A Land to Call Home (21 page)

Kaaren shifted the twins in her arms and nodded when Penny motioned that she’d take one. But when Penny changed Sophie and laid her in the box on the oven door, the infant set up a wailing that would fit one twice her size.

“They don’t like to be apart,” Penny said, picking the red-faced baby back up and rocking her in her arms.

“You’d think she’s too little to know better.” Kaaren tapped the cheek of the twin she held, encouraging her to wake up and finish eating. She glanced over to the bed where Solveig lay propped up on pillows against the sod wall. The face she made sipping the bitter brew caused Kaaren to chuckle. “I thought the same, sister mine.
But believe me, that concoction helps you sleep and keeps the pain down. Tried some laudanum one time and this is better.”

Only Metiz’ twinkling eyes showed her response. She sat cross-legged on her pallet on the floor by the wall, using a rounded stone in a carved wooden bowl to crush her dried herbs into powder.

When Lars returned from putting the team up, he stood by the stove, rubbing his hands in the warmth above it. “If it rained tonight, we’d have snow for sure.”

“Snow at dying moon.” Metiz continued to grind.

“You think it’ll hold off that long?”

One nod was his answer.

“Then maybe we can get the lean-tos done. Once the roof is on that barn, we can side it when we have time. Onkel Olaf has become the boss on the job.”

Kaaren reminded Solveig who Olaf was. “God surely sent him at the right time.” At the glower that darkened Solveig’s face, Kaaren exchanged a questioning look with her husband. When he shrugged, she turned back to Solveig. While she wanted to ask what was wrong, in her heart she already knew. Like so many others before her whom life had treated fairly easy, Solveig’s faith had been tested and found wanting. Solveig’s hand strayed often to the scar that still flamed on the side of her face. It would fade with time, but there was no getting around it. Solveig would never be the beauty she had been, and if she kept frowning like that . . . Kaaren shook her head. Compared to what it could have been, the scar and the leg were a small price to pay for life.

But Solveig wasn’t ready to hear that.

“Is she full now?” Penny asked from the side of the rocker.

Kaaren held up the baby. “I hope so. While Sophie can go longer between feedings, Grace wakes her up no matter how quiet I try to be.” Kaaren got to her feet, meeting Metiz at the edge of the extra bed. “Do you want me to unwrap it?”

Metiz nodded.

“Now what?” Solveig asked.

“Metiz has made a poultice to apply to the wound. It will help draw out any infection and soothe the pain.”

“My leg is as good as it is ever going to be. The doctor said so.”

“Nevertheless, we will do what we can.” Kaaren laid her hand on Solveig’s shoulder and pushed her back to the pillows. “You just lie back. Metiz has the most gentle hands of anyone I know.” She smiled down into her younger sister’s eyes, eyes now full of rebellion
instead of the love she’d dreamed of.

She watched as Solveig finished drinking the tea Metiz had prepared. Even with the honey they’d added, she knew firsthand how bitter it tasted. Her mouth pinched at the remembered pucker.

Once everyone was finally in bed, she shifted gently so as not to disturb the sleeping babies.
Father in heaven, please look with compassion upon my dear sister. She is so different than I remember, and I fear the train accident is the cause of much of that. Please help her to not become bitter. I know the scar on her face will fade with time, but scars upon her soul are more to be feared. Help her remember what Mor taught us from your Word, that you are love and will see her through this. I know that ahead of her may lie worse trials. . . .
Her thoughts flew back to baby Lizzie and the emptiness after her three went to their heavenly home and left her behind. Her heart had been shattered and the pieces scattered, only to be mended through God’s grace. She sighed.
Thank you, Father. I know you have a great design for Solveig’s life as you have for ours. I trust you with the care of all of us, Amen
. With that, she sighed and drifted off to sleep.

