Peace Like a River Read online

  “What’s wrong with that?” I demanded—though honestly I wasn’t crazy about it either. I preferred the other one, where Sunny lit the cigarette after putting Valdez in the ground.

  “It doesn’t work,” she declared.

  Well, you can’t bargain with someone who won’t sell. If she was miserable and intractable about staying so, what could I do about it? This would’ve been a good time for me to shut up and go to sleep, but the slow fever of jealousy had been lit in my veins. Swede was talking some language to which I knew the words but not the meanings. It scratched my pride. I tried making my voice gruff, like Davy’s. “Listen, Swede, who’s running this story anyway?”

  She didn’t answer. She was right not to. It was a dumb old question.

  When Sorrows Like Sea Billows Roll

  TEN DAYS BEFORE THE START OF DAVY’S TRIAL, THIS ARTICLE APPEARED IN the Minneapolis Star:

  A VICTIM’S STORY

  His aunt called him Bubby because as a child nothing made him happier than sitting on her back step, blowing soap bubbles that rose and drifted across the yards of this small middle-American town.

  “I was a second mother to him,” Margery Basca said. “Bubby lived with me when his parents had difficulties. He was easy to have. Oh, he was sweet.”

  Last month, on a night that brought the first bitter snow of autumn, Bubby—Thomas Basca, age seventeen—was shot dead in a house across town. His parents, Stanley and Karen Basca, have been unwilling to talk with the press about the loss of their only child. Now, that child’s favorite aunt has agreed to tell her story to the Star.

  I won’t belabor you with the rest of the Star piece, beyond revealing that it vexes Swede to this day. (“It’s hackneyed,” she pronounced recently, poking through decaying clippings at my kitchen table. “Maudlin. Asinine.” Swede grew up unforgiving of journalistic convention.) Yet the story had sway; it can’t be denied. Looking back at how the Finch and Basca families shunned the papers at first—cussing over chain locks at forward reporters—the timing of their turnaround seems predestined, as all history does when you think about it. By the time Margery Basca decided to talk (“By the time she sobered up and got her house cleaned,” said Swede), the reporters had pretty well run the string out on Davy Land’s heroics and seemed cheerful at the prospect of laying him low. The Associated Press strewed the Bubby story all over Christendom, and I mean to tell you it got results. Do you think poor Mrs. Basca could’ve guessed at the power of tragedy? Could she have expected the letters of warmth and sorrow that suddenly bloomed in her post-office box? (“Could she,” Swede asked cruelly, “even read those letters?”) My sister’s resentments notwithstanding, Margery’s pitiful recital contained a certain truth that I, at least, eventually had to face. Tommy Basca was an idiot, but he wasn’t purebred evil. You could see looking at him that he might be somebody’s Bubby. He tagged after Israel Finch because Israel Finch liked having a disciple and no one else was witless enough to want the job. I suspect even Swede could be brought around to the truth of this, but remember, Tommy was an accomplice the night of her horrible ride. He grinned during it. Swede comes by her blind spot honestly.

  But the Star piece, for all its mawkishness, dropped a tasty new ingredient in the stew. Observing the public response, even Tommy’s bereaved folks, Stan and Karen, patched things up long enough to pose pathetically for an AP photographer. (I’ve got that clipping too, by the way; as a picture of American underprivilege it could’ve won awards. You never saw people of more threadbare hopes, their eyes dustbowl-flat. Remember those photographs they used to take out West, of dead outlaws propped frowning in their coffins?)

  I have a number of letters here that arrived for Davy in the days just before his trial. I’m guessing Walt Stockard didn’t read these out loud.

  Dear butcher,

  This is to let you know what I think of a person who shoots somebody that way. That Basca kid never even owned a gun. Because, he didn’t like killing things. Not like some who will shoot anything that moves for the fun of slaughter. You’re like the nasty kid who waits in shadow for the little harmless twerp to walk by on his way to school, then you grab the twerp and whack him around awhile because you like to see him scared. Well you listen to me, butcher. The Bible says the meek are going to inherit the earth. And when they do every last harmless twerp will rise up emboldened, and they will join together, and they will hunt down all butchers and cast them off cliffs and into rivers until the earth is cleansed. In the meantime I hope your trial is a great success and that the judge gives you the electric chair, you butcher, or however it is done in this present day. Hang you by the neck until dead.

