Abbeville

by Jack Fuller

  JUDGE: Why did you do it, Karl?

  DEFENDANT: I make no excuse.

  JUDGE: But an explanation. Something.

  DEFENDANT: At first I did not want to alarm my family. Then I wanted to show folks confidence. In the end I suppose I kept going just because I didn’t know how to stop.

  PROSECUTOR: The defendant has agreed not to contest the prosecution’s recommended sentence.

  JUDGE: It’s mighty harsh, Harley.

  DEFENDANT: I have my reasons, Your Honor.

  JUDGE: I understand the guilty plea, Karl. Those loans you made off the books, well, there’s no getting around them. But I’ve always known you to drive a pretty hard bargain, and two years’ hard time looks like you got the worst deal you could.

  DEFENDANT: I knew what I was doing, Tom. I mean, Your Honor.

  JUDGE: It is going to be mighty hard on Cristina and your young daughter.

  PROSECUTOR: Your Honor, this emotional display by the defendant is uncalled for.

  JUDGE: For heaven’s sake, Harley. Can’t you even let the man weep?

  Grampa never once hinted at the connection to Fritz.

  When I had finished with the documents, I carefully returned them to the file and gave them back to the woman behind the desk.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked.

  WHEN IT HAD COME TIME for my mother to move into a retirement home, she chose one closer to Abbeville than to Park Forest. This made it a trek for me to visit her from Chicago, but she seemed to know everyone in Cobb County, so she did not want for company.

  Today, though, the location was an advantage. The drive from Potawatomi only took twenty minutes. I had called ahead and told her I would be there shortly. She asked where I was, and I told her.

  “You’re coming from the wrong direction,” she said.

  “I stayed the night in Abbeville,” I said.

  “You did?” she said, obviously pleased. “It looks real good, doesn’t it?”

  The retirement home was a rambling, four-story structure with a colonial facade, set back from the road behind a broad lawn. My mother had a two-room apartment stuffed with every piece of furniture from her house that she could fit. It was a wonder she could get around it with her walker.

  The door was ajar when I arrived. I knocked and went in.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  She labored to stand.

  “Don’t get up,” I said.

  “I want my hug,” she said.

  She had become quite frail after her stroke. I was careful when I embraced her, but she held on to me with surprising force.

  “You did want a hug,” I said.

  “It‘s been a long time,” she said.

  “Only a few weeks,” I said.

  “It’s been a year,” she said.

  “We’re going to have to get a notebook I can sign each time I come so you’ll remember,” I said.

  “I’d just forget to look at it,” she said.

  She never had any trouble remembering her years in Abbeville.

  “Your grandma wrote him every day,” she told me. “But he only replied once. ‘Until I come home again pretend I don’t exist,’ he wrote. ‘It will be easier that way.’ So your grandma naturally decided that I should go.”

  “Were you afraid?” I asked.

  “I went,” my mother said.

  WILL HOENIG DROVE HER in a truck that Karl had sold him. They bounced over roads that had deteriorated badly as the money dried up. This made the trip slow and uncomfortable.

  “Your Uncle Fritz could have used a little more asphalt on this stretch,” Mr. Hoenig said.

  “Don’t let’s talk about him, all right?” said Betty.

  She knew that people wanted to take her side, but they didn’t know how dark her feelings were or they wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere near her.

  “They say there’s justice in the next world,” Mr. Hoenig went on.

  “If there is, I hope it puts Fritz on roads like this for all eternity.”

  It took hours to get to Joliet. Mr. Hoenig had to tack back and forth to avoid the potholes, and he did not always succeed. He fixed two flat tires along the way. It reminded Betty of the time they had driven to Michigan, which made her think of drowning.

  The prison, with its limestone walls and battlements, seemed to have come down from the time of dragons. A low building that looked incongruously like a home stood at the gate. Several families had already queued up at the door. A meaty matron in a blue coat with a badge and black Sam Browne belt sat behind a small table reading a crime magazine.

  “Will I be able to see my father today?” Betty asked her.

  “What did you say, girl?” said the matron. “Speak up.”

  “My father is in this jail,” Betty said, forcing herself to stand proud.

  “It’s up to him if he wants to see you,” said the matron, who took her name and passed her on to another, thinner matron who led her down a long corridor. A heavy door closed behind them with such a clang that Betty thought it might never open again.

  Eventually they reached a room deep in the interior. In it sat rows of straight-backed benches. There were also a number of heavy chairs. She took one of them and scraped it along the stone toward a solitary corner.

  A dozen other people were waiting in the room, women mostly, looking tired. All except one, that is. She had exuberantly red hair and a bright light behind her eyes. Her skirt billowed—old-country style—as if she were an actress in a play. Betty wondered what remarkable kind of man she was visiting. A gypsy king, perhaps. Or somebody the Tribune would call an anarchist.

  From time to time the matron presiding over the room called a name. Finally it was Betty’s.

  “I hope you aren’t planning to take that inside,” said the matron, pointing to the sack in Betty’s hand. Cristina had given it to her full of Karl’s favorites. It had become oily in several places from the shortening, so you could almost see right through the paper. The matron took it away from her.

