The Children's Blizzard

by Melanie Benjamin

  No one but Anna, his wife. Anna saw and heard everything; she was a force of nature who never kept still, never hid herself away, seemed to be everywhere at once: now in the kitchen, dicing meat for stew; now in the little parlor, polishing the prize china lamps; now in the stable—his domain—rubbing the bits and bridles until they shone. Checking on the chickens, sending Anette through her paces, diapering the baby, braiding her daughter’s hair so tight the girl cried, obsessively ironing her own pretty clothes, the only things she didn’t make Anette launder. Sewing new aprons and bonnets for herself while Anette’s clothes grew more and more threadbare, cooking dinner, each dish so pretty in a dainty bowl or platter, the table set like at a hotel, with many forks and spoons, even when the food was just plain farm food. She heard, she saw, she suspected, she scattered her withering words like hard, sharp pebbles throughout the house, you had to pick your way carefully through them, you never knew when you would face a new onslaught.

  She never sat, never rested. Not even at night.

  When Gunner crept back downstairs that awful night, Raina lay still for a long while. I’ll go back to sleep, she told herself. She may murder me in the night but I don’t care anymore. I need to leave this house one way or another.

  She had never said a single word to Gunner that would indicate she was the type of woman who would run off with a married man. But words weren’t the only way to communicate. And in her miserable heart she knew that had Anna not shown herself, she might have gone with him—after all, hadn’t she already risen, her feet on the floor, ready to follow him, before Anna spoke?

  A crash, a wail—Raina twitched as if she’d been poked with a barbed wire. She heard glass breaking, shattering her memories, and she looked about her. The largest schoolroom window had blown in with an explosion of glass; it was all over the floor. The greedy wind rushed through, howling now inside the schoolhouse as loudly as it did outside, and her hands flew to her ears to stifle it. She froze, trying to make sense of the scene: papers blowing all over the place and children screaming. Clara burned her hand on the stove as she ran to it for warmth. The snow piled in; the cold assaulted the room like an army of sharp knives. Tor rushed to gather the girl up as those icy knives slashed at Raina’s shawl, her dress, her flesh, her bones. She was shivering now, her entire body shaking. Walter Blickenstaff ran to the window with his coat, trying to cover it up, but his coat was then sucked outside. Tor threw the last log into the stove, desperate, then turned to look at Raina for guidance while she still stood, freezing, shaking, children running to her, tugging on her skirt, crying, wailing, hysterical.

  It hit her then. They couldn’t remain here, after all. They would freeze to death. The time had come, and gone, when she could be rescued.

  She was going to have to lead these ten children, not including Tor, outside. Into that storm.

  Panicked, her gaze returned to Tor, who was comforting Clara. Raina knew that they would have to do it, the two of them. Together, these two children—yes, they were children, her heart cried out. How confusing that today she called herself a child while all those nights, in Gunner’s eyes and her own desires, she had declared herself a woman. The irony did not escape her, but she only had a breath to realize it before returning to the desperate situation before her. Two young people, fifteen and sixteen, would have to get these even younger people somewhere safe.

  Somewhere they wouldn’t all freeze to death by morning.

  CHAPTER 9

  •••••

  THE SLEIGH WAS NOT SKIMMING merrily over the snow as it should have. The wind was too capricious, pummeling first this way, then the other, like a prizefighter taking out his revenge on an unworthy opponent. The little bay, Tiny’s pride and joy, was frothing at the mouth, trying to keep up; his eyes kept getting crusted over with ice, causing him to stumble, so that every few yards, Tiny had to rein him in and climb down to cover the horse’s eyes with his hands, thawing the ice.

  “How close are we to home?” Gerda shouted over the wind as Tiny pulled on the reins, preparing to climb down and repeat this task. The little bay was whinnying pitilessly.

  “A mile, maybe two,” Tiny called back, and Gerda’s heart sank. They must have been in the storm for nearly an hour. The two little girls sat on either side of her, their shawls—inadequate—pulled up over their heads. As Gerda gathered them closer to her, she could feel them shivering uncontrollably—or was that her own body trembling?

