Be Still the Water

by Karen Emilson

  Stefan stared at the ground, shaking his head. He either didn’t agree or couldn’t believe what was happening, but I couldn’t tell which.

  “Where did you two go?” J.K. asked Petra.

  Her eyes began to well. She looked at her father then back again. “We walked around.”

  “Where?”

  “Over there,” she said, pointing at the hall.

  “Then where?”

  She shrugged. “When I came back from the outhouse she was gone. I thought she went to watch the game.”

  “Where was your father?” Bjorn called out.

  Eyes settled on Bensi.

  It took Pabbi a moment for the thought to register, then he swung around. Before Bensi could step back, nearly two decades of resentment were concentrated in Pabbi’s fist. He caught Bensi on the chin, knocking him to the ground. The women screamed. Asi grabbed Pabbi, holding him back.

  “You criminal,” Pabbi rasped. “Waiting until my guard was down to strike again.”

  Amma pounded her armrest.

  Bensi held his jaw, eyes panicked at all the uncertainty surrounding him. “Pjetur,” he cried as he staggered to his feet.

  By then Amma was wailing.

  J.K. stepped in front of Pabbi grabbing him by the shoulders. “We have to eliminate all possibilities,” he said. “Do you hear me?”

  “What if it was Thora?” Pabbi choked. “Would you be so calm then?”

  “I would be out of my mind. I would need you to be the one thinking straight, understand?”

  Pabbi looked at Amma shaking in her chair. His eyes went to Bensi, then to his family. Pall stood red-faced beside his mother, mouth agape.

  “Alright,” J.K. said, clapping his hands to rally everyone the way he did the ball team. “We will start searching.”

  The men broke into groups, marching off in all directions.

  Olafur strode across the grass to Bensi. Bold as the devil, he thrust his chin out. “I know what you said about Freda and the girls,” he whispered through tight lips. “Watch a wolf long enough, and soon you learn his tricks. If you did anything to Freyja, I will kill you.”

  As I pay attention now, the one who surprises me most is Leifur. He does not utter one word. He just quietly studies Bensi and Pall.

  It was so incredibly difficult to leave The Narrows that night. Mother and I almost wouldn’t, but Pabbi insisted we follow Kent and Gudrun home to make sure Freyja wasn’t there, while he and J.K. stayed behind with the rest of the men. As the sun set, we watched the men split up to begin combing the shoreline.

  Before we left, Kent took Pabbi aside. “Edward Elliott is the police chief and a good friend of mine,” he said. “I shall speak to him the moment we are in Winnipeg. I’m sure she will show up, but if not I will see to it that a constable is sent out to investigate.”

  “Thank you,” Pabbi said.

  “Send me a telegram.”

  “I will.”

  We were all in a state of disbelief. The whole way home we scanned the road, calling her name. Around every bend we expected to see her waiting.

  “Look,” Solrun said, “there she is!” Our hearts leapt, but as we came closer, we realized the shadow at the edge of the bush was a fallen tree. Our eyes played tricks on us the whole way.

  Our last hope was that she’d boarded the steamship and got off at Kristjansson’s dock. I prayed we’d find her at home. Knowing Freyja, she would be completely unaware of our worry.

  “That would be just like her,” I said as the house came into view, but Mother was so distraught she couldn’t even reply.

  I jumped off the wagon and ran to the door ahead of everyone. The house was quiet, exactly as we’d left it, except now it was stifling hot inside. I called her name, took the stairs two at a time, hoping that she was lying on the bed pouting. I pushed open the door, praying this would all be over.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  It is a long time before scorched ground grows again.

  —Fóstbroeðra Saga

  Bulbs flashing. A camera. I am wide awake.

  It is so obvious now, the clue was right here all along. Solrun went home, so it is Lars who relaxes in the chair.

  “Scrap . . . book,” I say, startling him.

  He spills coffee on his knee as he quickly stands up. I say it twice more before he hears correctly then picks it up. He opens the book. He wonders where to start.

