Prudence (17 page)

The land began to dip and the maples gave way to ash and elm. It rose again into stands of poplar and birch. There wasn’t any breeze and the paper hung motionless from the birch boles in the heat. Felix turned to look at David. He was sweating fiercely and batting mosquitoes and gnats from their lazy orbits. Felix kept veering right until they struck the tote road again. Frankie and Billy must be close. He slowed and let David catch his breath.

They ambled down the center of the tote road, staying clear of the ruts. The brush grew closer here. The filberts were still cased tightly in their prickly green purses, the leaves heavy with heat. Felix heard a short laugh, he couldn’t tell whose, up ahead, behind a screen of brush. He slowed. There was no need to rush. Through the brush he saw someone. At first he wasn’t sure if it was Frankie or Billy, and then the single figure resolved itself into two: Frankie and Billy stood close together. Billy had his hand on Frankie’s arm. Frankie said something and Billy smiled. And then Billy touched Frankie’s arm and they kissed, the Winchester dangling from Frankie’s left hand. He reached up with his right and removed bark or a twig or a piece of grass from Billy’s hair. They smiled at each other again and this time Billy said something and Frankie laughed.

Felix stopped and edged back down the road so the boys wouldn’t see him and so David wouldn’t see them. But Ernie came out of the woods on the other side. Frankie and Billy dropped their hands and stepped back.

Ernie said something, and Felix could see a sneer on his face.

Billy looked down at the ground. Felix couldn’t see the expression on Frankie’s face, but Felix heard him say, “Come on, Billy.”

And then, “I said, come on.”

There was something hard in Frankie’s voice.

Felix could see the expression on Ernie’s face as Frankie stalked away. Ernie was smiling.

And as Frankie disappeared from view, he could hear him say, yet again, “I said,
come
on. Billy, come
on
, I said.”

Felix shrank back and splayed his hand out behind him, signaling David to be quiet. But Billy’s head turned their way. When he saw Felix, he dropped his gaze and disappeared into the brush after Ernie.

Then they heard the blast. Felix and David jumped.

“Let’s go,” said Felix. His heart beat in his chest as it hadn’t since he first met his wife and again many times during the Great War. But perhaps it was something he had learned then: When some people shoot, you immediately feel better. And when some others do, you know nothing good will come of it.

He was through the brush in a few strides. Billy held the Winchester, with the barrel pointed down at the ground. “Where?”

“There,” said Frankie, pointing ahead into a deep pocket of brush around a blown-down basswood. His hands were shaking.

Ernie came huffing behind them. Felix could smell whiskey on his breath.

“You see that, Ernie?” said Frankie. “You see that? We got him. We got the bastard good.”

He sounded fine, but his hands were shaking.

“Where?” asked Ernie, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

“Right there. Can’t you see the Kraut? Can’t you see him at all?”

“I don’t see anything.”

Felix did. In the darkest section of the deadfall he could see some kind of agony spending itself, a flurry of leaves, the shaking of branches. Animals died that way. He halted.

“Let’s go get him,” said Ernie. “Let’s drag him out of there.”

“Wait,” said Felix. “Just wait. It’s easier if you wait.”

After a few minutes he crept forward. The brush was thicker here
and he had to bend down and, finally, get on all fours, in order to work his way to the center of the deadfall. He was halfway there when he saw movement ahead. He stopped. He could see something moving. Could hear something rustling in the leaves. Maybe, thought Felix, maybe it’s not a German, after all, but a deer. A doe, perhaps, with a fawn. The fawn wouldn’t know to leave. They are born stupid. Felix stopped and searched deeper into the tangle of branches with his eyes. His question resolved itself. He saw an eye. And then black hair. And then a dirty white blouse and gray woolen jumper. He saw her: a girl, huddled with her knees to her chest, looking at him through the tunnel of leaves.

Felix rushed forward. The girl didn’t move. Felix was on his hands and knees, the girl was curled away from him and wouldn’t look him in the eye. At her feet lay another girl—smaller, younger. She couldn’t be older than thirteen. Her body was rigid, her neck arched, one arm outflung, the other curled like a wing against her chest. The wound was easy to see—a jagged tear across her neck. Her blouse was dyed red.

“Oh,” said Felix. “Oh. What happened?”

The girl said nothing.

