Peace Like a River Read online

  But Dad was in his usual fine humor that day in the cafeteria, diagnosing the breakage, catching my eye and Peter’s as we watched from our benches and sending us a wink. His face betrayed delight, for he’d entered at the moment of Chester’s fabulous lurch. It took him perhaps twenty seconds to gauge the damage, unlock a supply closet, and set to work with a ragmop and bucket, and in that time Mr. Holgren saw before him an opportunity to set an example. To superintentend. To scour. As Dad knelt for broken glass Holgren stepped up next to him so that Dad was working around his knees. He looked slavelike down there, bending for bits of bottle as Holgren stood, hands on hips, dissatisfied as Legree. I could barely watch. Behind me Miss Karlen encouraged the class to finish our gingerbread, but the kids sat bewitched. Something horrible was happening. I looked at Mr. Holgren, whose hat was now off. He was looking back at me, holding my eye, for I’d done him an outrage. At his feet Dad worked patiently, tossing shards onto a tray, finally standing and finishing up with the mop, using the rinse bucket so the whole stretch of floor was a continent of shine and good health.

  Mr. Holgren said, “Land, we have to talk.”

  Dad looked at his boss, surprised by some alteration in his voice.

  “There’ve been complaints,” the superintendent said.

  Miss Karlen said softly, “Children, we must go now—” and guess what Holgren did. He held up one hand for silence, not taking his eyes off Dad. He wanted everyone there.

  “All right,” Dad said.

  “Last week, when you were cleaning up your little mess down the basement, two people reported you stumbling around down there. Talking out loud to yourself. Two different people came to me and said so.”

  Dad said nothing. I didn’t know what Holgren was getting at, saying next, “This isn’t the first time. I’ve seen it myself. Come down to the boiler room and I hear you chattering away.” He spoke with quiet reason, as if Dad were some disturbed child—oh, how I wanted to kill Holgren! I wanted him dead and his grave unkept! “Jeremiah,” he said, his voice a disapproving murmur, “I’m aware you passed clean out a couple of weeks ago. In public,” Holgren said. “In church,” he added most sadly, deeply concerned for the ruined dignity of the employee before him. “Don’t you think your problem is getting out of hand?” he said.

  I entered here into some sort of shock, for I understood three things at once: first, that Superintendent Holgren was accusing my father of drunkenness, a charge so preposterous that God would surely flatten him before our waiting eyes. I also understood that word of the sensational Johnny Latt service had spread, and how people will apply the unkindest parts of themselves to any heard intelligence. And I understood, with my soul turning sour, that Dad would not defend himself within our hearing. I do not doubt that Holgren understood this also.

  Miss Karlen began quietly rallying us children to leave, in spite of the fine example being set by the administrator; Miss Karlen’s slender face was a dark displeased red, for which I ever after gave her the devotion of an ally. As we clattered up our trays I heard Holgren demand Dad’s explanation; I saw Dad lean down and voice a soft reply. At this the superintendent made the most fitful transformation—his neck compressed into his shoulders, his hands clawed and shrunk upward into his sleeves, he stamped his foot like the maladjusted. He was Mr. Hyde! He roared a few words, and Dad became a former janitor.

  Most boys, I am guessing, have never watched outright as their father was stripped of his livelihood, and I don’t want to pound it too hard, but the cruelty of that moment still impresses me. I left my milling classmates and headed for Dad, where he stood in rapt surprise facing Holgren. I hadn’t in mind to say anything, and indeed I didn’t; for as I approached Dad lifted his hand, sudden as a windshift, touched Holgren’s face and pulled away. It was the oddest little slap you ever saw. Holgren quailed back a step, hunching defensively, but Dad turned and walked off; and the superintendent stood with his fingers strangely awonder over his chin, cheeks, and forehead. Then I saw that his bedeviled complexion—that face set always at a rolling boil—had changed. I saw instead skin of a healthy tan, a hale blush spread over cheekbones that suddenly held definition; above his eyes the shine of constant seepage had vanished, and light lay at rest upon his brow.

