Northfield

by Johnny D. Boggs

  Well, Papa says, like I’ve told you, that I’ll always be his baby

  But that’s all right because I love Papa.

  Papa’s name is Joseph Lee Heywood. He works at the bank. Do you know him? I bet you do because he knows everybody in town. He’s been working at the bank as long as I can remember. He was a hero, too. During the old war he almost died fighting the mean Rebs. I don’t remember the war because I wasn’t born yet, and I never met a mean Reb. Papa told me not to worry, that mean old Rebs don’t come to Minnesota much and aren’t as scary as witches and warlocks, and the war is over, right prevailed, and we’ll never see something that horrible again.

  I think Papa is the most handsomest man that ever was, and Mommie Lizzie, she says so, too. He has fur on his face, and it’s dark and sometimes it pricks me, but mostly it’s soft. Other men in town have fur on their faces, too, but only Papa lets me touch it when he comes home after working at the bank. Mommie Lizzie came here a little while ago back when I was just a baby, maybe three years old, to be my mommie because Mommie Martha is in heaven. Papa says we’ll all see Mommie Martha sometime in heaven. He says heaven isn’t the place where we go on Saturdays to place the flowers where Mommie Martha’s sleeping, the special place with all the crosses and stone things in the ground at the edge of town. He says heaven is in the sky, like the clouds and the stars and all the pretty sparkles when they shoot off fireworks. Mommie Martha went to heaven after I was born and was just a baby, and then I didn’t have a mommie except for the times when I’d let my dolly be my mommie and I’d be her baby until Mommie Lizzie came to see us and live with us and be my new mommie.

  “Listen,” Mommie Lizzie said.

  We were still sitting in the rocker, and I listened, but the popping sound wasn’t making noise any more.

  “I don’t hear anything,” I told Mommie Lizzie, and she said—“I know.”—and we both got off the rocker and moved toward the door again.

  I hoped Dolly Martha hadn’t gotten scared from all the daylight fireworks and run off and hided. And I hoped that bad dog, June, that lived next door hadn’t taken my dolly and run off with her like she run off with the wooden spinning top that Papa had bought for me and warned me not to leave it outside, but I did, and it was an accident.

  Dolly Martha was right where I dropped her and I ran and picked her up and told Mommie Lizzie: “Look!” Only Mommie Lizzie didn’t look, not at me, but kept looking down the street, and I looked down the street to see who was coming— maybe, Papa!—but no one was coming.

  We didn’t hear any popping. Some dogs barked, maybe puppy June was one of them, and heard some other noises, but nothing much else. I wondered what had happened to the daytime fireworks. They hadn’t lasted very long.

  I asked Dolly Martha if she had seen anything, and we started talking, and then Dolly told me she wanted me to comb her hair, so I pretended that I had a comb and started combing her hair, which is what I was doing when Mommie Lizzie stepped down the steps.

  “Where are you going?” I asked, but she must not have heard me. She just walked a few paces and then she looked down the street again, and, when I looked up, I saw some people coming, and I got excited because I hoped one of them was Papa, but no, these men didn’t have any fur on their faces, and Mommie Lizzie, she came back and put her hand on the rail on our porch and was stepping up toward me.

  Then one of the men running down the street began yelling: “The bank’s been robbed! The bank’s been robbed! We’re getting a posse!”

  Mommie Lizzie swayed a little, then ran up the steps and started to go inside, then just turned, and I saw she was crying again, and she just flattened herself against the wall, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, but I stopped combing Dolly Martha’s hair, and, when my dolly asked me why I had stopped, I told her to just hush, and kept on looking at Mommie Lizzie.

  She was acting crazy. She never acted crazy. Mommie Lizzie acted kind of scary, like witches and warlocks and mean Rebs.

  “Was that man talking about Papa’s bank?” I asked Mommie Lizzie. She didn’t answer, so I asked her again, and even again, and had to shout it before she looked at me, but still didn’t answer, just blinked her eyes, and then she took this long deep breath and held it for the longest time, and I thought she was going to hold her breath forever like I did sometimes when I was a baby and was mad at Papa or somebody for something.

