Under This Unbroken Sky (22 page)

“What are you doing?” Teodor watches her fumbling to uncork the jug. “Maria…”

“I won’t have this in my house.” She grabs a knife and pries into the cork. He stops her hand. Maria wrenches the jug away.

“Give it to me.” Teodor holds out his hand.

“No.”

Teodor squeezes her hand that clutches the knife tight. “Let it go.”

Maria lifts the jug above her head with her free arm. “I’ll drop it.”

Teodor easily reaches over her and grabs it. “Let go.” He presses her hand against the table, forcing her to release the knife. She struggles to smash the jug against the table. Teodor holds it steady. They stand locked in a twisted dance.

“Is this what you need to prove that you’re as good as them? That you’re not a peasant who can be kicked and ordered to bow?” She pleads, “Are you willing to risk us?”

Maria sees his eyes cloud with disappointment. He speaks gently, as if to a child he doesn’t expect to understand. “A man should be able to have a drink in his own house.”

“I won’t wait for you.”

Teodor coaxes the jug from her hand. He sets it back in the niche and straightens the picture.

THE CHILDREN GATHER AROUND TEODOR AT THE kitchen table. He lights a cigarette from the oil lamp. The smoke curls around them. He speaks to his hands, the nicotine-stained fingers, the grayed linen bandage that dresses his wound. He forbids them to have any contact with the people in the house on the other side of the stone wall.

Maria kneels before the Blessed Virgin and prays.

WHEAT WINE

Cook two pounds of well-washed wheat until soft. Drain.

In earthen crock, pour five gallons of boiling water over wheat, then add ten pounds of white sugar and one yeast cake broken.

Drop this in when mixture is lukewarm.

Cover with cloth. Let sit behind stove or in warm place for 3–4 weeks.

Strain through pillowcase into creamery can.

Pillowcase with solids can be placed in can and tied off, so long as it doesn’t touch the bottom.

Fit creamery can with wooden block for lid. Drill 1
¹
/
2
" hole in bottom of block and
¹
/
2
" hole in side of block.

Insert copper pipe through hole on side. Make sure fit is tight. Coil pipe through tub of ice, snow, or cold water. Heat can on stove for 1–2 hours. Use half-gallon jugs or jars. First jars nice and strong.

Keep pouring until just water. Test by throwing some on the fire. If it flashes, keep pouring.

Makes 1 gallon. Adjust recipe for quantity needed.

T
HE TEMPERATURE DROPS TO BELOW TWENTY IN THE days and minus forty below at night. Night steals away the day by suppertime. A hoary frost coats the exterior of the log cabin. Inside the house, even with the fire burning, the family wears long underwear, sweaters, socks, and boots.

The four-mile walk to school has been deemed too dangerous. The children aren’t allowed out for more than ten minutes before Maria herds them back inside to check their raw cheeks for frostbite. The crusted snow groans beneath their feet. The dry, cold air sucks the breath from their lungs. Tears freeze on eyelashes. Scarves and mitts grow stiff from condensation and sweat.

Each day Myron chops through the lake’s two-foot-thick ice to fetch water, only to find the hole frozen again the next morning. There have been stories in the newspaper about people losing their toes and fingers. Cows and horses have been found frozen solid, still standing in their paddocks. Bodies are piling up in the shed behind the church waiting for the ground to thaw so they can be buried.

In some places the snow has drifted four feet. The mice and rabbits are scarce, already starved or frozen, unable to reach the prairie grass. Coyotes have been spotted in the town’s streets. It is the worst winter on record and it’s only November.

Teodor planes a long strip of bark down a ten-foot log. For the last two weeks, he has been building a barn with two stalls, a small room for the tack and one for the grain. He has to get the horse out
of Anna’s barn before Stefan claims it as his own or worse. Teodor knows he’s capable of hurting the animal to get back at him.

The walls are up. The rafters are in. He is hewing the boards for the roof now. He brushes away the ice clinging to his scarf, obscuring his vision. It is wrapped twice around his head, leaving only a gash for his eyes. He wears two pairs of mittens. The palms are bound in burlap. Once, he removed the mitts to better control the plane and his hands stuck to the metal handle. He had to breathe on the steel to thaw it with his breath, but it still ripped away a layer of skin. He knows now how long he can push after losing feeling in his fingers and toes before he is forced to hobble into the house and let the fire warm his blood.

Maria unwraps his scarf, pulls off the mittens, removes his coat, and hangs them over the stove to gather heat. She unlaces his boots and slips them off his feet. His feet are so numb, he can’t feel the floor through his socks. They are like stumps, the toes fused together. Maria sets hot rocks in his boots and wraps him in a blanket. She rubs his feet and hands as he sips on hot water. The blood starts to melt and the nerves scream as if on fire. He tries to rock away the pain. His face contorts in agony; he stuffs the blanket in his mouth and bites down to suppress the moans. The children retreat into their rooms. They sit, wiggling their fingers and toes, unable to imagine not having ten of each.

After twenty minutes, Teodor gets dressed again and returns to his work. In another week, he should be finished.

