A Land to Call Home (3 page)

“Those little feet are beating a tattoo on my ribs. There must be more than one in there. Sometimes I think it’s a whole army” She rubbed the upward curve of her belly. “Hush now, little one, hush.”

“Ones.” Ingeborg kept her gaze on her stitching, but everybody could see her mouth twitch.

With the squares of nine patch stitched together, Agnes sorted through her store of cloth. “I have blue for the solid squares or yellow. Which would you like?” She held up the cloth in the colors mentioned.

“I think the blue—no, the yellow.” Kaaren shook her head. “Making up my mind even over little things is a big chore.”

“The yellow it is.” Agnes cut one square and used it as a pattern for the next. When Penny gently but firmly took the scissors from her hand, the older woman straightened and dug her fists into the curve of her back. “I don’t remember being so stiff and tired with the others.” She rubbed her back again. “Must be getting old.”

Back in their chairs to finish the final seams, the women turned the talk to the new people who had moved into the area during the summer.

“I know someone who will be at the service tomorrow. Someone who’s been asking after our Penny.” Ingeborg nodded and winked at Agnes.

“Who could that be?” With innocent wide eyes and smiling
mouth, Agnes looked up from her handiwork.

“That nice Mr. Clauson, that’s who. He said he was looking for a wife, and when he saw Penny, he was sure he’d found the one.”

“Of course. She’s the only unattached female for five square miles,” Kaaren added.

“Or ten.” Ingeborg finished the sentence.

Penny could feel the heat staining her cheeks, making her wish for a cold wet cloth. “But you know I’m promised to Hjelmer. He’s
your
brother-in-law, after all.”

“Ja, well, who knows about Hjelmer, and Mr. Clauson is here with land of his own and an itching for feet to meet under his table. Not that I wouldn’t mind being that woman, ’twere I but a few years younger.”

“Tante Agnes!”

“Just teasing, my girl, but nonetheless, there’s wisdom in those words.”

But what about Hjelmer?
Penny could hear the wail echoing and re-echoing in her mind.

T
hunderheads darkened the westering sun.

Hjelmer Bjorklund looked up from the iron bar he was hammering into a coal scoop and watched lightning fork through the black expanse above. In spite of the chill fall wind, he wiped the sweat from above his eyes and thrust the flattening bar back into the bed of white-hot coals. He nodded to the boy whose job it was to pump the bellows and switched to a broader hammer. He wanted to get the coal scoop done before dark, and with the storm, darkness was almost upon them. The cook had been badgering him for it, threatening no supper unless Hjelmer brought the finished product with him.

“Could snow. It’s almost that cold,” shouted Leif Ransom, his friend since Hjelmer joined the James J. Hill company as it pushed the tracks of the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway toward the Pacific Northwest. The two met one night in the chow line, lined up bunks one above the other, and soon developed a reputation as hardworking, honest young crew members who stuck up for each other and for those who needed a champion.

“Ja, it could.” Hjelmer waved at the jovial young man carrying a sledgehammer over his shoulder and then went back to his coal scoop. He thinned the metal even more at the open end and bent it up first on one side then the other. Thrusting the formed piece into the water bucket, he watched it sizzle and steam. Just as he pulled it out, the steam whistle echoed across the flatland, announcing the end of the workday and time for chow. Hjelmer’s empty stomach rumbled in response. He banked the coals in the forge and shed his apron, making sure his heavy leather gloves were tied to the apron strings, then he folded the equipment in half and stuck it in his
wooden chest. If things weren’t properly stowed, they had a habit of disappearing. He rotated shoulders nearing ax-handle width and rolled his grimy white sleeves over arms corded with well-formed muscles.

Arnie, his bellows boy, finished dropping all the tools into their proper slots around the forge bed, and the two leaped to the ground. “See ya tomorrow, Mr. Bjorklund.” The boy sent Hjelmer a grin, showing one front tooth missing. The way the boy talked, Hjelmer had an idea the gap was compliments of the father the boy had left behind in Minnesota.

