A Pioneer Christmas Collection

by Kathleen Fuller

  Iain is dead. Lorna repeated the phrase over in her head, as though looking at a vaguely familiar face whose name she was unable to remember. She rolled over in bed, moving into the empty space Iain had filled. For three weeks her eyes had opened expecting to find him next to her. Yet each morning she found only cold emptiness. Iain is dead. She was conscious of this new, horrible reality but could do no more than hold that truth in her mind for mere seconds before laying it down and moving to calmer, safer thoughts. Thoughts of kneading bread and setting it to rise. Thoughts of the ache in her back while bending over the fire—an ache she never previously had, but one that arrived with the cold of Michigan. Lorna exhaled into the rough ticking of the mattress.

  “Mama?”

  Lorna lift her head to look at her daughter Afton, who stood next to the bed.

  “What is it, kitten?” Lorna slowly sat up to face her six-year-old.

  “Harry wants out.” Afton pointed to where Harry, their mutt with scruffy russet fur jutting out in all directions, sniffed and pawed at the door to be released into morning sunlight.

  Lorna sighed, scooted to the edge of the bed, wrapped her black woolen shawl around her, and winced as she placed her bare feet on the icy floorboards—boards Iain had felled and split and planed with his own capable hands. Lorna pressed a fist to her chest where the ache was so fierce she thought her heart would stop. She was almost surprised to feel it thrum, hard and sure, beneath her hand.

  “Have you used the privy yet?” Lorna asked.

  “Yes.”

  The metal latch of the door was stiff, and Lorna gave it a firm, two-handed tug. The door groaned open. Harry sprinted into the world outside where the sunrise pinked the tops of the spruce trees. That dog is sure to return muddy, Lorna thought. But what was a little more muck added to the disorder the cabin had become? She shut the door. Her eyes roved up to the back corner of the cabin, the corner opposite the stone fireplace and the bedroom Lorna and Afton shared. Thatching of pine and spruce boughs covered a hole that looked to be about the length and width of a buckboard. Leaves and twigs, small birds seeking shelter, and icy fingers of wind all penetrated this makeshift covering, leaving a continual mess in their small home.

  This portion of roof was all that was left to be finished. Three weeks ago, Iain had planned a final trip into the forest to fell a tree for lumber. “I’ll be home soon, my love,” he had said to Lorna. He gave her cheek a quick kiss. “Then our home will be complete.” She had watched Iain ride off on Goldie—their horse’s name so chosen by Afton for the golden tone of the mare’s coat—down by the stream and out of the clearing. The red of his wool shirt disappearing among the trees. Hours later, as the sun began to hide itself behind the trees, Goldie sauntered into the clearing alone.

  Lorna again pressed her fist to her chest. She handed Afton her coat and lifted the water bucket from its place by the door, the layer of water left in the bottom overnight now a sheath of milky ice.

  “It’s cold out there,” Afton whined.

  “The sooner we get water, the sooner we get breakfast,” Lorna answered.

  With an exaggerated moan, Afton shrugged into her coat, the bright red one of which she was so proud, and took the pail from her mother’s hand. Lorna remembered when Afton had gotten lost in the vastness of that coat last winter in Boston. Now it fit perfectly. Lorna studied her daughter, the long length of her stride, her squared shoulders, and the uplifted tilt of her chin. Afton was every inch the image of Iain. With what seemed all the energy she possessed, Lorna followed Afton to the edge of the clearing where the stream burbled and spun down a narrow bed of its own making.

  A mockingbird chirruped in a tree nearby. Lorna squinted but could not see the songbird. That wee bird should be heading south, Lorna thought, before winter arrives. No one survives winter here alone. Lorna’s breath seemed to snag then freeze in the back of her throat. The mockingbird’s song disappeared as though it had never begun.

  Lorna looked at the hill rising behind their cabin. On that hill Lorna and Iain had first set eyes on this land upon which they would build their home. On that hill they had walked as a family in the evenings, Iain and Afton at times bursting into song. And on that hill Lorna had, with the help of Mr. Edgar, placed a marker for her husband. There was no casket. No grave. No body was ever found. On a quiet night she thought she could still hear him on the hill, singing old hymns they had learned as children. Lorna swallowed. Afton dipped the pail into the water. Harry, next to her, licked her face, her hand, the pail as water trickled down the side. Afton giggled. Lorna wanted to reach out, touch the sunlit, silky hair of her daughter. Run the backs of her fingers along Afton’s soft cheek. Remind herself of what she still had.