IT’S BEEN TWO WEEKS AND THE FAMILIES HAVEN’T SPOKEN. Each night Maria prays for them all.
God bless Anna, God bless Lesya, God bless Petro, God bless the unborn child.
She has to reach deep in her heart for
God bless Stefan
. No one utters their names out loud. In the first few days, Ivan cried himself to sleep, demand
ing to be told why he couldn’t play with Petro. After the third night of Maria’s whispers and empty consolations, Teodor barged into the room and threatened him with a strapping. After that, Ivan covered his head with his pillow and learned to cry without sobbing.

Maria tried to reason with Teodor that he was punishing his sister and her children for her husband’s betrayal. He rolled over in bed and slept with his back to her. She pleaded with him that he couldn’t let them starve. Think of Lesya, think of the boy.

He screamed back at her: “He didn’t think of
my
children! Who’ll feed them if I’m not here?” He stormed out and didn’t return until after dark.

Maria didn’t worry, she knew he was in the barn. Every hour she could see the end of his cigarette glowing hot just outside the barn door. In bed, she put her arms around him, her round belly pressed against the small of his back, her legs spooned against his. She breathed into his neck: “Do it because you are a good man.” He didn’t answer.

Before morning broke, Maria slid quietly out of bed and replaced her sleeping form with a pillow. She kept her feet bare, despite the chilled ground. She didn’t stoke the fire for fear of waking the household. Quietly, she navigated the room, her hands groping the darkness, her eyes adjusting to the faint moon shadows. At one point she closed her eyes and searched the shelves with her fingers. She was amazed to discover that she could sense the objects at the end of her fingertips before they touched. When Teodor woke, Maria had finished packing the basket full of food supplies.

“You take it or I will,” she said calmly. Teodor cursed, and Maria slipped her feet into his oversized boots. She clunked over to the coat hook and pulled his coat over her nightdress and five-months-pregnant belly. She wrapped his scarf around her neck and pulled on his mittens.

“I’ll take it.” Teodor got out of bed.

Now every morning he walks down the hill to the forbidden place on the other side of the wall. He approaches the back of the barn. Some days the horse is waiting for him; other days it is mercifully inside. He doesn’t go around front, he enters through the tack room. He checks that the cow is being milked and fed; that the teats are clean and healthy; and that the stall has been mucked out. He brushes down the horse. If it is an especially cold day, he feeds it extra oats. Occasionally, he drapes the saddle blanket over its bowed back. He rubs its head and promises that soon he’ll take it to its new home.

He peeks out the barn to see if smoke is rising from the stack and that wood is chopped. He is surprised how the pile has grown. He can see the footprints are small. The ax is stuck in the chopping block. The first few days, it was mostly small branches, then a few small logs, but with each day the stack has grown and now the logs are fat and thick, split perfectly down the center. He wishes he could see his nephew swing the ax.

He sets the basket a few feet from the cow’s stall and picks up the two eggs or the jug of milk offered in return.

Only once did he encounter Lesya, when he arrived an hour earlier to get a jump on the day. Her back was to him as she set the two eggs on a cushion of hay inside the empty basket. The horse’s whinny made her look around. Teodor stood awkwardly with the other basket in hand, self-conscious of the pink embroidered linen cloth covering it. Lesya scrambled to her feet and bolted for the door.

“Lesya…”

She stopped at the door but kept her hand on the latch.

“Is there anything else you need?”

Lesya shook her head and hid behind her long hair.

“Is your mama okay?”

Lesya hesitated and nodded.

“If you need anything, if anything happens, you come get me. Do you understand?”

Lesya nodded again. Teodor sat the basket on the ground and pocketed the eggs. “I won’t come by before seven from now on.”

That was the last morning he saw her there.

IVAN TRUDGES AFTER MYRON, HAVING SUCCESSFULLY badgered Maria to let him help check the snares. She acquiesced, hoping he would expend some pent-up energy and stop tormenting his sisters.

His trouser legs rub together, padded by the extra pair of long johns. He walks stiffly, his arms hang away from his sides, propped out by two sweaters. He feels thick and heavy, swaddled by his mother’s worry. The scarf tourniquets his forehead and winds over his nose and mouth, chokes around his throat, obstructing his peripheral view. Twice he fell in the deep snow, floundering on his back until Myron grabbed him by the scruff and hoisted him up.

“Myron…” His voice sounds muffled and far away. He shouts louder: “Myron.”

“What?” Myron grouches, expecting to find him flailing in the snowdrifts again.

“Can I hold the gun?”

“No.” Myron slings the rifle over his shoulder and pushes forward. The steel light of morning is already graying the clouds. He’s late. He’s usually at the wall before first light, but this morning he had to wait for Ivan to get dressed and now he has to wait for him to catch up. He quickens his pace, forcing his little brother to run.

Checking the snares is his job. It’s the only time he can be alone,
away from the family. Away from the confines of the house. Away from the unspoken tension between his mother and father. It’s the only time he can breathe.

