This Tender Land (28 page)

They all stared at me as if I’d suddenly grown antlers or a third eye.

“But we love Sister Eve,” Emmy said.

“You didn’t see what I saw.”

“What did you see?” Albert asked.

“Remember when you told me that something about Sister Eve stunk to high heaven? I know what that is now.”

I told them how I’d sneaked into the back of Sid’s automobile when he’d driven to Mankato and how I’d followed him to the café. I told them how I’d watched him give an envelope full of money to someone. And I told them how, when he stepped away from the booth where they sat, I saw who they were. I paused a moment to gather myself.

Who was it?
Mose signed desperately.

“You remember the man with the hunched-over boy in the first tent show we saw? That boy who was bent over so bad he could barely walk? And when Sister Eve touched him, his spine just straightened right up? They were both there. And the woman who stuttered and we couldn’t understand what she was saying? She was there. And the cripple guy who threw away his crutches? Yeah, he was there, too. All of them being paid off for the show they put on. Or maybe being paid for the next one, because when Sister Eve gets to Des Moines, they’ll be there, too.”

They stared at me, all of them as speechless as Mose.

“Don’t you get it?” I screamed at them. “She’s a fake. Everything about her is a lie.”

“No, Odie,” Emmy said. “She’s an angel.”

“Some angel,” I said bitterly, and tears rolled down my cheeks again and I didn’t bother trying to stop them.

Mose signed,
What about the man with the dead wife?

“She didn’t heal the dead wife, did she? And if Emmy hadn’t told me to play my harmonica, Sister Eve wouldn’t have a face now, would she? Tell me who saved who that night.”

“She’s healed so many people, Odie,” Emmy argued. “They can’t all be fakes.”

“I saw a lot of envelopes with money in them. I think whenever Sid disappears in the morning, he goes to pay off the people who’ve put on a show for Sister Eve.”

What about Whisker?
Mose signed.
Tsuboi? Everybody else? She helps them.

“Or just uses them,” I said. “Until they get hauled away like Dimitri.”

“We should ask Whisker,” Emmy said. “He wouldn’t lie.”

“How would you know? You’re just a kid.” I said it harshly, and as soon as the words were out of my mouth and I saw how they struck Emmy, I regretted them.

Albert hadn’t spoken in a while. Now he said, “Whisker’s your friend, Odie. Would you know if he was lying?”

I said, “I’m thinking he won’t lie if I ask him straight.”

“Then ask him straight,” Albert said.

“All right, I will. But one thing first.” From my shirt pocket, I pulled the snap case.

What’s that?
Mose signed.

“Sid’s a dope fiend.” I opened the case and showed them the syringe and vials.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Albert said. “Get rid of it, Odie.”

“That’s exactly what I was going to do.”

I snapped the case closed and threw it as far as I could. When it hit the river, it disappeared with barely a splash.

“Let’s go get some answers,” Albert said.

AT THE TENT,
we were told that Sister Eve and Sid had gone to the police station to try to spring Dimitri, who, we learned, was wanted on suspicion of selling bootlegged liquor, which to Albert and me was really no crime at all. We found Whisker alone on the platform inside the big tent, his thin, fast fingers doing a little skip across the piano keyboard. When he played during a crusade service, his head was bare, but most other times, he wore a little black fedora at a jaunty tilt. As we mounted the platform, his dark blue lips curved in a warm smile.

“Hey, Buck. We were worried. You kinda disappeared.”

“Just had to get away and do some thinking, Whisker.”

His fingers stopped tickling the ivories and the skin around his eyes crinkled seriously as he studied me. “Whatever you were thinking, it looks like it didn’t sit with you all that well.”

“I’ve got a question to ask you, Whisker. I need the truth.”

He sat back on the piano bench, and his eyes went from me to Albert, to Mose, and finally to Emmy. It was hot in the tent, and a little sheen of sweat formed a glistening mustache above his upper lip. “Knowing the truth ain’t always what it’s cracked up to be, Odie.”

“Will you tell me the truth or not?”

“If I know it.”

“Sister Eve, does she really heal?”

“Now what kind of question is that?”

“Just answer it.”

“Odie, I seen more miracles inside this tent than I can recall.”

“Real miracles or fake? Fake like that boy with the bent-up spine and the woman with the twisted tongue.”

