That night, three nights ago, when he saw Junior limping from the darkness into the light cast by the burning barn, a limp body in his hands, Millie by his side, a change came over Pa. After getting Junior into bed, sending someone for the doctor and listening to a quick but tired account from Millie, he and some men who had come to help with the fire had gotten in their pick-ups and driven over to the Neuwalds’ house to confirm Millie's story. They found Mr. Neuwald and Geshen lying in the back of Mr. Neuwald’s pickup, both of them beat up, burned a little and bound with twine, Geshen covered in his own moonshine vomit. Eventually, the cut noose was found in the woods, and the bodies under the dirt at the bottom of the pond, and in the cabin next to the pond a trilby hat everyone in Price knew as Tommy’s.
Through the next few days, as the truth kept revealing itself—not only the truth about what happened to Mr. Sterno, Junior and Millie at the hands of Mayor Greentree, but Tommy too—Pa didn’t say a word. He slammed around in his duties, putting out the fire, hauling the surviving livestock to Cecil Penny's farm, some to the Fitzmorris farm, moving the box with Mr. Sterno’s body to the cellar, then back out when the ambulance truck came for him. He spent most of his time sitting with Junior. Junior lay in his room naked save a blanket across his private area. Pa had taken the metal from the lockbox in his drawer and given it to him to hold in his sleep. For two days he lay still like this. The holes in his ribs wept pink fluid, sometimes blood when he coughed. Doc Rosenzweig had removed the bullets while Junior was unconscious—though even in that state Junior had winced and said "h-y!" as the doctor dug with his metal pincers. After two flattened slugs from Mr. Neuwald's gun were taken out—the third, in his leg, was too deep, and would remain there—Junior slept, and was still sleeping. The fever came and broke, but the pain stayed. Pa stayed too, right there by his side. He changed Junior's dressings, gave him a bedpan, he wiped his sweat and his drool, he fanned him with a newspaper, he fed him spoonfuls of apple sauce and mashed potatoes and lemonade. When Millie had to leave the room, she could sometimes hear Pa talking to him, real low, real soft, a funny kind of sound coming from Pa. If she was in the room he didn’t say a word. And once, when he had thought Millie was asleep in the corner chair, he took a wrist of Junior's in each hand, turned them so the palms faced the ceiling, looked for a long time at the worked-raw hands of his son. He squeezed out tiny little tears as he put Junior’s hands back on the mattress.
Then this morning, still without a word, he took up his shotgun. He just suddenly stood up as if something had bitten him, took the shotgun from the spot on the wall in Junior's room, where he had been cleaning it, he filled his pockets full of shells and walked out into the sunshine for all to see. He stood with the gun in both hands, facing the barn, staring at his burned out tractors, his threshers and balers, his destroyed barn. There had been concern among the men and women who had gathered to help. Even when the lawmen—even Sheriff Jake, who had everything else in the world to deal with—had asked him to set it back down, he did not listen. Everyone watched as he loaded the gun, pointed at the barn, fired it in the direction of the smoke as though he could put out the fire that way. He shot up the barn, then the blackened, blanched, ashed-out metal of what used to be his machines and finally the smoldering frame of Tommy's buggy; he spent a whole box of shells on the buggy. Loading it, emptying it, again and again. Each report and clank of buckshot off metal loped off into the fields, came back to them from the trees as tiny cracking-ringing sounds. Then he would load it again, empty it. Load it again. He did this without hurrying. He thought hard about each shot before putting his finger on the trigger, like he was painting a picture with the tiny holes in the metal and wood and the smoking pin beams of daylight slanting through them. The last two shells he kept. Put them in the pocket of his shirt. Held them for now, for this quiet evening, with a fleet of Fords on the front lawn. He saved them because he had found out the truth.
Through all of this he didn't say a word.
Mother on the other hand hadn’t stopped talking, moving, bustling around the house, into town, back and forth to neighboring farms in Pa’s pick-up. She had no choice. There had been much to do even before all the Pinkertons and Topeka lawmen started showing up; there was much to do just to get them all here.
Millie had given Sterno’s notes and the instructions to Mother, and had told her story, the whole story, not just what had happened to Mr. Sterno in the woods, but The Story of her Lovey-Dovers as well. Mother took the instructions from her and took over all tasks from that point forward. She followed the instructions exactly as they were written. She and Millie went into town to make 'phone calls to St. Louis, to Wichita and to Topeka. Millie stood next to her idly rubbing the twine marks on her wrists as Mother called the men whose names were on the instructions, to tell them what had happened: Mr. Sterno was dead. No, we've got his body, for now. No, but my daughter saw them hang him, with her own eyes. Yes, you can speak to her, but not yet. One of the men who did it is dead. No, it was my son Braun who killed him; two more are hurt. The son is in jail, Geshen is his name. Neuwald, yes, n-e-u-w-a-l-d. Yes, like the sheriff, but he had nothing to do with it. The father—Jonas, the sheriff’s younger brother—has been taken to the hospital in Wichita. Yes, Braun Jr. is hurt badly, but he is healing; he was shot three times, and burned. They burned down our barn—yes, completely gone. They tried to take Millie, our daughter, but she is fine, except for her concern for Braun Jr. The mayor has not been seen or heard from, but the men here say he is holing up in his house. Yes, he was the one who killed Mr. Sterno. Yes, he was the man who killed my Tommy. Millie knows everything. She saw everything. What's that? oh, she's twelve. Yes, they understand everything is depended upon her testimony; they're keeping a close eye on her.
