This Tender Land - William Kent Krueger Page 0,127

In the faces of the women around that cook fire, what I saw was the vacant look of abandonment, and I knew it was all my fault.

“I’ll find him,” I said, thinking this might be a way to atone, but also thinking that it would be a way to escape the despair of that little gathering.

“I’ll go, too,” Maybeth offered.

We rose and set off together.

* * *

“HE DOESN’T USUALLY start his drinking until later,” Maybeth said as we walked. “It’s this whole situation, being stuck here with no idea how to get unstuck. He’s really a good man, Buck.”

I wished I believed that were so, but I knew the truth of the situation. I’d given her father the wherewithal to change his family’s dire circumstances, and all he’d done was head off on a tear. Good money after bad. I hated it when Albert was right.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so low,” she said. “It kills me to see Mama and Mother Beal working so hard to hold us all together. And then Papa goes and does something like this.”

I held Maybeth’s hand. Even though her face was clouded with worry, she was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and her ache was mine. My conscience was screaming at me to confess, but my heart was cowering at the prospect of falling out of her good graces. I wanted to help but had no idea what to do at that juncture. So I did what came naturally to me. I hauled out my mouth organ and began to play a tune, the liveliest that came to mind, Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm.”

A few bars in, Maybeth began to sing, and I was amazed that she knew the words.

She was smiling now, singing how you wouldn’t find old man trouble around her door, and her face seemed more beautiful than ever. Then her eyes rounded wide, and I caught what she’d just heard—the sound of her father singing along in a drunken tenor. His voice came from a short distance away, somewhere in Hopersville. I kept playing, and Mr. Schofield sang right along, and we followed the sound of his warble to where he sat on an upended water bucket, his back against the raggedy wall of Captain Gray’s mostly cardboard shanty, keeping company with the captain himself. He gave us a broad smile and opened his arms in welcome.

“Will you look at this, Captain? My two favorite young people, glowing like angels in the morning sun.”

“Papa,” Maybeth said, her voice severe. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

“Not everywhere apparently,” he said, beaming. “For here I am, love.”

“Drunk,” she said and cast a cold eye that included the captain.

Mr. Schofield raised his hand in a solemn pledge. “I haven’t touched a drop today. If I’m drunk, it’s only with happiness. And there’s the cause.” He poked his finger at me.

Despite his protestation, he sure seemed stewed. But close as I was to him, I caught no smell of booze. I did catch the smell of gasoline, however.

“Our deliverer, Maybeth child. And the fruit of his generosity.” Her father reached down and touched a red, spouted, five-gallon gas can with SKELLY printed on the side. “This is our ticket out of Hopersville. Next stop, Chicago.”

Maybeth looked rightly confused. “You haven’t been drinking?”

“As I said, not even a taste. I went off this morning in search of a gas station. And then a store, where I bought a little gift for everyone, you included.”

He reached down to a brown paper bag, stuffed full, and what he drew out made Maybeth gasp with surprise and pleasure: a blue dress.

“It’s almost exactly like the one I gave Janie Baldwin,” she cried and, taking the dress, held it to herself as if appraising in a mirror how it might look on her. I was thinking that it might look pretty wonderful.

“Buck, I hope you don’t mind me using a little of your gift to gift a few others,” Mr. Schofield said.

“It’s your money now,” I told him.

“Well, then I don’t guess you’ll mind that I gave Captain Gray here a little gift, too. Enough money for a bus ticket to D.C. so he can join that Bonus Army gathering there.”

I didn’t know what a bus ticket to Washington, D.C., might cost. I just hoped there was enough left to get the Schofields to Chicago.

Mr. Schofield laughed. “I can see from your face you’re worried that I’ve blown the whole wad. Rest easy, Buck.