by Jason Heit
“That night Katherine and me… We planned to meet and watch the northern lights. It was already dusk when I left the bonfire and I was nearly at our meeting place, a grove of chokecherry trees, when I heard something behind me. I remember turning to see what it was, then nothing. I was knocked out. When I came to I was seeing stars and the pain – it hurt bad!” Peter pointed at Frank. “He knows what it’s like now –”
“Then why lie about the horse?” Joseph asked.
“I couldn’t talk then, so Katherine spoke for us. She told Mother it was a horse because she was too ashamed to tell folks what really happened.”
“Because you’d planned to lie with her,” Frank panted.
“No,” Peter said, shaking his head at the accusation. “We didn’t think that way.”
“The hell you did! I saw the way you looked at her at the bonfire; you had plans for her.” Spittle dripped from the corner of his mouth as Joseph braced him on his side. “I might die here, Nels, but I’m not going to let this whiny ass say what I did or didn’t do. I stopped him. Knocked him out and stomped his –” Frank’s chest heaved as he panted for air.
“See!” Peter rushed toward them looking as though he might pounce at any moment. “He admits it.”
“Slow down, Peter,” Nels growled. “What were your plans with Katherine? Why was she ashamed?”
And just as quickly Peter drew back. “Nothing, Nels.” His hand went to his cheek. “She was hurt too. When I came around I heard something rustling in the bushes and other sounds, too, like someone choking. The sounds were close but it was so dark I could barely see. I tried to scare whatever, whoever it was away…” He growled at Frank. “It was you. Wasn’t it?”
Frank didn’t respond. Joseph lowered him onto his back and inched away from him. Now, he lay in the snow working to catch his breath, drawing quick short puffs through his nose.
Peter continued. “After he ran, I found Katherine blacked out. I stayed with her till she woke up around dawn. She didn’t know who did it and neither did I; she made me promise not to tell.”
“Bullshit,” Frank groaned, recovering his breath. “Pete’s got it half right. I bedded Katherine and she knows I did,” he smirked.
Clenching his fists, Peter dropped down next to Nels; the two of them knelt in the snow only inches from Frank. “No. No, you didn’t. You raped her. Knocked her out like you did me.”
“Ha! Ha!” Frank laughed. “Ow!” he moaned, shriveling from the pain.
Nels’s guts were tied in knots. He wanted to be sick – all of this, it was all too disturbing, too grim. The one night he and his father leave Katherine alone and the most terrible thing happens. He wanted to undo it – push time back and shove Frank down a deep hole. He tried ordering the pieces Peter and Frank had placed before him, but they were all mixed up inside. “You married her; and I vouched for you.”
“She wanted me,” said Frank. “Even back then.” Then he pawed at the snow scooping a handful to his mouth.
Nels tried to steady himself, his impulses, but he could feel the blood rushing through his veins moving his body in a pulsing motion. “You’re a monster.”
“She’s my wife, Nels. My wife! And I did nothing wrong. In fact, I did right by her. So, go ahead and say I’m a monster but she loves me and if you don’t bring me back to her and my baby that blood will be on all of you.”
“Goddamn you to hell!”
“You’re sick, Frank,” said Joseph, stepping away from the others. “I don’t – I can’t look at him.”
“Suit yourself,” said Frank. “But just do me one goddamn little thing before you leave and fetch me some of Nels’s whiskey.”
Joseph looked to Nels for a sign. “Check by the campfire,” he replied, and Joseph trudged off in search of the bottle.
“Goddamn, if one of you don’t kill me the pain will do it,” Frank moaned. “How about it, Pete, gone this far; show me you’re not a whiny little ass.”
Peter grimaced and looked to Nels. “What are we going to do with him?”
“You know, Pete, when I told Katherine what I did to you that night, she laughed.”
“There’s no way, you bastard!” Peter clenched his fists and hammered the ground next to Frank.
Frank smiled weakly. “Well, Nels, Pete seems to lack the balls to finish what he started. How about you?”
