Ordinary Grace (17 page)

he bulrushes shook as if a herd of elephants raged through and in a moment a group of men burst into the clearing. My father and Karl and Gus were among them and the sheriff was there

and Doyle and a couple of deputies. They halted when they saw Jake and me at the lean-to. Halted all except my father who strode straight to us and stood eyeing us with confusion and concern.

What are you boys doing here?
Looking for Warren Redstone, I said.
The sheriff came and stood beside my father. He said brusquely,

I thought about Redstone’s parting words:
You’ve just killed me, white boy.
And I recalled the afternoon in the back of Halderson’s Drugstore and the drunken men with the look of murder in their eyes. I stared into my father’s face where rain ran off his brow in clear rivulets and I saw a fearful desperation there. I looked into the sheriff ’s face and was met with a coldness, a hard determination empty of compassion, and although I didn’t see murder in either of these men what I did see was disturbing enough to make me hold my tongue.

That way, Doyle shouted and pointed downriver toward the path Jake and I had hastily broken through the reeds and Warren Redstone in his own flight had followed.
How long ago? the sheriff demanded.
A couple of minutes, I said.
All the men began a footrace except my father who hesitated a

moment and pointed toward the slope of the riverbank and said, Go on up to the car and stay there, do you understand? And without waiting for us to reply he joined the others in pursuit.

I stood in the rain and looked down the ragged empty way we’d torn through the reeds.
Beside me Jake said, Is it true?
Is what true?
That he’s as good as dead? That they’ll kill him?
He thinks it’s true, I said.
Do you think he hurt Ariel?
I don’t know.
I don’t think he did, Frank.
The moment of my own anger had passed and in the quiet of the regret that followed I thought Jake was right.
Come on, I said and began to run in the direction Redstone and the men had gone.
Thunder broke again and again over our heads and in those moments lightning whitened the gray curtain of the rain. The downpour was so heavy I couldn’t see more than thirty yards ahead and the men were not there. We raced as fast as our legs would carry us but the men’s legs were twice as long and took them away at twice the speed and I was sure that catching them was hopeless. Jake at the beginning was by my side but he gradually fell back and though he called to me to wait I ran on alone. Past the place where only fifteen minutes earlier we’d come down from the Flats, past the last of the houses along Fifth Street, and finally to the trestle across the river where my history with Warren Redstone had begun.
I’d run myself out. I stood dripping wet in the shelter of the trestle in the same place where the dead man had lain and Redstone had sat beside him. I breathed in gasps and my side hurt. The riverbank had become slick from the rain and in the mud there I could see tracks where the men in front of me had run in their pursuit. I thought I might even have heard them calling to one another though I couldn’t be certain because the roar of the wind and the pounding of water out of the sky drowned out almost all other sounds. I lifted my face in the same way Warren Redstone on that first encounter had lifted his and had caught Jake and me spying on him through the crossties of the trestle. And there above me between the crossties was the face of Redstone staring down.
He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He simply lay flat on the trestle and looked at me with eyes as brown and old and worn down as two stones that had tumbled along the glacial river over ten thousand years ago, a river that had been given the same name as he: Warren.
I remembered what he had said to Jake on our first meeting, that the tracks were like a river, a steel river, always there but always moving, and I realized that the river Warren Redstone intended to follow was not one of water.
He stood. I saw his body in flickers between the crossties as he started across the trestle. I left the shelter of the railroad bridge and walked out along the riverbank and watched him moving quickly and carefully from crosstie to crosstie with his head down so that he would not misstep and fall. He looked back at me once as if gauging my intent then returned his attention to making his escape.
The last I saw of him he’d crossed the trestle and slipped behind the veil of the heavy rain.

he sheriff ’s people finally got around to searching the railroad tracks on the other side of the river but by then Warren Redstone was long gone. I never said a word to anyone about seeing him. How could I possibly explain my silence, my complicity in his escape, things I didn’t really understand myself? My heart had simply directed me in a way that my head couldn’t wrap its thinking around and the deed once done was impossible to undo. But it weighed on me heavily. And with all that was about to occur, that guilt over my silence would finally come near to crushing me.

In the driving rain that afternoon a search was conducted along both sides of the river from well above Sibley Park to well beyond the trestle. It turned up nothing.The sheriff ’s people also carried out a search of the O’Keefes’ basement where Warren Redstone had been staying. They’d hoped to discover something that might further connect the man to Ariel, maybe even the mother-of-pearl barrette that matched her locket or the gold watch she’d worn that night, but they came away emptyhanded. The sheriff told us that he’d notified authorities in all the adjoining counties and assured us that Redstone would be caught. In the meantime, he would continue his search for Ariel.

