The Endearment

by LaVyrle Spencer

  “What did I say?” he asked, stunned by her sudden attack on his innocent comment.

  “You never mind!” she whispered back. “My turnips are my business!”

  Just then Karl returned. He hitched his britches up at the waist a little, then turned toward the empty place where the springhouse used to be.

  “I have been waiting to be told where my springhouse is, but since nobody tells me, I guess I must ask.”

  Turnips were forgotten as Anna and James smirked at each other conspiratorially.

  “The springhouse got wrecked, Karl,” James said in a masterpiece of simplicity.

  “How does a springhouse get wrecked, just sitting there holding pails?”

  “I blasted 'er to kingdom come when I shot the bear.”

  Should he live to be as old as Karl's virgin maples and their abundance of nectar, James would never forget the sweet nectar of that moment—the look on Karl's face, the jawfall of disbelief, James' own billowing pride, his self-pleasure at dropping the comment so casually, so manfully.

  And if Karl lived to be as old as his maples, he would clearly remember forever the shock of that moment—the way the boy stood holding the new Henry lever action repeater, trying to look nonchalant when the pride was beaming from his face in shafts, when his knuckly hands squared the rifle before him as if to say, “nothing to it, Karl.”

  “A bear?”

  “That's right.”

  “You shot a bear?”

  “Well, not alone. Anna and me, we shot him together,” James confirmed. There was no pretended nonchalance now. The words came tumbling from behind his widely smiling lips in a grand rush. “Didn't we, Anna? We were sleeping and we heard all these scraping noises and it sounded like something was trying to eat our door down, so we tried to figure out what it was, and pretty soon it moved to the springhouse and you shoulda heard all that racket, Karl. I think he had trouble gettin' through the doorway and by the time he did, why, he had it splintered five ways from Sunday and then we heard all this crashing and cracking and he got busy eatin' watermelon syrup after he broke most of the crocks and stuff, so I told Anna to light one of them torches that was left over from when she got lost, and she did and took it out in front of us to blind the bear so I could get off one good shot before he had a chance to think twice. 'Cause once you said that when a bear knows where to find free food he never fails to come back time after time and the only way to stop him is to kill him, so that's just what I did, Karl. I beaned 'im right between the eyes and there wasn't much left of his head when I was done, either!”

  At last James stopped, breathless.

  Karl was flabbergasted. He hunched his head and shoulders forward. “You and Anna did that?”

  “We sure did, but you loaded that shot a little heavy and it blew the back wall clear off the springhouse. Blew me clear off my feet, too, didn't it, Anna?” But before she could even nod, James hurried on, “But Anna, she made me promise that as soon as I fired that first shot I'd run back in the sod house fast as my feet would carry me! I swear, Karl, I hardly knew if I had any feet left after that gun smacked me over, though. You said she'd kick, but I wasn't expecting 'er to kick like a mule!”

  The import of all this was beginning to register on Karl. Suppose James had missed? Suppose the gun hadn't fired? Countless dire probabilities gripped Karl's gut.

  “Boy, you knew it was just my temper out in the bog that day when I got on you for being slow to the gun. You could have let that bear eat everything on the place and I would not have scolded, just so I come home and find you and Anna safe.”

  “But we are safe,” the boy reasoned.

  “Ya, you are safe, but because of my silly scolding I make you take such a risk to prove yourself when you have proved yourself all along.”

  “It wasn't cause of what happened in the bog, Karl, honest. It was . . . well . . . I don't know how to say it. It was kinda like when you say to Anna, 'A person keeps clean,' or when you say to me 'A door faces east.' All I could think of was 'A man protects his home.'“ Once said, the adultness of his simple statement struck James fully. He had taken his first steps across the threshold of manhood.

  “Karl,” James said now, suddenly very sure of the truth in what he was about to say, “I'd have done it anyway, even if I'd never seen a cranberry bog in my life before.”

