Lordor said, “Oh, I see.” He then looked down at his hands, took a deep breath, but still said nothing.
“Is it me?” she asked. “Tell me, what have I done?”
He shook his head. “No, no…it’s not you.”
“What is it, Mr. Nordstrom? You have to tell me. I’ve come all this way.”
Lordor seemed to be struggling for words, then he blurted it out. “I am afraid for my bad grammar. I knew you were pretty, but I didn’t know how good with words you would be. I don’t talk much because I don’t want you to find out how dumb I am. You might go back to Chicago.”
Katrina was never so relieved to hear anything in her life, and tears sprang to her eyes. “Oh, Lordor,” she said, surprising herself. “I don’t care about that. I just need for you to talk. It’s not how you say anything that matters to me.”
“Wait. Wait,” he said, putting up his hands. “There is more you should know. I don’t spell so good, neither. Them letters I sent? Mrs. Swensen helped me and spelled out the big words for me.”
Katrina smiled and shook her head. “I don’t care.”
Lordor looked at her in disbelief. “For sure?”
“For sure.”
“Then you will stay?”
Katrina started to reply, but then she felt a sudden pang of guilt. He had just been so honest with her. She had to tell him. “Lordor, before I answer, there’s something about me…you need to know. Something I haven’t told you.”
He seemed surprised. “What?”
Katrina bit her lip, then slowly opened her purse and took something out of it. “The truth is, Lordor, I don’t see very well…and you might as well know it now.” She then pulled a pair of round black-rimmed glasses out of a velvet pouch, put them on, and turned and faced him. “I wear spectacles….I know how ugly I look, but without them, everything is fuzzy.” She sat and waited for his response.
Lordor blinked and looked at her. After a long moment of studying her face he said, “Oh no, Katrina, you are wrong. You look very pretty in spectacles…and very smart. I like them.” He then smiled at her. “I like them very much.”
“You don’t mind?”
“No. It’s good for a man to have a smart wife.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but Anna Lee…”
He didn’t let her finish. “Katrina, answer me this.”
“Yes?”
“Will you stay?”
“Yes.”
“Forever?”
“Oh, yes.”
Lordor smiled. “Good.”
As they drove off, both were smiling. That day, Katrina saw Lordor’s face clearly for the first time, and he was even more handsome than she had thought.
—
FROM THAT DAY ON, Katrina wore her glasses, and Lordor just about talked her ear off telling her of all his plans for the town, for them, and for their future. Katrina continued to live with the Swensens, and joined in on Birdie’s knitting circle with the other ladies. She was a fast learner and soon was knitting with the best of them.
After a respectable three months’ time, the Swensens drove with them to the big Lutheran church in Springfield for Katrina and Lordor to get married. When the ceremony was over, Birdie cried, but both Katrina and Lordor breathed a big sigh of relief. After all that waiting, they couldn’t wait to get home and finally begin their new life as man and wife. But things don’t always go as planned.
—
THAT NIGHT, WHEN THEY arrived back at their house, it was surrounded by dozens of wagons, mules, and horses, and ablaze with light. The ladies had planned a huge surprise wedding celebration supper and had laid out enough food to feed an army. It was a wonderful party with music and dancing that went on until at least four o’clock in the morning. It was almost daybreak when the last of the hangers-on left. The fiddle player had had too much of Mr. and Mrs. Knott’s beer and had passed out cold. Lordor and Lars had to carry him out to his wagon. Finally, they could begin their first night as man and wife.
They went upstairs, and Katrina went into the bedroom and changed from her wedding dress into her nightgown while Lordor went into the room down the hall. He changed out of his new black suit with the velvet bow tie and hung it up in the wardrobe. He put on his new cotton blue-striped nightshirt and walked over to the mirror and combed his hair, then sat down and waited for Katrina to invite him to join her. A few minutes later, he heard, “You can come in now.” He walked down the hall and opened the door. She was sitting up in bed, looking so beautiful. They tried acting as calm as possible. Both were nervous.
Just as Lordor climbed into the large feather bed to join his bride, they heard the front door suddenly crash open with a loud bang. Then they heard the sound of heavy footsteps running through the house and the sound of tables and chairs being violently turned over and the loud clatter of glass breaking, pots and pans crashing to the floor. Whoever it was, was now downstairs in their kitchen going on some sort of mad rampage.
Lordor grabbed the shotgun he kept by his bed, ready to defend their life against a gang of bandits or worse. Despite his command to Katrina to stay there and lock the bedroom door behind him, she grabbed her glasses and followed him down the stairs, carrying her new silver-handled mirror as a weapon.
When they reached the kitchen, Lordor kicked the door open and stood ready to fire. But what they saw standing in the middle of all the clutter wasn’t a gang of bandits, or even one bandit. It was the 350-pound pig named Sweet Potato that Henry and Nancy Knott had given them as a wedding present. The pig had managed to break out of her pen, had come up the front stairs, and snouted her way into the house. Sweet Potato, who evidently had no fear of guns or humans, glanced up at the two of them, was not impressed, and continued eating all of the leftover food from the party. She seemed to particularly enjoy the leftover wedding cake and her snout was smeared with white frosting.
What a colossal mess. She had knocked over everything there was to knock over, rooting around for food. There were broken dishes, chairs, pots and pans everywhere. All of Katrina’s new china and lovely wedding presents that had been on display in the kitchen, including her new white bedsheets and quilts, were now on the floor and covered with food and small pig hoofprints. It took the two of them more than thirty minutes to get Sweet Potato back outside, down the steps, and over to her pen.
The sun was up by the time she had been safely locked in. When the ordeal was finally over, and after they had both tried so hard to look nice on their wedding night, they were covered from head to toe in mud and cake. It was so funny, and they laughed so hard, they finally had to sit down on the ground. Every time one would stop laughing for a moment, the other would start again.