A Cozy Country Christmas Anthology

by Melange Books, LLC

  “What happened when the bottle filled up?”

  His head nodded with the rhythm of age. “Treat money. The kids allus voted to buy double-scoop chocolate strawberry cones.” Turning back to his saddle buffing, he ventured, “Are you havin’ trouble with my stiff necked grandson? Fergive an old man’s killed-a-cat curiosity, but I noticed a mite of tension between the pair of you, on the order of two mount’in lions eying each other over a plump goat.”

  Her fingers trailed over the age-softened leather. “Ham, how do you let go of someone who’s already let go of you?”

  “Death’s the only final lettin’ go I ever heard tell of.” He rubbed with vigor, head bobbing with each swipe of his arm. “Love ain’t a rope you kin just drop and walk away from. Strong winds make a house on the prairie look dingy. “

  He paused to rub his forehead. “Look, sweet pea, Robbie’s a proud man. If he don’t see a fresh coat of paint on the house, he thinks it’s all weathered away. You’ve gotta chip through the grime—show him that underneath the soil, the paint’s still fresh and new.”

  Love likened to a coat of paint? Had she been standing back in awe of a fortress’s strength when all that stood between her and Rob was a few layers of dirt?

  After Rob’s return from the grocery store, they packed a lunch and went for a drive to a nearby lake. Rob rented a small motorboat and went fishing with Ham while Dorothy remained in the shade and did some serious thinking. Not the yearning and regrets type of thinking but about what it took for Ham and Rose to keep their partnership strong.

  The rest of the day and throughout the evening, Dorothy kept quiet, encouraging the flow of memories between Rob and his grandfather. They went out for ice cream again after supper and this time Dorothy stepped out of herself and talked to Ham’s friends and neighbors. This time she tried the chocolate-strawberry cone. Ham winked at her.

  She kept looking up to meet Rob’s puzzled gaze. Each time, she offered a tranquil smile, and, instead of regrets, the lightness of hope bubbled inside Dorothy. No more hand wringing and sighing, she told herself. You’re going to be a woman of action from now on. He’s got to see it to believe it.

  Cuddling next to Rob that night, she felt at peace as she traced the lines in the upturned palm of his right hand which instinctively closed around hers. He sighed in his sleep and she leaned in close, pressing a kiss on the corner of his mouth. He snorted, then smiled. She sighed but this was a sigh of contentment.

  After a breakfast of bacon, eggs and milk that wasn’t ‘clabbered’, they had a checker tournament that lasted until lunchtime. Dorothy spent the last half hour of their visit with Ham under the pine tree, rubbing the saddle with polish under his watchful eye.

  “I’m sending you a cell phone, Ham, so I can talk to you while you’re out here polishing,” Dorothy said.

  Rob nodded, his baffled gaze locked on his wife. “That’s a great idea. We’ll keep in touch at least once a week. And we’ll be back. Soon.”

  “Make it before the snow flies, Robbie. I’ll be knee deep in wider women, crocheted mittens and casseroles come winter.”

  After stowing the overnight cases in the trunk, Rob enfolded his diminutive grandfather in a gentle hug. “Goodbye, Ham. Expect us within the next month.”

  “We’d love it if you could come back with us for a visit sometime soon, perhaps stay for a week or as long as you’d like,” Dorothy added.

  Ham beamed. “Thanks for the invite, Dot. I just might take you up on it. Long as you got room for my saddle and my saw horse.”

  He bustled into the house before returning to present Dorothy with an object wrapped in a brown bag left over from yesterday’s shopping trip. She felt the smoothness of glass through the paper and the rasp of a leathery palm.

  “Don’t forget the lovin’ that goes with the givin’ and may the rains wash the dust from yer home,” he whispered, winked and gave her a smacking kiss on the cheek.

  As a child, Dorothy remembered accepting a “blind man’s dare”, walking across unfamiliar territory with eyes closed, hands clenched behind her back. The memory of that excitement, coupled with the fear that at any moment she could trip and skin a knee or bump into an obstacle with the dare ending in disaster, rose up in her. The stakes were much higher now, the prize more precious than the cheers of her playmates.

