by Ann Treacy
Why had Pa talked of this place so fondly? With the weather warming, logging would end, and Pa would come home soon. Their last conversation, long weeks ago, had been right here in the barn before Pa hitched the horses and went off to his winter work.
Pa had gestured with his empty pipe to an opening in the ceiling. “Go up and have a look?”
They climbed to the hayloft on a makeshift ladder of nailed planks. Morning light filtered through the roof boards. They turned in slow circles in the large empty loft. A rare moment alone with Pa. No doubt Pa studied the space with a farmer’s eye for the storage capacity, but Martin imagined the summer of hard work that would be required to harvest this much of anything.
They just stood together, looking up. Through the barn’s roof they saw the sky in several places. Martin was already missing him, but Pa put little store in talking about feelings. He never said things like “I’m proud of you,” but he would remark that Martin had gotten high marks that term or earned good money selling newspapers. Finally, in Gunnarsson tradition, they spoke of the work ahead.
“We’ve got some roof work to do this summer, son. I suppose my daddy built this barn. There was a sod stable before this. Have you seen it yet?”
Martin nodded. “There’s not much left to see.”
“There’s not much of anything, true enough.” Pa pointed with his pipe. “A few trunks and things in the corner yonder.” There rested three small trunks and a wooden crate. Pa sat and fished in the crate of discarded items. He came up with a carved wooden gun, which he turned over in his hands, then took imaginary aim and fired. “I wonder if this was meant for me.”
“What’s in here?” Martin used his toe to lift the lid of a small trunk. He saw faded fabric and a blue book. He bent and opened the book, but the stiff pages fanned shut again. It was half filled with small handwriting.
“Some sort of farm ledger maybe. I’ll give you the job of sifting through it all.” Pa placed a hand on each knee and stood. “Maybe you’ll find something Lilly can play with.” Pa winked. “Or the family treasure. They say my mother came to this country with an inheritance, but I’m afraid we’ll never know the truth of that story.” Pa drew on his pipe as if it weren’t empty, as if Ma hadn’t forgotten to buy him tobacco when she stocked up on her own patent medicines. For a second it almost smelled right.
“Time to harness up and head for the logging camp.”
Martin wished Pa didn’t have to leave and wished he could say so. But he was no good at saying those things either. They’d never even talked about Dan’s death. Not really. Pa would just say, “No sense fishing in water that’s already gone downstream.”
“Working at the logging camps isn’t so bad.” Pa believed in putting a good face on things that couldn’t be changed. “I’m lucky I have a way to earn a wage. But I hope our first crops can see us through the year, maybe even a little to sell for profit.”
One year. “You think we can make this place pay?” Martin asked.
Pa laced his fingers together then stretched his arms as if he couldn’t wait to do all the work. “We’ll go at it hammer and tongs.”
Martin loved the old blacksmith’s expression that Pa used to say before tackling any large job. It felt good to hear it again, like the last year hadn’t really happened.
“And after we do, we’ll fight for something to keep us busy. I remember from when I was a boy how winters on a farm got powerful long. Long and silent. That’s when the land speaks to you, in the silence.”
When Pa pulled his wagon up to the porch, swung down, and hugged the women, Martin didn’t know how to say good-bye. He yearned to jump up on the wagon seat and yell “boots and saddles” like he and Dan did as children when they went on adventures with Pa. It was easier to walk to the team and nuzzle Finn and Marshall and whisper good-bye to them than talk to Pa.
Noises in the farmyard caused the remembered scene with Pa to vanish. Martin arrived at the barn door just as Aunt Ida and Lilly came onto the porch. Ma was behind them, still in her housecoat. Before Dan died she never slept late, ever, but now she didn’t fully dress some days at all.
“Lord, who in tarnation?” Aunt Ida said, hastily patting her white hair.
A large man on a wagon pulled up his horses, nodded to the ladies, and said, “I’m Robert Perry.” He climbed down. Mr. Perry had a pudgy face and red hands, and an apologetic way about him. In fact his first words were to say he was sorry to take so many weeks to visit. He nodded at the porch, then turned to the barn. “This must be Martin. I’m one of the bachelors that raised your pa.”
