The High Divide (6 page)

At a quarter to seven folks started drifting down the hill from town in ones or twos, and in small clusters. They gathered on the east side of the oak-strewn park next to the river. The day had warmed. It felt more like summer than fall, with a damp heat that made Eli's shirt cling to his shoulders and back. Using tumblers from the barkeep, he and Danny ran back and forth between the hand pump at the center of the park and the gathered assembly, which by seven o'clock was settled and waiting, many of the people middle-aged or gray-haired, though several young families had turned out as well, their children playing tag or somersaulting in the grass.

Eli, pausing in his work, counted a congregation of thirty-eight.

As the sun descended into the oak trees behind them, and the windowed buildings of Fargo turned orange and pink to the north, Reverend Pearl stepped to the front, no pulpit or lectern to shield him, no white robe or surplice either, no clerical collar—only the plain dark suit he'd been wearing all day, its shoulders faded to gray, and a pair of square-toed shoes he'd polished earlier with shoeblack and a horse brush. He made no attempt at rhetorical flourish but simply introduced himself and thanked the people for coming.

“I believe we ought to sing for a while,” he told them.

He led with no instrumentation beyond his own voice, which sounded like a man calling through a steel pipe, and soon the congregation had begun to relax and sing along, the children quieting and falling in next to their mothers. It wasn't long before an old woman brought out a harmonica, and then a young woman with startling blonde hair produced a fiddle from a cloth bag and started sawing with energy, missing a few notes at first and losing others in screeches and high shrieks, but soon enough finding her way. For half an hour this went on, nearly all on their feet, some clapping, some with folded hands and bowed heads, the boys carrying water the whole time, until finally Reverend Pearl lifted his arms and motioned for everybody to sit down in the grass. He bent over to pick up his Bible.

Eli and Danny moved to the side of the hill and sat leaning against a double-trunked oak tree, catching their breath. They exchanged a commiserating look. It was one thing to get some help in catching the right train but quite another to spend half a day as the Reverend Pearl's personal servants. Eli would have sworn he wasn't interested in hearing what the man had to say, and yet it wasn't long before he found himself leaning forward and straining to make out the quietly uttered words, same as everybody else was doing. Some held cupped hands behind their ears, while others turned to the side, heads cocked. It seemed no one dared move for fear they might miss out on something. The harder they listened, though, the quieter he spoke, until he might as well have been whispering.

“I don't care about your holy thoughts or the earnest plea of your prayers. There is no true belief that is not marked by humility. Seek forgiveness from God, by all means. But remember, any coward can do as much. I'm here to tell you to bring yourselves low, brothers and sisters, to sink down into the dark muck of your hearts and look hard at what you find there—and then go and make things right.”

Eli thought of his mother back home and how she must have felt, waking that morning to find herself alone, how her face must have looked, squashed and fallen. He thought of the day his father left with the rooster in its cage and couldn't help feeling remorse now at refusing even to speak to him, angry as he had been. He thought of Mr. Goldman, from whom he'd stolen tobacco on occasion and, once, a pocketknife he wasn't able to carry with him or even use for fear Goldman might see it, and how he ended up just tossing the thing away into the river. Head bowed and eyes closed, the record of his transgressions unfurling inside his mind, Eli became aware that all was quiet, that Reverend Pearl had stopped speaking. Looking up, he saw a line of people forming out of the crowd to approach Reverend Pearl where he stood at the bottom of the slow rise of ground, watched as the man prayed for each briefly, whispering into their ears, long-fingered hands wrapped around their heads, before releasing them to return to their grassy seats on the hillside. Some smiled as they left him, some cried, some moved haltingly as if through a world they had never seen before. Eli got up from the tree and came closer to see if he could hear the man's prayers, make out what he was saying, but all that came to him were soft murmurs and the occasional sucking in of breath, whispers of assent. Sweat ran down the preacher's arms, dripped from his hair, and by the time he was finished and standing by himself in the near dark, slumped and diminished, the sap gone out of him, Eli was disturbed to notice his eyes alternately widening and narrowing as if he wasn't able to bring them into focus.

The reverend cleared his throat, licked his lips. “We'll pass the satchel now,” he said. “I don't ask for what you can ill afford. If you have enough for your needs and nothing more, hold on to it. I require little.”