Yes, absolutely, she can tell you the whole story.
That was two days ago. Today, the newspaper man and the state lawmen were here. Sheriff Jake was here too. Millie was keeping an eye on him. The skin on his face looked like wet plaster. His eyes sagged with dark bruises. He was one of the men who smoked. Millie felt sorry for him. He had lost a nephew, and would lose another to prison, and his own brother too, if he survived. But earlier, before Millie had gone out back for Sonnet, she had been with Sheriff Jake and Mother in the kitchen as they drank coffee, and he had said this was not what was bothering him. Mostly what was eating him was what they had done to her family.
"I aint sure why they are what they are. I aint sure why they did this. I knew something wrong had happened that night—I should have known, anyhow. It was a pretty crazy night, with that twister that come through. I went out looking for them, but couldn’t find them anywhere. I don’t know. I believed them—their story—because they’re kin. I had to believe them. Damn, if I could only have ten seconds with that Mr. Sterno, I'd sure tell him how sorry I was. Excuse my language."
"It's not your fault, Jake."
"I liked that boy a yours, Marnie. I really did. He was a fine young man."
"It'll be okay, Jake."
"Anyhow," he said, "I guess it's going to be fun putting that esteemed mayor of ours away. Cousin or no cousin."
Mother had had nothing to say to this.
"Fun, in a lawman kind of way. That is, if your husband hasn’t already took care of him for us." He sipped from his cup. There was a long pause. "You going to go out and see that girl of his after this?"
She nodded.
Sheriff Jake looked around the kitchen, sure of something. "She'll like it here, Marnie."
He had then been called out to the yard. Millie had gone around back for Sonnet, brought her out so she’d be ready when Pa was ready. He was going alone to the mayor's, before everyone else went. He wanted some words with him before they took him away. He wanted to do it alone—he owed that to Tommy, and nothing would stop him. Still, Sheriff Jake was still trying to talk him out of it.
"Abner aint alone over there," Sheriff Jake said.
Pa didn’t say a word. Millie gue
ssed, then understood, that after all that had happened, Pa was done talking.
"These men aren't going to let you just come up and pull him out of his house by his ear like a schoolboy."
Pa nodded his head a little, then shook it a little. Said nothing.
They moved out to the road as they talked. Millie reined Sonnet after them. Once on the road, Pa cracked his shotgun, dropped in two green, gold-capped shells. There was only a little wind, so both men were smoking cigarettes. She had never seen Pa smoke a cigarette before, but from the looks of it he knew his way around one. She was learning about her Pa, her real Pa.
Now the men traded looks and Millie knew it was time. Pa took the reins from Millie, helped her down from the saddle, got up on it himself. He looked down at her with that same face he had made before he had cried that time in Junior’s room--not a sad face but an angry one. His voice sounded sick and dry.
"Git on back to your Mother," he said. "She'll be shaky till I get back."
"When're you coming back, Pa?"
"Go on."
"Why don't you go in a car? With the other men."
He shook his head. "Git."
"We'll give you an hour, Braun," said Sheriff Jake, before he started back to the other men. "Hour-and-a-half. And I hope it aint you I'm hauling away in this car when I leave his place."
Pa took the horse down the road at a walk, then finally a trot. Millie was joined in the front yard by Mother, who rested a hand on her shoulder and watched him go. Pa was alone on that road tonight, but that’s how he wanted it. Even though he had the best horse in the county with him, a man never looked more alone.
*
.
Months from now winter would have come and gone. It would be the anniversary of Tommy's death. The sun would be setting in almost the same position as it was now, over the God Rock in the south field. On that evening Millie would be on the God Rock, waiting for everyone to gather around her. She would have that last letter of Junior's from the war in her hand, to read to Tommy. It was the only letter left; the rest had burned up in the barn. Flora and little Maggie would be there too, already waiting on the rock—a fat baby with a friar's shock of hair low on the head and icy blue eyes. Jumpy would be out there too, sitting on the rock cleaning his hind end. There because Junior had lifted him from the porch and carried him to the rock, limping the whole way on his “bullet leg” as Pa called it. Junior would have Sonnet out too—pulling grass, tail swishing. The animals were always family in Junior’s eyes, he never forgot to include them.
