Evergreen

by Rebecca Rasmussen

  “Emil,” she called, and the pain stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

  Eveline ripped opened the outhouse door and stumbled out of it into the blowing wind and snow, latching on to the thick rope Emil had strung from the front porch of the cabin to the doorknob of the outhouse to make navigating easier during the winter. Eveline prayed she’d get back to the cabin before the next episode of pain—Don’t fall, don’t fall, she told herself—which was just when her ankle twisted and Tuna flew away from the red birdhouse and the white winter world went black.

  Eveline woke to the sound of crying—a sound she assumed was coming from her, since her body hurt more than it ever had before. It took her a long moment to realize she was no longer outside, her cheek pressed against the snow, but that she was unclothed beneath the flannel sheet on the bed in the cabin, a metallic taste in her mouth. The sound was coming from Emil, who held a soiled blanket in his arms.

  “He’s dead,” Eveline said, and Emil turned.

  What Eveline felt now was worse than the burning between her legs and the unbridled zips of electricity radiating up and down her spine. If only she’d paid more attention to Hux during her pregnancy, recorded each of his stirrings in her journal instead of drawing one-dimensional babies while Emil was away in the woods. Maybe Hux had been trying to tell her everything wasn’t all right, with his kicks and thrusts and flips.

  In her dreams, Eveline had seen his sweet face again and again. When she woke, she’d patted her stomach when she should have said, You are loved.

  Eveline covered her eyes with her hands, and then she uncovered them because she’d worried about only one of them dying in childbirth—her.

  Of course Hux would live. He’d grow up strong and lean. He’d learn to climb trees and swim across rivers. He’d chase after wild horses with his friends like his father.

  Except there weren’t any wild horses in northern Minnesota. Any friends.

  Emil walked over to Eveline, his thick black eyelashes wet.

  “Hux is tiny but fine,” he said, placing the soiled blanket, their boy, in her arms. “You’re the one we were waiting for.”

  4

  Spring brought forth birch leaves on silver branches and tender green buds up from the softening ground. It brought bloodroot and wood anemones, southwest winds and melting ice, and on an afternoon in late April, the week Hux should have been born according to the medical world, it brought Lulu Runk.

  Eveline was sitting with Hux in a rocking chair on the porch, trying to get him to latch on to her breast. If giving birth was the hardest thing she’d done, then getting Hux to eat was the second hardest. She couldn’t tell if he was getting a flood of milk or none at all.

  In the middle of one of her coaxing sessions, Lulu came marching through the forest and up to the cabin, her coonskin coat unbuttoned and flying behind her like a feral cape and her child flying in front of her to avoid getting swallowed by it.

  “Straighten up!” she said, and Eveline pulled her shoulders back.

  “It’s not you I’m talking about,” Lulu said, pulling back her boy’s shoulders but looking at Eveline. Lulu spit into her palm and wiped it on her boy’s cheeks, which smeared the circles of dirt but didn’t get rid of them. Then she matted down his ragweed hair and made him swallow the blade of bluestem he was chewing on.

  “One of us has got to be polite,” she said, brushing a leaf off the front of her trousers, which were the color of mud and cut for a man. Her hair was short like her son’s and stuck up in the same places, too. Lulu Runk was a tall, solid woman, made larger by her booming voice and the vigor of her coat.

  “I’m sorry,” Eveline said, dwarfish at five feet.

  “It’s not you I’m talking about,” Lulu said. “Again.”

  More than six months had passed since Eveline had seen or talked to anyone other than Emil, who was down by the river fishing for bluegills in the cattails. Each morning after the ice had begun to heave and groan, he’d go down to the river with his rod, a feather jig, and a float he’d made from balsa wood and come back with that evening’s supper. He and Eveline would eat as if they were trying to make up for winter’s deprivation. They’d take turns scraping the blackened skin out of the cast-iron fry pan.

  Eveline lifted the nursing blanket and looked at Hux pleadingly.

  “I used to do that, too,” Lulu said.

  “He’s hungry,” Eveline said.

  Lulu’s mouth got crooked. “When aren’t they?”

