Raina allowed his big hands, not yet as rough as they would be in even a few months of this work, to grasp hers tightly; then he released them and sat down on the plow. He watched the ox standing so complacently. He looked up at the sky, squinting; he reached down and picked up the muddy earth he’d plowed. Then he looked back at his house, and Raina followed his gaze. Mrs. Halvorsan was standing in the kitchen window, gazing out at the two of them, but the glare on the window obscured whatever expression was on her face.
There was no sound other than the rustle of the wind, the constant music of the prairie, kicking up dust and rustling grass and causing clothes to flap on the line. But Raina could have sworn she heard gears turning in Tor’s head. New, stiff gears, creaking in protest.
Finally Tor rose; he wiped his hands on his dungarees, and stood halfway between the plow and Raina. He looked back at the farmhouse.
“I can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “I know it’s ungrateful of me, but I can’t. I can’t leave them, I can’t leave the farm now that it’s proved up, actually making a yield. It’s still such a thin line, between good and bad here—success and failure, I mean. If there was more of a cushion, if Mama had the means to hire some hands, maybe. But even then, I think I would be torn, all the time—my head in school but my heart here. If I stay home, I’ll be here, my whole self. I won’t be missing anything. Do you see?” He looked so desperate for her understanding, maybe her absolution, that Raina could not let him know how disappointed she was. Unsurprised, but disappointed nonetheless. She wanted her time in the schoolhouse to have meant something to someone—like one of those preachy stories of how a teacher inspired a student to go on to greatness. But Tor’s decision shouldn’t be about her in any way, and she had to give him the gift of not letting him see her disappointment.
“Of course I understand, Tor. But I couldn’t have lived with myself if I didn’t give you the chance.”
“Then it is good, between us?” Once more he reached for her hands.
“Yes, Tor, it is good between us.” She smiled up at him and felt her heart twist a little. She would go off, come back sometimes to her own home to visit. But she couldn’t see herself coming back here to this community—the Pedersens, the Halvorsans, the schoolhouse. And that was a shame, because here was a decent person whom she would always miss, even when she filled her life with other things, other people. Other goodness.
“You will write to me?”
He nodded eagerly. “I would like a postcard from Lincoln,” he asked shyly. “If you can? I’ve never had a postcard before.”
“Of course I will! As many as you want, for as long as you want. I wish…goodbye, Tor.”
“Goodbye, Miss—Raina.” He lifted his hand in farewell, as she picked up her skirts to trudge back across the land, still soft with melted snow, that softness that was so fleeting, for soon it would be as hard as pavement, baked dry. She headed toward the Pedersens’， where her trunk was already packed, and in the morning Papa would come for her. Waving at Tor, she watched as he went inside the house to tell his mother his decision. And she moved over the prairie, feeling strange as she did so—almost as if she were a ghost, revisiting a lost life. Even though she stopped to pick flowers, sticking them in her hair like she was a little girl again; even though she paused now and then to inspect a gopher hole; even though she waded into a patch of prairie grass, not yet waist high, but still she felt the grasses tickling her knees, embraced that feeling, from her childhood, that if she just kept walking, she would be swallowed up, which might not be a bad thing.
And when she got to the ravine behind the Pedersens’， she stopped to peer into it one last time, seeing once again the body of Fredrik Halvorsan. Then she shut her eyes resolutely to memory, marched across the log bridge—
And looked forward to tomorrow.
CHAPTER 36
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