With the day’s last color collecting behind her, Millie would signal to everyone it was time to read the letter. This would be their gift to Tommy in heaven on this special day. Millie imagined Tommy, among the angels, listening with that look of blinking concentration he used to get every time he read one of his brother's letters from the front. This letter, like those, would be of courage and fear, of love and of hate, of wood and field. Today, Millie would omit the swear words her oldest brother had taught her so well, because she knew Tommy didn't like them coming from her mouth. Pa would be sitting on the porch next to Mother. He would have a newspaper and a pipe. Mother would be working on another new dress for Millie, who would be getting a chest by then, and was not a little proud of it—like a joke played on the world by the world. When it was time, Mother would put the back of her needle wielding hand to her mouth, smile at this thought, then look over at her husband behind his newspaper. Together they would rise, cross the field of ankle-high spring hay, find a place on the rock to listen.
*
Little Brother, France, Oct. ‘18
Ive been meaning to write you for a couple weeks now. Just couldnt. I havent been able to get the words down, much less talk at all since it happened. I dont know if I ever told you about my good buddy Clem Heigh from Texas. I may have, I maybe didnt. He was my buddy, big like me. He was a farmboy too, but talkier, and funnier then all get-out. You say his name like Hay, like that stuff he put into bales all summer long and truck off to the neighbors. The boys, they got a big kick out of this. "Hey, Heigh, hay!" theyd say and point, when we came across one of those big tower bales they got here. Anyways, he got killed a couple weeks ago, outside Belleau Woods, blown to bits by those shit blasted Jerries. He was my good friend, an Im the reason he was killed.
I knew it was a bad day right from daybreak. It was raining for two strate weeks before this day, so everything was covered in mud and soaked through and cold as hell. We come across a little hamlet and thats when we knew it was going to be a bad day. There was dead Frenchies everywhere--soldiers I mean--and some Canucks too. Theyd been stepped on and rolled over with wagons and they had the pockets of there coats and pants turned out and some of them had had there teeth taken out too. Then we find this little pit and its full of women and girls, and most of them got their dresses up over there heads and there hands tied which means those shit stained German sons of whores had been at there usual you know what with those poor girls. Well this got us in a fighting mood if all that rain didnt.
Well we got our fight that night. The shelling came first like it always does but usually they do it for a couple days before they send the foot soldiers, this time they blasted the guts out of us for about three hours then sent the troops right in. They were good fighters too, from Russia since those cowards gave up the fight. Well this is how the Germans are, they send there boys in and just keep right on lobbing those shells into the fight. It goes on till dark, just keeps on going. The worst fight weve seen yet. There was so much noise and so much flashing lights, a guy could barely tell where he came from and where he was going. Well I was picking up doughboys who had been wounded, and some of them were bad. You cant know how frale a thing your flesh and bone is till you stick it up against hot and fast moving metal, like shrapnel or a bullet. I was finding out that night, carrying boys three at a time from the battle to the rear trench where they had a medicle tent. By the time I found Heigh I was already soaked thru in blood and carrying ten pounds of French mud with me everywhere I went. Heigh is the one who saw me, he yells Donnan Donnan! and how he needed a stretcher. Well there was no getting a stretcher out there, no way. I was already taking a big gamble going out there with those rounds wizzing by my head. I says Heigh! Your coming with me! He says no leave me, I cant move, I been shot bad, I need a stretcher. Nobodys going to bring you a stretcher out here, come on, I says. He says, leave me till they can, Ill be alright. But I dont leave him. I pick him right up and toss him onto my back and run like the blazes back to the trench. This is just when that same machine gun nest Heigh and a couple boys had gone out to shut down opens up on me again and I hear those Jerries yelling in that Godawful tongue of theres to use stick bombs, which they do. So now I got those machine gun rounds wizzing by me like hornets and I got those little potato masher explosions kicking up the little craters in the mud every other step. Hold on Heigh! I says, Were almost there. Heigh! I holler. Heigh Heigh Heigh Heigh!!!! But I figure hes passed out. Well I make it back, I jump into that shit corpse stinking muddy trench and flop Heigh over to a stretcher and theres nothing there, little brother. I had been holding his arm and there was a shoulder and a neck and a head hanging off that arm and a long string of guts hanging out behind him, but there wasnt nothing else. One of those stick bombs had blown him to bits. I had his blood and is bits of meat and bone all over my back to the skin.
Think about that. He wanted me to leave him be where he was. So not only did I kill him by trying to get him back, but he saved my life—he took that blast for me and saved my Goddamn shit blasted life. And I dont feel too good about that, little brother. I dont feel good about that at all, in fact I wished it was me that was in small pieces.
Anyways, well thats it, thats what I wanted to say. I havent been able to talk to anyone here about it. I havent said a word one to anyone about anything at all, in fact. They tell me I scream his name in the night, sometimes I whisper it too, they say. Over and over again. I dont k
now. I dont know. I do know this, if theres any good in all this, its that Clem Heigh loved America more than I do and he loved his outfit and he might have even loved me, and even tho I killed him, I know he died the way he would want to die. For some reason you got to die, little brother, so love ought to be that reason. At least then your not alone when it happens.
Hug our soldier for me. Jr.
THE END
Table of Contents
Copyright
Part I
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
Part II
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
Part III
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
Beast of the Field Page 28