  Without being asked and without asking, Lulu climbed the steps of the porch and sat in the empty rocking chair beside Eveline while her boy ran laps around the cabin, a toy gun in his hand. Tufts of matted brown fur from her coat fell to the porch floor during the maneuver, and though any other woman would have hastily stuffed the tufts into her pockets, Lulu put her feet on the porch railing, exposing a hairy ankle.

  “Don’t let him yank on your nipple,” she said, offering a cigarette to Eveline, who blushed. “He’ll take until you have nothing left to give.”

  “I don’t smoke,” Eveline said.

  “You should have seen mine with this one,” Lulu said. “Raw as meat.”

  To her boy, who was zigzagging around the cabin, bushwhacking milk thistle with the barrel of his gun and yelling, Yee-haw, she said, “You’re making me nervous. Why don’t you go pick some mayflowers for our neighbor? I’m guessing she likes the pink ones.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the boy said, running off with his toy gun, yelling, Pow, pow, pow!

  Lulu shook her head. “That’s Gunther. Born with a gun in his hands.”

  “This is Hux,” Eveline said, pulling aside the nursing blanket, embarrassed by the words raw as meat and nipple and yet relieved to hear them at the same time.

  “Try giving him your finger to suck on,” Lulu said.

  Eveline offered Hux her pinkie finger, bracing herself for his fury.

  “When you get tired of that, give him a bottle,” Lulu said.

  “I don’t have a bottle,” Eveline said as Hux lapped eagerly—magically!—at her finger. Why hadn’t she thought of this? What kind of mother was so resourceless? So bottleless?

  “I’ll bring you one tomorrow,” Lulu said.

  Eveline wondered what she meant by neighbor. After a long winter, the very idea of Lulu made her hopeful. A friend!

  “You just changed my life,” Eveline said.

  Lulu put out the cigarette with her boot and flicked it off the porch. “For the better, I hope.” She held out her hand, which Eveline shook. “Lulu Runk.”

  “I know who you are,” Eveline said. “I used to see you in Yellow Falls.”

  Because she realized how much she missed talking about things that husbands weren’t interested in, she added, “Ain’t something I’m likely to forget soon.”

  Lulu’s mouth got crooked again. “I only do that so people will stay out of my way.” She lit another cigarette and passed it to Eveline, who pulled the nursing blanket over Hux’s face and held the cigarette between her thumb and index finger like Lulu.

  “What’s your name?” Lulu said.

  “Eveline LeMay. I mean Sturm.”

  “You’re nervier than you look.”

  The two of them sat on the front porch most of the morning, enjoying the sun and cool spring wind, which made Eveline think of those lazy Saturdays and Sundays growing up in Yellow Falls, when her mother would make blueberry pancakes and her father would listen to his favorite radio program and Eveline would swipe spoonfuls of maple syrup when no one was looking. Tuna was flying herself dizzy, trying to keep up with all of spring’s birds. While they rocked, Lulu smoked more and Hux fell asleep. For the first time in weeks the world slowed down, and Eveline could hear herself think again.

  It turned out Lulu lived in what Eveline and Emil had thought was the abandoned cabin on the other side of the river.

  “We were gone this winter,” Lulu said. “Trapping up north. We’re only back because Reddy was cleaning his
rifle one day and shot one of his toes. You’d think he was dying for all the fuss he made. Reddy’s my husband. Our trapping days are over.”

  “How long have you been married?” Eveline said.

  “Long enough for him to drive me crazy. He’s like a brother you want to punch.”

  “I don’t want to punch Emil,” Eveline said, waving to him as he came up from the river through the forest, a rod in one hand and a string of bluegills in the other.

  “Give it time,” Lulu said. She stood up and called for Gunther to quit horsing around in the meadow and bring back those mayflowers straightaway. “You need a cowbell,” she said to Eveline. “That’s what I use to herd my menfolk in.”

  “Will you stay for lunch?” Eveline said, the taste of fish already on her tongue.

  “No thanks,” Lulu said. “I have a hard-boiled egg somewhere in here.”

