A Land to Call Home (31 page)

“Good morning, class.” She paused.

A few of the children who had been to school before intoned, “Good morning, teacher.”

“We will try that again, and my name is Mrs. Knutson. Good morning, class.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Knutson.” The response rang stronger.

“Now we will try that in English.” She caught the look of surprise on Solveig’s face at the back of the room.
Good
, she thought.
Solveig will learn the language, too, whether she wants to or not
. She repeated the greeting in English, then said the words one at a time. “Now repeat after me.” She said the words again slowly. While they stumbled over the response, she nodded. “Good. Now, let’s try it again.” By the third time, they had it. “Now, we will start all over again.” She switched to English. “Good morning, class.”

They responded likewise, using her name in place of class. Smiles of pride flitted across the faces of those who got it right, and those who didn’t corrected themselves. One more time through and Kaaren clapped her hands. “Well done. Every morning we will start this way and add new English words to your speech. As we go along, we will learn to use those words during the day too.” She paused to smile at them all, her heart already swelling with pride for them. “Now we will read from the holy Bible and sing a song. Then I want each of you to stand and tell us your name, your age, and how much schooling you have had.”

Kaaren turned and lifted her open Bible from the desk. As the year progressed she planned to have the children take turns choosing and reading the morning verses. So many plans she had for this group of children God had entrusted her with. “Please stand.”

From Proverbs chapter two, Kaaren began to read verses ten and eleven. “ ‘When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul, discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee.’ ” She smiled at the children. “Those are wise words for all of us. Listen closely as I read them again.”

After the reading, she lead them in a hymn and then asked them to sit down. “Now we will start with the back row so the little ones will know what to do when it is their turn.”

A tall boy who said he was fourteen led off. He looked big enough to be working alongside his father full time, which made Kaaren doubly glad his family allowed him to come. She knew most of the young people that age were being kept at home to work, their parents thinking they were beyond needing such a frivolous thing as more schooling. Changing their minds would take some persuading talk, Kaaren knew. She also fully believed she was up to the job of convincing the parents that their children needed to learn to speak English, if nothing else. If they had remained in Norway, the children would be in school, so why not here in the new land?

As each child said his name, she asked for the spelling and wrote it in her book. She included ages and at what level she thought they might be. Testing would come next.

When the twins began to fuss, Kaaren dismissed her pupils for recess outside. Sending Solveig outside, too, for a breath of fresh air, Kaaren nursed the babies in front of the window so she could watch the children as they ran shrieking in a game of tag, their breaths floating in clouds on the clear air. Quickly they tramped a large circle in the snow to play fox and goose. When she closed her eyes, she could see swings hanging from a thick board between tall posts and children pumping higher and higher as if they would fly into the sky. The schoolhouse would have a bell in a belfry, real desks, and many books lining the shelves, some for study and others for the children to read for the pure joy of it.

“So many dreams I have,” she whispered to her satisfied babies, breathing a kiss on each smooth forehead. Sophie smiled up at her, gurgling and making sounds with her fist waving in the air. Grace followed her mother’s every action with wide blue eyes, her perfect little mouth also widening into a smile. But she still hadn’t made sounds like Sophie did, those little babbling noises Sophie answered with whenever someone talked to her. The fist Grace freed from the blanket went into her mouth instead. Could she not speak or hear? The idea of either one made Kaaren’s heart ache for her precious baby.

“Are you ready?” Solveig asked, shutting the door carefully.

“Ja, if you will change these two.” Kaaren handed the squirming bundles to her sister, righted her clothing, and with a ready smile, opened the door and clanged the bar. When the children had all
taken their seats again, cheeks ruddy from the cold, she announced, “Since I don’t know how much you know, each of you take out your slates and chalk.”

Two children wearing the most threadbare clothes of all raised their hands.

“We don’t got no slates,” the older boy said.

“I brought some because I thought some of you might not.” Kaaren looked around. “Any others?” One more hand went up. “That is fine. Please come up here and pick one up.” When all had slates, she continued with her instructions. “Those of you who have been to school before write the most difficult arithmetic problem you know. Then go to the bookshelf and choose a book that you know you can read, but not the easiest one.” A boy in the back ducked his head. “Do you all understand?” At their nods and as they bent their heads to the assigned tasks, she began with the front row.

One of the young ones knew his alphabet and could count to ten, all in Norwegian. His English was nonexistent, other than the few words learned that morning. While Anna could say her rehearsed speech, that was all. No one had taught her anything else. Likewise the other one, so shy she never once looked up at her teacher. Kaaren had to bend close to hear the answers at all, the voice was so faint. When she leaned forward and cupped her hands around the child’s upper arms, the little girl flinched away, her eyes hooded and her mouth quivering.

Ah, dear Lord, let me make a difference in this one’s life—and all the others. Give me wisdom and a heart of love for each, especially this little lost lamb. Don’t fear, little one, I will not hurt you
. Right then she repeated her vow to herself. She would never strike the children, remembering the ruler that had raised welts on her hand those years ago because she didn’t learn the lesson quite quickly enough.

She heard a rude noise from the back of the room. When she looked up, all the faces looked angelic but for Thorliff. His glower and eyes slanted left led her to believe the boy next to Knute Baard was the guilty one. Now, the ruler might be necessary for some of the older ones, but she hoped not.

