But Teacher had not learned these things. She was a schoolteacher; she carried all the knowledge of the world in her head. Yet she couldn’t seem to understand the unspoken rules of Mother Pedersen’s house. Anette longed to warn her. But Anette didn’t have the words, even in her native tongue, to give voice to her concerns about what was happening in that two-story house. The air was so close, so stifling with things that she couldn’t understand, but that still resonated in her heart, her head, her very bones. There was a vibration, all the time, a high, tense note, like a string on a violin being teased forever, and all you could hope for was that it would finally break. And yet, you also feared that day, had nightmares about it, entered that house with dread that today would be the day when that note was silenced forever.
Especially after last week, when there was no school and the air was so bitterly cold that Father Pedersen couldn’t always escape to the barn where Teacher sometimes followed him, and they were all stuck together for long days and longer nights—Anette shuddered, thinking about it.
So it was such a relief, this morning, when the cold spell broke; everyone except Mother Pedersen had fled that house. Teacher had grabbed Anette’s hand and run with her—neither wore their heavy coats, only thick shawls, and Anette had even dared to put on her regular petticoats, letting her flannel ones air out on the line where she’d hung the children’s wash before breakfast. Teacher and Anette flew across the log bridge over the ravine at the back of the property, and their boots skimmed the packed, hard, snow-covered prairie, that little one-room school a beacon, drawing them away from the darkness of that house.
And now, at recess, Anette and Fredrik were running like they always did, like birds themselves, chasing and laughing, until Anette finally tagged him. When she did, she felt a stinging shock, heard a sizzle, and they both leapt apart, gasping.
Then they looked up at the sky. As Anette began to tremble, Fredrik ran to get Teacher.
CHAPTER 2
•••••
Come to Nebraska, the Garden of Eden! Acres for the taking, acres of a bountiful land that will surely yield a harvest fit for the gods. Have you ever seen the sun set behind rolling green hills, heard the prairie lark sing its glorious song, smelled the perfume of flowers so abundant, they make a veritable carpet of velvet petals? Have you longed for the magic of a prairie winter, gentle yet abundant snow to nourish the earth, neither too cold nor too warm, only perfection in every way? Have you longed to cultivate a land so yielding, the plow is scarcely needed to give up its rich earth? Then leave your Czars, your Kings, the shackles of the filthy city, and come to a land of fresh, healthy air, a land where every man can be his own king. Our agents of the Union Pacific Railroad will even meet you off the boat in New York Harbor and make arrangements for you to take the first train west to God’s own country, Nebraska. The Homestead Act provides for any male or female head of a household one hundred and sixty of these heavenly acres for only a small filing fee. In five years, those acres will be yours to pass on to your children and their children’s children.
Come to Nebraska, the Garden of Eden!
GAVIN WOODSON LEANED BACK IN his chair, the cigar between his fingers forgotten so the ash now was about an inch long. He had just pinned the Come to Nebraska newspaper clipping to the scarred wall to the left of his cluttered desk. Blots of ink marred the other clippings he’d been pawing through, so that this was the only one he’d managed to salvage. He didn’t know why he’d pinned it. It was pabulum, pure and simple. Maybe he’d decided to display it not as a trophy but as a taunting reminder of how far he’d sunk, here in Godforsaken Omaha.
He ought to be in New York right this minute, in the bustling offices of The World. Making plans for dinner at Delmonico’s, followed by drinks at the White Horse Tavern. Or he might stroll along Fifth Avenue and gape at the mansions, then watch a skating party in the park, maybe help a damsel in distress on the ice and hope it would lead to a carriage ride later. Or he could stay in his boardinghouse, a civilized place with musicales in the parlor in the evenings, a gentleman’s game of cards in the library, interesting and palatable food produced by dimpling young Irish girls who let you put an arm around them without automatically thinking you were engaged.
Instead, after a falling-out with The World’s then-new owner, Joseph Pulitzer, Gavin found himself in Godforsaken Omaha. He couldn’t say the name of the town any other way; it was never merely “Omaha.” It was godforsaken, pure and simple. As was this entire region, this desert, this prairie, these plains. And the poor sons of bitches he’d lured out here with his pen.
He glanced back up at the clipping and laughed. Jesus Christ, what a job he’d done! But that was actually his job—writing for the state’s boosters and railroad investors. Hammering out “news” articles that advertised this place as something it was not, pieces that got picked up by the wire services and placed in other newspapers or were used in pamphlets put out by the railroads. All with the same intent: To sell Nebraska. To sell all these acres, recently won from the Indians, to rubes and immigrants who didn’t know any better. To settle this state, grow the population—because there weren’t enough citizens in this country to fill up the ever-expanding territory, so they had to import bodies, pure and simple—and make the businessmen, the investors, and the railroads happy. And very rich. Because what good was a railroad snaking from coast to coast if there weren’t towns along the way, grain and wheat and corn and livestock to transport, not to mention people? How else would you get enough bodies inside a territory to turn it into a state? So the railroads and the boosters employed washed-up reporters to lure those people across an ocean. Reporters like Gavin.
Gavin reached for his pen with a sigh. His desk here at the Omaha Daily Bee was the smallest, his cubbyhole the farthest away from the editor’s desk. He wasn’t technically employed by the Bee, but he was given a desk here, for appearance’s sake. After all, to the public, he was a journalist.
But he wasn’t, and he knew it. And while that had once outraged him, he was growing used to the insulating feeling—like a ponderous buffalo coat keeping him warm while simultaneously weighing him down—of acquiescence. He even felt, after a couple of whiskeys at the Gilded Lily down the street, rather noble for admitting his failings. Wasn’t it best to acknowledge the limitations of a life and find a way to live within them, rather than constantly trying to push up against a fixed fate, like those ignorant sodbusters who’d believed his seductive prose, trying and failing every year to make a garden out of a desert?
It sure as hell was, Gavin had convinced himself. Most of the time.
“Writing something up about that sleighing party?” Dan Forsythe was standing next to him, in his usual sloppy attire—frayed, black-stained cuffs (he refused to wear paper cuffs to protect his shirts from the ink); heavy trousers, like farmers wore; heavy boots, too, that Gavin could easily imagine covered in muck and manure. Yet he was the star reporter for the Bee, the publisher’s pet.