Etta and Otto and Russell and James (3 page)

N
ot too many years later, Etta and Alma drove all the way to Holdfast in silence. Etta was fifteen. Alma at the wheel, in her beige shoes with heels. Her dancing shoes. Etta thought it must be difficult to drive in shoes like that, but she didn’t say anything. The wind was louder, even, than the car. When they reached the rest-stop café, Alma directed them to a table against the wall. They ordered from a waitress they didn’t know, and then,

I’m sick, Etta, said Alma. Her black hair was down; it was usually up. It changed her face shape like this, hid the stronger lines, hid her. The wind in the car had blown it messy.

You don’t look sick, said Etta. She knew sick when people turned gray, or yellow, or coughed a lot or lost their voices or couldn’t eat for one reason or another, but Alma was none of these things. Her voice was quieter, but it was there. Her face was hiding, but it was the right color. And she was eating. They’d ordered pie. Sour cream raisin for Alma, Saskatoon-berry for Etta. No one had had flu for a long time, years, not since they were very small. And that had been mostly the farm kids, not town kids like them with working lights and inside toilets. Still, Etta’s heart beat harder. You look fine, Alma, she said.

Alma put her hands on the table, palms up. Etta had to stop herself from doing the same. Her first instinct was always to do like Alma. Instead she pressed her hands, palms up, against the bottom of the table. I don’t have flu, said Alma.

Okay, said Etta.

I’ve ruined everything.

You have?

We have.

We
have?

I’m not going to tell him though.

Who? What?

Jim.

Oh, said Etta. Her stomach dropped; her face went cold, felt green. She hoped Alma couldn’t see it. Etta loved Jim. Jim took her out driving, along with Alma. Jim made her parents laugh. Oh, oh, oh.

The waitress came back with the pie. Thank you, they said.

Thank
you
, said the waitress, tilting her head while she said it, smiling. Then she turned around and headed back for the kitchen. Her shoes were like Alma’s, only more worn, with scuffs on the heels and across the fronts. Etta looked at her sister. Not her face, but everywhere else. Her breasts, her arms, her shoulders. She couldn’t see Alma’s stomach, because of the table, but she imagined it, the white skin of it, pulling under the cotton of her blue dress.

I’m going to have to leave, said Alma. I’ve thought and thought and thought and, that’s it. I’m going.

Going?

Yes.

Where?

To an aunt’s.

But we don’t have any aunts.

That’s not what that means, Etta.

I don’t, said Etta, then she stopped herself, looked down at the plate in front of her; a blue-flowered vine snaked around the edge. She wasn’t sick, but Etta didn’t want her pie anymore. Oh, she said. Will Jim go too?

I don’t know. I doubt it. Why should he go?

But he—

That’s not how it works, Etta.

Etta cut into the pastry with her fork. Purple-red. Can I come? she asked.

Etta, said Alma. No.

Alma ate some of her pie, sticky, dripping, so Etta ate some of hers. It was not as good as they could make themselves. We don’t even go to church, said Etta.

They don’t mind, said Alma.

We don’t even really know how to pray.

I do. Now.

So, the baby will be a nun too. Etta pictured a tiny child wrapped up in a habit, surrounded by women with their hair covered. Everyone in black. It was almost beautiful. Everyone singing holy lullabies.

No, said Alma. They give it away.

They give it away?

Yes. And I pray.

Forever?

Forever. But you can visit. And not all the habits are black, there are some that are blue, light blue.

Etta closed her eyes. She could feel her heart beating in her eyelids. She tried to see past black to blue, light blue like the sky, like water.

A
lma left less than a week later. So, you convinced her after all, Etta, said their father, walking back from the train station. Imagine, our Alma in a convent. Our Alma. Imagine. He was in front, then Etta, then her mother, strung out along the gravel path through brown grass, just close enough to hear one another.

I’m proud of her, said her father.

Yes, said Etta.

Yes, said her mother, from behind.

Etta did not know if they knew or if they didn’t.

T
he convent was on Prince Edward Island. Such a long train journey away, and then a boat. The only boats Etta and Alma had known were ones made of paper that almost-floated in their mostly mud creek. That’s miles, said Etta, on Alma’s last night, across their dark bedroom to the place she knew Alma was, despite the blackness of night and drawn curtains. Why that one, so far away?

