Black Hills (9781101559116)

by Thompson, Rod

  Finishing Becky’s last, he brushed off the final woodchips and leaned the crosses side by side against the wall of the barn while he backed away to look at his handiwork. Closing his eyes, he pictured in detail each member of his family in turn, along with the laughter and fun they had shared, as clearly in his mind as looking at a photograph. He remembered birthdays and Christmases and his mother’s kisses, baked pies and taters and gravy, walking to the fields with his father in the early-morning sun, sitting out a sudden thunder shower under their tree, and laying in the grass looking up at a night full of stars with Becky beside him . . . and his mother’s kisses.

  Opening his eyes, he found Lainey quietly standing beside him, looking at the crosses with tears streaming down her cheeks. For a long moment, they looked silently into each other’s eyes, sharing their pain. She, too, had lost her family. In silence, she took his hand and they walked out of the barn together.

  It occurred to Cormac that while Lainey had also lost both of her parents, she had no place to pay her respects, or to feel close to them. Working secretly, Cormac engraved a fourth cross and placed it with the others. The next day being Sunday, he told the Schwartzes his plan and arranged for them to accompany him and Lainey, and without explaining to Lainey why, took her to their own private graveyard.

  The morning sun lit the white crosses under the spreading branches of the tree as Lainey stepped down from the wagon and turned to take Cormac’s hand. She disliked him and had no use for him, but she understood all too well the pain he was suffering. Inadequate as it would be, she would give him her support the best she could.

  “Oh!” She gasped when she saw the fourth cross bearing the names of Connor and Jasmine Nayle. Her legs started to give out, and her body went weak. Only Cormac’s strong arm quickly encircling her waist kept Lainey from collapsing, and she cried out and then wept heavily. She continued to weep throughout the service as Mr. Schwartz read from his Bible in accented and caring tones, concluding with: “Thank you for welcoming these fine people, Lord, and for bringing the four of us together as the family we each needed. And thank you for giving us Lainey to be our wonderful daughter. We ask that you watch over and protect her and Cormac from further pain. Amen.”

  Lainey went to her adopted parents for comfort, and then to an uncomfortable Cormac Lynch for a long embrace that ended with a gentle, soft, and warm kiss on his cheek. “Thank you so very much,” she whispered raggedly.

  The Schwartzes had walked some distance away to allow the two of them a degree of privacy. Presently, Cormac joined them and they went for a walk to allow Lainey the previously unavailable opportunity to release the flood of emotions they knew she was holding inside. She had thought of her parents frequently. Theirs had been a tightly knit family and she missed them terribly, but previously had no place to let it out. She fell abruptly to her knees, and then, sitting back on her heels and holding her face in her hands, a heartbroken and grief-stricken Lainey Nayle folded her head to her knees and sobbed uncontrollably.

  “I would like to walk back,” Lainey told them after a while. Greatly affected by her new awareness of Cormac’s true nature of sensitivity and caring, she held out her hand to him. “Will you walk with me, please, Cormie?”

  United by catastrophic pain and feeling the closeness neither had expected to again feel with another person, they slowly walked the worn path through the grass and wildflower-spattered pasture to home; hand in hand, each in each other’s company, understanding and sharing their thoughts and emotions: no need for words.

  “I feel like such a huge weight has been lifted from me,” Lainey said finally. “I feel like you rescued me again. I can’t even describe how I have been feeling inside. It’s been horrible. I’ve wanted to talk to them, but we are so far from everything out here in the country, I didn’t think they knew where I was. I didn’t think they would hear me, but as soon as I saw their cross, they were there with me. I could feel them. I knew they could hear me, and I could finally say good-bye. It had all happened so very fast. They were trying to get me to someplace safe. One moment they were there, and then suddenly a giant wave appeared and tore them away. I can still see them for that instant, clinging to each other and yelling something to me that I was trying so hard to hear . . . but I just couldn’t hear them!” she cried out jerkily. Remnants of emotion erupted suddenly and Cormac only just did catch her before she collapsed sobbing to the ground.

