by Alex Jane
Being at the homestead again was taking some getting used to, he thought, even though he’d been there less than two whole days. As a child, Emmanuel had loved coming to Nebraska. Being here with his grandparents had been the most he'd ever felt really like himself. His mother would joke that even when he was a babe in arms, as soon as they left the property on the way back to New York, or Scotland, or Canada, or wherever her work would take them, Emmanuel would be inconsolable. Which was probably why, after his grandparents had died, he hadn't been able to bear the thought of ever stepping back on such hallowed ground, and had fled to another continent to get away from his grief. Which had only made things about a hundred times worse, of course.
Now he was back, waking up disoriented in the dark for the second morning in a row, he still wasn't sure what he was doing there or if coming back was simply another mistake he would have to live with. But still, he didn't know a man tough enough to not think fondly of hot coffee and a warm bed in those moments when he'd been faced with ash in the grate and a slice of cold pie at dawn. Which was what he had to look forward to again if he didn't get his ass out of bed. Digging around under the covers for a minute, he found the thick socks he'd taken to bed with him in the hopes of keeping warm. It wasn't even winter yet and somehow the chill Nebraskan wind was able to make the autumn mornings feel as if there was a frost on the ground already.
Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he lit the lamp on the small table there before starting to pull on the rest of his clothes. That was something else wolves didn't need much of—light. Some of the houses in the small town nearby had electric light now, as did a few of the homesteads. But his grandfathers could see perfectly well in the dark and had loathed the idea of having a noisy, unreliable generator on the property. And being that the homestead was his place now and with him not there to say one way or the other, the house had remained exactly as they had left it. Which was dark mostly. At least for his human eyes at five in the morning. But the storm lamp worked just fine—it had done since before he could remember—as he carried it down the creaking stairs to the main room below.
After setting the lamp down on the large table, Emmanuel started to clear the ash from the grate in the fireplace and getting a fire going with the workings he'd left out the night before. It didn't take long to get the flames crackling and to have a pot of coffee set over them. He went into the kitchen, which was off the main room, to the empty shelves in the bare pantry to get the half loaf of bread that amounted to his entire provisions. His uncles would expect him for breakfast once they were ready for him, and then he could think about going into town to pick up some supplies to tide him over the next few days. At least until he figured out what in the hell he was going to do with his life.
So far, his plan in its entirety had been to go to Nebraska and live in the house his grandfathers had left him. It had made sense at the time but now he was here, he felt more lost than he had done sitting on the ship that had brought him home from Europe after it had docked in the harbor—wanting to go home but terrified to step onto dry land again, suspended in some sort of limbo, a half-place where his life was an abstract concept, almost as if he didn't exist anymore. In the quiet of the Nebraskan morning, the gray light sketching in the edges of his dead grandfathers' furniture, eating the dry bread and drinking bad coffee which constituted the last of his provisions, the cold seeping into his bones like trench water, Emmanuel wondered—not for the first time—if he hadn't died on the battlefield after all and this was simply an illusion.
His mood, or lack of it, hadn't improved by the time he put on his hat and coat and stepped out into the morning. It would've been an overstatement to say things looked better in the daylight, but seeing the familiar place—the wide dirt yard extending beyond the small cottage garden in front of the house out to the barn and the stable, and the path that led down to the corral and, in the opposite direction, to the old forge and the path to his uncles' house—Emmanuel certainly felt a little more grounded.
It was strange though, the silence of the place. The last time he had been there, the yard had been full of chickens and the odd goose wandering around, noise coming from the pig sty and the stables, the paddock full of horses as well as laughter and sounds of industry, as a normal working day went on. Now, all the buildings and fields were empty. It was just him alone with his thoughts to fill the place. Or at least it appeared that way until he walked beyond the old forge and saw a pall of smoke coming from the cottage that had once belonged to his grandfather's foreman.
