The Horseman's Graves

by Jacqueline Baker

  Finally, someone said, “What’s the mother’s name again?”

  “She was a Schiller, not?”

  “Fox Valley Schiller?”

  “Dakota, I thought.”

  “Herb knows her, from the shop.”

  “What is it, Herb? What’s the last name?”

  “I thought Dunhauer.”

  “Never heard of Dunhauers.”

  “Dakota, like I said.”

  “No, no, you’re thinking of Marian Weiser’s people. Leo’s first wife, Cecilia. She was a Dunhauer.”

  “That’s right. This one’s a Brechert.”

  “Dakota, too, not?”

  “I wonder if her people will come.”

  “Hell of a trip, this time of year.”

  “And another snow yet coming, I’d bet on it.”

  “Well, she’s got Leo.”

  “Christ, yah. That’s a real comfort.”

  “That’s her only girl, too. Or was.”

  “She lost her first husband?”

  “Wasn’t ever a first husband. That’s what Ludmila said. Or what Marian told her. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know.”

  “That explains a lot.”

  “Explains what she’s doing with Leo, anyway.”

  “Well, there’s one thing for sure, those that live by the sword, die by it.”

  There was a moment of perplexed silence, until someone said, “What the Christ is that supposed to mean?”

  “Means Leo Krauss, that’s what it means.”

  “You think he gives a rat’s ass about it?”

  “It’s not him, it’s her that suffers. It’s the missus.”

  “Well, at least that girl won’t suffer no more. That’s something, I guess.”

  And they were quiet then and nobody spoke of Leo any more. They slurped at their coffees and smoked, heads down, coughing and snorting and swiping at noses.

  Ed, who had finished his coffee, who had been going back and forth with himself about it, wondering should he, shouldn’t he, but not able to restrain himself in the end (they would find out anyway, sooner or later), he finally said, “That Schoff boy was with her.”

  They all looked up from their cups.

  “Stolanus’s boy?”

  Ed nodded.

  “The one …?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He went through, too?”

  “No,” Ed said, “no. They were down there together, but only the boy come back. Stolanus’s hired man—”

  “The halfbreed?”

  “He’s Indian?”

  “I thought German.”

  “He’s half. Half German, half Indian. Or something.”

  “Now that you say it, he does have that look.”

  “Hell of a worker, though.”

  “And loyal to that boy.”

  “Treats him like a brother.”

  “I’m surprised he stuck around, after.”

  “Loyal, like I say. Those halfbreeds are like that.”

  “What? They’d as soon shoot you as look at you.”

  “Halfbreed, hell, there’s a few of us would as soon shoot you as look at you.”

  “Well, he’s loyal anyway.”

  “Hard worker.”

  “Funny they kept him on, Helen and Stolanus.”

  “Wasn’t even really his fault, what I heard.”

  “He was driving, wasn’t he?”

  “Anyway,” Ed said, raising his voice a little, “it was him that found the boy. He was running back from the river, I guess, the boy was. It was dark. He had one of them, what do you say, those fits he has.”

  “The halfbreed?”

  “No, the boy. Christ, listen, will you? The girl wasn’t with him. The hired man found the boy coming back from the river and he, the boy, had one of those fits. When he come to, he said she’d fallen in the river, the Brechert girl.”

  “Fallen?”

  “Through the ice.”

  “That’s the boy was run over by the wagon.”

  “He just finished saying that.”

  “Boy’s not right in the head.”

  “Miracle he lived.”

  “Ach, he’s all right.”

  “Those head injuries. Remember Martin Schlesser?”

  “Schlesser was all right.”

  “Say what you like, he gave me the creeps and so does that boy.”

  “Normal, they say. Except for the fits. Harmless.”

  “Harmless? You think so?”

  “There’s a girl out there might beg to differ with you.”

  And that made them think of the girl again. Wing came around with the coffeepot but they all shook their heads and Ed put his cup on the table and said, “Well, I guess it’s time.”

