Froelich's Ladder Read online

  The place was a haven for lost souls. Fathers and husbands, the missing and the presumed dead. Those who had a weakness for gambling or drink, or those with no weakness at all—nothing to goad their intractable hearts. Deep in the woods, where the continent still provided some measure of privacy, a man could ignore his past. He could live outside of history, were he so inclined, indulging in every sordid delight, or just one; could die a thousand deaths, or just one. The trees made for good company, neither inclined to gossip, nor did they encroach.

  By the light of the campfire, Gordy regarded the boy. He had fine features: high cheekbones and lips in the shape of a heart. Still, he must’ve had iron at his core to endure such a beating. Somebody at the Logging Camp would pay a hefty price for him, presuming he made it that far.

  “Lookout for what?” Carmichael growled.

  If one thing would satisfy a man’s doubt, it was greed. Slumping his shoulders, Gordy said, “Gold. And I wouldn’t’ve fallen, too! Except that he told me which branch to sit on. They’re going to be so mad, when they get back!”

  Gold: the word had a palpable effect on the two men. Though they tried to remain calm, their eyes grew wide and their ears pricked up. Pretending he didn’t notice, Gordy swiped his foot against the ground.

  “Who’s gonna be mad?” Carmichael said.

  “My boss! But I’m the one who should be steamed—I could’ve hurt myself! I said it wouldn’t hold, but he never listens. If he did, they wouldn’t be stumbling around in the dark like a bunch of fools!”

  “Never you mind them!” Nantz yipped. “What’s this about gold?”

  Carmichael cut him off, focusing on Gordy with unnerving intensity. “How’s that, he never listens? I bet you got some good ideas. Like what, for example?”

  “I’m not supposed to say …”

  “Listen, it’s just us out here. Don’t you worry about the boss man—he sure as sugar ain’t worried about you! Where’d you be right now, if we hadn’ta catched you? Like you said—hurt or worse!”

  “But you didn’t catch me,” Gordy protested, momentarily forgetting himself. “I hit the ground!”

  “No, I’m pretty sure we catched you. Nantz, wouldn’t you say you catched him?”

  “I sure would.” The skinny man nodded. “You bet I catched him.”

  “See? We saved your life! Which is lucky, because there’s lots of ways to die in the woods—especially out here, all alone. Now, why don’t you tell me about this gold?”

  Gordy made sure they could see him thinking. “The far side of the river,” he finally confessed. “That’s where you’ll find it. A prospector sold my boss the claim. They all went upstream, to where there’s a ferry. Only, if he’d listened to me, they didn’t have to go. I could see where it’s not too deep, from way up in that tree. They could’ve forded the river right here!”

  The Confederates reached a consensus without having to speak a word; all that remained was to suss out the details. “You hear that, Nantz?” Carmichael purred. “Paid for the paper—means he’ll have it on him.”

  “Means they ain’t expecting a fight.”

  “How many’d you say they were?”

  Not wanting to overdo it, Gordy ventured, “Four?”

  “You hear that, Nantz? Four.”

  “And no lookout.”

  Hauling the impassive boy to his feet, Carmichael fixed his eyes on Gordy, declaring, “Take us there.”

  There wasn’t any moonlight to guide them, so they made their way by the sound of the water—that and the stars above, winking down from between the trees. Beside the ache in his head, Gordy had been hobbled by the fall, and yet he still had a lighter step than his coterie. Carmichael and Nantz negotiated the underbrush like a pair of boars. If Gordy had wanted to escape, he could’ve. Twice they got separated, and twice he had to summon them back. But Carmichael was dragging the young boy by the arm. To part with them now would mean ill tidings for their ward, and a blight on Gordy’s conscience. So instead he stuck to his original plan.

  When they finally arrived at the riverbank, it was a stupefying sight, like the earth was slipping sideways. Were it not for the constellations’ reflection on the water, it might’ve resembled an avalanche, the landscape scoured clean.

  “Jesus!” whistled Nantz. “You got a way across that?”

  “It’s more shallow than it looks. Just go straight ahead.”

