The Endearment (36 page)

"What kind of wife thinks she pleases her man in britches. Ya, you have britches all-“

"You leave my britches out of this!" she hissed. "You know why I wear these britches. I'll wear them until they fall off my bones before I'll put one of those dresses on! I remember a time when you didn't exactly cry over the way I look in britches!"

"That was a long time ago, Anna," he said more quietly.

"Ya-a-a, you-us-us bet it vas!" she retorted, using the exaggerated Swedish accent now as a hurting weapon. "It vuz before the beau-us-us-tifful Kerstin mu-us-uves in next door vitt her blu-us-us-berry cobbler and her big bu-us-us-som." Anna put a hand on her hip and swayed it provocatively while she drew out the vowel sounds, taunting Karl until his rage became fury.

"Anna, you go too far!" he shouted.

"Me?" she shouted back. "I go too far?" Then she kicked viciously at a basket of cranberries, upsetting it so the berries rolled around Karl's feet. "I can't go far enough to get away from you! But you just watch me try, Karl! You just watch me try!"

She swung around and strode across the lumpy earth and grabbed James by the arm. "Come on, James, we don't have to stay here and take any more of this!"

Karl stood in his mound of cranberries, shouting at their backs. "Anna, you come back here!"

But Anna only pulled James along, forcing him to walk faster.

"Anna, that bear is out there! Get back here!"

"No bear would want to touch a paw to me any more than you would!" she threw back over her shoulders.

"Anna ... get--Dammit! Get back here!" swore Karl, who had never sworn at a woman in his life. But she only swooped away, riding on her wave of anger.

He tore his hat from his head and threw it on the ground, but knew nothing would make Anna turn around now. He bent to scoop the spilled berries back into the basket, glancing up at the diminishing figures disappearing across the bog. If he left the cranberries the bear would surely return and eat up Karl's most valuable cash crop, and all his richest earnings along with it. Karl could hardly leave the horse either, with the travois attached behind and loaded with the day's pick. The best he could do was hastily take what he could slap into the basket, load it as fast as possible and follow the willful wife who was striding away with her britched backside defying him with every step.

Anger and concern turned Karl's face a mottled red. The woman had no idea of the danger she'd just put herself and the boy into by running off through the woods with that bear around! Karl finally got the baskets somewhat secured and led poor Belle off across the bog at such a pace that the horse resisted on the precarious footing and got herself unjustly yelled at for the first time in her life.

By the time he reached the clearing James and Anna had been there for some time. Relieved to find them safe when he arrived, everything exploded inside Karl's head as he strode into the sod house like a war lord.

"Woman, don't you ever do a thing like that again!" he shouted, pointing a finger at Anna.

"I'm not deaf!" she spit back at him.

"You are not deaf, but you are certainly dumb! Do you know what that bear could have done to you? You put not only yourself in danger but the boy, too. It was a stupid, senseless thing you did, Anna!"

"Well, what do you expect from a stupid, senseless woman?"

"That bear could have torn you to ribbons!" he exploded.

Hands on hips, defiance in eyes, sneer on lips, Anna flung words at him she didn't mean. "And would you have cared, Karl?"

His face looked like he'd been slapped with a dirty rag for offering to wipe dishes. Anna knew immediately she had gone too far, but there was too much anger and pride and pain built up inside of her to pull back the words. Karl's blue eyes opened in surprise, then the lids lowered in hurt. The golden cheeks became mottled beneath his expression of disbelief.

They stared at each other across the rough-hewn table and it seemed like a lifetime passed in those few strained moments. Certainly, an entire marriage did. Anna saw the forced relaxing of muscles as one by one they eased from the tight hold Karl had upon himself. And by the time he turned to grab a canvas bag and stuff it with some food, too much time had passed for Anna to apologize gracefully. She watched as Karl silently went to the trunk, raised its lid and found a couple pieces of clean clothing and jammed them into the sack as well. He brushed around Anna to reach the spot above the fireplace where he kept his extra shot. He grabbed a handful of lead balls, thrust them into a leather pouch that lay on the mantel. Then he shouldered his way around Anna, picked up his gun, which he'd braced beside the door as he entered, and resolutely left the house.

Anna watched his back as he strode angrily across the clearing. Then, halfway across, he stopped, did an abrupt about-face and marched back into the hut, slammed the gun onto its hooks above the fireplace, slapped the bag of balls onto the mantel again and once more strode outside.

She continued watching him from the deep shadows of the dwelling. He disappeared into the barn, then came out with Bill and Belle, hitched the team to the wagon, loaded up all the sacks of grain, the hops, then all the baskets of cranberries--and left the yard without so much as a backward glance.

It was nearly evening. There was no question in Anna's mind where Karl would spend the night before starting out for town. That realization finally made Anna collapse onto the cornhusks and sob her heart out.

Poor James stood with his hands dangling at his sides until finally he couldn't stand listening to her and watching her any more. Helplessly, he went out to climb the ladder to his loft. There he, too, cried at last.

          
Chapter Seventeen

 
Karl left his home, glad to be doing so for the first time since he'd built it. He watched the broad rumps of Belle and Bill, time and again forcing himself to loosen his hold on the reins. He tried to put Anna's harsh words from his mind, then tried even harder to remember them exactly as she'd said them. He tried to put his own angry responses from his mind. Then, in the most human of ways, thought of sharper, wittier, truer retorts he might have made that would have put her in her place far better.

He wondered what her place was. He told himself he had made a mistake bringing her here. Thinking of the boy, he told himself he was wrong. The cruel words he had spoken to James made Karl ache in a way he had not remembered aching for a long, long time. How unfair he had been to the boy when it was the thing between himself and Anna that was what he railed against. About that much Anna had been right. He had treated her brother unforgivably.