  When only two or three of the men moved to join him, he said, “It’s got nothing to do with Leo. Nor that boy, neither. Think of the mother. Think if it was one of your own out there.”

  And then he put his money on the counter and pulled on his gloves, nodding to Wing as he went out.

  TEN

  Someone, out of duty or consideration, notified the constable, fifteen miles away at Triumph, that there had been a supposed drowning, and Corporal McCready—William Lance McCready, Macky to his friends, formerly of Havre, Montana, formerly of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, who had late in his police career accepted, that is what he said, accepted a lateral promotion and who liked to say over and over, sounding more each time like he was quoting himself, This is a peaceful place. It holds no interest for the cowboys, and the immigrants hardly ever get to town, and who looked upon the occasional accidental deaths and tragedies, though he would never admit it, not even to his wife, as a kind of personal attack upon him, and who deeply resented that, in the case of a drowning, it was his job to lead the dredging of the river—though in truth he never did a thing but come out and stand there a few minutes, well back from the edge of the river so as not to get his boots wet, frowning and scratching his nose—and to carry news of the tragedy to the families—who already knew, since they were the ones dredging the river—this Corporal McCready came down to the river that first morning and stood watching and smoking and scratching his nose while the men cast hooks out into the river and hauled them back in through the ice, he watched a while and then he returned to Triumph and later that day, after a good lunch, drove out to Helen and Stolanus’s and talked to the boy briefly and, finally, went on record to say that the drowning death of one Elisabeth Brechert had been, in his opinion, purely accidental.

  That was his opinion, both as a professional officer of the law and as a member of this fine and peaceful community. And when there were some who voiced a different opinion, he said again that he had made up his mind and he meant to stick by it. What others thought, well, that was their own goddamned business and entirely outside his jurisdiction.

  ELEVEN

  So it seemed she was dead, after all, in spite of the disbelief, the absence of a body. McCready had confirmed it and that seemed to settle the matter in everyone’s minds, everyone’s except maybe the mother’s, Mary’s. Or that is what they said, Ach, the poor mother, who spent every day now down at the river, yes, they had all seen her there, walking the banks, or just standing and staring, as if the girl might just somehow appear, as if she might be alive, after—Was it a week already? No, not a week, not that long—well, anyway, if you’re looking for the mother, she won’t be at home.

  But no one was looking for her, not any more. They were, in fact, happy enough to avoid her, for what was there to say, what was there to do? And then, she had never really been a part of the parish, either, kept too much to herself. Oh, she was not like Helen Schoff, that is not what they meant, she did not put herself above them, but she did set herself apart, made little effort, come now, no effort at all, to get to know anyone, always sending that girl to the door when anyone came (and she wouldn’t be able to do that any more, no), and never even so much as looking at anyone when they spoke to her, sometimes
they wondered if she was deaf, perhaps she was.

  And then, too, she was Leo’s wife, that is what really kept people away from her, before the drowning and after the drowning, people who would otherwise have gone out of their way to bring food and companionship following a death, throughout the dark, long hours, days, weeks, each blurring numbly into the next. A few did try, coming in groups of two or three, but Mary was never home, or if she was she did not come to the door and Leo would not invite them in, would simply take their offerings of food and bless them in a cursory, belligerent way and let the door swing shut in their faces. What more could be expected of them? After a day or two, they said, Well, and we are sorry for her, for the mother, but are we to be abused for our goodwill?

  Ma Reis herself had been over several times those first few days and always her welcome was the same. It was enough to make her want to knock Leo’s head against the wall. Not once did she see Mary, though she suspected, on at least one occasion, that the woman was, in fact, at home and not at the river as Leo had insisted when Ma pressed him. She thought, If I can’t catch her at home, I will watch to see when she passes, and I will follow her.

