The Horseman's Graves

by Jacqueline Baker

  Leo met him at the gate, as if he had been waiting for him, watching. When Ronnie saw him there, he almost turned and rode home again. But he could not. He must see the girl. Must speak to her.

  “What do you want?” Leo said.

  Ronnie sat his horse a moment, thinking. He wanted to talk to the girl, or to see her at least. Didn’t he? Is that what he wanted?

  “You get on home,” Leo said. “There’s nothing for you here. It’s none of your business what goes on here. Get on home now.”

  But he could not; he could not speak, and he could not go. He sat there, his horse huffing and shifting her weight beneath him.

  “You think I don’t know what you want?” Leo snarled. “Dirty buggers. I know what you all want.”

  She appeared then, in the shadows of the barn doors, leaning up against them, barefoot, her toes curled over the edge of the floor, arms folded across her chest. Ronnie saw her standing there. Just like a girl, he thought, like an ordinary girl.

  “You think I don’t know?” Leo said.

  But Ronnie just sat there, looking from Leo to the girl and back again, the horse shifting under him, and the earth shifting also. And still he could not speak, he could not call out to her, could not say, It was Erv. I wouldn’t, I never would.

  “You get on out of here,” Leo said. “Keep away, hear? If I get my shotgun, you’ll know all right. Goddamned buggers. Don’t you think she didn’t tell me what you did. Dirty sonsabitches. She told me. God will strike you down, you dirty—you get on out of here.”

  And, breaking off a dried stalk of thistle from beside the fencepost, he whipped it at Ronnie’s horse, who tossed her head and stepped sideways in the dirt.

  “Get on,” Leo said. “You’ve done enough. Get on.”

  Leo raised the thistle again and hollered, and the horse neighed and flung back her head, kicked up her front hooves. Ronnie reined her in a tight circle, the sky spinning in a blue whirl over him.

  “I just,” Ronnie said, “I wanted to see—”

  “You saw, now get on.”

  “But,” Ronnie said, “just for a minute. Could I talk to her? Please. I’ll—” He thought a moment, desperate. “I’ll pay,” he said.

  Leo raised the thistle higher, and then stopped. He did not strike. No. He stood there, arm raised, and something dawned on him, so clear it was as if the voice of God Himself spoke. Slowly he lowered the thistle, and stepped forward, but without heat now.

  “Get on,” he said absently, mindless of the hooves and the dust and the crazy blue spin of the earth. But the boy, alarmed at Leo’s sudden deflation, the dark gleam in his eyes, was already riding away. Leo swatted his hand through the air. “Get on.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Mary saw it all. From where she stood at the kitchen window, she saw the young man come and she saw Leo chase him away.

  Good, she thought. It was just as well. Better that he leave Elisabeth alone, all of them, those boys. There was trouble enough without them. Trouble enough between Leo and Elisabeth, with Elisabeth alone. And who would have thought it, all this trouble, all this grief after the grieving should have ended, after the miraculous had occurred, her daughter was alive; she had died and been grieved over and now she was alive. And she, Mary, should be overjoyed, should be down on her knees thanking God, or so Leo would have it. She should be thankful, grateful. She was not worthy of such grace.

  But she was not grateful, God help her. She felt only disorientation, a weird extension of her grief; grief that was not quite grief, either. Her daughter was alive, saved by the braucha, apparently, and by the grace of God. But she had lived down there with the braucha—how long?—as though she were dead, had let her own mother continue to believe she was dead (and she must have seen her down there, Elisabeth must have, must have seen her down there at the river every day in the cold, she must have seen her from the braucha’s place), and now she was alive, and Mary looked like a fool: what kind of a daughter lets her mother grieve unnecessarily, no, makes her grieve unnecessarily, forces her to? What was wrong with the girl?

  Oh, Mary knew well enough that between the two of them there had never been what you would call intimacy, affection even, but only a mutual awareness of the other’s troubles. At least, that is what she had always thought.

  Now, in the cold light of grief, she could see Elisabeth had never shown any consideration, not even as a child. Cold, her own mother had said of her. A monster, her father had said, a walking abomination. But then, growing up in that frigid household, even her own mother careful about displays of affection, yes, Mary could admit to herself now that she had not been a loving parent, and maybe that was what lay at the heart of the girl’s coldness.

