The Horseman's Graves

by Jacqueline Baker

  Later, much later, he came to the house because the lanterns still gleamed there though it was much too late for a light, and he stood in the hot August night outside the kitchen door, not finding himself able to enter after all, stood there until Stolanus came outside, for what reason he never did learn, and discovered him there and looked at him as if he did not recognize him, just for a second, and they stood there together, strangers, the sound of crickets all around them in the darkness. Then Stolanus opened the door and stood waiting for him and Lathias went in and before he could even see the boy he learned that Helen lay in a pool of her own blood, the life he’d felt under the palm of his hand already gone, dead before it had lived. And he stood there in the kitchen, not knowing what to do with himself, and Stolanus opened the door to their bedroom to go in and he caught sight of her lying there, Helen, and she saw him, too, their eyes meeting, briefly, and then the door closed and there was nothing for him to do but go upstairs to the boy. And so he did, and sat by his bed all through the night, looking anywhere but at his face.

  And the boy had lived but the infant had not, and Helen had never once looked at him, at Lathias, with anything but kindness in her eyes, though the kindness slowly grew distant and remote, as if it were a fondness she no longer felt, but only remembered. As if he, too, had died.

  ——

  Just before dawn, he rose from the bed where he had lain, awake and fully clothed, and smoothed the blankets and took his saddlebags from a nail in the wall and stuffed in his shirts and socks and underwear, his Sunday pants, a comb, his spare leather gloves and some few woollens. He lifted the lid on the chest and bent to gather his things, but in the early dark, it was as if the chest were empty, it yawned blackly before him, and so he only closed the lid and straightened, made the sign of the cross in the direction he knew the rosary hung, and descended the ladder, his saddlebags slung across his shoulder.

  The mare was asleep and he laid a hand against her neck and spoke softly and she huffed and shifted her hooves against the floorboards, and he spoke again, and poured a tin of oats into the basin before her which she snuffed and pushed at unenthusiastically while he pulled his blanket and saddle from where they hung across the rails and settled them over her, pulling up the cinches and buckling the saddlebags and strapping his winter coat in a roll behind the cantle, he led her out of the barn and away from the house. Only when he was well clear of the yard did he pull himself up and into the saddle and ride.

  If he could get as far as the river, that is what he told himself. If I can get to the river, without looking back, I will go. And then, If I can get to the river without hearing a coyote call, I will go. And, If I can get to the river without the horse stumbling, I will go. And that is how he rode, through the predawn cold, the horse steady and sure beneath him. When he reached the Horseman’s graves, he stopped a moment, made the sign of the cross, as he used to, and rode on, past them, toward the braucha’s, the buildings just visible now against the barely lightening sky, and the river valley beyond.

  When he got as far as the Bull’s Forehead and the lip of the river valley he stopped again and looked back at the farms spread out there beneath a vast, bluing sky, the way the land just seemed to go on and on, right up into the horizon, as if the way things were here was the way things were everywhere, no mountains or oceans, no foothills or deserts or lakes, no forests, just unending prairie, for ever and ever. As if he could ride the rest of his life and never get out of it. As if he could ride the rest of his life and never get it out of him.

  He put his heels to his horse and descended, down into the valley, west.

  ——

  He rode for three days and on the third he stopped at a town for food at the Chinese café. When he had finished eating, he sat and stared out the window, waiting for the men to come in for coffee, and when they did, he sat a few minutes more and finally he stood up and he cleared his throat and he said, “Any work around here?”

  The men looked up from their coffees.

  “Ain’t nothing but work around here,” one of them said.

  “Who’re your people, son?”

  “Schoff,” he said. Weren’t they? As much as anyone else. “Stolanus and Helen Schoff.”

  “Schoff. Never heard of them.”

  “Where’s home for you?”

  “East.”

  “What, Kindersley? Swift Current?”

  “Round about there.”

  “They run out of work?”

