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Chapter One (1909) On the following bright spring morning, a girl stood high on the east bank of the Mississippi. A damp breeze came up the river, and the sun shone warmly; the sky was that achingly storm-clean blue. Still, the girl was hesitant and vacillated between the shore and the big stone house up the hill. It was a hobby of hers, collecting bottles and bits of things from the river's edge. She had been told not to go down alone, and the maid, who usually accompanied her, was ill. Now she had stopped to consider which would be the greater of two evils: following her parents' admonitions and returning to the house empty-handed or ... The girl smiled to herself. Who would know? *** Isabel Rose Olsen. She was a quiet, strong-willed girl, the daughter of Swedish immigrants who had started a successful grain business. She took her hobbies seriously. She was a great reader of newspapers and books, and pried into things, refused to be put off, and was oftentimes at cross-purposes with her parents, who still spoke Swedish at home and lauded the virtues of the old country. Isabel, like most second-generation children, tried to hide her foreignness; she loathed the idea of Sweden. She wanted to get on in the New World. The other children in her neighborhood were all German and seemed to suffer the same predicament. And as if they had agreed upon it, they studiously avoided each other, all lonely. I have a picture of her, from around that time. Or, I should say, pictures. Isabel was an only child, and her parents doted on her, so they had her frozen in photographs at regular intervals. Here is Isabel as a toddler: pantaloons and ribbons and hair as shiny and light as flax. Here, Isabel at four: toy in hand, smiling, almost. Here, Isabel at ten: long-limbed, beside a pony somewhere, her outfit tinticolored blue, a certain wary yet defiant shadow hanging around her otherwise light eyes. In each, her face emerges more angular, her eyes big with bits of white in her irises. A determined, but surprised look, and each year sharper, as though life were cutting her down to size, even as she grew. And at last, Isabel at seventeen. This photograph, greasy around the corners, I have handled overmuch. In it, Isabel looks out at the camera--or was it the photographer?--with an undeniable melancholy. Her features are fine and sharp, even fragile. I have held this, Isabel's high school graduation portrait, alongside the photograph I have of my grandfather, taken the day he boarded the train. The resemblance is striking, down to the inbreath that must have caused the flare of wings on either side of the nose. They had been, both of them, my grandfather and grandmother, photographed on the same day: May 27, 1909. *** Yes, Isabel thought, and lifting her skirt, descended to the brush-tangled shoreline. There, newspapers and magazines had wrapped around the red willow in intriguing lumpy clots. A bloated dog lay on its side further up on a hummock of sand. She had the sudden conviction she was being watched. That maid, she thought. The dirty snitch! Then, just back from the river's edge, she saw what looked to be a trunk and a pile of muddy clothes. It was just like Isabel to step closer, to see for herself what lay there. *** A Pioneer Press newspaper headline from that week reads: "Salesman Thrown from Bridge in Railway Tragedy Found by Errant Girl." The article stated that a playing card, the ace of spades, was found in Mr. Broussard's shirt pocket. My grandmother kept that story, and others, in a leather-bound album. The stories speculated whether or not Mr. Broussard had tumbled from the train as it crossed the High Bridge or had been carried to the river by the tornado. Mr. Broussard, it turned out, was the only survivor of the wreck. At the hospital he confounded the staff by speaking French. Isabel visited him there, under the auspices of goodwill and charity. Isabel was fascinated, though not for the reason her parents thought: Grain markets were good and times prosperous, and Isabel had been promised a trip to Paris. She had studied with Madame LeFleur, a private tutor, and had leafed through numerous volumes on Parisian life. All was in a state of readiness for her departure. This Frenchman, her parents thought, was just the icing on the cake. But Isabel knew otherwise. This Mr. Broussard, with his big dark eyes and coal-black hair, was not a Frenchman. Nor was his name Benjamin, nor was he a salesman, though he'd said as much, delirious, before Isabel went for help that morning. He was, however, the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and was going to be her husband. And that was that. "Believe me," she told me, "you'll know." *** Isabel told me, Oh, how long I waited for him to call! And then I answered the bell one day, and there he was. Big, rawboned, his arm in a sling, straight out of the hospital. His eyes were the color of ... chestnuts and chocolate, all dark and full of mischief. "Mama," I said. "It's Mr. Broussard. The Frenchman." My mother blushed. She was wearing an apron and a blue shirt with yellow piping. I was wearing an embroidered sweater and skirt. The kitchen was dusty with flour. We'd been baking. The trip was off, temporarily--I'd begged my parents to let me go in August, to escape the heat, I'd said--and my