Vinegar Hill

by A. Manette Ansay

  He is two hundred miles from home before he lets himself think about Ellen, who, like the children, does not understand about money the way Rockefeller did, the way James does now. He convinces himself that she is not really angry, that by the time he comes back home things will have worked themselves out. Surely she must know he only wants a better life for the children, the way his own father wanted better for himself and Mitch. But just wanting something isn’t enough. Wanting something won’t make it happen when there are so many other, terrible things that are waiting to happen too. The fever. The stranger with a fistful of candy. The mad dog, the loose bull. The overturned truck blossoming into flames.

  The day after they moved back to Wisconsin, James took Ellen and the children to Saint Michael’s Cemetery to visit Mitch’s grave. From across the street, the tall steeple of Saint Michael’s Church brushed a long-fingered shadow over the gravestones, stroking the plastic roses and daffodils, disappearing like a slender ghost behind the trees. Ellen took James’s hand and they followed the shadow until they reached the Grier plot, a sunken square between two dying oaks. James used his foot to clear Mitch’s granite slab of leaves and debris while the children played leapfrog over stones farther up the path. He remembered the funeral, the winter wind pinching his ears, the sour feeling in his belly that was not loss. God took my good one instead of the weak, Fritz told people bitterly. Even God won’t have Jimmy or his mother.

  “Look, Mommy!” Amy shrieked; she scuttled up the back of a towering angel and leaped from between its wings, Bert tumbling after her. James saw them lying cold and still, their quick lips sealed with wax. He saw their flesh unwrap from their bones and small, blind creatures make nests in the hollows of their skulls.

  “This is a graveyard!” he yelled at them suddenly. “Show some respect for the dead.”

  They froze, their faces closed as doors. Ellen let go of his hand and stared high up into the branches of the oaks, which he knew were bright with autumn colors he would never see. He wondered about what color meant, if not being able to pronounce a thing red or purple or blue was significant enough to account for the differences between Ellen and himself. He understands her less and less; like color, she cannot be explained. She won’t go with him to the cemetery anymore; she won’t let him take the children. Sundays after Mass he walks over by himself while she chats with her sisters and her sisters’ families. He cleans the face of the granite slab with his handkerchief, pulls dandelions and chicory from around the stone’s edge. Mitch doesn’t have a company car, white cotton shirtsleeves, money in the bank. Mitch has a shallow box, a hole in the earth, a dirt sky. Sometimes James still hears him in the ragged laughter of drinking men. He sees him in the bold, loose stride of teenage boys. Mitch the handsome one. Mind like a steel trap.

  The one God chose to call home.

  It is late afternoon when James reaches the Traveler’s Rest, a motel south of De Kalb. He steps into the air-conditioned lobby, pauses to sip from the water cooler beside the door. As he waits for the receptionist to give him his key, he pockets two packs of complimentary matches, eats stale mints from the hospitality bowl, takes a coupon for ten percent off at the Ponderosa next door. It is money, he knows, which allows him to do this, along with his white cotton shirtsleeves, his briefcase, his ID card from Travis Manufacturer. The smile of the receptionist is bought by money too; he thinks of the sneers of the summer people’s children, the skirting glances of the town girls whenever he spoke in school, the nuns’ distasteful stares when he and Mitch opened their lunch tin and took out a bent spoon, four biscuits wrapped in a handkerchief, and a snuff tin of molasses. Tonight he will eat prime rib and charge it to the company account. When he leaves town in the morning, there will be no one to watch him go, no one to say, That little Jimmy Grier, I remember his old man, I remember his brother.

  James worked the dollar up into the lining of his Sunday coat where Mitch wouldn’t be able to find it. Every day, all through the fall, Mitch hunted for it patiently, methodically. He upended James’s dresser drawers, leaving a scattered rainbow of clothing across the bedroom floor. He dug his hard hands deep into James’s pockets whenever he caught him alone. He searched James’s schoolbag, the root cellar, the rafters of the smokehouse. Once, he even walked out to the two small graves on the hillside, and dug with a penknife around the flat granite stones until Mary-Margaret chased him away.

