mother.”
“He’s an orphan. We don’t know who his parents were.”
“The photograph might be quite beside the point—a souvenir that gave Benjamin a misimpression. On the other hand, Miss Cross is so persuasive.” A little smile played at one corner of her mouth. “Not that I agree with her, necessarily. But my husband saw the photograph as well.”
Kate jumped up. “Please leave,” she said.
Aimee’s hand went to her throat. “I was only … I’m your friend,” she said.
“I hate you,” Kate said. “Get out.”
Kate fled from the room and up the stairs, flung herself on the bed, biting the pillow to keep from screaming. When the sound of the buggy wheels receded into the distance, she flew back downstairs, through the kitchen—Mrs. Pinkerton was outside hanging clothes—and into Benji’s room.
The little traitor. She yanked open the top drawer of his desk: pencils, erasers, protractor, a butterscotch candy covered with lint, a small drawing of that girl, the undertaker’s daughter. A Japanese fan. She opened it, threw it on the floor, and ground her heel against it. Heathen. She dumped the contents of the side drawer on the bed and searched through the papers, her hands shaking badly. Schoolwork, articles from some veterinary journal, folded notes written in a childish hand. She went through the papers again, felt around the edges of the drawers, bent down to look for an envelope pasted to the underside of the desk. She began to go through the shelf of books, flipping through each one, upending and shaking them. A few pressed flowers fell out, and a canceled stamp. Women’s Suffrage: A Brief History, by Miss Charlotte Cross. She ripped off the cover, tore it into bits, fanned through the pages, shook it upside down, and spat on it.
In the closet, she turned out all the pockets and felt inside the shoes. There was a box on the floor. She pulled it out: the top she’d given him, the bear, a turtle shell, a whittling knife. She stabbed the bear with the knife, then grabbed the pillow from the bed, ripped it open, and pounded it on the bed. Feathers flew into the air.
“Kate!”
She spun around. Mrs. Pinkerton stood gaping in the doorway, laundry spilling from her basket.
“He’s ruined us,” Kate said, squeezing the knife against her palm until she felt nothing at all.
Benji walked home from school alone, avoiding the Cases and even Flora. The other boys had talked about Miss Cross’s prostitute pictures at recess in high, excited whispers, and Marvin said Benji’s mother was probably a prostitute. They’d gotten in a fight, and Benji held Marvin’s face against the dirt until he said she wasn’t. Somebody had told Miss Ladu and now he had extra homework for tomorrow. He picked up an Osage orange from the road and aimed it at an old shed; it splatted against the tin. He was sorry Miss Cross had come. She didn’t even know Japanese.
If Marvin could see the picture of Mama, he’d know she was a geisha; even an idiot like him could tell the difference.
The Guernseys were crossing the road to the house. They came earlier now that it was late fall and there was less grass in the meadow. The sky was heavy with clouds too; it smelled like rain. Bossy, the lead cow, didn’t like to get wet; Benji stopped to rub her head and tell her he’d be back soon. He’d eat whatever Grandmother Pinkerton had laid out for him before he did the milking.
Frank was leaning against the door of the barn. “Get in here,” he said, gesturing with his whip. His face was blotched. Drunk again. Benji hurried on past.
Frank ran after him and caught his arm.
“Where’s that picture?” he said.
Benji’s mind slid into a smooth hard place. “What picture?”
“You know damn well what picture, you bastard. That Moore woman was here, and Mother Pinkerton is in a hell of a state. The doctor had to come.” Frank raised the whip.
“You can’t whip it out of me,” Benji said. “I’d die first.” He turned, pivoted around Frank, and ran toward the barn.
Benji moved fast, throwing the saddle on Kuro, tightening the girth, slipping on the bridle.
“Where the hell you think you’re going?” Frank shouted, stumbling toward him.
“To get the picture of your bastard’s parents. If you follow me, I’ll tell everyone in town.”
He took off down the road, urging Kuro into a gallop. His heart was hammering but his mind was clear. He took a mental inventory: twenty cents, and, in his saddlebag, an apple from lunch. He glanced back: The road was empty. Frank would be fumbling with Admiral’s tack. Benji could outrun him easily if he didn’t have to stop by Keast’s.
He took a back way to Morseville, pushing Kuro hard down a rutted lane and through a pasture, then a patch of woods. He tied Kuro to a post around the corner from Keast’s boardinghouse.
There were only a few people in the street—women looking in the dry-goods-store window and a colored man leading a horse toward the livery stable. One of the women glanced at him briefly; later she’d say she saw him, the Pinkerton orphan on the run.
When she turned away, he hurried inside the boardinghouse and up to Keast’s room, yanked open the desk drawer, and took out the tin with the picture in it and the leather pouch full of money.
Back down the stairs—Mrs. Bosley’s voice, the smell of supper cooking—but no one saw him as he went out the door and down the street.
