The Children's Blizzard

by Melanie Benjamin

  “Teacher!”

  Raina jumped behind her desk, her heart racing; Fredrik Halvorsan was standing before her, panting.

  “Come look! Look in the sky, Teacher!”

  Raina shivered—the wind must have picked up, for it was noticeably colder than it had been earlier in the day—and followed him outside.

  * * *

  —

  ANETTE PEDERSEN HAD RACED OFF with Fredrik the moment Teacher released them. It was only when she was sitting still that her legs cramped up and the weariness overcame her, that bone-drenched weariness that was a constant companion ever since she came to the Pedersens.

  And it was only when she ran that she felt joy. Well—then, and whenever Fredrik Halvorsan sidled up to her, told her a funny joke, helped her with that foreign language that was so clumsy on her tongue.

  Teacher tried to help her learn; it was fortunate, she said, that they lived in the same house! But even when she said that, Anette saw in Teacher’s eyes a guarded confusion. And she wondered how anyone could use the word fortunate to describe the Pedersen household.

  “We go to a visit,” Anette’s mother had said that summer day a year and a half ago, when she told Anette to pack her scant belongings—some petticoats, two faded dresses that were almost too small, two pairs of mended stockings, a coat, mittens, and her rag doll—and climb up on the wagon. Ten years old at the time, Anette couldn’t help but notice that her four half-brothers did not pack their belongings; couldn’t help but notice that her stepfather laughed tauntingly at her and her mother as they rode out of the yard, away from the tiny dugout.

  Anette’s mother didn’t say a word the entire journey, not even when they stopped to give the horses a rest and eat their lunch, and neither did Anette. She felt she’d done something wrong. Had she looked at her stepfather that certain way he accused her of—“like a damn idiot,” he would say whenever he caught her staring off into space, her mouth half-open? Had she jumped away from him too abruptly when he crept near? Had she angered her mother somehow, either by not taking good enough care of her younger brothers, or simply by being herself, ugly Anette, pockmarked Anette, the rough craters from the smallpox still too visible across her high cheekbones?

  She didn’t know, she didn’t dare ask, and before it was dark she found herself in a strange house, bigger than the dugout—a real house made of wood, with two stories—with her carpetbag on the floor next to her.

  “I go now. Be good, don’t make trouble. That’s all I can give you,” her mother said, before she left the house without even touching her daughter in farewell and climbed back up on the wagon, turning the horses around and leaving Anette with her new family—Mother Pedersen, small and beautiful, too beautiful for Anette to even understand; she’d only seen such pink and gold and dimpled beauty once, on a postcard. On a person, it was a beauty almost too vivid to bear; Anette wanted to shade her eyes or look away. But she didn’t dare; she knew instinctively that this would be considered an affront. Mother Pedersen also had the most bountiful hair Anette had ever seen, thick and golden, so many braids in an intricate twist that flattered her pretty, but unsmiling, face.

  Father Pedersen was big and handsome with little streaks of grey in his hair and crinkly lines at the corners of his eyes that made him look slightly puzzled, yet kind. And three little Pedersens crawled about, already tugging on Anette’s skirt. “You’re Anette Pedersen now,” Mother Pedersen informed her as she marched her up to her “room”—a faded curtain divided the unfinished upstairs into two sections with a bed, a washstand, and a rush rug on each side. No window, no tar paper for insulation in winter, and not even the warmth from a stove pipe, which vented straight out from the kitchen, not the roof.

  Anette nodded. She went to bed that night in the stifling attic. She cried—silently—and couldn’t sleep. When the sun rose, she was summoned by a big cowbell from downstairs and put to work. Washing, fetching water, throwing slop out into the ravine behind the house, tending to the children, sewing—Mother Pedersen looked over her shoulder as she tried to darn a sock, and said something under her breath that Anette couldn’t quite make out—cooking, clearing away.

  That night, exhausted, Anette slept.

