The Endearment

by LaVyrle Spencer

  He noticed the dark rings beneath her arms and said, “There is a deep spot in my creek where we can all go to cool off at the end of the day.”

  “How deep?” she asked, wondering just what he meant by “cool off.” Wearing what?

  “Over your head.”

  “I can't swim.”

  “I will teach you.”

  “How cold is it?”

  “Not as cold as the spring.”

  “Oho! It better not be!”

  “You will try it then?”

  At last she stopped tugging at the branches and looked over at him. “We'll see.”

  “You really do not like to bathe, then?”

  Embarrassed now, she lunged again at a bough. “It's just that we never had to before. I mean, nobody ever made us. There was nobody to tell us what to do.”

  “What about your mother?” Karl asked, amazed.

  Anna gave a tug that sent her quick-footing it in reverse to keep from tumbling. “She couldn't have cared less,” she said expressionlessly.

  By the time Anna and James made their last trip down the hill, the shadows had lengthened and their strides had shortened. They stumbled along after Karl, who still strode sure and long and vigorously.

  Looking at the wilted pair of helpers, Karl laughed. “Go to the house, you two, but do not start any fires. I will come in as soon as I have seen to the horses.” He knew how tired they were after the day they'd put in.

  The fire-making and supper-making fell to him. He showed James the proper way to build a blaze, then showed Anna the proper way to build a stew. Alas, the two observed him listlessly, nearly asleep on their chairs. When the venison and turnips and wild onions were bubbling away on the hob, Karl could not help laughing again at his sapped companions.

  “If I do not do something quick to keep you two awake I will be eating all that stew by myself. And I have had my fill of solitary meals. Come!” He nudged each of them. “I think it is time we went for that swim.”

  The two sat disconsolately, while he gathered up clean clothing and flannels for drying. “Come along. Get your dry things and follow me.”

  “Karl, you're a merciless mule!” Anna complained, feeling a rush of intimacy in the criticizing.

  “Ya, I am,” he smilingly agreed. “And you, Anna, are a musty one.”

  Shamed, she could only follow him, ordering James to do the same.

  The trail followed the bank of the creek, a narrow footpath worn by Indians and animals in the long past. The creek was a purling brook that bubbled over stones in some spots, ran smooth in others. In most places it could be leaped in a single bound. The spot to which Karl led them had had the help of the beavers in creating a serene pond above a dam. Maidenhair and bracken ferns brushed their knees, while beneath the thick press of fronds, feathergrass sprang up. The smooth water was dotted with wild violets, shaded by tall virgin elms that stepped back to give sprawling black willow bushes first chance at the stream's edge.

  The last thing in the world Anna wanted to do was climb into that frigid water. “Do you do this every day?” she asked Karl.

  He was already stripping off his shirt. “Every day in the summer. In the winter I use my bathhouse where I sweat myself clean like in Sweden.”

  “Do you have some kind of fetish for cleanliness?”

  He stared at her, shirt hanging in his hands, while she stood without making any move to remove her clothing. “A person keeps clean,” he said simply.

  “Yes,” she agreed lamely.

  “Why do you not—” He felt suddenly shy. “Why do you not go put your things in the willow thicket there while James and I get in?”

  Mutely, she turned and headed for cover.

  “Come on, James,” she heard after two splashes. “We will hide behind the beaver dam while your sister gets in.”

  She shucked down to her shift and crept out of hiding. The two were gone; all their clothes lay in heaps.

  Anna hesitated. A toe in the water confirmed her suspicion. It was freezing! A person keeps clean, she said to herself, grimacing as she took the hated plunge.

  At her shriek, laughter sounded, then James called, “Come on in, Anna. It ain't so bad once you get used to it and move around some.”

  She sat down, screamed again. “James Reardon and Karl Lindstrom, you're both a pair of liars and I hate you!”

  For an answer came a big laugh answered by calls from birds perched nearby, watching these foolish humans who removed their plumage before bathing.

