The High Divide (19 page)

A Man's Burdens

T
he hand that shook her awake didn't belong to Agnes or Two Blood, and because of its urgency, its lack of regret at waking her, she knew whose hand it was, even before Danny spoke.

“It's me, I'm home, Dad sent me. What are you doing
here
?”

Gretta opened her right eye, the one not covered by the heavy robe, and though she couldn't see his face for the shadows, the shape of his head was the same as that of her own in a darkened mirror. She reached out and pulled him close. For several minutes she was unable to speak. She'd never seen her parents cry, not once, and hadn't cried herself in the presence of either of her sons, but she did so now.

“Don't make me ask,” she said, finally.

“They're fine, both of them. But Mom, what are you
doing
here?”

She held on to him hard enough to know for certain that he was back, but after a moment Danny pulled away and looked at her, the question still wrinkling his face.

“Fogarty,” she said, by way of explanation. Then with little embellishment, and doing her best to hide her anxiety, she described what had happened since the boys left home, mentioning her trip to St. Paul—though not what she learned there—and Fogarty's seizure of their house. Danny seemed calm and mostly unconcerned. He was more interested in telling his own story, which he did now, talking for an hour straight, starting with the night he followed Eli to the depot and jumped into the moving boxcar. Gretta shivered out of fear for what could have happened to her boys. At almost any point and in nearly every way possible, they could have been harmed or killed. In the makeshift camp by the Red River. In the alley in Dickinson, faced with a knife-waving criminal. Or in what must have been an opium den in Miles City
.
And yet she said nothing. Even when it was clear that Danny was telling less than he knew, as when he slowed down and picked his words carefully, she kept her thoughts and questions to herself. Because she was certain he would say more if she didn't try to guide him. And so she held her breath when he told about the letter Eli intercepted from the mailman, and kept a straight face as he described their visit with the widow of Jim Powers in Bismarck, and bit her tongue as it became clear that he wasn't going to offer any explanation for why her husband had failed to send a telegram, why he'd left without so much as saying good-bye. When her son was finished, after he'd given her the money and laid himself down on her mat and gone straight off to sleep, she sat next to him with a hand on his back, listening to him breathe and considering her choices.

There were just two, as far as she could tell.

A few days had convinced her that she couldn't stay in Sloan's Crossing without her husband. Or at least without a man. The women she considered to be friends had turned against her, apparently willing to believe Fogarty's account of what happened between them. As for the men, in their eyes she was either invisible or fair game. There was no way forward in this town except through Fogarty, and though she despised herself for it, she had no choice but to give serious thought to his offer. She'd gone to visit him, of course, after the encounter with Herman Stroud, and though Fogarty was happy to boast of intercepting a telegram meant for the sheriff, he remained tight-lipped about her sons—saying only that he knew their whereabouts and could vouch for their safety and health.

“What about my husband?” she'd asked him.

To which Fogarty only shook his head and smiled. “You know what I need from you, Mrs. Pope. This doesn't have to be difficult.”

And in fact it wouldn't have to be a permanent situation. Or at least that was what she'd been telling herself. She could move into his building, perform the cooking and cleaning—put up with the other requirements, too, such was the curse of women—and save every penny she earned until she was able to book passage to Denmark for Danny and herself. For Eli, too, if he came home. After all, she was still young enough to start over again, wasn't she?

The other choice, which was clearer in mind, especially now that she knew where her husband was and knew that he was alive, was almost more frightening, because it would force the questions she had been asking ever since Ulysses left in July. Questions she might not want answers to.

She covered Danny with the robe and left him there, sleeping. Outside she found Two Blood sitting by the front door, smoking his pipe. He nodded at the empty chair next to him, and she sat down. It was eight o'clock, and a weak sun peeked over the top of Two Blood's gun shop across the alley. The chill of last night's hard freeze hadn't burned away yet. Two Blood got up and went inside to fetch a blanket, which he draped over Gretta's shoulders.

“Thank you,” she said.

He sat back down and took a long pull on the pipe, his eyes meeting hers only briefly before glancing away. They looked like pieces of sky with thin clouds drifting through.

“I was out front of my shop, first light,” he said, “and Danny comes along, fresh from the train. Heading to your house.” Two Blood pointed.

“Thank you,” she said, again. The man had been so kind to her—his wife, too. But competing now with Gretta's sense of gratitude was the sudden anger she felt toward her husband. For the first time since Ulysses left home, she felt at liberty to hate him, and the cold rush in her lungs and belly made her almost dizzy. She closed her eyes and clenched her fists to gain control of herself. After a minute, she said, “Danny knows where he is. They found him out in Miles City. Montana Territory.”

Two Blood looked away. He blew out a long stream of smoke. The tobacco smell was sweet and sharp.

Gretta said, “He doesn't want me to come after him. That's what Danny told me. Danny says they're planning to come home in a month or so, he and Eli. And that I should wait here for them.”

Two Blood nodded at this.

“But I don't think they're coming back, and I doubt if Danny does either.”

Two Blood cleared his throat and spat.

Gretta said, “Ulysses doesn't know anything about what's happened here. To me. About the house, or about Fogarty.”

“I suppose not.”

“I don't know what to do. I don't know if I should go after him or not. I'm afraid he doesn't want to come home. I'm afraid he doesn't want me anymore. And the way it is right now, I don't know if I want him.” She opened her hands close beneath her breasts, as if holding a baby there. “Look at what he's done,” she said. “Look at what he's done.”

“If you find him, you could give him what he's got coming,” Two Blood said.

“I could?” she said. “No, I don't think so.”

Two Blood didn't speak.

“I could stay here, you know. Not with you and Agnes, I don't mean that. But Fogarty's offered me a job at his place, and I could work for him. At least for now. That might not be such a terrible thing, right?”

