No-Name Lake
“My name is Benny and I don’t have a penny,” he sing-songed though the grey stubble. The gravelly voice of the octogenarian seemed to echo in the rusty Ford Taurus, first against the cracked vinyl dashboard, split from years of recurring cycles of frigid cold and sunblasted August heat of the Upper Peninsula, then back towards his piles of smelly musty blankets and the stack of dirty laundry stuffed in the back seat.
It had rained last night, not convenient for sleeping outside under the stars or in the primeval forests that surrounded him. He felt resigned to stay put in the car, at least it was dry; stuck in the mud anyway, and defying his best efforts to free the old car, Nellie, as he called her.She was mired to the axle in mud but he had to admit this was partially his own fault as the road, really an old logging trail took him far off the crumbling highway where he was not likely to encounter a roaming Deputy Sheriff. It wasn’t that he had much to fear of the law, he knew most of the deputies by their first names, it was just his desire to avoid contact with anyone, yes anyone other than Jean. She had left him a year and a half ago, preferring the homeless shelter in Harbor Light where she was housed and fed daily, Ironically the force-fed religion was unpleasant but necessary to receive services. He objected on several counts as they were not allowed to sleep together, which he found objectionable, like feedlot cattle penned wherever the bosses said they had to be, although damn cattle were probably better fed than he was at this time.
He opened the door of the barely running junker, it creaked loudly and a horde of mosquitos assaulted him without mercy. The rain had let up. He lit a cigar stub, an inadvertent gift someone left on the sidewalk the other day in town. The cigar stub, he concluded, was an act of providence. The soggy cigar smoke lifted heavily around his grey features, eyes, crags of his cheeks, and shaggy beard.
He knew that summer would end soon and he would accept again work as a dishwasher at a local restaurant until late autumn. By fall, he might have enough money to travel south for the winter. The harshness of the future winter season was too much for him to bear. He would need to put in lard labor in exchange for several hundred dollars for the trip. He’d go south to Miami if Nellie was mechanically sound enough to get him there, like last year or the year before that.
Next week he’d muck stalls and help put up hay. Damn hard work for an old man. He remembered the old adage that there is no rest for the wicked, though he wondered why God punished him so. Mistakes, yes many, but he was not pure evil, no not that he could remember. Maybe God slipped over someone else’s evil onto his scale, a sleight of hand perhaps.
He untangled an ancient Zebco pole and reel from the ditch where he had hid it weeks ago and walked around the no trespassing sign toward No-Name Lake in the central Upper Peninsula. He stopped briefly to turn over rotten logs, looking for worms. He found a few red worms and jammed them deep into his battered suit coat so they wouldn’t crawl out.
He looked skyward. It was a grey leaden sky with the look of a thunderstorm on the horizon but he was hungry and a mess of perch, even small ones, would be nice, he thought to himself. Tomorrows he would gather sticks and logs and jam them under the wheels to free Nellie. A tow truck was out of the question, a luxury for the Upper Middle Class and beyond his reach.
He sat on a flat rock, some black basalt, he’d guess, a leftover from a distant geological era. He cast out the line. The Zebco reel had seen better days and the line was shot and barely serviceable, but he would make do. Soon several hand-sized perch lay beside him. Ripening raspberries lined the path to the lake and he had scooped up several handfuls, cupping them in his hands like water and partially quenching his thirst with the tangy bitterness of unripened fruit.
He understood that Jean was going to die soon. Advanced ovarian cancer. He would be allowed to have her ashes after she passes. I suppose that is why I am here at No-Name Lake. Just as in life and in death both of us are in a sense rather nameless. We have no children and no legacy to pass on. When Joan passes her ashes will end up here as I have promised her. Mine will end up here shortly after her passing. I have my own plans.
It is clear that two people living on the edge of nowhere carry no social currency. It is spent before it is ever created. From dust to dust, isn’t that what the Bible says?
Jean must wonder how he is doing. He had no way to communicate with her except driving the 60 or more miles to Harbor Light. He was banned from the shelter because of an argument with staff over his adamant desire to sleep with Jean. The staff had made the part like threadbare underwear ripped and pulled apart at the seams.
What were the staff afraid of? That they were going to have sex? Hell, they been having sex for decades. Or was this lack of consummation another form of evil that men created to justify inhumanity toward the poor? Hell, let them eat cake. Isn’t that what was alleged? Doesn’t matter really, there are rule makes and rule breakers and it is apparent who suffers the most. He sat sullen as cumulus clouds floated over. He hoped the rain would hold off until he could drive to town.
He found a small flat rock and got a fire going, wet kindling but finally it caught. Smoke curled toward his eyes. This would be humorous if it was a deterrent to the fucking mosquitoes, but it wasn’t. He couldn’t gloat over failure. He didn’t own a frying pan. He placed the perch on the hot rock as the flesh turned translucent, soon ready to eat. Flies buzzed around him, some bit. He slapped them with no mercy: horseflies, deer flies, each wanting a chunk out of him.
Daniel Evans slowed his 4-wheel drive pickup to a crawl when he saw the Ford Taurus. Ben recognized the crooked owner of a local lumber yard who had screwed him over when Ben and Jean built their home, now lost to the bank. Daniel could see the the rusty heap was stuck deep in the mud and blocking his access to the lake. Another damn trespasser, he fumed. His land holdings, actually over several thousand acres, included all of No-Name Lake and many heavily wooded sections further into the wilderness miles from the nearest city, Harbor Light.
Daniel spotted the old man tending a fire despite the fire ban currently in effect. He shut the late model pickup off and stalked to the old man’s fire. Benny had heard the truck diesel down and the truck door slam. Sensing the younger man’s anger, Benny crouched over the fire and chose not to look up.
“You know you’re trespassing?” Daniel shot out the words like bullets.
Benny shrugged his shoulders. “You want to have some perch?”
This seemed to provoke Daniel, who replied, “What those damn undersized perch you’re grilling on a dirty rock?”
“I don’t have a frying pan but I’ll make do,” Benny said matter-of-factly.
Daniel guessed this old man was a derelict — probably a down-and-out alcoholic or worse.
Benny squinted. The sun was bright now in contrast to the early morning rain. He took in Daniel’s crisp clean clothes and sharply creased khakis.
“There’s berries along the path if you have a desire. Damn good,” Benny said.
“Look, as soon as you’re done eating those fish stolen from my lake, I want you to get the hell off my property.”
“Can’t, I’m stuck,” Benny looked crestfallen, then brightened. “unless you’re willing to pull me out. Sure ya don’t want a fish to eat?” Benny thrust a small fish and a slice of white bread to Daniel. Daniel reluctantly took it from the old man.
“Like the Sermon on the Mount?” Ben said sarcastically.
“You know, Jesus shared his fish and bread. I’m certainly not anointed like He was but I’d share this meal with you. All I got. Whiskey’s gone, yesterday.”
“Figures,” Daniel said. “You know I could have you arrested for trespassing?”
“A warm bed at the jail and a hot meal, let me think about it,” Benny smiled. “I don’t have a lot of good options these days.”
“Look, I’ll pull you out and make sure you get to the County Road, then you are on your own.” Daniel fished a bone out of the corner of his mouth, spitting it on the ground.
“What do you need a whole lake for anyway?” Benny asked off-handedly.
Damn stupid question. “Because I can. My family has owned this lake since 1880 or so. It’s private and I intend to keep it that way. My family name is stamped all over this county,” Daniel retorted caustically.
“Your ancestors were lumber barons.” Benny said flatly.
“Mostly, I guess.”
“How’s your family get this lake anyway?”
“Not that it is any of your business but this lake and thousands of adjoining acres were purchased from the State of Michigan in the last century and have been passed down to our family.”
“Hmm, inheritance. And how did the State of Michigan get the land to sell to your family — just curious?”