  I motion for him to crank the bed up because I cannot see lying down. I quickly grow impatient, clawing at his arm. “Please,” I say, pointing at my spectacles.

  He flexes them open and, careful not to poke my eyes, lets them rest on my nose. They are crooked, but I can still see the Lögberg masthead. July 1908. Below it is a full page of text and photos from the opening of The Narrows Hall. There is a photo of suffragist Margrét Benedictsson and a politician I no longer recognize, plus the ball team, everyone’s name carefully typeset underneath.

  “Later,” I say, so Lars begins turning the pages, hesitating each time the paper’s masthead runs across the top. Ball tournaments from July 1909. 1910. 1911. 1912. 1913. 1915. 1916. Wait. I drop my hand down to stop him. I motion to go back. The year Freyja disappeared is not here.

  Now I remember. Pabbi put the unread papers straight into the stove in the months that followed. Not until the world outside his own became so large that he had no choice, did he open the papers again.

  “Photo,” I say. With no strength to explain, I close my eyes.

  There were three grainy photos in Lögberg, early July 1914. I saw them, briefly, before waking up. The first is of the team cheering as they held Bjorn on their shoulders. The second shows them lined up, Asi holding the trophy, everyone grinning, unaware of the tragedy that would soon unfold. And there is a third, a little bit smaller, on an inside page, the image of an old woman sitting in a wheelchair under the shade of a tree, looking out over the water, taken from the back. Barely noticeable, off to the side stands a teenaged girl cooling her feet at the edge of the swirling water, hands delicately holding up her skirt, a man at her side.

  * * *

  Finn came the following evening. I should have been heartened to see him but wasn’t. Amma was frustrated and bone tired from trying to make me understand something. Hours earlier, before preparing supper, I’d placed a book on her lap, laid a sheet on top, and crooked a pencil in her good hand. I was studying the paper when he came in. Solrun and Lars sat on my knees, as if holding me down so I wouldn’t disappear, too.

  “Can we go outside?” Finn asked.

  I shook my head no and my eyes went back to the page. Of the eight scrawled images I counted, none were actual words.

  I could see he felt silly right then, carrying the chessboard under his arm. He tried to hide it, setting it down behind the door.

  “I would like to talk,” he said. “About our future.”

  “Not now.” I said. Not ever, is what I thought. What future? I could not imagine how I would get through the next day, never mind how I was going to escape from under the blanket of grief that was smothering our house.

  I gave him credit for not giving up. It must have been hard to come so soon after it happened.

  “Where is everybody?” he asked. He meant Pabbi and Leifur who’d arrived home late morning and were likely outside doing their best to exhaust themselves, to keep from thinking about what might have happened to her.

  I shrugged.

  Finn took the sheet and began trying to decipher Amma’s puzzle. I left him to it, took the little ones upstairs to get them ready for bed, then did the same with Amma who was nearly asleep in her chair.

  I pushed her past Mother silently rocking back and forth in the front room. She´d been sitting there since shortly after we arrived home and hadn’t spoken a word.

  Once Amma was comfortable in bed, h
ead on the pillow, I gazed into her eyes.

  “What is it Amma, what are you trying to tell us?”

  She shook her head, tongue suffocating every word, as tears leaked down her temples.

  Finn was still bent over the page when I returned.

  “Do you think she saw something?” he asked.

  I shrugged. Knowing Amma, anything could be written on that paper.

  Finn must have reported what a sorry state we were in because the next day Gudrun arrived. She did not say a word, except “good morning,” then set to work, pretending she couldn’t hear Mother crying in the bedroom. Some women, when faced with crisis, dive into housework to distract themselves, but that was not Mother’s way. Fortunately, it was Gudrun’s. She whipped everything into shape and came back again two days later to do it all over again.

  We mourned like that for a week, and while the days passed quickly, it felt like we’d been grieving for months. It is hard to say exactly when or if we ever stopped.

  Losing Freyja wounded each one of us in a different way.

