Northern Lights Trilogy (68 page)

A woman’s face peered at him from behind the window curtains, then disappeared. Then a man’s face appeared. About fifty years of age, Foster was obviously displeased about being disturbed at this late hour. “What do you want?” asked his muffled voice.

“I need a horse.”

“We’re closed. Come back in the morning.”

“I need it tonight.”

“We’re closed!”

“I’m willing to pay extra.”

The man faced him more squarely from the other side of the door, obviously suspicious. “This some kind of emergency?”

“You could say that,” Karl said, looking at him levelly.

The man sighed and nodded once. “I’ll be out in a moment,” he said, then disappeared behind the gingham curtains again. He went away, presumably to dress, and Karl paced the porch, ignoring the stable master’s curious wife as she sneaked peeks at him from behind the curtain. The walls were thin, and he could hear them arguing.

“I don’t care if he’s the king of England!” she said. “No money’s worth going out on a night like this! And what if the horse turns an ankle in this wet? Then what good will the man’s extra dollar do for us?”

“Turns an ankle? Woman, my horses haven’t known anything but rain since we moved here anyway.”

“But it’s dark, and we don’t know the man.”

“Says it’s an emergency.”

“Sure, sure,” she said suspiciously. “He don’t act like a man facing an emergency.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Turn him away. Tell him to come back come mornin’ when you can see him better.”

“I can’t do that. Already told him I’d be right out—”

“You didn’t tell him that you’d rent him one of our horses. Tell him to come back come mornin’.”

“All right, all right,” the beleaguered man said. Karl turned from the door, not waiting for the inevitable. When it came down to a decision between a woman like that and him, he knew who would win, no matter how much extra he paid. He was walking down the stairs when the man peeked out the door. He looked sorry and embarrassed. “I take it you heard.”

“Yes, sir. I appreciate you trying.” He turned to walk up the street again.

“Where ya headin’?”

“The Third Street graveyard.”

“The graveyard? This time of night?”

“I have an old friend … it’s been too long. I have to take care of this tonight.”

The stable master looked twice as guilty upon hearing this new revelation. “It’s not a far piece. About five blocks north and two west.” Karl raised his eyes in surprise. “Guess I didn’t need a horse after all.”

“All the same, I wish I could let you one. It’s not a night for a walk.”

“Good night,” Karl said, turning away. As the rain fell again over his shoulders and the light from the stable master’s house receded, he shivered. He passed saloon after saloon, his steps becoming more leaden by the moment. He needed something to warm him from inside, a little liquid courage. At the next saloon, he turned and walked straight to the bar.

“Whiskey,” he ordered from the bartender as he pulled off his hat.

The bartender poured, and Karl downed it in one swallow. “Again,” he ordered.

Obediently, the man poured a second, a third, and a fourth before Karl waved him away. Slapping a bill on the counter and his hat back
on his head, he stood and immediately felt the dizzying effect of the alcohol.
Stupid
, he thought, hating himself.
Weak. Can’t even do this one last thing for Peder without a little false help, can you?
He concentrated on trying not to weave as he made his way back out into the Seattle night.

Somehow, he made it to the graveyard a half-hour later. He struggled with the flint and lamp in the rain, but finally got it lit. Peder’s grave was easy to spot, being so close to the wrought-iron fence. He saw the anchor Elsa had mentioned, and knew it was his. Silently, he made his way into the burial grounds and knelt in the mud by Peder’s grave. Over the mound was a soft layer of new grass.

For a long time, he felt nothing but emptiness as he remained on his knees. “Peder,” he muttered. “I made a mess of things, didn’t I? You and I were going to conquer the world together. We were going to be there for each other until we were old men. But I left you. I deceived you. And then I didn’t have the guts to face you again.”

He reached to trace the marker at the head of the grave. Rain sizzled and steamed as it hit the hot glass of the lamp, but still the flame flickered on, giving the scene an otherworldly feel. Karl smiled and spoke. “If anyone saw me here, old friend, they’d think I was crazy.” He talked to the headstone as if Peder sat there instead. He could see his face, his hair, his shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Peder. I wish I had come to you earlier. I wish I had asked your forgiveness. I wish—” His voice broke as he wept. “I wish we could have had another chance to be friends. To be brothers. You meant so much to me. Forgive me, brother, forgive me.”

Karl sank his fists into the muck around the grave and flung it to the sky. “Why, God? Why?” he screamed. “Why couldn’t you have given us one more chance?”

He stared upward, trying to see the sky as if, in his fury, he could face God himself. “Why?” he screamed again. And then he gave in to weeping, curling up in a ball as the rain beat down upon his back.

He awoke to the creak of wagon wheels and the suspicious stares of the few passersby about at this hour. The rain had stopped, but it was barely light and bitterly cold. Stiffly, he rose from the grass of Peder’s grave. He dimly remembered going to the saloon the night before but precious little afterward.

What was he doing here? What was he doing with his life? Where was he to go? He knew something had to change. He could not go on as he had. He was on the edge of a revelation—a new phase in his life journey—but he had not a clue of where to begin. He stared at Peder’s grave marker and wondered again about the anchor. Who chose that? Elsa? Why? Because he was a sailor? It seemed a shallow reminder of the man … Peder was much more than that.