“What are you doing here? What are you doing in here?”

But still she didn’t respond.

“
Aaniin dana enikamigak?
”

The girl shrugged. She wouldn’t look at him and she wouldn’t look at the girl at her feet. When her feet drifted close to the other girl’s matted hair, she jerked them back as if the body of the other girl were some deadly deep pool, some drowning place.

“Awenen wiin?”
asked Felix.
“Awenen?”

The girl shook her head.

“Nakwetawishin. Nakwetawishin bina.”

The girl spoke. In the coming weeks, she would answer no questions. She would make no account of herself, claim no place, ask for
nothing. Not food. Not fresh clothing. Nothing. By the time she did speak, it was clear she wasn’t going to leave the Pines, and no one was going to ask her to. But there, in the woods, afraid to fall into the blood at her feet, she said in English:

“My sister.”

“Hmmm,” said Felix. “Hmmm.” Nothing else came to him and he thought, for a moment, how stupid it must sound to the white people behind him; just like the Indians in the books they read. “Hmmm. Ugh.”

He reached out and turned the head of the one on the ground. Her head lolled. The buckshot must have broken her neck. The other girl scooted farther back in the leaves, trying to get away from the blood. She was shaking.

“Felix!” shouted Frankie. “Hey, Felix! Drag him out. We all want to see the bastard.”

No one else said anything, and then Felix heard Frankie say something low to Ernie and he heard Ernie scoff noncommittally.

“You’re coming with me,” Felix said to the girl.

She looked at him blankly.

“Giga-bi-wijiw. Wiijiiwishin goda. Akawe iidog. Akawe.”

“Gaawiin,”
she said softly.
“Gaawiin ganage giga-wiijiiwisinoon dana.”
She spoke with a lilt Felix associated with Indians much farther to the north.

He grabbed her wrist. She kicked him in the face. “Sonofabitch. You damn sonofabitch. Let go.”

But he didn’t. He had one hand around her wrist, and she reared back and kicked him again. He turned his cheek. Then he took her by the ankle and dragged her out of the deadfall as one would drag a dead deer, the girl screaming in English and Indian and lashing out with her free foot.

“What the hell?” cried Frankie. “What the hell is that?”

Ernie said, “Don’t you know what a girl looks like? Oh? I guess not. I guess—”

“You. Shut up,” said Felix.

“Can’t you tell a girl from a boy? Can’t you—” Felix took two steps and with his free hand open, he struck Ernie across the face. Ernie rocked back on his heels. He looked at each of them in surprise. No words came, but his cheeks flooded with color and his eyes teared.

“You,” Felix said to Billy, “go over there and wait.”

Billy nodded at the girl, still struggling in Felix’s grip. “She hurt?”

“Not this one. No.”

“Sonofabitch,” she cried. “Damn sonofabitch. Let go, I said. I said let go!”

“In there,” said Felix, with a nod of his chin. “Back there.”

“What the hell was she doing back there?” asked Frankie. “She’s got no business back there.”

“You shut up, too,” said Felix. “Stay with me, Frankie. Understand?”

Frankie looked back into the brush where the other girl lay and took a step in that direction.

“Boy!” shouted Felix. “Boy, you come with me. And you,” to Ernie. “And you, too,” he said to David. He took the girl and hauled her to her feet, then picked her up and carried her back to the Pines. Gradually she stopped struggling, and by the time Felix cleared the windrow and Emma came running and behind her Jonathan in just his undershorts, she was quiet, her head against his shoulder. Then Billy and David and Ernie emerged from the woods, and last of all came Frankie.

“What happened?” asked Jonathan, his life wild in his eyes. “What happened?”

“Accident,” said Felix. “There was an accident.”

Frankie wouldn’t look at anyone.

“What kind of accident?”

“I shot. I shot her,” said Billy quietly.

Felix turned and looked hard at Billy. Billy kept his eyes level and stared back at Felix for one, two seconds, before looking at Frankie and then away, over the trees.

“This one?” asked Jonathan.

“No,” said Felix. “The other one. Another one. This one is okay.”

He handed her to Jonathan. She had a few scratches from the struggle, but that was it. All the blood on her belonged to the other one.

“The other one? What other one? Who is this? What other one?”

“Her sister,” said Felix. “Her sister.”

