“Gunther isn’t his?” Eveline said.
“Of course he is. Even if he isn’t,” Lulu said. She looked at the other side of the river. “Not everyone was sweet like Reddy. Some of them didn’t ask for what they wanted.”
As if she sensed Eveline was about to put an arm around her, Lulu sprang to her feet. She started downriver toward Gunther, who was standing in the water trying to catch minnows in the reeds. She threw a heavy stone into the water. Another.
“I wasn’t always a wilderness master like I am now,” she said, looking back. “I didn’t know how to swim when I came here. Reddy had to teach me.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon at the river’s edge. Lulu ran up- and downriver with Gunther and Buckley, the three of them kicking and hollering, while Eveline fed Hux and thought about what Lulu had told her. As a true friend Eveline knew she couldn’t say anything, but she wanted to for that reason.
Just before Lulu herded Gunther and Buckley into the rowboat and crossed the river for the night, Eveline said, “Wait,” to Lulu, who already had one foot in the rowboat.
Eveline picked up Emil’s fishing rod and unwound the line from the reel.
“You take one end, and I’ll take the other,” she said to Lulu. “When you get to the other side, tie it to a tree branch and hang a bell from it. I’ll do the same with mine.”
“What for?” Lulu said.
Eveline placed the fishing line in Lulu’s palm. “If you need me or I need you. It’s like a doorbell. A way of knocking all the way out here.”
“That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” Lulu said, but before she pushed the rowboat away from the shore, she wrapped one end of the fishing line around her thumb and wrapped the other around Eveline’s.
That night, Eveline wrote another letter to Emil.
Dear Emil,
I don’t know if my first letter reached you or not, but if it did I’m sorry for its shortness. It’s true that Hux and I are staying in Evergreen, but I didn’t tell you how much we miss you and can’t wait for you to return to us. I also hope you send a letter soon or that you’ve already sent one. I don’t know how to picture you in the Black Forest. Is it really black?
Your son is beautiful and quiet these days. His demeanor has changed dramatically, which Lulu says happened with her boy Gunther at the same age (except he started off quiet and grew wild). Lulu seems so tough on the outside, but she’s actually very tender. Kind, like you. She’s been helping me with the garden. So far all we have is turned earth, but she tells me we’ll have green soon. I can’t wait for you to see it, to eat from it. I have been learning how to fish, too, although so far I’ve only caught an old boot!
Nighttime still makes me nervous, but I’m getting used to its noises more and more each time my ears encounter them. Sometimes, the noises surprise me. Sometimes, I surprise myself.
Have you ever been afraid?
Love, Eveline
7
According to Lulu, Reddy drove to Yellow Falls every week when the weather and the alfalfa and potato fields allowed a trip, ostensibly to pick up the mail but really to get drunk. At first, Eveline didn’t understand why he had to drive the twenty miles each way to drink whiskey when Lulu kept a cupboard full of the brown bottles in their cabin.
“He saved my life,” Lulu said. “That makes me obligated to save his.”
She and Eveline were taking a break from the meadow garden and Eveline’s side of the river, which long cold pine shadows took hold of in the afternoons. If you wanted direct sunlight, which Eveline and Lulu did on this day, you had to cross the river.
The two were sitting in a pair of tipsy diner chairs, which Eveline recognized from Harvey Small’s. A sandy fire pit was in front of them and a sleeping child between them. Behind them stood Lulu and Reddy’s cabin, which Lulu had painted red on one side and blue on the other because she couldn’t decide which color she liked better.
June had taken over the land, the trees, and the river. Only at night, when the air turned crisp and the logs were lit, when the mosquitoes and blackflies retreated, could drifts of heavy snow be conjured. During the day, June bugs clung to the outside of both their cabins. At night, the moths, prehistoric in their oddness and Jurassic in their size, took the June bugs’ place. Emil would have been able to tell Eveline their Latin names and might have preserved one for his personal collection. Eveline called them elephant moths and sketched a few of them in her journal for Emil to look at when he returned. Eighty days, at the most. She’d started brushing the moths off the cabin door and the porch railing, since cedar didn’t deter them and she couldn’t afford to lose any more clothing. Seventy-nine.
