I woke. The barn was still. The calf lay asleep in the far corner, its mouth wet. The rip of a hinge and the door flew open. I heard my name. It was then I was lifted up, a man’s breath in my ear. He labored and fell and righted himself, another voice calling my name and asking to carry me, but the man wouldn’t give in. Stumbling to the house, he grunted, nearly falling again as he held me fast. My cheek dropped against his shoulder, the smell of leather and tobacco. Soon I was awake enough to know it was Father who carried me, the way he hadn’t since I was a little girl. When I was young, he let me sit on his knee and rested the flat of his palm on my head, as if in protection. He wore an old leather hat, a triangular sort the color of moss, and he gave it to me whenever I complained of the sun. His hands were large, pocked at the knuckles, the whole of him wide as a barrel. Often he had carried me to my room at night when I dropped off to sleep in the parlor, if only to stay with my parents and their talk. Now he lowered me to my bed. Someone pushed a pillow behind my back. When I opened my eyes, he stood watching me, wild and gripping his chest.
“Mein Mädchen,” Father said, his face pinched. “You were found.” He ran his thumb across my cheek and slapped me with a full hand. “Never have us find you again.”
The room went quiet. My cheek stung. Around the bed my siblings watched like frightened children. Soon the room darkened and they hushed each other. I was falling asleep. I would sleep for several days more, hot as an oven and sweating through the sheets. The others came and went, tending to me. But it was Father who slumped always in the chair at my side, his head sagging. It was Father who said my name. I dreamt wonderful dreams then — of the girls returning home. Of Lee walking over the hill, not a limp in his step, and Mother taking hold of my hand. What a girl you are, she said. She opened the window and brought out her best skirt, fastening a belt around her waist. Your father says we have new sugar, she said. How about a cake? The girls ran to the kitchen to dip their fingers in the batter. Not so fast, Ray said. Not before dinner, I called out.
Then it was summer. It was late afternoon. Myrle was walking across the meadow in her bare feet, her fingers sweeping the grass. Her white-blond hair was dark and wet against her neck. On her back, the blue crepe. The fabric was soft and slim around her waist, the fit only just loose enough at her chest and hips. I couldn’t help but think how fine the dress was, how my needle had done that — and the way she walked in it, a pale spirit. Where’s she going? I asked my sisters. Agnes shrugged. To see a friend, Esther sung out. It was the last time I would see Myrle wear that dress. I would love if she could wear it again. I would bleach it clean, take my needle to the tears and hide them in new pleats — but Myrle was too far off now across the meadow to call back.
“Nan, Nan.”
I woke. The room seemed clear to me again. A man sat close to the bed. I knew his voice before I knew him.
“Carl.” I smiled at him and he drew his hand over my forehead.
“You’re awake.”
“I guess.”
“They were worried about you. Agnes thought I might be a help.”
Agnes sat on the other side of the bed. Her cheeks were raw, her hair twisted in a bun.
“Where are the others?” I asked.
“They’re in town.”
I tried to sit up, but Carl pressed a hand to my shoulder.
“Why ever for?” I asked.
Agnes stuttered and it was Carl who took my hand. He nodded to Agnes and she bit her lip.
“They found a girl,” he said.
“The girls came home?”
Carl shook his head. “A girl in the river. They don’t know who she is. The others have gone to find out.”
Part II: The River
JON JULIUS
I
In the year 1892 I was a young man of little more than thirty, stealing passage from an old German woman who expired on the docks before she was boarded. She had blue cheeks in the time I discovered her. Her woolens were so thickly bound about her throat and chest I never could hope to save her, long past saving as she was. Her hand rested stiffly on her stomach. Her ticket wavered from the tips of her fingers as if offering it up. I touched her wrist and felt it cold, gazed back at the foreign village where I was friendless and sure to starve, and slipped that ticket from her grasp. God forgive the young their desperateness. Now nearly as old, I would pay for such unhappy luck. Yet little had I known of its opposite even then.
In the weeks as they passed, I stayed secreted on that ship, securing room for myself in the lower berths. I was a farm boy with a rent in his trousers. I reeked of pigs. If spied on the decks, I feared I would in an instant be pitched overboard, a trespasser no matter what ticket I held. In the evenings when the skies closed and the storms fell, I sweated in my bunk. The air was so very dense with smoke and stench my head itched. They offered us a mattress stowed with seaweed. A life preserver for a pillow. A tin pail for meals of herring and soup. My stomach turned. The lamps on such rocky waters were too dangerous to light. I tucked my knees to evade the rats. Still the ocean swells plagued my sleep. I stood in the mornings so sickened, I doubted I had opened my eyes.
In the daytimes, I dared walk the decks to escape the hordes below. When I grew tired, my legs unsure, I hid behind the vents and surveyed the horizon for land. One week more. One dreaded week. The engines of the ship bore on. On the upper level, a woman perched her child on the rail, gripping only his waist. The child was small, barely two years old. He was calm as he looked out. The woman cooed to him under her hat. She had a lovely pale face, little younger than myself. A ribbon bound a nest of hair off her neck. The hair was a fiery red, her cheek the whiter against it, and I felt a stirring when the wind lifted her skirt from her ankles. Now and again, she closed her eyes. Her fingers loosened from the waist of that jumper. The child was oblivious. He leaned forward in the arms of his mother, reaching for the sea.
When must we learn to fear? And if not from our parents, from whom?
I missed the land my father worked. I missed the house where my mother had me born. Sitting on deck on those dull waters, I missed my boots on the soil. In the dark of the evenings, I imagined that old woman as she snatched her ticket back. This voyage had taken from me something I never would have dreamed. My assurance there was a place for me. The steadiness of my limbs. Home. The idea alone is not solid enough to carry with us. Yet without it, on what can we stand? If I reached the far side, I prayed the new world proved steady. I might place my feet on the ground, build a life worth these many miles. Once I achieved that, I vowed I would leave the good earth never again.
I am an old man now. I sleep in my slippers because my feet grow cold. I know men who sleep far deeper than I. I know women who visit them in churchyards. Yet I cannot truly sleep in any sense of the word. The room is dark. I tug at my blanket. What a waste of time the evening is for the old. All those many hours between sunset and sunbreak. When I close my eyes, the swells of that sea always are with me. The never-ending tide of the river against its banks. How often I tried to keep the waters under my thumb. How much they have from us stolen. If the old woman and her ticket laid a curse, I have seen it play itself out, once and again. Why might a man lock the doors of his house? Why can he never forget the trespasses against him? He makes his confession. Yet confessing never erases the act. Try as I might, the language is wrong. The sentences slip. My ease with the old tongue is fading, and I am left only with this English. Its many contradictions. Its twenty ways of saying one thing.