Free Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

walk, all dizzy from the spinning, and I lost track of the conversation in the kitchen for a moment. Jake fell down and I heard my mother’s voice again with a tautness near anger.
I don’t expect them to tell me the truth, Nathan. I’m sure in their minds it’s no one’s business but the Klements’. But they should tell you.
Because I’m their pastor?
Because you’re her pastor, too. And if she can’t turn to anyone else, she ought to be able to turn to you. People tell you their secrets, Nathan. I know they do. And not just because you’re their pastor.
Jake finally got up and went back to the tire. I would have spun him again but he waved me off and began to swing normally.
I heard water run in the kitchen sink and a glass fill and then my father said, He spent time in a North Korean POW camp. Did you know that, Ruth? He still has nightmares. He drinks because he thinks it helps him deal with the nightmares.
You have nightmares. You don’t drink.
Every man handles in a different way the damage war did to him.
Some men seem to have put their wars behind them easily enough. I’ve heard some men say being in the army was the best time of their lives.
Then they must have fought in different wars than I did and Travis Klement.
From the swing Jake called to me, Want to play catch?
I said sure and started for the house to get the ball and our baseball gloves. My father came out the side door from the kitchen and walked toward the church. I quickly fell in step beside him and asked where he was going.
To get Gus, he said.
Why?
I already suspected the answer. Gus was familiar with the drinking establishments in the valley of the Minnesota River and my father was not. If anyone would have an idea about where Mr. Klement was getting drunk it would be Gus.
I need his help, he replied.
Can I go?
No.
Please.
I said no. My father seldom spoke sharply but his voice made it clear that on this subject he would brook no argument. I stopped and he walked alone to the church.
Jake and I went inside the house where my mother had begun distractedly preparing lunch. Upstairs, my brother grabbed his ball glove from where it lay on the floor. I began digging through the closet in search of mine.
Jake sat on his bed and put the glove to his nose as if inhaling the good aroma of the old leather and said, He never talks about the war.
I was surprised because I thought he’d been so involved with his tire swing that he couldn’t have heard the kitchen conversation. Jake was always amazing me this way. I found my glove, an old Rawlings first baseman’s mitt, and put it on and slapped the soft palm with my hard fist.
Maybe he will someday, I said.
Yeah, maybe someday, Jake said but not necessarily because he believed it. Sometimes he just liked agreeing with me.

6
K
    arl was the only child of Axel and Julia Brandt. Axel Brandt owned the brewery in New Bremen which had been built by his great-grandfather and was among the first businesses
    established when the town was originally settled. For more than a hundred years the enterprise had prospered. The brewery employed a significant workforce and was part of the economic lifeblood of New Bremen. In a way it was the town’s crown jewel and the Brandts were about as near to royalty as you’d find in the Midwest.They lived of course on the Heights in a sprawling white-pillared mansion with a large marble patio in back that had a view of the town below and below that the Flats and beyond the Flats the broad crawl of the river.
    Karl Brandt and Ariel had gone steady for almost a year and although my mother didn’t like the idea, their relationship was more or less her doing. Every summer since we’d moved to New Bremen my mother had mounted a musical production that tapped the talent of the town’s youth and that was presented in the band shell in Luther Park the first weekend in August. The citizens of New Bremen turned out in extraordinary numbers. For some time after the last bow of the