that she makes from flour sacks. It is hard to imagine why he’s come. It’s obviously not time to help set the anchor rocks. There isn’t even a pudding to serve. Just yesterday’s soup. That’s the best she can do. At least the sugar bowl is full.
Gunnar would want the best for John. He thinks the man is some sort of prince, though she has never understood why. Not that there’s anything wrong with him, it’s just that she feels uncomfortable in his presence. And it’s not because he’s Indian; she’s known Indians all her life, having grown up near them on the Keweenaw. She’s not like those women, the newly come-over, who are afraid they’ll be murdered in their sleep, their children stolen, and all manner of things.
“He knows more about this land than I could ever hope to.” That’s the kind of thing Gunnar says when he’s been around John. Once Gunnar told her that John knew a hundred different plants in the woods. “What they’re good for. When to get them. Sure, but he doesn’t think anything of it. In fact, he seems embarrassed about it. He says that in his grandmother’s time, everyone knew twice as many.” It’s hard for Berit to imagine these conversations, since John will barely meet her eye, much less talk, and Gunnar is shy with most anyone but her. The lid of the kettle starts to rattle, and now John’s coming up through the snow. He’s got the auger balanced over his shoulder, and her piece of salt beef cradled in his arm.
Berit raps on the window and holds up a coffee cup, but John passes without looking in. Before she knows it, he’s in the doorway, standing there in his heavy wool coat, mitts to his elbows, boots to his knees. Filling it. Though he’s not that tall. He’s broad, but that’s not it either. He’s one of those people that just seems bigger.
“Please come in. Sit down. Do forgive me. I just didn’t see you standing there . . . Of course, I wasn’t expecting anyone . . .” Her voice is babbling like a stream.
John nods and scrapes a chair from the table. She’s glad he chose the one facing the window, so she can stand behind him near the stove. She pours him coffee and offers sugar and a spoon, feeling the cold coming off of his clothes.
“What brings you?” She retreats back to heat the soup, a false cheerfulness in her voice. Here she’d been pining for someone to talk to and now she can’t seem to manage.
John tastes the coffee, nods, adds sugar.
Lord, the bed is still unmade. “I hope you like pea soup,” she says, moving the pot to the center of the heat. She’ll have to be careful when she ladles it up so as not to scrape the bottom where she burned it yesterday. “It’s not much, but I’ll get that beef boiling.”
When she turns she finds him looking at her drawing on the chair. His head bobs approvingly, and she feels a puff of pride. People have always been complimentary of her pictures. When they lived in Duluth she drew a series of cards in colored ink that some said she could sell if she wanted—deer bedding in the snow, pinecones, tumbling waterfalls. Someday she’ll paint. Have a palette of oils and be able to mix any color. She looks at John, then at her lead-drawn bear. John turns away with a funny expression.
“They’re black bears,” she says, picturing them painted on canvas.
He stirs his coffee.
“Well? What do you think?”
He lifts his cup and nods.
“No, tell me, what do you think?”
“Your bears don’t have tails.”
“What?”
“No tails.”
Berit takes the book from the chair. “Bears don’t have tails. I’ve never seen a bear’s tail.”
“Maybe you’ve only seen them from the front.”
“What kind of tail?”
“Small. Furry.”
She can feel heat rising on her neck. John sits gazing at the tabletop, as if there was something interesting there, a smile, she thinks, playing at the edge of his mouth. She certainly doesn’t see what’s amusing.
“Well, it’s a drawing from memory. I’ll have to wait until spring and see for myself. Honestly I can’t recall seeing a bear with a tail.”
“All the animals in these woods have tails. All the mammals, that is, except you and me.”
Berit carries her book to the nightstand, not really sure what she’s feeling. Why should she care what he thinks? He probably has never even seen a real painting. She certainly didn’t like the reference to her tail, or his, or that she doesn’t have one.
The soup is burning. Berit hurries to the stove and lifts the pot off the heat. She can only make the best of it. She ladles the steaming soup into a bowl. “So what brings you this way? You never did say.” There’s the false cheer again.
“Rabbits.”
“Rabbits?” She sets the bowl in front of him.
“That’s why I came. I’m delivering them from Gunnar.”
“Where? You’ve seen him?”
“He’s at the lumber camp, down by Swing Dingle.”
“Yes, I know, but . . . you were there?”
John is looking at the tabletop again. “I did some hunting for the camp and then for him, too.” He holds the soup under his chin and starts in, not seeming to mind the heat.
“Well, how is he? What did he say?”
“I agreed to dress the rabbits,” he says between spoonfuls.
“I meant for me. Any word for me.”
He eats like he hasn’t had a meal in days, scraping every bit from the edges of the bowl. Then he rises abruptly and produces a piece of paper that’s folded in a tight square.
Berit unfolds it to find a strange hand, neat and uniformly upright. My Dear, My Mrs., the message begins . . .
I’m sending John with some rabbit, as I know they’re your favorite.
“I don’t understand,” she looks up. “This isn’t Gunnar’s hand. He can barely write.”
“It’s mine.”
“Yours?” She looks at the neat rows of cursive, too late to cover her disbelief.
“Boarding school,” he says in a stony voice. But she has gone back to reading . . . as I know they’re your favorite. Be certain that I am thinking of you, my dearest. It is so odd to hear his voice in this way. Things are moving in good time, so I hope to be home as planned. Don’t consider saving any rabbit for me. I don’t want to find even a morsel left over . . .
John puts on his hat and draws the knife from his belt. He examines its edge and then slides it back in its sheath, watching Gunnar’s wife as she reads. Her pale skin, her thin frame, her hair the color of dried grass, bundled at the back of her head. He’ll dress the rabbits as he’d promised. “Don’t let her talk you out of it,” Gunnar had said. “She’ll go on about how she can do it herself.” Well, she’s not talking, she’s leaning against the cupboard, fully engrossed in the letter, and he needs to get back to his trapline if he’s going to make it back to camp and then home, if he’s lucky, before the week is out.
John closes the door on the cabin’s warmth and the earthy smell of pea soup. He lifts the rabbits from the nail, wondering what, if anything, she knows of the story Gunnar told him at the logging camp.
The telling has stayed strong in his mind, the heaviness in Gunnar’s voice, all the stops and starts as he seemed to search for words. They’d sat together in an empty log sleigh. There was a bright moon and the wind stirred the shadows, as the camp’s men snored and coughed. No, his wife doesn’t know about the dead man in the lake. It was clearly the first time that Gunnar had spoke it out loud.
John