  Listen: There are easier things than witnessing a miracle of God. For his part, Mr. Holgren didn’t know what to make of it; he looked horrified; the new peace in his hide didn’t sink deep; he covered his face from view and slunk from the cafeteria.

  I knew what had happened, though. I knew exactly what to make of it, and it made me mad enough to spit.

  What business had Dad in healing that man?

  What right had Holgren to cross paths with the Great God Almighty?

  The injustice took my breath away, truly it did. I felt a great hand close against my lungs and Miss Karlen escorted me gasping to the nurse’s office, where Mrs. Buelah plugged in her teapot and made a steam tent from a bolt of tan canvas.

  When Dad came to take me home—having boxed up the contents of his single drawer in the boiler room—I wouldn’t go with him. I stayed on Mrs. Buelah’s couch. Dad lifted a corner of the canvas and peeked under.

  “Looks like I’m getting a little vacation,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “I’m sorry you saw that.”

  His getting fired, he meant, not the other thing.

  “How about we go home.”

  But I shook my head. I just couldn’t go with him. Nor could I tell him it wasn’t his public mistreatment that stole my breath and blocked my tongue; it was something too mean to explain. It was the fact that Chester the Fester, the worst man I’d ever seen, even worse in his way than Israel Finch, got a whole new face to look out of and didn’t even know to be grateful; while I, my father’s son, had to be still and resolute and breathe steam to stay alive.

  Late in the Night When the Fires Are Out

  EARLY WEDNESDAY, UNDER RED SKIES, WE DROVE TO MONTROSE FOR DAVY’S trial. We’d been told to be at the courthouse at 9 A.M., but the DeCuellars insisted we breakfast at their house at 7:30. There’s no way a person can really prepare for someone like Mrs. DeCuellar. Buxom and businesslike on her doorstep, once she had you inside she became the woman you wish had lived next door all the days of your childhood. She was short, round, bright. At the age when most women begin putting up their hair, she wore hers long, for beauty, and it was beautiful—black and woolly, her very own buffalo robe. She had turquoise earrings and crisp metallic perfume; helping Swede off with her coat, she knelt and put her cheek to Swede’s and held it there a moment before getting up; then she said, “Breakfast’s ready, sweet ones,” and marched us to the kitchen. It was fitting, that march; there was something about Mrs. DeCuellar that reminded you of a bass drum.

  And breakfast? What would you say to butter-crumbed eggs that trembled at the touch of your fork? To buttermilk biscuits under tumbling steam? To orange sides of salmon lying creamed upon blue saucers? What would you say to fresh peach pie, baked not the night before but that very morning? For breakfast? And through everything Mrs. DeCuellar, like a small sun beside her proud and outshone husband, beamed down on Swede and me. It seemed, honestly, like a mistake. I couldn’t remember ever being so easily liked.

  Thus braced against the evil of the day, we went to the courthouse. We’d thought to visit Davy before it all started but were informed this was impossible and advised to wait on benches in the hall until the jury was seated and given instructions. (“What instructions?” Swede wanted to know. “‘Listen carefully’?”)

  In fact, I’ve learned, trials are mostly a succession of waits. When the benches became restrictive, we up and bushwhacked around the big hall. We waited all morning. When others began to arrive, including some newspapermen of our aquaintance, a clerk came and asked if we’d like to wait in a separate office, the three of us. We were glad to. A whiskery yellow-eyed old man was sitting on the neighboring bench; a reporter sat with him, calling him Mr. F
inch. The old man didn’t answer; his hands shook; he had those thirsty fingers. Stan and Karen Basca stood in uneasy conference by the water fountain; Stan’s sister Margery, the famous aunt, had just hove into view down the hall. We followed the clerk to a barren office with a long table acrawl with cigarette burns, and a few minutes later in stepped Mr. DeCuellar to say it would be a bit longer—the prosecuting attorney, whom I remember only by his first name, Elvis, had detected an attitude problem in one of the jurors.

  “Will it be a long time?” Swede asked, not a hint of whine in the question, she liked Mr. DeCuellar that much.