  Anna watched the only two men she had ever loved coming to terms with each other, setting their tack toward a course of future respect and sharing. Joyful though she was for them, her heart ached to reach a similar plane of understanding with Karl. But their private truce would have to be put off for a while yet, for Karl was saying with an appealing half grin, “So show me this bear with his head shot off, who only bargained for a little watermelon syrup.”

  James broke into a grin and a jog at the same time. “He's out here behind the sod house. We wanted to put him where you couldn't see him at first, and spring the surprise on you when we were good and ready.”

  Karl began to follow him, but realized that Anna hung back. He turned, asking, “Aren't you coming, Anna?” She hesitated a moment, until he added, “The fireman must come along, too. If it had not been for you there would have been no torches in the house.”

  Was he teasing her? Anna wondered with a little skip of her heart. Oh, he was teasing her about getting lost in the blueberry patch! How long had it been since Karl had teased her?

  He turned to follow James, and she studied his high boots, remembering the first day they'd met, how she'd wanted to look up at his face but had only walked along, like now, with her eyes on his boots, wondering what he thought of her.

  Coming around the sod house, Karl was confronted not only by the carcass of the black bear hoisted into a tree. Beside it, hanging from its heel tendons, hung a twelve-point buck whitetail deer. Karl stopped dead in his tracks. He stared incredulously while Anna and James shared another conspiratorial pair of smiles. Karl's reaction was exactly what they'd hoped it would be. “But where did the deer come from?”

  “Oh, that's Anna's,” James said offhandedly, stifling a smirk.

  “You two are just full of surprises today.”

  “Well, the deer was a surprise to us, too,” James revealed.

  Anna was poking around in the dirt with the toe of her shoe.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?” He leveled his eyes on his wife.

  “You tell him, James.”

  “Somebody tell me. I do not care who.”

  “The reason Anna doesn't want to tell you is 'cause she's scared you'll be mad at her about the potatoes.”

  “What potatoes?”

  “The ones the Indians stole.”

  Karl was getting more confused by the minute. Still, Anna kept poking her shoe in the dirt, and he knew he wasn't going to get anything out of her.

  “I see I must ask again,” Karl said, playing their game. “What potatoes did the Indians steal?”

  James completed the story. “The ones from the garden. We dug up all the potatoes and got them all washed and in gunny sacks, but we forgot how you always said the Indians would steal anything that wasn't tacked down if they wanted it. I guess, to tell the truth, we never really believed you. So we got all those sacks of potatoes lined up against the wall of the log house, but we figured there was no hurry getting them into the root cellar. We left 'em there overnight and when we got up yesterday morning, one of the sacks was gone. All we could figure out was that the Indians took it. Anna was pretty sure you'd be mad because you said we need all the potatoes we can raise for the winter ahead. Anyway, she was really upset about it and we didn't know how to get them potatoes back. Then, this morning when we got up, here hangs this deer in the tree next to the bear. I guess the Indians are pretty much like you had 'em pegged, Karl. They have the strangest sense of honesty I ever heard of. The deer has to be their way of paying us back for the potatoes they stole.”

  “I'm sure it is. I guess we will just have to eat more meat than pota
toes this winter, that's all. Could I ask one question?”

  “Sure,” James answered.

  “If Anna was so scared about the sack of potatoes that was gone, why are the rest still sitting there?”

  “Because neither one of us could lift them down the steps of the root cellar. We figured we'd bruise them all up if we dragged 'em down and dropped 'em over the side. We had all we could do to get 'em this far. So Anna took a chunk of wood from the woodpile and leaned it against each sack during the night. She said that if the Indians want the potatoes that bad, let them take 'em and she'd eat turnips!”

  “But I thought Anna hates turnips,” Karl said, eyeing her.

  Relieved that Karl didn't seem too upset about the stolen spuds, Anna finally braved a glance at him, but stubbornly didn't answer.

  Karl again turned his attention to the pair of trees. “So, that takes care of the deer. But how did you get this other monster up?”