  “They all have money over there, that’s what I heard.”

  “He’s looking for a wife, maybe.”

  “Talk to Wally, here, he’s looking to get rid of his.”

  Lathias stood quietly, waiting while the men chuckled and teased each other, thinking, Things don’t change much. Things don’t hardly change at all, when you think of it. I could just keep riding and riding and things wouldn’t never change much at all.

  “A wife is what you don’t need.”

  “That’s right, you’re only young once. You have to enjoy yourself, not?”

  “Just so long as you’re not enjoying yourself with his wife.”

  Lathias stood waiting.

  “Here, hold on once,” one of the men said. “Wechter,” he called to one of the men at a table in the back corner, “this young fella’s looking for work. He promises to keep clear of your daughters. And your wife, too.”

  “Yah,” someone said, “but will they keep clear of him?”

  “What’s the name?” someone called.

  “Schoff. From—where’d you say you’re from again?”

  “Schoff? Never heard of them.”

  “You need to see Wechter, here. He’s got all the money.”

  “And the daughters too, not?”

  “Yah, six girls, he should be able to find one he likes.”

  “Not if Wechter has anything to say about it.”

  A tall man in a denim coat, with blue eyes that crinkled deeply at the corners, turned in his seat and looked Lathias up and down.

  “What’s this?” he said gruffly. “Hired man, eh?”

  Lathias took off his hat, nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said. “That’s right. Hired man.”

  The big man studied him a moment more, then he held out his hand.

  Lathias took it.

  ——

  Stolanus looked to Lathias’s empty seat, and then to Helen. She ignored him, setting a bowl of gravy onto the table. She pulled her chair in with a screech and passed Stolanus the platter of roast pork. When he did not immediately serve himself, she forked two big slices onto his plate and said, as if there were some connection, “He has already eaten.”

  “Lathias?”

  Helen glanced up sharply.

  “Oh,” Stolanus said. “Of course. How is he?”

  “The same.”

  She passed the potatoes, and then the gravy and the bread, only serving herself after Stolanus had been served, filling her plate enormously, as she always did, and then pretending to eat, moving things around from one side of the plate to the other.

  Stolanus cut his meat into pieces and then laid down his knife and his fork.

  “But,” he said, “will we not wait for Lathias?”

  Helen made motions of chewing, swallowing. “No,” she said. “Why should we?”

  Stolanus frowned, turned his attention back to his plate.

  After a few moments, he lifted his head again, watched her. “Where is Lathias?” he said.

  “You think I sit at the window all day to watch where he goes?” She placed a small bite between her lips.

  “Has he been in today?”

  “No,” she said. “I haven’t seen him.”

  “I thought he had gone to town on errands for you.”

  “Bread?” she said, lifting the board toward him, though he already held a piece in his hand. When he did not reply, she lowered the bread to the table and said, “I haven’t seen him, I tell you. Check the loft. Maybe he is not well.�
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  “His horse is gone.”

  “Well, then, I guess he’s gone out.”

  “Without saying? All day like that?”

  “Well, he is not a child,” she said, emphasizing the word. Then she added, “He can do what he wants.”

  “Did I say he couldn’t?” Stolanus frowned, looked out the window. “It’s funny, though.”

  “Yes, isn’t it, ha ha.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know what you meant.”

  “What are you talking about?” It was the boy. He stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at them, ghostly.

  Helen half rose from her chair.

  “Well,” Stolanus boomed, “and look what the cat dragged in.”

  “Will you come down?” Helen said, still in her odd position, half in and half out of her chair, palms against the edge of the table.

  He blinked down at them. “Where is Lathias?” he said.

  “Ach, who knows,” Stolanus said jovially, winking at the boy. “Spring fever, maybe.”

  The boy did not move, or change his expression.

  “Town,” Helen said, flicking her eyes toward Stolanus. “I sent him to town on errands.” Then, when the boy did not respond, she repeated, “Will you come down?” And she pulled his chair out a bit from the table.

