This Side of Jordan

by Monte Schulz

  “Of course not. There’s much more profit today in booze-traffic. Every town in this great republic of ours has its own speakeasy. Who do you think keeps them stocked with demon rum?”

  “I never seen a drunkard or a saloon downtown this morning.”

  “Did you notice the soda fountains and drugstores?”

  “What of it?”

  “Well, they’re selling more than soda pop these days. Why, I’d wager you’ll find overnight liquor in milk bottles on half the stoops in Kansas tomorrow morning.”

  Alvin mulled that over. Cousin Frenchy kept quart bottles of whiskey hidden in Uncle Roy’s root cellar and had a drink habit he couldn’t crack. Uncle Cy believed half the population of Farrington was misusing liquor. “You think Chester’s a rumrunner?”

  The dwarf replied, “He’s no snooper.”

  “Well, I ain’t for squealing on nobody, neither, but I’ll bet you there’s plenty of homebrew outfits in these parts. I seen empty gallon jugs packed in straw and sodden boxes in that kitchen cellar. I smelled kerosene and molasses down there, too. Don’t tell me that uncle of hers wasn’t an old soak.”

  “Auntie imbibed Coca Cordials while she was sending dollar bills through the mail to the Reverend Dr. Wilson in support of National Prohibition, and seeing a revenue officer from Peoria, too.”

  “Well, my Aunt Clara makes cider with a kick, but it ain’t kitchen brew.”

  “Laws are made for men,” said the dwarf, “not men for the law. Who can be made moral by legislation? Persecution causes a crime to spread. This ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. I’m sure there are temperate uses of alcoholic drink, but until they’re commonly understood, gangsters like Chester are certain to knock heads with the Volsteadites, leaving the rest of us caught in the middle.”

  “Well, I ain’t interested in getting pinched over some stall to sell a few bottles of hootch.”

  Rascal got up and walked to the ladder. He put the screwdriver aside and went backwards down the first few rungs. Stopping halfway to the barn floor, the dwarf said, “These are dangerous times, my friend. Very dangerous. We must keep our wits about us, if we wish to survive.”

  Alvin got up, too, and followed the dwarf to the ladder. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The heart of the adventurer is sly,” Rascal said, as he descended to the floor of the barn. Stepping away from the ladder, he looked back up at Alvin. “Even in his dreams, he is alert.”

  Rascal disappeared into one of the stalls directly beneath the hayloft.

  Alvin sat down on the ledge beside the ladder. He felt drowsy and ill. Below him, the dwarf shuffled about in the dark, fixing his bed for the night. After a few minutes, Alvin climbed down the ladder and looked in on the dwarf. He was hard to see, buried in the straw with only the bald top of his head visible in the yellow lamplight. With each breath, little puffs of dust blew free from his mouth. Alvin noticed the light in Rose’s bedroom was extinguished. She, too, had given up on Chester, and had gone to sleep. The farm boy took the lantern off the ladder and walked to the back of the barn where he had chosen his own stall. He hung the lamp on a post nail. The night wind hissed in the long dry grass. Trying to ignore the fever chill in his bones, Alvin spread his bedroll out over the straw and lay down on his back. If anyone was worrying about him at home tonight, he was sorry, but they’d intended to send him back to the sanitarium, and that was a lot meaner than him running off. Like his own daddy used to say, “A man finds his own road one day and starts walking. He don’t argue an east fork into a west one, and he don’t set hisself facing backwards, neither.”

  After ten minutes or so of looking for bats in the upper rafters of the barn, Alvin fell asleep. Out on the Mississippi with Frenchy, fly casting into a swift green current, sunlight on the water, catfish tapping at the underside of the skiff, inviting themselves to get caught and fried up for supper. Frenchy had trotlines baited with rat tails. The skiff had a hole in it, leaking water in at Alvin’s feet. Baling with his right shoe wasn’t working, so he removed his left and used that, too. A catfish as big as a pig flew into the boat, landing in Alvin’s lap, knocking him over. The skiff capsized. Swimming underwater, Alvin found himself caught in Frenchy’s trotlines. Freeing himself just before drowning, he rose to the surface. The river was black. Stars flickered overhead while upstream, fireworks exploded in the night sky above the Illiniwek Bridge where a crowd had gathered to witness another suicide like Mable Stephenson, jilted by her college geography teacher, who did her lover’s leap at high noon on Christmas Day in front of a hundred people, landing headfirst on a frozen log and breaking her neck. Alvin swam in that direction. All along the shoreline, giggling voices rang in the bushes. Rose was atop the bridge, her arms spread wide, the hem of her white chemise blowing wildly in the wind. As Alvin swam close, she leaped away from the bridge and something blunt struck Alvin between the eyes, waking him, and a voice he didn’t recognize, ordered, “Get up, you little sonofabitch!”

