Kaidenberg's Best Sons

by Jason Heit

  Nels’s face reddened with agitation. “What do you think would’ve happened if he came home to her, even as a cripple? You think he wouldn’t have told her what we did? Think of the lies he might’ve told her. The lies she might’ve believed.”

  Peter massaged his cheek. He knew Nels was right; still, he wasn’t convinced they’d done the right thing.

  “You know he’d been hitting her too?”

  Peter shook his head. He hadn’t thought much of their married life – had never wanted to – but he believed it. The thing with Frank he’d learned is that it piled on in heaps. “I didn’t know.”

  “She’s forgotten all about him hitting and pushing her. It’s like he’s a saint in her mind.” Nels turned quiet. “You ask what I regret. That’s what I regret. That’s what I figure I’m meant to bear. Don’t burden me with your second thoughts. I’ve got plenty to think about.” Nels stamped the shovel blade into the frozen earth.

  Peter’s mind wandered. Why did she still love Frank so strongly after all the pain he’d caused her? Was it possible that love could be made from fear? “Why did she marry him? Why did Johannes allow it?”

  Nels pulled a whisker from his moustache and flicked it to the ground. “It’s easy now to see that Frank was no good, but it was harder then. Katherine wasn’t happy and our father gave her the choice to marry or to go to the convent, but even in her sadness she knew she wanted a child. So it was Frank.”

  A sound came from behind them and Peter turned back to the sod house. Katherine appeared outside the door holding a small bundle wrapped in blankets. He swallowed. The baby was real. He realized he didn’t want to see the child.

  “Speaking of,” Nels said. “Why don’t you go see her for yourself.”

  Peter started toward the house as Katherine picked her way from one snowy footing to the next, avoiding the mud and the afternoon puddles.

  “Wait there,” Peter shouted.

  “Mind what I told you,” Nels said.

  Peter nodded and made his way to Katherine. He moved carefully across the patchwork of snow and frozen puddles. Nels’s words settling in his mind. Katherine had the child she wanted although the cost seemed too high. Still, it was best Frank was dead. He would’ve told the tale to his benefit. Turned everything on its head.

  He held his arm out to Katherine as she neared him. She steadied against it for an instant as her footing shifted; she smiled at him. Her eyes, like wolf willow leaves fluttering in the summer sun, revealed something like contentment.

  “I’m happy to see you, Katherine.”

  “It’s good to see you, Peter. I see you’ve been helping Nels. Is Joseph here too?”

  “No, it’s just me. Joseph has his head in the clouds.”

  “Really?”

  “He’s like a bee buzzing around a flower, and it’s all Nels’s doing.”

  “Yes.” Katherine smiled. “Nels mentioned the Dudenhafer girl. They’re getting on well?”

  “They are,” Peter replied. “They plan to marry this summer.”

  “That’s wonderful. They must be very happy.”

  “Maybe not as much as Nels, now that I’ve told him.”

  “It’ll be another feather in his cap,” she said. She looked to the bundle in her arms.

  Peter nodded and rested his eyes on the child. “A boy?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Frank, like his father.”

  Peter cringed.

  “Is something the matter?”

  “Only I would’ve thought, Johannes, after your father.”

  “Well, he’ll be christened Frank Johannes Weran.”

  “Perhaps, you might give some thought to Johannes Frank Weran,” he countered. He could see frustration growing along Katherine’s brow.

  “Are you trying to be funny?”

  He saw that he was on the cusp of offending her in some irrevocable way, but he also felt that he might be protecting her. “I only think with Frank’s misfortune perhaps the name is tainted. Johannes is a fine name and nothing evil ever befell your father.” He paused. “He lived a good life.”

  “I’ve never known you to be superstitious.”

  “Well, I’d never name a son of mine Peter, nor would I have any of my siblings do such a thing.” He offered one of his closed-lip smiles.

  “Perhaps, you might also warn them against naming their daughters Katherine as well.”

  “Now that you mention it, yes, I would warn them against it,” he said, playing along. “Then again, perhaps, each name has an unknown misfortune attached to it.” He paused. “And the baptism is this Sunday?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, you have time to think about it.”

  “You confuse me, Peter. Frank was good enough for his father; it’ll suit our boy fine too.”

  Peter sighed. He could end it all now. He could tell her the awful truth, although Nels would make him pay. That he could handle. But Katherine would never forgive him and he wasn’t brave enough to live without her love. Yet some part of him believed that Katherine’s and the boy’s fate were tied to her knowing.

  He took a step closer to Katherine and carefully pulled the wrap away from the baby’s face. Deep set eyes, thick lips, dark hair – he was his father’s son. “Yes, I suppose it will.”

  Katherine smiled as the baby turned away from the light and pressed his face towards her chest. “I should take him inside. I don’t want him to get a chill.”

  Peter nodded and watched Katherine make her way back to the soddie with baby Frank in her arms.

