The Big Rock Candy Mountain (30 page)

She was crying as she said it. Elsa put out a hand and touched her. “Then he's been good for me,” she said. “At least I may have learned to keep my temper.”

“It isn't a matter of keeping it. It's having it to keep. You don't seem to ever want anything for yourself any more, and that's not natural, Elsa.”

“Let's not talk any more about it,” Elsa said.

“Why don't you get a divorce in spite of Dad?”

Elsa laughed a little. “I don't know how. I don't even know how to begin, and I haven't any money for a lawyer.”

“George would help you.”

“And get him and you in dutch with Dad.”

“George wouldn't care. Then you'd be free of him. You wouldn't always be getting letters ...”

“One since I came,” Elsa said drily.

“... and worrying yourself about him. You're thinking about him all the time, and worrying.”

“And then what would I do?” Elsa said, rising. “A divorce wouldn't change things any.”

“You could get married again.”

After a short, incredulous stare, Elsa laughed. “Don't be silly.”

“Henry would still marry you.”

“You make him sound very charitable,” Elsa said. “I remember what you used to say about Henry.”

She held the blue indignant eyes for a minute. “Don't you like Henry any more?” Kristin said.

“Certainly. I always did like him.”

They stared at each other, and by a sudden emotional shift in the wind they were both close to anger. As they stared, Kristin's face changed, her eyebrows lifted, her lips came together.

“Elsa,” she said, “you're still in love with Bo!”

Elsa turned away. “Well, what of it?” she said harshly.

Elsa stood above the kitchen range, the glow of its slow heat on arms and face, making Christmas pastry. It was the day before Christmas. Kristin, Sarah, and the boys were doing some last-minute shopping; her father had gone out to the farm after Erling.

On the table behind her a mound of sugar-dusted
fattigmands bakkelse
almost poured off on the floor, the back of the stove was sheeted with gray lefse, a wide crock in the cupboard was heaped with
goro brød.
She turned over a lefse sheet, browning in spots like broad freckles, and dropped a new batch of
fattigmand
into the kettle of fat. The kitchen was full of rich smells. She smiled a little, remembering how excited the boys were. This would be a Christmas they would remember, the kind of Christmas kids ought to have.

She thought too of what Bo's Christmas would be like in that raw little settlement in Saskatchewan: a few drinks with some other men, probably; perhaps a bowl of tom and jerry batter in his bunkhouse the way they used to have it in Dakota. Just that, and her own futile, wept-over parcel with the knitted muffler and the gloves and the heavy home-made socks. One parcel to be ripped open in the postoffice or wherever he got his mail, and instead of the warmth and ritual and color, the tree and the decorations and the bountiful eating that brought the old country close that one day of the year, and the reunion of people tied by blood and traditions, there would be only his drinks with a few other men as lonely as himself in a little unformed unhistoried town of a half dozen frame shacks.

But that was what he wanted, that was the natural result of the itch in his bones and the restlessness in his mind. She thought it odd that he should be lonely, as his letter said he was, as she herself knew he was. For all his strength and violence he was oddly dependent in some ways, like a child. Like Bruce, she thought in surprise. He was really more like Bruce than like Chester, though they had both always thought Chet the image of him.

The doublings of her own mind wearied her. As she lifted the
fattigmand
brown and cake-smelling from the fat, she saw her bare right arm, the ridge of white scar in the bend of the elbow. She would always, apparently, wear Bo in her as she wore that scar, yet she had to make up her mind. She. had to answer his letter, let him know what she would do. And she had to decide what to do about this house that echoed constantly of home but was home no longer.

The front door slammed, she heard the stamping of feet in the hall, Sarah's admonitions to the boys to clean the snow off their shoes. They all came in together, the boys rosy with the cold, Sarah pulling a wisp of hair up under her net, Kristin carrying packages. She dumped them on the floor by the cistern pump.

“Else,” she said, “could you ...” She stopped, looked at the piles of pastry, pulled off her gloves. “You're awful busy, though.”

“I'm just about done. What is it?”

