Read The Endearment Online

Authors: Lavyrle Spencer

Tags: #Fiction

The Endearment (3 page)

BOOK: The Endearment
8.43Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

It was not at all what Karl would have had Morisette tell Anna. He did not want to scare her away before she even had a chance to see his wonderful
Minnesota
and let it speak for itself.

"Yes, of course, I've ... read them for myself," Anna lied. "But Karl thinks there is no place better to settle because there is so much land and it is so rich and ... and there's everything a man could want here."

Morisette laughed. Karl had filled her head already, he could tell.

Pleased with her reply, Karl answered, "See there, Morisette, you cannot scare Anna away with your foolish talk. She has come this far, and she is here to stay." Anna's heart grew a little lighter. So far she seemed to be passing muster, seventeen or not, wrinkles or none.

"And so the good père is marrying you at the mission?" Morisette asked.

"Yes, in the morning," Karl said, looking at the back of Anna's shoulders where those tumblecurls were rioting over her collar.

Just then the half-breed drivers came into the store, each with a barrel hoisted on his shoulder. One of them set his load down with a thud, then said, "That boy stands in the road as if he is lost. Did you not tell him this is the end of the run?" There was no doubt that he was directing his question to Anna. But she stood dumbstruck.
   

"What boy?" Lindstrom asked.

Seeing no way out, Anna looked him square in the eye and answered, "My brother, James."

Baffled for a moment, Karl stared back at her, the truth dawning on him even as Morisette and the drivers looked on. "Ya, of course ... James." Lindstrom stalked to the door, and for the first time looked fully at the lad who had been the other passenger on the supply wagon. Karl had been so intent upon Anna that he'd scarcely realized the boy was there.

"James?" Lindstrom spoke, trying to make it sound as if he'd known all along.

"Yes?" James replied, then amended it to, "Yes, sir," wanting to create a good impression on the tall man.

"Why do you stand in the road? Come in and meet my friend, Morisette."

Surprised, the boy's feet seemed rooted momentarily, then he jammed his hands in his pockets and entered the store. When he passed before Karl, the man noted some similarity between the boy's looks and Anna's. The lad was gangly and thin, too, with similar coloring, but the freckles were missing, and the eyes, although large like his sister's, were green instead of brown.

Karl expertly concealed his surprise, moving about the store methodically, loading supplies on his wagon out front. James and Anna explored the shop, catching each other's eye now and then, quickly looking away, wondering at Karl's reaction or lack of it. They were both amazed at how unconcerned the man seemed to be with James being here. He just went about calmly loading supplies onto his wagon, bantering with Morisette.

When things were firmly lashed on behind the pair of blinking Percherons, Karl came back inside, announcing that it was time to leave. But Anna noticed he did not repeat his offer to buy her anything she needed. He bid goodbye to Morisette and took Anna stiffly by the elbow to guide her outside, but there was a pressure there that warned her this new husband-to-be was not as complacent as she'd thought earlier.

 

 

         
Chapter Two
          

 
Anna thought Karl would dislocate her arm before he let go of it. Without a word he herded her along, Anna taking two steps to every one of his, but he ignored all but her elbow with which he finally pushed her up to the wagon seat. She ventured a peek at his face, and his expression made her stomach take to quaking something awful. She rubbed her misused shoulder socket, wishing more than ever that she had written the truth in all those letters.

Karl's voice was as controlled as ever as he spoke to his horses, gave them a cluck and started them up the road. But when they were around a bend, beyond earshot of the store, the wagon lurched to a sudden halt. Lindstrom's voice bit the air in a far different tone than he had used thus far. His words were as slow as always, but louder.

"I do not air my arguments before Joe Morisette down at his store. I do not let that tease Morisette see that Karl Lindstrom has had a fast one pulled on him. But I think this is what has happened! I think you, Anna Reardon, have tried to take in a stupid Swede, eh? You have not been honest and would make a fool of Karl Lindstrom before his friend Morisette!"

Her back stiffened. "Which-what do you mean?" she stammered, growing sorrier by the minute.