Nels grabbed Frank around the neck, pressing his weight down on Frank’s throat. He felt Frank’s Adam’s apple sink deep into his windpipe, forcing a swallow that squeaked from his mouth. “This ain’t no game, Frank.” Panicked, Frank’s eyes widened as his face twisted fiery red. Nels squeezed. “Admit you raped her.” Frank managed a nodding twitch of his eyes, and Nels loosened his grip.
A dry retch poured from Frank’s mouth. “Damn it,” he muttered. “Kill me and you’ll rot in hell for an eternity.”
“Then it’ll be me and you.” Nels reached under Frank’s back and found the cloth Joseph had used to cover the wound.
“What are you doing?”
“You don’t need this anymore.” Nels pulled the cloth out from underneath him.
“To hell with you.” Frank coughed. “She’s carrying my child.”
Nels gnashed his teeth and punched Frank in the nose; then he forced open the man’s mouth, stuffing the bloody cloth inside. Blood gushed from Frank’s nose as his eyes filled with icy tears; he swung his fists but his punches landed weakly, hitting Nels in the chest and the arms. Nels covered Frank’s mouth and nostrils with his bare hands and pressed down. Still, the words lodged in the back of Frank’s throat came muffled through Nels’s hands, demanding that he stop and cursing him to hell.
“You don’t have to do this,” Peter said. “We can take him to a doctor. It’s my doing; no one else has to be involved.”
“No way he’s going back to her.”
Frank’s fingernails clawed into Nels’s hands, pitting the flesh like a piece of fruit. While next to him, Peter continued to plead for Frank’s life, but it was no use. The more Peter talked the more Nels realized he’d no other choice. He pressed harder, careful not to look Frank in the eyes; instead, he looked off toward where he’d last seen Joseph. He spotted him at their camp rummaging through the supplies for the whiskey bottle. Good, he thought, keep looking. A tremor pulsed through Nels’s hands setting his forearms shaking, until soon his entire body rattled from exertion. Yet Frank’s fingers still grasped his hands. He prayed for it to end soon, for Frank to die. Nels closed his eyes and swallowed hard.
By the time Joseph returned with the whiskey, Nels had pulled the cloth from Frank’s mouth and tucked it in his pocket. “We can’t tell Katherine what happened,” he told the brothers, his breath still heavy from the effort. “She can’t know about any of this – for her and the baby.”
Peter wiped his face with his coat sleeve and looked away.
Joseph nodded and stood there quietly staring at Frank’s body. “I figured he’d be dead by the time I came back. I didn’t want to be here for it, and I don’t want to know which of you did it.” Tears stained and froze to his cheeks. “Just tell me what we’re supposed to tell folks when we get home.”
“We’ll tell them it was his horse,” Peter said. “It kicked him. Broke his back.”
“Sounds right,” said Nels.
-
They’d pointed their half-loaded sleighs southward and hurried to be gone from the place – to be home and out of sight. Like before, Nels took the lead, now followed by Joseph in Frank’s sleigh, and Peter in the rear; while Frank’s body lay wrapped in a blanket atop the stack of wood behind Nels. It seemed they’d barely set off when Nels caught sight of a rider on the crest of a sparsely treed hill about 400 yards to the west. The horse and rider picked their path down the hill favouring a snow-swept flank where the frost-bitten ends of the prairie grass peeked through the white
cover. Together they melded – the horse’s dark mane and the rider’s black braids chest-length over a tan blanket with a wide blue stripe that framed the rider’s shoulders and the lengths of his arms, draping the buckskin horse – into something ghostly and soothing, a sort of reaper.
Joseph called out to Nels, “Is that an Indian?”
Nels ignored the call and kept his eye on the rider. The Indian was joined by another of his kind. The two riders stopped on the hillside and watched the men. Surely, they could see Frank’s body lying behind him. It was probably better to be found out by an Indian than an Englishman, Nels told himself; then, he snapped the lines and his big horses quickened their pace.