  Alvin felt cold steel pressed to his forehead and opened his eyes. A dark figure stood over him. A rifle barrel extended from Alvin’s forehead to the hands of the man standing in front of him. “Nobody robs Charlie Harper, you little double-crossing sonofabitch!”

  “Huh?”

  “You think I couldn’ta guessed who done it?”

  The barrel dug into the skin between Alvin’s eyes, hurting more now that he was waking up.

  The man yelled, “ROSA JEAN!”

  Off to Alvin’s left across the barn, a small shadow darted through the railing of the last stall and slipped outdoors.

  “Get up,” said Harper, nudging Alvin in the butt with the toe of his boot. He pulled the old Sharp’s rifle back a few inches from Alvin’s face. “ROSA JEAN!”

  The farm boy climbed to his feet as slowly as possible while searching the barn for something to use as a club if the opportunity to fight presented itself. His head spun with vertigo. A cough rattled out of his chest. With the lamp extinguished, most of the barn was black.

  “ROSA JEAN!” Harper poked Alvin in the ribs with the rifle, directing him out the barn door toward the farmhouse. “Get on out there, and don’t try nothing, you little shit-heel!”

  They walked out of the barn in tandem, connected by the length of rifle. A cold wind swirled in the yard, sweeping dust about and scattering stems of dried grass from the empty fields beyond.

  “ROSA JEAN!”

  The back screen door banged open and shut in the wind. Rose’s bedroom window was raised an inch or so, the drapes closed. Nearing the trough, Alvin wondered if she was watching.

  Charlie Harper prodded Alvin in the back with the rifle and shouted again. “ROSA JEAN!” Water dripped from the pump. The kitchen door banged hard. Alvin took three more steps, and Harper called out, “ROSA JEAN!”

  Then another voice, just off Alvin’s right shoulder, said, “Stop right there.”

  Harper stopped, and the rifle barrel left Alvin’s back. Chester’s voice spoke once again, “Go on, dad. Put that rifle down.”

  Alvin swiveled his head to see Chester, rising from a hiding place beside the trough. His .38 revolver was held at arm’s length and pointed directly at Charlie Harper’s head. Chester cocked the hammer back. “No cause for trouble now. Just do like I say.”

  The kitchen door flung open and Rose came out into the yard. Her hair blew wildly in the wind, her white chemise billowing up. Alvin’s hands and feet felt cold. He studied Rose’s face for indications of fear or surprise or anger, and saw none. He was terrified himself.

  “They robbed us, Rosa Jean,” said Harper, whose attention was not on Chester at all, but rather on his daughter. “They snuck in after closing and robbed us blind.”

  “I don’t want to shoot you, old man, but I surely will if you don’t set that rifle down.”

  “They’re crooks, Rosa Jean. Scoundrels. They took every last cent in that safe.”

  Rose stood perfectly still, maybe t
hirty or forty feet from Alvin, teary-eyed in the wind and dust, staring past her father toward Chester who began slowly to circle behind the old man.

  “They don’t care nothing about people like us, Rosa Jean,” said Harper. “They come here to hurt us, is all. They’re nothing but goddamned liars and cheats.”

  “Come on, dad, put the rifle down,” Chester said, his voice flat and nerveless. “Let’s be friendly here. What do you say? No sense in getting hurt over a little misapprehension.”

  “Daddy,” said Rose, walking now toward him, hair blowing across her face. “Please put the gun down.”

  “They’re thieves, Rosa Jean. Don’t trust them.”

  Chester had circled clear around Harper, standing just behind his right shoulder. Harper’s rifle still pointed toward Alvin’s back. Rose stopped fifteen feet from the water trough, her arms held out imploringly to her father. “Daddy, please!”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Alvin caught a glimpse of Rascal standing motionless by the rear corner of the house, watching from the shadow of the eaves. Then he heard Harper release the hammer, and a moment later the barrel of the Sharp’s rifle struck the dirt behind his feet.