“Ahhh,” he said with a nod. “So, you think you know the truth about those folks, do you?”

“I saw Sid paying them off.”

“Them’s Sid’s people all right.”

“What about all the others?”

Whisker put his fingers on the keys again and softly began to play a tune, which I recognized from the radio: “Little White Lies.” He bent his head as he played, but after a few bars, peered up from under the brim of his fedora. “Sister Eve’s the one you need to be talking to.”

“She’s a liar.”

“She’s a lot of things, Odie,” he said, continuing to play. “A liar ain’t one of them.”

“She claimed to heal those people, Sid’s people, and that was a lie.”

“When you’re a kid, Odie, things seem cut-and-dried, but it ain’t that way. Talk to Sister Eve. I guarantee she won’t lie.”

“Whisker—” I tried again, but he cut me off.

“Like I told you, talk to Sister Eve.”

We went to her tent to wait for her return. I’d been inside many times when no one was around, but it was a first for the others. Their eyes went big when they saw the snakes in the terrariums on the low, narrow table, but I explained to them that only Lucifer was really dangerous, the others were fake. “More lies,” I said.

We didn’t have to wait long before I heard Sister Eve outside, talking to some of the women who cooked with Dimitri. She assured them that Sid was taking care of things and Dimitri would be rejoining us soon, then she came into her tent. When she saw the looks on our faces, she smiled reassuringly.

“Don’t worry about Dimitri. Sid’s taken care of things.”

“This isn’t about Dimitri,” I said.

She looked at me closely, then at the others. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re a liar.” As soon as I said it, tears welled up in my eyes, because it felt to me as if I was killing something, something beautiful, but I tried to tell myself that you can’t kill a thing that never was.

“A liar?” She absorbed the accusation, nodded, and sat on the padded bench before her dressing table. “Give me your hand, Odie.”

Like iron, I stood unmoved and unmoving.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “Just give me your hand. What harm can it do?”

From outside came the sound of preparations in the cooking tent, the clank of pots and pans as the kitchen crew began to put together the meal that would be served to those who came to the crusade that evening. I heard Dimitri’s voice giving orders, and I knew that Sid had found a way to spring him. In the big tent, a couple of other musicians had joined Whisker, and they began practicing one of the hymns that would be sung that night, “Be Thou My Vision.” Still, I didn’t move.

I felt Emmy’s touch on my arm. “Go on, Odie.”

Sister Eve held her hand motionless in the air before me, and finally I reached out and took it. She closed her eyes, and after a long moment, said, “I see.” She smiled, let go of my hand, and patted the bench at her side. “Sit, Odie.”

“I don’t want to sit with you,” I said.

“I understand. So, you followed Sid and you think you know the truth.”

“I saw him with those phonies. You didn’t really heal them.”

“I’ve never claimed to heal anyone, Odie. I’ve always said it’s God who heals, not me.”

“Heals through you, then. But that’s not the way it is. Nobody’s healed. You’re a fake and they’re fakes.”

“You’re upset, Odie,” she said.

“Fake!” I screamed at her. “As fake as this cobra.”

I turned from her and went to low table where the terrariums sat and without thinking reached into the glass enclosure that held the harmless snake Whisker had told me they called Mamba. I brought it out writhing in the grip of my hand, and I stepped toward Sister Eve and thrust it at her, as if in evidence. Sister Eve reacted not at all.
It was Emmy who screamed. She danced away from me and backed right into the narrow table where all the terrariums sat. She tumbled, and the table went over with her, and I heard the shatter of glass. In the next instant came the awful rattle of Lucifer.

I stood paralyzed, but Albert was a blur of motion. He leapt the tipped-over table, grabbed up Emmy, and held her out to Mose, who snatched her away in his arms. Just before he came back over the table to safety, I heard him give a little cry of pain.

Sister Eve was up, and she knelt where Emmy now stood. She put her hands on Emmy’s shoulders and looked her over quickly. “Did he bite you?”

“Unh-uh.” Emmy shook her head while tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Thank God for that,” Sister Eve said.

Then a voice spoke, the kind of voice a stone might have if it could speak. Albert said, “It got me.”