“George is going to be here at six o‘clock, and that green dress doesn't fit right around the neck.”

“Sure, just a minute.”

Elsa moved the kettle of fat off the stove, gave a sugared
fattigmand
to each of the boys, standing with their tongues between their lips at the table, and shooed them out. Kristin picked up three or four big packages and followed her upstairs. While Elsa worked on the dress she said nothing, but when the collar was going back on, she jerked her head at one large parcel. “That came for you in the mail,” she said.

They looked àt each other, then at the square package. “Yes,” Elsa said. “He said something about a Christmas parcel.”

Though she wouldn't have shown it to Kristin, she was excited. Bo would have some part in this Christmas. He hadn't forgotten, and he wouldn't be forgotten.

She was so busy getting Kristin ready for George that she had no time to open it then, and later there was supper, and then the dishes, and then a quick change into a dress-up dress for the Christmas tree. But that was all right. Let it be a surprise, to her and to all of them. They thought he was so low and vicious, let them see right out in the open that he could be thoughtful too.

The house was full. Sarah's two sisters had come over, George was down from Minneapolis, Erling in from the farm. Groaning full with
ludefisk,
kjodkager,
risengrot, anschovy salat,
a half dozen kinds of pastry, pleasantly warmed by the grape wine traditional with Christmas feasts, they crowded into the parlor, sitting on chairs and floor wherever there was room. George and Kristin sat on the floor under the Christmas tree, Sarah on a straight chair, Nels Norgaard on the couch between Sarah's sisters. He quizzed them in Norwegian and smiled a little grimly at their halting and giggling answers. Erling had slipped out immediately after supper.

Chester stuck his head in between Grandpa and Hilda Veld. “There ain't any Santa Claus, is there?”

“Hoo!”

“There ain't any Santa Claus that comes down the chimney, is there?”

“I knew a boy once that didn't believe in Santa Claus,” Grandpa said. “You know what he got for Christmas? An orange, and the orange was spoiled.”

“Aw!” Chet said. He retreated to whisper with Bruce.

When Elsa came in Bruce ran up to her. “Mom.”

“What is it?”

“Chet says he ain't going to come.”

“Isn't. We don't say ain't. But he'll come. Chet's just trying to be smart.”

“Aw, I know,” Chet said. “I know!”

There was a knock on the door, and Elsa went to open it. It was Henry Mossman, stooping and smiling and apologetic. “Merry Christmas,” he said. “Can I butt in on the celebration?”

“Sure thing. Come on in.”

Henry bowed and spoke all around, the parcel he carried looking uncomfortably prominent in his hands. Elsa told him to put it under the tree.

“When do the festivities start?” he said.

“Any time now. Erling's out getting ready.”

Henry looked at the boys, secretive in their corner. “They don't look half excited, do they?” he said, and laughed.

Elsa half turned away and smoothed the papers on the library table. For an instant a thought had sneaked into her mind. Just the sight of Henry's unaffected kindness, the way he looked at the boys as if he loved them both, made her see him for an instant as their father. They'd have walked all over him from the time they were born, but they would have loved him, they wouldn't ever have known what it was to hate or fear him ...

Outside there was the faint jangle of sleigh bells. Nels Norgaard rose and shooed them all toward the kitchen, reached over and picked up the lamp. “All out,” he said, “all out, all out. He won't come in if he sees us.” The boys, frantic with excitement, hung back, escaped, had to be rounded up and ‘herded. George and Kristin were hurriedly lighting the tree candles in their pink clamp-sockets. The tree glowed, the strings , of popcorn gleamed white, there was a rich red glitter from the long festoons of cranberries, a shimmer from the glass bubbles and ornaments.

Motioning Henry to go in with the others, Elsa ran upstairs and collected her packages, piled her arms, stooped and caught her fingers in the cord of Bo's parcel, felt her way down the dark stairway again. Kristin was pushing packages under the tree. In the three minutes since the lamp had been removed the floor under the tree had been mounded with gifts. Elsa pushed her packages in with the others, turned and saw Erling's face grinning in through the window over a bushy white beard. “Hurry up,” Erling said, his voice faint through the storm windows. “It's cold out here in this monkey suit.”

