A Cozy Country Christmas Anthology by LLC Melange Books Page B

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