River's Edge (32 page)

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Authors: Marie Bostwick

BOOK: River's Edge
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I wanted to find a way to help support the family, yes, but more importantly, I wanted to find a way to bring Junior back to life. Surely, getting back into the fields, with the warmth of sun on his back and the smell of newly turned earth in his nostrils, would strengthen his unused muscles and heal the pain in his soul. I turned to give him a grateful, encouraging smile, but when I did, his eyes were cold. and the sarcastic edge had returned to his voice.
“I don't think we're going to have to worry about building a shed, because I don't think we've got a chance in the world of getting a crop! You have no idea what you'd be getting yourself into. Growing tobacco isn't like growing carrots in your victory garden,” he snorted. “It's hard work. It's a man's work, Elise, not a girl's.”
“First off, I'm not a girl!” I spat. “And I know all about growing tobacco. I've helped Mr. Scholler, and Mr. Jorgenson said I was the best worker on the place.”
“He fired you!” Junior shouted.
Mama and Cookie gasped, and the twins looked down at their hands. I could feel angry tears at the back of my eyelids, but I blinked them back.
Junior spread his hands wide, exasperation dripping from his fingertips. “Look! I'm sorry, but it's true. It wasn't your fault, but Mr. Jorgenson fired you! You never even finished the season. You don't know anything about preparing the fields, or fertilizer, how to decide when to harvest, how to cure it. Elise, what you don't know about growing tobacco would fill a book!” The volume increased with each word, and by the time he finished he was shouting.
I was on my feet, shouting right back at him. “Maybe I don't! Maybe I'll fail! But at least I'm willing to take a chance and try. Maybe I don't know enough to bring in a decent crop, but you do! If you'd only get up out of your chair and quit feeling so damned sorry for yourself and help, maybe we'd have a chance!”
“Help you?” He screamed the question and shoved his arms against the table, pushing himself to a standing position, the veins in his neck throbbing with effort and anguish. The chair he'd been sitting in fell clattering onto the floor and he clutched the table lip for balance. “How am I to help you? Tell me how! I can't even walk across this room without a crutch. In the hospital I couldn't even relieve myself without help. I can't drive a car or hoe a field or do a decent day's work. I am useless!” He let out a tormented, trapped-animal cry of frustration and pounded his fist against the table like he wanted it to split in two.
“I can't even climb the stairs anymore, so I have to sleep in Papa's old study—surrounded by memories of him. The room still smells like him! Do you know that? When I was a little boy people used to come up and pat me on the head and say that if I was lucky I'd grow up to be half the man my father was. And I knew they were right. I admired him so much!” He was crying now, the tears streaming down his face, rivers of agony. “But I wasn't lucky. That's God's big joke on me, isn't it! Instead of making me half the man my father was, He just made me half a man.”
His eyes screwed shut and his shoulders jerked like he was wincing from the pain of a hidden wound. His chest heaved as he swallowed all the air in the room and exhaled a damning self-indictment. “I go to sleep at night with the smell of him still in my nose, choking on the scent of the man I loved and helped kill!”
Junior turned, seeking escape, and kicked aside the fallen chair with his good leg, nearly falling himself in the attempt. He stumbled over to where his cane was propped on the wall and grabbed it, pounding it against the floor as he limped to Papa's old study, seeking refuge in the room he'd papered with his own accusations.
The kitchen was dead silent. Junior's pain stunned us. Mama whispered, “Oh, dear Lord,” as she closed her eyes in prayer.
“Mama?”
Mama's eyes opened. “Curt! What are you doing up? You should be asleep.” Curt stood leaning against the door frame, looking small and frightened in his pajamas.
“The noise woke me up. Is Junior all right? Is there anything I can do to help him?”
“You can pray, Curt. We can pray together.”
“But, shouldn't someone talk to him?” Curt asked.
Mama looked a question at me.
“Yes,” I answered. “Someone should go talk to him.”
 