  She reached into the pocket of her coonskin coat and, instead of an egg, which sounded wonderful—Eveline hadn’t had one since September—Lulu pulled out a rumpled envelope. “I almost forgot why I crossed the river,” she said. “When I was in Yellow Falls a couple days ago, Earl gave me this. He said you all moved out this way during the fall, but he says a lot of things that aren’t square. If I’d known you were up here for sure, I’d have brought you supplies from the general store. Or a few chickens. Gunther got his hands on it if you were wondering about the dirt.”

  “You didn’t get our note then?” Eveline said.

  “What did it say?”

  “My husband wrote it,” Eveline said, motioning to Emil.

  After Eveline introduced Lulu and Emil, Lulu tucked the cigarette she’d rolled but hadn’t gotten around to smoking behind her ear and walked up to the meadow to retrieve Gunther, who was minding his toy gun instead of her. Even when they’d made it through the forest and to the swelling river, Eveline could hear Gunther yelling, Pow! and Lulu yelling, It’s not healthy to shoot your mama! which made Eveline smile.

  In the excitement of the morning and in the presence of the string of lovely bluegills, whose silver scales glinted in the sunlight and would blacken tastily in the fry pan, Eveline forgot to give Emil the letter, which she had slipped into the pocket of her dress.

  “I’m glad you have someone to talk to now,” Emil said. He leaned over and kissed Hux, who was still asleep. “Women need women.”

  “What do men need?” Eveline said, worried Emil might kiss her, too, and taste the tobacco on her lips and disapprove of her spending time with Lulu, even though now that the weather had turned away from winter he often took a rosewood pipe onto the porch after supper and smoked what was left in the canvas pouch he kept in his coat pocket.

  But Emil only smiled. “Women.”

  Eveline went inside to put Hux down in the reed basket and get the fry pan and the woodstove ready for the bluegills, which Emil cleaned and gutted on the porch. If only they had butter, she thought, which brought her back to thinking about Lulu’s egg and the good fortune of her and Reddy planting themselves on the other side of the river, one step closer to Yellow Falls and the roads, which had been mostly washed away in the flood but which Lulu said she and her red pickup truck could manage on in a pinch.

  “What do you consider a pinch?” Eveline had asked Lulu.

  “No whiskey, for one thing,” Lulu had said.

  When Emil finished cleaning the bluegills, he brought them to Eveline the way he used to bring her field flowers when he was courting her in Yellow Falls.

  “What about Lulu’s husband?” Emil said.

  “She wants to punch him sometimes,” Eveline said, marveling at the potency of Lulu’s influence, since she would have simply said his name before her visit. Out in the bush it was easy to fall into the routine of saying only what was necessary.

  After Eveline coated the bluegill fillets with flour and placed them in the fry pan, Emil threaded his fingers through hers. “I’m glad for your little hands.”

  “I don’t want to punch you if you’re worried about that,” Eveline said.

  “Not now,” Emil said. “But you probably will one day.”

  “That’s what Lulu said.”

  Emil poked at the bluegills with a fork. “It’s good to know Hux will grow up with a little friend. I had a wonderful playmate in Germany. Ava. She was better at everything than me. I’ll cross the river tomorrow and introduce myself to the husband.”

  “Reddy,” Eveline said.

  “The fish?” said Emil.

  Eveline gently swatted his hand away from the fry pan. “The husband.”

  Together, they ate lunch. After, Eveline cleaned the dishes with water from the rain barrel—another joy of spring! Hux woke with his usual hunger, and Eveline fed him while Emil worked on rigging up a shower in back of the cabin with the help of a second rain barrel, a brick oven, and a length of copper pipe he’d found in a pine tree after the flood.

  When a half hour passed, Eveline offered Hux her pinkie finger like Lulu showed her. Lulu said a half hour was long enough for him to get what he needed and short enough to avoid chafing. Eveline put Hux in the cloth sling she’d made and walked around the cabin, arranging Gunther’s mayflowers and wondering what Lulu’s cabin looked like.

  She thought of sketching her little son’s face. Hux had thick black eyelashes like his father’s and long thin fingers like Eveline’s. Before Lulu’s visit, Eveline had worried about Hux’s endless supply of tears. After the visit, she stopped. Everyone was tired, that was all.