  On the trip home, she tried to relax as she watched the scenery glide past the windows, planning for the future, their future. Rob kept sneaking sidelong glances at her and she realized that she was no longer the desperate pursuer, but a mystery, and her relationship with Ham was something her husband could not get his head around.

  She cradled her gift on her lap until they reached the outskirts of the city and moved into heavier traffic. With Rob distracted, she unwrapped the bottle and said a quick prayer.

  As the car idled at a red light, Dorothy turned Rob’s face toward her, smiled at his startled expression, and kissed him hard on the mouth.

  He sat motionless. Then he drew a deep breath and tugged a penny from the pocket of his shorts. Leaning forward, he dropped it into the bottle, the metal of the coin ringing against the milky glass.

  “Ham gave me that coin when we were out on the water. He told me that a wife wasn’t a seed you could drop on the ground, walk away from and expect a bumper crop.”

  Dorothy gave a giggle and rubbed her stomach. “I’m growing.”

  He placed his hand on her “baby bump” and then bent to kiss her. She met him with equal passion and they clung to each other until impatient horns of the other drives startled them apart.

  As the car glided into motion once more, Rob chuckled. “That coin was the continuation of a wonderful family tradition, Dorothy. My way of saying that I’m definitely in for a penny.”

  “And I’m in for a pound.” She felt her lips stretch into one of the biggest smiles of her life. “I hope our kids like chocolate strawberry cones as much as we do.”

  THE END

  Breath of God

  Betsey knew, without opening her eyes, she’d overslept. The sleepy twitter of birds in the trees outside her window had given way to energetic debate, indicating that they were well along with the business of their day.

  She sat up. Sunbeams spilling across the hand braided rug confirmed her fear. She was late! She hadn’t made breakfast; she had to get Erik up and both of them ready for school—

  “Betsy!” Karl Swenson’s shout silenced the birds and jolted his daughter out of bed.

  Tangling her foot in the quilt, Betsy crashed to the floor. Wincing, she scrambled up and grabbed her dressing gown before rushing down the stairs.

  Her father stood in front of the stove, glaring into the interior where a fire should be burning. The familiar fragrances of fresh milk and corn wafting from his clothing in place of the scent of coffee only served as an accusation to her dereliction of duty.

  Betsy rubbed the sore knee resulting from her fall and hung her head.

  “The stove is cold.” Karl’s thick accent emphasized his disgust.

  “I overslept, Papa. I’m sorry.”

  “The chickens were making such a noise I checked and found out they hadn’t been fed or the eggs collected.” He pointed to a pail near the door, with brown eggs piled inside.

  Betsy gulped and looked down at the floor.

  “Are you sickening for something?” The dairy farmer took a step closer and peered at his daughter; the bushy, sandy brows which reminded Betsy of sheaves of wheat drew together in a frown. “Your eyes are as red as Mrs. Jeppson’s Sunday hat.”

  “I had homework.” Betsy blushed because she hadn’t been doing schoolwork; she’d burned the kerosene lamp by her bed into the early morning hours and wept over the last chapters of Ivanhoe. The love story, so beautiful, had her tears watering the pages like spring showers.

  “I have fed and milked the cows. I have a field of corn that needs to be picked. Is a man expecting too much to want food on the table when he comes in for his bre
akfast?

  Six year old Erik, blonde and stocky like his papa, appeared in the doorway with his suspenders trailing to the floor and one shoe on. “Time for breakfast?”

  Karl Swenson ignored the hopeful question from his only son. “School foolishness again keeping you from your chores. Clothes need washing. The bread box is nearly empty. Apples are rotting on the ground in the orchard. You stay up late and ruin your eyesight on books. I have no breakfast.” His voice rose with each sentence.

  Betsy bit her lip and kneaded a fold of her nightgown. Not just books—she had discovered magazines and several were even now hidden under her bed. Her teacher had encouraged her to borrow them, declaring they would open her eyes to the wide vistas beyond a Minnesota farm. A fascinated Betsy had spent hours studying pictures of faraway places.

