Etta and Otto and Russell and James (15 page)

You could be, though.

I don’t think so. She put a hand on his shoulder, not heavy or light, just her hand, and Russell, without thinking, closed his eyes. But you’ll be great, she said. She squeezed his shoulder a little bit and he opened his eyes again. Etta’s other hand was on the back of the caramel freemartin; she bridged the three of them. And I’ll help you, if you need it. Letting both hands fall back to her sides. The sun in the barn like a solid thing, solid bronze.

Okay, said Russell, as Etta made her way back to the barn door, home to prepare and sleep for work tomorrow. He had his own hand up to his shoulder, where hers had been. Thanks, Etta.

You’re happy, I’m happy, Russell, she said.

F
rom then on, each morning, Etta and Lucy Perkins caught the bus together into town.

I like your pants, said Lucy. I wish I had pants.

Thanks, said Etta. She wore the coveralls every day, itching and bunching and a little small on her ankles and wrists, but a part of her, more and more, like a shell. You might, one day.

Yeah. I hope.

They’d part ways at the school and Etta would walk twenty-five minutes to the east side of town, past the grain elevators, to the factory. And each morning, as she walked, other women would join her, walking in the same direction, in the same navy coveralls. The closer they got to the factory, the more they amassed, until they all convened and collected, bottlenecking in the clocking-in and
jewelry-removal station like water at a low point. Each morning, when it was Etta’s turn at the station, she would stamp her name card, and Thomas, the security man with eyebrows like icicles, would ask, Wedding ring? and Etta would spread her fingers before him, clean, bare, and he would wave her through to the giant rooms that smelled of icy copper.

I
n the evenings after her shift, at home next to the locked-up school, Etta would bake. Things for her and the other workers, for Russell and for Lucy Perkins and her mother, and for wrapping up in brown paper and rough twine and sending miles and miles away to Otto. She would sing to herself while her hair slowly let go of its metal smell and soaked up the cinnamon, the nutmeg, the vanilla. Her hands went up and down in the dough, up and down, press and lift, bringing air, crushing it out; while Otto’s feet went up and down in his boots, up and down, press and lift, bringing space, crushing it out.

R
ussell walked with Glenda Hubert out across an obstacle course of rocks and holes and weeds and dirt. She was the wife of Rory Hubert, former-farmer, now soldier; the mother of five grown children, two here, three away; the grandmother of fifteen, ages zero through twelve; and, as of one year ago, the head of the Gopherlands Regional Farm Revival Project Committee. Her gray coveralls had G.R.F.R.P.C. hand-monogrammed across the back, with the letters getting smaller where she had started to run out of space. Watch your feet, she said, this place is a veritable quicksand of gopher cave-ins.

Okay, said Russell. Thanks.

They walked for twenty-five minutes, in a wobbly square. All right, said Glenda, that’s it. You’ll take it?

Russell righted himself after almost tripping over a rock the size of a small sheep. Yes, he said, I will.

You’ll have to promise to fix it up and live on it and get it producing again within the year. You’ll have to sign things. You’ll be able to do that?

Russell looked out over Glenda’s gray coveralled shoulder to the west; there was nothing but dirt and weed and rock for miles and miles and miles. Yes, he said. Yes, I will. The almost-setting sun lighting it all up in caramel and orange and gold.

12

A
nd Etta walked
and walked and James walked too, sometimes running up front, sometimes sniffing
behind, sometimes just at her side. Rocks, lakes, trees. Rocks, lakes, trees.

A
nd Otto stayed awake and
made and made. An owl, a swallow, a narwhal, a gopher, a pair of raccoons, a fox, a
goose, a squirrel, a rattlesnake, a bison that took him nights and nights, a lynx, a
chicken, a coyote, a wolf, a collection of the smallest, most delicate
grasshoppers.

A
nd Russell was somewhere in the North and nobody knew where except
him.

W
innie was dead now, but not so long ago she wasn’t. She had called
them, Otto and Etta, on a long-distance call from the government home in Paris, for
Otto’s birthday.

Will you come home? he had asked, like he always asked.

This is my home, she said, like she always said, voice deep within the
grooves of an accent that fell away the longer she spoke to him.

Okay, said Otto. Just worth checking again, just in case.

Ha! In the background the foreignness of language he couldn’t
understand.