  When school started up for the summer session, before the crops had to be harvested, she was told that she could attend when she wasn’t needed at home. Mother Pedersen gave her a slate and a shiny new lunch bucket but warned her, “They cost a dime. A whole dime, do you understand? If you lose them, you can’t go to school anymore. And come right home after. No dawdling.” Anette ran the mile north carrying the slate and bucket along with a flicker of hope, cradling them carefully, terrified that all three would be snatched from her, or fall to the earth and shatter.

  But school hadn’t turned out to be much better than her new home; she couldn’t understand English, her overworked muscles cramped up from sitting at the bench for so long, and sometimes she fell asleep without warning. The other children—twelve assorted Norwegians, Swedes, and Germans—were polite, but they all knew that she was only a hired girl with no family. So they kept their distance.

  Except for Fredrik Halvorsan. Who, one day, instead of running around with his brother and the other boys, suddenly peeled off, pulled on Anette’s apron string, and said in Norwegian, “Tag, you’re it!” And Anette ran toward him, she tagged him easily, and he was so astonished—because he prided himself on being the fastest boy in school—that he blurted out, “You’re my friend now,” and he kept that promise. He sat next to her at lunch, they chased each other at recess, sometimes he even raced her home, even though he then had to turn around and run another mile and a half back north to his farm. He was the only good thing in her life, but Anette couldn’t tell him that for fear of inviting too many questions for which she had no answers.

  Teacher was also nice to her, when she was allowed to be. Ever since she started boarding at the Pedersens’ this last school term, she had tried to help Anette with English. But Mother Pedersen wouldn’t allow it. “This is not school,” she told the younger woman, as she gave her one of her needling looks so at odds with the china-doll delicacy of her face. “Boundaries must be respected. Anette is mine here.”

  Mother Pedersen was always claiming ownership of things, people—even ideas.

  Father Pedersen was different. He had tried to be kind to Anette, and to Teacher. But he was outside most of the time with the horses he loved. Anette had learned not to smile too much at him or laugh at his jokes or his stories. Mother Pedersen had a way of looking at her when she did that caused Anette to lose sleep at night, puzzling over it.

  But Teacher had not learned these things. She was a schoolteacher; she carried all the knowledge of the world in her head. Yet she couldn’t seem to understand the unspoken rules of Mother Pedersen’s house. Anette longed to warn her. But Anette didn’t have the words, even in her native tongue, to give voice to her concerns about what was happening in that two-story house. The air was so close, so stifling with things that she couldn’t understand, but that still resonated in her heart, her head, her very bones. There was a vibration, all the time, a high, tense note, like a string on a violin being teased forever, and all you could hope for was that it would finally break. And yet, you also feared that day, had nightmares about it, entered that house with dread that today would be the day when that note was silenced forever.

  Especially after last week, when there was no school and the air was so bitterly cold that Father Pedersen couldn’t always escape to the barn where Teacher sometimes followed him, and they were all stuck together for long days and longer nights—Anette shuddered, thinking about it.

  So it was such a relief, this morning, when the cold spell broke; everyone except Mother Pedersen had fled that house. Teacher had grabbed Anette’s hand and run with her—neither wore their heavy coats, only thick shawls, and Anette had even dared to put on her regu
lar petticoats, letting her flannel ones air out on the line where she’d hung the children’s wash before breakfast. Teacher and Anette flew across the log bridge over the ravine at the back of the property, and their boots skimmed the packed, hard, snow-covered prairie, that little one-room school a beacon, drawing them away from the darkness of that house.

  And now, at recess, Anette and Fredrik were running like they always did, like birds themselves, chasing and laughing, until Anette finally tagged him. When she did, she felt a stinging shock, heard a sizzle, and they both leapt apart, gasping.

  Then they looked up at the sky. As Anette began to tremble, Fredrik ran to get Teacher.

