Sufficient Grace (7 page)

Ingwald found his brother behind the milking shed, weeping so hard that his square shoulders were shaking, speaking of grave failure. Samuel was squirming, and Reuben lay screaming in the cold shade of the wall, both now wearing only cloth diapers. Peter knelt against the stone foundation, his skinning knife unsheathed and stuck into the snow. He'd sawed branches off of the spindly birch and, in the midst of the patchy snow, had a green wood fire smouldering in a scraped dirt circle.

‘We never spoke of it, so I don't know what brought Peter to his despair, and I'll leave that to Jesus. What I know is this: Peter didn't believe when he took those baby boys behind the shed, but as Ingwald held his trembling hands and they cried out to the Lord, he believed.'

I know Grandma wants it to be true, that unwrapping a toddler and an infant and making a fire brought Peter to the Lord. She holds on to once saved, always saved; she believes he'll leave behind his sin and come back to the Lord. But for most, that's not enough; you got to walk the walk, and that just ain't my Uncle Peter's way. He just knew something we don't; maybe he still knows. He saw deep into those boys: something about where they were going or where they were from.

Uncle Peter is a black sheep; for all his coming-to-the-Lord story Grandma told me, he's still got a ways to come. I guess I always thought my uncle was unsaved and that all he did and said was still waiting to be swept away by the blood of Jesus. Now that I know he's been saved and is backslid, I worry more about his soul and I understand why Grandma don't want him in her house. Peter's been found once; I hope he finds his way again before the Lord returns. Reuben's seen him with beer, and Mom says he can't seem to settle down with one woman. Grandma says that he'll come back to the Lord. When she was but a young girl, the Lord spoke to her:
All your boys will return home before I call you home
.

Grandma asks me to put another split log on the fire, so I go to the basement to get the wood.

When my grandma was a little girl, Wisconsin was a frontier. Her daddy traded pelts with the Indians and her momma minded the store. Grandma, blonde pigtails tied in ribbons, tidied paper sacks and swept the plank floor with a straw broom. ‘Be still.' That's all she remembers of when the Indians would come through the door. ‘Be still.'

She still knows those words in German because that's how her momma talked. Little Grandma was let loose on the candy under the counter and could cut brown bags into paper dolls as much she liked as long as she kept quiet. I can hear those snip, snips while she slices long lines of girls holding hands all in a row. She liked to eat striped candy while the tall shadows leaned over the counter and her momma guarded her beneath her skirts. Grandma still claims a fear of Indians, but I believe she just wants candy.

It makes her laugh, my reckoning about her sweet tooth. She smiles wide and shows me her rows of perfect teeth. They aren't stained with coffee and wine like those in the world, but she does misuse them to bite off stray threads. I've seen her do it. She claims she tries not to be afraid of good Indians, Christian Indians, just the ones that still do the worshipping of the trees and such. But I've seen her fearful in the grocery store, too scared to walk an aisle with an Indian in it. I guess she can't forget her momma's legs trembling beneath her skirt when the men, smelling of campfire and horses, stood in the store. Grandma's blonde hair would have been a prize scalp, so her momma said.

‘Once I peeked out, low by Momma's foot, and I saw a buckskin moccasin.' That's all she knows. Naomi's an Indian, and that ain't nothing she's got to be ashamed of, not her or us. Grandma says it and it is true. Naomi is part of us now. ‘She's no more Indian than we are.' Snip, snip, she cuts the stray threads of a patch with her teeth; snip, snip, she cuts the stray threads with scissors. ‘Liquor's another story. Only the blood of Jesus can cover that.' And she believes that for any man.

Naomi ain't no Indian to Grandma; Grandma can't get enough of that girl. But, for once, Naomi ain't here; it's just Grandma and me rocking and working, staying warm by the fire. I thread needles and pile the patches by colour: blue with blues, stripe with stripes. The wooden chair creaks across the floor while Grandma's hands stay busy with the quilt.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm one of the righteous or the wicked. Would the Lord spare this place and this people for my sake? Or will He sweep it all away, all of us together, sinners and saints alike? He will not do it; I believe it in my soul. The Judge of heaven and earth will do right. But it is not my place to know the mind of God, or the timing of His return.

