A Cozy Country Christmas Anthology (10 page)

Betsy wiped up the applesauce on the oil
cloth covering the table and added the peelings and cores to the
bucket of apple chunks destined to be fed to the pigs and the
chickens. She decided to leave the colander, sticky and awkward,
for when Mama came back to help her heat water to wash the supper
dishes.

She punched down the bread dough that had
puffed up so high in the heat from the applesauce making for the
final time and covered the pans with a dish towel. When the fire
died down a little more, she could pop the bread inside and Mama
would wake up to the delicious smell of baking bread.

Betsy swept the kitchen and wiped off the
dust on the window sill that had blown in along with the leaf. The
kitchen had cooled down a little, so she went and got a small quilt
to cover up Erik who was snorting like a baby piglet in his
sleep.

Glancing at the clock, Betsy realized it was
almost time to start supper. Why wasn’t Mama up yet? She climbed
the stairs and peeked in. The window was opened; Sara Swensen loved
fresh air, breezes blew through every room of the house until
autumn’s chill took over. Betsy’s mother curled up on the wedding
ring quilt covering the bed, one hand tucked under her cheek. The
other hand lay palm up beside her.

Betsy took the limp hand in hers. It felt
cool and slack to the touch. At least Mama wasn’t running a fever.
Unfolding the wagon wheel patterned quilt at the foot of the bed,
Betsy draped the comforting material over her mother and closed the
window before tiptoeing back downstairs...

“Betsy!” Erik tugged her back into the
present, yanking on her apron strings. “Why are you staring in the
cupboard? Did you see a mouse?”

She placed the colander back inside and
closed the door on the jars in their orderly rows and the memories.
Knees aching from kneeling on the tiled floor, Betsy remembered her
father’s words from this morning, “Apples are rotting on the ground
in the orchard.” A ten year old could be forgiven for mistaking
death for sleep, but Betsy still shuddered from the thought how she
had failed her beloved mama when she needed her most. If only she’d
gone upstairs earlier, perhaps she could have saved her.

Realizing Erik was gazing at her with a
puckered expression around his mouth, as if deciding whether to
cry, Betsy clapped her hands together. “Guess what! I’ve got a
penny in my pocketbook for you to pay my big helper.”

Her brother was quite willing to be
distracted from the cupboard’s contents and ran upstairs to get his
bank. Betsy checked the oven before cutting out biscuits and
arranging them on the baking sheet. Erik arrived, puffing,
clutching his bank, which was made of iron and very heavy.

He watched her until she wiped her hands on
her apron and fetched the penny. Grinning with excitement, he
placed the penny into the dog’s mouth. With a whir, the iron canine
jumped through the hoop held by a man in a bright red jacket and
deposited the coin into the barrel on the opposite side of the
bank.

Laughing in delight, Erik hopped up and down
and Betsy found herself smiling, yet envying his joy. If only
finding happiness could be as easy as putting a penny in a bank,
but a hundred dogs jumping through a hundred hoops couldn’t bring
back her mother.

When the biscuits were done, Betsy wrapped
them in a napkin along with cold tongue and a chunk of homemade
cheese. She accompanied Erik down into the root cellar and let him
fish out juicy pickles from the brine in the pickle barrel. A
couple of apples and a jug of buttermilk completed the picnic
lunch.

On the walk to the field, Erik skipped ahead,
darting to chase after a brown rabbit and flapping his arms to
imitate birds in flight. They found Papa giving the mare a drink
from the bucket he carried on the back of the wagon. Grundel, the
black and white dog who always followed him around the farmstead,
lay panting in the shade of a huge hickory at the end of the field,
a tree whose roots always reminded Betsy of enormous bent fingers
clawing into the earth.

Karl Swensen straightened while Erik raced
forward and wrapped his arms around his father’s knee, which was as
high as he could reach. “I want to play in the corn, Papa!”

After being lifted into the wagon, Erik
picked up two ears of corn and tried to juggle.

Betsy cleared her throat. “We brought your
lunch.”

Her father turned towards her and she saw the
weariness carved in the lines of his broad face. “It’s a good time
to take a break.”

Neither of them spoke while they ate, Karl
nodding at Erik’s chatter and only smiling when his small son
offered to turn a somersault.