  “This is where our roots will go down,” Iain had told Lorna as he held her in bed the night before the forest claimed him. “I feel, at last, we’ve come home.”

  Lorna breathed in the earthiness of the air, the scent of pine. We’ve come home. It was not a home of her choosing; it was the home Iain had chosen. He cleared the trees. Constructed their cabin and the barn. He even bought a goat they named Nanny! If Lorna left now, then it was all for nothing. Those five years toiling in Boston. Those three babies she had carried such a short time and lost. The typhoid fever they all endured—the fever that seemed to close her womb forever. She had survived it all. She—and Afton—would survive this, too.

  “We’ve come home,” Lorna said aloud. Afton looked at her, smiled with a dimple appearing in one cheek. Her brown eyes the same shade as Iain’s.

  “Of course we’re home, Mama,” Afton said, her voice musical. The handle of the bucket cut into Lorna’s fingers as she lifted the burden from her daughter.

  “Let’s make breakfast, kitten,” she said and smiled at her daughter. The first smile she’d been able to offer in weeks. They walked toward the cabin. Lorna tilted her shoulders to counterbalance the weight of the pail. The first thing to do, she determined, was to finish the roof. Lorna lifted her chin, hearing again the song of the mockingbird burst from the trees.

  “Hallo, Mrs. Findlay!”

  Startled, Lorna stopped the ax midswing. The ax head landed with a whump on the hard earth. Their neighbor Mr. Edgar, aloft on his pinto, lifted his hat and called out again as was expected when approaching a homestead. With the continual threat of Indians and wild animals, folks here were skittish.

  Lorna raised her hand in greeting then let it drop. It felt as weighted as the ax. She dragged the ax to the sparse woodpile and propped its handle against the stacked logs. Her palms felt gritty, raw. She wiped them against the apron she had tied around the outside of her gray woolen coat and forced a wooden smile onto her face. Her cheeks felt stiff, maybe from the cold. Edgar rode toward her, dismounted, walked the remaining distance. His horse plodded behind.

  “Good morning, Mr. Edgar.”

  “As I said before, please call me Joseph,” Mr. Edgar said with a pleasant smile. Lorna fidgeted with her apron. “Can I help you with some of this?” He pointed at the ax and the empty chopping block. The small log Lorna had been hacking at had fallen forlornly off the block. It lay on the ground like an old boot tossed to the dog for gnawing.

  Without awaiting an answer, Edgar handed Lorna his horse’s reins, set his hat and heavy coat atop the woodpile, and grasped the ax. He set the log back onto the block, heaved the ax over his head, and in a single stroke, split the log cleanly through. Lorna felt her shoulders sag. Edgar set up another log then split it. The pieces separated like an egg cracking open. He grinned at her, hoping, she supposed, for her admiration. She turned away, walked the horse to the post outside the barn, and tied him up.

  “Where’s that girl of yours?” Edgar asked. Another drop of the ax, another log split. Afton should be fetching Nanny, Lorna thought. That goat needed set out to graze before it gnawed a hole through the pen. Lorna looked around. She reached behind her back to untie her apron strings that had stubbornly knotted themselves.

 
“She and Harry were just here,” she mumbled more to herself. She squinted through the trees for a glimpse of a red coat, strained to hear Afton’s laughter or Harry’s bark. Nothing. Lorna’s hands began to shake and her breaths shortened. Edgar lowered the ax.

  “I’m sure they haven’t gone far,” he said. His tone was soothing, almost patronizing, Lorna thought. She glanced at him. Had she so quickly betrayed her panic? She again forced forward her smile, hating that he thought he knew what she was thinking. She took a step away from Edgar, her fingers still fighting the knot of her apron. She had heard only last week of a man killed in his fields by two passing Indians.

  Her chest tightened. With quick strides she moved toward the stream. In a frenzy of fear, she felt a scream trying to push its way out from her lungs. She opened her mouth, her daughter’s name on her tongue.

