by Amy Espeseth
Shoving aside a plate of powdery sandwiches and peanut-butter bars, Naomi plops herself and the calendar at the kitchen table.
‘No more desserts.’ Aunt Gloria looks up from the chest freezer and glares at Naomi. At least she’s finally noticed the girl’s getting a bit thick in the middle.
Why the churchwomen keep bringing food, I don’t know. It must just be trying to be help to somebody. Bringing food to the dead or keeping birds alive in winter, either way it only matters to the hands that are feeding. The dead don’t care, and the birds die just the same; they die just the same, only later.
‘These jars need emptying, Ruth.’ My mom hands me a dusty few from far back on the shelf. The tin tops have puffed up, so it means it’s bad. The insides have gone rancid. As I scrape out the pickled beets, a syrupy smell — like kerosene, but sweeter — rushes out the jar and fills the kitchen. They’ve gone bad; they’ve been gone awhile.
‘Your grandma, girls, lived a long time. She honoured her parents, respected and honoured them, so she was given a long life.’ Uncle Ingwald is leaning over Naomi’s shoulder. He has wrapped her braid around his hand, and they are reading Grandma’s calendar entry for the first day of the year.
There, in and around the square marked for the date, she has written all our names. Near these names are brief prayer requests for the family, the country and the world. ‘Peace, joy and hope.’ Grandma called out these things to the Lord. She called them out, knowing she’d be heard.
‘She was a woman of prayer, my mother.’ Ingwald keeps reading them out. ‘Faith, long-suffering, gentleness.’
And she was, Grandma Esther; she was a mighty woman of prayer. Earlier, when it was just my mom and me at the house, Mom picked up Grandma’s prayer notebook and set it aside. In it — in the same scrawl that obscures the dates of peaches — are recorded prayer requests and answers for the current year. But that private notebook holds a different list from the open calendar on the wall.
Grandma’s hand had written Naomi, vanity (Gloria); Samuel, pride (Ingwald); Ruth, anger (Eric); Reuben, envy (Marie); All, fear (Unknown). She knew her grandchildren — and our line — and so she prayed. And she knew that bad blood can skip; sometimes the bad travels by the heart alone. But she didn’t know what I believe: my anger has a different source and my anger is also my strength.
Mom put it away with the older notebooks in the cedar hope chest in the bedroom. Not quite hidden but still stored away, in amongst the crocheted doilies and embroidered handkerchiefs, there is a deep stack of spiral-bound paper written in an ever more shaky hand.
‘Your grandma rarely forgot others’ trials, but she often forgot their victories,’ Mom said. Then she asked me to keep this pile between us, to keep it not from the others but for another day.
And that’s fine with me. I’ve finished scraping the beets and washing the jars. They are stacked and drying on the counter where Grandma won’t be making bread. They don’t need me in the kitchen any longer, so I return to the window to watch the birds. Samuel sits there still, picking his teeth and keeping watch. He is watching the winter birds swoop from the bare-armed trees; he is watching the little ones scratch for seed. I look out at the black bark and then down to the scraping of the nails on the icy snow. If birds are as close as we know to angels, I think it would be something every heart must dread. For angels carry more than feathered wings: they are tipped with beak and claw. And that sharpness is something we all should fear.
27
PEOPLE ON THE LAND LIVE CLOSE TO THE BEGINNINGS AND ends of life. Death ain’t a scary something that creeps in now and again in the night, slipping away with a surprised somebody and leaving shocked folks behind in the light of the morning. We are people that raise, hunt and butcher; meat don’t come wrapped up nice. Well, it does, but you got to peel off the feathers or fur and fat to get down to the bone. Meat is wrapped just like my soul: sometimes there’s got to be a bit of blood shed before you get down to it.
