The Quilt (3 page)

The ride was more in the nature of an adventure than something that would take “no time at all.”

Initially the road was just a single gravel lane cut through the forest, and then it turned into simple dirt, wide enough for one vehicle, with a ditch cut on each side and thick trees interspersed with small man-made clearings of forty to eighty acres.

Had it been raining, or winter, or spring, they would not have been able to travel at all; with mud or snow the track would have been completely impassable.

As it was, the highest speed the truck could maintain was ten miles an hour. Kristina's farm was only
seven miles away. But age, wear on machinery and the poor quality of tractor fuel, which was little more than low-grade kerosene, all contributed to slow the truck to a measly four or five miles an hour—hardly more than walking speed. Indeed, on more than one occasion the boy and his grandmother got out and walked alongside the bouncing vehicle. Every quarter to half mile the engine would overheat and Elmer would have to stop the truck, let the engine cool down and get a bucket of water from the ditch to pour into the boiled-over radiator. Each of these stops took half an hour or so and the end result was that the truck averaged about a mile an hour.

The boy loved it. In his mind it was a grand adventure, a voyage through wilderness, and he imagined wild beasts and Indians and even Germans and Japanese hiding in the forest along the road. He found a stick in the shape of a gun and used it to guard and defend the truck and Elmer and his grandmother. As they churned past each new homestead, which is what the small clearings were, the people who turned to look and the children who ran out to see them became
the people who cheered the tanks that liberated villages in the newsreels.

He felt very much the hero, and when, nearly seven hours after they started, they came to a wooden mailbox with the name Olaf Jorgenson carved on the side, he felt almost sad that it was over.

The driveway was a tunnel through overhanging thick green trees and brush. They drove through them, bouncing and jerking with steam boiling out of the radiator, for two hundred yards until they came to a clearing. To the left stood a small, neat two-story white-painted frame house, surrounded by a low white wooden fence. To the right stood a series of smaller buildings—a granary, a chicken coop, a shed and a red barn with an arched roof. Next to the barn was an old Minneapolis-Moline tractor with steel lug wheels, all covered with rust, and next to that, a wagon with high sides and a long wooden tongue that stuck out the front and lay on the ground.

There was no other machinery, no car, no truck. As they hammered-wheezed-smoked into the yard a cloud of chickens exploded into running flight and a dog
came streaking out from in back of the barn barking, with his shoulder hair up.

Elmer tried to kill the engine. Of course, now it refused to die. He jerked the throttle and spark levers down and he had to engage the hand clutch to lunge it ahead to still the yammering.

There was a moment of silence, deafening after seven hours of noise. In the sudden quiet, broken only by the barking dog and cackling chickens, his grandmother said:

“We're at last here.”

The boy was out of the truck instantly and the dog, after peeing on the tire, approached him with tail wagging and pushed against his leg. He knelt and hugged it and began petting it while Elmer stiffly got out and his grandmother turned and handed boxes and sacks to Elmer.

There was still no other indication that people lived at the farm.

When their packages were on the ground Elmer went to the front of the truck and turned the crank to start it. He climbed on, made a big circle in the dusty
barnyard and disappeared down the driveway, the truck clanking and smoking.

The dog broke away to chase the truck. The boy stood up.

“He didn't say goodbye.”

“Yes, he said it in Norwegian, but not loud. You must not say it loud or the devil will hear and ruin your trip. He had to hurry to get back before dark.”

“Does the devil come in the dark?”

“No. He doesn't have any lights.”

“The devil?”

“No. Elmer.”

The truck had disappeared, but the boy could still hear it. “But can't the devil hear the truck anyway?”

“That's different. Come now, grab a box and let's get up to the house.”

Just then the screen door slammed. A woman came out of the porch along the front of the house.

She was very tall, wearing large men's bib overalls and a blue work shirt, with long white-blond hair tied up in a bun on her head, and she was hugely pregnant.

“Why is her belly so big?” the boy asked in a whisper.

“She's going to have a baby,” his grandmother said. “Very soon. That's why we're here. To help.”

Kristina came through the gate and stopped. “Alida! It's so good to see you! And I see you brought your helper. I would have come out sooner but I was putting bread in the oven. Why did Elmer leave so soon? Usually he stays to eat.”

“He wants to get back before dark,” Alida answered. “Though if he knew you had fresh bread he might have stayed. That man loves his gullet.”

Kristina had a big voice, strong but still soft in some way, and she leaned down and shook the boy's hand and he saw her face close on for the first time and thought, and would think for the rest of his life, that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

Her eyes were a striking blue and almond-shaped, with a tilt at the corners and long blond lashes. Her nose had a slight upturn and her teeth were even and white when she smiled at him. He liked her instantly.

“We're here,” he said, “to help you have a baby.”

“Hush!” his grandmother said. “How you talk!”

“Well, that's what you said. Just now, you said we were here to help.”

“Sometimes the young ones talk just to hear themselves,” his grandmother said. “Hush now.”

“But—”

“Well, he's right, Alida. That's why you came out here. Come now, to the house, before the banty roosters come out of the coop and make a fuss. They think they own the world and don't like company, and we have to eat supper before chores.”

Kristina picked up a box and went to the house and the boy and his grandmother followed with the rest of their packages.

“I have a room in the back for you and the boy,” Kristina said, “and a cradle for the baby, which will be good for a while. He can lie with me when he first comes.”

“He?”

“I did the flour-and-ring test last night and three times it pointed to boy. That's what Olaf wants most. A boy. It would be so nice to surprise him with a son when he comes home.”