Martin knew there were two Mr. Perrys who had raised Pa. This one, who looked to be twenty years older than Pa, and Robert’s father, who died last year. The family had never met them, but Pa always talked of the good life he had with them.
Mr. Perry shook his hand. “Your pa came by to see me on his way to the camps. I’ve been laid up since with the late winter ague.”
Ma clutched her bedroom wrapper around her. After meeting Aunt Ida, Mr. Perry turned to Ma and spoke haltingly. “Ma’am, so nice to meet you finally. I sure haven’t been one to put a pen to paper all these years. So, I’m late to say how sorry I am for your loss last year.”
Ma just stared at Mr. Perry. Martin assumed she thought about Dan all day, every day. But now that someone actually referred to him, she looked blank. There was a time when Ma would have smiled at Mr. Perry’s shyness. Later, that Ma would have said something to the family like “Isn’t he the blushing bashful bachelor farmer.” This Ma just nodded, then turned to go inside. Martin glimpsed her drag the spoon and cough syrup out of her pocket.
Months ago Pa had attended the funeral for Mr. Perry’s father. That’s when they made the plans for passing the Gunnarsson homestead back to Pa. Mr. Perry wanted to stop farming but would still live on his own place. He would give Martin’s family a cow and the use of equipment and machinery to get their first crops started.
Tied to Mr. Perry’s wagon was a milk cow he called Ella. Lilly stepped from behind Aunt Ida’s skirts and danced across the yard to the cow’s shoulder. She petted her gently, “Ella . . . Ella . . . Ella.”
“My Lord,” breathed Mr. Perry in a surprised way, as though he wasn’t used to the sound of his own voice saying something he hadn’t practiced. “Why, she’s the spitting image.”
Whose spitting image? Before Martin could ask who Lilly looked like, Mr. Perry had walked around the wagon and busied himself unloading a crate of laying hens. He set the box of murmuring chickens on the porch step with a nod to Aunt Ida. “Ma’am, if you can use them—with my father gone now, I want to get out of the chicken business entirely.”
“Thank you.” Aunt Ida nodded toward Lilly. “They’ll provide plenty of work for the young lady.”
“If there’s anything I can do for the family . . .” Mr. Perry said, but trailed off as though he’d spoken his ration for the day.
Even Aunt Ida couldn’t persuade him to stay for a cup of coffee. Mr. Perry gave a final awkward nod, cap in hand, before leaving.
Pa always spoke with such admiration of the Perrys’ kindness that it was like meeting a distant grandfather. But this shy man couldn’t be the fun-loving man Pa had told stories about. And who had Lilly reminded him of? It was as if Mr. Perry almost couldn’t get away fast enough after seeing her.
Chapter 5
Each day passed slowly, but fresher scents of spring started to sweep away winter’s memory. Sounds returned too. Flocks of birds hurried north in capital-V formations. About once a week, despite Pa’s prediction that they’d never “catch on,” the rickety-tick of an automobile carried up to the farmyard from the road. Except for mealtimes, sleeping, or school, Martin stayed outside or in the barn. He sometimes read to Ella, preferring the cow’s company to the house full of women.
Glass had been expensive when the barn was built, so the main floor was always as dark as evening. Martin pulled the milking stool under the only window, where Grand
father Gunnarsson’s old tool bench stood. They had found no books in the house when they moved in, though Ma had several past issues of the Ladies’ Home Journal. In Stillwater he’d frequently borrowed library books, but here the nearest library was miles away.
Ever since Martin could remember he had learned reading and writing out of the McGuffey Readers series. He was now in the final reader of the familiar tan and red books. Their last assignment, “After the Thunderstorm,” by James Thomson, wasn’t so bad for a poem. Today Miss Abrams had hastily assigned the older students to “read on” in the Sixth Eclectic Reader. Martin located Reading Selection VI, “House Cleaning,” and read out loud:
The walls are stripped of their furniture—paintings, prints, and looking-glasses lie huddled in heaps about the floor; the curtains are torn from their testers, the beds crammed into windows, chairs and tables, bedsteads and cradles, crowd the yard, and the garden fence bends beneath the weight of carpets, blankets, cloth cloaks . . .
