Years (55 page)

I
T WAS A WINTER
of great change, that winter of 1918. The changes happened not only within the Westgaard family, but within their newest member, and throughout the world at large. In her blissful, newly married state it would have been easy for Linnea to forget that American doughboys were going to France to make the world safe for democracy and to bask instead in the happiness that glowed within her heart. But the example set by her own family made her realize she, too, had an obligation, perhaps an even greater one in her position as a teacher. Linnea talked Superintendent Dahl into allowing the school to subscribe to the newspaper, and with the children she followed the events in Europe in an effort to understand.

The cry to defeat fascism was everywhere, but while in late January it was announced that the first U.S. troops were occupying front-line trenches, stateside military camps were still bulging with restless soldiers forced to drill in civilian clothes with broomsticks instead of rifles. Democratic fervor alone would not win the war. It would take supplies, and supplies took raw materials, and raw materials were limited. The War Board was formed to determine production priorities, and America cheerfully tightened up, cut back, and sang rousing patriotic songs. New factories sprang up overnight, turning out overcoats, shoes, rifles, gas masks, blankets, trucks, and
locomotives, while all businesses not engaged in war contracts closed on Mondays. A ban was put on Sunday automobile driving. People were encouraged to use more sweaters and less coal, eat more bran and less wheat, more spinach and less meat, and adopt the “gospel of the clean plate.” But above all, Americans were asked to give.

What it gave most of was its men. A half million of them reached France by the spring of 1918, and one of the volunteers was Bill Westgaard. The church had a special service for him on the Saturday before he left, and from that day on a service flag bearing a single blue star hung in the nave, raising countless prayers that there never come a time when a gold star be sewn in its place. Shortly thereafter, Judith wrote with the news that Adrian Mitchell had received a draft notice and was already gone.

Bill and Adrian may have been rejected suitors, but it mattered little to Linnea. The war had touched her personally now, and she felt a zeal to do her part in whatever way possible.

There were countless things the children could do to help with the war effort; all they needed was organization. Noon knitting became the favorite pastime. Linnea herself sought Nissa’s help in learning how, and each mother was asked to teach her daughters. At school a chart was posted, with a star for each stocking or muffler completed. To Linnea’s amazement, Kristian and Ray showed up one day, each with a ball of yam and a pair of needles. It caused a great deal of laughter when the boys awkwardly took up the craft, but soon they had every boy in the schoolhouse joining them. With the exception of Allen Severt, who adamantly called knitting “sissy stuff” and became an outcast because of his attitude.

But all the others were willing and eager to help with all of Linnea’s plans. Patricia Lommen came up with the idea of piecing a quilt and everybody enthusiastically agreed to bring scraps of cloth from home. As the children watched it take shape, plans were begun for an auction sale at which to sell it, proceeds to be donated to the Red Cross. Word of the auction spread and the cloakroom began filling with a motley collection of donations, including several prime muskrat skins from Ray and Kristian. Libby Severt, who showed a promising talent in art, made two large posters advertising the event: one was hung in the church, the other in the Alamo General Store and Post
Office. A farmer from a neighboring township volunteered a player piano and even offered to deliver it. From then until the day of the auction, the schoolhouse rang with music.

It was Nissa who suggested a Cakewalk to go along with the auction, and soft-hearted Frances who read in the newspaper about clothing drives for refugees and shyly suggested taking up a collection for that cause along with all the rest.

The big day was dubbed “War Day,” and as it approached excitement ran high and auction items overflowed into the main schoolroom. An auctioneer from Wildrose volunteered his services and old man Tveit brought an unexpected wagon of coal to put up for auction. By the time the day was over, P.S. 28 had earned $768.34 for the noble cause.