Later, when darkness came, the men stopped in the middle of the cold prairie and set their sleighs in a half-ring. They built a snow wall at the base of the carriages to protect them from the wind. Joseph built a fire and heated up some food; they ate quietly. Afterward, they didn’t talk. Joseph sobbed to himself, while Peter huddled up next to the fire, his head dipping from time to time and then snapping back to place. Nels wondered about the Indians. They’d seen a dead man being hauled home – nothing particularly odd about that. And who would they tell anyway? As for the brothers, they had their share in the matter, even Joseph in his way.
Nels reached into his pocket and pulled out the bloodied cloth. He looked it over. Things were better, now, he told himself. He’d made a good choice for Katherine and her baby; they’d be free of that devil. He tossed the cloth into the fire, closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
The next day, they carried on before dawn’s light, continuing their push south. Nels faded in and out of a nightmarish sleep. Still, he held the lead position, knowing his Belgians would keep to the trail and find their way home. As the day passed, he grew more and more tired until he no longer heard the sounds of the horses and the sleigh running through the layers of snow – powder, crust and hard pack. Those sounds – the crunching squeaks, the heaving breaths – were inside him. And, on the woodpile behind him, Frank whispered into his ear: to hell with you, Nels; she’s carrying my child.
The setting sun bled red and blue through the flesh of the evening clouds as Nels set his eyes on the farm. A grey spool of smoke unwound itself from the chimney pipe of the house Frank had built. He couldn’t remember what he’d planned to tell Katherine. He hoped something would come to him.
He knocked on the door. Katherine opened it and shook her head at him. “Where is Frank?” she asked, her voice raw.
The words circled him: It was the horse. It was the horse… But he couldn’t get them out; they’d frozen like everything else.
The Horse Accident
The Horse Accident
The Horse Accident
The Horse Accident
The Horse Accident
The Horse Accident
The Horse Accident
The Horse Accident
The Horse Accident
The Horse Accident
The Horse Accident
The Horse Accident
The Horse Accident
A Turn West
1909
Tradition dictated that Frank Weran’s body lie in wake for three days prior to the funeral. Peter had intended to go alone to pay his respects to Katherine, but Joseph caught up to him as he gathered the horses from the corral.
Joseph slung his arms through the sleeves of his sheepskin jacket as he hurried along the trampled snow trail. “Where are you going?”
Peter looked up from his work fixing the harness to the black Percheron mare and shook his head at his brother. “Katherine’s.”
“I should go with you. Make sure you don’t say the wrong thing.”
“What would I say?”
Joseph shrugged and started fixing the breeching to the mare’s hindquarter. “Something about Frank.”
Peter huffed. “Like the truth.”
“We gave our word to Nels.”
“Trust me. I won’t say anything. I wouldn’t hurt her.”
“You need to make a confession, Peter – ask for God’s forgiveness. It’ll ease your burden.”
Peter spat into the snow. He didn’t need Joseph telling him what to do. His brother didn’t know the full story – had refused to hear it. Sure, he might’ve wanted Frank dead, but it was Frank who’d gone after him and it was Nels who’d killed him. It wasn’t his sin to carry. Not alone.
“I’ve heard you in your sleep,” Joseph continued. “Calling out for her.”
Peter looked down, ashamed. It was true he hadn’t been sleeping well – his dreams kept bringing him back to the darkness of that night when Katherine was raped and his jaw and teeth were broken. He hadn’t been able to call out her name then and now the memory haunted his dreams and his waking mind. “You can go later,” he mumbled to his brother.
Joseph hitched the mare to the shafts of the cutter. “No, I’m going with you.”
The brothers arrived sometime before noon, but they were not the only ones at Frank and Katherine’s farm to pay their respects. Frank’s father, Kasimir, and Frank’s sister, Teresa, were sitting with Katherine; across from them, set on a pair of sawhorses, was the box with Frank’s body. The only other seating in the room was a four-foot-long bench running parallel to the coffin. The kitchen table had moved from its usual place near the wood stove to the wall opposite the door to allow for the set-up. Kasimir greeted the brothers at the door with a firm handshake and a wafting cloud of moonshine. Katherine poured them fresh cups of coffee which they gladly accepted, and Teresa offered up her chair, as did Katherine, but the brothers declined.
