The High Divide (5 page)

Gretta's hair prickled at the base of her neck. “Mutual feeling?” she said.

“A reciprocal goodwill.”

“Do you mean will I take your money?”

He reached out and placed his cool fingers against her forearms where she'd crossed them in front of her breasts. “That's
not
what I mean,” he said. “Let's find my damned keys.”

They searched without success along the tight bend of the river where water eddied in a deep pool favored by the oldest of the bottom-feeding cats. On the opposite bank stood the charred ruins of a barn where nineteen horses had perished along with their owner, Bill Grandin, who went to sleep drunk one night in a straw-pile, smoking. Or so the story went. They squeezed through a thicket of red willow and they crept on all fours, parting the dead grass with their hands. They found no keys. After a quarter of an hour, Fogarty straightened up on his knees like a bear on its hind legs. He'd been nipping at the flask and now rose unsteadily to his feet and pointed at the ground beneath him. Looming above was a giant cottonwood, its bark coarse and green-tinted.

“Here's where I had them last,” he said. “Or I think I did. Now where are they?”

Gretta got up and walked over to where he stood sweating and wiping his brow in the shade of the tree. She almost pitied him.

Fogarty said, “It's unbecoming for a woman to chase after a man the way you're doing.” Then he reached out and took her shoulders and pulled her close, locked her to his chest, his mouth grazing her ear and his breath hot against her neck as she tried to escape from his grasp. He slid his hands down the length of her back and took hold of her buttocks, squeezing hard. She tried to get a knee into his groin, but he anticipated this and lifted his knee between her legs and pushed up hard. And so she threw her weight forward, toppling him backward to the ground, she on top of him. The shock of their fall loosened his hold on her, and Gretta kicked free, the hard toe of her shoe connecting with his shin. She rolled away and got to her feet.

Fogarty was curled on his side, clutching his leg and whimpering, his face as flushed as a rooster's comb. The flask of whiskey was lying in the grass beside him, and she picked it up and handed it to him. After a while he quieted and opened one eye, then the other. He uncapped the flask and put it to his mouth, tipped it up. “You've pushed me to my limit,” he said, squinting, as if he could read his own words in the air. “And you probably think you should still have your train money.”

Gretta stood above him. His thin brown hair had fallen all to one side and hung past his ear toward his shoulder. On his chin was a mud stain in the shape of a question mark.

“You owe me nothing,” she said.

“But you'd take it if I offered.”

“I have to find Eli and Danny,” she said, immediately hating herself for not adding her husband's name—or maybe for realizing how close she was to giving up on him
.

Fogarty cranked his neck a couple of times, blinked, and sat up. He fished out the bill from his vest pocket and showed it to her, fingers trembling. A five-dollar silver certificate, crisp and new and bearing the likeness of Grant. He waved it in the air. “Come here,” he said.

This time she was ready when he reached for her, prepared for what he wanted and resolved to take what she needed. As she had done now for weeks, she pushed her fear away like an unwanted memory. It was a trick of the mind, turning the feared thing into something else entirely—in this case, turning Fogarty into a little boy, stamping his feet against the ground and demanding a stick of peppermint. Trying to stand up, he slipped in the grass, then struggled up again and wrapped an arm around her, not groping this time but holding on for balance.

“Here, let's sit down together,” she told him. “Maybe I could have a drink, too.”

He handed her the flask and she pretended to swallow, jogging her throat for effect. Then they sat down and passed the whiskey back and forth until it was empty. It didn't take long.

“Let's go over there,” she said, pointing to the edge of the river where the grass was less trodden. He stood up, stumbling, and she had to help him, allowing him to lean on her until he went to his knees and then laid himself down.

“There,” she said, forcing herself to pat his shoulder.

“Yes,” he sighed.

She sat down next to him and listened as he started talking—first about his lost keys and then about his hotel, and how the people who stayed there didn't know a good place when they saw one. The sun was high, straight above them, and sitting out of the wind as they were, the day felt almost warm.

“Let's just rest for a minute, I need to relax,” Gretta said.