  CHAPTER 2

  •••••

  Come to Nebraska, the Garden of Eden! Acres for the taking, acres of a bountiful land that will surely yield a harvest fit for the gods. Have you ever seen the sun set behind rolling green hills, heard the prairie lark sing its glorious song, smelled the perfume of flowers so abundant, they make a veritable carpet of velvet petals? Have you longed for the magic of a prairie winter, gentle yet abundant snow to nourish the earth, neither too cold nor too warm, only perfection in every way? Have you longed to cultivate a land so yielding, the plow is scarcely needed to give up its rich earth? Then leave your Czars, your Kings, the shackles of the filthy city, and come to a land of fresh, healthy air, a land where every man can be his own king. Our agents of the Union Pacific Railroad will even meet you off the boat in New York Harbor and make arrangements for you to take the first train west to God’s own country, Nebraska. The Homestead Act provides for any male or female head of a household one hundred and sixty of these heavenly acres for only a small filing fee. In five years, those acres will be yours to pass on to your children and their children’s children.

  Come to Nebraska, the Garden of Eden!

  GAVIN WOODSON LEANED BACK IN his chair, the cigar between his fingers forgotten so the ash now was about an inch long. He had just pinned the Come to Nebraska newspaper clipping to the scarred wall to the left of his cluttered desk. Blots of ink marred the other clippings he’d been pawing through, so that this was the only one he’d managed to salvage. He didn’t know why he’d pinned it. It was pabulum, pure and simple. Maybe he’d decided to display it not as a trophy but as a taunting reminder of how far he’d sunk, here in Godforsaken Omaha.

  He ought to be in New York right this minute, in the bustling offices of The World. Making plans for dinner at Delmonico’s, followed by drinks at the White Horse Tavern. Or he might stroll along Fifth Avenue and gape at the mansions, then watch a skating party in the park, maybe help a damsel in distress on the ice and hope it would lead to a carriage ride later. Or he could stay in his boardinghouse, a civilized place with musicales in the parlor in the evenings, a gentleman’s game of cards in the library, interesting and palatable food produced by dimpling young Irish girls who let you put an arm around them without automatically thinking you were engaged.

  Instead, after a falling-out with The World’s then-new owner, Joseph Pulitzer, Gavin found himself in Godforsaken Omaha. He couldn’t say the name of the town any other way; it was never merely “Omaha.” It was godforsaken, pure and simple. As was this entire region, this desert, this prairie, these plains. And the poor sons of bitches he’d lured out here with his pen.

  He glanced back up at the clipping and laughed. Jesus Christ, what a job he’d done! But that was actually his job—writing for the state’s boosters and railroad investors. Hammering out “news” articles that advertised this place as something it was not, pieces that got picked up by the wire services and placed in other newspapers or were used in pamphlets put out by the railroads. All with the same intent: To sell Nebraska. To sell all these acres, recently won from the Indians, to rubes and immigrants who didn’t know any better. To settle this state, grow the population—because there weren’t enough citizens in this country to fill up the ever-expanding territory, so they had to import bodies, pure and simple—and make the businessmen, the investors, and the railroads happy. And very rich. Because what good was a railroad snaking from coast to coast if there weren’t towns along the way, grain and wheat and corn and livestock to transport, not to mention people? How else would you get enough bodies inside a territory to turn it into a state? So the railroads and the boosters employed washed-up reporters to lure those people across an ocean. Reporters like Gavin.

  Gavin reached for his pen with a sigh. His desk here at the Omaha Daily Bee was the smallest, his cubbyhole the farthest away from the editor’s desk. He wasn’t technically employed by the Bee, but he was given a desk here, for appearance’s sake. After all, to the public, he was a journalist.

  But he wasn’t, and he knew it. And while that had once outraged him, he was growing used to the insulating feeling—like a ponderous buffalo coat keeping him warm while simultaneously weighing him down—of acquiescence. He even felt, after a couple of whiskeys at the Gilded Lily down the street, rather noble for admitting his failings. Wasn’t it best to acknowledge the limitations of a life and find a way to live within them, rather than constantly trying to push up against a fixed fate, like those ignorant sodbusters who’d believed his seductive prose, trying and failing every year to make a garden out of a desert?

  It sure as hell was, Gavin had convinced himself. Most of the time.

