by Sara Dahmen
“Ah ha! Gil! I win!” He spins and disappears toward the Rusty Nail, and Gilroy Greenman’s rumbling answer gets louder as he ambles nearer, too.
Soon I have most of the Nail’s customers inside the shop, and I want to cover the sword with my body to keep it from all the fingers. Lara O’Donnell ends up slicing open her hand as she touches the wrong end, and I pull out my rag box and bind it before blood gets on the steel.
“Behold what the Lord has helped Marie Kotlarczyk make with her hands!” Father Jonathon intones as he steps in, silencing the argument and removing his wide black hat against the heat inside the tinshop.
“Aaah, Father, did the Lord forget to help her the first time, then?” Horeb quips and all the cowboys guffaw loudly in response.
Everyone stares and touches until rumbling stomachs and the shift of the sun remind them all of their hungry stomachs or their duty and the shop empties again.
“I should do the same and make some food,” Berit mentions, pulling her cloak back on. It is cold and frigid outside, perhaps worse than other Decembers past.
“I was wondering if you’ve sold your house yet?” I ask quickly.
She looks at me strangely, but stops putting on her wrap. “No. No one needed it when the last wagon train went through, as you know. What does it matter, Marie?”
The asking is hard, as it changes things. It will sever something comfortable and easy between us.
“I was thinking I need a smaller space. It is just me, after all.”
She surveys the shop, skeptical. “How would you ever fit all of this in my old house?”
“I might take out a wall or two in your main room. Make it one big space, with a bed in the corner. It’s small, and simple. You needn’t take as much care of me—”
“But I like to take care of you, honey. It gives me—and Walter—joy to have you here.”
“Where is she going?” Both Berit and I swing around to look toward the door, which is dark with Walter’s height.
“Oh, Marie was considering … is considering … moving herself and the shop to my old house, as it hasn’t been taken over.”
Walter’s thick eyebrows shoot up. “Is that so?”
I feel strange and disjointed now that my thought is out in the open, as if I am betraying him, too. I shake my head.
“It’s just an idea.”
Berit stares at me, weighing, then turns to Walter.
“I’ll be over shortly, min kjære. It’ll be a simple meal. I just need to do up the pudding with some nutmeg.”
He glances between us, and then lumbers away, letting the late afternoon light in again. Berit looks at me closely, her head moving to the side as she considers.
“Marie, do you wish you’d married Danny?”
“Why can’t everyone leave that be? I didn’t want to marry him.”
“And you will part ways with Percy as well, I suppose?” When I nod, she does, too. “Well, honning, I can understand that.”
“Good.” I rub my fingers together before twisting them. “Then I can buy your old place from you?”
She pauses once more. “Are you feeling you need to make your life smaller because you are alone here?”
It’s partially true. “Yes, there is that.”
“But you’ve us. We’re family.”
Her belief is touching and filling, but it also makes my body tighten. They are my family in a way, but not really. Not in the way I wish them to be. And I want to shrink away from the memories clouding the shop.
“I know, Berit. And I’m thankful.”
“Well, of course, I can’t make you stay in this old barn by yourself,” she sighs, looking around again. “You needn’t decide right now anyway, honning dear.”
She pats my hand, and then calls over her shoulder. “Come on over, then. Thaddeus will be glad to know the sword is done if he hasn’t heard already. I’ve got to grab up water, so I’ll meet you inside.”
I grab my wool cape and follow her out, still not certain if she will sell me her place, but unable to press the issue without sounding desperate. She heads to the well, her greying, queenly head bent against the chilly breeze, and I move toward the Salomon house, pausing outside the door to scrape the muddy slush from my boots.
“… said she’d take Berit’s old place.” Walter’s rumble is deep and loud through the boards, and I pause, listening without meaning to, but needing to at the same time.
“Czemu?Why?”
“She wants something smaller. Can’t say I blame her.”
“But then who will cook and care for her? She can’t do both.”
