Linnea found the ten-year-old crying in the cloakroom one day during noon recess. She was sitting in a dejected heap on one of the long benches, looking heartbreakingly forlorn with her pigtails drooping and her skinny shoulderblades protruding as she sobbed into her hands.
“Why, Frances, what is it, dear?”
Frances swiveled toward the wall and hid her face on a jacket hanging from a peg. But her shoulders shook. Linnea couldn’t resist sitting down and turning Frances into her arms. Unadvisable as it was to have favorites, Linnea couldn’t resist Frances. She was a sweet child, quiet, untroublesome, one who strove to please in every way, no matter how difficult it was for her academically. As if realizing her shortcomings in that department, she tried to make up for it with little kindnesses: a favorite cookie left on Linnea’s grade book; a crisp, red apple placed on the corner of the teacher’s table; an offer to collect the composition books or pass out crayons or tie the boot strings of the younger ones who didn’t know how yet.
“Tell me what’s made you so unhappy.”
“I c... can’t,” the child sobbed.
“Why can’t your’
“B... because... you’ll th... think I’m d... dumb.”
Linnea gently pressed Frances back and looked into her puffy, downcast face. “Nobody here thinks you’re dumb.”
“Allen d... does.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“He d... does, too. He c... calls me d... dimwit all the t... time.”
Linnea’s anger flared, and with it protectiveness. “You are not dumb, Frances, so just put that out of your head. Is that what made you cry? What Allen said?”
Woefully, Frances shook her head.
“What then?”
It all tumbled out at last, the secret that “teacher” wasn’t supposed to know, but part of which she already did. Frances’s greatest wish was to be an angel in the Christmas play, because the angels always wore long white gowns and let their hair flow loose with a sparkly tinsel halo adorning it. But instead of growing, her hair was getting shorter, and not only did she fear missing the chance to be an angel, she was afraid she was going bald.
It took great self-control for Linnea not to laugh at this astounding revelation. She hugged Frances hard, then drew back to wipe the girl’s cheek. Forcing a sober expression, Linnea cajoled, “Here now, have you ever heard of little girls going bald? Only grandfathers go bald.”
“Th... then why is my h... hair getting sh... shorter?”
Linnea perkily turned the child around to investigate. “Doesn’t look any shorter to me.”
“Well, it is. But only one of my pigtails.”
“Only one?”
“This one.” She pulled the left braid over her shoulder.
Upon closer scrutiny, it was obvious the hair had been trimmed — and none too neatly. Linnea took the end of it and teasingly brushed Frances’s nose. “Maybe you ate it off yourself. Isn’t that the one you suck on when you’re trying to figure out your arithmetic problems?”
Frances dipped her chin to her chest with a coy smile she couldn’t quite hold back, though her cheeks were still tear-stained.
“I have an idea,” Linnea said, adopting a thoughtful air.
“Until you find out if you’re really going bald or not, and until you find out why it’s happening to only one side of your head, why not have your mother tuck your pigtails up in a coil — like mine, see?”
Linnea twisted around, showing the child the back of her head, then faced her again, lifting the brown pigtails experimentally. “All it takes is a couple of hairpins, and they’re tucked safely away so nobody can see how long or short they are.”
Frances showed up the following day proudly displaying her new corona of braids, which Allen Severt could no longer crop. The change settled the symptom but not the problem, for only two days after that somebody drilled a peek hole through the back wall of the girls’ privy.
Linnea felt certain the villain was Allen, but had no proof. And not only were his pranks growing more serious, she had the uneasy feeling he enjoyed seeing others suffer.
She decided to talk to Theodore about it.
11
SHE SOUGHT HIM out that night and found him in the tool shed fashioning a new vane for the windmill. One of his knees held a wooden slat across a barrel top, and he faced the rear of the building as she approached.
She stopped outside the high-silled door and watched his shoulders flexing, then glanced around the interior of the shed.
