The Brushstroke Legacy

by Lauraine Snelling

  Driving a car made for great cogitating time. Being alone was the missing ingredient on this entire vacation. She thought of the boxes on the counter that held her great-grandmother’s things. While she wanted to know what was in them, she wanted to work on her painting more. So she had, until Erika had pulled her away to join the others at Paul’s for lunch.

  She slammed the heel of her hand against the steering wheel. Erika had asked for more batteries. Well, I’m not going back. I’ll have to get them at the gas station in Medora. One more stop. The desire to keep painting ached like a tooth gone bad. While Storm was shaping up, her cattle on the other canvas needed some help. She’d even bought the camera in case she saw the cows again and could get a few shots. Then, of course, she’d have to have the pictures developed. At home she would have used her digital camera, slid the card into the computer, and viewed them instantly—in all sizes. Lack of electricity definitely hampered someone who was used to the techno age.

  But I haven’t missed it at all, not even e-mail. The thought caught her by surprise. If someone had told her a month ago she’d be offline for weeks, she’d have laughed herself silly.

  Keeping an eye on the traffic, she watched for the buffalo or the wild horses inside the park fence. Disappointed, she took the Medora turnoff, stopped at the gas station for the batteries, and headed back to the cabin.

  Her thoughts roved back to the meal she’d shared with Paul and his family. While at first the niece and nephew had looked at Erika a bit strangely, Paul had broken the ice by telling them about Erika playing with Sparky and then suggested they all go riding for the afternoon. Ragni had caught him watching her more than once. Each time their eyes met, her fingertips got warm and rills ran up and down her back. Even thinking about him now caused similar sensations. So there was an attraction there. She’d been attracted before, and look where it had gotten her. And this one was seriously improbable. She had yet to hear of a long-distance romance that worked out, unless one person finally relocated.

  This ranch wouldn’t fit in Chicago.

  She slowed down and pulled off to the side of the road, being careful to choose a gravelly place. All she needed was to get stuck. The dirty white cattle that she knew belonged to Paul were grazing in a small meadow by the road, along with other cows in various mixtures of red, brown, black, and white. A young red calf with a white face raced off, tail straight in the air, the puff at the end of the tail a flag of white. If only she’d brought her good camera along from home, what a picture that would make. Instead, she got out of the car and took shots of the grazing cattle, the walking cattle, and those lying down. What I know about cows wouldn’t fill up a page. She shook her head and climbed back in the car. But perhaps she could paint them anyway, from a distance.

  When she reached the river valley, she could see Paul’s machinery raising a dust cloud as he progressed down the field. Instead of stopping at the ranch, she continued on to the cabin and unloaded the supplies. At the rate she was going, she’d have to rent a trailer to take everything back to Chicago or else ship a bunch of boxes.

  Or leave things here in the cabin for when I come back. She’d built up enough vacation hours that she could come back for a couple of weeks later in the fall, if she got her projects at work caught up and finished.

  After testing to see if the paint on Storm was sufficiently dry to continue, which it wasn’t, she picked up Watering Hole and redrew two of the cows from what she’d noticed on her trip from town. When she sat down and filled the brush, she immediately lost all sense of time, totally focused on the scene coming alive beneath her brushstrokes. When she came back to reality, her rear was tired from sitting in the chair so long, and she was thirsty enough to drink out of the river.

  Holding a water bottle from the cooler, she stood in front of both paintings and studied what she’d done. Cows were not her forte. Yet. But the pond and the background worked well. If only she had a picture of that running calf. And of Sparky. Before lunch, Erika had insisted she come down to the barn and see how the colt had grown and how he came when she called.

  “Sure he comes,” Ragni had said. “He knows a good deal when he sees one.” Ragni took a couple of the carrot pieces and palmed them for the mare as Erika slipped a halter on the colt. She stepped back from the door so Sparky could parade past, following on the lead like a puppy on a leash. When his mother nickered, he turned to look at her but kept going with Erika.

  “You taught him to lead?”