As he approached, the door opened unexpectedly and a familiar smiling face beamed out at him. Without saying a word, Emmanuel almost broke into a jog, meeting his friend halfway on the path, and they threw their arms around each other and held tight for a long time.
"Nobody told me you were coming already," Emmanuel said finally, when he held his old friend out at arm's length to take a good look at him.
Otis looked much the same, his familiar grin filling Emmanuel with warm memories of a childhood spent together. He was older now, they both were, but at least Otis looked somehow more manly with it whereas Emmanuel was simply worn. Otis had grown into his long limbs and big feet long before Emmanuel ever had. Emmanuel had often wished for his fair skin to be dark copper year-round like his friend's, until he had become old enough to know what that meant. But even then, he still envied his dark eyes and quick wit. Otis's sister, Violet, was much the same, always ready to laugh and tease the younger boys along with Emmanuel's siblings. And although Otis was closer to the others in age, he and Emmanuel had always been fast friends, perhaps being the quieter of the children.
"I would have been here yesterday for your triumphant return but Violet needed me to fetch the old crib from the loft and clean it up and it got too late." Otis's gaze roamed Emmanuel's face, his smile faltering. "You look like shit."
Emmanuel laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. "I'm glad to see you too."
"You settling in all right? How was the trip over?"
Emmanuel smiled and fell into step beside his friend as they started the walk over the pasture to his uncles' place, which was all of fifteen minutes away on foot. "I guess, and fine, respectively," he said before Otis bumped him with his shoulder. "The journey was long, as usual. My ass is still half numb from the seat."
"I still don't understand why you don't travel first class with the cushioned benches and the fancy dining," Otis said, shaking his head and pressing his hands into his pockets.
"That's more Harry's style than mine, you know that." Emmanuel’s brother was hardly a spendthrift, but he did enjoy his home comforts whenever he could get them. Which included traveling in style, whether gallivanting around town, as their mother liked to call it, or on the trek from Westchester, New York to Lastford, Nebraska. A trek the whole family had made more times than they could count. But then their mother joked she had practically given birth to all of them while on public transportation, so their wandering ways had hardly come as a surprise. At least these days the journey only took a couple of days rather than almost a week as it had done when they were children.
"Everyone sends their regards, by the way. Mother will undoubtedly be here sooner rather than later to help with the imminent arrival." Violet, being close to giving birth to her third child, had never said whether or not she wanted Dr. Jackson in attendance, but Emmanuel's mother would show up regardless, not trusting a local midwife with her treasured friend's health.
"It'll be good to see her. It's been a while. And what about the other thing? You settling in?"
Emmanuel gave Otis a sideways glance. "You know, I only arrived the day before yesterday."
"I know," Otis said, keeping his eyes on the house on the brow of the hill, such as it was. The land barely undulated in that part of the county compared to some, but the incline they were climbing was making itself known to Emmanuel's thighs. "It's not exactly what I meant."
Emmanuel knew what he had been getting
at, he was simply choosing to dismiss the question. Otis meant the same thing as his mother when she asked him five times a day if he had a headache, or when his father endlessly reminded him that he was there to talk, or when his Uncle Thaddeus squeezed his shoulder every time he walked past, or when his grandmother couldn't look at him without tears in her eyes. It was the reason he'd finally had enough of the city and had decided the only thing for it was to hide out in the country.
"I'm fine." He sighed. "I'd be a lot better if everyone stopped treating me like I'm an invalid or as if I might crack up."
"You don't look cracked to me," Otis murmured and rubbed at his nose. "But then there was that cowhand over in Dawson County who came back and swore he was fine and ended up taking a hatchet to his brother-in-law in the middle of the night."
"You should be glad I didn't marry your sister, then." Emmanuel forced a grin and the awkwardness of it made Otis laugh and slide his arm around Emmanuel's shoulders.
"Don't worry," he said. "We won't treat you any different than anyone else, but don't suffer in silence. We all remember what Caleb went through with his bad spells, and it never hurt him to have a little help. Don't think you'll be getting out of chopping the wood neither."
