Years (56 page)

“I’ll do worse than that if you continue with this sort of behavior. I’ll have you expelled from school.”

With his eyes slanted back, Allen looked more malevolent than ever. She could sense the vindictiveness in those cold, pale eyes, something worse than heartlessness. It was a cruelty with which she simply did not know how to deal. And now she had embarrassed him in front of the other children for the second time. She could sense his vengefulness growing, and her hands shook as she released his head.

“Children, you are excused,” she said to the others, her voice far from calm. Allen shrugged away from the wall and shouldered her roughly aside on his way to the door. “Not you, Allen. I want to talk to you... Allen, come back here!”

But he swung around at the bottom of the steps and pierced her with a venomous glare. “I’m gonna make you sorry, teacher,” he vowed, low enough that only she could hear, then turned and marched away without a backward look.

She stared after him, realizing only after it was over how weak-kneed she was. She sank onto a cloakroom bench, hugging her shaky stomach. Well, he’s backed you into a corner again, so what are you going to do, sit here quaking like a pup with the palsy or march down to his house and tell them what a devil they have on their hands?

She marched down to his house to tell them what a devil they had on their hands. Unfortunately, Martin wasn’t home at the time, and his wife’s response was “I’ll speak to Allen about it.” It was said dryly, condescendingly, with one eyebrow raised. Her lips were compressed into a superior moue as she held the door open for Linnea’s exit.

I’m sure you’ll speak to Allen, thought Linnea, while her own hope of having Allen dressed down on the spot went unsatisfied.

She walked home feeling more frustrated than ever and utterly ineffectual.

Two days later she found her mouse dead in a baited trap.

She told Theodore about it and he wanted to march right down to Severt’s house himself and put a couple more dents in the kid’s skull, but she said she could handle it, and he said are you sure, and she said yes, and something good came of it anyway, because they made love again as they used to, and afterward she begged him to talk to Kristian about going to
war, only this time without anger. And he agreed to try.

But the attempt failed. The two of them talked down in the barn the next day, but Theodore’s fear for his son’s life manifested itself in anger once again, and the session ended with the two of them shouting and Kristian marching out and heading down the road without telling anybody where he was going.

He went to Patricia’s house because lately it felt better to be with her than with anybody else he knew.

“Hi,” he said when she answered the door.

“Oh... hi!” Her eyes brightened and a flush beautified her face.

“You busy?”

“No, just knitting. Come in!”

“I was wondering if you could come out instead. I mean, well... I’d like to talk to you. Alone someplace.”

“Sure. Just let me get my coat. Ma?” she yelled, “I’m going for a walk with Kristian!” A moment later she appeared in a brown wool coat with a tan scarf looped over her head, its tails hanging over her shoulders. They both stuffed their hands into their pockets as they headed down the prairie road. Beside it the snow was already pithy and showed deep ruts. The north-westerlies had a milder breath — soon the snowdrops would blossom in the ditches. The days were growing longer and the late afternoon sun was warm on their faces.

He needed to talk, but not now. What he needed now was to simply walk along beside Patricia with their elbows softly bumping. She took her hand out of her near coat pocket and he followed suit. Their knuckles brushed... once... and again... and he took her hand. She squeezed his tightly and looked up at him with something more than a smile: a look of growing awareness and trust. She tipped her head against his shoulder for two steps, then they walked again without saying a word.

Not until they’d turned and were heading back did he speak.

“You ever get sick of looking at the same old road, the same old fields?”

“Sometimes.”

“You ever wonder what it’s like beyond Dickinson?”

“I’ve been beyond Dickinson. It looks just like it does around here.”

“No, I mean
way
beyond Dickinson. Where there’s mountains. And the ocean. Don’t you wonder what they look like?”

“Sometimes. But even if I saw them, I’m sure I’d come back here.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because you’re here,” she answered guilelessly, looking up at him.

He stopped. Her blue eyes were clear and certain, her mouth somber. The tan scarf had fallen back and the March wind ruffled her hair. In his broad hand, hers felt fragile. He suffered a moment of doubt about the wisdom of going to war.

“Patricia, I... ” He swallowed and wasn’t certain how to put his feelings into words.

“I know,” she replied to the unspoken. “I feel the same way.”

He leaned down and kissed her. She went up on tiptoe and lifted her mouth, resting her hands against his chest. It was a chaste kiss, as kisses went, but it filled their hearts with the essence of first love, while all around them the land readied for spring, for that season of bursting renewal.

In time they moved on, back through her yard, but loath to part yet.

“Want to go in the corn crib?” she asked. “We could shell some corn for the chickens.”

He smiled and she led the way to the far side of the farmyard, pulled a corncob from the hasp on a rough wooden door, and he followed her into semi-privacy. Inside the sun angled through the slatted walls against the steep hill of hard yellow ears. At the base of the corn sat a crude wooden box with a hand shelter attached, and beside it a seat made of nothing more than an old chopping block. Kristian sat down and fed an ear into the hopper and began turning the hand crank. Patricia leveled off the corn and sat down cross-legged on the lumpy ears, watching. It was warm in the corn crib, protected from the wind as it was, with the sun radiating off the wall of gold behind them. She flung off her scarf and unbuttoned her coat. He finished the first ear and she handed him another as the naked cob fell free. He watched the ear rotating as the teeth of the grind wheel gripped it; she watched his shoulders flexing as he cranked the wide flywheel. When the ear was only half clean, he dropped the handle and swung to face her. They hadn’t come to the corn crib to shell corn, and they both knew it.

