“Never,” James answered. “Are you gonna teach me?”
“First thing in the morning. Maybe Anna would like to learn, too.”
Then again, maybe Anna would not, thought the one in question, while her brother went on with his questions. “Why do you keep a goat? Why not a cow like everybody else?”
“Cows are truly expensive here, and they like to stray away into the woods like the pigs. Then you must find them each day when it is time to milk them. Goats are like pets. They do not stray as far, and they are good company.”
“I never thought about a goat being like a pet before.”
“Goats make maybe the best pets of all. They are loyal and quiet and do not eat much. During the winter blizzards, there were many times when I was grateful for the company of my Nanna to listen to me talk and never complain when I tell her how impatient I am to have neighbors, and how I miss my family back in Sweden and how I think spring will never come. Nanna, she just chews her cud and puts up with me.” His eyes strayed to Anna as he spoke, then back to the boy.
“Is that your goat's name—Nanna?”
“Ya. You will love her when you meet her.”
“I can't wait! Tell me about the rest. Tell me what else we're gonna do tomorrow besides milk the goat.”
Karl laughed softly at the boy's eagerness, so like his own since he had come here. “Tomorrow we begin felling trees for the log house, but by the end of the day I do not think you will be as pleased as you are right now.”
“Will Anna help, too?”
“That is up to Anna,” Karl said.
She looked up quickly, anxious to be included in anything that would get her out of this dingy cabin and into the sun. “Could I, Karl?” she asked, fearing he meant to leave her to watch goat's milk turn into cheese on the chimney corner. But Karl read only happiness into her question.
“Anna will help, too,” Karl said. “Even for three the work will be hard.”
“So we were right, and you'll be glad I'm here,” James boasted a little.
“Ya, I think so. Tomorrow I will be glad you are here.”
But tonight was a different matter. Even though Karl enjoyed talking with the boy, he was ever aware of bedtime drawing near. The fire was spitting and settling. Karl stretched his legs out toward it, forcing himself to relax back into his chair. From his pocket he fished a pipe and leather pouch.
Anna watched his movements, learning something new—he smoked a pipe.
He filled it slowly, while he and James talked about the cabin and all it would take to build it. The smell of the tobacco smoke drifted lazily, and James leaned his chin more and more heavily upon his hand. Now and then Karl's gaze moved toward Anna, but she would look quickly away toward the fire. There, on the hob, hung the black cauldron Karl had filled with water after supper.
James revived when Anna arose to clear away their few dishes, but soon he nodded heavily once more.
The squeak of Karl's chair called out as he got up, saying, “The boy will fall off his bench soon if I do not make a bed for him. I will go to the barn and bring back a forkful of hay.”
She turned her eyes to Karl, trying not to look skittish and seventeen. “Yes,” she said.
He left her standing gawkily, and within minutes returned, bringing a wooden fork laden with sweet-smelling hay. “It grows wild in the meadows,” Karl said, looking squarely at Anna, then back down to his chore of piling it high and spreading it with a buffalo robe.
James dove for the shakedown immediately, while Karl leaned on the fork and watched him. “Do you think you have time to take your shoes off before you sleep, lad?” James doggedly removed his shoes.
Again Karl's eyes met Anna's briefly, and he said, “I will take the fork back where it belongs.” When he left, she turned and stared at the pot of water, tested it quickly and found it was getting warm much too fast.
“Anna?” She jumped at the softly spoken word and turned, unaware that Karl had returned.
“Yes?”
He realized they had never had a chance to talk alone, to acquaint themselves with each other. Wildly, he searched his mind for something to give them time to do so. A woman should not jump so when she hears her man's voice, he thought. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Tea?” she repeated stupidly, then quickly added, “Oh, tea . . . yes.” The relief was evident in her voice.
“Sit down. I will make it for you. I will teach you how.”
She sat, watching him move about the room, now and then casting an anxious glance at her brother who was snuggled comfortably on his makeshift bed. At last Karl brought their two cups to the table and pushed hers over to her.