Sixty-five years, Winnie. Did you think that, when you went?

Yes, I think I did.

Hm . . .

Hey, Otto, how is Etta?

She is . . . good most of the time. Most of the time she’s
just fine.

Okay. Otto?

Yes?

If you need me back there, you know I’ll come. I’ll come home.

I know, thank you, Winnie. And thank you for the gift, the globe.

It arrived on time? Not broken?

It arrived perfect. Beautiful. Thank you.

De rien. Joyeux anniversaire,
mon vieux.

Dear Etta Gloria
Kinnick,

I look at each bullet now and
wonder if you’ve looked at it too.

Not often, but occasionally, Otto would find himself with an evening off
in a place big and resilient enough to still have bars and music and women. Though
at home he’d only drunk beer and rye whiskey, here Otto would drink wine, staining
his tongue and lips deep red. The drinks were always free for soldiers.

There was a woman called Gisèlle who was often around. The town or city
would be different, but Gisèlle would be there, the same Gisèlle. Her hair was short
and dark and she would always find Otto before he found her.

My favorite, she’d say. The boy with the white hair. Are you ready to
dance?

Who do you dance with when I’m not here? asked Otto, against accordion and
clarinets.

You’re not my only favorite, said Gisèlle. One hand pressed around on his
back, one in his hair.

Etta,

___________ ___ ____ ___ so
we thought we were catching up with them, but, really, they were catching up
with us, and _____ _____ ______ ______ _______ _____ ________ and I ran, not
chasing,
not escaping, just running until I found myself _____ ___ and it was dark and
closed, but we’ve been in the dark so much that we can see everything, and I
could see him, this ______ in the back, against the wall, breathing like he’d
just been running too, and I knew he could see me. His hand at his right side
and mine at mine. I wanted to say something but we didn’t know the same words.
Then a ____ ____ and he started, jumped, and reached quickly down and I ducked
behind a bookcase and reached my arm around and shot and shot. All in one
movement, like one breath, one word. And then I jumped up and out, out of ____
___ out of there and started to run again and ran and ran and the thought that
pulsed in my head was Write It Down, Write It Down and I knew that if I kept
that thought in front of all the other thoughts then I would have to be okay
because I’d have to stay safe in my body and mind long enough to get back to my
pen and paper, to this.

And dancing with Gisèlle, whose hair curled into her face just so, and
who smelled of perfume, the sweetness of flowers edged with the sharpness of alcohol
that led his nose and mouth to the places she’d dabbed it, inside her wrists, behind
her ears, between her breasts, up the guiding lines of her stockings.

Dear Etta,

Each time, each thing hits you
like water in the face, like gin in the throat, saying This is Real This is Real
This is Real. As though everything back home, and even Regina, and Halifax, and
the train, all of that was just a set-up on a stage and when you look behind it,
open it up, you see it was just a façade, and that the real thing is this,
always this, only this.

It won’t be too long until my
first year is up and they send me home
for my few days and, Etta, I’m not even sure
I want to go. Not sure I’ll be able to merge that with this, that that’s even
possible.

I have been re-reading your
letters and looking a lot at the picture of the school and the kids and you.
These threads that connect this to that. Reminding myself that there is that and
that that is still something.

Etta,

I will be off for home leave
in ten days. The year so big until its over, like walking across a full-height
wheat field. It will take me another ___ _____
for the crossing, then three days for the
train, so I should be there ____ _____. I would like it if it was only you at
the station. Just for that moment, stepping back into home. My mother and father
and Russell and sisters and brothers are so much; I’m afraid at what I might
feel or do. Do you understand? I will look for you there.

Sincerely,

Otto.

H
ow long does a
crossing take? Etta had brought shortbread over to Russell’s new farm. He was
outside repainting the new old house. White. The sun was nearly setting.

Um, I think it took Otto seven days when he went over. But it can be
faster. I think my uncle was only four days. . . . Between four and
eight, I’d say. He was up on a ladder, calling down. Why?

Just curious. She put the plate of cookies off to the side, away from the
ladder and the drips. I’m going to leave these here, okay?

Okay, thanks. I’ll run the plate back over to your place when I’m done
with it.

Maybe let me come and get it, my factory shifts are going to be a bit
unpredictable for a while, I think.

Okay.

