Years (19 page)

In their turn, Theodore’s hands stopped pumping. He recalled warning Miss Brandonberg that he didn’t have time to be hauling her to school. He thought of her on that saddle last night and his neck seemed to grow a little warm. He’d readily admit she hadn’t looked much like a hothouse pansy then. She’d looked... ahh, she’d looked...

Something happened within Theodore’s heart as the picture of Linnea appeared. Something a man of his age had no business feeling for a young thing like her.

Resolutely, Theodore continued milking. “I told her when she come here I didn’t have time to be cartin’ her off to school when the weather got bad. I got things for you to do.”

“But she’ll be soaked through by the time she gets there!”

“Tell your grandma to find her a spare poncho.”

Kristian’s lips hardened and he vehemently lit into his milking. Damn the old man. He don’t need me and he knows it. Not for the ten minutes it’d take me to drive her to school. But Kristian knew better than to press the point.

Linnea was all dressed for breakfast when she heard the thud of Kristian taking the steps two at a time. Two sharp raps sounded on her door, and she opened it to find him standing breathless on the landing.

For the second time that morning there was a look on his face that warned her to keep things very impersonal between them.

“Oh, hello. Am I late for breakfast?”

“No. Grandma’s just putting it on. I... ahh... ” He cleared his throat. “I just wanted you to know I’d give you a ride to school if I could, but Pa said he needs me right after breakfast. But Grandma’s got a spare poncho for you to wear. And an umbrella, too.”

“Why, thank you, Kristian, I appreciate it.” She flashed him a second smile, attempting to make it appreciative but not encouraging.

“Well, I... um... I gotta wash up. See you downstairs.”

When Linnea closed the door, she leaned back against it, releasing a huge breath. Goodness, this was one problem she
hadn’t foreseen. He was her student, for heaven’s sake. How would she handle his obvious attraction for her if it kept growing? He was a sweet, appealing boy, but he was — after all — just a boy, and while she liked him as she liked all her students, that was as far as it went.

Still, she couldn’t help being touched by his blossoming gallantry, his visible nervousness, and the fact that he’d asked permission to give her a ride to school. Neither could she help being piqued by the fact that the permission had been denied.

At breakfast, several minutes later, Linnea covertly studied Theodore. She’d hoped that last night had seen the last of his orneriness, but apparently not. Well, if one could be ornery, so could two.

“It’s too wet to work in the fields today. No reason why Kristian can’t come to school.”

Theodore stopped chewing and leveled her with a chastising stare while she innocently went on spreading raspberry jam on a piece of toast.

“Kristian ain... isn’t going to school today. We got other things to do besides cut wheat.”

She glared at Theodore. Her mouth tightened like a drawstring purse. Their eyes met and clashed for several interminable seconds, then without another word, she pitched her toast onto her fried eggs, her napkin on the toast, and ejected herself from the chair. She made as much racket as possible as she clattered angrily up the stairs.

In her wake, John, Kristian, and Nissa, astonished, stared at the empty doorway, but Theodore went on calmly eating his bacon and eggs.

Less than fifteen minutes later Kristian watched her trudge off down the road through the drizzle and wished again he were going with her. Still stewing, he harnessed Cub and Toots, then clambered onto the wagon seat to wait in irate silence for his father. He sneezed twice, hunkered forward, and stared straight ahead when the old man came out of the house, dressed in a black rubber poncho and his tattered straw hat. The wagon seat pitched as Theodore climbed aboard, and Kristian sneezed again.

“You gettin’ a cold, boy?”

Kristian refused to answer. What the hell did the old man care if he was getting a cold or not! He didn’t care about anybody but himself.

Even before Theodore was seated, Kristian gave a shrill
whistle and slapped the reins harder than necessary. The team shot forward, setting Theodore sharply on his rump. The older man threw a look at his son, but Kristian, churning, only pulled his hat down farther over his eyes, bowed his shoulders, and stared straight down the lines.

The day suited his mood — wet and cheerless. The horses plodded along through a sodden, colorless countryside devoid of moving life. Those fields already shorn looked dismal, their stubble appearing like tufts of hair on a mangy yellow dog. Those yet uncut bent low beneath their burden of rain like the backs of tired old people facing another hard winter. When Kristian had ridden in stony silence for as long as he could, he finally spouted, without preamble, “You shoulda let me give her a ride to school!”

