The Loves of Leopold Singer (44 page)

But the river did rise. Lightning kept to the clouds’ topsides. No streaking bolts plunged to the earth. Still the rain fell, and still the river rose, surreal muted booms and soft-lit blinking clouds.

Jonathan Zehetner, strong as ever, anchored a line that included Jonnie, Dieter, Leo, and now Josef and Solomon Grasmere. Reverend Lightfeather put his lean muscles to the task in a line headed by Leopold Singer that included Samuel and Harry. Capping another line of men was Reverend Grim, with Lyman Grim, and even Martin. No grudge would keep him from this duty.

“Courage!” Grim’s voice boomed through the atmosphere. “God may send the whirlwind, but He gave us the heart and the strength and the faith to confront that whirlwind!”

Lightfeather said to Leopold, “I might disagree with his exegesis of Job, but I find no fault in his sentiment.”

The men did take courage from Grim’s bellowing—or perhaps his volume awakened them. At any rate, the work continued.

The steady rhythm of receiving and placing bags worked Leopold into a pensive state. A man had been swept away this morning by the river, years younger than Leopold, and his life was over. Leopold would have done nothing differently. His boys were good men. They made him proud. He didn’t mind so much Samuel turned out a preacher. He’d be guided by Lightfeather and not do too much damage. It had all turned out for the good.

He looked at Zehetner, still pulling more weight than any man. He’d done well for himself. Good man, too. They had built a fine farm together. Those men at The Green Owl would be shocked to see Zehetner these days. They’d be green themselves, ha.

Ah, Father
, he thought,
at this age wouldn’t we have been drinking a beer at the Green Owl and arguing over Kant’s categories? I miss you. I miss you every day. I hope there is a heaven for your sake, and mother’s. I cannot imagine you don’t exist somewhere. You should see your grandsons, and your granddaughter. Eleanor will be a natural mother, she treats babes like her roses and puppies, with all the care you can imagine. Ach, I am an old man! Not that it is over, ha. It has all been good.

Marta is still so beautiful. What man can think he is old when he has that to greet him every morning? And she has been a good wife, once she came up from her troubles. It is all good. And yet...

Nein, I can’t think of other things. No point in it. I have made a difference here. The Post, the girls’ academy, the law school opening soon—who needs Boston? I’ve given them a preacher and a politician, and a future mother to spawn more preachers and politicians. I can account well for my life.

Susan
. Somehow, it slipped in, the forbidden thought:
Susan
. Had she been happy? He had not thought of her in fifteen years, or more. Marta was the best wife a man could want. He could never have made Susan the mother of his children. But had loved her too.

“No more sand!” a boy’s clear call rang out.

The wall of sand and cloth reached three feet below the lowest branch of the giant oak on the riverbank. Still, the water rose. It began to seem hopeless. Leopold turned to the boy and said something, but his words were carried away by a sudden blast of wind. Standing at the top of the sand wall, he lost his balance.

George Grim watched Leopold Singer. He stood atop the sand wall like a god, his hair whipped by the wind, his muscular build evident under his clinging wet clothing. Purposeful and confident, he was the model man of action. Grim felt a stab of the jealousy he’d never let go. By comparison, he knew himself to be a clod. The years had lifted Leopold Singer as they had lowered George Grim. When God at last gave the Singers children, George tried to bury his fantasies of Mrs. Singer. He continued to regard her, however, with a degree of wistful gloom.

Singer fell.

With uncharacteristic alacrity, George sprang onto the oak’s lowest limb, straddled it, reached into the water as Leopold passed under the tree, and grabbed the man’s forearm with his own left hand. The two beheld each other, frozen in the moment. George heard the shouts of men behind him, as far away as the thunder. The river pulled at his catch as if it wanted the thing for itself. Each man was locked in the gaze of the other; each spoke one word.

George let go. The River Shermer swallowed Leopold Singer, leaving behind the echo of his last word, “Susan.”

Why had Grim called out Marta’s name? An oak branch swept along in the racing waters slammed into Leopold’s back, forcing the air from his lungs. Was this the end? His head smashed against a submerged boulder.

Water is the wrong word. The River Shermer churned and pounded through the valley, a brown juggernaut of liquid mud carrying tree limbs, animals drowned and drowning, the wall of a house, a still-floating nest whose occupant’s frantic peeps were covered by the river’s roar.

As if Leopold Singer were the sacrifice that palliated the riparian gods, the waters began to recede. Lightfeather and Martin Grim pulled George Grim out of the oak tree, assuring him he had done his best, had bravely risked his own life, and et cetera.

Samuel Singer ran toward the river bank, ready to leap into that murky cold hell and demand their father’s release, but Harry caught him and held him back. “He’s gone, Sam!”

“Think of your mother,” Lightfeather said. “Will you add your own death to her misery?”

Rays of sunlight broke through parting clouds to glorious effect. There was no wind. Grim leaned against the wall of soaked sandbags, staring.

“Father, come. I’ll take you home,” Martin said.

The rest of the exhausted men broke away, unable to reconcile the joy of the Grims’ reconciliation with the horror of Leopold Singer’s demise. Lightfeather joined Samuel and Harry on the long walk to find their mother.

The next morning just before daybreak and in wretched cold, Harry set out to fetch Eleanor. In the surreal tumult of yesterday’s events, no one had thought to go for her. Josef and Solomon Grasmere were still sleeping at the Zehetner place, having helped bring home Leopold’s body. Harry dreaded leaving the farm today. His father’s favorite Morgan was sure to foal. Like his father he was no farmer, but he felt he should be at home for the event. He could think of twenty more reasons; the truth was he wanted to stay by his mother.