  Ma Reis sat by her own kitchen window all one afternoon, waiting. When Mary passed on the road around about nightfall, Ma grabbed her coat. Art was angry with her for it, it was none of her jeezly business, why did she always have to stick her nose into other people’s business? And Leo Krauss’s business, of all people. Did she not remember all the trouble Pius Schoff’d had with the old one? Those Krausses, leave them alone, they are nothing but trouble, and anyway it was almost suppertime, and what about that? That is what he said.

  And Ma said, “Ach, you men are all the same, nothing is worth any trouble unless it has a wheel attached to it, or a hoof.”

  “Yah,” Art said, under his breath, “there’s a mule that’s given me many a year of trouble.”

  “If you didn’t want to trouble with a mule,” Ma said, “you shouldn’t have married one.”

  “Yah,” Art said again, “that mule didn’t give me much choice, if I remember right, and what am I to do about supper?”

  But Ma was already out the door and did not hear him.

  It was dark when she got to Krausses’, and no lights on in the house. Ma stood in the yard a minute, Cecilia’s old bottle tree tinkling a little in the darkness. She wondered whether or not to knock. Perhaps Mary was asleep already. She would not want to wake her, the poor woman must be exhausted. Then—she didn’t know how exactly, it was kind of like the shiver one gets when someone walks over their grave—she knew all at once that Mary was sitting there on the porch, right in the old chair that Leo had kept there ever since he used to sit and watch Cecilia working in the yard. So she stood there quietly, knowing the woman must have seen her approach, thinking Mary might speak.

  When she didn’t, Ma said, very gently, “Mary? Is that you?”

  The chair legs creaked a little and Mary said, “Yah, what is it?”

  Ma walked up to the porch steps, asked if she might sit a minute, and when Mary did not reply, settled herself on the top stair. She thought, No use beating around the bush, and so she said, flat out, “You have an awful lot on your shoulders, Mary. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Mary said, “What is on my shoulders?”

  Ma did not know how to answer. Felt, in fact, a little irritated with the woman’s response—was she an imbecile?—and so she said, bluntly, “Well, Mary, losing your daughter that way. That is more than enough in itself, not? And then it must be so hard here anyway …”—might as well come right out about it—“with Leo.”

  The porch chair creaked a bit more and finally Mary said, “Yah, that is what everyone thinks, not? That it is so hard for me. That Leo is so hard.” She paused and shifted in her chair. “Tell me,” Mary said, “what is so bad about Leo? What does everyone think is so bad?”

  Ma was shocked. She had assumed, like everyone else, that things must be bad for Mary, with Leo. Assumed that Mary must know herself that things were bad. How could she not? And she remembered Cecilia, then, and how bad things had been for her and the children. But, no, had they? Come to think of it, things had not been so bad at all. They had prospered, had even seemed happy. But Cecilia was dead. And her children as good as scattered by the winds, her children that were no longer her children. And so what was it that was so bad about Leo? What was it that they all despised so? Ma sat for a while, wondering how to answer, trying to say exactly what it was about Leo, what was so unforgivable, what he’d done that was so awful. And in the end all she could think to say was, “Why, he’s just Leo. Just the way he is. Isn’t that awfully hard to live with? You can’t be happy here.”

  And Mary sighed and shifted and said, “With my father we lived with nothing, here we live with something. Maybe it is not always a good something. But it is something, still. Who is to say which is worse? Leo is not the best maybe. But I am not the best either.”

  A breeze rattled the bottles in the cottonwood tree. Ma sat quietly again, smoothing her dress across her knees. Finally, she said, “I am sorry, Mary.”

  Mary just nodded a little, a slight movement in the darkness. Then she said, “Those bottles, there. You hear?”

  “Yes,” Ma said.

  “They’re pretty.”

  “Yes,” Ma agreed. “They are.”

  “Did Leo put those bottles there?”

  “No,” Ma said. “That was his first wife, Cecilia.”

  Mary nodded. “Leo married her,” she said.

  “Yes,” Ma said. “That’s right.”

  Mary nodded again. Finally she said, “So Leo put those bottles there.”

  “No,” Ma said, “Cecilia did.”

