This Side of Jordan

by Monte Schulz

  Alvin called for Rascal. When he didn’t hear back, the farm boy went looking for him out behind the barn where the fence was broken down. It had been some time since a plow had entered the field and the grass had grown tall. Maybe a dozen yards beyond the rail fence, the tips of the grass rustled, indicating where Rascal had gone tramping about. Sparrows sailed by overhead, darting high and low. Insects buzzed in the grass. Rascal giggled. Alvin lay down and closed his eyes and listened to the insects and the birds and the dwarf. When he and Frenchy were kids, they were always running out into the cornrows at twilight and playing hider-seeker with big sticks, which they used to slap the stalks and taunt each other. After dark, they’d huddle together with a kerosene lantern and dig for fishing worms in the black loam.

  Alvin heard the grass rustle nearby. The dwarf sat down next to his shoulder and asked, “When’s supper? I’m famished.”

  “I hope soon. I’m hungry as a horse.”

  A door slammed shut back at the farmhouse.

  Rascal sighed. “I wish I were a farmer. I love animals.”

  “You love spreading manure, too?”

  “If need be. I’m not afraid of work.”

  Alvin rolled onto his shoulder and spat in the grass. “You think you know what farm life’s all about, but you’re just a dumbbell. There ain’t nothing swell about it at all, and if you grew up on a farm like I did, you’d hate it like the dickens, and that’s a fact.”

  “I doubt that very much,” the dwarf replied. “One man’s cross is another man’s lintel. You ought to try locking yourself in a closet for a couple of weeks if you don’t think that’s so. See how that suits your fancy.”

  “Well, I’d rather live underneath that ugly old house of yours for twenty years than spend another day shoveling chicken shit.”

  Rascal plucked a stem of grass and stuck it in his mouth to chew on. “When I was young, I had a chicken named Evelyn. Auntie sewed her a dress to wear when she went outdoors. I made her a bonnet with a red bow. She’d fetch buttons and thimbles all day long if you coated them with maple syrup or peppermint.”

  “A chicken?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fetching like a dog?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Well, it’s true. She was the cutest thing you ever saw, all fancied up like a society lady out for a stroll. I’d hoped to have her taken to a taxidermist when she died, but that ugly dog from next door, Mr. Bowser, cornered Evelyn under the porch and chewed her up so badly we couldn’t find enough of her to stitch together. It was very sad.”

  Alvin looked the dwarf straight in the eye, astonished at his storytelling audacity. “You are the goddamnedest liar.”

  “I am not!”

  “You are so!”

  Chester called out across the grassy fields. Alvin picked himself up and headed for the farmhouse. He found Chester standing by the water pump, ladling water into his hands which he used to slick his hair back just as Rascal had done. He was dressed handsomely for town: blue jacket and trousers, a new felt hat. His shoes looked newly polished and spit-shined. Rose sat on the raised windowsill, her legs hanging down, bare feet swinging above the dirt. All she wore was a white silk envelope chemise. Her hair was damp and stringy with sweat, her blue eyes dark and hollow.

  “I’ve got some business to put over in town for a few hours,” said Chester, eyeing the young farm boy. “I’ll be back later on. Rose’ll fix some supper for you and the midget if you like. She’s a swell cook.”

  “I’d rather go with you into town, if that’s all right.”

  “Well, it isn’t. You’re staying here until I get back.”

  “There ain’t nothing to do.”

  Chester worked the pump once more, drew a handkerchief from his back pocket, and dried his hands. He told Alvin, “Another hour or so, the sun’ll be down. Nobody’s supposed to know we’re staying here, so keep the lights out. Don’t go running around, either. If someone sees you, they’re likely to come give us a once-over. I won’t be gone too long, so be a sport and keep your eyes peeled. Get some sleep, too. We’ll be driving out of here at dawn.” Chester lowered his voice. “Keep an eye on this birdie for me, will you? She’ll do anything you tell her to do, just make sure she doesn’t try to go anywhere until I get back.” He looked over at her, still sitting motionless on the windowsill, her brown curls fluttering in the breeze. “She’ll be coming with us tomorrow.”