I opened the door a crack, hoping for an invitation to enter, but when none came I pushed the door wide and stepped inside anyway.
“You're right,” I said to Junior's back. “It still smells like him.”
He didn't respond, just stood leaning on his cane, looking out the window at empty fields. I waited for him to say something, but he just stood there. Silence divided us like a thick veil. I decided to take a chance, push through the barrier, ask the question that had been in my mind since his first day home, when he'd fended off my embrace and pushed me away.
“Junior. Do you want the ring back?”
“Yes.”
One word only, but he cut me with it. I nodded to myself. Yes. I'd known all along. I took the ring from my finger. It slid off so easily, so much more easily than I'd imagined it would. Surprising. I laid it on the nightstand next to Junior's bed, in the spot where Papa's desk used to stand.
I turned to leave, but as I did, the other question slipped unbidden from my lips, the other question whose answer I was sure I knew, but whose answer I had to hear for myself. Just as the ring had come off more easily than I'd imagined, surely knowing the truth could not be more painful than the speculation.
“Why do you want it back?”
“I told you.” He took a deep breath and let his head fall forward, resting on the windowpane, his back still to me. “I'm useless. I have nothing to offer you.”
“What?” I didn't understand. “What are you talking about?”
He pivoted toward me, holding onto the window sash for support. “What do you mean, what am I talking about? You heard what I said in the kitchen. I can't marry you or anyone else. I can't take care of you!” His voice lifted in frustration, angry with me for forcing him to say it out loud.
His answer was simultaneously confounding and offending. “Well, that's a relief, because I don't want to be taken care of!” I retorted. “I can't believe you! Is that your reason, honestly? Is that the reason you're willing to throw away everything we had together, everything we might still have? For your pride?” I was incredulous.
He closed his eyes and raised his hand up like a cop stopping traffic. He looked tired. “Elise, you don't understand. A man has certain responsibilities and obligations. He has to fulfill them or he can't ever really be a man.”
“So fulfill them!”
“How? Don't you have ears? Listen to what I'm trying to tell you. Open your eyes! Look at me!” He spread out his arms. “I'm a cripple! I'll never be able to do a decent day's work in my life. In the hospital they gave me occupational training. You know what they taught me? Caning chairs! Same thing they taught the blind guys.” He laughed cynically.
“It's a nice hobby, Elise, but you can't support a family by caning chairs. Listen to me,” he spoke slowly, spacing out his words to be certain I heard him. “Try to understand. I love you, but I can't take care of you.”
I heard him. I heard the part that mattered. He loved me. That was all that mattered. I walked toward him, determined to make him understand, to touch him even though his wounds were still tender. We had to start somewhere. I moved in close to him, stretched out one finger, just one, and touched his face, traced a line from the base of his ear along the line of his clenched jaw.
“Listen to me,” I said softly. “You are stubborn, Junior, and you're proud, and you're all the man I want. You're the only man I've ever wanted or ever will want—every bit as good a man as your father ever was. I know, because I loved him, too, like you did. But I know a thing about him that you don't.”
I laid my whole hand on his cheek, leaned in closer, whispered urgently into his ear. “Listen! Papa took his responsibilities as a man seriously, yes. But he didn't take care of Mama. They took care of each other. That's what made their love so special. They each brought a piece of themselves to their union and fused the two parts into a whole, into something much better and stronger than they had been separately. They took care of each other! We could do that, Junior. We could be so much better together than we are apart.”
I rose up on my toes to reach his cheek, but he collapsed onto me before I could kiss him. He leaned his weight onto mine, his arms wrapped around my shoulders for support, as if hanging on to a tree in a buffeting wind.
He bent his head down into my shoulder, his denials muffled in the fabric of my blouse. “No, Elise. It wouldn't work. You don't know. You don't know who I am. You don't know what I did.”
My heart ached for him because I did know. I knew just what he'd done. “You let Papa die,” I whispered. “That's what you think, isn't it?”
He nodded. I could feel his head rub against my shoulder, “I was supposed to protect him! It was my job to carry the weapon for him, to keep him safe, but I couldn't do it!” His tears fell hot and accusing on my shirtwaist as he told the story, letting loose all the demons that tortured him.
“The fighting was heavy that day,” he remembered. “We were driving through this little village that we'd just captured. We were on our way to the hospital so Papa could visit the guys who'd been wounded. The burial squads hadn't even been through yet, and there were still bodies lying around. I was driving the jeep. Papa said ‘Stop! There's something moving over there!'
“He jumped out before I could come to a full stop. I told him to give me a chance to scout around, make sure it was safe, but he didn't listen. Just jumped out of the jeep and ran over to the ditch. Papa was right. There was a guy lying there, hurt real bad, blood everywhere, barely breathing. He had a St. Christopher medal around his neck. Papa said, ‘He's Catholic. Run back to the jeep and get my field kit. I've got to perform last rites.'
“I was halfway to the jeep and I heard a shot. I yelled for Papa to hit the dirt and he did. I crouched behind the jeep. Another shot rang out, and I spotted the sniper in an upstairs window of a house. I got off three shots, but missed on the first two. He threw the grenade before I killed him. I don't remember it hurting, just that I was bleeding and my leg wouldn't work. I crawled over to Papa. I said, ‘It's all right now, Papa. You can get up. I got him.' But Papa didn't move. There was blood everywhere. The bullet hit him in the back of his head. Just below where his helmet ended. He was dead.