  She breathed out, and shook her head, and then she knelt beside me and asked: “I’m sorry, Lizzie, what is it that you asked?” She was still crying, not loud or anything like that, just tears flowing down all her cheeks.

  “Is that man talking about Papa’s bank?”

  “Pray that it is not so, sweetheart,” she said. “Let’s go inside and pray.”

  “But it’s not nighttime or breakfast or dinner or supper.”

  “Let’s pray anyway.”

  “But it’s not church.”

  “Come,” she said.

  “What’s a posse?” I asked.

  “I’ll explain later. Let’s pray. Let me find our Bible.”

  She was opening the door when another man in a checked suit came running down the street, and started pounding on the door of the house near ours, the house where Mr. Karl—he comes from some place called, oh, I can’t remember—but Mr. Karl lives in that house and the other man was yelling—“Robbery, robbery!”—and Mr. Karl, he opened the door and said: “Guten Tag. Was gibt es Neues?” He talks funny, I think.

  “Robbery!” the man in the checked suit said. “Robbery and murder!”

  “Wie bitte?” said Mr. Karl.

  “Robbery, I said!” The man in the checked suit was waving his arms and he was sweaty and icky stuff, and I kept waiting for Mommie Lizzie to go inside with me, but she just stood frozen. And then I heard the man in the checked suit say this: “Robbery and murder! They robbed First National and murdered Joe Heywood, shot Alonzo Bunker.”

  “Grosser Gottl” Mr. Karl said. “Der Meuchelmord?”

  “Yes, sir,” the man in the checked suit said. “Foul murder. We’re forming a posse. Come with me to the square!”

  “Ich komme sofort!” Those are funny-sounding words Mr. Karl says, but Papa tells me that’s all right and that Mr. Karl is a fine Christian gentleman and good neighbor, but he didn’t even remember then that he was our neighbor, I guess, he was so excited because Mr. Karl took off running after the man in the checked suit. They were running toward the railroad tracks, which Mommie Lizzie and Papa say I mustn’t play on, and toward the river and the square, which is where Papa works.

  Mommie Lizzie jerked me inside and slammed the door. She was holding her stomach with one hand, covering her mouth with the other, like she was going to be sick, and I hoped she wasn’t going to be sick.

  “Mommie Lizzie,” I said. “They were talking about Papa. What were they saying about Papa?” When she didn’t answer, just stood there, I started crying, and Dolly Martha was crying, and Mommie Lizzie finally knelt beside me and she pulled me tight and almost crushed me, and then she scooped me up again and we ran into the parlor, and she stumbled on the quilt she was making, but didn’t drop me, and then she sat me down in the rocker and she was sitting, kneeling, just right there in front of me, and she took another one of those deep breaths, and she wiped her tears and suddenly she wasn’t crying no more.

  “Lizzie May,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “I need you to be very strong. I need you to be a big, big girl now. You can’t be a baby any more.”

  “All right, Mommie Lizzie. I’m not a baby. I’m five. But where’s Papa? I want Papa!”

  “I know.” She paused again. It seemed like the longest time, and I felt I would start crying again, but then she squeezed my arm, squeezed it hard, but not too hard so that it hurt.

  “Lizzie May, do you remember when Papa’s friends from work came over a little while ago and were talking about the secessionists during the late unpleasantness?”

&
nbsp; Well, I remembered Papa had a party, but I don’t remember anything about it.

  “You remember one of Papa’s bosses asked what Joe, your father, would do if bad men wanted him to open the safe like the bad Rebels had done at that bank in Vermont during the war?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Joe said he’d never open the safe for such scoundrels. Do you remember that?”

  “I think so.” But I didn’t.

  “Your father is a hero.”

  “He was a hero in the war. When he fought the mean Rebs.”

  “I fear he was a hero today, sweetheart.”

  “Is Papa coming home soon?”

  “I pray so, but….”

  Somebody started knocking on the door, and Mommie Lizzie shivered and it wasn’t even cold. She stood up, but not before she kissed both of my cheeks and wiped my face with the hem of her skirt.

  “I miss, Papa,” I said. “I love Papa. I want Papa to come home…now.”

  “I love him, too.”