Not that I wasn’t all torn up by Grandma’s homegoing; I was. I am still. But Failing’s no place to be if you can’t handle the comings and goings of this life. The Lord giveth and taketh away, and folks help each other along the best we know how. Being friends and all, Daddy shot Turgeson’s dog late last summer. Why they didn’t have a gun in the house, I didn’t understand, until Grandma told me the deal about their daughter getting shot up. So when their dog started running deer, Mr Turgeson asked my daddy to take it behind the barn. So he did. It shouldn’t be that way: their dog was a malamute and near to half wolf, but it was raised by regular farm dogs that don’t chase or herd deer. I don’t know how he learnt it; maybe it was just in his nature. But that’s the kind of friend my daddy is: when your neighbour asks you to shoot his dog, you do. Someday, you might hope he’ll repay the favour. There is a reason for it all.
Flesh just got to make room. Look at the Indians. They moved over for us, and I suppose someday we’ll have to move over for someone else. I wonder if we’ll move to the reservation, and if we do, where will all the Indians go then? I hear folks talking about the goings-on out there in the woods. I hear talk about the drink and even drugs and how that casino out there is taking farmers’ money and ruining lives. I guess them Indians fight; I heard somebody even set their boy on fire and burnt his whole face off. But I don’t have no cause against them, and I sure don’t know where the blame lies. I like to hear their drums and singing on that radio station and see them now and again. I hope they keep dancing — dancing in their spinning, whirling way — even if they are just dancing to make sure there is still room for themselves here on earth.
Leaving earth and going to heaven is a walk we all got to take. Sooner or later, we’re going. It’s just a matter of how and when. I’d like to be dead and buried now. I’m not afraid to die, to move over and on and make room for the new. But I am afraid of not dying and living past the rapture. My family will be taken up to heaven, and I might remain behind. What if I am left? What if I wake up in the middle of the night and my mom’s nightgown lies crumpled and empty on the bed, and what will I drink if the faucets run with blood instead of water? Maybe I deserve to be left: I sin.
Sometimes I read books that speak of tens of thousands of years upon the earth, and sediments and fossils, and even amoebas turning into frogs and them changing into monkeys and then monkeys eventually becoming us. I know I shouldn’t read the Enemy’s lies, but the book was in my science class. I guess that’s why our church hopes to grow a Christian school ministry. Then, we kids wouldn’t have to learn that kind of science. We wouldn’t have our faith challenged none. But I like to read, even those kinds of books. Sometimes, deep inside my mind where I think no one else will ever know, I think about the earth millions of years ago. I know the Lord can read my thoughts, and for that I am ashamed. No one else knows that I think on these things, so I do from time to time. With one hand on the earth and one hand reaching toward heaven, I tear between the two, suspended between death and life.
When bad things happen — death or blindness or some other such pain — the sin can’t always hang on a boy or his parents. Sometimes it happens so that God can make a miracle. As long as it is day, we must do the work of Him who sent Me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world. And after the rapture, the saved will be together in heaven. They will have eternal bodies of perfection in paradise, and sinners will have eternal torment in hell. We will be right back where we started, back in the perfect image of God. We are doomed now without Jesus. We are damned to hell, all because Eve ate the apple and tricked Adam into eating it too. All because of sin, there is pain and hate in the world. But God has compassion on us; he forgives us if we are covered in the Lamb’s blood, the blood of Christ.
When I worry at night that I will be left behind or that I will go to hell, I pray and think about heaven. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Th
ere will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. But when I awake from a dream that has me screaming, I don’t know if I seen things to come or things already passed. Just to make sure, I sometimes ask Jesus into my heart over and over. Mostly, I want to hold Grandma’s soft hand and smell her warm breath again, and folks can never be too safe.
Why it was Daddy — not my mom — who came to help me wake, I don’t know. Maybe because she was feeling poorly or he was up anyway, but right when I woke, he was standing next to my bunk. His head is still taller than where I lay, all scrunched up and sweaty under the quilts. He peers into my bed and touches my shoulder.
‘I’m alright.’ I try to sound calm and still. ‘Just a nightmare; it’s gone now.’ I didn’t know it was a dream until I woke up cold. I woke up scared and shook and slick with my own sweat.