mother was happy to have me around. A pot of coffee was on the sideboard. While my mother busied herself with the cups and saucers, this Frenchman and I glanced at each other. Each time I looked up, he did too. Did he know then that I knew? I think so. His skin was the color of chicory, a deep reddish brown. He spoke French with a guttural backwoods accent. "How lovely," my mother said, handing him a cup of coffee. "I just love to hear French. " I winked at him. A high red color came out in his forehead. "I'm sorry," my mother said, "I didn't mean to embarrass you." *** They began seeing each other, escorted by Isabel's mother, Margaret. Margaret was chatty and tried to draw Peke out on issues pertaining to Parisian life, thus keeping the interaction on an educational plane. During those first few meetings, Margaret said things that so amused Isabel she had to pinch herself to keep from laughing. One afternoon Margaret asked why she was always seeing pictures of workers tinkering with the Eiffel Tower. Monsieur Broussard replied that the Eiffel Tower had been damaged by woodpeckers and termites. "The wood, you see," he explained, "is reedled weet holes." "I didn't know there were woodpeckers in Paris," Margaret replied. *** Isabel was like a vision, my grandfather told me. Like a gull. All bright and swooping down out of nowhere. Wenebojo, he said, put me in that river bottom. Gitchi' manido sent your grandmother. He always winked then. "But what was I to do?" he asked. He had left Prentice with enough money to tide him over until he reached Grinnell. The money, what of it there was, could do one of two things: keep his rented room, or buy food. I had to look good, so it was the room, he told me, chuckling. But the situation was not as funny as that. In truth, Peke was slowly starving, and he had no intention of getting on the train for Grinnell. "Not without your grandmother," he told me. Scholarship or no scholarship. Thinking about school put some ideas in his head. He had a calling card, a name, and a brochure of vitreous china the former Mr. Broussard had sold. He had the sample case and order forms. Standard--it was a good name for sinks and toilets. There was some connection there, so he roamed the university in downtown Minneapolis, overwhelmed by the size of the stone buildings, trying to figure it out. One afternoon he went into the library. His stomach churned. He had to make water. Downstairs, he was told. He went through the doors, and there, under the newly installed electric lights, he saw his salvation and nearly wept. "Toilets!" he told me. All old fixtures. Cracked, rusted. With old-style seals and gaskets! Earlier he'd leafed through page after page of Benjamin Broussard's sale-case brochures. He saw that tiled room come to life! New sinks! New commodes! New plumbing! He went from building to building. Nickel plating and chrome and china whirled and spun, sparked him. He went windigo with toilets! He tallied fixtures, worked the computation sheets. When he'd come up with a conservative figure, he nearly halved it, then arranged to see the building inspector. He saw them all. He talked fluid flow, spit equations at them, some real, some fictitious, showed them the fixtures in the sample case. The administration argued over this newcomer. He showed them pictures of work his company had done in Chicago, in Milwaukee, in Green Bay. His offer was too good to refuse. *** Isabel thought likewise. At the end of the month my grandfather made his intentions public, and Isabel's parents were delighted. A businessman! Little did they know their daughter was marrying a man who, in the plumbing business, had overnight become known as Mr. Potty. What's in a name? my grandfather teased when I was little. Would you ever forget a name like Mr. Potty? No, I told him, and he was right. *** But things were not to be so easy. My grandfather suffered over what to do about his family. He knew they must think him dead. And Standard had sent him a curious telegram: "Confine area of operations to Saint Paul Stop." And here, he told me, Wenebojo tricked us. That story I heard while we were huddled around the table in Peke and Isabel's tiny kitchen. "Don't fill her head with that nonsense," Isabel warned. But he did, anyway. He said, One day Wenebojo was standing by a maple tree, and all of a sudden it started to rain. The thunders threw down bucketfuls, and he tried to hide under that tree. He was supposed to get married that evening. He didn't want his clothes messed up, see? The tree got tired of him leaning against there and threw him out. His buckskins got drenched. I've had it, he was thinking, and then the sun came out. That buckskin shrank so bad Wenebojo lay there, strangling. A dog came up the path. "I'll fix it," the dog said, "if you give me your buckskins." Wenebojo agreed to that, and the dog bit off the laces. Wenebojo had kicked this dog a few times: he was a camp robber, made off with whatever wasn't tied down. Wenebojo couldn't figure out why the dog was doing him this favor. "Here," the dog said, and he messed around in the brush there. Pretty soon Wenebojo was all dressed up again, only now in a red coat. "You'll want this for your wedding," the dog said, and gave him a fancy hat with a feather in it. Wenebojo promised never to kick that dog again. The two parted, and Wenebojo hiked