Karl left his home, glad to be doing so for the first time since he'd built it. He watched the broad rumps of Belle and Bill, time and again forcing himself to loosen his hold on the reins. He tried to put Anna's harsh words from his mind, then tried even harder to remember them exactly as she'd said them. He tried to put his own angry responses from his mind. Then, in the most human of ways, thought of sharper, wittier, truer retorts he might have made that would have put her in her place far better.
He wondered what her place was. He told himself he had made a mistake bringing her here. Thinking of the boy, he told himself he was wrong. The cruel words he had spoken to James made Karl ache in a way he had not remembered aching for a long, long time. How unfair he had been to the boy when it was the thing between himself and Anna that was what he railed against. About that much Anna had been right. He had treated her brother unforgivably.
Karl admitted that he loved the boy as much as any father might. Throughout the summer it had been a sweet thing to have the lad working beside him, following him with those wide eyes that always said how anxious he was to learn, to please. And how well the lad had done. There was not a thing for which Karl could fault James.
But when he thought about Anna, Karl found he could more readily place the brunt of the blame on her instead of himself. The cutting things she had said burned his innards. She had called him a big, stupid Swede, taunting him with an imitation of his dialect.
I am Swede, he thought. Is this wrong, to speak my native language with the Johansons? To bring back only a little bit of the place I loved, still love—the place where I was born? Is it wrong for me to sit at their table and eat foods which bring back the picture of Mama cooking, putting food on our table, slapping lightly any hand that reached for a bowl before Papa had come to his seat?
He longed for the solace of his deep-seeing father, who was a teacher such as Karl never thought to be. If his papa was here, he would make Karl see things clearer. His papa would puff on his pipe and think long and hard, weighing one side against the other before offering any advice. Papa had taught him this was the wisest way. Yet, today Anna had taunted him for this very deliberate slowness, had called him dumb.
But most painful of all had been the last thing Anna had said about the bear, intimating he cared so little about her that such a thing would not bother him. Her words were weapons, he knew, weapons wielded by instinct, not by premeditation. Still, like all people when they are hurt by the tongue of another, Karl flayed himself with her words instead of admitting why she had spoken them.
At the Johansons', candles were burning in the new log house and everyone was at the supper table. When they heard Karl's wagon pull in, the entire family left its meal to come outside and gather him in.
“Why, Karl, this is a surprise,” Olaf greeted.
“I thought we would get an earlier start in the morning if I came up this way and maybe slept in your wagon tonight.”
“Why, sure, Karl, sure! But you will sleep in no wagon, you will sleep in the cabin you helped us build!”
“No, I do not want to put nobody out,” he assured them.
“You want to see somebody put out, you try sleeping in our wagon, Karl Lindstrom!” Katrene scolded, shaking a finger at him as if he were a naughty child.
Their table was like his own family's table had been in Sweden. There was much laughter, much food, many smiles, big hands reaching this way and that, the fire glowing, and all around Karl's ears, his beloved Swedish.
Karl found himself more aware of Kerstin than he had ever been before. He had never singled her out any more than the others. But Anna's unfair accusation now made him do so. Kerstin laughed while fetching more food from the ledge of the fireplace, tweaking Charles' hair when he scolded her for letting the bowls grow empty. The firelight reflected off the gold coronet of her braids, and Karl found himself wondering if Anna had been right and he had been conscious of Kerstin's femininity all along. When she stretched between two broad shoulders to place the wooden bowl on the table, he caught the outline of her full breast against the firelight. But Kerstin caught his eye as she swung back, and he put his thoughts in order where they belonged.
When the meal was over, there came the supreme joy of sharing pipes together, man to man. The fragrant smoke drifted through the cabin—postlude to mealtime, prelude to evening, while the women put the cabin in order, washing dishes, sweeping the wood floor with willow broom. Talk slowed. Katrene, Kerstin and Nedda removed their aprons for the night, a thing Karl remembered so well his mother and sisters doing. Always they had worn a copious apron such as Kerstin had just removed.
“Papa,” she said now, “you have filled Karl's nose with smoke long enough. I want to take him outside in the fresh air for a little while.”
Karl looked up at Kerstin, startled. Never before had the two of them been alone together. To be so tonight, after he had been thinking what he had been thinking, during supper, was not a good idea, he thought.
“Come, Karl. I want to show you the new pen we have made for the geese,” she said casually, and grabbed up her shawl and walked out of the cabin, leaving Karl little choice but to follow.
What could he do but excuse himself and trail behind her down where the new split rails showed white in the blueing evening. Yes, there was a new pen all right, but it was not about it which they spoke.
“How is Anna?” Kerstin opened, without preamble.
“Anna?” Karl said. “Oh, Anna is just fine.”
“Anna is just fine?” Kerstin repeated, but her inflection made her meaning clear. “Karl, your place is no more than a half-hour's ride up the road. There was no need for you to save a half hour by staying at our house tonight.”
“No, there was not,” he admitted.
“So,” Kerstin said quietly, “I was right. Anna is not so fine as you would have me believe.”
