CHAPTER TWO

“Haw!” I shouted, trying to make my eight-year-old voice sound as grown up as I felt. I was thrilled when Dan, the gentle Percheron that carried me, turned at the end of the row in response.

“Atta girl, Eva,” Pappa called. His muscular arms directed the plow as it split the earth, making long, straight furrows that looked like hungry mouths eager to swallow the seeds he would feed them later on. I smiled, sitting tall and feeling the sway of Dan’s sweaty body. My legs barely reached the curve of his back.

I turned to wave at Pappa. A few strands of thick, blond hair had pasted themselves onto his high, wet forehead. He forced a smile on a face that looked as tense as his body under the strain of the plow.

“Yaaah, I knew you could do it,min litten flicka.”

I liked the way Pappa’s accented speech dipped and climbed back up again, how he lingered over some of the syllables and slurred others, as if he were singing instead of talking. But maybe the real reason I loved the sound of Pappa’s voice was because I loved him so much--every part of him--from the earthy smell of his big, rough hands to his funny, crooked nose; the clear blue of his wide eyes to the way he held onto hisyahs when he spoke and refused to let them go.

Pappa had struggled to shed his Swedish accent, but unlike others in our rural community who had also immigrated from Sweden, he wasn’t able to shake it off completely, no matter how determined he was to speak English. Grownups said learning a new language was harder for some than others. I supposed that was true. I could understand a little Swedish but preferred to speak English, like my friends.

Like their neighbors, my parents were hard-working farmers, used to winters in the old country that were as cold or colder than Wisconsin, or so they said. But even as the days grew warmer and winter faded into spring, I worried about Pappa. He’d been sick. A week earlier, he lay in bed with a fever--the doctor called it pneumonia--and Mother didn’t think he should be up working so soon.

But Pappa was firm.

“Who’ll plant the crops? Yaaah, you probably think they’ll just pop right up out of the ground,min Frida, with no help from me.” He gave Mother a reassuring pat on her arm, then edged closer.“Det gör ingenting,” he whispered.“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

Now, as Pappa worked the plow, worms and beetles rode the soil that rotated to the top, providing a feast for a flock of noisy, greedy gulls. I watched them land and take off, bobbing up and down like painted horses on a merry-go-round and imagined I was one of them. My shoulders had sprouted wings, and I was gliding over treetops to faraway lands, fairytale places where princesses waited in castles for handsome knights, like in the stories Pappa sometimes told me.

When the horse reached the end of another row, Pappa called out,“Enough. What do you say we take a break?”

He pulled a handkerchief from the rear pocket of his pants, wiped his forehead, and walked over to Dan and me. When he reached up, I slid into his open arms.

“Well, now, you did a wonderful job.” He grinned, holding me high.

All at once, he put me back on the ground, turned his head, and began to cough, a hollow, frightening sound that seemed to echo from deep inside.

“Pappa?”

He was silent for a moment, swallowed, and then his smile returned.

“I’m fine, Eva. Stop worrying about me. Yaaah, let’s worry instead about filling that empty stomach of yours.”