  Where is it? he whispered across the breakfast table, between the sharp blows of the ax as James chopped wood, in the darkness of the bedroom as James knelt to say his prayers. Over the summer, Mitch’s body had started to change into the body of a man. Hair sprouted on his knuckles and chest, on his belly, beneath his chin. His privates swelled against the cool morning air as he stripped off his pajamas.

  Where is it? Where?

  It was Ann who walked into the milkhouse one bright September day and found Mitch pressing James’s face into a bucket of milk. James’s forehead was plastered with heavy cream; he breathed thickly through his mouth, coughing white bubbles that clung to his lips. Milk leaked from his nostrils and dribbled from the corners of his eyes. When Ann cleared her throat, Mitch took his hand from the back of James’s neck. Barn cats scuttled in around Ann’s skirts and lapped at the concrete floor.

  “He’s been playing in the milk,” Mitch said. He towered over Ann, his wide shoulders swaying. “I told him Pa’d wear him out.”

  “He’ll wear you both out if you don’t get this mess cleaned away.”

  “It’s Jimmy’s mess. He’ll clean it up.” Mitch smiled and walked toward Ann, big boots clomping; after a moment she stepped aside to let him through. When he was gone, she went to James and gently slicked the hair out of his eyes. Milk was caked behind his ears, around the edges of his nose.

  “Why do you let him find you alone?” she said, and then she shook her head. “You get this cleaned up quick, maybe your pa won’t even find out. And get these kitties out of here,” she said. “I got to get supper started ’fore they miss me.”

  After she left, he lay down in the puddles of milk, his body knotted close on the concrete floor. His head hurt from holding his breath. The barn cats moved around him, pink tongues working, a flicker against the back of his neck, a warm rough rasp on his ear. He lay motionless as they cleaned him, trying not to weep at how good it felt to have their mouths moving over him as though he were one of their many babies, their cool noses kissing his skin.

  That night, when Fritz’s belt cut through the air like a scream, James’s mind dwindled smaller and smaller until it was only a speck of dust that could easily drift away, past the house, past the backhouse, past the barn, over the fields until it reached the woods, and the lake beyond the woods, and sank into the silence of the water. Afterward, Ann came into the room. She sat on the bed and sang to him in a soft sweet voice, until he came up out of the silent water and through the woods and across the fields, until he lay on the sheets with his wrists tied to the bedposts. She untied him and pressed a white cotton towel to his back, blotting the design of the belt, and then for a long time she was silent. This can’t go on, she said at last, and she wept, clutching a pillow over her face so she would not make a sound. The next day she died and they laid her out on the kitchen table to prepare her body to be put into the ground.

  One hot day the following year, James crawled up onto the table and stretched out to see what it was like to be dead. He closed his eyes and waited. By the time Mary-Margaret found him there, he was deep underwater and refused to open his eyes. She screamed and beat on his chest with her fists and poured whiskey under his tongue. Opening his eyes was the hardest thing he has ever done.

  For the next week he visits distributors, hawking a new line of pea harvesters, his Travis Manufacturer cap clutching at his head like a mother’s firm hand. He drinks bitter coffee in tiny offices gray with cigar smoke; he walks the lots with the managers, noting comments about the performance of various machines. The managers sense the farm in
him easily. They pump his hand and call him young man and ask him about his family. At each stop, James tugs his wallet from his hip pocket, and he shows them a picture of Ellen, who, he proudly explains, is a schoolteacher. He shows them a picture of Amy at six, with Bert toddling beside her, holding onto her thumb. The managers show James their own pictures: my Maisie, my Scottie, my first grandchild, Michael.

  Later, alone in his motel room, James studies Ellen’s picture. She looks no different from the other men’s wives; she is smiling, she is happy. He remembers Ellen as a little girl, three grades younger than himself, rolling up the worn sleeves of a dress he recognized as her sister Julia’s. He can’t remember ever speaking to her, though, and after he left school in the ninth grade, he never thought of her at all. It was Julia who lingered in his mind, the way her small mouth opened wide when she laughed, the way she never seemed to notice Mitch’s gaze following the back of her skirt down the narrow halls. Ellen laughed with her mouth closed to hide her crooked teeth; now she doesn’t laugh at all. Her eyes are red-rimmed, heavy-lidded; she frequently yawns behind the back of her hand. When he talks to her he feels she isn’t really listening.