Gunther and Buckley were taking turns on the tire swing, which hung from a great old oak tree with branches nearly as thick as its trunk. Instead of them being annoyed with Hux, lately they were encouraged he could hold up his head for several minutes before it flopped to one side. Whenever they saw Eveline, they’d ask, “Can he walk yet?”
“A few more months,” Eveline would say to keep up their hope.
Today the two seemed content to let Hux grow on his own terms, which allowed time for Eveline and Lulu to talk freely instead of spelling what they didn’t want the boys to hear. “How is driving to Yellow Falls to drink saving Reddy’s life?”
“He won’t drink in front of Gunther. He thinks it would make him a bad father, since he doesn’t do it for enjoyment,” Lulu said.
“Why does he do it?” Eveline said.
“Reddy needs whiskey like the rest of us need water.”
“What does he do in the winter?” Eveline said.
“I have to slip teaspoons of whiskey into his coffee to calm him down,” Lulu said. “Once, I put a shot’s worth in a bowl of beef stew.”
“He didn’t taste it?” Eveline said.
“He didn’t say anything,” Lulu said. “He went back for a second helping, though.”
“Is that when he shot his toe?” Eveline said.
“He was sober for that, bless him.”
“I’ve never had a drink,” Eveline said. “Unless you count in church.”
“I don’t,” Lulu said, getting up. “I won’t!”
She went inside the cabin, crashed around the cupboards, and came back outside with a bottle of whiskey and two chipped glasses.
“I have to feed Hux,” Eveline said, her breasts swelling at the thought.
“Give him some goat’s milk,” Lulu said to her. To Gunther and Buckley, she said, “Would you two go milk Willa Girl, please?”
“We’re swinging, Mama!”
“It’ll make Hux walk a lot sooner,” Lulu said.
“What if he doesn’t like goat’s milk?” Eveline said, brushing Hux’s silky dark hair with her fingers.
“Better hope he likes whiskey,” Lulu said, pouring some into the glasses.
Eveline sipped the astringent liquid with as much grace as she could, even though the peppery taste on her tongue made her eyes water and her nose run. She wanted to spit it out, but Lulu would only make her drink more.
“It’s not high tea,” Lulu said. “What are you doing with your pinkie finger?”
“I’m being a lady,” Eveline said.
“Stop. It’s making me want to throw up.”
When Gunther and Buckley finished milking Willa Girl in her chicken-wire pen beside the cabin, they took a shortcut through the garden and ended up trampling a row of young sweet corn and spilling most of the milk along the way.
“This will make him grow big muscles,” Gunther announced, handing the glass to Eveline, which gave her an excuse to set down the one with whiskey in it.
“How should I feed it to him?” Eveline said.
Lulu laughed a little. “A spoon?”
“I see you’ve thought this out.” Eveline set down the milk, lifted Hux out of the reed basket, and unbuttoned the top of her dress. “I think I’ll feed him my way.”
“My God!” Lulu said, staring,
reaching. “They’re huge!”
With one hand, Eveline covered her top half with Hux’s receiving blanket. She swatted the top of Lulu’s hand with the other.
“Your nipple’s like a saucer!” Lulu said.
“Well, what do yours look like?”
“Not like that,” Lulu said.
The two of them stared at each other a long moment before they started laughing and belting out words like Saucer! and Mushroom! and Bundt cake! and Lulu took a swig of whiskey and spit it all over her shoe. After they calmed down, Lulu poured more whiskey, and Eveline asked the question she’d been thinking about asking for a while now.
“Do you ever take off that coat?”
Lulu patted the arms of the coat and a cloud of dust rose into the air. “Not in years,” she said, waving away the dust as if it were nothing but finally succumbing to coughing.
“We’re demented,” she said when the coat reabsorbed the dust.
