The girl with the mesmerizing breasts cried, “Morrie, don’t!” When he didn’t respond she stepped close and pushed herself against us both in a kind of wedging maneuver meant, I suppose, to separate Engdahl’s hands from my shirt. It was a surreal moment. Death looked me in the face but all I could feel was the warm press and yield of that girl’s breast against my shoulder. It was as if in the second before dying I’d been allowed to glimpse heaven and I was almost okay with my fate. “Morrie,” she purred in a deep-throated way that spoke to something instinctive and sexually primal in every male there. “Morrie, baby, let him go.”
Engdahl was many things. Crude. Ignorant. Callous. Self-absorbed and at the moment embarrassed and angry. But he was also nineteen and one element of his being topped all others and with it the blonde had him hooked. I felt his fists soften and then release their grip on my T-shirt. He shot out a deep final breath like a horse clearing its nostrils and he stepped back. The girl stepped away too and stood in such an enticing pose that Morris Engdahl couldn’t take his eyes off her.
That was my opening. I charged him again and shoved him brutally. He stumbled back and once more toppled from the rock into the water below. I stood at the edge looking down as he sputtered and splashed and this time was able on his own to grasp the safety of the rock and begin to pull himself out.
I yelled, “Run!” and turned and fled from the quarry with the others at my heels. We raced as if the Devil himself was in pursuit. We pounded the worn path to the fence, squeezed through the breach, leaped onto our bikes, and shot down the ruts toward the main road to town.
“He’ll catch us!” Danny shouted as he pedaled for his life. “He’ll run us down!”
Which was probably true. In his Deuce Coupe Engdahl would be on us within minutes.
“Follow me!” I yelled and veered out of the ruts and bounced through the tall wild grass of the field that lay between the quarry and the road. I made desperately for one of the piles of spoil rock that had been dumped in the empty acreage and I shot behind it and threw my bike down so that it was hidden in the grass. After me came Danny and Lee and Jake all of whom did as I’d done and together we hunkered behind the jumble of stone blocks with our hearts kicking at our sternums. In a minute we heard the roar of the Ford engine from behind the line of birch trees. The Deuce Coupe shot past with Engdahl at the wheel and the blonde at his side. The black hot rod with fire painted along its length hit the pavement, squealed left toward town, and disappeared with Engdahl in pursuit of four boys he would not find that day.
We looked at each other and allowed ourselves at last to breathe and then we began to laugh and fell onto our backs in the grass and howled in relief and triumph. We’d bested Morris Engdahl who was many things. Tough. Mean. Vengeful. And, most important to us that summer afternoon, blessedly stupid.
15
That evening my mother and Ariel left the house in the Packard to attend the final rehearsal of the chorale that Ariel had composed and that was intended to be the highlight of the Independence Day celebration in Luther Park. Dad had played tennis that afternoon with one of his fellow clergy in town, a Catholic priest named Father Peter Driscoll. My father called him Pete. The rest of us called him Father Peter. Dad had invited him to dinner after their match and because my mother and Ariel were not home he’d bought broasted chicken and French fries and coleslaw at the Wagon Wheel Drive-In and all the males of the household along with Father Peter dined informally at the kitchen table.
I liked Father Peter. He was young and told a lot of jokes and was good looking. With his red hair he reminded me of a picture I’d seen of President Kennedy on the cover of Life. He’d gone to Notre Dame where he’d played shortstop for the university baseball team and he talked knowledgeably about the game and was excited about the Twins. At the end of the meal, Jake and I were put to work doing the dishes while Dad and Father Peter still dressed in their tennis whites went out to the front porch where they both packed pipes and sat and smoked.
When we finished the dishes, Jake said, “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Nothing I guess.”
Jake went upstairs to work on a model airplane he was building. I figured maybe I’d talk to Gus about Danny’s uncle and maybe about Morris Engdahl while I was at it. There was something else I wanted to talk to somebody about, something that since the episode at the quarry had been bothering me, but I wasn’t sure Gus was the guy. It didn’t matter because I looked out the front window and saw that his motorcycle wasn’t in the church parking lot. Through the screen I could hear Dad and Father Peter talking. The priest was saying, “I’m just telling you what I’ve heard, Nathan. New Bremen’s a small town. People talk.”
“Your Catholic congregation talks about the wife of the Methodist minister?” My father sounded slightly amused.
“My parishioners talk about everything and everyone, Nathan. Some of them grew up with Ruth and frankly they were surprised when they learned she’d married a preacher. She was, I understand, pretty fierce and wild in her youth.”
“Still is, Pete. But when she married me I wasn’t a minister. She married a cocky law student who thought he was going to set the courtroom on fire and make millions in the process. The war, well, that changed things. She didn’t sign on for the job she has now. But she does it to the best of her ability.”
“She drinks, Nathan.”
“In the privacy of her own home.”
“She smokes cigarettes.”
“Every woman in every movie I’ve ever seen has smoked cigarettes. A good many of the women in my own congregation smoke in private. Ruth simply chooses not to hide it.”
“Worst of all, they say she shuns the activities of the WSCS.”
