Kris

by J. J. Ruscella

  Noah flipped the toy back and forth in his hands.

  “Well, what do you think? You’re the toy expert. Least that’s what Josef tells me. What do you know about a toy like this?” Noah asked.

  I remained quiet as I looked at the men, not knowing what they wanted me to say, and afraid to reveal too much to them, too soon.

  “Well?” Josef asked.

  “Wa-What?” I stammered.

  “Think you can fix it for him? Apparently, it is his daughter’s favorite toy.”

  “Ahhh, yes. I see. Yes, I can fix it.”

  “Well go take care of it before he has to go home,” Josef said as Noah handed me the duck. “Hurry on!”

  I hastened back toward the workshop to see how I might repair the broken toy.

  “Thanks, ma’ boy. My daughters will love you for this!” Noah shouted after me.

  I stopped and turned to Noah, meaning to say, “Thank you, Sir,” but I heard Josef question him.

  “So, you said you do not know who left Kendra or the toy at the church?”

  “Nope,” Noah said. “I saw him the first time, but he was at some distance, and a scarf covered his face.”

  “How do you plan to find him?” Josef asked.

  “Don’t think I want to,” Noah grunted. “Better off not knowing some things.”

  Josef looked over and saw me watching them. “Get on!” he said. “You have work to do. Now hurry. But make it right! You’ll know what you need to do.”

  I raced into the carpentry with the broken duck. Its wings had been chipped and cracked, and it no longer was free to fly. Time and rough circumstance had taken their toll upon this gentle winged creature, but it had been loved as well. It had been treasured, held closely. And now that it was injured, it had winged its way back to me so I could heal its broken parts, and return it to the place where it had nested, to bring joy and play again.

  I rummaged through the pieces of wood I had practiced on while first building the toys and found an earlier version of the wings I had set aside in dissatisfaction due to their crude form. The earlier design was slightly simpler but sturdier, and these would surely work as surrogate parts with some gentle shaping and a loving touch.

  Sarah watched me as I set about to repair the toy duck, but I ignored her as I worked and focused on finishing off the replacement wings and reconnecting the pieces so the toy would be whole once again.

  Jonas, Noel, and Markus continued with their assignments at the back of the carpentry, oblivious to the enormity of what I was living through.

  After some time, Sarah interrupted my silent work.

  “Kris?” she asked.

  I continued to ignore her to discourage her from pursuing idle talk.

  “Kris,” she said more emphatically.

  “What?” I asked her sharply.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure?” She pressed. “What was that all about?”

  I was so obsessed with my work that I was annoyed by her interruptions. Couldn’t she see I was busy? This was important.

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing. He just wants me to fix a broken toy.”

  “I heard. But why are you acting like that?

  “What? Like what—what are you talking about?”

  “Why didn’t you tell him it was your toy?” she whispered to me pointedly.

  By the time I realized what she was asking me, my fear of her discovery, ruining everything, made me rude.

  “Why? Because it isn’t!” I said to her.

  “Why are you trying to cover it up, Kris? Didn’t you hear that his daughters loved it? He probably would have paid you to make more of them.”

  “Well that’s just great. But I didn’t make this toy,” I said again.

  “I remember seeing you work on it, Kris. You held it up to me and made its wings move.”

  “Do you think I am the only person on earth who makes toys?”

  “Like that one? Yes,” she said.

  “I don’t even know that man. Why would he have one of my toys?”

  “I don’t know, Kris. I’m sorry. I guess I was wrong.”

  I returned my attention to the toy and tried to block out Sarah’s accusations. Sarah wandered over to another window and gazed outside for a few moments, seemingly at the barn. I thought she had relented, moving on to other thoughts, but then she asked, “Why do you think Josef keeps that old horse?”

  I knew she realized I was troubled by the events that had just unfolded, and would not yield to her curiosity. She was trying to put together the pieces, and then I would lose everything, even her warm if distant attentions.

  “He doesn’t,” I said to her curtly.

  “She seems awfully old to be lugging that sleigh around by herself. Poor girl could keel over any time. Especially if she’s out trudging all that distance across the snow.”

  “Sarah. Please stop.”

  “Are you making toys for the chapel orphanage or something?”

  “Sarah, stop!”

  “I just think it’s nice,” she said.

  “Stop talking! Would you please just stop talking and leave me alone!”

  I returned to my work, but I could tell I had hurt Sarah deeply. She quietly backed out of the room without notice, and when I looked up again, she was gone.

  I glanced over at Markus, Noel, and Jonas, who were staring at me in shock. When they saw me returning their stares, they jumped back to their tasks at hand, looking all the more bewildered.

  Some weeks later, I was out collecting firewood to stoke the morning fire in the carpentry. We had more than enough beside the furnace but Josef made me begin each morning replacing what we had used the day before. Chopping wood on a cold morning can be miserable, and all I wanted was to crawl back under warm covers. When I at last returned to my cot, I found a neatly wrapped, sizable gift resting on it against my pillow. This surprised me considerably. I ran my fingers over its decorative covering. I decided, finally, Gabriella must have left it, since she was the one who usually brought me special treats and items she felt would be of use to me.