Fogarty shifted his hips against the earth, spread his legs and smiled, his eyes closed. Five minutes later he was snoring, drawing air through his mouth in long rasps, as if breathing underwater. Gretta reached into his vest pocket for the five-dollar note, which she pushed deep into the side pocket of her coat. Then she set off for the walk back to town.

The Dark Muck of Your Heart

D
uring his father's short time at the depot, Eli had often gone to work with him, sensing he might be needed, and in fact he was there on the night his father got into the fight that caused him to lose his job. He was sweeping the floor when a passenger on a westbound got off during a watering stop, came inside for a cup of coffee, and began shouting, “What kind of place are you running? What are these savages doing here?” He was a big man, tall and round-bellied, and he pointed toward the lobby, where a family sat waiting for their train, a mother, father, and three small children. They had shining black hair and brown faces.

“Same thing you're doing,” Ulysses said, coming out from behind the counter.

“Well get 'em out of here. Get 'em out of my sight.” As he'd marched to the coffee table, one of the little boys, scuttling to avoid him, tripped and fell headlong to the floor. The man kicked the boy's sprawled legs away with the side of his boot, carelessly, and the boy's father stood up fast. Ulysses was faster, coming straight at the man and putting a fist in his big stomach. The man went to one knee, gasping.

“Go back to your car,” Ulysses told him, but the man stood up, pulling a knife from his coat. Ulysses swept it away and hit him square in the mouth, bursting his lips, which began spewing blood, then he went about beating on the man's body until the porter and telegraph operator pulled him off. Eli had never seen his father like that before, had never seen him lose control of himself, had rarely seen him angry. It was like watching the calm surface of a lake erupt beneath a sudden storm, and ever since, he'd been dreaming about it—not about the fight itself but his father afterward, and the excited state of his breathing, which was fast and hard, like a dog that has scented another dog, its entire being caught up in a blood rage.

It was early afternoon, and Eli was sitting on hard ground in the shade of a towering cottonwood, watching his brother sleep. Twenty feet away the muddy Red slipped by. They had spent the morning trying to jump a westbound—first in the big switching lot where they'd been stranded, and then at the Northern Pacific depot in town. But there was too much yard help, too many watching eyes, and they finally retreated downhill to Fargo's quiet, overgrown river shore. The plan was to let Danny catch up on the sleep he missed last night and wait until after sundown to give it another try.

Behind Eli a branch snapped, and he turned and stood. Approaching from uphill was a man walking briskly, thirty paces and closing. Eli stepped back and to the side, thinking to hide himself behind the cottonwood, but the man lifted a hand in greeting.

“Eli? Eli Pope?”

Eli crouched to shake his brother awake, and stood up again. The man was tall and straight, with bristly white hair an inch long. His nose was tilted so far to one side that it seemed to rest against the hollow of his cheek, and his light, frozen-green eyes put Eli in mind of a wolf. He wore a frayed black coat that reached past his knees.

“Reverend Pearl,” Eli said. He hadn't seen the man since he'd dunked his father in the Plainwater River more than a year ago.

“And Danny too,” Reverend Pearl said in his low, nasal voice, watching as the boy got to his feet. “You two have come a distance.”

“Not so far,” Eli said.

“On your way somewhere?”

Eli gave his brother's arm a squeeze, which meant
Keep your mouth closed.

Reverend Pearl blinked. His smile loosened a bit. “I was up at the creamery for a brick of butter—” From his coat pocket he pulled a square of it, wrapped in white paper. “Got some catfish waiting for the pan. Come along.” He pointed north, past where the railroad bridge spanned the Red.

The boys hadn't eaten since last night except for a hard-boiled egg apiece, mid-morning. Danny glanced up at his brother, just the slightest movement of his eyes, but Eli said, “We ate already.”

“Please. It's plain to see, Danny's hungry.” The reverend turned on his heel and headed north, not so much as glancing back to see if they were following.

He's a hard man to say no to,
their father had said more than once, and Eli found himself falling into step behind him, pulling Danny along. During the week of Reverend Pearl's revival, he had stayed in a barn Ulysses was building at the edge of town, and by week's end, he was taking his meals at their home, though their mother didn't take to the man and didn't attend his meetings.

