Years (32 page)

Inside, a single lamp had been left burning low on the kitchen table. She felt tired and suddenly despondent, filled with endless questions about where her life was leading. And what about those she cared about? Would Bill really go off to war? Would other young men she knew? Absently she wandered around the table and rested her hands on the back of Theodore’s chair. Thank God, if it came to that, he was too old to join.

“So, did you have a nice ride?”

Her blood fired at the sound of his voice in the shadows
across the room. She turned to find him leaning against the living-room doorway, his arms crossed loosely. He wore black trousers and black suspenders over the top half of his union suit. He filled out the underwear like an apple fills its skin, each bulge and dip emphasized by the form-fitting cloth. His sleeves were pushed up to the elbow, revealing thick, muscular forearms shadowed with dark hair. At the open buttons near his throat more dark hair showed. He was so much more of a man than Bill.

“Yes,” she replied, standing straight and still.

He waited, silent, willing away the jealousy, telling his heart to calm down. Her skin in the lamplight took on an apricot hue. Her lips were slightly parted. Her eyes seemed filled with challenge. And she made no effort to look as if she weren’t caressing his chair. Damn girl didn’t know what she was inviting.

“We rode down to the creek.”

He knew perfectly well what she was up to, but leaned in the doorway with feigned indolence, pretending his vitals weren’t wrenching him as he wondered what else they’d done.

“Pretty down there at night.”

You stubborn Norwegian! Can’t you tell what’s in my heart?

“He asked me to the dance Saturday night.”

“Oh? And what did you say?”

“I said yes.”

For a long time Theodore stared at her, unmoving. Bill was young; he had the right. But that didn’t make it any easier to accept. At length he forced himself to glance away. “That’s good,” he said, pulling away from the door.

She felt like bursting into tears. “Y... yes.” She drew a deep breath and asked, “Will you be there?”

He seemed to consider for a long time before answering, “Guess I will.”

“Will you dance with me this time?”

“You’d best dance with the young guys.”

Her hand lifted in appeal. “Teddy, I don’t wa—”

“Good night, Linnea.” Swiftly he turned and left her standing in the kitchen.

In his bedroom he sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. Her face glowed before him, that pretty young face with the expression that hid nothing. With those blue,
long-lashed eyes that were incapable of concealing the truth. He flopped back, eyes closed, arms outflung. Lord, lord. He was the one with the age, the wisdom. It was up to him to hold her at arm’s length. But how?

During the week that followed, the weather turned cold and the haymows began filling. Oscar Knutson stopped by on Thursday to let Linnea know Saturday’s dance would be held in the schoolhouse.

“The schoolhouse?”

“You got a stove here, and we just pile the desks against one wall. Most of the dances’ll be here till the haylofts get empty again, on toward spring. Just wanted you to know so you have them kids empty their inkwells. Generally Theodore comes down here to light the stove and get the place ready.”

Theodore again. He hadn’t said two words to her since she’d told him she was going to the dance with Bill — the last thing she wanted to do was ask him to come down and light the stove before the dance.

“Do I have to ask him?”

“No, it’s all taken care of.”

They all went down early, Bill and Linnea in one rig, Theodore, Nissa, Kristian, and all the hired hands in another, to light the fire and fill the water crock and push the desks aside.

The schoolhouse seemed cozy at night, with blackness pressing at the windows, the lanterns lit indoors. Linnea pushed her table against the front blackboard so the band could set up on the teaching platform. Nissa set up a refreshment table in the cloakroom, sliced a high lemon cake that would be joined by more cakes and sandwiches when the other women arrived. Kristian sprinkled cornmeal on the floor. Theodore got the fire lit, then sauntered around the edge of the room, tipping his head to study a line of childish drawings strung along the wall on a length of red yarn.

From behind him came a quiet voice. “Russian thistle.”

He glanced over his shoulder to find Linnea observing him with her arms crossed. She was wearing a navy-blue middy dress tonight and looked no older than the young ones who’d drawn these pictures.

“I thought so, but on some of these it’s hard to tell.”