  “I’m sorry, Papa,” she apologized again, scurrying to the stove. “I can scramble eggs now and I’ll do the baking as soon as I get home from school.”

  Karl slammed his hand down on the oak harvester table. “You have no time for school. Things must be done around here, today.”

  Betsy almost dropped the iron skillet. “No school?? But, Papa, I have three more years until graduation—”

  Her father’s cheeks looked as ruddy as Mrs. Jeppson’s Sunday hat. “No school!” He spat the words in her direction and stomped out of the house.

  Her head pounding, Betsy ordered Erik upstairs to finish getting dressed and followed him up to get ready for the day. Back in the kitchen, she lit the stove and toasted bread. After they’d eaten a hasty breakfast, she set him to work sweeping the hearth and polishing the fireplace andirons with a soft rag torn from an old sheet.

  As she cleaned the kitchen, Betsy wondered why she’d been so foolish. This wasn’t the first time she’d neglected her chores, but she’d never dreamed of Papa becoming so angry. Her stomach ached at the memory of his declaration regarding school. Why had she stayed up so late last night?

  As she got out the washtubs and lye soap, Betsy blinked back tears, her eyes burning from the strain of hours of reading by the kerosene lamp. Papa had a right to be so angry. A man needed a full belly to strip corn from the stalks by hand under the hot September sun.

  Filling the tubs meant many trips to the pump in the yard. Anyone who did the laundry developed strong arms doing the washing and hauling water. With each pail she heated on the stove and poured into the tubs, Betsy felt as if she were drowning her dream of becoming a teacher.

  With her mother gone, Betsy lost all support for higher education or even finishing high school. Papa had been indentured as a farm hand at the age of eleven when he arrived in America from Norway and had difficulty reading a newspaper in English. He didn’t understand his daughter’s passion for knowledge.

  Betsy put the sleeve of another work shirt into the wringer and turned the crank. If only she hadn’t neglected her household duties in favor of the glorious escape of reading. Now Papa would ban her Saturday afternoon visits to the library in town and she would never get to finish the serial in her favorite magazine. A tear splashed into the rinse water as Betsy squeezed out one of Erik’s shirts, remembering just in time that the buttons would never survive a trip through the wringer.

  The clothes line stretched like a tightrope between an elm and a maple tree in the back yard. Papa and Mama had taken her to the circus once when it came to town. She’d never forgotten the winking sparkles on the performers’ costumes and the scent of roasted peanuts. Her favorite memory, however, was hearing Mama’s giggles and Papa’s deep belly laugh at the clowns and their silly tricks.

  She couldn’t remember hearing him laugh since Mama... Betsy sighed as she lugged the basket of damp clothing and the tin can filled with clothes pins to the end of the clothes line.

  Lefse, an orange and brown barn cat named for his exploit as a kitten of sneaking into the house and devouring half dozen of the flat pastries, wound around Betsy’s legs and mewed complaints of starvation.

  “You’re plump as a market hog,” she scolded him. “Go guard the grain and earn the milk Papa squirts into your mouth each morning at milking.”

  The thought of never going back to school gnawed at her like the sharp teeth of a varmint chewing through a feed sack. She stretched on her toes to hang a pair of Papa’s work pants by the legs. The wind pounced and shook the pants as Lefse would shake a mouse to break its neck.

  Lonesome for company, Erik wandered outside to join her. After rubbing Lefse’s belly, he looked up and Betsy smiled at the black smudge on his nose. His eyes grinned up at her, blue as the autumn sky stretched over their heads.

  He held up grimy hands. “My teacher will holler at me tomorrow for having dirty fingernails, Betsy. Can I play now?”

  Erik thought they were enjoying a day off. With a pang, Betsy realized that Erik would suffer also from a lack of schooling. If they somehow lost the farm and a farmer was only one disaster away from doing so, her brother’s only choice would be to work as a laborer for someone else. The breeze ruffled his straw blond hair and Betsy noticed that a button was missing from his shirt. She’d neglected both the house and her family.

  Her brother stuck out his tongue and tilted his head back.