Eveline took the glass of whiskey from her. “We?”
Reddy came back from Yellow Falls with an armful of mail, a paper bag full of penny candy for Gunther, and a package of T-bone steaks from the butcher, one of which he’d bought for Eveline because he said women needed iron.
“Are you corrupting your friend?” he said to Lulu.
“She’s corrupting me,” Lulu said.
Lulu was right: Reddy may have looked like a rangy old mule, but he was soft as a lamb. Eveline had never seen him in anything other than a thick plaid work shirt, which concealed the boniness of his shoulders, and a pair of brown trousers, the same as Lulu wore.
He kissed Lulu’s shoulder. “I don’t think that’s possible.”
Lulu pushed the bottle of whiskey under her chair with her foot. “How was the trip?”
Reddy had been gone two days. One to drink and one to sober up. His hands were shaking a little. The whites of his eyes were yellow.
“Good,” Reddy said.
Which brought Lulu to her feet, as if in the secret language of their marriage that word meant something different than it did to Eveline. “I’ll fry up those steaks.”
Reddy urged her back down in the chair and started for the cabin. “I’ll heat some broth to tide me over.”
Eveline was fond of Reddy and curious about him, too. Here was a man who’d given himself over to drinking and yet was completely honorable. Eveline didn’t know any man—would Emil?—who would do what he’d done for Lulu, for Gunther.
Halfway to the screened door, Reddy returned to them.
“I almost forgot,” he said, sifting through the letters under his arm. Last week he brought Eveline a note from her parents, but she hadn’t received any postmarked letters yet.
“I mailed yours for you,” he said, handing Eveline two envelopes, one thick the other thin. “Earl said three weeks or thereabouts.”
“Is that all?” Eveline said, cheered.
“One’s from the government,” Reddy said. “Probably trying to squeeze blood from a turnip. We got that one, too. I make Lulu open those. Bad news sounds better from her.”
Eveline wasn’t interested in the government letter; she focused on the thinner one. When she felt brave enough, she looked at the return address in the corner of the envelope.
Germany!
“It’s from Emil,” she said, hugging the letter. “I think I’ll go home to read it.”
“Should I take you?” Lulu said.
“I can manage,” Eveline said. She tucked the letters into the pocket of her dress and picked up the reed basket. “Thank you. For the day. The letters. Everything.”
Newly buoyant, Eveline started down the path to the river. The white lady’s-slippers stood pretty and prim, like eager schoolgirls, on either side of the footpath. The light was lighter. How wonderful, too, the smell of the pines and birches and the electric-green moss.
And what lovely words: my husband, my husband, my husband.
Just as Eveline was about to step into the rowboat and push it away from the shore with the paddles Lulu and Reddy had lent her, Lulu came running down the path.
“Your steak,” she said, getting tangled in the fishing-line-and-bell contraption.
Eveline placed the steak next to Hux and the reed basket in the bow of the rowboat. Then she got in herself, the toes of her canvas shoes wet from the water, her heart flapping like the fish she hadn’t yet caught.
“That was a dumb idea, wasn’t it?” she said.
Lulu untangled herself from the fishing line and gave the rowboat a push. “It’s kind of like art. It’s growing on me.”
After Eveline got back to the cabin and had lit the oil lamps, which glowed warmly in the early evening light, she tucked Hux into his crib. When she was certain he was asleep, she went to the porch with a cigarette and packet of matches. She opened the letter from the government first because she wanted to savor the fact of Emil’s a little longer.
Dear Resident,
On behalf of the Minnesota Water and Energy Commission, we are writing to inform you that thirty days after this third day of June, 1939, we will begin rebuilding the dam at the mouth of the Snake and Owl Rivers, eight miles north of Evergreen, in a government supported effort to bring you, those who live primitively in the wilderness, electricity by way of hydroelectric power. Light, my friends!
