Years

by LaVyrle Spencer

  At his words, she looked up, he looked down. They felt the pull again, strong, undeniable, elemental. She thought of the woman whose picture remained on his dresser and wondered what it would take to get him to put it away and never bring it out again. He thought of how welcome her warmth felt, through his jacket sleeve, and realized they had shared an accord here today that went far beyond anything he and Melinda had ever shared.

  Then they both became aware of Nissa’s presence and cautiously drew apart. They returned their gazes to the horizon, but the horses had disappeared.

  14

  THE END OF HARVEST truly signaled the onset of winter. They awakened one morning in early November to a world of white. Linnea peered out her tiny window and gasped in delight. Overnight North Dakota had been transformed into a pristine fairyland.

  But before she was halfway to school, she stopped considering the snow as quite so romantic and began looking upon it as a nuisance. Trudging along, she moved with all the agility of a freshly wrapped mummy. Lord, couldn’t somebody invent something better than these miserable leggings to keep the snow out?

  The leggings weren’t the only problem. Underneath them she’d donned thick long underwear that covered her from waist to ankle, and over these, full-length black wool knit stockings rolled at the top around a tight rubber ring that pinched and cut into her groin. Over all this bulk went the khaki-colored canvas leggings — stiff, unbending things with stays running from ankle to knee, the entire contraption lashed together at the sides with eyelets and strings that cut off her blood supply even further. Added to it all were rubber overshoes. She felt as if she were walking in kegs!

  At school the snow brought excitement. And puddles. And the smell of wet wool. And runny noses. And a mess in the cloakroom, where leggings lay strewn beneath the benches and wool scarves fell onto the dirty floor and got wet and mittens got lost and overshoes mismatched. After recess came the worst smell of singed wool from the mittens drying on the fender of the stove.

  Linnea assigned a cloakroom monitor, gave orders that no child was to come to school without a handkerchief, and made a mental note to ask Superintendent Dahl about a wooden folding clothes rack.

  But the snow brought gaiety, too. At recess they played fox and goose, Linnea running the rim of the wheel with as much exuberance as the first graders. The younger children made “angels” in the snow and chattered about Thanksgiving, which was just around the corner. The older boys made plans to run trap lines down along the creek bottom in the hope of earning money over the winter.

  With the arrival of snow, things were different at home, too. The routine around the farm changed. Everything relaxed. The family was all together at mealtime again, and Kristian was beginning to show a marked improvement in table manners. In the mornings, the kitchen smelled milky. The cream separating was done inside now instead of outside. Two of the barn cats took up residence underneath the kitchen stove. In the evenings, Nissa was often seen with knitting needles in her hands: Linnea, taking her cue from the cats, corrected papers in the kitchen instead of in her drafty upstairs room.

  The weather turned frigid. Like her students, Linnea wrapped a warm woolen scarf around her face when she walked, and even in thick knit mittens her fingers were often numb before she reached P.S. 28.

  She returned home from school one day to find Theodore and John working by a small shed near the well. She crossed the yard, pulled her scarf down, and greeted them. “Hello, what are you two doing?”

  “Getting ready for butchering,” John answered, his breath a white cloud.

  “In here?” The shed was only six feet square, built of wood, with a crude floor in the middle of which was a square hatch,

  Theodore and John exchanged smiles. Sometimes the little missy asked the most ridiculous questions. “No,” Theodore clarified, “this is where we store the meat. Gotta make the ice before we kill the cow.”

  “Oh.”

  They were busily pumping water into a deep, square hole beneath the floor. The following day she observed the ingenious efficiency of the meat house when she found them spreading a layer of clean straw over the huge solid block of ice, all now in readiness for the freshly cut beef.

  The next afternoon, butchering day, she came home to a kitchen that quite turned her stomach. The two men were busy sawing up the carcass of a cow right on the kitchen table, and Nissa was busy with the sausage stuffer.

  Walking in on the messy operation, Linnea turned a little green. Theodore grinned and teased, “So where did you think beef came from, missy?”

