The Children's Blizzard Read online

  She was strong enough.

  It was easy to get the mother outside—simply whisper that she was going to be given a gift of a horse, one of Gunner’s prize mares; it was only the beginning of the bounties awaiting her. That beast she’d ridden, it should be shot. But she should come with Anna now, since Gunner had already bedded down the horses for the night. Raina was upstairs, the Newspaper Man gone back to town. It was a secret gift, between two women! Anna would make sure she got to pick the best horse; if she waited for Gunner to do it, he would try to talk her into an inferior nag, not worthy of her.

  Anna glanced at Anette, who was sleeping peacefully as her mother sat on the side of the bed, gazing about the room, most likely wondering what she could fit into that ragged carpetbag of hers.

  Mrs. Thorkelsen—she never gave her first name and Anna was glad for that—nodded eagerly and obediently followed her outside. She gabbled on about the money, how good life would be from now on—occasionally she caught herself and thought to mention how good life would be for Anette from now on. But mostly she talked of clothing for herself, a house, a carriage, more food than she had ever eaten before, cakes and cookies and enormous joints of beef. A life of ease and luxury, that’s what she would have! And no more men—she laughed about that and Anna begrudgingly chuckled, as well, woman to woman. No more men! She wouldn’t need a husband now!

  After they were inside the barn, the door latched behind them, Mrs. Thorkelsen scurried up and down the stalls, perusing the horses as if she were the judge at a livestock show. Anna watched her, let her take the time to choose—that one, the little black mare with the white diamond on her face. She would do just fine—what an elegant horse!

  Anna nodded. As she walked over to where the woman was standing and smiling at her prize, Anna reached into her apron pocket. The cool metal of the gun soothed her once more—mesmerized her, as it had when she’d trained it on Gunner that night of the blizzard. The blizzard that was, she realized, not merely a storm but also the physical manifestation of the torment of her own soul, the turbulent struggle for it bursting out and over the prairie. She, Anna, had stirred up the very gods, dooming her to hell while they had destroyed children like Fredrik and taken Anette’s hand.

  She knew her fate, and she knew Mrs. Thorkelsen’s.

  The woman never grasped it, though—she had no time to see the flash of steel, Anna’s finger curling around the trigger. She must have felt the muzzle against the back of her cloak, for Anna knew she had to muffle the sound as best she could. But Anna pulled the trigger quickly, and the woman fell without a sound, although the horses did react and so Anna had to run from stall to stall, soothing them, praying Gunner wouldn’t hear and come out—how stupid, she hadn’t thought of the horses!

  But he didn’t come out, and soon she had them quiet again, and all Anna had to do was haul the woman’s body over the swaying back of her pathetic mule that had been stabled. She was heavier in death. Anna struggled, her muscles quivered, but she managed it—and then, bundling up in Gunner’s coat and hat and gloves and boots, which she’d stashed away out here after dinner, she led the beast out of the barn.

  Turning her head against the slight wind—it wasn’t so bitterly cold, it was simply a February night in Nebraska—Anna led the unsteady mule with its silenced burden out on the prairie. Anna’s feet swam in her husband’s boots, making the journey more difficult. She glanced up, grateful for the full moon illuminating her path. She led the mule out for what seemed like miles, before she reached a small ravine, far from any homestead in the area. After studying it for a long moment, she began to dig out the snow, two or three feet of it—it took longer than she thought it would. Her hands, even in Gunner’s rawhide work gloves, grew numb with cold, and her arms ached.

  Finally, she had carved out a well large enough for the body of a small, hateful woman. She dumped Mrs. Thorkelsen into the snowy grave, and suddenly Anna felt nauseated. She saw once more the small, almost blue body of Fredrik Halvorsan lying in a similar grave, next to Anette. But then she closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them she found she could get on with her work. She pushed and kicked the snow over the body until it was completely covered.

