Katerina's Wish

by Jeannie Mobley

  “I’ve come to clean. Is Karel up?” I asked.

  Mark nodded. “He’s just finishing his breakfast.”

  “Then Trina will want to be getting her work done,” Old Jan said. “Be a good lad, Marek, and fetch Trina some water in her buckets.”

  “Glad to,” he said, still grinning, and he picked up my buckets. “Will you come with me, Trina?”

  “I should get started here,” I said, jumping to my feet a little too eagerly. Mark looked disappointed as he set off with the buckets alone.

  I got to work sweeping and beating the rugs. When Mark returned with the buckets filled, I scrubbed the counter and table in the kitchen, then scrubbed the floors, starting in the bedroom and working forward through the kitchen until I finished at the front door. I straightened, stretched my back, and heaved the buckets of now dirty water over the porch rail out into the yard. Old Jan and his sons were on the porch, and they invited me to sit down and rest with them, but I declined. I knew my mother would not be expecting me back right away, and there was something I wanted to do in the few free minutes I had.

  “Let us pay you,” Mark said, as he did every week, and as always, I shook my head no. My mother would not allow it, not when they were neighbors and friends and had been through hard times.

  I said good-bye and hurried to the creek, where I set down my buckets on the bank. I walked downstream, but I paused as I neared the bend in the bank. Were the tree and the pool really there? It all felt too much like a dream, and I was suddenly nervous that it wasn’t real. I stepped around the bend and breathed a sigh of relief. There stood the tree, its leaves moving gently in the breeze. Below it the shaded pool looked cool and inviting, just as before.

  I paused in the shade of the tree and looked at the water, but I saw no sign of the fish. Suddenly I felt very silly. What had I been expecting to see? Had I really thought I could come make a wish and be back in Bohemia for supper?

  I stepped over the tree’s root, into the quiet space and sat down, my back against the tree. The shade was pleasantly cool and the soft sounds of the leaves and the water relaxed me. I leaned back and closed my eyes, thinking about magic fish and wishes, and about Marushka. She was wise, I decided. Certainly she had gone looking for something impossible, like my papa had done when he came to America. But she had been modest and good and sought nothing for herself, and so she had made friends instead of enemies. That was why she had received what she needed. In the stories with magic fish or fairies or rings that granted wishes, it was the selfish ones who were harmed rather than helped by their wishes. They were the fools. I smiled to myself at a new thought. If Marushka saw a magic carp, she would make the most of her wish.

  What would you wish for, Wise Katerina?

  My eyes flew open as I jerked upright, the voice ringing clearly in my mind. A perfect ring of ripples was widening in the pool before me. I leaned forward, my heart in my throat. There, just under the surface, I could see the carp, its tail waving slightly in the current. I was sure it could see me, too. Had it spoken, or had I been drifting off? What would I wish for, if I had a wish? My mind flashed to our village in Bohemia, but there was only one thing I could wish for if I were going to be Wise Katerina. I took a deep breath to quell the pang of homesickness at my heart, and I spoke.

  “I wish for a farm where my family can be happy and live well—the farm my papa wants. I wish for a farm here in America.”

  Chapter 4

  AS SOON AS THE wish was spoken, the fish darted off under the bank and disappeared. I waited. Nothing happened. Everything felt very ordinary, and once again I realized how foolish it was. I got to my feet, glad no one had seen me. I walked back to where I had left my buckets and I filled them, then climbed the slope and walked home. Nothing there was different either. Not one thing all evening. The feeling of foolishness grew, along with bitter disappointment. I had actually been hoping, I realized. Hoping to be saved by a magic fish! I was almost fourteen, too old for fairy tales or wishes. I could not stop myself from dreaming entirely, though. All that night, I found myself in fields of ripening wheat.