A walk of five minutes brought them well past the bridge, high above on its timber struts, and down along the water to a thicket of young poplars growing like weeds. They passed through it, bending the slender trunks aside, and then through a dense stand of red willows, coming finally into a small glade, at the center of which stood a gnarled cottonwood tree. There were two men, one crouched before a campfire, another, with flame-red hair, wrapped in a blanket and lying in the dead grass. Around the edge of the clearing was an assortment of crude huts made of crates and weathered planks, battered sheets of rusty tin.

“Have a seat.” Reverend Pearl pointed at a log lying next to the fire, then stepped over the sleeping man and plucked a pair of tin cups from nails in the cottonwood. He poured coffee and handed a cup each to Eli and Danny, then glided away through a gap in the willows, heading for the river.

The coffee tasted like boiled earth, bitter yet dull, and Eli washed it around in his mouth before letting himself swallow, the coarse grounds scraping at the sides of his throat. His stomach burned and clenched. A pulse started up at the back of his eyes. A second swallow tweaked his vision—widening the world, everything seeming larger than it was a moment before.

The red-haired man on the ground rolled onto his back and draped his long arms over his face, elbows jutting straight up. The one sitting at the fire smiled across at them, then stood and moved off to a lean-to of twisted boards, where he sat down on a kitchen chair and commenced cleaning his nails with a knife. Reverend Pearl reappeared, pushing aside the springy branches of red willow. He was laden with catfish, a chain stringer hoisted in his right fist, three fish—no, four—their heavy bodies rolling against each other, long whiskers juddering. “You boys better be hungry,” Reverend Pearl said, laying out the catch on the dry grass.

He made quick work of the catfish, gutting them, tossing away viscera, and skinning and deboning the fillets. Then he pushed a pair of logs together at the edge of the fire, set a big iron frypan on top of them, and tossed in a chunk of the fresh yellow butter from the creamery. As soon as the butter started sizzling and pooling, he laid in the eight gray fillets, setting them down with care, side by side by side.

“Praise be to God for the fish of the sea—Amen, Elmer?” He poked a booted toe into the ribs of the red-haired man, still supine in the grass, who raised a finger beside his head and wagged it in the air. Reverend Pearl stirred at the fire, leaned down and blew on a smoldering ember. Flames jumped up and licked at the pan. “Here we go,” he said, grinding pepper on the humming fillets with a mill he pulled magically from a pocket.

By the time the fish was ready, its buttery, sharp scent rising in the air and filling the clearing, the men had dragged themselves to the fire circle and waited with plates on laps, their eyes fastened to the sputtering pan. Eli and Danny had plates, too, chipped ones from a makeshift cupboard in one of the huts. Eli's was pink china, clean except for a smear of dried egg yolk, which he tried to avoid looking at. They all applied themselves to their food, handling the hot fish gingerly with their fingers and washing it down with swallows of lukewarm coffee.

“Meet your approval?” Reverend Pearl asked, inclining his head toward Eli.

“Good,” Eli said through a mouthful. Next to him, Danny nodded.

“You haven't yet told me where you're heading,” Reverend Pearl said. The smile he offered was more interrogatory than friendly, and his light-colored irises twinkled.

Eli didn't answer. It seemed unlikely that the man would feel compelled to go out of his way to report back to their mother. On the other hand, wasn't it possible he might know something about their father? Eli searched his mind for what to say.

In his flat, guileless voice Danny said, “Mother claims it's your fault that he left us.”

“I see. And would you like to say more on the subject?” Reverend Pearl asked.

Danny shook his head. “Nope.”

The reverend leaned forward and hooked the coffeepot with a finger, then brought it around to Eli and refilled his cup. Danny's words were flat-out true. Their mother
had
laid on Reverend Pearl the blame for their father's leaving, saying more than once, “A man like that can afford to spread those principles of his, all that guilt. Traveling place to place and expounding as if from on high, too haughty to settle down with other folks. Of course he wasn't too proud to accept my hospitality.”

The reverend moved now from man to man, boy to boy, collecting their dirty plates, then set out toward the river, turning around at the line of red willows. “Your mother came and found me at the meetings I led in Moorhead last month. Gave me a piece of her mind, she did. I told her what I knew and what I know—which is nothing—and told her also that I am sorry for anything I might have contributed to what's happened. Now I must wash these dishes.” He turned and disappeared through the willows.