  His last stop this trip is at a family farm called Riverland. The owner has big money to spend; the distributor, a man named Monty Fried, arranged for James to meet him at the place. It helps to have a Travis rep come right to the house: makes the distributor look good, impresses the farmer. Often, after they finish talking business in the kitchen, the wife will ask them to dinner, and they’ll all sit down to ham and potatoes, fresh coleslaw, creamed corn, and rhubarb pie.

  James is looking forward to this visit. He has worked with Monty before; Monty likes his whiskey, and an evening can get interesting. He parks in the courtyard behind Monty’s truck and gets his briefcase from the backseat. His father’s farm was laid out much the same as this one: the wide gravel courtyard with the house to the right and the barn to the left behind the low stone wall; the clothesline strung between the house and the corner of the chicken coop; the high clover fields behind the house; the cow pasture in the low land around the barn; the pea fields stretching beyond it. He turns to admire the placid herd of Holsteins, the broad slope of their backs, their slender swinging tails. Two big dogs sniff at his heels; he pats their handsome heads and inhales the almost-sweet odor of the clover. Chickens bathe along the rutted driveway, fluttering dust into their feathers. In the distance he can see sheep, their coats shorn short and clean. The cows begin migrating, two or three at a time, to stand before him, curious and calm, stretching their chins above the low barbed-wire fence and lowing.

  He remembers his father’s cows, their ragged teats pink and oozing, Fritz’s foot in their bellies when they kicked at his rough hand. He remembers the sheep, savagely sheared, their staccato bleating. How one spring the smell of the blood drew dogs, and in the morning the sheep parts were scattered across the field, the dead smell rising from the ground. How he and Mitch hauled the sheep legs and sheep bellies and sheep heads, torn off at the throats, to be burned. How he found a half-formed unborn sheep in the grass, the birth bag still intact, the frail beating heart the size of a child’s thumb. He remembers the kittens congealed into a cold wet lump at the bottom of a tin bucket. He remembers the dogs, one after the next, that got too old, too lazy, too stupid, too slow. He remembers the gunshots, two, three, four, the frantic pedaling limbs, the fixing eyes. Always was a goddamn lousy shot, Fritz said. Can’t hit the broad side of a barn. You try it, boy.

  But James refused.

  And when he refused, there was always Mitch, who could do whatever it was James could not. Because Mitch was his father’s son, while James was his mother’s boy, sickly and frail, no use to anyone. How come God took the strong one is what I want to know, Fritz shouted into the winter wind, but even Fritz did not guess Mitch’s strength. Only James knew that Mitch wasn’t gone. Only James knew that Mitch would never leave him. Look how your legs are like mine, Mitch said as he stripped back the covers, one hand holding the candle, tracing James’s body with the light of the flame. Look how your hands are my hands.

  He jumps at the clap of Monty’s hand on his shoulder. The dogs bark, sensing his fear, muzzles slung low to the ground.

  “Jesus.” Monty laughs, waving the dogs away. “Jimmy, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. This here is Mr. Wally Donovan.”

  “Fine place you got here,” James says quickly, and he shakes hands with the owner, nods as the owner introduces his oldest son, Josh, his second-oldest, Bobby. But he feels Mitch’s hand in the owner’s firm grip. He sees Mitch’s smile in the owner’s strong teeth. Tonight it will be Mitch who drinks Monty’s whiskey. It will be Mitch who heaps his plate with bread and country ham. Mitch will smile at Wally Donovan’s wife, the way James remembers him smiling at Julia, red-lipped, white teeth flashing.

  James wakes up in a room that smells of mildew. His suitcase is unopened at the foot of the bed; a TV stands in the corner, bolted to the floor. Someone is tapping on the door, rattling the knob. James opens his mouth to speak, smells whiskey.

  He does not remember where he is.

  “Just a minute,” he says.

  “Check-out time is ten and I’m not waiting around for you.”

  “I’m sorry,” James says. “I overslept.”