  “That’s for my father,” Betty protested. “Harley Ansel said he cheated his own bank, but he never cheated anybody in his whole life.”

  “I lost all my money in a bank,” said the matron. She turned some pages on a clipboard, putting her finger to the lists. “Karl Schumpeter must be quite a fellow, because you’re the second female here to see him today. The other’s a regular, but I don’t know you.”

  “I’m his daughter,” said Betty. “His only daughter.”

  The matron wrote it down.

  “Well, at least you aren’t both his wives,” said the matron. “Don’t think I never seen that. You might as well sit. It will be a while.”

  When Betty turned back to the room, she could not imagine who else could be waiting to see her father. The tarty-looking thing in the tight skirt and fake fur? The masculine one who could have been a matron herself? The redhead? Impossible.

  She went to one of the long wooden benches, sat down, and arranged the ruffles of her Sunday skirt. The wood was filigreed with names and initials and dates. She ran her fingers over them and wondered why anyone would want to leave her name in such an awful place.

  “So you are Karl’s daughter,” said a voice behind her. It startled her, and when she turned, she saw the woman with red hair. “I’m Luella Grundy.”

  When she put out her hand, Betty felt drawn to take it.

  “My name is Betty,” she said.

  “I don’t suppose Karl has ever spoken of me,” Luella said.

  She had a friendly face, though with a hint of hardness deep at the level of bone.

  “What do they do when someone has two visitors?” asked Betty, because it was the least of her confusion.

  “I imagine they go with a preference for blood,” said Luella. “After maleness and wealth, that’s the usual.” She must have seen something come into Betty’s face, because she immediately softened. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I was a secretary in hi
s uncle’s firm in Chicago when your father came in out of the North Woods smelling like a chimney.”

  “He took my mom and me to the North Woods once,” said Betty.

  “I helped him find his way in the city,” said Luella. “He was really very sweet. But you know that, don’t you? Then your mother arrived on the scene.”

  Betty looked to the concrete floor.

  “Oh, my,” said Luella. “I’ve given you the wrong idea. I was glad that he found your mother. He needed someone who could love the life I knew he was going to choose.”

  Again she read Betty’s mind.

  “The life of a farm town,” said Luella. “The good bourgeois burgher’s wife. Pillars of the community. I’m afraid I’m made differently. Tell your mother you met a crazy socialist who was trying to be a friend of the oppressed.”

  Betty moved down the wooden bench to give Luella a place to sit beside her.

  “Of all the capitalists in the world, they came down on your father,” said Luella. “My Joe says he must be a good man if they sent him to prison.”

  “Joe is your husband?” said Betty.

  “Bourgeois marriage is hypocrisy,” said Luella. “That’s Marx and Engels.”

  “I’m not familiar with them,” said Betty.

  “Not surprising,” Luella smiled, “in a banker’s daughter.”

  She ran her fingers through her thick hair and then shook it out.

  “What does Joe do for a living?” Betty asked.

  “He operates a movie projector,” said Luella.

  “Marx Brothers,” said Betty.

  A tiny laugh escaped Luella.

  “When I met Joe he was working at the Oriental Theater on Randolph Street,” she said. “He could get me in free to pretty nearly any show in the Loop, he had so many friends. Then came the trouble, and he didn’t have any friends anymore. When he got laid off, he found a job in a picture show in Lockport. It was pretty easy for me to get work there. Letting me learn bookkeeping was the one good thing your dad’s uncle ever did for me. That and introducing me you to your dad. Do they have a movie theater in your little town?”

  “Abbeville,” said Betty.

  “Abbeville,” said Luella. “How is Abbeville dealing with all of this?”

  “Some people better than others,” said Betty.

  “Smoke?” said Luella, holding out a pack of cigarettes and making a few of them pop up with a flip of the wrist.

  “Oh my, no,” said Betty. She had never seen a woman smoking before except on the big screen in Kankakee.

  Luella took out a cigarette, tapped it on the bench, then pulled out a book of matches and struck one. The sulfur stung Betty’s nose.

  Luella leaned back on the bench and let the smoke roll in her mouth before gulping it down. She talked about what it had been like to be young in Chicago at the turn of the century, the World’s Columbian Exposition, the Board of Trade, and Uncle John.

  “That one was all business,” she said.

  “They say he managed to keep some of his money,” Betty said.

  “He wasn’t a captain who’d go down with the ship,” said Luella.

  “My dad’s brother kept his head above water, too,” said Betty, “by pushing Dad under.”

  “The world is full of them,” said Luella. “Joe was the one who saw in the paper that they’d sent your dad here. We started coming regular, it was so close to Lockport and all. Joe almost always comes along, but today he couldn’t. I wish you had a chance to meet him. Another time. Your poor dad’s going to be here for quite a while.”

  Betty didn’t like to think of it that way. Two years ago she had been a silly little girl. The sentence was that long.

  “Luella Grundy,” said a voice. “Betty Schumpeter.”

  They stood.

  “Maybe I should wait ’til you’re done,” Betty said.

  “Come on, girl,” said the woman. “You had the gumption to get this far.”