Karl nodded. The geese were making soft clucks, settling down with their plump breasts looking plumper as they squatted to the ground. They were a pair, a goose and a gander. Karl watched as they wriggled themselves into comfort, closely nestled beside each other before the goose tucked her head beneath her wing.
“Karl, I must ask you something,” Kerstin said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Ya,” he said, absently studying the fowl.
“Do you like me?”
Karl could feel the red creeping up his collar even before he turned to look squarely at Kerstin. “Well . . . ya, of course I like you,” he answered, not knowing what else to say.
“And now I am going to ask you something else,” she said, meeting his eyes with a steadiness that unsteadied him. “Do you love me?”
Karl swallowed. Never in his experience had any woman been so bold with him. He didn't know what to say without hurting her feelings.
Kerstin smiled, unchagrined, turning her palms up. “There, you have given me your answer. You have given yourself your answer. You do not love me.” She turned aside and leaned her arms on the top of the fence. “Forgive me, Karl, if I speak to you in a straightforward manner. But I think it is time. Tonight at the supper table I thought I saw you looking at me in a way a woman senses is—Let me say different. But I think it is because of something between you and Anna, not something between you and me.”
“I . . . I am sorry, Kerstin, if I offended you.”
“Oh, for heaven's sake, Karl, do not be so foolish. I was not offended. If things were different, I would be outright proud. But I do not bring it up to make you feel uncomfortable. I bring it up to get you to talk about whatever is wrong between you and Anna.”
“We have had terrible words,” he admitted.
“I thought as much. And, forgive me again, Karl. I do not mean to sound as if I think so much of myself. It is not that. But as soon as I met Anna, I knew this fight was coming. I felt a kind of jealousy from her. Between women this is something that can be felt almost immediately. I thought right away it might bring about disagreements between
you and her. Tonight when you rode in, I thought to myself, it has happened. Anna has said something to Karl at last. Am I right, Karl?”
“Ya,” he said, looking down again at the geese.
“And you have stomped off like a stubborn Swede and come here to pout?”
It was all right for Kerstin to call him a stubborn Swede, because she was one, too. She was proving it right now by not letting up on him. He found enough goodwill in him to laugh lightly at her badgering. Then he sighed and said, “I am a little mixed up about Anna right now. I needed to get away to think.”
“It is all right to think, as long as you think things that are true. What I believe you were thinking inside our house at the supper table, that was not true, Karl.”
“I did not know that what I was thinking showed so much, and I am sorry, Kerstin. It was wrong of me. It was Anna who put those things in my head.” But suddenly he stopped, contrite, a little embarrassed. “Oh, it is not like it sounds . . . not that I do not admire you, Kerstin, but—”
“I know what it is you are saying, Karl. I understand. Go on about Anna.”
“What Anna and I fought about . . .” But Karl's words trailed away.
“You do not need to tell me, I think some of the things that bother Anna, I have already guessed. I guessed them when you came here with her the first time. But, Karl, you must look at us with her eyes. I could tell how she felt that day, coming in here and all of us so excited we were talking in Swedish, and she not understanding a word of it. All that talk about the homeland, and things we all loved back there. When we talk in English, this is what she hears. And then, when we came to your place I learned even more things about your Anna. She feels like she does not please you because things around her house come hard for her. I could tell when Mama and I worked in her kitchen she wished to feel comfortable in it, like we did. Something tells me Anna has not had much experience at the things I have been taught since I was a little girl.”
“She has had a much different bringing up than us.”
“I guessed that. The way she dresses tells that and more.”
“She grew up in Boston and did not have a mother that was like yours and mine.” Even the word Boston was hard for him to say now.
“Boston is far from here. How did you meet her?”
“This is part of our trouble. Anna and I did not meet before we got married. I . . . we agreed to get married through letters we wrote to each other. Here in America they would call Anna my mail-order bride.”
“I have heard of such things, but I did not know this about you two.”
“We were only married at the beginning of this summer.”
“Why, Karl, you are newlyweds!”
Karl thought that over a moment. “I guess this is true,” he said, though it seemed like the strain between Anna and himself was years old.
“And you are having some troubles like all newlyweds have, getting used to each other, is all.”
“There seems to be much that neither of us will ever get used to in each other.”
“Oh, Karl, I think you are looking on the dark side. So you have had your first fight. You are being too hard on both Anna and yourself. Things take time, Karl. You and Anna have not had much of that yet.”
“Why would she say such a thing about . . . about . . . well, about you and me?”
Kerstin was a girl who met things head-on. “What was it she said, Karl? I do not know.”
“That I—” He leaned on the fence rail, too, rubbing one big hand in the palm of the other. “That I would rather be here with you and your blueberry cobbler and your braids than with her.”
Kerstin laughed, surprising Karl. “Oh, Karl, it is so plain! You are just a little bit foolish, I think. She sees you coming here to everything that is familiar, and I can do all the things and be all the things you have left behind in Sweden. Naturally, Anna is going to think you want those things when she sees how happy and gay you are here with us. She does not see that it is all of us who make you happy instead of just me. Do you know what she asked me to do when we were at your house?”
“No, but I hope it was to teach her how to make decent bread, though.”