THE BITE WAS
high on his right calf, two marks bleeding red below the cuff of the pant leg he lifted to show us. Lucifer, unseen, continued his rattling on the far side of the tipped-over table. Mose, in one powerful motion and with a startling crack, snapped off one of the table legs, and I watched him bring it down again and again behind the barrier of the tabletop until the rattling ceased.

Emmy’s scream brought in some of the crusade folks, Dimitri and Sid among them. Sid took in the broken table, the shattered terrariums, and finally Albert’s bared calf.

“Was it Lucifer?”

Albert nodded.

“Christ,” Sid said.

“What do we do?” I pleaded.

“Don’t panic. I’ve got antivenom. He should be fine. Keep him calm and immobile, Evie. I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?” Sister Eve asked.

“To the hotel. I keep the antivenom in my satchel. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

My legs suddenly threatened to give out under me. “A brown satchel?”

“Yeah, brown.”

“A snap case with a syringe and some vials?”

“Yes.” He shot me a stern look. “Why?”

I could barely say the words. “It’s not there.”

“What? Where is it?”

“In the river.”

“The river?”

“I threw it in. I thought it was dope.”

“Good God, Odie.” He grabbed my shoulders, and I thought he was going to crush me with his bare hands. Instead he shoved me away and whispered, “Oh, Christ.”

“What do we do, Sid?” Sister Eve said, so calmly she might have been asking, “What shall we have for dinner?”

“We get him to a doctor. Now.”

Sid drove, Emmy and Mose up front beside him. I sat in back with Albert and Sister Eve. I could feel my brother’s body shaking, and I didn’t know if it was because of the poison or because he was as scared as I was.

“I’m sorry, Albert,” I kept saying. “I’m so sorry.” I wanted to beg him,
Please don’t die,
but I was afraid to say the word
die.
I didn’t even want to think it. Yet there it was, a big balloon inside my head, crowding out all other thinking. Soundlessly, I screamed,
Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die!

The doctor’s office was just off the central square in New Bremen, a two-story red-brick house with a white picket fence and a sign hung out front:
ROY P. PFEIFFER, M.D. & JULIUS PFEIFFER, M.D.
We piled out, and Albert hobbled inside surrounded by us all. There was a little waiting area off the foyer, where a mother in a flowered
housedress sat with her small child. A bell over the door tinkled as we entered the house, and a moment later a woman appeared, smiling. She was young and wore pants, which wasn’t the way a lot of women dressed back then, especially in small towns. When she saw our large entourage and the frantic looks on our faces, she lost her smile and said, “Who’s the patient?”

“He is,” I said, taking Albert’s hand.

She glanced at his rolled-up pant leg and her brow furrowed. “What’s the trouble?”

“Snakebite,” Sid said. “A rattlesnake.”

That clearly surprised her, but she composed herself quickly. “Bring him in here.”

She led us to a room with an examining table, on which she had Albert lie down. “I’ll be right back,” she said and disappeared.

There was a cabinet full of little bottles and beneath it a stainless-steel table with several drawers. There was a sink, a standing metal lamp with a big metal shade, a wooden writing desk with a chair, a few small pastoral paintings on the wall, and a window that overlooked a rose garden in the backyard. The window was up and the scent from the roses wafted in, overpowering the vague smell of medication. I’d never been in a doctor’s office before. At the Lincoln Indian Training School, there’d been what they called an infirmary, which was nothing more than a room with four beds where children with some communicable disease like chicken pox or mumps or measles were sent to be isolated while their contagion ran its course. It was also the place where, while Albert and Mose and I were there, a couple of children were sent to die. The examining room in Dr. Pfeiffer’s home seemed much more encouraging.

The woman returned quickly with a man of perhaps sixty. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and a red bow tie with little white polka dots. His glasses had thick lenses, so that his eyes loomed huge and blue behind them. His gray hair was ruffled, as if from a strong wind.

“I’m Dr. Pfeiffer,” he said, addressing Sid. “Is this your son?”

“No. Just a—” Sid fumbled for the right word.

“He’s with me,” Sister Eve said. “One of my young workers from the Sword of Gideon Healing Crusade.”

The doctor’s gray eyebrows lifted in a way that made me understand exactly what he thought of Sister Eve and her healing crusade. But he said, “A rattlesnake bite. You’re sure.”