Years

They rode on in silence through the weeping day, with Theodore’s last words reverberating in their minds. And if those words brought to mind Linnea rather than Melinda, it was nothing either man could control.

  They came at last to the coal fields of Zahl. Theodore pulled the wagon onto the scale and stopped the horses with the old Norwegian term that was somehow comforting today.

  “Pr-r-r,” he ordered, the word blending with the mood set by both the story and the falling rain. Nobody was about. They were surrounded by the smell of wet coal and the sound of dripping water. Theodore turned to his son, rested one hand on his shoulder, and said, “Well, she’s a pretty little thing, all right. I’ll grant you that.” Abruptly, he changed moods. “So, here we are. You up to loadin’ eight tons of coal, boy?”

  Kristian wasn’t. He was feeling worse all the time. The sneezes were coming one right after the other, and it was a toss-up as to which was dripping faster, his nose or his hat brim.

  “I ain’t got much choice, have I?”

  Theodore gently scolded, “There’s no such word as ain’t, boy.” Then he vaulted over the side of the wagon and went to find old man Tveit to get the empty wagon weighed, so they could start loading.

  The vast farmland that had driven Melinda Westgaard into a state of depression and caused her to desert her husband and son was, that day, as bleak as she’d found it on the bleakest of days. The rain fell dismally over the flat coal fields of Zahl with not a single tree to break the monotony of the featureless horizon. Aesthetically, nature had been unkind to North Dakota. But though she’d robbed the state of trees to provide precious fuel, she had offered something in their stead: coal. Twenty-eight thousand square miles of it. Soft, brown lignite, so accessible that man could simply scrape away the thin covering of surface soil and harvest the fuel with pick axes and shovels.

  And so Theodore and Kristian harvested it that wet September day.

  The weather was so grim that old man Tveit hadn’t even hitched his team to the fresno. Instead, the earth-scraper sat idle, collecting rain in its scoop.

  As Kristian worked beside his father, he paused often to blow his nose and sneeze. The damp chill crept up his legs and down inside his poncho. The inside of his collar grew wet, sending a shiver straight to his marrow.

  By the time the wagon was loaded, he was utterly miserable. But he still faced the hour-and-a-half drive back home. Long before they got there Kristian felt weak from sneezing. His nose was rubbed raw from Theodore’s damp handkerchief and the chills were shaking his body. Halfway home a timid sun began separating the clouds, peering through like a jaundiced eye, but it did little by way of warming Kristian.

  “I s’pect you’re feeling as soggy as you look,” Theodore noted.

  Kristian’s mouth was open, eyes closed, nostrils flaring as he felt another sneeze coming. He peered at the sun to bring it on. When it erupted, it doubled him over and left his eyes watering.

  “I’ll drop you at home before I go on over to school to unload.”

  “I can help,” Kristian felt compelled to insist, but there was little zest in the words.

  “The best place for you is in bed. I can handle one wagon of coal by myself.”

  Kristian had no thought of objecting, and Theodore left him tucked securely in bed with Nissa fussing over him like a mother cat.

  By the time he started for school it was late afternoon. The sun had chased away the remaining clouds and lay upon the ripe wheat like a benediction. Troubled, Theodore went over his talk with Kristian.

  You’d best tread light around the little missy, too. Kristian’s got no idea she sets off a spark in you too, and he’d better not ever find out.

  The schoolyard was empty as he pulled the horses up before the steps.

  “Pr-r-r,” he ordered softly, studying the door as he secured the reins and leaped down. Crossing before the team, he distractedly fondled Cub’s nose and headed for the schoolhouse steps.

  The door opened soundlessly. The cloakroom was deserted, its inner doors ajar. The lunch pails were gone from beneath the long benches. A drip of water fell from the water spigot into a bucket with a lazy, echoing blip. The heavy knot of the bell rope swayed before Theodore’s eyes and he backhanded it aside, moving toward the double doors. Suddenly, from inside, came the sound of Miss Brandonberg’s angry, feminine voice. With his hand on the door, he paused.