up to the wedding lodge. He was a little late and everyone was waiting. Tens of them. The chief and everybody. Wenebojo strode out into the clearing, proud as could be, and everyone stared. His bride, Omackwe, was staring too. "What have you got that turd on your head for?" she asked. "And why don't you cover yourself?" Sure enough, his hat was a dog turd with a feather in it, his jacket and breeches sumac leaves with his thing pokin' through. Isabel's eyes got glassy. "Oh, Pop," she said, and he waved her off. He said, And Omackwe, she takes a chunk of that turd off his head and puts it on her own. Plucks a feather from her gown and sticks it in. "Nice hat," she said. The dog was long gone, but I'm sure he was havin' a laugh. "What?" Peke asked. "What's wrong now?" "You forgot part of it," Isabel said. "Oh," he says. He's got a big grin on. Everybody set on Wenebojo. But Omackwe, she kissed him, and they turned into partridges and flew away. He lifted his hands over the table. And that's why partridges have that black cap and tuft on their heads. It's that turd and feather the dog gave 'em. *** In Isabel's telling, their wedding day was clear, sunny, and cool. (Records, however, attest to temperatures in the nineties and high humidity. A developing cloud front indicated storms by that evening.) The wedding was held at Isabel's parents' home. Relations traveled from as far as South Platte, Nebraska, and Spokane, Washington. Since Isabel had not taken her summer abroad, the wedding refinements were all the more lavish--a beautiful gown, enormous flower arrangements, attendants to pour punch. The house was a beehive, Isabel told me. From the turret window on the third floor she watched people arrive. Some came in motorcars, the men in goggles and leather hats, the women wind-blown and flustered. Some came in carriages towed by fancy horses. Isabel was frightened and bored. Peke was late. The wedding party assembled downstairs, and Isabel waited in back of the parlor, her father beside her. He was not much taller than Isabel, but he had an aggressive, commanding demeanor. He was uneasy now, however. He pressed her arm. Three largish men sat on wooden folding chairs at the back of the room. "Who are those men?" Isabel asked. Isabel's father expressed surprise. And at that moment, Papekewis, alias Monsieur Broussard, came striding up Summit Street, proud as a peacock. Isabel watched through the open door. He very nearly danced up the walk, then skipped over the threshold. He had bought himself a new hat and rented a tuxedo. He wore a red boutonniere over his heart. He smiled at Isabel. "Ma cherie!" The three men in back stood. Two went around and blocked the door. The one remaining reached for Peke's hand as if to shake it and, pulling him forward, jerked up and around, pinning him. "We know who you are," he said. "A thief!" Isabel's mother said, tearing through the house. "A common criminal!" Isabel, thinking she would right the situation, led the police to Peke's tenement and to the trunk he'd salvaged from the river bottom, a hope chest of sorts, and established his rightful identity. "A heathen!" Isabel's mother cried, truly shocked now. "How could you!" I liked that part. It made me want to pound my chest and dance in half steps around the table. "How, how, how, how!" Her father would not speak to her. *** Down in Grinnell they told my grandfather he could not have his scholarship back. After all, he'd been dead for over three months. They had, however, held his mail. I have since been down to Grinnell and sat on the steps of the old administration building. I imagine them there, Peke and Isabel, the cold marble, storm clouds rolling in from the north. The clouds, Isabel told me, very nearly followed the train down. "Your grandfather has always attracted lightning," she told me. The letter is water-stained, and the ink runs in places. Was it raining? Or did the two of them huddle there on the administration steps and cry? Lac du Flambeau Aug. 20, 1909 My dear Peke, We are all waiting to hear how things are down at that school. You were never away from home so long before were you? I don't believe you miss us much anyway. Your sister has been out to the country since Monday. Just think of it we only had four in the family all week. I thought of you a good deal during that awful spell of rain and your brother Herman on the ice wagon nearly got washed away. If you don't come home soon you won't know the place two large buildings they put up last week just back from the pond. Zo'zed and his wife and boys are on a visit from up north. We had them out to the boathouse last night. I hope we will see you soon and that you keep quite well let us know when you are coming and we will have a couple of nice chickens our calf is a dandy. I see by the papers the Mayor of Prentice is having quite a time of it. Well, goodbye for now but write soon we are glad to get a letter and then I'll know you are all right. With love, Mama P.S. You're always welcome here at home. Time and again, I dig down through my box of keepsakes and find that letter. Isabel gave it to me one dreary winter afternoon when I'd reached what seemed to be yet another impasse in my life. You think about it, she said, pressing the letter into my hands. I handle that letter with care. Copyright © 1997 Albertine Strong. All rights reserved.