Kaidenberg's Best Sons

by Jason Heit

  So young Frank took me on my word and paid me a couple more visits that year. He slowly started talking to me, telling me the things that were on his mind. Of course, he wanted to know more about his father. I tried to help him where I could without inventing more than I could remember. For the most part, they were innocent little stories, like the one where his father caught a hawk and trained him to land on his arm. I told him that one happened back when his father was a little boy on the steppe. I figured it was harmless enough. The one that worried me some was the one I’d made up about his father being asked to leave choir because he was so good he made all the other singers sound like mooing cows. It sure made the little fella laugh when I told him that one.

  There were other things he wanted to know about too, like coyotes. He wanted to know what they liked to eat, if they’d eat a boy, if they could see in the dark, and what would happen if they found him crawled up inside one of their dens. Badgers too. Some of the questions he asked were harder for me since I didn’t really know most of the answers myself. Nor was it something I wanted to make up fancy stories about; I was getting the feeling the boy might be thinking about running off, but I didn’t say nothing. Then winter came and I didn’t see him around except for church, and only a few times the next summer. I took that as a good thing. The times he did come around, he’d taken an interest in blacksmith work, heating the metal, bending and shaping it into the things a man could use.

  Things pretty much went to pot for young Frank that winter when the Spanish flu hit and took his mother with it. Him and his sister Elisabetha went to live with their uncle Nels and aunt Aggie. I guess, things could’ve been worse. He could’ve stayed with Bernhard. How that would’ve worked I don’t know. From what I’d gleaned from the boy, the accident at the church picnic had changed Bernhard. He forgot things like whether he’d done the chores or not. He’d yell and get upset real quick. And there was drinking too. More since Katherine’s passing.

  It must’ve been November 1918 when his mother passed, and I think it was late May or early June of the following year when Frank paid us a visit. He’d gone quiet again and it wasn’t stories he was looking for, it was the forge and the hammer he wanted. He had a hurt inside him he needed to work out. All I could do for him was heat up some iron and let him hammer that metal against the anvil.

  It went on like that for a while. It seemed he was here nearly every other day that summer, though it probably wasn’t that often. I don’t know how he got away from the farm so much without his cousin Lambert or his uncle and aunt getting curious about it. Well, eventually they did. I understand now that he’d been telling them that he was going off to visit Bernhard. That worked up until Nels checked in on Bernhard himself and didn’t find Frank there. Well that must’ve set Nels’s mind turning. That Nels is a cool one. He didn’t show his cards straight away. He just waited until the next time Frank told him he was going off to visit Bernhard and let Frank have his start and then followed the boy the mile and a half to my farm.

  That’s how it happened that Nels come by my farm that July day in 1919. I was in the house when Nels rode up on his horse. Not one of those big Belgians he owned, this was a smaller quarter horse. I hadn’t yet seen Frank that morning, though sometimes he went straight out to the blacksmith shop.

  It didn’t take much for me to put two and two together. I guess I’d always suspected this day would come. Still, I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you I had an uneasy feeling in my gut when I looked out the window and saw Nels Eberle riding up to the house.

  So, I set my coffee down and went out to meet him. “Nels,” I said. “What brings you here?”

  He didn’t say nothing straight away. Instead he just leaned back in his saddle, looked at me for a moment or two like he was studying me, like he could learn something from the way I was standing there waiting for him to talk.

  “Why don’t you come on down and have a coffee with me and Margaret? I was in the middle –”

  “Sorry to bother you, Kaspar. I’m looking for Katherine’s boy, Frank. Have you seen him around here?”

  That was it. There was no fancy story I could tell to get me and the boy out of this one.

  “He’s probably around somewhere.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “He comes here every once in a while. He likes to help me blacksmith.”

  Nels’s eyes turned to the shop and, like he and his horse were of one mind, the horse turned straight for the door of the shop.

  I hurried over to the shop as fast as my bad knee would take me. I was worried for the boy; he’d been lying to Nels for a while. There was no question in my mind that Nels would be wanting to teach him a lesson, and if I had to guess about it I figured he’d do it right there and then, just to show me he was the authority. “Frank,” I hollered, as Nels stepped down off his horse. “Frank, are you there?”

  Young Frank stepped out from the door right in time for Nels to grab him by the shoulder and give him a slap to the backside that made him jump off the ground.

  “Whoa!” I shouted. I was within spitting distance of Nels. “Best you hold up on that boy!”

  “Keep your nose of out of this, Kaspar,” Nels said. “You’ve done enough against this boy with your revenge on Bernhard.” Nels paused. It was as though his mind were suddenly stuck on the thought – why Frank would even be at my place. “What sort of lies has he been feeding you?” he shouted at the boy.

  “He ain’t been feeding me nothing,” Frank said. He sniveled and held his hand to his backside.

  “Nels, the boy’s been helping me is all. I was meaning to get around to telling you. That’s my fault, not the boy’s.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Kaspar. It doesn’t suit you.” He let loose his grip on the boy and turned his anger on me. “Is this your way of getting back at Bernhard? I used to think you were a decent man.”

