Coyotes also sought shelter in dens constructed in abandoned houses or in soddies or against what trees there were, or in ravines and creek banks. Hunting was difficult in the winter; the rodents buried deep in the ground, leaving only deer—skinny themselves now, months after the abundance of their autumn pillaging—to be brought down, divided up, consumed or hoarded.
It was the larger animals, the ones who couldn’t hide in dens, that took the brunt of it. The deer and the elk and the pronghorn had to endure the worst of nature’s fury, huddling together against what shelter they could find out on the pitiless prairie that left them so vulnerable with few trees, hills, or gullies for protection. The minute they smelled the change in the air, they clumped together in herds, snuggling low to the ground for warmth, heads down, eyes shut, the weakest and youngest in the middle for protection. Many wouldn’t survive; neither would most of the rabbits trying to shelter together trapped far from their burrows.
The cows—what grazing cows there still were, that is, since by this year of 1888, most bright-eyed ranchers, like an eager young New Yorker named Theodore Roosevelt, had learned the brutal lesson that cows were a losing investment on the merciless plains—had it the worst. The weather was too harsh; every year blizzards wiped out hundreds in one fell swoop. This blizzard was no exception, striking in its peculiarly heartless fashion. Some of the confused cows, not as adept at gathering together as deer and elk, found themselves encased in a hell of self-made ice, their blowing, moist breath freezing about them, suffocating them where they stood, then the elements finishing them off while they remained upright.
Most of the migratory birds from Canada—rough-legged hawks, a snowy owl or two—weathered the storm, somewhat stunned by its ferocity; they had their nests atop abandoned barns, the odd tree. They were used to the tundra, so they simply bent their heads against the elements and waited; once the weather cleared, the piercing blue sky against the dazzling white landscape would provide the perfect setting for hunting.
Horses caught outside, too, suffered in the storm, wandering farther from their barns in their confusion, some finally giving up and laying down to be covered by the snow, and, eventually, overcome by the plunging temperatures that would follow.
One horse in particular, dragging an empty cutter sleigh, had stopped trying to outrace the howling wall of fury nipping at his heels; it was now barely moving, swaying on its hooves, the weight of the sleigh terrible, so that every now and then the horse tried to buck it off. That took too much strength, though, and the horse became resigned to its burden, even as its heart slowed down, trying to conserve energy. Blind to his surroundings—eyes fully plastered shut by ice—the horse kept moving by instinct, yet he was slowing down with each step.
Slowing down enough so that someone could have caught him. And the horse wondered why his owner had not; why the exhausted cries of his name had stopped at some point, so many painful steps back.
* * *
—
LIKE THE HORSE SHE CURSED, Gerda kept moving against the force of the wind, just barely; staggering with each small step, eyes tightly shut against the javelins of ice hurtling down from the sky, tugging little Ingrid along, struggling to keep the child upright. Minna had stopped crying, a silent stone upon Gerda’s back. Every now and then Gerda felt a warm breath in her ear, so that she could tell Minna was still alive, and she thanked God. Because now she knew, she fully understood, that the three of them might not make it out of this; she’d already given up on Tiny, or so she told herself. She wasn’t prone to foolish hope, no, not she. Not practical Gerda—isn’t that what Papa always called her? His little soldier, his rock. Papa had wanted a son so much, at least that’s what Mama said once, in a rare, disjointed act of desperation that Gerda still wondered about, years later.
One morning when Gerda was only about ten, Mama had been airing out the bedstead that she and Papa slept on. But all at once, Mama plopped down on it as if her legs had given out on her, and suddenly a torrent of words—Norwegian words—poured out of her. Mama was talking to her, Gerda, who had been carefully washing the breakfast dishes in a bucket of water, keeping an eye on Raina, who was outside, singing a little song while she made her doll a blanket out of tallgrass, weaving the long purplish stems in and out. It was a spring day, a soft one, as Mama sometimes called these rare, blessed days when everything—the sun, the breeze, the temperature—was moderate. Coaxing.
