Peace Like a River Page 11

  “We’re going to lose, Reuben,” Swede told me that night.

  We were socked into sleeping bags on the floor of Mr. DeCuellar’s study. Though the day had been troublesome and the night was black with a racketous wind, still I found this small library a reassuring place. How could anyone who’d read so many books lose a case in court? Then I remembered Stanley Basca, and the way Elvis had turned righteously toward the jury during his testimony, and I agreed with Swede, though not aloud.

  She then said, “We’ve got to break him out.”

  I should’ve known it was coming. “Oh, Swede, don’t now.”

  She sat up in her sleeping bag. “We could do it—bust him out of there. Really. Tonight!” She had hold of my shoulder. “I’m not kidding.”

  “I know it.”

  She was up, padding around. “They’re gonna convict him, Reuben—you see it same as I do. You want Davy in prison?”

  A gust gnashed at the window. I said, “We can’t even drive, Swede,” but it carried no water. She paced in the gloom, full of deadly schemes.

  “We’ll wait till they’re asleep—take some of Mrs. DeCuellar’s cookies—offer ’em to the guard, tell him we’ve got to see Davy—when he turns to me you grab his gun,” and so on. It was one of those rare moments when I actually felt older than Swede. Seizing it, I told her to grow up. She went silent and fell to studying bookcases. Mr. DeCuellar had left a reading lamp on in a corner as a night-light—had he children of his own he’d have known better—and it so illumined the room I could read the spines from where I lay. C. S. Lewis. Graham Greene. Charles Dickens—lots of Dickens. She returned to bed at last with a book of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson.

  I said, “Read me a couple, Swede.” Few writers can match Stevenson; both danger and peace inhabit his verse; it throws a very wide net. So Swede lay beside me reading “Land of Nod,” “My Ship and I,” “North-West Passage,” and “The Lamplighter,” with its wistful narrator:

  But I when I am stronger and can choose what I’m to do,

  O Leerie, I’ll go round at night and light the lamps with you!

  My heart still breaks with that poem, I love it so.

  Then Swede was quiet some little time—I wasn’t asleep yet but was on the doorstep, a dream just opening up.

  “Listen to this one, Reuben.”

  I opened my eyes. She was propped on an elbow. Sleep already had me in the legs and arms, but Swede looked bright and scared. She read:

  “Whenever the moon and stars are set,

  Whenever the wind is high,

  All night long in the dark and wet,

  A man goes riding by.”

  Gooseflesh rose. Outside the wind thumped around; the reading lamp flickered but stayed on. She whispered:

  “Late in the night when the fires are out,

  Why does he gallop and gallop about?”

  I said, “Let’s sleep, Swede.” Though I couldn’t have—not anymore. There was a prescient chill in those lines, in her voice.

  “Whenever the trees are crying aloud,

  And ships are tossed at sea,

  By, on the highway, low and loud,

  By at the gallop goes he:

  By at the gallop he goes, and then

  By he comes back at the gallop again.”

  Had I not been eleven I’d have squirreled down and drawn the sleeping bag up over my head. Maybe you’re thinking there’s nothing creepy about this particular poem. I’m telling you, that night there was.

  But Swede was watching me for reaction so I just yawned, a big fake one, and asked was that the end.

  “It’s a sign,” she said.

  Which of course put a keen point on the vague dread I was feeling. You don’t like to say It’s a sign at such times, or hear it, or even think it, for fear the words themselves will bear it out.

  “What does it mean?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” She shut the book and turned out the light and waited awhile and then said, “I think it means we ought to break him out.”

  Next afternoon they put me on the stand. I felt like a parakeet up there: new chinos, a green wool sweater that itched at the neck, my hair slicked to pudding. I looked at Dad, who smiled back; at Dr. Nokes, who winked; at Swede, who was leaning forward pestering Mr. DeCuellar in the moments before swearing-in. I laid my hand on the Bible, and when finished looked at Davy, who was straight across the floor. He was making faces, trying to bust me up, just like back in church.

  Now, be warned. I must witness here against myself, and so, as a human brimful of vainglory, may attempt excuse. If so, pay me no mind. The fit will pass.