  Very sincerely

  The sentiments here are representative of the new surge of mail; people love an underdog, especially a dead one, and poor Tommy made a dandy, so blank and trusting. How hideous my brother suddenly appeared to patrons of printed news, how base and small-souled! You’d have thought poor Bubby broke into our house still wearing short pants. (Though I’ll admit the letter has some panache; this fellow really found his voice once he hit on the harmless twerp idea. That’s a good phrase, rise up emboldened; it sounds like something Swede might’ve written, and besides it’s hard to argue against the meek turning the tables at long last. I don’t blame the writer, who, from his remark about Tommy not owning a gun, betrays the earnest influence of the Margery story. How could he know how wrongheaded it was?)

  Even Davy’s fellow inmate, Mighty Stinson, took delight in the sudden downturn of public opinion, lifting his head to say, “Pretty much of a hotshot—great big Davy Land.” Mighty, who got no mail, was housed two cells down; a perplexed fry cook of twenty, he’d hooked a lady’s checkbook left behind at the cash register. The lady realized her mistake in minutes and was back to claim it, but by then Mighty was trotting down to the First National, where he produced the checkbook and wrote one out to cash for thirty-five dollars. That First National was the lady’s own bank, and that all three tellers on duty knew the fry cook on sight meant little or nothing to Mighty. “You’re such a hotshot, let’s see you bust outa here. Bust me out too while you’re at it,” he said.

  All of this troubled Thomas DeCuellar. The trial, which would start Wednesday at the courthouse in Montrose, was our small world’s favorite conversation by now; on Sunday night Mr. DeCuellar sat down tiredly at our kitchen table and told us how it was.

  “People are placing their sympathies with the dead boys,” he said. There was bread and cheese on the table, and he built a sandwich. “You wouldn’t have any of those pickles left?”

  “They’re all gone; our compliments to Mrs. DeCuellar,” Dad said. “I don’t understand why it matters. The jury is supposed to be impartial.”

  Mr. DeCuellar looked at Dad, a careful look. “Oh, they are. They’ll do their best. Jeremiah, have you been reading the papers this week?”

  I remember how long it took Dad to answer that question. Mr. DeCuellar chewed his bread and cheese. Swede and I sat quietly. I had a feeling the adults didn’t know we were in the room—a feeling we were getting away with something, and a sadness that it was nothing to be prized.

  “I’ve read them,” Dad said.

  “You have to assume the jury has also. Of course they’ll be sequestered once the trial starts. Until then, they’re quite free. Quite at liberty.” You know, Mr. DeCuellar did speak like a lawyer, but he didn’t mind doing it with his mouth full of bread and cheese. He turned, unexpectedly, to us. “You know, compadres”—using that word because Swede liked it—“the situation could be much worse. Do you know how they conducted trials back in Saxon England?”

  Swede shook her head. She liked most everything about Mr. DeCuellar: his black-coffee eyes that seemed, in poor light, all pupil; his pipe, a small neat meerschaum he extracted now from a baggy pocket; and his way of speaking to us, which, Dad said, was in the manner of men who had wanted children for decades and never had them.

  “Do you remember the Battle of Has
tings?” he inquired.

  “Ten sixty-six,” Swede replied. “King Harold took that arrow—right in the eye!”

  “Exactly.” Mr. DeCuellar beamed. “Well, before that, England was in Saxon hands. The Saxons invented jury trials, but they also tested for guilt by ordeal.” He said this last in a portentous whisper while pressing sweet shredded tobacco into the bowl of his pipe.

  Swede hunched up. “That sounds awful.”

  “Yes, it was. A man might point to his poor neighbor and say, before the judge, ‘He stole my grain.’ Henceforth the accused would be bound securely. ‘Stoke up the fire,’ the judge would cry out, and the poor man, having no argument spoken in his favor, would have a red-hot iron laid across his palm. Or his hand would be pushed into boiling water—tsssssssssss!”