  Elisabeth was her daughter after all, flesh of her flesh, blood of her blood. Even more: Mary felt consumed by her, now more than ever, as if nothing of herself was not for Elisabeth; consumed by her death, consumed by her resurrection, and always this devouring, as if Elisabeth had eaten of her flesh, drunk of her blood—and she had, she had: Mary remembered well the pain of nursing her, that little mouth against her breast, it was awful, as if she were being eaten alive, and she had pried the little vicious mouth away and her nipples were split and bleeding and in the baby’s mouth there was milk and blood, and she had gone in tears to her mother and her mother had said, “Ach, Mary, but that is normal. That is how it is to be a mother. You should have thought of that sooner.”

  But it was not normal. Her nipples bled and bled, and soaked the front of her dress, and still the baby fed and fed and fed, as if she would never be full, and when she did not feed she wailed, and Mary wondered if there was milk coming or only blood, wondered if the baby were feeding on her blood and that maybe she was starving, maybe they would both die because of it, and she wept from the pain and the worry as she sat nursing the baby, endlessly it seemed, until Anna, dear Anna, could no longer stand to watch and she snuck warm cow’s milk in a cloth teat when their mother was not watching and they fed the baby in secret and so Mary’s nipples scabbed over and healed and her mother was never the wiser. Even now, Mary could still remember that pain in her breasts, that awful slow devouring.

  The night she learned that Elisabeth had drowned in the river, she felt it again, that pain in her breasts, and she thought, I am bleeding, and she slipped her hand inside the front of her dress, just to see, though, of course, there was nothing.

  And then the girl had come back—no, had been brought back—to her, to Mary, but would just as soon have left her mother there by the river, left her to throw herself into that icy water, too, as she had so often been tempted as she stood there watching the river flow by, east and east and east. Elisabeth would have left her, and what would she have cared? It was nothing to Elisabeth. But Leo had dragged her back. And now she would not speak, had not said a word since she’d returned, not as far as Mary knew, wanted nothing, only sat and stared at her hands whenever Mary went out to see her, to sit with her. Maybe Elisabeth hated her, that was possible, for bringing her here, for bringing her into the world at all.

  Yes, better that they all stay away. And the halfbreed, too, from Schoffs’, and that retarded boy. The one who had … but, what? Hurt her somehow? Or even …? But she could not think it. In spite of what people had said. She could not think it of him, and more, even if the boy had intended to hurt her somehow, had wanted to, he could not have; she knew better of Elisabeth.

  Mary walked to the crate and looked down at the child there, lying in listless sleep.

  It was sick, the baby, the way it lay there, its little face all flushed up and hot. She stood looking down at it. But it was quiet now, had barely stirred all that morning. She would tell Leo to take it to the braucha. Something must be done. She did not feel affection for it, but she did not want to see anything happen to it, either. No, she would not want to see it suffer. She was not heartless. She was not a monster. She was its mother, after all.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Father Rieger wa
s hearing confession. There were maybe a dozen or so people in the pews, sitting and waiting to confess or kneeling to do penance, when Leo banged through the doors. The way some told it later, Leo stepped into the church that day glittering with a dark light, looking for all the world like the devil himself. They all talked about it afterwards, at the café and the hardware and the grocery, stopped in the road, around kitchen tables and crouched in front of barns. Ma Reis was there, too, with Art, and when Leo banged into the church, Ma made as if to get up and confront him, but Art took her hand firmly and eyed her from beneath his brows and Ma settled back on the pew, frowning, watching it all, how Leo waited outside the confessional, tapping his feet and drumming his fingers against the back of a pew. Ma said later: “Father had Ida Rhenisch in there. But you know old Ida, everybody tries to get in to confess before she does, you know how she can go on, I don’t know what all she has to say in there, but her life must be a hell of a lot more interesting than it looks, or else she’s confessing for everybody else, which is more likely. So Leo stood there, waiting and waiting and waiting, and finally he banged on the confessional door and said, ‘What, are you taking a shit in there?’ I swear to God. And everything went real quiet, like maybe they—Ida and Father—thought it was the voice of God, and so Leo banged again and said, ‘Enough of that nonsense now, you come on with me, I want to show you something in my barn out there, something better than anything that old noodle-stepper can tell you,’ and when no one answered, he rattled the doorknob and said, ‘Come on out, I know you’re in there,’ as if Father was hiding on him, and God knows maybe he was, but then Leo said into the confessional, ‘Or maybe you two are in love?’ and a few people laughed then and I don’t know if Father heard the laughing or what, but anyway that door flew open and Father came blasting out with his black robes flying, like a bat from a belfry, that’s just how he looked, and Ida Rhenisch poked her head out, and Father shrieking and flapping away at Leo, who just stood there as always as if he were the sensible, patient one, which only made Father angrier. He just stood there and when Father had pretty much burned all his fuel, Leo said, ‘Well, and are you coming or not?’ And Father said he sure as hell was not. That’s what he said.

