Years (18 page)

He turned to look at her, but found himself staring at the part in her hair. Her head remained bowed as she went on. “I came to apologize to you.”

Still he could think of nothing to say.

“I think I hurt you rather badly the other day when I ridiculed you for your improper grammar and called you dense. I’m very sorry I did that, Theodore.”

He saw her chin lift and quickly glanced away before their eyes could meet. “Aw, it don’t matter.”

“Doesn’t it? Then why have you refused to talk to me or even look at me ever since?”

He had no idea how to respond, so he stared at the piece of leather on the trap while an enormous clap of thunder made the sturdy barn shudder. But neither Theodore nor Linnea flinched.

“It’s been very hard on me to share the same table with you and to pass you in the kitchen all the while you were trying to freeze me out. My family is very different from yours. We talk and laugh together and share things. I miss that very much since I came here. All week long, whenever you’d get all cold and stiff and turn away from me, I felt like crying, because I’ve never had an enemy before. Then today in church, I thought... well, I hoped maybe you’d warmed up a little, but when I thought about it a little more I realized you were probably very deeply hurt and if I wanted to be your friend again,
I must apologize to you. Would you... would you look at me, please?” Their eyes met, his self-conscious, hers contrite. “I’m sorry. You’re not dense, and I never should have said that. And I should have been more patient with you about your grammar. But, Theodore, I’m a teacher.” Without warning she placed a hand on his arm and her expression became tender. Something awkward happened to his heart, and it felt like her light touch was singeing his skin. He tried to drag his gaze away but failed.

“Do you know what that means?” Her eyes glittered and he wondered frantically what he would do if she started crying. “It doesn’t mean that I’m a teacher only when I’m in the schoolroom. I can’t separate me into two different people — one who teaches when she’s a mile down the road and one who forgets about it when she comes back here.”

She gestured widely and, thankfully, he was free of her touch and of the threat of tears. “Oh, I know I’m impetuous sometimes. But it happens automatically. I hear people speaking improperly and I correct them. I did it again without even thinking, when I came in here. And I saw how uncomfortable it made you feel.” He began to turn away, to pick up the rag and look busy, but she grabbed his shirtsleeve and forced him to stay where he was. “And I’ll do it again... and again... and again before I’m through with you. Do you understand that?”

He stared at her mutely.

“So what harm can it do if you know that I don’t mean to belittle you? There’s no rule that says I must be a teacher only to children, is there?” When he made no comment, she twisted his sleeve impatiently and insisted, “Is there?”

She was an enigma. He wasn’t used to dealing with directness such as this, and he waited too long, trying to decide what to say to her. She flung away his arm irritably. “You’re being bullheaded again, Theodore. And while we’re on the subject of bullheadedness, you certainly don’t set a very good example for your son when you sulk around and pull your silent act. What do you think Kristian thinks about his father treating the schoolteacher that way? You’re supposed to respect me!”

“I do,” he managed at last.

“Oh, of course you do.” She squared her fists on her hips and tossed a shoulder. “So far you’ve tried to pawn me off oh the Dahls and freeze me out. But I can’t live this way, Theodore.
I’m just not used to that sort of enmity.”

Out of the clear blue sky, Theodore made an admission such as he’d never expected to hear himself make. “I don’t know what enmity means.”

“Oh!” His admission went straight to her heart. Her eyes softened and she dropped her belligerent pose. “It means hostility... you know, like we’re enemies. We’re not going to be enemies for the next nine months, are we?”

He seemed unable to summon up his voice again. All he could think about was how fetching she looked in the lantern-light, and how her blue eyes came alight with those gold sparkles, and how he liked the pert tilt of her nose. She grinned and added, “Because I’ll be plumb crazy before then.”

What could a man say to a feisty little firecracker like her?

“You talk a lot, you know.”

She laughed and suddenly swung across the room and mounted one of the saddles on the sawhorse. Astride, she crossed her hands on the pommel and hunched her shoulders. “And you talk too little.”

“Quite a pair we make.”

“Oh, I don’t know. We were doing all right when I first came in here. Why, you were practically... ” She grinned teasingly. “Rhapsodizing.”

He leaned back against the workbench and crossed his arms over his bib. “So what does that mean?”

She pointed her nose at him and ordered, “Look it up.”

Someplace in the house there was an English/Norwegian dictionary. Maybe he could puzzle it out or stumble across the word somehow.

“Yeah, maybe I’ll do that.” And maybe he’d see if he could find out anything about a few of the other words she’d harangued with him.

She took a big breath, puffed out her cheeks, and blew at her forehead. “Wow, I feel so much better.”

She smiled infectiously, and Theodore found himself threatened with smiling back.

In her mercurial way, she slapped the saddle. “Hey, this is fun. Giddyup.” With her heels she spurred twice. “I haven’t been on a horse many times in my life. Living in town, we don’t have any of our own, and whenever we travel, Father rents a rig.”

A quarter grin softened his mouth as he leaned back, watching, listening. Forevermore, but she could babble! And she was, after all, really a child. No woman would sling her leg over a saddle that way while visiting a man in a tack room and run on about anything that popped into her mind.

“You know, little missy, it ain’t... it’s not good for a saddle to be set on that way when it’s not on a horse.”

“Sat on,” she corrected.

“Sat on,” he repeated dutifully.

