“Yes, sir.”
“What happened to your sister, it’s got people upset. The Brandt boy, I’m betting he goes scot-free. I’m sorry to say that, Frank, but that’s the way the world works. The rich, they walk on stilts and the rest of us, we just crawl around under them in the dirt. So what do you do? Well, you spray-paint the truth where the world can see it, I guess that’s one thing. Rub their noses a little in the stink of what they’ve done and who they are, huh?” He smiled and laughed quietly.
I thought I hated the Brandts but the way Doyle talked made me feel uncomfortable, like we were both part of some larger darker conspiracy, and I wasn’t sure I wanted that. Still it was better than being taken to jail.
He pulled to a stop in front of our house and we got out and he opened the trunk so I could get my bike. He held up the can of spray paint I’d seen lying near the Brandts’ gate. “I’ll keep this, if you don’t mind,” he said. “Dump it somewhere nobody’ll find it. Frank, this is between you and me, understand? You say a word to anyone, I’ll swear you’re a liar, we clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right then. Get some sleep, kid.”
He watched me lean my bicycle against the garage wall and then go quietly in the side door to the kitchen. Before I went upstairs to bed I looked out the front window and he was gone.
29
First thing next morning the sheriff arrived. We were eating breakfast, all of us except my mother who was still in bed. My father answered the front door and the sheriff stepped inside. I got up from the kitchen table and stood in the doorway listening to the two men talk and I could barely breathe.
“We had some vandalism last night out at the Brandt home, Nathan. Somebody spray-painted those folks’ front gate. Wrote Murderer there. Except the vandal wasn’t too bright. Left out an e and spelled it Murdrer. But it’s pretty clear what the intent was.”
“That’s a shame,” my father said.
“I don’t suppose you or your family know anything about it.”
“No. Why would we?”
“Didn’t figure as much but I’ve got to ask. The truth is it could be just about anybody in town. Sentiment against the Brandts is pretty sour these days. By the way, heard you almost lost Ruth last night.”
“Nothing like that. She just took a walk and didn’t tell any of us where she was going. It got a little late and we got a little worried.”
“Ah,” the sheriff said. “Must’ve heard it wrong.” Then he looked past my father into our house the same way he’d looked past me a couple of days earlier. His eyes found me in the kitchen doorway and held on me in a way that made me believe he was certain who the vandal was.
“Is that all, Sheriff?”
“Yeah, I guess so. Just thought you ought to know.”
He left and got into his car and drove away and when I turned back to the kitchen table Jake was sitting there looking at me in the same way the sheriff had. My father returned to the table and Jake didn’t say anything and we finished our breakfast.
Later in our room Jake said, “Murdrer? You couldn’t even spell it right?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“I wondered why you went to bed in your pajamas but got up wearing your underwear and T-shirt. You went to the Brandts’ last night, didn’t you?”
“You’re crazy.”
“I’m not.” He sat there on his bed looking up at me but he didn’t look angry or worried. “Why didn’t you take me?”
“I didn’t want you to get into trouble. Look, Jake, I was there but I didn’t paint that word.”
“What did you do?”
‘‘‘Mom asked me to put an envelope on the windshield of Karl’s car.”
“What was in it?”
“I don’t know. She made me promise not to open it.”
“Who spray-painted the gate?”
“I don’t know. It was that way when I got there.”
I was about to tell Jake the whole story when I heard the feisty growl of a little automobile engine and when I looked out the window Karl Brandt drove up in his sports car. Jake and I both went downstairs where our mother was finally up and eating some toast and drinking coffee. My father had gone to his office in the church but he must have seen Karl arrive because he came quickly home.