  “... next time I catch you up to your tricks, I fully intend to tell your parents about it. I will, in any case, be making visits to each home. You’d like me to have something good to report to your mother and father, wouldn’t you, Allen?”

  So the Severt kid was in there with her.

  “You know, you’ve given me another one of those absolutely awful days. You and Theodore.”

  Theodore’s eyebrows shot up and his chin drew in. Then he scowled. What business was it of the Severt kid’s what went on between himself and the teacher?

  “I do not understand that man. It wouldn’t have hurt him one bit to let Kristian come to school today!” Her voice calmed and she added, “But I guess that’s none of your affair. You’re excused, but tomorrow when you come to school it had better be with a changed attitude.”

  Theodore backed away from the door, prepared to look as if he’d just entered the cloakroom when Allen walked past. But no footsteps sounded. No Allen appeared. Instead, all Theodore heard was the scrape and click of the chalk on the blackboard.

  “All right, Theodore, he’s gone and we can fight in peace!”

  Theodore stiffened, chagrined at being caught eavesdropping. He was preparing to enter the schoolroom when her voice hurried on. “Oh, all right, you know what I mean!” Suddenly he realized she had no idea he was there, and smiled. So, what was she doing, practicing fighting with him? Apparently so, for she was putting plenty of gusto into her words as she scolded, “It wouldn’t have killed you to let Kristian come to school today, but no, you’re too bullheaded stubborn to let me get one up on you, aren’t you! So how did you keep him busy?” Her voice turned sarcastic. “Polishing harnesses in the tack room?”

  The chalk scraped on the board, and she started pronouncing disjointed words.

  “Clock. Kite. Stuff. Fling. Wheel. Gullet.”

  Theodore smiled and inched toward the double doors. Silently, he pushed one wider and peered inside. She was writing a list of words on the blackboard, putting dots above some of them with an angry smack of the chalk. She’s going to chip that blackboard, he thought, amused. He watched her slim back as her hand moved along and the movement of her skirts as she slashed a crossbar across the top of a letter. Then she began long strings of words.

  The clock hung on the wall, she wrote, murmuring along with each word, while Theodore’s eyes followed. And next, The kite had a blue tail. She snapped straight and appeared to be studying the blackboard thoughtfully. Then, with brisk, sure motions, she wrote and pronounced very clearly, “I would like to stuff Theodore.”

  He smiled so big it was all he could do to keep from laughing aloud. She backed off and studied the sentence, forcefully underlined stuff, then propped her hands on her hips and snickered. “Oh, would I ever,” she repeated, her voice rich with anticipation.

  But when she wrote the next sentence, she chose not to repeat the words aloud, and Theodore’s smile faded as he puzzled over the writing he couldn’t read. Again she backed off and giggled, obviously enjoying herself at his expense before bending toward the board again.

  When she’d finished the next sentence, she covered her mouth with both hands and laughed so hard it rocked her forward.

  “Hello, teacher,” he drawled.

  Linnea whirled around, mortified. There stood Theodore, lounging against the back wall with one thumb hooked behind a suspender clip. Her face took on the appearance of a slice of watermelon, and she twirled back toward the blackboard, frantically erasing the words.

  “Theodore, what do you mean by sneaking up on me that way?” She wielded the eraser so ha
rd Theodore thought she might push the front wall off the schoolhouse.

  “What do you mean, sneaking? I drove up with a team of horses making enough noise to raise the dead, but there was just so much racket in here you wouldn’t’ve heard a mule train comin’ through.”

  She swung around to face him with her palms pressed against the chalk tray behind her. “What do you want, Theodore? I’m busy,” she finished superciliously.

  His eyes lingered on the milky blackboard then came back to her as he tapped a pair of dirty leather gloves against his thigh. “Yeah, so I see. Getting ready for tomorrow’s lesson?”

  “Yes, I was, until you so rudely interrupted.”

  “Rude?” He touched the dirty gloves to his heart, as if unjustly maligned. “I am the rude one when I came to offer you a ride home from school?” That put her in a fine tizzy. She scowled like a great horned owl.