  “But if he was innocent!” Swede protested. Mr. DeCuellar could be ruthless on an audience; my goodness, but he loved history.

  “If innocent, he would pass the test. His flesh would be unharmed.” He struck a match and drew a gob of flame down into the bowl. The tobacco glowed and settled. He said pleasantly, “So people believed.”

  “Then no one ever passed,” Swede observed darkly.

  And Mr. DeCuellar replied, “It’s recorded some did pass; some men accused of murder and theft were tried this way and left unscarred.” He looked at Dad. “Probably not many, hm, Jeremiah?”

  Dad said, “Maybe, Tom, you ought to tell us what we can expect of the trial—how it all works.”

  “Yes, of course. It’s quite simple.” And Mr. DeCuellar spoke a brief clear paragraph about the properties of justice, about the efforts the prosecution would surely make to discredit our brother and portray him as a brutish reprobate, and finally, as if to cancel budding doubts, about Davy’s brave defense of us his family. A most heroic act, he said, as anyone could see. When Mr. DeCuellar stood to go, Swede rose also and hugged him hard around the waist.

  I recall that, before leaving, Mr. DeCuellar offered Dad two counts of advice for the coming days. First, maintain a happy composure at work; second, answer no questions, especially from reporters. We were to stay out of the newspapers, which, he said, had never really seen the problem with Saxon justice.

  * * *

  Good advice is a wise man’s friend, of course; but sometimes it just flies on past, and all you can do is wave. Because the next day, speaking of ordeals, Dad went and got fired by his boss Mr. Holgren, with half the school looking. Honestly, I hate to even tell you this part. Who wants to hear a story that’s nothing but misfortune? All the same, there’s a detail or two it’d be improper to leave out, and anyway Dad didn’t have a whole lot of himself invested in the janitorial field. You don’t have to worry about his self-respect, is what I’m saying, though you might light a candle for Mr. Holgren’s, if you are that sort of person.

  It transpired in the cafeteria of Roofing Elementary. Several classes, mine included, were assembled for the morning milk break. Because of impending Thanksgiving we all had on pilgrim hats cut from stiff black paper, and Mrs. Bushka downtown at the bakery had sent over some gingerbread turkeys, bedecked with orange and yellow frosting. You can imagine what a treat these were, especially juxtaposed against our general feelings toward the cafeteria. Even as we sat, prying lids off milk bottles, we could hear the persecuted cooks banging around back in the kitchen, grandmas barking at each other, preparing the daily grotesque. I remember Peter Emerson predicting meat loaf for that day’s lunch—Peter, looking uncharacteristically solemn because of his pilgrim hat, explaining his logic: “The butcher’s truck goes to the dump every Thursday. This smells like the dump Fridays.”

  It was, nonetheless, a gladhearted gathering there in the cafeteria, at least until Mr. Holgren came down to make some brooding remarks about Thanksgiving, probably having to do with privation and death. He’d certainly picked the right career, had Mr. Holgren; his every feature spoke of resentment and annoyance and, to people under five feet tall, of physical danger. His poor face looked always festering with some imminent parasitical hatch. Nothing could quiet a happy crowd of kids like Mr. Holgren’s unannounced appearance—he loved superintending; he was made for it. So when he marched in that morning with a determined grin on his face, we froze. Boys and girls recognize sinister as handily as dogs do. Here it was. My best guess now is he’d got it in his head to try “relating” to us—but when he produced a paper pilgrim’s hat from behind his back and put it on his own head, I think we all nearly bolted. I had a nightmare once in which the Devil entered my room and opened my closet and started trying on my clothes. This was similar. Mr. Holgren stood there with his mouth grinning and his eyes in some sort of torment and the pilgrim hat—well, I’d actually thought those handmade hats were pretty neat until the superintendent donned his. Suddenly they seemed repulsive, and I reached up and took mine off.

  Then Mr. Holgren said his few words. I’ve forgotten them—doesn’t matter—no doubt he thought we were all spellbound and that he was giving Miss Karlen and the other teachers present a fine lesson in captivating schoolchildren. What had my attention, though, was something I hadn’t noticed before. I’d been so transfixed by Mr. Holgren’s strange manner, I hadn’t seen the neatly scripted letters near the squared-off top of his hat. Very small capitals in white chalk, easy to miss but really quite readable: SHOOT ME! they said, in letters so smoothly drafted Miss Karlen herself might’ve written them.