  Elvis came up in his bow tie. He asked some chatty questions about school, friends, bullies, stuff I liked to do. It irritated me, for I knew what he was up to—getting me comfortable, warming the clay. Also showing the jury how concerned and thorough he was by getting on good terms with Davy’s kid brother. “Patronizing” was the word Swede used later, though by then I was too mortified to ask anyone exactly what it meant. But I was properly terse. I looked him in the eye and answered him straight. And when he came to the end of his getting-to-know-you questions, what he and the court mostly knew was that he hadn’t got to me with his smiles and joshing; this was one eleven-year-old who’d never take sides against his brother. I gave him nothing at first, I promise you.

  But gradually—oh, it hurts!—something began to work on me. I began to have, of all things, self-confidence. It crept up like an oily friend. It seemed to me that Elvis began to look less certain of himself, walking to and fro. Clearly he’d expected I’d be putty by this time. And my own voice sounded particularly grownup, I thought, saying, “No sir, that’s not so,” or “Sir, he’s my brother, and I ought to know.” I sirred him to death; I sirred him with a disrespect he had to comprehend. And hearing these things from my own mouth I thought, Not bad. Pride is the rope God allows us all. When Elvis asked if I’d had scary dreams since the night “these things transpired,” I replied, “Certainly not, sir,” with what I imagined was the hauteur of a condemned legionnaire. Of course hauteur is an odd adornment on a boy that age—but oh, that gallery of faces, all watching me. Faces of friends and erstwhile friends, of interested strangers, of newspapermen. They were my sun, my water. I remember hoping, unreasonably, that Bethany Orchard was there watching, and in fact I did look for her with such concentration that Elvis had to beg my pardon to bring me back. At some point I looked at Mr. DeCuellar and saw alarm in his eyes. I actually wondered what was wrong, which tells you how far gone I was.

  Then Elvis, who’d been working his way forward from the locker-room incident, said, “Reuben, the night the boys came by and took your sister for a ride”—a ride; how do you like that?—“what happened that night? Before the sheriff arrived? Do you remember?”

  As if I might have forgotten. As if the chill of Israel Finch’s intrusion wouldn’t be forever as close as air to skin. Memory chasing pretense for a moment, I said, “Well, Swede was white. And she looked real small.”

  “Small?”

  “Yes sir. Usually she’s as big as me.” In retrospect it was as telling a statement as I ever made. It also produced an audible ripple of goodwill for this youngster on the stand. Immediately I felt reduced, from budding hero to guileless moppet. Elvis turned to the gallery and made the most of it, and I’m ashamed to say how his doing so tweaked my attitude. Having lost ground here I ought’ve simply dug in, humbled, and held my new position, but I’d become a proud twerp over the preceding fifteen minutes.

  Turning back to me, Elvis smiled. “Reuben, was Davy angry that night?”

  He thought I was hesitating out of fear to answer the question. I confess to you now I was only looking for the right voice—something legionnaireish. Oh, I still wanted to do my best by Davy, I hadn’t forgotten him; but I wanted to sound smooth doing it, you see. Like a hotshot, Mighty Stinson would’ve said.

  Elvis prompted. “Something like that happening to his little
sister—say, I would’ve been upset, a thing like that.”

  Reaching down for a good low register I replied, “No sir, Davy was as easygoing as anything.” (And truly, that’s how he’d been. Not pale and dry with fear like Swede and me, but calm, with a stillness that was itself fearsome.) Except on “easygoing” my voice slipped back into its normal range, or possibly a little higher. I discerned snickering. Again I was ridiculous before my public.

  Then Elvis said gently, “Now, Reuben. Haven’t you told us how your brother sticks up for you? Protects you?”

  I had.

  “And now you’re telling us he didn’t have a thing to say after Tommy and Israel brought her home? Scared as she was by those boys, and Davy just sitting quiet?”

  Posed like that, it did seem unlikely. I thought it over, sensing the court waiting. Davy had said something, hadn’t he? Just before Ted Pullet drove in? I looked at my brother, there in the courtroom, and tried to recall.