Karl knocked on the front screen door and I opened it. As he walked in, Dad bounded up the porch steps behind him. Karl looked like death. He stood in the house with his shoulders slumped and his eyes downcast and there came from him, as if it held an actual scent, the air of despair. My mother stepped in from the kitchen with her coffee in her hand. She didn’t seem surprised at all. Karl’s dark eyes lit briefly on each of us then settled at last on my mother. He held up the envelope which I recognized. Not a word passed between them yet my mother came forward and put her coffee cup on the dining room table, took the envelope, and walked to the living room. Karl followed her. The rest of us watched as if it was a silent play being performed. Mother sat down at the piano. She opened the envelope, took out a couple of pages of sheet music, settled them on the music rack above the keyboard, and began to play and to sing.
The song was Unforgettable, the great Nat King Cole standard. She played flawlessly and sang in a way that was like a pillow inviting you to rest all the weariness of your heart upon it. Karl had sung this same song with Ariel at the Senior Frolics in the spring, a duet that had brought down the house. We’d all been there and after I had heard them sing together I’d figured I knew pretty well what love was all about.
Karl Brandt stood with his hand on the piano and I thought if he hadn’t had that great instrument to lean against he might have collapsed. He’d always seemed to me to be old and mature and sophisticated but at that moment he looked like a child and like he was going to cry.
When my mother finished he whispered, “I didn’t kill Ariel. I could never hurt Ariel.”
“I never thought for a moment that you did, Karl,” my father replied.
Karl turned and said, “Everyone else in town does. I can’t even leave the house anymore. Everyone stares at me like I’m a monster.”
From where she sat on the piano bench my mother looked up at Karl and said, “You got my daughter pregnant.”
“It wasn’t me,” Karl said. “I swear it wasn’t me.”
“You’re telling me my daughter slept around?”
“No. But I never slept with her.”
“That’s not what you told your friends.”
“That was just talk, Mrs. Drum.”
“Hateful, hurtful talk.”
“I know. I know. I wish I’d never said those things. But all the guys say them.”
“Then all the guys should be ashamed of themselves.”
“I didn’t kill her. I swear to God, I didn’t touch her.”
We heard the pound of steps on the front porch and the hammer of a fist on our door and there were Mr. and Mrs. Brandt looking at us with their faces dark through the mesh of the screen.
My father let them in and Mrs. Brandt rushed to her son and put herself between him and my mother and said to Karl, “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I had to tell them,” he said.
“You had to do nothing of the sort. You owe no one an explanation.”
“Oh, but he does, Julia.”
Mrs. Brandt turned on my mother. “He had nothing to do with your daughter’s death.”
“What about her pregnancy?”
“Or that.”
“He’s been telling two different stories, Julia.”
I couldn’t believe how calm my mother seemed, how solid, like cold iron.
Mrs. Brandt said to her son, “Karl, you go home and wait for us there. We’ll take care of this.”
“But they need to understand,” he pleaded.
“I told you, we’ll take care of this.”
“Go on home, Son,” Axel Brandt said
. He sounded tired and some of Karl’s despair was in his voice.
Karl slowly crossed the room, cowering, and I saw him in the same way the sheriff and Doyle must have seen him when they called him the Brandt boy. He reached the front door and paused a moment and I thought he was going to turn back and say something more. Instead he simply pushed out into the morning light. A minute later I heard the sound of his car pulling away.
“Now,” Julia Brandt said returning her attention to my mother. “Is there something you want to say to me, Ruth?”
“Just one question, Julia: What are you afraid of?”
“What makes you think I’m afraid?”
“Because you’ve been hiding. Nathan and I have been trying to talk to you and Axel and Karl, but you’ve refused to see us. Why is that?”
“Our lawyer,” Axel Brandt said. “He advised us against speaking with anyone.”
“Given the circumstances,” my father said, “I think the least you could have done was to have agreed to see us.”
“I wanted to, but . . .” Mr. Brandt didn’t finish. Instead he cast an accusing glare at his wife.
“I saw no reason,” Julia Brandt said. “Karl didn’t hurt your daughter. Nor did he impregnate her. Nor, despite speculation to the contrary, did he ever intend to marry her.”
“And how do you know all this, Julia?” My mother stood up from the piano bench. “You’re privy to Karl’s every action and every thought?”
“I know my son.”
“I thought I knew my daughter.”