  Rose smiled.

  Alvin gave her a small wave.

  Chester walked over to the window, kissed Rose once on the mouth, ran his hand through her hair, then walked over to the Packard and climbed in. As the engine started up, Alvin saw Rascal standing by the barn door, nearly invisible in the shadow. The tan Packard rolled out from behind the farmhouse and down the dirt road leading to the highway. Chester beeped the horn twice as he turned in the direction of Harrison.

  They sat in the kitchen, watching Rose fry up the eggs and potatoes on an old wood-burning stove. Outdoors, the sundown sky cast burnt shadows all across the dusty yard. Rascal had removed a stuffed pillow from the front room sofa and used it to raise the level of his seat at the table. Alvin played with the tarnished silverware Rose had dug out of her uncle’s boxes in the cellar. He also had his eye on Rose in her white chemise. Something inside him stirred when he studied the curves of her body and the milky-white skin of her neck and shoulders. Her dark hair was long and curly, fussy from her afternoon under the sheets with Chester. She had a musky odor, too, not entirely unpleasant. When she looked at him, he could hardly breathe. Maybe he loved her. Back at the restaurant when they were all hungry and tired from traveling, Alvin wondered why Chester had invited her out. Now, alone with her in the kitchen, he knew clear as a bell that if he had the guts Chester had, he would date her up himself. If he had the guts.

  “I can still scramble ’em if you’d prefer,” Rose said, turning from the stove. Her face was sweaty from the heat and it made her even prettier. “You just tell me what you like.”

  “If they’re not boiled, I don’t care how you fix them,” replied Rascal, rubbing one eye.

  “Can’t boil an egg without a pot,” Rose said. “You didn’t see one out in the barn, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Then, there you go. No boiled eggs.”

  “Fried eggs are swell, too,” said Alvin, feeling like a hick all of a sudden. “If I was cooking, that’s how I’d fix them.” Why couldn’t he spit out a quick word or two to catch her eye? A fellow can’t expect much if he won’t deliver nothing. Frenchy always told him that and he was right.

  Soon enough, Rose slid the fried eggs and potatoes onto three plates and sat down at the table with Alvin and Rascal.

  “Shall we say grace?” the dwarf asked.

  Rose looked over at Alvin who shrugged, wholly ignorant of the topic. She told the dwarf, “Go on, if you like. I don’t trust God. He don’t listen to me much.”

  “All right.” The dwarf bowed his head. “O merciful Father who hath turned our dearth and scarcity into plenty, we give Thee humble thanks for this Thy special bounty, beseeching Thee to continue Thy loving kindness unto us, to Thy glory and our comfort, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

  His stomach grumbling, Alvin picked up his fork. “Let’s eat.”

  “You said it,” added Rose.

  “Is there anything to drink?” the dwarf asked Rose, as he dug into the fried potatoes.

  “Icebox’s dry as a bone, but there’s water in the well.”

  “Are there any glasses?”

  “Not anymore,” replied Rose. “Just some tin cups in the cabinet back there.” She motioned toward the pantry.

  The dwarf shoved his chair back from the table.

  “Bring me one, too,” Alvin said, his mouth drier than a hole in the ground.

  “If I get you a cup, will you pump the water?” asked Rascal. “I have an awful pain in my shoulder.”

&nbs
p; “Nope, I ain’t that thirsty.” Why the hell should he do all the work? Chester wasn’t here.

  “Thank you very much.”

  Rascal glared at Alvin and headed for the pantry. After a few minutes of rummaging around, he came out with a tin cup and crossed through the kitchen and out the back door. The screen slammed shut behind him. Alvin listened to him trotting across the yard to the trough pump. It was dark out now. Crickets sang in the bushes by the rear porch. The pump creaked as Rascal drew water from the well. Alvin stuck a forkful of eggs into his mouth and tried his best not to stare at Rose’s titties. Her knife scratched the plate as she scooped some eggs onto her fork. While the dwarf worked the pump over and over, the farm boy felt his passion coming back again.