The red-haired man and the other one, too, wandered away, and Eli and Danny conferred about their next move. It was Eli's opinion they ought to find another place to hide until dark, that avoiding everyone who knew them—the reverend included—was the prudent thing to do. They were just getting up to leave when he emerged from behind the big cottonwood.

“You can't sneak off without dessert,” he said.

“We ain't sneaking,” Danny said.

“Then why've you got your tails tucked between your legs? Come on, sit back down.”

Reverend Pearl reached into his pocket yet again, his hand returning this time with a bright foil package, a flat rectangle that he flourished in the air before presenting it to Danny. “Man that sold it to me said it comes from South America. You have tasted nothing like it.” Danny kept his hands on his lap, and Reverend Pearl said, “You don't think I feel badly about your father?”

Danny glanced at Eli, who reached out for the packet. His fingers stripped away the foil and he took a small bite from the corner of the chocolate bar, eyeing Reverend Pearl as he did so. He took another, larger bite—half the bar—before handing the rest to Danny, who broke off a corner of it. It was dark, more bitter than he was used to, but good. Nothing like the bland ones that Goldman sold.

Reverend Pearl laughed. “What did I tell you? Makes me want to make a trip down there some day, hold some meetings.” He sat down again across from the boys and poured himself another cup of coffee, took a swallow, and sighed. “I grew up in Ohio, in a nice brick house where my mother would never have served fish without an accompanying dish or two. A baked potato, creamed beans and corn. Now there was a woman who could put a home in order. She told me, ‘Charles, if you're going to preach the Word, you need to get yourself a well-built church in a respectable town.'” Reverend Pearl looked up through the branches of the big cottonwood, straight up into the blue sky. “And here we are. Tell me, what did your mother think about you boys leaving her?”

Eli watched the man's eyes for the self-conscious flicker people had when they were after something. He didn't find it.

Reverend Pearl said, “Boys have a right to find out what it is that's got its teeth in their father's spleen. I'm not against you.”

“He went to Bismarck,” Eli said.

“How do you know?”

Eli shrugged.

“Do you know what he's doing out there?”

“He's not there anymore, but he was. We're not sure what he's doing.”

Reverend Pearl pressed his lips together as if making up his mind about something, then smiled, his teeth and the empty places between them forming what looked like a broken puzzle in his mouth. He tried again. “How did you boys get here?”

“The westbound, this morning.”

“First-class tickets?” Reverend Pearl lifted his brow and winked.

“Our car got dropped on a siding,” Eli said, pointing west. “It wasn't how we planned things.”

“No doubt you'll be jumping back on.”

Eli nodded.

“I'm heading that way too, as it happens, and my situation being what it is, I might be riding steerage—then again, one's fortunes can change, God willing. You boys can trail along if you like, as far as Jamestown. That's my next stop.”

Eli asked him when he was leaving.

“Tomorrow or the next day. Depending on how things go tonight. I'm preaching in the city park.” He pointed along the river, to the south.

“We're leaving tonight,” Eli says.

“That would be your prerogative. You may want to think on it, though. I do know trains. Been riding them since the tracks were laid, and I can make sure you find your way to Bismarck. No more cars stranded on the siding.”

That afternoon they tagged along with Reverend Pearl as he broadcast word of his meeting. At the brick hospital he spoke to the ill and lame in a high-ceilinged room with polished floors, as Eli and Danny stood in the hallway listening through the door. Through the window Eli saw the people's heads inclined toward Reverend Pearl, their faces open and their eyes as bright as new coins. At the First National Bank, the reverend simply walked in and began speaking, his voice low and gravelly, a human sound against the monied tension of the place. A ceiling fan spun lazily above his head, and if anybody noticed the smell of him in that brass-appointed room, they didn't let on. After several more stops—the cattleyards, the big mercantile on Front Street, and a couple of hotels—the barkeep at the Senate Saloon served them a sit-down meal of liver, onions, and mashed potatoes, with a glass of warm ale for Reverend Pearl and milk for Eli and Danny.