In the Heart of the Heart of the Country Page 5

  No.

  Why not? That’s what he needs, something warm to his skin, don’t he?

  Not where he’s froze good. Heat’s bad for frostbite. That’s why I only put towels on his chest and belly. He’s got to thaw slow. You ought to know that.

  Colors on the towels had run.

  Ma poked her toe in the kid’s clothes.

  What are we going to do with these?

  Big Hans began pouring whiskey in the kid’s mouth but the mouth filled without any getting down his throat and in a second it was dripping from his chin.

  Here, help me prop him up. I got to hold his mouth open.

  I didn’t want to touch him and I hoped ma would do it but she kept looking at the kid’s clothes piled on the floor and the pool of water by them and didn’t make any move to.

  Come on, Jorge.

  All right.

  Lift, don’t shove . . . lift.

  Okay, I’m lifting.

  I took him by the shoulders. His head flopped back. His mouth fell open. The skin on his neck was tight. He was cold all right.

  Hold his head up. He’ll choke.

  His mouth is open.

  His throat’s shut. He’ll choke.

  He’ll choke anyway.

  Hold his head up.

  I can’t.

  Don’t hold him like that. Put your arms around him.

  Well jesus.

  He was cold all right. I put my arm carefully around him. Hans had his fingers in the kid’s mouth.

  Now he’ll choke for sure.

  Shut up. Just hold him like I told you.

  He was cold all right, and wet. I had my arm behind his back. He sure felt dead.

  Tilt his head back a bit . . . not too much.

  He felt cold and slimy. He sure was dead. We had a dead body in our kitchen. All the time he’d been dead. When Hans had brought him in, he’d been dead. I couldn’t see him breathing. He was awful skinny, sunk between the ribs. We were getting him ready to bake. Hans was basting him. I had my arm around him, holding him up. He was dead and I had hold of him. I could feel my muscles jumping.

  Well jesus christ.

  He is dead. He is.

  You dropped him.

  Dead? ma said.

  He’s dead. I could feel. He’s dead.

  Dead?

  Ain’t you got any sense? You let his head hit the table.

  Is he dead? Is he dead? ma said.

  Well christ no, not yet, not yet he’s not dead. Look what you done, Jorge, there’s whiskey all over.

  He is dead. He is.

  Right now he ain’t. Not yet he ain’t. Now stop yelling and hold him up.

  He ain’t breathing.

  Yes he is, he is breathing. Hold him up.

  I ain’t. I ain’t holding any dead body. You can hold it if you want. You dribble whiskey on it all you want. You can do anything you want to. I ain’t. I ain’t holding any dead body.

  If he’s dead, ma said, what are we going to do with these?

  Jorge, god damn you, come back here—

  I went down to the crib where Big Hans had found him. There was still a hollow in the snow and some prints the wind hadn’t sifted snow over. The kid must have been out on his feet, they wobbled so. I could see where he had walked smack into a drift and then backed off and lurched up beside the crib, maybe bumping into it before he fell, then lying quiet so the snow had time to curl around him, piling up until in no time it would have covered him completely. Who knows, I thought, the way it’s been snowing, we mightn’t have found him till spring. Even if he was dead in our kitchen, I was glad Big Hans had found him. I could see myself coming out of the house some morning with the sun high up and strong and the eaves dripping, the snow speckled with drops and the ice on the creek slushing up; coming out and walking down by the crib on the crusts of the drift . . . coming out to play my game with the drifts . . . and I could see myself losing, breaking through the big drift that was always sleeping up against the crib and running a foot right into him, right into the Pedersen kid curled up, getting soft.

