Kaidenberg's Best Sons

by Jason Heit

  Mrs. Landgraf puffed her cheeks. “A piece of advice, Mr. Weran, if you care to keep your wife happy, put a smile in your voice when you apologize to her.”

  “I’ll try to remember that,” Frank said in a muffled voice.

  Suppressing a chuckle, Nels took a sip of whiskey and smiled. That had turned out better than expected, he thought.

  After supper, Mrs. Landgraf and Karolin cleaned up the dishes while Nels chatted with Mr. Landgraf about their crops and, later, when Mrs. Landgraf had returned to the conversation, how their other children, the married ones, were doing. He knew that Aggie would be interested in knowing. Peter listened for a time, then excused himself to get some fresh air. Amid it all, Frank and Joseph stole looks at Karolin as they talked among themselves. Their conversation and laughter turned louder and louder as they exchanged whiskey for moonshine. Nels was surprised to see Karolin returning Joseph’s looks with her own coy glances. Thoughts of matchmaking tickled his imagination – he could ask the young pair to join him in a game of cards, or maybe put a bug in old Mr. Landgraf’s ear about his cousin’s prospects – but this wasn’t the right time. Frank had made too rough an impression on Mr. and Mrs. Landgraf and he feared Joseph might be painted with the same brush.

  Nels had sufficiently put away any thoughts of a matchmaking when Karolin returned from the kitchen to ask her father to bring out his accordion.

  “It’s getting late.”

  “Please, Father, just one song and I’ll sing,” she said, her eyes gleaming. A smile crept across Mr. Landgraf’s face and he left the room to fetch his accordion.

  Joseph smiled at Karolin, the booze bright in his cheeks. “What are you going to sing?”

  “Sing ‘The Fox and the Rabbit,’” Frank said.

  “I was thinking ‘Home on the Steppe,’” Karolin said.

  “That’s a fine song,” Joseph said, and the two exchanged smiles.

  As Karolin sang ‘Home on the Steppe’, Nels felt himself ease back into his chair. The words brought to mind memories of his youth – of him and his cousins playing hide and seek in the orchard as the older girls sat under a cherry tree singing songs and braiding each other’s hair. When Karolin and her father had finished, the men applauded and Mrs. Landgraf asked her husband to play a waltz. Frank grabbed Karolin’s hand. They danced around the table; on their return, Joseph cut in, taking his turn with Karolin. Nels offered his hand to Mrs. Landgraf and was surprised by her spry steps. Shortly after, the door opened and Peter snuck in as quiet as a church mouse. He leaned against the wall watching his brother dance. Nels saw the trace of a smile, closed-mouthed, lighten Peter’s face.

  There were a few more songs and drinks before the men said their goodnights to Karolin and Mrs. Landgraf. Mr. Landgraf insisted they have one more drink before they laid out their blankets on the floor to sleep.

  In the morning, Peter managed Mr. Landgraf’s chores while the others readied the horses. After a quick meal of coffee and porridge, they rode out.

  -

  Twenty-seven miles later they arrived at Battleford, with daylight on their side. They stabled their horses at the livery, went to the General Store, and bought the things they’d been told to get from those at home – coffee, tea, sugar, salt, fabric, lamp oil, whatever was on the lists.

  They stayed in a bunkhouse above the livery, where they ate their evening meal. Frank passed around a jug of moonshine, Kasimir’s recipe. Nels took a swig. His face twisted as the liquid went down. “Harsh stuff.” He wiped his moustache clean of the liquor.

  Joseph held out his hand. “I don’t mind it.”

  “Because you don’t know better,” Nels teased.

  “What do you think of Karolin?” Frank asked Joseph.

  Joseph laughed a little nervously and took a swig from the jug. His cheeks flushed red – but likely not from the drink, thought Nels.

  “She’s very nice.”

  “And?” Nels rolled his finger as if he were winding a string.

  Joseph looked to the jug in his hands. He had the worried look of a child about to enter the confessional for the first time. “There’s another girl I’m sweeter on. I’ve been talking with Margaret Dudenhafer after church.” He passed the jug back to Nels.

  “You like her?”

  “I think she’s very kind – beautiful too.”

