Anna glanced up now as Karl's form filled the doorway, shutting out the daylight behind his wide shoulders. A queer, weak sensation flooded through her. He looked like a blond Nordic god, bigger than life, with that sack of flour on his shoulder and the muscles of his chest bulging as he paused uncertainly before coming all the way in.
Sudden shyness overwhelmed her. She longed to rush to him and say, "Hold me, Karl," to feel his strong, tan arms take her against his chest.
"Hello, Anna," he said quietly. He had not thought he'd missed her this much, but the things his heart was doing told him how empty the last two days had been. He could tell she, too, was very tense and nervous.
When she spoke, her voice trembled. "Hello, Karl."
She wondered if he would stand in the doorway all evening.
"You're home," she at last thought to say. It sounded inane.
"Ya. I am home."
"And James says you've brought the gun for him?"
"Ya. A boy needs his own gun, so I bought him the best--a Henry repeater. But he had better not be thinking of using that hatchet to open the crate. Go out to the tack room and get a clawhammer, boy, like I taught you."
"Yessir!" James obeyed, and nearly knocked Karl back out the door.
There was a fire and something was cooking. Anna turned to stir it. The sack on Karl's shoulder grew heavy, and he passed just behind her to set it on a free spot on the floor.
His very nearness made her pulse throb faster, but she stirred the pot in order to appear busy, then clapped the cover on, saying, "I'll get some sticks from the woodpile to put under that sack."
"It can wait," Karl said, straightening.
"But the bugs will get it." She headed for the door.
"Not that fast."
His words and their boyish note of appeal stopped her halfway to the door. She turned to face Karl, then stood looking at him, and he at her, while time roared backward to the last time they had faced each other across this confined space.
"I have some small things in the wagon you could carry in for me." He glanced apologetically at the simmering pot. "It wouldn't take but a minute."
She nodded dumbly, then whirled toward the door, leaving him with his heart in a turmoil.
Is she afraid of me? thought Karl with fading hope. Have I fixed it so she wants nothing but
to run from me like a brown-eyed chipmunk
493 every time I come near her? Does she think I ran off to Kerstin to spite her?
When he came within inches of her to climb on the wagonbed, she skittered sideways to give him wide berth. He picked up a parcel from behind the seat, walked back to the open end of the wagon and stood above her, looking down at the top of her whiskey-hair.
"Here," he said, waiting for her to look up so he could toss the parcel down to her, "these are some things I thought you would need." Finally, she lifted her eyes, and he dropped it.
"What is it?" she asked as she caught it.
"Necessities," was all he would say.
Her eyes became wide with surprise, while he turned away with the picture of her undisguised delight in his mind.
Anna tried not to feel giddy, but it was hard. Nobody had ever given her a gift before. But Karl did not say it was a gift, she thought. Perhaps it's only some spices or things for the new kitchen. But it's soft, she thought. It bends and there is a lump in the middle of it!
An iron clank interrupted her notions as Karl dragged something black and heavy from the front of the wagon. It made another metallic chink as it scraped on the other pieces resting against it. One by one he pulled all of the black iron sections of the stove to the tail of the wagon, before leaping lightly down and heisting up the largest.
Anna gawked.
James came out of the barn then, polishing the stock of his new rifle with the sleeve of his shirt. He stopped long enough to watch Karl disappearing into the new cabin with his burden.
"What's that?" James called.
Karl swung around slowly, the iron sheet turning with him until his face appeared from behind it. "It is Anna's new stove," he answered. Then, without another word, he disappeared into the log cabin with the first of it.
Anna's new stove? thought Anna.
Anna's new stove!
Anna's new stove!
Had Karl answered, "It is Anna's new diamond tiara," he could not have surprised his wife more. Her eyes followed Karl's every step, back and forth, as he carried the pieces into the new house. Gladness filled her chest until she felt she would pop the seams of her shirt! She fought the urge to follow along at Karl's heels each step of the way to see where he was setting the pieces, if he was putting them up, connecting them together. Instead, she just stood in the yard while Karl marched to and fro, carefully attending to his stove-carrying and keeping his eyes from his wife. At last came the pipe from under the wagon seat. It was silvery black, shiny, clean. Anna could stand it no longer.
"Could I carry those for you, Karl?" she asked. Could I touch my stove? Could I touch this gift? Even this much of it--to make sure my eyes are not playing tricks on me?
"You do not need to help with this. It was only that little package I wanted you to carry."
"Oh, but I want to!"
He stopped, understood, handed her the sections of the stovepipe, pleasure growing in him at sight of her pleasure. Her freckles looked delightful beneath her excited brown eyes.
"There is more, Anna," he said.
"More?"
"More. When you buy a new stove, it seems they give you these newfangled kettles with it.
They say they cook even better than cast-iron ones and they are lighter to lift. They are in the carton."
"Newfangled kettles?" Anna asked, incredulous.
"In the carton," he repeated, enjoying her disbelief.
"Are they copper?"
"No. Something called japanned ware."
"Japanned ware?"
"They say things don't burn in it as easy as coppery, and it does not rust like iron because it is covered with lacquer."
At the mention of burned food, Anna's eyes skittered down to the package. She picked at the wrapping absently with a fingernail, remembering all those times she had charred poor Karl's dinners. He saw her eyes drop and wondered what he had said to disappoint her.
Then James intervened. "Wow, Karl! Anna gets a stove and all them kettles, and I get a gun! I wish you'd go to town more often!"
Karl forced a laugh. "The kettles are no good without food to cook in them."
"When can we go hunting?"
"When the cabin is done and the vegetables are all dug."
