Abbeville (11 page)

I seized the pellet rifle and trotted off, holding it at port arms the way my father had taught me. We used to go through the whole Manual of Arms together, both the regular Army way and the flashier National Guard style. My father snapped the weapon smartly through right-shoulder, left-shoulder, order, and present arms, ending at parade rest. It was the first time I really could imagine that he had been a soldier. For myself, I liked the National Guard way. This left my father disconsolate.

As I came out of the shed, Grampa was opposite me behind his mower.

“Going hunting?” he called.

“Nah,” I said. “Just messing around.”

Grampa looked at me as if he still had enough boy in him to know better.

They said you could find muskrats in the ditches along the cornfields north of town. They said you could find weasels. The bounty on these was higher than on crows, which were in any event too smart to let a boy sight in on them. You received payment by turning in the
varmint's carcass at the general store. At least that was what my second cousin had told me, making it sound as full of glory as the National Guard. So I was determined to bag myself a fierce weasel because anybody had the guts to shoot a bird.

Behind the church lay an immensity of cornfields cut through by a ditch big enough to require a culvert under the C&EI tracks. I let myself down the bank until my Keds touched the moist matting of grass at the bottom. A few hops from rock to rock carried me across the slow-moving water.

I saw no sign of weasels in any direction, so I decided to lie in ambush, cradling my rifle across my lap, safety off for speed, finger on the trigger, waiting for the moment when a weasel was foolish enough to show itself. I sat perfectly still for what felt like hours, then the fidgets got the better of me. I brought my rifle up and fired at a stick twenty or thirty yards away. I thought I saw it jump and counted this as a kill. Then I lay back again and waited.

There were burrows everywhere that must have led to underground quarry. Did weasels live in burrows? I should have asked Grampa, who knew about everything. It had been Grampa who had taught me to recognize the long, curving berm in a lawn that meant a mole. Technically speaking, I guess I had already killed my first mammal when a spring-loaded trap I had set drove a sharp trident into the soil as the mole passed beneath. But this was no more satisfying than catching a mouse. I only knew I had succeeded by the mole guts on the tines.

Out in the sun nothing was moving except the water. There weren't even any fish in the ditch because between rains it often completely dried up. I stood and walked downstream in the direction of the railroad tracks. Maybe on the other side, where the ditch ran through a stand of trees, I could find varmints.

When I got to the tracks, I stopped on the ballast and found a good rock to place on the rail. It balanced neatly on the steel surface that
had been polished by the trains. My mother always warned me not to place even so much as an old penny in the way of the big diesels that roared through Abbeville. “You don't want to be responsible for a wreck, do you?” she said. But I had done it anyway, dozens of times, once Grampa had sneaked me a peek at his collection of coins the trains had turned into foil.

Down the way, the preacher's wife emerged from the back door of her house, crossed the clearing, and took the stairs to the church basement. She did not look in my direction. I crossed the tracks and made my way to the grove of trees, sure I would only slay the prize by tracking it to its lair.

When the ditch entered the grove, it widened, making scummy pools behind fallen tree limbs. I found a small burrow, but it probably belonged to a snake. Beyond lay a thicket that could have served as something's den. But when I reached it, I found absolutely no sign of life.

Back home in Park Forest I often retreated to a little woods a block away from our house. Sometimes I would scare up a pheasant in the prairie beyond it or see a rabbit running away. It never seemed particularly wild there, but compared to this it teemed like the African savannah.

To get to the other side of the water, I had to walk across a fallen log, using my rifle like a tightrope walker's pole. I was more than halfway there when I started to get into trouble. My toe stubbed on a big knot. The rifle began to teeter wildly. The next thing I knew I was lying in the fetid water.

It wasn't deep, but it soaked my pants and one side of my shirt. Thankfully, the barrel of my rifle stayed dry, but the stock had sunk deep into the mud. I leaned on it to get upright and eventually was able to reach dry ground. But as I did, my foot pulled out of my shoe, leaving it mired in the sucking muck.