"What do I mean?" he repeated, the accent more pronounced. "Woman, I am no fool!" he exploded. "Do not take me for one! We have made a bargain, you and me. All these months we make the plan for you to come to me, and not once do you mention your brother in your letters! Instead, you bring a little surprise for Karl, huh, that will make people laugh when they know that it is the first time I have heard of my bride bringing an extra passenger I have not been expecting!"

"I ... I guess I should have told you, but-“

"You guess!" he shouted, totally frustrated. "You do more than guess! You know long ago you are planning this trick on me, and you probably think Karl Lindstrom is such a big dumb Swede that it will work!"

"No, I didn't think that at all. I wanted to tell you but I thought once you saw James, you'd see what a help he'll be to you. James is a good, strong boy. Why, he's almost a man!" she pleaded.

"James is a stripling! He is another mouth to feed and another set of winter clothes to buy."

"He's thirteen years old, and in another year or two he'll be full-grown. Then he'll be twice the help that I'll be."

"I did not put the advertisement in the
Boston
paper for a hired boy, I advertised for a wife."

"And I'm here, aren't I?"

"Ya, you sure are. But you, plus this brother, is more than I bargained for."

"He's a good worker, Lindstrom."

"This is not
Boston
, Anna Reardon. Here an extra person means extra provisions. Where will he sleep? What will he wear? Will there be enough food to feed three during the coming winter? These are things a man must consider in order to survive here."

She pleaded in earnest now, words rushing out. "He can sleep on the floor. He has enough clothing for one winter. He'll help you raise extra crops during the summer ahead."

"The crops are already in the ground, and you were supposed to help me tend them. I only needed one--you."

"I will help you. Just think of how much more three of us could raise! Why, we'd have so much – “

"I told you, the crops are already in! Right now I do not even think it is the crops I am concerned with. It is the fact that you have lied to me and what I must do about that. Never would I willingly choose a liar for a wife."

Anna sat smitten into silence. There seemed no argument against that.

James, who had gotten onto the wagon without a word, spoke up at last. "Mr. Lindstrom, we didn't have any choice. Anna thought that if you knew I was part of the deal you'd turn her down flat." James' voice cracked from tenor to soprano, then back again.

"And you think right!" Karl exploded. "That is exactly what I would do, and I am thinking I might still do just that!"

Anna found her voice again, but fear made it tremble. Her eyes were wide in her too thin face, and they sparkled with threatening tears.

"You ... you wouldn't send us back? Oh, please don't send us back."

"When you lie to me, you break our agreement.

I do not think I am responsible for you any longer. I did not bargain for a wife who was a liar."

He sounded so self-righteous, sitting there all sated and healthy-looking, so obviously well-fed, that Anna's temper suddenly flared.

"No, you don't have to bargain at all, do you!" she lashed, then gestured with hands thrown wide toward the earth in general. "Not when you have your precious
Minnesota
to yield all its nectar and wood and fruit!" Her voice fairly oozed with sarcasm. "Not when you're warm and fat and cozy! You wouldn't know the first thing about going cold and hungry, would you? I'd like to see you that way, Karl Lindstrom. Maybe then you'd find out how easy it is to lie a little to improve your station in life.
Boston
would teach you quick how to be a blinkin' artist at lying!"

"So you make a habit of lying? Is that what you are saying?" He glared at her then, finding her cheeks pinked beneath their sprinkling of freckles.

"You're damn right," she cursed with fierce intensity, looking him square in the eye. "I lied so I could eat. I lied so James could eat. First, we tried it without lying, but we got no place fast. Nobody wanted to hire James 'cause he was too skinny and undernourished. And nobody wanted to hire me because I was a girl. Finally, when trying for an honest living didn't work, we decided it was time to try a little dishonesty and see if it'd work out better for us."

"Anna!" he exclaimed, disappointed as much by her cussing as by her lying. "How could you do such a thing? There have been times I have been hungry, too. But never have I been hungry enough to make lies. Nothing makes Karl Lindstrom into a liar!"

"Well, if you're so almighty honest, you'll keep your half of the bargain and marry me!" she spouted.