  “Goddamned sonsofbitches!” said the old man, and sunk backward to sit down on the trough. Rose walked forward another three steps, muttering something under her breath indistinguishable in the wind, and got close enough to her father to have her dress sprayed with blood an instant after Chester placed his pistol against the back of Harper’s head and pulled the trigger.

  The blast echo circled the yard and chased out across the fields. Charlie Harper’s body lurched into the trough with a large splash. Stink of gunsmoke filled the dark.

  Paralyzed with shock, Alvin found himself utterly transfixed by the sight of Charlie Harper bobbing in the black water. As Rose drew near, she whispered, “Daddy?” and leaned over the trough.

  “Well, I guess that plan was a dud,” said Chester, his gun still held out in the air where Harper’s head had just been. “A fellow really ought to cut out boozing after work.”

  Dust stung Alvin’s face, forcing him to look away from Rose and the water trough. He sought out the dwarf by the north side of the farmhouse and found that Rascal was gone. Chester jammed the pistol back into his waistband. He grabbed the handle of the pump and jerked it twice to draw fresh water from the well. As Chester ladled it into his cupped palms, sucking a drink, Rose grabbed up her father’s rifle from the dirt beside the trough. Cocking the hammer, she swung the barrel around to Chester’s direction, but he had already drawn his revolver again.

  Alvin watched dumbfounded as Chester calmly took aim and shot Rose through the chest.

  She fell away from the trough, landing flat on her back, a small black stain from the wound soaking the hole in the front of her chemise. Her eyes were wide open, staring up into the night sky. Her left foot twitched for a couple more seconds, then stopped altogether.

  Another gunshot echo faded across the dark.

  Chester stared at her a little while, revolver drawn and pointed, then shook his head, put the gun away again, and washed his hands clean under the pump spout. He rubbed them hard, scraping and scrubbing with his thumbs and fingertips.

  Alvin had lost all feeling in his limbs.

  The rising water floated Harper’s body to the rim so that his hands appeared determined to try and grip the edges. A vile taste crept up into the back of Alvin’s throat and he coughed harshly. Vertigo came and went. That section of Charlie Harper’s face disintegrated by the exit wound remained underwater.

  Chester let go of the pump handle before the trough could over flow. He took a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and used it to dry off his hands. Then he told Alvin, “She’d have killed us both. We’re lucky I saw her.”

  Alvin stared at Rose, lying just below him. The dead held no particular fascination for him, having seen over the years his Uncle Otis, old Grandpa Chamberlain, his second-cousin Leroy, and a traveling salesman give up the ghost right before his eyes on the farm in Farrington. Funerals followed harvest celebrations as the most popularly attended ceremonies in the county. None of the casket dead resembled themselves. Faces all waxy and pale. Lips and brows painted. Eyes stitched shut. That was the difference. Here, Rose looked prettier in death’s shadow than she had sitting on the bed indoors. It spooked Alvin. If he leaned over her, she’d be looking him right in the eye. The stain had quit, just a damp soiled patch on the fabric, requiring only a good scrubbing with soap and vinegar. Her eyes needed closing, though. Otherwise, she wouldn’t get her reward. At every wake, Granny Chamberlain said, God’s sweet smile is too glorious to behold with white eyes revealed.

  As Alvin bent down to close Rose’s eyes, Chester leaned forward and grabbed him by the wrist. “Don’t touch her. Don’t touch either of them. Just leave them where they are.”

  Then Chester walked off toward the back door, his blue suit jacket fluttering in the wind. Thoroughly terrified, Alvin looked once again for Rascal. The dwarf had been by the rear of the farmhouse, watching everything. Afterward, he had run off like a scared rabbit. Alvin went over to the rail fence for a look into the fields. It seemed even darker now than when Harper had led him out of the barn. Trees only a few dozen yards away were all but invisible, just big hazy shadows somewhere out beyond the fence. Alvin stopped breathing and listened to the wind hissing through the grass on the dark Kansas prairie.