  “Yep. And to stand when I brush him. Paul says he is learning good manners.”

  “Just like teaching kids manners, huh?”

  “He even lets me pick up his feet.” Erika clucked her tongue and trotted forward. The colt paused, then pricked his dark ears and followed her, the white sox on his front feet catching sun dazzle as they ran.

  Ragni smiled to remember. If I could paint that for Susan for Christmas, she’d be thrilled. She reached for one of the other canvases and started sketching before she lost the picture in her head.

  That night when it was too dark to paint, Ragni and Erika opened the boxes Myra had brought. There were a couple of albums, black pages filled with black-and-white snapshots tucked into corner holders, names of those in the photos carefully recorded in fading ink.

  “Look, there’s Grammy as a little girl.” Erika studied the picture closely. “She looks like some pictures of me when I was little, doesn’t she?”

  “Or perhaps you look like her.”

  “Right. Mom will love seeing these—Grammy will too.” Erika turned more pages. “I wish I we had a magnifying glass.”

  “Put it on the list.” Ragni swapped grins with her niece. She held up a picture that wasn’t in the book, tilting it to the lamplight so she could see better. “Look at her face.”

  “Who?”

  “My great-grandmother. She has wrinkles like she must have laughed or at least smiled a lot. Not frown lines, see?” Ragni traced the creases at the edges of the woman’s eyes and the curves in her cheeks. “I wonder what color her eyes were? She looks pretty gray here.” Ragni turned the picture over to find the date. “She was born in 1882, so here she was, eighteen plus twenty-seven is…”

  “Forty-five.”

  “Thanks. I never was good with math. Forty-five isn’t really old now, but I guess it was more so then.”

  “Why?”

  “People didn’t live as long then as they do now.”

  Erika took a paper out of an envelope and read it. “She died in 1947 at the age of sixty-five.”

  Ragni glanced at the paper. “That’s her death certificate? Was there a funeral notice in there?”

  “No.”

  “I think she moved into town in the thirties, after her husband died.”

  “I wonder where she lived then?”

  “I don’t know but we might find out when we go through all this stuff.” Ragni stretched her arms above her head and yawned her eyes closed. “This all gets curiouser and curiouser. As much as I want to keep going, I think you’re right. We should save it for your mom and Grandma, and we can all see it at once. That will make it even more fun. Besides, we can say, ‘I know something you don’t know.’”

  Erika grinned back at her, one eyebrow raised. “Like she does to us, huh? Yeah.”

  Ragni yawned again. “’Scuse me, I’m heading to bed. You want to go paint or draw on location tomorrow?”

  “If you want. Do we really get to stay an extra week?” Enthusiasm leaked around Erika’s mask.

  “Yeah, we do. I was totally shocked when James said to take more time.”

  “We’ll be here for my birthday.”

  “That’s right. I hadn’t thought of that. What would you like to do for your birthday?”

  “Spend the day in the park. Ryan said there’s a prairie dog town, and they’ve seen lots of buffalo there, even calves.”

  “We can do that. Take sketchbooks, et cetera, along?”

  “Ryan said the barbecue
on the Fourth of July will be great. We’re invited, you know.”

  “I know.” Ragni started putting things back in the boxes. Pieces of her great-grandmother, pictures, things that made her real. Why had they not come out here on family vacations?

  “Wish Mom could come out for the weekend.”

  “Me too.” She folded the flaps in place to cover the tops.

  “Ragni?”

  “What?”

  “You think Mom’s all right?” Erika studied a photograph she was putting back in the box.

  “Sure, she said she just had a bug. Even your mother is entitled to catch a bug now and then.”

  Erika shrugged. “Guess so.” Her shoulders said no problem, but her lower lip quivered.

  “Why?” Ragni turned and leaned against the counter, folding her arms over her chest.

  “Well, I think something was wrong before we left, and now you said she sounded sick. She thinks I don’t notice things, but I do. I just don’t tell her everything like I used to.”

