Years (28 page)

She treated Theodore no differently from the rest. He took his share of teasing and back slapping, even added bits of wry humor now and then.

But that night, when the others had bedded down in the hayloft, on new, sweet wild hay, Theodore took a pail of cold water and a bar of soap to the tack room, closed the door, bathed, and donned fresh clothes. Buttoning his blue chambray shirt, he wondered if the others suspected what there was between Belle and himself. Then he put it from his mind, drew his suspenders over his shoulders, and pulled on a plaid wool jacket against the cool night.

When he slipped from the barn, the light from Belle’s wagon glowed softly out beside the caragana bushes. As he’d known she would, Belle had lowered the hinged doors, hooking them tightly at the bottom, leaving only a tiny square of brightness glowing from the window on the rear door.

He knocked softly, then slipped both hands into the deep pockets of his jacket, studying the knee-level step.

The door opened and he lifted his head. The rich light filtered through Belle’s hair, turning it the color of sunset before it fell across Theodore’s upraised face. She wore a fresh muslin nightdress surrounded by a pale-green shawl, which she held together at her breast. Her face was in shadow as she leaned put and held the door wide in welcome. All traces of the salty, loud-voiced harridan were gone. In her place was a mellowed woman, her coarse facade replaced by a quiet dignity, neither shy nor bold.

“Hello, Belle,” Theodore said softly.

“Hello, Ted,” she replied. “Been expecting you.”

Briefly, over his shoulder, he glanced at the quiet farmyard. “It’s a nice night. Thought we might talk a while.”

“Come in.” She moved back, and Theodore stepped up and inside, closing the door quietly behind him, glancing slowly
around in a circle, both hands still in his pockets. The benches were pushed beneath the table, the table against one wall. Upon it was spread her bedding: two thick goose-down ticks and a single fluffy pillow. With the shutters secured, the interior of the wagon was cozy and private. A teakettle sizzled softly on the cookstove, and beside the entry door a kerosene lantern sat on the seat of the room’s only chair.

“Looks the same,” he said, his eyes returning to her and sliding on past.

“It is the same. Nothing changes. Have a chair.”

He moved as if to sit, noted the lantern, and straightened again.

“Here, I’ll set it out of the way,” she said, brushing near him in the limited confines to take the lantern and set it on one of the benches, which she pushed from under the table to the opposite wall. Theodore bent his frame to the chair, and she boosted herself up onto the edge of the makeshift bed. For a full minute neither of them said a word.

“So, how have you been?” she asked at last.

He flicked her a nervous look, his elbows resting on his widespread knees. “Fine... fine. Had a good year.” Again he studied the floor between his feet.

“Yeah. Me, too. I see you got most of the same boys back.”

“Yeah, they’re good workers, Cope and the rest. Got a couple new ones though.” Still he studied the floor.

“So I see. So how they workin’ out?”

“Good... ” Then quieter, with a nod of the head, “... good.”

“That boy of yours is sure growin’ up.”

Theodore braved a brief meeting of her eyes, smiling with banked pride. “Yeah, only an inch more and he’ll be as tall as me.

“Gettin’ to look more like you all the time, too.”

Theodore chuckled silently, a little shyly.

“I notice he didn’t come to help with the threshing till afternoon.”

Theodore cleared his throat and met her eyes at last. “No, he’s started school already. The new schoolmarm, she pitched a fit cause I was keepin’ him out, so I finally let him go.”

“Ah, I see.”

Theodore put in quickly, “Course, he comes home and helps right after school.”

That subject died, and when neither of them could think up a new one, Theodore dropped his eyes to the floor again. After some moments he rubbed the back of his neck.

Isabelle noticed and explained, “Gets a little warm in here when I close up. You want to take your jacket off, Ted?”

He stood to do so and found Belle there to help him. When she turned away to lay the garment on the bench, he watched her shoulders and the side of her breast, crisscrossed by the lattice stitches of the green shawl. When she straightened and turned, her eyes met his directly.

“I’ve thought about you, Ted.”

“I’ve thought about you, too.”

“You’re not married yet?”

“Naw.” He shook his head, dropping his gaze.

“You would be if I ever gave up this crazy life and decided to plant myself.”