  The back door slammed shut and Chester came out into the yard, carrying the thirty-dollar Victrola under one arm and a flat piece of wood under the other, a narrow shelf from one of the white kitchen cabinets. He walked over to the trough and placed the wood upright against the pump. Then he took a pocketwatch out of his vest, checked the hour, and headed to the Packard, announcing that they had to go. Rascal walked out of the barn loaded up and ready to depart, his wool blanket in one hand, Alvin’s bedroll in the other. He went only as far as the middle of the yard, where he stopped and waited for Alvin to pay his last respects at the trough. Back around the rear of the house, Chester started up the car.

  Both bodies looked like genuine Farrington farm corpses now, dead as yesterday. Wind had partially covered Rose’s hair and fingers in dust, and clouded her eyes. If she hadn’t yet beheld the Lord, she surely would in the next hour or so. Alvin came around the trough and found himself facing the board Chester had laid up against the pump. It was a message scribbled in charcoal, intended for whoever found Rose and Charlie Harper. It read:

  STANTONSBURG, NEBRASKA

  THE DWARF WADED AT THE SHADY CREEK BOTTOM in cold water up to his kneecaps, the suspender straps to his short denim overalls hanging loosely at his side, insects buzzing about his sunburned ears. Overhead, cottonwoods rustled and shook, fluttering leaves and dry bunchgrass down into the creek bed behind a narrow two-story framehouse on the great Nebraska prairie. Alvin Pendergast tossed his cap and farm shoes and socks underneath a fallen cottonwood log, then rolled up the cuffs of his work trousers and dangled his feet off the log into the narrow stream. Cold water numbed his toes and they tingled when he withdrew them from the current. Brushing a shock of hair off his forehead, he watched Rascal squat in the creek like a duck and fish the sand with his fingers, sloshing in quick circles, making paddling motions and humming to himself. Chester had taken the Packard and headed back up the highway to Stantonsburg: pop. 1328. He had told them to wait down in the creek bed until he came back. By Alvin’s guess, that was two hours ago. Feeling a little better today than he had all week, Alvin wanted to go over town him self, buy a soda pop and have a look around, maybe find a pretty girl to jolly at the sweetshop, get her going with a nifty Ford joke or two (“Why is a Ford like a bathtub? Because you hate to be seen in one!”). He liked that idea. What was the use of traveling around, he thought, if you don’t go nowhere?

  “The flora and fauna of our Republic,” said the dwarf, “are quite fascinating when one takes care to observe them in their natural habitat. I once kept a grand col
lection of lady bugs in a Mason jar for a season of breeding.” He bent further and sunk his elbows into the water, dredging a trench in the creek bottom and rising up with two handfuls of mud. “Creatures of a lower order have always been a great interest of mine.”

  “My cousin Frenchy eats crawdads cold,” said Alvin, dunking his toes again. “Don’t ask me why.”

  The water felt better now, less icy. The farm boy sunk his legs in up to his calves and sloshed around. It was hot out. The creek bed was cooler than up on the prairie, but Alvin still found it generally stifling. If the water had been deeper, he’d have already dived in and had himself a swim. He splashed lightly with his feet, watched the ripples expand. He liked fooling around in the middle of the day. Work was for saps. Water bugs skittered across the surface. A moldy odor of decaying vegetation on the muddy banks floated in the air. He asked the dwarf, “Can you swim?”

  “Actually, I’ve never tried.”

  “Scared of drowning, huh?” Alvin smirked, picturing the dwarf flailing his arms and sinking like a rock. Alvin himself had learned to swim when he was three, taught by old Uncle Henry who couldn’t swim a lap in a bathtub anymore.

  “Of course not. In fact, I’m sure I could manage quite well. My Uncle Augustus once swam across Lake Michigan in a rainstorm. He assured me buoyancy runs in the family.”

  “I didn’t ask if you float or not,” Alvin said. “I asked if you ever been swimming.”

  The dwarf’s hand shot down into the water. “Ahhh… there… devil, devil, devil!” It came up empty, three tiny streams of soggy sand leaking between his fingers. He looked over at Alvin. “Do you suppose there are any snapping turtles hereabouts?”

  “I never met nobody before who couldn’t swim,” Alvin remarked, letting his legs slide down a bit further off the mossy log. Sunlight sparkled on the current. Maybe he’d just go ahead and jump in. His cotton shirt and brown trousers were filthy, and needed washing. “Seems like something everybody ought to be able to do. Like walking, or riding a horse.”