She stopped talking and the boy thought it was because they were at the door, but he caught a glimpse of her face and saw she was crying, soft tears, and it didn't make sense to him until she said:

“The damn war. The damn, damn war.”

“Men,” his grandmother said. “It's how they fix things. Fight over them. Just like bulls.”

When they entered the house, they came directly into the kitchen. The boy immediately smelled the bread baking and started to salivate. Except for a jar of canned wild plums they had opened on the way and shared with Elmer, they had not eaten all day, and he was starved.

Along one wall was a wood-burning cookstove, facing the door, and it was making the room very hot because Kristina had it fired up to bake the bread. On the other wall, to the right, there was a sink, but instead of faucets it had a hand pump. To the left the wall was full of cupboards.

In the middle of the kitchen was a table with four wooden chairs, and from the ceiling hung a Coleman gas lantern. There was no electricity on the farm. But
that summer in the cookcamp the boy and his grandmother had lived without electricity, so he knew about lanterns and candles.

“Sit,” Kristina said. “We'll eat.”

“Let me,” his grandmother said, moving to the cupboards. “You're so close now. Let me do the work.”

“But I feel fine.”

“Hush now,” his grandmother said. “Don't let the devil hear.”

“Oh, Alida …”

They put the boxes and packages in a side room. Soon there were plates and silverware on the table. His grandmother cut fresh bread, hot from the oven, and took a jar of honey from the cupboard and from the top of the stove a cast-iron pot filled with stew. They sat to eat.

They did not talk while they sat but kept at the food until they were done. The boy ate three slices of hot bread with sugared honey and a full plate of stew and thought he had never eaten food that tasted so wonderful, and when they were done they put the dishes in the sink for later and went back out into the yard.

It was still light and with the summer sun would be light for another four hours. The boy was halfway across the barnyard, following his grandmother and Kristina and looking for the dog when he heard a loud chukkering behind him. He turned to see four enraged banty roosters, with their neck feathers all puffed up, flying through the air toward his head.

“Grandma!” he yelled, and ran for her skirts. She turned and waved her arms.

“Get gone with you, damn you!”

And the roosters seemed to stop in midair. They veered off to the side and backed away.

“They're cowards,” Kristina said over her shoulder without turning. “Just don't let them bluff you down.”

“What's bluff?” The boy watched them flutter from the protection of his grandmother's skirt.

“Like a lie,” his grandmother said. “They lie to scare you and pretend they're tough, but they're all talk.”

They didn't look like all talk to the boy. They looked like they could tear his head off and he decided either he would not come into the yard alone or he would find a big stick to carry. Faced with Alida, however, the
roosters gave up and moved off to the back of the barn to look for bugs in the manure.

The barn was a wonderful mystery to the boy, dark and cool. Three cats came up and rubbed their sides against his legs in greeting.

“Cotton, Candy,” said Kristina, pointing at two gold cats, and then at a brown one, “and Mud. We got them to keep the rats and mice down but they mostly just steal milk.”

She moved to the back of the barn and slid the door open. The boy was surprised to see seven cows standing there, waiting to come into the barn.

“Hello, girls,” Kristina said. She turned back into the barn and the cows followed her in. They were enormous and the boy moved back against the front wall. But they all trooped to their stalls, each waiting for the one next to her to get settled before going into her own stall.

“They know where to go,” he said. “Just like people …”

“Better than people.” His grandmother snorted as she carried a bucket from a little side room. She took a stool
from a hook on the wall, leaving two other small three-legged stools. “They almost never fight…. People aren't so smart.”

The boy remembered suddenly. “What was that word she used back in the house?”

“What word?”

“She said ‘shores,' or ‘chores.' What does that mean?”

“It means light work,” she said, smiling down at him. “Light work in the mornings and evenings before the real work starts…. You'll see. Now, here, carry this stool down to that red cow on the end. We'll start there and Kristina can come the other way and we'll meet in the middle.”

The boy did not think of it as light work. Kristina might be pregnant but she could work like a man, and his grandmother and Kristina kept him running.

“Your job is to carry the stools between the cows for us,” Kristina said, smiling as she finished milking a cow. She stood to carry the bucket of milk to the milk cans in the pump room at the end of the bar.

“I could carry the buckets of milk,” he said. She shook her head. “Not yet. Just the stools for now, and keep the cats from sitting on top of the cows. Abigail and Eunice don't like it and they fidget and give less milk.”

“The cows have names?”

“You bet. And they know them.” She slapped the cow she had just finished milking lightly on the rump. “Isn't that right, Abby?” And the cow turned and looked at her before turning back to face forward.

They didn't quite meet in the middle. His grandmother did four cows and Kristina did only three, but twice the boy saw her stop milking and lean her head into the cow's flank and close her eyes and wince and sigh, and he guessed that something about having a baby was hard work and perhaps hurt or made a person tired and he decided to work as hard as he could and help as much as he could.

He ran back and forth with the stools and tried to shoo the cats off the cows but they ignored him. When milking first started, they sat up on their hind legs like little bears in back of his grandmother and Kristina and waited to have milk squirted into their mouths. But soon they'd had enough milk, and they jumped up onto the backs of the cows and began jumping from cow to cow, playing on them.

Some of the cows did fidget, and while at first he was afraid because the cows were so large, after a time he
realized how gentle they were and he went between them after the cats. Soon he ignored the cows completely.

What with chasing cats, running back and forth with the stools and then after the cats, by the time milking was done and all the milk put into the milk cans in the water trough in the pump room, the boy was so tired he nearly staggered as they walked back to the house.