  “I'm in now, you can come out!” she called. When Karl and James emerged and moved toward her, she had no choice but to dip in up to her neck. She didn't want either one of them seeing her puckered nipples through the flimsy shift.

  “James, you little traitor!” she teased. “You never liked bathing any more than I did.”

  “It's different when you can get clear in.” His head disappeared, popped up with a big grin on it. “I dare you to duck under, Anna!”

  “Oh yeah?” Gamely, she dipped, only to come up sputtering and shuddering. Eyes still closed, she playfully nagged, “I hate your pool, Karl Lindstrom! Can't you heat it up for me?”

  “I will go down and ask it.” He flipped his feet, dove and with a flash of white skin was gone. He emerged across the way and yelled, “Sorry, Anna. The beavers do not agree. It is as warm as it is going to get.”

  He struck out in long, even strokes, effortlessly swimming the distance to her. “Come, I will take you to where the ledge angles down, then we will swim back toward shore. Do not be afraid.”

  He took her hands under the water and pulled her slowly off her feet. She glided, mouthing water. He smiled at the way the droplets clung to her eyelashes and hair.

  “Don't take me too far,” she begged.

  “Do not worry. Do you think I would risk you now that you are here?”

  “Maybe!” she sputtered. “What are you going to do with a woman who can't cook stew?”

  “There are uses I can think of,” he said quietly, so James could not hear. His mouth, like hers, was halfway beneath the surface. They bobbed, weightless, holding hands and learning each other's eyes, with eyelashes stuck wetly together, hair swept back in furrows and skin jeweled by occasional runnels.

  “How about a woman who cannot bake bread?”

  “She can be taught,” he burbled, the water lapping about his lips.

  “Or make soap?”

  “She can be taught,” he repeated.

  “To make it or to use it?”

  “Both.” And he opened his mouth, took in a mouthful of water and spit it right between her eyes.

  “You big Swedish bully!” she yelped, coming after him. But he was gone like quicksilver to the deep near James.

  “Be good and I will come and teach you to swim,” he backtalked.

  “Why? I don't like your miserable pond, anyway!”

  But a serious look came over his face. Then he pointed just behind her, asking James, “Is that a snapping turtle?”

  Poor Anna almost broke her neck wrenching around. Her hands dug wildly at the water as she scrambled to get out. On her way up the bank, her pantaloons sagged, revealing one white cheek before she snatched angrily at them and turned with hands on hips, bellowing, “Karl Lindstrom, see if I come in there again! That wasn't funny!”

  But Karl and James were slapping the surface of the water in disgusting merriment, falling over backward like fools, while Anna fumed. She sat miserably on shore, hugging her arms, shivering while the two took up surface diving, racing and exploring the outer perimeter of the beaver dam. Stubbornly she sat until Karl swam toward her. “Come on, Anna. I won't tease any more.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. Her nipples were like spearpoints now.

  “Should I come and get you?” he threatened, taking one more step. Her eyes dropped to the level where the water sliced across his hips, revealing the hollows just below the hipbones.

  “No! I'm coming!” She l
eaped up and plunged in, venturing farther than before. Karl taught her to roll on her back and flap her hands at her sides, like a fish using its fins. But lying that way with his arm slung beneath her back, her breasts became islands with no more than a cloud-thin veil of clinging cotton to disguise their darker centers. She quickly flipped onto her stomach again.

  Anna and Karl bobbed out to the ledge and swam toward shore many times. Once, heading back out, she overshot the shallows and panicked when her feet touched nothingness. Karl grabbed her from behind with one swift flexing of his steely arm, and again her feet touched sand. But his arm lingered long after she was safe, spanning her ribs, touching the bottom of her breasts, pulling her back against his nakedness below the water.

  Then James came near, and Karl released her. The trio broke for shore.

  When Karl announced their stew must now be done, Anna was surprised to find she had forgotten her tiredness while they were frolicking. They each went their separate ways to dry and dress, then met back on the path to walk home. On their way they were accompanied by night peepers and frogs who'd tuned up to orchestrate dusk.

