Charity Read online

Lena left the office, stood on the street, and wondered what to do. She had to keep moving. Keep busy. Think. Most of all she needed someone sensible to talk to. It was a long walk out to Gustie’s, but Lena did her best thinking on her feet.

  Lena walked east, crossing the road she had come uptown on, and continued due east on an even narrower dirt road that led straight out into the country. Not much thinking was required to know where to look first for Pa’s killer. You didn’t have to strain your eyes looking beyond his own family. A nasty bunch—the whole lot of them. Always fighting one another—like badgers in a sack.

  She sighed. They’d had a reputation, the Kaiser boys. Will chased her around three counties before she consented to marry him. It was because he had chased her, and because he was...well, never mind he was the tallest, best looking man in those three counties—he was, in spite of his family, a kind, gentle man, and full of fun. At least he was before the drink took him. But blood tells and it had spoken loudly in him eventually. They’d had ten good years. He had taken to booze and throwing his fists around after he’d lost the sight in one eye and the hearing in one ear the same year. The blinding had been an accident—he caught a tiny piece of metal shaving in his eye at a drill sight. The ear was lost when Oscar took a shot at him and missed. The shot was so close it had destroyed his ear drum and the nerves.

  Anyway, she reflected, Will never did any fighting when he was sober, and he was sober more than half the time. That was still the difference between her man and his brothers. Stone-cold sober, Walter shot Oscar’s arm off when they were kids in some quarrel over something nobody could remember any more. Even with one arm, Oscar remained a violent man with his wife and his horses, and he seldom drank. He’d been sober when he fired at Will, too. These boys were mean whether they were drunk or not. They’re mean when they’re asleep, she thought.

  Frederick, the youngest brother, was not a brawler or a drinker, but Lena had never completely trusted him in spite of the fact that he had always been pleasant to her and was the only member of the Kaiser family to regularly wear clean clothes. Will had not had clean clothes every day till she married him. Lena thought Frederick was lazy and some kind of a conniver. He did no visible work, and yet he always had money to spend.

  Ma Kaiser. She could have killed the old man. She was strong enough. Gertrude Kaiser had the size and strength of a bull, if not the sweet disposition. Her thoughts went back to Oscar, the oldest, the one who was most like his mother. Silent and brooding, one never knew what Oscar was thinking. Maybe he didn’t think at all. He walked with a stoop that made him look much older than his years. Lena imagined he had developed this hunched-over posture to make less noticeable his missing arm. Hank Ackerman had remarked once that because they up and sawed his arm off—never mind it was to save his life—Oscar got cranky. Lena always chuckled at that. Cranky did not describe Oscar by half. They said that when he was a boy of about twelve, he killed a dog that his dad had brought home for him because he got tired of it always following him around.

  Walter, now, was much better natured than Oscar. He strutted around like a banty rooster, a cigar always cocked up between his teeth. He did not seem to be a likely killer. With him, it would have been some fool accident. He got scared and ran off, and yet when he shot Oscar, it had been no accident. Frederick. Hard to think of Frederick as a killer. It was hard to think of Frederick at all. The youngest brother was sort of invisible. One didn’t think of him in his absence. He left little or no impression. Lena only thought of him now as she was ticking off the members of the Kaiser family one by one. Frederick was handsome and noted for a certain gracefulness. He did not have the heavily muscled frame of his brothers because he hadn’t worked from dawn till dusk with well equipment and horses. As far as Lena knew, he seldom even mucked out the barn. He drove his aunt and his mother around. Since they never could go anywhere together, that could be a full day’s work. It wouldn’t hurt either of them to walk. And now she was back to the two old sisters. They had tasted plenty of gall on account of that old man over the years. Lena’s mind went round and round.

  Any one of them could have done it, but which one would have? In Lena’s estimation, they were all crazy and wouldn’t have needed much of a reason. One thing she was sure of: they would, all of them, guilty and innocent alike, sit by and let the blame fall on Will.

  Lena had been walking and thinking for half an hour. The air warmed. Flies buzzed around her head. She waved them away. Why Gustie wanted to live way out here was a mystery to Lena. The house was nice enough, but this far out of Charity she wasn’t going to get electricity or indoor plumbing any time soon.