  “So Leo stood there looking at him a minute and then he said, a little quieter, but still loud enough that everyone could hear so that it appeared that Father and Leo were in cahoots somehow, he said, ‘It’s worth the trip, Father. They could make you a bishop for that. Pope, maybe.’ And Father said, ‘What, for God’s sake?’ and Leo smiled a dark little smile and said, ‘A miracle.’”

  TWENTY-THREE

  There had already been, of course, talk of a miracle, at least among the Ludmila Baumgarten circle. They were all crazy for it, that bunch, all the talk about miracles (Ma Reis said obliquely, “Yah, because they’ll need one themselves, not?” and everyone knew exactly what she meant). They had all heard—had they not?—of the Virgin appearing at Lourdes? Of course they had. And didn’t the Bible itself tell, too, of countless miracles? Had not Lot’s wife been turned to a pillar of salt and Aaron’s rod to a serpent? Had not the ten plagues—the blood and frogs and lice and flies and murrain and boils and hail and locusts and darkness and death—been delivered unto Egypt? Had not the Red Sea divided and the waters of Marrah sweetened? Had not the walls of Jericho fallen down? Had not the sun and moon been stayed in their orbs? Had not Jeroboam’s hand withered? Had not Elijah been fed by ravens, and had he not been carried up to heaven in a chariot of fire? Had not a hundred men been fed with twenty loaves? Had not the Syrian army been smitten and then cured of blindness? Had not Daniel been saved in the lion’s den and Jonah in the belly of the whale? Had not the lepers been healed and the water made wine? Had not others been raised? Oh, not just Jesus, that went without saying, and not even Lazarus, but what about the others? What about the Shunammite’s son and the widow’s son at Nain, what about Jairus’s daughter? Yes, certainly, it was not without precedent, this raising from the dead.

  But, that was only in the Bible, resurrection. That did not happen in real life, among them. Oh, and what about Lourdes, then? But that was not a resurrection, it was an apparition, a visitation, the Virgin Mother. But a miracle, nevertheless. Yes, a miracle, certainly, but perhaps it all should not be taken just the way it says in the Bible, as if it had really happened, perhaps it should not all be taken just that way. And how should it be taken, then? Well, with a grain of salt, like everything else.

  And then again, the girl had not been raised from the dead at all, this Elisabeth Brechert, for no one had seen her dead. Though some may have said it—die laufenden toten Gestalten—they did not mean it literally, but only suggestively, descriptively (though there were always those who chose to take a darker view, a more scandalous and outrageous view, as if she really were the walking dead, but thankfully they were in the minority). Of course, the phrase did imply something darker, too, that brush she’d had with death, that taint, of the touched and of the untouchable.

  (But the girl was not dead, of course. No. Whether by fate or accident or divine intervention, she was not dead, had not drowned. She had gone through the ice, as the boy had said, and into that cold nocturnal river and had even been carried, dragged, along under the ice a few yards, down as far as the bend in the river, where the current slowed and then picked up again and the ice was all out, and there she had, by fate or accident or divine intervention, surfaced in that frigid water and managed to fight her way to the muddy bank, or else the river spat her out there—and this is where, too, by fate or accident or divine intervention, the old woman later found her, or so it was supposed since no one ever did learn for certain and it was all pieced together in the usual way, as history always is, by hearsay and supposition and outright imagination—and that is where she lay, wet, freezing, too cold even to call out, and, even if she could, who in that vast empty prairie would have heard her anyway, that being the real question, and, in the end, the only one worth asking: who in the eternal silence of those infinite spaces could have heard?)

  TWENTY-FOUR

  After Father had closed the rectory door in Leo’s face, he drove straight home, cracking his old mule needlessly across the back, it could not possibly go faster. He had a plan, and he would do it with Father, or without him.

  He put the mule in the corral and then stopped at the door to the barn, hesitating. But before he could decide, Mary came out of the house, the screen door clattering shut behind her. She carried the baby.

  “She is sick,” Mary called. “Something is wrong.”

