“No more rough stuff, eh, Hess.” Elliot tapped his fingers.
“Fires,” said Clark with a sigh. “That’s enough. Hess, the men just need to know you’re on their side. Everyone else has paid their bonds and more.”
I bristled. “Those bonds were not mandatory.”
Lee rubbed his neck.
“Eight hundred,” said Elliot.
Margrit stood at the stove. Already she had it filled with wood and started the kettle. Her smile was tight. “I don’t know what men like you would be doing out on a night like this,” she said. “Mary, now, she’ll never believe it.” Elliot cleared his throat. Margrit carried a tray of cups to the table. On the tray, a new lemon cake. Her knife shuddered as she sliced through it, scooped the pieces to our plates. “Ropes and torches,” she said. “It’s a hard thing when a wife is told something like that. A wife likes to believe better of her husband.” Elliot flinched. With a flick of her wrist, the plates fell in front of us.
“Hess,” started Elliot. “The bonds. ”
“I will not pay a dime after being abused like this.”
Elliot tried to gain Clark’s attention, but the man was intent on his cake. Tom sat with his hands on either side of his plate, breathing it in. Behind him, Myrle appeared in her nightgown.
“Myrle,” said Margrit. “You’re to go to bed.”
“But Mother. ” The girl was shaking.
Margrit drew Myrle under her arm. “Why not some cake? Will that settle you?”
Myrle nodded and took a chair in the far corner. Margrit brought her a plate, but the girl would not eat. She sat with her eyes on her lap.
“I suppose we are finished,” I said.
Clark swallowed. “All right.”
Elliot’s face was hot. “But he hasn’t paid.”
Clark whispered in his ear.
“All right.” Elliot cursed. “Another time, Hess. You could save us the trouble and pay in town yourself. See to it that you do. And the river. ”
The sound of laughter stopped him. At the far end of the table, Tom Elliot had picked up his fork with a piece of Myrle’s cake. He fed it to her, stabbed at the slice on her plate, and fed her another. The girl chewed, her eyes closed. A blush ran from her forehead to throat. As the boy brought her another bite, she laughed again.
“Well,” said Lee.
“What’s that?” Elliot said.
We watched, not another word between us. Myrle was so very small sitting there, her face bright. She sat far too close to Tom in the near dark. The boy gave me a glance as he brought the fork again to her mouth. It scraped her tooth. Myrle leaned in.
Elliot’s hand flew between them. Tom lurched to his feet, a hand to his jaw. Myrle cried out. Margrit took her in her arms and rushed her down the hall.
“What was that for?” asked Tom.
“You know what,” said Elliot.
“Now, now,” said Clark. “We’re finished here.”
They stood and I let out a breath. Margrit appeared in the door at the sound of our chairs. The cake on my daughter’s plate was crumbs. On the boy’s, it lay untouched. Clark picked up the piece between his fingers and slid it whole into his mouth. “A fine cake, Margrit. Very fine. Rhonda would say so herself. Apologies for keeping you. Those other men, the drink gets to them. They’ll be asleep on their feet by now.”
Clark swept his tongue against the inside of his cheek. The three turned and headed out, Elliot pushing at his son. By the door, Ray saw them off. We were alone in the kitchen with Lee then, my wife gathering the plates. I reached out to stop her, but her hands snapped away.
“Mother.”
“Alles wird schlimmer.” She touched her fingers to my temple, my cheek. “More and more, Julius. When is it enough? You are all mad. All of you men.”
She left the plates and went to our room. Behind her, the lock turned on its bolt.
Lee and I sat at the table across from each other. His bulk took nearly the entire bench. Above us, Myrle sobbed, and Nan ran up the stairs to settle her. The room fell to silence.
“It will be all right,” I said.
Lee scuffed his boot on the floor.
“We can handle them. It’s nothing we can’t.”
He leaned forward, his voice little more than a whisper. “I heard them. They called you Prager. Prager is dead.”
IV
Lee enlisted the week after the next, and Governor Harding made his proclamation. Only English in our schools, in public conversations, on trains, telephones, in public or private meetings. Even in our churches. The loss of one’s native language, William L. Harding said, is a small sacrifice to make. I closed up the house and fixed locks on our doors. I would not be opening them to anyone soon. Outside by the river, Ray roamed the fields with our horses, intent more than ever on finishing the channel. I never could muster the energy to join him. I could not ask him to pocket his own. What was the answer, to press on or to change direction? Instead I kept close to my wife. She stayed to our bedroom now after breakfast and was to bed again soon after supper. As the days passed, she never left bed at all. She complained of headaches and fatigue, a fever that spiked in early mornings. I sat with her in her wakeful hours, and Nan took up the housework her mother left unfinished. When at last he came, the doctor closed the door and whispered to me in the hall. “I’ve got dozens already in this county alone.”
“What is it?”
“The flu. Mary Elliot has been sick more than two weeks. The whole house, but she’s the worst of it.”
“Is there nothing my wife might take?”
“Only rest.”
“She is not as ill as that, surely.”
The man chewed his lip. “They say it’s the boys who brought it home. Tom Elliot and the others.”
“Tom was in my house.”
“He was in many houses. Mary Elliot will die by the end of the week, if not sooner. I’d keep your children away.”
I opened the door to our room. Inside, Margrit sat propped on pillows, her eyes closed and her ankles crossed. Her chin rested on her shoulder, a blood-spotted towel in her hand. Agnes lay at her side with her drawing paper. Closer still, Myrle had curled herself up, a braid of her mother’s hair wound about her finger. At the end of the bed, Esther raised her voice and waved her arms as she read: “On whom,” Stephen said, “do you intend to seek revenge?”
“Esther, please. You will tire your mother. You will tire your sisters.”
“But they like it.”
“That is hardly material for someone so ill.”
“It’s from our primer.”
“Esther,” I spat. The girl stiffened. Margrit tapped her finger on Esther’s stockinged foot. When my wife looked at me, her eyes were stones. It was about Esther she worried. Esther she never wanted to restrain. Let her go, her look said. I could only repeat the thought for them alclass="underline" Let her go. Let her go.
“Girls, you need not keep to your mother like squirrels.” I dropped my voice. “She’s not well.”
Myrle tightened her finger on her mother’s hair. Agnes never stopped her pencil. Only Esther watched me, waiting.
“Very well.” I sighed and backed out.
Over the next days, Margrit slept late in the afternoons with few hours of waking. That bloody towel she held always in her hand. With the girls at school, I had her in the mornings to myself, only to leave her when her eyes closed and only as far as the other side of the wall. There I brooded at the dining room table. My eldest brought me a plate of scrappling and toast, a cup of coffee no larger than my thumb. I had little appetite. Still I liked to watch Nan lay a place and sit across from me in her housedress and apron, her hair pinned. Often she twisted the ring on her finger until her knuckle bled. Oh, what would this girl become? She had wanted to be her mother and now she so nearly was. I gazed out the window. The girls were leaving for school. Esther and Myrle walked arm in arm, Agnes trailing. When I turned, Nan had dropped her head. My daughter sat with me only out of duty, I knew, an empty hour when she might have gone to town or finished her sewing.