  Fragrant aroma greeted them at their door. Karl enjoyed supper, especially watching Anna and James polish off enough food for a pair of grizzlies. Before the bowls were emptied for the last time, James drooped and wilted, then his sister followed suit. Karl scooted them off to bed.

  With full night fallen, Karl lit his pipe and wandered out to the barn. Belle and Bill, their great breaths pumping slowly, shifted contentedly, thumping hello in their stalls. They knew who entered, knew a oneness with their visitor. His gentle hand stroked the wide heads between the eyes. Finally, when the pipe coals turned pungent, dying away, came the deep voice. “She is a spunky one, my Anna. What do you think, Bill? Not as easy to break to the halter as your Belle, here.”

  In the dark sod house Karl lay aside his pipe, then his clothes. He settled into the enveloping cornhusks. Automatically, he reached out to encircle the slumbering Anna. He pulled her into his curve, knowing at once content and want. He thought about her breasts and how they had looked in the water. They lay now so close above his arm. All he need do was shift his arm slowly, slide his hand upward and he would be touching her breast at last. How badly he wanted to caress her, to know that first feel of her.

  But she slept in utter exhaustion while Karl's sense of fairness rankled. When he explored Anna for the first time, he wanted it to be a shared thing. He wanted her awake, aware, receptive and responsive.

  He could hold off. He had waited all this time to ease his loneliness. What they'd shared today—the three of them—would be enough for now. That and the feel of her sleeping body curved against his belly, the texture of her hair where he pressed his face against it upon her back.

  Chapter Eight

  Anna awakened to a myriad of sounds: bird-song so involved it became tuneless chatter, the crack of the axe, male voices, a short spurt of laughter. The bed beside her was empty. So was the pallet on the floor. The cabin door stood open, beckoning the long sun to cascade across the floor in a welcome rush of gold. She clenched her fists and stretched, lynxlike and twisting, savoring the goodness of everything—the sounds, the sun, the snugness.

  Arising, she found a blanket had been strung up across one corner to act as her dressing room.

  When Karl came inside, he saw only her backside. He eyed it appreciatively as she poked her head around the drape to investigate her niche of privacy.

  “Good morning, Anna.”

  She whirled around to find him smiling at her, sunshafts at his back, hugging a burden of firewood against his chest. In his other hand was the axe again, looking ever so right.

  “Good morning, Karl.” She stood with bare toes curled against the dirt floor, her nighty wrinkled, her hair in terrible disarray.

  Karl couldn't have been more pleased with her appearance.

  Suddenly, Anna realized that they'd both been stupidly smiling at one another, he with perhaps thirty pounds of wood on his arm, she with a blanket pulled across her front. She looked at the rope from which it hung, patted the cloth to make it wave a little and asked, “Did you remodel your house for me?”

  He laughed and answered, “I guess I did.” Then he went to the fireplace with his load.

  “Thank you,” she said to his strong back as it bent, sending the wood clattering.

  He turned, his eyes flicked momentarily over her breasts, then back to her face. “I should have thought of it yesterday, with the boy here and all.”

  Having followed the path of his eyes, she grew flustered, so asked quickly, “Were you teaching him to use the axe?”

  “Ya, on something a little smaller than a standing tamarack.”

  “How did he do?”

  James sailed in just then, answering her question. “Lookit, Anna! I split nearly all the wood Karl brought in.”

  “Nearly all?” Karl repeated, with a cock of his head.

  “We-e-e-ll . . . half anyway.”

  All three laughed at once, then James asked, “Which pail should I use for the milk?”

  “Any one from the springhouse.” Karl nodded toward it.

  Before James darted away again, excited, eager, he bubbled, “You were right, Karl. Nanna came home all by herself to get milked, and she came right up to me and nuzzled my hand as if she knew I was the one who'd be taking care of that job from now on.”

