The Endearment

by LaVyrle Spencer

  I would shoot it and take it home for supper, Karl thought, but I do not have my gun. The pheasant can wait for James to bring it down.

  No, Karl did not have his own rifle. He had a gun all right, but when it was shot for the first time, it would be shot by James. It was a Henry repeater that made Karl smile in anticipation. He had much to make up for with the lad. The gun would be a start. Karl thought about himself and the boy walking out in the amber autumn mornings, their guns slung on their arms, companionably silent as they stalked pheasants, brought them down and carried them home to Anna.

  Then he would teach Anna how to stuff it with bread stuffing enhanced by their own wild hazelnuts. Karl supposed he would have to teach her to make bread all over again, now that she would be doing it in the cast-iron stove.

  Karl smiled. He flicked the reins. But Belle and Bill each turned a blinder in his direction, as if asking him what the hurry was. They were already cutting a good pace toward home, and they were as anxious to be there as he was.

  When the team turned into their own lane a short time later, Karl wanted to slow them instead of hurrying them. But now they obstinately refused to be slowed. Karl saw the familiar opening in the trees up ahead, then his skid trail, and at its base, the beautiful log house he and Anna and James had built together. Leaning beside it were neatly placed sacks of potatoes. Out on the grass by the garden were willow baskets with grapes drying in them, shriveling themselves into raisins. There was smoke coming from the chimney of the sod house.

  But there was something missing. Karl scanned the clearing again and realized with a start that it was the springhouse! His springhouse was gone! There were two pails sitting where it had been before, and some rutabagas that looked half-washed. Some crocks were submerged in the sand, as usual. But the building itself had disappeared into thin air. There was a smell in the air that made Karl's nostrils twitch, but he couldn't figure out what it could be that smelled so much like bear. The horses seemed to smell it, too, for they threw their heads and flicked their manes until Karl had to say, “Eaaasy. We are home. You know home when you see it.”

  Neither Anna nor James was in sight as Karl drove the team up near the log house. There it stood—the house of his dreams. While he reined in his team before it, he wondered once more if he had shattered those dreams beyond repair or if he and the boy and Anna could patch them up. He forced a calm into his limbs as he tied the reins to the wooden brake handle, and spoke to Belle and Bill.

  “You will have to wait a while till I get these things unloaded.”

  The horses told him in no uncertain terms they were impatient to get to their barn.

  Coming around the rear of the wagon, Karl glanced toward the sod house. James stood just outside its door, his hands in his pockets, staring at Karl. Karl stopped short and looked back at the boy. A sudden stinging burned the back of Karl's eyes, seeing how James just stood there, making no move to come forward or greet him in any way. Karl tried to speak, but his tongue felt like it was stuck to the roof of his mouth. Finally, he just raised his hand in a silent gesture of hello. His heart beat high in his throat as he waited for a return greeting from the boy. At last James removed a hand from his pocket and raised it silently, too.

  “I could use a little help unloading this wagon, boy,” Karl called.

  Without a word, James came toward him, watching his feet scuff up puffs of dust on his way. At the rear of the wagon he stopped, looked up at Karl, silent as before.

  Inanely, Karl managed to get out, “I got the wheat ground.”

  “Good,” said James. But the note escaped him in a high contralto. “Good,” he repeated, deeper this time.

  “We will have plenty flour for winter.” Karl remembered how he had once told the boy he was an extra mouth to feed.

  “Good.”

  “Got those windows for the log house.”

  James nodded his head as if to say, yes, so I see.

  “Everything all right here?” Karl's eyes flickered toward the cabin, then back to the boy's face.

  “Ya.” After a pause, he went on. “We thought you'd be back yesterday.”

  “It took a day to get the flour milled. They were busy at the mill and we had to wait our turn.” Did they think I wouldn't come back, Karl wondered. Is that what they thought?

  “Oh.”

  Tentatively they hovered, brawny man and gangly boy, hearts surging with remorse and love, neither of them yet having said what he wanted so desperately to say.

  “Well, we'd best get it unloaded,” Karl said.