He skipped ahead a page.
These smearings and scratchings, these washings and dashings, being duly performed, the next ceremonial is to cleanse and replace the distracted furniture.
Ella lowed and turned a questioning eye. He scanned the dense descriptions of servants, scullery maids, and wheelbarrows filled with lime. God help him. “I’ll stop.” Martin patted the cow but didn’t milk her yet. If he came in with the milk before supper was ready, Lilly would try to engage him in a game of checkers, or Aunt Ida would ask him to hold a hank of yarn on his outstretched hands while she rolled it into a ball, or he would try and fail to talk to Ma. The more patent medicines Ma took, the more she slept and the less she spoke to anyone.
Wasn’t there a book of some sort in the old trunks he’d discovered with Pa? He climbed into the loft. The day’s remaining light seeped in better up here. Cool evening air also crept in through many cracks in the walls, but it was almost warm enough to sleep out here.
Martin planned. He’d bring bedding and a lantern from the house. The loft wouldn’t be fancy, but it would be a room of his own. Until it was brimming with hay in the fall, it would beat sleeping at Lilly’s feet behind the kitchen stove. In the corner were the trunks Pa had told him to sort through. Martin pulled them into position to serve as a makeshift chair and bedside table. He opened the trunks before stacking them. One held clothing and an old quilt top—at least that’s what they appeared to have been. Martin took out each item, piece by piece, until he saw the small hole in the trunk’s corner where mice had gotten in and chewed the contents.
He was glad to be alone so he could study a yellowed muslin corset at the bottom of the trunk, smashed flat by the weight of clothing and years. Martin picked it up and separated the front from the back, rounding it out and giving it shape again. The string tie fell to the floor in pieces. He knew little of women’s undergarments, having only seen them drying on wash day. Did it tie in the front, the back, or on the side? But he’d felt them. Plenty of times he’d helped Ma or Aunt Ida down from the wagon, his hands on her waist, and could feel the hard stays the corset held in place. It was like putting his hands around a tree trunk with ridges.
A length of twine held together six black buttons. More buttons, carved from shells, were sewn to an old dress bodice. He replaced everything, hoping Ma might be well enough to take an interest in the buttons someday.
Finding the undergarment among the tattered clothing made him willing to investigate further. He flipped the top on the third chest with a magician’s flair, saying Voila! The gesture reminded him of Samson.
The third trunk held girl items. But no mice had gnawed their way in here. There was one very old doll with human hair, clothes, and quilts. These things might have belonged to his Aunt Cora. Best of all were a book and the crinkled handwritten ledger he had seen with Pa.
Martin grabbed the books and slammed the lid. The first was a volume of poetry. Some poems are interesting, Martin thought, thumbing through Longfellow, Wordsworth, Milton, and Shelley. But the rhyming lines of these reminded him of words from “House Cleaning,” and he wanted to erase poem-like words like “smearings and scratchings” and “washings and dashings” from his memory.
Martin set the book down carefully. Obviously someone had cared for it well. He figured he would do the same. The second was the wider but thinner book with its stiffened cover of blue fabric. Only half of the pages in the volume, hand bound with yellowing thread, were filled.
Pa had called it a farm ledger, but it looked more like a diary. Martin brought the volume closer to his face to study the script. Inside the front cover, in large flowing letters, was inscribed:
Presented to Cora Gunnarsson
on the Occasion of
Twelve Years of Life
19 March 1864
His aunt’s diary! After that fancy first page Cora’s letters were as small as fractions. She had written with no regard to the faint blue lines. It appeared she tried to use every quarter inch of space. Martin knew writing paper had been precious back then, and it was still scarce now. But he wondered how a girl, living on this farm, could have found so much to say. He read the first page.