Here, as in the tack room, neatness reigned. She studied the almost fanatic tidiness, smiling to herself. Hilda Knutson could take a lesson from Theodore. The shed was cozy. The lantern created enough heat to warm the tiny, windowless building, which smelled of fresh-cut pine and linseed oil. A stack of paint cans took up one corner. On the wall hung snowshoes, traps, and a variety of pelt stretchers. There were two small nail kegs and a neat coil of barbed wire. In a near corner leaned a worn broom. Linnea’s eyes fell to the sawdust drifting onto Theodore’s boot, and she imagined him sweeping it up the moment the chore was finished. His penchant for neatness no longer irritated her as it had when she’d first arrived. Now she found it admirable.
“Theodore, could I talk to you a minute?”
He swung around so suddenly the board clattered to the floor. His cheeks turned crimson.
“Seems you and I are always startling each other,” she ventured.
“What’re you doing out here?” He hadn’t meant to sound so displeased. It was just that he’d been doing his best to avoid her lately. The sight of her made his palm feel slippery on the saw handle.
“May I come in?”
“Not much room in here,” he replied, retrieving the fallen board and setting back to work.
“Oh, that’s all right. I’ll stay out of your way.” She entered and perched herself on an upturned keg.
“Theodore, I have a problem at school and I wondered if I could talk to you about it. I need some advice.”
The saw stilled and he looked up. Nobody ever asked Theodore for advice, least of all women. His ma was a dictator and Melinda hadn’t bothered letting him know that she was going to show up at his doorstep expecting to get married. Neither had she informed him she was running away two years later. But there sat Linnea, rattling Theodore with her mere presence, posed like a nymph on the nail keg, with her hands clasping her knees. Her big blue eyes were wide and serious, and she wanted his advice.
Theodore set aside his work and gave her his full attention.
“About what?”
“Allen Severt.”
“Allen Severt.” He frowned. “He giving you trouble?”
“Yes.”
“Why come to me?”
“Because you’re my friend.”
“I am?” he asked, surprised.
She couldn’t hold back a chuckle. “Well, I thought you were. And Clara said if Allen kept it up, I should talk to you.”
Theodore had never had a friend before. His only friends were his brothers and sister and those they’d married. It sounded good, having a friend, though he wasn’t sure how well being Miss Brandonberg’s would work. But if Clara thought he should know, he’d listen. He set aside his saw, straddled the barrel, and crossed his arms.
“So what has Allen been up to?”
“Not much I can prove, but plenty I can’t. He’s been a troublemaker right from the first day of school — teasing the younger children, openly defying me, creating disturbances. Just little irritating things. Hiding lunch pails, taking bites of cookies. But now he’s started in on Frances and I—”
“Frances? You mean our little Frances?” His shoulders squared and his arms came partially uncrossed. As he bristled defensively everything about him became more masculinely imposing.
So Frances was one of the things he cared about. Linnea found it touching that he’d referred to the child as ours.
“He calls her dimwit all the time. He’s very good a
t picking out the children’s weaknesses and teasing them. But that isn’t the worst of it. I suspect he’s the one who’s been cutting off Frances’s braid, and one day he locked her in the outhouse and stuck a snake through the hole in the door. Now the girls have found a peek hole drilled in the back of the outhouse wall. I can’t prove any of it, but there’s something about Allen that... ” She shrugged, then rubbed her arms and shivered.
Theodore’s air of displeasure doubled. Forcing himself to remain seated, he pressed the heels of both hands to the barrel edge between his thighs.
“Has he done anything to you?”
She glanced up quickly, not having intended to say that much. Her personal misgivings about Allen were too nebulous to put to voice. And besides, she’d feel utterly foolish telling Theodore that Allen stared at her breasts. All boys reached an age where they became interested in the development of girls. With Allen it wasn’t the fact that he stared, but how he did so; trying to put this into words would be difficult.
