Etta and Otto and Russell and James (19 page)

E
tta walked over to Russell’s. It was after work; she was still in her coveralls. It had been two days since Otto had left. Russell was bent down, pulling up thistle. Etta had no gloves so she found and pulled out dandelions instead. Pulling from the base, getting the roots. They threw everything they pulled into a big pile away from the good soil. You don’t have to do that, said Russell.

I hate the emptiness of my house, said Etta.

Okay, said Russell.

A
few days later, on the bus, Lucy Perkins said to Etta,

Do you hate the city?

You mean town? Where the school and the factory are?

Yeah.

No, I don’t think I hate it.

I do, said Lucy Perkins.

T
he morning after that, Lucy Perkins was not on the bus. Etta took a seat next to a boy sleeping against the window.

After work she walked to Russell’s. He was further down the land, still working on thistle. She walked out to where he was and got
started on dandelions.

Mrs. Perkins came by yesterday, said Russell. He pulled at a thistle base with one hand. The leaves shuddered. He put both hands around it, right next to the soil, and pulled again, forcing out a cascade of roots twice as long as the plant. She’s given up trying to sell; she said she was just tired. She said she felt ancient. Another plant, both hands, roots like uncombed hair. I said she looked the same, because to me she did. But she shook her head and said, No, Russell, no, I’m not the same, not at all. She said as their land’s next to mine I might as well have it. She and Lucy are moving in with her sister in town, today or tomorrow.

Today, said Etta.

You spoke to them?

Lucy wasn’t on the school bus. Etta broke the leaves off a dandelion stalk and put them in a separate pile for salad. Russell, she said, do you think—

I know. The letter carrier recognized the color of the envelope addressed to Mrs. Perkins, the feel of the tag inside. It’s the only thing she delivers in Western Union telegram format, she said. It’s so horribly obvious, she said. She was delivering to my aunt’s just before, just one stop before, and had to go in and sit down and ask for coffee but not drink it, just sit at the table with my aunt, hoping time could stretch backward so she wouldn’t have to do what she had to do. She finally left once the coffee was cold and half a day’s work wasn’t done. My aunt called round for me after that. To help her catch up. She told me then.

Yesterday?

The day before yesterday.

Etta pulled off some leaves and tore the stem; it bled thick white
onto her hand. Russell, she said, he was from right here. Right where we’re all from. It could have been any of them, any of us.

I know. And my aunt knows and Grace Vogel knows and the letter carrier knows. And Otto knows and Walter and Wiley and my uncle and Mr. Lancaster and Winnie knows too.

Etta wiped her hand on her leg and dropped the leaves into the salad pile. What did you say? About the farm?

I said I’d take care of it. That I’d keep the land active until they want it back. Mrs. Perkins said she never wanted to see it again, but I said, still, still, and she said, No, Russell, not at all. She said, You’re all that’s left, Russell. It’s just you.

She was wrong. You’re not all that’s left. I’m here. I’m helping.

I know.

It’s terrible, to just give up. It’s horrible.

I know.

It makes me want to do things and do things and never stop doing. If we’re doing we’re living and if we’re living we’re winning, right?

Etta, let’s go dancing tonight.

Okay. Yes.

Dear Etta,

Everything is fine. I made it over in one piece, the boat stayed up and I stayed on it. We are in this seems-to-be peaceful _____ until the new recruits come to bolster our ranks and spirits. In the meantime, there are double portions at dinner, and double socks and razorblades and blankets for all of us still here. The food is fairly terrible, but less so when you can actually eat your fill of it. So. Things are good. Except,

I miss your skin, Etta. I miss your hands and coveralls and bare legs and ____ and _____ and _____ and _____ ______ ______ and ____ for me. It is both easier and harder being here, now.

Yours, here,

Otto.

16

S
leeping under the moss that night with Bryony, Etta slipped into water dreams again. She was close to shore, needed to swim in, but her uniform was too big, rolled up at the wrists and ankles, coming unrolled every time she took a stroke. She could see land, see the rest of the boys there, gathering their things and marching away in pairs, across the beach and away, but she’d never get there because she had to stop and re-roll, wrists, ankles, again and again. Gérald was there too, on the beach, waiting for her, watching her; she wasn’t sure how long he would wait.

She woke up at the sound of Bryony opening a cellophane bag of sunflower seeds. Oh good, good, said Etta, you’re still here. Thank you for waiting.

Bryony smiled. She offered the opened bag to Etta. Barbecue flavor.

Etta took a small handful. Did everyone else go?

It’s just us, said Bryony. Just like it was last night.

Last night we were all on a boat, said Etta.

A bridge, said Bryony.

A boat, said Etta.

Okay, said Bryony. Should we start walking?

Yes, said Etta, absolutely.

T
hey stopped for a break around nine o’clock in the morning. They had walked silently together until then. Do you think he’s coming back? said Etta.

Who? said Bryony.

James.

Oh. I don’t know, Etta. I hope so.