  “Good hips,” Frank said. “You’ll want that.”

  Peter huffed.

  “I’d like to marry her,” Joseph confessed.

  Nels and Frank smiled.

  “I could speak to Margaret’s father about a matchmaking,” Nels said.

  “You’d do that?”

  “I’ve done it a few times before.”

  “It’s his ticket to the wedding feast,” Frank teased.

  “That’s also true,” Nels agreed. He took a pull from the jug. It was better on the second draught.

  “I remember asking Johannes for Katherine’s hand,” Frank said. “I nearly froze, turned to stone, but I had to make Katherine my wife. I knew I’d never be able to live with myself if another man married her first.”

  Peter grabbed the jug from Nels. He took a deep swig, slow and deliberate, as though he were cleansing his mouth of a bitter taste. When he finished he leaned back against one of the livery’s support beams and took another pull.

  “Do you have any marriage prospects, Pete?” Frank asked.

  “The only woman my brother loves with any true devotion is our mother,” Joseph chuckled. Nels and Frank laughed along with him.

  “No,” Nels said. “You’re too young to remember, but years ago on the steppe, Peter and Katherine would hold hands and walk through the fields together. They were quite love-struck.” This set off another round of laughter.

  “I’m sorry I stole your true love,” Frank said.

  Peter took a drink from the jug and capped it. He closed his eyes and clenched what remained of his teeth. Nels stopped laughing. He wasn’t too sure why he’d started in the first place. The moonshine, probably. Joseph eased up; Frank too, but not before he let out one last snicker. The room was quiet except for the fire crackling in the wood stove and the heavy sounds of horses breathing through the floorboards. Peter opened his eyes and exhaled.

  Frank swaggered over to Peter. “You think you’d have a wife now if you had your teeth?”

  “That’s plenty, Frank,” Nels said.

  “It’s fine,” Peter said. “We don’t have to dance around it…” He stared at Frank; his eyes narrowed. “Sure, I’d be married, but you might not.”

  Frank turned red with anger, grabbed Peter by the coat sleeves, and pulled him close. “Take it back or I’ll knock out the rest of your chompers.”

  The jug of moonshine swung loosely at Peter’s side. He shook his head. “Do it.”

  Frank cocked his fist at Peter, but hesitated just long enough for Nels to grab him by the shoulders. “Hit him, Frank, and you’ll have to deal with me next.”

  “Let me be,” Frank snarled; he shot a piece of spittle at Peter’s feet. Nels manhandled Frank towards his bunk. “Fine,” he acquiesced. “He ain’t worth it.”

  -

  The sounds of Frank’s and his cousins’ snoring droned in Nels’s ears as he lay awake thinking about Katherine. She’d been sad ever since they stepped off the train from North Dakota – not that she’d reason to miss the place. None of them did. Yet it seemed silly to think all her sadness was from Peter getting his jaw broken by that horse. Sure, that probably played some part, but if he was honest the real fault lay with him. He was the one who’d encouraged his sister to marry Frank after their father had told her it was time to pick a husband or join the convent. He could have found others to court her; there were plenty of widowers and old bachelors around. Any of them would’ve been happy to call her wife – she was pleasant to look at and hardworking
too – but Frank had been there waiting, helping them build cattle fences in the summer of ’06 and checking in on Katherine and the family through the following winter. Yeah, Frank had put on a good show. Not so much now.

  Nels got up from his blankets to add a piece of wood to the stove. In the soft light of the flame, his hands stumbled upon the jug of moonshine; he slipped two fingers in the neck handle and took a swig.

  “Ahem,” coughed one of the others.

  To his right, Nels made out the silhouette of Peter sitting up in his bunk. He passed him the moonshine. Peter drank and let the jug fall to his lap – both the jug and Peter seemed to slump toward Nels.

  “Katherine’s not like she was on the steppe or in the Dakotas,” Nels said, his voice hushed. “She doesn’t talk like she used to – doesn’t share. Sometimes I wonder if seeing that horse kick you changed her somehow.”

  “I think she has her own grief,” Peter said, quietly. He took another pull from the jug.

  “Would you have married her?”

  “I would have asked.”

  “You didn’t.”