If you desire to stay in your home, which I’m certain you’ll recall was built on land deeded to the government by the Chippewa Indians in exchange for tax clemency in the year 1889 and therefore which you have no legal claim to, you must sign and deliver this document within thirty days and thus will be able to remain where you are for a small monthly fee to be determined on an individual basis by our field agent who will assess all roofed structures (including but not limited to cabins, henhouses, outhouses, work sheds, and root cellars) as well as any and all cleared land in the months of July and August.
In signing this document, I must remind you that you retain no legal right to recover any damages, fiduciary or otherwise, from the Minnesota Water and Energy Commission or any branch of the government for any future destruction to your homes or personal effects or to the members of your family should an act of man or nature bombard you during your tenancy on government land.
Remember, it is light we are offering you.
Sincerely,
Albert Muldoon
President
Lead with Light Initiative
Minneapolis, Minnesota
“Horseshit!” Lulu must have been shouting across the river, but the words and the official watermark beneath them on the heavy cream paper intimidated Eveline. Albert Muldoon from Minneapolis, president of the Lead with Light Initiative, had told her something she didn’t know: the land beneath their cabin didn’t belong to them and therefore neither did their cabin or the outhouse or the garden (including but not limited to). Did Emil know? Why wouldn’t he have told her?
Which led her to opening his letter before she was ready.
Dearest Eveline,
I have no doubt disappointed (hurt?) you by not writing more often and sooner, but Father requires my continual attention. Everyone believed he was waiting for me to come home before he let go of his earthly concerns, but now that I am here, he continues to hold on for reasons unknown to all of us.
Yesterday when I was reading a passage from Goethe, To be loved for what one is, is the greatest exception, he stopped me.
“Are you happy?” he said to me.
“Very,” I said.
“Then you are richer than I ever was.”
Despite the war and its hardships, I always believed my father was generally happy. What a terrible shock to discover he wasn’t. If he’d had his way, which I suppose means if my mother didn’t get pregnant with me all those years ago, he would have become a naturalist in the tradition of Darwin.
Yesterday he said, “I don’t believe in heaven. How can I be expected to die without that belief?”
I don’t know how to answer that, so I sit n
ext to his bed and read to him whether or not his eyes are closed. When we’ve both had enough, I tell him about you and Hux. He enjoys hearing about your rosy cheeks and your long, lovely hair. He’s particularly interested in your efforts to learn German and your interest in taxidermy (which my mother thinks is a form of barbarism).
I wonder if I have made a mistake leaving you and Hux with your parents in Yellow Falls. Perhaps I should have stayed home, as I suspect it is not me my father really wanted.
Germany is not what I remember it to be. There is a movement here to involve all German boys in a program designed to promote nationalism, but one that excludes the Jewish population as well as other ethnic groups, among them the Gypsies. My father believes we will have another war on our hands very soon. He has heard Hitler speak on the shortwave radio. As have I now. Hitler is extremely persuasive; he makes hatred seem like a human right. The few Jews in our village have gone to stay with extended family in France and England, which my father thinks is wise since in Berlin and Munich a handful of synagogues have been burned to the ground and violence done to several of their worshippers. We’re in trouble, I believe. We’re already occupying Austria and part of Czechoslovakia, according to the papers here. Have the American papers said anything? I wonder. You mustn’t worry about me. I will be fine. I will come home to you soon.
Gitte and my mother have asked me to make sure you know you are welcomed into our family as is our little son. Gitte is making you a shawl. She and my mother are constantly bustling about as if household industry soothes their spirits. I wish it soothed mine, as it would be more convenient than running off to the forest to chop wood when my mood needs lightening.
On one of my wood-chopping adventures, my old friend Ava, whom I told you I used to play with as a boy, interrupted me. For as long as I can remember, she’s been caring for her mother, who suffers from a mysterious illness that keeps her in bed. Ava has consoled me greatly. She’s taught me how to change my father’s bed linens without rousing him from sleep. She was always more clever than me. Everyone, including Ava, thinks I should return to you and Hux at once, but I can’t leave my father just yet.
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