My name is Cora Louise Gunnarsson. I live on this claim with my father and mother. A secret is that I think there will be a baby. I attend the neighborhood school where I have two friends, Jo and March. Next year there will be a raising bee for a school building. My parents speak in Swedish at home, but at school we never do.
Martin looked out the window into the darkening barnyard. The baby she wrote about was certainly Pa. He felt a little dishonest, like he was spying on his father’s childhood. The urge to read on pulled at him like an untamed horse pulls on a rope.
5 May 1864
Daylight lasts so long now. We almost never light the rag that Mother soaks in fat and sets in a can to burn for light. The boys are gone from our little school for plowing and planting. Father and Mr. Connor and the bachelor Perry work together again this year. They are still plowing. Then they will harrow, cross harrow, seed, and after harrow the fields. I think they might grow tired of working the same squares of earth over and over, but I never tire of walking their late afternoon lunch out to them. I am still at school, so they must come to the house for the large noon meal. We will soon have fun when the crops are planted.
Many homesteads need a permanent house. Several will go up this summer and there will be many socials. Today Robert Perry offered me cookies from the lunch I carried to the men. He should know that women never eat the food they carry to the field. Father said I blushed, and I think it is true.
—Cora Gunnarsson, Minnesotan
Martin’s head shot up in understanding. He knew a Robert Perry. But the Robert Perry he knew was an old man—at least twenty years older than Pa, which would have made him only ten years or so older than Cora. He’d have been a young man in his twenties at the time of this writing.
Ever since the early years at school Martin had a terrible habit. “You don’t hurt anyone but yourself,” his teacher would say about his tendency to read the end of stories first. Daylight failing by the minute, he flipped ahead to where the script ended. While the earlier entries had been carefully drawn on the page by a journalist who took time to be exact, the entry for 6 July 1865 bounced on its page as if written in a race.
6 July 1865
Mother is sick. Not even Father was this sick. She told me to take Jacob to the Perrys. Her last words were about a dowry, which I hid safely in my doll’s house. Jacob is starting to cry. I am afraid to disobey her, but I am also afraid to leave her alone.
Ice sluiced down Martin’s spine just like when he’d jumped into the cold lake and discovered Samson. His mind snapped back to the book in his hand. Was this forty-year-old proof that the family legend was true? If so, where was this fabled treasure, this dowry that Cora hid? He had already explored what remained of the homestead’s few buildings.
Lilly’s voice cut the silence and made Martin jolt and bang
his knee on the trunk lid. “Mother sent me to see if the cow kicked you.” As always she clutched her rag doll, Stella, against her ribs. He had not seen her yet today; he’d left for school before she was up and had been in the barn since returning. She stared at him as if she expected something.
Martin’s heart pounded from being surprised. “What are you doing up here?”
“It’s my barn, too.” Lilly crawled fully into the loft, then stood looking around. She pointed with her free hand. “What are you reading?”
“I’d tell you if it were any of your business.” He herded her back toward the ladder. “Go on, unless you want to milk the cow. Your arm will freeze that way if you don’t ever put down that stupid doll.”
“Will not,” she called over her shoulder. A few minutes later he heard her through the barn wall, crying “I miss Dan, I miss Dan.”
Martin remembered how close Lilly and his older brother had been, always teasing and laughing, while Martin usually did both boys’ chores. He carefully lit a lantern, hung it high away from the bedding straw, and milked Ella.
22 June 1864
Mother said she brought something special from Sweden that her father made. Her older brother got their farm, but she got something else. She kept it with her every day of the long journey. I wonder what it can be. I certainly have seen every item we possess in this small house. My Swedish grandpa made Mother’s wedding ring, but it is very plain. Perhaps she means something else.
Chapter 6
Thunk. Martin stooped, picked up another length of firewood, placed it on the chopping stump, and swung the heavy splitting ax. Thunk. He took care not to strike all the way through the chunk of wood, which would hasten the destruction of the handy stump—the firmly rooted base of an ancient tree.