  Pabbi felt it in his heart. It was obvious in the way he stood after that, shoulders slumped and chest caved in, a posture that became more pronounced whenever someone mentioned her name, as if by reflex his ribs were shielding his heart.

  Leifur took it in the gut. You could see his instincts come alive, riling him to the point that he needed to do something—anything. He tackled next winter’s wood supply all by himself. He hammered into the bush, pulling out the deadfall, then sawed each log into three foot lengths, splitting some of it, then, like a man possessed, piled it to the eaves along the lean-to wall.

  Signy, well, she let her brain take care of it. She always was prone to reasoning everything out and, with the exception of letting herself fall in love with Olafur, her brain trumped her heart every time. She was the only one mad at Freyja, concluding that no matter what had happened, it was Freyja´s fault; therefore, anger was her response.

  Losing Freyja was a cut to Mother’s soul. Once she started speaking, I knew by the things she said that she believed fate was thrashing her again—first she’d lost her sister now her daughter.

  For me, losing Freyja was hardest on my eyes. I saw everything differently after that.

  One morning, as I hung out the laundry, Solrun and Lars came to ask, checking over their shoulders first, if it was possible the huldufólk had taken Freyja. I knelt down, pulling them close.

  “There are no huldufólk here,” I said. “But if there were, why would they take her?”

  “She made Mama angry,” Solrun said.

  “Not everyone believes they exist,” I said.

  “Freyja does,” Lars said. “She told us they live in the knoll by Bensi’s and that we should stay away from there.”

  “You know Freyja has a wonderful imagination,” I replied. “She wanted to tell you stories, just like Amma.”

  “Then where is she?” Solrun asked.

  “She has gone away for a while.”

  “When will she back?”

  They both looked so hopeful that my eyes stung. “When she is ready.”

  This seemed to satisfy them and since the rest of us never spoke our fears out loud, it didn’t occur to Solrun or Lars that Freyja might never return.

  Signy arrived two days later right after dinner.

  “Where are the men?” she asked.

  “Out building a fence,” I said. “Between our place and Bensi’s.”

  Rationally it made no sense, but none of us were thinking clearly.

  She kissed Amma on the forehead then went in to see Mother. She asked how I was, but didn’t wait for the answer. I must have looked pathetic standing there with my arms wrapped around myself, hair still in the same frizzed out braid from the picnic.

  “There is work to do,” she said.

  That, I have to say, was the worst part. No matter what tragedy befell us, there was never time to stop, to forget about the chores and sit down to think. For some, work was like a salve; it kept a person from thinking too much. For those, like me, who could not stop the endless scenarios from rolling through my mind, the pressure of endless work had the power to drive a person crazy.

  We bumped Amma outside so she could enjoy a bit of sun. Setta broke away from the children to come lie down in the grass beside her.

  “What does Pabbi think happened?” Signy asked as we each picked up a scythe and began cutting the tall grass around the house. “Did he send for the police?”

  “On Tuesday.”

  “And Leifur?”

  “Hasn’t said a word.”

  “Olafur doesn’t think Bensi did anything,” she said with a sideways glance. “I agree.”

  I chuckled to myself. Those two thought they knew everything.

  “He didn’t see deception in Bensi’s eyes,” she said. “Olafur understands people.”

  I was in no mood to quarrel. I’d regretted not telling Pabbi that Bensi had been in our house, so I’d told Leifur the day after the picnic. He hadn’t replied, just continued splitting wood as if I wasn’t even there.

  “So what happened to her then?” I asked, taking a break to catch my breath.

  Signy leaned heavy against the scythe handle. “She must have run away.”

  “Never,” I said, swinging it again, chopping the curved knife blade through the grass. “Where would she go? She had no money. And what about Stefan? She would never leave him. Leave by boat? Someone would have seen her. No, she either got lost in the bush or . . .”

  Signy turned to listen, waiting for me to finish.

  When I closed my eyes, I felt the steady rhythm of my heart. The nightmare was vivid, Freyja’s terror so real. That morning I’d jolted awake, heart aching. It had knocked me off balance and I still felt that way. I couldn’t tell Signy what I saw every time I closed my eyes.