The next day flew by as the lumber seemed to take wing and make itself into the shed-roofed sides of the barn where the livestock would be housed. The men worked in teams, with some drilling holes for the pegs while others held the beams and pounded in the pegs. A wedge driven in the end of the peg sealed each joint. The boys on the ground took turns stripping the bark off tree branches of the right size and carving the sticks into pegs or splitting shingles. Laughter rang out over the grind of brace and bits, the rasp of saws and thuds of hammers, and all the while the rich fragrance of freshly cut wood hung in the air.

Ingeborg had a hard time keeping herself at the cooking with the other women. She wanted to climb the ladders and pound home the pegs, to hold the board and batten siding in place for another to hammer home the nails. Her feet wanted to dance a jig in time with the rhythm of the construction.

Much against her will, Joseph had said, Agnes stayed home.

Ingeborg knew her friend must be really miserable to miss the party air at the Bjorklunds’. She promised herself to ride over to the Baards’ as soon as she could. In the meantime, she took out a few moments to run over to the other soddy and check on Kaaren and her brood there. Penny walked back with her.

“So, how are things there?”

Penny shook her head. “That Solveig, she ain’t too pleasant a
company, but I figure she’ll adjust after a while. Body got to do that or you’ll go daft like that woman over to the north of us.”

“Mrs. Booth is getting worse then?”

“Seems so. Even this summer she would hardly come out of her house. Kept talking about the wind when we went over there for a visit. And it wasn’t even blowing that day; it was still as could be. Why, soon as we got inside, she just shut the door tight. Something strange going on there, that’s for sure.”

Ingeborg brushed a piece of something out of her eye. “Auduna is such a fine seamstress. Besides all the work she did on the quilt the women made for us, she brought us a pair of pillow slips, all embroidered and finished. Just beautiful.” She paused to think a moment. “Maybe if the women get together again and someone went and got her, she would come. Might be enough to help her some.”

Penny nodded. “Tante Agnes tries to help her, but you know, some folks just don’t want to be helped.” She turned to Ingeborg with a shrug. “I sure hope Solveig ain’t like that.”

Ingeborg kicked at a lump of black prairie dirt. “Me too, Penny, me too.”

By the time the last wagon drove off, the sheeting had been nailed to half the barn roofs, the board and batten siding covered the upper walls above the shed roofs, the front and back walls, and one shed side. Olaf said he would start laying shingles soon as it was light enough in the morning. Thorliff and Baptiste dragged themselves in for supper and returned to the sod barn to collapse right after. When Haakan teased them about splitting more shingles, they just shook their heads.

“Wore them right down to a nubbin, din’t we?” Olaf rocked his chair back on two legs and stretched his arms above his head. “Those two are good workers. Them Baard boys too. You found a good place when you stopped here. And the folks what come after, they be good too.”

“Except for one or two,” Ingeborg muttered, thinking of the Strands and the Polinskis.

The older man chuckled, his pipe smoke circling his head. “Ja, there always be them kinds of folk, but they prob’ly weren’t Norwegian, huh?”

Ingeborg threw him a smile over her shoulder, as she had both hands in the dishwater on the cool side of the stove. “You’re right there.”

Haakan stood with Andrew, who’d fallen asleep on his shoulder,
and crossed to the bed to lay the sleeping child gently down. He pulled up the covers and gave the boy a loving pat as the little one turned on his side, drawing his knees up to his chest.

Ingeborg felt a tightening in her bosom at the gesture. How blessed she was to have such a good man in her life and home. She thanked the Lord for him every day, still learning herself how to answer to Haakan’s teasing and loving ways. If only her mother could meet this man and give her seal of approval. She pulled back her thoughts from their winging toward Nordland and scrubbed the last pot clean.

The next morning when she entered the barn attired in her men’s britches, Olaf only raised an eyebrow and then winked at her.

“This way we can get some more sod broken while you men work on the barn.” She pulled her wide-brimmed man’s hat down tighter on her head to keep the wind from tumbling it across the prairie. “You want I should use the horses or the oxen?”

Haakan shook his head. “I want you should go about the things you have to do. You would do better to go hunting than break sod.”

