“for richer, for poorer . . .” Riches we do not need. A home will be enough . . .
“in sickness and in health . . .” I'll learn all I said I knew . . .
“till death do us part.” I'll make up for everything, Karl, somehow I promise I'll make up for everything.
She saw Karl swallow and detected a tremble in his eyelids.
Then, still squeezing her hand, he looked at Father Pierrot. “There is no gold ring, Father. I could not afford gold, and there was nothing else at Morisette's store. But I have a simple ring because it doesn't seem right without a ring.”
“A simple ring is fine, Karl.”
From his pocket he extracted a horseshoe nail curled into a circle. It was on his lips to say, I'm sorry, Anna, but she was smiling down at the ring as if it were burnished gold.
Anna saw Karl's hands shake, and her own, as she extended her fingers and he slid the heavy iron circlet over her knuckle. He had misjudged in bending it, and she had to curl her fingers quickly to keep it from slipping off. Then Karl's hand recaptured hers again. Gently, he spread her fingers and lay the banded hand upon his open palm, the fingers of his other hand lightly touching the ring as if to seal it upon her flesh for life.
“Anna Reardon, with this ring I make you my wife forever.” His voice cracked faintly upon the last word, bringing her eyes up to his once more.
Then she put her free hand over his and the ring, and said into his eyes, “Karl Lindstrom, with this ring I accept you for my husband . . . forever.”
He looked down at her turned-up freckled nose, her pretty, waiting lips. His heart became a wild thing within him. Now she is really my Anna, he thought, suddenly timid and eager all at once.
Fleetingly, Anna's eyelids quivered, and she felt his hold upon her hands tighten a fraction of a second before he bent to kiss her lightly, forgetting to close his eyes as he brushed her lips uncertainly, then straightened again.
“So be it,” Father Pierrot said softly, while bride and groom nervously cast about for something upon which to settle their gazes. Anna's turned to her brother, and the two hugged quickly.
“Oh, Anna, Anna . . .” he said.
She whispered in his ear, “We'll be safe now, James.”
He squeezed her extra hard. “I'll do my part.” But he looked at Karl as he said it, though it was Anna's hand he still held.
“I know,” Anna said, now looking at Karl.
Father Pierrot surprised her by warmly embracing her, then planting a congratulatory kiss on her cheek. “I wish you health, happiness and the blessing of many children.” Then, turning to Karl with a firm handshake of four hands instead of two, the priest said emotionally, “And the same to you, my friend.”
“Thank you, Father. It seems that I already have one of those things.” Karl looked meaningfully at James, who smiled broadly.
“Yes,” Father Pierrot said, shaking James' hand in a manful way. “Now, young man, it will be your job to see that these two do as I have ordered. There may be times it will be the hardest job of all.”
“Yes, sir!” James replied, and everyone laughed.
“So be it, and so it is done. Now all that remains is for you two to put your signatures on the document, to be witnessed by James here and myself. Then you may be on your way. You have a long ride ahead.”
Karl turned, placing Anna's hand in the crook of his elbow, then reached to include James, who stood uncertainly. “We have a long ride ahead, eh, James?”
“Yes, sir!” the boy beamed.
“But we go together, you and Anna and I.”
While Father led them once again to his tiny rooms at the rear of the school building, Anna moved beside Karl, her hand on his solid arm, worried sick once again. Father produced ink and quill, then dipped the tip and handed it to her, indicating the parchment on the desk.
“You may sign first, Anna.”
But Karl was right there, smiling broadly, watching her. She didn't know how to write her name!
“Let Karl sign first,” she said ingeniously.
“Very well.” Agreeably, Karl carefully placed his name on the paper.
She stood behind him, eyeing the back of his neck while he formed the letters. She glanced at James, who shrugged covertly in reply. Anna exchanged places with Karl and made a grand X on the paper while he looked over her shoulder.
And so quickly was the next deception exposed.