That’s where the light blue habits are, said Alma.

4

Etta,

I am drawing a dotted line across our globe, starting from home, here, out along what I imagine is your path. I only put one or two dashes a day, small ones on our big globe, but it’s nice to do, still, still, there is progress and I can watch it. Also, it can be like a Hansel und Gretel trail, leading you back here, should you forget the way. Even though I know you can’t see it, or me, right now.

You must be in Manitoba by now.

I have planted the spring seeds. The spinach and carrots and radishes.

I am sending this to William, Harriet (4)’s son, who lives in Brandon. The accountant, you remember. In case you stop there, to sleep maybe, as you pass by, if you pass by, though I know you probably won’t, and, probably, William will be confused by the name on the envelope, “Etta Vogel, c/o William Porter,” and will post it back to me, but that’s
okay. I’ll give it to you when you get back; put it in a pile next to the pile I’m making of the letters you’re sending here. They’re on the kitchen table, because I hardly need all of it to eat at.

I haven’t been out to see Russell, in his field, since last week, when he suggested that maybe I shouldn’t come back for a little while because I’ve got a cough, and it could scare away the deer. So I stay away. But sometimes he comes by after he’s done looking, and we have coffee, or sometimes he leaves notes on our door as he passes by. He is well. I haven’t told him where you’ve gone. I tell him you’re out, that’s all.

Here,

Otto.

P.S. I know you have gone to see the water, and you should see it, Etta, you should, but, in case there are other reasons you’ve left, in case there are things you have discovered or undiscovered that you didn’t want to tell me in person, in that case, you can always tell me here. Tell me here and we can never mention it outside of paper and ink (or pencil).

E
tta was in Manitoba. She could tell because the license plates had changed. She had been walking for fourteen days, so far. Washing her body and hair in rivers and streams when she could find them. If her clothes were dirty she would walk into the water with them on, not too far, just enough to let the current pull the dirt and sweat away, and then she would close her eyes and hold her breath and duck her head under, the feel of moving liquid through her thin white hair, against her scalp. At home she had kept it curled, to look like more than it was, but here it dried straight and fine and she tucked it behind her ears like a child. If her clothes weren’t dirty, she would take them off and walk into the rivers naked. The cold hitting her in patches: knees, sex, belly button, breasts, mouth, hair. But there weren’t always rivers and streams crossing her path; Etta would sometimes go for days dry.

S
ome months earlier, she had started getting pulled into Otto’s dreams instead of her own at night. She would be pulled right in and would be there, in water, in trousers, standing on a gray beach with blood lapping up to her knees and men all around yelling and she would be there, sometimes with a spoon or a towel in her hand and sometimes with nothing. Night after night.

She tried to sleep without any part of her touching any part of him, so his memory couldn’t find a contact point to slip into hers.

B
ecause Russell waltzed instead of walked, maybe, or maybe because he usually slept back at his aunt and uncle’s, so that he didn’t hear and wake when the Vogel parents, late, late into the night, sat at the kitchen table with the radio or just with each other and talked about this thing rolling up and over countries, lots of them, rolling over people, homes, everything, sucking them up, young men especially, young men like them and like their brothers; because Russell didn’t wake and put an ear to the rough floorboards, careful of splinters, to hear news from downstairs, or, maybe, because he waltzed instead of walked, Russell wasn’t afraid like the rest of them the autumn he and Otto were sixteen, the autumn they had all finally begun going to school for real, really trying this time, now that there were fourteen other Vogels to share the at-home chores. Russell didn’t seem to be afraid at all. He whistled when he waltzed to school, on the days that Otto didn’t. They each went every second day, so long as their chores were done the day before. On even days Russell put drops into the cows’ drippy eyes and lifted boulders of hay from here to there while Otto went to school, worrying, and Otto did the same on odd days while Russell went to school, whistling.

Otto shared his desk with a boy called Owen. He was only fourteen, but ahead of Otto in every subject. He had dark hair in tiny tight curls. He smelled like flower soap. He watched as Otto’s hand shook, trying to keep up with the words Mr. Lancaster was writing on the blackboard.
HELLO. MY. NAME. IS. THANK. YOU. CAT. MOLE. FISH. SUN. RAIN. CLOUD
.
Mr. Lancaster would say a word, loud and slow,
then turn around and write it on the board, then turn back to them and say it again,

HELLO,

HELLO

HELLO
.