“It was my fault,” he sobbed. “I tried to take care of him, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it.” He crumpled under the weight of his own accusation, falling onto my shoulder, spent and exhausted.
I put my arms around him and led him to the bed, lay down next to him, and murmured forgiveness into his hair. “It wasn't your fault, Junior. It just happened. It wasn't your fault. You did the best you could. You tried. That is all that matters. Don't give up now. You have to try. We've got to try.”
Chapter 22
“
T
hese new controls work great!” I yelled.
“What?” Junior said over the roar of the tractor engine. “Can't hear you!”
“I said the new controls work great!”
Junior frowned and shook his head. He shifted into a lower gear, brought the tractor to a stop near the shed and turned off the motor. “Now. What did you say?”
I smiled and jumped down from the fender that served as a passenger seat. “I said that the new hand controls work great!”
“Oh,” Junior replied and grinned. “Yeah, they do work pretty slick. The twins had a great idea. All these years I thought Mama had given birth to a matched set of juvenile delinquents, and it turns out they were just a couple of inventors disguised as juvenile delinquents.”
“They turned out to be pretty good workers, too,” I commented, looking around at the rows and rows of tall, healthy broadleaf. We hadn't planted the full fifteen acres I'd planned. Junior had been right—fifteen would have been too much for a first crop on unbroken soil, but the ten we had planted were looking good so far.
“We couldn't have done it without them,” I continued. “Or without you. You're a pretty fair hand with that tractor.” I smiled, and Junior reached for me, drew me close, and we kissed, leaning into one another for both strength and support, our caresses slow and savored because we knew this summer and the next and the next, we would always be together. I rested my head on Junior's shoulder and felt a flood of pure contentment that I never knew existed a year before but that was now as familiar as breathing.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he answered and draped his arm over my shoulder. His eyes scanned the landscape, “Look at this!” he smiled in wonder and swept his arm across the vista of fields laid out green and growing before us. “I would never have imagined this! Without you, I wouldn't ever have tried. I'd still be sitting in that rocker feeling sorry for myself.”
“We make a good team,” I concurred.
“We do. Looks like our teamwork is going to pay off in a few weeks. Like Mr. Scholler always said, ‘God willing and the creek don't rise, we ought to have a pretty good crop.' ”
I smiled inwardly, thinking of kindly Mr. Scholler and the way his face had lit up as he shouted, “Girlie!” whenever he saw me coming. “It's so hard to believe he's really gone,” I said. “It just seems strange to look at his house across the field and know that it's empty. Mr. Scholler's dead, and Mrs. Scholler's moved to Virginia to live with her sister.”
“I know,” Junior said. “He was a good man, but he was seventy-five. He lived a good, long, life and he died just the way he would have wanted to, tuning up the tractor and getting ready for planting—it's the only respectable way for a farmer to die.” Junior bit his lip thoughtfully, missing the old man. “I was kind of surprised that Mrs. Scholler moved away, and so quickly, too, but I guess I can't blame her. She'll be less lonely living with her sister, and the weather in Virginia is bound to be better for her arthritis.”
“Well,” I said, patting the metal hood of the tractor like it was a horse's neck, “it was awfully nice of her to let us use all the equipment and the drying sheds until they find a buyer for the farm. I don't know what we would have done otherwise.”
Junior nodded and said reflectively, his eyes moving over the horizon, taking in the abundance of green. “Yes. I wouldn't ever have thought it would have worked out. I guess God has reasons for everything.”
“I guess so.”
“Now we just have to hope nobody buys the place before we get the tobacco harvested, hung, and cured, but I think we're in the clear. Nobody will be looking to buy a tobacco farm at the end of the season. It probably won't sell until next spring. I just hope the new owners are as nice as the Schollers,” he mused.
I reassured him. “I'm sure they will be.”
Junior smiled at me and twisted around in the tractor seat, lifting his wooden leg off the edge. He braced one arm against the fender and the other on the edge of the metal seat, preparing to climb down.
“Want some help?” I inquired, offering an arm.
“Nope. I've been practicing—think I got it now. But better stand by to catch me in case I fall.”
Always,
I thought to myself,
and you'll do the same for me.
Junior grunted with effort, lifting his torso with his powerful arms and sliding down to plant his good leg on the special step Chuck had welded onto the tractor's frame. He paused for a moment to steady himself, then hopped down to the ground. I noticed a few beads of perspiration on his brow, but that was all right. He was getting stronger every day; it would get easier, and even if it didn't, I knew he would never give up again.
I could smell Cookie's fried chicken all the way across the yard. We ambled toward the house with our arms draped around each other. I leaned my head against Junior's broad shoulder as we walked and silently composed a little prayer of thanks to God for driving all the demons from our lives and for the utter contentment of that moment. Junior leaned down and kissed the top of my head just as I heard Cookie shouting my name.
She ran out of the house, waving a piece of paper over her head like a flag and yelling, “Elise! Elise!”
I looked up at Junior. He face split into a grin, and he said what we were both thinking. “The war is over! It's V-J Day!”
We hurried toward Cookie as she ran up to us panting with excitement. “Elise! It's a telegram—and it's from Germany!”
The meaning of her words didn't quite register in my mind. Cookie held the paper out to me and I took it.
AUGUST 7, 1945
 