  Warming to the game now, James answered, “Oh, we had a hard time pulling him up there, didn't we, Anna?” He had been around Karl long enough that he was unable to resist such an opportunity for teasing!

  “Now do not try to tell me that you strung that bear up there, not two skinny little—” But Karl quickly amended, “Not two young pups like you!”

  James couldn't wait to finish his story. As before, the words came bubbling out like the spring bubbled out of the earth near them. There was no stopping either.

  “When we shot him he fell back into the springhouse and we knew we were in a terrible fix. He'd lay there and foul up the water in no time, I figured, so I took your axe and knocked away the walls that were left standing and Anna and me we gutted him right then and there. Anna, she got pretty queasy, but I told her if we didn't do it that meat'd be pure spoiled by morning. We washed the carcass out real good and let it lay, then first thing in the morning we walked up to Olaf's place and Erik come back with the team and got him hung up here with the block and tackle. Erik says he thinks this fellow would go three hunnert fifty pounds anyway. What do you think, Karl?”

  But what Karl was thinking was, Anna gutted that bear? In the middle of the night, by torchlight, probably dressed in her nighty? My Anna gutted that bear? Anna, who retched at the sight of a prairie chicken being dressed? “I would say closer to four hundred, myself,” Karl finally answered James.

  “He mighta gone four hunnert with his head on. Course, Erik never saw him with his head on. We all had a pretty good laugh when he come down here to the spring and sees that headless bear. All the while we were stringin' him up, Erik keeps sayin, 'Yup! You two sure fixed one mighty beautiful bear rug!'“

  Pleased as punch, getting into his story better all the time, James rambled on. It was “Erik this” and “Erik that” until Karl got quite peeved at hearing the man's name so much. Then, when Karl learned that Erik had stayed for dinner, he couldn't help but remember the way Anna had clung to Erik's neck the night he'd rescued her from the wolves. But just about the time James began telling about Erik staying to supper, Anna remembered she had those turnips cooking and took off for the sod house.

  Damn you, James! she thought as she scurried away, do you have to go on and on and make it sound like Erik stayed here all day!

  All through supper Karl and James talked bears and guns. They dissected the Henry forty-four caliber lever-action repeater and how she could hold fifteen rounds in her tubular magazine, and how she had a breech so tight she never leaked gas and how she would soon put Karl's own single-shot Sharps out to graze in obsolescence. When the meal was done, the Henry came to take the place of the dishes. The two of them took the gun apart, piece by piece, then put it back together, while Anna listened to foreign words again and was left out of the conversation: chamber, breechblock, wedge bar, finger lever, magazine spring. She grew fidgety.

  Night came on, and Anna wondered what was in the package Karl had brought for her. In all the excitement over the stove and the kettles and the gun and the bear and the deer, the package had been eclipsed, and by the time they were all in the house for supper, Anna decided she wanted to open it when she was alone. Meanwhile, the package lay on the bed unopened.

  At last Karl arose in his customary way and stretched, twisting at the waist with elbows raised. He picked up his tobacco pouch from the table. Now, Anna thought, while he is out there in the barn, and when James is already in bed, I will open the package.

  But Karl startled her by saying, “I must check the horses. Will you come with me, Anna?”

  She took a jacket. Nights were getting cooler now. It helped to have some place to stick her useless hands. She jammed them into the pockets and folded the jacket fronts deeply across one another. Karl lit his pipe and they sauntered toward the barn. Halfway there he noted, “You were very busy while I was gone.”

  “It just happened that way.”

  “I thought I would have to come home and dig potatoes and turnips.”

  “Oh, that was James' idea, to dig them. He said you told him they were ready for digging or I never would've known. I'm sorry about the potatoes the Indians took, Karl.”

  “I can see we will not be in need of them. I can tell just how busy you were when I look around and see how good the crops were. There will be plenty for winter. Plenty.”