Some hunter! I looked down at my pants and could not help thinking of a little boy who has peed himself. Then suddenly I felt someone watching me. I turned. A squirrel had me fixed in its gaze. The first quarry of the day, and it was stalking me.

As I raised the muddy rifle butt to my shoulder, the squirrel lit out. I fired but came nowhere close to it. Before I had a chance to fire again, it had put a tree trunk between us and scampered up it.

Losing a squirrel was no reason to cry. Getting my pants wet was no reason. Not having a clean hand or shirt cuff to wipe the tears was the least reason of all.

Eventually I had the presence of mind to rinse the rifle butt free of mud and get moving again. When I reached the tracks, I heard the preacher's wife inside the church singing Elvis's “Love Me Tender.” Up in the belfry I thought I saw the shape of a hawk. Sure, it was a bird, but a big one that would bring a bounty. I raised my rifle and began to plant my feet, but before I could get my sights on the predator I flinched. The rifle fired a puff of CO
₂
. Then came a shattering of glass. The woman's song turned into a scream.

When I lifted my burning foot, the bee I had stepped on was writhing. Fear overcame pain, and I limped into the cornfield as fast as my injury allowed.

As I fled down the rows, the leaves ripped at my arms. I kept going until I could not even tell which direction the sun was. It didn't matter. At least I was getting away from the scene of the crime.

The farther I went, the more the pain forced its way back through the fear. My foot felt as though it had swollen to five times its normal size. It was a surprise when I pulled off my sock and saw that the damage was pretty much localized in my big toe.

It hurt too much to put the sock back on. When I stood up, I found that I could walk painlessly, though awkwardly, by staying on my heel. The trouble was, I had no idea where to go. The corn loomed two feet
over my head. Every direction, the rows looked exactly the same. I began walking, having no idea whether it was toward safety or more trouble.

Becoming lost was no reason to cry. Shooting the preacher's wife was no reason to cry. Nor even having to face my mother. I sat down in the middle of nowhere and bawled.

I only stopped when the ground began rumbling beneath me. The wail of the horn rose in pitch as the train took the turn toward Abbeville and picked up speed.

The sound showed me the way out of the maze. But when I got up I suddenly remembered the stone I had put on the track. I tried to move fast so I could kick the stone away before the train got there, but my stung foot hobbled me. I reached the edge of the field just as the diesel arrived, and I imagined the big engine's flat nose rising up and then crashing to earth, a hundred cars behind it flying off the tracks. I slid back a few feet into the corn. The engineer leaned on the horn as it passed over the stone without so much as a shiver.

As its hundred cars rattled past, I sneaked back to Grampa and Grandma's house. It appeared that nobody had been in the shed after me, so I was able to wipe the last of the mud off the stock of the rifle and replace it next to the BB gun. When I was finished, I retraced my path. I had to retrieve my lost shoe.

When I got to the ditch, I crouched so as to be hidden by the banks. When I reached the tracks, I heard the preacher's voice coming my way. I had no choice but to step into the slimy water and hide in the culvert.

At first it didn't scare me. Then I thought I felt something flitting across my ankles, and it was all I could do not to cry out.

When I had gotten about halfway through the tunnel, the preacher's voice boomed through it the way it did on Sundays, full of hell's fire.

“The wretch must have stood right about here,” he said.

I froze.

“Look,” he said. “Some fool kids were putting rocks on the tracks again. I bet it's the same ones that did the shooting.”

“You see any other rocks?” said another voice I didn't recognize. “Because here comes the 11:02.”

I felt a deep, muffled rumble beneath his words, growing in intensity. Up above, on the beautiful surface of the Earth, I could pretty much judge a train's distance by the sound. But down here in hell everything echoed and was magnified. When the preacher delivered his sermons, I had never really been able to imagine eternal punishment, but suddenly I knew that it would be just like what I was feeling in the culvert: ordinary things raised to the level of terror.

I hunkered down more, as if another inch of clearance would save me. The noise became excruciating. I put my hands over my ears, but it did not help. My whole body had become an eardrum.