I smile at Thaddeus’ concern, though it is only because he knows that I am no hand at making up a home.
“I don’t know, son. I’m sure my wife would look in on her. Now, Berit was going to add nutmeg to the pudding. Handle it, will you? I’ll pull the coffee.”
There is a snort, likely from Thaddeus at his father’s newfound inclination to help around the hearth. I don’t want Berit to see me eavesdropping, so I open the door, lifting my face to the blast of warmth from their living area. Walter looks up and smiles before going to measure the beans into the pot. Thaddeus is on the far end of the room, and he does not look up. Perhaps he does not hear me.
I watch him take down the nutmeg grater—the one I’ve made and given to Walter, I realize—and carefully shave the spice into the pudding. He pauses, considering how much to put in, then peers at the grater itself.
Likely I’ve left a seam poorly soldered or it is already coming apart. I sigh, but then catch the sigh halfway as I watch him rub his thick thumb over the curved edge of the grater. It is a thoughtful thing he does before palming the tool and pressing it back carefully into place among the cutlery. I wish … well, there is nothing to be done. What am I supposed to do? Tell him that I wish he might touch my body so gently? That I wish to be with him? If I were alone, I’d laugh aloud at the ridiculousness of it. I may be unorthodox with my career, but I’m no fool. I can only imagine how such a plead would sound, and how dismissive Thaddeus would be.
“Time to eat?” I ask.
Thaddeus turns, at once surly. “Father says you might leave your shop and move.”
“Just across the town.” I’m unprepared for the bitterness in his voice. I’ve forgotten how much he dislikes change of any kind. Well, it’s not his life.
Walter straightens slowly too, facing his son. Even in profile, he looks surprised. “It’s not a sure thing, Tadeusz.”
The younger blacksmith stares at the pair of us, and then shakes his head. “I just didn’t expect you to leave a good thing, Marie. Between the shops and Berit taking care of everything, it’d be foolish to disrupt it. You know you belong here, by the smithy. You may have your moments, but you never struck me as a nierosądny foolish woman.”
“I—”
My retort is cut as Berit bursts into the room, and we end up all eating in complicated silence. Even Walter tries to be talkative, but both Thaddeus and I are brooding for our own separate reasons. Berit finally gives up.
“Well, since half of us at the table are in no mood to be happy, I suppose I should serve the pudding and be done with it and no ceremony.”
I shake my head, wishing I could be livelier in the face of her obvious attempts.
“I’d adore some pudding, but perhaps tomorrow.”
She doesn’t argue, and instead winks at her husband. “More for myself and Walter. Go on then. And you, too, Thaddeus? You’ll want to see the sword?”
His head comes up fast. “It’s done then? You didn’t think to mention it, Marie? I had to hear through gossip. Fine. I’ve only to add the hilt.”
“Whenever you’d like to have it back, I’ll bring it over to the forge,” I tell him.
He looks more than annoyed. “Why should I want to wait to finish the damn thing?”
His anger bites and slashes my heart. What would it be to have him gentle again, the way he sometimes is—was? Not recently,
of course. And it’s been slightly worse since I decided to deny Danny a marriage.
“Then I’ll bring it over,” I say, and head out immediately, forgetting my cloak in my rush to finish this whole ordeal.
I’m proud of the work, indeed. But I am also embarrassed by my attraction to the blacksmith, and I am afraid of what it will mean to be done working so closely with him.
The air is cold and clear, and the evening falls quick and grey and blue. I walk into the shop, which is still warm from the brazier and the stove. In the cool brush of winter light, the sword looks otherworldly. I am actually fond of it now. It rather turned me into a full smith. I feel confident about my trade, and my ability. Though Al and Father and even Tom cannot see this masterpiece, I think they’d be proud too. It is enough.
I wrap the sword in the sheepskin, and carry it back to the smithy, going around the house instead of through it. It’s good to have the time in the cold to gather myself a little longer.
Thaddeus is not in the forge. The coals spin hot and undulating in the chimney. I put the sword down on the bench, and unwrap it to see it once more. It will be grand when the hilt is on.
