Abbeville (24 page)

Together we moved all the little desks and chairs in the north room to one side, leaving a broad, scuffed expanse of varnished pine.

“I need you to stay a little ahead of me,” said Grampa. “Pretend you are sowing oats.”

“I don't know how,” I said.

“I'll show you.”

Grampa laid down the sawdust in a quarter moon with a broad, sweeping motion of his right arm. The first time I tried, the sawdust landed in a clump.

“I thought we might need a bit more of it there, where the marks are the worst,” I explained.

“Spreading it evenly straight through the swing will do just fine, George.”

Once I got the hang of it, we needed just three passes to finish the part we had cleared of desks and chairs. The used cleaning compound lay in a neat line at the near end of the floor. I leaned over the dustpan as Grampa swept it in.

“You can throw it in the trash can over there,” Grampa said. “We'll burn it later. The wax makes for a pretty flame.”

When I looked back, the floor glowed in the setting sun.

“Now the other half,” Grampa said. “This time we'll have to lift the desks and stay on our tiptoes so that we don't scrape a heel.”

When we were finished with both rooms and the hall, the floors in every direction were as void of human imprint as a beach smoothed by waves. Grampa tilted his head to make sure that the job was right from every angle. Of course, in the morning the kids would obliterate our work. But for that moment when the children arrived, the school would shine.

I don't know whether or not he thought of it as the last time he would be able to look back on gainful labor. But the way he talked, he seemed content that others would follow—other caretakers, other postmen, other generations of the family, other rivers down to the end of time when the purpose of all would reveal itself, or would not.

We went out and put the trash and sawdust in the circle of blackened rocks at the back of the lawn. Grampa pulled out a kitchen match, struck it against the sole of his shoe, and tossed it on the pile, which whumped into flame. As it burned, we sat silently nearby, like ancient Indians raising prayers at a sacred spot on the endless plains.

W
HEN EVERYONE ELSE
had gone to bed, Karl and Cristina sat together in the kitchen.

“I guess we won't be warming milk on this cookstove many more times,” said Karl.

“Well, you've got prices marked on everything we might warm it in,” said Cristina.

“Did I go too high, do you think?” said Karl. “I don't want anybody to feel I'm gouging.”

“Do you still have a bottle of schnapps?” asked Cristina.

She could still surprise him even after all the years.

“Why, I do believe there's some in the cellar,” he said.

“No price tag on it for the sale?”

“Nope.”

“How long have you had it down there for a secret nip?” she said.

“Every man needs something to hide,” Karl said.

When he brought it up, it had a heavy coating of dust.

“See,” he said. “Hardly touched.”

“Blow it off outside, please,” she said.

Karl went to the back steps and rubbed the glass down with his hands. Cristina took out two glasses that she had promised to a cousin. They were heavy crystal. She had bought them in Chicago just before their wedding. All six in the set had survived, largely because they had always been too good to use.

Karl poured, the bottle's neck tapping the lip of the glass like code. She let him pour a fair amount, more than he ever remembered her taking, and this emboldened him to give himself as much as he pleased.

“It's going to be a lot different,” Cristina said.

Karl lifted his glass and said, “To the next fifty years.”

Cristina lifted her glass, too, a little more slowly, and let it be touched.

“I'm not sure how many more years I have,” she said.

“At Betty's,” he said, “whatever happens, somebody will be there.”

“I won't be cooking for you anymore,” Cristina said.

“You deserve someone to do for you for a change,” he said.

“She'll keep me out of her kitchen,” Cristina said, “just like I always kept her out of mine.”

Karl put his hand around his glass and left it there.

“I noticed you didn't put a price on Fritz's revolver,” Cristina said.

“We should have buried it with him,” he said.

Cristina reached across the table and touched his hand.

“You could still, you know,” she said. “I would go with you.”

“It's a walk,” he said.

“I'll survive,” she said. “Get the shovel and lantern. I'll carry the pistol.”