  “Well, that's a relief. I really wasn't sure how much one sack of potatoes meant. But James forgot to tell you that we still have a few rutabagas and carrots left to take up. We didn't quite finish them.”

  “Ya, I see them out there, but they will keep. Carrots like to be in the earth to sweeten after the first frosts, my papa always used to say. We have plenty of time yet.”

  They swerved, nearing the barn. Anna's feet quite refused to take her into it. She turned and began sauntering with careless steps toward the vegetable garden, which was washed in moonlight, the carrot tops and rutabaga leaves and pumpkin vines clearly defined in the blue-white beams.

  “That was something to come home and find that bear hanging in the tree. You were just as brave as the boy, Anna, to go outside not knowing for sure what was out there.”

  “I didn't feel very brave at all. If it had been up to me, we would've stayed right where we were and kept wondering what was out there. It wasn't my idea to open the door.”

  “But you did, Anna. The point is, you did.”

  She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Well, what else could I do? Let James go out there by himself? I tell you, he's got a stubborn streak in him a mile long. You didn't see him, Karl. He was bound and determined to go out there alone if I refused to go along. I told him to let the bear eat everything in the place for all I cared, but he was determined. He kept saying 'Karl says this' and 'Karl says that,' and there was no way I was going to change his mind.”

  Karl's heart warmed, realizing the extent of his influence over the boy, just how fully James respected his teachings.

  “He is something,” Karl said ruminatively.

  “Yes, he's something.”

  “Anna, if something had gone wrong and that bear had harmed either one of you, I could not live with myself.”

  The bitter, thoughtless words she'd thrown at Karl about the bear came back to plague her. They hurt her now more than they had hurt him at the time they were spoken. She struggled for the right words, needing so badly for things to be set right between them again.

  “Karl . . . what I said before you left . . . about the bear—”

  “Listen to me, Anna. It was my own stupidity that brought it here. I have thought about it and wondered why a bear would come nosing around when I have never been bothered by one before. It is because I was so angry when I left the cranberry bog that I did not use good sense. I think I must have left a trail of cranberries straight to our door. When a man loses his head that way, he uses bad sense. I think this is what I did that day. I even put my own good horse in danger by making her hurry where the footing was bad. And when I make her hurry, I spill cranberries. I should have covered the bas
kets, but I didn't. Instead, I foolishly led that bear to the door by inviting him with cranberries. Then I ran away and left you two to take care of him.”

  “That's not true, Karl. I think you say it now because of what I said before you left. I never should have said that and I knew it as soon as the words were out of my mouth. I didn't mean it, Karl.” She glanced up at him penitently.

  “That is what Kerstin said.”

  “Kerstin?” Anna's eyebrows shot up irritatedly. “You told Kerstin what I said?” Already Anna's face felt like it would glow in the dark.

  “We had a talk, Kerstin and I, and she said you were only human and spoke without thinking, like we all do sometimes.”

  The idea of Karl exchanging confidences with Kerstin wounded Anna so fiercely that she climbed up on the top fence rail and sat down, facing away from Karl so he couldn't see her face in the moonlight. He must be closer to Kerstin than I guessed, she thought, to speak with her about our private affairs.

  “You spent the night at Johansons, Erik said.”

  Erik said, thought Karl dismally.

  “Ya. They were only too glad to take me in.”

  I'll bet! Anna thought sourly, especially one.

  “Karl,” Anna began, wanting the subject of Kerstin dropped once and for all so they could get on to mending their differences, “thank you for the stove.”

  “There is no need to thank me, Anna. Kerstin called me a stubborn Swede, and I guess I have been, saying all the time that we do not need a stove. We talked a long time, Kerstin and I, and she made me see that we should have a stove.”

  Something inside Anna turned to stone with those words. She was hurt beyond words to think that Karl came around to buying a stove only when the delectable Kerstin thought he should! Not because his own wife wanted one. All the joy went out of her at the thought of the stove now. She found herself wanting to lash out and hurt Karl in return, in any little way she could.