When they finished, he plucked his red
bandana from the pocket of his dusty overalls and wiped his
mustache. “Good biscuits, Betsy.”

“Please take care of Erik for me.” Her
mother’s last words echoed inside Betsy’s head, drowning out the
chirp of the birds in the hickory tree and the rustle of the corn
leaves. She clenched her fists and said in a loud voice,
“Papa?”

He turned from soaking his bandana in the
water bucket to look at her, his eyes the same clear blue as
Erik’s, the blue of the sky.

“Please, Papa, don’t blame school, it’s my
fault. I stayed up late reading, not doing school work. I promise
to take care of the house and I understand if you won’t let me go
back to school, but you have to let Erik go. He must have the
chance to learn.” Betsy set her teeth into her lower lip and
pinched a fold of her calico skirt.

Karl mopped his brow. “With your hair pinned
back, you look like your mama, Betsy.” Typing the damp cloth around
his sun-tanned throat, he sighed. “Sara wanted you and Erik to get
an education—book learning was very important to your mama.”

“I miss her very much.” The words squeezed
out of Betsy’s throat.

Her father closed his eyes. When he spoke,
his voice sounded gruff with emotion. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have
bellowed like a bull this morning—you’ve done a woman’s work for
the past four years and you’ve done a good job raising Erik.”

Words of praise. Betsy couldn’t imagine any
of her friends’ fathers apologizing to their children and her voice
sounded husky in her ears, “Thank you, Papa.”

His hand, thickened and scarred by years of
toil, squeezed her shoulder with gentle pressure. “A man must
acknowledge his faults, Betsy. Your mama would take a broom and
shoo me back from the gates of heaven, if I told her I took you out
of school.” He nodded. “You and Erik have fun this afternoon
because tomorrow you’re going back to school.”

Betsy rubbed Belle’s rough mane and the mare
blew through her nostrils. “Maybe we should get Belle a straw hat
on our next trip to town, Erik. A red hat, as fine as Mrs.
Jeppson’s Sunday best.”

Erik, convulsed with giggles at the thought
of the horse wearing a hat with feathers, had to be told twice that
it was time to go back to the house.

As they walked away to the jingle of Belle’s
harness, the wind made waves in the long silky grass which bowed
around their feet and the relentless motion, combined with relief
that Papa hadn’t banned school, made Betsy dizzy. Erik tried to
sing the song she’d sung to him earlier, but he could only remember
the line about the wind shaking the apples down from the trees.

“I like to eat the apples God shakes down
from the trees, but I’d rather throw them. Will you play under the
trees with me, Betsy? I promise not to throw at you as hard as I
can.” He flexed his arm to show his muscles and then looked
disappointed that his shirt sleeve didn’t bulge like Papa’s
did.

Betsy hadn’t set foot in the orchard since
Mama died. But the trees held a great attraction for Erik, who
loved to stalk the cats with pocketfuls of little green apples for
ammunition.

Memory suddenly slanted white hot light into
a chink in the darkness of the cupboard with the colander and the
dusty jars. Mrs. Nelson, the neighbor lady who stayed with them
while Papa fetched the doctor, must have washed it.

Betsy didn’t remember much about that day
after Papa had run down the stairs to tell her that Mama was dead.
Forgotten until now was what she’d overheard Mrs. Nelson telling a
group of ladies at the funeral. But now those words jumped into
Betsy’s head, along images of black armbands and the sounds of
sobbing.

“The poor young woman had put up over a dozen
quarts of applesauce before she took sick. The children were
outside when I got there, the babe chewing on a twig and watching
his sister hurl jar after jar against the house. Broken glass
everywhere and fresh made applesauce dripping down the boards.
Child didn’t even seem to realize what she was doing—”

Betsy stopped to gaze at their house. For a
moment, she could almost see the white paint marred with brown
streaks.

As if it were happening all over again, the
pain crushed her chest, tears blurred the grass as she carried out
shining brown jars, the sound of breaking glass delighting Erik
into laughter. Clanging pot lids together his new favorite game, he
loved loud noises.

“I broke them because I thought making the
applesauce killed Mama,” Betsy whispered.