“I'd better make sure it isn't loaded,” he said.

“Don't you worry,” she said. “I've done that every day since you brought it into this house.”

They sneaked out the back door, passed the summer kitchen, feeling their way along the wall of the chicken coop and outhouse. Once they got beyond them, Karl fired up the lantern.

Because he did not have a free arm to support Cristina, she grasped his belt and shuffled behind him. When they reached the blacktop road, they stayed well away from the shoulder, where there were ruts and holes that could have tripped them.

“It's been a long time since we've taken a stroll together,” Cristina said.

“A stroll to the cemetery in the middle of the night,” he said. “I think it may be a first.”

“For me,” she said. “But not for you.”

“I have liked it there at sunrise or sunset,” Karl said. “It always gave me a sense of things coming back around.”

“Are you afraid?” she asked.

“I like my independence, just like you do,” he said. “I like making my own mistakes.”

“Well,” she said, “you've got a little experience there.”

They reached the dirt road. At the end of it, beyond the lantern light, stretched the moonshadow of the big old tree near her grandparents' graves. They made their way forward, Karl using the spade like a blind man's cane.

“Tell me again why are we doing this?” he asked.

“My grandmother always said, ‘
Der Weg ist das Ziel.'
”

The way Cristina voiced the old saying made it sound like
Lieder,
the song a person would sing only when he finally had the distance to realize that the destination at journey's end had all along been the journey itself.

“You have always favored your grandmother, you know,” he said.

“Am I really that old?” she said.

Once inside the cemetery grounds Karl stopped and put down the lantern and spade, then turned to take both of her hands in his. As he did, he felt the icy hardness of the pistol.

“You're not pointing that, I hope,” he said. “I guess I should have been more careful what I said.”

“You did fine,” she said.

“We've got to choose a place to dig,” he said.

“Why not between Fritz and Edna?” she said.

“Maybe back there under the fence line, with the barrel pointing out,” said Karl.

He left the lantern with Cristina and moved forward to the edge of the light. At first he wasn't sure which fence post it was that he was looking for, the one Fritz had dropped on his shin in another century, before the logging, before Cristina, before the dynamo, before the darkness of Verdun and the Crash, the shame of Stateville, the suicides, his penitence, the letting go. Above him he could see the lights of a high-flying airliner wink a few times before disappearing into a cloud. Before modern life as they had come to know it had begun, and
certainly before death. As he stood there, it all came back to him, his father's orders—where he should begin, exactly how many feet he should put between the posts, how much area to enclose. Not a square foot more than he had promised.

“I found it,” he called out in the darkness. Cristina probably had no idea what he had been looking for. Many times in their life she hadn't.

He stuck the spade into the ground, then returned to her.

“Come to me,” he said. “Careful. The grass is wet, but I want you near.”

He picked up the lantern and took her hand. In the dark they were both unlined by time.

When they reached the spot, he left the lantern with her, then outlined with the spade a circle about a foot in diameter. Carefully, he slid the blade under the sod and lifted it in one piece like the lid of a barrel.

After placing the disk off to the side, he began digging with more determination, cutting into the rich, black dirt and piling it next to the hole. When he had gone down a foot and a half, he rested the spade against the fence post and went to Cristina.

“Do you want to do the honors?” he asked.

She held the pistol out to him by the barrel.

He got down on his knees and laid the weapon in its final resting place, where the rainwater would render it inoperable and then slowly leach away the oxides. A surge of feeling washed over him for the passing of one thing into another. He silently prayed the prayer he had prayed so often since they had taken him off to Stateville: “Lord, let me learn to love your commands.”

Then he stood and shoveled the dirt back and refitted the sod, tamping it down with the sole of his shoe and feeling the moisture come up through the worn leather.

When he was done, he stood motionless for a moment.

“Are you talking to Fritz?” Cristina asked.

Karl did not realize his thoughts had made a sound.

“I was asking for forgiveness,” he said.