  “You come out here very often?” he asked Rose.

  “Only when I need a fellow.”

  She said this without changing expression, still shoving eggs and potato into her mouth. It stabbed at Alvin’s heart. His face flushed and his own appetite faded.

  “You got a girl back home?” Rose asked, setting her fork down for a moment.

  Alvin swallowed a chunk of fried potato and shook his head. The truth embarrassed him. “None in particular. How come you ask?”

  “My daddy thinks I’m a whore.”

  He stopped chewing. “Is that so?”

  She leaned close, her eyes sparkling. “Do you think I’m a whore?”

  What was he supposed to say? He shrugged. “How should I know?”

  “When we met back in my daddy’s restaurant, and you first saw me, did you think to yourself, ‘She sure looks like a whore’?”

  Alvin felt his face redden deeper. Rose’s attention was fixed hard on him. He was sure he smelled Chester’s gin on her breath. “I thought you were pretty swell-looking.”

  “Are you jealous of Calvin?”

  “Huh?”

  The pump stopped outdoors and the dwarf’s footsteps scurried back through the dirt toward the house. Rose said, “Me lying down with him, instead of with you? Are you jealous?”

  Alvin shrugged. “Sort of, I guess.” Sure, he was jealous as hell, but what could he do about it? He didn’t hardly smile at her in town. Who knows what she thought of him back there?

  “Don’t be,” she said. “It ain’t account of you that I’m with him. It’s ’cause of my daddy. He’s scared of Calvin. The second he laid eyes on him, he told me to stay away from him.”

  Rose put down her fork and napkin.

  “Do you love him?” Alvin asked, afraid of her reply. If she said yes, he’d likely throw up.

  “Who?”

  “Calvin.”

  “Of course not. I don’t lie down with fellows I’m in love with. I don’t flirt with them, neither, though I have to say I’d rather be thought of as a whore than a flirt. But this’s got nothing to do with love. No girl with half a brain and an ounce of self-respect would consider it.”

  “I ain’t following you.”

  “That’s ’cause you’re not a girl, and you don’t know my daddy, neither.”

  The back door opened and Rascal came inside with his tin cup in one hand and a small brown feather in the other. Quietly, he sat down at the table, took a drink from the cup, laid the feather on the side of his plate, and began eating once again. Alvin watched how the dwarf held his fork funny, twisted nearly backward in his hand, making him bring food to his mouth in a strange looping motion. The farm boy wondered who taught him that.

  Rose got up from the table and went to the back door. She opened it and tossed her leftover eggs and potatoes out into the yard. “My cooking stinks.”

  Then she laid her empty plate on the counter and walked out of the kitchen. Rascal continued eating. Alvin listened for Rose. She had gone into the bedroom. The bedsprings squeaked as she plunked herself down onto the mattress. Alvin finished his own food and got up, setting his plate on the counter next to Rose’s. The dwarf had his head down, methodically shoveling egg and potato into his mouth, one forkful after another. Alvin went outdoors to relieve himself.

  A cool wind had come up in the past hour, blowing dirty feathers off a mud hen carcass all over the yard. A dozen or so floated in the water trough. A sweet hay smell filled the evening air. The farm boy walked across the yard to the edge of the field by the barn and unfastened his pants. He was feeling a little better. The summer grass rustled and swayed before him as he pissed into the dirt and stared out across the prairie. Farrington was not so flat, so vast and empty. Here in Kansas, the wind played through the grass like the fingers of God. In the daylight, every contour of the prairie justified property lines divided according to high ground and low. Sunlight made visible the particulars of slope and expanse. Darkness erased them, creating an endless flatland beneath the tips of the tall prairie grass. The wind in Alvin’s face blew across a hundred miles of fields.

