He does not answer for a moment, but when he does, he says, “I do not remember. Perhaps Kendra sold it to him.” He rises and picks up the lantern, placing it closer to me. “I do not need the light to see. Perhaps if I put it here, you will be able to read.”
So I do. I find the book in my satchel and open it to where it will fall, reading about the Thirty Years War and Martin Luther and witch persecutions while the spinning continues.
It is the last that makes me ask, “How is it you can do this, that you can spin straw into gold?”
He stops what he is doing and stares ahead, as if dreaming. Finally, he shrugs.
“I suppose we each have our gifts and abilities. Some people get to be princes or great artists or lead armies. Others get this.”
“But how did you realize it?”
“That is an interesting story. When I lived at the foundling home, people would come occasionally looking to adopt an orphan. Typically, they wanted a baby. If they chose an older child, it was because they needed a robust lad to help on their farm, or their business, or a girl for the washing. I lived there for many years, and I was never chosen, but one day, a man came in, a farmer. He was looking for a boy, someone to help him. He had three daughters, but he wanted a son.”
“And he chose you?” As soon as I say it, I slap my hand to my mouth, to push back the incredulous, insulting words.
But he laughs. “Oh, I know. All the bigger, stronger boys had been taken by the smart farmers who had arrived earlier. But my farmer was stupid, so all he got was me. Also, they told him I was nine when I was twelve, so he thought I would grow more. I did not, as you might guess, excel at farmwork. I was too weak to push a plow, too slow at picking, useless even at milking the cows, a chore his daughter, a girl of only eight, could do.”
“It requires a great deal of strength in the lower arms,” I say, still trying to make up for my prior comment.
“I was afraid of cows. With each failure, the farmer beat me, and then he assigned me what he believed to be an easier task. The last of these was merely to care for the chickens, a task which, he said, his six-year-old daughter could do.”
“You could not have been afraid of the chickens,” I say, trying to lighten up the mood, and as I do, one of the chickens clucks loudly, as if she has heard. I can well imagine his disappointment in his failures. I felt it myself, trying to keep up with my older sisters. But I was not beaten.
“I could well have been afraid of the chickens,” he says. “They were quite threatening, I assure you. But no. For the first days, I was all right. I fed the chickens and gathered the eggs and cleaned the coop, all just as well as the six-year-old did. But, on the third day, the farmer’s wife instructed me that I should spend the night in the barn, watching the chickens. The boy who used to do it had been let go, and this would be my new chore. ‘Surely,’ she said, ‘even one as stupid as you can sit and watch sleeping chickens so they do not get eaten by a fox.’”
I know what is coming. “You could not?”
He shakes his head sadly, his foot moving the treadle more quickly. “The problem was I had been up all day. So though, in the farmer’s eyes, I had accomplished nothing, after a full day in the summer sun, I was tired. I struggled to stay awake, but I eventually succumbed to the sandman’s sprinklings. When I woke, two of the chickens were gone. I knew a fox had gotten them.
“It was the farmer’s wife who discovered me crying in the barn, crying because I loved the chickens. I had never owned a pet. But I was also crying because I had failed again, and I knew what that meant. The farmer’s wife said, ‘When my husband returns, he will give you the beating of your life and send you back to where you came from.’”
“But it was not your fault!” I say, feeling my stomach clench at the injustice of it.
He laughs and, for a second, with his eyes crinkling and his mouth upturned, he is almost—almost—handsome. Not handsome like Karl, but pleasant-looking. I look at his face a moment longer than I need to, for I quite like it.