“Oh, no, he hasn’t done anything. And it’s not even so much what he does to the others. So far it’s been little things. But they’re getting more serious all the time. And what I’m most concerned about is that I think he enjoys being... well, malicious... making people squirm.”
Theodore rose in one swift movement. He gave the impression that he wanted to pace but was unable to in the confined space. His brow beetled, he swung on Linnea. “You talk to his folks about this when you were at their place for dinner?”
“I tried. But I saw immediately that Allen’s mother wasn’t going to believe a word I said about her golden boy. She has him so spoiled and herself so deluded that there’s no reaching her. I thought for awhile I might get some cooperation from Reverend Severt, but... ” She shrugged. “He seems to think that if Allen reads the Bible all his life it’ll keep him a saint.” Linnea chuckled ruefully, looking at the floor.
“Martin’s not a bad sort. It’s just that that wife of his has led him around by the nose for so long he don’t know how to stand up to her.”
“Doesn’t,” she corrected absently.
“Doesn’t,” he repeated without a second thought.
Linnea looked up appealingly. “I’m not sure I can handle Allen without their help.”
A warning stirred in Theodore. He pressed his hands more tightly against his armpits.
“You afraid of Allen?”
“Afraid?” Her gaze held his for a moment, then flickered aside. “No.”
He didn’t believe her. Not entirely. There was something she wasn’t telling him, something she didn’t want him to know. And even if she was telling him everything, there was still little Frances to consider. She had always been one of Theodore’s favorites, the one who never forgot her Uncle Teddy at Christmas. One year she had given him a pomander ball for his bureau — a pomander ball, of all things. He’d taken one sniff of the feminine thing and wondered what his brothers would think when he showed up smelling like orange and cloves in his clean overalls. But he’d slipped it into his bottom drawer until Frances smelled the fruit and spice on him one time and grinned wide in toothless approval. Then and only then had he removed it from his drawer.
With the recollection fresh in his mind, he made a sudden decision.
“I want you to tell everything you just told me to Kristian, then pick out a desk for him ‘cause he’ll be in school Monday morning. After that Allen better watch out if he decides to pick on Frances. But Monday’s the soonest I can spare him.”
Linnea’s lips dropped open in surprise.
“K... Kristian?” she repeated.
Theodore — stubborn — was a sight to behold! His eyes darkened to the color of wet Zahl coal, his jaw jutted, and his chest looked invincible as he stood like a Roman gladiator with his shoulders thrust back, lips narrowed with resolve. “What that little pip-squeak Severt needs is somebody bigger than he is to take him down a notch every now and then.”
She stared at him while a smile spread slowly upon her face. “Why, Theodore!”
“Why Theodore what?” he grumbled.
“You’ll give up your field hand to protect someone you care about?”
He dropped the warrier’s pose and gave her a quelling frown. “Don’t look so self-satisfied, teacher. Frances gave me a pomander ball for Christmas one year and—”
“A pomander ball!” Linnea squelched a giggle.
“Wipe that smile off your face. We both know Frances isn’t nearly as bright as the rest of the kids, but she’s got a heart of gold. I’d like to shake that Severt brat myself a time or two for pestering her. But don’t worry. From now on Kristian’ll be there to keep an eye on things.”
On Monday not only Kristian showed up at school, but all the other older boys as well. It appeared they’d been simultaneously released from field work as if by some mystical force.
Their coming brought a distinct change to the schoolroom. It seemed pleasantly full, taking on a busy air, a new excitement. It was especially apparent in the younger students, who idolized the older ones. There was a wonderful and unexpected camaraderie between the oldest boys and the very youngest children. Instead of shunning the small ones, the big boys indulgently included them, helped them, soothed them if they fell and hurt themselves, and, in general, tolerated their immature concerns with good-natured forebearance.
On the playground things were livelier. Gopher-hunting was finished for the season, and it wasn’t uncommon during noon recess for the entire school, including the teacher, to take part in a ball game.