Away from the sweltering heat of the forge, the cold wind knifed through Hjelmer’s black wool coat. He wished he had one of sheepskin like some of the other workers. The leather outside and the wool turned in made for better wind protection, and with nothing between the camp and the northerners howling across the prairie, he knew he would soon need added protection. He pulled a black wool watch cap farther down over hair that had deepened over time from tow-colored to the amber of honey left late in a bee tree.

Thoughts of the snug soddy he’d so reviled last spring when he arrived from Norway made him shake his head. So much he had learned in the last six months. Those at home in Nordland would never believe half of it if he told them. That thought prompted a twang of guilt for not writing his mother, and that one reminded him of an even worse sin. He hadn’t written a second letter to Penny. Asking her to wait for him had taken all the gumption he possessed, and now he’d let her down again. Visions of her sparkling blue eyes and curls that captured the sun made him sigh. He fingered her letter he kept in his pocket, so worn at the folds that he cradled the paper in his hands to read it again lest it fall totally apart.

One letter. She had promised to write every week, and while he hadn’t traveled that far, he did say he would answer, that he would keep in touch. He would come back for her, and they would build a building by the school to house their home and their store, with his own blacksmith shop set right next door. He wondered if they had built the school yet. And who was the father of Mary Ruth Strand’s baby? One thing he knew for certain, it weren’t him, accusations by her or no. He knew what it took to make a baby, and he had never gone that far, not with her or any woman.

“You look like you lost your last friend.” Leif clapped him on the shoulder. “And I know you din’t, ’cause I’m right here.” As short and stocky as Hjelmer was tall and broad of shoulder, Leif laughed at
his own joke. Life, according to the gospel of Leif, was one long, continuous joke, the kind that if a man didn’t laugh he might never quit crying. When he threw back his head and laughed, summer mink curls bounced on his forehead, the combination attracting broad smiles from anyone present, especially those of the women, young and old alike.

“Ja, you are.” Hjelmer broke into a jog to outrun his biting thoughts. “If we don’t hurry, the food will all be gone.” They dodged in and out of the line of men plodding toward the cook car. Kerosene lanterns hung from the box cars to light their way. Just as they stepped inside, a peal of thunder shook the sky and the clouds let loose a deluge, as if they’d just turned a heavenly bucket upside down to drench those foolish enough to have dawdled.

“Just in time,” Hjelmer said, whipping the hat from his head and stuffing it in his coat pocket. Rosy lantern light softened the bare tables lined with benches and the life-hardened crew taking their places. With the workday finished, laughter bounced from the smoke-gray wooden walls to meld with voices loud enough to be heard above the noise. It was nearly impossible for anyone to carry on a conversation lest they be side by side. Young boys toted steaming bowls of vegetables and platters of meat from the cook car to the front of the dining car—if it could be given such a dignified name. Most called it the cookshack. Serving only two meals a day, the cooks fixed enough food to feed twice as many men as the crew, and the food always disappeared before the late arrivals got enough.

The two were just scraping the last of the apple pie off their plates when the foreman stopped behind them. “You two boys want to join the poker players tonight? Big Red over there asked me to invite you.” He nodded toward a man at the far trestle table who laughed just then at something his neighbor said. The laugh rolled over the tables, bounced off the walls, and caused more than one man to turn to look, hoping to get the joke too.

Hjelmer never failed to wonder how such a deep laugh could come from such a narrow chest. The man stood just over five feet, his hair flaming in the lamplight. Red at least suited him, but big? The reputation that rolled outward like waves toward shore said otherwise. Big could possibly refer to his temper. Soon as anyone came to camp they were warned to stay on the sunny side of the banty Irishman. No one, on pain of severe injury, made remarks about his size or lack thereof.

All these thoughts raced through Hjelmer’s head as the desire to
feel the cards in his hands again made them tremble. Could he play just one or two hands, have a few laughs and a beer or two, then leave it alone?

