The Horseman's Graves

by Jacqueline Baker

  Though it was not only possible, but inevitable; oh, not in this way, perhaps, or at this particular time, but some day and some way and so why not this way as well as any other? And that boy, could his word even be trusted? Perhaps the girl was home already. Had anyone checked? But there was that hole in the ice, and the boy, draped in that blanket, sitting there in his father’s wagon, alone and imperious, it seemed, as if he held some dark dominion over those lights and those hills and that river. Over that girl. Over life and death. It put one in mind of something, of someone else … why, Leo Krauss, for heaven’s sake, he looks just like Leo Krauss sitting there. But no, how foolish. He was just a boy. Wasn’t he? Still, he looked so unconcerned. What could he be thinking?

  If only they knew. The boy was not thinking much, his brain slow, cold; he knew only that some time ago, when the snow began to fall, someone had come to the wagon and draped the blanket about his shoulders and squeezed his hand (had they? It seemed that they had, but perhaps he had only wished it). Since then he had sat alone, watchful and shivering, marvelling at the silence, at all those people—so many, where had they all come from?—and those lights and that river. Marvelling at the dumb beauty of it. He tried to imagine the sun, the river flowing into it, east and east, raising it up, golden and glorious.

  But it was dark. The glittering fire, the ghostly lanterns, even these seemed to throw no warmth, only a cold and eerie light. His head was heavy, and his limbs, too. He closed his eyes and let his head drop, felt himself sink and drift, down, down, and all that cold, dark water.

  “Show us again.”

  It was his father, beside the wagon, dusted in a ghost of snow. The boy blinked at him, then climbed down with the blanket clutched about him and stood a moment, his father waiting, and others, too, he could see them now, waiting for him, and so he led them to the river, stood there staring, trying to remember in all that darkness. When they had first come, he had walked the bank, looking for the spot, feeling more sure. But now it did not seem possible, was he even remembering it right? Had it even happened? Part of him believed she must be home by now—had anyone checked? But he did not say that. His father stood beside him, waiting. And the others. The boy looked at the river, he wanted to be sure. Though it did not matter. The futility of it all was remarkable to him. But he did not say that, either. He merely pointed with the corner of the blanket.

  “You’re sure?”

  He nodded, but he was not, he was no longer sure of anything. He had a vague memory, as of a dream, of Elisabeth far out on the ice, irritable and taunting—why was she so angry with him?—while around them the hills darkened and the wind died and the faint, dry rattle of bones drifted down into the valley.

  Do you hear that? she’d said, calling to him through the darkness.

  Where are you?

  Can you hear that?

  I can’t see you, where are you?

  Die Pferdekenner.

  Don’t.

  “You’re sure?” his father asked again.

  “Yah,” someone said from behind him, “how can he be sure?”

  “It’s too dark,” another added, “he wouldn’t remember.”

  “Ach, leave the boy alone. Hasn’t he had enough?”

  “It’s not the remembering that’s the question.”

  That is how it went, the boy standing dizzy among them, and his mother, his mother had not come, she was back at the house, but his father, where was he? And, Lathias? Someone held a lantern up to his face and he blinked, blinded, squeezed his eyes together, as if he would cry, as if he could cry.

  “Leave him alone,” someone said. “We don’t know what happened.”

  “Maybe he should talk, then. Maybe he should tell us.”

  “You’re scaring him.”

  He squinted his eyes, rubbed them, tried to see past the green glare of light. The blanket slipped from his shoulders, but he did not bend to retrieve it.

  “Try and be sure,” his father said.

  “I’m sure.” But he was not.

  “All right,” his father said quietly, “go back to the wagon.”

  But the boy just stood there, thinking there was something more expected of him, what was it? Something more he could say.

  “Where is Lathias?” he asked, though that was not it either.

  “Gone,” his father said, “to get the mother.”

  The boy stood there, waiting; for what, he did not know.

  “Go on,” his father said again, but not looking at him, and then he walked away with the others, lanterns swinging, leaving him alone there in a pool of darkness.

  ——

  Just before dawn a few of the men went home and came back with chains and ropes and grappling hooks made from pieces of old plows. Everybody stood and watched as they cast and pulled, cast and pulled, moving painstakingly downstream from where the boy said she’d gone through. The snow had stopped falling and it was turning colder again. Some of the women had brought coffee and cold meat and buns for the men dredging the river, and when the ones who were watching caught the smell of that food and coffee they realized how cold they were and they stood around stamping their feet and smelling that food, and then they said, But there is nothing more to do, I guess. No, there is nothing to be done here. There is help enough now, and they stood around a minute more and then they went home to their breakfasts.