She kept insisting she would see the body. After what the river had done to it, no one thought that a good idea. Harry had seen the thing, somehow churned up and snagged by the roots of an oak and exposed in the muck, the tree and mangled body a grotesque pieta. Half the face was scraped away, the back of the skull missing, the limbs twisted to inhuman formations.

That was not his father. That thing was not his father, and he would not have it be his mother’s last memory of her husband.

“Harry!” Jonnie Zehetner caught up as Harry turned down the long driveway. “Are you going for Eleanor?”

“Yes.”

“Let me go.” He was holding a package wrapped in the same colored paper that had covered the boots Leopold made for Eleanor when she first went to school.

Harry knew his parents had sent Eleanor to school in part to separate her from Jonnie, but everything was different now. It might be better if Jonnie were the one to bring the terrible news. Still, he wasn’t going make it easy. “I don’t think my mother would like that,” he said. “And I suppose I don’t either! Why would you be compromising my sister?”

“Harry, you know Eleanor won’t be free for one moment once she returns home.”

“What of it?”

“I have to—I want to…”

“Is it that you have a very particular question to put to my sister?” Harry was laughing outright now. It felt good to laugh.

“Have some mercy, Harry! Get down from there and let me go!”

“All right, man. I'll plead ignorance as to the value of my sister’s virtue—but you’re in my debt, Zehetner.”

“Yes, yes.” Jonnie placed the package on the driver’s bench and set off on his hopeful and sad mission.

-oOo-

“Eleanor,” Sara said, “I am so afraid. It is cruel of Mama to send me across the ocean with not even a word. It is unthinkable!”

“It is.” Eleanor hugged Sara and looked around their room. The walls they’d decorated with drawings and favorite objects were bare. She knew then she would not live at Grasmere House again. “I suppose her letter was lost in all the flooding.”

“I'll write as soon as I arrive, and you must answer right away. Tell me about Miss Westerman and the Captain.”

“Josef has lived a long time without marrying. But he does seem captured now.”

“It is true love,” Sara said. “Love at first sight, on both sides. I think when he and Mr. Grasmere return, the Captain will find a reason to be alone with her.”

“Then the question will be whether Mrs. Fuller is able to put Mr. Grasmere and Miss Fiddyment together.”

“And then the question will be when you and your Jonnie can be put together.”

“I suppose I can’t put him off much longer, though I still haven’t seen Europe.”

“I wish you could come to England with me. Soon everyone will be married, and I will be alone with a fearsome old aunt in a haunted English manor house.”

“That does sound drear. You forgot about the baronet and the squire who compete for your hand.”

“That sounds even worse. Oh, do promise to write. Don’t get too busy with your life!”

“Sara, we will always be friends.”

“Eleanor, my dear.” Miss Fiddyment was in the doorway, her face pale. “Mr. Zehetner has come for you.” She sat down on the bed and pulled Eleanor beside her. “There has been a terrible accident. Your father has drowned.”

None of them could really believe the words. The gods are supposed to be immortal, and wasn’t Leopold Singer a god to them all? Father, benefactor, symbol of male perfection. After several stunned minutes, Eleanor went downstairs in a kind of madness. The world made no sense. Mr. Zehetner wasn’t there. Jonnie was there. She walked directly into his open arms.

“Ellie,” was all he said. There was grief in his voice, but comfort, too. His embrace saved her from the despair that, for just an instant, was so inviting.

Once they were out of town, Jonnie placed a package on her lap. “Your father helped me make them. I was planning to give them to you as a token if you accepted my proposal. I still want you to marry me, Ellie. But these are yours whether you will or not.”

The package contained a new pair of boots, the same creamy color as the ones her father had made her before going to school. The design was different, though: sweet peas, her favorite flower. “These are beautiful,” her voice cracked as she remembered her last gift of boots. After a few minutes she said, “Just last week, I tried to put mine on, and it was impossible. My feet had grown—I had grown—out of them. I will marry you, Jonnie. As soon as you like.”

-oOo-

“Leopold Augustin Singer was more than a great father. He was a great man, a great citizen.”

Though not yet ordained, Samuel had agreed to give the eulogy. He stood at the graveside with a sense of the honor and the obligation. His words were stilted by pain. He was certain he comforted no one.

“In his life, we see much cause for celebration. Here was a man who truly made the world a better place than he found it. When he spoke, things seemingly difficult fell into place. I remember once he said that there should be a school for females in Shermer Landing, and not long thereafter, there was one.”

The sweet pea designs on Eleanor’s boots were more real to Marta than Samuel’s words. She took hold of Eleanor’s hand and saw that Jonnie Zehetner was holding the other one. A tremendous crowd had gathered to bury Leopold next to Obadiah. Reverend Lightfeather spoke next, but only heard the sound of his words, not their meaning.

The weather was fair and warm for early spring, a bad cosmic joke. Lively conversations took place inside the house and on the lawn. Marta sat outside in a wicker chair Josef had brought from some exotic country. An ancient fat black cat with white paws claimed her lap; and Jonnie and Eleanor kept close, seated on the grass on each side of her.

A swarm of children bowled past them, laughing with plans for a game. “No, you be Wellington!” said one little bully. “I want to be Napoleon!”

Suddenly Marta saw Leopold again, as on the day she fell in love with him, so young and unafraid of life. He had calmed those children so well, and she had known then if she could be near him she would never be afraid of life. It was impossible he should be gone. But he was gone. Everyone goes, and all too soon, whether Obadiah after so many days or Leopold after so many years. They go, and others come.