  A crashing of brush sounded. Harry broke through the tree line with a bark and ran for the stream. Afton trailed behind with a fistful of ferns raised above her head. Lorna exhaled, her shoulders hunched forward. She managed to stay on her feet despite the tremble of her legs. Afton waved the clump of ferns at Lorna, who waved back. Lorna’s other hand rose to her chest.

  Afton and Harry tramped to the stream where Lorna knew Harry would get terribly muddy, and Afton would spend the next hour floating fern leaves, like a tiny armada, down the water’s spinning current. Frosty signs of approaching winter licked the water’s edge. Nanny could wait a little longer, Lorna decided. She reached back to attempt again to untie her apron.

  “May I help?” Mr. Edgar asked, his voice close behind her. She turned and, finding Edgar only inches from her, moved back several steps.

  “Mr. Edgar, I—”

  Edgar held up a hand as if to assure her of his innocent intentions.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his hand still raised. “Your apron. I just want to help.”

  “Indeed, Mr. Edgar,” Lorna nodded, reminded that she needed this man’s help. There would be no finishing her roof without him. “There was something I wished to speak to you about.” She began to explain her decision to stay in Michigan with Afton and her need to complete her roof. As she spoke, she watched a look of mild humor spread across Edgar’s face. Irritated, Lorna continued until Edgar finally held up his hand again, this time to stop her.

  “I admire your sentimentality, Mrs. Findlay,” he said, seemingly unable to hide his amusement. “Clearly you are attached to this homestead you—and your husband—began. But,” he paused to hide his laughter behind a cough, “you can barely chop wood. Your mare is fat and restless because she’s not been ridden in weeks. Your land’s overrun with brush, and you haven’t a decent roof on your cabin. Your beasts are kept warmer than you are.” He stepped toward her, his grin replaced by a somber, pointed look at Lorna. “No woman can survive out here alone.”

  Lorna stiffened, angry at Edgar’s laughter, resentful that he saw her determination as mere sentimentality. “Sissy has managed,” Lorna retorted. The image of Sissy Cousins, a hardened neighbor woman in her sixties, loomed in Lorna’s mind. Sissy had buried her husband and five of her six children. Sissy was a survivor.

  “Sissy’s tougher than the devil,” Edgar said. He crossed his arms. “Death took one bite of her and threw her back. You seem to lack her…tenacity.”

  A gust of wind swiped a piece of hair across Lorna’s forehead, and she brushed it away. The giggles of her daughter brought her attention to the stream, where Afton pulled a small leaf from the fern, held it up for Harry to sniff, then released it into the swirl of the current. Lorna bit down on her lower lip. Mr. Edgar was a seasoned frontiersman. A man who had survived many winters here. Lorna stared at the coarse green fabric of Edgar’s shirt, the sleeves rolled past his wrists, a splinter of wood caught in one sleeve. He was easily ten—if not twenty—years older than she, though the weathered condition of his face made his age difficult to gauge. His hands, wrinkled and calloused, ought to be cold in the November wind, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He didn’t seem to feel anything. Was this what she must become—someone weathered, calloused? Someone without feeling?

  “I suppose an arrangement could be made,” Mr. Edgar said, his voice hesitant. “A marriage arrangement. That is, if you are determined to stay.”

  Lorna blinked several times before she understood what Edgar, with his pleasant smile and rough hands, offered to her.

  “You—” She paused to clear her throat, her mind. “You know that my husband has been…been gone only three weeks.”

  “I do,” Edgar replied, his voice not unkind. “I offer out of consideration. No woman can survive out here alone.”

  Lorna stared at him. Her mind howled like the wind that swept around their cabin at night. She glanced at Afton, who had paused in the launching of her leafy ships and, as though sensing the magnitude of the conversation, had turned to watch Lorna. Something hard knotted in Lorna’s stomach. Edgar seemed to translate her silence as possible assent. “The winter is coming,” he continued. “You have this place to manage, a daughter to care for. And Michigan is not kind in winter.”

  Michigan is not kind in any season, Lorna thought. Her blood pulsed in her ears. She gritted her back teeth to keep away the tears. Joseph Edgar would not see her cry. Edgar smiled, the creases in his forehead and around his eyes deepened like folds of worn leather.

  “We could marry immediately. You and Afton would have a home,” he lifted his eyes to the latticed patching on the roof, “and no reason to fear the coming snows.”

