Etta and Otto and Russell and James (8 page)

T
hey started spending a lot of time at Russell’s aunt and uncle’s, on the floor, in the middle of the blue and white living room, whenever they had breaks between school, chores, sleep. They would both sit facing the same direction, toward the radio, as if it were a person. After half an hour or so, Russell’s uncle or aunt, or sometimes both, together, would knock gently on the door and slip in with a tray of coffee and buttered brown bread. Then they would all sit listening. One by one they drew in and soaked up the reports, the predictions, the analyses, the lists and lists and lists of sometimes-foreign and-sometimes-familiar-names, and the interviews. All of these in the steady, reassuring voice of the radio announcer, the vowels long and consonants precise, the strong, solid inflection leaning more toward England than home, all of these except the interviews, where, suddenly, starkly, they heard voices like their own. Sometimes the interviewer, calm, measured, would interject with questions or little comments, like breaths, between phrases: No? Yes, I see, Ah, Oh, oh, oh, but usually, mostly, they receded and let the interviewees tell their first- or second- or thirdhand stories in voices that could have been their cousins’, their neighbors’, their own.

They heard one story about prisoners who had been taken from their homes and jobs, pulled away from cash registers, books, stoves, cats, bosses, friends, and put all together in a very small room with no windows except one, extremely tiny and high up, higher than anyone could jump or anyone could reach even when three went on each other’s shoulders like a totem pole, teetering, with a crowd of hands reaching, waiting for the top to fall. There was no food
and no toilet and everyone was so close to everyone else that they’d sleep standing up, supported by bodies on every side, with blankets of their neighbors’ clothes and hair and breath. They were like this for three days, taking turns standing in the corner that they’d designated for their waste, the smell of it choking and repulsive at first, but hardly noticeable by the end of your three-hour turn, counted out loud in seconds, as everyone had their watches taken off them, craning their necks higher and higher, toward the air and light of that one window, stomachs louder and louder, competing against the counting. It had been three days, three days like any, like many, others in very similar rooms with similar prisoners all over the region, all over the past few years, when, all at once, at what they figured was close to noon based on the light from the window, all the children and all the babies started to rise, so hungry and so light that they floated. And once they started floating and realized what they were doing, what they could do, they waved their arms to steer, and directed themselves up and straight to that one window. One of the children, the seven-year-old daughter of Aaron and Thilde Bloomberg, locksmiths, slipped her narrow hand and wrist through the grate to release the latch holding the pane in place, and pulled it away. The children passed the square of glass, roughly two square feet, down between them, back to the adults below, so it wouldn’t fall on anyone’s head. Then they floated back up and took turns gliding out of the hole where the window had been, the older ones holding the hands of the infants. No one knew, said the radio, where they’d gone, or where or if they’d landed, though it was speculated to perhaps be Switzerland or perhaps Central Africa.

They heard another story about a field that had once been yellow with grain that had turned completely red. Painters and scientists were sent in to examine it, but they always came back completely
red themselves, head to toe, skin and clothes, if they came back at all. Due to the fate of the painters and scientists, no one was willing to eat or buy the red grain, and the field was deemed unusable and irreparable.

Every day there were new interviews, new stories, every day more.

S
oon enough it was Otto’s birthday. A Saturday. Winnie made an apple cake for dinner. Everyone sang a song about birthdays that they’d learned in school, from Miss Kinnick. After dinner Otto’s mother gave him the rest of the day off chores, the traditional luxury reserved for birthdays. Otto lay in a soft bit of wild grass, in the shade of one of the wind-break trees. Russell, after dishes, found him there. Otto, he said, you should go.

No, said Otto.

Go, said Russell.

No, said Otto. Nope. I’m waiting for you, Russell. And that’s that. He crossed his legs and closed his eyes. Five months, he said. Just five.

O
tto went to school and did farmwork, learned more and more shaky letters and words, songs and numbers, forced ticks off horses and weeded row after row after row of sandy earth while the knotted ball of anticipation in his stomach shuddered and stretched and kept him awake long into the night, until, soon enough, it was five months later, Russell’s birthday, and he and Russell were in town, in the doorway of what was a dance school Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday afternoons and, now, was the nearest recruiting office. It was a large gymnasium, with a man at a desk in the middle. Other than him, Otto and Russell were the only ones there. The man at the
desk was in uniform. Dark green with a triangular hat like the boats they used to make of paper. He stood when they entered. He did not speak. He picked up two papers from his desk and held them out mechanically at Otto and Russell, looking over their heads.

There wasn’t space on the desk, so Otto and Russell spread their forms on the floor. Otto looked over the pages, carefully sounding out the questions in his head.

FAMILY NAME?

CHRISTIAN/GIVEN NAME?

BIRTH DATE?

POSTING ADDRESS?