“Rose hips,” he said quietly.
“What?” She looked up, startled.
“The tea is made of rose hips. First you must squash them in the cup, then add the hot water.”
“Oh.”
“Have you never had tea of rose hips before?”
“The only tea I ever had was . . . well, tea. Real tea. But not too often.”
“Here there is little real tea or coffee either. But rose hip is almost better. When winters get long, rose hips will keep you from getting scurvy.” Achingly, he wondered why he rambled on about rose hips. But his tongue had a mind of its own. “Wild mulberry hips will do the same, but they are not so plentiful here as rose.” She took a sip of her drink. “How do you like it?”
She found it delightful, which gratified him.
“Anna,” he said, leaning on an elbow across the table from her, “there is so much here in Minnesota, I cannot tell you how good a life we will have. Why, I could walk out into the woods right now and pick you more herbs for tea than you could remember by morning. There is wild strawberry, chamomile, basswood, salsify . . . Have you ever tasted comfrey, Anna?” She shook her head no. Karl promised, “I will show you how to make comfrey tea. Comfrey is so good I grow it in my garden. I will show you, too, how to dry it. You will love comfrey tea.”
“I'm sure I will, Karl,” she said, realizing all of a sudden that he was just as nervous as she.
“I have so much to show you, Anna. Have you ever caught a bass on a line and felt him fight you so hard the line would cut your hand if you let him take it through your palm? You will love to fish, Anna, and so will the boy. In Skäne where I grew up, my papa and I fished much, and my brothers, too. Here there are as many fish and more than in Sweden, and wild fowl and deer and elk. Anna, I have seen an elk in my woods! I did not know what it was, but my friend Two Horns told me. It was magnificent. Did you ever imagine a place with so much? In the autumn when geese fly south from Canada, there are battalions of them. So many a man can bring down one with each shot. And the way things grow here, Anna, you will not believe it. Potatoes grow to be the size of squash and squash grow to the size of pumpkins and pumpkins—”
Suddenly Karl stopped, realizing he was rambling on about his favorite subject, quite carried away by it. “I think I chatter on like the squirrels,” he said sheepishly, dropping his eyes to the tabletop only to find her hands tense upon her cup.
“It's all right. You had forgotten to mention the squirrels anyway.” Her reply brought smiles to both of their faces before she again dropped her gaze to her cup and said quietly, “It's very different here from Boston. Already I'm beginning to see the difference. I think it'll be good here for James. He seems to like it already.”
A moment of silence went quivering by before Karl quietly asked, “And you, Anna . . . how about you?”
They studied each other across the table while the fire lit a single side of each of their faces, the far sides cast into complete shadow. And so it seemed to Karl and Anna, as if only half of what each was, was illuminated for the other to see so far. There was yet much that remained in shadow, but only time would bring it to light.
“It . . . it takes some getting used to . . .” Anna dropped her eyes. “But little by little I think I am.”
He wondered what
she would like for him to say, what was the best way. After some time he could only think to ask, “Are you tired, Anna?”
She looked sharply at James, but he was still. “A little,” she answered uncertainly.
“The water is warm.” Of course it was warm. It was hot enough to have steeped rose hip tea. Together they looked at the pale threads of steam rising from the kettle. “But I have only homemade lye soap.”
“Oh, that . . . that's fine!” she said too brightly. He made no move to leave and she sat glued to her chair.
“The basin is on the bench outside. I will fill it for you.”
“Thank you.”
He took the kettle from the hook and went outside.
By the time she followed him out, he was gone somewhere into the dark. She washed herself faster than she ever had in her life. In spite of how she hated baths, she had to admit it felt more than tolerable to be rid of the travel grit. She glanced toward the clearing, but there were only fireflies skipping in the dark. From the barn came a gentle nicker, then all was quiet.