  I opened the wrapping, touched by its attractiveness, evidence that someone had spent considerable time decorating the gift in such an elaborate way. As the wrappings were peeled back, I saw thickly padded, deep red fabric neatly folded. I removed it from the package and held it aloft to discover it was a fine-looking big, red winter coat.

  Red. I had never seen anything similar to it. I knew that women would dye their yarns different colors and that socks or scarves or hats of each village had a pattern of colors that would delineate their origins. I didn’t know how red was created. Some kind of berry, I imagined, or a specific type of tree root that would soak for days. Either way, she must have used a tremendous amount of it to die the entire coat.

  But why red? The boys were certain to laugh at me. To be sure, the color was strange. But I didn’t care. I thought the coat magnificent.

  How wonderful it was. Gabriella truly must have labored over it. How incredible it felt to receive such a fine gift, so thoughtfully and lovingly presented!

  Gabriella had commented many times about the old and dilapidated coat I had worn since I first came to them. What special feelings it brought that she would attend to me so.

  I hung the coat on a large hook near my cot and ventured over to my workbench.

  The toys I worked on had become more detailed and inventive over time. And before me now I studied the moving parts of a toy wolf, which I held inches from my face so I might inspect every edge and fine feature.

  Sarah entered the carpentry, carrying her usual delivery of freshly baked goods. We hadn’t spoken in weeks, not since my rude outburst. I was embarrassed and didn’t know how to heal the divide without addressing her earlier dangerous questions.

  Sarah placed her basket on the counter, not looking at me. Turning to leave, she adjusted the cloth covering the bread in the basket, making s
ure there were no openings to let out the heat. Then I saw her fingers. They were stained dark red, and I knew it must be from the dye. It was she who had made the coat. It was she who had spent hours cutting and sewing. It was she who had lovingly wrapped the wondrous gift and laid it against my pillow.

  A surge of awareness stole my breath. She had already forgiven me. In that moment I fell in love with her.

  I had longed for her and thought about her, but this was different. She had forgotten herself and instead focused on her uncanny understanding of me. Without words or explanations, she knew me. She was the angel I had imagined that stormy night a lifetime ago when I had first laid eyes on her.

  When she noticed I was studying her, she quickly hid her hands behind her back then stood awkwardly, waiting for me to do or say something.

  I did not know how to close the gap. Words did not come easily to me. I looked down at the toy in my hands, considering all the ways I might apologize, all the ways I might say thank you for her precious gift. I sat there trying to appear occupied with the toy wolf while stumbling through my thoughts. It was Sarah who first spoke.

  “I just came by to deliver bread,” she said defensively.

  She lifted the basket of fresh bread and walked out the same way she entered. After about five steps, she realized she had mistakenly picked up the basket and turned back around. A little shaken and trying to hide her mistake, Sarah walked back to where she had first put down the basket and began taking out loaves of bread and stacking them into some kind of pyramid, as if this is what she had intended to do the entire time. Unfortunately for her the bread structure tumbled with each new loaf she placed on top. I could tell it was frustrating her, but I was fascinated by the absurdity of what she was doing. Finally, on the verge of tears, she grabbed all of the loaves with the cloth they were initially wrapped in and stuffed them haphazardly back into the basket. Left that way they were certainly going to go cold quickly. I could tell. And I started to point that out to her when she rounded on me, planted her foot firmly on the ground and announced vehemently to the empty carpentry, “I won’t bother you. I promise.”

  “No, please!” I said, “I’m happy you are here.”

  I jumped up in my very clumsy way to clear a place for Sarah to sit with me nearer the furnace.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  What a curiously beautiful girl she was.

  “That really isn’t necessary,” she continued.

  I ignored her and continued to clear a place so she could join me. “I wanted to thank you for the coat. Please warm yourself” I said.

  Sarah looked away without speaking, crossing her arms as if to feign indifference.

  “It’s really so soft and comfortable,” I said to her. “And I know it will keep me warm.”

  “Which coat?” Sarah asked. She looked at me defiantly, feigning innocence as if she had no knowledge of what I was speaking about.

  “The big red one. I wanted to thank you for it. It’s so beautiful.”

  “I’m sorry?” Sarah continued, unwilling to take credit for the gift.

  “All right,” I said as I turned away, surrendering to the discomfort of the moment.

  Then I heard a small giggle and turned back to see what she found that was funny. She melted me with the warmth of her gentle smile.

  We looked at each other for a long time before she walked to me, sat down, and took my hands in hers. “I didn’t want you getting lost in a snowdrift delivering toys. That’s why I decided it should be red. To stand out against the snow.” Then, almost embarrassed, she added, “And because it reminded me of your big heart.”

  “Well, you aren’t a very good liar,” I said, but as I heard the words spill from my mouth, I realized they had come in far too abrupt a manner.

  Sarah ran her red-stained fingers over the toy wolf in my hands as if she were petting it. “I guess we have something in common,” she said coyly, reminding me of my denial and obvious lies regarding Kendra’s wooden duck.

  Now it was my turn to be embarrassed, and I was curt with her as I tried to deflect her comment. “I thought you promised not to bother me.”