  “You first.”

  “Me?” Gordy squeaked. “If I’m in the river, I can’t show you the way. I won’t be able to see the path!”

  “What path? I thought you said it’s a straight line.”

  “Look, if you’d rather wait, we can go at first light …”

  “Holy Moses,” Carmichael huffed, tugging at his shirt and kicking off his shoes. “Enough talk! If we wait till morning, they’ll beat us here. Get in the d—ned water, Nantz. Quit being such a crybaby!”

  Thus, timidly, the two men entered the river, while Gordy and the boy remained onshore. Carmichael and Nantz walked gingerly, shoulders up around their ears and clothes held high, the starlight illuminating their pale torsos.

  “Don’t worry,” Gordy whispered to the boy. “It won’t take long.”

  “Are we goin’ straight?” Carmichael hollered to the shore.

  “Straight as an arrow,” Gordy replied.

  “The water’s so fast!”

  “What’s he think?” Gordy muttered. “I can make it any slower?”

  “WHAT?”

  “I said, hold onto each other! For balance!”

  Groping at his portly companion, Nantz insisted, “Hold onto me, Carmichael—for balance!”

  Ironically, it was the slender man who brought them down. When he slipped on a rock, already sternum-deep, Nantz refused to relinquish his grip on his friend. Rather than anchor them in place, Carmichael also lost his purchase, and together they were dispatched in a matter of seconds—so fast, there was hardly time to hear them scream.

  Only after they’d vanished from sight did the boy speak—his voice more tenor than baritone. “My daddy says never cross a river at night.”

  “Yeah?” Gordy replied. “He sounds like a smart man, your daddy.”

  “Nah. He says lots of things.”

  With dawn still hours to come, Gordy trudged back toward the Confederates’ campsite, followed by his companion. When Gordy paused along the way to collect firewood, the boy stopped too, always lingering at a distance, offering neither his assistance nor his gratitude. After they got back and the fire had been fed, there was nothing to eat and little to do. The only sport was staring at each other, which Gordy expected would bore him to sleep.

  “Ma runs a boarding house,” the boy finally volunteered, breaking the silence. “You can eat something, if you like.”

  “I’d appreciate that. I’m Gordy, by the way.”

  “I’m Gak.”

  “Gak?”

  “Something wrong with your ears?”

  Gordy sighed. “No, I guess not.”

  “What was you doing up there really, in that tree? You ain’t no lookout.”

  “I fell off a ladder.”

  “A ladder?” Gak snorted. “You fell off a ladder and into a tree?”

  “Yeah, well.” Moving his body a little closer to the fire, Gordy laced his fingers behind his head. “Let’s just say it’s a really big ladder.”

  Chapter 5

  In front of strangers, her siblings called her Gak. They’d found that three women invited more attention than two women and a teenage boy, so with their daddy missing and Hollis not yet big enough to lift a gunnysack, Gak played a role: minding the guests, making conversation, and otherwise impersonating the man of the house. Ma ran the enterprise, but should trouble arise, as it invariably did, it was Gak who wielded the Winchester over the mantel.

  Despite his heroics at the riverside, Gordy was treated no different: Gak didn’t reveal her true sex, nor did Hollis or Dolly betray her secret. Good to her word
, she provided Gordy with a breakfast of steak and eggs, washed down with an inky cup of coffee. While he hacked away at his slab of meat, the children openly stared at him, kicking their feet under the kitchen table like they were treading water. Upstairs, Ma’s footfalls marked her progress from room to room as she freshened the bed sheets.

  “So, your uncle just lives up there,” Gak stated, incredulous. “That’s what you’re saying?”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Gordy agreed, using his knife and fork like a drunken sawbones.

  “How come I’ve never heard of this ladder before, if it’s so big?”

  Rubbing the back of his head and wincing, Gordy said, “You should’ve. You will. It’s gonna be famous.”

  “But … on a ladder? He lives up there, way on the very top?”

  “Everyone’s gotta live somewhere.”

  “Sure,” Gak scoffed. “And everyone’s gotta eat. So what’s he have for food?”