  Lorna closed her eyes and saw their table spread with food, Afton singing Christmas carols, and Iain’s seat empty. She didn’t fear winter for the snow. How was she to survive Christmas without Iain? Lorna opened her eyes, blinking hard to keep them dry. Edgar walked away, setting the ax by the woodpile and retrieving his coat and hat. He released the reins of his horse from the post with the snap of leather against wood. The pinto snorted as Edgar mounted.

  “I’ll let you think on my offer,” he said and dipped the brim of his hat at Lorna.

  Lorna waited until he rode down the lane out of sight then hurried into the barn and heaved the door closed behind her. A sob burst from her throat. She clapped both hands over her mouth. Afton didn’t need to hear her mother crying. Tears streaked down Lorna’s face. Goldie lifted her head over her stall and stared at Lorna with gentle gray eyes, while Nanny, mildly curious, gnawed on the post of her pen.

  With the sleeve of her coat, Lorna scrubbed away the tears that continued to fall, lifted her chin, refused to dissolve into this grief that threatened to consume her. She walked to Goldie, touched the horse’s velvet muzzle with the back of her fingers. “What do I do?” Lorna whispered into the stillness. How could she replace her own husband? Replace her child’s father? Lorna knew that in the wilderness these marriages of convenience happened daily. It was expected when a spouse was lost that a replacement be quickly found in order to survive.

  “What do I do?” Another tear driveled alongside her nose. She knew what Iain’s answer would be even before her whispered question, like a prayer, rose into the eaves of the barn. Iain would kiss the tips of her fingers and say, “Trust in the Lord, my sweet.” A swallow—or was it a sparrow?—flapped around the barn roof, trapped.

  The barn door creaked open, admitting a shaft of sunlight to carve away some of the shadows. Afton’s face appeared, and Lorna again swiped away her tears.

  “Mama?”

  “Yes, kitten?”

  Afton sauntered farther into the barn. She stopped at Nanny’s pen.

  “What are you doing?”

  Lorna drew a deep breath, exhaled heavily. “Fetching Nanny.”

  Afton peered into her mother’s face, a crease of concern lining her forehead, the corners of her little mouth turned down. “I’m sorry I forgot, Mama,” Afton’s face strained as though she might cry. “I promise I’ll remember to take Nanny out tomorrow.” Lorna pulled Afton, in her red coat, against her. Afton wrapped her s
mall arms around Lorna’s waist and squeezed.

  “Thank you, little one.” Lorna held tightly to her daughter, kissing the top of her small head and inhaling the soft scent of soap that lingered there.

  Chapter 3

  November 30, 1830

  The wooden handle of the small saw chafed Lorna’s palm. Iain had used this tool to craft exquisite furniture—Windsor chairs, highboys, dining tables. Now she used it to hack at brush and thin young trees that crowded the west side of their cabin outside the bedroom window. She stamped down onto a lithe, bending stalk—the beginnings of what looked like a Hemlock—and two-handed she sawed at the base of the plant. Sissy had told her that these small trees often sheltered critters that tended to come visiting indoors once the snows arrived. “Best clear them shoots out afore they get sturdy roots,” Sissy had advised.

  These roots are already sturdy, Lorna grumbled. Roots that refused to relinquish their hold on the earth. So, instead of battling the roots, Lorna found Iain’s saw. Her upper body rocked as she sawed until the green flesh of the infant tree was exposed then severed. Lorna wiped the back of her hand across her forehead, clearing away the beading sweat. One baby hemlock gone, a dozen more to go. She grabbed ahold of the next shoot, pleased that it seemed thinner than the last.

  “Your sun must have been stolen,” she said to the gangly plant. She bent it the whole way to the ground, trapped the rangy trunk with her foot, and sawed at its base. The roots, she knew, would survive beneath the ground through the winter, only to bud again. Lorna shook her head. She would deal with the roots in the spring.

  Afton whooshed around the corner of the cabin along with a gust of wind. Lorna looked up, her blade halfway through the small trunk.

  “He’s gone!” Afton cried. Her brown eyes spilled giant tears, her face scrunched with worry.

  “Harry?” Lorna asked. “Is he locked in the barn again?” She straightened, let go of the saw’s handle, its blade wedged in the wood. Her foot stayed securely on the trunk.