by Lloyd Zimpel
Praise for A Season of Fire & Ice
“To read Lloyd Zimpel’s superb new novel (his first in 40 years and well worth the wait), A Season of Fire & Ice, is to be reminded, in gripping detail, of the pride we can all take in immigrant American grit. . . . Zimpel tells his tale with masterful economy, and yet with a rich linguistic vein that brings the 1880s alive as swiftly as his compendious knowledge of the details of farming a century and more ago. As a novelist, and not just as a historian, he is also the master of his craft . . . a true page-turner. The suspense, as the neighborly drama unfolds, tightens like a tourniquet. Compare the hold such a tale exerts on the imagination to the experience of reading contemporary novels in which so much anguish is expended on a life of so few rigors, as opposed to the Praegers’ seasons, as Zimpel says, of fire and ice. . . . But these are not pages of poverty-stricken lives. At the worst of times, the food Ma Praeger manages to conjure up will make the reader salivate. The fields may be barren when times are hard, but human resourcefulness is celebrated on every page of Zimpel’s book, and there is a glory in it. It’s this, and not only the suspenseful writing, that makes “A Season of Fire & Ice” so hard to put down. This is a splendid book, and it belongs on every reader’s bookshelf as a reminder of the forging of America.”
—The San Francisco Chronicle
“A skillful evocation of a time, a place, a temperature . . . a stark morality tale told with tongues of fire in a landscape of ice.”
—January Magazine
“Recalls both the austere emotional ground of Annie Proulx and the contradictory machismo of Jim Harrison.”
—The Rocky Mountain News
“Zimpel is able to accomplish this simultaneous emotional stimulation upon both characters and readers in an unusual way: by fracturing the points of view that the story has been told from up to a certain point, by leading both characters and readers along a safe path to a point of relative knowledge and security and then abruptly cutting the strings, shifting the perspective, and even the main focus of the whole narrative, to something else entirely. As I read I thought, ‘Wow, what nerve on Zimpel’s part.’ This is the kind of risk-taking in which too few novelists, in my opinion, are willing to engage. . . . There’s a lot to seek out here. In addition to some of the things we’ve touched on there is rich, sophisticated symbolism of all kinds; the texture and cadence of the pose at times moves towards the beautiful; and, upon a second and third reading, the care with which the author sets up and prepares for scenes in episodes that have come before becomes more apparent and more appreciable. This novel is a big achievement, and one that reminds us of how great fiction can instruct us in how to understand our world a little better.”
—Peter Quinones, The Bohemian Aesthetic
“A richly envisioned story . . . convincing . . . precise, insightful style . . . What is most remarkable is the way the lives of Zimpel’s characters and the land they live upon are inseparable.”
—The Salt Lake Tribune
“Zimpel keenly depicts the hard existence of these settlers, who are often put under by floods, blizzards, pestilence, and drought. With their strong family loyalty, sense of fairness, deep respect for animals, and willingness to help friends and neighbors when catastrophe strikes, the people who inhabit this story are fundamentally commendable folks. And in their world it is fitting that when malice occurs, a sense of justice ultimately prevails. A worthwhile addition to all historical fiction collections and larger library fiction collections.”
—Library Journal
“A beautifully written novel that offers strong character portrayals.”
—Booklist
“Lloyd Zimpel tells the classic frontier story. The one with lots of snow, fire, hardship and despair. Edith Wharton wrote the beautiful, tragic, New England version in Ethan Frome. Annie Proulx addressed it more recently in Close Range: Wyoming Stories and Willa Cather did the sunnier Nebraska version in My Antonia. Zimpel has chosen the Dakota Territory in the 1880s. And mentioning the name of this 75-year-old novelist in comparison with these three masters is no exaggeration . . . The final scene is so unexpected and appropriate, I wish I could describe it without ruining reading pleasure, but I can’t. . . . Zimpel looks at male anger and envy, especially on the frontier, as a trigger to dangerous feuds that go on for generations. A violent, snaky confrontation roiling out of those emotions fuels the final third of the book . . . Zimpel’s book would make a fine, dramatic film too, though there’s no surprising cultural twist as in “Brokeback Mountain.” But if literate examples of the classic pioneer story ever make a comeback, here’s one you might hurry to read before you see the movie. Because the movies are never as good.”
—The Durango Herald
“I was compelled to find out what would happen . . . Readers of this book will intensely experience the anguish of the 19th century high plains farmer . . . ”
—Historical Novels Review
“Zimpel has crafted a bone-chilling ending worthy of the likes of Cormac McCarthy . . . elegant and memorable.”
—The Denver Post
A SEASON
of
FIRE & ICE
Excerpts from the
Patriarch’s Dakota Journal,
with Addenda
LLOYD ZIMPEL
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Unbridled Books
Denver, Colorado
Copyright © 2006 Lloyd Zimpel
Originally published as an Unbridled Books hardcover
First paperback edition 2007
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form
without permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zimpel, Lloyd.
A season of fire & ice: excerpts from the patriarch’s Dakota journal,
with addenda / Lloyd Zimpel.
p. cm.
