Years by Lavyrle Spencer

wheat, sayin’ it was drivin’ her crazy. Lord, how she used to cuss that wheat. Trees, she said, there wasn’t no trees out here. And no sound, she said. The sun gave her rashes and the flies drove her crazy and the smell of the barnyard give her headaches. How Teddy ever thought a woman like that could be a farm wife, I’ll never know. Why, she had no sense about raisin’ gardens — didn’t like gettin’ her fingernails dirty, didn’t know how to put up vegetables.” Nissa made a sound of humorless disdain: “P’chee.” Again she shook her head, crossed her arms. “A woman like that,” she ended, as if still mystified by her son’s choice.
    “I seen it happenin’, but there wasn’t nothin’ I could do. Teddy, he was so happy when she first come here. And when he found out there was a baby comin’, why, that boy was in his glory. But little by little her complainin’ turned to silence, and she started actin’ like she was gettin’ a little tetched. At first, after Kristian was born, I could see she tried to be a good mother, but it was no good. Teddy never said so, but Clara used to come down here and play with the baby, and she’d come home and tell us how Melinda cried all the time. Never quit cryin’, but what could he do about it? He couldn’t change all that wheatland into woods. He couldn’t put no city in the middle of this here farmyard for her.
    “And then one day she just up and left. Left a note sayin’ to tell Kristian she loved him and she was sorry, but I never saw it, nor did I ask to. It was Clara told me about it.” Again her thoughts trailed off.
    “And you took care of Kristian after that?”
    A new sadness came into Nissa’s eyes. “Me and Clara did. You see, my man, my Hjalmar, he’d died that year. We’d been up to church one spring evenin’ to help with the graveyard cleanin’ like we always did every spring. We come home and was standin’ just outside the kitchen door and I remember Hjalmar had his hands in his pockets and he looked up at the first star comin’ out and he says to me, he says, ‘Nissa, we got lots to be thankful for. It’s gonna be a clear day tomorrow,’ and just like that he pitches over and falls dead on our doorstep. He always used to say to me, Nissa, I want to die workin’, and you know, he got his wish. He worked right up to the very hour he died at my feet. No pain. No sufferin’. Just a man counting his blessings. Now, I ask you, what more could awoman ask for than to see her man die a beautiful death like that?”
    The room grew quiet except for a soft sigh of ash collapsing in the stove. Nissa’s stiff old hands rested, crossed, beneath her drooping breasts. In her eyes was the bright sheen of remembrance as she stared, unseeing, at the red flowered oilcoth beneath the catalogue. A lump formed in Linnea’s throat. Death was an entity she hadn’t pondered, and certainly never as a thing that could be beautiful. Studying Nissa’s downcast eyes, Linnea suddenly understood the beauty of lifelong commitment and realized that for those like Nissa it took more than death to negate it.
    Nissa lifted the cup to her lips, unaware that the coffee was cold. “The home place was never the same without Hjalmar, so I left it to John and came up here to take care of Teddy and the baby, and I been here ever since.”
    “And Melinda? Where is she now?” Linnea inquired softly, holding her breath for some inexplicable reason. She sat absolutely still while waiting for the answer.
    “Melinda got run over and killed by a streetcar in Philadelphia when Kristian was six.”
    Oh, I see. The words were unspoken, but buzzed in Linnea’s mind as she released the lungful of air in small, careful spurts that slowly relaxed her shoulders. The room grew still except for the soft, absent tapping of Nissa’s fingertips upon the forgotten catalogue. Her apron swagged between her spread knees, and the afternoon sun lit the soft fuzz on her cheeks. Suddenly