Linnea loved it. There was a wholly different feeling to a country school than to a town school. She’d never experienced anything like it before. It was wholesome and rich with sharing, much the same as in an extended family. Watching a sixteen-year-old boy pick up and dust off a howling seven-year-old girl who’d hit the dust during a game of red rover was a rewarding experience. And watching an older girl teach a younger one the intricacies of making French braids brought a smile to Linnea’s lips. One day, looking on, she realized something astounding.
Why, they’re learning to be parents!
And as long as they were, they’d better learn right.
Now that all the boys were present, she took up the subject she’d been dying to introduce.
“Shakespeare may have said ‘Unquiet meals make ill digestions,’ but Shakespeare, I daresay, never sat down to the table with a bunch of hungry Norwegians. We shall today take up the topic of table etiquette, including the social amenity of making graceful mealtime conversation.”
The boys looked at each other and snickered. Steadfastly, she went on, pacing back and forth in front of the room, hands clasped dramatically at her waist. “But before we get to mat, we will start with the subject of burping.”
When the laughter died down, the students suddenly realized Miss Brandonberg was not laughing with them. She was standing with sternly controlled patience, waiting. When she spoke again, not a student in the room doubted her earnestness. “I will have it clearly understood that this schoolroom has heard the last unrestrained belch it will ever hear as long as I’m the teacher here.”
No more than five seconds of silence had ticked by when, from the direction of Allen Severt, came a loud, quick rifle shot of a burp that echoed to the rafters.
Laughter followed, louder than before.
Linnea strode down the aisle, stopped calmly beside Allen’s desk, and with a movement as quick as the strike of a rattler smacked his face so hard it nearly knocked him out of his seat.
The laughter stopped as if a guillotine blade had fallen.
In the quietest of voices, the teacher spoke. “The proper words, Mr. Severt, are, ‘I beg your pardon.’ Would you say them to your classmates, please.”
“I beg your pardon,” he parroted, still too stunned to do otherwise.
It was, indeed, the last burp Linnea ever heard at P.S. 28, but Allen Severt didn’t forget the slap.
October settled i
n, bringing the first frosts and the first hired hands. Linnea ambled out of the house one afternoon to find a stranger in conversation with Nissa by the windmill.
“Linnea, come on over! Meet Cope!”
Cope, it turned out, had been coming to work for the Westgaards for twelve years. A stubby, ruddy Polish farmer from central Minnesota, he took his nickname from the round can of Copenhagen snuff ever present in his breast pocket. Doffing a flat wool cap, he shook Linnea’s hand, called her something sounding like “a pretty little sitka,” spit out a streak of brown tobacco juice, and asked where them other bums was.
Cope was followed by Jim, then Stan, and a string of six others. Five of the men were repeaters, three of them new to the Westgaards.
One of the first-timers was a young buck who had drifted through from Montana wearing scarred cowboy boots, a battered Stetson, and a platter-sized silver belt buckle bearing a Texas longhorn. His hair was as dark and shiny as polished onyx, his smile as teasing as a Chenook wind.
As Cope had been, he too was talking with Nissa the first time Linnea saw him. She returned from school one afternoon with her grade book and papers to find the two of them outside, near the kitchen door.
“Well, who’s this now?” he drawled as she approached.
“This here’s Miss Brandonberg, the local schoolteacher. She boards with us.” Nissa nodded sideways at the man. “This here is Rusty Bonner, just hired on.”
From the moment her eyes met his, Linnea became flustered. In her entire life she’d never met a man so blatantly sexual.
“Miss Brandonberg,” he drawled, slow as cool honey. “Happy t’ meetcha, ma’am.” When he spoke, one could almost smell sagebrush and whang leather. With one thumb he pushed his Stetson back, revealing arresting black eyes that hooked downward at the corners as he grinned, and untamable black locks that teased his forehead. In slow motion he extended one hand, and even before she touched it, she knew what it would feel like. Wiry and hard and tough.