  “You mind how you speak to me on my own land,” I said. I took another step closer to him. I could feel my blood boiling. Sure, it might all be a misunderstanding, but I didn’t take to being insulted on my own farm.

  We were nearly standing toe to toe – it was a staring match if I’d ever been in one – and I wanted to push him. Send him right back where he came from. We must’ve both been thinking the same thought because suddenly we had each other by the arms in a pushing match. And, just as I could feel my bad knee wanting to give way, the young fella shouted out, “He didn’t do it.”

  Nels grunted and turned to the boy. He’d eased up just enough that I got my arms free of his and hobbled a half-step to the side. From the corner of my eye, I spotted Margaret standing by the house with a worried look on her face. I shook my head and waved her away.

  “Didn’t do what?” Nels said.

  “That’s between me and Frank,” I said.

  “He didn’t hurt Bernhard… I did.”

  “Don’t lie to me.” Nels grabbed the boy again.

  “Don’t,” I said to the both of them.

  “I’m not lying,” the boy said. “I dropped the rock.”

  Nels paused; his mouth fell open. “You put him up to this,” he said to me. There was spit hanging from his lip and I suspected he was about ready to continue our pushing match. As for myself, I was smiling inside. I was so proud of the boy for telling the truth and standing up for himself and for me.

  “No,” I said. “I only helped him keep it a secret.”

  “What the hell, Kaspar! Why?”

  “He’s just a boy. He didn’t know what he’d done… Ain’t you ever been on the wrong side of something like that?” I said. And from the way Nels looked – his eyes lowered for the first time since he’d stepped onto my farm – I figured he had. “I have. It’s a heavy enough cross for a man to carry, let alone for a boy all by his lonesome.”

  Nels’s eyes were still lowered. He was thinking hard. Then he looked s
traight at young Frank once more. “Why’d you drop a rock on Bernhard?”

  The boy was quiet. I wanted to speak for him, but I knew Nels wanted those words from Frank.

  “You can tell me,” he said, his voice softening just a little.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You do know.”

  “He made me mad,” the boy said.

  “How’d he make you mad?”

  “He hit my friends and he scared Mother…and I didn’t want him to be my father any more.”

  Nels sighed. We all just stood there.

  “What am I to do with you, Frank?” The words hung in the air for some time.

  “He’s a good boy,” I said. “He’s been a big help for me, Nels.”

  Nels nodded, then he kicked the dirt with the ball of his foot and walked back to his horse. “He’s too big to ride back with me on this horse,” he said. “Can you bring him back to the farm when you two are done?”

  “Sure,” I said. I watched Nels climb up on his horse. It turned its head towards the boy in a pretty way, like it was giving Frank a kiss on the cheek. Then, as quick as that, Nels and the horse were headed back from where they’d come.

  Frank and I spent some more afternoons together that summer. We never did talk too much more about that day. But there was a change in the boy; after he made his confession a load had come off him, and his anger seemed to cool. He was less interested in pounding the iron, drawing and spreading it. Instead, he wanted me to teach him new things, like how to twist iron to make a fancy cross like I did for Anton or bend it into a perfect circle. He visited some the next summer, and he’s come a few times again this year, but I got a feeling he doesn’t need me like he did before. I know I should be happy for him, but I miss him and our visits. And I miss my Anton too.

  Telling Stories

  Telling Stories

  Telling Stories

  Telling Stories

  Telling Stories

  Telling Stories

  Telling Stories

  The Card Game

  1928

  I crossed paths with young Frank Weran today; caught him on his way back from Bernhard’s old farm. He’s no longer the little boy getting pushed around at the church picnic. He’s grown up, a big broad-chested 19-year-old, not much younger than his father was when he passed. Damn. It’s hard to look at him and not see his father, especially around the eyes. They’re Weran eyes: dark and kind of sunken in under the brow. When Katherine was around he still looked plenty like his mother; nowadays, all I see are those deep-set eyes and my mind plays tricks on me and takes me back to that winter day when my brother, Peter, killed Frank’s father.

  Anyhow, Frank and me got to talking, and while half my mind was stuck reliving that horrible day, I managed to blather on as I do. “Checking on the old farm?” I asked from my wagon perch; forgetting it wasn’t Frank’s to be checking on. “I mean…I know it ain’t yours –”

  “I’ve got some dealings with Jakob Feist,” Frank said from his saddle, “which might change all that.”

  Those words put a chill down my spine, and the half of my mind watching my brother slam the axe in the older Frank Weran’s back stopped, and another memory took its place.

  -

  It was last October, 1928. There were four of us playing the regular Friday afternoon card game above Zahn’s Hardware & Lumber Supply in Kaidenberg. It was a small room with two card tables and maybe a dozen chairs, a scrap of carpet on the floor to dull the noise of shifting table legs and tapping feet, an east-facing window draped with a sun-bleached blue sheet, and an electric light hanging from the plaster ceiling. We sat at the table nearest the door and the electric light. None of us were expecting Bernhard to show up, but it was an open game and anyone with a few bits in their pocket was welcome to play.

  “I got another letter from Margaret’s brother-in-law in Argentina,” I told the others as I tossed a couple of pennies into the pot.