  -

  If there was one thing the baptism showed Peter it was that there was no burying Frank Weran. He just kept coming back. Things could’ve been worse. Katherine could’ve asked him to be the child’s godfather, but he was sure his comments about naming the child had removed any such idea. And, of course, Nels and Agatha would make fine godparents. A new truth seemed at hand: whatever wishes he’d had to do right by Katherine seemed an impossibility now. She held onto Frank too closely. The child’s name was proof of that. Perhaps, if it had been born a girl…. No, that wasn’t it. There was only so much he could tell her, and only so much that she’d hear from him. And the truth lay outside those borders.

  He would’ve been happy that day to have put his hat on after church. To saddle his horse, and leave, ride off for some distant place. He felt then that he was done in Kaidenberg, but it seemed the obligations were only beginning to pile on, with his brother’s upcoming wedding and a new house that needed building.

  He pushed through the rituals of seeding – horse and plough clockwise around the field – the furrows turning as they had year after year. Once he’d finished, he went to check on Katherine. He found her working the land with her team of horses hitched to the double plough and the baby swaddled to her back.

  “I’ll come back with my horse and plough,” he said.

  “Please don’t,” she said.

  “It’s fine. I have nothing more to do.”

  “No, Peter. I want to do this myself.” She was quiet. “It might sound strange, but he feels closer here.”

  There wasn’t anything he could say to that. He had helped to destroy the monster, but the ghost was proving much stronger than Peter could ever have imagined. As he rode back home, he cursed God for ever making a man like Frank Weran.

  -

  It was the middle of June when he found extra work building the rail bed for the tracks that would link Kaidenberg to the main line. He wasn’t the only one. Most of the young farmers had jumped on the opportunity to earn a few more dollars. As he bent over his shovel, piling dirt for the embankment, Peter began to think seriously about going west. He’d heard men telling stories of panning gold and trapping grizzly bears, though none of them seemed to have done it themselves. Except for one of them, a foreman, Karl Ziegler, who hai
led from Baden, Germany. Ziegler shared stories about his work laying rail through the mighty Rocky Mountains, felling trees as broad as a man and building trestle bridges spanning wide mountain chasms.

  “They’re giant mountains,” he said. “Even the biggest, loudest man is humbled in their shadows.”

  It was that sentiment that attracted Peter. If there really was a place where men were humbled by the greatness of nature, of God’s creation, he wanted to be there. He wanted to see it while it was still wild and untamed by men. The prairie was vast, seemingly endless, yet settlers were filling every corner, taming it with wheat, oats and barley. But the mountains, whole ranges of them covered in forest and ice, a man could get lost there and never be seen again.

  He worked four weeks and earned $20. Ziegler asked Peter to stay on longer. “It’s hard work,” Ziegler said. “But if you want to be in nature, see the beauty of the land, I always need another good worker.”

  But he had to turn him down. He’d promised to help Joseph and his father build the new wood-frame house for their mother and father.

  The idea of leaving Kaidenberg, of going west and starting a new life, became more and more deeply rooted in Peter’s mind as the walls of the house went up. It made him happy to think his life needn’t be one long straight line. He kept these thoughts to himself until the Sunday before Joseph’s wedding. On the way home from church the family stopped at the house to show their mother, Johanna, their work. It was nearly finished – only the windows and doors were missing.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, as she climbed down from the wagon. “You’ve done such good work.”

  “It’ll be a good house,” Joseph said.

  She kissed Joseph on the cheek, then Peter.

  She stepped inside the three-room house. “This will be our new home.” The men followed. “Wood floors!” she sighed. She examined the new wood stove and flashed them an approving smile.

  Konstantin took her by the hand and walked her to the room closest to the stove. “This is our room.”

  “Very nice.” She smiled. Then she peeked her head into the other room. “Oh, Peter, you have a window too. I’m so happy you will be living with us.”

  Peter shook his head. “I don’t know, Mother.”

  “What don’t you know?” Her forehead creased with worry.

  “If I should want to live here.”

  “Don’t be ungrateful,” Joseph said.

  “I’m not ungrateful.”

  “Well, you can’t stay in the soddie.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “What’s this about?” asked his father.

  Peter looked down. “I’d like to keep working on the rail.”

  “On the rail. That’s fine,” Konstantin said. “Now that the house is done you can go back, although there’s only a week or two until harvest.”

  “And don’t forget your brother’s wedding,” Johanna added.

  Peter shook his head. “Not here, Father, I want to go west. I want to see some new country.”

  “How far west do you mean?” Konstantin asked.

  “Alberta. The mountains.”

  “No, you can’t go,” Johanna sobbed. “You might be hurt. Those are strange places with strange people.”

  The room took on a quiet heaviness. His father chewed on his lip, as Joseph tried to comfort their mother. Peter caressed his jaw where the bone had fused, misshapen. He regretted his timing. He’d stolen a piece of his mother’s happiness and, perhaps, tainted her future memories of this house and this day.

  “Please, Mother, don’t cry. It’s just a thought.”

  “You mustn’t go,” she whimpered. “We’re getting old. We need you too much.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Konstantin said. “He might be your boy, but he must be his own man.”

  Peter nodded. Relieved his father understood.

  “You say this is just a thought,” Konstantin said, his eyes studying Peter. “Or maybe it’s more than that. But for your mother’s sake and for mine too, stay with us until the harvest is done. Afterward, if you still want to go, you’ll have our blessing and we’ll put some money in your pocket.”