Ingeborg glanced at Olaf in time to catch only a raised eyebrow. This man would do well here, that was for certain. Nothing much seemed to shock or surprise him. “I can do that late this afternoon. Penny is watching Andrew and the boys are taking the sheep out.”

“I will help you harness up then.” Haakan lifted the leather harnesses down from their pegs. “You get the horses.”

Ingeborg reveled in the pleasure of riding the sulky plow rather than walking behind the hand plow like the year before. As the sod lay over in straight rows behind her, she caught herself singing. She went from one hymn to another, the horses twitching their ears as if enjoying the symphony of human voice, creaking harness, thudding hooves, and squeaking wheels. The bite of the plow blade into the earth had its own kind of melody to add.

Ingeborg enjoyed the pull of the lines against her shoulders and the push against the foot pedals to raise and lower the share on the turns. As the team went up and down the field, a few snow geese flew over them on their way southward. The prairie wind whistled in her ears, a song of rejoicing in the late fall and of the coming winter, a song of freedom and the joy of the land.

She let her voice soar as she didn’t dare in their church services, cautious of some who felt such volume would be unseemly. Out here she could worship as she pleased.

Bagging a spike elk that evening put the finish on a perfect day.

On Saturday every available body met at the school to shingle the roof so they could have church there the next morning. “Our first service in the new building,” sighed Mrs. Johnson from west of the Baards. “And to think we will have a pastor here to celebrate with us. He took the night at our house, you know. Said my raised biscuits was the best he ever tasted.”

“Ja, Reverend Hostetler said he might consider remaining here with us if we were to ask him,” said Mrs. Valders.

“You asked him?” Ingeborg could feel the furrow deepen between her eyes. “When did you meet him?”

“He was to our house the night before. But my husband didn’t really ask him, just sort of hinted around to see if the good reverend might be open to such a thing. You know some of these itinerant preachers think stopping in one place is a terrible idea. Don’t go along with what God called them to do.”

“That’s cuz they got the wanderlust like half the men here,” muttered one of the women whose husband already had itchy feet to go farther west.

Ingeborg felt sorry for her. She knew the woman wanted to send her roots deep into the prairie soil like the rest of them, not pick up and move on.

About noontime, another wagon drove up. Ingeborg shaded her eyes with her hand and then let out a groan.

“What is it?” Penny appeared at her elbow.

“The Strands are here.”

“Ach, I’m glad Tante Agnes is at home. She might tear that hussy, Mary Ruth, arm from shoulder.” Penny bit her lip. “I don’t think I can stand to be polite to her.”

“You don’t have to be polite, you can ignore her all you want,” Ingeborg said for Penny’s ears only. She handed Penny the bucket with a dipper. “You go offer a drink to the men on the roof, then I think you better go home to check on Agnes.”

“And then to Kaaren’s too?”

“Ja, that’s a good idea. Take Bell over there, she rides well.” The two shared a secret look, and Penny went to do as told.

Mr. and Mrs. Strand walked around greeting folks as though they’d just seen them all a week ago. Mary Ruth leaped nimbly from the back of the wagon bed and joined the group of younger women, some of whom kept an eye on a favored man.

She’s no more in the family way than . . . than Metiz is
. Ingeborg kept the observation of the young woman’s slim waist and hips to herself. Surely she would be heavier by this time. After all, she would be four months along by now.

“That . . . that flaming hussy,” hissed Mrs. Johnson. “And to think she accused young Hjelmer of being the father of her child. I’d bet my one and only Sunday dress she made it all up.”

“You truly think so?” someone else asked. “Could be she . . .”

“Could be, nothing. She’s a liar through and through. Poor Penny, the heartache she been through. I tell you someone oughta . . .”

The grumbling continued as the women put out the last of the food and called the men to eat. Ingeborg didn’t have to say a word. All the other women said them for her. But what could they do? Short of chasing Mary Ruth and her family out of the area at the point of a rifle, that is. How could they possibly get hold of Hjelmer now to tell him to come home when they hadn’t heard from him in months?