Daniel relaxed and sat on a large rock beside the fire. “Treaties with the Indians when they gave up the land.”
“Gave up?”
“Yeah, gave up,” Daniel said sharply. “My ancestors gave good money for the timber and the land, and it got passed down though time.”
“Did the natives have the same inheritance rights as your family?”
“You’re getting at something.”
“Makes no difference, does it?” Benny asked. “Things are done and not much chance of fixing it, I guess. Id’ bet you and your family own thousands of acres stolen from the natives that you keep posted to keep all of us riff-raff out.”
Daniel’s eyes flashed. “I’m going to pull you out like I offered, then I never want to see your ass on my property again. Tell me your damn name so I know who to prosecute next time.”
“Name’s Benny.”
“And what is your last name, Benny,” Daniel demanded.
“Richardson.”
“Richardson?” Daniel said incredulously. “I remember you. Benjamin Richardson, the crooked attorney at Fisk and Hamilton Law Firm?”
“Yeah, that’s me, fallen a few rungs on the ladder but yeah. The disbarred attorney if you must know. Drink got me. I was found guilty of financial malfeasance, stole from my clients and trust me, I paid the price. My life just blew apart.”
“I heard you were a partner in the law firm, fucked up a brilliant career. You took on pro bono native treaty disputes.” Daniel re-examined the old man at the fire realizing he had underestimated him, but that still didn’t change the facts — he was a trespasser and a crook.
“You know I should leave you stuck in the mud for all the grief and money your firm cost my family over the disputed treaty. My family, along with a number of others were subject to a lot of public harassment and bad press over something that happened in the 19th century,” he said angrily.
Benjamin sighed. “I don’t think we are going to litigate this issue here and now. I’m a washed-up attorney just trying to make it through the day.” A tear slid down Benjamin’s cheek. Too much water had gone under the bridge, he thought quietly to himself.
Daniel, not saying a word, hook a tow rope to the Taurus and yanked it out of the mud so forcefully it ripped off the front bumper. He yelled back at Ben, “Now get the fuck off my property and never come back.”
——————--
It gave Benny a sense of shame that Jean, his long-suffering wife, was hospitalized. Her well-off brother was paying for her hospice care, while he had nothing to contribute to her cancer care other than remorse. He knew it was likely that their mutual alcoholism probably contributed to her demise. It was all his fault, when he lost his license to practice law it exacerbated his drinking and she followed suit as she always did. He held her hand across the hospital bed frame.
“I worry about you Benny, worry about your life, or maybe what’s left of your life. You’ve got to quit drinking and find a purpose. You’ve always needed that, something to sink your teeth into. It’s still not too late for you, maybe for me, but not for you.” He turned his head away, trying to shut out the pain so she wouldn’t see it, but he knew she did. All the losses they had endured for so long had taken a toll. Now she was on the threshold of death and still worried about him. He muffled a sob as she fell asleep and quietly left her room. She lapsed into a coma shortly thereafter.
“Sally, Mr. Fisk please.” He spoke softly to one of the secretaries of the former law firm he once called home.
“May I asked who is calling please?” she questioned.
“Yes, this is Benjamin Richardson,” his voice quavered.
“Let me see if he can take a call now,” she said, remembering the disgrace Benjamin Richardson had brought the firm. The line went quiet for a minute.
“Hello Benjamin, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“Yes Tom, it has been. I called because I want a favor. I know my disgrace was harmful to the firm but I would like to make amends, if that is possible. I don’t expect an immediate answer but please consider my sincere apologies and my willingness to provide legal research on Native American Treaty disputes for no fee. I think I can be an asset to the firm now. I’m dried out and hungry to reform what little is left of my life. I want to make a difference somehow and I truly believe in treaty reparations. I can do all the heavy lifting with the research and the firm can pro bono the case, a public feather-in-the-cap for the firm. I want to be clear that I don’t want nor will I accept any compensation from the firm, I just want justice for the tribe.”
Tom let this sink in. It would be a risk to have Richardson come back — even if it was the right thing to do. He would need to speak to his partner first but he was inclined to take the risk.
Benjamin Richardson sat quietly in the back of the courtroom looking up at the bench. The threadbare sleeves of his suit coat were shiny from wear but the firm had opened an account at the local clothing company for him and he would have a reasonable clothing allowance (provided by the firm) from this point on, despite his desire to pay his own way. He felt humbled.
Jean died the following week. The funeral home agreed to dress her in an inexpensive Mexican skirt that they had purchased in Tijuana years ago. She was cremated and Ben spread her ashes along No-Name Lake. Daniel Evans had him prosecuted for trespassing and Ben served several days in the county jail. The firm bailed him out and he is currently researching the original treaty and with the firm’s approval, fully intends for the case to go forward.
He was sad that Jean never knew that he joined AA shortly after her death. He had accepted Christ as his Savior and soon after got a job serving meals at the shelter. He was content for the first time in years.
It had rained last night, not convenient for sleeping outside under the stars or in the primeval forests that surrounded him. He felt resigned to stay put in the car, at least it was dry; stuck in the mud anyway, and defying his best efforts to free the old car, Nellie, as he called her.She was mired to the axle in mud but he had to admit this was partially his own fault as the road, really an old logging trail took him far off the crumbling highway where he was not likely to encounter a roaming Deputy Sheriff. It wasn’t that he had much to fear of the law, he knew most of the deputies by their first names, it was just his desire to avoid contact with anyone, yes anyone other than Jean. She had left him a year and a half ago, preferring the homeless shelter in Harbor Light where she was housed and fed daily, Ironically the force-fed religion was unpleasant but necessary to receive services. He objected on several counts as they were not allowed to sleep together, which he found objectionable, like feedlot cattle penned wherever the bosses said they had to be, although damn cattle were probably better fed than he was at this time.
He opened the door of the barely running junker, it creaked loudly and a horde of mosquitos assaulted him without mercy. The rain had let up. He lit a cigar stub, an inadvertent gift someone left on the sidewalk the other day in town. The cigar stub, he concluded, was an act of providence. The soggy cigar smoke lifted heavily around his grey features, eyes, crags of his cheeks, and shaggy beard.
He knew that summer would end soon and he would accept again work as a dishwasher at a local restaurant until late autumn. By fall, he might have enough money to travel south for the winter. The harshness of the future winter season was too much for him to bear. He would need to put in lard labor in exchange for several hundred dollars for the trip. He’d go south to Miami if Nellie was mechanically sound enough to get him there, like last year or the year before that.
Next week he’d muck stalls and help put up hay. Damn hard work for an old man. He remembered the old adage that there is no rest for the wicked, though he wondered why God punished him so. Mistakes, yes many, but he was not pure evil, no not that he could remember. Maybe God slipped over someone else’s evil onto his scale, a sleight of hand perhaps.
He untangled an ancient Zebco pole and reel from the ditch where he had hid it weeks ago and walked around the no trespassing sign toward No-Name Lake in the central Upper Peninsula. He stopped briefly to turn over rotten logs, looking for worms. He found a few red worms and jammed them deep into his battered suit coat so they wouldn’t crawl out.
He looked skyward. It was a grey leaden sky with the look of a thunderstorm on the horizon but he was hungry and a mess of perch, even small ones, would be nice, he thought to himself. Tomorrows he would gather sticks and logs and jam them under the wheels to free Nellie. A tow truck was out of the question, a luxury for the Upper Middle Class and beyond his reach.
He sat on a flat rock, some black basalt, he’d guess, a leftover from a distant geological era. He cast out the line. The Zebco reel had seen better days and the line was shot and barely serviceable, but he would make do. Soon several hand-sized perch lay beside him. Ripening raspberries lined the path to the lake and he had scooped up several handfuls, cupping them in his hands like water and partially quenching his thirst with the tangy bitterness of unripened fruit.