  That would have been worse than holding to his body in the kitchen. The feeling would have come on quicker, and it would have been worse, happening in the middle of a game. There wouldn’t have been any warning, any way of getting ready for it to happen, to know what I’d struck before I bent down, even though Old Man Pedersen would have come over between snows looking for the kid most likely and everybody would have figured that the kid was lying buried somewhere under the snow; that maybe after a high wind someday somebody would find him lying like a black stone uncovered in a field; but probably in the spring somebody would find him in some back pasture thawing out with the mud and have to bring him in and take him over to the Pedersen place and present him to Missus Pedersen. Even so, even with everyone knowing that, and hoping one of the Pedersens would find him first so they wouldn’t have to pry him up out of the mud or fetch him out from a thicket and bring him in and give him to Missus Pedersen in soggy season-old clothes—even then, who would expect to stick a foot all of a sudden through the crust losing at the drift game and step on Pedersen’s kid lying all crouched together right beside your own crib? It was a good thing Hans had come down this morning and found him, even if he was dead in our kitchen and I had held him up.

  When Pedersen came over asking for his kid, maybe hoping that the kid had got to our place all right and stayed, waiting for the blizzard to quit before going home, Pa would meet him and bring him in for a drink and tell him it was his own fault for putting up all those snow fences. If I knew Pa, he’d tell Pedersen to look under the drifts his snow fences had made, and Pedersen would get so mad he’d go for Pa and stomp out calling for the vengeance of God like he was fond of doing. Now though, since Big Hans had found him, and he was dead in our kitchen, Pa might not say much when Pedersen came. He might just offer Pedersen a drink and keep his mouth shut about those snow fences. Pedersen might come yet this morning. That would be best because Pa would be still asleep. If Pa was asleep when Pedersen came he wouldn’t have a chance to talk about those snow fences, or offer Pedersen a drink, or call Pedersen a bent prick or a turd machine or a fairy farmer. Pedersen wouldn’t have to refuse the drink then, spit his chaw in the snow or call on God, and could take his kid and go home. I hoped Pedersen would certainly come soon. I hoped he would come and take that cold damp body out of our kitchen. The way I felt I didn’t think that today I’d be able to eat. I knew every bite I’d see the Pedersen kid in the kitchen being fixed for the table.

  The wind had dropped. The sun lay burning on the snow. I got cold just the same. I didn’t want to go in but I could feel the cold crawling over me like it must have crawled over him while he was coming. It had slipped over him like a sheet, icy at first, especially around the feet, and he’d likely wiggled his toes in his boots and wanted to wrap his legs around each other like you do when you first come to bed. But then things would begin to warm up some, the sheet feeling warmer all the time until it felt real cozy and you went to sleep. Only when the kid went to sleep by our crib it wasn’t like going to sleep in bed because the sheet never really got warm and he never really got warm either. Now he was just as cold in our kitchen with the kettle whistling and ma getting ready to bake as I was out by the crib jigging my feet in our snow. I had to go in. I looked but I couldn’t see anyone trying to come down where the road was. All I could see was a set of half-filled prints jiggling crazily away into the snow until they sank under a drift. There wasn’t anything around. There wasn’t anything: a tree or a stick or a rock whipped bare or a bush hugged by snow sticking up to mark the place where those prints came up out of the drift like somebody had come up from underground.

  I decided to go around by the front though I wasn’t supposed to track through the parlor. The snow came to my thighs, but I was thinking of where the kid lay on the kitchen table in all that dough, pasty with whiskey and water, like spring had come all at once to our kitchen, and our all the ti
me not knowing he was there, had thawed the top of his grave off and left him for us to find, stretched out cold and stiff and bare; and who was it that was going to have to take him to the Pedersen place and give him to Missus Pedersen, naked, and flour on his bare behind?

  2

  Just his back. The green mackinaw. The black stocking cap. The yellow gloves. The gun.

  Big Hans kept repeating it. He was letting the meaning have a chance to change. He’d look at me and shake his head and say it over.

  “He put them down the cellar so I ran.”

  Hans filled the tumbler. It was spotted with whiskey and flecks of flour.

  “He didn’t saying nothing the whole time.”

  He put the bottle on the table and the bottom sank unevenly in the paste, tilting heavily and queerly to one side—acting crazy, like everything else.

  That’s all he says he saw, Hans said, staring at the mark of the kid’s behind in the dough. Just his back. The green mackinaw. The black stocking cap. The yellow gloves. The gun.

  That’s all?

  He waited and waited.

  That’s all.

  He tossed the whiskey off and peered at the bottom of the glass.