  Peter looked to his crying mother then back to his father. “I will.”

  -

  The wedding celebration had more than its share of good food and drink, and there wasn’t a guest who found complaint with Mrs. Dudenhafer’s banquet spread – a tender pork roast with roasted potatoes picked fresh from the garden. Nor could anyone wish for better music to mark the celebration. Mr. Dudenhafer’s accordion and Mr. Zerr’s fiddle incited a frenzy of dancing among the young and young at heart. Even Peter was caught up in the whirlwind. Margaret had obliged him to share a dance with her and afterward quickly passed him from one sister to another, until, he found himself hand in hand with Katherine and, forgetting his disfigurement, he smiled as he had years ago. When the dance was finished he held her hand in his for a moment longer.

  She gave his hand a squeeze and closed her eyes.

  He felt his world pulled into the quiet place she inhabited. What was behind those eyes? Not Frank, he prayed, as his smile faded.

  She let go of his hand and opened her eyes. “I should check on the baby.”

  “Of course.”

  Those brief happy moments echoed in Peter’s thoughts through the long days cutting and stooking the wheat, and the longer days when the rain came and every moment was spent waiting for the sun to reappear and dry the crop so the work could start up once more, and when the grain was good and dry, and it was time to pitch the stooks into the threshing machine, even then, he could close his eyes and retrieve the sound of the music and the smile on her face as they went spinning around the room.

  Then, one day, it was done. He tossed the last sheaf of wheat into the steel beast. It turned and flailed out straw from one end and grain from another, then rolled to a stop. It took him another day to realize the harvest was over and he was free to go. There was nothing holding him to Kaidenberg but himself. In his 22 years of living, he’d never had to make a decision like this before. He’d never chosen a course of action for himself alone; nothing that’d take him away from his family. His guts clenched. He couldn’t eat. His insides ached for him to make a decision. In the background, his mother’s pleas for him to stay persisted and in his weakness they seemed more and more reasonable, but it was his father who finally pushed him to take his next step. They’d been doing the afternoon chores in their usual silence when Konstantin clapped him on the shoulder and told him to set down the feed pail.

  “It’s hard to leave what you know,” Konstantin said. “I couldn’t do it again, but I’m older now.”

  Peter listened quietly.

  “This life here is far from what I’d imagined all those years ago. It’s better in some ways and in some ways it’s not.” He paused. “There’s no certainty to these things.”

  Peter nodded.

  “So, if you’re going to do this, you should get at it while you’re young; while you have the stones to do it. And if you have a change of heart, or it doesn’t work out, there’ll be something here for you to come home to.” Konstantin put his hand on Peter’s shoulder.

  The weight of it made Peter weak. He swallowed. “Thank you,” he said.

  After that, there was no delaying things further. He planned to ride out the day after next, taking what little he owned and ‘borrowing’ the things he’d need to get by. There was one last thing he had to do before he left.

  -

  The next day, he saddled his horse and rode east to Katherine’s. About a half mile from her farm he saw a figure leaving the yard on horseback and rode towards it. A few hundred yards on he recognized the figure on the horse as Bernhard Holtz. He’d heard that Bernhard had helped Katherine and Nels bring in the harvest. Peter began to wonder about t
he nature of Bernhard’s intentions.

  When they were some 50 yards apart, Peter shouted, “Holtz.”

  Bernhard rode closer. “Out for a ride, Eberle. Where are you headed to?”

  “My cousin’s – Katherine’s.”

  “I just came from there. I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you.”

  Peter had never known Bernhard to be so warm and pleasant. It reminded him of Joseph’s cheery behavior during his courtship of Margaret. Peter spat on the ground. It was too early for Bernhard to be courting Katherine; it’d only been six months since she was widowed. And Bernhard of all people – the drunk, the thief – what good could he bring her?

  “She’s been wondering about you and your family,” Bernhard added.

  Peter’s horse turned away from Bernhard, as if to say: move on. But Peter circled him back.

  “She got the harvest off,” Bernhard said.

  “Yeah, I heard you helped.”

  “I did. Along with Nels and Agatha. We managed to get it done.”

  “No help from Kasimir?”

  “No,” Bernhard replied.

  “I should’ve expected,” Peter said. “His promises seem to end at the bottom of a whiskey jug.”

  Bernhard nodded and made no comment.

  Peter couldn’t help but feel some small satisfaction knowing his remark had touched Bernhard. It was well known that he had his own problems with the bottle. “She deserves better than what she’s had in the past.”

  Bernhard stayed quiet.

  Peter’s mind flashed a picture of Frank dying in the snow. He shook it off.

  “She’s been a friend to me,” Bernhard said. “I ain’t got any others.”

  Peter nodded. “She has a good heart.”

  “She does.”

  Peter leaned back in his saddle; perhaps he’d been too rash in his thinking about Bernhard. In some ways, they really weren’t so different.

  “I won’t keep you.” Bernhard tipped his hat and steered his horse to the side.

  “Wait.” Peter said, and Bernhard turned his horse back around to face him. “I guess you know she doesn’t take help easily.”