  The three of them were up most nights now. Eveline would breastfeed Hux, and Emil would walk him around the cabin, bouncing him the same way he did when Hux was first born and Eveline was caught in that porous place between consciousness and unconsciousness, trying to figure out which way was home. They didn’t speak of what Emil had done in the cabin that day, but Eveline was certain he’d saved her life.

  Eveline’s body was recovering slowly but steadily. Before she left Yellow Falls her mother packed her with small tins of arnica, Hypericum, and calendula—herbs meant to heal her from the inside out. Eveline and Emil were planning a visit next month, so her parents could meet their grandson and the local photographer could take a portrait of Hux for Emil to send back to his family in Germany. Maybe they could ask Lulu to take them in her truck. Eveline was already thinking about the bottle of whiskey they could buy her to show their gratitude. While they were in Yellow Falls, they’d stop at the general store so Eveline could covet licorice ropes while Emil purchased what he needed for the taxidermy business.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to preserve butterflies instead?” Eveline had said again this morning when Emil came back with a squirrel. “We could manage. I could plant a garden and sell the seeds at the general store. I’ve seen people do well with that.”

  “I’ll skin deer for the rest of my life to keep licorice ropes in your belly,” Emil said.

  “Even if you have to do it for the worst kind of people?”

  Eveline was thinking about the businessmen that came up in large hunting parties from the southern part of the state and shot at anything that moved until they got a buck. They never wanted the meat, only the heads. Even Jeremiah Burr, who’d lived in Yellow Falls his whole life, had offered Emil a dollar for every antler point.

  “What you do isn’t who you are,” Emil said.

  Eveline kissed Hux’s warm cheeks and put him down in his crib. She watched him sleep for a while, wondering if the things you did didn’t define you, then what did? What else could? Eveline wondered what Lulu would say. That’s when she remembered the letter, which she brought out back to Emil, who was trying to figure out a way to make water move up in the copper pipe when it only wanted to move down.

  “Für mich?” Emil said, wiping his hands on a handkerchief.

  “Lulu brought it this morning,” Eveline said.

  “I thought it was from you,” Emil said, pretending disappointment.

  “My cursive’s not nearly as nice.”<
br />
  Emil opened this letter and read its contents, at first with casual interest and then more and more seriously until whatever happiness his face had held in recent months gave way to panic. The way Eveline would remember it, there was a moment of absolute stillness when the future was still theirs before the wind blew up from the river and the first of spring’s leaves shook as if they were afraid.

  5

  According to the letter, Emil’s father had the kind of aggressive cancer a person couldn’t recover from. He’d lost control of his legs already and was confined to his bed, mired by the indignity of a bedpan. The cancer had spread to his brain and was making him confused and hysterical. Dr. Hayner was waiting for Emil to arrive before he administered morphine. Emil’s sister, Gitte, had written the letter, which explained its fine penmanship and its (perhaps) overly descriptive nature. Gitte wrote for the local newspaper.

  Emil folded the letter. When he tried to put it in his pocket, the letter slipped from his hands to the floor. The news stiffened his body; his knee cracked when he bent to retrieve the letter and again when he stood upright.

  “I have to go to him,” Emil said.

  “Of course you do,” Eveline said. “We’ll go with you.”

  Emil looked at the crib, their son. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. The boat could make Hux sick. That happened with a boy on the way over. One day he was on the deck playing, the next day he was dead.”

  “Are you certain?” Eveline said, though she knew Emil wouldn’t lie to her.

  “Would your parents mind looking after you and Hux until I come back?” Emil said. “I can bring you there this afternoon. Or we can ask Lulu. She has a truck, doesn’t she?”

  “I don’t understand,” Eveline said.

  What she meant was: Why is this happening? To you. To me. To us. The three of them were just beginning to settle into life in Evergreen as a family. Summer was approaching, which was a cause for celebration in and of itself, and she had a new friend. How could a letter change all that? What right did it have? For a moment, Eveline despised Gitte. She despised the copper pipe outside, the sunshine glaring through the kitchen window.