The Endearment

by LaVyrle Spencer

He was having the utmost difficulty getting through this without kissing her teasing little face. He promised that soon they would hunt for prairie chicken eggs. Then came goat's milk.

  “Enough to make it the right thickness,” which she observed at extremely close range, getting her head in his way so he could not see, telling him ignorantly when she thought the batter was “just right.”

  The eggless pancakes proved sumptuous fare, indeed, especially when topped with syrup, which Karl explained proudly, was tapped and boiled down right here just this spring, from his own maples, which he promised to show her soon.

  Anna was forced to miss the harnessing of the horses that morning, for she was left behind to clean up the dishes and scour the wooden pail from the goat's milk, using the disgusting yellow lye soap, which burned her skin. It was becoming increasingly apparent to Anna why a man needed help out here in the wilderness. Who in his right mind would not want someone to take care of these unpalatable household tasks?

  But once again free of the cabin, her spirits blossomed. Outside was where she loved it best, with the wind lifting her hair, and the horses snorting and tossing their heads impatiently, and James pleased because he'd helped with the harnessing again today and had remembered everything quite clearly, and Karl seizing up his axe and the five of them all heading out to the tamaracks again.

  They flushed a covey of grouse that morning, and Karl brought down one of the elusive darting birds with a single shot, laughing when he lowered the gun to find Anna squatted down in terror with her elbows over her ears.

  “It is only a grouse,” he said, “my little brave boy in britches.”

  “Only a grouse? It sounded like a hurricane!”

  “Next time you hear it, you will know it is only wings, and you will not need to hide like a mouse.”

  The ease with which Karl brought the bird down convinced Anna that he was a practiced marksman, along with everything else. He gutted the kill immediately. At noon he completed the dressing of the bird, while James watched and learned, and Anna gagged.

  Karl beamed with pride when he showed her where he kept his wild rice. It, too, was harvested off a slough on his own land in the northeast section. He set the rice to soak in boiling water, promising them a delightful supper. Later he taught them how to stuff the grouse with the musty-smelling rice, and how to wrap it all up in damp plantain leaves and plunge it into the coals along with yams wrapped likewise. He showed them how to sweeten the yams with maple syrup. Their meal would be truly delicious when they returned from their swim.

  Anna was less tired that night, and also somewhat less unwilling to dip into the cold water. While Karl and James stood in chest-high water, throwing pink rocks into the drop-off, concentrating hard on just where they'd have to dive to retrieve them again, Anna took an enormous breath, glided underwater from behind Karl and bit him on the ankle, touching nothing else of his skin. Karl yelped. Anna heard him clear underwater, and came up howling and sputtering, the sand all awhirl where Karl had jumped and kicked at the underwater menace.

  “Oh, Karl, you're so funny!” she gasped. “Scared of a little fish that doesn't make half the commotion of a bunch of dumb ruffed grouse!”

  But one glance at Karl, and she knew the play war was on. He crouched. He narrowed his eyes menacingly, and lowered his face till it rode the water like a crocodile, only his eyes showing as he glided silently in pursuit. She backed away, hands spread to fend him off.

  “Karl . . . no, Karl . . . I was just teasing, Karl!” She thrashed wildly, laughing and screaming, trying to get away from him.

  James hollered, “Git her, Karl! Git her!”

  “James, you little turd! I'm your sister! You're supposed to be on my side!” she yelled, clumsily plowing water. She looked over her shoulder and found she was getting nowhere fast.

  “Git her, Karl! She called me a turd!”

  “I heard her. Do you think a woman with such a nasty tongue should be punished?”

  “Yeah! Yeah!” cheered the disloyal James, loving every minute of it.

  “Traitor!” she badgered while Karl advanced, a feral gleam in his eye. Suddenly, he disappeared. Anna turned a circle, but the surface was broken only by little ripples. “Where'd he go? Karl? Where are—”

  Like a whale surfacing, Karl lunged up and out of the water, catching Anna with a shoulder behind her knees, pitching her high in the air while the forest reverberated with her shriek. She flipped butt-up and landed with an ignominious splat! Up she came, with hair every place but where it should be, to the tune of James and Karl guffawing in great camaraderie.