Theodore cautiously studied his son, the profile set in lines of rebellion, the lips pursed in displeasure. Just when had the boy had time to become so dead set on squiring the schoolmarm around?

“I told her the first day I wasn’t cultivating no hothouse pansies here.”

Kristian glared at his father. “Just what is it you got against her?”

“I got nothin’ against her.”

“Well, you sure’s hell don’t like her.”

“Better watch your mouth, hadn’t you, boy?”

Kristian’s face took on a look of intolerant disgust. “Aw, come on, Pa, I’m seventeen years old and if — ”

“Not yet, you ain’t!” In his ire Theodore realized he’d used
ain’t,
and it angered him further.”

“Two months and I will be.”

“And then you figure it’s all right to cuss a blue streak, huh?”

“Saying hell ain’t exactly cussin’ a blue streak. And anyway, a man’s got a right to cuss when he’s mad.”

“Oh, a man is it, huh?”

“You don’t ask that when you send me out to do a man’s work.”

The truth of the statement irritated Theodore further. “So what is it got you so nettled? And give me them reins. You ain... you’re not doin’ them horses’ mouths any good.” Theodore plucked the reins from Kristian’s hands, leaving him to stare morosely between the horses’ ears. Moisture gathered on
his curled hat brim and dripped past his nose.

“You never ask me, Pa. You never even give me the choice about going to school or not. Maybe I want to be there right now.”

Theodore had figured this was coming. He decided to confront it head on.

“To study?”

“Well of course to study. What else?”

“You tell me.” Kristian shot his father a quick look, set his gaze on the hazy horizon, and swallowed pronouncedly. Theodore studied Kristian and remembered clearly the pangs of growing up. He forced his voice to calm, and asked without rancor, “Got feelings for the teacher, do you, boy?”

Surprised, Kristian again flicked a glance at his father, shrugged, then stared straight ahead. “I don’t know. Maybe. What would you say if I did?”

“Say? Not much I can say. Feelings is feelings.”

Having expected an explosion, Kristian was surprised at his father’s calm. Having expected reticence, he was even more unprepared for Theodore’s apparent willingness to talk. But they never talked — not about things like this. It was hard to get the words out, but there were so many things mixing up Kristian lately. His own anger calmed and much of his youthful confusion became audible in his tone. “How’s a person supposed to tell?”

“Don’t know if I can answer that. I guess it’s different for everybody.”

“I can’t quit thinkin’ about her, you know? I mean, I lay in my bed at night and think about stuff she said, and how she looked at supper, and I come up with things I wanna do for her.”

The boy was smitten, but good, Theodore realized. Best tread soft.

“She’s two years older than you.”

“I know.”

“And your teacher, to boot.”

“I know, I know!” Kristian stared at his boots. Water funneled from the front of his hat brim and rain wet the back of his neck.

“Come on kind of fast, didn’t it? She’s only been here a couple weeks.”

“How long did it take for you and my mother?”

What should he answer? The boy was growing up for sure, to be asking questions like that. Truth was truth, and Kristian deserved to know. “Not long — I’ll grant you that. I saw her standin’ up there on that train beside her pa, wearin’ a hat as yellow as butter, and I hardly looked at Teddy Roosevelt again.”

“Well then why couldn’t it happen to me that fast?”

“But you’re only sixteen, son.”

“And how old were you?”

They both knew the answer. Seventeen. In just two months Kristian would be seventeen. It was coming on faster than either of them was prepared for.

“What did it feel like, Pa, when you first knew how you felt about my mother?”

Like last night when I looked at the little missy sitting on that saddle. To Theodore’s bewilderment the answer came at will. He was no more ready for it than for his son’s imminent manhood.

“Feel like?” The feeling was with him again, new and fresh. “Like a strong fist in the gut.”

“And do you think she felt the same?”

“I don’t know. She said she did.”

“She said she loved you?”

Slightly self-conscious, Theodore nodded.

“Then why didn’t she stay?”