6

YESTERDAY AFTER SCHOOL
,
DADDY WANTED TO WORK ON THE
old tractor that he's reassembling. Someday he'll have his own shed — maybe we'll even own our own woods — but until then, his projects are piled up in the dust and grease of Grandma's barn. I stayed inside with Grandma for an hour, but once she started talking about making lefse, I made my escape. Peeling potatoes makes my hands go red and itchy.

When I left Grandma in the kitchen, she was pressing a white kitchen towel against her forehead. Sometimes I look at Grandma and see the Haralson apple tree we have in the orchard in the yard. This August, it had so many little green apples pulling it down, its branches were fit to break. Straining to hold its arms up to allow its fruit to ripen in the sun, the tree was slowly losing its fight as it drooped closer and closer to the ground. Deer eating off it at night were like dark, silent ghosts surrounding a weeping willow. Grandma holds all of us up to the Lord in prayer, trusting God for our safety and salvation. As she leaned against the kitchen sink, Grandma looked bone weary, and it don't seem fair that she didn't have anyone anymore to help hold up her arms.

It ain't really fair, neither, to call the abandoned little patch of fruit trees we got an orchard. The pines surrounding it have grown too close and are shadowing what apple and cherry trees have survived ice storms and lawnmower crashes. Daddy planted most of them for an agriculture project his senior year of high school, so I guess we are all still hoping they'll become a success. I thought on all of these things while walking out to the barn, dragging my feet in my hand-me-down pink, puffy moon boots.

Sliding the barn door across to squeeze into the shelter, I thought I heard a coon or a skunk or something scratching around the back of the lawnmower. Already covered in grime, the mower was sitting idle as it had since the end of September, so leaning against it to peer over into the corner was my first mistake. Nothing living was in the corner anyways, and my second mistake happened right quick. An old Gustafson's ice-cream-pail handle, twisted up and tangled by the mower, had been kicked out the side of the blower and was there waiting for me to plonk my foot down hard. The wire ripped right through the bottom of my boot and screwed up into my foot. At first, I only felt wet soak into my boot, like I was barefoot on the cold, concrete floor of the barn. The metal must have clanked my bone inside my foot, though, because I felt that hit right up to my teeth.

Daddy was there quicker than I thought he could move. He'd been wiping his hands on an oily rag, cleaning up, getting ready to come back inside when he heard me cry out. Kneeling over me, down on the floor with the swallow droppings and the dust sticking to my boots and jacket, he shook my shoulder to get me to stop crying, look up at him and tell him what was causing the racket. When I pointed to the wire tangled around and through my boot and he saw the thin trickle of blood staining the sole, he caught the hair hanging in my face and tucked it behind my ear.

‘What you over here crouching around for?'

I explained about the possibility of coon or even skunk.

He just grabbed me up in his arms and carried me out of the barn. ‘You let them skunks look after themselves.' His arms were shaking, but he was smiling the comfort smile he gave the ewes when they were lambing: knowing they was hurting, but loving them the same. He carried me to the house like I was still little and light.

Daddy showed my wired boot to Grandma. She put down her potatoes and told him to set me on the couch.

I was wailing — I balled my hands and bit my lip, but I couldn't keep the sound down — and he said, ‘I got to take her in.' Even his hands were trembling.

Grandma shook her head no; her mouth was set firm and she pointed him to the kitchen. They went in and there were some words, but I couldn't hear them rightly over my own noise. But I didn't need to hear; I knew. Grandma's momma seemed to fall into whatever faith was passing through Failing on any given day. We're blessed that that woman came to know the truth of Jesus Christ when she did, but still, our family hangs on to some of Great-Grandma's beliefs picked up from travelling Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter-day Saints, and even questionable revivalist preachers. Grandma wants always to pray for healing and to believe for the touch of the Lord. I guess we still have to suffer now even though we have insurance through Daddy's construction job.

