Jewelweed (67 page)

Flo stopped. “Here,” she said. “This is where I wanted to stand.”

As they stood, their feet slowly sank into the soaked grass.

“What is it about this place?” he asked.

“I don't really know,” said Flo. “But when I'm sitting in my chair making my rosaries I always wonder what it would be like to stand here with the windbreak behind me. Now I can look at the window and wonder what it would be like to sit behind it.”

“Don't they feel about the same?”

“Not at all.”

They went back to the house and Buck helped Flo up to her room. Then he went down to the basement, where Amy was putting a new finish on a piece of period furniture. He told her he'd be gone for several hours.

On his way out to the truck, Wally called from the porch, “Where you going?”

“Over to Luster, want to come?”

“Yes,” said Wally.

During the drive, Wally asked about Lucky. “I saw he was here earlier this morning. What did he say? Did the contracts come through?”

“They did,” said Buck.

“Well?”

“Apparently Lucky went after a job he didn't tell us about. He got it, and he was pretty proud of himself.”

“What is it?”

“Building a new prison outside Words. They're going to call it the Words Correctional Program Facility. There's a group of investors putting millions into it, and apparently they have some down-the-road understanding with the right people in the Department of Corrections and the Department of Development.”

“How many cells?”

“Four hundred, with a separate building for laundry and a backup power plant.”

“Big job,” said Wally. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him we wouldn't do it.”

“Someone else will build it anyway,” said Wally.

“I know it. Lucky was pretty angry. He said he'd put a lot of time into the deal.”

“Tough decision on your part,” said Wally.

“I'll talk to the crew on Monday,” said Buck. “The company building the prison—the second one down on the list—will be needing more help. That's what Lucky said.”

“How many do you think will leave?”

“Half, maybe more. We don't have enough work to keep them all on anyway, not after the nursing home is finished. They know that. Our only new jobs are a couple large single-family homes in the hills.”

“Hard times for construction,” said Wally.

“Does that mean you would have taken the prison job, Dad?”

“Hell no, Buck. Carrying something like that into the afterlife would be like wearing lead clothes into the dreamworld. You and I started out over twenty-five years ago with a wheelbarrow and a manual cement mixer. We did real well, better than I imagined we would and possibly better than we deserved. And by the way, the idea of Lucky being angry just warms me all over.”

In Luster, they found Jack Station washing his car in front of his modest house, working with a soapy sponge. They pulled in and got out.

“Who are you and what do you want?” asked Station.

“Most people call me Buck and this is my father, Wallace Roebuck.”

“You own the construction company in Grange,” said Station.

“That's right,” said Wally. “We're here about Blake Bookchester.”

“What did he do?” asked Station without looking up.

“He didn't do anything,” said Buck.

“He took his father's truck into Iowa. I know he did that, but he didn't get caught.”

“That's what we're here about,” said Buck. “We want to make sure he doesn't go back to prison.”

“Why?”

“Blake's son and his son's mother live in an apartment in my house,” said Buck. “She works for my wife and her son is a friend to my son. Blake's father used to drive for our company and his cousin manages our cement company. Blake currently works for a man who occasionally fixes our equipment. His wife has been a pastor in Words for over fifteen years. And on top of all that, my wife's grandmother sees unique potential in Blake.”

“Unique potential?”

“I can't say I see it myself, but she does. The point is, if Blake Bookchester goes back to prison it will affect a lot of people I care about.”

Station tossed the sponge into the bucket of soapy water, walked several yards away, and sat on the grass.

“I'd appreciate any help I can get,” he said. “There's only so much I can do beyond hammering away at these guys not to break the rules. Like taking his father's truck out of state: so long as I'm the only one who knows about it, that's one thing. But when other people find out, that's when it gets out of my hands.”

“So you're not trying to find a way to send him back?” asked Wally, taking up the sponge and washing where Station had left off.

“Of course not. People who work with these guys like I do don't want to see them returned to prison. It's the people above us—career guys who've never met an inmate in their lives, and have no understanding of the situations they come from—who push us to send them back, to keep the prisons full.

“Don't get me wrong,” Station went on, “there are plenty of guys who need to be locked up—better for them and for the rest of us. But most of them get hauled in because it's easier to keep locking up people who don't need to be locked up than it is to change the system.”

“What can we do?” asked Buck.

“Give me your telephone number so I can call you if something happens. You could also sign up as sponsors.”

Buck took the sponge from Wally and began washing the top of the car. “We'll do it,” he said.

Wally walked around the soapy car, snapped his suspenders against his chest, and asked Station where he was going to put the car when he was finished washing it.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, where are you going to park it?”

“Right where it is now.”

“You need a garage.”

“No kidding.”

“Buck and I will build you one, at cost.”

“What do you mean?”

“We'll build you a garage.”

Station stared at Wally.

“What kind of garage?” he asked.

“One big enough for your car, with a couple windows and a side door.”

Station stood up, walked over, and took the sponge away from Buck. He continued washing his car.

“I should probably mention that I've got a fishing boat and trailer behind the house, and a ride-on lawnmower on the back porch.”

“We could build a two-stall garage,” added Buck. “All you would have to pay for is the cost of the materials.”

“Two single doors or one double?”

“You choose.”

