On the fourth trip to the creek, you notice the willow branches Fritz brought are perfect for a roof frame.
You lash them with twine you unraveled from old sacks.
You create ribs over the rectangle, like you’re building the skeleton of a beast that will protect your children.
That night, you cook thin porridge on the iron stove under the wagon.
Greta falls asleep with the bowl in her lap, mouth sticky, cheeks smudged.
Fritz stays awake beside you, watching the stars.
“Mom,” he whispers, “what if the wind takes it?”
You look at the dark outline of your half-built sod walls and say, “Then we build it again.”
Your voice doesn’t break, and Fritz’s shoulders loosen like you just gave him permission to breathe.
The next day, Hinrich Folkmeer returns.
He stands at the edge of your pit, silent, eyes scanning the walls you’ve raised.
His face doesn’t change much, but you see something shift in the way he holds himself, like his certainty is getting uncomfortable.
He clears his throat.
“You’re still here,” he says.
You wipe sweat and dirt from your brow with the back of your wrist.
“I told you,” you reply. “I have two dollars and sixty cents.”
Then you gesture at the walls. “And I have hands.”
Hinrich steps down into the pit, boots sinking slightly in the soil.
He presses his palm to the sod, testing the tightness, the density.
For a moment, he looks almost… respectful.
“This will be low,” he says, not criticizing, just observing.
“Low is warmer,” you answer.
He nods once, slow.
Then he surprises you by pulling a small sack from his coat.
He tosses it onto the ground near your feet.
“Salt pork,” he says gruffly. “Don’t make a speech.”
And before you can thank him, he climbs out of the pit and walks away like kindness is something that embarrasses him.
That pork is not charity.
It’s an admission.
In the following week, you push harder.
You set the glass pane carefully into a rough frame you make from scavenged wood.
You seal gaps with a mud-and-straw mix until your fingers are numb and your nails are permanently dark.
You shape a small vent for smoke, because you’ve learned the prairie doesn’t just kill with cold, it kills with mistakes.
Silas Murdoch’s voice follows you even when he isn’t there.
Twenty dollars.
It echoes in your head when you feel your strength run out at sundown.
Twenty dollars could buy warm coats.
Twenty dollars could buy flour.
Twenty dollars could buy your children a winter that doesn’t taste like fear.
But you know what else twenty dollars buys.
It buys you back into being someone’s dependent.
It buys you a life where your children watch men make decisions for their mother.
It buys you a slow death of dignity, which is a different kind of freezing.
So you don’t sell.
Instead, you finish the roof.
You layer willow branches, then grass, then sod blocks like shingles made of earth.
It’s heavy work, and you have no ladder, so you stack crates and climb carefully, heart in your throat.
Fritz steadies the crates with both hands like a tiny foreman.
When the last block slides into place, you don’t cheer.
You just sit down in the dirt and stare at it.
A roof.
You built a roof with your own body.
Greta runs into the pit and spins in circles, laughing, like the walls are already filled with warmth.
Fritz touches the sod wall with reverent fingers and whispers, “It’s real.”
And you realize he needs to say it out loud because for months, “real” has been the thing life stole from him.
On the first cold night of October, the wind arrives like a bully.
It slams into the prairie and searches for weak spots.
You hear it whistle over the grass, a high keening sound that makes Greta crawl into your lap.
You tuck both children inside the sod house for the first time.
The interior is dim, tight, earthy.
The air smells like wet soil and hope.
The walls absorb the wind’s violence, and for the first time in weeks, you feel a strange sensation.
Stillness.
You light the stove.
The iron warms slowly, and the little space begins to hold heat like a secret.
Greta sighs in her sleep. Fritz watches the walls as if he’s waiting for them to fail.
They don’t.
Two days later, Silas Murdoch rides out to your land.
He’s wearing a wool coat too fine for real labor and boots that have never known mud.
He circles your sod house once like he’s inspecting livestock.
His smile is wrong, too sharp.
“You did it,” he says, almost annoyed. “I’ll be damned.”
Then he adds, quickly, “But winter will still take you. Sell now. I can still give you fifteen.”
