Louise erdrich the queen6/10/2023 ![]() ![]() He owned a whole county of Minnesota wheatland. ![]() Ober, a tall man with a carefully trimmed black beard. There was something different about us even then. There were just us three: Karl and me and our mother, Adelaide. This story starts then, because before that and without the year 1929, our family would probably have gone on living comfortably in a lonely and isolated white house on the edge of Prairie Lake. I was the one who begged spotted apples from the grocery store and stole whey from the back stoop of the creamery in Minneapolis, where we were living the winter after my father died. My mother called him delicate, but I was the opposite. He suffered from fevers that kept him in a stuporous dream state and was sensitive to loud sounds, harsh lights. Karl was taller than me but spindly, older of course, but fearful. With no one to protect and look out for, I was weak. It was not that with Karl gone I had no one to protect me, but just the opposite. When it was out of sight, I stared down at my feet. I saw the train pulled like a string of black beads over the horizon, as I have seen it so many times since. The only difference would be the fragrant stick blooming in his hand. ![]() That was when I realized Karl had probably jumped back on the same boxcar and was now hunched in straw, watching out the opened door. I was the girl in the stiff coat.Īfter I ran blind and came to a halt, shocked not to find Karl behind me, I looked up to watch for him and heard the train whistle long and shrill. ![]()
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