He shrugged. Then he tucked me closer still.
“He was a good guy,” he said. “I don’t know everything about this trip he took across Europe. I know he was traveling home after the war, but I don’t really know why he went this place or that place. He seemed to be wandering. I’m sure he was shell-shocked from everything that had happened.”
“I imagine everything was upside down. It had to be devastating.”
“He was from a dairy farm in Vermont. That’s the puzzle. I have a hard time imagining him here in Europe, just poking around. He had a big soul, Grandma always said. ‘He breathed through both nostrils’ was her phrase for it.”
“I like that phrase. I hadn’t heard it before.”
He shrugged again. Then he nodded.
“I spent a lot of summers with him. My mom and dad didn’t have a smooth marriage, to say the least. So during the summers, I went up and lived with Grandpa and Grandma, and I helped on the dairy farm. You were wrong about one thing on the train, by the way. I don’t have a trust fund. I have a little bit of a nest egg from the sale of Grandpa’s farm. I hate thinking about it. About selling it, I mean.”
“And your parents are alive, right?”
“Yep. Mom’s out in California reinventing herself. Dad moved down to Boston. They didn’t have much interest in the farm, so they sold it. Dad grew up on it and was sick of it. I tried to talk them out of it. I actually wanted to be a dairyman at one point.”
“And they gave you the money from the sale?”
“They split it in thirds. I guess partially out of guilt, they included me in the division. They knew I wanted the place. They sold it when land in Vermont was going for top dollar, and we did okay.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was.
“The house wasn’t much, honestly. It probably needed to go. But the land … and the barn. I always loved the barn. While I was in college, I tried to get Grandpa some money to fix it up from the National Registry. I researched the whole topic. As a nation, we’re losing barns all the time, so there is some interest in trying to preserve them. Anyway, I was just this college kid with a grandpa he loved. I couldn’t swing it, and the barn was wicked expensive to keep up. Once the roof starts to go on those old barns, it’s over in no time if they’re not replaced.”
“I guess I didn’t have you completely pegged on the train.”
“I still had it a lot easier than a ton of people.”
After a little longer, the boat began to shift to the left bank, and one of the workers, a thin, wiry young kid with buckteeth and now wearing blue overalls, asked us in German to move. They were going to start pulling in the milk, he said through Jack. Jack asked him his name, and the kid smiled a bunny smile and said, “Emile.”
“Can we help?” Jack asked, standing and helping me up to my feet.
“Help?” Emile said and laughed.
He shouted something into the cuddy window, and the captain, a bearded man with an enormous belly and a deep, throaty voice, yelled back something that got drowned out in the engine sounds. The third crew member, likely the first mate, already stood up by the bow, ready to throw a rope to someone. The barge swung out of the current and rolled a little as it left the faster water and came into the slack. Emile ducked away toward the stern, probably preparing to throw a rope on that end. In the dimness, we could just make out the outline of a wooden dock beside a large field of emptiness.
The boat slowed, the engine reversed, and the ropes zipped out into the darkness with a whistling sound. The captain yelled something, and someone else replied, and then we shivered into the dock, rubbing it like a cat finding its way, a hundred, five hundred silver milk canisters arranged on the dock, waiting to be loaded.
*
We watched the first ten canisters come aboard. They swung in on small pallets; Emile worked as the ground man, guiding the loads while the first mate operated the crane. The captain did not bother coming out of his cabin, but we smelled his pipe smoke now and then when the wind brought it to us.
Five or six men moved on the dock. They didn’t say much except to shout directions occasionally. A bright floodlight illuminated the scene, and moths fluttered under the light like miniature angels. After a while, Jack and I began helping Emile land the pallets in the proper order. It wasn’t hard work, merely time consuming, and with three of us, it went faster. Emile laughed a lot as he watched us. The first mate said nothing, but the men on the dock commented about him having help for a change. The milk canisters came aboard sealed, but the bodies of the canisters perspired from the coolness of the night contrasted by the warmth of the milk. Light followed the loads and played off each one in short, soft glows.
When we had the milk secured, we off-loaded a pile of empty pallets. That was the hardest work, and Emile did not laugh as we helped him on that job. We handed the pallets down by crane, a dozen of them looped together for the men on the dock. The men let the entire load rest on the dock, then they unfastened the chain and swung it back to us.
“My grandfather would have liked this,” Jack said when we finished and the boat moved off, pulling back into the current and running at a higher engine rev. “He would have compared it to what he did on the dairy farm back home. He was a good farmer.”
“They must have trucks now, though, don’t you think?”
“I’m sure they do. Maybe this is just an old way to do it that hasn’t died out yet. Water is a cheap way to transport things.”
We stood along the railing and watched the countryside. Most of it was dark and formless, but here and there we saw houses and lights, and dogs sometimes barked at us as we passed. The water hissed beneath us; the boat ran through a group of swans before pulling into the second landing, and the swans paddled off like origami fabrications, impossibly serene and white and comfortable in the water.
We helped Emile on the second stop, and the work went faster. This time, the captain came out and joked a little with all of us, his pipe an empty pointing tool in his hand. He said he wanted to hire us permanently, then he went off the boat and came back in a few minutes with rolled-up newspapers containing fresh bread. He gave us two long baguettes and a small plastic tub of honey. The rest he gave to Emile and the first mate.