Hardcover edition ISBN: 1-932961-19-4
Paperback edition ISBN 10: 1-932961-36-4
Paperback edition ISBN 13: 978-1-932961-36-2
1. Frontier and pioneer life—Fiction. 2. Dakota Territory—Fiction.
3. Diary fiction. I. Title: Season of fire and ice. II. Title.
PS3576.I515S43 2006
813’.6—dc22
2005035593
3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Book design by SH • CV
Second Printing
To Virginia
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Parts of this book first appeared, often in different form, in the following magazines:
Alaska Quarterly Review, Arkansas Review/Kansas Quarterly, Missouri Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Sou’wester, South Dakota Review, and Whetstone
With thanks to E.V. Griffith, Diana Rathbone, and Greg Michalson
CONTENTS
1. Beidermann’s First Year
2. Beidermann at the Flood
3. INTER-LEAF
4. Beidermann and God’s Gift
5. Beidermann’s Place
6. INTER-LEAF
7. The Fourth with Beidermann et al.
8. Beidermann and the Hard Words
9. INTER-LEAF
10. Catastrophe for Beidermann, and Others
11. INTER-LEAF
12. Winter Silence, and a Sudden Moth
13. INTER-LEAF
Beidermann’s First Year
1882
MAR. 19. Before first light comes the honk of geese above, but we are not misled to believe they por
tend an early thaw. While the winds warm somewhat, the river stands solid. Hay is adequate still, though lacking some quality, in that it is the last cutting.
A new homesteader, by name Beidermann, has settled to the south. Otto, going to the river and beyond to see to the new calves, brings back this news, which is of some curiosity in that the newcomer is the first to claim in that southern region which slopes into the valley, the last good sections before the bleak hills. Even more to our wonder, if as Otto attests it is true, the new man arrived at the New Year, those weeks being most severe, so that a man not well sheltered, as Otto says Beidermann is not still, could well have gone under in the blizzards and cold that descended then. The man Beidermann, with only two wolfish dogs, says Otto, camps in a draw, hard by a seepage of warm mineral waters, unknown these years to Otto or me or the other boys, though we have gone after deer and prairie hens near where it is. So this newcomer is a man upon whom God and fortune smile, or Otto would have come upon not him but the bones left by his dogs.
Ma vows to provide this man a welcome, that meaning a gift of her bread and a geranium, which she husbands through the winter freeze in every corner; although Otto is doubtful that Beidermann, who he found lacked congeniality in his disposition, will take pleasure in geraniums as decoration for his camp. But Ma has made her plans, that when the weather permits she will send the twins with welcoming gifts; for this man, as she says, is not only our newest neighbor, but now our nearest one.
APR. 12. This morning at the crossing I found trees down again, and have some urgency to clear them while ice remains, that we need not contend with the ugliness of flood and stranded stock.
The day staying fair, from the crossing I rode south and came in surprise upon the new homesteader Beidermann, with his dogs, which before any greeting passed between us, he had vigorously to whip back from my gelding, which in fright for good reason, unseated me, and I was left uninjured but mighty sore. My ready offer to shoot his animals then and there, the newcomer took in the spirit with which it was offered, and thus our early footing was an uneasy one. However, I put that aside, in part, and talked some, for we are nearest neighbors after all, and it was an occasion for sizing up by both parties.
This Beidermann is a large-boned man, but not fleshed out as are some with a similar frame, firm bodied and of more than medium stature, somewhat like myself as a younger man, for all that I lack such a generous and bent nose and eyes the color of split coal. He is, I have the understanding, without wife or family anywhere, although of an age when most men are long thus blessed or, as the sour Krupp says, burdened; and his undertaking of this enterprise is solitary, which I can see suits a disposition made plain in his behavior toward me and toward his savage curs.
Where I came upon him considerable timber is down along the bank, so he is occupied in getting together the means for his cabin, in the doing of which he gives no suggestion of wanting help. At one juncture he warns—he does not ask—that as the weather allows he will cross my land with his stock and goods, fetched down from where he does not say. From me he seeks no information, and I see in him a feeling that he, the newcomer, offers me, long settled, more than I offer him.
All the same, I put out some advice: to hold his dogs off my stock when he comes through. Looking at them and me with a near smile, he says, Yes, they are mean sons of bitches for certain.
APR. 21. Ma has thoughts of the solitary Beidermann, who, as she says, lacks a comforting bride and family, and with a twinkling eye asks if in my opinion Swede Jenssen’s widow can smell a bachelor nearby; I say that it is my opinion that Beidermann having lived the winter in his close camp, then all Dakota can smell him. She speaks often of the Widow’s well-being, whose husband went under two years past from injuries on our binder. For all that the Widow is a rail of a woman, ill-tempered to her girls and with flocks of geese whose clamor is heard in the next section, she keeps the Swede’s homestead, as other widowed women would not keep that of their dead husbands, but flee.
Today the twins go by buggy to Beidermann’s place, with a welcoming kit for him of bread and currant jelly, a small salt ham and a damned geranium. Beidermann having ignited no benign flame in my own breast, I am cool to the undertaking, the more so for my two youngest boys being gone dawn to dusk, although with a good horse, their rifles, and my warning of the wolfish dogs, and advice to hold to the river trail. Not least, they take their own good sense, this being deficient in none of my children, I may say, however they may sometimes misplace it.