  She was hot now, perspiring beneath the heavy coat. But she would cool off on the walk back home—she slapped the mule, sending it stumbling farther out on the prairie. It wouldn’t last more than a day or two and then it, too, would be a pile of bones come spring. There was no saddle on it; she’d remembered to unbridle it, so that there was nothing identifiable, just in case.

  And it would snow again, soon; she sniffed the air. It had that heavy, moist scent. Oh yes, it would snow again soon, and cover every track.

  Satisfied now—content that she had saved Anette once and for all—Anna was resigned to her own fate. But she wasn’t in any hurry to meet it, so she kept the pistol in her pocket as she started the long walk back to her house. She would get there before dawn, the household still asleep. She would clean herself up, take the woman’s carpetbag and hide it somewhere until she could burn it. Then she would sneak into the makeshift cot next to her children where she’d been sleeping for weeks now. Gunner would never notice she hadn’t spent the night inside.

  There would be questions in the morning—but not too many. No one would be sorry that the mother was gone; Anna could easily make up a story about giving her some money and sending her back, everyone would believe her. The mule, of course, would be gone, too. Anette might be sad, but not for long. After all, she’d been abandoned before.

  Soon everyone would be gone from the house: the Newspaper Man, the Schoolteacher, Anette. She had to give the girl up; she’d saved her life twice now. That was enough. Someone else—someone without a mortal sin on her soul—would have to see the girl through to adulthood. So it would be just her family again, no interlopers, no strangers coming to gawk. Anna felt a soaring within, anticipating the house back to normal, everything polished and shiny, everything—and everyone—in its place. Including the pistol, tucked back in the loose brick behind the stove, where it would remain until the next time she needed it. Now she understood why her sister had given it to her before she left Minneapolis. In the city she would have had no use for it. But out here, well—

  Out here, a woman needed an ally that would ask no questions. And tell no tales.

  Anna stopped for a moment, halfway home; she stood, breathing heavily, and she looked up at the sky. The moon was so bright that she could see her shadow, but even so the stars were visible, and so numerous she gasped. How had she never looked up at them before? The prairie sky was a dazzling display of flickering ice, leaving scarcely any room between the stars. She felt that if she was up there among them she wouldn’t be able to take a step without touching one—she raised her hand, pointed a finger, imagining how cold they must be, icy to the touch, so far away from the sun.

  There was a low hooting sound, an owl, off somewhere. Dropping her gaze from the illuminated sky, Anna searched for it but saw nothing but the tundra encircling her. She was the very middle, the eye. The frigid, frosty land stretched in all directions, and it was beautiful—graceful, even. Fingers of dried tallgrass broke through the snow and waved gently; there were little dips and swales, like on a cake gaily frosted. The excited whisper of loose snow dancing in the distance. The feeling of being the only person in the world—Anna loved that feeling, and she wondered why she’d never thought of looking for it out here.

  My God, but the prairie is beautiful, she thought. One day I, too, might disappear in it.

  Placing her man-sized boots into the tracks she’d made on the way out, she continued to walk toward home.

  CHAPTER 35

  •••••

  BY THE TIME SPRING ARRIVED on the prairie, with the Chinook winds sweeping over snow-smothered plains, snaking along the frozen creeks and up the sandhills, rattling houses anew, it was the
melting that people worried about. And indeed, that year there was massive flooding, entire towns afloat, creeks rushing over their banks and turning soddies into muddy memories. But that was part of a prairie spring, everyone was prepared for it. After the snow came the floods, then the jolting dry, the spring fires, the summer and the grasshoppers and then the fall fires…it went on and on. It was simply what happened.

  By the end of spring, life had, for the most part, returned to normal. The dead were buried. There were always dead after a prairie winter; babies who couldn’t survive, the elderly. The weak were ripe for the picking in the depths of the prairie winter.

  This year, there were just more healthy people lost. And too many children.

  More empty places at tables, fewer hands to try to work the fields after the floods finally abated. Schools emptied out anyway in the spring, so the surviving children could help with the planting. By then, they’d all gotten used to the empty desks.