He understood that Jean was going to die soon. Advanced ovarian cancer. He would be allowed to have her ashes after she passes. I suppose that is why I am here at No-Name Lake. Just as in life and in death both of us are in a sense rather nameless. We have no children and no legacy to pass on. When Joan passes her ashes will end up here as I have promised her. Mine will end up here shortly after her passing. I have my own plans.
It is clear that two people living on the edge of nowhere carry no social currency. It is spent before it is ever created. From dust to dust, isn’t that what the Bible says?
Jean must wonder how he is doing. He had no way to communicate with her except driving the 60 or more miles to Harbor Light. He was banned from the shelter because of an argument with staff over his adamant desire to sleep with Jean. The staff had made the part like threadbare underwear ripped and pulled apart at the seams.
What were the staff afraid of? That they were going to have sex? Hell, they been having sex for decades. Or was this lack of consummation another form of evil that men created to justify inhumanity toward the poor? Hell, let them eat cake. Isn’t that what was alleged? Doesn’t matter really, there are rule makes and rule breakers and it is apparent who suffers the most. He sat sullen as cumulus clouds floated over. He hoped the rain would hold off until he could drive to town.
He found a small flat rock and got a fire going, wet kindling but finally it caught. Smoke curled toward his eyes. This would be humorous if it was a deterrent to the fucking mosquitoes, but it wasn’t. He couldn’t gloat over failure. He didn’t own a frying pan. He placed the perch on the hot rock as the flesh turned translucent, soon ready to eat. Flies buzzed around him, some bit. He slapped them with no mercy: horseflies, deer flies, each wanting a chunk out of him.
Daniel Evans slowed his 4-wheel drive pickup to a crawl when he saw the Ford Taurus. Ben recognized the crooked owner of a local lumber yard who had screwed him over when Ben and Jean built their home, now lost to the bank. Daniel could see the the rusty heap was stuck deep in the mud and blocking his access to the lake. Another damn trespasser, he fumed. His land holdings, actually over several thousand acres, included all of No-Name Lake and many heavily wooded sections further into the wilderness miles from the nearest city, Harbor Light.
Daniel spotted the old man tending a fire despite the fire ban currently in effect. He shut the late model pickup off and stalked to the old man’s fire. Benny had heard the truck diesel down and the truck door slam. Sensing the younger man’s anger, Benny crouched over the fire and chose not to look up.
“You know you’re trespassing?” Daniel shot out the words like bullets.
Benny shrugged his shoulders. “You want to have some perch?”
This seemed to provoke Daniel, who replied, “What those damn undersized perch you’re grilling on a dirty rock?”
“I don’t have a frying pan but I’ll make do,” Benny said matter-of-factly.
Daniel guessed this old man was a derelict — probably a down-and-out alcoholic or worse.
Benny squinted. The sun was bright now in contrast to the early morning rain. He took in Daniel’s crisp clean clothes and sharply creased khakis.
“There’s berries along the path if you have a desire. Damn good,” Benny said.
“Look, as soon as you’re done eating those fish stolen from my lake, I want you to get the hell off my property.”
“Can’t, I’m stuck,” Benny looked crestfallen, then brightened. “unless you’re willing to pull me out. Sure ya don’t want a fish to eat?” Benny thrust a small fish and a slice of white bread to Daniel. Daniel reluctantly took it from the old man.
“Like the Sermon on the Mount?” Ben said sarcastically.
“You know, Jesus shared his fish and bread. I’m certainly not anointed like He was but I’d share this meal with you. All I got. Whiskey’s gone, yesterday.”
“Figures,” Daniel said. “You know I could have you arrested for trespassing?”
“A warm bed at the jail and a hot meal, let me think about it,” Benny smiled. “I don’t have a lot of good options these days.”
“Look, I’ll pull you out and make sure you get to the County Road, then you are on your own.” Daniel fished a bone out of the corner of his mouth, spitting it on the ground.
“What do you need a whole lake for anyway?” Benny asked off-handedly.
Damn stupid question. “Because I can. My family has owned this lake since 1880 or so. It’s private and I intend to keep it that way. My family name is stamped all over this county,” Daniel retorted caustically.
“Your ancestors were lumber barons.” Benny said flatly.
“Mostly, I guess.”
“How’s your family get this lake anyway?”
“Not that it is any of your business but this lake and thousands of adjoining acres were purchased from the State of Michigan in the last century and have been passed down to our family.”
“Hmm, inheritance. And how did the State of Michigan get the land to sell to your family — just curious?”
Daniel relaxed and sat on a large rock beside the fire. “Treaties with the Indians when they gave up the land.”
“Gave up?”
“Yeah, gave up,” Daniel said sharply. “My ancestors gave good money for the timber and the land, and it got passed down though time.”
“Did the natives have the same inheritance rights as your family?”
“You’re getting at something.”
“Makes no difference, does it?” Benny asked. “Things are done and not much chance of fixing it, I guess. Id’ bet you and your family own thousands of acres stolen from the natives that you keep posted to keep all of us riff-raff out.”
Daniel’s eyes flashed. “I’m going to pull you out like I offered, then I never want to see your ass on my property again. Tell me your damn name so I know who to prosecute next time.”
“Name’s Benny.”
“And what is your last name, Benny,” Daniel demanded.
“Richardson.”
“Richardson?” Daniel said incredulously. “I remember you. Benjamin Richardson, the crooked attorney at Fisk and Hamilton Law Firm?”
“Yeah, that’s me, fallen a few rungs on the ladder but yeah. The disbarred attorney if you must know. Drink got me. I was found guilty of financial malfeasance, stole from my clients and trust me, I paid the price. My life just blew apart.”
“I heard you were a partner in the law firm, fucked up a brilliant career. You took on pro bono native treaty disputes.” Daniel re-examined the old man at the fire realizing he had underestimated him, but that still didn’t change the facts — he was a trespasser and a crook.
“You know I should leave you stuck in the mud for all the grief and money your firm cost my family over the disputed treaty. My family, along with a number of others were subject to a lot of public harassment and bad press over something that happened in the 19th century,” he said angrily.
Benjamin sighed. “I don’t think we are going to litigate this issue here and now. I’m a washed-up attorney just trying to make it through the day.” A tear slid down Benjamin’s cheek. Too much water had gone under the bridge, he thought quietly to himself.
Daniel, not saying a word, hook a tow rope to the Taurus and yanked it out of the mud so forcefully it ripped off the front bumper. He yelled back at Ben, “Now get the fuck off my property and never come back.”
——————--
It gave Benny a sense of shame that Jean, his long-suffering wife, was hospitalized. Her well-off brother was paying for her hospice care, while he had nothing to contribute to her cancer care other than remorse. He knew it was likely that their mutual alcoholism probably contributed to her demise. It was all his fault, when he lost his license to practice law it exacerbated his drinking and she followed suit as she always did. He held her hand across the hospital bed frame.
“I worry about you Benny, worry about your life, or maybe what’s left of your life. You’ve got to quit drinking and find a purpose. You’ve always needed that, something to sink your teeth into. It’s still not too late for you, maybe for me, but not for you.” He turned his head away, trying to shut out the pain so she wouldn’t see it, but he knew she did. All the losses they had endured for so long had taken a toll. Now she was on the threshold of death and still worried about him. He muffled a sob as she fell asleep and quietly left her room. She lapsed into a coma shortly thereafter.
“Sally, Mr. Fisk please.” He spoke softly to one of the secretaries of the former law firm he once called home.
“May I asked who is calling please?” she questioned.
“Yes, this is Benjamin Richardson,” his voice quavered.
“Let me see if he can take a call now,” she said, remembering the disgrace Benjamin Richardson had brought the firm. The line went quiet for a minute.
