Etta and Otto and Russell and James (17 page)

That’s the warmest place. She’ll sit there all day.

I didn’t know you knew mechanics.

I’m learning. A lot. Russell pulled himself out from behind the hood, wiping his hands on his overalls. His shirt was red and black plaid flannel, too hot for today, rolled up at both sleeves. Otto, he said, stepping around the tractor, you’re a son of a bitch for being a sneak about the whole thing, for sneaking back here all quiet like a fox, but, goddamn it is good to see you. He opened his arms and took Otto in. He felt bigger, stronger, than Otto remembered him and smelled of white soap, dust, animals, grain. Familiar. Like me, Otto realized. Like I used to.

H
ow often do you think about dying?

They were walking around the periphery of Russell’s land, Otto was getting a tour.

You mean over there? said Otto, picking up a rock just bigger than his fist and tossing it out of the field. I think about living more. I think about living as hard as I can. You should see the dances, Russell. The women.

There are dances here too.

Yes, of course. There’s just . . . less contrast.

They fell silent, reached the far edge of the rye and turned ninety degrees. This is real impressive, said Otto, what you’ve got here. This whole farm, just yours, that’s really something.

Thanks, said Russell. It’s small. A farm you can walk around in twenty minutes. But I’m going to buy Perkinses’ too, once I’ve got money.

Be sure you save some land for me, for when I’m back.

You’re coming back? Russell caught himself, corrected, I mean, I don’t mean like that. I mean, you’re not going to stay there, once it’s over?

Once it’s over, I’m coming home, Russell.

Okay. Okay good. I just wasn’t sure. It’s hard to know, from here.

They reached another corner and turned another ninety degrees. Otto started to speak and stopped himself. Took a breath and started again. I wasn’t sure, Russell, he said. When I was over there, I wasn’t sure I could, I mean, I wasn’t sure I could come home. Not really. Thought maybe all that would superimpose over all this and nothing would make sense, and would be empty, just empty. Like holding on to a ghost. Hollow.

But it’s not.

But mostly it’s not.

W
hen Etta woke up Otto was gone. She lay in bed and thought through each part of her body, checking to see if they felt different. Warmer, maybe, from the inside. She wanted to talk to Russell. But she didn’t, couldn’t. Russell might not even know that Otto was home yet. And she wanted to talk to her sister, Alma. She wanted to take her to the Holdfast café and pay for both their pies and have her listen coolly and quietly, like she did, and then respond with composed, simple advice. Etta pushed her sheets away and sat up, legs swung over the side of her bed. The worst thing about night shifts was having to try and sleep during hottest parts of the day. She stepped over her coveralls, discarded on the floor, opened her second-to-top drawer, and felt around through layers of stockings until her fingers closed on something cool and solid and sharp. She lifted it through the stockings and up to her ear and whispered, Is this good?

Oui, oui, oui,
it whispered back.

E
tta brought pinwheel cookies, dusted in sugar and light like lace, to her last night shift.

Those are awful hard to make, said the girl in the spotted head scarf, picking up a bullet, holding it close to her face, closing one eye and squinting. You shouldn’t waste them on us.

It’s my last night, said Etta, trying to hold her hand steady, always steady, like the woman had chanted at them in training, always steady, only steady. I thought we should mark it somehow.

What? Already? That was brief. So you’re leaving us. You don’t
like us? The girl’s reflection distorted in the casing.

It doesn’t matter if I do or not; it’s for the bus. The bus only runs for the day shifts.

So how’d you get here today? Yesterday?

A horse. I borrowed a horse. I tie it up behind the parking, in Mickleburgh’s field.

Oh . . . I don’t think you’re supposed to do that.

No, I’m not.

I’ve never been on a horse. This was from the girl with bright red lipstick, further down the line, joining the conversation.

Never?

Never?

I’m from town. I take the tram. Or walk.

Then Etta will have to take you on hers.

It’s not mine, actually.

Still.

I’m afraid of animals.

All animals?

Yes. Especially ones bigger than me.

I’m returning the horse in the morning, said Etta. Tonight’s your only chance.

How do you know for sure you’re afraid of horses until you’ve been on one? said yellow dots. Your whole life, maybe, you’ve been wrong.

I don’t think I am, said bright red lipstick. Pretty sure I’ll faint as soon as I see the thing.

It’s tonight or never, said Etta.

Break’s in fifteen minutes, said yellow dots.

Tonight or never, said red lipstick, almost whispering.

14

E
tta walked and her legs did not get tired and her feet did not get tired and her back did not get sore. She closed her eyes and saw herself in the red and white uniform of a sprinter, in the long black lines of a cross-country skier, in the green and gray uniform of Otto’s regiment. These are good boots, she said to James.

Shoes,
said James.
Yes, they are excellent shoes.

She wrote a letter,

My Dear Etta,

These days, we march and march and march and march and march. Only, always. But we sing as we do it, which reminds me of your class, which I like. Boots over new soil, under new trees, guns rubbing against the bare skin of our hips, at odds with our feet warm in socks knit by nuns.

J
ames pulled it from her bag while she slept and dropped it into a lake. The pen-dark ink bled into the night-dark water and caused the
fish to swim into each other until it diluted and cleared.

In the morning he said,
Good morning, Etta.

And she said, Good morning, James.

And they kept walking; singing and keeping away from towns while their supplies were still good.

Eventually, however, they ran low again. Etta caught fish and boiled water.