  And do you know, when Davy looked back, something was different. Something in the look itself—it was untethered somehow, loosed from Elvis and the jury and judge. He smiled at me from some planetary distance. And I thought of his way in the kitchen that night, how he’d hooked the car keys on his finger and yielded them to Dad, wordlessly, after a long and inner weighing. And I remembered.

  “Why, yes sir,” I told Elvis. “He asked Dad a question. He said, How many times do you let a dog bite you, before you put him down?”

  And the court did not erupt, nor the jury gasp in wonder at this revelation; only Elvis’s eyebrows rose slightly, and “Reuben,” he said, with such gentle approval my blood gelled to a stop, “you have been holding out on us.”

  That night I agreed to break Davy out of jail. Swede knew I would. She had on her side the fact that I’d as much as damned our brother to prison and therefore death; for he would die there, or some core inside him would. We lay awake while the adults spoke in counsel long and low in the kitchen, and Swede laid our plans—desperate, slapdash, bloody plans. I was in no position to propose alternatives. I never saw her so upset or brilliant. She was like a horse let out to run.

  I did make one suggestion, about guns being better than knives for the work at hand. She shook her head in regret. “They don’t have any guns. I looked everywhere. Poor Mr. DeCuellar,” she added. “Someday I’m going to buy him one.”

  Yes, poor Mr. DeCuellar. After my damaging performance I’d been unable to avoid his eyes, and the sorrow and disappointment they showed were as if I’d struck him in public. I tried to apologize and broke down before him, and his forgiveness was so quiet and complete I could only grieve the more.

  And why, you’re wondering, did I toss Elvis that line of Davy’s, about putting down the dog? Well, I suppose I had to, once I’d gone and remembered it; Elvis had asked me the question, and I was tied to honesty by oath. A person can’t regret honesty any more than other unavoidables—a plain face or a poor history. What I regret is how I said it: like your choice of stupid punks with something to prove. I said it with belligerence, a trait ever cultivated by fools. I said it, I tremble to admit, as Israel Finch might have. And predictably, chaos accompanied belligerence into office. For that putting-down-the-dog remark led Elvis to seek and pull from me other facts pointing to ill intent: that Davy already had his coat on to deliver vengeance when Dad stopped him; that Davy had been angry with Dad earlier, when it seemed to him the locker-room beating hadn’t been nearly severe enough; that Davy, waiting on the stairs for his arrest after the shootings, had grabbed my wrist and spoken the words I meant to. With despair I heard myself answer Elvis’s inquiries, each answer seeming horribly convicting the moment it was uttered. Oh, I was a meek enough fellow now—but it didn’t matter. Elvis drew these facts from me and unfolded them to view and laid them before the court like a series of bloody hankies.

  I saw it happening but could not stop it. Humility came to me too late. I’m a living proverb; learn from me.

  We went to bed jittery, faking weariness. Even as Dad prayed over us for forgiveness and joy and a night of peace, Swede in her sleeping bag was clutching a box of steak knives stolen from the DeCuellars’ kitchen. We shut our eyes, slurred our goodnights. The moment Dad left the room Swede bounded up and pulled jeans over her pajamas. She strapped on a belt and stuck two knives in it, right and left. Gravely she offered me the box. I chose two and with grim aspect slid them in my belt. Swede crossed her arms. She might’ve sailed with Francis Drake. She said, “We are of a noble tradition, Reuben.” I buttoned up a flannel shirt and drew blood from three knuckles tucking it in.

  We’d have sneaked out then, except the adults decided to have their evening coffee in the living room. This was inconsistent and very probably the work of the Lord. The front door was in the living room and we weren’t likely to just waltz out through it. Trapped and mutinous, we worked our brains.

  “We’ll go out the window,” said Swede. But Mr. DeCuellar, in his efficiency, had put his storms up right on schedule. We sat down in misery, mine counterfeit I will admit.

  “I guess we’ll have to wait,” I said. It was fine; outside the trees were leaning their tops around in the wind; the pane was so cold it felt wet.

  But Swede was intent. “After they’re asleep, then.”