  With the laundry behind us for the week, we had other chores, but we had a little free time in the afternoons, too. Out in the street, kids gathered for games of kick the can, hopscotch, and skipping rope. I went along to watch my sisters, but I was too old to play. The girls my age gossiped over knitting or mending. I sometimes joined their conversations, but too often it turned to talk of boys. It made me think of Mark, and right away my feelings got tangled up inside me. I would send my thoughts off instead to the pool by the creek.

  I felt strange, like a part of me was still waiting for something to happen, hoping it would. I suppose that part of me wanted to be like Marushka, or like my father, able to believe in the impossible. But as the week passed uneventfully, my hope dwindled. Even my sisters stopped talking about wishes, and things seemed to go back to normal.

  Sundays were the only day of the week that the mine closed down and Papa stayed home. Momma, my sisters, and I got up quietly and went to church while Papa slept late. When we returned home on the Sunday after I made my wish, Papa was sitting on the porch reading the newspaper, his legs stretched out comfortably before him.

  Momma sat down beside him with a contented sigh. “You girls can run along and play today,” she said.

  At once Aneshka was clamoring to go play in the creek.

  “If Trina will go with you, to keep an eye on you,” Momma said.

  I agreed, so we changed out of our Sunday best and set off. Momma needn’t have worried about the water. There were already several families spending the afternoon on the broad, grassy bank where we had done laundry. The creek was filled with laughing, splashing children, shouting in a mixture of languages, but playing together as if they understood one another.

  I sat down on the grass and watched my sisters. Aneshka ran out into the middle at once so she could splash her classmates who were already there. Holena stayed close to the bank, looking for pretty pebbles and gathering them into her apron. Before long her quiet amusement was interrupted as a wild game of tag broke out. The older children, Aneshka among them, raced past her, splashing water and mud in all directions. A flailing arm caught Holena square in the back and she toppled forward, landing facedown in the icy water, soaked from head to toe.

  I hurried to her, scolding the older children as I went. I helped her to her feet and up onto the grassy bank.

  “Are you all right?” I asked her.

  She nodded, but her teeth were chattering from the cold water and she was blinking back tears. I wrung the water from her skirt and invited her to sit with me in the sun to warm up. We watched the game continue for some time, Holena chewing her lip uncertainly. A big Welsh family had arrived, and the Welsh children were especially wild. We were always wary of the Welsh, who lived on the other side of camp. There were plenty of rumors that the careless Welsh miners had caused more than one deadly accident in the mine. Their children seemed just as troublesome as they went splashing and shouting into the creek. Aneshka wasn’t bothered by them, and I knew she could hold her own. Holena, though, wasn’t one for so much rough-and-tumble play. I stood and held my hand out to her.

  “Let’s take a walk,” I said. “I know a quieter place I think you’ll like better.”

  With a sudden, bright smile, she jumped up and took my hand. We set off downstream. I felt a little uncertain as we walked. I hadn’t, until that moment, considered sharing my special place with anyone. I certainly didn’t want to share it with Aneshka, but Holena was different. She appreciated quiet and beauty and wouldn’t disrupt it with mindless prattle.

  Holena was still holding my hand as we rounded the bend. At once the high slope shut out the sound of the children splashing and shouting. We could hear the burble of water and the chirping of birds. I could hear another sound, too—one I hadn’t expected. Someone was whistling a tune. And not just any tune, but a Bohemian folk song.

  I
shaded my eyes with my hand and looked to the tree. A man was reclining in the shade with his feet propped up on one of the roots. It was silly of me to think a place so close to the camp was a secret, but I was disappointed to learn it wasn’t.

  “It’s Mark!” Holena said. She let go of my hand and skipped toward him.

  He heard her voice and sat up, the sun lighting his face. He smiled, looking glad to see us.

  “Trina! Hello. Come sit in the shade,” he said.

  Holena was already sitting on the big root of the cottonwood, leaning out over the pool and trailing her fingers on the surface of the water. I stepped over the root, into the narrow wedge of grass, and hesitated. It was too small a space to share with another person, though Mark seemed to be expecting me to sit down there beside him. He saw my hesitation and his smile faltered.

