Tinsmith 1865

by Sara Dahmen

  There are hours when my frustration boils and whips through me. I expect to feel helpless and sad and distraught, but instead my emotion is pure anger. Why is he leaving me to myself so often, when I need him the most? Does he think to give me independence and strength? I’m not sure I like the lesson, if that is so. Tonight though, Father seems to warm up, and he actually chatters about the upcoming needs for hot dip tin, and how he and I might build a copper cistern.

  “And that Danny Svendsen will be wanting to marry you at some point. Will you be saying yes?” His comment is so casual, at first I miss it, and he plows on. “I know you will be wishing to be married,” he says, surprising me. “I know you are wondering if you ever are to be being so. The boys used to be keeping most of the young men away.” He echoes my sentiment and actually cracks a small smile. “There is something to be being said for making a match. A szczęśliwy happy one, a love match.”

  “Like yours and Mother’s?” I’m embarrassed we are discussing my love interests at all. It’d be easier with the boys.

  He smiles again, though his eyes slant with sadness. “There is being both good and bad with having a passionate marriage, my little Marya.” The endearment feels like acceptance, finally. I breathe just a little easier. Maybe he is not quite so angry about my inability to help him keep things together after all.

  I slide over along the tinner’s bench so I can lean across from him. I wish to grip his hands, to keep him connected with me. Forgiving me. I hold my tongue, waiting and hoping he continues.

  After a long moment, he inhales slowly.

  “I’m sorry. The grief from her being gone … what is being the word? Overwhelming. The joy of all of you—with the boys and you—being together, and with no worry that you’d be leaving me … it was being enough. But then the boys leave. Both of them. I … I am breaking the promise to your mother.”

  “You promised her they’d never go to fight anywhere again? That’s an odd thing to agree to, Father,” I say softly.

  “No, not that. I told her I’d be keeping us together. I’d be keeping you all safe.”

  “But Father—”

  He holds up his hand. “I know, it is being a strange thing to promise. So she was dying, and it was meaning much to her for the family to be being together. We did not like Tom to be fighting in the war. The boys are so much prone to be doing what they wish instead of putting the family first. It is not being Polish to do so. So then I was to be worrying with the west being expanding perhaps one of the boys would be leaving to seek adventure, and another might be going to make master smith in a new city. This way … well. It was being a foolish thing to be promising your mother, and more foolish to be thinking I could keep it.”

  He clears his throat, and it is noisy and raspy. “We were having dreams of the Kotlarczyk family to be being a grand house of smiths. It is another reason why we were spending money on all the machines. And I was thinking we were having a bigger chance of building here, where it is being fresh and open. I was not to be thinking there was to be being something else to be taking them away. More wars. All of them, now. Gone.”

  Does he realize his stubbornness to keep the family together, to keep them from striking out on their own, is one of the reasons they went with the Army? It wasn’t only the money. And yet, it seems he had hoped for just that.

  “They’ll come back,” I reassure him, though the seeds of doubt curdle in my stomach.

  “As you are saying, I hope it is being true,” Father says, reaching over to pass his hand over my own work, glancing over the math I’ve sketched. “And in the while, you are being a good help, Marie. I am being grateful. Your mother would be being glad of this.”

  His memories clot inside my heart. What would Mother think of me now? Would she be upset that I am no lady? That I hold a job, of all things?

  “She would be proud.”

  “Well, damn,” I swear. I had not meant to use it aloud.

  “Marya. Your bad words is getting worse! But no, she would be being proud. As I am. I know I’ve been being so silent. But I will be trying harder. The boys will be coming home soon, I’m sure. And then we can be being as I am imagining—as your mother is always hoping. And in the spring, you might be marrying.”

  We’ve come full circle, and I feel foolish.

  “Father, I’m not sure about that. Danny is kind, but it’s awfully soon to worry about it.”

  “And then is there Jimmy.”

  My head spins up, and Father meets my eyes.

  “You think no one is noticing it?”