“Hello Benjamin, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“Yes Tom, it has been. I called because I want a favor. I know my disgrace was harmful to the firm but I would like to make amends, if that is possible. I don’t expect an immediate answer but please consider my sincere apologies and my willingness to provide legal research on Native American Treaty disputes for no fee. I think I can be an asset to the firm now. I’m dried out and hungry to reform what little is left of my life. I want to make a difference somehow and I truly believe in treaty reparations. I can do all the heavy lifting with the research and the firm can pro bono the case, a public feather-in-the-cap for the firm. I want to be clear that I don’t want nor will I accept any compensation from the firm, I just want justice for the tribe.”
Tom let this sink in. It would be a risk to have Richardson come back — even if it was the right thing to do. He would need to speak to his partner first but he was inclined to take the risk.
Benjamin Richardson sat quietly in the back of the courtroom looking up at the bench. The threadbare sleeves of his suit coat were shiny from wear but the firm had opened an account at the local clothing company for him and he would have a reasonable clothing allowance (provided by the firm) from this point on, despite his desire to pay his own way. He felt humbled.
Jean died the following week. The funeral home agreed to dress her in an inexpensive Mexican skirt that they had purchased in Tijuana years ago. She was cremated and Ben spread her ashes along No-Name Lake. Daniel Evans had him prosecuted for trespassing and Ben served several days in the county jail. The firm bailed him out and he is currently researching the original treaty and with the firm’s approval, fully intends for the case to go forward.
He was sad that Jean never knew that he joined AA shortly after her death. He had accepted Christ as his Savior and soon after got a job serving meals at the shelter. He was content for the first time in years.
Clara
After the first heavy frost descended on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the foliage turned from variegated shades of green to rich layers of burnt umber. In the fall, many species of hardwoods are recasted to brilliant blood reds and flaming fires of orange. Not to be forgotten are the falling leaves that change to filigrees of gold adornment, like precious ornate jewelry. To Clara, God was an artist with a palette well beyond the reach of mankind. The bounty of harvest time was a gift, something that Clara had always looked forward to.
With the passing of her late husband Ray, the hard-scrabble farm was now hers. The aging farm sat forlornly in the middle of the near-wilderness of a place, often just abbreviated to the U.P.
Clara had turned over the hills of Russet and Pontiac potatoes with the 1946 Allis-Chalmers tractor, now 10 years old. The once bright orange tractor was now faded. Ray had bought it new from the farm implement dealer in a neighboring town. Clara, who named everything, much to Ray’s amusement, called the thing Draco, which she kind of understood meant dragon, in some ancient language, maybe Greek. She still owned a dusty copy of Bullfinch’s Mythology which she had read may times.
To Clara the tractor seemed like a fire-huffing monster from a children’s book, but it still ran well, at least when she could get the beast going. Occasionally, she would have to squirt the noxious-smelling ether down the carburetor like Ray had showed her until the engine backfired, shooting flames upward. The first time this happened, it scorched her eyebrows and the bangs of her long grey hair. She swore at it, but to no visible effect. The damn thing seemed to have a mind of its own, like Raymond, she thought.
He’d been gone six months, February of 52. It was like a postmark stamped on her forehead for all the village to see. His death had hollowed out a piece of her she couldn’t quite mend, like a gut ache, she reasoned, that even the foul tasting castor oil couldn’t fix.
The farm, roughly sixty acres, was paid off now, thanks to the insurance policy Ray had bought without her knowledge. She only discovered the policy after his death. He’d been private about things, maybe secretive, was closer to the truth, never letting on he had life insurance that he’d bought from Arvid, his old hunting friend, who owned the only insurance agency for miles around.
She bent over the exposed hills, shaking dirt off the withered vines, and dropping the potatoes in a grey weathered crate. Though the meat of the Russets were hardy, the deep red Pontiacs were sweeter, and more to her liking.
Sixty plus years wore on her like the thread-bare flannel shirt. Clara’s back ached incessantly from the lonely exertion, but she knew necessity required it for awhile, and complaining was a waste of time.
Seagulls from the turbulent inland sea of Lake Superior alighted on the freshly turned soil, screeching for want of the numerous red worms turned up along with the furrows of potatoes.
A murder of crows feasted on over-ripe tomatoes further west of the rows of potatoes. Fall was a bounty for all and Clara didn’t mind sharing. After all, this was to be her last harvest on the farm, she had assured herself.
Several weeks after Ray’s death, Arvid had contacted Clara and informed her of the policy. “I think you need to know that Raymond had a considerable amount of life insurance. You should come in sometime soon so we can go over it,” he said.
So she did.
——————--
Arvid paced nervously, filling a mug of cold coffee. “You see Clara, Ray had purchased a term insurance policy but had never signed the beneficiary line, and so seeing that both of you are legally married, the proceeds go to you.”
Clara listened intently but had a nagging feeling Arvid was leaving something out. “I don’t understand why the beneficiary wasn’t noted on the policy?”
“Well, I suppose legally, it doesn’t matter, the proceeds are yours.”
“Arivd, I’m confused. You wrote a policy that didn’t designate the beneficiary?”
“Clara, the policy was only written several weeks before Raymond passed, and only because Doc Rahala signed on the the medical exam that Ray was in good health. Ray must have forgot about that.”
“Arivd, something doesn’t smell right.”
Arivd turned his back to Clara and refilled his morning mug of coffee. “Coffee Clara?” There was a note of nervousness in his voice.
“No thanks. You’re not telling me something.”
“Clara, please let sleeping dogs lie.”
“I don’t think I will do that, Arvid.”
He paced. “Damnit, Clara.”
“Well,” she pressed.
He sat down and pounded on the stapler on his desk. “See, when he saw Doc Rahala, about a month before he passed, Doc told him his heart was not going to hold out much longer. Ray explained to Doc that without considerable cash for the mortgage you would likely lose the farm. He told him he intended to buy a life insurance policy for that purpose. Ray told Doc he needed him to sign the waiver of medical fitness required by the insurance company. Well, the doc signed off thinking he was doing the right thing. This is where the whole thing gets really messy. You see Doc’s heart was in the right place but his ethics were definitely in the wrong place. I only found out about this later from Doc, after Ray’s funeral, and after the insurance company had paid out the proceeds to you. Technically this was insurance fraud, and if I had prior knowledge of this arrangement Doc and I could both face jail time. Do you see what a damn mess this could be?
“Well, Clara, this puts me in a rather embarrassing and difficult position. I don’t lie, mostly because it always comes back to slap you in the face.”
“What do you mean, Arvid?” Clara was angry and perplexed. This was not like Raymond. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why was the beneficiary line not complete?”
“Leave it alone Clara.” He was tense, sliding his office chair back forcefully. “He had a friend,” he said, finally exasperated.
It all made sense now. She was stunned as if she had been a gut-shot doe.
He pushed on reluctantly. “Ray had a friend he intended to name as his beneficiary but ironically he passed before he had a chance to add her name to the policy, so by default, as his legal wife you received the proceeds. I’m really sorry Clara to be the one to bring this to your attention and I wouldn’t have brought it up but…” his voice trailed off.
“Doesn’t all of this seem downright ugly, maybe even malicious?” she asked tearfully. “Who is she?”
“I’m sorry I don’t know for certain and I won’t pass on a rumor I can’t confirm. Ray never told me and, frankly, at this point I don’t even want to know.”
Despite what he had said earlier about lying, Clara suspected he wasn’t telling the whole truth. She slammed the office door as she left, rattling the glass in the door frame.
——————--
She missed church the following Sunday. She had never been a drinker, but she swallowed the foul-smelling whiskey as she rocked back and forth in the antique rocker.