  “What are you doing, you silly boy?” Betsy picked up the last shirt and a couple of clothes pins.

  “Tasting the wind.”

  “And what does the wind taste like?”

  He gave her a mysterious smile. “Just like apples and leaves and cinnamon.”

  Betsy stuck out her tongue too, but couldn’t taste anything. Erik had such an imagination!

  “And just a little bit like maple syrup.” Erik loved maple syrup as a sweetener—in cookies and on oatmeal and everywhere he could get it. They boiled their own from the trees on the back quarter of their farm.

  “You’d be happy if I’d let you drink maple syrup by the gallon.” Betsy grasped the handles and lifted the empty clothes basket to rest on her hip.

  Erik crouched to study an ant hill, grimacing when a gust of air kicked up a puff of dirt. He grabbed a sleeve from one of the shirts snapping in the wind and used it to wipe his eyes.

  “Erik! That’s clean! Or it was clean.” Betsy’s shoulders slumped when she saw that the black smudge of soot across her brother’s nose had now transferred to one of his father’s work shirts.

  “Sorry, Betsy!”

  She took down the shirt. “I haven’t emptied the tubs yet—I’ll wash it again.”

  “It’s the wind’s fault—it threw the dirt in my face, Betsy.”

  “We can’t do without the wind.” She ducked under the line of flapping clothes. “Without wind, how would the windmill turn? And the clothes wouldn’t get dry. Mama always said, “There’s no such thing as an ill wind—”

  Her brother abandoned the ants and scuffed along behind Betsy through the long grass. “What else did Mama say about the wind?”

  He sounded so interested, he always was when she slipped and mentioned Mama. But she didn’t want to talk about their mother. Instead, Betsy dangled the basket by one handle and pretended the warmth of the sun on her shoulders was the touch of loving hands. But she’d already let Erik down today by antagonizing Papa about school.

  “Folks say it’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow good to someone.”

  At Erik’s puzzled expression, she forced herself to share a memory, one she kept locked away like a precious gem in a jewel box. “Even if the wind might not be helping us, someone else needs the breeze. I used to be afraid when the wind would howl on stormy nights, so Mama taught me a poem to help me be brave.”

  “Like Hickory, Dickory Dock?” It was Erik’s favorite and as a little boy, he always checked their grandfather clock in the hope of seeing a mouse swinging on the pendulum.

  Betsy paused on the steps of the washhouse and chanted:

  “Wind is the breath of God ruffling our hair,

  Changing the weather from stormy to fair.

  Bending the grass and r
ustling the leaves,

  Shaking the apples down from the trees.”

  Catching her breath, she remembered the last time she and Mama had picked up windfalls. They had been in high spirits, with Mama teaching her to juggle three apples and chasing her with a tiny green worm who had poked his head out of a hole. She blinked at the memories washing over her, the sweet smell of ripe fruit crushed underneath, the sound of wind tossing the branches overhead and the plop of apples dropping to the cushioning grass. Mother and daughter dodging between the gnarled trees amid the giggles of two year old Erik as he toddled around with an apple clutched in his baby hands.

  Pressing her hand against her stomach, Betsy fought to hold in the hurt. For a moment, her mother had been there with them again and the realization that the happy time in the orchard had been part of their last day together brought hot tears welling up. Mama had been wrong, there were ill winds. One had blown across Betsy’s life that day, one which four years later still possessed the power to dry up laughter with its scorching breath.

  “Betsy?”

  Erik’s anxious voice made her manage a smile for his sake. “Papa missed his biscuits this morning. Help me finish the washing and then we’ll take a picnic out to him in the field.”

  “Hurray!”

  Like anything else on a farm, brisk breezes were not to be wasted. Erik helped his sister strip the beds and they carried armloads into the washhouse to soak in the washtubs.

  Excited at the prospect of even a small outing, Erik worked hard, humming as he steadied the heavy flour sack so his sister could refill the canister. Betsy mixed bread dough and set it aside to rise. She sent Erik out to gather some windfalls. Along with the bread and biscuits, she’d bake a pan of apple crisp and a pie.