The WSCS, the Women’s Society of Christian Service, was an important organization in the church, and the women of my father’s congregations took great pride in their work on its behalf.
“She puts all her energy into the music programs for three churches,” my father said. “That’s where her heart is.”
“You don’t have to convince me, Nathan. I like Ruth and I love her spirit and I think what she’s achieved musically for this community and for the churches you serve is nothing short of miraculous. But I’m not a member of your congregation and I’m not the one bending your district superintendent’s ear.”
There was quiet on the porch. Then I heard a train horn blare a warning and for a full minute after that a loud freight rumbled through on the tracks a block away and when it had passed my father said, “She won’t change. I wouldn’t ask her to.”
“I’m not advising that you should. I just thought you might want to know what folks are saying.”
“I know what they say, Pete.”
“Ah, Nathan, it’s so much easier to be married to the Church.”
“But the Church won’t scratch your back when it itches or snuggle up to you on a cold night.”
Both men laughed and Father Peter said, “Time to go. Thanks for dinner.”
Later that evening I told my father I was going to the Heights but I didn’t tell him why. He looked up from his reading and said, “Be home before dark.”
I left the house and walked up Tyler Street and a minute later I heard the slap of sneakers on the pavement behind me and Jake ran to my side.
“Where you going?” he said a little out of breath.
“Uptown,” I said. “Looking for Gus.”
“Can I come?”
“I don’t care.”
Jake fell in step beside me. He said, “Are you going to tell Gus about Morris Engdahl?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ve been thinking, Frank. Maybe you should tell him you’re sorry.”
“Engdahl? Fat chance.”
“If he catches you he might hurt you or something.” Jake was quiet for a moment then he said, “Or me.”
“You don’t have to worry,” I said. “I’m the one who pushed him in the water.”<
br />
We crossed the tracks and Jake picked up a rock and threw it at the crossing sign and it hit with a crack like a small gunshot. “I hate it when he calls me Howdy Doody,” he said.
We were both silent after that, thinking our own thoughts. I was thinking that although I’d shrugged off Jake’s concern for his safety it was not an unreasonable fear. Morris Engdahl struck me as exactly the kind of guy who if he had a grudge against you would gladly beat up your brother. We turned off Tyler onto Main Street and headed toward the shops of town. It was a few minutes before eight o’clock and the sun was caught in the branches of the trees and the light across the lawns was yellow-orange and broken. From down the streets that we crossed came the occasional rattle of firecrackers and the pop of bottle rockets but otherwise the evening was calm and quiet. I wasn’t thinking only about Morris Engdahl but also about his accusation and that of his girlfriend, that Ariel was a skag. I didn’t like the word. I didn’t like the sound of it or the feel as it had leaped off my own tongue that afternoon or the place in my head that it had unlocked. As nearly as I could figure, skag referred to a girl who had sex with guys, maybe especially creepy guys like Morris Engdahl. Tying that particular activity to Ariel in that particular way wrenched my gut.
I was not ignorant of sex. I simply associated it with married people and I understood that men and women who indulged in sexual intercourse before marriage were doomed in many ways and I couldn’t imagine Ariel doomed in any way. Yet in the dark corners of the place so newly opened to my thinking there were already items I’d thoughtlessly stored there. Ariel’s late night rendezvous. Her sudden reluctance to leave New Bremen for Juilliard which had been the dream of her life. Her inexplicable tears when I’d caught her alone recently. In the hours since I’d left the quarry I’d come to realize that not only was she in love with Karl Brandt but she’d probably been sleeping with him as well. At thirteen I had no idea what to do with that.
Then as if conjured by the devil of my own thinking Karl Brandt pulled alongside us in his red Triumph with the top down.
“Hey, you two goofballs,” he cried with friendly familiarity, “where you going?”
I stared at him, trying to fix in my understanding the new contours of his existence in my family’s life. What I knew without doubt was that I liked Karl Brandt. I liked him still. I’d seen no arrogance in him, had never felt patronized by him, and in all the times I’d been around him when he was a guest in our home I hadn’t once sensed in his feelings for Ariel anything but genuine affection. But what did I know?
“Looking for Gus,” Jake said.
“Haven’t seen him,” Karl said. “But I’m headed up to the college to pick up Ariel after the rehearsal. You guys up for a spin in my little red demon here?”
“Heck, yes,” Jake said.
Karl leaned over and popped the door.
There was no backseat so Jake and I were forced to squeeze into the passenger’s seat together.
Karl said, “All set?”
He shot away from the curb and almost immediately the wind was a fury all around us.
We didn’t go directly to the college which was on the hill not far from the hospital that overlooked Luther Park. Karl zipped all over New Bremen for a while and then hit a couple of the back roads beyond the town limits where he really leaned on the accelerator. The wind howled and Jake like a madman howled with it and Karl’s gold hair flew around like corn silk in a tornado and he laughed with genuine pleasure but I found myself holding back as I looked at him, marveling at the ease of his life and at the same time feeling the slow invasion of a resentment that had never been there before.
As we pulled back into town and Karl braked to a reasonable speed and the wind died around us I asked, “Are you going to marry Ariel?”