  She hustled through the kitchen and burned a trail up the stairs in her haste to get away from the nauseating sight.

  That evening, after supper, Theodore, Nissa, and Kristian sat at the table patiently cutting thin, long strips of beef and dropping them into a keg of brine.

  “What’s that now?”

  “Gonna be jerky when we’re through,” Nissa replied without looking up. “Soak ‘em a couple weeks, hang ‘em in the granary to dry — ain’t nothin’ better.”

  The kitchen smelled delicious the following night, and at suppertime Linnea was passed a bowl containing a thick concoction of meat, potatoes, carrots, onions, and gravy. She buttered a slice of Nissa’s fresh-baked bread, loaded her bowl with the scrumptious-smelling stew, and dug in. It was absolutely delicious. And how much more pleasant mealtime was around here now that they’d learned how to talk!

  Kristian asked Nissa where Thanksgiving dinner was going to be held this year.

  “Ulmer and Helen’s turn,” Nissa answered.

  “Aw, Aunt Helen’s dressing isn’t as good as yours, Grandma. I like it best when we have Thanksgiving here.”

  “Christmas’ll be here. You’ll be eating my dressing then.”

  John put in, “Ma’s dressing’s good, but it can’t hold a candle to this heart stew.”

  “Heart stew?” Linnea’s jaw dropped and her eyes fell to her bowl.

  “One of the biggest beef hearts I ever seen this year,” added Nissa. “Eat up.”

  Linnea’s innards seemed to roll and pitch violently. The spoon slipped from her fingers while she gaped at the half-finished serving before her. What was she going to do with the mouthful she was holding?

  Just then Theodore spoke up. “I don’t think Miss Brandon-berg holds with John’s opinion.”

  Every eye turned to her. She drew a deep breath, steeled herself, and bravely swallowed. Immediately the heart stew tried to come back up. She grabbed her coffee, sucked in a huge gulp, and burned her mouth. Her eyes started watering.

  “Somethin’ wrong with the heart stew?” Nissa inquired, peering at Linnea over her oval spectacles.

  “I... I... ”

  “I don’t think it’s good table manners for her to answer, Ma,” Theodore put in archly, hiding a grin.

  “E... excuse me,” Linnea managed in a weak, shaky voice. She pushed her chair back, dropped her napkin, and made a beeline for the stairs, running like a coon before a pack, a hand covering her mouth.

  Upstairs, her door slammed.

  The four at the table exchanged meaningful glances. “She’s a fussy one at the table, ain’t she?” Nissa observed wryly, and calmly went on eating.

  “I reckon we should’ve told her. Especially after the tongue sandwiches,” Theodore said, but inside he smiled.

  “Thought she was Norwegian. Never heard of no Norwegian bein’ so fussy.”

  “She’s only half Norwegian,” Kristian reminded them. “The other half’s Swedish. Remember?”

  “Oh. That must be the fussy half then,” Nissa decided.

  Upstairs Linnea curled on her bed, motionless. Each time she pictured the unsavory sights in the kitchen yesterday and thought of a big pumping beef heart, the queasiness peaked. She forced her thoughts to more pleasant things: the horses running free in a cool, fresh wind; the morning glories climbing John’s windmill; the children playing fox and goose in the fresh, clean snow.

  A g
entle knock sounded on her door.

  “Yes?” she answered weakly.

  “Miss Brandonberg, are you all right?” It was Kristian — thoughtful, considerate Kristian.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Can I do anything for you?”

  “I’m afraid the heart stew already did it.”

  “Are you really sick?”

  She drew a deep lungful of air. “Close.”

  Looking at her closed door, Kristian couldn’t help smiling. “Grandma says to tell you if it’s bad, you can take some peppermint extract.”

  “Th... thank you, Kristian.”

  “Well, g’night then.”

  “Good night.”

