Years (26 page)

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 in, 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.

“Mister Bonner,” she greeted, attempting to keep the handshake brief. But he clasped her hand a moment longer than was strictly polite, squeezing his rawhide-textured hand against her much softer one.

“Name’s Rusty,” he insisted in that same drawn-out way.

The only rusty thing about him was his skin. Burned by the sun to a rich, deep mahogany, it framed his dark, lazy smile in a way that must have left a string of broken hearts from the
Texas panhandle to the Canadian border. He was a head taller than Linnea, lean as a drought year, and put together mostly with sinew.

“Rusty,” she repeated, flashing a nervous smile first at him, then at Nissa.

“Well now, you’re a right pretty lady, Miss Brandonberg. Makes me wonder what I missed when I dropped out o’ school to go rodeoin’.”

Hushing, she dropped her gaze to his scarred boots and the bedroll lying on the ground beside them. He stood in the hip-shot pose of a self-assured ladies’ man, one knee bent, grinning at her lazily with those devilishly handsome eyes that looked as if they were figuring her body dimensions and her age.

Nissa sensed that Linnea was out of her league and ordered, “You can put your roll in the barn. You’ll bunk with the other boys in the hayloft. Wash water’ll be hot one hour before sunrise and breakfast’ll be served in the kitchen till the cook wagon gets here.”

Inveterate charmer that he was, Rusty Bonner wasn’t choosy about whom he showered that charm on, long as she was female. He swung his laconic gaze to Nissa with no perceptible change in appreciation, doffed his hat, and drawled, “Why, thank y’, ma’am. That’s most obligin’ of y’.”

Then he swung down lazily to snag his bedroll and sling it over his shoulder by one finger. Tipping his hat brim low over his eyes, he sauntered off toward the barn, hips swinging like pines in a slow breeze.

“Whew!” Nissa puffed, shaking her head.

“Whew is right!” Linnea seconded, watching Rusty’s back pockets undulate on his tight blue Levi Strauss britches.

Eyeing Linnea, Nissa declared, “I think I mighta just made a big mistake by hirin’ that one on.” She swung and aimed a finger at Linnea’s nose. “You keep away from him, you hear?”

“Me?” Linnea’s eyes widened innocently. “
I
didn’t do anything!”

Disgruntled, Nissa turned back toward the house. “With his kind a woman don’t have ta.”

It was Sunday, the last lull before the roar of the steam threshers broke over the prairie. Down along the creek bottom the poplars were already dropping gold coins into the Little
Muddy. The cottontails were fat as Buddahs, and as the muskrats went about filling underwater larders, their pelts were so thick they stood out like ruffs about their necks.

In the wind it was chilly, but in the shelter of the uncut millet, with the sun pouring into their own private bowl, Kristian and Ray lazed like a pair of contented coon hounds, their bellies to the sun. The boys were shaped alike, all length and angles, with too much bone for the amount of muscle they’d grown. Cradling their heads, elbows up, they studied the puffy white clouds scudding along the cobalt-blue sky.

“I’m gonna go after mink this year,” Kristian announced.

“Mink?” Ray chuckled knowingly. “Good luck. You’re better off goin’ for muskrats.”

“There’s plenty of mink left. I’ll get ‘em.”

“You’ll get one for every ten of my muskrats.”

“That’s okay. It’s gotta be mink.”

Something in Kristian’s voice made Ray roll his head to squint at his cousin. “What’s gotta be mink?”

Kristian shut his eyes and mumbled, “Nothin’.”

Ray eyed him a little longer, then settled back again, staring at the sky. From far away came a faint sound like old nails being pulled from new wood. It amplified into the unmistakable rusty squawk of Canadian honkers, heading toward the Mississippi flyway. The boys watched them grow from distant dots to a distinct flock.

“Hey, Ray, you ever think about the war?”

“Yeah... some.”

“They got airplanes over there. Lots of ‘em. Wouldn’t it be some thin’ to fly in one of those airplanes?”

The wedge of geese came on, necks pointing the way toward Florida, wings moving with a grace that forced a silent reverence upon the boys. They watched and listened, thrilling to a sound that stirred their blood. The cacophony became a clatter that filled the air over the millet field, then drifted off, dimmer, dimmer, until the graceful creatures disappeared and the only sound remaining was the rustle of the wind in the grass and their heartbeats against the backs of their heads.

“Someday I’m going to see the world from up there,” Kristian mused.

“You mean you’d go to France and fight, just to fly in an airplane?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“That’s stupid. And besides that, you’re not old enough.”

“Well, I will be soon.”

“Aww, it’s still stupid.”

Kristian thought about it a while and decided Ray might be right. It probably was stupid. But he was anxious to grow up and be a man.

“Hey, Ray?”

“Hmm?”

“You ever think about women?”

Ray let out a honk of laughter as raucous as the call of the geese. “Does a wild bear shit in the forest?”

They laughed together, feeling manly and wonderful sharing the forbidden language with which they’d only recently begun experimenting.

“You ever think about giving a woman something to make her look different at you?” Kristian asked, as if half asleep.

“Like what?”

It was quiet for a long time. Kristian cast a single wary glance at his cousin, returned to cloud-watching, and suggested, “A mink coat?”

Ray’s head came up off the millet. “A mink coat!” Suddenly he clutched his stomach and bawled with laughter. “You think you’re gonna trap enough mink to have a mink coat!”

He howled louder and rolled around like an overturned turtle until Kristian finally boosted up and punched him in the gut. “Aw, shut up. I knew I shouldn’ta told you. If you say anythin’ to anybody I’ll stomp you flatter’n North Dakota!”

Ray was still winding down, breathless. “A... m... mink coat!” Overdramatizing, he flopped spread-eagled, wrists to the sun. “You might just get enough mink by the time you’re. as old as your pa.”

Kristian laced his fingers over his belly and crossed his ankles, scowling straight up. “Well, that was just a daydream, you jackass. I
know
I ain’t... I mean, I’m not gonna get enough for a mink coat, but I could get enough to give her mink mittens, maybe.”

Suddenly it dawned on Ray that his cousin was serious. He came up on one elbow, giving Kristian his wholehearted attention.

“Who?”

Kristian grabbed a blade of dry millet and split it with a thumbnail. “Miss Brandonberg.”

“Miss Brandonberg?” Ray sat up, shifting his weight to one hip and raising one knee. “Are you crazy? She’s our teacher!”

“I know, but she’s only two years older than we are.”

Too startled to be amused, Ray gawked at his cousin. “You
are
crazy!”

Kristian flung the millet away and crossed his hands behind his head. “Well, there’s nothin’ wrong with thinkin’ about her, is there?”

Ray stared at Kristian as if he’d just sprouted horns. After a long stretch of silence, he flung himself onto his back and exclaimed, “Sheece!” in a breathy rush of excitement.

They lay flat, unmoving, thoughtful, staring at the sky to give themselves an air of controlled casualness while underneath their blood was running faster than Little Muddy Creek.