It took a moment for him to swing his gaze toward me and I thought I sensed in his hesitation something that had nothing to do with careful driving but was born of a reluctance to look me in the eye.
“We haven’t talked about marriage, Frankie.”
“You don’t want to marry her?”
“We both have other plans right now.”
“College?”
“Yeah, college.”
“Ariel doesn’t want to go to Juilliard.”
“I know. She’s told me.”
“Do you know why?”
“Look, Frankie, this isn’t a discussion I want to have with you. This is between Ariel and me.”
“Do you love her?”
He looked at the road and I knew it was because he could not look at me.
“She loves you,” I said.
“Frankie, you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”
“She told me love is complicated. It seems easy enough to me. You love each other and you get married and that’s how it works.”
“Not always, Frankie. Not always.” He said this with such heaviness that he sounded crushed.
• • •
The college was small and its primary purpose was to turn out Lutheran ministers. It had an excellent music program and a fine auditorium which was where we found my mother and Ariel and to my great surprise Emil Brandt. The rehearsal was just ending when we arrived and the singers who were a mix of college students and townspeople were dispersing. My mother and Ariel and Brandt all stood together at a baby grand piano that had been set on the stage. I knew that Brandt had agreed to play for the chorale and that his participation had been a huge part of the publicity for the event but I figured that considering his recent brush with death the idea had been scrapped. Not so, it appeared.
Karl bounded up the steps and greeted his uncle and my mother and gave Ariel a peck on the cheek and said to her, “All set?”
“You two go on,” my mother told them. “I’ll drive Emil home.”
Karl took Ariel’s hand and drew her off the stage. As he passed where we stood in the aisle he said, “You guys are on your own getting home.”
On the stage my mother and Brandt stood together and I had the sense that she was waiting for her sons to leave so that she could be alone with him. She wore a pair of dungarees and a blue denim shirt over a white top and she’d bunched the shirttails around her waist and tied them in a loose knot in a way that I’d seen Judy Garland do in a movie about show people.
“Frank,” she said to me in a dramatic tone, “you and Jake better get started if you’re going to make it home before dark.”
Jake in obedience turned without a word and started out of the auditorium. The lights had begun to wink off leaving the seats in darkness. I remained a moment longer, certain that something in that auditorium was unfinished.
From the stage my mother said, “Go on, Frank.”
I followed Jake into the lobby which was lit now by only a few dim overheads. My brother said, “I have to go to the bathroom.”
I pointed down the hall. “That way,” I told him. “I’ll wait here.”
The door to the auditorium stood open and the acoustics inside were excellent. My mother and Emil Brandt were in deep conversation on the stage and even in the lobby where I stood waiting for Jake I could hear every word.
Brandt said, “It’s a beautiful piece she’s composed, Ruth.”
“She’s learned a great deal from you, Emil.”
“She was born with talent. Yours.”
“She’ll do a lot more with hers than I ever did with mine.”
I heard a simple melody tapped out on the piano and then Brandt said, “Remember that?”
“Of course. You wrote it for me.”
“A present for your sixteenth birthday.”
“And two days later you were gone to New York without a word of good-bye.”
“If I knew then what I know now maybe I’d have made different decisions. Maybe I wouldn’t have this face of mine and I would still have eyes and I would have children like yours. She’s so much like you, Ruth. I hear you in her voice, I feel you in her touch.”
“She adore
s you, Emil. And I will always love you.”
“No, you love Nathan.”
“And you.”
“Differently.”
“Yes. Now.”
“He’s a lucky man.”
“And you, Emil, are a man much blessed too. Can’t you see that?”
“I have moments of such darkness, Ruth. Such darkness you can’t imagine.”
“Then call me, Emil. When the darkness comes, call me. I’ll be there for you, I swear it.”
In the course of their conversation I’d drifted slowly to the auditorium door and I could see them on the stage. They sat together on the piano bench. My mother’s hand was pressed to Brandt’s left cheek, the one bubbled with thick scar tissue. As I watched, Brandt’s own hand rose and covered hers.
“I love you,” he said.
“You look so tired,” she replied, then took his hand and kissed it gently and said, “I should get you home.”
She stood up. Like a man old beyond his years, Emil Brandt rose with her.
• • •
“What’s it mean? Skag?”
Jake lay in his bed in the dark on his side of the room.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I said. I’d been lying there awhile in my own bed with my hands behind my head staring up at the ceiling and thinking about the blonde with the red bathing suit and trying my best to recall exactly the image of her breasts when she bent over on the rock that afternoon.
“Is it something bad?”
“It’s nothing.”
“The way that girl at the quarry said it it’s something.”
I was surprised that Jake brought it up. Except for being worried about what punishment Morris Engdahl might be contemplating for us he hadn’t talked about the incident at the quarry. In a way I’d been glad. I’d been hoping the whole skag thing had gone over his head. It hadn’t.
I considered trying to detour his wonderment but I knew that when Jake was after something he stuck with it until he was satisfied and I was concerned that he might try getting the answers from our parents and that would be disastrous on so many levels that I finally settled on dishing him the truth. Or as much of the truth as I understood.
(2013) Ordinary Grace Page 14