“We all know about your daughter, don’t we?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“She’s had her eye on Karl for a long time. Why do you think she got herself pregnant?”
“Julia,” Mr. Brandt said horrified.
“It needs to be said, Axel. Ariel got herself pregnant in order to force Karl into a marriage he didn’t want. None of us wanted. The truth, Ruth, is that we would never have allowed such a union.”
“Julia, will you just shut up,” Mr. Brandt said.
My mother said quietly, “And why would you have objected, Julia?”
“What kind of family would Karl have married into? Look at the risk,” Mrs. Brandt replied. “Just look at your children, Ruth. A girl with a harelip. A son with a stutter. Another son wild as an Indian. What kind of children would Ariel have produced?”
“Nathan, Ruth, I’m sorry,” Axel Brandt said. He strode across the room and grabbed his wife’s arm. “Julia, I’m taking you home now.”
“Just a minute, Axel,” my mother said with unnerving calm. “Julia, that horse you’re on is pretty high. But I remember when you were the daughter of a drunkard who fixed other people’s automobiles. And everyone in this town knew you had your eye on Axel, and we’ve all done the calculations regarding your marriage and the birth of your son so don’t you say one more word to me about Ariel’s condition, you of all people.”
“I’m not going to stand here and listen to this. Axel,” Julia Brandt said and spun away from my mother.
“Whatever it is you’re hiding, Julia, I’ll find out,” my mother said to the woman’s back.
Axel Brandt mumbled more apologies and followed his wife out the front door.
A great quiet was left in their wake, the kind I imagined that might have fallen on a battlefield after the guns had been silenced. We all stood looking at the screen door.
“Well,” my mother finally said brightly, “I think we should be grateful to whomever it was that flushed out the Brandts.”
My father turned to her. “Flushed out? Ruth, they’re not quails we’re hoping to shoot.”
“No, but they are adults and they should be accepting responsibility.”
“Responsibility for what? We don’t know anything for certain.”
“Don’t you feel it, Nathan? There’s something they’re holding back, something they know and aren’t telling.”
“The only thing I feel is great dismay at how the Brandts are being treated by the people of this town.”
“That’s because you didn’t grow up here. The Brandts have always sidestepped responsibility for their trespasses and everyone in this town knows it. But not this time.”
My father looked truly distressed. “How can I help you let go of this anger, Ruth?”
“I suppose you could pray for me, Nathan. Isn’t that what you do best?”
“Ruth, God isn’t—”
“If you mention God to me one more time, I’ll leave you, I swear I will.”
Now my father looked startled as if she’d struck him with her fist and he held out empty hands, offering her nothing. “I don’t know how to do that, Ruth. For me, God is at the heart of everything.”
Mother walked past him to the telephone, lifted the receiver, and dialed. “Dad,” she said, “it’s Ruth. I wonder if I could stay with you and Liz for a while. No, just until . . . well for a while. No, Dad, everything’s fine. And, yes, I could use a ride, the sooner the better.”
She hung up and the room was a fist of silence.
30
Mother left with a suitcase full of her things. After she’d made the phone call, my father didn’t try to talk her out of her decision. He offered to help carry the suitcase but she refused and hauled it to my grandfather’s car herself. The two men shook hands and then stood awkwardly and watched while my mother settled herself in the big Buick.
Jake and I hung back in the porch shade and after my mother had gone my father walked to us and looked at us bewildered as if he had no idea what to say. Finally he shrugged. “I guess she needs some time, boys,” he said. “It’s been hard for her.”
Hell it’s been hard for us all, I thought but didn’t say.
“I’ll be in my office,” he said. He left us and walked slowly toward the church in a drifting way that made me think of a man wandering lost.
Jake kicked idly at the post that supported the porch roof and asked, “What do you want to do now?”
“Let’s find Gus.”
Because it was a hot day and still early I figured the pharmacy and we found Gus’s Indian Chief parked in front. We went inside. No Gus. Mr. Halderson was talking with a customer but when he saw Jake and me he excused himself and came right over. Like we were special or something.