  “What’s the matter, Trina?” he asked.

  “It’s just that it’s awfully crowded here,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Not just here. You don’t want to talk to me at my house, either, or anywhere else. What have I done?”

  The heat of embarrassment filled my cheeks. I wanted to flee, but I could not. I sat down on the root of the tree, trying to decide what to say.

  “It’s always like this now,” he continued. “You hurry to get away from me. You won’t even look me in the eye.”

  I had kept my eyes on Holena, but I could hear the hurt in his voice. I forced my eyes up to meet his.

  “You haven’t done anything wrong, Mark.”

  “Then why are you avoiding me?”

  “I’m not. It’s just—” I thought hard, trying to untangle my feelings. “We used to talk about school, and what we wanted to do afterward. Now that you’re working, things have changed.”

  “I’m still the same,” he said.

  I studied his face. It was the same—blue eyes with pale lashes, the soft beginnings of whiskers, and a mop of blond hair that wanted to flop across his forehead toward his left eye. Something else was there too, though. A new seriousness, perhaps, or more worries. Things that had aged him faster than me. I wanted him to still be the same, but like everything else in America, what I wanted made little difference.

  He reached his hard, coal-stained hand out and took mine. “Trina, I still want to talk about school and our friends there. Just because I had to go to work doesn’t mean I wanted to give up everything else.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I just thought—” I was still searching for the right words when I was saved by Holena.

  “What’s this?” She held up a fishing pole that had been lying in the grass next to Mark.

  “I bought that with my paycheck last week,” Mark said with a smile.

  I jerked my hand out of his. “You’re fishing? Here?”

  “I thought if I could catch a meal or two it might stretch our income, but I’m not having much luck.”

  “Maybe there are no fish in this creek,” I said.

  “You’re probably right. There’s another stream over that ridge.” Mark pointed toward the hill that rose on the other side of the water. “Johnson at the store says there’s good fishing there, but I thought I’d try here first. I’m tired, and this is my only day off.”

  I shaded my eyes and surveyed the slope, my thoughts on the fish in the pool that I did not want him to catch. “It’s not too bad of a climb. It might be worth the trouble to have fresh fish for supper, don’t you think?”

  “If it is worth the trouble, you are welcome to use my pole. I’ve got a can of worms you can take with you, too.” He grinned and held the pole out to me.

  “But—” I looked at the pole and the water before turning back to Mark. “But I don’t know how—and I’m supposed to be watching my sisters.”

  “Holena can stay here with me. This is all you have to do,” he said, and he explained how to cast the line into the water and how to reel it back in. Uncertainly, I took it and tried casting as he had said, only to whip the hook into the grass practically at my feet. Holena giggled.

  “No,” Mark said. “Like this.”

  He got to his feet and stood behind me. Then he wrapped his arms around me, his hands on mine to show me how to hold the pole. He pulled it back gently and cast. Though my hands and arms followed obediently through the motion, I could not concentrate on the lesson. His encircling arms felt strong and safe, and his body was warm and solid. It felt nice. My heart began to hammer unexpectedly. I hoped he couldn’t hear it.

  “Now you try it,” he said, stepping away from me. I forced my thoughts back to the fishing pole again. This time the hook landed in the middle of the pool. I reeled it back in quickly.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Now let me show you how to bait the hook and you’re all set. You’re not squeamish about worms, I hope.” He dangled one in front of me. Then he deftly threaded it onto the hook and held the pole out to me.

  “But—” I looked at Holena. I wasn’t as eager to get away from Mark as I had been before.

  “I will stay with Mark,” Holena promised. “I don’t mind. And Papa loves fish.”

  That was true, and fresh fish for supper did sound good. I looked back up at the ridge, then at Mark. My face flushed unexpectedly.

  “Okay,” I agreed, and set off quickly before I could change my mind.