  Well, I saw that and wanted to laugh. Not just wanted to—I tell you that laugh was down in my stomach, like bad beef; it meant to come out. Desperately I strove for placid thoughts; which meant, of course, not looking at Mr. Holgren’s hat. Not thinking those words. And yet they called, like a summons, like a hissed invitation, SHOOT ME!, calling to the laugh inside my belly. You want torture? A giggle crept up the old esophagus; I swallowed it down. My eyeballs watered. The worst of it was I seemed to be the only kid who’d noticed. Either that or everyone else had iron control, a terrible thought. I looked around; glazed faces everywhere. No one else had seen! Oh, but that moment was a lonesome place. Mr. Holgren talked on; I molared the inside of my cheek; the laugh stayed put but I felt it down there, accruing strength. Goodness, it made me nervous. I chanced a look at Mr. Holgren. SHOOT ME!, plain as day! I swallowed about twelve times. Then Peter Emerson leaned over to my ear. “Bang,” he whispered. I knew defeat. Through mouthplastered hands the laugh ripped forth—hoo- hoo-ha-ha-wha-wha-wha—a ruddy bray that condemned me to the stares of aghast pilgrims and who knew what violent repercussions at the hands of Mr. Holgren. I laughed so hard my sight went dark. I laid my forehead down on the table to sob. Did anyone laugh with me? Who knows? I do remember it felt solitary, as the wave rolled off, and I remember looking up through tears to see the glaring superintendent, death in a hat, SHOOT ME! still writ upon his mighty crown, and I remember wishing I could arrange to be shot at that moment and have it done with.

  It occurs to me now that I have no idea what became of Superintendent Holgren. Is he somewhere alive yet, a distressed old man in suspendered baggies, fixing his nightly suppers from tin cans, fearing his own reflection? Or did his conscience take pity and kill him early on, as Swede suggested might be just?

  Well. He didn’t kill me, though I don’t doubt his intention; it was his very eagerness to reach me that wrecked his day, because he started for me, all right, but was so anxious about it he clipped his thigh rounding the table. Do you remember how tippy those milk bottles were? Struck by more than a sidelong glance they’d whirl and spill. Mr. Holgren took that corner in the meat of the thigh, and half a dozen of the little soldiers leapt from the tabletop and burst wondrously at our feet. That froze Mr. Holgren, and just as he was about to do some real superintending, too. The cafeteria was silent except for the contents of one tipped bottle streaming off the table to the floor—a lonely bathroom sound. Beside me Peter Emerson, feeling left out because his bottle had stopped just short of the edge, moved his elbow furtively. The bottle tipped, sailed out, explo
ded. “Aww,” Peter said aloud. He was the happiest kid I ever knew.

  And then, as would happen, Dad appeared. Instinctively I feared for him, for a curse seemed hovering in that room. And I’ll admit I feared for myself as well. I owned a bit of rotten pride in those days that recoiled at the sight of Dad in coveralls. It didn’t seem fair, you understand. I knew Dad was the smartest, best-hearted, most capable man in any room he occupied, knew too that he was beloved by God, that whatever he touched was apt to prosper, sometimes in mighty and inexplicable style. To see him therefore in janitor clothes seemed to me the result of a strange and discomforting arithmetic. How could it be that his boss was a man like Mr. Holgren—whom Swede called Chester the Fester on account of his face—a man who treated Dad with feudal contempt? Who talked about scouring Dad’s teeth?

  And this bothered me, too: Dad would come into a room, pushing his broom, and always some dumb kid would turn to me and smirk. Janitor’s kid. Mop jockey. Cleaned up any good puke lately? I’m sorry if you thought better of me, but the fact is I spent whole hours imagining alarming humiliations for those kids—big dumb kids, always, with effortless all-star lungs. Oh, yes, and hours spent thus were not bitter but passed like joyous dreams, in which Bethany Orchard always chanced along to see the dumb kids at their most abject. It’s true. No grudge ever had a better nurse.