“You shot her, Billy?” asked Emma, her hands on her cheeks in surprise and shock. “Oh, Billy. Oh, how could that happen?”

“I don’t know, ma’am,” said Billy. “I don’t know.”

And then Felix turned and disappeared into the woods. He moved very quickly and soon he was gone, and all sound and trace of him was gone, too.

*   *   *

F
rankie wouldn’t leave his room the next day. Billy came but wasn’t fit for chores. He avoided Emma and Ernie and even Felix. Search parties still formed across the way at the camp and trolled the shoreline and walked the swamps. But no one at the Pines was all that interested in helping anymore, so, not having anything else to do, Felix took the metal garden rake and at last began to clear out the weeds and trash and dead fish from under the dock. It was something to do while they held their breath.

He expected to find whitefish or red horse or tullibee, which often died off in late summer, starved for oxygen. But as he reached under the dock he snagged something much larger. When he pulled
hard on the rake, the corpse floated out. The German had tried to swim the river. Most likely he had hoped to steal one of the rowboats, or even the Chris-Craft. But he didn’t make it. His body was wedged halfway inside one of the cribs. It had been in the water for three days and it was bloated and rotten in the heat. The tines of the rake had punctured the skin on the German’s back. Leeches clung to the meat of his belly and face. Everyone gathered around and gazed mutely at the body, except for Prudence, who wouldn’t leave the maid’s room, and Frankie, who wouldn’t leave his bed.

If only they had known. There would have been no need for the Winchester. No need at all.

Prudence told them nothing more, beyond her name. Not where she’d come from or what school she and her sister ran from, or even her sister’s name. None of Emma’s inquiries produced any information, nor did the investigation that the sheriff conducted. A couple of Indian runaways and a hunting accident, and it was all very sad. They stored the body in the icehouse for a few days while the sheriff did his work, and then they laid it in the ground. Frankie was bed-bound, and Billy was nowhere to be found. Not even Prudence came. She stayed in the big house, staring out the window, as Felix put the body of her sister in the wheelbarrow (there was no other way to do it alone) and wheeled her up the hill and buried her beneath a pine. Emma and Jonathan came and stood silently as they watched the Indians bury another Indian. For once neither had anything to say.

Within a week of Prudence’s bloody arrival and the discovery of the German under the dock, everyone had left. Jonathan and Frankie went back to Chicago, and Emma followed them. Ernie and David stayed a little while longer, drinking together in Ernie’s cabin, and then they left, too. All the food that had been purchased and prepared for the celebration was left to rot. Felix piled it in the corner of the garden and at night the raccoons and skunks gathered there to
feast. That fall Billy came by to see Felix a few times, but it wasn’t the same. They didn’t say much to each other. And then Billy got married to Stella around Thanksgiving. He’d enlisted shortly thereafter and was gone by Christmas.

*   *   *

O
ne more look out the window. Nothing moved on the ice. Plenty moved below. Maybe tomorrow Felix would cut a hole and, with a blanket over his shoulders and another under his body, he’d decoy for muskie. He had a few of the decoys, painted wooden minnows with metal fins. And he could use one of the sucker spears. If only he had watched his father more closely. He remembered that he’d carved his lures out of poplar and scraped them until the wood glowed white and then wrapped beaver fat around the bit of wood, but he hadn’t watched closely enough. He remembered, though, that they’d set lines in the evening and by morning, northern or muskie, big enough to feed the whole family, would be dead on the line, the stick caught in their jaws. And if no fish came, his father sometimes took a bit of root from his pouch and, with his back turned, did something to their sets. It was some kind of medicine. He’d asked about it and his father had said,
“Migizi-mashkiki,”
and that was all. He’d hidden his medicine from his son, that’s how secret it was. Felix wished he had it now. He wished he knew what his father had known, that he had some power to bring the big fish in.

The camp across the mouth of the river was dark. The lights went off at ten. Felix took another look at the items on the table, sent all the way from England. He leaned over and picked up the envelope addressed to Billy. It was heavy. A long letter. Billy was in the infantry, somewhere in France. Why would Frankie send it here?

The kerosene lantern on the table guttered. Felix sat down and took the letter between his hands, and then he took his pocketknife
and sliced it open. “Dearest,” it began. He read slowly, mouthing the words.