The Mysteries of Soldiers Grove (3 page)

“You know, Clifford Brown was killed in snow like this,” I tell him. “He was a great jazz trumpeter, made all kinds of innovations. He was helping some motorist who got stuck in a drift, and another car going too fast started sliding and wasted him.”

Jazz. That was the music I listened to when I was young—even now. I have stacks of 78s, 45s, tapes and CDs going way back. I always favored the music, felt like it saved my life sometimes because it was great enough to blow my blues away.

But I don’t think it’s going to save my life now. Nothing is. This guy doesn’t listen to any jazz. I can tell. He doesn’t listen to anything. He unloosens his balaclava and folds the flaps back from over his mouth. He’s got a greasy black beard, and a mouth like an open cut. “Why don’t you shut your fuckin’ trap?” he says. I can tell he’s a man who doesn’t care where he goes or what he does, so long as he’s getting away. He’s not even going to Peoria. But he’s got me in his truck now.

There are no other cars on the road. Decent, sensible folks stay home on nights like this. You can’t even see the lights of Readstown through the blizzard. For a moment the truck starts wavering and sliding almost sideways, but he takes his foot off the gas, manages to straighten the vehicle out of its slide, and slows down only a little. You can tell he’s driven desperately in snow before. He doesn’t care.

I’ve got to do something—so I start talking again, “One time Jesse James and his brother, Frank, were up north raising hell in Minnesota.” The guy twists in his seat and I don’t know if he’s going to hit me or shoot me. To make things worse, now my groin is aching. I forgot to use the men’s room in Burkhum’s before I left. I have to pee. I mean I
really
have to pee.

But I keep talking. “Jesse and Frank are taking what they can get. They go into the bank in a little town, pull guns, and line all the people up against a wall. Some women have fainted and little kids are crying. The bank clerk is moving too slow and Jesse knows he is stalling, so he tells Frank to shoot the guy in the foot just to show they mean business. Frank blows off the guy’s big toe right through his shoe. He’s howling on the floor, but Jessie and Frank haul him up bleeding and make him open the safe.”

I can tell in the darkness that the balaclava guy is listening. It’s his kind of story. So I start to give it a little twist.

“There’s an old man amongst the hostages, and he’s not in good shape. He’s gasping and clutching his chest like he’s going to drop from a heart attack. Jesse sees this and he feels bad. He’s partial to old guys because his father’d been good to him when he was a boy.”

This is whole cloth, I admit—but I am out here zipping through cold darkness with this balaclava guy and his monster gun, and I’m spinning a story as fast as I can think it up. Maybe it will help me.

“Jesse has some mercy,” I go on. “He takes the old guy by his arm and helps him to the door and—to the amazement of the people in the bank—he lets him go. Then the James boys make about finishing their business, scooping up bloody bundles of cash and running for their horses. But some of those town folks in the bank were cheering Jesse and Frank as they rode away.”

This last is too much of a spin. “Get off it, you old shithead!” Balaclava snarls.

“I’ve got to pee,” I say.

“What are you sayin’ to me? Tough shit!”

“I’m going to do it in my pants!” I warn urgently.

“Not my problem.”

“It’ll get all over your upholstery.”

We haven’t passed another car yet, and Balaclava is whizzing down the middle of the road. “We’re the only two people in the whole county crazy enough to be out on a night like tonight,” I say. “Except the sheriff. I know him. He’ll be out watching for anyone speeding in this weather. By now he knows somebody’s skipped paying at the Mobil.”

Balaclava thinks about this for a minute, and looks into his rearview mirror. Then he says, “Bite it off, old man!” He still has his huge gun on his lap.

“I’ve got to pee!” I try to keep quiet, but I feel it beginning to seep into my long johns.

“What is this? Grade school?” Balaclava is really irritated.

“If you shoot me, I’ll just bleed all over your upholstery, too.”

Balaclava abruptly starts pumping his brakes and the car is slowing down, wavering and slipping as he eases it toward the side of the highway almost sliding off into the berm.

Cyril
, I say to myself,
this is it. Now you’ve done it. You’ve recited your last brief life.
But I give it one last best shot—I say to Balaclava as the storm batters around us, “You remember Neil Armstrong, the first moon walker? He was born in a little town in Ohio, and they made him commander of the first moon mission, even though he was a civilian. It was 1969. When he stepped out of the Apollo onto the moon he said some famous stuff about taking one small step for man, a giant leap for mankind, but when he wrote a book about it later, he claimed he was really thinking—just at that very moment when he first put his foot down in the white moon dust—about his old father in a care home back in Ohio. He was recalling how the old man was always gentle to everyone and everything. He wanted to remember this so that if he came across any moon creatures, he’d know to be kind to them.”

This
was the most whole cloth I’d ever spun. It didn’t matter. “Jesus Christ, old man!” Balaclava snaps. “
You
are from the moon.” I thought he was going to laugh, but he says, “How do you shovel anything that deep?” He picks up his considerable gun and points it at me.

I’m thinking that I’m done.

“Give me your fucking wallet and get out of my truck before you start pissing on my seat.”

I fall to my hands and knees in the snow when I get out of his truck. Balaclava doesn’t shoot me. I struggle up and watch his taillights disappear in the swirl. The snow is driving hard and horizontal, and the wind is slicing. I pull my stocking cap way down to my eyes and over my ears. The frigid whiteness is up to my calves and over my boot tops. It is coming into my wrists between my sleeves and gloves. It’s ten miles between Soldiers Grove and Readstown and I figure I’m about halfway. Out here the farms are so far in off the road you can’t even see their lights.