I turn to the outer door to go, but it is blocked by the smith himself, the grey eyes dark in the growing cloudiness. My cloak hangs limply over his arm.
“You forgot this. Must have missed you somehow going and coming,” he says, then sees the sword. His arm drops and he carelessly lets the hem of the cape drag in the thick soot of the floor. “You were just going to leave it there? Not a word to me?” The disbelief is thick in his voice, the anger.
I try to face his annoyance head on. “I didn’t think you needed to speak of it. It’s done.” I gesture lightly, and then look up at him. “I figured you’d be glad of it.”
“That I am,” he agrees, and moves inside from the cold, pulling the doors closed against the chill with my cape still hanging haphazardly from his forearm. “But it is unlike you to just drop and run. You’ve been a friend to me, Marie, but not lately. And this only is another moment of it.” He has stopped calling me Marya since the dance, and that bothers me more than I admit.
The glow of the coals flickers across the exposed skin of his face. He’s both familiar and ghostly in the darkness and I instinctively step backward, hoping I don’t hit anything sharp or hot as I do.
“I think you’ve been strange too,” I accuse, not sure if it’s true, but then decide to grasp at the words anyway. “Ever since the dance. Since I refused your other friend. Since I said I won’t marry Danny.”
“I know. You have no wish to be married at all. Danny told me.” The harshness in his voice is rough. I knew I’d be facing his irritation about this, and the frustration wrought by his loyalty to Danny. It might be best to be done with it.
“I never said such a thing to him.”
“Didn’t you?” He looks at me with hardness around his long slash of a mouth. “He was particular about it.”
“When? He hasn’t been back since the harvest festival.”
“Oh, he told me then.”
I remember them staring at me and into their beers at the dance before Danny departed, dejected and angry. The untruth of the statement squeezes me, and I push back.
“But I do wish to be married! Danny’s wrong.”
“How so? Danny was quite clear about the notions you had, that you don’t wish to be a woman at a hearth all your days. You want to be a smith.”
“Well, that part is true.”
The fight seems to go out of Thaddeus. I wish he might light a lantern, but he seems disinclined to it.
“I don’t blame you that. You’re good at your trade.”
The compliment warms me. And thankfully, the storm of his testiness appears to be over, at least for tonight.
“And you know I am not a good cook,” I add.
“Many women aren’t. But that doesn’t mean you cannot take a marriage.”
Why does he push into this discussion, as if he is accusing me? Old anger of my own boils up, the tetchiness hiding my stifling dejection.
“I know it. I never told him I didn’t want to marry. Only that I did not wish to marry him. Danny is very kind, but I wish to love the man. It is a silly thing, of course.” I tack on the last to temper my hope for an impossible match. “Besides, you helped me with my debt. It’s thanks to you, Thaddeus, that I had a choice about marriage to Danny at all.”
“And this is how you thank me? By refusing him?”
“I do not love him!”
He’s quiet, brooding, then scoffs. “Love, you say. It is a silly thing.” He turns away from me and toward his fire.
I grab my cloak from his arm, yanking hard. “Is it too much to ask? I’d like for a man to see me as a smith. Not just a smith, but a woman, too, and care for me as both. Both things, together. Anything else I will not cleave to. It wouldn’t make sense anymore.”
I spin away from him, feeling tears convulse inside my throat, as if the sorrow of my father’s death is once more pulling upwards, to remind me to pity myself, to tempt me to drown in the pain of loneliness. It is sharp this time, and an ache. I reach the door to the living quarters and can hear the soft murmuring of Berit and Walter through the wood planks.
When I yank it open and stomp through, Berit and Walter fall silent, and I half expect Berit to stop me, but she stays quiet. And while I wish to hear Thaddeus pound after me, if only to continue our argument, that is another half-hope that falls flat.