  “Fifteen minutes I’ll be back,” the woman says, “and you better be dressed and decent. I know all the tricks. Don’t you dare try anything.”

  He hears the creak of the cleaning cart, and then he remembers pulling into the parking lot, paying the night clerk, falling into bed without undressing. He is in Illinois, at the Sweet Dreams Motel and Bar, three miles down the road from Riverland, still five hours from home. He gets up, splashes water on his face, and carries his unopened suitcase to the car. On his way through the lobby he takes a complimentary cup of coffee and two complimentary Danish.

  Thunderheads bruise the horizon. James gets on the interstate, balancing the coffee between his knees. He twists the radio on for a forecast: tornado warnings across Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana. He accelerates to sixty, to seventy-five, as gusts of wind rock the car. Hot air laps at his face and neck, and the back of his shirt clings to the seat. He watches the west, letting his gaze sweep across the flat gray landscape, lingering on the occasional crisp white outlines of a farmhouse, the hulking shadow of a barn. The crops—field corn, peas, wheat—bend to the east, as if turning their faces away. He passes a windbreak of hickory trees and hears the snap of the branches. He is remembering gathering those hard sweet nuts as a boy, when the light is sucked away.

  Too late, he begins to roll up his windows. The radio voices are shattered by static; the drum of the hail against the roof fills his ears, and he cannot hear if there is anything behind it—the train roar of a twister, or more likely, three. When he was eleven or twelve, Fritz took him out onto the porch during twister weather. James had been sitting with his mother on a burlap sack of potatoes in the cellar, listening to her chant the Rosary in a hushed, dry voice. Twisters always frightened her; she believed they came from God. Suddenly, the cellar doors flew open, but it wasn’t God, just Fritz coming down the stairs in a gust of rain.

  “You come on up with your brother and me,” he said, and Mary-Margaret released James’s hand. After Ann’s death, she never argued with Fritz over anything.

  “Mother,” he said, but when she did not answer, Fritz pulled him up the stairs and across the barnyard to the house. Rain came in spurts, warm as bathwater, and it seemed to James as if there were tiny figures darting through the air: devils, ghosts, angels. He clung to the porch railings as one figure grew closer, larger, running up from the barn, and then he saw it was Mitch with his hair sleek against his head, his wet shirt billowing.

  “There!” Mitch shouted, and he pointed at the two ribbons that descended from the clouds, skipping nimbly over the Hansens’ field three miles away. James forgot to be afraid. The power of the twisters amazed him; they were truly afraid of
nothing. They went where they wanted, did what they wanted, and people were helpless to stop them. James felt that if he could get close enough, he could learn what made those twisters what they were. Perhaps he could become like that, too. He let go of the porch railing and began to walk toward them until a hand grabbed him by the shoulder, held him tight.

  “Ain’t they something,” Fritz said into his ear.

  James nodded, unable to speak. For the first time in his life he felt close to his father, and it was Mitch, whooping and shrieking as lightning split the sky, who did not understand.

  Afterward, when Mary-Margaret emerged from the cellar and picked her way across the muddy courtyard, wrinkled and squinting as a mole, James felt proud that he was a man like his father, like his brother, unlike his mother, who had huddled helplessly in the ground. From then on he looked at her differently, and when she put her soft hand on his arm, he quickly pulled it away. “I’m too big for that, Mother,” he said, and when she tried to kiss him: “I’m too big for all of that.”

  Now he wishes he were underground, where he hopes Ellen has taken his parents and the children. He hopes she has remembered to leave the east windows open three inches. He hopes she has remembered to unplug the TV. He hopes she won’t let Fritz bring the children upstairs to spot the funnel. He sees their small bodies lifted easily as twigs, spun high into the air, dashed to the ground like loose bales of hay. The thought of this seizes hard in his chest; he pounds the steering wheel, his rage as sudden as the hail, and lukewarm coffee pours down his legs. It’s not right of Ellen to say he doesn’t love his children. It’s not right of her to say he is distant, to call him a stranger, to say he doesn’t care. He is driving home as fast as he can, he will not stop until he gets there and sees that everyone is fine. He loves his daughter, he loves his son. Ellen just does not understand.