  To be sure, when the snows melted, bodies were found, and there was a fresh round of grief, but it was muted. These bodies had already been mourned by the practical souls of the plains. No one still held out hope that a lost loved one was simply waiting for a bout of good weather to return home after sheltering in some stranger’s house. So more funerals, more burnt cork to blacken the coffin, but at least now the ground was softer, the digging easier, everything sped up so they could get back to what was important, what was life—the spring planting.

  At the few celebrations that spring—a wedding here, a christening there, church when people could be spared from the fields—it was noted, ruefully, how many incomplete people were there. Friends and relations missing ears, wearing hats pulled down low to cover up the raw wound. Grotesque holes where once there was a nose. Missing digits abounded; it was almost, but not quite, rare to see someone with ten fingers or ten toes, they joked. They grew used to wooden hands, like the one Anette Pedersen sported proudly.

  To wooden boots, like the one that Gerda Olsen stomped about on, miserably.

  But those who experienced the storm would never forget it; they would pass the stories down from one generation to the next, and they wouldn’t embellish them because they didn’t need to. And embellishing was not their way regardless.

  Life must go on.

  But many lives had irrevocably changed. Some for the better.

  Most not.

  * * *

  —

  THE HALVORSAN FARM continued to eke out an existence. Tor did not go back to school, although he was missed. Raina went out to the house one day before the spring term was over. She needed to talk to him, to see for herself how the family was doing—she couldn’t quite explain why. It was part of her general leavetaking, she supposed; she felt a compulsion to wrap things up before journeying back to her family and all that awaited her there—most important, Gerda.

  But she wanted to see Tor and Mrs. Halvorsan, she wanted one last chance to say how sorry she was for their losses. She no longer felt responsible for Fredrik’s fate, but she did feel, keenly, the family’s grief because she had been witness to its inception, the first oozing cut of it.

  When she walked to their house one warm spring day, after letting the children out—and smiling to see little Rosa being fought over as to which big boy would carry her home because she was still using a crutch—once again Raina marveled at how short a distance their house was from the schoolhouse. You could make out the buildings, the well, even the clothesline from the steps of the schoolhouse. It was a walk of about fifteen minutes.

  Yet it had been a lifetime that day in January.

  Mrs. Halvorsan was out hanging clothes when she saw Raina coming; the good lady immediately ran into the house but Raina smiled; she knew women, she knew there would be a plate of cookies or a slice of coffee cake, warmed up, waiting for her, with a cup of tea. It was inconceivable to allow a visitor inside your house without food to welcome her.

  By the time Raina knocked on the door, carefully scraping the spring mud from her boots, Mrs. Halvorsan had smoothed her hair and put on a clean apron. She let Raina inside with a shy smile—that shy smile most prairie women had upon greeting guests, especially after a long winter, because they were so unused to company. By the end of summer, people would be freer with their smiles, their laughter. But the isolating, demoralizing winter was still too recent.

  “Good, good, Miss Olsen, it is good of you to come! You have been on our minds!”

  “I have?” Raina laughed, shook off her cloak, took the proffered seat at the kitchen table, sipped some tea. Two little Halvorsans—one looking so like Fredrik that her heart seized, just for a moment—were chasing each other about the kitchen but all it took was for Mrs. Halvorsan to glance at them once and say, “It is the Teacher!” and they quieted down.

  “They will be at school next term,” Mrs. Halvorsan said proudly. “So you can teach them!”

  “That was one reason I wanted to visit,” Raina said, shifting uncomfortably in the narrow ladder-backed chair. “I won’t be back next term. I’ve given my notice.”

  “Oh, heavens.” Mrs. Halvorsan appeared truly distressed; she twisted the apron in her lap and there was a flash of tears in her eyes that she turned away to hide, but not quickly enough. Then she tried to laugh at herself. “I cry so easily these days.”

  “That’s understandable—so do I,” Raina admitted, reaching over to clasp the woman’s hand. It was a hand that was red from scrubbing, the fingers long and sinewy, very little fat in the pads. There were shiny spots where burns—from cooking—had healed. The nails were short, but not dirty. There was strength in this hand.

