Bittersweet Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #5): A Novel (15 page)

For a moment Birdie stood in the silent room, mesmerized by the clock’s
tick-tock, tick-tock
. It had to be here somewhere, the proof she needed. His desk!

Walking rapidly, her heels clicking on the oiled floor already soiled after the weekend’s cleaning, Birdie reached the largest desk in the room. In spite of rules and regulations and close supervision, the desktop, like others, was badly scarred with scratches, ink blotches, even initials. Freshly carved: HB. Harold Buckley. Buck, it seemed, was not going to end his school days without a permanent reminder of his presence.

Neither paying attention to the initials nor caring about the desecration of school property, Birdie lifted the desk lid. Inside was a hodgepodge of Buck’s leavings: grimy handkerchief, broken pencil (the eraser chewed off), Victoria Dinwoody’s hair ribbon, crumpled paper, shriveled saskatoons. A scribbler...

Lifting it out, Birdie closed the lid, laid the tablet on the desktop, and opened it, bending close in the dimming light: spelling words, half-completed arithmetic problems. Essays, essays begun and not completed, the most recent being a report on early beaver trade.

Birdie’s breath quickened. Lifting the tablet, she scanned it, impatient until she might locate the proof she needed: “A beaver lodge held animals of diffrunt ages. Sometimes, in those days, there were as many as fifty beavers in a squar mile. The Indians capchured them for food as well as for clothing. Machure beavers weighed as much as fifty pounds and although the meat is fat, the Indians didn’t mind.”

Ignoring the spelling errors, typical of Buck and proving that the tablet was indeed his, Birdie’s gaze slid over the report, watching for one word, one particular word, one word with its telltale missing letter
t
. Surely it would show up in this lesson. But not
yet. Reading on—“We must never forget that it was the flat-tailed, industrious beaver of the north [Buck was obviously quoting now], with its superior pelt and rich long guard hairs and very fine down, that opened up the Saskachewan....”

If she had doubted it when she saw him skulking around the birch ring, if she had been inclined to hold on to any hope whatsoever, she wondered no longer. For long moments she stared, dry-eyed, while the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Fell into place and shattered her silly speculations once and for all.

Saskachewan
.

Wilhelm “Tiny” Kruger climbed into his rig, the buggy tipping alarmingly as he did so, picked up the reins, and chirruped to his horse. With one final glance back, he waggled a hand toward the store and a couple of men standing there. Their acknowledgment of his good-bye warmed his heart. Although he had been in Canada twelve years and in Bliss only three, he felt a part of the country and the community. He had friends; he
was
a friend.

The hamlet itself was small, built around the store/post office and the single grain elevator. When and if the railroad track came through Bliss, that elevator would be joined by others, for the land was fast being taken up for miles around and becoming productive. And with the clearing of bush and the planting of crops, each year saw an increase in the grain sold and shipped. Contending with catastrophes of drought and weather and short growing seasons, still there would come a time when it was said the Canadian West “produced more wheat gold than all the gold mined in the world.” Such riches!—though they dribbled down to a few wagonloads per homestead per year.

The world wanted Canadian wheat, the good milling wheat, the hard wheat—Red Fife first, then Marquis, perfect for Canadian prairie and bush.

Tiny Kruger well remembered the sense of satisfaction his first crop had brought. The wrenching farewell to the Old Country was a thing of the past, the years spent in the east merely a
stopgap, the hard adjustment to the new land was fast becoming a memory—a land that was huge and rich, young and eager, welcoming and promising. And productive.

The toil and trauma of establishing his homestead in the territories had been endured, four or five acres had been cleared, stumps had been pulled, and finally—on newly plowed ground just freed from the grasp of the bush—seed had been scattered in the same manner as had been done centuries before when Jesus was a boy.

Every morning he had watched for the little green shoots that meant life and sustenance for him, Isolde, and Little Tiny. Eventually his watchful care and prayer had been rewarded, and stalks—full and heavy—dotted his field. And then had come the harvest, the first golden grain pelting from the threshing machine and trickling through his fingers.

Remembering, Big Tiny Kruger’s heart—a heart as big as his big body would allow—swelled with gratitude, satisfaction, and perhaps some pride.

But the house he built—first a cabin, eventually enlarged to a comfortable abode of reasonable size and efficiency—was empty of the love and grace of a wife and mother. Along the way, another of the lost babies—in its struggle to live and to die—had taken Isolde with it.

Remembering, Big Tiny’s bulk heaved with the magnitude of his sigh.

Memories sad and happy were interrupted by the pounding of hooves, and a horse and rider flashed past without greeting or glance, a most unusual occurrence in Bliss. But Big Tiny knew horse and rider: Mortimer Buckley’s roan with his son Buck astride. Bent low over the mane, digging booted heels into the horse’s flanks, the overgrown youth was undoubtedly coming from school. But why in such an almighty rush?

Big Tiny resumed his earlier train of thought: Next best to the golden grain was the golden straw that had sustained it, that had separated from it for another purpose, an important purpose. Piled in heaps called a stack, it meant life or death to a herd. It was extra feed, of course, hay being the most important; though it was not
the most nourishing, cattle still seemed to do well on it. Clear a path to the straw stack and the cattle did the rest until, come spring, the stack was nothing but a memory of scattered straws, and the cattle—still alive, though thin—were nosing over the lush green of new growth in the meadows and clearings.