  The sight of Gustie’s small white house sitting there on unclaimed acreage made Lena feel lonely. She didn’t know how her friend stood it with no family, no neighbors. Lena had offered to help her find a place in town. She even invited Gustie to stay with herself and Will till she found something suitable of her own. But Gustie refused. “I like it out here,” she’d said, somewhat wistfully, Lena thought. “I like it very well.”

  “Well, you’ll find out,” Lena prophesied with a finger beating the air. “In the winter it won’t be so easy. You’ll be cooped up here all by yourself. You’re always welcome to stay with Will and me. Anytime it gets too much for you. Just make sure you have enough food put by. For yourself and the horse—now, both of you, I’m talking about. I’m going to check your pantry and barn myself come November and make sure. You folks who just come out here don’t know how bad or long a winter can be. Snow gets so deep you can’t open your door, let alone go someplace. And you get yourself a couple ropes and tie them to the house. Run one to the barn and one to your outhouse. Tie them good and tight. I’m not foolin’! Alfred Ficksdahl, Alvinia’s uncle, that old bachelor lived up north of the Paulson place...they found him in the spring with his drawers still down froze solid because he was a stubborn old fool and didn’t listen to his neighbors and string a rope to his toilet. January came along and they all said, Alfred...where’s your ropes? And he said if the weather hadn’t come by January, it wouldn’t be comin’. Well...it came all right. It came and he went.”

  Gustie got her ropes, Lena made sure her house and barn were provisioned for the worst that first winter, and her friend appeared to weather it just fine. No, there was nothing stiff-necked about Gustie. She took the advice given her and made the best of it. Lena worried about her out here all the same.

  Lena walked the slender wagon path that wound from the road up to the doorstep. A field mouse skittered across the path in front of her and disappeared into the low grass, which was kept scythed down neatly by Orville Ackerman, one of Gustie’s pupils. Gustie earned little money—less than some teachers in the Dakotas, Lena knew. The school year was divided into two terms of about two and a half months each in the fall and spring. She was paid twenty dollars each term. Between terms Gustie tutored a few youngsters whose parents cared enough to provide them with extra help. She was given this house to live in until a homesteader, willing to prove up the land it sat on, appeared to claim it. On their mothers’ baking days, the children brought her bread and cakes and pies. Milk, eggs, and butter were discreetly dropped off by farmers who claimed they had too much that week. Gustie’s needs were few. So far she had managed. But Lena wondered for how long.

  Lena peeked around the side of the house. No horse, no wagon. She opened the front door and called in, “Gustie? You home?” Lena stood for a moment and took a deep breath, bitterly disappointed. “Fiddlesticks! Well, I’m going in to sit down a little.”

  Once inside she decided to fortify herself for the long walk back home. She was in no hurry. She put the coffee on, then sat at Gustie’s table to wait for it to perk itself into something drinkable. The first time she was here, almost two years ago, Gustie served her a cup of freshly brewed coffee. Lena took a mouthful of the strongest, bitterest coffee she had ever had, and it would not go down. She had to run outside and
spit it into the weeds. She came back into the house, demurely patting her mouth with her handkerchief, saying, “That’s not Lutheran coffee!” Gustie had laughed so hard the tears came to her eyes, and Lena laughed with her. They both still laughed whenever they thought of it.

  Now Lena’s eye’s wandered around Gustie’s small, sparsely furnished living room. Her tabletops and chests were bare of the crocheted and embroidered frills that women made for themselves, for each other and passed down to daughters and granddaughters. Still, Lena was comfortable here. Other things bespoke the life of her friend lived within these walls.

  The main adornments in Gustie’s home were her books—a shelf full of them—richly bound and wearing the patina of affectionate use. Lena had never seen so many fine books, not even at Doc Moody’s or in Pastor Erickson’s study. She ran her hand across the bindings reading some of the names: Shakespeare, Dickens, Sand, Austin, Brontë, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne. Once, with Gustie’s permission, Lena had pulled some off the shelves and tried to read a bit. She quietly put them back; they were beyond her understanding. One needed more than a fourth grade education and being able to read from the Bible to make much of books like these.