He turned back to study the clumsy attempts at artwork,
thumbs hooked around his suspender clips, a benevolent smile on his lips. She idled along the line with him.

“The Halloween ones are a little better.” She pointed. “Pumpkins... corn shucks... ghosts.” The farther along they moved, the more polished the work became, until it changed from outsized drawings to written compositions with smaller illustrations at the top.

“Kristian isn’t much at artwork, but when it comes to rhetoric he shows great promise. Here, this is his.” She removed a straight pin from the corner of one paper and proudly handed it to Theodore. “Read it and you’ll see.”

Read it? He gaped first at the paper, then at her, taken by surprise. Unable to think of what else to do, he reached out woodenly for his son’s composition and stared at it while she waited at his elbow, beaming with pride. He stood beside her for several long minutes, feeling ignorant as a stump. He wondered what the paper said. The black writing on the white page reminded him of straight, parallel rows of corn stubble sticking out of a fresh snow, but beyond that it meant nothing. He was thirty-four years old and his son was smarter than he.

And now Linnea would know.

She tipped her head and pointed to a spot on the page. “See what he chose to discourse on? Wouldn’t you say that shows an inquisitive mind?”

The blood climbed Theodore’s chest. It climbed his neck. It reached his ears and they seemed to grow hot enough to singe the hair above them. He hung his head, swallowed, and stared at the paper, mortified.

Blithely, she crossed her forearms behind her back, waiting for him to finish reading and offer some comment. When he didn’t, she glanced up with a perky smile. “Well, isn’t it wonderful?”

One glimpse of his face and Linnea realized something was very wrong. He’d turned fiery red and refused to look up.

“I... I guess so,” he stammered at last.

“Well, you don’t seem... ” She glanced from his face to the paper and back again, her words slowing like an engine losing steam, “... very... impr... ” Something tripped in her mind. One hand came from behind her back and covered her lips. “Oh... ” she breathed, the truth at last registering. “Oh, Theodore... you can’t read?” They stood close, so close she
heard him swallow convulsively while his thumbnail dented the right margin of the paper.

He shook his bowed head.

Oh my dear stubborn Theodore, why didn’t you tell me? She was abashed for him. Her heart melted. She, too, felt herself blushing. They stood in a cocoon of discomfort that bound them mercilessly, while behind them the band started tuning up. Slowly, he handed her the paper, meeting her eyes at last, still red to the hairline.

“B... but what about the hymnal at church?” she whispered.

“I know those songs by heart. I’ve been singing them for thirty-odd years now.”

“And the sentences on the blackboard?” She recalled her own chagrin the day he’d caught her poking fun at him with all those outlandish insults. She empathized with him now when he was the one being found out.

His glance rested steady on her. “The only one I understood was that you’d like to stuff Theodore.”

“Oh.” She studied the toes of her shoes. “When I heard you behind me that day, I thought you’d been standing there reading them all the while I was writing them, and I just wanted to die.”

“Not half as bad as I want to right now.”

She lifted her face and their eyes met, a little of the strain eased. The band struck up a first number. “Theodore, I had no idea. I really didn’t.”

“There was no school here when I was a boy. Ma taught me how to read a little Norwegian, but she never learned English herself, so she couldn’t teach the rest of us.”

“But why didn’t you tell me? Surely you didn’t think I’d think any less of you.”

“After us arguin’ about Kristian goin’ to school? How could I?”

“Ah,” she voiced knowingly, “pride.” She reached to hang the piece of paper on the yarn again. “Men have such silly notions about it. So Kristian knows a little more than you do about the English language. But you know more than he does about a lot of other things.” She faced him, gesturing toward herself. “Why, for that matter, you know more than
I
do about a lot of things. The other night when you were talking about the war — Well, I had no idea you knew so much about what’s
been going on over there. And you know how to fix windmills and set mousetraps and... you taught me how to catch a horse and saddle him—”

“Her,” he corrected.