He took the back road west toward Galena, Kuro’s legs pumping beneath him as a plan began to gather in his mind. He’d make his way across the country, working on farms; they always needed help making barns snug for the winter, repairing tools. Then he could get a job on a merchant vessel going to Japan. He hadn’t meant to go to Japan so soon, but nothing ever happened the way you planned it. He wished he could have told Flora and Keast, but he couldn’t think about that now.
Ahead, two walls of corn stalks made a long rattling tunnel and the sky bore down on him. He touched the right pocket of his trousers where the pict
ure was. Once he was in California, he’d have someone read the writing and then he could find his family in Nagasaki. He could make it, he and Kuro. What would he do with Kuro? They might not take him on the ship. He’d think about that later too.
It was a long way, six thousand miles. He saw himself on Kuro, a small speck moving slowly across the globe, and the reins went slippery in his hands.
A breeze had come up, moving through the corn, a hollow sound. The stalks above his head made him dizzy. He’d been lost in a cornfield once, every direction he went the wrong one, walking, then running, his feet slipping in the mud, his mind confused about the sun. He could have died; even grown men died in the corn. It had happened to Jed Stevens last year. He rubbed his face hard with both hands. He was thinking crazy.
He let Kuro slow to a trot as they passed out of the fields and into pastureland, a cattle farm. Herefords mostly. Frank had always talked big about raising cattle. “You couldn’t cut it,” Benji said aloud, “you goddamn sousehead, you stinking piece of dung.” He thought of Frank coming toward him with the whip and put his heels to Kuro’s sides again. The road behind was still empty.
When Kuro tired, Benji let him walk and concentrated on the remnants of prairie at the edges of the road. The grasses in their fall colors and the bobolinks swooping above made him think of Flora. She said the bobolink’s song made her happy even when nothing else could. The bobolinks were migrating; what would cheer her up now? He swiped away tears. He couldn’t be a sissy; he had to concentrate on his plan.
The road passed a small stream, where Kuro drank, the rings on his halter clinking. They followed the stream across the railroad tracks into a cluster of trees beside the water. He would spend the night here, sheltered in the woods, and just in time too; it was getting dark. He removed Kuro’s saddle and tack, brushed him down, and tied him to a sapling. Upstream, he found a skirt of hickory nuts beneath a tree. He ate the nuts and shared his apple with Kuro. He’d have to stop in Galena for food and other supplies. He wished he had his knife with him, and his slingshot for killing jackrabbits. There was a lot to wish for. He had to stop that kind of thinking. Using the saddle for a pillow, he settled down for the night at the base of a large pine.
Images raced through his mind: Flora’s pretty feet in the water when they sat beside the creek last summer; the family at the table tonight, Franklin crying when he heard his big brother had left, Frank with the whip. Miss Cross looking at the picture. She must have told. Damn suffragist, cross-eyed bitch. Not that Frank didn’t deserve it, the lying bastard. Then he thought of Franklin; he would never hear the end of it at school, and Benji wouldn’t be there to protect him.
The ground was knobby beneath the pine needles and he was shivering with cold; he’d buy a poncho and blanket, a bedroll. He turned again and again, thinking he would never sleep, but then it was morning and a light rain was falling.
He was nervous on the road to Galena. If Frank had started off early to find him, he might catch up this morning. He could probably guess what direction he’d gone. Frank wouldn’t want him except to whip the stuffing out of him and to get the picture. He pushed the tin deeper into his pocket. Would any of the family want him now?
He passed a farmer driving an empty cart, then a buggy headed the other direction, in it a man wearing a bowler hat. The man’s eyes were distracted; he didn’t see Benji. Closer to town there was more traffic; he kept his head down as he guided Kuro along the edge of the road.
In Galena he ducked into a dry-goods store, bought beef jerky and a hunk of cheese, a slingshot, a slicker, a horse blanket and a blanket for himself, a bottle of mineral oil in case Kuro developed colic. His money bag was considerably lighter; no sleeping bag until he found work.
Kuro could graze on wild grasses, but he also had to have oats. In the feed store across the street, a suspicious-looking man with a boil on his neck sold Benji a small sack of grain. “Where you off to, boy?”
“To see my grandfather.” It was a good answer; Keast would say he had his mind on straight. As he packed the saddlebag, he felt a burst of good spirits.
He pulled on the slicker and set out on the north road toward East Dubuque. He’d cross the Mississippi there and then he’d be in Iowa, his first state.
It was raining harder. Kuro’s hooves made sucking sounds in the mud. Don’t throw a shoe, he prayed. Benji had to let him walk now and conserve his strength.