The tinshop itself is not comforting when I arrive. Now that everything is finished, I have nothing left to fill my mind and my hands. The emptiness is loud and almost painful.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
20 December 1867
Marching into the bank is easier this time. And slapping the pad of cash on the hard, rough wood of Percy Davies’s desk is just as fulfilling as I could have wanted, giving me the courage to spit out the blunt demand.
“I want to leave.”
“Excuse me?” He stares first at the money, then me.
“I want to leave the Svendsens’ land. It’s not possible to stay.”
Percy looks a bit blown about, and his hair is not slick today. Esther Flies-With-Hawks has had a child just the other night, and I try to remember the gossip.
“Ah … and congratulations. On your son.”
Percy grins widely. “Why thank you, Miss Marie.” He settles back into his chair, the creak echoing through the bank, as he thumbs through the bills.
“I mean what I say. I can’t play the game anymore.”
“I won’t have Oddvar selling to the rail. It’ll end up by passin’ the town and Flats Town’ll die. It has to go through on Brinkley land.”
“But—”
“I’m sorry, Marie. You need to stay there so Oddvar won’t sell. He’s no fool. A monthly rent that never ends eventually will be worth more than a one-time sum from the railroad.”
I fold my mouth over my teeth briefly, tightly, and then let out the air hard. Panic marries frustration and I let the anger blast outward. “Damn you, Percy Davies! I’m telling you I’m done. And even if I wanted to stay, I can’t afford it!”
“Yes, you can. I’m giving you the loan.”
“It won’t work. I’ll just keep in debt to you—more and more! I need to stop.”
“Marie, you owe me, and the bank, for your family’s old lumber loans, the initial rent, the back rent and the interest on it. It’s a large sum.”
I choke down my scream and cross my arms, glaring at him as darkly as I can. “Damn you to hell. It was blackmail. I’m done with it.”
“It’s practical. I do what I can to build this town into somethin’, to keep it alive.”
“I—”
“You should have married Danny Svendsen.”
I fume, filling with indignation. “It’s a poor reason to marry.”
“But then you could have paid off your debt to me and spent your marriage convincin’ him that his father doesn’t
need to sell, that the place is rentable and the money would keep comin’ in for decades. You would have been—”
“You put so much power in a woman’s role, do you?” I counter.
“Why, I—”
“Just because you—you’ve been knocked over by an apron string—”
Percy grins again. “Ah, Esther’s not exactly one for wearin’ an apron.”
“Damn it, you know what I mean.”
He sighs and crosses his arms across his stomach, which is just starting to round with age. “I can’t make you stay on the Svendsen land, I suppose, if you’ve a place to go, and you’ve served a purpose for a good while. The rail men won’t be back now for at least another six months to speak to anyone, so I’ve got time for another scheme.”
“A new one without me,” I demand. “I can count and so can you. I’ve paid everything. Even the fucking interest.”
Percy’s blue eyes go wide at my curse, but ignores it and slowly reaches for the wad of notes. Flicking his wrist and licking his fingers between every fourth scrap of paper, his lips move soundlessly as he adds.
As he reaches the end, his face almost melts. “It covers.”
“So I said.”
He ignores my tartness and gazes at me frankly. “Back to Chicago, then?”
“No. I’ll stay.” I grip the sides of my skirt, my palms sweating, my knees tremble once, and I slide into the chair across the wide desk, pinning Percy with my eyes. “I understand what you’ve been trying to do in Flats Town, and I am in favor of it.”
The chair pops and cracks under him as he shifts, and Percy frowns slightly. He waves a finger, as if dismissing my half-compliment into the cool air.
“If you won’t stay on the Svendsen land, will you live somewhere else? And how will you buy another little place?” he asks, but he is not rancorous, and seems honestly interested.
“I don’t know yet, but I’ll manage. I always do.”
He cocks his head. “I’ll be frank. I won’t be lendin’ you money for a different house. You’ve reneged on this deal we had about stayin’ on the Svendsen land. Do you understand, Marie?”
I stand, feeling both exultant and very tired. “I understand.”