  The back door banged in the wind. Alvin finished pissing and buttoned up. Rascal appeared in the doorframe, staring off into the dark. A moment later, the light went out in the kitchen. Rose had assured Chester that the farm still had electricity, but the only room with working electric lights was the kitchen. All the others required kerosene lamps after sundown. A yellow glow behind the window shade in the main bedroom indicated that Rose had lighted hers already. A small shadow moved in front of the shade, the dwarf visiting her for conversation. Rather than going back indoors, Alvin decided to eavesdrop at the window, hoping he’d overhear some conversation concerning himself. Nobody ever spoke honestly in the presence of the person they were discussing. When Alvin was a boy, Granny Chamberlain had told him that any fly on the wall hears more truth spoken in half a minute than any man in his lifetime. She said this with the conviction of a woman who had held secrets deep in her heart for more years than her family had been alive.

  He crouched beneath Rose’s window. The dwarf was speaking, his hushed voice barely carrying past the glass. Alvin peeked over the windowsill and saw Rascal seated on the bed beside Rose, holding her hand in his. Alvin sank back down again, astonished. Was Rose allowing herself to be wooed by the dwarf? Maybe that silver tongue of his made up for the peculiarities of his appearance. Rose giggled loudly. Rascal’s voice became slightly louder, enthusiastic, chirping like a bird. It was too much for Alvin to bear outdoors, so he crawled along the side of the house to the kitchen door and slipped inside.

  With the lights out in the kitchen, he had a difficult time negotiating his way from the back door to the hallway dividing the bedroom from the front of the house. Once there, however, the lamp Rose had lighted guided him in her direction. The door was partway open. He tiptoed up to it and craned his neck around the edge to have a look inside. She and the dwarf were still sitting side by side in the middle of the bed, her hand in his, both smiling. Chester’s hipflask was on the nightstand.

  “I don’t believe a word you’re saying,” Rose giggled. “It’s a lie, all a lie!”

  “Palmistry is one of the ancient sciences. I learned it from my Uncle Augustus who was taught by a lovely Egyptian woman at Alexandria where it’s been practiced for thousands of years. I’ve been fascinated by mysteries of the occult since I was a child. I intend to see the famous oracle at Delphi one day before I die.”

  “My daddy got his fortune read once by a gypsy who told him he’d die a rich man. He says it’s all hokum.”

  Rascal ran the tip of his forefinger down the middle of her palm and across to the base of her thumb. “Belief, like beauty,” the dwarf replied, in a solemn voice, “exists in the eye of the beholder. Truth, on the other hand, is unwavering and eternal. Your own flesh reveals it. Doubt not that which you know to be true.”

  Then Rascal giggled, too.

  The bedroom stunk of liquor and sweat.

  Alvin walked in. A flickering yellow light from the single kerosene lamp danced lazily on the bare walls. The portable Victrola sat mute on a wooden chest by the footboard. Rose and the dwarf ignored Alvin completely. He cleared his throat to get their att
ention, but Rascal continued to chatter on as he stroked the palm of Rose’s left hand with his forefinger, tracing a circuitous pattern between her thumb and little finger.

  “… and so your children from this marriage will be lost in a ballooning accident in the Congo only to be captured by a tribe of pygmies and ransomed for a herd of goats to a family of Quakers and returned a year later to America where they’ll become doctors, healing the poor and destitute of Philadelphia.”

  Rose laughed and withdrew her hand from Rascal’s. She fell back onto the pillow behind her head. She winked at Alvin. “Will they remember their dear old mother every Christmas?”

  “No,” replied the dwarf. “In fact, the ballooning accident will cause a rare form of amnesia that destroys all memory of their former lives. It’s very tragic.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Rascal nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “Then I’ll need to have more children.”

  “And so you shall,” said the dwarf, a moony smile on his face.

  Rose jumped up off the bed. “Oh, goody!”

  She took the hipflask and had a sip, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She crawled back across the bed to open the window on the yard and stuck her head out for a look. “I think it might rain tonight. I hope you’ll be all right in the barn. My uncle had trouble with the roof leaking. It can get awfully wet and cold out there.”