“What would your ma say if she knew we were out here?”

“She probably does. We walked right past the house.”

“Oh.” He wished she were closer, but felt uneasy about moving over beside her when they sat in a building where anybody could see right through the walls.

Their mutual hesitation hung heavy between them for a moment, then she laughed and plucked up a piece of dry, brown cornsilk. “Let’s see what you’d look like in a moustache.” The corncobs rolled as she moved to kneel before him and fit the tuft of cornsilk beneath his nose and lips.

It tickled and he jerked back, rubbing a finger across his nostrils.

She laughed and pulled him forward by the front panel of his jacket. “Here, don’t be so twitchy. I want to see.”

He submitted, letting her hold the cornsilk in place again and study him assiduously.

“Well, how do I look?”

“Gorgeous.”

The sun threw bars of light and shadow across her face as she knelt between his knees, and the wind whistled softly through the slatted walls.

“So what do you think, should I grow one?” He hardly realized what he was saying; his thoughts were on her and how pretty she looked with her lips the color of sunset and her long-lashed eyes intent upon him.

“I don’t know. I think I should kiss you first and then decide.”

“So kiss me.”

She did, with her finger and the cornsilk in the way, both of them giggling and the fine brown strands tickling terribly. Until she came up against his open legs and they pulled back, staring into each other’s eyes.

“Oh, Kristian... ” she murmured just as he, too, murmured her name. Then no excuse was needed. The cornsilk fell to his jacket collar as she flung her arms around him and they kissed fully, pressed as close as gravity would allow, with her stomach cradled by his warmest parts and their arms clinging tenaciously. He tightened his thighs against her hips and callowly explored her lips with his tongue. It took some coaxing before she realized what was expected of her and allowed her lips to slacken, and his tongue to probe inside.

The warm, sleek contact rocked them both, and when the
kiss ended, they backed off to stare at each other, still somewhat overcome by discovery.

“I think of you all the time,” she whispered.

He straightened a strand of her auburn hair that had caught on her forehead. “I think of you, too. But I need to talk to you about something, and when we start kissing I forget all about talking.”

“Talk about what?”

“Me and my pa had a dilly of a fight — two of ‘em, actually.”

“About what?”

He swiveled around and started shelling corn again. Above the loud metallic grinding and the sound of the kernels falling she thought she heard him say “I want to enlist.” But that was silly. Who’d
want
to go to war?

“What?”

This time he turned so she saw his lips move. “I want to enlist,” he said louder, still cranking.

She put her hand on his and forced him to stop. “Enlist? You mean go fight?”

He nodded. “As soon as I graduate in the spring.”

“But Kristian—”

“I suppose you’re going to argue with me just like my pa did.”

Crestfallen, she gulped and stared at him, then sat back and folded her hands between her thighs. “Why?”

“I want to fly airplanes and... and I want to see more of this world than Alamo, North Dakota! Oh, damn, I don’t know.” When he would have leaped to his feet she grasped his knees and made him stay.

“Couldn’t you do that without becoming a soldier?”

“I don’t know. My pa says I’m a wheat farmer and I guess I’m afraid that if I don’t go now I probably will end up being a wheat farmer all of my life, and maybe I could be something more. But when I try to reason with my pa about it, he just gets mad and shouts.”

“Because he’s scared, Kristian, don’t you see?”

“I know he is — so am I. But does he have to shout at me? Couldn’t we just talk about it?”

She didn’t know how to answer. She herself had had bouts with her own parents recently that seemed to flare out of nowhere.

“I think it’s part of growing up, fighting with your parents.”

She was so calm, so reasonable. And looking at her made him waver in his convictions.

“What would you think if I went?”

She studied him intently for a moment, and answered softly, “I’d wait for you. I’d wait for as long as it would take.”

“Would you?”

She nodded solemnly. “Because I think I love you, Kristian.”

He’d thought the same thing about her more than once lately, but hearing her say the words was like a blow to his senses. In a flash his hands were on her arms, drawing her up into his embrace again. “But we shouldn’t say it,” he said against her neck. “Not now, when I’m planning to leave. It’ll make everything too hard.”

She clung, pressing her breasts firmly against him. “Oh, Kristian... you might get killed.” Her words were muffled by his coat collar before he forced her head around and their mouths joined. As they strained against each other, his trembling, uncertain hand slid inside her warm coat, glided over her back, her side, and finally sought her breast. Her breathing stopped and her mouth hovered close without meeting his.

“It’s a sin,” she whispered, her breath warm against his damp lips.

“So is war,” he whispered in reply.

But she stopped his hand anyway and drew it to her lips and kissed his knuckles.

“Then stay,” she pleaded.

But he knew as he kissed her one last time and backed away that she was part of what would keep him here his entire life if he didn’t leave in June.

22

S
PRING CAME TO
the prairie like a young girl preparing for her first dance, taking her time primping and preening. She bathed in gentle rains, emerging snowless and fresh. She dried with warm breezes, stretching beneath the benign sun, letting the wind comb her grassy hair until it lifted and flowed. Upon her breast she touched a lingering scent of earth and sun and life renewed. She put on a gay bonnet, trimmed of crocus and snowdrop and scoria lily, fluffed her red-willow petticoat, then tripped a trial dance step upon the stirring April breeze.