She slipped back into the house, found her nighty in the trunk, put it on and stood uncertainly, looking first at James asleep on the floor, then at the bed. Resolutely, she crossed to it, flung the buffalo robe back and put one knee on the mattress. But she stopped still at a crackling noise—cornhusks filling the mattress. My God! What is that! Gingerly, she moved her knee and the crackling sounded again. There was nowhere else to go. So with her mind set, she scampered the rest of the way in and pulled the robe up to her neck.
The door moved, its shadow widening, then narrowing on the sod walls, before Karl closed it with the wooden thud of the latch falling into place. Carefully, he drew the latchstring in. He came to the side of the bed, no longer able to ignore the sheaf of sweet clover, which still lay where he'd placed it yesterday morning. Her eyes followed him as he leaned to pick it up from beside her head.
“This is sweet clover,” he said dumbly.
“It smells good,” she choked.
“There is no sweeter smell in all of Minnesota.” Then he swallowed. “Oh, Anna, I meant it as a welcome, but after I left it here I thought perhaps I should not have done so. I thought . . .” He looked down at the clover in his hands. “. . . I thought it might scare you.”
“No . . . no, it didn't.” But her body was shaking so beneath the buffalo robe, its nap of hairs was trembling.
He turned and went to the fireplace and thrust the stalk of sweet clover into it. She watched it flare, brightening the room momentarily, throwing Karl's silhouette into sharp relief. Hands on hips, he studied the fire while she studied his back. Then he bent to bank the coals, sending sparks popping their way up the chimney. He hesitated, kneeling there in thought, while the room's illumination waned to a gentle glow. But there was no more to be done, nowhere to go but to bed. He ran a hand through his hair.
Her eyes stayed fixed on the pale fireglow as he returned to the side of the bed and, with his back to her, slipped from his clothing and into the spot beside her. The husks crackled. The ropes creaked. The tick readjusted to his weight, and she found a new force threatening to roll her in his direction. She tightened her shoulder muscles to keep it from happening.
They lay on their backs, staring at the logs of the ceiling. At last Karl turned his face to her, studied her profile, then whispered, “Look at me, Anna, while there is still enough light left to see by.”
She did, wide-eyed and undeniably frightened, remembering that other time. She tried to focus on Karl Lindstrom's face, but only the scalding memory of Saul McGiver came to her, and with it dread and shame.
“It is hard for me to believe you are here at last,” Karl whispered. “The way we started—I want to forget all that. I want to do things right with you. I want this to be right.”
She was afraid even to swallow, let alone talk.
He wondered if she knew his turmoil. He found her hand and brought it to his chest and pressed it palm down upon his hammering heart, surprising her.
His heart is going crazy just like mine is! she thought disbelievingly.
“You are so young, Anna. Seventeen . . . no more than a child, when I had expected a woman.”
“Seventeen is . . . is old enough,” she whispered in a strained little tone.
“Do you know what you say, Anna?” He wondered if she truly understood.
She wondered if she truly understood. She said what she felt compelled to say to a husband who had all rights to her. Knowing what her duty was, she had answered as she did. But she did not know what Karl's response would be. Memories of the past and fear of the future gripped her. As long as they talked, nothing else happened, so she went on, “I know lots of girls who got married at seventeen.” But she really didn't. She only knew lots of slatternly women who—at thirty, thirty-five and forty—had long ago given up hope of marrying out of their profession.
“Anna, in Sweden things like this are not done—two strangers agreeing to marry as we have done. If we lived in Sweden and I could meet you first in the village, I would buy for you a silk hair ribbon and maybe tease and laugh with you a bit. You would have a chance to say to yourself, “yes, I think I like getting a silk hair ribbon from Karl' or “I will take no more hair ribbons from Karl.' But if you took the ribbons with a smile and tucked them into your little hanging pocket on your waist belt, I would next take you to meet my mor and far so you could see for yourself where I come from. I had always thought to court a girl in the way I remember my brothers doing in Skäne.” He rubbed his palm over the back of her hand, remembering, while his heartbeat thundered on.