  “Now’s a fine time to offer me a ride home! Now that the sun’s out and the rain has stopped! And where was your generous offer this morning, when you refused to let Kristian give me a ride to school?”

  “He told you that?”

  “He didn’t have to tell me that. All he had to tell me was that he wanted to. And you don’t fool me for one second. You didn’t come to give this... this hothouse pansy any ride home, so what are you doing here?”

  He pulled away from the back wall and clumped slowly up the left aisle, drawing on his gloves, all the time watching her. “Why, waitin’ to get stuffed. Wasn’t that what you said you wanted to do?” Reaching the edge of the teacher’s platform, he spread his hands wide. “Here I am.”

  Linnea’s embarrassment doubled, but her sense of theatrics came to save her. She pointed imperiously at the door. “And you can just turn around and head straight back out! I have no wish to either see or talk to you until you change your attitude about Kristian coming to school.”

  “My boy comes to school when I say he does, and not a minute sooner!”

  She forgot theatrics and let her temper flare. “Oh, you... are... insufferable!” She stamped a foot and sent chalk dust swirling around her hem.

  He lifted one boot to the edge of the platform and crossed both hands on his knee. “Yeah. And don’t forget bullheaded.”

  “Well, you are, Theodore Westgaard.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been told that before, but who was the one that threw her napkin down and stomped out of the kitchen like a spoiled brat this morning? Not a very good example you set for your student.”

  Properly chastised, she faced the board and started erasing it more cleanly before listing the spelling words again.

  “If all you came for is to criticize me, you may leave. And the sooner the better.”

  “That’s not all I came for. I came with the load of coal.”

  “I could have used it this morning,” she nagged, “my feet were squishing by the time I got here and the room was as chill as an icehouse.”

  The scrape of the chalk was the only sound in the room before his voice came again, kinder. “I’m sorry.”

  Her hand stopped moving over the blackboard. She peeked over her shoulder to see if he was serious. He was... and studying her feet. She turned to face him again, brushing the chalk dust from her hands. When their eyes met, she found only apology in his. Her gaze dropped to the soiled gloves, but even the sight of the aged, bruised leather became fascinating, simply because they encased his hands. How could he be so aggravating one moment and so appealing the next?

  “You should be sorry. You made me so angry, Theodore, I did want to stuff you.”

  It was when she wasn’t even trying that she achieved her goal: he reared back from the waist and broke into rich, resonant laughter. Never having seen him even smile before, she was unprepared for the impact. The sight was incredible; it completely changed him. She gazed at his beaming face with a feeling of profound discovery. She had not known his teeth were so beautiful, his mouth so handsome, his jaw so perfect, his throat so tan, or his eyes so sparkling. While his laughter filled the sunny schoolroom, the sight of him filled her heart. And suddenly she found herself incredibly happy. A first chortle of enjoyment left her throat, then a second, and soon her laughter joined his.

  When the room stilled, they continued smiling at each other in mutual amazement. Her waich was lifting and falling very quickly upon her breast. He imagined that if he stepped close and placed his hand over it, he would find the gold warmed by her flesh.

  He tried to swallow and couldn’t.

  She tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t.

  He tried to think of her as a child, but couldn’t.

  She tried to think of him as an older man, but couldn’t.

  He told himself she was the girl his son was falling in love with, but it didn’t matter.

  She told herself he was her student’s father, she lived in his house, it wouldn’t be fitting. But none of it mattered. None of it.

  Common sense intruded, and Theodore withdrew his foot from the step. Briskly he tugged his gloves on tighter. “I’d better get that coal unloaded.”

  She stood with unformed words clogging her throat, watching him walk down the length of the room, noticing for the first time in her life how much narrower a man’s hips are than a woman’s, how beguiling bronze arms can be when protruding from rolled-up sleeves, how powerful a man’s hands appear when sheathed in soft old gloves that have been with him through hours and hours of toil.

  When he was gone, she tried returning to the sentences she’d been forming, only to be distracted time and again by the sight of him, just outside the window, shoveling coal. She moved closer. From her high vantage point she looked down upon his shoulders and the top of his head, captivated by the sight he made as he leaned to the task. How wide his shoulders, how spare his movements, how capable his muscles.