  “Eggs, seeds—whatever he can find. There’s a garden.”

  “A garden? What’s he grow—squash?”

  Dolly whispered something in Hollis’s ear and the two of them giggled. Sometimes, just the sight of Gak in pants was enough to set them off. Quick as a whip, Gak separated them, hauling Hollis’s chair away from the table such that the legs made an aggrieved sound.

  “It ain’t polite to tell secrets,” she reprimanded her younger brother. Then, turning to her sister, “Maybe there’s something you’d like to ask our guest?”

  “Where’s he go?” Dolly queried Gordy, her eyes twinkling mischievously. Dressed in a patchwork of purple and green, Dolly resembled a bird of paradise, perched on the edge of her seat. Gak tried to recognize her garment from its previous incarnation, whether as a quilt or a curtain, but Dolly had done an expert job of seaming, rendering it something completely different.

  “Where’s he go?” Gordy echoed. “Mostly up-and-down, depending on his needs. Only, Froelich would say it’s forward-and-backward, on account of—”

  “No,” Dolly interrupted him, fighting back a snicker. “I mean, where’s he go?”

  Catching her meaning, and glancing back and forth between the two of them (poor Hollis barely able to keep a straight face), Gordy shook out his napkin.

  “When Froelich goes,” he said, “he just goes—and the rest of us try to stay dry.”

  The children delivered the expected response: scandalized delight. Hollis, in particular, was incensed, laughing so hard that his nose whistled, which inspired even Gak to grin. Finally, their guffaws were curbed by a noise from upstairs: a note, or tone, inaudible to their guest, which caused the three of them to stiffen.

  “So … who-all else?” Gak inquired, trying without success to paint the moment as unremarkable. Meanwhile, Dolly and Hollis retreated into themselves, their faces going slack. “Standing under the ladder, trying not to get pissed on? There’s you, your daddy and ma—?”

  “My brother Binx,” Gordy informed her. “It’s just the two of us. Lotsee died while she was birthing him, and Harald passed away two years ago.”

  “We had a brother who died when he was born,” said Dolly, solemnly.

  Gak waved a hand. “You’re too little to recall.” She herself had been Dolly’s age. All she could remember were the grim details: the labor, the bloody sheets, digging a hole in the frozen ground. “Anyway, there’s no reason to dwell on it. What I’d like to know is, if this uncle of yours fell off a ladder, where’s he now?”

  “A cloud probably poached him—they migrate toward the coastline this time of year.”

  “A cloud?”

  “It must’ve been hungry,” Gordy said, laying down his fork and knife. “Still, it takes a long time for a cloud to digest something. Froelich should be fine, so long as he can get himself down. But it raises another question, doesn’t it? Where do I find him?”

  Gak didn’t answer immediately, uncertain of whether or not she was being teased. Dolly and Hollis looked perplexed, too—stuck between wearing a frown and a smile. If Gordy intended to be funny, he had a strange sense of humor.

  Opting for sincerity, she said to him, “I’ll tell you where to look—wherever your uncle landed, he probably ended up at the Logging Camp. Everybody does, sooner or later.”

  At this point in the conversation, Gak was preempted by her ma, who entered the room with a basketful of laundry. A short woman with chapped hands, she’d yet to speak in the presence of their guest—not in response to Gak’s battered face, which she had left unexplained, nor to any of her quips. This had had a predictable effect on Gordy, who’d seemed otherwise inclined to mind his own business. Like many men before him, he’d responded to her indifference by babbling uncontrollably.

  “Thanks again for the grub, miss!” he said stupidly, while at the same time trying to conceal his plate by draping a napkin over it. “Can I help you with anything? Maybe I can carry that?”

  “If you’re so eager to work,” Gak suggested, “there’s plenty to be done. You know how to dig a hole? Or shovel s—t? If you got a strong back, there’s always more s—t to be shoveled. I’d say it’s worth dinner and supper—wouldn’t you agree, Ma?”

  “Thanks, but no,” Gordy quickly demurred. “It’s been nice meeting you all. But, like I was saying, I’ve got to find my uncle.”