“It’s fine. ” Katherine’s hand gently stroked her pregnant belly. “I need to stretch my legs and there’s always the bench for us.”
Peter’s eyes locked on her belly – his jaw tightened and that old venom pumped through his veins. He hadn’t expected to feel this way. Hadn’t expected to see Katherine so very pregnant with Frank’s child. A part of him wanted to tell her then – wanted to pull her aside and tell her the terrible lie Frank had held over her – of the evil she carried inside her. But here she was, tired, her green eyes turned red and puffy, and offering him her chair. Peter bit his tongue and buried his anger.
“Yes, yes,” Teresa agreed; her nose twitched with each word. She had always seemed a mouse-like creature to Peter.
The brothers relented and took seats on the offered chairs. Teresa thrust a plate of Kuchen at Peter. He stared at it, then took a small piece; Joseph reached for a couple pieces for himself before Teresa could attack him with the plate.
After he’d washed the cake down with coffee, Peter turned to Kasimir and then Katherine, and realized they were waiting on him or Joseph to say something. Peter looked to Joseph, whose mouth was full of cake, and rolled his eyes.
“Mr. Weran. Teresa. Cousin.” Peter looked at each one in turn. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” Kasimir belched.
It was a disgrace to see the old man drunk at his son’s wake. Peter felt embarrassed for Katherine, Teresa, and in a strange way even for Frank – despite all the horrible things he’d done, this minor offense seemed to be its own ugly violence. He couldn’t imagine his own father behaving this way. Peter fumbled as he tried to think of something he might say to Katherine that would counteract Kasimir’s foul presence. But he couldn’t bring himself to say the things that are usually said: He was a good man; He loved you. So, he sat there with his troubled thoughts.
“It’s sad that he won’t have the chance to see his child,” Joseph said, breaking the awkward silence.
Peter noticed Katherine’s lips purse. “I apologize for my brother,” he quickly said. “He should be more careful with his words. It’s a painful matter.”
Kasimir waved away the comment. “Ah! He speaks what we al
l think.” He reached for the jug of moonshine next to his chair, pulled out the stopper, and poured an inch of clear liquid into three glass jars.
“Father’s been waiting for someone to have a drink with him,” Teresa said. Peter took a jar from Kasimir; he passed it to Joseph with a look that said don’t say a word. “You’re the first to arrive today,” Teresa continued. “Yesterday there was a good many.”
“We’re happy to keep your company,” Joseph said.
“Where’s your cup, Daughter?” Kasimir said.
“Oh, Father, perhaps, this one can just be for the men.”
“No, this is special. These are the men that shared Frank’s last hours. Katherine, you too.” Kasimir spat in the pair of empty coffee cups he held between his fingers and polished their insides with his handkerchief before pouring two more shots of liquor. He passed the cups to the women, picked up his own jar, and raised it up.
“To a good son and husband – may he never be forgotten. God bless him and give peace to his soul.” Then the old man put the jar to his lips and guzzled the drink down.
Peter took a sip. He didn’t like drinking in the morning. His insides weren’t ready for it.
Joseph finished his drink and the old man refilled their jars; he splashed an ounce into Peter’s drink as well. Joseph raised his drink. “To Frank, to his family, may God love them and keep them strong.”
Kasimir raised his drink and emptied it just as fast; he splashed more moonshine into his jar, and topped up the women’s cups too.
Peter shook his head. The old man was his own worse menace, but Joseph certainly wasn’t helping matters – he was being far too gracious for Peter’s liking. Joseph didn’t seem to appreciate that there was a certain amount of bitterness that was owed to Frank and his father. And Joseph’s warmth was making his own contempt all the more conspicuous. Peter could feel the old man’s eyes on him, willing him to raise a toast. He coughed and turned to Katherine. “I should say something,” he said.