Their eyes met. Something good happened between them. Something warm and rich and radiant that held the promise of enjoyment. Matching grins grew on their lips. Linnea bowed formally from the waist. “I stand corrected again, sir. Her. Which proves my point exactly. Why, you don’t have to feel—”

“There you are, Ted!” It was Isabelle Lawler, appearing to interrupt the harmonious moment. “My feet are itching and there’s only one cure.” Without troubling herself to apologize for the interruption, she appropriated Theodore and hauled him off to dance.

Linnea’s happy mood turned sour. She glared after the outrageous redhead who seemed to follow no code of manners whatever. How dare that... that orange-haired hippopotamus commandeer a man that way, and trumpeting like a bull elephant yet! I’d like to get her into my etiquette class for just one day. Just one!

Suddenly something else struck Linnea.

Ted.
She’d called him Ted!

“Come on. Let’s dance.” It was Bill, coming to claim his date. Linnea forced herself to smile and be gay, but she kept catching glimpses of
Ted
and the hippo and it practically ruined her evening. As before, Linnea had plenty of dance partners... with one obvious exception. Circling round and round the black stovepipe, she cast occasional furtive glances his way. Theodore was probably the best dancer in the place — damn his hide! — and he’d dance with that red-headed hussy till they’d have to put in a new schoolhouse floor! But he wouldn’t dance with the
little missy
to save his soul. After what had passed between them last Saturday night, and earlier tonight, she’d hoped he’d finally begun looking at her as an adult. But apparently not, and she was sick and tired of being treated as if she were still wet behind the ears! But then,
she
wasn’t built as wide as a gang plow. And
she
didn’t have vocal chords like a mule skinner. And
she
didn’t have hair the color of a Rhode Island rooster.

Petulantly, Linnea tried to turn a blind eye on them, but it
didn’t work. Finally, after Theodore had ignored her till nearly the end of the evening, she put on her best posture and most supercilious face, walked out on the floor, and tapped the redhead on the shoulder.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Lawler, may I cut in?”

To Linnea’s acute embarrassment, the fool woman yelled in a voice loud enough to raise the dead, “Why, I should say not! When I get my hands on a man, I make damn good use of him before I cut him loose!” Then she collared Theodore in a death grip and whirled him away.

Linnea wanted to die on the spot. What could she do but withdraw to the edge of the room and burn? Just what did he see in that overblown floozy? She Was rude and sweaty and she hauled Theodore around the dance floor puffing like an overweight draft horse.

Let him have her
—
it’s no more than he deserves.

She was still standing petulantly at the edge of the dance floor when the song ended. She saw Theodore say something to Isabelle, then escort her to the cloakroom. Momentarily he reappeared alone, scanned the crowd, and crossed directly to Linnea. Her gaze shifted to the fiddler, and she tightened her mouth as if she’d just eaten a bad pickle.

“Come on, little missy, it’s your turn.”

Her turn! As if she’d been pining away the whole evening until he could free a spot on his dance card.

“Don’t bother yourself, Theodore.” Haughtily, she turned up her nose.

“Well, you wanted to dance with me, didn’t you?”

She glared at him, chagrined at how impotent she felt against his teasing. Give a man a few beers and a few dances with a redhead and he became noxiously jocular.

“Just wipe that smug expression off your face, Theodore Westgaard. No, I did
not
want to dance with you. I had something to tell you, that’s all.”

Theodore had all he could do to keep from laughing aloud at the little spitfire. She was something when she got riled and turned up her saucy nose that way — looked about fourteen years old, too. Though he’d told himself to lay low when it came to the little missy, there was no danger in taking her around the floor a couple of times while the whole family looked on. As a matter of fact, dancing with every woman in
the place but her might look more suspicious than giving her a turn.

“So come along. You can tell me now.”

He gave her no choice. He swung her onto the floor with loose-limbed ease and grinned down at her with the most annoying air of amusement.

“So, what was it you wanted to tell me?”

To dry up and blow away
—
along with that redheaded sweat-box!
Linnea pursed her mouth and gazed over his shoulder pettishly. He tipped his head, bent his knees, and brought his eyes to the same level as hers.

“Cat got your tongue now that you finally got me?”

She glared at him, sizzling.

“Oh, quit treating me like a child. I don’t like being condescended to!”