  Now why should he remember all them colors?

  He leaned over, his legs apart, his elbows on his knees, and held the glass between them with both hands, tilting it to watch the liquor that was left roll back and forth across the bottom.

  How does he know? I mean, for sure.

  He thinks he knows, Hans said in a tired voice. He thinks he knows.

  He picked up the bottle and a hunk of dough was stuck to it.

  Christ. That’s all. It’s how he feels. It’s enough, ain’t it? Hans said.

  What a mess, ma said.

  He was raving, Hans said. He couldn’t think of anything else. He had to talk. He had to get it out. You should have heard him grunt.

  Poor poor Stevie, ma said.

  He was raving?

  All right, is it something you dream? Hans said.

  He must have been dreaming. Look—how could he have got there? Where’d he come from? Fall from the sky?

  He came through the storm.

  That’s just it, Hans, he’d have had to. It was blizzarding all day. It didn’t let up—did it?—till late afternoon. He’d have had to. Now what chance is there of that? What?

  Enough a chance it happened, Hans said.

  But listen. Jesus. He’s a stranger. If he’s a stranger he’s come a ways. He’d never make it in a blizzard, not even knowing the country.

  He came through the storm. He came out of the ground like a grub. Hans shrugged. He came.

  Hans poured himself a drink, not me.

  He came through the storm, he said. He came through just like the kid came through. The kid had no chance neither, but he came. He’s here, ain’t he? He’s right upstairs, right now. You got to believe that.

  It wasn’t blizzarding when the kid came.

  It was starting.

  That ain’t the same.

  All right. The kid had forty-five minutes, maybe an hour before it started to come on good. That isn’t enough. You need the whole time, not a start. In a blizzard you got to be where you’re going if you’re going to get there.

  That’s what I mean. See, Hans? See? The kid had a chance. He knew the way. He had a head start. Besides, he was scared. He ain’t going to be lazying. And he’s lucky. He had a chance to be lucky. Now yellow gloves ain’t got that chance. He has to come farther. He has to come through the storm all the way. But he don’t know the way, and he ain’t scared proper, except maybe by the storm. He hasn’t got a chance to be lucky.

  The kid was scared, you said. Right. Now why? You tell me that.

  Hans kept his eyes on the whiskey that was shining in his glass. He was holding on hard.

  And yellow gloves—he ain’t scared? he said. How do you know he ain’t scared, by something else besides wind and snow and cold and howling, I mean?

  All right, I don’t know, but it’s likely, ain’t it? Anyway, the kid, well maybe he ain’t scared at all, starting out. Maybe his pa was just looking to tan him and he lit out. Then first thing he knows it’s blizzarding again and he’s lost, and when he gets to our crib he don’t know where he is.

  Hans slowly shook his head.

  Yes yes, hell Hans, the kid’s scared of having run away.

  He don’t want to say he done a fool stunt like that. So he makes the whole thing up. He’s just a little kid. He made the whole thing up.

  Hans didn’t like that. He didn’t want to believe the kid any more than I did, but if he didn’t then the kid had fooled him sure. He didn’t want to believe that either.

  No, he said. Is it something you make up? Is it something you come to—raving with frostbite and fever and not knowing who’s there or where you are or anything—and make up?

  Yeah.

  No it ain’t. Green, black, yellow: you don’t make up them colors neither. You don’t make up putting your folks down cellar where they’ll freeze. You don’t make up his not saying anything the whole time or only seeing his back or exactly what he was wearing. It’s more than a make-up; it’s more than a dream. It’s like something you see once and it hits you so hard you never forget it even if you want to; lies, dreams, pass—this has you; it’s like something that sticks to you like burrs, burrs you try to brush off while you’re doing something else, but they never brush off, they just roll a little, and the first thing you know you ain’t doing what you set out to, you’re just trying to get them burrs off. I know. I got things stuck to me like that. Everybody has. Pretty soon you get tired trying to pick them off. If they was just burrs, it wouldn’t matter, but they ain’t. They never is. The kid saw something that hit him hard like that; hit him so hard that probably all the time he was running over here he didn’t see anything else but what hit him. Not really. It hit him so hard he couldn’t do anything but spit it out raving when he come to. It hit him. You don’t make things like that up, Jorge. No. He came through the storm, just like the kid. He had no business coming, but he came. I don’t know how or why or when exactly, except it must have been during the blizzard yesterday. He got to the Pedersen place just before or just after it stopped snowing. He got there and he shoved them all in the fruit cellar to freeze and I’ll bet he had his reasons.