  “No,” he said, and turned and disappeared back up the stairs, as if he had never been there at all.

  ——

  After Lathias had fed and watered his mare and turned her out to what he presumed was the home pasture, he walked to the neat, white house, his small bundle tucked beneath his arm. He paused on the doorstep, listening to the chatter and clattering of dishes that came through the open window. Before he had lifted a hand to knock, the door was pulled open and a little girl stood looking up at him.

  “Who are you?” she said in German.

  “English, Milly, English,” a woman’s voice called above the noise from inside. “Who is it?”

  “Who knows?” the little girl called back in German. “He cannot speak, I think.”

  “Oh, Millie,” came the voice, and the door was pulled farther ajar and a woman’s face appeared there. “Yes?” she said.

  But the little girl who still stood looking up at him was right: he could not speak. He only took the hat from his head, and lifted his bundle a little.

  But the woman slapped a hand to her forehead. “Ach, but I would forget my head today. We’re in the middle of Easter baking,” she said, and wiped her hands on her apron, as if to prove it. “You’re the new man.”

  When she said this, the noise from the kitchen behind her came to a sudden stop and the little girl pulled at her mother’s skirt and giggled.

  “He’s handsome,” she called into the kitchen behind her. “I win.”

  And the mother slapped her gently away.

  “I spoke English,” the little girl said indignantly.

  “Get on, now, Millie,” the woman said, waving the girl away. “That’s enough, I think.” And then to Lathias, “Forgive me.” She stepped back a little and eyed him up and down and sighed before opening the door wide and saying, “Well, come in, for heaven’s sake, and let’s get some food into you before the wind blows you away.”

  FOURTEEN

  Holy Thursday came without celebration or notice either by Krausses—Mary and Leo—or by Schoffs—Helen and Stolanus and the boy—who kept to themselves now more than ever, the hired man gone too now, that’s what they’d heard, and Helen and Stolanus always with one eye cast over their shoulders, and who could blame them, everyone said, so much tragedy in that family, things always seemed to go wrong for them; but that was the way sometimes, wasn’t it? The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Well, they had their money for comfort, anyway. And what about this weather? If there was more snow coming, it should come then, and not wait for July. This crazy country. It is too much. It is enough to drive anyone mad.

  ——

  On Good Friday, the sky cleared and the sun blazed with a warmth unusual for so early in the season. Water dripped tentatively and by noon trickled in steady streams from rooftops, down eavestroughs into oak barrels and through culverts, filling ditches as if they were canals, down, down, flooding creeks and sloughs and dugouts, and down farther still, toward the valley, as if called by the river itself, running coldly into draws with a high, giddy sound; the world was melting, the earth softening and coming slowly to life, all that Good Friday and throughout the night, the thaw continuing on into Holy Saturday, water and water and water, the ground beneath galoshes thickened with it, the good, rich smell of gumbo mud everywhere, and all across the parish, people shed hats and jackets and sour woollens to feel the sun against their skin, and the children shouted and jostled each other as they collected eggs from henhouses and carried them carefully inside to boil and then lower gently with a teaspoon to prevent cracks, still steaming, into mugs of dye and vinegar and cold water, all afternoon, dozens and dozens of eggs, checking every few seconds the shade of green or yellow or pink or lavender, then rolling them around to dry on sheets of newspaper so they could be rubbed with a little oil for shine and arranged in bowls and baskets and eaten—whenever one pleased, imagine that—with a little salt, the pretty pieces of coloured shell scattered outside doorsteps for good luck, out in the sunshine and mud, ah, take a good, deep breath, and everywhere one looked the air was bright and mild and filled with the improbably green smell of spring under a big, ballooning blue sky.

  The weather was so mild and the thaw so hard and fast and the spring so sudden that everyone felt a bit addled, as if drunk on it all, as if pure sunshine coursed through their veins; the young men, in particular, all of them crazed and restless with spring, racing their horses wildly in the muck and wrestling and talking big, to the girls and to each other, making vast, impossible plans.