  “Ya.”

  Karl stepped to the wagon to remove the backboard, but when his hands were upon it he did not pull it loose. He stood instead braced that way, gripping the rough wood as if it were his security. He closed his eyes. The boy stood unmoving, near Karl's elbow.

  “Boy, I . . . I'm sorry,” Karl croaked. Then he leaned his head back and looked up at the autumn sky. The sharp edges of the clouds were blurry.

  “Me, too, Karl,” James said. And for once in his life his voice came out strong and masculine.

  “You got nothing to be sorry for, boy. It was all me. Me! Karl!”

  “No, Karl. I shoulda got that gun like you said.”

  “The gun had nothing to do with it.”

  “Yes it did. It was the first lesson you taught me. Move for the gun like your life depends on it, cause it probably does.”

  “I was wrong that day. I was mad . . . I had things on my mind about Anna and we weren't getting along, so I took it out on you.”

  “It don't matter, really.”

  “Ya. It matters, boy. It matters.”

  “Not to me, not any more. I learned a lesson that day. I figure I needed it.”

  “I learned a lesson, too,” Karl said.

  Karl looked up then, found the boy's wide green eyes filled to the brim and understood how his own father had felt when he waved to him for the last time.

  “I missed you, boy. I missed you these last three days.”

  James blinked and a tear rolled down, unchecked, for his hands were still stuffed in his pockets. “We mi—we missed you, too.”

  Karl took the plunge, loosening his hold on the wagon and turning in one heart-filling motion to sweep the boy into his arms and hug him to his chest. James' arms came clinging to Karl. Karl took James by the sides of his hair, holding him back to look into his face, saying, “I'm sorry, boy. Your sister was right. You did everything right that I ever asked you to learn. A man couldn't ask for anything better than a boy like you.”

  James pitched roughly against Karl's chest, releasing all his pent-up anguish in a torrent of words that came muffled against Karl's shirt. “We didn't think you were coming back. We looked for you all day yesterday, and then nighttime came, and you didn't have your rifle and we knew about the cougar.”

  Karl thought his heart would explode. “Olaf was with me, boy, you knew that.” But he was rocking James, feeling the boy's heart beat against his own. “And he had his gun. Besides . . . a man would be a fool not to come back to a place like this, with all this plenty.”

  “Oh, Karl, don't ever go away again. I was so scared. I . . .” Standing there against the big man's chest, against the smell of him, that mixture of horses and tobacco and security, the words that ached in James' throat could be denied no longer. “I love you, Karl,” he said, then backed away, his eyes cast earthward, and dried them sheepishly on his sleeve.

  Karl pushed James' arm down and held him by the shoulders, forcing him to look square into his face as he said, “When you say to a man that you love him, there is no need to hide behind your sleeve. I love you, too, boy, and don't you ever forget it.”

  At last they both smiled. Then Karl swiped his own sleeve across his eyes and turned to the wagon again. “Now are you going to help me unload this wagon or do I need to get your sister to help me?”

  “I'll help you, Karl.”

  “Can you lift a sack of flour?” Karl asked.
<
br />   “Just watch me!”

  They unloaded the flour and the windows, which were protectively couched between the sacks. Lifting a precious glass pane, Karl said, “I bought five of them. One for each side of the door and one for each of the other walls. A man should be able to look out and see his land all around him,” he said, entering the log cabin.

  Coming back outside, Karl said, “I see you picked potatoes while I was gone.”

  “Ya. Me and Anna.”

  “Where is she?” Karl inquired while his heart danced against his rib cage.

  “She's getting some supper.”

  Now it was Karl's turn to say, “Oh.” Then he jumped onto the wagonbed again and said, “Help me move these last couple sacks, boy. We will take them to the sod house for Anna.”

  James pulled a sack away, revealing a long wooden box. He could see the words, “New Haven Arms Company” stamped on the front of it. He pulled the second sack away, and the words “Norwich, Connecticut” became visible. His hands fell loose upon the sack, and it would have tipped over sideways if Karl hadn't caught it. James' green eyes flashed up to Karl's blue ones.