“You've done enough of that, Karl,” she said. “Let's go home now.”

He took her hand.

“Why are we moving away from Abbeville, Cristina?” he said.

Through her touch it was as if he could actually feel her thoughts.

“Are you ready to risk it alone with me a while longer?” he said.

“Do you have to ask?”

“Who knows how long I'll last.”

“Don't you leave me, Karl Schumpeter, wherever we go.”

“You agreed to go to Betty's for my sake,” he said. “And I agreed for her sake. So what about your sake, Mama?”

“I don't need much,” she said.

“Well, for once you're going to have it,” he said.

“Karl, are you sure?”

She gripped his hand more tightly. Maybe she was struggling to feel his unspoken thoughts, too.

“Only if you are,” he said.

“I'm sure,” she said.

When they got home, she disappeared into her room as Karl banked the stove and walked through the house, as he did every night, checking that all was in order—no mice in the traps, doors pulled shut against critters, lights off. As always, he finished at the bathroom door.

It was open. Drops of water in the discolored old sink told him Cristina had already finished. He shaved and washed, then checked to make sure there were no whiskers in the bowl. Then he emptied his bladder, which seemed more a matter of concentration with every passing year.

He found his way to his bedroom easily in the dark, removed his pants and shirt, and put them on the chair. Slipping out of his under-shorts
and t-shirt, he pulled his nightshirt on over his head, leaving his socks on his feet for warmth.

Then he felt his way to her door. She always left it open so they could hear each other breathing. But when he reached her bed, it was empty.

That was strange. He touched his way back to his room. He would have to make another walk through the house to find her.

“I'm here,” she said from the direction of his bed.

“I thought you would be asleep,” he said.

“Well, I hope you're not disappointed,” she said.

“It's been an awfully long while,” he said. “I really don't know anymore.”

She reached out and found him.

“I guess we could try,” he said as he felt her hand pulling him gently toward her.

“Der Weg ist das Ziel,”
she said.

W
HAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS
?”
MY MOTHER
said when Grampa told her of their decision. “It's just a question of where we want to be when it does,” said Grampa.

“You aren't going to find it as easy as you think,” my mother said.

“No,” said Grampa. “I don't suppose we will.”

In fact, it didn't take long before things started to go bad. First Grandma came down with a terrible case of the flu. Then Grampa had to have his gall bladder out. With each crisis we raced down to Abbeville, and my mother pressed them to move up to Park Forest like sensible people.

Much as I admired their grit, it was sad seeing them the way they were. Every visit they seemed to have slipped more.

Then the big stroke came and took Grampa in his sleep. Grandma stayed with him in bed all night and only called Henry Mueller in the morning.

“She didn't want him getting cold,” Henry told my folks.

When Grandma moved in with us, it changed our lives. My mother and father ceded their bedroom to her and started sleeping in the living room on a couch that folded into a bed. I kept my room, but my mother took over part of my closet and some drawers to make space in the other bedroom for Grandma's clothes. Even though she had never before hesitated to barge in on me whenever she pleased, the new arrangement felt like an enemy occupation.

Grandma's way of coping with loss was collapse and silence. Within a month she was unable to move around on her own. My mother would have to lift her up and hold on to her as she walked.

As for me, I was mortified. The spectacle of my mother taking Grandma to the bathroom and sitting her down to do her business embarrassed me to the marrow. And my parents sleeping in the living room was a dark secret I felt I could share with no one.

Not that I didn't have other secrets. Sometimes when everybody was in bed, I pulled out selected
Life Magazines
and
National Geographics
and let the pictures bring on lovely, guilty feelings. Maybe it was a movie starlet in a revealing pose. Or an African woman wearing nothing but a few leaves over the very place I wanted most to know. Or a Polynesian girl no older than me naked to the waist the way Herman Melville described in the book my father had bought me. I didn't know what to make of the fact that the great author gave me the same feelings the pictures did; I went to that book so often that it fell open to certain pages.