  He looked at her, brought out his meerschaum, and squatted comfortably. Lighting the pipe, he said, “Tell me, Swede, who in your family is champion in War at Sea?”

  Swede blinked, and Mr. DeCuellar slipped a notebook from his pocket saying, “You’ve grown up so big not knowing how to play War at Sea? I don’t believe it. Here.” It is thus I most often remember that good lawyer—he sitting slouched on a folding chair, notebook on his knee, Swede leaning into him as he pointed and strategized, the pants of his brown suit bagging at the ankles.

  We played War at Sea right up through noon, Swede and I, and then, just when I’d hit on a pattern for locating and destroying her fleet, the door opened and it was Mr. DeCuellar again and the trial was about to commence.

  You’ve seen courtrooms; this one had dark wainscoting all around and a raised jury box fenced by a brass rail, and after we’d all stood up and sat again it had Judge Raster, whom I’d pictured as some predatory deep-sea critter, sitting behind his high desk. In the flesh the judge had the kind of wavy white hair I associated with benevolence, the hair of soft-touch aunts who keep mints in candy dishes within your reach; though his eyes, behind half glasses, evoked no such hopeful impressions. Surprisingly, my first sense of Judge Raster was of a man who clung to small vanities. He had a preening look. You don’t like to think it of a judge.

  Davy was in the front pew beside Mr. DeCuellar. I was surprised what a short and unrakish figure he cut. You play these things in your mind beforehand, you know, and somehow Davy’s entrance into that crowded courtroom—this boy so much interpreted, the silent and notorious Davy Land—was always accompanied in my thoughts by an awed hush and perhaps a thud or two, as young women, glimpsing him, fainted away.

  In real life nobody seemed to be looking at him. He had on khaki pants, a chambray shirt. He needed a shave and looked to have dropped some pounds. I wanted to run forward and make him look in my eyes.

  After certain formalities Elvis, the prosecutor, rose to get things started. He cleared his throat and preached an eloquent and transparent sermon on violence, a five-minute redaction in which Davy ceased being any human being’s brother and became an icy double murderer who forefigured not only his crimes but how those crimes would be read by a common populace starved for heroics. The confidence with which Elvis knifed my brother’s honor left my mouth dry. Israel Finch grew into a lost boy of great promise, who despite his broken home and juvenile record showed natural talent in the areas of negotiations and auto mechanics. And Tommy Basca—Elvis’s ace—Tommy was just some forlorn kitten, out mewing in the dark and the cold and the rain. Through all this I gaped occasionally at Swede, who appeared snakebit and vengeful.

  Then up stood Mr. DeCuellar to respond. I don’t remember his words, but in general feeling—well, remember how the great Daniel Webster argued against the Devil for the soul of Jabez Stone? The Devil had him beat, you recall, as long as Webster stood on logic. You can’t argue with a signed contract, and Jabez, the dolt, had signed. But Webster saw victory in the Devil’s face and in the faces of that hellish jury, the whole lot of them leaning forward licking their lips, and he calmed himself and began to speak instead about what makes a man a man, and the nature of the soul, and its very Creator whence comes all freedom, and so on. And the Devil himself did wither in the face of this bigger logic—and so, it seemed to me, must Elvis wither, and judge and jury also, when Mr. DeCuellar had finished his wise and simple statement.

  They didn’t seem impressed, though.

  In fact, there came some fairly bad moments after that.

  One came when Elvis called Stanley Basca to testify. Till now I’d thought I had the facts by the tail—wasn’t I an eyewitness?—but Stanley had been treasuring up a zinger to impart to the court.

  “Davy came around to Finch’s place that night. Rotten night out. Nine o’clock or thereabouts,” Stanley said.

  Elvis: “Did you see him yourself?”

  Stanley: “Yes, sir. It was Davy Land. I was over to the Finches’ looking for Tommy; he was all the time over there.”

  Elvis: “They were best friends, your Tommy and Israel Finch.”

  Stanley nodded. Swede later suggested this was because he didn’t want to admit it out loud.

  Elvis: “And what did you see Davy do?”