  “A man does best with his own gun,” Karl said simply.

  “His own gun?” James repeated doubtfully.

  “Do you not agree?”

  “Su . . . sure, Karl.” James looked back down, wanting to touch the box, afraid to. He looked up again.

  “I picked one with a stock of hand-shaped walnut that will fit your grip like your pants fit your seat. It is just right for a boy of your size.”

  “Really, Karl?” James asked disbelievingly, still not pulling the crate out. “Is it really for me?”

  “I have taught you everything except how to be a hunter. It is time we got started. Winter is coming on.”

  James had the carton slipped free and in his arms. He leaped from the wagon and was running across the clearing, long legs bounding toward the sod house as he bellered, “Anna! Anna! Karl bought me a gun! Of my own, Anna, my own!”

  Karl waited for her to appear in the doorway of the sod house, but she didn't. He shouldered a sack of flour and headed that way, for James had disappeared inside.

  James was going crazy, talking far too loud, repeating that Karl had bought the gun to be his own. Anna was overjoyed for her brother.

  “Oh, James, I told you, didn't I?” She had seen from the depths of the cabin how Karl and James had made their peace out there. It was not necessary for her to know what they had said. To see the two of them hugging that way in broad daylight had filled her heart to bursting.

  Anna glanced up now as Karl's form filled the doorway, shutting out the daylight behind his wide shoulders. A queer, weak sensation flooded through her. He looked like a blond Nordic god, bigger than life, with that sack of flour on his shoulder and the muscles of his chest bulging as he paused uncertainly before coming all the way in. Sudden shyness overwhelmed her. She longed to rush to him and say, “Hold me, Karl,” to feel his strong, tan arms take her against his chest.

  “Hello, Anna,” he said quietly. He had not thought he'd missed her this much, but the things his heart was doing told him how empty the last two days had been. He could tell she, too, was very tense and nervous.

  When she spoke, her voice trembled. “Hello, Karl.”

  She wondered if he would stand in the doorway all evening.

  “You're home,” she at last thought to say. It sounded inane.

  “Ya. I am home.”

  “And James says you've brought the gun for him?”

  “Ya. A boy needs his own gun, so I bought him the best—a Henry repeater. But he had better not be thinking of using that hatchet to open the crate. Go out to the tack room and get a clawhammer, boy, like I taught you.”

  “Yessir!” James obeyed, and nearly knocked Karl back out the door.

  There was a fire and something was cooking. Anna turned to stir it. The sack on Karl's shoulder grew heavy, and he passed just behind her to set it on a free spot on the floor.

  His very nearness made her pulse throb faster, but she stirred the pot in order to appear busy, then clapped the cover on, saying, “I'll get some sticks from the woodpile to put under that sack.”

  “It can wait,” Karl said, straightening.

  “But the bugs will get it.” She headed for the door.

  “Not that fast.”

  His words and their boyish note of appeal stopped her halfway to the door. She turned to face Karl, then stood looking at him, and he at her, while time roared backward to the last time they had faced each other across this confined space.

  “I have some small things in the wagon you could carry in for me.” He glanced apologetically at the simmering pot. “It wouldn't take but a minute.”

  She nodded dumbly, then whirled toward the door, leaving him with his heart in a turmoil.

  Is she afraid of me? thought Karl with fading hope. Have I fixed it so she wants nothing but to run from me like a brown-eyed chipmunk every time I come near her? Does she think I ran off to Kerstin to spite her?

  When he came within inches of her to climb on the wagonbed, she skittered sideways to give him wide berth. He picked up a parcel from behind the seat, walked back to the open end of the wagon and stood above her, looking down at the top of her whiskey-hair.

  “Here,” he said, waiting for her to look up so he could toss the parcel down to her, “these are some things I thought you would need.” Finally, she lifted her eyes, and he dropped it.

  “What is it?” she asked as she caught it.

  “Necessities,” was all he would say.