And I think he will go straight out of my room, my dark room with only me and the wool blankets and the frost freezing on the window. I know he will walk out, just shake his head and turn and leave; I will be alone with the night wind outside shrieking enough to rattle the panes of glass. But he stays.
‘You were screaming, Ruthie.’ He pulls back his hand and he switches on the lamp fastened to the wooden side of my bed.
When I first got the bunk beds, I couldn’t reach the bedside lamp from my top bunk; Daddy rigged up a clamp so that I could keep reading at night. The bulb is yellow and sends a circle of light onto my face. He can see me now: eyes red and scratchy and lip chewed down to bleeding. He ain’t happy with what he sees, me screaming at night with proof of tears.
‘What’s troubling you?’
From his crooked mouth and his fingers twisting at his beard, I know he’s hurting for me. But where would I start, if I told him what’s wrong. And where would I ever end? He won’t move, my father, unless I give him something to take.
‘Just Grandma.’ I speak soft, telling the truth even if the missed-out bits make it part a lie. ‘I’m worrying on heaven and sin.’ I speak the truth and even as I speak, my eyes tear with thinking about what can’t come out. I think about Grandma and her praying, twisted belly cows, and the girls who bleed in the yard. There’s folks that get the chance to come back to the Lord and there’s those that don’t ever. There are stains that won’t be washed away with the blood of Jesus.
His eyes are wet now, so he wipes at them with the back of his hand. Daddy’s momma has gone to Jesus and he can’t think about it anymore or any other way. ‘Peter should have kept his mouth shut.’ He’s angry but still crying. ‘My mother was a woman of faith.’ He pats my arm again and reaches for the light. ‘She wasn’t ashamed — the Indian thing — but it wasn’t something anyone needs to worry about.’
He shuts off the light, still talking as he walks toward the door. ‘Grandma’s in heaven with Jesus.’
And then he is gone.
The wind is howling and my room is dark. There is still my father’s smell at my bed: soap and sweat. While I lay waiting for sleep to come, I remember last spring when that big black-and-white malamute would rush across the fields. Turgeson’s dog would run with his tail stretched flat, legs scrambling in the muddy furrows made by the plough. He’d chase the new fawns as fast as he could until he tired. After, he’d come down to our house so I could pat him or feed him a bite of venison sausage. To help him shed for summer, I’d brush his long tangled fur with a rusty sheep’s comb. I’ve kept that hidden too. Out there in the garage, I’ve got an old pillowcase full of his fur. Mixed together, it isn’t black and white. Once fur is scraped away, it makes something more like grey.
28
WE ARE IN THE COLD KITCHEN BECAUSE NO ONE LIT Grandma’s stove. The family is gathered together again, remembering Grandma and her ways. ‘Gentle and good’, ‘loving and strong’; no one says ‘stubborn’ but we all share sly smiles knowing we’re thinking it just the same.
And the talk turns. My daddy and my uncles are worried about the land and the barn: leases and fallow years, dividing and selling. The men are speaking — even Peter’s in the house and is having his say — and Mom and Aunt Gloria are listening and nodding. Reuben and Samuel are set at the table, and Naomi and me are standing behind our mommas’ chairs. There is an empty seat at the head of the table; it is where Grandma sits. All the women are quiet, but we are there nonetheless.
Uncle Peter leans back in his chair. ‘Just so everyone knows: there’ll be no hunting or trapping either way.’
‘You can’t be serious.’ Daddy puts down his coffee cup. ‘That ain’t fair and you know it.’
‘That’s the way it’ll be.’ Uncle Peter sounds certain.
Reuben shakes his head and looks as if he might yell or cry or both. Samuel’s face is hard to read; he might just be pleased.
Daddy can’t believe it. ‘Peter, Momma’s law got buried with her. You can’t keep me and Reuben from these woods.’ His voice is angry.
‘Let’s see if I can’t.’ Peter’s voice is calm. ‘And this ain’t about the boy.’
Ingwald looks up from his Bible for a moment. He scrapes his chair back. ‘As the eldest, perhaps I should have a say here? Peter, you might farm the land, but Eric has a right to the woods and his machinery in the barn.’