You’re not afraid of coyotes?

There are worse things.

Like what?

Bears . . . people . . . sharks . . .

There are some bears out here too, sometimes.

I know.

And people.

But no sharks.

Not as far as I know. Not yet anyway.

They finished drinking and stretching and leaving scent marks, Etta’s far removed, separated from Bryony’s. Ready to go again? asked Bryony. Etta was sitting on a rock, looking at a small, crumpled piece of paper.

You:

Etta Gloria Kinnick
of Deerdale farm. 83 years old in August.

Bryony, said Etta, who was I this morning?

You were you, of course, Etta.

But was I?

I’m not sure.

I’m not sure either.

T
hey walked through low forests and full forests, along rock-lined drops and broad open fields. They took off their shoes (Etta’s sneakers, Bryony’s tall leather boots) and made their way across shallow, pebbled streams and slick-wet slate gorges. They were away from towns and people again, and wouldn’t need to stop for a few days at least. Bryony had taken off her burgundy blazer and tied it chunkily around her waist. It was very hot now through the drooping midsections of their days, and Etta had to eat more, more sugar, more quick-to-the-muscles food to keep herself awake and moving. She looked forward to streams and creeks, to water over her bare feet.

They were hiking through a north-bound stream, tingly with cold from the shins down, soggy with heat from the knees up, when Etta said, Hey, Bryony, what are your stories?

I don’t have any, that’s the point. She pointed her toes each time she brought a foot out of the stream, minimizing the ripples like a diver.

But you must.

I really don’t.

Under all the layers of everybody else’s I’m sure you do. You’ve just forgotten, maybe, or can’t get to them anymore because they’re so covered over.

Maybe, said Bryony.

Well, you can think about it, said Etta. And tell me if you remember one.

Okay, said Bryony. They continued on for a few steps, Bryony lift-pointing with each one, Etta shuffling so as to keep as much of
herself in the stream as possible.

T
hey walked and lifted and shuffled and marched and walked and lifted and shuffled and marched, taking turns in front, moving north and east, keeping their distance from the American border. They camped just outside Saint-Elzéar-de-Témiscouata, in an abandoned barn surrounded by mustard flower.

In that night’s dream Etta was swimming or dancing, she couldn’t decide which, but it didn’t matter because they were, really, the same thing, only in swimming the water was your partner, all around, ready, following, light and easy and heavy and comforting and there in your arms and you in its arms and if you opened your mouth to sing along to the music it would rush in and tell you its secrets and taste like wine.

In the morning she said, I want to go home.

Bryony was already up, was always up first. Home?

Yes, if they’ll let us. I’m worried. I can’t stop thinking about my father, mother, sisters, brothers . . . aren’t you worried about your wife, Gérald? Isn’t it stupid that we’re here with each other and not there, with them?

No, said Bryony, it’s not. It’s not stupid, it’s important.

Are you sure?

Yes.

So we keep marching?

Yes.

And tonight we’ll find a bar and go dancing.

If we’re lucky.

Okay, sighed Etta. She was sitting on the ground; she still hadn’t gotten up.

Here, said Bryony. She took Etta’s hands in both of hers and pulled her up to standing.

I miss them all so much, said Etta.

I know, said Bryony.

O
tto was looking through the recipe cards, browsing for something he could make that he hadn’t tried yet, something he had the ingredients for, when he found a card written out in Etta’s young hand, in ink that had faded to a light indigo over sixty years. It was from when he had come home for good.

For Otto at night,

it said, in easy looping letters,

NEEDED:

20 flax flowers

1 mortar and 1 pestle

INSTRUCTIONS:

Take the blue flowers and crush and pulp them. Spread the paste on his eyelids, thick, weigh the skin down. Then have him sleep. And he will sleep easy and the dreams will stay away. In the morning the flowers will have gone dry and light and have turned to a powdery rust that can be brushed away as easily as hair or dust.

He put the card down apart from the others and headed out, weaving through his animals, to see if there were any late blossoms remaining on Russell’s flax. He found four, collecting them carefully into the coffee mug he’d brought with him.

Back in the kitchen, he pulled the petals away from their stalks and dropped them into the mortar. As he crushed them, their color became brighter and richer. A good color for a beetle, he thought. He made a mental note to make beetles next. It was awkward spreading
the paste on his own eyelids, and even more awkward feeling his way with eyes closed and heavy with paste out of the kitchen, along the hall, and into the bedroom. But once he was there, laid down on his back so as to not stain the pillowcase blue, he fell away, almost immediately.

Otto slept and slept, until night, then through the night and well into the next day. When he woke up, he brushed a hand, without thinking, across his face and rust-colored dust fell away around it.

He felt wonderful. He felt, for the first time in a long time, like his body didn’t want anything from him. He made coffee and breakfast, then set about designing and crafting his beetles, and his hands didn’t shake and his heart didn’t race. While the first coat was drying, Otto went back out, back through his animals, to the fields to try and find more flowers. He had to go farther this time, and longer, but eventually he found two complete blossoms and one that had only dropped half its petals. He put them in a coffee cup with a little water so they’d be ready and fresh for that night.