“Yes, I know, your papa, my Steffen, he wanted a son so badly to share the work, to keep his name alive, but he loves you girls, Gerda; he loves you with all his heart.”
Gerda looked at her mother in confusion; she had never questioned her father’s love, it was as constant as the rustling of the prairie grass. As perennial as the cry of a screech owl at night. As comforting as the patter of a gentle rain in spring.
“Oh, yes, he loves you,” Mama repeated in a rush, mistaking Gerda’s expression. “You especially, Gerda. He does look at you like his right arm sometimes, and I don’t know that that is fair, but it is the way it is. Still you have the best papa around, but a son, a boy, it would have helped. He is a strong man but this place is too much even for him, he will work himself to death, that is the fate of a man here, but it is a fate your papa wanted, even so. At home, there wasn’t enough for him, the farms were divided up among all the sons so that none of them had much. They weren’t big farms like this, no, so your father had to up and leave, he took us away; my mother, my poor mother, I do miss her so. My sisters, my Breena and my Maja, the letters come too slowly, all the way across the ocean, they might be gone now, do you know? Gone—accidents happen, sickness, and Mama, she is old!” Gerda’s mother looked stunned by this, she raised her hands up in a jerky movement and let them fall in her lap while her eyes were big and wondering, her mouth open in surprise. “Yes, they might be gone and, Gerda, I wouldn’t know, would I? Maybe not for months.”
“Mama!” Gerda dropped a tin cup in the dishwater and ran to her mother, putting an arm about her, but Mama didn’t cry; she looked at Gerda, smiled, shook herself a little, and continued on with this strange conversation that seemed to spring from a hidden well, a conversation Gerda had never been part of before, the kind of talk you imagine goes on between a papa and a mama at night, after you’re tucked into your bed with your sister and they’re still up, sitting in front of the fire, their heads bent together, their voices low and murmuring and assuring you that someone is still awake and alert and will care for you even if there are wolves outside the door; you know you heard them, even though Papa scoffed and said it was a coyote. But as long as Papa and Mama were up and talking, you could go to sleep because you knew they wouldn’t let a wolf inside.
But now, for the first time, Gerda suspected that perhaps those conversations weren’t so comforting, after all; perhaps they were about urgent things, sad things. Heartbreaking things.
“But I have you and Raina, don’t I? I have you and so I’m not as alone as Papa is; it’s almost like my sisters but not quite. But Papa, he doesn’t have men around him and that’s a kind of loneliness, it is, Gerda, even though he loves us so. Do you think he is disappointed in me, because I didn’t give him sons? Oh, there was one, yes, before you, but he died so little, so quickly, sometimes I almost forget. Of course, I won’t ever forget but sometimes I get so busy and I have you two and so I do go a few hours without thinking of him; little Peter, we baptized him, or at least Papa did with our Bible, but he barely got it done before the baby died. He shuddered and whimpered and lay very still in my arms and then Papa took him from me. He wrapped him in something, and later we had a ceremony outside, but that was long ago, back home in Norway. I’ll never see him again and I cried about that, yes I did, when we left; and perhaps I was even angry at your papa for taking us away from him, but of course I couldn’t say that. And now we are here, so far away from him and Mama and my sisters, who might be dead, but that is the way of
the Lord and all we can do is accept it.”
Gerda was too stunned to say anything; she’d never heard of a brother. She’d never seen any sign of longing or sadness for him in either of her parents. She had no idea why her mother was so worried about the lack of him, or another son, all of a sudden. Did Mama have these thoughts all the time? And did she have to hide them, storing them up somewhere inside until they gushed out like now? Gerda understood that this was not part of the conversation that went on at night between her parents. Gerda knew that this was the kind of conversation that women had, and she remembered how sad Mama had been when her friend Lydia Gunderson, on the homestead next to theirs, had died giving birth. To a son, Gerda remembered. But both mother and child had died, and Mama, Gerda realized, must have been so lonely ever since. Even though they didn’t see their neighbors all that often, especially during winter, still, Mama and Mrs. Gunderson must have been the kind of friends who talked about these things. And now, Mama only had her and Raina.