  On the wall hung two paintings that Lena suspected were something special since Gustie had carted them all the way across country. But Lena was not interested in paintings or pictures unless they were of people she knew or scenes from the Bible. These were neither. One depicted sea waves breaking on large rocks against a stormy sky, and the other, a tranquil sea with circling white birds. Glancing into the bedroom, Lena saw on the bedside table the leather photo album which had appeared last year. Gustie never offered to show the pictures inside to Lena. She was tempted to look at them now, just for something to do. No. I’ll wait till I’m invited. Lena noted the white nightgown hanging on the closet door. She thought there was something peculiar about it, but she couldn’t think what at the moment.

  The coffee was perking up a commotion and Lena removed it from the heat and poured herself a cup. When she finished she washed the cup and carefully put it back on the shelf where she found it. She decided she might as well do the few dishes Gustie had left as well. A plate, knife and fork, and the frying pan.

  Lena’s virtually sleepless night was finally taking its toll. She lay down on Gustie’s bed for a nap. She could rest a few minutes, get up, drink the rest of the coffee, and go home. Maybe Gustie would be back by that time. As she drifted off to sleep, she realized what was odd about the nightgown. It was too small. It could never fit Gustie.

  The coffee was stone cold.

  Oh, for heaven sakes. Lena looked outside. The sky was dimming. She felt addleheaded. Well, how could I sleep all day? She could not now make it home before dark. Lena wasn’t afraid of the dark, but she didn’t feel like walking home in it either. Anyway, at the moment she had nothing to go home to. Nothing at all. She went back to bed. This time she undressed and crawled under the covers. It felt good to sleep. To forget.

  Early the next morning, after leaving a scribbled note stuck in Gustie’s screen door, Lena walked back to Charity. The sky was a clear, light blue, lacking substance. The few wisps of white cloud floated higher and higher till they dissipated altogether. For a bird to get enough purchase with feather and wing in such a thin sky to be able to fly seemed impossible. And perhaps it was, as all the birds around her were hopping from brush to branch or perched on stalks of grass, chirping at one another and preening themselves, passing the time, waiting for the sky to thicken up a bit.

  Ma Kaiser’s house squatted at the edge of town: huge, dark, musty, and unkempt—like Ma herself. Lena never liked going inside. Today, more than ever, she didn’t want to go in or even talk to Ma. But she was sure nobody would come to her, and she had to start somewhere to try to find out what was going on.

  The gate screeched as she pushed it open, then it swung askew since the latch was rusted out. The wooden porch steps squeaked under her weight.

  Lena stopped to listen for voices. She heard nothing but the buzz of flies and the woo-wooing of a mourning dove. She opened the tattered screen door. “Ma?” Lena listened. “Is anybody home? Ma?” For answer there was only a steady creaking from the bowels of the house. Lena followed the sound through the sour smelling kitchen, the dining room, which was lorded over by a mahogany china cabinet crammed with God knew what, and into the living room, the darkest room in a dark house, full of more heavy pieces of furniture that loomed about her, shapeless and colorless. On every one lay a dingy antimacassar.

  As Lena’s eyes adjusted, the source of the monotonous creaking issuing from the farthest reaches of the gloom took form: Gertrude Kaiser, her great bulk shrouded in black taffeta and squeezed into a wooden rocker, rocking back and forth, back and forth. The few timid rays of light that trespassed through the sagging draperies were drawn to the one bright spot in the room. Her thick white hair glowed with reflected light like a patch of snow in a dark gully catching a moonbeam at midnight. Such beautiful hair, Lena thought, on such an ugly woman. Ma’s hands gripped the armrests of the chair; her eyes stared at nothing Lena could see.

  “Ma?” She stepped closer, but the old woman did not acknowledge her. “Ma!” Lena, short on patience, took two strides to the side of the rocker and shook her mother-in-law by the shoulder. “Ma! Where are the boys? Where’s Mary and Nyla? I thought they’d be here.”

  “They’re at Molvik’s seeing to Pa,” her mother-in-law wheezed. “Seeing to things.”

