Charity (4 page)

Lena often wondered where Gustie went to but had not felt it her business to ask.

Mathilda Langager, whose head bobbed about on her scrawny neck as if she were a goose trying to avoid the hatchet, opened her mouth. Lena snapped, “What do you care where she goes? She’s always in that cold, cramped school house come a Monday morning of a school day, isn’t she? And if it weren’t for her, that boy of yours, Mathilda,” Lena pointed her finger at Mathilda, “wouldn’t even be able to scrawl his name, let alone read a book or add two bags of feed in a wagon to two lying on the ground and know he had a pile of four.”

This was true, of course, and everybody knew it. Arthur Langager was sixteen years old before he could write his name. Gustie had worked with the boy, and he could now even read a few lines from the Bible and do simple sums. Mathilda reddened, and her mouth puckered into an unattractive pout.

Lena’s back was more than up—she had been ready to throw the whole pesky lot of them out of her house. So they finished their coffee, hastily nibbled the last crumb of the last cookie, and, sucking sugar crystals off their fingers, went their separate ways at three o’clock with variously expressed, though mostly all smug excuses that they had to “be getting home to the family to start supper.” Gustie was not present; the only one who was stung was Lena, for there were those who knew very well that after twelve years of marriage, her childlessness was as big a wound as Will’s drinking. But Lena kept her back straight and her chin out and willed a gleam to her eye that defied anyone to ever say a direct word to her face about any of it. No one ever did.

And now that Will was in jail, maybe for keeps this time, people did not know quite what to do. In the past, Lena had refused comfort or criticism, and now that she might need some of the former, even the most well-meaning in Charity were hesitant to offer it.

Gustie, without thinking, confronted by the white paper crumpled in her door, read Lena’s message, jumped back into her wagon, turned Biddie around, and headed for the south of town to Lena’s house.

She found Lena on the floor surrounded by a pink sticky mess and choking with sobs. Gustie lifted her gently by the shoulders, seated her at the table, and cleaned the floor. When the coffee was poured, she sat across the table from Lena, who was still snuffling, making little moaning sounds, and blowing her nose. Gustie had not failed to notice as she was cleaning things up that the cupboards were all but bare.

“What’s happened?” Gustie coaxed when Lena had exhausted her sniffling.

“You don’t know?”

“Your note just said ‘come see me.’ I find you on the floor making a big fuss over some rhubarb sauce.”

Lena laughed and choked into her dish towel. “Oh, Gustie, you always make me laugh.” She wiped her eyes, blew her nose again, and said, “It’s Will.”

It usually is
, Gustie thought dourly. But even Gustie was surprised when Lena poured out a story far more serious than his usual drunken episodes.

“Dennis says he’s got to hold Will for the circuit judge. I told him, I says, ‘You know Will could never do anything as bad as this,’ and he says it makes no difference. Will is the only suspect, and he’s got to hold him.” Lena blew her nose fiercely into the dishtowel. As her anger got the better of her grief and fear, she pummeled the air with the wadded up towel. “And then I went to see Ma Kaiser. She’s just sitting there in that house rocking and staring off. She’s worthless. And thinks Will done it. And Julia...”

“Yes, what does Julia think?”

“Julia doesn’t think Will did it, I don’t believe, but she’s pretty tore up over Pa, so she wasn’t saying too much. Pa did a lot for her you know, one way and another. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I’ve been sitting here so all alone, and I didn’t know what to do. Where were you?” Lena began to cry again.

Gustie reached across the table and took Lena’s hand. “I’m sorry, Lena. I’m here now.”

“Oh, fiddlesticks. You can be anywhere you want. I’m not like some other people around here who have to know everybody’s business. I just...no one else around here is any good.”

Lena was looking out the window in some embarrassment and didn’t notice Gustie’s smile.

“Well, we’ll think of something.” There was a short silence between them as Gustie took up the vigil out of the window, and Lena searched for inspiration in her coffee cup.

Gustie asked, “When is the judge due?”

Lena shrugged. “Two weeks, I guess. Maybe more.”

“We have a little time. Let’s rest, and we can think clearly in the morning. We’ll figure something out.”

