“That’s Roy snoring.”
The old man was perfectly clear, even from across the yard and locked up in his tiny house. Delphine shook the skillet. What would they do when it got cold out, come winter? Having grown up with it, she was used to the sound the way people get used to living next to train yards. But poor Cyprian would be kept awake tossing all night. The thought, coming to her as she turned over the brown, crusted potatoes, was the first for a long time she’d had in which she imagined a future with Cyprian. And all because they’d had this one night. Well, that was stupid! She knew what was going on, him with his eyes closed tight. What was he seeing in his head? She turned the potatoes back and then used the spatula to set a heap on each plate. She set the plate before him, touched the side of his face with the back of her hand, wishing to know the answers, but already protecting herself. It might not happen, after all, for another eight months or a year, and what the hell did she really think, anyway, was going on during his trips up north?
* * *
DELPHINE WAS OUT BACK setting new straw down on her potato beds when Fidelis drove up in the meat-market truck. She straightened, brushed her sweaty brown curls back from her forehead, narrowed her eyes although she didn’t think they’d have a run-in. She’d expected that he would come out looking for Markus when he returned. School was starting soon. He walked toward her, his arms motionless as hooks at his sides, his face quiet. He wore a rumpled plaid shirt — she’d never seen such a thing on him. And his pants were stained on the thighs where he’d wiped blood off his hands. Fidelis was usually immaculate, but of course that had been Eva’s doing and then her own. As she walked toward him, she added another secret piece of gloating to her store. Tante couldn’t keep up with the laundry. They stopped with about three feet of space between them and stood without speaking. Delphine cocked her head to the side. The sun was behind her and full in his face, a ravaging white sun that blotted out his features.
“Where’ve you been?” she asked.
“Running around like a fart on a lantern,” he said, “I come for Markus. Where is he?”
“Like a fart on a lantern, huh,” said Delphine. “That’s no excuse!” Her temper flared, her heart caught. She suddenly missed Eva and that lonely pang turned to anger. “Of course he’s here. Do you think I’d let that bitch of a sister of yours beat him black and blue?”
Fidelis grew very serious, though he didn’t look surprised. He looked down at his feet in the tough steel-toed slaughterhouse boots, and he frowned so hard at them that Delphine looked down, too. There was nothing to see but that cracked leather planted in the soil.
“I come to get him,” said Fidelis in a low voice. Delphine waited for him to say something more. Thank you wouldn’t be out of the question, she thought. But he held his silence, which annoyed her enough so that she asked an abrupt question.
“Are you going to give him a whipping?”
“Why should I?” said Fidelis, then raised his eyes and looked full on at Delphine. Even through the blast of sun she could feel the power of his pale gaze. As on the first day she met him, she felt a jolt of strangeness. Not fear, just an instinct that there was more, much more, happening in that moment than she could grasp. He was withholding an energy composed of menace and promise. Tons of power were behind his slightest gesture and she thought of a great smooth-faced dam.
“Come in, take a load off, and I’ll pour you some iced tea. Roy and Markus are down at the river, but I think it’s too hot for the fish to bite. They’ll be back any minute.”
She was stalling, trying to find a diplomatic way not to send Markus back. Fidelis came into the house, still darkly cool as she’d kept the windows shut against the growing heat. She now opened the windows, sensing that undertone of cellar rot that crept in elusively and smelled to her of despair. There were six green ash trees outside that changed the air around in the late afternoon. The rooms would cool. The place was clean, scrubbed to a finish. Earlier, she’d cut a lemon into a jug of clear brown tea and stirred in the sugar, then set it right next to the ice block. Now she poured the tea into the glass beer mugs. The sides of the glasses filmed over and sweat. Fidelis looked at the tea a little sadly.
“I don’t have beer,” said Delphine.
Fidelis took a long drink, and Delphine refilled. Then he put his mug down and asked, “When are you coming back?”
Delphine mulled that one over, and then thought, Here’s my bargaining point. “That’s a hell of a question,” she said.
Fidelis leaned forward and hunched his shoulders as though he was going to say something very difficult, but all he said was, “Tante can’t run things alone.”
Delphine realized that it was a form of betrayal for him to make even the mildest critical statement regarding his sister. That was the way of those old German families. Tante was the only family he had over here. She wrote descriptions of whatever he did in endless script letters. Tante was always mailing off a stack, foreign postage. It was said that Tante wanted to go back to their pretty town in Germany, Ludwigsruhe, if only it weren’t for Fidelis. She couldn’t just leave him in this country, especially now, with those boys. Still, his troubled frown, and obvious discomfort, annoyed Delphine.
“I suppose I could think about coming back to help out — that is, if you’d tell her to pack her bags and get.”
Fidelis looked like he’d been knocked on the head with a sheep mallet. Such a thing must not have occurred to him, and Delphine had to laugh.
“She can’t cook. You’re losing business because she’s snotty to the customers. Your clothes look like hell. Your boys are running wild. And I won’t come back if she’s there, you can bet!”
Fidelis gave a cool nod and closed up. He wasn’t going any further with that, Delphine could tell. Maybe she should have been amazed that for such a big man he was such a coward before his sister, but she understood a lot more about him now.
“Look,” she said, pretending to soften. “I guess it’s tough. I like your boys, so I’ll think about it. Just leave Markus with us another couple weeks. He can start school from here. Cyprian can drive him in. He’s too much trouble for Tante, and he’s good help to us.”
Fidelis agreed to that, and when Markus came back Delphine watched very closely to see how he acted with his father, whether he was eager to return. But Markus was wary when he saw his father’s truck in the yard, and he seemed relieved to stay on with Delphine. She brought a lemon pound cake to the table, and tension eased up quickly. Fidelis ate the cake with great attention. Eva’s recipe, he knew. He experienced a wave of feeling when he gathered the last crumbs, and he made a ceremony of putting down his fork, slowly lowering it to the table. Delphine felt his sorrow, then, as a current of energy. Leaving, Fidelis nodded in approval at the good-size fish his boy had caught despite the heat, and took the fish as a gift. Markus put his shoulders back and strutted a little, which made Delphine laugh because he was such a skinny, unassuming boy. Yes, he had to stay. There was no doubt about it. She had to teach him a few things before she let him face Tante, and she had plans how to do it.
* * *
DELPHINE STILL OCCASIONALLY dreamed of getting a show together, a large-scale drama production, or of putting the balancing act somewhere in the plot of the thing. To do that, they’d have to take it on the road because the town could not support a cast of professional players. But Delphine no longer wanted to leave. Not with Roy behaving and with Markus near. Losing Eva had taken something out of her, too, and she began to spend more time with Clarisse. Another reason to stay in Argus. Still, the question lingered whether she and Cyprian were still essential to the investigation. Nothing had come of the sheriff’s plan to solve the Chavers’ deaths, nothing that she had heard, anyway. Delphine thought that she would like to know where things stood. She was curious. It struck her that she should pay a visit to the sheriff. So she left Roy napping in the shade one afternoon, and as Cyprian had driven the car up north, she walked to town.