  A few stayed throughout the early dawn, still casting, though there seemed little point. The Schneider brothers, Stolanus, Mike Weiser, Art Reis, some others. There was a group of boys who had been watching upriver a distance, quietly at first, with their collars turned up and their caps pulled low and their hands jammed into their pockets, exchanging a forbidden cigarette between them, but then, catching the excitement of a death, the smell of it, the way animals do, one of the boys—the one who had come with the cigarette (the one who, as an old man in St. Joseph’s extended-care facility in Victoria, would tell the story of the dredging to the attendants as they helped him with his bath, always too cold, but he would confuse the details so that sometimes it was the boy who had drowned and not the girl, always finishing in tears, begging for the cigarette which he was no longer allowed to have)—slid out onto the ice at the edge, retreated, ran out again, sliding in his big boots. Soon he was followed by others, quietly, tentatively at first, taking turns, feeling the danger, and then crazily, and all at once, back and forth, with wild whoops and hollers, farther and farther out, toward where the ice was thinner and the water deeper. By mid-morning, even they were cold and hungry and disappointed at the lack of a body. They went home, too. And the girls who had been sitting huddled together in a wagon, shivering, not from the cold, but from the idea of a death, and one so close to them, or not close to them, but close to being them, Elisabeth—Brechert, was it?—out there in the river, she was out there somewhere beneath the ice—Just imagine, it could just as easily have been you, Clara, or you, Lena, it could have been any one of us. Oh, awful, how can you say it?—even they began to tire of talking about how well they had known the girl, that Brechert girl—was it Brechert?—began to tire of outdoing each other in tales of their kindnesses toward her, and began to tire mostly because the boys who they had been pretending not to watch no longer whooped and slid on the ice and cast glances in their direction, and so they went home, too. Soon the men packed up their chains and ropes and hooks with half-frozen hands and loaded their own wet, cold bodies into wagons driven only of necessity by their wives.

  Soon everyone was gone but Stolanus, and still Lathias had not returned with the mother. The boy was in the wagon, awake now, but Stolanus just stood there on the bank by himself, awaiting the girl’s mother, staring out at the river, wondering, maybe, just a little, just briefly, for the first time in his life, if his son really was capable of hurting someone, of hurting that girl.

  SIX

  The boy did not remember watching that sun rise mute and cold above the colourless horizon. Everyone had gone, only his father st
ood looking out at the river, his wretched hands stuck up into his coat sleeves, his clothing wet and slowly stiffening in the cold. The boy watched him, watched the snow that fell lightly again settle on his father’s dark cap, on his shoulders, his body so still he appeared to have frozen there, too, in that steady, windless cold, and he thought, Someday, when I am old, when he has gone to his grave, I will remember this, my father standing there at the river with the snow coming down on him. I will remember this.

  When Stolanus finally turned, the boy lifted a corner of the blanket in greeting. Then, when his father did not wave back, he let it drop, feeling foolish, and still with that sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. His father appeared to be staring right through him. He bit his lip to keep from crying. Then he heard it, too, and he turned, and looked up to where a wagon was descending slowly into the valley, ghostly through the snow. Was it Leo? But it was not. It was Lathias, and beside him, Mary, though he did not recognize her at first, she looked different somehow, and it occurred to the boy that he had never seen her that way before, out in the open. Always she seemed to be half hidden, peeking around the edges of things, doorways, Leo. As they neared, he realized how heavy the woman was, he had not known it before, she was wide and soft, broad across her chest and a round belly swelling out from beneath her coat, Leo’s coat. She was a big woman, but also, she was young. He had not known. As she stepped down from the wagon and came toward him through the veil of snow, in the soft light of a March dawn, she seemed much younger than he had thought. There was something pretty in her face, beautiful even, the way her dark hair swept back squarely from her forehead, the curve of her nose, her mouth parted slightly and puffing in the cold, coming toward him, it seemed to take an eternity, and Lathias behind her, and his father coming, too, quickly, from the river, they all moved toward him, through the snow, it made him dizzy, all that slow, swirling motion converging upon him, and he thought, She will want to know what happened now. I will have to tell her. Thinking, There is nothing to tell. She was, and then she wasn’t. His head light, ballooning with the impossibility of it all.

  When she reached the wagon she stopped and stared up at him, her breath coming in short puffs he could read on the air, her upper lip wet and glistening. She stared up at him, he thought she would speak, but she only reached for him, her big soft hands, reached up at him, as if they would wrench him from his seat. He heard his father call, was aware that he was running toward them, was aware that the woman’s mouth was moving now.

  “Bitte,” she was saying, clutching him in her strong hands. “Please.”

  Then everything went black.

  SEVEN

  “She would not have hurt him.”

  It was his father. The boy lay in his upstairs bedroom, warm and tucked beneath the feather tick, fully clothed, he realized, and his mouth felt dry and hot as if he had a fever.

  “Maybe not.” His mother, her voice coming too, through the iron grate in his floor. Talking to his father. It seemed impossible. And he wondered if Lathias were there, too, sitting at the table in the kitchen beneath him. The boy did not move, did not breathe, for fear of missing something, a word between them, the beat of his own heart.

  He flinched at the sound of a coffee cup set down on the table.

  “Do you think she thinks …?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Some do already. Will say it. Are saying it.”

  “Ach, Helen. I don’t know. We should send him to Heinrichs, maybe.”