“Oh, Gustie, I’m so glad you’re back.” Lena took in her friend through watery eyes. “You’re a brick, Gus.”

Gustie, often mystified by Lena’s expressions, assumed brick was good.

“Let’s get some food into you. I’ll bet you’ve had nothing but coffee all day.” She referred to the uncut loaves. Gustie poured another cup of coffee for each of them, dished up what little was left of the rhubarb sauce, and sliced two healthy portions of bread. Nobody baked like Lena. Since there was no butter or sour cream, they dipped their bread in the coffee. Lena sprinkled hers with sugar.

“Now,” said Gustie, “you’ll come back with me. We’ll pick up a few things at O’Grady’s and this evening have ourselves a good supper. I’m hungry myself. Bring your sweater. It’s going to get cold.” Lena did not move. “Let’s get out of here. You can’t sit here by yourself another day.”

“I want to finish my coffee first,” Lena whined.

“All right.” Gustie rinsed her cup and bowl and set them to dry on the sideboard. “Has anybody notified Ella and Ragna?”

Lena told her of her decision not to.

“How about Tori?”

“No. He usually comes in Saturday nights and stays over. I don’t really expect him before that.” Lena still had not moved from the table. She suddenly brightened. “But you never know. He might come. I should be here if he does.”

“Do you want to go to O’Grady’s with me?” Gustie was getting exasperated.

Lena still did not move from her chair. She took a sip from a coffee cup that Gustie knew was empty. “I don’t feel like it, really. I just don’t feel like going to O’Grady’s just now.”

Gustie rested the tip of her finger on her lower lip and considered. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to miss Tori if he came by. I need some things. I’ve been gone a long time.” Gustie took herself briskly to the door. “How about...if I just go and get what I need and come back for you. If Tori isn’t here by then, we’ll leave him a note.”

“Well, that sounds all right.”

The man stepping down from the 4:30 train out of St. Paul was obviously not a homesteader. Nor was he a traveling salesman, teacher, or preacher. His gray suit was too finely tailored, his matching hat and gloves too expensive, his skin too pale, his hands too soft. He was thin, of medium height with sparse sandy hair, and the mien of one accustomed to taking and giving orders, and, having chafed under the taking, now gloats in the giving. The stranger checked into the Koenig Hotel and after inspecting his room, and locking his luggage securely therein, asked for directions to the sheriff’s office.

Dennis Sully was alone, fingering a tin cup of tepid coffee and pondering the fact that he had nothing further to offer the circuit judge in the way of evidence for or against Will Kaiser in the murder of Frederick Kaiser, Sr.

Dennis never expected to do much as sheriff. He had no inflated ideas about his position as a lawman. He simply wanted a quiet steady life. In Charity, he got it. Mostly, he broke up occasional brawls between the heavy drinking Germans and Poles, and between Indians and whites—again, only the drinkers of either community ever fought—and picked up Will Kaiser three or four times a year and locked him up for a few hours or hauled him home depending on his condition. Dennis suspected that the city council had hired him more to keep up appearances as the county seat than because they had any real need for a sheriff.

Dennis was not pleased, therefore, to be investigating a murder. Not that he was squeamish. As a young cowboy in Missouri and Nebraska, he had seen a few gunfights. He had fired his own pistol a time or two, though he had never killed anybody and never meant to. Dennis was a crack shot if he had to be. In his younger days he could, on a galloping horse, bring down a deer with one bullet. He never left a duck or goose flapping and gasping for bloody breath. If he couldn’t kill with the first shot, he didn’t fire. And he had seen some heated skirmishes with Indians in their last efforts to save their place on the land. Now, the cattle were fenced in and the cowboys mostly out to pasture, the game was thin, the Indians had lost, and Dennis’ pistol lay in his desk drawer.

Dennis Sully was forty-two years old and going to fat, but underneath the expanding paunch he still had plenty of grit and gristle. He had never married. He liked his quiet life and the people who surrounded him.