  That night, as he lay in bed, Theodore couldn’t help smiling again at the memory of Linnea’s face when she heard what she was eating. It was times when she appeared youngest that he was most attracted to her: when she balked at strange foods, when she stood looking down at an ice hole with her scarf tied tightly beneath her chin, when she stood in a middy dress with her arms crossed behind her back, when she caught her hair up in a crisp wide ribbon and let it fall free over her high collar. And, of course, when she looked at him across a dimly lit kitchen with innocent blue eyes that refused to admit the obvious reasons why the two of them must fight the attraction they felt for one another.

  Since that night there’d been no further opportunities to be alone with her. Thank heaven.

  But at bedtime, when he lay flat on his back staring at the ceiling, he pictured her in the room above. Sometimes he allowed himself to imagine what it would be like if she were thirty, or even twenty-five. The thoughts made him miserable. He ended up rolling to his stomach, groaning into his pillow, wishing for sleep to clear his mind of forbidden wishes.

  Linnea’s thoughts were far different. As the days went by, she found their age difference mattering less and less. Theodore’s maturity only made him grow more desirable in her eyes. His body, fleshed out, honed by years of hard work, held far more attraction for her than the thin ones of younger men. The pair of creases that bridged his eyes only added character to his attractive face. And she knew how to make him laugh so they’d disappear. Though he didn’t know how to read, he had knowledge of things that mattered more than written words: of horses and crops and weather and machinery and the thousand things about farm life she found fascinating. The few times she’d shared these with him only made her want to share more.

  She thought of him sleeping below her, and remembered the night he’d kissed her. She closed her eyes and let the feelings sweep through her vibrant young body. Kissing her pillow no longer sufficed as a substitute for the real thing, and she was bound and determined to have more of the real thing.

  On a night in mid-November the entire Westgaard family piled into Theodore’s house for an impromptu card party. In no time at all the house was overrun with relatives. The adults set up several tables in the kitchen while the youngsters holed up in Kristian’s and Nissa’s rooms and the front parlor. While the children giggled, played paper dolls, or organized card games of their own, Linnea was invited to join in the adults’ game of “smear.”

  In it, bids were announced as each hand began. Partners went for designated points: high, low, jick, jack, joker, and total game points. Linnea ended up as John’s partner and sat across from him at a table of four, Lars on her right and Clara on her left.

  As the cards were being dealt, she asked, “What’s jick?”

  “Left jack,” John answered, scooping up his cards. “You never played before?”

  “Oh, yes, but we never had anything called ‘jick.’”

  “Opposite jack of the same color as trump,” he explained succinctly. She blinked at John, surprised. When play commenced she saw immediately that though he was slow at most things, cards wasn’t one of them. Together they made an unbeatable team. In no time at all she and John were creating a sensation by winning nearly every hand. They took the first game easily, and as the evening wore on they remained consistent winners.

  Between games, Ulmer passed out tiny glasses of a transparent liquid, placing one at Linnea’s elbow, just as he did at everyone else’s. She sipped and gasped, then fanned her open mouth.

  “Aquavit,” John informed her, grinning over his cards.

  “Ah... ah... aquavit?” she managed, catching her breath. “What’s in it?”

  “Oh, a little potatoes, a little caraway seed. Pretty harmless, huh, Lars?” Linnea caught the devilish grin that passed between the two brothers. John tipped up his glass, downed the potent Norwegian liquor in one gulp, and closed his mouth tightly for a full ten seconds before breathing again.

  Linnea expected to see the top of his head blow off. Instead, when he finally opened his eyes, he smiled appreciatively and nodded in satisfaction.

  As the night rolled on, the glasses were refilled time and again, and though Linnea drank far less than the men, she mellowed at the same rate as everybody in the room. She couldn’t say when the mood went from mellow to silly, then from silly to boisterous. But it all seemed to work in rhythm with the accelerating excitement over the card game. They whooped and hollered and leaped to their feet on big plays. Often a card would be played with a slam of the fist that sent the table jumping clear off the floor. Then everyone would roar with laughter or cuss good-naturedly.

  Behind Linnea, Trigg bawled, “Damn you, Teddy, I figured you had that jack hiding someplace!” Linnea looked over her shoulder to see Theodore smiling like a new moon, his face flushed from the liquor, a hank of hair coiling down his forehead.