Ray’s family had owned this piece of ground for generations. But at times they had needed to borrow from the Credit Union to buy cattle or hay, or to put a roof on the old red barn. Finns all. They were hard-scrabble farmers that stuck to their land like wood ticks: hard to brush off, stubborn, obstinate, and linked to the land with an unmatched ferocity that only God could understand. Her ancestors were the same, lived in the same township, farmed the same God-forsaken earth that Ray’s ancestors had farmed. Clara tipped back the cracked coffee mug. Whiskey ran down her cheek and mixed with tears.
She had never questioned his love before, although he never would have used the word love; that was too sentimental for him. His staunch Lutheran background would not allow him to whisper words of tenderness, although he would touch her hand now and then in the evenings as the sun sank over the Porcupine Mountains and she knew what he needed, and she dutifully followed him to the bedroom. Her life had been a pattern like a handmade quilt she had sewn; predictable, and to her way of thinking, complete.
They had never used a condom, never needed or wanted too, as she saw children as a gift from the creator. But here it was, a condom, hidden in his old hunting coat. It jarred her mind, but it finally occurred to her, that not only had Ray had a sexual relationship outside their marriage but most likely with a younger woman of child-bearing age. She had wondered at first who she was, now with this discovery it seemed to narrow down the possibilities.
Raymond was 61 when he died, and to her mind she figured the woman might be in her later thirties or so, to still be concerned about conceiving, otherwise why need a condom? It wasn’t that venereal disease wasn’t known around here, but there were no local gossip of any recent outbreaks, so that seemed unlikely.
Clara recalled that Naomi, a beautiful widow with a small child had attended the July memorial for Raymond. At the time, Clara had thought nothing of this, but she remembered Naomi had worn long black gloves despite the summer heat.
Clara, despite her growing contempt, realized how attractive she might appeal to an older man, and there was the issue of Clara’s missing cameo ring, passed down to her from Raymond’s late mother Hilda, long deceased. The cameo ring, a Victorian piece was not worth a great deal, but the figure of Cleopatra carved intricately into the Ceprodite was elegant and, to her mind, unique. Clara had noticed it missing from her jewelry box several years ago, but thought at the time she had just misplaced it. Perhaps, the long black gloves were worn to hide the truth, a truth that Naomi chose to conceal.
And, of course, Raymond, the president of the church board had those monthly meetings, which naturally, Naomi as the treasurer was most certain to have attended.
Clara washed the chipped plate, as ketchup stained the dishwater red. She wiped bread crumbs from the table, a sick feeling gripped her like an ill-timed fever. She slept fitfully, tossing and lost in dark dreams.
——————--
As the lone rooster crowed, Clara roused and opened the drawer of her nightstand. The sharp redolent smell of gun oil penetrated the air of her tidy bedroom. She withdrew the old 38 pistol, there was one shell in the chamber, that’s all she would need.
When they first married they would often go partridge hunting. Ray preferred a pistol over the most often used shotgun for bird hunting, more skill needed he had once told her. She would drive the backroads while Ray, in the passenger seat, scanned the road ahead for grouse, sipping mud puddle water and ingesting the necessary gravel for their gullet.
On the farm, guns were like hand tools, sharpened and ready, just in case. Mostly, the pistol was for home protection but she was well-acquainted with the firearm. She’s shot a few varmints in her day, raccoons, skunks, and once a coyote, all with the 38. Link Ray, she thought it more of a matter of pride to take an adversary with a pistol as opposed to the old double-gauge. She returned the pistol to the nightstand, slowly shutting the drawer, at least, for the time being.
——————--
She recalled:
The garden had been too large for just the two of them. Of course, if there had been children, maybe grandchildren, she would have gratefully exchanged her labor for the laughter of little ones; but no, that would never be. She had been childless, barren they called it. What an ugly word, barren, like the blister on her hand, evocative but disgusting.
As the day warmed, sweat dripped down between her breasts. She didn’t hoe the invasive garden weeds, as much as she pummeled them, anger at Ray mixed paradoxically with a rising sexual desire. Why this was so, she couldn’t determine. Clara knelt in the black dust, the worn garden dress pulled up around her thighs. She yanked an over-ripe cucumber from a withered vine, breathing heavily, her hands drenched in anticipating sweat. The crows were the only witnesses as she finally collapsed, spent.
——————--
The doctor was never certain whether her inability to conceive was her fault or Ray’s. She had often laid awake at night and wondered if God was punishing her for fondling herself when she was younger. It was a sin according to church doctrine, and in her thoughts, could bring damnation.
She had been tempted to try another man to see whether his seed would take; perhaps John, a sturdy man who picked up the heavy milk cans for the creamery, but she refrained, though the thought had made her wet at times.
“Raymond, what if we adopted or took in foster children,” she had once asked.
“Not the same, Clara. Need to pass down blood; God’s will. Be patient.”
She’d been patient, but still, no children blessed her house. She’d cried often, but never when he was around. She’d hid her despair like the blood-stained rags that came monthly, a sober reminder that another month had passed and still she had no child.
Rocking, rocking in the antique cane-back chair, she recalled what Ray had said.
“Clara, with the war winding down in Korea the price of beef is going to jump. We’ll get rid of a few heifers, should do well this year, maybe could take a day off and go to the Copper Country, see the big lake, have dinner, you know.”
“Yes,” she had replied, unenthusiastically, “What if we drove to Berea, Kentucky, and visit that famous college there. I read a lot about it in a magazine at Doctor Rahala’s office. Most of the magazines there are as old as I am, but still they must still be around. Could see Mammoth Cave too.
“Berea College? Why the hell do we want to go there?”
“Cause they teach old-time crafts like weaving, pottery, blacksmithing, and such. I think it would be interesting for both of us, maybe even sculpting.”
“Doesn’t sound interesting to me. Both our families had to do that stuff to survive. I don’t want to be reminded of all that misery.”
“But what if we got away for a week or so from the darn cattle; have your cousin take care of them. We could afford to do that you know.”
“Can’t. The cattle are skittish around strangers. They’re used to you and me. They know us. We’re familiar. Besides who will usher at church? No one else can squeeze those old Finnlanders for cash like I can. Pastor told me so. I do an evil eye on the holdouts,” she remembered he had said, “and they cough up God’s due.”
And then she remembered like a flash of lightning what followed. “I count the offering after all the folks are gone. Just me and God in the sanctuary, quiet and alone.”
Was he alone, as he stated? She had her doubts now. “Really, in God’s church?”
——————--
It was late afternoon. Clara ate a light dinner of pickled bologna and a warm slice of her homemade bread with a slather of butter from the neighbor’s Guernseys. As the sun dropped beyond the mountain, she cracked the seal of a bottle of cheap whiskey.
Clara topped off the mug of whiskey with copious amounts of water. Hangovers had been too frequent and she knew she had to end this pattern, and she would at the right time, but not yet.
Clara’s father had been an alcoholic and she had no intention of repeating his habit. As an only child she spent many hours alone. In some ways this had been fortunate as it drove her to read anything within reach and forced her to be creative, if nothing else, to burn up loneliness. Her mother had died when she was 12 leaving her and her mostly absent father alone in the drafty farmhouse. Consequently she developed her artistic nature. She had had a frivolous dream of becoming a sculptor as a young child, and fashioned clay figures from a dull-grey clay she discovered on the back forty. She kneaded the sticky clay with Lake Superior’s beach sand and the unfired sculptures dried reasonably well in the summer sun.
She had imagined her mythical creatures came to life at night when she had lonely dreams. Once, she fashioned Pegasus, the luminous winged white horse, out of the sticky clay, but it crumbled to nothing after a summer’s thunderstorm. Dreams, now gone.
—————————--
She remembered, “Ray I’m tired of shoveling manure and mending fences. Why don’t we sell out and move to where there isn’t miserable cold and snow — someplace warm.”
“Clara, I’m part of Nelson, this village, this farm. It’s all a part of me. If we moved it would be like choppin’ off a part of myself.”
“You mean you won’t do it?”
He shrugged, that was how he was.