  “I didn’t know. I figured if the boys didn’t like it …”

  “They are seeing. They are encouraging it. They are liking the Salomons and Jimmy too.”

  I blow out a small huff of breath. “So they finally found someone they approved.” I stop short of saying the rest: it is too late. They took Jimmy away with them. The words are invisible, unspoken and yet I feel them hang: a judgment I must ignore.

  Father lets the air out of his nose, and shuffles around to me, putting his hand on my shoulder.

  “It is not mattering, Marie. You will be being—you are becoming—a good smith. You’ll be finding a husband, and your own way likely, too.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  24 December 1866

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “I thought it would match your eyes.”

  “You had a difficult color to match.” I pat down the soft hazel wool draping in wide folds around my shoulders. It is a gorgeous, luxurious gift.

  “I know I couldn’t give you what you really want, but this is at least useful,” Danny explains, and I smile at him. I’m always tongue-twisted around him, for so many reasons. He reaches out and runs a hand down the seam of the fabric. In truth, he is tracing my shoulder, and then my arm before reaching my hand. “Merry Christmas, Marie.”

  His long-boned fingers squeeze mine. The gesture is tentative and sweet, and I know I am blushing. Father is behind us in the shop, but has discretely turned away so I might open my gift in the privacy of an unobservant chaperone.

  “I’m afraid your gift is not so fine, nor store bought,” I tell him, and release his hand to reach under the counter. The box is copper instead of tin, and gleams with new polish. Inside are a small boiler and mucket, as well as a place to put any foodstuffs.

  “It’s for your lunches, so you don’t always have to pack in a loose sack, as you’re rarely at your own house to eat,” I explain as he opens it. His hands pass over the copper carefully and smoothly, leaving ghostly fingerprints against the shine.

  “Marie, did you make this?”

  “Well, Father helped with the handles on the two inside pieces. It’s not something we’ve made before, but you will use it, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps? Of course I will. Likely my father will want one, too,” Danny winks. “You do enjoy the trade, don’t you? Won’t you miss it?”

  “Miss it?”

  “When your brothers return,” he says. “Will it be hard to go back to the kitchen?”

  “I was never much for the kitchen,” I remind him, and he shakes his head, still disbelieving I am as incompetent as I say.

  “Well, has Mrs. Andersen been cooking up quite a storm for the holiday?” The question is put as a reason to stay and talk a moment longer together. He states the obvious with the mouthwatering smells wafting between my little back kitchen and the big Salomon one. Mrs. Andersen flits constantly between the two, happy to have both a hearth as well as the potbelly here. Walter has agreed she should share the Christmas dinner with us, and strangely, she states she will enjoy a quiet dinner with our little group better than the large, sprawling party at her son’s house this year.

  “She says she is making buckwheat stuffed goose of all things. And I made a creamy kielbasa stew,” I tell him.

  “See? You are a grand cook,” he grins, and his blue eyes go squinty with mirth and teasing. He reminds me very much of Al and Tom and their incessant pok
ing. I wish I could get my most desired Christmas gift: to have more word of them, or to have any of them to return to us. Any—even Jimmy.

  Jimmy! Will I still blush at his kisses? Be embarrassed to have him see me flushing in front of Danny? If I must decide between the two, whom would I choose? The fact that I have no answer for this question sometimes keeps me awake at night.

  “Well, you must have a good time over the holiday yourself,” I tell him, inching Danny toward the door.

  “It will be a long winter, Marie. I’ll have to think of other reasons to stop in and see you.”

  “You’ll know where to find me. There’s plenty to do.” I wave my hand at the work that surrounds us. I wish he’d go. Sometimes, seeing him only reminds me what money we owe Percy to keep up with his father’s demands. The rent has gone up the first of December, and likely will continue. Unless we get many orders over the winter and the tin sheet lasts, we will only sink further into debt even if the money from the boys comes in the next letters.

  He smiles once more, hugging the copper box to his chest and then calls across the room. “Good Christmas to you, Mr. Kotlarczyk!”