And then he made the paste.

And then he slept.

The next day, he searched and searched up and down the overgrown rows of Russell’s land, but couldn’t find a single flower. The sun was hot and the top of his head pulsed with it.

That night his heart raced and his lungs jerked and jumped and he stared up at the sparkles in the stucco ceiling until he’d counted each one, breathing like a sprinter. Then he got up and walked to the kitchen and rinsed the big bowl and started a mix of flour and water in his pajamas and robe. His hands were shaking, but that was not such a big deal at this stage when he was just mixing. Later, when it came time to craft and sculpt, he would drink some coffee or take some ibuprofen or rye to try and calm them.

A few hours after sunrise, he started up the truck and drove to the Co-op. They were just opening, just putting out the flower specials in buckets by the front door.

Good morning, said Otto. He walked slowly, carefully, from the truck to the shop, on guard for coughing fits that could throw off his balance and land him in the flower buckets.

Here for more flour?

Not today, Sheryl.

Paint?

Nope, not today, Wesley.

Sheryl was closest to the door, untying bunches of pink and yellow carnations. Here, she said, as she put down her flowers and held the door for Otto.

Thanks, said Otto.

Be right with you, Wesley called after him, clipping the stems of cellophaned roses.

Two minutes later, when Wesley finished with the roses, he found Otto by the notice board. I just wanted to put this up, please, said Otto. He passed Wesley a handmade notice. It said,

WANTED: FLAX FLOWERS

Please contact OTTO VOGEL if you have/find any late flax flowers in your fields or wild. Of some urgency.

Of course, said Wesley. How long for?

Otto thought, calculated. Where was Etta? Quebec? Two weeks, he said. Maybe more.

The bells on the shop’s door rang and Otto and Wesley turned to see Sheryl come in with the pruning scissors and a bucket full of stem ends. She squinted toward the notice. Otto, she said, you having
trouble sleeping?

I’m all right, said Otto.

Because we got capsules.

Capsules aren’t so good for your heart, said Otto. I’m all right.

Okay.

I’ll put this up for two weeks then, said Wesley. Right in the middle, here.

And, here, take this, said Sheryl. She handed Otto a yellow carnation that was too short to fit in with the others.

At home, Otto put the carnation in a coffee cup, as all their vases were too tall for it. He stroked Oats’s sleeping head and replaced some of the newspaper scraps in the side of the crate she wasn’t using, then checked that the last coat he’d applied to his raccoon was dry. It was. Everything was dry here. He carefully picked up the model and carried it out to the yard to find a place for it. His eyes ached, hot. He’d find a shady spot in the living room or kitchen after this and would try to sleep again.

Beautiful raccoon, said a woman with mixed brown and gray hair all pulled back sharply. She stood between the narwhal and the trout. Underwater, thought Otto, though not really.

Thank you, said Otto. I thought I’d put it at that edge, there, looking at the trout.

That makes sense, said the woman.

But I don’t want to sell, said Otto. It or anything.

That doesn’t make sense, said the woman, but I know.

It shouldn’t rain in the next two weeks, that would be very—Otto stopped to cough—unseasonal.

I know, said the woman. Though it could. But that’s not why I’m here. She held one hand up to the narwhal’s side, as if to pet it, but an inch away, not actually touching. I’m here because I thought
you might want to talk about what could or should happen to your collection in the case of an unfortunate unforeseen event.

Otto nodded, waiting.

The woman stood, watching him, waiting.

Otto nodded again, waiting.

I mean, said the woman, I mean if you die, Otto. I’m here to ask if you might consider willing your collection to us, the gallery, should you die.

Oh, said Otto.

He thought. His left hand shook. He put it, with the other, behind his back. Then he said, I guess the first problem would be that they’re mostly presents.

Presents?

Yes, presents. For Etta and for Russell. So I don’t know if it would be appropriate to will them to someone else.

Well, said the woman, there must be some—

And, said Otto, the second problem is that, frankly, I just don’t see who would be interested, of the gallery-going public. I mean, apart from you, of course.

Really? said the woman.

Really, said Otto.

Jesus! Otto! said the woman. Look. She turned around, toward the road, and pointed. A procession of cars and trucks were snaking slowly by, some with binoculars poking out their windows. Otto counted fifteen before his eyes started to blur. He lifted one hand from behind his back, and waved. An arm from out of the backseat window of a blue station wagon waved back.

Oh . . . said Otto, really?

Really, said the woman.

Huh, said Otto. And then, I’ll think about it.

Thank you, said the woman. Before she left, she gave him another business card.

I’ve already got one, said Otto.

Well, now you’ve got two.

After she left, Otto sat down in the grass beside his raccoon and watched the cars crawling by. Apart from coughing, he stayed very still, like a statue, his hands behind his back.