Judy Kleinschmidt finally confirmed Morris Engdahl’s story and so gave him the alibi that freed him from the cell where for several hours he’d remained the guest of the sheriff ’s department. The sheriff confided to my father that he didn’t necessarily believe Engdahl’s story or the girl’s confirmation of it but he had no choice at the moment except to release the kid, especially in light of the locket that had been in Warren Redstone’s possession.

By that evening our situation was well known in New Bremen. My grandfather and Liz arrived and Liz took charge of feeding us which was its own blessing since she was a wonderful cook. Emil Brandt had gone home and then returned because, he told my mother, he couldn’t wait this out alone. Karl, who’d brought him, looked uncomfortable in our presence and in the presence of our misery and he quickly left.The downpour continued and brought an early dark and after dinner the adults sat in the living room and Jake and I sat on the front porch, barely talking, and watched the rain fall so hard it threatened to beat the leaves from the trees.

Time in the Drum household changed that night.We entered a period in which every moment was weighted with both the absolute necessity of hope and a terrible and almost unbearable anticipation of the worst. My father’s response was to pray which he did often and fervently. He prayed alone and he prayed in the company of his family. I sometimes prayed with him and so did Jake but my mother didn’t and usually stared straight ahead with a look that seemed to vacillate between bewilderment and rage.

On Thursday morning the visitors began to arrive. Neighbors and members of my father’s congregation dropped by, staying only a moment, just long enough to deliver their good wishes along with a casserole or a loaf of homemade bread or a pie in order to free my mother from the responsibility of the kitchen. My grandfather and Liz came early and Liz prepared our meals from the delivered food and my grandfather greeted the visitors at the door and thanked them on my parents’ behalf and in between the visitations he and Liz sat with my mother and with Emil Brandt who was always present. The Methodist district superintendent, a man named Conrad Stephens, drove over from Mankato and offered to cover the Sunday services for the churches in my father’s charge. My father thanked him and said he would think about that.

Gus was in and out. I heard the growl of his motorcycle arriving and leaving. He was in touch with Doyle who was deeply involved in the effort to locate Ariel and he often slipped into the house and spoke with my father in low tones and then left without a word to the rest of us. I found out later he was bringing my father information about the reports the sheriff ’s people and the town’s chief of police were receiving concerning Ariel’s disappearance. A girl fitting her description had been seen in the company of some boys down in Blue Earth or someone thought they saw her walking along the road near Morton or she’d been spotted at a truck stop in Redwood Falls.

It was an awful time and Jake and I frequently sought sanctuary in our room. Jake would lie on his bed with one of his comic books open but more often than not instead of reading he stared silently at the ceiling. Or he sat at his little workbench and tried to focus on his plastic airplane models and our room was filled with the dizzying smell of glue. Much of the time I sat on the floor by the window looking at the church across the street and wondering about my father’s God. In his sermons my father often talked about trusting God and trusting that no matter how alone we might feel God was always with us. In all that terrible waiting I didn’t feel the presence of God, not one bit. I prayed but unlike my father who seemed to believe that he was being heard, I felt as if I was talking to the air. Nothing came to me in return. Not Ariel or any relief from the worry about her.

All day the rain continued and the hours passed in a deep fog of fear and waiting. Since Ariel had gone missing my parents had had almost no sleep and they looked terrible. That night as Jake and I lay in bed my father received a telephone call from the sheriff. He took the call in the hallway outside our room and I got up and stood in the doorway and listened to his end of the conversation. He was grim and clearly upset. When the call was finished he told me to go back to bed and he went downstairs where my mother and Emil Brandt and my grandfather and Liz sat together in the living room. As quietly as I could I crept to the top of the stairs and listened.

We were not the only family suffering in the wake of Ariel’s disappearance, my father reported. Because of Warren Redstone, Danny O’Keefe’s family was being harassed. They’d received a number of threatening calls and had stopped answering their telephone. That very night their living room window had been shattered by a rock thrown from the dark outside. My father said he was going to the O’Keefes’ house and apologize to them.
Apologize for what? my grandfather asked.
For the ignorance of others, my father said.
What ignorance? my grandfather persisted. Those people housed