After the auction, the cattle and farm equipment were sold off. An adjacent farmer bought the land at a fair price. For the last time, Clara mucked out the stalls. If the farm hadn’t sold she would have let it all gone fallow. She knew she was done, just done.
Life was simpler now, and she hated to admit it but with Raymond gone the financial burden was lifted, and to her shame, she felt a sense of relief. His death had made everything possible. She shrank back from this shameful self-admission but it was as if God had granted her another life, a life after Raymond.
That afternoon she bought a bus ticket to Berea, Kentucky and packed a battered suitcase. Tomorrow she would leave, forever — there was just one thing left to do.
Clara knocked, uninvited, at Naomi’s door. The white house, neat and tidy by the village of Nelson’s standards, sat quietly on a dead-end dirt road.
Naomi opened the door, with a look of surprise on her face. A very young boy pulled at his mother’s apron.
“I’m sorry Clara but I’ve got a cake in the oven, could you come back some other time?” Clara noted the cameo ring on her left hand as she gripped the door handle tightly.
“Oh Naomi, this won’t take long — please. I intend you no harm, but I do know the truth about you and my late husband.”
Naomi looked apprehensive. “Really this isn’t a good time.”
“Yes, I’m sure it isn’t but I am leaving Nelson this afternoon and I don’t think I will ever be back. Please, I would love to have a cup of tea with you before I leave.”
Reluctantly, Naomi opened the half-closed door and Clara entered.
“Please sit down, I’ll put on some fresh water for tea,” Naomi said, turning her back. Clara seated herself at the kitchen table.
“I want you to understand that I didn’t come in anger. I’m past that point, although a couple of months — well — let’s just say I might have put a bullet in your heart.”
Naomi flinched as if she had been shot. “I know we shouldn’t have… but we fell in love, and well,” she motioned with her head towards the young boy. “There’s Gene.” Clara had already guessed this from a rumor she has overheard at the General Store.
“Did you know that Gene is Raymond’s middle name, Naomi?”
“No, Ray never told me that.”
“There’s probably a lot of things Ray didn’t tell you, like that ring for instance.”
“Well, I know it was old, and I assumed it might have been from his family, so I chose not to flash it at Ray’s funeral.”
“That was kind of you,” Clara said, with a slight note of bitterness. “It was a gift, Ray’s mother Hilda gave to me shortly after we married. I think it is fair to say I had sentimental feelings about it.”
Naomi slipped off the ring. “Please take it, I would only have contempt, not for you, but for Ray,” she paused. “like in the Bible, I have had a poor harvest.” Naomi wept.
Clara reached across the table and took Naomi’s hand, “Perhaps we both have.” Clara wiped a tear from her cheek.
“What are we to do?” Naomi said, her voice cracking from the strain.
“You have a boy to raise, and I suppose that is both your duty and your penance.” Clara sighed, still choking back tears.
Naomi hung her head. “What a mess Ray and I made of all of this. I never thought the condom…” her voice trailed off.
“I see,” Clara said, “that explains much.”
Silence settled in for a moment as each woman collected her thoughts. Then Clara took a deep breath. “I suppose you know Ray intended to leave you some funds, I suppose to raise your son.”
“Yes, he told me he intended to leave me $20,000 dollars and $40,000 to you. Ray thought you should have it to pay off the mortgage.”
Clara was visibly shaken. “I thought he intended to give all of it to you.”
“Oh no,” Naomi said. “He never meant for me to have all the life insurance. He never would have done that to you. No matter what you might believe, he loved you dearly. He just loved us both — seems to be a problem many men have. My first husband too, God damn his soul,” she spat out. “Seems I got caught in my same trap twice. I guess that’s why they call all of that sin.
“I guess I see Ray’s last actions as a kind of redemption,” she was breathing heavily, now. “I suppose he meant well, all in all, and between you and me, he failed both of us miserably, but himself as well.
“I have to leave soon,” Clara related matter-of-factly, “or I will not have the courage to leave. I brought my checkbook with me and I intend to give you a check for $1,000 every Christmas for Gene’s care, until he is a young adult. There is one stipulation. You must write me a long letter each Christmas about Gene’s life. I want to be involved but only on the periphery. The boy should know about his father, both the good and the bad. Tell me about how you and Gene are doing. Can we agree on that? He’s not my son, but in some strange way all of us are connected.”
Naomi sighed and shook her head in agreement, as Clara wrote out the first check.
“I have rented a room within walking distance from Berea College in Kentucky, where I intend to study sculpting.” Clara slid the chair out from the table. “I will be in touch soon. Who knows, maybe I will meet a young sculptor and fall madly in love,” she said, smiling. “Life is short.”
——————--
Clara sat on the wooden bench, at the village corner, waiting for the Greyhound to arrive. It would be there soon. She happened to glance up and realized that the bus stop was also the Texaco gas station and that the lighted sign was the image of Pegasus, the mythical winged horse, and she smiled.
With the passing of her late husband Ray, the hard-scrabble farm was now hers. The aging farm sat forlornly in the middle of the near-wilderness of a place, often just abbreviated to the U.P.
Clara had turned over the hills of Russet and Pontiac potatoes with the 1946 Allis-Chalmers tractor, now 10 years old. The once bright orange tractor was now faded. Ray had bought it new from the farm implement dealer in a neighboring town. Clara, who named everything, much to Ray’s amusement, called the thing Draco, which she kind of understood meant dragon, in some ancient language, maybe Greek. She still owned a dusty copy of Bullfinch’s Mythology which she had read may times.
To Clara the tractor seemed like a fire-huffing monster from a children’s book, but it still ran well, at least when she could get the beast going. Occasionally, she would have to squirt the noxious-smelling ether down the carburetor like Ray had showed her until the engine backfired, shooting flames upward. The first time this happened, it scorched her eyebrows and the bangs of her long grey hair. She swore at it, but to no visible effect. The damn thing seemed to have a mind of its own, like Raymond, she thought.
He’d been gone six months, February of 52. It was like a postmark stamped on her forehead for all the village to see. His death had hollowed out a piece of her she couldn’t quite mend, like a gut ache, she reasoned, that even the foul tasting castor oil couldn’t fix.
The farm, roughly sixty acres, was paid off now, thanks to the insurance policy Ray had bought without her knowledge. She only discovered the policy after his death. He’d been private about things, maybe secretive, was closer to the truth, never letting on he had life insurance that he’d bought from Arvid, his old hunting friend, who owned the only insurance agency for miles around.
She bent over the exposed hills, shaking dirt off the withered vines, and dropping the potatoes in a grey weathered crate. Though the meat of the Russets were hardy, the deep red Pontiacs were sweeter, and more to her liking.
Sixty plus years wore on her like the thread-bare flannel shirt. Clara’s back ached incessantly from the lonely exertion, but she knew necessity required it for awhile, and complaining was a waste of time.
Seagulls from the turbulent inland sea of Lake Superior alighted on the freshly turned soil, screeching for want of the numerous red worms turned up along with the furrows of potatoes.
A murder of crows feasted on over-ripe tomatoes further west of the rows of potatoes. Fall was a bounty for all and Clara didn’t mind sharing. After all, this was to be her last harvest on the farm, she had assured herself.
Several weeks after Ray’s death, Arvid had contacted Clara and informed her of the policy. “I think you need to know that Raymond had a considerable amount of life insurance. You should come in sometime soon so we can go over it,” he said.
So she did.
——————--
Arvid paced nervously, filling a mug of cold coffee. “You see Clara, Ray had purchased a term insurance policy but had never signed the beneficiary line, and so seeing that both of you are legally married, the proceeds go to you.”
Clara listened intently but had a nagging feeling Arvid was leaving something out. “I don’t understand why the beneficiary wasn’t noted on the policy?”
“Well, I suppose legally, it doesn’t matter, the proceeds are yours.”