  You got that right. Ragni nodded and stared down at her feet, now clad in thongs. Her toenails needed cutting. Her hair also needed cutting. But right now Erika was asking questions for which she had no answers. She shrugged. “I just don’t know. But the next time we are in town, let’s both get on the phone and see if we can figure it out, okay?”

  “’Kay.” Erika dug a bottled water out of the cooler. “Ryan’s a hot-tie, don’tcha think?”

  “Hottie?” Ragni suppressed a grin. Like his uncle, perhaps?

  “We’re going across the river for firewood,” Mr. Peterson announced at breakfast.

  “You will come back for dinner, or should I fix something for you to take?”

  “Fix something, if you please.”

  “I will maybe find you some red rocks,” Hank added.

  “Red rocks?” Mr. Peterson’s eyebrows drew together.

  “For around my trees, to help protect them,” Nilda explained.

  “Why red?”

  “Because that will look pretty.”

  “Black, gray, brown rocks, what’s the difference?” His mutter as he went out the door made her clamp her lips together. Anything she suggested lately made him mutter. In the week since he’d been to town, the two men had been out fixing the fence and repairing the corrals beyond the barn. The last couple of days they’d been hauling rocks back to a spot they’d cleared out near the windmill. When she’d asked about it, he’d grumbled that they were going to build the well-house she’d wanted to keep the milk and butter cool.

  “I s’pose you’re going to be wanting another cow, too,” he’d said.

  “Why would I want another cow? One is enough for us and some left over.”

  “But when she goes dry, then what?”

  “Why will she go dry?” Is she dying?

  He shook his head. “Uff da, don’t you know anything?”

  “Not about farming I don’t.” She snapped her reply and then shut her mouth. No sense in antagonizing a person who was grumpy already. But my land, how he can say the wrong things.

  With the men gone from the house, Nilda went about fixing sandwiches from the bread she’d baked the day before, all the while her mind whirling on how to spend the gift of her day to herself. Just the day before she’d found a small red rock on the riverbank. As Hank had said, sandstone was soft rock, and she’d been able to scrape small bits off it with a chisel she found out in the shed. Now to pulverize it and mix it with the mineral oil Hank had brought back from town. She’d have red paint, or at least a semblance of red paint. A piece of charcoal from the stove would make black.

  “Ma?” Eloise wandered from the bedroom, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She leaned her head against her mother’s thigh.

  “Are you hungry?”

  Eloise shook her head. “I want go outside.”

  “Breakfast first. Go get your clothes on while I finish this.” She watched as Eloise drifted back to the bedroom. Nilda wrapped the sandwiches in a clean cloth, added the remainder of the cookies she’d baked the day before, and poured coffee into a jar, screwing the lid down tight. With the basket packed, she glanced around the kitchen, seeking something else to put in it. If she’d known they were going to do this, she’d have baked some beans or something to take along.

  “Ready?” Hank stuck his head in the doorway.

  “Ja, I hope this is enough.” She handed him the basket. “Is there something I can use to grind my rock into powder?”

  “You might use a hammer and a flat rock. Sometime I’ll get a piece hollowed out for you.”

  “Mange takk, Hank. You are so good to me.”

  Hank paused with the basket in his hand. “Mr. Peterson, he’s not mad at you. You know the way he’s been lately. Sometimes he can get to worrying on something like an ornery dog with a bone, but he gets over it.”

  “Thank you.” She watched him swing the basket into the back of the wagon and climb up over the wheel. They’d go downriver a mile or so to where there was a ford. Like the day they went to town, she wished she could go along. But only for one long moment. Then, humming a little song her mother had sung to her, she went to help Eloise get dressed. She would treat today as another gift and let the worries take care of themselves.

  After cleaning up the kitchen, weeding the rows of feathery carrots, and hauling water for her trees, she sat Eloise down in the dirt to make mud pies and located both the hammer and a flat rock. After chiseling small pieces off the red stone, she tried pounding them with the hammer. They flew everywhere. She scraped off some more and used the head of the hammer to grind the grains to powder. Better, but terribly slow. Using her dampened paintbrush, she picked up the powder and added it to a few drops of mineral oil. More scraping and grinding, more powder. The oil developed a reddish tint, but she had so little that three brushstrokes would use it up. She tried daubing the oil on the stone, hoping it might sink in and soften the stone, but it only made the stone shine—a beautiful red-brown color but not paint.