Okay, good night, Russell, don’t work too hard.

He watched her go, a good view from up on the ladder, all the way across
the field. Once she was out of sight, he climbed down and took a cookie. He ate it
with his paint-spattered hands.

T
here was only
one train a day into town, and usually nobody got on or off; it was a request stop,
usually the cars just passed noisily through, between two-thirteen and two-fourteen
every day except Sunday. But on any given day somebody could get off, there was
always the possibility. And, so, Etta did the math, and figured: Otto could be
coming home any time between next Thursday and the one after. Any time except
Sunday. She asked at the factory if she could
be switched to
nights.

Just for the one week?

One week and one day, please.

She stayed with her parents so she could walk to the factory, since the
school bus didn’t do a night-shift run. She told them, just,

I’m working nights at the factory.

Which wasn’t a lie. They didn’t ask why, or if that kind of swapping was
normal, if they should expect her to need them often, if they should keep her old
bed made up. They just did, just in case.

And she told Lucy Perkins, the Wednesday before, on their way home,
bumping next to each other on the gravel, in their regular seats,

I won’t be on the bus for a while.

For how long?

For eight days.

Are you going to fight?

No, no.

Okay good. I’ll save your seat.

So, starting that first Thursday, Etta began a new sort of ritual, putting
on her light blue dress with the cap sleeves, the close waist, and the pressed
collar at one-forty-five in the afternoon, walking over to the station in time to be
there just after two, standing on the platform and waiting for twelve minutes, the
adrenaline mounting in her parallel to the sound of the train approaching,
discernible from miles away, and watching with breath held as it pushed past her.
Then she’d wipe the dust the train had thrown up off of her face and dress, and,
between two-fourteen and two-sixteen, would walk back to her
parents’ house, take off the dress, and go back to sleeping or reading, or
helping her mother or talking to her father until it was time to put on her
coveralls and walk to work with the setting sun.

The night shift girls were different. When Etta showed up for the first
time, one of them, who had swapped her issued navy head scarf for a green one with
yellow dots, said,

New girl, someone bite her.

And another girl, in the regular head scarf but with bright red lipstick,
grabbed Etta’s arm, brought it to her mouth, and gently nipped her wrist, leaving
faint teeth marks and pronounced lip marks. We’re vampires, see, we night girls. So
we had to make you one of us.

More of this, and more talking, was allowed on the night shift. It kept
everyone from falling asleep.

How come you swapped? said green with yellow dots.

Just wanted to try it, said Etta.

Really? said lipstick. She raised one eyebrow. Practiced, acute.

On the first Thursday nobody got on or off the train and it just clicked
by, steady, rhythmic, not-gonna-stop-not-gonna-stop.

Friday was the same.

Saturday, Etta could hear the train’s wheezing ritardando from two-ten
p.m. She held her hands behind her back, clenched. She breathed in deep gulps of the
thrown-up dust. At two-eleven a woman ran up onto the platform, panting, holding two
small brown cases with silver buckles. She smiled at Etta, wiped a hand across her
brow dramatically. At two-thirteen she stepped up the train’s three metal steps. At
two-fifteen the train picked itself up again and pulled away, laboring at first,
then more and more at ease as it drew further and further away.

Sunday, Etta borrowed her father’s car to go home to her teacher’s
cottage, where she watered and weeded her garden, dusted
away
all the bits of prairie that had settled on the surfaces and broader objects, and
struggled with her body to know when to sleep.

Monday nobody got on or off the train, rhythmic,
not-gonna-stop-not-gonna-stop.

Tuesday, Etta could hear the train’s wheezing ritardando from two-oh-seven
p.m. She held her hands behind her back, clenched. She breathed in deep gulps of the
thrown-up dust. No one else on the platform at two-ten or at two-eleven. Etta
reminded herself to blink. Ran a hand over her hair. She could see the train windows
now, they could see her.

At two-twelve the train stopped. At two-thirteen the doors of the third
carriage opened and Otto stepped down the three metal stairs, one, two, three. His
hair was as white as the dust.

He only had one bag, green, soft. He dropped it on the platform as he
walked to Etta.

Otto, she said, your hair,

He put his hands on her arms, above the elbow, held them in, and kissed
her mouth and kissed her and kissed so that neither of them could breathe and
neither of them wanted to.