  Her eyes became wide with surprise, while he turned away with the picture of her undisguised delight in his mind.

  Anna tried not to feel giddy, but it was hard. Nobody had ever given her a gift before. But Karl did not say it was a gift, she thought. Perhaps it's only some spices or things for the new kitchen. But it's soft, she thought. It bends and there is a lump in the middle of it!

  An iron clank interrupted her notions as Karl dragged something black and heavy from the front of the wagon. It made another metallic chink as it scraped on the other pieces resting against it. One by one he pulled all of the black iron sections of the stove to the tail of the wagon, before leaping lightly down and heisting up the largest.

  Anna gawked.

  James came out of the barn then, polishing the stock of his new rifle with the sleeve of his shirt. He stopped long enough to watch Karl disappearing into the new cabin with his burden.

  “What's that?” James called.

  Karl swung around slowly, the iron sheet turning with him until his face appeared from behind it. “It is Anna's new stove,” he answered. Then, without another word, he disappeared into the log cabin with the first of it.

  Anna's new stove? thought Anna.

  Anna's new stove!

  Anna's new stove!

  Had Karl answered, “It is Anna's new diamond tiara,” he could not have surprised his wife more. Her eyes followed Karl's every step, back and forth, as he carried the pieces into the new house. Gladness filled her chest until she felt she would pop the seams of her shirt! She fought the urge to follow along at Karl's heels each step of the way to see where he was setting the pieces, if he was putting them up, connecting them together. Instead, she just stood in the yard while Karl marched to and fro, carefully attending to his stove-carrying and keeping his eyes from his wife. At last came the pipe from under the wagon seat. It was silvery black, shiny, clean. Anna could stand it no longer.

  “Could I carry those for you, Karl?” she asked. Could I touch my stove? Could I touch this gift? Even this much of it—to make sure my eyes are not playing tricks on me?

  “You do not need to help with this. It was only that little package I wanted you to carry.”

  “Oh, but I want to!”

  He stopped, understood, handed her the sections of the stovepipe, pleasure growing in him at sight of her pleasure. Her freckles looked delightful beneath h
er excited brown eyes.

  “There is more, Anna,” he said.

  “More?”

  “More. When you buy a new stove, it seems they give you these newfangled kettles with it. They say they cook even better than cast-iron ones and they are lighter to lift. They are in the carton.”

  “Newfangled kettles?” Anna asked, incredulous.

  “In the carton,” he repeated, enjoying her disbelief.

  “Are they copper?”

  “No. Something called japanned ware.”

  “Japanned ware?”

  “They say things don't burn in it as easy as copper, and it does not rust like iron because it is covered with lacquer.”

  At the mention of burned food, Anna's eyes skittered down to the package. She picked at the wrapping absently with a fingernail, remembering all those times she had charred poor Karl's dinners. He saw her eyes drop and wondered what he had said to disappoint her.

  Then James intervened. “Wow, Karl! Anna gets a stove and all them kettles, and I get a gun! I wish you'd go to town more often!”

  Karl forced a laugh. “The kettles are no good without food to cook in them.”

  “When can we go hunting?”

  “When the cabin is done and the vegetables are all dug.”

  “The vegetables are all dug, Karl. Me and Anna did it while you were gone.”

  “The turnips, too?” Karl asked, amazed.

  “Of course, the turnips, too. We already got 'em washed and down in the root cellar and Anna's cooking some for supper.”

  “She is, huh?” Karl eyed his wife again, finding a pleasing blush creeping upon her cheeks. “My Anna is cooking turnips?”

  Always, when Karl called her “my Onnuh” that way, it made the blood beat at her cheeks. But James was still babbling away.

  “You were sure right about the turnips. I never saw such big ones in my life!”

  “What did I tell you?” Karl chided James good-naturedly. Then, lowering his voice, turning away, he repeated, “Turnips, huh?”

  But while Karl went to the cabin with the box of japanned ware on his shoulder, Anna turned quickly to James and ordered in a feisty whisper, “James Reardon, you just keep your nose out of my turnip-cooking, do you hear!”