  “I think I just made a new kind of sea monster!” Karl pointed at Anna, who was coming on with fingers gnarled, snarling beautifully through the mop of dripping hair. Karl feigned helplessness when she caught him with both hands from behind his waist and wrestled him off his feet. She got the worst of it, naturally, for she went down backward and Karl sat on top of her. Under the water her arms slipped down on his water-slicked body and came into contact with more than just his belly. Swiftly, he turned in that liquid world, caught her against his chest and together they shot up like geysers, laughing into each other's faces.

  “Oh, Anna, my little sea monster,” he said, “what did I do before you were here?”

  They all went to bed at the same time that night, in the room flavored with tobacco smoke and fellowship. When the cornhusks quit rustling, James' voice came lazily. “ 'Night, Karl. 'Night, Anna.”

  “Goodnight, James,” the two wished together.

  Then Karl found Anna's hand and made patterns on its palm with his thumb. At last he pulled her nearer, making her roll on her side to face him, while he did likewise. “Are you tired?” he whispered very near her lips.

  “No,” she whispered back, thinking, no, no, no, no, no! I'm not at all tired.

  “Last night I was disappointed you went to sleep so fast.”

  “So was I,” she whispered, thrilled by his simple words and the feel of his hard thumb softly brushing. Her heart beat in double time while the palm of Anna's hand grew hot where Karl stroked it. They lay so still, with eyes wide open, noses almost touching, breathing upon each other.

  James sighed, and Karl's thumb stopped moving. His breath warmed her face. With a slight movement, he touched the tip of his nose to hers. Silently, he let the touch speak for him while feelings of greater need coursed through his body. His grip on her hand became almost painful. A hint of movement brought Karl's lips lightly to hers.

  Do that again, Karl—harder, she thought, while her heart hammered wildly. They lay unmoving, childlike, knees to knees, nose to nose, lips to lips, breath to breath, absorbed in the growing feeling of goodness at such simple nearness.

  “Today was so good, Anna, having you and the boy here. I . . . I feel such things,” he whispered.

  “What kind of things?”

  “Things about all three of us,” he whispered hoarsely, wishing he knew better how to tell her what he meant. “Working together on the logs—it is good. Eating together, swimming. I feel . . . I feel full, Anna.”

  “Is . . . is that what makes it? Working together and all the rest?” She nudged his thumb aside so hers could stroke his palm. Briefly his warm breath stopped falling upon her face, then she heard him swallow.

  “You feel it, too, Anna?”

  “I think so. I . . . I don't know, Karl. I just know it's different here from Boston. It's better. We never had to work before. Working here, helping you . . . I don't know. It doesn't really seem like work.” She wanted to add things she didn't know how to say, things about his smile, his teasing, his patience, his love of this place, which somehow had started to seep into her, even the sweet peace of weariness last night, a satisfied weariness she had never before known. But these were things she yet only sensed but could not put voice to.

  “For so long I dreamed of you being here to help with the cabin. Now it is just like I thought it would be. Going out all together in the mo
rning, working all day, relaxing together in the evenings. I feel . . . how good it is to laugh again, to laugh with you.”

  “You make me laugh so easy, Karl.”

  “Good. I like to see you laughing. You and the boy, too.”

  “Karl?”

  “Hm?”

  “We never had much reason to laugh before. Here, though, it's different.”

  It pleased him that he should have provided this nicety, one he had not consciously sought to provide. He felt her admission was more than a simple statement of enjoyment, sensed it as her invitation for affection. Soundlessly, he moved, taking a piece of her upper lip between his, tugging lightly at it, as if to say, come nearer.

  She obliged, and their mouths met softly, each of them slightly open, hesitant, hopeful, yet infinitely childish in their slowness, their willingness to let the other move first. There had been only that chaste kiss the first night. But this kiss had been born on the rising sun, had been foretold by their first “good mornings” while Karl stood holding an armload of wood and Anna stood holding her curtain. Through the day the certainty of this kiss had grown, enriched by their teasing and good humor and their growing sense of familiarity with each other.