“Well, boys,” he said. “What can I do for you this morning?”
“We’re looking for Gus, sir,” I said.
“He was in here earlier but he left a while ago. Went next door for a haircut, I believe. Say, I heard there was some vandalism up at the Brandt place last night.”
“We heard that too,” I said.
He gave me the same kind of conspiratorial smile Doyle had offered me the night before and it was clear he didn’t at all condemn the guilty party and it was just as clear whom he considered the guilty party to be. I wondered if Doyle had been spreading the word.
I thanked him for directing us to Gus and went next door. Sure enough, he was sitting in the chair with a white sheet draped over him and his head bent while Mr. Baake ran an electric razor over the back of his neck. The barber looked up and said, “Come on in, boys.”
Mr. Baake cut our hair too and my father’s. Once a month or so we’d all troop down to his barbershop on a Saturday morning and get the deed done. I liked the barbershop, the way it smelled of hair oil and bay rum and had a million comic books and magazines of the kind my father would never let us read. I liked how men gathered there and talked and joked and seemed to know each other in the same way Jake and I knew our friends when we met on the ball field for a game of workup and afterward sat on the grass and learned what was what in New Bremen and to a smaller extent the world.
“Hey, Frankie, Jake,” Gus said with a grin. That was one thing I loved about Gus. He was never not happy to see us. “What are you two up to?”
“There’s something we wanted to talk to you about,” I said.
“Okay, go ahead.”
I looked past Gus’s face
to the face of Mr. Baake behind him and Gus saw and interpreted correctly the flick of my eyes and said, “Tell you what. Why don’t you guys sit there for a few minutes and do some reading and when I’m finished here we’ll talk, okay?”
Jake and I sat down. Jake picked up one of the Hot Stuff comic books which was about a little devil whose temper was always getting him into trouble. Me, I picked up a magazine called Action for Men that had on the front cover an illustration of a guy in a safari outfit holding a powerful looking rifle and with a voluptuous blonde at his side who wore a very short khaki skirt and a blouse ripped away enough to show a lot of bare skin and a little bit of her bra and they both were facing a lion that looked pretty damn hungry. The woman was clearly scared. The guy looked cool of nerve, exactly how I imagined myself reacting in that situation. I opened to an article that was supposed to be true about a man who’d been attacked by killer spiders in the Amazon. But I didn’t read much because within a couple of minutes Gus was finished and striding out the door with Jake and me at his heels. On the street he turned to us.
“So what did you want to tell me?”
“Mom left,” I said.
“Left? What do you mean?”
“She’s gone, went to stay with our grandparents.”
Gus ran a hand over his newly clipped hair. “How’s your dad?”
“He went to his office, so I don’t know.”
“All right,” Gus said, thinking. “All right.” He looked toward the Flats. “You guys want a ride back?”
And of course we did.
Gus threw a leg over his motorcycle. I hooked up behind him on the seat and Jake settled into the sidecar. It took only minutes to reach the church lot where Gus parked the Indian Chief. He nodded toward our house and said, “You guys go on and have some lunch. I’ll be over in a bit.” He headed into the church and we crossed the street to home.
We threw together a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and ate them with potato chips and cherry Kool-Aid in the kitchen. Then we headed to the living room to watch television. I thought that with our mother gone the place wouldn’t feel drowned in despair but breathing the dark air of that room full of the stale smell of cigarette smoke was like breathing death. Mother in her grieving had forbidden us to open the drapes. My father and Emil Brandt both had tried to talk reason to her but she was almost vicious in her resistance. In truth we often kept the drapes closed in summer during the worst of the heat but my mother’s desire for the dark had nothing to do with that. Jake flopped on the sofa and turned on the television. I went to the south window and yanked back one of the drapes and then the other and July brilliance caromed off the floor and smacked the wall. Jake jumped up and looked stricken, as if I’d broken one of the Commandments, then he realized the freedom that had suddenly become ours and he ran to the east window and threw back the drapes there. It wasn’t just sunlight that flooded
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