Read Online Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger - Free Book Online
Authors: William Kent Krueger
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fellowship hall during which I was questioned a good deal about the dead man Jake and I had found. Each time I repeated the story I embellished it just a bit more and as a result suffered Jake’s disapproving scowl. So much so that by the last telling I’d made him little more than a footnote in the tale.
When my father had finished with the final service that day, which was held at noon in the church in Fosburg a dozen miles north of New Bremen, he drove us all home. As always it felt as if I’d just spent a long time in hell and had finally been granted a divine pardon. I raced to my bedroom and changed my clothes and got ready to enjoy the rest of the day. When I went downstairs I found my mother in the kitchen pulling food from the refrigerator. She’d put together a tuna casserole and Jell-O salad the night before which I figured would be our dinner. My father entered the kitchen after me and it was clear he thought so too. He said, Dinner?
Not for us, my mother replied. It’s for Amelia Klement. The ladies of the choir told me that she was quite ill and that was why she didn’t come to church today. She pushed my father aside and walked to the counter with the pan of tuna casserole in hand. She said, Amelia’s life is a prison cell presided over by Travis Klement, who, if he isn’t the worst husband in the world, is certainly in the running. She’s told me more times than I can count that choir practice on Wednesday and church on Sunday are the two things she looks forward to most in a week. If she couldn’t make it to church today, she must be very ill, and I intend to see that she doesn’t have to worry about feeding her family. I’m going to finish this casserole, and then I’m going to deliver it, and you’re coming with me.
What about our dinner? This slipped from my lips before I had a chance to think about the advisability of asking.
My mother gave me a scathing look. You won’t starve. I’ll put something together.
The truth was that it was fine with me. I wasn’t at all fond of tuna casserole. And I thought that if she and my father were driving out to Peter Klement’s house I might go along and tell Peter about the dead man. I was really warming to the effect this story seemed to have on those who heard it.
Ariel came into the kitchen dressed for work at the country club.
My mother asked, Would you like a sandwich before you go?
No, I’ll grab something when I get there. Ariel lingered and leaned against the counter and said, What if I didn’t go to Juilliard this fall?
My father who’d plucked a banana from the bunch on the top of the refrigerator and was peeling it said, We’d send you to work in the salt mines instead.
I mean, Ariel said, it would be cheaper if I went to Mankato State.
You’re on a scholarship, my father pointed out and stuffed a good third of the banana into his mouth.
I know, but you and Mom will still have to pay a lot.
Let us worry about that, my father said.
I could continue to study with Emil Brandt. He’s as good as anyone at Juilliard.
Emil Brandt had been Ariel’s teacher since we’d come to New Bremen five years before. He was in fact much of the reason we’d come. My mother wanted Ariel to study with the best composer and pianist in Minnesota and that was Brandt. He happened also to be my mother’s good friend since childhood.
I learned my mother’s history with Brandt gradually over the whole course of my life. Some things I knew in 1961, others were revealed to me as I grew older. In those days I understood that when she was hardly more than a girl my mother had been briefly engaged to Brandt who was several years her senior. I’d also gathered that by the standards of the staid German population in New Bremen, Emil Brandt was a wild one, both a prodigiously talented musician and one of the high and mighty Brandts who knew he was destined for greater things. Shortly after he’d proposed to my mother Brandt had left her flat, gone off to New York
When my father had finished with the final service that day, which was held at noon in the church in Fosburg a dozen miles north of New Bremen, he drove us all home. As always it felt as if I’d just spent a long time in hell and had finally been granted a divine pardon. I raced to my bedroom and changed my clothes and got ready to enjoy the rest of the day. When I went downstairs I found my mother in the kitchen pulling food from the refrigerator. She’d put together a tuna casserole and Jell-O salad the night before which I figured would be our dinner. My father entered the kitchen after me and it was clear he thought so too. He said, Dinner?
Not for us, my mother replied. It’s for Amelia Klement. The ladies of the choir told me that she was quite ill and that was why she didn’t come to church today. She pushed my father aside and walked to the counter with the pan of tuna casserole in hand. She said, Amelia’s life is a prison cell presided over by Travis Klement, who, if he isn’t the worst husband in the world, is certainly in the running. She’s told me more times than I can count that choir practice on Wednesday and church on Sunday are the two things she looks forward to most in a week. If she couldn’t make it to church today, she must be very ill, and I intend to see that she doesn’t have to worry about feeding her family. I’m going to finish this casserole, and then I’m going to deliver it, and you’re coming with me.
What about our dinner? This slipped from my lips before I had a chance to think about the advisability of asking.
My mother gave me a scathing look. You won’t starve. I’ll put something together.
The truth was that it was fine with me. I wasn’t at all fond of tuna casserole. And I thought that if she and my father were driving out to Peter Klement’s house I might go along and tell Peter about the dead man. I was really warming to the effect this story seemed to have on those who heard it.
Ariel came into the kitchen dressed for work at the country club.
My mother asked, Would you like a sandwich before you go?
No, I’ll grab something when I get there. Ariel lingered and leaned against the counter and said, What if I didn’t go to Juilliard this fall?
My father who’d plucked a banana from the bunch on the top of the refrigerator and was peeling it said, We’d send you to work in the salt mines instead.
I mean, Ariel said, it would be cheaper if I went to Mankato State.
You’re on a scholarship, my father pointed out and stuffed a good third of the banana into his mouth.
I know, but you and Mom will still have to pay a lot.
Let us worry about that, my father said.
I could continue to study with Emil Brandt. He’s as good as anyone at Juilliard.
Emil Brandt had been Ariel’s teacher since we’d come to New Bremen five years before. He was in fact much of the reason we’d come. My mother wanted Ariel to study with the best composer and pianist in Minnesota and that was Brandt. He happened also to be my mother’s good friend since childhood.
I learned my mother’s history with Brandt gradually over the whole course of my life. Some things I knew in 1961, others were revealed to me as I grew older. In those days I understood that when she was hardly more than a girl my mother had been briefly engaged to Brandt who was several years her senior. I’d also gathered that by the standards of the staid German population in New Bremen, Emil Brandt was a wild one, both a prodigiously talented musician and one of the high and mighty Brandts who knew he was destined for greater things. Shortly after he’d proposed to my mother Brandt had left her flat, gone off to New York
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