  “Writing something up about that sleighing party?” Dan Forsythe was standing next to him, in his usual sloppy attire—frayed, black-stained cuffs (he refused to wear paper cuffs to protect his shirts from the ink); heavy trousers, like farmers wore; heavy boots, too, that Gavin could easily imagine covered in muck and manure. Yet he was the star reporter for the Bee, the publisher’s pet.

  “Yep.”

  “Hadn’t you better go out there with them, then?”

  Gavin had to laugh at this. “Why? That’s not what I’m paid to do and you know it. Nobody wants the truth from me. I’ll give ’em a pretty picture—the gay party, accompanied by a brass band, rode triumphantly east on Douglas Street toward the river, the ladies’ velvet outfits—one bright red, jaunty cap in particular stood out—providing splashes of color against the pure white of the gently banked snow.”

  Forsythe laughed, and Gavin even enjoyed the admiration in the man’s eyes; he couldn’t help it, he was proud of his imaginative powers, even though they had no place in real journalism.

  “You’ve got it about right,” Forsythe said, still chuckling. “I saw them heading toward the river myself, right down to the jaunty red cap. And the brass band in the last sleigh. It’s a helluva party—the whole town is having a holiday. Must have been a couple of hundred sleighs. The mayor’s even out there.”

  “Well, it is big news, that bridge. It’ll be good for everyone.” Omaha was on the west bank of the Missouri River; Council Bluffs, Iowa, on the east. Originally, Council Bluffs was the bigger town; it was assumed that the new Union Pacific Railroad would build its terminus there. But Omaha won out, and there was a bitter rivalry between the two. Still, this new bridge could only help both towns. Previously, horses and wagons had to take a ferry across in summer, or trust the ice in winter; the only bridge had been the train bridge.

  “Think I’ll take a stroll,” Forsythe said, scratching the back of his neck. Gavin knew what taking a stroll meant: heading down to one of the taverns, most likely the Lily. He decided to join Forsythe; he could write up that puff piece about the party in ten minutes and hand it over to be typeset. He’d have plenty of time after a snort or two.

  The two men retrieved their coats and headed outdoors. The streets of Godforsaken Omaha were the usual mess of mud churned up and frozen into ruts covered with hard-packed snow that was brown with manure. In the business district near Douglas Street, there were wide planks for walking, although these, too, were treacherous no matter the season. The street here had tracks laid and a cable car, electrified by a wire dangling precariously above
it, that chugged up and down, ringing its jolly bell at every stop; the city was inordinately proud of it, and it was crowded at all times. In the distance, the Paxton Hotel on Farnam rose a whopping five stories, and the new Bee building, almost complete next to the city hall, was going to top out at seven. There were restaurants and shops and busybody ladies’ societies and churches and an opera house and schools and banks, as well as a decent red-light district for a man with money and particular preferences, but Omaha was still a cow town when you got right down to it. The stockyard stench marinated the town in summer and not even the most bracing winter winds could completely chase it away. Wild packs of dogs sometimes terrorized citizens; fistfights, canings, and the occasional gunfight were not unusual. And the only decent meal a fellow could have was steak. Steak for breakfast, steak for supper, steak for dinner.

  Christ, what Gavin wouldn’t give for a fresh oyster.

  The two men stood for a moment outside; the sky was low but not threatening, a few soft snowflakes lazily drifted down, so sporadically that they barely registered. It was warm today, warmer than it had been, which was why the sleighing party had set out. It was only one o’clock, lunchtime, so he’d take advantage of the spread at the Lily, the usual boiled eggs and pickled beets and slices of tongue. His hunger roared to life and he patted his doughy stomach in embarrassment; he was going to seed here in Godforsaken Omaha, that was for damn sure. All he did was eat and drink and play cards and churn out ridiculous lies. The slim, taut young fellow he’d been in New York, vibrating with ambition and purpose, was only a memory now. A mocking memory.

  Godforsaken Omaha—make that Godforsaken Nebraska, might as well throw in the entire state—had robbed him of his purpose. This damn West, with its damn stupid boosters and backroom deals and rubes falling for every scheme, every trick at the card table, every pamphlet filled with lies about the land and its opportunities—it had simply flattened him.