and fed Redstone. My god, Nathan, do you believe that they didn’t know what kind of man he is?
And what kind of man is he, Oscar?
My grandfather sputtered. He . . . he . . . well he’s a troublemaker.
What kind of trouble?
Well, my grandfather said, it was a long time ago.
Oscar, the only thing I know for sure about Warren Redstone is that he intervened when Morris Engdahl tried to hurt Frank.
He had Ariel’s locket, my mother said in a stone voice.
Yes, my grandfather chimed in. What about that?
Frank says Redstone claimed to have found it.
And you believe the lies of an Indian? my grandfather shot back.
An Indian. My father’s voice was stern but not cold. If you ask me, Oscar, I’d say that’s the whole point of this harassment. It has nothing to do with Ariel. Ariel is simply the excuse some people are using to let loose their prejudice and their cruelty. So I’m going to the O’Keefes’ and I’m going to tell them I’m sorry for their ordeal.
My grandfather said bitterly, And if Mr. Redstone is responsible for Ariel being missing?
There’s a good explanation why Ariel is gone, my father replied. I truly believe that. And I believe she’ll be coming back to us.There’s no reason in the world why the O’Keefes should have to suffer.
I heard him cross the room and from the dark at the top of the stairway where I sat hidden I caught a glimpse of him as he left through the front door.
A fool, my grandfather said.
Yes, but a great one, Emil Brandt replied.

Loss, once it’s become a certainty, is like a rock you hold in your hand. It has weight and dimension and texture. It’s solid and can be assessed and dealt with. You can use it to beat yourself or you can throw it away. The uncertainty of Ariel’s disappearance was vastly different. It surrounded us and clung to us. We breathed it in and breathed it out and we were never sure of its composition. We had reason to be afraid yes, but without any real idea of what had happened or was happening to Ariel we had every reason to hope as well. Hope was what my father held to. My mother chose despair. Emil Brandt was a constant presence and a great comfort to her and was sometimes able to discuss with her in a way my father could not the darker possibilities of the situation. Jake turned to silence which because of his stuttering was a familiar shelter for him. Gus just looked grim all the time.

Me, I dreamed the best of scenarios. I imagined Ariel sick of life in the valley and eager for experience and I saw her on the seat beside a friendly trucker rolling across the high plains with her eyes on the Rocky Mountains that rose like a dark blue wave out of yellow wheat fields and somewhere beyond those mountains was Hollywood and greatness. Or I saw her bound for Chicago or New Orleans where she would also make a name for herself. Sometimes I saw her frightened and desperate in her flight which in a way was hopeful because it meant that we would get a call from her from a phone booth in the middle of somewhere she didn’t want to be asking my father to please come and bring her home. I believed that one way or another we would hear from her and she would return. I believed it with all my heart and when I prayed that was my prayer.

For two days the sheriff ’s department and the town police conducted dozens of interviews with the kids who’d been at the party on the river and with Ariel’s friends but they learned nothing that helped clear up the mystery.

By the third afternoon the atmosphere of our house so oppressed me that I began to think I would suffocate or go crazy. My father had gone to a meeting with the other clergy in town to discuss the concern about the possibility of violence, not just against the O’Keefes but also against several Sioux families in the area who’d received overt threats though they had nothing to do with my sister. I’d heard that the other kids on the Flats were keeping away from Danny and I thought that was wrong and I wanted to show him that as far as I was concerned there was nothing between us but the friendship that we’d always shared. I told Jake I was going to Danny’s house and he said he wanted to go along and I said that was okay by me. My mother was with Brandt in the living room where the drapes were drawn and I spoke into the cool dark there. Jake and me are going to Danny O’Keefe’s house, I said. He’s been having a tough time, I heard.