  “Heinrichs? Are you crazy? They don’t even know him.”

  “Just for a little. Let it all blow over.”

  “It will never blow over.”

  “Then Battleford. We will send him to seminary.”

  “He is not even thirteen yet.”

  “But they would take him. If we told them—”

  “No! What are you thinking?” Dropping her voice. “They will never take him then. They will think the same as everyone else, that he’s—”

  “What?”

  There was a long silence. Then his father said, “They will have to know about it, the seizures.”

  “Yes, that. Of course that. But not about … oh, I can’t even think it. That girl.”

  “Think what? That he—”

  “No!” Lowering her voice again. “No, for God’s sake, he never would.”

  “I thought that you—”

  “No. Just that girl. Isn’t that enough?”

  “What does that mean? Isn’t what enough?”

  “Nothing.”

  Then they were silent again. Through the window, the boy could see Lathias cross and recross the yard in the early light, enter the barn.

  “I should go,” his father said, after a while.

  “Go?”

  “They will dredge again this morning. Farther downstream.”

  “What for? What good will that do?”

  The boy heard his father rise, the floorboards creak beneath his weight.

  “You’re going, then?”

  “I said I was.”

  “But he will be awake soon.”

  “And?”

  “And you should be here.”

  “And if I am here and not there, how would it look?”

  The boy heard the rustle of his father’s coat, knew he would then pull on his boots, his hat, and last, his gloves, first the right, then the left, always the same order, every time.

  “Lathias will be here. He’ll wait here with you.”

  “You should be here. You’re his father.”

  “How would it look?” After a minute he added, “You don’t need to be afraid of him.”

  “Don’t talk so stupid. I don’t know why you would say that. Afraid.”

  “I shouldn’t have. Forget about it. But we must do something, not? We must decide. You know what they think, some of them.”

  “If it had been another boy—”

  “But it was not.”

  “Does Leo know?”

  “I think if he had we might have heard from him by now. He was not there when Lathias went for Mary. She wanted to wait for him. If you can imagine.”

  “God help us, he will try to make something of it. Mark my words.”

  Another long silence and then the boy heard his father pull the door open.

  “Tell him I’ll be back soon.”

  And the door pulled shut and silence descended, a heavier silence, as if his mother were not there at all, as if the house were empty. The boy leaned back and pretended it was. Then, after a minute, he closed his eyes.

  He woke to hard sunlight, blinding, someone in a chair by the window. He lurched up from the pillows, remembering.

  “Good,” Lathias said, “you’re awake.”

  ——

  Only later that morning, after his mother had brought him food on a wooden tray and the three of them—his mother, the boy, Lathias—had sat there wordlessly watching the food grow cold, until finally she carried the tray back down to the kitchen, and only Lathias stayed, staring bleakly from where he sat, though not at the boy, but only out the window, though there could be nothing to see out there, his face pale and drawn deeply with lines at the corners of his mouth, his eyes reddened and hollow as if he had not slept, the hard sun glinting fiercely off his cropped black hair, only then did the boy speak.

  “Lathias?”

  “Yes?”

  “What do they think?”

  EIGHT

  When Leo rose from his pallet by the stove, the fire was out—if there had been one at all—and the room was cold, a plate of food on the counter, cold, too, and hardened. He called out, though he knew by instinct and memory that the house was empty, the way one who has once known grief or despair will know the ghost of that feeling ever after, though they may not put a name to it. And he could not remember if Mary had been there when he’d come home.

  The water in the tin bucket had crusted over with ice and he broke the dipper free, cutting his knuckles against the s
hattered surface, and scooped out a ladleful, the chips of ice knocking against his teeth, sending an ache back deep into his skull. He drank two more dippers, wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve, called again, though for no other reason than to hear the sound of a voice in all that early quiet. He looked out the window. The wagon was there in front of the barn. And the mule, too, standing dumb in the adjacent corral.

  He drank one more dipperful of water, wiped his mouth. Then he buttoned his suit jacket across his chest and pulled his hat over his ears and left the shack, his hands fisted against the cold.

  NINE

  Wing’s had opened for business as usual, of course, there was no reason it shouldn’t, though word of the girl’s drowning had already begun to spread through town.

  Ed Kotschky, who had heard word from Mike Eichert, had come to enlist help for the second dredging of the river. The news silenced the men, as they sat with their heavy coats unbuttoned, hunched and squint-eyed over their coffees in the smoky, pink-walled café, with Wing’s wife at the counter and Wing himself hovering between the cash register and the coffeepot, wiping ketchup bottles and emptying ashtrays, for, though the men had not known the girl well, or in some cases at all, she was a girl nevertheless, and one of their own, as far as that went.

  When it had been quiet for a time, Ed, who’d taken a minute to have a coffee (what matter now to the girl?), though he still stood with hat and coat on, warming his bare hands around the cup, repeated, “So, if any of you can spare the time …”

  The men coughed, wiped at noses with checked hankies, stared deeply into cups of coffee.