  “But Leo married Cecilia.”

  What? Ma thought. Has she lost her mind? “Yes,” she said, a little impatiently. “He married her.”

  “And so it was Leo who put those bottles there.”

  Ma was about to object again. Then she closed her mouth, sat listening to the bottles tinkling across the darkened yard.

  “She comes sometimes,” Mary said. “Cecilia does.”

  Bah, Ma wanted to say, nonsense. But she did not.

  “She would come sometimes to Elisabeth. She would touch her face, in the night. At first I thought, Leo. And so it was good, her out in the barn, away from him.”

  Away? Ma thought. That gave him free licence. But she did not say that. Instead she just said, “Oh, Mary.”

  “I know what you think,” Mary said. “But Leo would not hurt her. Not like that.”

  “How do you know, Mary?”

  “I just know.”

  And all the while the bottles tinkling away across the yard. Ma began to be sorry she had come at all. She was not often at a loss for words.

  “Will you go away?” she asked.

  “Why?” Mary said.

  “Well,” Ma said, “you wouldn’t want to stay,” and then she added, “now.”

  “Why not?”

  Ma shook her head in frustration. “Mary,” she said, “you can’t be happy here.”

  “What’s happy?” Mary said. “Are you happy?”

  “Yes,” Ma said, after a moment, “I am.”

  Then Mary fell silent and Ma felt bad that she had said that, felt terrible that she had admitted to her own happiness, the fullness of her life (for it was full, she was very fortunate, her children, who were not perfect either maybe, nor was she, nor was Art, who knew she was a mule and loved her anyway), but she was sorry she had said it to Mary, had waved her happiness like a flag in Mary’s face, making her feel worse. And so she added, “Mostly, I am. Not always, but mostly.”

  She wished that she could see the expression on Mary’s face, who sat in heavy silence.

  Finally, Mary said, “How do you know?”

  “How do I know what?”

  Ma waited.

  “How do you know that you are happy?” Mary said.

  Ma said later that wa
s the saddest thing she’d ever heard. She said it almost made her jump up and take that big, sad woman in her arms and rock her like she was a little girl. But she never found out whether or not she would have, because just then, out of the darkness and the prairie, came the sound of a wagon, and pretty soon they could see one emerging as if out of the road itself, out of the earth, and Ma thought, at first, It is Art, he has come for me, wanting his supper, the old fool.

  But it was not Art Reis, it was Leo. He lurched his old wagon into the yard, just a few feet from where Mary and Ma sat, he could not see them, and so he hollered, “Mary, get some supper on,” and he climbed slowly down and began to unhitch the mule, fumbling in the darkness. When no one replied, he called out again, “Mary.” But tentatively, as if he knew he would be calling out to an empty house, or not knew, but feared. It was fear Ma heard in his voice, and she was surprised and ashamed for him, for Leo.

  The two women waited while Leo led his mule to the corral. Then Mary rose and opened the screen door.

  Ma said softly, “Mary.”

  “I got to get supper on,” Mary said. And she stepped into the house and let the screen door fall shut quietly behind her.

  Ma heard Leo coming from the barn, then, and she said she didn’t know what got into her, it was not like her to be deceptive, that was for sure, she liked to be open about things, but she scooted up onto the far side of the porch and crouched there so Leo would not see her. She just did not want to face him.

  He stepped heavily up and through the screen and shut the peeling wooden door behind him. At first she only crouched there in the cold, her coat wrapped tightly around her, listening to the scrapings and thumpings as Mary went about making supper, wanting to be sure Leo was not still at the screen door where he would see her leave.

  But then some small light began to glow through the window, from the stove Mary had lit, Ma assumed, and she poked her head up, just barely, well back from the window so the light would not catch her face. There was Mary working heavily at the counter, and, there, there was Leo, so near she could have reached out and touched him had there been no window between them. He was sitting at the table, his forearms resting there, watching Mary go about the supper. And the silence there, oh, the silence. It was unbearable, Ma said.