“Aw, Belle... ”

“Close the curtain, Ted.”

He looked up, and his Adam’s apple bobbed once. Without further ado he crossed to the rear door and drew the little blue and red patterned curtain together on its drooping string. When he faced her again he found Belle back on the edge of her bed, still with her shawl on.

“You know what I always liked best about you, Ted?” She neither expected nor got an answer, only his dark, uncertain eyes that caught the orange lantern light as they lifted, then blinked. “You never take me for granted.”

He moved to stand before her, raised one big hand to her temple, and touched the bright hair which she’d drawn back and tied at her nape with a wilted white ribbon. The hair was damp, as if she’d just washed it, and she smelted of the only perfume she ever used — ordinary vanilla extract. Wordlessly he took the shawl from her shoulders, folded it in half, and carefully laid it on top of his jacket. He took the ribbon between his fingers and slipped the bow free. When he laid the limp scrap of white atop the green shawl, he did it with as much care as if it were a jeweled tiara.

Returning to the edge of the makeshift bed, he took Belle’s face in both hands, tipped it up, and lowered his mouth to hers with singular lack of haste.

When the kiss ended, he drew back and gazed into her plain,
clean face. “A person gets hurt, takin’ others for granted,” was his reply. Then he kissed her again and felt her hands reaching for his suspenders to push them down and open his shirt before gathering him close and urging him with her onto the feather ticks where, together, they found ease.

Afterward, relaxed and lazing, he rested with Belle’s head in the crook of his shoulder. Her hand lay across his chest, and he lightly brushed his fingertips up and down her arm.

“What’s the matter with the women around these parts? Why doesn’t one of them nab you?”

“I don’t want to be nabbed.”

“What a shame, when you’re so good at what we just finished.”

He smiled at the ceiling. “Am I?”

“Why, of course you are. You think any of those other galoots care about what I’m really feeling? How lonely it gets in this stuffy wagon night after night, year after year?”

“Then why don’t you get married, Belle?”

“You askin’ me, Ted?” His hand stopped moving on her arm, and she playfully swatted his chest. “Oh, no need to tense up so. I was only teasin’. You know a gypsy like me’ll never take to settlin’ down. But now and then I like to dream of it. Now and then a woman likes to feel like a woman.”

His hand detoured for a light pass over her breast. “You feel like a woman, that’s for sure.”

She chuckled, then absently studied the glowing lantern and sighed against his chest. “You ever stop to think, Ted, about how different you and me are on the outside than we are on the inside?”

“A time or two, I have.”

“I don’t think another man on earth sees anything in me but the width of two axe handles, a lot of red hair, and too much sass. All these years I been meanin’ to thank you for takin’ time to look a little deeper.”

He spanned her with both arms, kissed the crown of her head, and said, “You’re a good woman, Belle. And I was thinkin’ lately, you’re probably the only friend I’ve ever had besides my brothers.”

She raised her chin and peered up at him. “Really?”

He grinned down and squeezed her lightly. “Really.”

“You reckon that’s a sign we’re growin’ old, Ted? Cause I been spendin’ some time lately dwellin’ on the same thing. Never stayed in one spot long enough to make friends. Guess that’s why I’m always so anxious to get back here every year.”

“And I’m always here a-waitin’.”

She tucked her head against his shoulder again, pondered silently for some moments, and asked, “You think what we do is wrong, Ted?”

He studied the circular impression from the lip of the lamp chimney thrown onto the ceiling in a wavering ring. “The Good Book says it is. But who we hurtin’, Belle?”

“Nobody I know of. Unless, of course, your boy found out. Might not be so good if he did. Do you think he suspects?”

“I thought about it some before I came out here tonight. He’s growin’ up in more ways than just one. Lately he’s been moonin’ over that new teacher, and when that starts, boys usually get pretty observant about the birds and the bees.”

“I can see why he’d moon over her. She’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she?”

Oddly enough, Isabelle’s observation seemed to cause more reaction in his heart than anything else she’d said or done tonight.

“She’s all right, I guess. Never really looked at her close.”