  Then they were falling. Falling, the sleigh teetering on one runner, for a brief, hopeful moment balancing there while Gerda held her breath lest she blow the whole thing over. But the sleigh tilted farther, heartlessly tossing its occupants out onto the prairie before it was yanked back upright by the horse. They hit the ground hard—the snow was packed and icy—and the girls started to cry. Gerda pushed herself up, stunned, and suddenly Tiny was leaping to his feet and dashing after the little bay who was still trying to outrun the storm; the horse and the sleigh disappeared into a swirling mass of ice and snow.

  “Tiny! Tiny!” Gerda didn’t seem hurt from the fall, but maybe she was too numb to feel pain? She wasn’t too numb to feel panic, however; panic rising up from her feet, rushing over her heart, squeezing her throat as Tiny disappeared into the raging nightmare, shouting, “Poco! Poco!”

  Poco. That horse of his, he’d named it after himself, saying that poco was the vaquero word for “small,” and maybe it was but it didn’t matter now. What mattered was that Tiny had vanished—she couldn’t even hear him calling after the horse—leaving her and the girls. Minna was crying while she held on to Ingrid’s hand, and the tears, Gerda saw to her horror, froze on her cheeks. Gerda took her thumb, clad in her wool gloves that were also frozen, and tried to rub the ice away from the little girl’s cheek.

  She stopped, her stomach churning, when the flesh peeled away, exposing a raw, red wound on Minna’s face, although the girl didn’t appear to feel anything; she kept sobbing, but it was from fear, not pain, as far as Gerda could tell.

  “Tiny!” Gerda—holding tight to the girls, one in each hand—took a few steps toward where Tiny had vanished, but she wasn’t sure of the direction. Maybe it was this way? She turned, took more steps, stopped, dizzy; she didn’t know which way was north or south, east or west. Desperately she looked at the ground, searching for tracks of the cutter sleigh, of their footsteps in the blowing, drifting, oddly sand-like snow, but there were none. It was as if a giant broom had swept away any trace of their journey so far.

  “Tiny!” Where was he? Why didn’t he come back? He would, he must—they would wait for him. He’d be back in a moment, back with the horse and sleigh, of course he would. He wouldn’t leave her, not Tiny—reliable, exasperating Tiny. Men like him didn’t leave women and children to fend for themselves in a storm like this. He would be back. He had to come back.

  Squatting down, she huddled with the two girls, drawing them close to her body; it was a little warmer this close to the ground, a little more visible as well, but still she couldn’t see more than a couple of feet in any direction.

  “Let’s sing a song,” she began, to keep the girls’ minds off the deadening misery that must have grasped their very bones as it was now seizing hers. “Little drops of water, little grains of sand…” But she gave up; she couldn’t keep shouting over the wailing squall. So they crouched as long as they could, Gerda’s knees locking into place so thoroughly she wondered if she could ever stand straight again; finally, she collapsed onto the numbingly glacial earth, drawing the girls into her lap, the three of them one shuddering, miserable being, snow blowing so fiercely she worried they’d be covered completely, then she thought that might be preferable to being so exposed….

  She opened her eyes, her heart thumping but curiously weak; she must have drowsed off, and she knew that was deadly. She shook the girls, pinched them until they cried; little Minna’s long eyelashes were
frozen to her cheek and Gerda blew on them, rubbed them and more of the girl’s tender flesh was exposed. Ingrid remained stoic, too stoic; Gerda worried that the older girl might just topple over without giving her a chance to save her.

  Because they were lost and alone. Tiny hadn’t come back. She had no idea how long they’d been there on the ground but she had to dig them out of a small drift that came up to Minna’s shoulders, in order for her to painfully rise and pull the girls to their feet.