  Sunday of the next week after dinner, Lainey and Cormac walked out to the graveyard and sat sadly in thought near the crosses, both coming to grips with their losses.

  “I think your parents and mine would have liked each other,” Cormac said suddenly.

  Lainey looked at him and smiled. “I like that. And here, they’re all together. It’s a nice thought.”

  Shortly, they arose with silent mutual consent and started back. It was a nice day. Not hot, just pleasantly warm with the friendly voices of the bobolinks ringing out and a family of ground squirrels chasing each other in play under a blue sky with a few white clouds floating lazily overhead. Things had changed between them: a bond had been formed, and for the first time, they chatted comfortably as they walked.

  The path took them to a tree-shaded footbridge Cormac’s father had built over the stream, which was moving slowly, full from a recent rain. “How ’bout we get a drink and soak our feet?” Cormac asked. Lainey agreed, and as they turned from the path, he snatched a handful of wildflowers from a convenient clump and handed them to her. “For you, milady,” he joked, pretending she was royalty.

  Lainey looked up at him and flashed a quick, happy-eyed smile, showing bright white perfect teeth and amazingly green eyes. Cormac had never looked at her from so close before. He couldn’t breathe. Never before had he looked into her eyes and realized the depth and shade of their color. They were beautiful. He stumbled on a washed-up river rock he hadn’t noticed. She had never before smiled at him until a week ago, and then it wasn’t an all-out smile like this one. Surprised at her beauty and unprepared for the feelings it aroused, he was momentarily stunned. It felt the same as when his pa had accidentally knocked the wind out of him once when they were wrestling in fun. He tried to catch his breath while he followed Lainey down to the water, hoping she hadn’t noticed.

  She had . . . and loved it, realizing she was feeling happy and girlish for the first time since losing her parents. It was a good feeling.

  Cormac washed his hands in the water, then gathered as much as his cupped hands would hold and poured it into her likewise cupped hands so she wouldn’t have to get her dress dirty kneeling on the bank. He repeated the procedure until she was satisfied before he drank. Then, thirst satisfied, they sat together on a washed-up broken tree trunk with their feet in the cool, bubbling water and threw pebbles into the stream.

  “Look,” Lainey cried excitedly and pointed at a fish swimming slowly in the gentle current at the water’s edge. Cormac dove for the water with outstretched hands but only succeeded in scaring away the prey.

  “Good try.” She laughed as he regained his seat beside her. “We had a stream like this near where we lived in Ireland, but there were no fish in it. At least none that I ever saw. A boy at the next farm was always telling me he could catch one from it anytime he wanted, but I never believed him. My father used to bring home fish he caught someplace else, and we would have a fish fry.”

  Cormac was amazed. “I didn’t know you lived on a farm before. That explains why you’re used to this work. Tell me about it.”

  Lainey scootched around a bit to make herself more comfortable, then began their first real conversation. “It was a lot like yours,” she started, “but Irish fields are tiny compared with Dakota’s wide-open spaces. We grew hay, flax, and some wheat, and lived in a small whitewashed cottage with a straw-thatch roof, stone walls, a dirt floor, and an open chimney stack. You could look up through it and see the sky, and it had a big iron hook that hung over the open hearth where my mother would hang a b
ig iron kettle for the tea, or a big black iron pot to boil the soup or potatoes, or a large flat griddle to bake soda bread. We had one cow for milk and butter and a vegetable garden and got meat once a week from the butcher in the next town. My mother made jams from the elderberries that grew wild along the hedgerows. Hedgerows are bands of bushes, flowers, and trees, with lots of different plants that grow tightly together, and animals and insects and many birds live in them. I didn’t much care for the taste of the elderberries. I like the wild-berry jam Mrs. Schwartz makes better. I wanted my mother’s bread with just butter, which I spent many hours churning. That was my job,” she added proudly.

  She stopped to pick up another handful of small pebbles to arc into the water one at a time to hear them plop. Cormac felt privileged that she was sharing with him, and was enjoying listening to what she was saying and to the sound of her voice. This was a Lainey he hadn’t seen before. This Lainey was happy, and her Irish lilt had perked up. There was a musical sound to it. It was bouncy. He thought it sounded airy. Now, where did that word come from? he thought as she restarted her story. It would have made his mother happy.