My wet underpants and long johns start freezing to my groin, my scarf is back on a stool in Burkhum’s Tap, so the wind runs its cold fingers down my neck. Cyril, I say to myself, get your butt moving. It’s only five miles. I start shuffling back in the direction of Soldiers Grove, toward my warm, little room in the home.

Who do I start with? George Mikan? Heinrich Kühn? The Empress Marie Louise? Bingo Binks? Catherine of Valois? Ji Chang? Siegfried Sassoon? Dodo Marmarosa, General Alexis Kaledin? Nelly Sachs? Gorgeous George? Ségolène Royal? Thomas à Kempis? Colley Cibber? Suetonius? Édouard Vuillard? Heinrich Heine? Barbara Jordan?

Elisha Kent Kane! The guy who walked out of the snow. That’s it. That’s the guy. Cyril, you’re on your way to Greenland. It’s going to take awhile.

C
HAPTER
2

Louise

T
his late-autumn chill—what happened to summer? I remember only shuffling through dog-day heat in a stupor, through hallways from one clinic to another, sitting by a window in my house sweating with a lap rug over my aching knees in August, watching a neighbor take hay from our fields. I recall ingesting many medicines, falling down on several occasions, and after a spell on the floor alone, struggling up alone to tend my bruises. That was summer.

When neighbors express concern I say, “Oh, I’m all right, I’m just taking my turn,” and put on a plucky smile. I’ve worn many masks in my life, absorbed many blows and finally, losing Heath, my husband, knocked me permanently askew. Now growing old is a final cudgeling. At times I feel resentful about this last tussle, but then I suppose everyone feels a bit cheated when the end comes into sight.

Just awake from a nap and feeling chilled from the snowy weather outside, I snug my shawl around my shoulders. Firewood is stacked outside the door in the hutch Heath made for us, but I am not yet sufficiently confident of my strength to struggle up and make it to the door to bring in an armful.

H
EATH
. I think of the first time I saw him in his American army uniform more than sixty years ago, bright as a yearling deer, believing he could do everything. He’d won my attention, then my heart—and that was not an easy thing to do. Many had tried to turn my head, but I’d been the star student at the
académie
and had my mind set on other things besides men.

The world war fighting had swept back and forth through our village three times and, in its course, destroyed half my family—I’d lost my father and a sister. It didn’t seem that grief would ever end. But France was recovering now, things were going uphill again, and I had things to do. I was young, ambitious, and poised to rise above my losses—like young Heath, I assumed I was deathless and that all things were possible. I wanted to paint, write poems, play the piano, study in Paris, meet artists and interesting people, find my own essence, and try new things. I was ready to
live
my life.

But Heath, the stunning liberator, the wholehearted, blond American, surprised me—he would become so buoyant when he described the beauty of his Wisconsin farm to me, making it sound like a verdant park. “How couldn’t we be happy together in those driftless hills? The two of us,” he would ask as he held me close. “We must marry and you will come with me. We’ll be like Adam and Eve in the garden,” he said.

My mother, who called Heath
le garçon d’or
, the golden boy, was torn—not certain at all that she wanted to have her only remaining daughter marry and go away to America. But Heath was quite a
prix
. My mother had been permanently shaken by the war and loss of her husband and a daughter. There was little left of what we owned and loved. She wanted good things for her remaining child. America was good. The war had not touched there. Money and power were there.

My mother had many brothers and an unmarried sister she could live with in France to help stave off her loneliness. We talked and talked; some days she urged me to go with Heath, other days she threatened to lock me in my room. But travel was cheap after the war. We decided that, if I went with Heath, I could come home to France often for visits. Perhaps my mother could even come to America for stays. We would write often to each other. Heath was a “man of property,” he was engaging, he was strong and beautiful, he had a clear mind, he was in love with me, wanted to marry me, he seemed a gentle person—and he was an American.

With young Heath holding me in his strong arms, I began to believe that perhaps I
could
do the things I wanted to do in the beautiful countryside of Wisconsin. I became so confused and overwhelmed by his enthusiasm and declarations of love that sometimes I would suddenly turn and flee from him. Heath had the good sense not to pursue me when I did this. He knew enough to give me some space and time.

When I saw him again vigorously striding down the street toward me, I’d think to run away from him once more, so not to be confused. But I did not run. Heath would be smiling, full of enthusiasm and more ideas—and when he talked and looked off into the distance, his eyes were Scandinavian blue like I imagined Wisconsin skies must be.

We tried to make plans. When he described his farm and drew some maps, it seemed possible to me that together we could make the place into a sort of park. We would border our acres of grass and grain with beds of flowers. I would create sculptures to place on the lawns. There would be green, well-tended paths through our woodlands. We would have many children to frolic on our lawns. I imagined we would host
soirees
for rustic artists and writers. Heath would buy me a piano, and our family would sing together—Berlioz and Gershwin songs—we would tell stories together and gaze out at the grandeur of the seasons on our small estate.

A
S
I look out now across the fields toward our woods I see the first challenge of the impending winter, snowflakes flurrying, skittering just outside my window on the deck that Heath had built many years ago. Still I do not feel strong enough to rise from my chair and bring in some firewood.