  He paused, rested crossed wrists on the handle of the shovel, and she retreated one step into the shadows. The bright sun rained down on his rich walnut-brown hair, and she realized she rarely saw him without the straw hat he wore in the fields. She supposed it had gotten wet this morning and was at home, drying on the peg in the kitchen. He glanced in a circle, squinting, his face wearing a film of coal dust now. He was sweating, and she watched a droplet trickle along the edge of his hair, collecting black as it went. He pulled off one glove, searched his rear pocket, found no handkerchief, so donned the glove again and swabbed his forehead with a sleeve. Again he set to work, sending up a rhythmic clatter of coal falling upon coal.

  He was so much a man, so much more mature than any of the boys to whom she’d ever been attracted. And he was attracted to her, too; she hadn’t imagined it. For that brief, revealing second she had seen it in his eyes as clearly as she could now see the coal dust coating his handsome brown face. Something had sizzled between them while they’d stared at each other. Desire? Was that what it felt like? Her heart had caromed from the impact. She felt it yet. The awareness. The pull. The insistence.

  But when he’d drawn the curtain over his eyes, she’d realized he still saw her as a child.

  Most of the time.

  9

  WHEN THE COAL SHED was full, he sailed the shovel onto the empty wagon bed and flexed his tired back. He wiped his forehead with an arm, checked the gray streak left there, tossed his gloves aside, and ambled across the school yard to the pump. Unhooking his suspenders, he sent them swinging, stripped off his shirt, and tossed it aside, then started pumping. With widespread feet he leaned over the stream of pure, icy water that splattered onto the dirt below. Alternately pumping and washing, he doused his face, splashed his chest, arms, and neck, then drank from his cupped palms.

  When he straightened and turned, he found Linnea on the steps, watching him. She stood still as a stork with the fingertips of one hand lightly touching the iron handrail, the other palm clasping her elbow. Their gazes met and locked while he slowly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then became conscious of his bare, wet chest an
d the suspenders hanging down his thighs. He leaned from the hip and grabbed his flannel shirt from the ground, did a cursory toweling, then slipped it on and began buttoning it, all the while wishing she would move or at least stop staring.

  But Linnea was intrigued by the sight of him. There were times she had seen her father’s chest bare, but it hadn’t nearly as much hair as Theodore’s. And though her father, too, wore suspenders, they’d never dangled at his knees like dropped reins. And watching a father wash up was nothing whatever like watching Theodore pelt water over himself with such heedlessness that it went flying through the air, ran down his chest, and dripped from his temples and elbows.

  But Theodore’s heedlessness stopped abruptly when he spotted her.

  She grew bemused by the sudden haste he showed in getting the shirt on and buttoned. He hung his head and half-turned away while stuffing the shirttails into his britches, snapping the suspenders back into place, and combing his hair with his fingers. At last he turned.

  “Are you ready to go?” he called.

  She flashed him a saucy smile. “Are you?”

  She could have sworn Theodore began to blush, though he managed to hide it behind a wrist as he again swept a hand through his hair and broke into a purposeful stride.

  “I’ll bring the wagon around.”

  When they were sitting side by side, heading home, all was silent. Theodore rode with his back sloped, elbows to knees, thinking of how strangely self-conscious he’d felt when he’d turned around and caught her watching him wash up. Linnea balanced her grade book on her knees and glanced at the passing countryside, thinking of how dark and curly the hair at the back of his neck became when it was wet. Neither of them looked at the other, and neither said a word until they were past John’s place. Then, out of the clear blue sky, Theodore stated, “Kristian caught a cold today. That’s why he didn’t come along to help unload the coal.”

  Her head swiveled around, but he stared straight ahead, offering nothing further. How odd that he felt compelled to explain why he’d come alone. She searched for something clever to fill the gap, but her thought processes seemed to be confounded by the memory of that well water running into the hair on his chest. “Oh, poor Kristian. It’s much too beautiful a time of year to have a cold, isn’t it?”