  Which of course was not what I meant by wait. I meant the rhetorical wait, as in Wait till next year, or Just you wait and see. “Oh, I’m sure they’ll be up a long time,” I said, thinking, O Lord, let them stay up—

  And don’t you know, they did. After a while we lay down on top of our sleeping bags, just to soften the wait, and the wind tumbled stuff around outside, and a fine freezing rain began against the window. And I began to dream that a small piglet sat beside me, brown and aloof, and bit me on the hip when I rolled over. Actually, it was one of the steak knives. I sat up to feel for blood. The house was asleep, Swede too. She groused a little in a dream as I slipped the knives from her belt, but she didn’t wake.

  Next thing I recall is Dad kneeling between my bag and Swede’s, waking us before sunup, strangely. I remember Mrs. DeCuellar singing in her kitchen and the excited music of pans and perking coffee, and there was an agitation in Dad’s voice that made me think, just for a moment, that we were on our way west, the car packed and pointed toward the faint cries of geese, the thrill of the cold.

  Then I heard Dad say, his voice part of sleep, his voice coming off-balance into my sleep like a man feeling into a dark room, “The sheriff was here an hour ago—wake up, kids—the sheriff has been here—kids, are you listening? Davy’s broke out.”

  A Boy on a Horse

  THE BEST OF IT, TO SWEDE IN PARTICULAR, WAS THAT DAVY ESCAPED BY PONY. We wouldn’t know this for several days, however, nor would the disturbed sheriff, Charlie Pym, who’d showed up pounding the door in the wee hours. Over breakfast Mr. DeCuellar told us how he’d wrapped himself in a tartan robe and peeked between curtains before opening the door: “Do you know who is up at four in the morning? Dairy farmers. Paperboys. Lunatics.” (Mr. DeCuellar was not himself that morning; he was, in fact, grouchy. It was indecipherable to Swede and me, to whom this news was cotton candy.)

  Sheriff Pym had insisted on entering. The night was wet and freezing and Pym stood dripping sleet on the rug, giving Mr. DeCuellar what he called the “onus eye.” (I am sure he meant the evil eye; the word onus made Swede break into such unruly giggles she had to hunt Kleenex.) The sheriff then inquired whether Mr. DeCuellar had slept well.

  “Thus far,” Mr. DeCuellar replied.

  “No visitors,” the sheriff said.

  Mr. DeCuellar looked at the door, then at the soaked Pym. He said, “You can’t possibly believe he would’ve come here.”

  So all we knew, that first morning, was that Davy’d got out—maybe seven hours before. We hadn’t details except that he’d taken with him a police-issue revolver and that a posse had been formed. Twelve men in six cars were out parsing the county at this moment.

 
“We’ll have him by lunchtime,” the sheriff said—looking at Dad, who was standing in his long johns in the gloom. “We’ll try not to hurt your boy.”

  It was Swede’s contention, as the morning stretched on, that a posse of twelve hundred couldn’t catch Davy. Let ’em try.

  Dad said, “Swede, if you can’t talk sense, don’t talk at all.”

  They were the harshest words I’d ever heard him speak. I watched him sipping his coffee, his face foreign with misgiving. How I wanted to understand him! But I was eleven, and my brother had escaped from the pit where my vanity had placed him (a vain notion itself, Swede has since pointed out, yet it was certainty to me). How could my father not be joyous over such a thing? Who in this world could ask for more?

  Nevertheless, the following days must’ve been excruciating for Dad—dreading Davy’s recapture yet fearing worse. The state police were advised, and locally the posse grew exponentially; after early radio reports of the escape, fifty men appeared at the courthouse, every one of them armed. Such a profusion of goose and varmint guns and beat-up World War pieces you never saw—at least such was the description given us by Deputy Walt Stockard, whose unconcealed glee over the escape must’ve been repugnant to Sheriff Pym. Though the very word posse sounds archaic, it made all sorts of sense at the time. For one thing, Davy was believed to be on foot. Since no one in Montrose County had reported a stolen vehicle—not a car, not a tractor, not so much as a Schwinn—it was assumed he was still nearby, shivering in some hidey-hole.