Ordinary Grace

Jake skips Sunday service in Cadbury because he feels sick. Peter and Amelia Klement are among the congregation. When the Drums get home, they find Jake and Gus waiting on the front porch and learn that Emil Brandt has tried to kill himself. We learn that Lise Brandt had come to the Drum’s house, terrified and seeking help: “She gripped [Jake’s] head in her hands and squeezed so hard he thought his eyes would pop out. It took him a few minutes but in the end he understood. Emil was in trouble. Emil was dying” (100).

Emil has attempted suicide by taking a bottle’s worth of sleeping pills. At the church service in New Bremen, Frank again falsifies details, making his younger brother a bigger hero than he was, in regard to saving Emil’s life. Jake curses at his brother in church; Frank is mortified, and Jake flees.

Later that day, Frank and Jake accompany their father to the hospital; Lise Brandt refuses to leave while Emil is still admitted, and Nathan knows that Jake’s special relationship with Lise might convince her to go home. Julia Brandt and Ruth have an icy exchange, with Ruth calling Julia “a perfect bitch” under her breath (107). 

The plan works and Jake is able to coax Lise Brandt into leaving the hospital. Frank, Jake and Ariel remain at the Brandt’s farmhouse with Lise. Frank describes the interior walls of the farmhouse as “basically bare,” and adds that the home is filled with “a profusion of flowers, arranged beautifully in vases and set about every room” (108). Lise Brandt makes the Drum children dinner then changes into overalls to work in the garden. Frank and Jake help. The trio moves a large rock from the garden, and, happy with their success, Frank claps first Jake then Lise on the shoulder. Lise’s response is violent: “The moment I touched her she swung around with the crowbar in her hand. If I hadn’t been so quick and leaped back out of reach, that iron bar would have crushed my skull” (111).

Frank, concerned, asks Jake what to do. Jake says Lise will calm down, though it may take a moment. Frank leaves the property by way of a gated fence that leads down a hill, toward the railroad tracks and river. Frank wanders by the shore of the river, hearing first Danny O’Keefe and other boys playing then seeing Warren Redstone emerge from the bulrushes on the shore and walk toward the O’Keefe’s home, where Warren lives. Frank continues walking and comes across Officer Doyle, who is inspecting Redstone’s lean-to. Doyle erases his tracks before leaving; Frank inspects the lean-to, but can’t deduce what Doyle was looking for. 

Emil Brandt returns home three days before the Fourth of July. Frank eavesdrops on Nathan and Emil talking; Nathan is concerned that Emil will again attempt suicide, but Emil says that he doesn’t have the strength to. Nathan tells Frank and Jake that it’s time to leave. Frank says that he wants to walk home, and makes Jake come with him. Instead of heading home, they go to the river.

Frank takes Jake to Redstone’s lean-to, with Jake saying they shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing. The lean-to is deserted; Frank spots a mound of sand in a back corner, and begins to dig. He uncovers “a large tin can that stood a foot high and…eight inches in diameter…covered with a white rag that was secured with a rubber band” (117). Inside the can is a copy of an issue of Playboy magazine, which makes Frank agog; a Mickey Mouse wristwatch with a missing hand; a ceramic frog; “an Indian doll dressed in buckskin”; a comb; a Purple Heart; and Bobby Cole’s glasses. (118). The boys keep nothing, cover their tracks, and leave. 

After their Sunday morning yard work at Ruth’s father’s house, Frank and Jake go to Danny O’Keefe’s, to play the board game Risk. Warren Redstone is there, in the basement, watching baseball on TV. The two discuss the game then the picture that Redstone has taken from the Skipper, the dead man on the shore of the river. Redstone asks Frank if Frank wants the picture. Frank replies that he might. Redstone asks Frank if Frank would then give the photo to the police, to which Frank again replies that he might. Frank tells Redstone he’s heard that Redstone was in jail, then asks if it’s true. Redstone says it’s “‘only part of the truth,’” adding that the rest of the truth is why he was in jail and that “‘We who are Sioux have a responsibility to make sure the past isn’t distorted by lies white tell each other and try to tell us’” (121).

The two go on to discuss the 1862 Dakota Sioux uprising, with Redstone offering why the Dakota Sioux attacked white settlements:

Our people were starving…the whites trespassed on our land…our crops failed and the winter was hard, hard. We asked for the food the whites had promised us in the treaty we’d signed. Know what they said to our starving people? They said, ‘Let them eat grass.’ Sure we fought. We fought for food. We fought because promises were broken…[i]t was a hopeless thing we tried to do, because the whites, they had soldiers and guns and money and newspapers that repeated all the lies (121-22).

Frank asks what the uprising has to do with Redstone going to jail, to which Redstone responds, “‘I spoke the truth. And for that I was labeled a troublemaker and put in jail’” (122). Frank responds that Americans aren’t jailed for being troublemakers, to which Redstone says, “‘That’s how they get away with it’” (122). The game of Risk ends and Redstone tells Frank, “‘Go on and play, white boy’” (123). 

Frank, Jake, Danny and another friend, Lee, go to a quarry outside of town to swim. When they arrive, they find town tough Morris Engdahl’s ’32 Deuce Coupe parked there. Jake urges the group to go home, and all are ready to leave save for Frank, who convinces the group to stay.

The boys arrive at the quarry, where Frank hears “the tinny sound of transistor radio on which Roy Orbison was singing Running Scared” (125). On “a large flat table of red rock…surrounded by willows” (125), the group see Engdahl, in white swimsuit, sitting on a big blanket with a blond girl in a red bathing suit. Morris has heard the group approach and insults Jake’s stutter. The girl asks Engdahl who “these little creeps” are, and Engdahl replies that Ariel Drum is their sister (126). The girl calls Ariel a “skag” (126). Frank calls the girl a skag, and Engdahl gets up to defend her honor. Frank realizes his choices are to run or fight. He chooses the latter, hitting Engdahl in the stomach and sending him in to the quarry’s water. Engdahl flails; the girl, panicked, tells the group Engdahl doesn’t know how to swim. Jake grabs a willow branch and hands it to Frank, who pulls Engdahl to shore.

Once recovered, Engdahl grabs Frank, vowing he’s going to kill him. Frank says, “I looked into his face, into eyes that were a dark menacing blue and so completely abandoned to anger that there was in them not the slightest glimmer of reason and I knew I was dead” (127).

The girl in the bathing suit steps between Engdahl and Frank. Frank pushes Engdahl over and the boys flee, grabbing their bikes and riding off and hiding in the bushes as Engdahl’s Deuce Coupe drives by them.