Charity (12 page)

Will knew the man meant well, but he found his manner embarrassing. He wanted a drink. The minister disappeared to don his pastoral robes for the service.

Frederick was the first to break from the flock of baffled Kaisers and step forward. He was the only brother tall enough to see eye to eye with Will. They shook hands. “Glad you’re out. They shouldn’t have arrested you in the first place. I guess Dennis didn’t know what else to do.”

Everyone nodded more or less in agreement and the tension eased. Frederick held his arm out for Gertrude who ignored Lena and just patted Will’s arm mutely as she passed. Walter, the next to move, bleated a solemnity, and Mary smiled rather furtively at Lena as she followed her husband out. Oscar, grumbling his greeting in passing, was out the door with Nyla close behind him, leaving only Julia, who took Will’s hand and then Lena’s in turn quite warmly. “How are you, Dear?”

“I’m fine now, Julia. Thank you.”

Julia nodded and as she patted the top of Lena’s hand, Lena felt the wad of string that held the opal ring in place.

The piano had already begun to sound. Mrs. Happy, wisps of her gray hair escaping in all directions from the roll she carefully tucked around her head every day, pounded out the opening chords of the Lutheran’s battle hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” A sound wave broke through the church as pews and bodies creaked and throats cleared; the congregation stood and began to sing.

Six men bore the casket to the front of the church. Right behind it, Frederick, the only single son, escorted Gertrude at the head of the family. Then, following two by two, were Walter and Mary, Oscar and Nyla, Will and Lena. Julia and Tori brought up the rear. The family turned left into the two front pews. The pall bearers lowered the casket onto a wood platform at the foot of the altar steps.

A decent number had turned out to pay final respects to Frederick William Kaiser—mostly older folks who had known him a long time—people whose first wells he had sunk in the early homesteading days. Younger people, friends and acquaintances of the sons, were divided about whether to show up at the funeral. Lena suspected most of them came out of curiosity. The church was nearly full.

The service was simple and strangely empty of emotion. Will was the only one who appeared moved by his father’s death. Very early in the service he covered his face with one hand and Lena wondered if he was going to break down, but he did not. He carried himself with dignity, and for once she was proud of him.

The thoughts of the congregation rose to mingle in the rafters with the hymns, liturgy, prayers, and the scent of burning candles—surmises about who was responsible for the body of the old man lying, somewhat prematurely, in that wooden box; the belief that Will could not be guilty; the conviction that it must have been some stranger passing through—someone who had gotten off the train, found the empty barn to hide out in and rest. Maybe tried to get some money off Pa Kaiser, when he, perhaps, heard a noise and went to check the barn. There was a struggle, perhaps. The whole thing could have been an accident, but the fellow—the stranger—had got scared and run, took the next train out. Folks accepted the fact that they might never know for sure and took comfort in the conclusion that it could not be one of their number.

Will himself had come to the same conclusion. At first he had blamed himself for being so drunk he could not prevent the killing. But soon enough he realized that, had he not been drunk, he would not have been in the barn in the first place, and therefore, could still not have prevented it. Will was accustomed to sleeping off his drunks in there. Neither Lena, nor any of his brothers knew that. Getting to the barn before he passed out somewhere else saved him a night in jail. Will was not a man for introspection, and once that last idea had formed, he felt simple grief, unmixed with regret.

Lena maintained her composure until Magda Nilsen stood up to sing “The Old Rugged Cross,” a hymn that always made Lena cry. Except today. Magda’s throbbing soprano filled the church solemnly with the opening lines:

On a hill far away

Stands an Old Rugged Cross

The emblem of suffering and shame.

But as she launched into the next stanza:

How I love that old Cross

Where the dearest and best

For the sake of lost sinners was slain.

Her exaggerated vibrato supported by an overlarge bosom that heaved and rolled with religious fervor under dangerously taut gray silk, began to massage each word, as if she had been there, only yesterday, at the feet of her bleeding Lord. By the time she reached the first chorus:

And I’ll cling to the Old Rugged Cross

Till at last my life I lay down.

I will cherish the Old Rugged Cross

And exchange it someday for a crown.

Magda was perspiring, her chubby hand beat emotional time in the air, and Lena had the giggles.

Lena, a devout Christian, was smothering herself in her hankie. Will knew very well that his wife was not choking on grief. He put his arm around her and pulled her head against his chest, and they both, somehow, got through three verses, three choruses and a key change into the fifth chorus finale, when Magda, finally spent, puffing, and thoroughly satisfied, sat down.

Pastor Erickson, furiously polishing his glasses, stepped up to the pulpit for the benediction. He hooked the wires carefully over his ears and kept his head down for just a moment before he raised his head and his hand:
“
The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:”

Lena wiped her eyes and controlled herself. She liked the benediction. She liked the minister’s hand raised in blessing over the congregation. She bowed her head, angry with Magda and whomever it was who had asked her to sing.
Probably Nyla. She wouldn’t know any better, the dumb cluck.

“The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.”

On cue, Mrs. Happy, all stops pulled, hit the chords of the closing hymn. The congregation rose and began to sing, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.” The pall bearers moved to the front and hoisted the coffin upon their shoulders. They were followed out by the pastor and the family in the same order as they had come in.

Beneath a lowering sky that made Lena think of dingy, un-carded wool, they slid the coffin onto the bed of a small wagon pulled by a single black horse and driven by Rudi Molvik, the undertaker.

Except for Mary and Nyla, who went back to Ma’s to prepare a lunch for the mourners, the family squeezed together on the slat seats of Gertrude’s wagon, Oscar driving, his mother and Walter in the front, Will, Lena, Julia and Tori crammed onto the second seat and holding on while they bumped along behind the hearse. No one spoke. Lena wished she’d worn a hat.