Owen’s assignment had been to write a two-hundred-word piece on a king or queen of his choice, but he had finished long ago. He had written about Boudica. Now he watched Otto’s shaking hand. He watched Otto a lot.

Hey, he whispered. Look, there. He pointed to the space between where Otto had copied out
MY. NAME. IS.
and
THANK. YOU.
You’ve not done that right. You need to fill in that bit, put in your name, or it doesn’t make sense. Here, he said, and drew a ^ in the place where he had been pointing. Write it up here, your name, just here. Quick though, before Mr. Lancaster comes to check your work.

They both looked up. Mr. Lancaster was still at the board, writing. Otto looked back down, at the ^. He was losing time, falling behind. At the board Mr. Lancaster had already written two new words:
SEE
. and
SMELL
. Owen was watching, waiting. My name, thought Otto. Mr. Lancaster had never written Otto’s name on the board.

Okay, thanks, said Otto.

Owen smiled.

My name, my name, thought Otto. At the board, Mr. Lancaster was writing:
JUMP
. Otto had to write something. He wasn’t stupid. He scanned the words he had written so far.
MOLE
.
THANK
.
RAIN
.
They were all just made of letters. Everything was. But he had no idea which ones he needed. So Otto picked letters from the words he had. The
E
from
MOLE
, the
H
from
THANK,
the
Y
from
YOU
, and so on. Otto wrote,
MY
.
NAME
.
IS
. ^
EHYFE
.
THANK
.
YOU
.

At the front of the class Mr. Lancaster wrote:
PINK
. PINK,
he said.

Owen followed Otto out of the school at noon. Usually Otto and the other Vogels would walk home for dinner, where they’d tell their mother at least one thing they’d learned before she would give them soup or bread. But today Owen was following him, so Otto stopped.

I’m not stupid, said Otto. I can stop a crazy bull. I can change two diapers at once.

I never said you were, said Owen.

Okay.

Oma says Vogels are the smartest kids around.

Okay.

But, said Owen, but you should know how to write your name.

I wrote my name.

You didn’t write your name. You didn’t write anybody’s name.

Otto kicked at the ground. The dust covered his boot, disappeared it for a half a second, then settled again.

Otto, I can show you. I won’t tell anyone. Let me show you, okay?

Otto kicked with his other foot. Balance. He looked over to where Gus (8) was standing with all the other siblings, waiting for him, and waved them away, home. Fine, he said, and followed Owen to the dusty dry dirt patch behind the school.

It’s great, said Owen, because your name starts with the same letter as mine. That’s neat, hey? That’s nice. He pulled up a mostly dried foxtail and used the pointed root end like a quill in the dirt. Look, he said,
O
.
It’s just a circle. It’s easy. Your whole name is easy, in fact. It’s just circles and signs-of-the-cross, like at your church. He traced three more letters in the dirt:
t t o.
He handed Otto the foxtail, and then put his own hand on top of Otto’s and guided it. Circle, sign-of-the-cross, sign-of-the-cross, circle.

We don’t go to church much, said Otto.

The next day was Russell’s turn for school, Russell’s turn to sit
next to Owen. You’re good at writing, said Owen.

Just normal, said Russell. But thanks.

The day after that, Owen showed Otto his surname. It’s easy, see? Just an arrowhead, another circle, a fat man fishing, an apple with peel hanging off, and a line.
V o g e l.
See? Owen let Otto hold the foxtail by himself this time, putting his hand across his taller, older, pupil’s shoulders instead.

On the days when Otto went to school, Russell would show up, between chores, at three-thirty in the afternoon to meet him and walk back to the farm with him. Sometimes Russell had a dog or younger sibling with him, but usually he came alone, so he and Otto could have some time to talk together, in peace. They walked slowly because of Russell’s leg, but Otto didn’t mind. Everything else at the farm moved so quickly. On the days when Russell went to school, Otto would meet him in the same way. Every school day, Owen would watch them walking away together, the trail of dust raised by their asymmetrical boot steps hot and dry.