  “Someone took her,” I rasped.

  “Who?” Signy was not easily deterred. She’d given this considerable thought and had come to a few conclusions I hadn’t even considered. “Did she meet anyone in Winnipeg? Someone she wanted to visit?” she asked, appearing so sure of herself she looked almost satisfied.

  I shook my head.

  “Olafur doesn’t like Stanley,” she said. “Thinks he is strange.”

  I knew this was the reason she’d come, to tell me what the two of them had discussed long into the night.

  “Too intelligent,” she said. “Don’t you agree?”

  I did. It was hard to admit that I wasn’t particularly fond of my fiancé’s closest friend. The night I’d met him he’d made me uneasy; he couldn’t take his eyes off Freyja; how convenient it would have been for him to slip away during the game. He’d stood so quietly after the picnic, almost invisible between his parents, watching as fearful possibilities flew all around him.

  “You think Stanley?” I asked.

  She shrugged.

  “Leifur and I are certain,” I said, swinging the scythe hard, “that Bensi or Pall . . . you know Pall, always trying to lift up the girls’ skirts.”

  Signy thought for a few moments then shook her head. “All Freyja could talk about was living in Winnipeg,” she said. “I am convinced she ran away, perhaps with Stanley, and will come home when we least expect it. You’ll see.”

  It was difficult to get on with our lives after that.

  Bergthora and Magnus hugged me hard that first day back to work. Bjorn hung around the store all day, asking what I needed, rushing ahead to lift anything that had a bit of weight to it. He hovered near the counter, waiting to talk, but I had nothing to say. Before I left, he put his hand on my shoulder.

  “I know how you feel,” he said.

  “Nobody knows how I feel,” I said.

  The memory of Pabbi sitting under the tree the night before was still fresh. I’d go
ne to sit with him. An hour passed before he turned to me. He looked like a man defeated.

  “I would rather have found her dead that first night,” he said.

  It was a painfully selfish thing to admit.

  Then I wondered: What is worse? To watch your brothers drown in front of you, helpless to save them; or to have a loved one disappear, to live with gut-wrenching uncertainty?

  Bjorn was trying to offer solace. I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did. We could debate whose suffering was worse for years, but all it would do was rip our hearts open time and again.

  He easily forgave me, even apologized. He said that I was right. He didn’t know how I felt.

  Two weeks after Freyja disappeared, Mother decided that we should go to church. To pray. None of us felt ready to leave the cloister of home, but it was such a relief to hear her finally speak, that we agreed.

  Everyone except Leifur. There was a ball tournament in Kinosota. “The team needs me,” he said.

  Normally, Mother would have argued that we needed him too, but there was no fight left in her. “Be careful,” was all she said.

  We rode by wagon to Hayland while he caught Lady Ellen across the lake to Kinosota. We arrived at the church the same time as Bensi and his family.

  “Why do they even come here?” I asked. “He does not share our beliefs.”

  Mother sighed as Pabbi pushed on the wagon brake. Olafur was waiting outside and waved us over. Pabbi told us to go inside so he could speak to Olafur alone.

  It was obvious that Gudrun had told everyone that Freyja was not yet found since no one asked. Likely they all had opinions but thankfully kept their thoughts to themselves. Pabbi and Olafur came in and sat at the end of our pew. Whatever it was Olafur had said had Pabbi thinking hard.

  Not long after the service began, there was faint whispering and mumbling at the back of the church. We all turned in our seats. Olafur’s father Oli got up from the last pew and went to open the door.

  “Fire,” he said, eyes wide.

  Instantly we all smelled the heavy, acrid smoke that blew in from across the prairie. Miles away, in the direction of home, smoke billowed up over the trees. The men scattered, quickly hitching the teams, as their wives gathered up the children. Forming a long line, we raced across the prairie toward the smoke, which now looked like it was coming from our farm. It’s so difficult to judge fire from a distance, it never ends up being where you think.