Eli and Danny carried the leather satchel between them, holding it open as they moved among the gathering, coins spilling out from purses and wallets, and from the pockets of trousers that were patched and frayed. Finished, they closed up the satchel and retreated to the double-trunked oak tree to wait for Reverend Pearl's benediction and the gradual dispersal of the small crowd uphill toward town. The amount collected was fourteen dollars and eleven cents, which Danny counted out slowly under the eye of Reverend Pearl, who then led the boys back to the river camp, where he handed a silver dollar to each of the men there—four now, including the two from earlier—all of whom jumped right up and headed for town.

“Thirsty, I fear,” Reverend Pearl said. He sighed and let his body sag down to rest on an old chair with twisted legs.

“Are we leaving in the morning?” Eli asked.

Reverend Pearl was quiet for a few moments, absolutely still, as if he didn't hear the question. Then he shook himself all over, like a large animal waking, and wagged a long finger. “For everything there is a season, boys. This morning you rode into town on a boxcar, today we cooked fresh-caught fish on a fire, and tomorrow I hold one more meeting for the edification of the good people of Fargo. But the
next
morning,” he added, a smile widening his face—“the next morning, we three sojourners after truth will be eating from silver spoons on a Pullman car, heading west.”

St. Paul

T
he stall in momentum tugged her body forward, waking her. Then she fell back against the seat as the car rocked to a stop, brakes hissing. It was dark, the dead middle of the night, and through the window a small depot stood beneath a single streetlamp. Beyond, through a fringe of trees, lay a glimmering lake. She pressed her hand against the glass before leaning back and taking a long breath. Not only had the train been stopping at every small town on its eastward course, but an engine breakdown earlier had caused a three-hour delay. Now they were far behind schedule.

Gretta closed her eyes, wishing herself back inside the dream she'd been having, in which her husband came strolling up the street in front of their house, his hair cleanly barbered and beard trimmed, wearing a starched white shirt that smelled of soap. He walked up to where she stood in the yard, his eyes sparkling like river stones, and said, “It looks like you made out fine without me.” But Gretta couldn't sleep again. She was thinking of the day he left and the strange feeling she had that night as she sat down with her boys for a late supper, the urgency in Eli's face, the flat resignation on Danny's. “What's keeping him?” she'd asked, trying to keep control of her voice, in answer to which Danny said, “He won't be coming back, and you know it,” his words so true to what she feared that she reached across the table and slapped his cheek. Gretta did not slap her children. Danny had pushed his plate of food away and blinked, accepting the offense as nothing compared to the cause of it. Then came that long, terrible night, waiting in front of the fireplace for hours before finally going to sleep on the floor, all three of them together. At first light she'd woken to find both boys gone—same as she would six weeks later. She ran outside and started for town, her stomach loose and bowels threatening, but hadn't gone a block before she met them coming back toward her, Eli carrying his brother, who was shaking his head, flailing his arms, trying to break free. “No,” Danny was crying, “I want to go too, I want to go too.”

Eli had always taken care of Danny like that, anticipating his spells, doing his chores, standing up for him when other boys pushed him around. Yesterday, though, during her panicked search through town and then her ride out to the river with Fogarty, Gretta had failed to see what she
could
see now in the clarity following the hard sleep of dreams: Eli, whose instinct was to ease his brother's passage through the world, would never have taken him along on his search for Ulysses. Never. He wouldn't risk Danny's health in that way. Which meant, Gretta realized, that Ulysses must have come back for the boys, either that or he'd sent for them. It was the only explanation that made any sense. The problem was, it forced Gretta to look at something else, too, something she hadn't been willing to confront, at least nakedly and straight on—the likelihood of another woman. Why else would Ulysses have failed to write even a single letter home or send a telegram to explain his absence? And why else would he have taken with him the beautifully beaded tobacco pouch, which he'd claimed was a gift from a fellow trooper in the Minnesota Ninth, a man from the Chippewa tribe? Wasn't it an odd gift for a man to give another man? Of course it was, and Gretta knew it was high time she accept what might well be the truth: that after stealing her love and her trust—as worthless as they must have seemed to him—and trampling them under his boots, now Ulysses must want their sons, too.

Behind her the door latch rattled, and she turned to see a lantern-bearing porter striding to the middle of the car where he stood with his chest thrown forward and chin lifted. “The conductor wishes to inform you that we will be laying over here for three hours, due to unforeseen mechanical problems.”

From several rows ahead, a man shouted, “The damn engine quit again?”

