Early Warning

They all signed the deeds, and Frank received his one-dollar “consideration” and put it in his inside jacket pocket. He said, “Okay, I suppose I’ll invest this in computers.”

Everyone laughed again.

The lawyer swept up the papers and stacked them together. He congratulated Joe and Jesse, now joint owners of a very nice farm, and, as they all left the office, he put his finger on Frank’s arm. “I have to tell you, I’ve seen a lot of grief and fury in this office. Glad to see this one stay together and remain a family farm.”

Frank smacked him on the back in a friendly way, then followed his brother and nephew onto the porch and down the long driveway. They paused when they got to the street. It was late afternoon, but the air was still bright and flat with dust. Joe said, “Never thought that would be so easy. When John died, my heart sank, I gotta tell you.”

“Who’s going to live over in their house?” Only two houses now — the kit house where Joe and Lois lived with Minnie, and this old Vogel-Augsberger place.

“It’s in pretty good shape,” said Joe. “John told me it was built by a famous bricklayer who’d come over from Bavaria after learning his trade there. I guess he made the bricks himself.”

Frank said, “Remember the story Opa used to tell about the brick maker who refused to give the king an extra brick?”

Jesse said, “What was that?”

“Well, every time the brick maker took his bricks from the kiln, he set aside a certain number for the king, and at the end of the year, he pushed them in his wheelbarrow to the castle. They were fine bricks, of an unusual color, and after the king had received them for many years, he decided to build a house with them, with an arched doorway as an entrance. But after the house was built, the builder was one brick shy — the very brick he needed as the keystone of the arch. He wanted all the bricks to match, so he sent his representative to the brick maker to demand one last brick. However, since the brick maker had paid his taxes, he asked that the king pay him one aureus — that’s a gold coin — for the brick. The representative sent a messenger to the king, and when the king, who was walking around the new house, heard the message, he became enraged at the arrogance of the brick maker. He sent the messenger back to arrest the brick maker and throw him into the dungeon. He kept walking around and around the new house, and after a while he was so angry at the pride of this mere common brick maker that he decided that he wanted to go and demand the brick himself. And so the king rushed out of the house, and as he did so, his crown hit the top of the arch, and the arch, being unsecured, collapsed on top of him and killed him.”

“I don’t remember that story,” said Joe.

“Is there a moral?” said Jesse.

“Sometimes it’s easier to pay,” said Frank. “ ‘Do the easier thing’ was always Opa’s moral. He was a happy man.”

Frank did not want to be thanked. What he wanted was just this thing that he was now getting: Jesse laughing at his story, this knowledge that his money had gone for something worthwhile at last, that, against all odds, he was a good man, that happiness could be bought — if not his, then Jesse’s and, yes, Joe’s. Joe and Jesse got into the same car, Jesse driving, and waved as they drove off. Frank stood for another moment or two, not knowing quite where to go for the evening.

1977

AS OLD AS she was and as much as she had seen, Eloise understood politics less and less. How blithely she and Julius had once discussed whether, in America, class was the most important political divide, or race. Julius held out for class — he was a traditionalist, wasn’t he? — and Eloise insisted on race. But neither of them had any idea what they were talking about — they had learned it all from books. In 1920s Chicago, they had been know-it-all tourists, writing articles and tracts extrapolated from the theories of Germans living in England. How was she to think about the Zebra killings, converted Muslim black boys walking around San Francisco, torturing and shooting random white women and old men because they were white and white people were devils? She thought several things, and one of them was, why not, really, given the past and present cruelties that whites perpetrated on blacks? Another of them was, if women were equal to men, then why were their murders more affecting? And another of them was that religion was not just the opiate of the people but an out-and-out poison; and still another was, I hope I don’t get shot walking down Shattuck, thinking about whether I should wash the car. And what was she supposed to think about the Symbionese Liberation Army and Patty Hearst?