She blinked and the memory of the brownish
streaks vanished. Dropping the hamper, she ran forward and pressed
her nose against the sun warmed boards. She sniffed. Not a hint of
apples. Papa had repainted the house and never mentioned the
incident. Never asked her to make applesauce, one of his
favorites.

Only then she realized the colander had been
sitting in the cupboard for four years, ready for use. The pain
eased as Betsy remembered the rolling motion of the pestle in her
hands, the pride of wearing a woman’s apron, even if it had to be
triple wrapped around her waist, and the leaf dancing across the
yellow oil cloth, blown by the breath of God.

Erik collapsed, stuffing the last biscuit
into his mouth while a blue jay hopped closer, hoping for crumbs.
When her brother beamed at her, Betsy felt a rush of love, as warm
and rich as new made applesauce. She stooped to kiss the top of his
tousled head.

When Erik tossed the rest of the biscuit, the
bird snatched up its prize and sprang into the air. Together, they
watched the blue jay land on a tree branch.

The breeze hurried the clouds along overhead
and blew against Betsy’s forehead in a gentle benediction. “The
breath of God ruffling our hair,” she murmured.

“Let’s go pick up the rest of the windfalls,
Erik, and you can help me make applesauce this afternoon. We can
have a fight but you must promise not to throw as hard as you
can.”

He jumped up and turned a somersault,
sprawling on his back and giggling. Betsy laughed, too, as overhead
the blue jay fanned out his wings and launched itself into the
waiting arms of the wind.

THE END

The Piano
Christmas

If Sara hadn’t left her lunch pail behind,
she never would have seen Miss Ellen wrapping the Christmas
presents—a pile of gleaming glass balls at on the rickety wooden
table Miss Ellen used as a desk. Peeking through the open cloak
room door, Sara watched her teacher’s deft fingers wrap an ornament
in a flannel square and tie up the bundle with ribbon. String for
boys, hair ribbons for girls.

Sara tiptoed out of the schoolhouse door and
hurried down the snowy path, the memory of the spheres gleaming in
the lamplight warming her like a flame.

Christmas
Eve
was tomorrow and Sara
knew Miss Ellen set great store by gifts—the teacher often related
stories about her family Christmases back home in Boston. Sara’s
favorite tale concerned the holiday referred to as “the Piano
Christmas”. On that morning, Miss Ellen had discovered a grand
piano, wrapped in a giant satin bow, standing next to the Christmas
tree in the drawing room. But Boston and such lavish gifts seemed
as far away as Europe to Sara. The only present she received last
year was an orange after the church Christmas program.

Sara found herself skipping in her clumsy
boots. Mama would scold for being late; after supper, the women
planned to decorate cookies to hang on the tree Papa would cut down
tomorrow,

As the oldest in a family of seven, Sara was
kept busy at mealtimes. Tonight, however, Mama had to ask her three
times to pass the dish of pickled beets because Sara couldn't get
her mind off the pile of glass balls on Miss Ellen's desk.

Over and over, she pictured her family
admiring a tree decorated with popcorn strings and gingerbread men.
Sara, stepping forward, would hang her ornament on the tree, the
sparkle of the glass in the firelight making the room brighter.

“Oh, Sara! Where did you get it? It’s
beautiful!”

Her brothers and sisters would gaze at Sara
with awe in their eyes as she explained, “Miss Ellen gave it to
me.”

“What are you mumbling about, child? I
declare, you must have left your mind as well as your lunch pail
back at that school you’re so fond of.”

Grandma's sharp voice penetrated Sara's happy
vision and she realized she'd spoken out loud. “'I'm sorry,
Grandma. Just excited about Christmas.”

Mention of Christmas sparked a memory in
Krista. “Will I get an orange tomorrow?”

“Don’t spoil the surprise for your little
brother and sister,” Mama replied, cutting another slice of bread
for Eric.

Curled up beside Krista that night, Sara
licked a bit of frosting off her hand and thought about her
present. A crystal globe was much more exciting than a scarf or
mittens; Mama had been doing a lot of knitting lately.

Sara’s ornament was bound to be the most
beautiful. Wasn’t she Miss Ellen’s special helper, in charge of
leading the Pledge of Allegiance each morning, buttoning up the
smallest children’s hobnailed boots, and reading aloud to keep the
class quiet when Miss Ellen stepped out?