She pulled a face and looked down at her skirts, then up at him while her expression changed to an impish grin. “Aww, it ain’t?” Without warning, her foot flew over and she landed on her feet with a bounce. “Then next time maybe it better have one under it, wouldn’t you say?” And with that she flitted to the door, pivoted, and waggled two fingers at him. “Bye, Theodore. It’s been fun talking.”

She left him studying an empty doorway as she ran out, heedless of the rain, and in her absence he found himself wondering again who Lawrence was.

8

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
the rain had turned into a low-lying mist that clung to the skin and clothing and made hay cutting impossible. Kristian shivered, then sneezed twice as his feet went over the side of the bed. Even the linoleum felt damp. Over long underwear he drew on warm woolen britches, a long-sleeved undershirt, and an outer shirt of thick flannel. As he opened his bedroom door to go downstairs, Linnea Brandonberg opened hers to do the same.

Kristian’s blood suddenly lost its chill.

Her hair wasn’t combed yet but hung free to the middle of her back. She looked sleepy-eyed as she held the neck of her wrapper with one hand, the blue basin with the other.

“Good morning,” she greeted.

“Good morning.” His voice went from tenor to soprano in one crack. Flustered, he realized his shirt was only half-buttoned and hurriedly finished the job.

“Chilly, isn’t it?”

“Damp, too.” He’d never seen any woman besides Grandma in her wrapper and bare feet. The sight of his teacher in night-clothes made his throat feel queer and he wasn’t sure where to let his eyes light.

“I guess you won’t be able to go out to the fields today.”

“Ahh, no, I ahh, guess not.”

“You could come to school then.”

He shrugged, not sure what his father’s reaction would be to that. “One day wouldn’t do much good, and the sun’ll probably be out tomorrow.”

“One day is one day. Think about it.” She turned and hurried down the stairs, giving him a better view of her cascading hair which bounced with each step. What was happening to him lately? He never used to notice things like girls’ eyes or what they were wearing or whether their hair was up or down. Girls were just troublesome brats who always wanted to tag along hunting gophers or swimming in Little Muddy Creek. When you let them they always spoiled your good time.

He clumped down the stairs behind her and pretended not to be watching as she greeted Nissa, filled her basin, and scurried back upstairs for her morning bath. He pictured it... and his chest felt like it was caving in.

She’s the schoolteacher, you jackass! You can’t go around thinkin’ about the schoolteacher that way!

But he was still dwelling on how pretty she’d looked on the landing as he made his way to the barn to help with the morning milking.

Dawn hadn’t yet arrived but would soon sneak in undetected. The farmyard, shrouded in mist, was redolent with the smells of animal and plant life. Cattle, pigs, chickens, mud, and hay — they were all out there in the damp shadows. The dense air muffled all but the faraway sound of roosting chickens throatily clucking their prelude to rising. Upon the spillpipe of the windmill droplets condensed, quivered, then fell to a puddle below with an unneven
plip
. Beyond the looming derrick a row of golden windows glowed a welcome.

Opening the barn door, Kristian sneezed.

Entering, he gave an all-over shudder, happy to be out of the damp. There was a pleasantness to the barn at this time of day that could always manage to take the edge off a man’s early-morning grumpiness, especially when the weather was bad. Even when snow, sleet, or biting cold pressed against the windows, inside, beneath the thick, cobwebbed rafters with the doors sealed tightly, it was never chilly. The cattle brought with them a warmth that dispelled the most insidious dampness, the most oppressive gloom.

Theodore had already let them in. They stood docilely, awaiting their turns, rhythmically chewing their cuds, the grinding sound joining the hiss of the lanterns that hung from the rough-hewn rafters. The barn cats — wild, untamable things — had decided against mousing in the rain and watched from a safe distance, waiting for warm milk.

Kristian picked up his milk stool and wedged himself between two huge warm black and white bellies. When he sat and leaned his forehead against old Katy, he was warmed even further. He filled the sardine cans, set them at his side, and played the perennial game of waiting to see if the wary cats could be enticed that close. They couldn’t. They held their ground with typical feline patience.

“You still asleep or what?” Theodore’s voice came from someplace down the line, accompanied by the liquid pulsations of milk falling into a nearly filled pail.

Kristian flinched, realizing he’d been wool-gathering about Miss Brandonberg, whose hair was quite the same caramel color as one of the cats.

“Oh... yeah, I guess I was.”

“All you took from Katy so far was two sardine cans full.”

“Oh, yeah... well... ” Guiltily, he set to work, making his own milk pail ring. Then, for long minutes, there was only rhythm... the unbroken cadence of milk meeting metal, of milk meeting milk, of powerful bovine teeth grinding against cuds, of the beasts’ breaths throwing warmth into the barn with each bellowlike heave of their huge bellies.

Kristian and Theodore worked in companionable silence for some time before Theodore’s voice broke in.

“Thought we’d drive over to Zahl today and get coal.”

“Today? In this drizzle?”

“Been waitin’ for a rainy day. Didn’t want to waste a sunny one.”

“Reckon you’ll be wantin’ me to hitch up the double box then.”

“Soon as breakfast is over.”

Kristian went on milking for some minutes, feeling the strong muscles in his forearms grow warm and taut. After pondering at length, he spoke again.

“Pa?”

“Yuh?”

Kristian lifted his forehead off Katy’s warm side. His hands paused.

“Long as I’m gonna have the wagon all hitched up, would it be all right if I took Miss Brandonberg to school?”