“There, Karl! You see! She tries very much to please you, but things like that come hard for her. No, it was not that which she asked me. It was to teach her how to put her hair up in braids.”
Karl turned to Kerstin genuinely startled. “Braids?” he repeated. “On my Anna?”
“Yes, braids, Karl. Now why do you think a woman with such lovely curling hair as Anna would want to put it up in these awful braids?”
He remained silent.
“Karl, why do you think she went out picking blueberries for you?”
But he was busy trying to imagine Anna in braids, which would certainly not suit her at all.
“Do not be a fool,” Kerstin went on. “Anna loves you very much. An Irish girl who tries so hard to be a Swede because she thinks it is what her man wants . . . Why, Karl, don't you see?”
“But I never told her she needed to pick blueberries or wear her hair in braids to please me. Once, a long time ago, I even told her braids were not important.”
“A long time ago, Karl? How long ago? Before I came here?”
“Why, sure, but what does that matter?”
“What matters is that she sees you happier at our place than at your own. Even I see that. It should be the other way around.”
“There are things you do not know, Kerstin.”
“There always are, Karl. There always are. But I know a woman in love when I see one, and I know she tries very hard to please you. But I also know you hold yourself back from being pleased by her for some reason. This is why Anna accused you of liking me more than you do.”
Karl lowered his face and covered it with callused hands, his elbows braced upon the fence rail.
“Anna should know better,” he admitted raggedly.
“Why? When you have left her in anger? It is she who is maybe suffering more than you right now, wondering where you are and when you will come back. You need to go back and make things right with her, Karl.”
He knew she was right. Knowing this, he admitted the rest of his day's transgressions. “I shouted at the boy today, too. I fixed it real good with both of them, I think.”
“So, what is wrong with saying you are sorry when you get back, Karl? James needs to learn that people make mistakes. People do not always use good sense in everything they do. Surely the boy . . . and Anna, too . . . will see that and forgive you.”
“She said she could not get far enough away from me and said I would not care if she was killed by a bear.”
“Sure, I'll bet she did. But that is only part of the story. The part you left out is what went before. I do not even need to hear all of it to know you both said things you did not mean. But, Karl, you must remember Anna is human, too. She makes mistakes. She is probably sorry right now she made that one.”
Yes, she is sorry for that one and the other one she cannot live with until I forgive her. Karl leaned his face in his hands, remembering Anna the night they had found her treed by the wolves. He remembered her sobbing in his arms, saying over and over again, “I'm sorry, Karl, I'm sorry.”
He had known then it was not the getting lost, not that alone, for which she was sorry. She was telling him how sorry she was for everything, all the lies, all the things she saw as failures in herself, but mostly, for the thing he could not—no, now Karl knew the fact was that he would not—forgive.
And he, stubborn Swede that he was, had deliberately rejected her apology and held himself higher than her by doing so. How well he'd been taught by his mama that self-praise stinks. By refusing to accept Anna's honest efforts to please him, he had made himself better than her. And he'd clung to his stubbornness because of something she had done in desperation long before he had even met her.
“You know, Karl,” Kerstin was saying, “I have reconsidered, and I think you could not g
o to buy windows at a better time. I think that a couple days away from Anna is going to do you both a world of good.”
Chapter Eighteen
James could build a beautiful fire by now. He could curl shavings off a piece of wood and make them as thin as paper, just like Karl. He could get a spark off his flint with the very first stroke. He could lay on the kindling without smothering the first flame, and add split logs until there was a hearty blaze. And through all this, not so much as a wisp of smoke backed up into the sod house.
But he caught himself squatting on his haunches, gazing into his freshly built fire as he'd so often seen Karl do, and immediately he arose and turned his back on it.
“Why'd he do it, Anna?” he asked defeatedly at last.
“Oh, James, it had nothing to do with you,” she said in a soft, sorry voice. “It's something between Karl and me. Something we need to get straightened out, is all.”
“But he was so mad at me, Anna.” The hurt was intense, tangible in his voice.
“No, he wasn't. He was mad at me.” Anna gazed ruminatively into the fire, seeing Karl's angry back as he drove out of the clearing, wishing she could call him back and apologize for her words which had hurt him cruelly when he deserved her love and respect instead.
“For what?”
“I can't tell you everything about it. Come and eat your supper.”
Brother and sister sat in dismal companionship unable to eat, each of them at once angry at yet longing for the presence of the man who made this . . . who undeniably made this . . . home.
“It's got something to do with Barbara being what she was, doesn't it?”
“In a way, yes.”
“I never would've guessed it about Karl. I mean . . .” James paused, confused, then went on. “Well, he's just about . . . he's just about the most perfect person I ever knew. He just doesn't seem like he'd blame us for what she was.”
Anna reached to touch his hand. “Oh, James, he doesn't. Honest, he doesn't. It's not because of that, really. It's mostly me. I can't—well, I can't do much of anything around this place. I can't cook right or dress right or wear my hair right or any of the stuff that a wife oughta be able to do. Barbara didn't teach me much of that and every time I try to do something for him, it turns out bad.” She stared into the fire and tears glimmered on her lids as she remembered all the disasters resulting from her attempts to please Karl.