He saw her make the mark, and was naturally surprised, knowing she was a lettered woman. But she smiled brightly into his face in an effort to disarm him.
But Karl was not disarmed. And so, he thought, I learn one more truth about Anna. But he did not let Father Pierrot know what little drama was being acted out here. Instead, he took Anna's arm stiffly, steered her toward the door and led her out.
“Wait here. I must get the wagon,” was all he said. Then he stalked off, leaving her with James.
“Anna, I didn't know what to do,” her brother sympathized. “I couldn't sign that one for you. I told you we shoulda told him.”
“It's all right. At least now he knows.”
“But why didn't he say anything? Maybe he's not too mad about it.”
“Oh, he's mad all right. He nearly cracked my elbow leading me out of there, but I promised never to lie to him again and I'm never going to. But I didn't promise to tell him every lick of truth about myself all at once. I'm not sure he could take it all in one gulp.”
“I'll rest easier when he knows it all,” James said.
Anna looked at him sharply, wondering again if he suspected anything about how she'd earned money for his passage and his clothes. But just then Father Pierrot came out with a bundle of food for their journey, and Karl appeared with the wagon. It was time for fond farewells, handshakes and the ride into their uncertain, married future.
Chapter Four
They had not traveled a mile up the road before Karl pursued the subject which could not be avoided. But he drove his team, and when he drove his team he was not one to raise his voice, so he spoke now with stilted patience, glowering at the reins that stretched ahead of him through the checkrings.
“I think you have more to tell me, Anna. Do you want to tell me now?”
She peeked sideways. Sure enough—that jaw bulged out like a rock. “You know already, so why make me tell you?” she asked her lap.
“It is true then? The letters were not written by you?”
With a shake of the head she answered no.
“And you do not know how to read or write?”
Again she shook her head negatively.
“Who wrote the letters?” he asked, recalling all the times he had touched them, lingered over them, thinking of his Anna's hands having touched them first.
“James.”
“James?” Karl looked across Anna to the boy who stared straight ahead. “You set the boy to writing deliberate lies because you could not write them yourself?”
“I didn't set him to writing them.”
“Well, what would you call it, teaching a young boy like him such lessons?”
“We agreed, that's all. We had to get out of Boston and find a way to live. James was the one who found your advertisement in the paper and read it to me. We decided together to try to get you to marry me.”
“You decided together to get Karl Lindstrom to marry a twenty-five-year-old woman, a good Catholic girl who could read and write and teach our children to read and write, who could cook and make soap and garden.”
The two guilty parties sat silent.
“And who will do that, Anna? Who will teach our children to read and write? Am I supposed to take the time to come in from the fields and teach them?”
His casual reference to their children brought roses to Anna's cheeks, still she answered, hopefully, “James can teach them.”
“James, you said, is to be my helper in the woods and in the fields. How can James be in two places at once?”
She had no answer.<
br />
“How is it that James learned to read and write, but you did not?” he asked.
“Sometimes, when our mother got a fit of conscience, she'd make him go to school, but she didn't see any girl needing to know her letters, so she left me alone.”
“What kind of mother would only send a boy to school now and then, when she had a fit of conscience? Conscience over what?”
This time James saved Anna from lying or revealing the full truth. He burst in. “We didn't have much, even before Barbara got sick and died. We lived with . . . with friends of hers most of the time, and I had to go out and try to find work to help. I guess she thought I was kind of young to be out working, and sometimes she'd get . . . well, sorry, kind of. That's when I'd have to go to school. I managed to go enough to learn to read and write a little.”
Puzzled, Karl asked, “Barbara? Who is Barbara?”
“That was our ma's name.”
“You called your mother Barbara?“ Karl could not conceive of a child calling his mother by her given name. What kind of mother would allow such a thing? But since neither of them answered, Karl pressed on. “You told me there was no work for you in Boston and that is why you needed to get away.”