Big Tiny passed the schoolhouse, obviously shut up for the day, the children, like Buck, scattered out across the hamlet and the community to their homes. Somewhere ahead, unless the children had been released early, Little Tiny would be ambling homeward and would be glad of a lift. Home, where the two of them made out well enough....

Enough reminiscing, enough dreaming! Big Tiny waggled the reins and urged the horse to a faster clip. Soon, ahead, he saw the unmistakable form of Miss Wharton, Bliss’s teacher.

Big Tiny’s thinking might be slow, but it was thorough. His glance narrowed as he studied the slight figure that even he could see was far from erect and confident; no doubt Miss Wharton had endured a long, hard day. Then, with a slight frown, he turned to cast a look backward—the boy/man on the galloping horse had disappeared from sight. Buck—had he been kept in after school? Big as he was, if there had been a problem, Miss Wharton would not flinch from her duty; but would it have been enough to bow her shoulders dispiritedly and to send Buck off in a tear? Thankfully, Big Tiny thought now, there were just a couple of weeks remaining, and Buck would be done with school. What he would turn his clumsy hands and his mischievous mind to was a question his father had pondered aloud a time or two in Big Tiny’s presence. “Send him to work in the woods with his uncle for the summer,” seemed to be Mortimer’s tentative decision. “Give him a chance to grow up. It worked with his brother, and it might work with him.”

Miss Wharton, obviously lost in thought and not hearing the approaching rig until it was almost upon her, cast a glance back and stepped quickly from the road to the grass. But she had been surprised, and her start had tumbled a couple of books. With her arms already encumbered, she was at a loss for the moment. It
seemed clear that she would need to set down the items she carried, pick up the fallen books, and incorporate them into the load, picking them all up together.

But for the moment, she hesitated, studying the fallen books, halfway reaching for them with one hand, pulling it back as those in her arms threatened to fall, deciding what to do.

No man could leave her in such a pickle, let alone Big Tiny Kruger of the kind heart. Pulling the horse to a stop, he spoke: “Good afternoon, Miss Wharton. Can I—”

“You crept up on me,” Birdie muttered. “Again.”

Fortunately her gaze was turned elsewhere; she was looking rather helplessly at the dropped books. Big Tiny’s small grin would not have helped the situation.

But his voice, when he spoke, was serious enough. “I must say, Miss Wharton, I am truly sorry. Again.”

In normal circumstances even Birdie Wharton would have recognized the humor in the situation and might have allowed herself a smile. As it was, his words went almost unnoticed, and Big Tiny, watching, was instantly sober.

“Hold, Dolly,” he said soothingly to the horse who, whether she understood or not, was agreeable to a rest.

Quickly for so large a man, Big Tiny was out of the rig, bending over the fallen books and gathering them up. But instead of tucking them into Birdie’s arms, on an impulse he turned and put them in the buggy.

“Might as well let the buggy carry them,” he said lightly, “and you as well.”

The proof of her disturbance over something was clear when, without demur, she allowed him to take her load from her arms and, with his free hand, help her up into the rig.

Settling herself, receiving her material from his hand, Birdie managed to murmur her thanks. “Kind of you.”

“Not at all,” Big Tiny assured her. “I’m going your way, and I have an empty rig.”

It wasn’t quite true. When Big Tiny stepped up, the buggy, now filled to three-quarter capacity, tipped alarmingly. Birdie,
startled from her distraction, made a grab for the iron armrest and held on until Big Tiny was settled and the buggy had righted itself. But wide as he was, the “emptiness” of his rig was in question; Big Tiny left very little room for Miss Wharton and her books. If she’d been otherwise than a wisp of a woman, the fit would have been impossible. As it was, they rubbed along thigh to thigh, but even that, the man noticed, failed to arouse so much as a flush on his companion’s face, sure evidence of her absorption with... something.

They jogged along in silence for a while. “You’ll be happy to see the school year come to an end, ya?” he asked finally.

“Oh... yes. Yes, of course.” It was as if Birdie Wharton’s thoughts had been wrenched back from some distant and strange place.

“And you’ll be losing some pupils.”

Birdie looked at him, eyes blinking thoughtfully, perhaps with relief.

“Why, you’re right. I believe just... one.”

“Buck.”

“Yes. Yes, of course. Buck.” And it seemed that the thought took hold, until Birdie’s bosom heaved with what might have been a sigh of relief, and the taut expression on her face seemed to relax.

“Two weeks... even less,” Big Tiny said, flicking the reins until Dolly quickened her pace, trotting a little.

“Two weeks,” Birdie repeated. “Two weeks.”

“And then, if I’ve understood his pa, he’ll go to the woods, at least for the summer. That seems like a good thing for a growing boy, wouldn’t you say—a summer, maybe longer, in the north woods?”

You’d have thought he had thrown her a lifeline. “Two weeks,” she breathed, half desperate, half hopeful. If Birdie Wharton had been a praying person, one almost would have believed it was a prayer.

T
here’s no need to drive in,” Birdie protested when they reached the Bloom gate. “I can walk the rest of the way.”

“It’s no problem,” Big Tiny said mildly as he turned the buggy from the road to the Bloom driveway. “Do you always bring home such a lot of... stuff?”

“No, usually I don’t, except on a weekend.” Birdie didn’t feel called upon to explain the blindness with which she had scrambled items together—most of them unnecessary—and, clasping them as if her sanity depended on it, had stumbled from the school to the road, along its dusty trail, her numb mind only then beginning to think, to sort things out.