  “And like I was saying,” Gak echoed, standing up from the table and pushing out her chair, “he’s at the Logging Camp if he’s anywhere at all. There’s a mail jitney that stops at the Myers & Co. Store—first come, first served. It’ll save you a day’s journey, walking to the coast. You wouldn’t mind, Ma, if I showed our guest to the store?”

  Not the faintest utterance passed her ma’s lips, much less a yea or a nay. Still, a curt dialogue was taking place. When Gak had returned with her face beat up, she’d been missing for three days. Dolly and Hollis hadn’t asked any questions, which was unusual for them, but Ma would hold her tongue the longest. Such as it was, she now claimed the final word in their silent debate: blithely humming a hymn and exiting the dining room with the laundry on her hip.

  “She don’t mind,” Gak grumbled, sounding unconvincing even to her own ear. Squatting between her siblings, she took a moment to address them, draping her arms around their shoulders and swiveling her head to and fro. “I gotta go now—”

  “Again?”

  “—but I want y’all to listen. Hollis—you listening? Be good to Ma, and don’t cause her any grief. Dolly’s in charge while I’m away. Dolly, if there’s trouble you and your brother go hide till it’s safe, then run for McHenry’s farm. Everyone remembers which direction that is? Okay, then—gimme a big hug.”

  “Is the store very far?” Gordy joked, making a bid for levity, but nobody shared his humor. With her arms wrapped around them, Gak could feel the warmth of her brother and sister, and imagined she could allay all their fears. Truthfully, any assurance would be a lie. Despite the Winchester, the hymnal, and the McHenrys’ farm, death could arrive at any time and take any form: pestilence in the water or a lecherous neighbor. Life was a promise made to be broken, another hole dug in the frozen ground. None of them was really safe.

  Outside, the day had become muggy, midges suspended in the air like dust motes. The road they were taking (a path frequented by homesteaders, and not unfamiliar to animal tracks) was narrow and shrouded, such that Gak could reach out and touch the trees on either side. She would’ve been content to walk in silence. Indeed, she might’ve preferred it, only Gordy seemed beset by guilt.

  Stepping over a branch, he commented, “I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

  “Who?”

  “Your brother and sister—I’m sure they’ll be safe.”

  “Safe from what?”

  “Carmichael and Nantz,” he promptly replied—because, apparently, the Confederates were his only context for danger.

  “Those goons?” Gak laughed. “I’m more afeared of bee stings, if I wanted a fright. D’you know how many Rebels we’ve hosted
, since the war between the states? Good Lord, it’s been one after the other, on their way up to Canada. I tell ’em, if you hate Negroes so much, why not stay here? We’ve got exclusionary laws! And nooses, they say, and circuit judges. Thanks, but no thanks. Anyway, those two aren’t worth losing sleep over.”

  Skipping over a divot in the road, she slapped at a low-hanging limb, provoking a claque of birds to take flight. Gordy observed this feat with bald skepticism.

  “Oh, no?” he said. “Weren’t they the ones who bruised your face? I wouldn’t think too generously of whoever did it.”

  Delicately probing the flesh around her eye, Gak scowled. “Yeah, well … maybe so. But the joke’s on them, ain’t it? Good luck finding the Logging Camp without my help—if they do float ashore, which I doubt they will.”

  Abruptly, Gordy stopped walking.

  “You wanted to go to the Logging Camp?”

  “Sure I do!” Gak declared. “That’s where I was going the whole time. It’s safer traveling in twos and threes—though I might’ve picked better company. What, you thought they nabbed me?”

  “I might’ve been informed,” Gordy grumbled. When Gak failed to provide a timely response, he said it again, and louder. “I might’ve been informed you weren’t their captive. I might’ve known that, before sticking my neck out for you.”

  Gak’s first instinct was to deliver a retort: if breakfast hadn’t been reward enough, he should’ve picked up a shovel! But, for once, she thought twice. So far, Gordy had done right by her. He’d kept his word, as well as keeping his hands to himself. If Gak were going to depend on him, she could start by being honest.