  Jakob Feist leaned back in his chair. “They need money?”

  Andreas Stolz stroked his thick beard, pulling it to a point at the base of his chin. “Lots worse off than us.”

  I nodded. “Their son’s got TB. I have a stack of a dozen or more letters all asking for whatever we can spare to help with his treatments.”

  “You sent them money before,” Frederich Gerein said. Unlike Stolz, he’d shaved his harvest beard some days earlier. Gerein dealt us each another card face up. It was stud poker. Seven cards.

  “I did. But just the once. I got thinking it might be a swindle so I ignored the others. I’ve never met them. Margaret says her sister would never do such a thing.” I sighed. “She also says she ain’t ever going to see her sister again except in heaven and she wants to be in her good graces when the meeting comes, and now with this new letter she says I’d better pay up.”

  “So, you’re going to give them more.” Jakob folded his long arms behind his head. He looked relaxed; he’d had a good year on the farm and had treated himself to a new coat and hat.

  I shook my head. “I don’t have much of a choice. I sent two dollars in the last letter and now they’re asking for three.” The three of them laughed at that and I smiled too. “But I sure ain’t giving them three dollars.”

  Stolz smiled. “And now you’re playing poker with us.”

  “I told Margaret I believe in her sister; I’m guessing the husband is a drunk but Margaret doesn’t care. She just took a dollar from the keeping place, wrote her letter, and sent me to mail it.” They all laughed again, but I just shook my head.

  “That’s it, Joseph,” Stolz said, between laughs. “Keep your wife happy.” The crow’s feet around his eyes cut deep into his leathery skin. You’d have to figure he spent most of his days smiling and laughing in the sun. He eyed up the pile of coins in front of me. “Was that the dollar?” I smiled at him and tossed a nickel into the pot; Stolz laughed and tossed in his nickel.

  Jakob shook his head. “I’m out.”

  Gerein slid a nickel into the pot. He had a dangerous hand showing: a chance at a straight or a spade flush. I had a pair of sevens on the table and another seven in my hand – enough to run me into a bit of trouble. Gerein tossed out the cards, face down this time.

  I looked at mine. Not what I wanted. Gerein huffed when he picked up his card; I couldn’t be sure if it was just show, so I tossed in another nickel. “I’m betting you guys don’t want to take any more money from my poor brother-in-law,” I joked.

  “Your brother-in-law doesn’t have to worry about me.” Stolz said, folding.

  “If you’re giving money away to hopeless causes,” Gerein said, “you might as well throw some my way.” He put down his nickel and laid out his cards – spade flush.

  I tossed my cards onto the table for them all to see. “Beats me.” Stolz passed me his bottle of whiskey. “To losing,” I said. Then I raised the bottle and took my swallow.

  Money crisscrossed the table over the next few hands, but our easy ways were interrupted by the slow mechanical clomp of boot heels echoing through the floorboards and up the stairwell. It was followed by a duller sound, a breathy “pa-pa-pa” of a weary soul. I stalled the dealing and kept shuffling the cards waiting for our visitor to show.

  “We can get another hand in before this one makes it up the stairs,” Gerein said.

  “Thought a greedy pig like you’d want more feed in the trough,” I teased.

  “I’m the butcher, not the pig,” Gerein said. And, the way he said it, a little too seriously, made us all laugh again. Then the clomp-clomp stopped and all I could hear was the sound of puffy breathing from behind me.

  “Speaking of pigs,” Jakob said. His expression turned cold and dull as he looked to the door. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

  Bernhard Holtz stood leaning one hand against the wall a
t the top of the stairs – his nose was red from years of booze and his beard patchy with tufts of grey hair curled around the jaw line. He wore a miserable look on his face. The kind of look a man gets when he has a broken tooth shooting pain through his head and body. I don’t know if Bernhard had a toothache, but I knew he had plenty to be miserable about – there was the beating he took at the church picnic that could’ve killed him, then Katherine dying and having to send the children to live with Nels and Agatha, and living all alone again ever since. It’s more than I’d wish on my worst enemy.

  “Feist,” Bernhard said, “I knew there was a reason my head was beginning to ache.”

  Jakob Feist grinned in a mean-looking way. “You’ve just seen through to the bottom of a few too many bottles.”

  Bernhard didn’t say anything back. He just puffed himself up; his silence did the talking for him. He hobbled to the table, pulled out the extra chair between Gerein and me, and sat down.

  “You look rough,” Stolz said. “Like you’ve been sleeping in the livery.”

  “I heard old man Weninger’s been sleeping in the livery,” Gerein said.

  “Ha! Sleeping? Zahn told me he caught the old man lying with the horses.” Stolz snickered.

  The bunch of us laughed. Old man Weninger was a scrawny fellow no higher than a country fence pole and probably just as thin. A genuine bachelor all his life. It seemed his mind had been causing him more and more trouble in his later years. Another sad story.

  “I’m not surprised,” Gerein said. “Ever since Gutenberg butchered the last of his sheep, he’s had nowhere to sow his seed.”

  “Ugh.” Jakob made a disgusted look. “Enough of that. Let’s get on with the card game. You got money to play?” he asked Bernhard.