  He caught her eye as he played another winning card and gave her a broad wink while scooping up the trick.

  She spun to face her partner again, but she spun too fast and the room became a little bit tilted. The bottle labeled LINJE AKEVITT made the rounds again. By this time Linnea realized she was pleasantly drunk, and two-thirds of her students were in the house to witness it! She stopped imbibing, but the damage was already done. She giggled often and seemed to be observing everything through a golden haze.

  Still, she and John continued winning. At the end of one close hand, Lars leaned his chair back on two legs and bellowed at Nissa, “Hey, Ma, we could use a little heart stew over here!”

  Linnea’s head snapped up — at least she thought it snapped, but everything seemed to be moving in slow motion now.

  Without even looking up, Nissa called, “Why? You got somebody you wanna get rid of, Lars?”

  Obviously, they had all heard of her green-faced flight from the supper table, and she wondered who’d spread the tale. She focused on Theodore, but he wore a tight-lipped grin. “All right, who’s the loudmouth?” she demanded.

  “John,” Theodore accused, pointing a finger at his brother.

  “Theodore,” John accused, pointing back.

  They all began chuckling, and suddenly the whole heart-stew episode became hilarious to Linnea. She giggled and giggled while the whole kitchen broke into an uproar of laughter.

  It had been years since Linnea had laughed so much. When they let down their hair, these Westgaards really knew how to have a good time. She felt as much a part of the big, boisterous family as if she bore their name.

  Midway through the evening everybody stretched, took a nature break, then returned to form up new tables.

  “What do you say there, Heart Stew, you wanna take me on?”

  Linnea turned around to find Theodore at her shoulder, grinning, the lock of hair still trailing down his forehead, his eyes dancing mischievously.

  She lifted one brow cockily. “You think you’re good enough... ” She paused before adding, “Teddy?”

  He pressed a hand to his chest and looked injured. “Me! Good enough? Why, I been playin’ smear since before I had whiskers.”

  “Since before you had whiskers?” She gave a mock frown and pursed her lips. “Tsk! Tsk! Tsk! What a 1-o-o-ong time! You’re probably too good for me. And anyway, Trigg has already asked me to be his p
artner. But have a chair and we’ll give you a chance to beat us.” She pulled out the one at a right angle to hers. “Come on, Trigg. Let’s show this big talker who knows how to smear whom!”

  The playing began again. With Theodore so close, Linnea was conscious of his every movement. Occasionally he sipped aquavit, studying her from the corner of his eye. Sometimes he rested his elbows on the table, other times he tipped his chair back on two legs, knees splayed, considering his cards. Then he’d narrow his gaze, studying her over his hand as if to determine her next play before making his. Occasionally he’d flip a card out as if there were no question that it would take the trick. And sometimes she’d come back with a better one, loudly snapping the corner of her card on the table before pushing the trick toward Trigg to collect.

  Linnea and Trigg took four games over Teddy and Clara’s two. When the games ended, Theodore tipped back and called to John, “I get Heart Stew for my partner next week, John.”

  “I don’t think so,” John called back. “I found her first.” Under cover of the noise and confusion of pushing chairs and clearing the tables, Theodore and Linnea exchanged a brief burning glance, then she murmured, low enough for only his ears, “Yes, he found me first,” and turned away.

  They cleaned away the cards and spread out lunch on the great oak table, and all the while she felt Theodore’s eyes on her. “Lunch” was a regular feast: deep-fried cookies called fattigman, tasty cheese known as gammelost, and a suspicious-looking entry they referred to as blodpose.

  Turning up her nose, Linnea inquired archly, “And what does blodpose mean?”

  She directed the question to Theodore, expecting some teasing retort. Instead, he only sipped his coffee and glanced away. John answered instead. “She caught you this time, Ma.”

  Chuckles sounded, but Theodore remained sober. “What does it mean?” Linnea asked, clutching John’s arm.

  “Blood sausage.”

  “Blood sausage!” She groaned and did her best swooning heroine, grabbing her stomach and pitching forward across the table dramatically. Everyone laughed except Theodore.