“What if I want to heat it in the winter?”

“We'll insulate it, build you a heated garage. How does that sound?”

“Concrete floor?”

“Poured concrete on clay and sand,” replied Buck.

“You could have parties inside, with coffee and cake,” added Wally.

“I don't know. I've watched your crews. You've got some pretty young guys on your payroll. Their workmanship can't be the best.”

“Buck and I will build it ourselves,” said Wally. “The two of us. I've been wanting to swing a hammer again and building an insulated garage seems like just the thing. We'll even mix the cement ourselves.”

“Well, I suppose it would be good for the community,” said Station. “I mean, a new building in the neighborhood would benefit everyone—looks neater, good for property values.”

“Of course,” replied Wally.

H
idden among the Helms' afternoon mail lay a hand-written invitation to celebrate the marriage of Blake Bookchester and Danielle Workhouse. The reception was to be held outdoors, at the old July Montgomery farm outside of Words. All food and beverages would be provided.

Winnie recognized Dart's handwriting in the body of the invitation, but the blocky signature was definitely Nate's. They had worked on it together. A note at the bottom—also in Dart's scrolling hand, with extravagantly looping
g
's and little swirls on top of the lowercase
i
's—requested that August extend the invitation to Lester Mortal on behalf of Ivan.

Winnie smiled and read it again. When she showed it to August he went to his room to retrieve a seventeen-page essay he'd recently printed out on the history of ginseng and its place in human culture. After rolling the pages into a tight tube and stuffing it into his back pocket, he went outside, adjusted the strap holding his canteen around his shoulder, and ran off in the direction of the veteran's hut.

Setting down her cup of tea, Winnie watched through the kitchen window as her son disappeared into the tangled vegetation beyond the yard. An unusual calmness visited her and she no longer wished to be indoors.

On the painted bench in her garden, Winnie studied her flowers. A premonition of autumn had invaded the once-plump summer leaves, thinning them down and in some cases wrinkling the edges brown, but most of the rudbeckia, tall phlox, hydrangea, turtlehead, and echinacea blooms were still in optimal display of orange, purple, white, and gold. Late-summer butterflies with nearly transparent regalia hovered in the
air, drifting lazily from flower to flower, landing, sipping up nectar, adjusting their colored robes, and moving weightlessly on. The slightest breeze moved the dainty creatures off course, but this never seemed to distress them, and Winnie admired their aimless good cheer.

She took off her shoes and socks and felt the grass with her feet. She remembered the first time she had thought about making a garden. The idea sprang from her belief that divine inspiration could be received by anyone, anywhere. It seldom was, but she remained convinced that nothing prevented even those in the most squalid or splendid surroundings from participating in numinous luminosity. Nothing could obstruct the advancement of spiritual events, provided the time was right and the recipient open to holy communication.

And yet Winnie also believed—with similar conviction—something almost contradictory: for effective prayer, some places worked a whole lot better than others. When God went looking for individuals, any location they happened to be in would suffice; but when Winnie went looking for God, some places were clearly better to search in than others. And maximizing her efforts in this regard was particularly important to her. From an early age she had known that without searching prayer, her life resembled the meandering of troubled sleep. Reverent prayer helped focus her mind and order her thoughts.

She had chosen the location for her private garden carefully, with an eye to cultivating heightened receptivity.

First, she'd observed the wild creatures in the area surrounding her home. In different seasons and at different times of day, she noted where they dozed, stretched, groomed, ate, nested, stored winter food, and conversed with each other. Next, she spoke to people familiar with the history of the area. A local landowner belonging to the Ho-chunk Nation even informed her of earlier uses of the land, and the location of former sacred sites.

She studied groundcover, trees, and shrubs, and measured the rate of growth from spring to fall. She watched how trunks, branches, and leaves spread their shadows on the ground, paying particular attention to the sound of the wind moving through them, and to the changing textures, colors, and fragrances.

Scientists at the university in Madison analyzed her samples of soil.
She dug holes, filled them with water, and timed how long it took for them to drain. At night, she charted the constellations seen from different places. In the library, she downloaded pictures taken from global positioning satellites and studied them.

For more personal deliberations, Winnie had Jacob tie several turns of scarf around her head and lead her from one place to another. While blindfolded, she related her changing feelings, thoughts, and moods, which Jacob dutifully recorded in a spiral notebook. They repeated the experiment at different times of day and night. Finally, they made love in dozens of locations and rated their respective experiences, then repeated the experiment again in the top-rated spots.

When the findings of all these tests had been evaluated, Winnie selected the grassy plot of ground a hundred yards or so uphill from her home. To the west of her chosen site, sandstone outcroppings rose out of the earth like fossilized layer cake, allowing for a sense of protective enclosure. Congested bunches of aspen, white pine, and birch grew to the north and south. To the east, a sloping view of a narrow valley expanded down an open meadow to a distant ridge, giving the impression that her garden rested in the plugged neck of a land funnel.

The project took two years to finish, and with a modest sense of satisfaction Winnie now sat up, raised her head, closed her eyes, and felt the afternoon sunlight gently push against her eyelids, igniting a lavender glow in front of her irises. As wave after wave of contented relief rinsed through her body, she focused her attention, following them into ever-widening experiences.