Hearing his grandfather's name like that, casually thrown into conversation, was almost too painful to bear. People talked about him and Jacob all the time. They just didn't do it in front of Emmanuel. He'd taken their passing badly, and it seemed there was some unspoken rule about not mentioning them directly unless Emmanuel brought them up first, even after four years. Still, if anything, his flippant manner reinforced Otis's claim that here he was just the same as anybody else. No special treatment and definitely no excuses either.
"I'll be all right," Emmanuel said quietly. "Once I figure out what I'm going to do here."
"You going to keep writing?"
Emmanuel shrugged. "Yeah. I guess so." That was one thing the war hadn't taken from him. He wasn't sure if writing was something he really enjoyed, as such. His father was a columnist and had written a few modestly successful science fiction books, and he had always encouraged his children to put their thoughts down on paper. He'd been less keen when Emmanuel had signed up to be a war correspondent, but there hadn't been a lot anyone could have done to persuade him not to go. In the end, it was abandoning his post, such as it was, that had gotten Emmanuel sent back home. Since then, he hadn't put pen to paper other than to write letters. Still, he didn't feel the urge to shy away from it, and increasingly had felt an itch in his fingers that he knew could only be satisfied one way. "I thought I might write a book."
"That would make sense. Something like your father's? I liked the one with the little green men from outer space."
Emmanuel laughed. "I thought you might. No, I was thinking something a little more…grounded."
"Sounds good to me. If you need an editor, you know where I am."
"You might regret that," Emmanuel said with a smile. "Maybe you should write one of your own one of these days."
Otis laughed. "Not likely. I've got enough to do, thanks all the same. I'll let you take down my memoirs instead, how about that?"
"I hope that's not a euphemism, Otis. I love you like a brother, but there are limits."
The two of them were still laughing away, with their arms around each other's shoulders, when they got to the uncles' house. As expected, Ephraim was standing at the front door, waiting, wiping his hands on a cloth.
"What the hell are you two idiots chuckling about? I could hear you down at the homeplace."
"Manny has offered to be my biographer," Otis said, slapping Emmanuel on the shoulder before barging him out of the way to get inside first.
"Has he?" Ephraim looked between the two of them with narrowed eyes, as if they were mischievous children and not men of thirty and more. "It'll be a short book if you don't stop misbehaving." Then, putting a hand on Emmanuel's back, he ushered him inside. "Just to warn you, Josh has decided you're looking too thin."
"Oh Lord," Emmanuel muttered, taking off his hat and placing it on the hook next to the door.
Ephraim hadn't been joking. In fact, the situation was worse than he'd feared when Joshua wouldn't allow him to even fill his own plate, instead handing him one piled high with eggs and bread and bacon and cold meat pie and a chicken leg. "Josh. Really."
"Yes. Really," Joshua replied, maneuvering his wheeled chair to sit at the table with them once he'd finished bustling around the kitchen. He could walk short distances with some effort, but having lost most of the use of his legs in an accident when Emmanuel was only a baby, the house was set up to accommodate him and the wheeled chair Caleb had made him to get about in. "You look gaunt and you barely ate a thing yesterday."
"I'll burst."
"Rubbish. It'll put some color back in your cheeks."
There was no arguing, and Emmanuel knew it. Both his uncles had fussed over him as if he were their own child his whole life, and he'd no more argue with them than he would his own parents.
Otis huffed out a laugh. "Is that why I never get second helpings?"
"No. It's because of the pot belly you're growing," Joshua replied with a smirk that quickly turned to guffaw when Otis frowned and pushed back from the table with a, "Hey!" looking down at his perfectly flat, muscular stomach in dismay as the rest of them chuckled at his vanity.
"How did you sleep?" Ephraim asked Emmanuel once they started eating.
Emmanuel shrugged. "Fine. I think it'll take a while to get used to the quiet again."