“All right! Why, Ted, where’s your eyes? A woman like me’d give what good teeth she had left in her head just to look like her for one day.” While Ted chuckled, Belle rolled across his chest, reached beneath the table, and came up with a tablet of cigarette papers and a drawstring bag of tobacco. Laying back down, she expertly filled, licked, and rolled herself a smoke, closed the drawstring bag with her teeth, then pressed herself across Theodore again to come up with a wooden match and a sauce dish. She struck the match against the edge of the table, beneath the overhanging feather ticks, then laid back with the sauce dish on her chest, thoughtfully watching the smoke drift toward the ceiling.

He patiently waited until she was settled before observing dryly, “There’s nothin’ wrong with your teeth, Belle, nor with your face either.”

She smiled and blew a perfect, round smoke ring. “That’s why I like you, Ted, cause you never seem to notice what’s wrong with me.”

He watched her smoke half the cigarette, trying his best to keep the images of Linnea from popping into his mind and making comparisons. When he failed, he reached over and took the cigarette from Belle’s lips, transferred it to his own, and took a single deep drag. Finding it as distasteful as ever, he tamped it out, rocking the sauce dish on Belle’s chest.

“Got some time to make up for and I’m gettin’ a mite impatient, Isabelle.”

He set the sauce dish on the floor. Rolling to his back, he found Belle grinning at him with a hooded look about her eyelids. As her strong arms and legs reached to reel him in, she declared in her gruff contralto, “Yessir, there’s some mighty stupid women around here, but I sure hope they never wise up, Ted, cause once they do—”

“Shut yourself up, Belle,” he said, then his mouth did it for her.

It was Saturday night. The first dance of the harvest season would start at eight o’clock in Oscar Knutson’s barn, the one with the emptiest hay mow.

Linnea had devoted the entire afternoon to preparing for the event. She could have done it in far less time if Lawrence hadn’t constantly interrupted, circling her around the bedroom floor while violins and cellos played Viennese waltzes — and she in her petticoat!

He sat in her rocking chair now, watching as she experimented with two combs, catching her hair back this way and that, frowning at herself in the mirror.

“I suppose you’re going to be the belle of the ball. Probably dance with Bill and Theodore and Rusty and
—”

“Rusty! Oh, don’t be silly, Lawrence. Just because he smiled at me and called me ‘right pretty’ doesn’t mean
— ”
Linnea angled closer to the mirror and ran four fingertips from jaw to chin, studying her reflection critically. “Do you think I’m pretty, Lawrence? I always thought my eyes were too wide apart. It makes me look like a calf.” She covered one incisor with an index finger. “And this tooth is crooked. I’ve always hated it.” She closed her lips and smiled, then frowned again at what she saw in the mirror.

“You wouldn’t be fishing for compliments now, would you?”

She spun around with her hands on her hips. “I am not
fishing for compliments! And if you’re going to tease me, you can just go away.” She swung back to the mirror. “Which you’d better do anyway, or I’ll never get this hair ready.”

She had washed and given it a vinegar rinse, and now that it was dry, curled it with the curling iron. Heating the barrel over the kerosene lamp, she hummed and pondered hair arrangements. She tried piling it up on the crown of her head, leaving little sausage curls to drift from the cluster. But it was too long; the weight of the tresses pulled out the curls and left them looking like stringy cows’ tails. Next, she put it up in a loose topknot, leaving trailing tendrils around her face and on her neck. But it was difficult to get the topknot loose enough without losing it entirely — she could just see herself spinning around the dance floor with the hairpins flying. By the time she had tried and ruled out the two styles, she had to curl it all again.

This time she decided on a simple, girlish fashion, letting the back hang free and catching the sides up high in a crisp navy-blue grosgrain ribbon. Assessing the final results, she smiled and moved to the next decision: what to wear.

Looking through her limited wardrobe, she ruled out the wools, which would be too warm, and decided on the white-yoked shirtwaist and the green twill skirt because, with its three back plaits, it was sure to billow as she swirled around the dance floor.

On her face she smoothed a single precious dollop of Almond Nut Cream, which she saved for very special occasions. On her lips and cheeks she spread three dots of liquid rouge. Standing back, she looked at herself and giggled.
You look like a tart, Miss Brandonberg. What are the parents of your students going to think?