  Preacher Leonard is with Mommie Lizzie now. She is wearing a black dress, and Mrs. Ames says I’ll have to wear a black dress, too. She says Papa was a hero. I tell her Mommie Lizzie and I knew that. I heard the man tell Mommie Lizzie, when she opened the door, that Papa had been a hero, that he would not open the safe for the bandits, and I heard Mommie Lizzie, being strong, say: “I would not have had him do otherwise.”

  “You are a courageous lady,” the man said.

  Mommie Lizzie pretends good, too.

  They would not let me see Papa. They brought him home in a buggy, and covered with a white sheet, but there were some icky spots on the sheet, red and brown and nasty, and I knew it was blood, but I didn’t touch it. Maybe, I thought, Papa was pretending to be a ghost, but they told me that Papa was in heaven, that that was just his body, nothing in the scheme of things—what is a scheme?—and that God has a reason for everything, even this.

  Papa’s in heaven with Mommie Martha.

  Does that mean I can go to heaven, too?

  “You shall, dear child,” Preacher Leonard told me, “but not for a long, long time, God willing.”

  “But I want to go see Papa now.”

  But I can’t. They won’t let me.

  They tell me that after Mr. Miller had Papa all fixed up, maybe tomorrow, that maybe I can go see him and kiss him good bye, but I don’t want Papa to leave. I want him to read me stories and let me feel his fur and I want him to bring me my dolly and my spinning top and let me play on the piano and sometimes the clarinet because I like music, too, and Papa says I have a gift. I want Papa to take me to see where Mommie Martha’s sleeping when she’s in heaven at the place at the edge of town. I want to hug Papa again.

  “Your father had so many friends,” Mrs. Ames tells me. “And how heroic. You must be brave, too. Brave and strong.”

  “Mommie Lizzie tells me I must.”

  “Your stepmother is such a strong young lady.”

  I pretend to rock my dolly to sleep. She’s crying, too, because she misses Papa.

  “Your father will have two services, child,” Mrs. Ames is telling me. “One in the high school hall. That will be for all of Northfield, all of Minnesota, I warrant. And another here. It will be a trying day for all of us, you dear, sweet child. I hope you will continue to show this God-given strength of yours. You and your stepmother. It says in the Good Book…listen, Lizzie May, did you hear that?”

  I look up. It is dark again. Maybe fireworks. No?

  “Thunder. Hear it roll. Blessed rain. I think angels of the Lord are shedding tears, or will soon shed tears, tears of joy for bringing a brave, brave man like Joseph Lee Heywood into the fold. Do you hear?”

  Thunder. I don’t hear it, but maybe if I tell her that I do, maybe then they will let me see Papa.

  “Yes, ma’am. Can I see Papa now?”

  She gives me a sad look. “In time, Lizzie May. In time. You do not wish to see him now, not in that ghastly state. Remember your father alive.”

  I am good at that. I can pretend. I like to pretend. I think I will pretend that Papa is not in heaven, and that he’ll let me play with his fur, and he can tell me stories and make me laugh. Yes, I will pretend. I will pretend that.

  I will pretend that I am not sad.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  FRANK JUPIES

  Men at some time are masters of their fates:

  The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

  But in ourselves, that we are the underlings.

  Fate had dealt us a cruel hand, or, as Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar, we dealt it ourselves, choosing the bank in Northfield, leaving behind Bill Stiles—no sorrowful loss—and Clell Miller; Jesse and I felt mighty pained to lose a top hand like Clell. What’s done is done, however, and there ain’t no turning back. As Bob Younger, if he weren’t so bad shot up, might say: “We played a good hand but we lost. Spilt milk. There are more pressing matters.”

  Staying alive.

  So we rode, rode like hell, running some white-haired sodbuster off the road in his spring wagon. “Take the ditch, damn you!” Charlie Pitts screamed at him, and we didn’t give the old farmer any choice.

  We rode.

  “Let’s take a damned horse!” Cole cried out, him smarting some, bleeding bad, saddle, reins, and brother all shot to hell, but Jesse wouldn’t listen, and I can’t blame my brother at all.

  “Too soon! Too soon!” he yelled. “We need to get past that little town first. Might have wired the law there.”