The boys burst loose when she slipped into the kitchen. “Is he
here?”
Bruce said.

“I heard him up on the roof,” she said. “He got stuck in the chimney for a minute or I'd never have got out in time.”

She peered out the door. The partition between dining room and parlor cut off the tree, but she saw the flutter of its lights on the wall. There was the soft sound of the front door opening. She turned to her father. “Blow out the light,” she said. “Then we can let the boys creep out and peek at him.”

The kitchen went dark in a puffed breath. Sarah's sisters, somewhere in the dark, whispered and giggled. “Shhhhhhh!” Chester said fiercely, three times as loud as the whisper had been.

Taking the boys' hands, Elsa tiptoed them carefully into the dining room, where she stood with finger on lips and leaned to look through the double doors. Erling in a Santa Claus suit was standing in front of the fireplace cramming long scrolls of candy into the stockings. From a bag he poured streams of peanuts and butternuts and almonds, and crowned each stocking with a tangerine. The tree was barricaded with new packages, brightly wrapped. Candy canes hung from the tree, and there was a shimmer, a glitter, the whole fairy wonder of childhood, in the room. She pulled the boys close so they could peek.

They bent, stared; she felt their bodies rigid with awe. Even Chet, the unbeliever, did not breathe for minutes. Against their will they were tugged back into the kitchen. Sarah lighted the lamp again, and the roomful of people stood looking at the two boys, every pair of eyes watching the dazed entrancement in their faces. Bruce looked up at his mother, crowded against her legs, smiled wanly, and began unaccountably to cry.

Sleigh bells jangled again loudly, diminished as if moving away. “There he goes!” Chet said. They piled out of the kitchen, and the boys stopped short for a moment when they saw, well-lighted now and in plain view, the piles of gifts. Then they fell upon the loaded tree.

For a half hour there was pandemonium as they ripped open parcels, exposing Indian suits, revolvers, pencil boxes and crayons, tricycles (her father's gift, lavish, unheard of). The room was full of birdlike chirps of joy. Henry and George went around salvaging packages from the boys' rapacious hands and distributing them to their rightful owners. With surprise, Elsa found herself pressed with gifts. It had not occurred to her, in her desire to make this Christmas one that the children would always remember, that she would herself be remembered. Christmas before had always been a kind of hurried pushing-back of the world's leanness, a hasty and dutiful gift-giving always soured just a little by Bo's contempt for the whole business. (Spend a lot of money and get people things they'd never buy themselves and would never use.) She wished he could see this, the fine wholeheartedness of this feast. Her lap was full of things, gloves and a new dress from Kristin, a lavalière from Erling, a sternly practical sewing basket from Sarah and her father, even a brush and comb and mirror, backed with ivory, from Henry Mossman.

She stammered on her thanks, and her eyes betrayed her, so that she got up and began picking up scattered wrappings and feeding them into the heater. If Bo could only see it, just once, could only know just once that feeling of family loyalty and love and thanksgiving that was like a song sometimes, when Christmas went right, he would know what she missed, and why she missed it. Then she thought of Bo's package.

Chet collided with her, riding his tricycle around the room, and she caught his shoulder. “There's a package from Pa,” she said, and steered him toward the tree. Bruce wheeled up, avid for more plunder, while she groped under the low branches and found the parcel.

The babble of voices went on behind her while she cut the string. The lips of the cardboard box spread apart. Wadded newspaper came first, then a package wrapped in brown paper. She wished she had had time to open the things first and re-wrap them prettily. Bo wouldn't have had any chance, where he was, to get nice wrappings, and now his presents looked shoddy by comparison with the others. She supposed Sarah and her father, even Kristin, would notice that and hold it against him.

The boys were clamoring at her shoulder. George Nelson, his eyes crinkled with a smile at the corners, bent to help her. For a moment, with the brown and dowdy package in her hand, she felt a twinge of fear, a tiny cold premonition. The voices behind her had dropped, and she knew they were all watching.