The Brushstroke Legacy (28 page)

Erika grinned back at her, one eyebrow raised. “Like she does to us, huh? Yeah.”

Ragni yawned again. “’Scuse me, I’m heading to bed. You want to go paint or draw on location tomorrow?”

“If you want. Do we really get to stay an extra week?” Enthusiasm leaked around Erika’s mask.

“Yeah, we do. I was totally shocked when James said to take more time.”

“We’ll be here for my birthday.”

“That’s right. I hadn’t thought of that. What would you like to do for your birthday?”

“Spend the day in the park. Ryan said there’s a prairie dog town, and they’ve seen lots of buffalo there, even calves.”

“We can do that. Take sketchbooks, et cetera, along?”

“Ryan said the barbecue on the Fourth of July will be great. We’re invited, you know.”

“I know.” Ragni started putting things back in the boxes. Pieces of her great-grandmother, pictures, things that made her real. Why had they not come out here on family vacations?

“Wish Mom could come out for the weekend.”

“Me too.” She folded the flaps in place to cover the tops.

“Ragni?”

“What?”

“You think Mom’s all right?” Erika studied a photograph she was putting back in the box.

“Sure, she said she just had a bug. Even your mother is entitled to catch a bug now and then.”

Erika shrugged. “Guess so.” Her shoulders said no problem, but her lower lip quivered.

“Why?” Ragni turned and leaned against the counter, folding her arms over her chest.

“Well, I think something was wrong before we left, and now you said she sounded sick. She thinks I don’t notice things, but I do. I just don’t tell her everything like I used to.”

You got that right.
Ragni nodded and stared down at her feet, now clad in thongs. Her toenails needed cutting. Her hair also needed cutting. But right now Erika was asking questions for which she had no answers. She shrugged. “I just don’t know. But the next time we are in town, let’s both get on the phone and see if we can figure it out, okay?”

“’Kay.” Erika dug a bottled water out of the cooler. “Ryan’s a hot-tie, don’tcha think?”

“Hottie?” Ragni suppressed a grin.
Like his uncle, perhaps?

“We’re going across the river for firewood,” Mr. Peterson announced at breakfast.

“You will come back for dinner, or should I fix something for you to take?”

“Fix something, if you please.”

“I will maybe find you some red rocks,” Hank added.

“Red rocks?” Mr. Peterson’s eyebrows drew together.

“For around my trees, to help protect them,” Nilda explained.

“Why red?”

“Because that will look pretty.”

“Black, gray, brown rocks, what’s the difference?” His mutter as he went out the door made her clamp her lips together. Anything she suggested lately made him mutter. In the week since he’d been to town, the two men had been out fixing the fence and repairing the corrals beyond the barn. The last couple of days they’d been hauling rocks back to a spot they’d cleared out near the windmill. When she’d asked about it, he’d grumbled that they were going to build the well-house she’d wanted to keep the milk and butter cool.

“I s’pose you’re going to be wanting another cow, too,” he’d said.

“Why would I want another cow? One is enough for us and some left over.”

“But when she goes dry, then what?”

“Why will she go dry?”
Is she dying?

He shook his head. “Uff da, don’t you know anything?”

“Not about farming I don’t.” She snapped her reply and then shut her mouth. No sense in antagonizing a person who was grumpy already.
But my land, how he can say the wrong things.

With the men gone from the house, Nilda went about fixing sandwiches from the bread she’d baked the day before, all the while her mind whirling on how to spend the gift of her day to herself. Just the day before she’d found a small red rock on the riverbank. As Hank had said, sandstone was soft rock, and she’d been able to scrape small bits off it with a chisel she found out in the shed. Now to pulverize it and mix it with the mineral oil Hank had brought back from town. She’d have red paint, or at least a semblance of red paint. A piece of charcoal from the stove would make black.

“Ma?” Eloise wandered from the bedroom, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She leaned her head against her mother’s thigh.

“Are you hungry?”

Eloise shook her head. “I want go outside.”