“Well, there wasn't. I mean . . . well—”
“Well, what, boy?” Karl demanded. “Which is the truth? Did you work or not?”
James took a gulp of air and braved it, in a strange falsetto. “Mostly I picked pockets.”
Karl was stunned again. He looked at the fledgling's profile, trying to imagine a boy that young doing such a dishonest thing. Then he glanced at Anna, who sat sullenly staring at the narrow road ahead.
“Did your mother know this?” he asked, watching Anna's face carefully for signs of lies. But there was no sign, just a resigned sadness that expressed age far older than her actual years.
“She knew,” Anna said. “She wasn't really much of a mother.”
Something in her tone of voice melted Karl. The resigned way she said it made him suddenly sorry for both of them, having such a mother. Karl thought of his own mother, of the warm and loving family she had raised, teaching the value of honesty and of all the old beatitudes. Father Pierrot had been right to admonish him that he must be prepared to be their teacher. It seemed he would have to make up to both Anna and the boy all the teachings that this lax mother of theirs had not bothered to instill in them. Now more than ever Anna seemed but a child to him, a wayward child much like her brother.
“Here in the wilderness you will not find many pockets to pick,” Karl said. “Here, instead, there is much honest work to keep a boy's hands busy from sunup to sundown. It is a good place to forget that you ever learned how to pick pockets.”
Brother and sister both turned and looked at Karl at the same time, then with growing smiles, at each other, realizing they'd once again been forgiven. Anna ventured a brief study of Karl's profile, the nose so straight and Nordic, his burnished cheek, his bleached hair curling like a sun-washed wave over his shell-like ear, his lips that had brushed her own such a short time ago. Oh, he was magnificent in every way, it seemed. And she wondered how a person came to be so good. What manner of man is this, she asked herself, who faces each new hurdle and moves past it with such forbearance?
He turned a ghost of a glance down at her. In that moment she could have sworn she saw a smile aborning upon his lips. Then he scanned the woods on his far side.
Some weight seemed to turn to warm, summer-scented air and drift away from Anna's shoulders like a dandelion seed in the wind. She clasped each knee, and smiled at the rutted road. For the first time, she looked around, fully aware of the surrounding beauties.
They were passing through a place of green magnificence. The forest was built of verdant walls, broken here and there by peaceful embrasures where prairie grasses fought for a stronghold. Trees of giant proportions canopied above saplings vying for the sky. The sky was embroidered with stitches of leafy design. Anna leaned her head way back to gaze at the dappled emerald roof above.
Karl eyed her arched throat, smiling at her childish but pleasing pose. “So what do you think of my Minnesota?”
“I think you were right. It's much better than the plains.”
“Far better,” Karl seconded, pleased by her answer. Suddenly, he felt expansive and glib.
“There is wood here for every purpose a man could name. Maples! Why, we have maples aplenty, and they are filled with nectar such as you will find no place else.” He pointed, stretching a long arm in front of Anna's nose. “See? That is the white maple, a hundred feet of wood and twelve gallons of sap every year. And such grains it has—fiddleback, burl, birds-eye, leaf . . .” He chuckled deep in his throat. “When you cut into a maple it is always full of surprises. And hard . . . why, it can be polished to shine like still water.”
Anna had never thought about trees as anything but trees before. She was amused at his rapport with them. They drove a little farther before he pointed again.
“See that one there? Yellow locust. Splits as smooth and true as the flight of an apple falling from a tree. And that chestnut there? Another smooth splitter, to make boards as flat as milk on a plate.”
They passed through a little patch of sun just then. Anna shaded her eyes and peered up at Karl. He looked down at her piquantly cocked head, the squint, the crinkled-up nose, the cute smile. He found it all thoroughly delightful, and was pleased she didn't seem to find this subject too profound nor too boring.
Anna searched all around, with a sudden intuition of how to please him. She discovered a new variety, pointed and asked, “What's that one?”
Karl followed her finger. “That's a beech tree.”