  She wished she had been born with a lot bigger store of gumption because this world seemed to require it.

  The corridor took a couple of turns before it opened out into a larger room where the men sat on one side of a wall of chicken wire and the women sat on the other. Betty looked up and down the line at the inmates, all of them in the same faded gray, with black numbers across their chests.

  “There he is,” said Luella.

  He had lost at least twenty pounds, which made the clothes hang from him.

  “With all the weight coming off, you just keep getting younger and younger,” Luella said. “You look like you did when I met you.”

  “My heavens,” said Karl, a smile lighting him. “What did I do to deserve this bounty? Come here, Betty. Let me look at you.”

  The women reached out their hands. He touched both of them and then withdrew from Luella.

  “Luella and I met when I was just a lad,” he said.

  “We had a talk about it,” Betty said. “Your ears must have been burning.”

  As he looked at her, his ears actually did redden.

  “You weren’t supposed to come,” he told Betty.

  She wanted to press herself up against the wire and hug him the way he used to hug her when she was hurt.

  “How are you doing, Karl?” Luella asked.

  “Not bad,” he said. “Not bad.”

  Betty kept her fingertips in contact with his, which were cold and seemed to lack the strength to push back.

  “Are they feeding you?” Betty said.

  “Don’t forget to tell your mother how much I miss her cooking,” he said.

  “What can we do to make this easier for you?” Betty said.

  “Be of a quiet heart,” her father said. “That’s what you can do. Forgive.”

  “I can’t listen to this,” Luella snapped. “You’ve got to fight back.”

  It startled Betty, but not her father.

  “That isn’t my plan,” he said.

  “See, that’s why we weren’t made for each other,” Luella said.

  “Your mother knows all about Luella,” Karl told Betty. “I suppose it doesn’t hurt that you know, too. She was the first big-city girl I’d ever met, and I was infatuated. Then your mother came to Chicago, and Luella disappeared.”

  “Let’s not talk about it,” said Luella.

  “I have wanted to since way back then,” Karl said, “but you vanished from the face of the earth. And then later, well, somehow it just was never the right moment to apologize. I think now is the time and place for penitence, don’t you?”

  Luella response was subdued. Even her hair seemed darker.

  “One day,” she said, “I hid near your rooming house and followed you when you came out. It wasn’t hard to keep you from seeing me. You were off somewhere.”

  Luella watched the spot where Betty’s fingers were in contact with her father’s. Her own fingers stroked her bare, freckled forearm below the white cotton ruffles of her blouse. Her voice was low.

  “You met her in the park,” she said, “and then you walked to the beach. You talked all the way. I knew then that you would marry.”

  Luella gathered up her purse and stood.

  “It’s time for me to go,” she said. “Joe will be waiting. We plan to stop somewhere along the way to eat, someplace charming, like I’ve always imagined Abbeville to be.”

  NOW, ALMOST SEVEN decades later, as my mother sat in her living room at the retirement home, it still brought tears as she told it: Luella obviously still loving him, seeing him on the other side of the wire mesh, his fingers weakly touching my mother’s, the metal rubbed shiny under them by countless hands reaching for what they could not have.

  19

  WITH THE VERY MODEST ADJUSTMENTS the system in those days provided for good behavior, Karl’s release came a few days before Thanksgiving. The guards led him to the storage room, where he changed back into his clothes, which had grown as baggy as a clown’s. Then they handed him a paper bag with his pocketknife
and other personal effects. Sheriff Hawk was waiting for him at the gate.

  “What are you doing here, John?” Karl asked.

  “I took you away from Abbeville,” the sheriff said, “and now I aim to bring you back.”

  They did not talk on the drive. Karl had nothing to say.

  When they reached the house, it seemed to have aged a decade. The paint had lost the last of its color. A large crack had developed in the massive concrete front steps, which were covered with green moss, as if no one had trodden upon them since he had left. The porch screens had holes that had not been patched against the bees and wasps. Wasn’t there even enough money to buy a couple of square inches of mesh?

  He entered the porch and let the door slap closed behind him. The front door was, as always, unlocked to the world. He pushed it open, thinking of the marvel of doors that swung freely, the terror of what some doors opened onto.

  The smell of fresh corn boiling on the old cookstove overwhelmed him. He put the paper bag down on the wooden bureau. The mirror above it caught his image. He did not belong here anymore.

  Cristina came into the doorway of the kitchen and froze.

  “We didn’t expect you so soon,” she said.

  “They knocked a little time off,” he said. “I should have found a way to let you know. Maybe Fred Krull can take me in.”

  He took a step back toward the door.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Cristina said.

  “I don’t blame you not wanting me,” he said.

  She stepped forward and put her arms around him. At first he stood motionless. Then her embrace reached into him, and he held to her.

  During his first days home he missed the prison rituals that had emptied time of meaning and made it light enough to bear. Now there was nothing to give it shape. It wasn’t possible to revive his older habits: the early-morning visit to the grain elevator, the opening of the bank. The evening pinochle games were still going, but Karl could only bring himself to stand on the porch in the chill and look across the prairie grass and tracks toward the lights in the garage.