"The vegetables are all dug, Karl. Me and Anna did it while you were gone."
"The turnips, too?" Karl asked, amazed.
"Of course, the turnips, too. We already got 'em washed and down in the root cellar and Anna's cooking some for supper."
"She is, huh?" Karl eyed his wife again, finding a pleasing blush creeping upon her cheeks. "My Anna is cooking turnips?"
Always, when Karl called her "my Onnuh" that way, it made the blood beat at her cheeks. But James was still babbling away.
"You were sure right about the turnips. I never saw such big ones in my life!"
"What did I tell you?" Karl chided James good-naturedly. Then, lowering his voice, turning away, he repeated, "Turnips, huh?"
But while Karl went to the cabin with the box of japanned ware on his shoulder, Anna turned quickly to James and ordered in a feisty whisper, "James Reardon, you just keep your nose out of my turnip-cooking, do you hear!"
"What did I say?" he asked, stunned by her sudden attack on his innocent comment.
"You never mind!" she whispered back. "My turnips are my business!"
Just then Karl returned. He hitched his britches up at the waist a little, then turned toward the empty place where the springhouse used to be.
"I have been waiting to be told where my springhouse is, but since nobody tells me, I guess I must ask."
Turnips were forgotten as Anna and James smirked at each other conspiratorially.
"The springhouse got wrecked, Karl," James said in a masterpiece of simplicity.
"How does a springhouse get wrecked, just sitting there holding pails?"
"I blasted 'er to kingdom come when I shot the bear."
Should he live to be as old as Karl's virgin maples and their abundance of nectar, James would never forget the sweet nectar of that moment--the look on Karl's face, the jawfall of disbelief, James' own billowing pride, his self-pleasure at dropping the comment so casually, so manfully.
And if Karl lived to be as old as his maples, he would clearly remember forever the shock of that moment--the way the boy stood holding the new Henry lever action repeater, trying to look nonchalant when the pride was beaming from his face in shafts, when his knuckly hands squared the rifle before him as if to say, "nothing to it, Karl."
"A bear?"
"That's right."
"You shot a bear?"
"Well, not alone. Anna and me, we shot him together," James confirmed. There was no pretended nonchalance now. The words came tumbling from behind his widely smiling lips in a grand rush. "Didn't we, Anna? We were sleeping and we heard all these scraping noises and it sounded like something was trying to eat our door down, so we tried to figure out what it was, and pretty soon it moved to the springhouse and you shoulda heard all that racket, Karl. I think he had trouble gettin, through the doorway and by the time he did, why, he had it splintered five ways from Sunday and then we heard all this crashing and cracking and he got busy eatin' watermelon syrup after he broke most of the crocks and stuff, so I told Anna to light one of them torches that was left over from when she got lost, and she did and took it out in front of us to blind the bear so I could get off one good shot before he had a chance to think twice. 'Cause once you said that when a bear knows where to find free food he never fails to come back time after time and the only way to stop him is to kill him, so that's just what I did, Karl. I beaned 'im right between the eyes and there wasn't much left of his head when I was done, either!"
At last James stopped, breathless.
Karl was flabbergasted. He hunched his head and shoulders forward. "You and Anna did that?"
"We sure did, but you loaded that shot a little heavy and it blew the back wall clear off the springhouse. Blew me clear off my feet, too, didn't it, Anna?" But before she could even nod, James hurried on, "But Anna, she made me promise that as soon as I fired that first shot I'd run back in the sod house fast as my feet would carry me! I swear, Karl, I hardly knew if I had any feet left after that gun smacked me over, though. You said she'd kick, but I wasn't expecting 'er to kick like a mule!"
The import of all this was beginning to register on Karl. Suppose James had missed? Suppose the gun hadn't fired? Countless dire probabilities gripped Karl's gut.
"Boy, you knew it was just my temper out in the bog that day when I got on you for being slow to the gun. You could have let that bear eat everything on the place and I would not have scolded, just so I come home and find you and Anna safe."
"But we are safe," the boy reasoned.
"Ya, you are safe, but because of my silly scolding I make you take such a risk to prove yourself when you have proved yourself all along."
"It wasn't cause of what happened in the bog, Karl, honest. It was ... well ... I don't know how to say it. It was kinda like when you say to Anna, `A person keeps clean,` or when you say to me `A door faces east.` All I could think of was `A man protects his home.`" Once said, the adultness of his simple statement struck James fully. He had taken his first steps across the threshold of manhood.
"Karl," James said now, suddenly very sure of the truth in what he was about to say, "I'd have done it anyway, even if I'd never seen a cranberry bog in my life before."
Anna watched the only two men she had ever loved coming to terms with each other, setting their tack toward a course of future respect and sharing. Joyful though she was for them, her heart ached to reach a similar plane of understanding with Karl. But their private truce would have to be put off for a while yet, for Karl was saying with an appealing half grin, "So show me this bear with his head shot off, who only bargained for a little watermelon syrup."
James broke into a grin and a jog at the same time. "He's out here behind the sod house. We wanted to put him where you couldn't see him at first, and spring the surprise on you when we were good and ready."
Karl began to follow him, but realized that Anna hung back. He turned, asking, "Aren't you coming, Anna?" She hesitated a moment, until he added, "The fireman must come along, too. If it had not been for you there would have been no torches in the house."
Was he teasing her? Anna wondered with a little skip of her heart. Oh, he was teasing her about getting lost in the blueberry patch! How long had it been since Karl had teased her?
He turned to follow James, and she studied his high boots, remembering the first day they'd met, how she'd wanted to look up at his face but had only walked along, like now, with her eyes on his boots, wondering what he thought of her.