  Within Anna grew the realization of what this place, these duties, this man, meant to a boy of thirteen, and just how good it would be for her brother to grow to manhood learning a life such as this. “He's awful happy, Karl,” she said, knowing no other way to express it.

  “So am I,” Karl answered, turning to look over his shoulder at her from where he hunkered to his fire-making again.

  As she slipped behind the drape, Karl found himself intrigued by the sight of her bare feet peeping below it and lost track of what he was supposed to be doing. He watched her nightgown fall in a heap around her ankles. The blanket billowed here and there. Anna's feet turned around toward the trunk, which was also behind the blanket now. Then she seemed to balance on a single foot.

  “Ow!” Anna heard from the direction of the fireplace.

  “Karl? What's wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why did you say 'ow'?”

  “I think there will be a little skin burning with the kindling, that's all.”

  Anna's hands fell still. Karl made a mismove with his axe? she thought wonderingly. Karl? Then, looking down at her bare feet and the space between the floor and the blanket, she smiled widely to herself.

  When his fire was started, he called, “Do you know how to build a pancake?”

  “No.”

  “You will after today. I thought I could give up these kitchen duties once you came, and be a woodsman instead. But I think I must teach you how to make pancakes first.”

  Anna grimaced. She herself already liked the woods far better than the kitchen, but she buttoned the last button and stepped out to meet her domestic fate.

  “So, teach me how to build a pancake,” she ordered in an affected tone of command.

  “Annuuuh!” he exclaimed when he saw her, drawing out her name. “What is this you wear?”

  “Britches.” She flapped her hands.

  “Britches? Ya, I see it is britches but . . . but you are a woman.”

  “Karl, my skirts were wet to the knees before we got halfway out to the tamaracks yesterday. And they caught on the branches and made me trip, and got pitch all over them from dragging across the scrub. And . . . and they made my work harder, so I decided to try on a pair of James' britches. Look!” She spun around. “They fit!”

  “Ya, I see, but I do not know what to think. In Sweden no lady would be caught hiding in her pantry in britches.”

  “Oh, fiddle!” she snapped lightly. “In Sweden I'll bet there are so many men to build your houses the women don't have to help, right?”

  �
��Ya, that is right,” he reluctantly admitted. “But, Anna, I do not know about these britches.”

  “Well, I know. I know I'm not tripping over soggy skirts. Besides, who's gonna see me except you and James?”

  He couldn't actually think of a logical argument. He had thought her dresses inappropriate. But britches? He could not resist asking, “I suppose in Boston there was no one to stop you from running loose in britches any time you wanted either?”

  She looked sideways at him, then away. She found the still-rumpled bed and made herself busy flipping the covers smooth. “I did pretty much as I pleased there.”

  “Ya. I think you sure did. And it did not please you to learn pancake batter?”

  “Here I am,” she flipped her hands palms up, “ready to learn. But I'm not promising just how much I'll like it.”

  Karl explained that he had to adapt his mama's recipe for filmy, light Swedish pancakes because he had to do without eggs here.

  He looked so utterly ridiculous, her great big Karl, standing there at the table, mixing up pancakes, she could not help teasing him. Throughout the lesson she refused to be serious, while he instructed her in odd measurements.

  “Two palms full of flour.”

  “Whose palms? Yours or mine?” she kidded him.

  “Two pinches of salt.”

  “I might have to borrow your palms and your fingers when it's my turn, because yours are a different size than mine.”

  “Enough saleratus—leavening—to fill perhaps the half shell of a hazelnut.”

  “And if I've never seen a hazelnut?” she asked mischievously, eliciting his promise to show her one soon, and an order to straighten up and pay attention, though he tried hard to hold a straight face.

  “A lump of lard the size of two walnuts or so.”

  “Now—walnuts—at last, I know! It is the first useful measurement you have given me.”

  “No eggs,” he said hopelessly. “No chickens, no eggs!”

  “No eggs!” she exclaimed, pretending chagrin. “Whatever shall I do? I'm sure my pancakes will be tough as calluses without my eggs!”