The Children's Blizzard(21)

Tiny, out there shouting for his stupid horse, even though, rationally, Gerda understood that a horse was currency on the prairie. Tiny, alone in this, maybe as frightened as she was, although it was difficult for Gerda to imagine that.

Then she made her mind shut him out; she had to concentrate on the girls, on getting them to safety somehow. Although she couldn’t shut her mind to a more ominous thought: What about the other children she’d urged—so gaily!—to run home in this fury of a blizzard?

But she couldn’t think of them now. Gerda had to move, she had to get these two girls in her charge to some kind of shelter. No light penetrated the clouds, so she couldn’t tell what time it was, and there was nothing to illuminate any familiar landmark. A creek bordered south of the line of homesteads that included the girls’ farm and the Andersons’, so if they’d been coming the usual way from the schoolhouse, that creek, and its little brace of elm trees that were just planted a couple of years ago so not very tall, should be on their right. If she could find that creek and walk along it, they would come to a house or a barn or even a stack of hay eventually.

    But she felt like a mouse trapped in a bucket; no matter which way she turned, it all looked the same and there was no way out, no magic curtain of clouds parting, even for just a second, to show her the landscape beyond her own nose.

“Tiny,” she called once more, but the words didn’t carry, they were muffled, hollow; not even desperation could find a way out of this storm.

Minna was still crying, and now so was Ingrid, and they were both shivering violently. She tugged on them, taking a few steps forward, but Minna’s feet were too small, they couldn’t keep her upright in the force of the wind. So Gerda knelt down and told the child to climb up on her back. She staggered up with the additional weight, then stumbled, almost fell, but Ingrid grasped her hand, and she managed to stay upright.

“All right, all right,” she repeated over and over. Ingrid didn’t speak, neither did Minna, but at least Minna stopped crying as she buried her head in the back of Gerda’s neck. Gerda was grateful for the child’s warmth against her, shielding her a little from the wind.

“All right, all right,” she kept chanting despite her teeth rattling so that she worried she would chip one of them. She had to walk with her head bowed, to try to keep the snow and ice from glazing over her eyes—she remembered the horse, Tiny getting out to melt the ice over his eyes, and panic, thoroughly part of her now, squeezed her heart. Where were they?

Where was she?





CHAPTER 10


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THE HOUSE WAS LOSING SOME of its warmth, so Anna Pedersen went to the little lean-to off the kitchen to grab more wood. The lean-to was almost full; she thanked her foresight in having Gunner fill it up this morning, when it was warm, after those other two left for school.

She almost sang with joy when she saw them running away from the house this morning, the Schoolteacher—she refused to call her by her name—holding Anette by the hand as they flew away without a backward glance. If only they could truly flee and never come back! Even with the heavier workload, she would be glad to have both of these interlopers out of her house. She’d never asked for them to come here, had she? No. It was all his idea.

As it had been Gunner’s brilliant plan to leave Minneapolis, which she had loved—it had reminded her a little bit of Kristiania, Norway’s beautiful capital city, although it was not nearly so grand—to come here. To northeastern Nebraska, far from any city or town. A man who had never in his life tried to make a living from the earth, who had grown up in cities as had she, had gotten it into his idiotic head that owning acres of land was something he was owed now that he was an American. That living self-sufficiently, miles from any neighbor, was the true test of an American man. At least he hadn’t tried to grow any crops; she could at least be thankful about that. No, Gunner, who had been in the horse guards in the army back in Norway—and hadn’t she been smitten with him then, in his dashing uniform astride a sleek black horse?—had stuck with one thing he knew, anyway. And even Anna had to admit that breeding and selling horses was a reliable income in a land so newly settled, these Great Plains. People—poor farmers, too—had to have horses.

    But he could have easily done this in Minneapolis. Oh, they had lived in a lovely neighborhood there, a little slice of home with bakeries and coffee shops and everyone speaking Norwegian. She was happy in Minneapolis; she had culture and streetcars and teas and parties. She’d had no desire to leave.

But he dragged her away from her family, her friends, to live like a peasant. To dirty her hands with daily labor, to have only him for companionship, to bear children alone with no help from her mother, her sisters. To nearly grow mad with the loneliness, the screeching of the wind driving her senseless; but the times when there were no sounds at all—not a wolf howling, a chicken scratching, a horse whinnying—were worse. Those times, with only her own heartbeat to remind her that she wasn’t trapped in someone else’s nightmare, that she was, in fact, alive and vulnerable, made her question her sanity. More than once, in such a state, she’d found a knife in her hand as she stood over her sleeping children’s beds with no idea how—or why—it had gotten there.

She felt she was losing not only her sanity but herself. She kept looking in the mirror to reassure herself she was still Anna; Anna of the golden hair and the sparkling eyes and the brilliant laugh and the pretty ways who had been the envy of all her sisters, the belle of all the men. Anna who had chosen Gunner, not the other way around. She had many suitors, many chances, but she chose this man, and she must never let him forget that. He needed to know this every single day of this life out here in the middle of nowhere; he needed to be reminded that he was lucky to have her.