Jon Ehrlich attempted a nod, but a bubble of blood rose up at his mouth. She pushed the shattered cube off his legs. Don’t you go. Don’t you dare. He moved his head slightly. His eyes fluttered. Don’t you die on me.
She was sure she saw him nod and then she heard the rattle of his throat. Lily could feel the fall of his life away from him, some manner of relief, a melting away. She rose from her knees and put her hands to her head and let out a high keen.
The storage shed still stood, three-walled. The remaining walls yawed and groaned. The lake within the ice. The water eager for movement. She stepped across the shattered planks and leaned down to Benjamin once more.
She put her arms under the shoulders of her youngest son and tried to yank the dead boy out from under the collapse. His boot caught on a piece of beam. She could feel the boot rip as she yanked him from under the rubble. She tugged again. The ice moved.
Some laughter rolled from him. She bent down towards him. Some laughter again. Oh. Benjamin. Oh. She grabbed the back of his head but it lolled. She shook him. Get up, get up, you’re alive. His eyes were huge and surprised and unmoving. She rose into a crouch, pawed her way across the hard ground. Reached for Adam. She put her face against his lips. No breath. No warmth. More laughter, she was sure of it. But from where, whom? She heard it again, this time from its proper distance. Her chest heaved. From the house. The other children emerging from the cabin. The high play of their voices. Lily rose and rounded the corner of the sheds. She brandished an ice fork. Go back to the house, she said. Put wood on the fire, Nathaniel. Clean up the cornmeal, girl. Don’t come out again. I’ll be right home with you. I’ll be right back. You hear me? Tomas? Lawrence? Now, I said. Sweet Jesus. Now. Please.
Emily stared at her. Rooted to the ground.
— Go, shouted Lily. Go!
She went back to the work of dragging the bodies from underneath the ruin. The three walls remained. They moved minutely, threatening collapse.
SHE LAID THE bodies out side by side on the ground, her husband and two sons, then went back towards the house. She needed cloths to cover their eyes. Lily pushed open the cabin door. The boys were cowering in the pantry. Emily was at the window, looking out. Lily called her daughter’s name. No reply. She called it again. Emily, she said. No movement at all. She stepped across and turned the girl from the window. The child’s eyes were remote, vacant.
Lily slapped her daughter hard across the face, told her to get herself dressed, there was work to do. The child did not move, but then she rose and put her forehead against Lily’s collarbone. Mother, said Emily.
TWO EVENINGS LATER Lily Ehrlich hired a carpenter to come out and restack the cakes and fix the wooden shed. The weather was mean. The wind blew bitter. The hammering went all the way through the night.
A thaw would come soon. She would have to learn how to move the ice herself. To get it to the boats and to float it downriver.
She lay in her bed, surrounded by her four remaining children. The boys were old enough now, she thought. Emily could help manage the books. There were ways to survive. She looked out at the lake. The light from the moon sighed upon it. She woke Tomas first, then the other two. They stepped out into the night, down towards the barn, their breath making cloudshapes against the dark. First of all we’ll get the wagons ready, she said. Make sure the horses are fed.
THE BOOKLETS CAME from a company in Cincinnati. The McGuffey Reader. An All-Surpassing Opportunity. Teach Yourself in 29 Days. Money Back Guarantee. She had no idea what to do with them. The words presented themselves as a series of squiggles. How could she learn to read if she could not, in the first place, read? How could she be expected to learn what was unlearned in the first place? Her eyes swam. Her throat tightened. She tucked the booklets away on the shelf.
She hired a carriage and went south, two days, all the way to St. Louis. The buildings seemed so enormously tall. Laundry fluttered from windows. Men in stetsons tied their horses to hitching posts. A railway station whistle sounded out. Lily inquired about the bookshop. A young boy pointed the way. A bell on the door rang. She shuffled among the shelves. Frightened that she might be seen. The words on the spines of the books meant nothing at all.
It was a clerk who found it for her, high on the shelves accessible only by ladder. She knew it was he by the frontispiece engraving. The book was wrapped for her in brown paper and twine.
At home, Emily ran a small finger underneath the marks on the page. This is I. This is W. This is A. This is S. This is a B.
BY THE THIRD year after Jon Ehrlich’s death, Lily had a group of men working with her — two Norwegians, two Irishmen, and a Breton foreman. Her sons, too. Lily was a small thin figure on the ice, a little hunched by age, tapered by sorrow, but her voice carried across the expanse. They bought the newest machinery: broadaxes, crosscut knives, ice plows, harnesses. The saws kicked up white sparks. The horses heaved and steamed. The sheds were rebuilt and reinforced.
After school, Emily helped skim the huge cakes of ice across the surface of the lake.
Lily went to the city once a month. A grueling journey. Often it took three days each way. Lily haggled across the desk on Carondelet Avenue. She knew the price she was getting and she knew at what price the ice dealer was selling. It galled her to think that there was such a gulf.
She took Jon Ehrlich’s fountain pen out of her small silver purse and marked a signature on the page. She had learned this much, a push of the pen into the resemblance, at least, of a name. The ice dealer worked a thumb at the base of his nose. He was thin and sharp, as if he’d been sliced with a fresh saw.
— You can write?
— Of course I can write. What do you think I am?
— I didn’t mean anything by it, Mrs. Ehrlich.
— Well, I hope not.
She strode away, along the Mississippi. She watched the younger women walk along in their elegant finery: wide hats and swishing dresses. Paddleboats and steamers. The whole river was wide with commerce. Paperboys called out about gold and railroads. A hot-air balloon went over the river and drifted off towards the west. A man on a machine rode back and forth near the Opera House. With an enormous front wheel. The onlookers called it an ordinary. There were young men in wide cowboy hats who tied their horses outside saloons. They didn’t glance at her much anymore, but Lily didn’t mind. Her back was stiff from the years of ice. She developed a rolling shuffle. She kept three elegant dresses for business matters. The rest of the time her clothing was plain, dark, a touch of mourning about it.
In her fourth year without her husband, she negotiated a price with the foreman from Brittany. She sold him the cabin, the leases, and all the equipment. The first thing she packed was the painting that Jon Ehrlich had given her. All the boxes, the furniture, the chairs, the delph, the books. They loaded four wagons. She kept the painting upfront. They pulled up to their new home on Florissant Avenue. The roadbed was made with crushed limestone. The house was a two-story redbrick with high ceilings and a wide staircase. A pale blue carpet festooned with threaded roses. At the top of the stairs she hung the painting, then immediately set about her business as a dealer. Middle Lake Ice. An English sign writer made a logo on the warehouse doors. She was flustered by his accent. He bowed to her and she blazed red with embarrassment. An Englishman, of all things. Bowing to her. Lily Duggan. Bridie Fitzpatrick. Once the death carts had rumbled. The snowflakes fell.