Mama suddenly rose and continued shaking out the mattress tick; she bent down and kissed Gerda on the head and gently told her to go back to the dishes, and the moment was over. Mama was Mama again, singing hymns as she went about her tasks, that odd, feverish gleam in her eyes gone. She welcomed Papa home from the fields that night as usual, with a table full of hearty food and a scolding for him to leave his work boots outside, as if he’d ever dared to wear them inside!
That night, as she and Raina lay next to each other, Raina already softly snoring, Gerda heard the familiar, low murmuring between her parents, felt the reflexive relaxing of her own limbs, her eyelids growing heavy. But for the first time, she understood that conversation didn’t always bring about resolution. That people—all people—carried around inside them notions and thoughts and sadness that could not be alleviated simply by talking about them.
But that people—women, perhaps, especially—had to try. Or else…Gerda didn’t really know. Maybe, when you carried those sad thoughts around forever, you could die from them?
Gerda’s lips felt chapped and raw; she wanted to lick them but didn’t dare for fear her tongue would freeze to them. She realized she’d been talking to herself. Just like Mama had on that strange day—and others like it. But as Raina got older it was upon her that Mama would shower these urgent, pent-up torrents of words, thoughts, feelings, memories. Gerda, by then, was spending too much time out in the fields or barn with Papa, doing her very best to keep up with him, although she couldn’t. They both knew it, and in little glances and sighs from her father, Gerda did see what her mother meant; she did understand how much her father missed not having a son.
There she was again! Talking to herself, her thoughts strange and far away, while her body kept moving. Although she realized she was shuffling now, as was Ingrid, and she hadn’t felt Minna stir at all for a while. Suddenly her heart seized, then it tried to race but it couldn’t, her blood was too cold. But still panic flooded her, propelled her legs, her feet that could just as well have been cement blocks for all that Gerda could feel them, forward, forward. Now she was stumbling, shuffling instead of dragging. Her head still bent against the onslaught of this terrible, clogging snow; it filled her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her lungs, and she wondered if she could suffocate in it. She wondered if Minna already had.
“Come, come,” she yelled, crazily, to poor Ingrid, who looked up at her once, and through the whirling snow Gerda saw horror—a face rubbed raw, eyes crusted over with ice. Ingrid’s lips were blue and trembling. She emitted a faint, pitiful cry.
“Come!” Gerda had only one hand with which to drag the little girl, as her other arm was wrapped around one of Minna’s limp legs. “Come, Ingrid, come!”
And with her head bent back down again, Gerda plunged forward into the nightmare. It was growing darker by the minute. It must be nearly dusk. They’d never see a light in a window, not shrouded in this curtain of misery.
She staggered on this way, one girl on her back, the other barely upright, crying constantly now, until suddenly Gerda smelled something. Something faintly sweet. She stopped, walked ahead, then turned blindly to her left; she dropped Ingrid’s hand so that she could feel her way through the wind and snow, she inched ahead, arm outstretched, and it was a miracle that jolted through her body when she touched something—something hard, cold, little smooth ridges, an occasional sharp edge.
A haystack.
“Ingrid!” She whirled around, dropped Minna against the stack—the girl didn’t move, she was as inert as a doll. Gerda ran back a few steps; she heard crying, grabbed something alive, and it was—another miracle!—Ingrid. Then she dragged the child back to the haystack, and with a fury—a hunger—Gerda began to paw at the hay. It was freezing, sharp, it bit at her hands, fighting back. But after how long, she did not know—she only knew that she was both drenched in perspiration and numb with cold—she had carved out an opening, a tiny cave barely large enough to shove Minna and Ingrid inside and maybe she could squeeze herself in there, too. It was something, anyway, and she crawled in after them as far as she could. She fell on her back, gazing up at darkness but it was quiet now, so quiet her ears popped; the wind was muffled, she heard her own breathing, and another ragged little breath beside her. But from the silent, frozen mound of clothes and flesh at her head, there came no sound.