She sent the child in front of her back to her seat and stood. “That is enough.” Her stern voice rang in the room. “You will be respectful of those ahead of you, or . . .” She left the sentence dangling.

By the end of the day, she had all the children assigned according to reading and arithmetic abilities. Size hadn’t much to do with
knowledge, therefore she decided to start reviewing from the alphabet on, setting the ones who knew those things to helping those who didn’t. With about an hour to dismissal, she called all the children closer to the stove where she set her chair. As they found places on the packed dirt floor in front of and around her, she smiled at each of them again.

“You have all done so well today that I thought we would finish with a story. This will be the reward for trying your best each day and treating your neighbors as you would like them to treat you. The golden rule says, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ ”

Anna raised her hand. “That is from the Bible. Mor read that to me.”

“Yes, Anna, it is. Starting tomorrow, we will all be memorizing that verse and others.” She opened her book of Norwegian folktales and began to read.

The days passed swiftly, with school even on Saturday to make up for starting so late. The boxes of books sat on her table on Saturday morning because someone had been to Grafton and picked them up at the railroad station. She had ordered them by mail weeks before.

The children flocked around her, their eyes wide at the riches contained therein. She handed the books around so each child could share the thrill of smelling and feeling the new bindings and the pages that crackled when opened. When each held a book, she showed them how to properly open it and gave instructions on the care of books, after which they lined the precious treasures up on the bookshelves pegged into the sod walls.

Since all her summer egg and cream money had gone into purchasing the new books, she rejoiced at their delight. In addition to the books, there was black paint to make a blackboard. Olaf said that by Monday he should be finished smoothing and sanding the boards he had tongue-and-grooved tightly together to make a smooth surface. Then they could give it a couple coats of paint and they would have a blackboard. Next to the paint, they discovered a box of chalk, paper, and pencils, and at the bottom lay a round tube containing a map of the United States of America and the territories.

Kaaren set the oldest two boys to fastening the map to the wall next to the place where the blackboard would hang. The entire class gathered round to ooh and aah at the colors. Several could identify a state they had lived in before coming to Dakota Territory. Knute
Baard pointed out Ohio, but he couldn’t remember where in that state they had lived.

When everyone finally resumed their seats, the teaching began again with Kaaren saying the lesson and the children repeating it. Until more of them learned to read and write, there was no other way to instruct.

Church that Sunday was conducted by Reverend Gunderson, the young pastor from Acton. From then on, he would come one Sunday a month and the pastor from St. Andrew one Sunday. The other services the homesteaders would handle themselves. When the people discovered Olaf’s deep and resonant speaking voice, they asked him to take over leading the service when they had no visiting pastor.

The first time he read the Scriptures, one child said afterward, “He sounds like God, don’t he, Mor.” Chuckles flitted around the room, but many nods accompanied the twitter.

Mrs. Valders shook her head and whispered loudly enough for everyone to hear. “Children should be seen and not heard, especially in the house of God.”

Kaaren and Ingeborg swapped rolled eyes and raised eyebrows.
That woman!

“But this is our schoolhouse,” a youngster said from the other side of the room, accompanied by a mother’s shushing.

Kaaren swallowed a laugh.

Kaaren and Solveig kept up their routine of leaving before daylight in order to have the sod school warm in time for the children’s arrival. The two women always brought extra food, too—usually bread and cheese or some leftovers from the night before—because some of the children came with very little to eat in their dinner pails. Both Solveig and the twins grew stronger; gains in strength that could be seen almost daily. Since Kaaren was frequently exhausted by the time they arrived home from school, Solveig took over much of the evening cooking. Ingeborg invited them all to eat at her house, but Kaaren said she needed the time to rest, nurse the babies, and prepare for the next day’s lessons.

With the barn and the additions to both soddies finished, Haakan and Olaf spent as much time as possible felling trees in preparation for their lumber mill. While they were hard at that, Lars took the train from Grafton to Grand Forks and found one of the
salesmen Haakan had previously met. He looked at the improvements made on the equipment since the days when he had managed a threshing crew, and liking what he saw, he took out another bank note and proceeded to buy a steam engine for the Bjorklund farm. It would be shipped the next day. That afternoon he climbed back aboard the train and returned home.

“You bought it?” Kaaren asked the next morning.

“Ja, I did.” Lars grinned at her. “And I bought one slightly bigger than we need right now because that fancy engine will do more than we ever believed possible.”

When he met the others the next morning, they slapped him on the back, asking many questions about the new piece of machinery. On the sledge ride out to where they were cutting, the conversation turned to the saws and equipment they needed for the sawmill.

“It’s your turn this time,” Lars said to Haakan with a laugh. “Go get the sawmill and let your wife glare at you for increasing the amount we owe at the bank.”

“Ja, well, both these will pay themselves off in less than a year. You know that as well as I do.”

Lars nodded as he looped the reins around the brake handle. “You tell them.”

Ingeborg carded the wool she had washed and saved from the sheepshearing last spring. She and Andrew took care of the chickens, which now laid only enough eggs for the families because they had moved Kaaren’s hens over to join the others, sending them into a molt. But it made chores easier for everyone. Every afternoon, the two walked over to Kaaren’s and stoked up the stove to warm the soddy before the homecomers arrived. Many times Ingeborg started supper for them at the same time.

“So, how are things going at the schoolhouse?” she asked one afternoon when she hadn’t left before the scholars arrived.