Just like your father, my mother said. I couldn’t see her face but her voice sounded displeased.
Can we go?
She didn’t answer immediately but Emil Brandt whispered something and she said, Yes, but be careful.
The rain had stopped sometime in the night and was followed by a hot and windless summer day. Everything was soaked and the ground was soggy and because of the humidity the air we breathed sat heavy in our chests. On the Flats nothing moved. The drapes were drawn against the heat and nowhere did we hear the sound of kids at play. My father said that parents were watching their children carefully, keeping them close to home until the mystery of Ariel’s disappearance was solved. It felt like an episode from
The Twilight Zone
in which everyone except Jake and me had vanished from the world.
Danny’s mother answered the door. She looked at us with wonderment but not unkindly. Then she looked beyond us at the street and I understood that she was afraid.
Is Danny home? I asked.
She said, Why are you here?
I was just wondering if Danny wanted to come out and play.
Danny’s gone to stay with relatives in Granite Falls for a few days, she said.
I nodded and then said, I’m sorry, Mrs. O’Keefe.
For what, Frank?
For your trouble.
And I’m sorry for yours.
Yeah. Well, good-bye, I guess.
Good-bye, Frank. She looked at Jake and I thought she was going to say good-bye to him as well but she didn’t and I realized that she probably couldn’t remember his name which was a common result of Jake’s tendency toward silence in the company of others.
We stepped away from the front porch and Jake said, What do we do now?
Let’s go down to the river, I said.
In those days the Flats ended at the O’Keefes’ house. Beyond lay undeveloped marshland. We threaded our way through the tall cattails along a trail known to all the kids on the Flats and we emerged on the bank of the river. The two days of rain had swollen the flow and the water level and current were both far greater than they’d been in weeks. We began an aimless walk downstream toward our part of the Flats. The edge of the river was always changing, sometimes sand and sometimes mud, sometimes wide enough for a marching band and sometimes barely broad enough for the feet of two boys. The clearing on the stretch of reedy sand where Danny’s uncle had built his lean-to was almost completely surrounded by water now and because we’d often been warned about quicksand we stayed away from it. We walked past the place where if we wanted to return home most easily we would have climbed the bank but at the moment I wasn’t keen on returning to our house and to its atmosphere of dread. Not far beyond that Jake picked up a piece of driftwood as long as his arm and said, Want to race boats?
I found a big hunk of wood about the same size and said, Go! And we threw our make-believe boats into the river and the current snatched them away and we followed at a run. The boats swirled and turned and slid past submerged logs whose branches jutted above the river’s surface like the fingers of water beasts trying to haul them under.
Mine’s winning, Jake hollered and laughed for the first time in days.
We raced to the trestle where so much of that summer’s tragic history had already been played out. Where the water swirled around the pilings a little dam had formed of debris swept up by the powerful risen flow and our boats were caught among the branches and other detritus and the contest ended. We stood on the riverbank in the shade of the railroad bridge breathing fast and sweating profusely, with our sneakers covered in mud and our clothing snagged with burrs and our hearts lighter than they’d been since Ariel had vanished.
Let’s sit down, I said.
Where? Jake looked at the muddy riverbank.
Up there. I pointed toward the crossties above us.
Jake began to protest but I’d already started up the embankment and there was nothing for him but to follow.
My shirt stuck to my sweaty back and I took it off and threw it over my shoulder and Jake did the same.The weeks we’d spent outside in the summer sun had turned our skins the color of pecans. I walked onto the trestle just far enough to sit where my legs could dangle. Jake looked down the tracks warily and listened carefully and finally sat beside me. I’d scooped up a handful of rocks from the roadbed and I began to throw them at the branches and other debris that rode the river. Jake saw what I was doing and grabbed a handful of rocks for himself.
We sat this way for several minutes in the nearly silent swelter of that July afternoon. The sky was a cloudless blue, the cornfields on the other side of the river deep jade, the distant hills a mottled green like turtle shells, and the water of the Minnesota River the color of cloudy cider. I was so used to the fertile smell of the valley that I barely noticed the raw fragrance drawn up from the wet black earth by the heat of the sun. What I did note was how, for a moment, things felt normal again. God, I wanted that moment to last forever. And with guilty clarity I realized that as much as I wanted Ariel to return to us I wanted even more for things simply to be as they’d been before.
Jake threw a rock and said, Every time I think about Ariel it feels like somebody punched me in the gut. Do you think she’ll ever come home, Frank?
I don’t know.
I thought so at first but I don’t think so now.
Why?
I just have that feeling.
Well get rid of it, I said and threw a rock.
I’ve been dreaming about her.
Yeah?
I dream about her in heaven.
I’d been ready to throw another rock, even had my arm cocked, but I stopped and looked at my brother. What’s it like?
Mostly she’s just happy. I feel kind of good when I wake up.
Jesus, I wish I had that dream.
You said— Jake began his usual complaint about my language but dropped it. He looked past me and looked down and said, What’s that, Frank?
I turned my eyes to where he pointed at the little dam of debris the river had swept up and the trestle pilings had captured. Within the thick nesting of brush and branches which were all shades of brown and black was an undulation of bright red that couldn’t be seen from the riverbank but was quite visible from above. I stood and crept farther out onto the trestle where Jake was reluctant to follow and I reached the place directly above the debris. I peered down among the debris and branches where the brown cider water rushed through and obscured everything beneath the surface. It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at. And when I did the breath went out of me.
What is it, Frank?
I couldn’t look up. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t speak.
Jake said, Frank?
Get Dad, I finally managed to say.
What is it? Jake insisted.
Just get Dad. Now, Jake. Go. I’ll wait here.
Jake stood up and started out farther onto the trestle and I yelled at him, Don’t you come out here. Don’t take another step. Just get Dad, goddamn it.
Jake stumbled back and almost fell from the trestle and picked himself up and turned and began to run along the tracks toward the Flats.
Strength deserted every muscle of my body and I collapsed and stared down between the crossties at the rippling swatch of red which I’d realized was the fabric of a dress ruffling in the current. And beside it from the obscured depth of the river a little stream of a deeper color roiled up and fluttered along the surface and I knew this was Ariel’s long auburn hair.
The day was hot and windless and the sky a hard china blue and I lay alone on the railroad bridge and my heart out above a river that seemed to have none.