  Her entire body began to shudder, so that she could barely get the words out. “Girls, le-le-let’s go,” she forced herself to say. She couldn’t wait for Tiny anymore. For one last moment she let him fill her thoughts—Tiny with shoulders so broad she teased that he could pull a plow himself; Tiny with a cocky smile at the ready, even in church; Tiny with strong hands that could span her waist; Tiny, his sparse mustache with a little white streak in it, like a bolt of lightning, that she imagined would tickle her lips when she allowed him to kiss her.

  Tiny, out there shouting for his stupid horse, even though, rationally, Gerda understood that a horse was currency on the prairie. Tiny, alone in this, maybe as frightened as she was, although it was difficult for Gerda to imagine that.

  Then she made her mind shut him out; she had to concentrate on the girls, on getting them to safety somehow. Although she couldn’t shut her mind to a more ominous thought: What about the other children she’d urged—so gaily!—to run home in this fury of a blizzard?

  But she couldn’t think of them now. Gerda had to move, she had to get these two girls in her charge to some kind of shelter. No light penetrated the clouds, so she couldn’t tell what time it was, and there was nothing to illuminate any familiar landmark. A creek bordered south of the line of homesteads that included the girls’ farm and the Andersons’, so if they’d been coming the usual way from the schoolhouse, that creek, and its little brace of elm trees that were just planted a couple of years ago so not very tall, should be on their right. If she could find that creek and walk along it, they would come to a house or a barn or even a stack of hay eventually.

  But she felt like a mouse trapped in a bucket; no matter which way she turned, it all looked the same and there was no way out, no magic curtain of clouds parting, even for just a second, to show her the landscape beyond her own nose.

  “Tiny,” she called once more, but the words didn’t carry, they were muffled, hollow; not even desperation could find a way out of this storm.

  Minna was still crying, and now so was Ingrid, and they were both shivering violently. She tugged on them, taking a few steps forward, but Minna’s feet were too small, they couldn’t keep her upright in the force of the wind. So Gerda knelt down and told the child to climb up on her back. She staggered up with the additional weight, then stumbled, almost fell, but Ingrid grasped her hand, and she managed to stay upright.

  “All right, all right,” she repeated over and over. Ingrid didn’t speak, neither did Minna, but at least Minna stopped crying as she buried her head in the back of Gerda’s neck. Gerda was grateful for the child’s warmth against her, shielding her a little from the wind.

  “All right, all right,” she kept chanting despite her teeth rattling so that she worried she would chip one of them. She had to walk with her head bowed, to try to keep the snow and ice from glazing over her eyes—she remembered the horse, Tiny getting out to melt the ice over his eyes, and panic, thoroughly part of her now, squeezed her heart. Where were they?

  Where was she?

  CHAPTER 10

  •••••

  THE HOUSE WAS LOSING SOME of its warmth, so Anna Pedersen went to the little lean-to off the kitchen to grab more wood. The lean-to was almost full; she thanked her foresight in having Gunner fill it up this morning, when it was warm, after those other two left for school.

  She almost sang with joy when she saw them running away from the house this morning, the Schoolteacher—she refused to call her by her name—holding Anette by the hand as they flew away without a backward glance. If only they could truly flee and never come back! Even with the heavier workload, she would be glad to have both of these interlopers out of her house. She’d never asked for them to come here, had she? No. It was all his idea.

  As it had been Gunner’s brilliant plan to leave Minneapolis, which she had loved—it had reminded her a little bit of Kristiania, Norway’s beautiful capital city, although it was not nearly so grand—to come here. To northeastern Nebraska, far from any city or town. A man who had never in his life tried to make a living from the earth, who had grown up in cities as had she, had gotten it into his idiotic head that owning acres of land was something he was owed now that he was an American. That living self-sufficiently, miles from any neighbor, was the true test of an American man. At least he hadn’t tried to grow any crops; she could at least be thankful about that. No, Gunner, who had been in the horse guards in the army back in Norway—and hadn’t she been smitten with him then, in his dashing uniform astride a sleek black horse?—had stuck with one thing he knew, anyway. And even Anna had to admit that breeding and selling horses was a reliable income in a land so newly settled, these Great Plains. People—poor farmers, too—had to have horses.