“Minna,” she croaked hoarsely, but a blanketing exhaustion overwhelmed her. She was sinking now, sinking in this tiny space, straw tickling her nose. It was still cold—colder down at her feet than at her head, although she could barely sense that, as she could not feel her feet—but they were out of the worst of it. They would stay here until it passed over. Minna was surely asleep, that was all; Ingrid had stopped crying, and must have fallen asleep, as well.
It was so quiet. She was only aware of her own breathing, shallow breaths coming further apart than she’d ever felt. It was like drowning, but she had never known anyone who had drowned, had only read about it in books. Her lungs filled up with something other than air, and she felt her eyes close, her body grow limp.
She tried to stay awake; she began to count backward from one hundred. Ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven, ninety-six, ninety-five.
“Ingrid,” she murmured, lips so numb she could barely move them. “Ingrid, now it’s your turn, go on, keep counting….Raina, why don’t you ask her….”
But Ingrid didn’t answer; neither did Minna. And Raina was strangely silent, too.
Gerda didn’t care any longer; she gave in, the waves crashed over her, pressing her down, down, down into the cold, hard earth.
CHAPTER 16
•••••
SHE TIGHTENED THE SCARF ABOUT her head, tried to cover her ears, then quickly reached around to hold Enid firmly in place, even though the child’s legs were wrapped around Raina’s waist. Her other hand gripped Arvid’s, whose wheezing was almost loud enough to compete with the roar of the wind.
Raina turned around, eyes shutting against the stinging wind and snow as hard as buckshot, but she forced her eyes open. She shouted, desperate to be heard, desperate to hear.
“Children! Roll call!”
Ears straining, she heard the tiny voices, weaker this time than the last. First Tor—reassuring, knowing he was there at the end of this bedraggled line—then Sofia, Rosa, Eva, Albert, Clara, Tana, Walter, Daniel, Arvid.
“Enid,” the little girl whispered in her ear, and Raina closed her eyes, allowing herself to be thankful for this one moment, this moment when she knew they were all still alive, still together. Then she had to let go of that moment and forge ahead toward the next.
And it was in this way, inch by inch, stopping periodically for the children to claim their names, that Raina led her little band of schoolchildren toward what she desperately prayed was the Halvorsans’ farm.
She couldn’t rely on Tor for directions, although she tr
usted he would let her know if she was badly off. But he was there, was Tor; he was at her back, strong and steady and honest. Her guilt at not letting him run off after his brother was ever-present, whispering in her ear when Enid wasn’t. She had let him down badly, and he would blame her for the rest of his days if something happened to Fredrik. But there were so many things to feel guilty for lately; one more seemed like nothing, just one more drop into an almost-full bucket.
Occasionally, as she kept struggling against the wind, the cold, the snow that was unlike any snow she’d ever known, these grainy pellets that clogged the eyes and nostrils and mouth, she thought of Anette and Fredrik, and worried about them. But then she forced herself to say, out loud, the names of each of the children soldiering on behind her, tied together with apron strings and pluck and luck. Her heart swelled with pride; none complained, not even the tiniest, as they trudged on, heads bent down like hers. They were one living, breathing unit. And she was the head. The heart.
Another step forward. Another. Another. Her thighs quivered, were on fire, but the rest of her legs and feet were senseless. The wind came at her from her left, now her right; punched her face with an icy blow, hit the back of her head. Her breathing was shallow, rapid; she didn’t dare to breathe deeply, lest she inhale the sticky snow. Lest the frigid air burn her lungs from the inside.
Sometimes, she wondered about Gunner. Had he come for them, after all? Had he pulled up to the schoolhouse, seen the broken window, the chaos of scattered papers and books and lunch pails, and run to the closet, empty of clothes? What did he feel when he registered that she was gone, that they all were gone? Worry? Terror? Loss?
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