While Dennis Sully had not had more than a few years of country school, he did have common sense, an easy way with people, and a scalp that itched when he heard a lie. Had he any hair left on the top of his head, it would have stood up as soon as the man who walked through the door that afternoon introduced himself. “Good afternoon, Sheriff. My name is Steven Springer.”

Not his real name. Hell,
thought Dennis
, I reckon I don’t have to do much for a man who’s just lied to me.

Both the front and back doors to the sheriff’s office were left open to encourage a breeze. Will Kaiser, with nothing else to do, was happy to listen to conversations in Dennis’ office. Most talk was about the weather, stock prices, the skyward progress of wheat and corn. Will’s interest was piqued when he heard a strange voice.

“I am looking for a young woman whom I believe may have taken up residence in or near Charity.”

Not from around here
, Will thought.

The stranger removed his hat—gray felt that perfectly matched the shade of his suit. He held it with both hands in front of him like a shield to his mid-section.

“What’s her name?” asked Dennis.

“Her name is Clarice Madigan.”

Dennis took a moment after each of the stranger’s answers before asking his next question. “Why you looking for her?”

“She has taken something that doesn’t belong to her.” Springer had a petulant quality threaded through an apparent arrogance that annoyed the sheriff.

“Where abouts you from?”

“Pennsylvania.”

“All the way from Pennsylvania.” Dennis considered that, rubbing his chin. “What do you do back there?”

“Family business.”

Dennis waited, and Steven Springer added, “Dry goods. We’re an old established firm.” He turned the hat a few degrees clock-wise.

“Must be a pretty important ‘something’ for you to come all this way...from Pennsylvania...yourself.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why didn’t you hire somebody? You look like you could afford it.”

“It did not occur to me.”

That, Dennis, decided was the truth. “Well, I haven’t heard the name. What’s she look like? How old is she?”

“Oh,” Steven Springer said. “Yes. I suppose she might not be using her real name.” He said this with such an air of genuine revelation, Dennis laughed. Springer looked puzzled and offended. After some hesitation, however, he offered, “I have a photograph.”

Dennis nodded sagely, “Well, that would sure be a help,” and noted the slight reluctance with which the stranger brought out a flat leather wallet from the inside pocket of his suit coat and carefully removed a photograph.

While the man held the photograph with what Dennis would have described as tenderness, his lips pursed, like Steven Springer suddenly had a mouthful of bitterness and nowhere to spit.

Dennis took the picture when it was finally given to him and beheld the likeness of a young woman. Unruly hair billowed about her small face. Though she was not smiling, she did not look grim, merely composed. A small nose and delicate mouth. A Slavic cast to her eyes reminded Dennis of many of the fair-faced young women in the Polish settlement of Rennville—two townships to the southwest. Dennis considered the face. Interesting. Intelligent. When animated, probably pretty. He handed the photo back to Steven Springer. “Never seen her before, but if I do, I’ll give you a holler. You stayin’ at Koenigs?”

Springer nodded and carefully returned the picture to its place in the wallet, which he slid back into his pocket.

“How long you stayin’?”

“Till I find her, Sheriff.”

Dennis took a sip of his cold coffee, grimaced, and thought,
That could be a mighty long time. This is a big country.

“Miss Madigan was traveling with a companion. Her name is Augusta Roemer. Tall. Unattractive woman. Wears spectacles. Brown hair.” He said the word ‘brown’ as if he held the color itself in disdain.

In his jail cell, Will, hearing the name of his wife’s best friend, cupped his hand behind his good ear and strained even harder to hear.

Dennis remained completely slack-faced. “Augusta. I don’t know. Don’t ring any bells.” He took another sip of his coffee. Dennis Sully liked Gustie the first time she pulled her mare and wagon up in front of his office and announced, “I’m the new teacher. Can you tell me where I might stay until I find a place of my own?” She appeared competent enough. After all, she had got there with all her worldly goods from wherever it was she came from, apparently alone, and yet she had a shy, dazed look, not of a woman who had been sheltered, but more of one who wanted to shelter herself. She wore an expression of resignation that had made Dennis unaccountably sad. He pointed her to the only hotel in town, Koenig’s, and to the livery next door, said he would get in touch with the head of the school committee to call on her later.