  And that is how it came to be on Sunday morning, Easter Sunday, that Ronnie Rausch and Foxy Limbach rode optimistically down to the river in the pre-dawn light to see if the ice was yet out and could they get a raft in to do some spring fishing before church at nine. So there they were, standing at the edge of the river, studying the ice, or what was left of it, and rubbing their hands together, not from eagerness but only to warm them (for, though the sun would have power once it was up, the air was not yet nearly so warm as they’d hoped), and Foxy, who though small was actually the older of the two, being nearly seventeen, said, “Christ, it’s too damn cold, let’s come back after Mass.”

  “Sure,” Ronnie said, “and the fish all sleeping by then, we won’t catch nothing.”

  “Naw, that’s only in lakes. In rivers it don’t matter.”

  “Fish don’t sleep in rivers?”

  “Oh, they sleep all right. They’re just not on any real schedule. On account of the water’s always moving.”

  Ronnie nodded, as if that made sense, and looked around him. He spat over his shoulder, then gestured up to the eastern horizon, up the valley beyond the braucha’s place, and was about to say something about the sunrise, maybe, or the fact that time was wasting, or to remark even upon the beauty of the dawn, though that is doubtful, when he stopped and hung his jaw and stood staring.

  Foxy, who had been blowing on his hands, saw Ronnie’s face, and laughed a little, said, “What in hell’s wrong with you?”

  Ronnie didn’t say anything, so Foxy followed his gaze up the draw, toward the braucha’s place crouched and silent in the dim grey light. But he could see nothing out of the ordinary.

  “What?” he said.

  Ronnie shook his head. “You didn’t see that?”

  “What?”

  “A girl.”

  “A girl what?”

  “A girl girl.”

  “Yah, yah,” Foxy said, “I saw a girl, sure. There’s girls running around all over this valley.” He shook his head. “You been without a girlfriend so long you started imagining them.”

  “I sure as hell didn’t.”
r />   “Probably a coyote.”

  “If that was a coyote, it was a hell of a pretty one.” Then he added, “Call me crazy, but I’ll be damned if—”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just, well, it looked a lot like, I’ll be damned if that didn’t look just like that dead girl.”

  “What dead girl?”

  “That Krauss girl. Or Brechert, or whatever.”

  Foxy just stared at him. “That’s not even funny,” he said.

  “I’m not trying to be funny.”

  “Good,” Foxy said, “’cause you’re not.”

  They both stood there a minute, puffing into the grey light, and finally Foxy said, “So, are we gonna fish, or what?”

  Ronnie kind of hunched up his shoulders and scratched his chin and finally said, in an irritable, distracted way, “I don’t feel like fishing,” and then, before Foxy could say anything more, he pulled himself up on his horse and rode off, leaving Foxy standing there calling after him.

  Ronnie rode straight home and, not even bothering to put up the horse, walked into the kitchen where his parents were just rising, his father drawing his suspenders up over his shoulders.

  “What,” his father said, “you give up already?”

  “Did you expect them to swim up and jump in your pocket?” said his mother. Then she leaned her head up the stairwell and hollered, “Come on, up there. Church.”

  His father winked at him. “We’ll go down later,” he said, “after Mass. I’ll show you how to catch a fish.”

  “What,” the mother said, “on Easter Sunday?”

  “Was Christ not a fisherman?”

  “He was a carpenter, you dummkopf.”

  “But a fisherman, too.”

  “Not on Easter Sunday, he wasn’t.”

  “Yah, and how do you know? They couldn’t find him. Maybe he was fishing.”

  “What, Ronald, are you still standing there? You look like you filled your pants. What’s the matter with you?”

  “I saw her,” Ronnie blurted out. “I saw that girl.”

  “What girl?” his mother said, pouring boiled water over the coffee.