  The ridge was both steeper and higher than it had appeared. When I reached the top, I paused to catch my breath. From this height I could see beyond the mine and the nearby hills to the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains, cool and white against the sky. Below me on the other side of the ridge ran a green valley with a stream somewhat larger than our own. I looked back the way I had come. I could see the lone cottonwood. Mark and Holena stood in the sunshine beside it, looking up and waving. I waved back and set off down the opposite slope.

  Mark had been right about fish in this stream. I caught one almost immediately after casting my line into the water. After catching a fish in one pool, I walked along the water to the next, and I soon learned which places were likely to have fish and which were not. I worked my way upstream for some time, until at last I had twelve trout—one each for me, my sisters, and mother, and two for each of the men. The sun’s rays were slanting from the western horizon, and I knew it was time to get home. I gathered the fish into my apron and I tied it into a bundle with the apron strings. Swinging the bundle over my shoulder, I began to walk back toward the ridge. I had been moving upstream all afternoon, and wasn’t sure how far I had come. I had planned to climb to the top of the ridge and use the view from there to find my way back home.

  The bottom of the valley was choked with willow bushes and shrubs, and I had to fight my way through them to get away from the stream. I burst out into a plowed field and almost into the farmer. A tanned, squarely built man, with thick black hair and a large mustache blinked at me in surprise, as did the two barefoot children beside him.

  “Excuse me,” I said, taking a quick step back. “I was fishing. I didn’t know—” I was afraid I was on his land and he’d take my catch. He only stared at me. His little girl giggled, reminding me of Aneshka.

  “Buenas tardes,” she said to me, but her papa shushed her.

  I recognized the language as Spanish. I had heard it at school, spoken by the children of Mexican miners. At least, the schoolteacher called them Mexican, but I knew some of them had grown up on farms in the area. Farms like the one I had apparently stumbled onto. Now that my surprise was wearing off, I saw that they were planting a field. Each carried a canvas bag of seeds and a sturdy, pointed stick to form the holes for the seeds. I felt a pang of longing—this was exactly the life my father had wanted us to have.

  Suddenly I had an idea. I swung my bundle of fish off my shoulder and opened it. “Will you trade?” I asked. “Half my fish for some seeds?”

  The man held his hands up and shrugged. “No hablo inglés, señorita,” he said.

  I took six fish from the apron and held them out. “For seeds?” I re
peated, pointing at his canvas bag.

  The children and the farmer spoke for a moment in Spanish, then the man smiled at me. He took a handful of seeds from the bag and held it out, pointing between me and the seeds. I nodded and he poured corn kernels into my open hand, saying something to his son. The boy took a handful of beans and added them to the seeds I already held. I accepted them with thanks and poured them carefully into my pocket before gathering the fish and giving them to the man.

  “Muchas gracias,” he said. He handed the fish to his son, who ran off with them toward the low buildings on the far edge of the field. I retied the apron bundle and hurried away. The load was considerably lighter. There would not even be a who le fish for each of us now, but I was happy with my trade. I planned to plant a garden behind our house and grow some of our food. That way, we could save some of the money that we usually spent at the company store.

  The sun had nearly set when I got back to the creek, and everyone had gone home. I found both Mark’s family and my own waiting for me at my house.

  “Well?” Mark asked when I arrived. “Did you bring us supper?”

  I untied my apron so they could see the six fish. With so many expectant people gathered around, the fish seemed smaller than they had before.

  “We’ll have to share,” I said.

  “That’s not even one apiece!” Aneshka complained.

  “Hush, Aneshka,” Momma said. “I’ll put them in a stew with vegetables and there will be enough for everyone.”

  “And enough is as good as a feast,” Old Jan said, tweaking Aneshka’s cheek gently.

  “I’d rather have a feast,” Aneshka grumbled, but I ignored her.

  “I think it will be a fine meal,” Mark said, grinning at me.

  “I had more,” I said, “but I traded some to a farmer for these.” I pulled the seeds from my pocket and spread them gently on the porch.