Karl admitted that he loved the boy as much as any father might. Throughout the summer it had been a sweet thing to have the lad working beside him, following him with those wide eyes that always said how anxious he was to learn, to please. And how well the lad had done. There was not a thing for which Karl could fault James.

But when he thought about Anna, Karl found he could more readily place the brunt of the blame on her instead of himself. The cutting things she had said burned his innards. She had called him a big, stupid Swede, taunting him with an imitation of his dialect.

I am Swede, he thought. Is this wrong, to speak my native language with the Johansons? To bring back only a little bit of the place I loved, still love--the place where I was born? Is it wrong for me to sit at their table and eat foods which bring back the picture of Mama cooking, putting food on our table, slapping lightly any hand that reached for a bowl before Papa had come to his seat?

He longed for the solace of his deep-seeing father, who was a teacher such as Karl never thought to be. If his papa was here, he would make Karl see things clearer. His papa would puff on his pipe and think long and hard, weighing one side against the other before offering any advice. Papa had taught him this was the wisest way. Yet, today Anna had taunted him for this very deliberate slowness, had called him dumb.

But most painful of all had been the last thing Anna had said about the bear, intimating he cared so little about her that such a thing would not bother him. Her words were weapons, he knew, weapons wielded by instinct, not by premeditation. Still, like all people when they are hurt by the tongue of another, Karl flayed himself with her words instead of admitting why she had spoken them.

At the Johansons', candles were burning in the new log house and everyone was at the supper table. When they heard Karl's wagon pull in, the entire family left its meal to come outside and gather him in.

"Why, Karl, this is a surprise," Olaf greeted.

"I thought we would get an earlier start in the morning if I came up this way and maybe slept in your wagon tonight."

"Why, sure, Karl, sure! But you will sleep in no wagon, you will sleep in the cabin you helped us build!"
   
     

"No, I do not want to put nobody out," he assured them.

"You want to see somebody put out, you try sleeping in our wagon, Karl Lindstrom!" Katrene scolded, shaking a finger at him as if he were a naughty child.

Their table was like his own family's table had been in
Sweden
. There was much laughter, much food, many smiles, big hands reaching this way and that, the fire glowing, and all around Karl's ears, his beloved Swedish.

Karl found himself more aware of Kerstin than he had ever been before. He had never singled her out any more than the others. But Anna's unfair accusation now made him do so. Kerstin laughed while fetching more food from the ledge of the fireplace, tweaking Charles' hair when he scolded her for letting the bowls grow empty. The firelight reflected off the gold coronet of her braids, and Karl found himself wondering if Anna had been right and he had been conscious of Kerstin's femininity all along. When she stretched between two broad shoulders to place the wooden bowl on the table, he caught the outline of her full breast against the firelight. But Kerstin caught his eye as she swung back, and he put his thoughts in order where they belonged.

When the meal was over, there came the supreme joy of sharing pipes together, man to man. The fragrant smoke drifted through the cabin-- postlude to mealtime, prelude to evening, while the women put the cabin in order, washing dishes, sweeping the wood floor with willow broom. Talk slowed. Katrene, Kerstin and Nedda removed their aprons for the night, a thing Karl remembered so well his mother and sisters doing. Always they had worn a copious apron such as Kerstin had just removed.

"Papa," she said now, "you have filled Karl's nose with smoke long enough. I want to take him outside in the fresh air for a little while."

Karl looked up at Kerstin, startled. Never before had the two of them been alone together. To be so tonight, after he had been thinking what he had been thinking, during supper, was not a good idea, he thought.

"Come, Karl. I want to show you the new pen we have made for the geese," she said casually, and grabbed up her shawl and walked out of the cabin, leaving Karl little choice but to follow.
 

What could he do but excuse himself and trail behind her down where the new split rails showed white in the bluing evening. Yes, there was a new pen all right, but it was not about it which they spoke.

"How is Anna?" Kerstin opened, without preamble.

"Anna?" Karl said. "Oh, Anna is just fine."

"Anna is just fine?" Kerstin repeated, but her inflection made her meaning clear. "Karl, your place is no more than a half-hour's ride up the road. There was no need for you to save a half hour by staying at our house tonight."

"No, there was not," he admitted.

"So," Kerstin said quietly, "I was right. Anna is not so fine as you would have me believe."

Karl nodded. The geese were making soft clucks, settling down with their plump breasts looking plumper as they squatted to the ground. They were a pair, a goose and a gander. Karl watched as they wriggled themselves into comfort, closely nestled beside each other before the goose tucked her head beneath her wing.

"Karl, I must ask you something," Kerstin said in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Ya," he said, absently studying the fowl.

"Do you like me?"

Karl could feel the red creeping up his collar even before he turned to look squarely at Kerstin. "Well ... ya, of course I like you," he answered, not knowing what else to say.

"And now I am going to ask you something else," she said, meeting his eyes with a steadiness that unsteadied him. "Do you love me?"

Karl swallowed. Never in his experience had any woman been so bold with him. He didn't know what to say without hurting her feelings.

Kerstin smiled, unchagrined, turning her palms up. "There, you have given me your answer. You have given yourself your answer. You do not love me." She turned aside and leaned her arms on the top of the fence. "Forgive me, Karl, if I speak to you in a straightforward manner. But I think it is time. Tonight at the supper table I thought I saw you looking at me in a way a woman senses is--Let me say different. But I think it is because of something between you and Anna, not something between you and me."

"I ... I am sorry, Kerstin, if I offended you."
   

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Karl, do not be so foolish. I was not offended. If things were different, I would be outright proud. But I do not bring it up to make you feel uncomfortable. I bring it up to get you to talk about whatever is wrong between you and Anna."