Two Blood turned and looked at her straight on, his light blue eyes blazing now. He said, “As terrible things go, maybe not.”

“Is that what you think? Do you think it would be an awful thing to do?”

The old man drew on his pipe and held the smoke in his lungs for longer than seemed possible. He cleared his throat then looked past her. “If it's traveling money you need, I could help,” he said.

“No, no.” She reached into the pocket of her skirt and took out the bills and held them up. “He sent this with Danny.”

“Well, then,” he said, and turned his pipe over and knocked it against the side of his house. He used an index finger to clean out its bowl then wiped the blackened finger on his pants before glancing at her once more, getting up from his chair, and walking back inside.

That afternoon he took them to the depot in his donkey cart, the one he drove each week out to Prairie Lake, where he liked to fish for northern pike and walleyes. He sat up on the plank seat, elbows on his knees, not acknowledging those they happened to pass in the street. Gretta, too, had learned to keep her eyes to herself and did so even as Danny greeted everyone he knew. At the station Gretta carried their satchel inside and bought two tickets for the westbound leaving at three.

Through the early hours of the afternoon they watched the country roll past, most of it flat prairie the color of weathered wood. Occasional small settlements appeared then faded away, unpainted ranch houses, struggling farms with chickens and pigs, one-street towns, people carrying on their ordinary lives. Gretta couldn't help the envy she felt—women darning and baking and collecting eggs.

Danny stared listlessly out their window. His face was flat, his expression saying,
I've seen this already, I've seen it all,
and it hurt Gretta, knowing her son's life would never be as carefree as it had been until now, something for which she felt responsible. If only she had been able to summon the strength to draw the poison out of Ulysses. If only she hadn't turned away when she saw the pain in his eyes. In truth, she knew early on that something was wrong, even if she didn't know what it was. But she had been raised to believe that a man's burdens were meant for him alone to carry.

When Gretta was thirteen or fourteen, late one night, long after bedtime, she'd overheard her parents speaking in hushed tones in the kitchen. She crept down the hallway to crouch at the corner where she could listen, not daring to peek but knowing what she would see if she did—her father leaning forward, hands clasped in front of him, his face downcast but peering up at his wife nonetheless, who would be sitting erect, chin level or slightly raised. Gretta heard her father say, “I don't know what to do,” and her mother respond in the even, toneless voice Gretta despised: “Your complaining to me doesn't help anything, does it?” It wasn't long—a few months at the most—before he lost his store to the bank, and soon thereafter went to live with the woman in Nyhavn. Although he did return home the next year, he was never well again. Shortly, in fact, he died, the final sign of his fundamental weakness, according to Gretta's mother. As a girl Gretta was willing enough to accept this judgment. It explained their predicament, after all. But having someone to blame didn't save her mother from being a miserable person, more difficult than Gretta was willing to suffer. And so she made her escape to America, to the middle of the continent in St. Paul, where she imagined she would be free from the struggles she'd witnessed—although she still hadn't learned, any better than her mother, how to listen.

It was dusk before she finally got Danny to talk. She'd been avoiding the very thought of Jim Powers's widow but knew that she needed to prepare herself for seeing her, talking with her. She wanted to ask her son about the letter—whether it was a long one and what it said, what kind of paper it was on, what sort of penmanship the woman had. And how she'd signed it:
Sincerely, Mrs. Powers
?
Yours truly
?
Love, Laura
? She wanted to know why Eli had chosen not to bring it home to her but opened it himself instead. He must have been trying to protect her, she thought, though it seemed like a betrayal nonetheless. She wanted to ask Danny what the woman looked like, whether she was pretty or not, whether she had a pleasant voice. Whether she wore fashionable clothes. What, she wanted to ask him, had the woman said to them that might shed light on her motivations? Was she simply the wife of a friend? And if Jim Powers had been such a
good
friend, why hadn't Gretta heard of him until now?

Gretta remembered now the young woman from church who always stared at Ulysses during their first year in Sloan's Crossing, the one who sat on the far right side of the sanctuary with old Mrs. Wooten. Mrs. Wooten's grandniece. The girl ended up marrying and leaving town, and Gretta didn't even recall her name. But she had been so obvious in her interest that it had been all Gretta could do not to get up and walk over and tell her to keep her big eyes to herself. In truth, few other women had ever seemed to notice Ulysses. The missing ear, Gretta believed, tended to overshadow his jawline and good shoulders and sensitive mouth—this, a blessing for her, although she was ashamed to think so.

“What did she feed you the night you stayed there?” Gretta asked her son. A harmless enough question, something to get him started.

“What?”

“The widow, in Bismarck?”

“Oh. Chicken.”

“Does she raise them?”

“Yup.”

“She must have been surprised to see you. I mean, she couldn't have been expecting two boys at her front door.”

Danny pointed out the window at a hawk on a telegraph pole.

“Danny?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“What did she say about your father?” Gretta watched her son's face. He'd always seemed old beyond his years, but now there was a new calculation in his eyes, a cautious control she hadn't seen before. “Danny?”

“Only what I told you. About her husband and Dad in the service together. And Dad heading out to Montana, for bones.” Danny glanced up, then he looked back out the window.

“Did you like her, Danny? Was she nice to you?”

“She was nice enough.”

“But you didn't like her,” Gretta said, unable to help herself.

“No.”

“Why not?”

He thought for a moment, squinting. “Because of the way she looked at us. Her eyes. Like she was trying to see into our skulls. She made me nervous.”

A satisfying heat burned in Gretta's stomach. She bent down for the jar of water from her bag and took a drink, but it was lukewarm and stale.

Danny moved closer and squeezed her arm, looked up at her. “It's going to be all right, don't worry so much,” he said, smiling now, his eyes clear and guileless, very much her boy again.

II

Confluence