A rippling up his spine reminded him of giant Swen from the foundry in New York, the man who threatened to kill him for supposedly cheating at cards. Hjelmer knew he didn’t have to cheat to win. And he hadn’t.

“Thanks anyway, but I better not. You go ahead, Leif, if’n you want to.”

“The men are gonna think you’re scared,” Leif whispered behind his hand. “You get invited here, you play.”

Hjelmer studied his friend from under sandy lashes. He shook his head. “Thanks, Mr. Hanson, but if it is all right with you, I’ll come another night. Tell Big Red thanks for the invite.”

Hanson cocked an eyebrow. “You know, if you’re scared or don’t know how to play, we can show you how it’s done.”

Hjelmer half turned on his bench. “That’s right kind of you. Maybe another night.”

Hanson studied them a moment more before turning to make his way back across the trestle-table-and-bench-clogged room.

Hjelmer watched him go. A feeling down in his gut said he’d just made a big mistake. The look on Leif’s face said the same. Should he tell his new friend what had happened in New York? That he’d made a vow to never gamble again? Instead, he said, “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

The two ducked their heads as they strode through the slanting rain that bore a mighty close resemblance to sleet. Reaching the door to their home on wheels, they pushed it open and quickly stepped inside. The remodeled boxcar looked as if someone had plunked down a one-room house that was too large for the wheel bed, so it hung over two to three feet on both sides, and then built portable steps up to it. A potbellied stove in the center of the car radiated heat for about five feet around it, an inviting gathering place for those not ready to hit the straw-stuffed sacks frequently referred to as louse houses. A pot of coffee strong enough to pound into spikes steamed on the flat surface.

Hjelmer dug his carving sack out from his pack and brought it to the circle. One of the other men moved over so the carver could use the dim light from the hanging kerosene lantern. In the close quarters, the reek of burning kerosene almost disguised the odor of hardworking, unwashed bodies.

“Watcha makin’, son?” a black man with shoulders about as broad as Hjelmer’s asked in a gentle voice that still echoed his southern beginning.

Hjelmer took out the bird he’d begun carving a week earlier when he found a chunk of elm wood that had been cut off a railroad tie. Trees, branches, anything of a near size made up most of the ties, but when one was too big, they split it or cut it for firewood. He’d wanted to salvage the entire piece but grabbed a chunk small enough to keep in his sack.

He held the half-formed creature up to the dim light. He’d debated carving a flying eagle like he’d seen soaring over the Red River during the summer, but unless he inset the wings, the piece was too small. Instead, he’d shaped the bird sitting on a post or snag, not sure yet which it would be. He’d gotten it roughed out, so the shape was evident.

“An eagle?” At Hjelmer’s nod, the grizzly-headed man flashed a smile so bright against the darkness of his face that his teeth glistened in the light. “My pappy used to carve, but his tweren’t nothin’ like this.” He raised a long finger to touch the bird’s head. “We had eagles back to home so big they’d take your breath away. Old tales said eagles done carried bad chilluns away, so we was best we could be. I see’d one take a lamb right outta the field. Took him some flap-pin’ to get into the air again, but he done it.”

“That must a been some sight.” Hjelmer spit on his whetstone and commenced to sharpen his knife blade, using the circular motions his father had taught him long ago. The action always brought back thoughts of home in the Valdrez region of Nordland. He still had trouble calling his homeland Norway in the way of the Americans, but here on the crew he was picking up the strange language faster than he thought possible.

When the knife was sharpened to his liking, he dug into the wood, bringing wing feathers to life with each minute stroke. The voices of men swapping yarns around him lulled him into a near dreamlike state. A stream of tobacco sometimes rang in the spittoon, but mostly it missed. A laugh burst out once in a while, or a curse, when two men got to arguing over the relative merits of one cook over another. Rain drummed on the roof, sometimes leaking down around the stovepipe and sizzling on the black metal.