"Bargain! I said the bargain is broken by your deceit. I paid good money for your passage. What of that? Can you return it to me? Can you do that, or have I been fool enough to get you here and end up with no wife and no money?"

"I can't pay you back in money, but if you'll take us, both of us, we'll work hard. That's the only way we can pay you back." She looked away from the genuine shock in Karl Lindstrom's eyes, the kind that comes from gentle rearing where black and white are clearly defined.

"Mr. Lindstrom," James interjected, "I'll pay my way, too, you'll see. I'm stronger than I look. I can help you build that cabin you're planning on, and I can help you clear land, and ... and plant it and harvest it."

Karl's eyes bored straight ahead between Belle's ears. His jaw was so taut it looked swollen.

"Can you manage a team, boy?" he snapped.

"N ... no."

"Can you handle a plow?"

"I've never tried."

"Can you lift a logging chain or handle a flail or fell with an axe?"

"I ... I can learn," James stammered.

"Learning takes time. Out here time is precious. Our growing season is short and the winters are long. You come to me unskilled and expect me to make you teamster, logger and farmer all in one summer?"

Anna began to see the shortsightedness of her plan, but she couldn't give up now. "He learns fast, Lindstrom," she promised. "You wouldn't be sorry."

Karl looked at her sideways, shook his head despondently and studied his boots. "I am already sorry. I am sorry I ever had such an idea, to send for a wife through the mail. But I waited two years thinking there would be other settlers coming, other women. In
Sweden
there is much talk about this
Minnesota
, and I believed other Swedes would follow me. But nobody comes and I can wait no longer. This you know, too. This I think you have planned to use against me to get your way." He sounded sad.

"Maybe I did, but I thought you'd see that an extra person would be useful." Anna picked at a piece of loose cuticle while she said this.

There was another point Karl wanted to make, but he did not know how to say it without seeming to be a man of great sexual demands. He could not imagine taking a wife to bed in the same room with a brother. If he said as much, Anna would undoubtedly be horrified. All he could do was tiptoe around the issue by saying, with his eyes now on Belle's neck, "I live in a house of only one room, Anna."

Anna quit picking at her cuticle. She felt her face warming, understanding fully what Karl implied. His courteous way of implying they would need more privacy touched her. He was different from any man she had ever met. She'd never before met a human being who was totally good, but it looked as if perhaps Karl Lindstrom was. That goodness filled her with self-recriminations that she could not have come to him a better person herself.

Had Karl dared to look at Anna that moment, he would have seen a faint blush beneath her freckles. But he did not. He stared absently, preoccupied with another disillusioning thought. Suppose Anna had been wily enough to reckon on using their lack of privacy to keep her from performing the duty that some wives--he'd been told--found distasteful. This, of course, he could not accuse her of, especially not in front of the lad.

Karl only wanted to take his new wife to his little home, which was waiting in readiness for their return. There he would have had time and privacy to woo her as in any normal courtship. Ah, thought Karl, what a strange way we have come together, Anna and me.

Within the heart of Karl Lindstrom fell a heavy sadness. How he had looked forward to this day, thinking always how proud he would be when he took his little whiskey-haired Anna into his sod house for the first time. He would proudly show her the fireplace he had built of fieldstone from his own soil, the table and chairs he had fashioned of sturdy black walnut from his own trees. He remembered the long hours spent braiding buffalo grass into ropes to restring the log frame of the bed for her. How carefully he had dried last season's corn husks to make the softest tickings a woman could want. He'd spent precious hours collecting cattails, plucking their down to fill pillow ticks for her. The buffalo robes had been aired and shaken and rubbed with wild herbs to make them smell sweet. Lastly, he had picked a sheaf of sweet clover, its fragrance headier than any other, and had lain it on the spot where their two pillows met, in the center of the bed.

BOOK: The Endearment
8.43Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

A Stray Drop of Blood by White, Roseanna M.
No Different Flesh by Zenna Henderson
The Heart of the Mirage by Glenda Larke
The Crimson Campaign by Brian McClellan
33 Revolutions by Canek Sánchez Guevara, Howard Curtis
Now You See Me by Lesley Glaister
The Cthulhu Encryption by Brian Stableford