  “And to you,” Father tosses over his shoulder.

  As Danny leaves, I smooth the wool once more before taking it off. The color is deep. It must have been died in the wool and not after weaving.

  “He is liking you very much, my daughter.” Father is behind me, watching me place the cloak off to the side. “You will have to be thinking on an answer to him, for when he is asking.”

  “Has he mentioned anything to you?”

  “No.”

  “Then I have some time. Thank God.”

  Father sits next to me, slowly and with a heavy breathing that makes me pause and take him in. He looks the same as always. Has he aged so quickly? Is he unwell and hiding it?

  We sit quietly for a moment, before I blurt out a niggling fear.

  “If I refuse Danny, Father, do you suppose he will ask us to leave? We’d have to start over. Build a new smithy and shop, and new living quarters. We’d have to buy land, take an even bigger loan if Percy Davies gives it to us, and …” The enormity drowns my words.

  “I am not sure, Marie. If you are knowing Danny’s character, you might be guessing what he will be doing if you are not wishing to marry him.”

  My silence makes Father shift his uneven weight, and I hear the hitch and wheeze of his breath once more.

  “Love is growing, sometimes, daughter, and is starting with such affections. Jimmy is not being here, and Danny is.”

  That doesn’t matter. I want the choice.

  “I hope he doesn’t ask me for a long time,” I mutter. “I’ve only just started to make decent headway into the more complicated pieces and I want to try a biscuit oven.”

  Father heaves himself up, the skin around his face sagging and flappy. He puts a hand on my shoulder again. “So stubborn so not to be letting a job go unfinished?”

  We clean up the shop, and I put away the coppers and the sal ammoniac. There are five projects I’d put aside for Tom to do, as the lamps are his specialty. Putting away the unfinished wares always gives an icy jolt. I might have to do them.

  “Ready?” Father fidgets by the door.

  I nod, and pull out the large basket holding all my Christmas gifts. I have yet to finish the mitts I’m making Al, and I’m going to scramble to have them ready before the new year. It feels right to have something ready in case they come home. Tom’s mittens are finished and stowed along with the other gifts. Father has his own sack of goods, and I smile at him as I light the extra lantern. In the crunch of snow below our boots, I pull myself out of my seriousness, and elbow Father gently in the arm. Before our trip west, before our money woes, before my loneliness, I used to be just as jovial as the boys. Why can’t I find that piece of me? I should try, but there’s no more time to fret. We are at the Salomons’ door, and I open it without knocking. Their house is like a second home to me now, what with sharing a housekeeper and hearths.

  “Merry Christmas!”

  Both Walter and Mrs. Andersen nearly shout it aloud, and Father and I pause to take in the festivities. Besides the beer and wine, which has been making rounds between the two red-cheeked people at the table, there is goose for sure, and my stew attempt is sitting on the fire and looks as ready as it might. And there’s pickles and mashed potatoes and turnips, boiled onions and applesauce, and a lovely pumpkin pudding.

  Thaddeus comes in from the forge from the opposite side of the room, and his eyebrows shoot up as well. Even under his beard, I sense his surprise.

  “It’s a feast!” he exclaims, and I actually laugh out loud at the incredulousness written across his brow.

  “Well, honning dears, it’s been years since I’ve had anyone to cook for like this—all smaller, more manageable servings over the holiday,” Mrs. Andersen says comfortably, and shoves small tankards of beer toward us all. “I thought I’d do it up.”

  Father takes his usual seat next to Walter, but before we start the meal in earnest, there are toasts. Each of us thanks the others in the room, gives a blessing, and no one tackles the giant, obvious hole of the absent boys hanging over us.

  After the men are served, I take my seat across from Thaddeus, who wordlessly pushes the dishes toward me so I might pile my own plate. Mrs. Andersen keeps up her steady stream of chatter across from Father, her arms moving with great circles as she recounts the fight she had to butcher the goose.