  “The roof thatch was made with straw from the stalks of the wheat crop after it was harvested and thrashed. To bind the thatch, my father made ropes with a hook on a handle that could be turned to twist it into rope. I used to get to live with my grandparents for a while each summer until they died. I loved them very much.

  “My grandfather was German, like Mr. Schwartz, and was conductor for the Belfast Philharmonic Orchestra for a spell and taught my grandmama music. She was one of ten children; my being an only child was unusual in Ireland. My grandmama’s name was Mary Patricia, and I loved her name, but my grandfather, I called him Papa, called her Paddy. It’s a common nickname in Ireland, especially for anybody named Patrick. I guess Papa made it work for Patricia, too. She always hoped my mother or myself would learn to love music as she did. My mother didn’t, but I enjoy it. I haven’t felt like singing in a long time, but I used to sing the songs Grandmama taught me a lot.”

  Looking upstream, she stopped talking suddenly and leaned forward. “Look,” she whispered excitedly, pointing about twenty yards up stream. “Here comes a big one.”

  “I think it’s a bass,” Cormac whispered back, and quickly stepped away from the stream to run down the riverbank quietly. He stepped gently into the water with little splashing. Taking a position facing upstream, he straddled the gentle current flowing along the edge, bending at the waist to rest his elbows on his knees. He spread his fingers wide and held them, unmoving, close to the water then waited motionlessly.

  They both held their breath and watched the large fish swimming lazily along the edge of the stream, grabbing insects from the surface from time to time as they presented themselves. On the alert for small creatures, it paid no attention to the shadow of a large figure bending over the water until it was suddenly scooped out of the water.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Cormac called proudly, holding up the wriggling fish as Lainey laughed, “We got supper.”

  Indeed they did have supper. Mrs. Schwartz offered to cook it, but Lainey expertly had it cleaned, filleted, and fried by the time Mrs. Schwartz’s potato soup was ready. All agreed it was a fine meal, and with Lainey once again able to be her real self, their relationships began to grow deeper after that and their little group began the process of becoming a real family.

  When the Schwartzes squabbled, they lapsed into full German, which Cormac and Lainey found amusing. Hearing it, sometimes he or Lainey would giggle, earning them dirty looks that usually turned into smiles, if not laughter. Friendship born of necessity solidified and shared respect evolved as each found their place in the workload. Nobody tried to be the boss and nobody shirked the work needing doing. They all worked well together and everyone pulled their own weight.

  Cormac was pleased to see even Lainey was a hard worker, in the house as well as the fields. She showed no hesitation, even in cleaning stalls and spreading manure in the fields.

  “You do that so nicely,” he teased as he walked passed where she was helping them prepare a field for fall plowing.

  She was a sight to see wearing an old pair of faded blue bib overalls she had altered over a red cotton blouse, standing calf-deep in a manure-filled wagon while casting one shovelful at a time in a wide arc away from the rear of the wagon. Without skipping a beat, she targeted him with the next arc and laughed at him getting out of her way.

  “That’ll teach you not to mess with someone who’s trying to get some work done,” she told him as she stood up, wiped the sweat from her forehead, and brushed back the jumble of red hair that was adding to her discomfort.

  “Aw, you don’t worry me,” he called back over his shoulder. “You couldn’t hit me if I was standing still.”

  “Oh, you think not, do you?”

  “I know so. Heck, you couldn’t hit a bull in the butt with a scoop shovel.”

  An evil grin spread across Lainey’s face as she picked up a baseball-sized chunk of dried cow manure and bounced it off the back of his head. “Uh oh,” she said as he whirled and charged back at her.

  She hit the ground running and led Cormac on a merry chase around the field, jumping away and laughing at him every time he tried to grab her and missed. Finally, she ran to where Mr. Schwartz was pulling out some sunflower plants by their roots. Circling to the other side of him, she danced back and forth to keep him between them.