“Arivd, I’m confused. You wrote a policy that didn’t designate the beneficiary?”
“Clara, the policy was only written several weeks before Raymond passed, and only because Doc Rahala signed on the the medical exam that Ray was in good health. Ray must have forgot about that.”
“Arivd, something doesn’t smell right.”
Arivd turned his back to Clara and refilled his morning mug of coffee. “Coffee Clara?” There was a note of nervousness in his voice.
“No thanks. You’re not telling me something.”
“Clara, please let sleeping dogs lie.”
“I don’t think I will do that, Arvid.”
He paced. “Damnit, Clara.”
“Well,” she pressed.
He sat down and pounded on the stapler on his desk. “See, when he saw Doc Rahala, about a month before he passed, Doc told him his heart was not going to hold out much longer. Ray explained to Doc that without considerable cash for the mortgage you would likely lose the farm. He told him he intended to buy a life insurance policy for that purpose. Ray told Doc he needed him to sign the waiver of medical fitness required by the insurance company. Well, the doc signed off thinking he was doing the right thing. This is where the whole thing gets really messy. You see Doc’s heart was in the right place but his ethics were definitely in the wrong place. I only found out about this later from Doc, after Ray’s funeral, and after the insurance company had paid out the proceeds to you. Technically this was insurance fraud, and if I had prior knowledge of this arrangement Doc and I could both face jail time. Do you see what a damn mess this could be?
“Well, Clara, this puts me in a rather embarrassing and difficult position. I don’t lie, mostly because it always comes back to slap you in the face.”
“What do you mean, Arvid?” Clara was angry and perplexed. This was not like Raymond. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why was the beneficiary line not complete?”
“Leave it alone Clara.” He was tense, sliding his office chair back forcefully. “He had a friend,” he said, finally exasperated.
It all made sense now. She was stunned as if she had been a gut-shot doe.
He pushed on reluctantly. “Ray had a friend he intended to name as his beneficiary but ironically he passed before he had a chance to add her name to the policy, so by default, as his legal wife you received the proceeds. I’m really sorry Clara to be the one to bring this to your attention and I wouldn’t have brought it up but…” his voice trailed off.
“Doesn’t all of this seem downright ugly, maybe even malicious?” she asked tearfully. “Who is she?”
“I’m sorry I don’t know for certain and I won’t pass on a rumor I can’t confirm. Ray never told me and, frankly, at this point I don’t even want to know.”
Despite what he had said earlier about lying, Clara suspected he wasn’t telling the whole truth. She slammed the office door as she left, rattling the glass in the door frame.
——————--
She missed church the following Sunday. She had never been a drinker, but she swallowed the foul-smelling whiskey as she rocked back and forth in the antique rocker.
Ray’s family had owned this piece of ground for generations. But at times they had needed to borrow from the Credit Union to buy cattle or hay, or to put a roof on the old red barn. Finns all. They were hard-scrabble farmers that stuck to their land like wood ticks: hard to brush off, stubborn, obstinate, and linked to the land with an unmatched ferocity that only God could understand. Her ancestors were the same, lived in the same township, farmed the same God-forsaken earth that Ray’s ancestors had farmed. Clara tipped back the cracked coffee mug. Whiskey ran down her cheek and mixed with tears.
She had never questioned his love before, although he never would have used the word love; that was too sentimental for him. His staunch Lutheran background would not allow him to whisper words of tenderness, although he would touch her hand now and then in the evenings as the sun sank over the Porcupine Mountains and she knew what he needed, and she dutifully followed him to the bedroom. Her life had been a pattern like a handmade quilt she had sewn; predictable, and to her way of thinking, complete.
They had never used a condom, never needed or wanted too, as she saw children as a gift from the creator. But here it was, a condom, hidden in his old hunting coat. It jarred her mind, but it finally occurred to her, that not only had Ray had a sexual relationship outside their marriage but most likely with a younger woman of child-bearing age. She had wondered at first who she was, now with this discovery it seemed to narrow down the possibilities.
Raymond was 61 when he died, and to her mind she figured the woman might be in her later thirties or so, to still be concerned about conceiving, otherwise why need a condom? It wasn’t that venereal disease wasn’t known around here, but there were no local gossip of any recent outbreaks, so that seemed unlikely.
Clara recalled that Naomi, a beautiful widow with a small child had attended the July memorial for Raymond. At the time, Clara had thought nothing of this, but she remembered Naomi had worn long black gloves despite the summer heat.
Clara, despite her growing contempt, realized how attractive she might appeal to an older man, and there was the issue of Clara’s missing cameo ring, passed down to her from Raymond’s late mother Hilda, long deceased. The cameo ring, a Victorian piece was not worth a great deal, but the figure of Cleopatra carved intricately into the Ceprodite was elegant and, to her mind, unique. Clara had noticed it missing from her jewelry box several years ago, but thought at the time she had just misplaced it. Perhaps, the long black gloves were worn to hide the truth, a truth that Naomi chose to conceal.
And, of course, Raymond, the president of the church board had those monthly meetings, which naturally, Naomi as the treasurer was most certain to have attended.
Clara washed the chipped plate, as ketchup stained the dishwater red. She wiped bread crumbs from the table, a sick feeling gripped her like an ill-timed fever. She slept fitfully, tossing and lost in dark dreams.
——————--
As the lone rooster crowed, Clara roused and opened the drawer of her nightstand. The sharp redolent smell of gun oil penetrated the air of her tidy bedroom. She withdrew the old 38 pistol, there was one shell in the chamber, that’s all she would need.
When they first married they would often go partridge hunting. Ray preferred a pistol over the most often used shotgun for bird hunting, more skill needed he had once told her. She would drive the backroads while Ray, in the passenger seat, scanned the road ahead for grouse, sipping mud puddle water and ingesting the necessary gravel for their gullet.
On the farm, guns were like hand tools, sharpened and ready, just in case. Mostly, the pistol was for home protection but she was well-acquainted with the firearm. She’s shot a few varmints in her day, raccoons, skunks, and once a coyote, all with the 38. Link Ray, she thought it more of a matter of pride to take an adversary with a pistol as opposed to the old double-gauge. She returned the pistol to the nightstand, slowly shutting the drawer, at least, for the time being.
——————--
She recalled:
The garden had been too large for just the two of them. Of course, if there had been children, maybe grandchildren, she would have gratefully exchanged her labor for the laughter of little ones; but no, that would never be. She had been childless, barren they called it. What an ugly word, barren, like the blister on her hand, evocative but disgusting.
As the day warmed, sweat dripped down between her breasts. She didn’t hoe the invasive garden weeds, as much as she pummeled them, anger at Ray mixed paradoxically with a rising sexual desire. Why this was so, she couldn’t determine. Clara knelt in the black dust, the worn garden dress pulled up around her thighs. She yanked an over-ripe cucumber from a withered vine, breathing heavily, her hands drenched in anticipating sweat. The crows were the only witnesses as she finally collapsed, spent.
——————--
The doctor was never certain whether her inability to conceive was her fault or Ray’s. She had often laid awake at night and wondered if God was punishing her for fondling herself when she was younger. It was a sin according to church doctrine, and in her thoughts, could bring damnation.
She had been tempted to try another man to see whether his seed would take; perhaps John, a sturdy man who picked up the heavy milk cans for the creamery, but she refrained, though the thought had made her wet at times.
“Raymond, what if we adopted or took in foster children,” she had once asked.
“Not the same, Clara. Need to pass down blood; God’s will. Be patient.”
She’d been patient, but still, no children blessed her house. She’d cried often, but never when he was around. She’d hid her despair like the blood-stained rags that came monthly, a sober reminder that another month had passed and still she had no child.
Rocking, rocking in the antique cane-back chair, she recalled what Ray had said.