“She tried, son, she really tried. But right from the start she hated it here. Seemed like she was sad all the time, and after you were born it seemed to get worse. Oh, not that she didn’t love you. She did. I’d find her layin’ with you beside her on the bed in the middle of the afternoon. She’d be playing with your toes and talkin’ and croonin’ to you. But underneath, she was pure sad, like women get after birthings. She never seemed to get over it. By the time you were a year old she was still starin’ out across the wheat fields, claimin’ the sight of it wavin’ and wavin’ was drivin’ her mad. There was no sound here, she said.” Theodore shook his head disconsolately. “Why, she never cared to listen. To her, sounds meant streetcars and motorcars clanging by on a cobblestone street and hawkers peddlin’ and blacksmiths hammerin’ and trains whistlin’ through the city. She never heard the wind in the cottonwoods, or the bees in the caragana bushes.” Theodore squinted at the vast prairie and went on as if talking to himself. “She never heard them atall.

“She hated the stir of the wheat, she said after a while she hated it worse than she’d hated travelin’ on that train with her pa. I watched the sparkle go out of her, and her laugh disappeared, and I knew... ” He looked at the runnels of rain slipping down his wet poncho. “Well, I knew I wasn’t the kind of man who could ever bring it back. She thought I was somethin’ I wasn’t, that night when we danced and talked in Dickinson. That was some kind of fairy tale to her, but this was the real thing, and she could never get used to it.”

Kristian sneezed. Wordlessly, Theodore lifted a hip, produced a handkerchief, and handed it to his son. When Kristian had blown his nose, Theodore went on.

“She just stared out over the wheat fields and got sadder and quieter, and pretty soon her eyes looked all dull and... well, nothin’ like they were the day I first saw her on that train. Then one day she was gone. Just gone.”

Theodore’s elbows rested on his knees. Sadly, he shook his head.

“Ah, that day. I’ll never forget that day. Worst day of my life, I suppose.” He shook off the memory and went on matter-of-factly, “She left... but I never thought it was us she was leaving as much as it was the place. It hurt her to leave you. She said so in her note. Tell Kristian I love him, she said. Tell him when he’s old enough.”

Kristian had heard it before, but his heart swelled at the words. He’d always understood that his motherless family was different from those of his cousins and schoolmates, and though he’d never known a mother’s love, there had always been Nissa. But suddenly he missed the mother he’d never known. Now, on the verge of manhood, he wished he had a mother to talk to.

“You... you loved her, didn’t you, Pa?”

Theodore sighed, and kept staring at the horses’ rumps. “Oh, I loved her, all right,” he answered. “A man sometimes can’t help lovin’ a woman, even if she’s the wrong one.”

They rode on in silence through the weeping day, with Theodore’s last words reverberating in their minds. And if those words brought to mind Linnea rather than Melinda, it was nothing either man could control.

They came at last to the coal fields of Zahl. Theodore pulled the wagon onto the scale and stopped the horses with the old Norwegian term that was somehow comforting today.

“Pr-r-r,”
he ordered, the word blending with the mood set by both the story and the falling rain. Nobody was about. They were surrounded by the smell of wet coal and the sound of dripping water. Theodore turned to his son, rested one hand on his shoulder, and said, “Well, she’s a pretty little thing, all right. I’ll grant you that.” Abruptly, he changed moods. “So, here we are. You up to loadin’ eight tons of coal, boy?”

Kristian wasn’t. He was feeling worse all the time. The sneezes were coming one right after the other, and it was a toss-up as to which was dripping faster, his nose or his hat brim.

“I ain’t got much choice, have I?”

Theodore gently scolded, “There’s no such word as ain’t, boy.” Then he vaulted over the side of the wagon and went to find old man Tveit to get the empty wagon weighed, so they could start loading.

The vast farmland that had driven Melinda Westgaard into a state of depression and caused her to desert her husband and son was, that day, as bleak as she’d found it on the bleakest of days. The rain fell dismally over the flat coal fields of Zahl with not a single tree to break the monotony of the featureless horizon. Aesthetically, nature had been unkind to North Dakota. But though she’d robbed the state of trees to provide precious fuel, she had offered something in their stead: coal. Twenty-eight thousand square miles of it. Soft, brown lignite, so accessible that man could simply scrape away the thin covering of surface soil and harvest the fuel with pick axes and shovels.