Finally the engine passed and the noise abated. Now was my chance to get away, covered by the passing boxcars. I waded out of the culvert and moved toward the grove of trees as fast as my sore foot would let me. I quickly found my lost shoe and rinsed it as well as I could in the stagnant water. It squished as I limped my way back toward the house. The coldness actually made the sting feel a little better.

This time I went in plain view, hoping to be seen—wet and filthy, but unarmed. When I got near the house, Grampa was hauling fallen twigs to a big pile out back of the school for burning. I suddenly remembered that he had seen me taking the rifle in the morning. I was sunk. He gave me a big wave and that smile of his. Even from a distance I must have looked like one of the condemned.

When I reached the house, I took off my shoes and went directly to the bathroom, passing Grandma on the fly.

“Oh, Lordy, what did you get into?” she said.

I started filling the tub, then bolted upstairs to get fresh clothes. By the time I returned the bath was ready. Of course, there was no way to make the Keds clean again.

Soon my parents returned.

“Did you hear about all the excitement at the church?” my mother asked. She was looking directly at me.

“Excitement?” said Grandma.

“Somebody put a hole through one of the stained-glass windows,” my mother said.

A wave of relief came over me. At least the hole hadn't been in the preacher's wife.

“Was it one of ours?” Grandma asked. At some point in the distant past they had somehow been able to pay for three. Sometimes I would look at the plaques under them, Grampa's name on one, Grandma's on another, and my mother's on the third.

“It was the Schlagels',” my mother said, “but you can be sure we'll be called upon to help pay for fixing it.”

“It won't take much,” Grampa said, winking at me in a way nobody else could see. “I took a look. A little lead work and it'll be as good as new.”

“Do they know who did it?” Grandma asked.

“Anybody here have any ideas?” my mother said. I had to force myself not to look away from her.

“I fell into the ditch north of the Hagens' place,” I said. “In the trees there. My shoes and clothes got dirty. I'm sorry.” I put one true statement after another, which meant I didn't lie.

“The ditch runs behind the church,” my mother said.

“Maybe you saw something,” said Grandma.

“A squirrel,” I said.

“Squirrels don't shoot out windows,” my mother said. As I used true statements to deceive, she used them to annoy.

“Did you have your pellet rifle?” my father asked.

Before I had a chance to figure how to answer that one, Grampa stepped in.

“I saw him come back,” he said. “I've seen rats along Otter Creek that looked cleaner. But he didn't have the rifle.”

I didn't look at him for fear that the gratitude on my face would give us away. Today I wonder whether it was his willingness to stand up for a fool that had gotten him in all the trouble.

“It had to have scared poor Mrs. Rose half to death,” my mother said.

“She scares kind of easy,” said Grampa.

“What were you doing in the ditch anyway, George?” my mother asked.

“Looking for a little adventure,” Grampa said. “Leave the boy be.”

“Boys mean trouble,” said my mother.

“George,” Grampa said, “when you are a lad it's your lot to be under a constant cloud of suspicion.”

“A good thing, too,” said my mother.

“When I have a little boy, I'm going to trust him,” I said, guilt and pride all tossed together.

“That would make me a grandfather,” said my father.

“It's honest work,” Grampa grinned.

T
HE WAR IN
E
UROPE TOUCHED
A
BBEVILLE
early, first driving up the price the farmers got for their grain, then tearing the town apart. The French hated Woodrow Wilson and wanted the United States to intervene immediately to take back their homeland from what they called “the Hun.” The Germans, many of whose kin had left the Old Country specifically to avoid conscription, wanted neutrality at all costs.

Karl tried to stay out of the debate altogether, but he could not avoid its effects. Before the war he had begun to win French farmers from the south end over to his elevator. Now the momentum reversed. Despite the financial advantages Karl offered, the French were beginning to return to their own.

Meantime, Karl's situation at home had darkened. Cristina was not barren, but something was terribly wrong. The year before, she had become pregnant. It was a difficult delivery, desperately premature, and though Cristina had summoned the strength to survive it, Karl Jr. was so tiny that he did not have a chance. They buried him in the graveyard Karl had fenced as a young man.