REASON FOR JOINING UP?

REASON(S) FOR NOT JOINING UP (IF ANY)?

He slowly rounded out letters into the first and second spaces. V-O-G-E-L. O-T-T-O. Wobbly. Childish. He looked over to Russell, who was tapping his pencil on the floor, already finished. Russell, he whispered, head down low toward his papers so the officer couldn’t hear. Seeing as you’re finished, could you, maybe, help me?

Russell took Otto’s forms and filled them in with decided, quick strokes. What should I put for this? he asked, pointing with the pencil end to the last two questions.

Put “Because otherwise I will explode,” said Otto.

I don’t think I can put that, said Russell.

I know, I know. Okay, put “To see beyond this place.”

Russell wrote it in. And for the next one?

Write “None,” said Otto.

While Russell was writing, Otto saw that on his own form he had put, for the last question:

Dead leg. (2) Do not want to.

He hadn’t written anything at all for the second-to-last question.

While they wrote, the officer sat and pushed the papers on his desk to align exactly with its sides. He kept his head down while they placed their completed forms in the pile on his left, but lifted his eyes, just a little, just a tiny bit, up toward them. I know you’re worried, he whispered, but don’t be, don’t be. It will all be okay, I promise. It will be fine.

T
hree weeks later they got their letters in the post, in envelopes dyed a muted uniform green. Otto was to report to the Regina office for dispatch in four days; Russell would not be needed.

E
tta, in the new openness that surrounded the schoolhouse and teacher’s cottage, learned to listen differently. As the months passed, her ears learned to distinguish shapes, patterns, life, in the big silence of this place. Smaller sounds, broader sounds. Insects calling against or with the wind, the conversation the wooden walls of her room had with the sun, the tread of boots on gravel miles away. And, of course, the calls of children and their dogs across the fields as they made their way toward her, toward the school. The brushing of the grain away from their bodies as they passed through.

And she’d figured out the scheduling of the switching students. The Vogels and Russell, who took turns, each day, back and forth. She asked Russell, one morning, as everyone was settling in, finding their seats, Why you too, Russell? You’re not a Vogel. Before he could answer, Addie interrupted, from a front desk,

Oh, he is one of us, just with a different name. Mom calls him Otto’s twin.

Russell smiled and flushed. Owen, his desk-mate, grimaced and mumbled something. The students in the desk in front of them giggled. Bolstered, Owen whispered something more, a little louder this time. More sniggering. The girls on their left looked over, downward, toward the boys’ legs. Russell straightened up, looked directly ahead.

Right, said Etta. Okay. That’s enough of that. Everyone up, today we’re starting with “Johnny Appleseed.” Russell you can be on clapping, Gus and Beatrice, you do the stomps. Nice and loud, get the dogs howling. Ready?

In the months since coming to Gopherlands school, Etta had started to hear new things, and so did all the neighboring farms. First thing in the morning the wind would carry the belted song of twenty-two children out across the land, through the cracks in the barn where Mabel McGuire was milking, over the hum of the tractor Liam Rogers was driving in no fixed pattern, under the warped door of the farmhouse where Sandy Goldstein was still working her ancient body slowly, carefully, out of bed. If the song was one they knew, they’d sing along, passing it further and further.

T
he next day, before class, Etta was in the yard being introduced to Lucy and Glen’s new skinny gray dog when Otto and the other Vogels marched up the road to the school. Owen broke out of the circle of children around the dog and hurried up to Otto. Hey, Otto! he said. Good morning! Want me to fill you in on yesterday’s lessons?

Otto hesitated, opened his mouth like he might say something, then, instead, swung his arm around, a closed fist. Owen flinched left, clipped in the shoulder. The others turned away from the dog, began to yell out. Otto lunged again, this time at Owen’s chest. Don’t you, he said. Don’t you ever, ever— The smaller boy stumbled back, lost his footing, fell down, head cracking the gravel. Otto fell on top of him. A blur of dust rose around them.

Etta saw all this over the head of the dog and the heads of the students, played out before she even realized what was happening, before Owen did either.

Jesus Christ! she yelled. The students whipped their heads back to look at her; a blaspheming teacher was as exciting as a fight. She broke through them to where Owen was, on the ground. Knelt down beside him. Breathing shallow, eyes open, stunned, a bit of blood
here from his nose, there from the back of his head. Otto stood and stepped back, arms fallen to his sides. You, said Etta. You will not come to classes today, Otto Vogel. Go home, just you, by yourself, and come back to speak with me at the end of the day.

Otto said nothing, just turned and walked back toward the farm. His brothers and sisters watched him. Winnie took a step, like to go with him, but Walter put an arm out to stop her.