The cemetery was a fenced acre of land donated to the town of Charity by the Hansmeyer family. About two-thirds of it had been consecrated for Protestant burial and one-third for Catholic. Lena had never understood why the Catholics needed their own specially prayed over soil.
When you got right down to it
, Lena thought,
dirt was dirt.

The grave diggers had done their work neatly—a rectangular hole with perfectly squared corners gaped in the earth. The pile of black dirt was discreetly covered by canvas weighted down at the corners with rocks.

Oscar pulled the wagon around so that Gertrude had her back to the open grave and would not see the coffin being lowered. Even with only one arm, he managed a team of horses. Lena had seen him on occasion hold the reins between his teeth when he needed his hand for something else. At those times his expression changed from his usual bad-tempered sullenness to a disconcerting fierceness.

When the coffin was lowered and the ropes hauled up and laid out of sight in the undertaker’s wagon, they all gathered around the grave, except for Gertrude who refused to get down. Lena heard her muttering, “Ach, Gott in Himmel.” Gertrude always talked to herself in German.

Frederick assisted Julia down from the wagon, and she remained on his arm through the brief grave-side service. The sky was darkening by the minute. Pastor Erickson spoke the prayers as rapidly as he decently could. Lena noticed that Julia had flowers in her hand. She had not seen her take them from the vase in the narthex, but she must have since she didn’t have them with her in church. During the Lord’s Prayer, Lena for some reason kept her eyes on Julia waiting for her to toss the flowers into the grave. But when the prayer was over, her arm still looped through Frederick’s arm, Julia turned with her flowers and walked back to the wagon.

The dingy wool sky gave no sign that it was either going to release its downpour or move on. The weather seemed stuck. There was no wind. The clouds did not churn. They hung low like the underbelly of a pregnant ewe unable to give birth.

A murmur of voices and the aroma of coffee perking in two large enamel pots on the cookstove filled the dark ambiance that met Lena and Will as they stepped across the threshold of Ma Kaiser’s house. The windows as always were heavily curtained. Someone had lit a lamp here and there, but these little lights were not up to dispelling such gloom. Nor did the gathering of people there lighten the place. In their dark clothing, sitting, standing, or milling around, the people seemed saturated with the atmosphere of the house, like a sponge full of dark water. The white shirts on some of the men alleviated nothing. Only Lena in her blue dress bobbed along surrounded but untouched. A kind of euphoria shielded her and gave her buoyancy. For the moment, she felt pleasantly disposed toward everyone, even her sisters-in-law, whom she usually regarded as gnats—irksome but inevitable on a summer’s day. She managed a warm greeting, first for Nyla, who was slicing a pie and looking unhappy as she always did no matter what the occasion, and for Mary. Sweet Mary never spoke her mind, seldom went out, and when she did she was never alone except to attend Mass and frequently consigned to the shadow formed by Walter’s cigar smoke. Right now she was carrying a small porcelain pot she had just filled with coffee from one of the pots on the stove.

Lena and Will followed her in to the dining room where food was laid on for a multitude. Neighbors and friends had brought a variety of cakes and pies. There were also hot meat and potato dishes, cold chicken, ham, plenty of bread and butter. The coffee flowed in a constant stream, and the cream pitcher was kept brimming from the jug in the ice box.

Lena noticed the clean table cloth and attributed that nicety to Mary. It couldn’t be Ma’s, and Nyla, who was as slovenly as her mother-in-law, would not have thought of it.

For Lena not to have had a part in the preparation of such an affair was unusual. She found herself with most of the work at all family doings. This time, however, because of Will’s trouble, she hadn’t been involved and was grateful that no one expected anything of her.

Oscar, Walter, and Frederick, who had followed Will and Lena into the house, dispersed into the gathering. Ma took to her rocker and began accepting condolences. Julia busied herself in the kitchen washing plates and taking over for Mary in the supervision of the coffee pots, her little cat never far from her feet and the dish of cream she had put down for him in the corner. Tori sat at the kitchen table out of the way and happily accepted a large slice of angel food cake from Mary. On her way into the dining room with a bowl of stiff cream she had just whipped, Mary stopped and dropped a spoonful on his cake.

Lena helped herself to a piece of apple pie and a cup of coffee. She found a vacant chair in the corner of the dining room, from where she could see into both the kitchen and living rooms. She enjoyed watching her brother, who let the cat lick some of the cream off his fingers. Tori took after their pa in that way, always indulgent toward animals. Will piled a plate with ham, chicken, and cake for his mother, then one for himself. After that Lena lost track of him.

Lena took small uninterested bites of her pie and sipped her coffee while she observed the flow of people through the house—a mass without detail, like the surge and retreat of inlet water. A person or event would individuate for a moment, like a wavelet on the surface of Lena’s consciousness, only to sink again, merging into the dark waters. Walter: glad handing, puffing on his cigar, his gravelly voice cutting through the din, his square face thick behind heavy glasses and crowned by an oily stand of coarse, prematurely yellowish-gray hair. Even here, at his father’s funeral, he had to talk business and make jokes, though he was never funny, just goofy, Lena thought. Will was the only Kaiser with a real sense of humor. Anyway, this wasn’t the place for it.

Oscar: emerging larger and more brooding than Walter, lodging in first one chair, then another, unable to get comfortable, speaking seldom and only when spoken to. About as funny as a hailstorm on a good day. Nyla appearing again, venturing out of the kitchen to exchange a newly cut pie for an empty plate on the table. Her perpetually sour expression made her look older than Lena, though she was not. Her long thin hair was twisted into a tight braid and wrapped around her head in an unbecoming style. She wore shapeless clothes over a bottom-heavy body and clumped around in the same heavy shoes winter and summer. In winter, Lena thought she must ache with the cold, and in summer from the heat.