Theodore watched Linnea bloom throughout that winter. She took up her war project with characteristic enthusiasm and carried it to completion only to immediately begin another: this time a book drive for soldiers overseas. It was as successful as the auction sale had been. After the book drive came the making of scrapbooks for soldiers lying in European hospitals and the formation of a Junior League to sell liberty bonds. And when the state school board officially announced that the study of the German language was being dropped from all curricula, she stood up in church one Sunday and requested that in accordance with the current administration’s fervor for Americanization, all table prayers be said in English instead of Norwegian. How could anyone refuse a woman who’d almost single-handedly raised $768 in the name of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

And if Linnea brought a fervid enthusiasm to her organizational abilities, she brought no less to her marriage. She turned nineteen in late February and was fond of whispering into Theodore’s ear as she lay atop him in bed at night that she was learning more during her nineteenth year man in all the years of her life. And it was much more fun.

She was an ardent, uninhibited lover, insistent on “trying” things even Theodore had never tried before.

“How come you know about that?” he asked one night when the quilts were thrown back and the lantern was burning, as usual.

“Clara told me.”

“Clara!”

“Shh!” She covered his lips and giggled.

He lowered his voice to a whisper. “You mean my little sister, Clara?”

“Your little sister Clara is a woman, in case you hadn’t noticed, and she and Trigg have a wonderful time in bed. But if Clara ever finds out I told you, she’ll kill me.”

“Hmm... I’ll have to remember to thank Clara next time I see her.”

She socked him a good one. “Teddy, don’t you dare!” He caught her wrists and flung her beneath him and bit her bottom lip.

“You wanna talk about it all night or you wanna try it, Mrs. Westgaard?”

Within minutes they were trying it.

Another time, after they’d made love, Linnea lay in the crook of Theodore’s shoulder, thinking of how she used to wonder what lovemaking would be like.

She chuckled and admitted, “I used to think you’d squash me like a bug if we ever made love together.”

A rumble of laughter sounded beneath her ear. “Oh? So you used to think about it?”

“Sometimes.”

“How much?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“Come on... how much?”

“Oh, all right. A lot.”

“When?”

“What do you mean, when?”

“I mean, how long before we were married?”

“Mmm... at least four years.”

“Four — aw, you didn’t even know me then.”

“Yes I did. But your name at that time was Lawrence.”

“Lawrence!”

“Oh, lay back down and don’t get all huffed up. I had to name you something, since I didn’t know who you were yet.”

A powerful arm looped her neck in a lazy headlock. “Girl, you’re a little bit crazy, you know that?”

“I know.”

He chuckled again. “So tell me what you used to imagine.”

“Oh... at first I used to imagine how it was to kiss a boy — I mean a man. I’ve kissed an awful lot of strange things in my
day. Tables, icy windows, pillows — pillows work really well, actually, if you haven’t got the real thing. Then there are blackboards, the back of your own hand, plates, doors—”

“Plates?”

“Well, sometimes when I’d be doing the dishes I’d imagine I’d just finished having supper with a man and he was helping me do the cleanup afterward. I mean, you look in this nice clean plate and there’s this person looking back at you, and you close your eyes and pretend and... well, you’ve got to use your imagination, Theodore.”

“Not anymore, I don’t,” he countered, and rolled her onto his belly to end the night as they ended each.

She was more than he’d ever hoped for. She was bright, happy, spontaneous. She made each day a joyous sharing, a cause for celebration, a span of hours so piercingly rich and full he wondered how he’d ever survived those solitary years without her. He took her to school each morning, and from the moment he kissed her good-bye beside the warming stove, he counted the hours till he could go back and collect her. He never knew what she’d come up with next. She saw things from a refreshingly youthful perspective that often made him laugh, and always made him happy she was as young as she was.

One particularly frigid morning as they stood beside the stove waiting for the building to warm up, the school mouse slipped out of hiding and cowered by the mop board.

“Didn’t you ever catch that pest?”

“I never tried. I didn’t have the heart to kill the poor little thing, so I’ve been feeding him cheese instead. He’s my friend.”

“Feeding him! Linnea, mice are—”

“Shh! He’s cold... see? Be very still and watch.”

They stood silently, unmoving, until the mouse timidly scuttled closer, drawn by the heat, and stood on the opposite side of the stove on his hind legs, warming his front feet as if they were human hands.

Theodore had never seen anything like it in his life.