“Everything is under control. Stretch your legs, if you like. The depot's open, and the station manager has coffee and tea.” He clapped his boots together and continued on to the next car.

The old woman across from Gretta shook her head, snorted, and turned aside to sleep. Gretta stood and looped her handbag over her shoulder. Outside, the air was still and she drew the collar of her sweater high against the chill. She needed to think, and the motion of walking, especially at night, allowed her to see her life in ways she couldn't see it otherwise. She walked down past a grain elevator to the lake, where a pair of mallards glided off toward the moon's reflection. At the shoreline she crouched to touch the water with her fingers. She cupped her hands and took a drink. The tang of vegetation was strong, and she spat it out. A fish turned itself over in the shallows. She walked back up the dirt street toward the depot, around the last car of the train, and then out of the rail yard toward the empty commercial district. The small town was silent except for occasional animal sounds, and Gretta thought of her mother's night walks in Copenhagen, especially during the year that her husband was gone, how she'd walked north from their place near Tivoli Gardens, crossed the canal bridge, and strolled the grounds behind the library. Gretta, sixteen then, followed her mother many times, wondering if she was going off to meet someone, suspecting it might even be her husband, Gretta's father, who'd gone to live in the Nyhavn district with a woman he'd known during his sailing years. But in fact her mother never rendezvoused with anyone, never went to fetch her husband either, but waited for him to come home of his own accord. And when he did, she took him back, commencing to feed him as she'd always done, launder his clothes, and even receive him in her bed, though Gretta always sensed her mother's bitterness toward him. It wasn't long after, when he died, that Gretta left for America, unable to bear the thought of living any longer with someone who by turns was either angry or sad.

She came round a corner that brought the depot back into sight.
I won't come begging on my knees, and I won't play the fool,
she thought.
I have my dignity, after all. And damn it, I won't let you just come back and take my boys away.

The repair took longer than the porter's estimate, but at least Gretta was able to sleep again, and by the time she woke, morning had arrived and the train was curving through the hills of St. Paul, the city larger and louder and richer than she remembered, nearly unrecognizable after so many years gone—the long views of the Mississippi blocked now by grand structures of brick or limestone, the sparsely settled streets filled in with two- and three-story homes beneath canopies of elm and linden and maple. Back here in the place where they met, Gretta felt certain that Ulysses was close by, that she was going to find him. But she also dreaded more than ever the humiliation of discovering what he'd been unwilling to tell her when he left—that he had no intention of returning to her.

Her plan was to visit her sister-in-law, who lived on a little side street off Summit Avenue with her husband. Or at least she hoped they still lived there. It seemed unlikely Ulysses would return to St. Paul without enlisting their help, though it was also possible that shame might keep him away. He'd always been given to brooding over mistakes others would shrug off as nothing. Once during their first year together, when he was in the habit of making breakfast and bringing it to her in bed, he gave her a hard-boiled egg which, when cracked open, revealed a shriveled, bug-eyed chick. Gretta shrieked, but she wasn't nearly as horrified as Ulysses had been. For months he berated himself, and he never made her breakfast again.

At the Union Depot she splashed water on her face and brushed out her hair and moistened a handkerchief to freshen herself beneath the arms. She sprinkled herself with the rose water she kept in her handbag, but still she felt dingy and rough, too coarse for the city. And so she kept her face lifted and her back straight, her eyes busily engaged, trying at least to present an air of knowing her business. On the brick street outside the depot she caught a horsecar and rode out toward Summit Hill beneath a sky marred only by high puffs of cloud. She meant to go straight to her sister-in-law's, but the approach of an old landmark—a Romanesque church on a corner—caused her to ask the driver to please stop.

She gathered up her skirt, took up her bag and her valise, and climbed down from the car, which rolled on without her, leaving Gretta standing at the top of a narrow, dead-end street that descended past the church into a grove of red maples, their leaves fast approaching their deepest coloration. It was the street on which her aunt and uncle had lived and where she lived with them for just less than a year, until she married and moved away. They'd died within a few months of each other a decade after Gretta left, and she still regretted never going back to visit. In truth, though, she hadn't been close to them, or at least that's what she told herself. They had an old-country reserve and seemed to resent her presence in their house: the food she ate, the popular songs she played on their piano, the language she took to so naturally. Yet for all that, she had longed to see them during her first years in Sloan's Crossing, if only to hear their consonant-thick speech and remember her childhood, and the country she feared she would never visit again.