  But he could have easily done this in Minneapolis. Oh, they had lived in a lovely neighborhood there, a little slice of home with bakeries and coffee shops and everyone speaking Norwegian. She was happy in Minneapolis; she had culture and streetcars and teas and parties. She’d had no desire to leave.

  But he dragged her away from her family, her friends, to live like a peasant. To dirty her hands with daily labor, to have only him for companionship, to bear children alone with no help from her mother, her sisters. To nearly grow mad with the loneliness, the screeching of the wind driving her senseless; but the times when there were no sounds at all—not a wolf howling, a chicken scratching, a horse whinnying—were worse. Those times, with only her own heartbeat to remind her that she wasn’t trapped in someone else’s nightmare, that she was, in fact, alive and vulnerable, made her question her sanity. More than once, in such a state, she’d found a knife in her hand as she stood over her sleeping children’s beds with no idea how—or why—it had gotten there.

  She felt she was losing not only her sanity but herself. She kept looking in the mirror to reassure herself she was still Anna; Anna of the golden hair and the sparkling eyes and the brilliant laugh and the pretty ways who had been the envy of all her sisters, the belle of all the men. Anna who had chosen Gunner, not the other way around. She had many suitors, many chances, but she chose this man, and she must never let him forget that. He needed to know this every single day of this life out here in the middle of nowhere; he needed to be reminded that he was lucky to have her.

  And he behaved like a lucky man, he truly did—at times. Yes, he brought her presents from town, planted a flower garden for her in the best soil around the house, relegating the vegetables to a more troublesome plot of land and doing the hard work of coaxing them to grow. He sang her songs in the evening and made his gratitude known to her in bed, when she permitted it.

  But she could never forget the other times. The times when he put everything else on this dreadful scrap of land ahead of her. Like the time when she was giving birth to her youngest, the baby. Anna lay panting and grunting in the bed, the other two children standing in the doorway, dumbstruck, staring at her while she strained to bring forth this new life. And Gunner, where was he? In the barn, with his prize mare who was foaling at the same time. But the mare was having trouble, a breech birth, and her husband stuck his hands into the mare to pull out a foal, while she, Anna, lay alone. Split open with pain, clammy with terror, during childbirth. Alone, she gave birth to a son for him, she pulled the child out from between her legs with her own shaking hands, she held him there while she screamed. Their youngest son was born in a webbed, scarlet fury of blood and pain, and in that moment she couldn’
t help but feel this was his destiny.

  That, she could not forget. Let alone forgive.

  Then he brought them, those strangers, into her house. He presented each of them to her as he presented his pretty presents. With a flourish, a pleased flush on his handsome face. But with no real idea of how the practicalities of it all would work: who would feed them, clothe them, have to live with them day in and day out while he escaped to his everlasting stable.

  “Anna, my love, you needed help, so I have arranged it,” he told her the day that Anette’s mother arrived with her in tow. “I heard of a woman who wanted to sell her girl—there’s trouble at home, I gathered, and the mother thinks it’s best to get rid of her. Someone in town told me, and I wrote to her, and she’ll be here today. To help you, my love!” He must have seen the darkness overtake her face; that darkness she couldn’t always control, even though she knew it distorted her pretty features, made her less than her usual self.

  “A stranger? In my house?”

  “You said you were lonely!”

  “Lonely for my family, my sisters, my friends. Lonely for you. Not lonely for a girl her own mother doesn’t even want! What do we know about the family? Is she slatternly, the mother? Is the girl a bastard child?”

  “I don’t know—I don’t think—”

  “You didn’t even ask, did you?” Anna could have slapped his silly, stupid face right then; the man looked so surprised by her questions, so stunned at her refusal of his gift. Anna never refused gifts.