He passed several houses on the edge of town, then it was farmland again. Up ahead he saw a wagon filled with bare-limbed shrubs and evergreens—a tree salesman. Late in the year for a tree salesman. He hoped this was no one he knew. The driver was sitting in the wagon in a straight-back chair beneath a rigged-up canopy to keep off the rain. As he went by, Benji glanced at the man—a jovial face pursed around a cigar—relieved not to have seen him before.
The man removed the cigar. “Peach of a day, ain’t it?” he said, then popped the cigar back in his mouth.
It was late afternoon, and raining harder, when he passed through East Dubuque to the bridge. Kuro shied at the bridge, but Benji urged him gently with his heels and they started across. The bridge creaked and swayed in the gusts of wind. Kuro shied again, knocking against the wooden rail. Benji looked through the veil of rain down at the river, at whitecaps in the boiling current. “Come on, boy.” He snapped the reins and Kuro reared, nearly unseating him. He jumped off and tried to lead him forward, but Kuro threw back his head and reared again.
The rain was drumming down so hard now it stung Benji’s face; he could feel water seeping beneath the neck of his slicker. “Come on, damn you.” He tugged harder at the reins; Kuro danced from one side of the bridge to the other. There was a sudden blast of wind, and a sheet of rain hit them like a wave. Kuro flung his hindquarters to one side, smacking the rail so hard it made a cracking sound, then started to gallop. “Whoa!” Benji ran beside him, holding the reins; then they slipped from his hand, but he kept running, trying to stay even with Kuro. The boards were slick; if Kuro fell, he’d break a leg and have to be shot. But Kuro ran steadily, his hooves hammering against the bridge. Benji pushed himself faster, breathing hard, his chest burning. He caught one rein, jerking Kuro against him, then lost his grip and Kuro pulled ahead. If he lost his horse, he couldn’t make it. Then, through the rain, he could see a street in the distance, brick buildings; thank God, they were almost there.
Kuro clattered down the curve at the end of the bridge and onto the street. He wouldn’t go far. Benji found him around a corner, his ears flat against his head, rain streaming down his face like tears. “I knew you could do it, boy,” he said, putting his arm around Kuro’s neck and rubbing his forelock. Whistling, he led Kuro down the street to find a livery stable where they could both stay the night. He was a samurai, on his way home.
Butterfly:
My little god! My dearest, dearest love,
flower of lilies and roses.
May you never know that for you,
for your innocent eyes, Butterfly died!
So that you may go away over the sea,
and when you are older, may feel no pain
at your mother’s renunciation.
My son, sent from the throne of Paradise,
look carefully at your mother’s face,
so that a trace of it will remain with you,
look carefully! My love, farewell!
Farewell, my little love! Go, play, play!
Pinkerton:
Yes, all at once
I see my mistake
and I feel that I shall never be free
from this torment.
I shall never be free.
Keast had crisscrossed Jo Daviess County that day—a horse with glanders in Elizabeth; a report of hog cholera near Galena—and supper was already in progress when he returned to Morseville. He washed up outside the boardinghouse, went into the dining room, and took his place across from Lena. Smiling, she served his plate; he watched her beautiful hands, im
agining her across their own dinner table next spring. She was set on marrying when the lilacs were in bloom, though he was impatient at the delay, an old man like himself. The wedding date had provoked their only arguments.
After supper, he and Lena took a brief constitutional, wrapped up against the chill. “It would be a fine season for matrimony,” he said, imagining them warm together beneath a pile of quilts. She laughed, as if he was joking. She had work to do for the next day’s classes, so they squeezed hands good night outside the door of her room and—after he glanced around; no one in sight—he gave her a kiss. Her lips were willing, and her arms tight around him. It was hard to fathom why she’d want to wait.
In his room, he poured a glass of brandy and, with a sigh, sank into his chair with the latest issue of Hoard’s Dairyman. There had been several cases of foot-and-mouth in Ohio; God forbid that it should spread here. He’d witnessed a plague in Wisconsin when he was a boy; there had been massive slaughter.
He put down the paper. This was no subject for the evening hour. He should be watching Lena in the firelight as she sat reading or sewing; he could distract her with a kiss on the neck and lead her to the bedroom. Lena wanted children, as he did; it was high time for her too, at twenty-seven years old. Maybe she was harboring some doubts. He finished off the brandy.
As he crossed the room to refill his glass, he noticed that the bottom drawer of his desk was open. He pushed it shut with his foot, then turned to look. He hadn’t opened it. He squatted beside the drawer.
The tin that contained Benji’s photograph was missing and the box had been left unlocked. That wasn’t surprising—he’d taken it a couple of other times, just to look at her face, he’d said—but it wasn’t like him not to lock the box and close the drawer. He was careful that way. He felt in the back of the box for the boy’s pouch of money; nothing but a blank space. He jerked the drawer all the way open. Keast’s mesh bag of silver dollars was still there, so this wasn’t a case of theft.
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