The Fall of Alice K.. Jim Heynen

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      Alice Marie Krayenbraak was standing on the screened porch when she heard shots coming from a neighbor’s farm—one loud blast after another, the sounds of a twelve gauge. Each time she thought the shooting had stopped, it would start again. Some shots were followed by moments of silence, but others were followed by guttural squeals, like pathetic last-second objections. Sometimes a new blast came before the last squeal stopped. The time between shots got shorter, as if someone was hurrying to get this done.

      The kitchen door opened and Alice’s father stepped onto the porch with her.

      “You don’t have to hear this,” he said.

      The four-foot sections of screens were gray from the summer’s dust, giving a hazy view of the feedlots and beyond them the corn and soybean fields that extended in the direction of Ben Van Doods’s farm. The buffer of trees and dusty screens might have absorbed the sounds, but instead it caught the blasts and flung them back into the air for a second life, like an echo—or an aftershock. Alice could see the cupolas of Ben’s tallest barn and the green domes of trees in his grove, but she could not see the scene on the ground.

      “Aldah sure shouldn’t hear this,” said Alice’s father. “Go inside and have her watch some television. Play piano for her or something.”

      “What’s going on?”

      “Today’s market report.”

      “What’s going on?”

      Alice stepped closer to the screen, which prompted her father to move in front of the screen door to keep her from stepping outside and closer to the gunshots.

      “Ben must figure it’s cheaper to shoot them than truck them to market.”

      Her father’s shoulders twitched with each blast. If Ben was doing this by himself, he was getting faster and faster at it. Now there was squealing before the gun blasts, frantic squeals as if animals were trapped in a corner. The ones that were left must have known what was coming.

      “Go take care of Aldah.”

      Alice didn’t move. “She probably can’t hear it,” she said. “Mother is probably covering Aldah’s ears.”

      “Your mother is covering her own ears,” said her father. “Get inside.”

      Alice obeyed and walked into the kitchen, a space that to Alice felt cluttered in spite of its generous size. The round oak table in the middle was the room’s center of gravity, but surrounding it were contradictory images—the brick-patterned linoleum on the floor did not harmonize with the white metal cupboards or the plastic food canisters and cookbooks on the counters. In one corner sat her father’s wooden swivel chair, which looked like a respectable piece of antique furniture, but anything respectable was diminished by a scattering of dime-store paintings and plaques with quotations that were supposed to be either edifying or clever on the off-white walls. Some might say the room’s decor was eclectic. In Alice’s mind, it was a pathetic hodgepodge.

      Her mother stood across the round oak table with her back toward Alice. She was leaning over the sink and staring out one of the room’s two windows. It was not open, but Alice could almost see the sounds of the gun blasts rapping on the windowpane. As if responding to the sounds of gunfire, all the scattered pieces of the room came together into a harmony that made it feel like a comforting refuge.

      “This is just the beginning,” said her mother and kept her back to Alice while staring across the lawn toward the gravel road. “Things aren’t much better here.”

      The matter-of-fact coldness in her voice was all too familiar to Alice. The chilly flatness of it.

      This was her mother’s way of making reference to the millennium. The world was starting to end, one little chunk at a time, one dead hog at a time, one sour thought after another.

      Her mother’s shoulders looked narrow from behind and sloped steeply from the edge of her graying hair, which she had let hang loose. She was clearly in one of her dark moods. Alice could not see her hands. Might she have them folded over the sink as she looked out? Alice wondered. Was she praying for Ben? For the hogs? For the Krayenbraak farm?

      “Where’s Aldah?”

      “Watching TV.”

      “At two o’clock in the afternoon?”

      “It doesn’t make any difference

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