  They called that little town Dundas, on the Cannon River, three, four miles south of Northfield, and, sure as hell, if them damyankees in North-field had any sense they would have keyed off a telegraph in a hurry, and we’d be riding into a posse, us having forgotten to cut the wires on our way out of town.

  Well, we hadn’t forgotten. Didn’t have time.

  We rode.

  Bill Stiles had told us he knew a few crossings, but the water roiled from recent storms, and Stiles was deader than Brutus. Only crossing that we knew of was the bridge at Dundas. We rode.

  “Damn it all to hell, Dingus,” Cole said, “we got to stop. Now.”

  Jesse listened, changed his mind, and we eased our horses off the road near the bridge and rode down to the Cannon River. Bob Younger practically fell off the horse, and Cole hobbled over beside him.

  “Better reload your guns, boys,” Jesse said. “We’ll have soldiering to do. That posse will be waiting for sure now that we’ve stopped.”

  “Go to hell, Dingus!” Jim Younger bit back.

  Mightily I wanted to slide down off the saddle on the big dun horse, pour some cool river water over my bleeding leg, but didn’t feel overly confident I’d be able to climb back in the saddle again, so I just watched, tied a bandanna over the gash above my knee, keeping my eyes on the road. That’s how come I saw the man coming from Dun-das in his wagon—a team of grays in harness— coming casual as you please, and it struck me that, since town lay just up the road and this man didn’t have a care in the world, maybe those dumb Yankees hadn’t thought to telegraph the first town. (Turns out I was wrong, that the Yanks weren’t all as dumb as they looked, and they had got the wires humming, but the fool operator in Dundas was having his afternoon sit-down in the privy.)

  “Jesse.” Thumbing back the Remington’s hammer, I pointed the long barrel at the rider, who hadn’t spotted us.

  My brother grinned. “The Lord giveth. Looks like we got that horse for you, Bob,” he said, and Jesse and I rode up to the road, meeting the fellow just as he crossed the bridge.

  “We’ll be borrowing one of your horses,” I informed the man, showing him the business end of my .44.

  “What’s the meaning of…?”

  “Just shut the hell up, you little son-of-a-bitch, and cut one of those grays from the harness,” Jesse said. “Sass me, and I’ll blow your damned head off.”

  He was hauling rails, and he got right to work on the horse, after Jesse
split his scalp with his Schofield, realizing the seriousness of our moods. She was a right solid little mare. Lucky, Bob was, and we had the gray about rigged up for him when Charlie Pitts, now watching our back door, spotted two men riding down the road, riding, it looked like, on Clell Miller’s and Bill Stiles’s horses.

  “Keep back, you damned curs!” Charlie shouted at them, and the spineless bastards did as they were told, respectful of us.

  Cole and Jim, though both still hurting, helped Bob, his arm busted from that shot, onto the gray, then mounted their own horses. We rode through town, spurring our mounts, raising dust.

  Dundas, thank God, was quiet, but we needed to put some miles between us and Northfield, and those two cowards trailing us. One drummer in a sack suit pointed at us when we galloped along, saying in his Yankee voice: “Friends, you ride like a cavalry regiment. But if Sitting Bull were after you, I warrant you might even ride faster.”

  Jesse aimed his Schofield. “Get inside, you son-of-a-bitch!”

  The drummer got inside in a hurry.

  We had to show a couple other gents our guns, which irked one of the bastards idling away his afternoon in front of some store. He took offense, telling Charlie: “Get off that horse and I’ll whip you. I can whip any man points a revolver at me.”

  Charlie would have bashed that son-of-a-bitch’s face in, but we had no time for fisticuffs.

  We rode.

  Now, Bob rode the gray bareback, and, with his arm so bad, we had to get him a saddle, so we appropriated one off some dumb farmer, telling him we were Rice County sheriff’s deputies and chasing horse thieves. The man didn’t say nothing, just bobbed his head and chewed a straw. Doubt if he believed us. Actually I don’t rightly give a damn.

  Our next stop came at another farm because Bob had started begging for water. I had a powerful thirst, too, and this time I eased my bad leg out of the saddle, once the farmer—man named Donaldson—said to help ourselves after Jesse told him that Cole had taken a spill from his horse and broke his leg.