Peder Ramstad had been stalwart and strong, faithful, unmoving at times. Like … an anchor.

Like … God in a way.

How long had Karl been sailing without an anchor? Ever since he had given in to his desire for Elsa over what he knew to be right. Sailing without an anchor, without Peder, and more important, without God. Once again, it was as clear to Karl as the northern lights on the North Sea. It was the reason for his listlessness, his weakness for drink, his overwhelming sense of loss, the desire to gain possessions about him that might help him feel anchored.

Karl smiled for what felt like the first time in a long while. “Thank you,” he whispered, looking up at the gray clouds that were moving south. Once more, he traced the anchor on the gravestone. “Thank you too, friend. I’ll always miss you, brother. There was no one like you, nor will there ever be again.”

Karl did several things upon returning to town: he stopped by the telegraph office to wire Brad and tell him he was going away for some time; he purchased a Bible at the nearest store, since he did not remember where he had left his old one; and he ordered a bath. Feeling
clean and forgiven, refreshed as if he had had a full night’s sleep instead of an hour in the rain, he spent the day reading his Bible and praying. He ate downstairs at five o’clock and returned to his room to pray. Not on his knees, but spread-eagle on the floor before his God until sleep overtook him.

He awakened the next morning early, packed, and walked to the docks. He signed up to serve as a sailor on the first schooner he saw, never mentioning his prior experience to the captain. To Karl, it felt like he was reborn. Starting over again.

And never had he felt the exhilaration he did that October morn the
Silver Sea
was towed out of the sound and set free upon the Pacific’s waves.

E
lsa found that Kaatje’s tiny home was soothing to her soul, a cozy, healing balm to her grieving heart. Thoughts of returning home depressed her. She could not imagine climbing back into the huge four-poster bed without Peder. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving; thoughts of previous holidays together brought her even lower. When she had been in Seattle for the funeral, it was as if she had been in a stupor, a deadened, dreamlike world that held such memories at bay. Now her grief was sharp as a knife, each memory as clear as if it had occurred yesterday.
Oh, Peder, Peder
, she found herself saying to the ceiling,
what am I to do without you?

While the reality of his permanent absence sank in with each day that passed, Elsa had a difficult time understanding what her place in the world was now to be. For years she had been the captain’s wife, Kristian’s mother, an occasional columnist for the
New York Times
. Now it was as if everything but her role as mother had receded like the tide, leaving her with scattered, shattered shells that, if she could just pick up and make sense of them, would tell her what to do next. She felt so utterly alone, it chilled her. Only Kaatje’s warm, loving ministrations and the children’s antics kept her despair at bay. But she had
to face the truth; the five of them were painfully cramped in the tiny house and she would soon need to go home.

“Elsa!” Kaatje called as she opened the door. “Elsa—”

“Yes?”

“Where have you been?”

“I was just finishing up these dishes—”

“I’ve been calling you! Didn’t you hear me? We have a new baby in the family!”

Elsa smiled. “A baby?”

“Yes, that old Mr. Goat turned out to be a Mrs. Goat young enough to bear another!”

They laughed together, and Elsa grabbed her coat. She shivered as they left the house, still toasty warm from the morning’s baking and the fireplace embers. It was cold enough for snow, surely, and the ground was frozen solid beneath their feet. Before them was the glorious new barn that Karl had had built for Kaatje, with the understanding that the ancillary railroad he was building could store supplies there. No supplies had arrived yet, and Elsa doubted any ever would.

And she doubted that the extra material that arrived by “mistake” was anything of the kind. Karl had insisted that Kaatje use it to build another room on her house. When he stubbornly left the lumber out in the rain as if he truly was never going to return for it, she had hired a local man to do as he had bid. It was that extra room that Elsa now shared with Kaatje. Elsa was deeply thankful for Karl’s generosity. Kaatje deserved every kindness that came her way.

She wondered at the woman who walked beside her. Although larger in stature than Kaatje, Elsa felt like a mouse compared to her lioness. Kaatje had come through abandonment, a lost farm, another trek west, and establishing a new homestead, to get to where she was now. Where had she found the strength? As Kaatje opened the door to the new barn, an aromatic wave of fresh-hewn lumber wafted about them.

“Kaatje,” Elsa began. “How do you do it? Day after day, you make this farm work, you prepare food for the girls, you remake old clothes into new for them. Where do you find the strength?”

Kaatje smiled and looked down, as if a bit embarrassed. Then she looked at Elsa tenderly. “You’ll find the strength too, Elsa. I promise you. Look at you now. You’ve made it this far, three months after you lost your sweet Peder. Day after day, you put one foot in front of the other, and pray that God will make a path for you. And hasn’t he done just that?”

Elsa thought for a moment and nodded. “He has. He has been faithful.”

“And he will continue to do so.” Kaatje drew her in so she could close the barn door. In the far corner, they could hear the children squealing in delight and laughing. “No doubt you’re feeling terribly lost. That too will wane. Gradually, life begins to feel all right again, even without your spouse. It’s like losing a limb. You just have to get around without it, and eventually it somehow feels all right again.”

At Elsa’s horrified expression, Kaatje patted her arm. “Not all the time, of course. Sometimes you remember, and you ache for that limb. But in the day-to-day living, God teaches us how to do it in a new way. And somehow, that’s all right. It becomes all right.”