Anna's only opinion of men in this element—in bed—was tainted too vividly by growing up where she had, among people with whom flesh was a business and nothing more. But slowly the realization was dawning that Karl was just as uncertain about this as she was, that his heart was hammering not solely from arousal, but in hesitancy, too.
“I used to imagine something like that,” she admitted, “when I was younger.”
“Ya, I think all girls do. I thought to marry a golden-haired girl whose braids were pulled up beneath a small white starched hat with deep pleats, and who wore her embroidered apron on Midsummer's Eve, with the laces tied criss-cross upon her waist girdle. Our families would be there, and there would be dancing and laughter, much laughter.” His voice had grown reminiscent, wistful.
Anna somehow found herself, too, growing wistful. But the dancing and laughter, she had observed in her tender years, were nothing of which she wanted a part. She had not observed them in such a heartwarming setting as Karl's homeland. She had never had a starched hat, nor a girlish apron and cross-ties. She had never been courted by young swains on the village green, nor had she been given ribbons or smiles or invitations to their homes to meet their mamas and papas. She was not a girl given to fits of self-pity, but at the moment she was fighting the urge to indulge in it.
But Karl was handsome and earnest and sincere, and the murmur of his voice in the gloaming made it somehow easy for Anna to voice some of her girlhood dreams.
“I thought to get married in St. Mark's. I always felt good in St. Mark's. Sometimes I would dream of marrying a soldier in high boots and braids, with epaulettes on his shoulders.”
“A soldier, Anna?” He knew he was far from a soldier.
“Well, there were always soldiers around Boston. Sometimes I'd see them.”
It grew still—both the nightshadows and Karl's hand grew still.
“There are no soldiers here,” Karl said, disappointed.
“There are no blonde braids either,” she said timorously, surprising her husband once again.
Karl swallowed. “I think I can get along without blonde braids,” he whispered. Beneath Anna's hand his flesh rose and fell more rapidly.
Despite his seeming gentleness, she was afraid to give him the reply he sought, even though a soldier in epaulettes was at this moment the farthest thing from her mind.
H
e rolled onto his side, facing her. “I think I go too fast, Anna. I am sorry.” He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed its palm—warm lips, soft breath for the briefest moment touching her—then laid it on the pillow between them, quite where the sweet clover had lain before. “But I have been alone so long, Anna. There has been no one to talk with, no one to touch, no one to touch me, and at times I thought I would die of it. I would sometimes bring the goat inside, when the blizzards blew fierce in the winter, and to her I would talk, and often I talk to my horses. And to touch their velvet noses is good, or to stroke the ears of the goat, but it is not the same. Always I dream of the day when I have more than the animals to talk to. More than the bleat of my goat for an answer.”
Again, he took her hand to his lips, but differently this time, as if its warmth were the cure of him. The way he placed her fingers upon his lips, then moved the hand upward as if to wash himself with its touch, she felt glorified and undeserving. He whispered throatily, “Anna, oh Anna, do you know how good just your fingers on me feel?”
Then he pulled her palm against the length of his long cheek. It was warm, smooth, and she remembered its appearance as her hands fit its contours. Her fingertips brushed his eyebrow and, for a moment, his closed eyelid, and she felt a faint quiver there that made her yearn for light so she might see such a surprising vision as a man who held deep-pent emotions within.
“I never knew . . . You never told me all these things in your letters.”
“I thought I would scare you away. Anna, I do not mean to scare you. You are such a child and I have been alone too long.”
“But I made the agreement, Karl,” she said, determinedly.
“But you shake so, Anna.”
“So do you,” she whispered.
Yes, Karl thought, I shake from a little eagerness, a little timidity, maybe a little fright of scaring her off. It was his first time, and he wanted it to be by mutual consent—but more—by mutual love. He could wait a while to earn those things from her, but he had been alone too long to take away nothing with him this night. He reached to curl a hand around her neck, stroking her chin with his thumb, filled with wonder at the softness of her skin after feeling only his own for so long.