  “I am sorry you won’t be back. But you have so many nice things ahead of you, I don’t blame you.” The woman turned to face Raina, the tears wiped away. “Get away from here while you can. Once you break the ground with a hoe, you will never be able to leave.” And she looked out the window, to where Tor was in the fields, slapping the reins against an ox pulling a plow.

  “I love the prairie,” Raina said, and it was true. She loved the beauty of it, the wide openness, the songbirds and flowers, the waving, russet grasses in the fall. The shadows falling across the land, like patchwork, as the clouds danced beneath the sun. The people. But she still felt trapped like an insect beneath a glass jar whenever she truly took in the scope of it. Despite its optimistic vastness, there was little to do with it but stay and plow and hope for the best.

  “I love it, but I am excited to go to college. I’m going to Lincoln on a scholarship to the Latin School there, to prepare for the university in two years. I’ll be able to save the sum I was given, by all the kind people. And that’s what I wanted to see you about—I don’t think I deserved all that. Tor was just as responsible for getting the children here safely. Mrs. Halvorsan, please, won’t you let me give Tor some of the funds so he can go to college, too?”

  “Tor? College?” Mrs. Halvorsan was so startled, she had to clutch the table for support. She rose and rushed to the window to watch her oldest son in the fields. She stayed there for a very long time, and when she finally turned around, her eyes were shining, proud. “You think he could get in? The entrance exams—like to this Latin school?”

  “He could if I helped him study, and I would be privileged to.”

  “My Tor! In college—imagine!” Again that shining light in her tired but resolute eyes. She shook her head and repeated herself. “I wonder what he could be? Maybe a doctor, you think?”

  “Maybe.” Raina smiled.

  Then Mrs. Halvorsan’s smile faded; she looked around the small house until her gaze fell on the kitchen table where Raina still sat. Once, there had been a father at the head of that table. Now the chair was empty. Once, there had been another boy—still needing to grow into his strength, but he would—to help out.

  Now there was only Tor. For several years, it would be
only him; the other children were too young.

  Raina understood the struggle evident on the older woman’s face—the pride, the unexpected gift of opportunity. The reality of the money and time already sunk into the homestead, which was theirs now, outright; they had proved it up, it was a working farm now. Could she afford to hire hands to do the work when Tor was gone? Raina didn’t know but suspected not.

  “I would never stand in the way of any of my children,” Mrs. Halvorsan was saying, as if to herself. “That would make me a bad mother. But now…” And she didn’t have to say more.

  “I can’t presume to know how it is here, now that Mr. Halvorsan and Fredrik are gone. I know that they are missed, for so many reasons. All I can do is offer this to Tor.”

  “I will let Tor decide,” Mrs. Halvorsan said reluctantly. Raina didn’t know if she was fearful that Tor would take the offer or that he wouldn’t, and maybe Mrs. Halvorsan didn’t know this herself. The thing was, as she herself had learned ever since Gavin Woodson showed up at the Pedersens’ door, choice and opportunity were not the uncomplicated gifts most people thought they were.

  They were burdens, different but no less heavy than the burden of getting a good crop in, of fighting off a prairie fire, of worrying how to make it through a long winter with little fuel or food. The weight of making the right choice wore heavily on someone with a conscience.

  “How is Anette?” Mrs. Halvorsan asked.

  “Anette is doing well. Her hand looks very natural, especially when she wears long sleeves and gloves. She’s learned to button herself up in the back with a special button hook that also helps with her shoes.” Raina shook her head, remembering how quickly Anette had adapted to her loss, coming up with little tricks and cunning shortcuts—like jamming a knitting needle cast with yarn into a jar filled with dried corn to keep it upright, while she maneuvered the other needle with her one hand. This way, she could knit simple patterns, pot holders, and scarves. “Anette is just—stronger, somehow. I used to think that Fredrik was the one who gave her courage. She didn’t seem to possess any on her own. But now I see that Fredrik just gave her the key to unlock it herself.”