  “And then, if it weren’t for Thaddeus here, I’d be still chasing him!” she finishes, and takes another well-earned bite of the tender, greasy meat.

  “Oh really?” I squint at him. “How did you manage it?”

  He shrugs with a shoulder. “I walked out of the forge with a hot poker, reached across the yard, and banged him on the head.”

  Our fathers roar with laughter, and as they explode in their re-telling of farm animal escapades in the Old Country, I turn back to Thaddeus.

  “Where was your father during the whole goose chase?”

  “Napping,” he tells me, looking down at his food. His plate is half-covered with the kielbasa stew.

  “Is it to your liking?” I press, poking a knife into his meat.

  He swats my utensil away. “I haven’t tried it yet.”

  “Taste it. I made it.”

  “That’s why I haven’t tried it yet, Marie,” he says, and I press my lips together. He looks up at me sharply, his face hard but his eyes almost merry. “I’m jesting. Or, trying to, at least.”

  We fall to eating, and it is only after the meal is finished when I realize he ate it all and asked for seconds. Well, at least someone likes my cooking.

  As we do the dishes, Father and Walter pull out their bags and exchange gifts, and then hand over Thaddeus his present. He nods gravely, running his hands along the handle of a new bellows to replace the raggedy one in the forge. Mrs. Andersen has done small things for everyone: scarves and some beeswax against the cracking and bleeding of our hands. I am deeply pleased she has thought to include me in these items instead of offering me the usual feminine presents of ribbon and other baubles.

  I hand out my gifts: knit mittens for everyone, including Mrs. Andersen. Inside each pair is something small that I’ve made from scraps in the shop. Father exclaims over the pressed tinderbox with a Polish pattern drawn lightly on the top, and Mrs. Andersen seems to like the copper brooch I fashioned with a floral design matching her Norwegian dress print.

  Thaddeus reaches his broad hand into the dark mitts and pulls out thick copper rings. He holds them up, his eyebrows high.

  “They’re a bit large for me, don’t you think?” He twirls one around his heart finger, spinning it deftly.

  Walter, his tongue quite loose from the beer and special plum wine, hoots. “Finally! Since my son won’t find a woman, one has decided to ask him!”

  I flush, and reach across to pluck the copper out of his hand.

  “It’s fo
r the leather apron you have,” I explain.

  “What?”

  “The one you use in the forge. The leather is wearing out of the slats because you tug at them so hard. If you use these, they should pull closed and the leather belt will last longer. I think,” I add, and then hand the gift back.

  He frowns, as if trying to understand exactly what I mean, but he looks up in a moment and nods, his face surprisingly clear.

  Walter finds the old nutmeg grater inside his mitten, and he shakes his head.

  “I said I’d buy it from you!”

  “This is better,” I say, and smile at him. He snorts and goes back to teasing Father about some old story, their voices in the old language spilling over the room.

  Thaddeus turns over the copper rings. They look small in his expansive palms. He has a new burn.

  “Merry Christmas, Tadeusz,” I tell him, realizing I have not said so yet. The grey eyes meet mine, and he inches nearer.

  “Wesołych Świąt,” he returns lowly. “Merry Christmas. And thank you, too.”

  He reaches into his possibilities pocket and pulls out a long iron piece. It looks like a well-formed hunk of metal until he sets it in my palm. The weight surprises me, and I look at the edges. One side is square and the other tapered, ending in a dull slanted angle.

  “But it’s a setting down hammer head!” I am surprised and delighted at this.

  “I have no talent with wood, and the cooper’s been busy,” he explains, looking into the fire and reciting calmly why his gift is only half-finished. “But he has been paid for the work. Make sure the handle he makes is strong, but not so heavy. In case you … ah … break your setting down machine.”

  The tool is valuable and I ignore the barb, feeling overwhelmed. “My gift to you is hardly anything compared to this.”

  “They are just as useful. More so, as I’ll wear them every day.” His reasoning is given without waver. “And I owe you for more than Christmas.”