“Clara, with the war winding down in Korea the price of beef is going to jump. We’ll get rid of a few heifers, should do well this year, maybe could take a day off and go to the Copper Country, see the big lake, have dinner, you know.”
“Yes,” she had replied, unenthusiastically, “What if we drove to Berea, Kentucky, and visit that famous college there. I read a lot about it in a magazine at Doctor Rahala’s office. Most of the magazines there are as old as I am, but still they must still be around. Could see Mammoth Cave too.
“Berea College? Why the hell do we want to go there?”
“Cause they teach old-time crafts like weaving, pottery, blacksmithing, and such. I think it would be interesting for both of us, maybe even sculpting.”
“Doesn’t sound interesting to me. Both our families had to do that stuff to survive. I don’t want to be reminded of all that misery.”
“But what if we got away for a week or so from the darn cattle; have your cousin take care of them. We could afford to do that you know.”
“Can’t. The cattle are skittish around strangers. They’re used to you and me. They know us. We’re familiar. Besides who will usher at church? No one else can squeeze those old Finnlanders for cash like I can. Pastor told me so. I do an evil eye on the holdouts,” she remembered he had said, “and they cough up God’s due.”
And then she remembered like a flash of lightning what followed. “I count the offering after all the folks are gone. Just me and God in the sanctuary, quiet and alone.”
Was he alone, as he stated? She had her doubts now. “Really, in God’s church?”
——————--
It was late afternoon. Clara ate a light dinner of pickled bologna and a warm slice of her homemade bread with a slather of butter from the neighbor’s Guernseys. As the sun dropped beyond the mountain, she cracked the seal of a bottle of cheap whiskey.
Clara topped off the mug of whiskey with copious amounts of water. Hangovers had been too frequent and she knew she had to end this pattern, and she would at the right time, but not yet.
Clara’s father had been an alcoholic and she had no intention of repeating his habit. As an only child she spent many hours alone. In some ways this had been fortunate as it drove her to read anything within reach and forced her to be creative, if nothing else, to burn up loneliness. Her mother had died when she was 12 leaving her and her mostly absent father alone in the drafty farmhouse. Consequently she developed her artistic nature. She had had a frivolous dream of becoming a sculptor as a young child, and fashioned clay figures from a dull-grey clay she discovered on the back forty. She kneaded the sticky clay with Lake Superior’s beach sand and the unfired sculptures dried reasonably well in the summer sun.
She had imagined her mythical creatures came to life at night when she had lonely dreams. Once, she fashioned Pegasus, the luminous winged white horse, out of the sticky clay, but it crumbled to nothing after a summer’s thunderstorm. Dreams, now gone.
—————————--
She remembered, “Ray I’m tired of shoveling manure and mending fences. Why don’t we sell out and move to where there isn’t miserable cold and snow — someplace warm.”
“Clara, I’m part of Nelson, this village, this farm. It’s all a part of me. If we moved it would be like choppin’ off a part of myself.”
“You mean you won’t do it?”
He shrugged, that was how he was.
After the auction, the cattle and farm equipment were sold off. An adjacent farmer bought the land at a fair price. For the last time, Clara mucked out the stalls. If the farm hadn’t sold she would have let it all gone fallow. She knew she was done, just done.
Life was simpler now, and she hated to admit it but with Raymond gone the financial burden was lifted, and to her shame, she felt a sense of relief. His death had made everything possible. She shrank back from this shameful self-admission but it was as if God had granted her another life, a life after Raymond.
That afternoon she bought a bus ticket to Berea, Kentucky and packed a battered suitcase. Tomorrow she would leave, forever — there was just one thing left to do.
Clara knocked, uninvited, at Naomi’s door. The white house, neat and tidy by the village of Nelson’s standards, sat quietly on a dead-end dirt road.
Naomi opened the door, with a look of surprise on her face. A very young boy pulled at his mother’s apron.
“I’m sorry Clara but I’ve got a cake in the oven, could you come back some other time?” Clara noted the cameo ring on her left hand as she gripped the door handle tightly.
“Oh Naomi, this won’t take long — please. I intend you no harm, but I do know the truth about you and my late husband.”
Naomi looked apprehensive. “Really this isn’t a good time.”
“Yes, I’m sure it isn’t but I am leaving Nelson this afternoon and I don’t think I will ever be back. Please, I would love to have a cup of tea with you before I leave.”
Reluctantly, Naomi opened the half-closed door and Clara entered.
“Please sit down, I’ll put on some fresh water for tea,” Naomi said, turning her back. Clara seated herself at the kitchen table.
“I want you to understand that I didn’t come in anger. I’m past that point, although a couple of months — well — let’s just say I might have put a bullet in your heart.”
Naomi flinched as if she had been shot. “I know we shouldn’t have… but we fell in love, and well,” she motioned with her head towards the young boy. “There’s Gene.” Clara had already guessed this from a rumor she has overheard at the General Store.
“Did you know that Gene is Raymond’s middle name, Naomi?”
“No, Ray never told me that.”
“There’s probably a lot of things Ray didn’t tell you, like that ring for instance.”
“Well, I know it was old, and I assumed it might have been from his family, so I chose not to flash it at Ray’s funeral.”
“That was kind of you,” Clara said, with a slight note of bitterness. “It was a gift, Ray’s mother Hilda gave to me shortly after we married. I think it is fair to say I had sentimental feelings about it.”
Naomi slipped off the ring. “Please take it, I would only have contempt, not for you, but for Ray,” she paused. “like in the Bible, I have had a poor harvest.” Naomi wept.
Clara reached across the table and took Naomi’s hand, “Perhaps we both have.” Clara wiped a tear from her cheek.
“What are we to do?” Naomi said, her voice cracking from the strain.
“You have a boy to raise, and I suppose that is both your duty and your penance.” Clara sighed, still choking back tears.
Naomi hung her head. “What a mess Ray and I made of all of this. I never thought the condom…” her voice trailed off.
“I see,” Clara said, “that explains much.”
Silence settled in for a moment as each woman collected her thoughts. Then Clara took a deep breath. “I suppose you know Ray intended to leave you some funds, I suppose to raise your son.”
“Yes, he told me he intended to leave me $20,000 dollars and $40,000 to you. Ray thought you should have it to pay off the mortgage.”
Clara was visibly shaken. “I thought he intended to give all of it to you.”
“Oh no,” Naomi said. “He never meant for me to have all the life insurance. He never would have done that to you. No matter what you might believe, he loved you dearly. He just loved us both — seems to be a problem many men have. My first husband too, God damn his soul,” she spat out. “Seems I got caught in my same trap twice. I guess that’s why they call all of that sin.
“I guess I see Ray’s last actions as a kind of redemption,” she was breathing heavily, now. “I suppose he meant well, all in all, and between you and me, he failed both of us miserably, but himself as well.
“I have to leave soon,” Clara related matter-of-factly, “or I will not have the courage to leave. I brought my checkbook with me and I intend to give you a check for $1,000 every Christmas for Gene’s care, until he is a young adult. There is one stipulation. You must write me a long letter each Christmas about Gene’s life. I want to be involved but only on the periphery. The boy should know about his father, both the good and the bad. Tell me about how you and Gene are doing. Can we agree on that? He’s not my son, but in some strange way all of us are connected.”
Naomi sighed and shook her head in agreement, as Clara wrote out the first check.
“I have rented a room within walking distance from Berea College in Kentucky, where I intend to study sculpting.” Clara slid the chair out from the table. “I will be in touch soon. Who knows, maybe I will meet a young sculptor and fall madly in love,” she said, smiling. “Life is short.”
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Clara sat on the wooden bench, at the village corner, waiting for the Greyhound to arrive. It would be there soon. She happened to glance up and realized that the bus stop was also the Texaco gas station and that the lighted sign was the image of Pegasus, the mythical winged horse, and she smiled.