When they came out of the kitchen, the time for words was over.

And then they took it out. Grandma ran a bath and Daddy sat me, clothes and all, in the warm tub. He cut my boot off, real careful around where the wire went through, with his skinning blade. Grandma held my leg up and Daddy looked to the problem; in one quick pull, he untwisted the twisted metal from me.

‘They would have cut it out,' he told me when I asked why he didn't let me pick doctor or home. I used to always get to pick doctor or home.

They would have cut it out. So I was glad he made my choice for me.

Today, I am waiting just inside the door of the county courthouse. The bus dropped me off after school because I had to get a tetanus shot at public health. Mom said Grandma didn't have to know about the needle. So Mom didn't have to drive into town so early, Uncle Ingwald is going to collect me from county health; he's willing to keep our secret. Afterwards, he'll drive me to church for the annual spaghetti supper before youth group. Winter coats amongst some of the larger families in the congregation have been kind of scarce this year, so we are raising some money with spaghetti.

Picking me up, Uncle Ingwald leans across the church van to open the door and make my way easy.

‘This year, the spaghetti supper will keep some warm inside and out.' He chuckles, and he is so corny I laugh at him.

It is only a couple streets' drive to the church, but with my injury it would have taken me all night to walk. As we drive, Uncle Ingwald sings with the gospel radio.
I've got peace like a river; I've got peace like a river; I've got peace like a river in my soul
. He taps out the beat with his hands on the wheel and gives me a grin. An older and balder version of my dad's, his face carries scars from childhood. His calm voice and smile always make me feel happy and safe. It's a bit early for the supper, so bunches of kids are running around in the vacant field next to the church playing touch football. They run and scream and crash into the piles of leaves and snow, laughing.

We are singing
peace like a river, joy like a mountain
when we roll past the clump of trees all us kids call Babylon. A collection of twelve or thirteen pines in various stages of health, the ground beneath is littered with the long, auburn needles of the giant red pines and cedars and the sharp, short, green prickles of the ponderosas.

In the darkness there, under the canopy of sweeping branches, Samuel is hunched on the ground. He is wrestling with Zachariah Oleson, one of the boys my age. Samuel is on top of him like the bull in the yard. They're both wearing pants — it's too freezing for skin — but there's no mistaking what would be happening without the cloth, without the cold. Zach's pale face is pushed deep into the needles with only his wild eyes staring out of the dark like a startled sparrow. I see Samuel, and Uncle Ingwald sees Samuel too.

‘That damn boy.'

I have never heard him curse.

‘Not again. I'll kill that damn boy.'

The kingdom of heaven is sowed with good seeds and weeds both; it's not until the wheat sprouts, raising heads higher than the rest, that the weeds show themselves low down, close to the soil. With my own eyes, I see.

Uncle Ingwald parks the car crooked next to the trees we call Babylon. The lacy white-ridged scars that crisscross his cheeks are raised up and quivering. He tells me to go inside now and get Glory, and he runs toward the shadows of the trees.

Samuel spots him. Samuel stops.

I don't see my uncle all during the special coat supper. Throughout the fellowship hall, people are laughing and enjoying each other's company. All of us are thankful for food and friends and family. Aunt Gloria, with puffy eyes, comes inside after one of the elders says grace. Working in the kitchen, serving steaming spaghetti and garlic bread, she leans shaky against the high countertop and sighs with each scoop. Her arms must be so tired.

Mixed in with the overflow barn coats and snow-wet coats and new coats, Samuel has to stay in the nursery and wait for the spaghetti supper to end. When he sees me peering in through the door crack, he grabs my hand.

‘We were just playing, just wrestling.' His face is sad and covered in pimples; where a beard could be are just infected bumps. I don't want to look at him, his slumpy shoulders, skinny arms and that tight curly hair, but he is talking close to my ear now. He wants me to stay in here with him, smelling garlic and milk, crouching on shrunken chairs and playing with baby toys. He wants me in here with him so he ain't alone.