  Peter passed the jug to Nels and sank into his bunk wrapping himself in his blankets. Nels poked the fire once more. He’d never really considered Peter and Katherine in that way, not seriously. They’d seemed so young then. Nels closed the stove door and returned to his bunk. In the darkness, the glow from the red-hot stove coals lit up the back of his eyes. He wanted to wish something better for Katherine, but what that was, he didn’t know.

  -

  They got up tired. Frank and Peter stayed to their sides of the room as they ate their breakfast and drank their coffee, casting silent glares at one another. Joseph tried to ease the silence and make conversation with Nels, but Nels wasn’t interested in small talk.

  About three miles west of Battleford, they stopped at the bottom of an east-facing hill loaded with trees – aspen and birch – and made their rough camp, and then the men set to work felling the largest trees in the stand. Swinging and chopping a path northward along the edge of the bluff. As the hours passed, their forearms grew thick and their bodies warmed from the effort.

  Nels led his mare through the packed snow and the silvery wolf willows toward the biggest of the fallen trees. He wrapped his chain around a pair of trees and hauled them to where Frank and the brothers bucked them down and loaded them onto the sleighs. Their muscles had become tired and their bellies tightened with hunger. After they’d finished loading the brothers’ sleigh, Peter volunteered Joseph to return the loaded sleigh to the shelter of their camp some 40 yards south and get some food ready while the others kept working.

  Nels was chopping the thick branches from the fallen trees when Frank stopped to rest against the stack of wood loaded onto his sleigh. He eyeballed Peter trudging toward him carrying a big 12-foot birch log across his chest; Frank started to whistle, ‘The Fox and the Rabbit’. “Do you like my tune, Pete?” he called out. Peter spat into the thick snow. A sly grin crept across Frank’s face as he stepped away from the sleigh toward Peter until there was a half-dozen feet separating them.

  “Get out of my way,” Peter warned.

  Frank laughed, then faked a quick move to tackle Peter.

  “Damn you!” Peter swore and he heaved the log at Frank. It landed at Frank’s feet. He tried to skip over it but the toe of his boot caught the log and he tripped, landing face first in the snow. Frank brushed the snow from his face and hurriedly picked himself up.

  Peter laughed. No more than a few short puffs, but it was enough. The first punch hit him below the eye, as did the second; the third knocked him into the foot-deep snow. Frank fell on top of him, straddling him, holding down his forearm with one hand and washing his face in icy snow-beads with the other. “Katherine never wanted you,” Frank hissed. “She’s happy I stopped you.”

  Nels ran toward them, tossing his axe to the side.

  Blinded, Peter struck out wildly with his free hand. Frank punched Peter again, hitting him on the jaw before Peter folded his arm over his face to shield himself; still, Frank pressed him deeper into the snow. “I would’ve killed you, if you’d touched her.”

  Nels grabbed Frank under the armpits and pulled him off Peter. A flurry of elbows thrashed to the left and right of Nels; he firmed his grip. Crouching down, Frank slid his foot behind Nels’s and drove him backwards into the snow. Nels’s grip loosened and Frank rolled free of him. Scrambling to his feet, Nels leapt upon Frank and was met with a punch to the ear that blotted his thoughts and turned his vision to a red haze. Nels countered, punching Frank across the jaw, once, then twice; he cocked his fist back and held it ready. This was his chance to really hurt Frank – he understood this like he did the pain in his ear. “Aagh!” Nels hollered as he released his fist, dropping his arm to his side. He’d resolved to keep Frank pinned in place until everyone had settled, but that didn’t pass. Instead Frank raised his knee, striking Nels in his crotch. The pain shot through his guts and Frank took advantage, rolling him to the ground. Once again, Frank had turned the table, straddling Nels. He looked for Peter.

  From the corner of his eye, Nels saw something flash behind Frank. He heard Joseph shout, “Stop!” A bone snapped, and a sound like a drowning calf poured from Frank’s mouth as he crumpled over Nels. Nels could feel the heaviness of Frank’s body weighing him down and in his ear a panicked scream pierced his thoughts. He pushed Frank away, rolling him onto his back. The hairs on Nels’s forearms and the nape of his neck pricked up like a bucket of ice water had washed over him when he saw Peter standing above him, his chest heaving and his body trembling as he gripped Nels’s axe.