Both younger brothers turn their heads to watch Ingwald’s mouth form the words.
‘Maybe buying me out is the best way for you boys to keep me out of your affairs.’ Ingwald lowers his eyes back to his Bible.
The other men exchange looks across the table. The women sit in silence.
I am not ignorant about those who fall asleep; I do not grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. Jesus died and was buried and rose again; just like Christ, those who have fallen asleep in God will be raised up by Him. And those of us who remain awake — we who linger at the coming of the Lord — will not go before the sleepers. For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After they rise up — the dead shedding dirt from their skin and breaking the vines that hold their arms — after that, the saved will rise up into the clouds and touch our Jesus riding high in the sky. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
‘Mind your own way.’ Uncle Peter is more than angry; his voice is hard and we can hear him. He is in the doorway separating Grandma’s kitchen from the porch, moving his hands high. Peter points his finger sharp at his brother; Ingwald is drinking coffee and resting calm with legs crossed at the table. ‘Ingwald. You, mind your own way.’
Whatever brought on Peter’s anger, we missed when all the cousins went outside to get snow. We were going to make snow ice cream; Mom and Gloria already mixed the eggs, sugar and vanilla. As we stamp our boots on the porch and pull off our snow clothes, Peter surges through, angry as a wet cat.
He grabs Reuben’s arm. ‘Keep your gear on. Let’s go.’
My brother replaces his cap and follows orders.
Peter’s truck tyres scratch and spin black muck up onto the clean white of this afternoon’s snowfall.
Gloria is refilling Uncle Ingwald’s coffee cup as Samuel, Naomi and I file into the kitchen. Steam rises off our clothes while we huddle near the stove. Finally, someone saw sense and made a fire; the coals are just starting to glow and heat is pushing the crispness out of the air. Mom is leaning against the counter, still holding the blue bowl ready for the snow, and Daddy is resting his elbows on the table. His coffee cup is empty too, so I reach for it, but he stills my hand.
‘Did that need to happen today?’ Daddy is looking straight across the table at Ingwald.
This table in this kitchen held almost all their boyhood meals: breakfast oats, ham sandwiches and chicken dinner. It was here, a thousand times over that they read their daily bread — cardboard scriptures from the little plastic loaf that r
ests in the centre of the embroidered tablecloth. I keep my eyes on those faded, knotted birds picked out in blue and green thread.
‘There was a better time for that.’ And Daddy stops speaking.
Mom places the bowl on the counter. ‘Nothing was said that can’t be taken back.’ She almost whispers. ‘Peter didn’t mean —’
‘He didn’t mean?’ Ingwald interrupts her. ‘With his pagan poison and discontent?’ My uncle is almost spitting. ‘Peter dishonours our mother.’
Ingwald is crying now, great sobs pulling his arms down onto the table, his head slumped over his hands. Beneath his weeping I can hear the whirring and tick of the cuckoo clock; it chirps the hour as the bird slides in and out of its wooden nest.
‘And the unfounded accusations? Against my family?’ His voice is pitched high but soft, like a whimper. Ingwald picks his head up and looks straight at Samuel. The boy is standing in wet socks and a red long-underwear shirt, his jeans dripping a puddle on the floor. Samuel’s face changes from pale to whitest white as his father pushes himself up from the table.
Ingwald rounds the table and stands directly in front of Samuel. The boy must look up, as his father is still several heads above him.
I’m frozen at the stove with Naomi; we are like night animals caught in light, stunned into stillness. I’m using only the corners of my eyes; no motion can be seen. My mother and father do not move and neither does my aunt. But this stillness is not calm. It is not the eye of the storm; instead, it is the space before the great reckoning: the clouds hurling thunder and fire, the mighty cleaving of the earth, and the boiling of the churning sea.
‘Samuel.’ My uncle speaks with a tongue of fire burning atop his head and in his mouth. ‘Are you setting fires? Did you burn Turgeson’s barn?’