  Stanley: “Well, he had something in his hand. A tire iron, I guess, or pry bar. Hard to tell in that rain. Anyway, he whacked every window out of the Finch boy’s car.”

  Elvis: “You’re saying Davy Land came to the Finch residence. With a tire iron—”

  Stanley: “Or pry bar, it could of been—”

  Elvis: “—and smashed out the windows of Israel’s car, in which the boy took inordinate pride.”

  Stanley: “Well, yes sir. And the taillights—he got those too.”

  Now don’t worry, I’m not going to make a practice of this transcription business, but as I said there were salient moments. Those gathered stirred audibly—a surprise revelation! Here was what they’d come for, all right! For me, of course, the surprise quickly deadened into a recognition that it was perfectly true. Swede and I had gone to bed early; so had Dad, on account of his headache. Davy’d gone out into that freezing rain. And later, when I’d thought him asleep? When the footsteps entered our house? Wasn’t I amazed when the lights came on and there he was sitting upright, holding his Winchester as if he’d taken it to bed?

  Of course he’d taken it to bed. I saw it now. He knew they were coming. He’d issued them an invitation.

  I looked at Davy’s face, couldn’t read it, and looked at Dad’s, seeing not shock but sorrow and austerity. Evidently he knew about this. I checked Mr. DeCuellar—he knew it too. At that moment a wall inside me shifted. Gravity took hold, and I knew my brother had no chance inside that courtroom. Piece by piece our defensive architecture failed. Margery Basca testified, the tears standing in her eyes, how poor Bubby had gone to the store for her twice a week, getting the bread and milk and on occasion a dozen eggs, doing his uncomplaining best. Yellow-eyed old Mr. Finch—Israel’s grandfather, it turned out—told in quiet convulsive tones how Israel was without doubt the most maligned and abominated young man in Roofing: “He didn’t make friends that well,” et cetera. His voice left him after just a few moments. Elvis graciously articulated the old man’s powerful if obscure emotions, then released him to go wrestle the tormenting ague. Davy’s erstwhile girl Dolly was sworn in, throwing tragic looks at him, and recounted her experience in the locker room. It clearly troubled her to do so, for she understood the use Elvis was making of her: establishing for the jury the extant hate between Israel Finch and Davy. (Coming to Dad’s part in it, though, she may have eased the damage. How was a court of law to take her description of his luminous appearance? Peeking at the jury here, I saw most of them were studying Dad, possibly for radiance, or a look in his eye, or other unnatural credentials.)

  All this time I was fighting a magnificent swarm of butterflies. Mr. DeCuellar had told me I’d have to testify, as the single eyewitness of the shootings. He didn’t tell me the prosecution was saving me for last—my story being useful in throwing away the key—but Swede had figured it out and didn’t spare me the knowledge. In craven dread I sought Swede’s help in rewriting events to Davy’s advantage, but Mr. DeCuellar reassured me, saying to be honest and forthright, though frugal in detail. “Answer only the question,” he sa
id. “Short declarative sentences. No big prose.” Well, he didn’t have to worry about that. Who did he think I was, Swede? Anyway, I hadn’t a lot of choice, and Mr. DeCuellar promised to fix my mistakes in his cross-examination. I remember wondering, with a whole day still between me and the stand, whether the whirl in my stomach might be a blossoming case of flu. Surely they would excuse a witness who was busy throwing up. I worked at it awhile, remembering something Peter Emerson had told me: that if he thought hard about puking, or better yet remembered instances of his older brother puking, he could just about bring on the real thing himself. I shut my eyes. Once in school, going down to lunch from our third-floor classroom, Valentino Vail had leaned over the banister without warning and loosed a cataract of orange vomit. The stairway was the usual open stack and Valentino’s breakfast just dropped forever, three stories down, touching a good number of lives as it rocketed past and hitting the basement tile with a sound zookeepers must hear sometimes, around the elephants. I was right behind Valentino and saw it all—an astonishing puke that was discussed for days. Yet even this, vividly invoked, could not move my stomach to violence. I envied Peter’s mental potency.