  He slowly straightened his knees to move nearer. This time he took her lips fully, undemandingly at first, but his wet, warm tongue came seeking, riding upon the seam of her lips as if dissolving some sugar stitches he tasted there. Dissolve them he did, feeling beneath his tongue a first opening of her own mouth. Emboldened, he cradled the back of her neck, pulling her into the kiss, using his tongue to tease her away from passivity. What Karl waited for was some first sign, a movement, a touch of encouragement. His exploration touched a response in Anna and she, too, straightened her legs.

  Cautiously, she laid her hand upon his cheek. Never before had she caressed him in any way. The touch of her hand upon his skin raised an ardor in Karl that became difficult to control. Beneath her palm Anna felt his cheek muscles stretch as his mouth widened. His tongue entered her mouth more forcefully while she felt the strokes of it through her palm and his cheek.

  Never had Anna experienced kissing as an enjoyable thing. Now was awakened in her the knowledge that things like this could be different from the way she had always thought them. About this there was nothing sordid or ugly. There was no compulsion to push this man away, no crawling of skin, no stinging of tears. There was instead a feeling that he honored her, and thereby honored the act upon which they embarked. She sensed in Karl the unfolding wonder he experienced in taking her nearer fulfillment one slow step at a time. Anna felt herself unfolding, too, like the petals of a flower until the full beauty of the blossom is revealed.

  With a slow relaxing of muscle, he lowered his chest across hers, resting there upon her breast to see what she'd do. But she only laid her hand on the bare skin of his shoulder blade, testing again the rightness of what she felt, training her hand to move down the ridge beneath her palm. How well she remembered it after watching it flex in the sun these two days.

  Karl collapsed with his face buried in the pillow he'd filled for her with cattail down, basking in the first tentative exploration of her hand upon his back. Needing more, he arched away, freeing her pinned hand. But when she didn't seem to understand what he needed, he found the hand there beneath him and nudged it onto his shoulder, then settled down upon her, his face lost once more in the pillow beside her head.

  Anna could not help vividly recalling the expression on his face when he had told of bringing Nanna inside the house for company during winter. She remembered, too, the way Karl's hand had toyed with the goat's ear. She had never known before that men needed simple touching.

  The years of aloneness slid away with each pass of her hands along his skin. Their hearts, pressed tightly together, spoke of the human need both had harbored for so long. Within Anna, to whom such a feeling had also been denied for long years, a desperate voice warned she could lose all this warmth that radiated to her once Karl carried this act to its climax. But it was a good thing to feel so at one with another human being. She could not stop her hands from playing upon his back just a little longer.

  “Oh, Anna, what you do to me,” he said huskily, suddenly raising up, pinning her down with both hands on her arms. “Do you know what you do to me?” he whispered with a kind of vehemence that warned her she had perhaps already gone too far. But at Karl's movement, the cornhusks rustled, and they heard James make a sound as he rolled over. Karl's head jerked up in alert.

  They waited a moment before Anna whispered, “I think I know, Karl, but . . .” She had received the reprieve she needed, from James. She was confused herself, liking everything so far, still afraid to let it go further. “Karl, I wish . . .” Never before had she felt such dread of hurting someone's feelings. It was a new thing to Anna, this concern she had for Karl. She knew she must pick her way carefully. “It's only been three days. I feel like each day we've gotten to know each other a little better, but I think we need more time.”

  He'd done the thing he most wanted to avoid: he'd pushed her too fast. By now Karl liked Anna so much, and felt she liked him, too. Still, he tried to look at it from her point of view. She was perhaps afraid of being hurt. For this Karl could not blame her. “I should not have pushed you this way,” he admitted. “I only thought to touch you, but I find it is hard to hold back.”

  “Karl, please don't be so hard on yourself. I liked it and it's all right you touched me and kissed me. I'm only getting to know you better when I return the touches, like any woman wants to know her husband. Please understand, Karl . . .”