"Eh, you'll be all right in no time." Joshua wiped at his mouth with his napkin. "And once you get the homeplace up and running again, it'll be plenty noisy. You'll be yelling at chickens to shut up for five minutes like the rest of us."
He was undoubtedly right, but Emmanuel only shrugged and jabbed at the food on his plate. "I guess so. The house is so empty it echoes. I mean, I like the solitude, but it's not what I'm used to."
"Did you get your things unpacked yesterday?" Ephraim asked, looking concerned.
"Some," Emmanuel said, although that was an overstatement. Most of his belongings had been shipped to the homestead the month before and were still sitting in packing boxes waiting to be sorted. Not that Emmanuel had had a great deal to bring with him, but there were some things like his gramophone and typewriter and about a hundred books he couldn't live without, plus his clothes and photographs and assorted junk that he clung to like a safety raft.
He had intended to get to it and find a place for everything the day before, but after spending most of the morning cleaning—not that the place had been dirty exactly, but he wanted to make a fresh start—once he'd opened all the boxes and started rifling through the newspaper wrappings, he'd started to feel hemmed in and had had to get outside. Luckily, the weather had been good and he'd spent the rest of the day wandering the property, walking the boundary lines as he'd used to do with his grandfathers, and then out beyond the corral, over the little bridge that traversed the creek, to the edge of the wood where the Alphas were buried. He'd sat with them under the trees until the sun had started to cast long shadows and he could practically hear the old men telling him he couldn't hide out there any longer.
"I thought I'd go into town later. Pick up some supplies and take a look around. Although I'm guessing it's not changed much while I've been gone."
"I wouldn't say that." Ephraim's expression wasn't exactly a happy one. "I'll drive you in, if you want. I have to call in on Seth so…"
"Call on Seth," Emmanuel repeated with a wry smile. "You mean call in on the telegraph office. Is my mother expecting you to send a report on my progress every other day for the rest of my life?"
Ephraim scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm sure she'll be along shortly to check on you herself."
"You joke, but if I know Martha…" Joshua said, waving his fork at his husband.
"She'll be coming to deliver Violet's baby soon enough," Otis added.
"You make i
t sound as if they planned it that way."
Otis laughed. "I wouldn't put it past them. As long as I don't have to do it. I'll have enough trouble keeping Duke from blowing his stack like last time." It was funny but only because Emmanuel knew the man so well.
Violet had always been beautiful and had managed to snag herself a rather elegant young man who'd turned out to be a wonderful addition to the family, even if he did butt heads with Emmanuel’s mother from time to time.
"I'll put two bits on her hitting him with a chamber pot like last time," Emmanuel said with a smile.
"Hey, no gambling in this house," Joshua warned at the same time Ephraim said, "A nickel on Martha emptying a bucket of water over him."
Joshua glared at his mate, although Ephraim laughed and shoved a piece of bacon in his mouth. But he had enough sense to change the subject. "I figured, as it's too late in the day to be planting, you'd be available to help the co-op with the harvest?" Ephraim glanced at Emmanuel as if to gauge his reaction. "I put your name down with the understanding you might have other plans."
"No plans," Emmanuel said. "I guess I should come up with one before too long."
"It won't do you any harm to wait a while," Joshua offered. "It might do you some good to get some advice from the other homesteaders before you start putting anything in the ground."
"That makes sense," said Emmanuel. "How many places are we talking for the co-op?"
"Eight in all," said Ephraim. "Although the work won't be as bad as it sounds. Seth got in a tractor to pull the baling machine. Makes for an easier time all round."
"Sounds as if we'll be able to just sit back and take it easy while he does all the work," Emmanuel joked.
Ephraim laughed aloud. "Can you honestly see Seth on a tractor? He likes his motorcar fine but you know how he feels about farm work. Definitely can't see him muddying up his fancy linen shirts even that far off the ground. No, Josh gets to drive around. We're the schmucks doing the heavy lifting."