Etta did her best to lift Owen back to his feet. He was surprisingly light; she could feel his shoulder blades through his shirt. Thank you, he said, but I’ll be fine. He wiped at the blood under his nose with his shirtsleeve, staining it dark.

I
would like to make it clear, said Otto, in the doorway to the classroom after all the students had gone, that I am here with an explanation, not an apology. He crossed to where Etta was waiting, at her desk. He was taller, older close-up. Etta could feel the heat off him, angry.

You should sit down, she said. Sit and explain.

Russell, said Otto, is the smartest one here. Smart and kind to everyone and thoroughly capable—he was still standing, like he was giving a class presentation—of everything. Everything except standing up for himself. So I did that for him. So we do that for him. Prepared speech finished, Otto relaxed a little, leaned a bit on the heavy wood teacher’s desk between them.

What did Owen say about him?

Does it matter?

Maybe.

People could say things about Owen. They could. But they don’t. We don’t. Words are strong. The strongest. Worse than bruises on gravel.

Etta considered this. Things people had said, whispered, when Alma left. The deep and unexpected urge toward violence she’d felt. To throw her body in the way of the words. Not something covered in teachers’ college. You can’t hit people, she said, finally. Though she wasn’t sure. Her fist into the soft, stupid mouths of former friends, bursting, realizing, something. You can’t do it here, anyway, she said. You, you should have told me. I could have spoken with Owen.

It’s not your responsibility.

Surely it is. As much as yours.

It’s not.

. . .

. . .

Well, what will Russell do, if you’re not there? When you’re not there?

I will find a way, said Otto.

E
tta rearranged the seating so that Otto and Russell no longer sat with Owen but on the opposite side of the room, at the back. Owen, a dark smear swollen from one side of his nose to just under his eye, kept his head fixed forward through the lessons and went home, by himself, for dinner. His new desk-mate, Sue, whispered soft words of consolation at him, lightly touching the place where his hair had had to be shaved away, but Owen ignored her, steadily working through his lessons on his own.

A week later, after class, when the students and dogs had dissipated, away, back toward various homes, and Etta had finished bundling up the second- and third-year assignments on Why I Would Like To Be Queen Or King and Why I Would Not Like To Be Queen Or King, respectively, she noticed that Otto was still there.
In his new desk at the back of the room. Sitting, this time.

I thought I should apologize, he said. Not for what happened with Owen, but for how I spoke to you the other day. I thought I had better say sorry. I wouldn’t talk that way to my father or mother, and so I shouldn’t to you either.

Thank you, Otto. That’s good of you to do. I was just planning to fail all of your assignments for three weeks.

The room fell silent.

Oh, Otto said. Well, yes, yes, I am sorry.

Etta smiled. Apology accepted. You can go home now.

But Otto didn’t go anywhere, he didn’t move.

Otto? I need to lock the school.

Yes, sorry. Of course. It’s just that, I was wondering, I have a favor to ask.

Etta put the assignments back down on her desk.

You’ve noticed, I’m sure, said Otto, that I am not the best at words. At reading and, even more, at writing. I mean, I could be, I will be, but it’s still quite new, and it’s harder, starting late. The younger kids can get it right away, their brains still have space. But mine’s already part-full. So,

And then Otto told her about Owen, about the lessons Owen used to give him. First in the dirt with sticks, then at dinner with paper, pencils. And, said Otto, he was going to write me letters. I’m, I’m going away . . . to fight, and he was going to write to me, so I could write him back. So I could keep up practice, over there . . . He stopped. Didn’t go so far as to ask Etta anything outright.

Under the desk, Etta’s right hand clenched. It was just as Alma had described. Little by little, all the young men from all over the country heading east, marching past Alma’s convent in mismatched socks, draining out like a hot summer’s stream. Etta looked at her
student, his hands folded into each other, calm, still at his desk. Just like that, she thought; it’s that easy, they go just like that. She felt very heavy. When are you going? she said.

Saturday.

In two days.

Yes.

So this was your last day of school.

Yes.

An apology, a request, and a goodbye, thought Etta. All in one. Okay, she said. I can write to you, and you can write back. My mailing address is easy, it’s here. She went to the blackboard, picked up a nub of chalk:

The Teacher’s Cottage

Gopherlands School

Gopherlands, Sask

Canada

Oh, and, she lifted her arm back up to the top of what she’d written, squeezing the letters in:

Etta Gloria Kinnick

That’s me.

Etta, said Otto. That’s easy to spell. Good. He wrote the address out carefully in his book. On the inside back cover. I don’t know mine yet, he said. But I will send it to you.

They said goodbye, polite, formal, a handshake, and Otto walked to the door.

Oh, and, Miss Kinnick . . . Etta? His body was blocking the late-afternoon sun, a cut-out of light around him.

Yes?

Keep an eye out for Russell, okay?

Yes, Otto, of course.