The houses grew smaller and simpler as the ground descended, brick and stone two-stories giving way to wood-frame bungalows. Near the end of the street, though, standing higher and wider than the homes above it, was a bright Queen Anne. Apparently her aunt and uncle's little place had been torn down, she thought, replaced with this one—though another few paces brought her directly to the front of the house, and she could see that crouched in its shadow was the original cottage, its siding flaked away to bare wood, its front stoop gone, most of the windowpanes missing or broken. A section of roof had caved in. Gretta walked carefully toward it, skirt knotted in her hand, stiff weeds snapping underfoot and slapping against her stockings. The front door stood ajar. A tuft of flowers—geraniums and daisies, still blooming somehow—sprouted from the window box that her aunt had been so proud of. Gretta stepped close and put her face to one of the unbroken panes, where she saw her reflection.

That's me,
she thought, staring. It was hard to believe, though, with the deep creases at the sides of her mouth and the sunken cheeks, the tight, straight line where she used to have lips, the jutting cords in her neck. Disgusted, she stepped to the side, took hold of the doorframe and pulled herself up and over the rotting threshold to stand where the welcome mat used to be, the one that said
VELKOMMEN
.
She waited for her eyes to adjust. Then she moved toward the corner of the big room where Aunt Matty had kept her single extravagance, the piano with the lift-top that she'd insisted be shipped from Copenhagen, no matter the fee—
Or I won't cross over with you,
she'd always bragged of telling her husband. But there was a gaping hole in the floor, boards splintered and broken at the edges, and above this a corresponding hole in the roof, where a small dark cloud was passing across the sky. She slid her feet ahead, one foot-length at a time, until she stood at the very edge, leaning over the lip. The piano sat tilted on the cellar floor, lid slammed shut, its once well-oiled surface as dull as dirt.

“I'm sorry,” she said, as much to the piano as to her aunt, who she hoped couldn't see this from wherever she might be.

Other things also remained. The round, claw-footed table where they'd taken their meals. A painting on the wall of a city street in Denmark, all the vivid colors gone out of it. And lying on the floor, its glass missing and face cracked, the clock whose hollow ticking used to keep her awake at night, wondering if she'd made a mistake in leaving her mother to come here. Gretta left everything where it was, didn't venture into the bedrooms or kitchen, the pain too great, all these cherished things meaning nothing to the people who'd bought the place and built their house beside it. And yet she couldn't help feeling that she was the culpable one, ignoring her aunt and uncle in their last years.

She went back uphill and waited at the church until a horsecar pulled up in the same spot she used to catch it every day. The driver was young, his straight body tense with confidence, and his eyes took her in whole before glancing past her, frowning, as if she'd left some kind of trouble behind. During the months Gretta had lived here, the driver of the car had been Ulysses, who each morning gave her a ride west to the grand house on Summit where she cleaned and cooked for a shrunken, aging merchant who sat all day in a massive chair before the fire, filling journals with his cribbed hand. Then in the evening Ulysses would come by and carry her home again. He'd never talked much—predictions of the weather, his dream of leaving the city—but he was a patient listener, and Gretta admired his military bearing and his masculine certainty, not to mention the cleft in his chin and his pale eyes, which seemed to harbor some hidden pain. She'd been so young then, eighteen, and she saw in him everything she needed to see in a man: hardness enough to protect her from the world and kindness enough to make him a pleasant companion—an able guide through the perils of this new country. She had not pressed to learn how he had gained these qualities, although she knew he had been in the war. Nor had she considered that he might have seen in her the cure for his own needs and fears, and now she mused on her youthful selfishness.

At the intersection of Summit and Dale—another familiar stop—she got off and walked two blocks north. The house appeared unchanged, a two-story clapboard that looked like it belonged in a farmyard. The buildings on either side were recently built, three stories high, brown brick, modern and shiny. For a few minutes she stood in the street, summoning her courage. She'd never been comfortable with Florence and Charles, and in fact had spent little time with them, even though Ulysses, when she met him, was living in a small room at the back of their house. Florence was twenty years older than her brother, and by the time Ulysses stayed with her, she and Charles had already raised their children. It had always seemed to Gretta that her husband had avoided his sister, and once he and Gretta had moved to Sloan's Crossing, the annual letter at Christmastime was the only contact they had had with St. Paul.