Full of piss and vinegar they set off, to return long after supper, as we are ready to go out after them, enthusiastic at their adventure, having taken prize three shot rabbits, each lad claiming two, and no greater sport than having ventured a foolish, if successful, shortcut off the river.
Their news is difficult to believe, for they report that Beidermann has raised his cabin as well as beams for a shed; and his stock, which includes a fine team of Percherons, is on hand, in some way spirited along the river without my knowledge or that of Otto or any of the boys, for all that it is the only way in. As he warned me he would, he did, and leaves a puzzle as to how.
The twins report that Beidermann, confounded by the geranium, was yet civil at the gift of provisions; and fed and watered their horse, with which he showed a horseman’s hand; and provided jerky for them, which bore green spots, although Beidermann himself ate it heartily.
His beef stock is numerous, say the twins, having seen a portion of it, and milkers as well, although it is a mystery to me how they feed, except that he has gone to Krupp or Myers for hay and fodder, for he has not come to me. In the bottom section of his land, say the twins, grass sprouts abundantly, and if this is so and it is already sufficient to feed his herds, it is nothing a man could rightly expect without the Almighty’s magnanimous hand, and good fortune to boot.
If the twins report the truth, and not an overreckoning sprung from the inspiration they find in being alive on Earth in spring, then Beidermann is a man with gifts, and we need give him none. His plows and discs and harrows are oiled and gleaming, say the twins, so this aspect of his enterprise does not exceed my own, and perhaps the earth will not turn furrows in itself for him, as it does not for any man.
MAY 2. The twins come in triumph from a morning at the river, having captured three mallard hatchlings, which they would pen and feed as pets, for all my warning that these are creatures of the wild, with quirks of spirit that make them unaccepting of the lives of chickens; no sooner would the buffalo of these prairies yield to an oxen’s yoke. But they protest it is a thing that Beidermann, whom they encounter always in their venturing, vows that he has done, this raising of wild ducks, and they would believe him first before their father, since he is a man of odd accomplishments.
So I hear much of Beidermann although I do not see him, past the single instance of my encounter with his ugly dogs—and these, say the twins, they find to be animals of good nature when circumstances are favorable, and ready hunters.
MAY 25. The twins having persuaded Henry and Cornelius to take their Sunday chores, travel to Beidermann’s place again, and he, for all his stony disposition, from their account willingly suffers the company of two boys hardly wet behind the ears, and does so to their advantage in learning ways of doing: as example his skinning of a heifer brought down by an unknown ailment; this unpleasant work accomplished by Beidermann driving a stake through the animal’s head into the earth, and slitting the hide about the neck and down the belly, the neck-flap being hitched to his team, which then pulled it off, head to heels, in one swoop, as they report, like a man peeling off a tight mitten.
This Otto scoffs at, saying the hide would tear; but it is my recollection that this was done with buffalo one summer, by a band of drunken skinners, so it is cause to ponder whether it is in that company that our Beidermann learned his skill.
Returning today with horses worn down too much to please me, the twins tell of aiding our southern neighbor in the ambush of
a coyote, this told with awe at the matching of Beidermann’s wit with that of the prairie’s wily nuisance; the deed achieved with the two of them proceeding in a long circle-round that drove the beast to reveal himself for one instant within the range of Beidermann’s Winchester; while the twins, acting in faith on Beidermann’s direction, saw never a hair of the animal until, hearing the weapon’s distant report, they rode down gully and over hill to find the animal expired at Beidermann’s feet. As reward for their good effort they have the unsightly tail, and although weary, squabble for its possession, which Ma requires they leave outside.
Otto and Cornelius and Henry mistrust their account, that Beidermann is so surpassing clever, having themselves seen samples of the coyote’s guile; and the boys, being green, easily fooled. But Ma is admiring of the man for the way the twins look up to him, and for his lessons, as she says, to them; although in my opinion the degree of their admiration is excessive.
AUG. 2. By roundabout return from Krupp’s place, I run up upon Beidermann this day as he comes from a draw east of the river, myself not eager to lay eyes on him by reason of my mood of gloom after a few hours in the bleak company of Krupp, having traveled to his place to help him plan out needed ditching, his yard being underwater every spring, and Krupp himself, in my opinion, inept at any matter requiring the exercise of logical thought, which I provide as a neighborly duty; thus subject to his dark talk of drouth, as he will call it, although himself never victim to the deadly parch long past, when stock fell thin as the branches of the scrub they chewed for the bark and stuck bellowing in the river’s mud, and kernels of wheat at their fullest the size of mites, hard as stone. We have dryness, true, but Krupp has lost no stock nor will he; wheat and corn do not flourish fully, yet they survive and promise a yield not so meager that any will suffer; for the Lord provides sufficiently, and if not always in such munificence to allow His charges to accumulate a profit they do not need and which, in their possession, does lead to pride and vanity and a corruption of the spirit as afflicts Krupp, who looks for easy riches as they issue from harvests brought forth with little thought or effort.