He has a routine. He wakes up long before the others stir, even his father. He always puts his right foot out first, then his left. He retrieves the pants and shirt he laid out on the end of his bed. He always starts with his right leg in his trousers. He doesn’t tuck in his shirt until the quilt is straightened. That night when everything went bad, Myron had unthinkingly tucked in his shirt before he had straightened the bedcovers. He has been much more careful ever since. Before he leaves the room, he glances over to Ivan and counts him breathing three times, then enters the day. He knows the rituals are childish, but it’s all that he can control.

No matter how stealthily he moves or how early he wakes, Maria always gets up to set out a slice of bread with lard or jam and a cup of hot water colored with a few grains of coffee. Before climbing back in bed, she tousles his hair as she did when he was a little boy. His morning hug. They don’t exchange words. Enough has been said. He stacks his dirty dishes. Then swallows the last mouthful of lukewarm water just before he steps outside.

In the twilight of dawn, when his ears are still fresh to the day’s first sounds, he can hear clearer than at any other time of day. He turns his head back and forth, cocking his ears to each direction. Sometimes, he closes his eyes to listen better. He hears the branches cracking from the frost, the groan of the snow beneath his feet, the rumbling of the lake ice, the timber in the house shrinking and shifting, sometimes he thinks he can even hear the clouds sliding across the sky. This morning, though, when he opened his eyes, his brother’s face was inches from his own. “Can I come with you?”

Myron scans the snow for fresh tracks, but he and Ivan are the
only animals foolish enough to traverse snow this deep. He’s only trapped a dozen rabbits this winter and the last two were skin and bone. Maria never complains about the meager catch, but he feels the shame of failing his family.

The first rabbit he skinned, he tore the pelt and nicked the stomach. The rancid contents and stool poured onto the floor and contaminated the meat. He had said he knew how to do it. His father skinned the next rabbit. He set up a truss in the corner and strung the rabbit up by its rear legs. He began by sharpening the knife, polishing the blade against the grinding stone in smooth circular movements. He showed Myron how to test its sharpness by running his thumb along the razor-sharp edge.

With a surgeon’s precision, he made the first incision, cutting cuffs around the paws, under the tail, over the backside. Then, grabbing the skin, he pulled it down over the belly, carving through the fat, until the entire skin was turned inside out, draped over the rabbit’s head. Its entire musculature exposed, bloody and raw. He opened the chest and stomach cavity next, dissecting the heart and liver for Maria’s stew pot. Then, with one final pull, he yanked away the pelt hooding the head. The animal no longer resembled a rabbit. It had become meat. Teodor handed the knife to Myron and stepped back. Only once did he take his son’s hand and adjust the angle of the blade. Myron didn’t make any more mistakes.

Whenever Myron skinned a rabbit, Ivan watched intently over his shoulders, mimicking every move. Maria lined Myron’s and Teodor’s boots with the pelts for insulation and stitched together a baby blanket for Anna. Ivan added a rabbit skull to his treasure box.

“Can I take it from the snare?” Ivan hollers, the words punctuated by his breathless gasps.

“There might not be any rabbits.” Myron, impatient, stops to let him catch up. Ivan pushes through the snow, lifting his boots high,
clouds of white puffing from his mouth like a steam engine. His body is overheated in the extra clothes, each leg weighs ten extra pounds; he kneels in the snow pausing for air. He blinks his eyes, his eyelashes sticky with ice. Myron notices his brother’s smallness and remembers that he’s still just a kid.

“Why don’t you wait here?” Myron suggests.

Ivan struggles to his feet. “I’m comin’.” He trudges past his big brother, determined to get to the rabbit first. Angry that Myron would think that he would give up. He concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other. He sinks to his waist; he heaves the other leg over, and sinks to his knee. He pushes his upper body up, his hands disappear to his wrists; icy snow crams under the cuffs. He hits a crusted drift; the snow holds his weight and he scrambles across. He doesn’t notice the tracks leading up from the lake, loping toward the stone wall, but Myron does.

Myron veers off the path to check their freshness. They are large prints, dog tracks. The gait is long and bounding. Coyote. It came through a few hours ago at the most. Myron scans the horizon. There’s no sign that the animal returned the same way. He drops the gun to the crook of his elbow. “Ivan, wait up.”

But Ivan doesn’t hear him through the scarf and hat muffling his ears. He is running now. He’s only thirty feet from the wall. He scans the whiteness for any sign of a rabbit. He shoves the scarf away from his eyes. The cold numbs his forehead and he pulls it back down too far, covering one eye. Myron chases after him. The snow grabs at his legs and ankles, slowing him down. “Ivan!”

Ivan hears the crying first. He thinks it is a baby. He turns his head, peering through the slit, trying to locate the source. Stone/ wall/gray/snow/white—
Help, help, help
, it cries.

“I can’t see you.” Ivan runs blindly toward the wall.
Help. Help!
He looks to the east and to the west. White on white. Suddenly he
is afraid that he is all alone. He turns, searching for Myron, terrified he won’t be right behind him. Myron rushes past, gun in hand, nearly knocking him over.