  You got dough stuck to the bottom of Pa’s bottle.

  I couldn’t think of anything else to say. What Hans said sounded right. It sounded right but it couldn’t be right. It just couldn’t be. Whatever was right, the Pedersen kid had run off from his pa’s place probably late yesterday afternoon when the storm let up, and had turned up at our crib this morning. I knew he was here. I knew that much. I’d held him. I’d felt him dead in my hands, only I guess he wasn’t dead now. Hans had put him to bed upstairs but I could still see him in the kitchen, so skinny naked, two towels steaming on him, whiskey drooling from the corners of his mouth, lines of dirt between his toes, squeezing ma’s dough in the shape of his behind.

  I reached for the bottle. Hans held it away.

  He didn’t see him do it though, I said.

  Hans shrugged.

  Then he ain’t sure.

  He’s sure, I told you. Do you run out in a blizzard unless you’re sure?

  It wasn’t blizzarding.

  It was starting.

  I don’t run out in blizzards.

  Crap.

  Hans pointed the doughy end of the bottle at me.

  Crap.

  He shook it.

  You come in from the barn—like this morning. As far as you know there ain’t a gun in yellow gloves in a thousand miles. You come in from the barn not thinking anything special. You just get inside—you just get inside when you see a guy you never saw before, the guy that wasn’t in a thousand miles, that wasn’t in your mind even, he was so far away, and he’s wearing them yellow gloves and that green mackinaw, and he’s got me and your ma and pa lined up with our hand
s back of our necks like this—

  Hans hung the bottle and the glass behind his head.

  He’s got me and your ma and your pa lined up with our hands here back of our necks, and he’s got a rifle in between them yellow gloves and he’s waving the point of it up and down in front of your ma’s face real slow and quiet.

  Hans got up and waved the bottle violently in ma’s face. She shivered and shooed it away. Hans stopped to come to me. He stood over me, his black eyes buttons on his big face, and I tried to look like I wasn’t hunching down any in my chair.

  What do you do? Hans roared. You drop a little kid’s cold head on the table.

  Like hell—

  Hans had the bottle in front of him again, smack in my face.

  Hans Esbyorn, ma said, don’t pester the boy.

  Like hell—

  Jorge.

  I wouldn’t run, ma.

  Ma sighed. I don’t know. But don’t yell.

  Well christ almighty, ma.

  Don’t swear neither. Please. You been swearing too much—you and Hans both.

  But I wouldn’t run.

  Yes, Jorge, yes. I’m sure you wouldn’t run, she said.

  Hans went back and sat down and finished his drink and poured another. He could relax now he’d got me all strung up. He was a fancy bastard.

  You’d run all right, he said, running his tongue across his lips. Maybe you’d be right to run. Maybe anybody would. With no gun, with nothing to stop him.

  Poor child. Wheweee. And what are we going to do with these?

  Hang them up, Hed, for christ’s sake.

  Where?

  Well, where do you, mostly?

  Oh no, she said, I wouldn’t feel right doing that.

  Then jesus, Hed, I don’t know. Jesus.

  Please Hans, please. Those words are hard for me to bear.

  She stared at the ceiling.

  Dear. The kitchen’s such a mess. I can’t bear to see it. And the baking’s not done.

  That’s all she could think of. That’s all she had to say. She didn’t care about me. I didn’t count. Not like her kitchen. I wouldn’t have run.

  Stick the baking, I said.

  Shut your face.

  He could look as mean as he liked, I didn’t care. What was his meanness to me? A blister on my heel, another discomfort, a cold bed. Yet when he took his eyes off me to drink, I felt better. I was going to twist his balls.