“Do you two do this often?” Theodore asked, and at the sound of his voice the creature retreated, stopped, and turned a bright-pink eye on them.

“There’s enough death — don’t you think — that we don’t have to cause any more.”

He wondered if it were possible to love any stronger than he did at that moment. Life had never been more perfect.

But one day in late March Kristian shattered that perfection.

He’d been down along the creek bottom with Ray, hauling in their traps for the season, and at supper that night, Theodore could tell there was something on the boy’s mind.

“Something bothering you, Kristian?” he asked.

Kristian looked up and shrugged.

“What is it?”

“You’re not gonna like it.”

“There’s lots of things I don’t like. That don’t change ‘em.”

“I’ve been talking with Ray about it for a long time, and I’m not sure if he’s decided yet, but I have.”

“Decided what?”

Kristian set his fork down. “I wanna enlist in the army.”

Eyelids could have been heard blinking in the room. All eating stopped.

“You want to
what?”
Theodore repeated menacingly.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I want to do my part in the war, too.”

“Are you crazy? You’re only seventeen years old!”

“I’m old enough to shoot a gun. That’s all that counts.”

“You’re a wheat farmer. The draft board ain’t gonna get you. You’re exempt from the draft — have you forgotten that?”

“Pa, you aren’t listening.”

Theodore jumped to his feet. “Oh, I’m listening, all right, but what I’m hearing don’t make a lick of sense.” Linnea had never seen Teddy so angry. He pointed a finger at Kristian’s nose and shouted, “You think all that’s going on over there is them doughboys still pointing brooms at each other, well you’re wrong, sonny! They’re getting shot and killed!”

“I want to drive airplanes. I want to
see
‘em!”

“Airplanes!” Theodore drove his hands into his hair, twisted away in exasperation, then rounded on Kristian again. “What you’ll drive is a pair of horses and a plow, because I won’t let you go.”

“Maybe I want to do more with my life than drive horses and a plow. Maybe I want to see more than horses’ rumps and smell more than horse droppings. If I enlist, I can do that.”

“What you’ll see over there is the inside of a trench, and
what you’ll smell is mustard gas. Is that what you want, boy?”

Linnea touched Theodore’s arm. “Teddy—”

He shrugged it off violently. “Keep out of this! This is between me and my boy! I said, is that what you want?”

“You can’t stop me, Pa. All I have to do is wait till school’s done and walk down that road, and you won’t know where to find me. All I have to do is tell ‘em I’m eighteen and they’ll take me.”

“Now I raised a liar, too, as well as a fool.”

“I wouldn’t have to be one if you’d give your okay.”

“Never! Not so long as I draw breath.”

Kristian showed profound control as he said quietly, “I’m sorry you feel that way, Pa, but I’m going just the same.”

From that day forward the tension in the house was palpable. It extended into Theodore and Linnea’s bedroom, too, for that night was the first since they’d been married that they didn’t make love. When she touched his shoulder, he said gruffly, “Let me be. I’m not in the mood tonight.”

Abashed that he’d turn away her offer of comfort when he most needed it, she rolled to her side of the bed and swallowed the tears thickening her throat.

At school, too, Linnea’s placid days seemed to be over. As if the sap were rising in him as well as in every cottonwood on the prairie, Allen Severt started acting up again. He put pollywogs in the water crock, a piece of raw meat behind the books in the bookshelf, and syrup on Frances’s desk seat. There were times when Linnea wanted to bash his head against the wall. Then one day he went too far and she did.

He was walking past her at the four-o’clock bell when he nonchalantly plucked her watch out and let it retract with a snap against her breast. Before her shock had fully registered, she grabbed two fistfuls of his hair and cracked his skull against the cloakroom wall.

“Don’t you ever do that again!” she hissed, an inch from his nose, pulling his hair so hard it lifted the corners of his eyes. “Is that understood,
Mister
Severt?”

Allen was so stunned he didn’t move a muscle.

The young children looked on saucer-eyed, and Frances Westgaard snickered softly.

“You’re hurtin’ me,” Allen ground out through clenched teeth.