  Molvik was the undertaker. Lena had almost forgotten there was a body to be prepared for burial. She ventured in a more civil voice, “You know they think that Will did it.” Maybe Ma didn’t know that. Maybe they hadn’t told her. Maybe they thought the death of a husband was enough news for the time being.

  “Of all the boys,” the old woman wheezed, “I never thought it would be Will.”

  “He didn’t do it! But I mean to find out who did, believe you me. Now what do you know about this mess?”

  Ma Kaiser turned her small eyes upon Lena. “I don’t know anything,” she mewled, like a fat child confronted with an empty cake plate.

  “Well, when did you last see Pa?” Lena resisted the urge to smack her. “What was he doing in the barn? There’s nothing in that barn.”

  “I don’t know.” The old woman’s voice slipped into a higher register and she started to rock again. “I don’t keep track of what all that man does.”

  Ma Kaiser nor her house ever smelled good, but today the smell of a woman who casually believes all her sons capable of murder and takes for granted the guilt of her favorite was too much. Lena felt herself beginning to gag. She left as fast as she could and, once she had passed the gate, inhaled deeply.

  Lena found herself going next door to Julia’s.

  Julia’s house was modest in size. A fresh coat of white paint brightened both the outside walls and the length of fence that ran along in front of it. The fence, wrought iron with some scroll-work about the gate, did not go around the house; it kept nothing in and nothing out but made a very pretty picture when viewed straight on. Two peony bushes on either side of the front door were in bud.

  Julia met her at the door, a limp handkerchief in one hand, her cat in the other held close to her breast. She wore a gray linen dress, trimmed at the neck and sleeves with thin strips of white lace. She was dressed for company. The cat was gray with white paws and throat. Even in her agitation, Lena was amused at the resemblance between them. As she held the door open, Julia said, “Oh, Lena, he’s gone. Pa’s gone.” Tears rose in her eyes.

  “Yes,” was all Lena could say as she stepped into Julia’s kitchen and sat down at her small table. “Julia, they think Will did it.”

  “I know. It’s a pity.” Julia, with one hand—her other hand still cradled the cat to her bosom—set a cup in front of Lena. As she did so, Lena saw that the ring on her right hand, an opal in a gold settin
g that Julia always wore, was wrapped in string on the palm side. Lena commented on it and Julia said, “Oh, yes. These old hands are getting thin, especially when they’re cold. I didn’t want the ring slipping off, you know. It was Mother’s.” Julia poured weak coffee into Lena’s cup.

  “Yes, that happened to my mother,” nodded Lena. “She lost her wedding ring in the bread dough. Didn’t know where she’d lost it till Will bit into it in a piece of toast. Nearly broke his tooth!”

  Julia smiled at the story, returned the pot to the stove, and sat down. When she moved, her fine white hair held softly in a loose bun at the nape of her neck, waved gently, cloudlike about her head. With that puffball of white fine hair, she reminded Lena sometimes of a dandelion gone to seed.

  Lena didn’t know where to put her hands. They went from her lap, to play about her mouth and chin, to touching the table top and back to her lap again. Finally, with one hand and a toss of her head she indicated Gertrude’s house a few yards away. “She’s no help. His own mother. Sitting over there like a fat spider. Thinking he might have done it. ‘Of all the boys,’” Lena mimicked Ma Kaiser’s wheezy voice, “’I never thought it would be Will.’ Oof! She makes me tired. How you’ve stood her all these years, I don’t know.” Lena thumped her fingers on the table top, then took a quick sip of coffee.

  Julia did not answer or remove her loving gaze from the cat in her lap, who with perfect attention licked the inside of a curled paw. “Is Feather getting clean? Kitty Feather...” she crooned as she stroked his back with her thin, blue-veined hand. “Cats are so clean, aren’t they?”

  The kitchen warmed with light cascading through Julia’s white lace curtains. Julia’s house, like Julia herself, always smelled faintly of lavender. For a moment, Lena almost relaxed a little. She blurted out, “Who do you think did it? You know it wasn’t Will, don’t you?”

  “Of course, we all know it couldn’t have been Will,” Julia answered. “Not Will.” Julia continued to stroke her cat.