  “I guess I am just a bad liar,” Sarah said, smiling. She held up her stained fingers with a smile and wiggled them as if the dye had made them sticky or stiff.

  If I told her what she wanted to know, I would ruin everything. Even if the town didn’t make me leave, Sarah would never see me in the same way again. “I don’t want to talk about this with you,” I confessed. But I instantly regretted my words and I could see they only compounded the hurtful things I had said to her earlier.

  “Fine,” Sarah said as she rose and took her leave.

  I stood up as I called after her, “I’m fully capable of caring for myself.” But we both knew that too was a lie.

  Fiercely she looked back at me and then stormed right up to face me. “Yes, I know,” she said coldly as she lifted herself on tiptoes. “That, of course, is why you stay here.”

  Her statement stung me sharply, but I could not contest the truth. In an effort to regain the upper hand, I challenged her again. “And I am supposed to trust you? You just lied to me.”

  She took a breath. With Sarah on her toes, her eyes were only slightly beneath my own. “And I would lie just as hard to keep your secrets safe,” she whispered.

  I could feel her breath’s warmth on my lips. She looked through me as if to penetrate my heart. Yet I found myself still desperately unable to lower my defenses.

  “Don’t worry, you won’t have to,” I said and sat down.

  How I dreaded those words that escaped from my lips and tore at Sarah like the teeth of my saw.

  “I’m warm enough now,” she whispered to me. There was a sense of deep hurt in her voice as she lowered herself to her heels.

  Somehow I needed to stop her. “Sarah?” I said gently.

  She looked down at her feet like an injured bird. “What?”

  “Do you promise?” I asked.

  “Do I promise?” She looked up at me as quiet tears washed her face. Then her eyes transformed with realization. “Yes,” she said solemnly and sincerely, “I promise.”

  I could not continue to look into her tear-filled eyes. So I turned my back to her, placed the toy wolf away from me on the table, and nervously began to whittle with a knife and small flat piece of wood that had been left lying on the worktable.

  I could feel Sarah behind me, watching, waiting.

  Hesitantly, I started. “Josef and Gabriella took me in … because … my own father is gone.”

  “And what of your mother?” Sarah asked.

  There were no words I could find to sum this up simply, directly. How could I begin to tell a story that I did not fully know? How could I venture down a path where my heart did not wish to go?

  I could hear Sarah as she pulled the stool behind me and quietly sat. She placed a hand gently on my back, and I knew my secrets were secure with her and that here my heart was safe.

  “She is gone with him.”

  I ran my fingers along the edges of the wood, felt the roughness and unfinished nature of the cuts I had made, and thought about the ways I would shape the wood and smooth its coarseness to complete it.

  “I’m sorry,” Sarah said, and she waited patiently for me to tell her more.

  “He was the first,” I said to her, haltingly.

  “Your father?” Sarah asked.

  “We thought it would pass,” I said. “But after the elders, it took the babies and children, and then everyone. Our world was filled with the constant toil of disease and loss.”

  I spoke to her softly. Carefully. With painful breaths that stabbed at my weakened spirit. I spoke about the terror that raged through our village and the dangerous and perverse fears that fanned the growing fires of destruction. I spoke of the times when logic no longer prevailed, when illness consumed the feeble and vulnerable, and brought once strong and vital men and women to the door of death. I spoke of al
l the pain and suffering the fires were meant to eradicate and the towering columns of smoke that climbed the sky. But we had not triumphed over the disease as we had wanted. We had not cleansed our lands. The fires had only taken our homes, not the illness.

  And in the silence that followed, I thought about the words forgiveness, giving, and living, and how elemental they were. And I thought giving must be the essence of our lives. Could a soul once broken be made whole by giving of itself?

  “You are from the mountains?” Sarah said to me, breaking the silence.

  I nodded quietly in response and listened for a moment, awaiting some condemnation or other, but none followed.

  “We tried to burn the sickness behind us,” I said. “My mother was weak. She could barely feed Nikko.”

  “Your brother? You have siblings?” Sarah asked softly, slowly. “Were there others? Other brothers and sisters?”

  “I was the oldest. I wanted to take care of them. My mother did not believe I was strong enough. I begged her and argued with her, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  Sarah gently placed the side of her face against my back, rubbing her hand back and forth as if to wipe away my pain.

  What carpenter had carved a heart like hers? I wondered, as I leaned slightly back against her hand.

  “I put them all into the sleigh,” I said. “I was the one who found them homes. The one who left them there alone. My mother didn’t care. She was dying and didn’t want to know what became of them. I was the one forced to make those choices.”

  I sliced at the strip of wood before me, making deep gouges and ripping at its edges.

  “Be careful with that,” Sarah said.

  “I abandoned my brothers and sisters. One after another. My brother Garin jumped off the sleigh, and I didn’t stop him. The others I left stranded before strangers that I prayed would take them into their homes and shelter them from the bitter cold.”

  “Kris,” Sarah said softly in an effort to comfort me.

  I carved with unconscious hands that moved of their own volition.

  “We ran from the flames we left behind, but we could not outrun the sickness in my mother. I carried her with us in that sleigh until she died, and left her body in a snow bank to decay.”