“Awfully nice,” Mary let out. She fluffed her skirt, stretched a pale leg over the bench. Elliot watched her until she settled. She took a fair amount of time. “Awfully nice,” she said again. She jarred her husband with an elbow. His sour expression remained.
“Look what those boys are doing,” she said. Our sons had carried the topmost sieve into the yard. Now they sat together in the grass with the contraption between them. “Regular old fixer-uppers.”
I nodded. “I have given the thresher over to them.”
“Just the two of them and so many girls,” said Mary.
“Thank God for those.”
“You know what I heard at the market the other day? This will be the warmest year on record, that’s what Mrs. Conners says.”
“Has she?”
“The Conners, they seem to know everything. Terrible things. What with that fuss in Europe. I never would have given much thought to the Germans, but Linda says they’re fighting for what rightfully isn’t theirs. Everyone’s for the Kaiser, she says. The Germans sure like their hops. That’s all I could answer her. As far as I’m concerned, I hope Wilson holds to his senses and keeps us out of it.”
I opened my hands on our table. We are from nowhere else, Margrit had said. Behind us in the kitchen, my wife called out instructions to the girls. Elliot eyed me under the brim of his hat.
“Our pastor says the Irish will never let us join the war,” said Mary. She lifted the hat from her husband’s head, clicked her tongue. “But Pastor Michaels is a pacifist. My grandmother was a Brit, Irish or not. That’s our side of it anyway.”
The hat lay on the table between us. Elliot coughed into his fist. “You don’t. ” Her eyes widened. “Do you still have family over there?”
“No.” I winced. “Margrit and I left years ago.”
“And you’re no drunkards,” said Mary. “You’re not marching about. You keep up your fences.”
“We try.”
Mary reddened, her breathing fast. “Oh you’re so much better than that!”
Elliot coughed again. “What do you hear of prices?”
“Well.” Mary pressed a hand to her cheek. “That’s my signal. I’d be a better help in the kitchen. Besides, Margrit’ll want to hear about the Parsons.” She bowed her head in a whisper. “That girl of theirs. With a child! Might well drive them out of town. That’s what Mrs. Conners says.” She stood and glanced back, fetched one of her flowers from the table to carry inside.
Elliot watched her go.
“Prices are two to one,” I offered him.
“That all?”
“If a man could raise more stock, it would be something. That land of ours on the river, a plow or reaper can never run near it. But I have heard of some who are straightening their waterways.”
Elliot squinted at me.
“To recover the land. A straighter channel, less flooding.”
“Recover it,” he said. “I don’t have the hands to work what I have now.”
“It could save us from falling behind the others.”
He chewed at his cheek. “What you say we bring our wagons in together next trade. Keep them from underselling us.”
I sighed at him. “Next time, then.”
Elliot seemed relieved. He drummed his knuckles on the table and turned to watch the Clarks come. “House full of women.”
“All that work with only the girls to help.”
“Clark is sickly more than most,” he said. “He was sick something awful last year. Heart.”
I shook my head. In the churchyard two miles distant, the Clarks owned a stone and five empty lots. Elliot sat a while, his face fallen. He seemed to stew on something dark and close in coming.
“A good man,” said Elliot again. “And no sons. We have ourselves sons for more than threshing, don’t we? Should Wilson want them.”
“Should Wilson not keep to his senses, you mean.”
Elliot held up his glass as if to measure me through it.
“A man must support his president,” I said.
“Right.” His mouth softened, only just. “I suppose it’s eating time.”
“Always is.”
“These women, they like to keep themselves busy.”
“My Margrit works herself to the bone.”
“I can’t say I understand it, but it sure pleases Mary to have company. It pleases her a great deal.”
The voices of Mrs. Clark and her brood carried over the fields. Our yard was soon filling with children. Mr. Clark could only but lift his hat and wave. A man such as him. He might well land in the grave from nothing more than a skip in his blood.
Our kitchen door banged.
“Ready!”
In a frenzy, Esther raced out. She wore an old canvas sack cinched with a rope at her waist. Nan chased after her. Esther stopped and spun. She curtsied to Nan before running again. The Clark girls screamed, and I reached for my belt.
But again the door to our kitchen opened. Margrit emerged with a tray of sausages. My wife had a flower in her hair. She smiled as she set the tray to the table. “Würstchen,” she said. “Würstchen,” Mary repeated after her. Her husband grunted. The children grew quiet. When at last my wife sat, her blue dress matched the flowers Mary had brought, their color a vision against her whiter skin. Once I had not known this woman. Now I knew her more than well. Across from her, our children crowded the single bench. How strange it was to see them lined up as they were, Myrle as always between them. They straightened the ribbons in her hair. Tucked a napkin to her collar. I felt the weight of that letter in my pocket. How loath I was to open it, with little reason I could explain. My children appeared so alike in every feature, their faces as sharp and fine as that of my parents. Once the meal came to its end, they surely would scatter. I could not so much as reach across the table to prevent it. But for now, my wife held them close, as if by a string.
It was late in the day when Margrit and I sat in the quiet of our parlor. Outside, the last of the sun lit the grassy trail the Clarks had left in their wake. Only Nan stayed with us in her corner, yawning as she sewed.
“Nan, dear,” said Margrit. “You should take a rest.”
“I’m fine, Mother.”
Nan sat a while longer but soon gathered her things. Margrit touched her arm before she went. “You did so well with helping. Didn’t she, Julius?”
“Very well.”
Nan blushed and gave her mother a kiss.
I reached into a pocket for my handkerchief. I discovered the sharp corner of the envelope instead.
“I think our Nan has a beau,” said Margrit. “Julius, are you listening? It’s Carl McNulty.”
“Carl,” I said. “The boy who lives alone with his mother?” I drew the envelope out and studied the stamps. Hamburg, two weeks since.
“You’re afraid of that letter.”
“No, no.” The envelope was thin as a leaf. The slightest tremor might turn it to dust. When I opened it, the German script came to me like an old scent.
Dear Julius,
Forgive me, but I only just found your address among your mother’s papers, and I am writing to you with news of your parents. I’m afraid they’ve passed. Your father had a stroke in the fields a month back, and it must have pained your mother something to find him. Yesterday morning, Samuel discovered her with her head on the table, just after breakfast. She had taken her bread out of the oven, at least, so it didn’t smoke the house. She was a good woman, your mother. Your father as well. He left the land and the house to us, what remains of it. I know your mother would have wanted otherwise. She often talked of you and your letters. Both are buried in Schubert’s field, a small service as it was the best we could manage.