  Leo crossed the yard.

  “Give her to me,” he said, taking the infant.

  “She is sick,” Mary said again. “A fever. She is weak.”

  “No,” Leo said, “she is fine.”

  “She needs the braucha,” Mary said.

  “She needs nothing. I will care for her. Worry about your own daughter.”

  Mary did not say, She is my daughter, too. She just stood and watched Leo frown down at the baby lying listlessly in his arms, only the slightest flicker of a movement beneath the blue eyelids.

  Leo felt the infant’s hot forehead. “See,” he said, “nothing. She is fine.”

  Mary shrugged. “It is on your shoulders,” she said, but without passion, without interest. “If something happens. Then you will be the one to answer for it—in this life and in the next one, too.”

  And she went back into the house, letting the screen door slam shut behind her.

  Leo sat on the porch, little Cecilia resting limply in his arms. That red flush in the child’s cheeks, and her lips, so dry and hot. The braucha. What could it hurt? If she would even see him after all that business about the girl. But what right had she anyway to keep the girl there? He should have called the law on her. He had not. She owed him, when you thought about it. He said a quick prayer over the infant and carried her to the wagon.

  ——

  The braucha did not answer. Leo knocked again, then wa
lked away from the hut and looked around the yard. The hens pecked placidly by the coop and the wind stirred in the tall grasses. He called out. Waited. Finally, he went back to the hut and banged on the door again and then opened it.

  “Old woman,” he said, “are you in here?” His voice sounding small even to himself in the vast darkness of that tiny hut.

  He stepped down onto the dirt floor. The heavy burlap sacking was all pulled shut over the windows and he stepped to one and pulled it open and sunlight came dimly through and he opened another and then he turned, and was about to call out, though the dimensions of the hut were so small there could have been no need to, but he would have called out anyway, Old woman, because he was Leo Krauss, and he would have kept on calling out if he had not been silenced, yes, even he, Leo Krauss, silenced by what he saw there, before him and all around: on every inch of every whitewashed wall, a face, a hundred faces, five hundred, drawn there with charcoal from the fire, face after face after face, men and women, old and young, and when Leo had stared at those hundreds of faces long enough, individual faces began to emerge, there were the Schneider brothers, yes, he was sure of it, and old Arlen and Rita Gebler, Art and Ma Reis, no one could mistake her, Father Rieger at his pulpit, Wing and his wife, Ludmila Baumgarten, her husband Eddie, Roy and Esther Hech, Sister Benedicta and the others, he did not know their names, Mike Weiser, Marian, too, Brunhauers, Stolanus Schoff, his wife, the retarded son, the Fitz boys, Kaspar and Remigius, Viola Hahn, he could not mistake her either, the Eichert girls; face after face; all of the living, and the dead, too: Lucius Haag, Eugenia Weiser, Pius Schoff and the missus, Balzar and Ottilia Hech, Heironimus Schmitt, his wife Anna, Leonhart and Ida Rescher, and all the old folks, many Leo could not even recognize, or who looked vaguely familiar, disturbingly so, though he could not have named them, faces he had seen once or twice, faces he had never seen at all, faces from the old country, maybe, face after face after face, and there, my God, his own father, Old Gustav, and his mother, oh, he stepped forward, his mother there, her gentle, long-suffering face—is that how she had looked, after all?—and there, there was Cecilia, with that old distant look in her eyes, as if she were seeing already into eternity, good Cecilia, and over there the children, he stepped closer still, Magdalen and Henry, and the others—was that them?—my God, he would not have recognized them, his own children, he reached up to touch their faces and his fingertips came away blackened, he rubbed the charcoal dust between his fingers, yes, it was them, he pressed a fist to his eyes and then opened them again, yes, they were all there, everyone, all those now dead to him, a cemetery of faces, memorialized there by the old woman, drawn as if on a tombstone, as if that little cramped room was heaven, the place where the dead walked, they were all there, the old woman had put them there, but where was he? Leo looked again, face after face after face, until they all began to look like the same face, but not his, nowhere his, there were his siblings even, but he was nowhere among them. But he must be, he must be, for what reason would the old woman have left him out, why would she? Why? Nothing? There was nothing of him at all? He looked some more, but no, he was not there, and not little Cecilia, either. Nothing. Why would she leave them out? And the baby, what had she done, to be left out this way? It made no sense. Why would she do it? He said it out loud, a slow, creeping panic overtaking him. “Why?”