DAUGHTER:
 
AM ALIVE AND WELL. ARRIVING NEW YORK AUGUST 20 ON SS NORWAY. PLEASE MEET.
 
YOUR LOVING FATHER
HERMAN BRAUN
I thought I didn't remember what he looked like, but when he walked into the waiting room at the immigration station, through the same doors I had passed through a lifetime ago, I recognized him at once. He was wearing a suit and tie instead of a uniform and was much, much thinner, but the square shoulders, the ramrod-straight back, and the hair—grayer, but as close-trimmed as ever—told me immediately that, oh, yes, it was Father. I would have known him anywhere. He had not changed. I had known he never could.
I watched him approach but didn't move, wondering if he would be able to pick my face out from the crowd of waiting relatives. His eyes darted back and forth across the room, searching for his daughter, a quiet little girl with long brown braids, solemn dark eyes, and dressed in a blue woolen skirt and a cloak of loneliness and loss. He looked and looked for her, but she was gone, so I stepped forward instead.
“Father.”
His head turned toward the sound of my voice, and his eyes narrowed a bit, as if trying to put me in focus. Then his face froze and his mouth dropped open just a little, like someone seeing a ghost. “Lale?” he breathed the question, holding himself very still.
I didn't know what to say.
He stared at me a long moment. “No,” he corrected himself. “It is you. Elise.” When I didn't answer, he asked, “It is you, isn't it?”
“Hello, Father.” I put out my hand, and he seized it with both of his like a drowning man clutching a rope.
“Elise!” he cried over and over again. He threw his arms around me and began weeping uncontrollably. “My daughter! So beautiful! Safe. Oh yes, thank God! You are safe!”
I stood stiff as he embraced me and cried over me. My mind was blank, immobile and unable to reason, as disbelieving as Father had been just a moment before. Sobs racked his body. Without willing them to do so, my arms lifted to respond. I folded myself around him, my stranger-Father, whom I knew everything and nothing about. As he did me.
Yes, Daddy. It's me. It's your Elise.

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