“Breakfast first. Go get your clothes on while I finish this.” She watched as Eloise drifted back to the bedroom. Nilda wrapped the sandwiches in a clean cloth, added the remainder of the cookies she’d baked the day before, and poured coffee into a jar, screwing the lid down tight. With the basket packed, she glanced around the kitchen, seeking something else to put in it. If she’d known they were going to do this, she’d have baked some beans or something to take along.

“Ready?” Hank stuck his head in the doorway.

“Ja, I hope this is enough.” She handed him the basket. “Is there something I can use to grind my rock into powder?”

“You might use a hammer and a flat rock. Sometime I’ll get a piece hollowed out for you.”

“Mange takk, Hank. You are so good to me.”

Hank paused with the basket in his hand. “Mr. Peterson, he’s not mad at you. You know the way he’s been lately. Sometimes he can get to worrying on something like an ornery dog with a bone, but he gets over it.”

“Thank you.” She watched him swing the basket into the back of the wagon and climb up over the wheel. They’d go downriver a mile or so to where there was a ford. Like the day they went to town, she wished she could go along. But only for one long moment. Then, humming a little song her mother had sung to her, she went to help Eloise get dressed. She would treat today as another gift and let the worries take care of themselves.

After cleaning up the kitchen, weeding the rows of feathery carrots, and hauling water for her trees, she sat Eloise down in the dirt to make mud pies and located both the hammer and a flat rock. After chiseling small pieces off the red stone, she tried pounding them with the hammer. They flew everywhere. She scraped off some more and used the head of the hammer to grind the grains to powder. Better, but terribly slow. Using her dampened paintbrush, she picked up the powder and added it to a few drops of mineral oil. More scraping and grinding, more powder. The oil developed a reddish tint, but she had so little that three brushstrokes would use it up. She tried daubing the oil on the stone, hoping it might sink in and soften the stone, but it
only made the stone shine—a beautiful red-brown color but not paint.

When her hand began to ache, she left off the grinding to make ham sandwiches for the two of them for dinner.
Lord, is it so wrong to want to paint designs on my cupboards and over the door, to draw pictures and want to paint them in? Mr. Peterson doesn’t like it, and l don’t understand why. He said it was a waste of time, but I work hard.
After grinding for a while again, she and Eloise took the path to the river and waded in at the edge, feeling the gravel beneath their feet.

Eloise giggled when she slipped and sat down. “Ma, come down.” She patted the water by her side.

Nilda reached between her legs, drew the back of her skirt forward and tucked it up in the front of the waistband of her skirt, thus hitching it up and out of her way. Then she leaned over, took Eloise’s hands, and whirled her around, splashing the water as she bobbed her in and out. Their laughter set the crow to cawing, which made them laugh even more. By the time they headed back for the house, they were both clean and wet so the breeze blew cool in spite of the sun. After putting Eloise down for a nap, Nilda again took up her grinding. When her wrist hurt enough to bother, she mixed all the powder into the oil, covered her experiment with the paper she had painted, put it in a box under her bed, and took out the ingredients to make a cake. Beating a cake was far easier than grinding red stone to powder and would make Mr. Peterson far happier.

Humming as she worked, she sliced ham for supper, set the rice to boiling, and mixed up the dry ingredients for corn bread. The men would be hungry when they got home so she milked early and had just set the corn bread in the oven when Eloise came running in.

“They coming.”

“Oh, good.” With a swift glance around, she made sure all was in place, the table set and a jar of daisies in the middle. The ham was already fried and kept warm in the skillet on the back of the stove, so she forked it onto a platter and sprinkled flour into the drippings. As soon as that browned nicely, she heard a “whoa” from outside, and the wagon creaked to a halt. After adding water to the browning mixture, she stirred hard to beat out any lumps. Lumpy gravy was not the hallmark of a good cook. The red-eye gravy simmered while she went to the door.

Both men were pulling red rocks from the wagon bed and setting them in the circles around each of her little trees. Short logs filled the rest of the wagon, piled so high that the men had strung ropes over the heap to keep them from rolling out. Both horses wore dark patches of sweat from the heavy pull.

“Oh, thank you. That looks so beautiful.”
Even better than I dreamed.