  She wondered exactly how to say what she meant. She wanted him—yes—yet she wanted to put off the time of consummation because she feared afterward he would find her repugnant, and that would be the end of this interlude of adjustment she was so enjoying.

  Also, Anna wanted more time to be wooed. It had nothing to do with whether or not she was a virgin. She was a woman, and as such had had dreams of soldiers with braids and epaulettes. How could she make him understand that braids and epaulettes mattered little, but that she wanted the joy of anticipation to go on a while longer? She wanted to be courted when she was already married. How absurd it sounded, even to her. Still, she had to try to explain.

  “Do you know what I want?”

  “No, Anna, what?” He thought he would give her anything if she would only not deny him interminably.

  “I want some more days like today . . . first. I want laughing and teasing and looking at each other across the way and . . . oh, I don't know. The things we'd have done if we had met in Sweden and you had bought me that hair ribbon, I guess. All girls want that sort of thing, like we talked about the other night. Do you understand, Karl?”

  “I understand, but for how long do you want such a thing?” The intensity was waning from his voice, and she thought perhaps she had succeeded in keeping from alienating him.

  “Oh, a little while, Karl. Just a little while for you to be my suitor instead of my husband. A little while to enjoy getting to know each other.”

  “So you like some teasing and some . . .” Karl could not think of the right word.

  “Flirting?” she filled in.

  “A true American word—flirting.”

  “Yes, Karl, maybe I do. For both of us.”

  “You are a strange girl, Anna, writing letters to me to agree to be my wife sight unseen, now demanding me to flirt with you. What am I to do with such a whiskey-haired girl anyway?”

  “Do as she asks,” Anna said coquettishly, something quite new to her.

  “You will have your way, Anna. But before you do, let me have another kiss like the last one. Just one.”

  Chapter Nine

  If Anna wanted flirting, she got it in subtle ways during the following days. Karl could do things in the most off-hand manner, making her turn red, or away, or look quickly to see if James saw. Karl could draw his oversize red handkerchief out of his hip pocket and dry h
is neck and chest in the sun, never laying an eye on Anna, but knowing full well she watched his every shimmering muscle.

  Anna could bend to pick up a load of branches and point the hind pockets of James' britches at Karl in as equally an innocent manner. He could remove his straw hat—she had taken time to stitch a sunbonnet for herself realizing Karl needed his hat—and wipe his forehead with his forearm, then, squint at the sun and say, “It is hot today.” Guilelessly?

  Anna didn't think so.

  Raising the hair from the back of her neck, she would agree casually, “It sure is.”

  In the pond their frolicking became sensitized by more frequent brushing against each other, under the guise of dunking, learning to swim, being teacher and student.

  Those sun-splashed days in the tamaracks were harbingers of more to come. But one day when the three awakened to rain, the tamaracks were forgotten for the time being. Karl checked the gray drizzle after breakfast, lit his pipe thoughtfully, then went to the barn to fetch a pitchfork and dig worms. Soon afterward he and James left with fishing poles in hand.

  Anna was alone in the springhouse washing vegetables, displeased at being left behind. She muttered to herself and threw the beans from pail to pan in irritation. Beans! she silently griped. I'm left to clean beans while those two go off to fish bass!

  Suddenly the light from outside was dimmed even more. Anna looked up and screamed. A bunch of Indians stood crowding around the doorway of the springhouse, somber faces impassive while she jumped up and spilled green beans everywhere. They all had oiled hair, pulled back into braided tails, and were dressed in fringed buckskin.

  The one nearest the doorway smiled in a toothy grin at the sound of her fright. They all acted like they were waiting for her to step outside. What else could she do? She squelched her fears and stepped into the misty day.

  “Foxhair,” Toothy Grin grunted.

  She stood in the drizzle, wondering what to do, while they all stared at her hair. Should she act as if it were totally natural to stand in the rain carrying on a conversation with an Indian, or stalk off toward the cabin where they were sure to follow?