  When her hand began to ache, she left off the grinding to make ham sandwiches for the two of them for dinner. Lord, is it so wrong to want to paint designs on my cupboards and over the door, to draw pictures and want to paint them in? Mr. Peterson doesn’t like it, and l don’t understand why. He said it was a waste of time, but I work hard. After grinding for a while again, she and Eloise took the path to the river and waded in at the edge, feeling the gravel beneath their feet.

  Eloise giggled when she slipped and sat down. “Ma, come down.” She patted the water by her side.

  Nilda reached between her legs, drew the back of her skirt forward and tucked it up in the front of the waistband of her skirt, thus hitching it up and out of her way. Then she leaned over, took Eloise’s hands, and whirled her around, splashing the water as she bobbed her in and out. Their laughter set the crow to cawing, which made them laugh even more. By the time they headed back for the house, they were both clean and wet so the breeze blew cool in spite of the sun. After putting Eloise down for a nap, Nilda again took up her grinding. When her wrist hurt enough to bother, she mixed all the powder into the oil, covered her experiment with the paper she had painted, put it in a box under her bed, and took out the ingredients to make a cake. Beating a cake was far easier than grinding red stone to powder and would make Mr. Peterson far happier.

  Humming as she worked, she sliced ham for supper, set the rice to boiling, and mixed up the dry ingredients for corn bread. The men would be hungry when they got home so she milked early and had just set the corn bread in the oven when Eloise came running in.

  “They coming.”

  “Oh, good.” With a swift glance around, she made sure all was in place, the table set and a jar of daisies in the middle. The ham was already fried and kept warm in the skillet on the back of the stove, so she forked it onto a platter and sprinkled flour into the drippings. As soon as that browned nicely, she heard a “whoa” from outside, and the wagon creaked to a halt. After ad
ding water to the browning mixture, she stirred hard to beat out any lumps. Lumpy gravy was not the hallmark of a good cook. The red-eye gravy simmered while she went to the door.

  Both men were pulling red rocks from the wagon bed and setting them in the circles around each of her little trees. Short logs filled the rest of the wagon, piled so high that the men had strung ropes over the heap to keep them from rolling out. Both horses wore dark patches of sweat from the heavy pull.

  “Oh, thank you. That looks so beautiful.” Even better than I dreamed.

  Hank smiled over at her, but Mr. Peterson only nodded.

  “Supper is almost ready.”

  “Good thing. I could eat a horse.”

  “Or a steer maybe.” Hank set the final rock in place. “Just right.”

  “Ma, it’s pretty!” Eloise beamed up from one man to the other. “Pretty.”

  “You think it’s pretty, little one?” Joseph Peterson spoke gently, as if he always conversed with the blond sprite. “You should know.”

  Nilda blinked back the moisture that flooded her eyes. Grumpy with her didn’t matter when the big, dark man looked down at the little girl, his mouth twitching in what might have been a smile. Or at least the beginning of one.

  “Were you a good girl today?” Mr. Peterson asked.

  Eloise nodded. “Ja.”

  “Then would you like a horsy ride?”

  Eloise looked over to her mother and then raised her arms to be lifted up. “You horsy?”

  Hank smiled at Nilda, swung up on the seat of the wagon, and clucked the horses off to leave the wagon at the woodshed.

  Nilda watched as Mr. Peterson held on to Eloise’s tiny feet and walked around the yard, her sitting up proud as could be.

  “See, Ma. Horsy ride!” The rest of her words were unintelligible, but none were needed.

  Nilda hurried back to the stove to stir the gravy and move it to the cooler end. She checked the corn bread and returned to watch Mr. Peterson swing Eloise to the ground.