We’re close to a city now
, said James,
I can smell it. All the people and all the cars.

I’m going to have to stop, said Etta.

I know,
said James.

So they altered their course slightly, down, toward the city.

I
t’s hot.

I think I see her!

Wouldn’t it be too soon?

Oh, it’s not her. It’s a motorcycle.

It
is
hot.

Didn’t you bring water?

Yes, but not for us. For her.

How much?

It’s not for us.

It’s hot.

I think that’s really her now!

I can’t see! Get the dog out of the way.

Oh wow oh wow

Get the camera!

And the water!

Do you think she’ll stop?

She rarely stops.

The banner!

The banner!

The banner!

Almost forgot, get it out, hurry!

My hands are slipping, they’re sweaty.

Hold it higher!

Here, let me.

It’s blocking my face!

Hold it higher!

Etta!

It’s her!

Etta!

Etta!

Etta!

E
tta motioned for James to get behind her, safer on the other side of her legs. She held up one hand, Hello. Hello, hello, hello, hello. One for each face she counted. I can’t stop, I’m sorry. She shouted out in front of her, like a shield.

Oh we know.

That’s okay.

We’ve got water!

(Where’s the water?)

(
Did you drink it?
)

Here, some water!

Thank you, said Etta. A camera flash as she reached out for the bottle. Then another and another.

Etta, said a woman with two strollers, one child asleep, one
awake, would you take this? She stretched her hand out to Etta, in it a bobby-pin with a tiny opalescent green star on the end. Etta took it, squeezed the woman’s hand, and tucked the pin into her hair behind her right ear.

Etta! called a man on the other side of her, young, business-suited, perfectly shining black shoes. Please, he said. He gave her a nickel. It’s from the year I was born, he said.

The whole time Etta did not stop walking, moving through the crowd like swimming as it shifted and merged around her.

And then she was out again, on the far side, with the chant,

Etta!

Etta!

Etta!

fading behind her. She had food and water and a bobby pin, a nickel, a green ribbon, a locket, a small plastic soldier, and a perfectly round pebble. She tied the ribbon around James’s neck and put the other things in her pocket. Is anybody following us? she asked James.

No
, he said.

And they made their way back out to the fields, lakes, trees.

O
tto cleared a space in between all the flour bowls, newspapers, and tools on one side of the table and all the letters and recipes on the other side. He got out one of his better, smoother black pens and some off-white paper. Oats rolled her glassy marble eyes up toward him, but stayed silent. She licked the side of her box.

Dear Etta,

he wrote,

I have been offered some money, a fair amount of money, for my collection. The things I’m making to pass the time until you come back. A woman with mixed brown and gray hair all pulled back sharply came by the house. She came during the day but I was sleeping. She saw me, she said, with my head on the table, so she waited in the yard, wandering between the animals until the sun had gone down and I was awake. Once she saw through the window that my head was no longer on the table, she knocked and I let her in and gave her coffee and squares and she said, It might rain.

And I stirred my coffee and offered her a spoon and she said, No, really, Otto, it might rain. It’s summer now, but it won’t be forever, and then it might rain and it will certainly snow, eventually, and everything will be ruined. We would take care of your collection, in the gallery, we could even paint the walls and everything to make it look just like out here.

And I said, by the time it rains, Etta will be home. Certainly by the time it snows. So it’ll be okay if they melt.

It won’t be okay, she said.

It will.

She gave me her card, in case I change my mind. I’m including it here.

And that’s all, here.

I wish I knew where you were. I wish I knew how much farther and how much longer. The yard is filling up, and Russell’s too. I’m tired and old. I just wish I knew how much longer.

Yours,

Otto.

I
n the mornings, Otto helped his mother and Harriet. Lifting, carrying, pulling, walking, calling, holding. It felt good, felt necessary, to be using his body like this. Afternoons he went to Russell’s and did the same. He felt sorry for the soldiers who had gone home to quiet, still places in towns and cities, legs twitching on sofas in sitting rooms.

After Russell’s, he went to the teacher’s cottage. To Etta. Either just after she’d changed out of her coveralls, or just before. As they met they’d hold up their right hands with some number of fingers showing, five for five days left, then four, then three, pressing them together before they fell into each other. Apart from this, they did not mention the inevitable winding down of days.

Until the day of just two fingers, when they were lying together just before sunset in the field behind the school, on land that was technically Perkinses’ and was growing too fast and too wild, when Etta said,

I think we should also be counting up.

Their discarded clothes made a trail back to the cottage’s front door. Etta’s bare feet reached down past Otto’s, still in socks.

Up?

Yes. We’re counting down each day, but I think we should also be counting up, making a tally of how many days we’ve gotten to spend together. Counting up.

Otto considered, then lifted his hands above them so they blocked the setting sun, holding up two fingers in one and three in the other. Etta did the same, lining her hands up with his so they superimposed.

The next day it was one finger and four. Otto brought over all his letters. The ones he had written from away that Etta had sent back to him with her corrections. In chronological order, he unfolded each one and read them aloud. After each, he would hand the paper over to Etta, who put the letters in the drawer of the small table next to her bed, one by one. When he got to the end, to the last one, she said,

Keep going.

So he did, reading out letters to her he hadn’t yet written down, as she read him her not-written-down replies.

It was windy outside and the wind blew dust up against the windows, coating them thick so all you could see from inside was the glow of late-day sun. From there, they could pretend they didn’t notice it dimming.