  “Alright yoou two leettle kids,” he said in an exaggerated German accent, pretending to be mad with his face all grouchy. “Yoous get avay from me and go doo your nonsense some udder places. I got’s vork to dooo. Yoou keep this up and I turn yoou both over my kneee. Now vhat yoou tink about that?”

  Letting him win the game, they both pretended to be admonished. “Yes, sir,” they said dutifully, and started back for the wagon. Four steps later, he grabbed at her, she ducked, and they ran laughing to the wagon, which she jumped into, and went back to work. He continued on the way to get the pick and shovel he was originally going for.

  Springtime found them all plowing and planting from early morning until late in the day. Fall found them harvesting and plowing under the surface growth. Between times, they pulled weeds . . . so many weeds.

  Cormac decided the few potatoes they needed for their own use would be grown in the vegetable garden. They planted flax. There would be no more potatoes planted there.

  He and Mr. Schwartz hunted as needed for meat: sometimes together, other times alone. Pheasants, ducks, and geese—usually Canadian Honkers—were in abundance, occasionally deer wandered into the area or, more rarely, a buffalo, of which there were too few left after the buffalo hunters and which Cormac refused to shoot.

  Travelers were passing by more frequently and were invited to stay for food and rest. Their company and conversation were much looked forward to for the latest news of what was happening in the world.

  A traveler stopping by on his way to California gave them a well-read copy of the Chicago Tribune, which told them a foursquare-mile section of the city had burned to the ground and hundreds of people had been killed because a cow belonging to a Mrs. O’Leary had kicked over a lantern in a small shed near the edge of town. A Bostonian wearing a sweater-vest and what he called “riding breeches” that ballooned out on both sides, along with a silly cap, spoke of Wild Bill Hickok being the marshal of Abilene and of two railroads that connected somewhere in Utah, making the railroad tracks stretch all the way across the nation.

  A handsome young fellow not long out of New York who caught Lainey’s eye succumbed to her flirting by giving her a nearly new two-cent piece with the words “In God We Trust” prominently displayed on one side, which he claimed was the first time the phrase had ever been used on U.S. currency. True or not, it was the first time any of them had seen such a coin. Cormac wasn’t too happy about the flirting part, although he wasn’t quite sure why. What did he care if she wanted to make a fool of herself?
He stormed out of the house and jumped on Lop Ear bareback. With no saddle and a handful of mane, they shot into the hills like a house afire.

  Another traveler, this one from Illinois, was on his way to California in search of gold and tried to talk the Schwartzes into walking away from their farm and going to find some for themselves. “They could travel together,” he said.

  “No tank you,” Mr. Schwartz answered in his German accent. “We’ve found our gold right here. We go to bed at night as a family, wake up, and work this rich Dakota soil as a family. That’s all the gold we need.”

  The travelers’ stories put Cormac in mind of his mother’s comments about reading, taking him places he might otherwise not go. She had been well-read and had wanted him and Becky to also be. He returned to reading her books again. Maybe one day he might be wishful of seeing some other places, but for now, he had the responsibility of the farm.

  Mr. Schwartz had taken to wearing his handgun, as had most men, and taught Cormac about the powder charge, the ball and cap routine of loading it, and how to use the molds to make the necessary balls—or actual bullets if he wanted more killing power. With his pa’s teachings in mind, Cormac got in some practice time shooting at targets, and his aim became better. He rarely missed with any of the guns, making Mr. Schwartz envious. Being left-handed, Mr. Schwartz wore his holster on his left hip. Cormac always threw rocks with his left, leading him to believe he was also left-handed.

  One day when Lainey had carried lunch to them in the field, Mr. Schwartz and Cormac stopped work and walked, with Mr. Schwartz on Cormac’s right, to where she was spreading the lunch out on a blanket. As she bent to place a bowl down, a rattlesnake in the brush near her leg rattled his tail and struck. Cormac heard Mr. Schwartz’s gun go off and saw the snake’s head disappear into the brush and the snake flop to the ground before realizing that the gun was somehow in his own hand. It was he who had pulled it from Mr. Schwartz’s holster with his right hand.