  Frank’s scream had softened to a low bellow as he smacked his fists into the white snow; Joseph kneeled down next to him and stared at Peter. “Why did you –”

  “It was him.” Peter pointed the axe at Frank, accusingly. “He was there. He –”

  “Drop the axe, Peter,” Joseph shouted, before the sound of Frank attempting to stay his puffy breath turned his attention. “Where are you hurt?”

  “Scheisse. Scheisse.” Frank moaned.

  Careful of the dull pain in his lower body, Nels got up slowly, wiping away the ice crystals that’d attached to his eyebrows and moustache, and scanned the trampled snow around them. “I don’t understand,” he said. “There’s no blood.” He looked to Peter. “What did you do?”

  But Peter’s attention remained focused on Frank while his hand still held tight to the axe handle. “I know it was you.”

  “I can’t move my legs,” Frank’s voice quaked. He uncovered his eyes and looked to Peter. “Goddamn it! Goddamn it, Pete!”

  “Listen, Frank –” Nels started.

  “The hell with you, Nels.”

  “Listen –”

  “I know you were there,” Peter swore.

  “He hit me with a goddamn axe!”

  “The hammer end.”

  Nels grabbed the axe from Peter and threw it in the snow. “Get out of here.” He pushed Peter in the chest. “Shut up and go.”

  Peter pushed back. “You don’t know what he did.”

  Nels waved Peter away. “This ain’t the time.” Returning to Frank, Nels lowered down next to him, opposite Joseph. “You have to stay calm.” Frank was anything but calm; his breathing was short and fast, like a chugging train. “It might just be a passing thing,” Nels continued. “I’ve seen it happen before. When Andreas Stolz was a kid he fell off a horse and broke his back and he’s good now, but you have to calm down.” Frank caught a breath and nodded fast. “Good.” Nels surveyed their surroundings. “We’ll need to carry him –”

  “What if he’s bleeding?” Joseph asked.

  Nels had forgotten to check. He unbuttoned Frank’s sheepskin coat and reached under his back. Frank’s shirt was wet and sticky against his skin. “Get some rags,” he told Joseph. “Whatever you can find.
”

  Joseph nodded and ran back to the cook fire.

  “Will you help us?” Nels hollered at Peter.

  Peter sat, shoulders hunched, on the birch log he’d heaved at Frank; his teeth chattered uncontrollably. “He – he doesn’t deserve our help.”

  “You hurt him bad, Peter.”

  “Good. He hurt me and Katherine bad too.”

  “Hell no!” Frank grimaced through the pain. “I saved her from you.”

  Nels looked from Frank to Peter. “What’s he talking about?”

  Peter stood up, took a half-step toward Nels and Frank. “It wasn’t a horse that broke my jaw, wrecked my face. It was that bastard.”

  “Liar,” Frank cried.

  “You were there. I know it.”

  “You don’t know shit.”

  “You just said to me you stopped me from being with Katherine.” He paused. “But we didn’t tell anyone we’d planned to meet.”

  Joseph returned with a kettle of water and a scrap of cloth from an old flour bag. He knelt down next to Frank and commenced pulling Frank’s arm out from his coat sleeve.

  “I don’t understand,” Nels said.

  “The night when I had my head bashed in. It wasn’t no horse.”

  “Ahh!” Frank cried in anguish.

  “Enough, Peter. Either help us or get out of here,” Joseph demanded.

  “Damn you!” Peter spat in the snow.

  Joseph shook his head in disapproval before turning his attention back to Frank, who had shut his eyes and seemed to be bearing down on the pain. “Help me turn him over,” he told Nels. Nels grabbed hold of Frank at the shoulder and waist, rolling him onto his side, while Joseph pulled up Frank’s shirt so he could put the cloth to his wound. Squeezing his eyes shut, Joseph looked away.

  “Lots of blood?” Nels asked.

  Joseph shook his head. “It’s the bone.”

  Frank groaned.

  “Let him bleed,” Peter muttered.

  Joseph glared at his brother. “God forgive you.”

  “Hold the cloth tight against him,” Nels told Joseph before turning to Peter. “Tell me what this is about.”