“And what's it good for?” she asked, following it with her eyes as they came abreast of it.
“Beech? The beech you whittle. It takes to the carving knife like no other wood I know. And when it is rubbed smooth, no wood is prettier.”
“You mean you can't carve just any old wood?” James interjected.
“You can try, but some will disappoint you. You see, some people don't understand about trees. They think wood is wood, and they ask of some trees things they cannot do. You must ask a tree to do what it does best, then it will never disappoint you. And so I split the locust, carve the beech and make boards from pine and chestnut. It is the same with people. I would not ask a blacksmith to bake me a pie, would I? Or a baker to shoe my horse.” Karl tipped a little grin their way. “If I did, I would perhaps have to eat my horseshoe and tack the pie to my horse's hoof.”
James and Anna laughed gaily, making Karl feel truly clever and more optimistic than ever before about this family of his.
“Tell us more,” James said. “I like hearing about the trees.”
Anna looked up, studying Karl's jaw while he constantly played his eyes back and forth as they jogged up the road. She thought that she had never seen a person so alert while looking as if he weren't.
“Soon we will come to the oaks,” he continued. “Oaks like to grow in groves. The white oak makes shingles that will keep a roof tight for fifty years. You must think of that—fifty years! It is a long time, fifty years. Longer than the life of my morfar who—”
“Your what?” Anna interrupted, crunching up her face.
“My morfar, my mother's father. He taught me much about trees, as he did my far . . . my father, too. My morfar gave me my first lessons in riving.”
Anna digested the idea of being taught to love the land and its fruits by a grandfather. “But your . . . your morfar?” It sounded ridiculously English to Anna, but Karl nodded approvingly at her attempt. “He is dead now?”
“Yes, he died years ago, but not before he teaches me much of what he has learned about the woods. My mormor, she is still alive in Sweden though.”
A wistful note had crept into Karl's voice. Anna wanted more than anything to lay her hand comfortingly upon his forearm. He seemed lost in thought, then momentarily glanced over his shoulder, as if
sorry he'd burdened them with his memories or his lonesomeness.
It's all right—Anna smiled the tacit message, then urged, “Go on . . . I interrupted. You were talking about the oaks.”
“Ya, the oaks . . .” Again he looked glad, and Anna liked him better that way. “Do you know that when you rive shingles from oak, there are natural and beautiful grains which catch the rain and send it running in channels as true as the course of a river over a falls? It's true. But when I need fence rails I use red oak. Once I made an axe handle of white oak, but it was not good. Too hard. Hickory is best for axe handles, but this I do not have here. But ash does almost as well. It is light and strong and springy.”
“Springy?” James asked, mystified at the idea of wood being springy.
“It must be, to absorb the shock from the hands when it strikes the tree trunk.”
“What other kinds of trees do you have?”
“Not too many dogwood here, but one here and there. With dogwood I make gluts and mauls. Willows I split into withes. Elder is for shade and beauty.” Karl smiled. “We must not forget that some trees are given to us for nothing more than shade and beauty, and if this is all we ask of them, they are happy.”
James smiled crookedly. “Aw, Karl, trees can't be happy.” He leaned his elbows on his lap and peered around Anna at the blond man, who only grinned as if he knew something special. “Boy, Karl, you sure know a lot about them though,” James said, sitting up again and looking around in a wide arc, wondering how a man could ever learn as much as Karl knew. And Karl was only twenty-five!
“Like I said, I learn from my morfar and my far in Sweden, which is much like Minnesota. That is why I came here instead of Ohio. Also, I learn from my older brothers. We have all worked with wood since we are much younger than you are now. I think we get a late start teaching you, eh, boy? You will have to learn twice as fast as Karl did.”
But James detected a teasing lilt in Karl's voice, which made him all the more eager. “So tell me more about the trees,” he demanded almost giddily, getting caught up in the magic of learning, already catching the contagious love that flowed from Karl to the woods.