Hank smiled over at her, but Mr. Peterson only nodded.

“Supper is almost ready.”

“Good thing. I could eat a horse.”

“Or a steer maybe.” Hank set the final rock in place. “Just right.”

“Ma, it’s pretty!” Eloise beamed up from one man to the other. “Pretty.”

“You think it’s pretty, little one?” Joseph Peterson spoke gently, as if he always conversed with the blond sprite. “You should know.”

Nilda blinked back the moisture that flooded her eyes. Grumpy with her didn’t matter when the big, dark man looked down at the
little girl, his mouth twitching in what might have been a smile. Or at least the beginning of one.

“Were you a good girl today?” Mr. Peterson asked.

Eloise nodded. “Ja.”

“Then would you like a horsy ride?”

Eloise looked over to her mother and then raised her arms to be lifted up. “You horsy?”

Hank smiled at Nilda, swung up on the seat of the wagon, and clucked the horses off to leave the wagon at the woodshed.

Nilda watched as Mr. Peterson held on to Eloise’s tiny feet and walked around the yard, her sitting up proud as could be.

“See, Ma. Horsy ride!” The rest of her words were unintelligible, but none were needed.

Nilda hurried back to the stove to stir the gravy and move it to the cooler end. She checked the corn bread and returned to watch Mr. Peterson swing Eloise to the ground.

“There you go.”

Eloise held on to his hand and tugged him toward the door. “Suppah ready, Mistah Peterson.”

“I have to wash up. Hank too. You go on ahead.”

Nilda could feel her smile warming all the way to her heart. He and Eloise. Playing.

Her hand brushed his shoulder when she set the platter of ham on the table. More warmth, of perhaps a slightly different kind, streamed up her arm.

“It looks like you got a lot of wood.” Nilda sat down after serving the others.

“There’s plenty more up there,” Mr. Peterson said. “Though we could wait until winter and skid the trees out.”

“Is it far away?”

“No. But that will be easier on the horses.”

“I’m thinking to make a stone boat for hauling the rock for the wellhouse.” Hank spread butter on a square of corn bread, then juneberry jam. After one bite, he looked to Nilda and said, “This is mighty fine.”

Mr. Peterson nodded. “Good meal.”

Two words. All he said was two words, but she felt lit from within. First playing with Eloise and now complimenting her cooking. What had happened to the man up there cutting wood? Not to mention bringing back the red rocks.
Maybe he needs to go up there every day.

July slipped into August, and the final nails were pounded into the wellhouse roof. Water was now piped from the pump to the rock tank inside the stone structure and on out to the cattle trough through a pipe in the other end. Just stepping into the dim building made one think of spring weather, not the hot days outside. Mr. Peterson made the building large enough to hang a deer or beef, and made shelves along the walls on which Nilda could set crocks and jars for storing food for winter.

“Once winter comes, you just set milk in the window and it gets plenty cold, but this should do for now.”

“I cannot thank you enough, Mr. Peterson.” She smiled up at
him. “What a fine builder you are.” Resting her hand on his shoulder as she poured coffee during meals or refilled serving bowls had become a habit, a habit that even made him smile at her at times. But right now, she wanted to throw her arms around his neck and hug him. Sometimes she wondered if he knew how to be happy—or if perhaps he had once known but somehow forgotten.

That night, they had the last of the peas, creamed with carrots and new potatoes. Nilda also simmered the browned grouse Hank had provided, and served the corn bread that had become their favorite.

“Mistah P?” Eloise tugged on his sleeve. “I have more, please?” She held up her dish.

“Corn bread?”

“Ja, corn bread.”

“And jam?”

“Ja, jam.”

Nilda watched him slice a piece of corn bread open, add butter and jam, and put it on Eloise’s plate. Never would she have dreamed this would happen.
Not only has he changed, but Eloise
—
why, one would hardly recognize her for the frail creature who came off the train.
She ran everywhere, running on her tiptoes as if about to fly. She carried a stick with her, and when the rooster flew at her, she whacked him with the stick. He’d learned to leave her alone, but she still took her stick into the chicken yard.