A Land to Call Home (40 page)

She was greeted with cries of delight and questions about her
health. The ladies cooed over the babies and couldn’t say enough how much they’d missed her. Afterward she left Solveig holding the twins and made her way to the group of three women she had most hated.

“Oh, Kaaren, it is so good to see you out and about again. I have been so worried about you.”

“Thank you, Hildegunn. Sometimes babies make their announcements in rather difficult ways.”

“Oh, how wonderful for you.” Brynja beamed and clasped one of Kaaren’s hands.

“I have something to say, and please let me finish before you say anything.” Their faces sobered. Kaaren took a deep breath. “I have come to beg your forgiveness for being so angry at you when Olaf was asked to be the teacher.”

“Oh, Kaaren, it is we who must ask you the same.” Hildegunn took Kaaren’s hands in her own. “We . . . we handled that so badly. Yes, I forgive you, but only if you can forgive me.”

“I already have.” Kaaren took each of their hands and pressed them between her own. “I know now that this is what God had in mind for me, and I’m not sure I would have listened any other way.”

“Ja, sometimes the still small voice of God is too still and too small.” Brynja bobbed her head as she spoke. “Please, can we all be friends again and meet for quilting? I have sorely missed your gentle presence.”

“Ja, we are and we will. I thank you for . . . for . . .” She swallowed and blinked. “The sun is so bright.” She smiled. “Just thank you.”

“And you.”

When she returned to the sleigh where the Bjorklunds and Baards waited, she walked right into Agnes’s embrace. “Lord love you, child, you have a bigger heart than me, that’s for certain sure. I think we all need some fence mending and you begun it.”

A sense of peace flooded Kaaren’s heart and soul, making the sun shine warmer and the wind sing instead of howl. The jingling harness bells sang with the wind.

The next Sunday just before the benediction, Olaf motioned to Mr. Valders to stand. Anner turned to the congregation.

“I asked Olaf here for a few minutes of your time to rectify a wrong we inflicted on one of our own. Would Mrs. Lars Knutson please come forward?”

Kaaren looked at Lars, who raised his shoulders and shook his
head. She stood and went forward as requested.

“Things happened a while ago that weren’t done God’s way a’tall. All of us here would like to make it up to you in some small way, so we took up a collection to repay you for the books you bought for the school and, while it isn’t much as we’d like, to repay you for the many hours you taught our children. We thank you for all you did. The school would still be just a dream, I’m sure, if you hadn’t wanted one so bad for all of us.” He handed her a pouch that jingled when exchanged.

Kaaren took it and stared at him a moment before she could speak. “Schoolteachers are never supposed to be speechless, but I am. Thank you.” She faced the congregation. “Thank you very much.” She returned to her seat, fighting tears at the smiling faces she had passed. Afterward the children said how they missed her, but that Mr. Wold was a good teacher. The men and women shook her hand and thanked her again.

When she counted the money at home, she looked up at Lars, her mouth an O to match her eyes. “They couldn’t afford this much.” She shook her head.

“Oh, I expect some felt more guilty than others and made up for those without.” His eyes twinkled. “Those without guilt or money, I mean.”

“I knew what you meant.” She dropped the bills and coins back in the soft deerskin pouch. “I’m just glad it is all over.”

“I’m proud to have a wife who could go to those . . .” He stopped at the look of caution she gave him. “Those saintly women?” His left eyebrow cocked. “And do what you did. You set a fine example, my Kaaren.” He rose and came around to drop a kiss on her forehead. “I have a wife like no other.”

I
n late March Hjelmer approached his boss at the roundhouse. “I need a week off so I can do some family business. It can’t wait any longer.”

The man, sporting a bent nose and the body of a wrestler, looked at him through squinted eyes. “You’ll come back?”

“Ja, I’ll be back.”

“I don’t usually do this, you know, but you been a good man. . . .”

“Thank you. I didn’t think you did. And I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.” He waited a moment before the man nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

The next day he caught a train to Moorhead and then one to Grand Forks. He’d been to the bank in St. Paul and withdrawn all but a thousand dollars of his wages and gambling money in the form of a check to deposit at the bank in Grand Forks. With the map in his pocket that showed the proposed spur-line route, he headed for the courthouse first, where he made a list of all the landowners along the stretch he was interested in. The next morning, dressed in the same clothes he’d worn to the card games that were enabling him to make his fortune, he entered the bank.

“I’d like to talk to the manager,” he said to the man at the teller window.

“I’ll get him.” The green eyeshade bobbled as he scurried off.

“Hello. I’m the owner and manager, Daniel Brockhurst.” The man’s dark three-piece suit matched his eyes. He held out his hand, soft from lack of manual labor. “How can I help you, Mr. . . . ?”

“Bjorklund. Hjelmer Bjorklund.” Hjelmer shook the offered hand.

“You by any chance related to the Bjorklunds up St. Andrew’s
way?” he asked as he ushered Hjelmer into his office.

“Roald and Carl were my brothers.” He sat down in the leather winged chair in front of the desk.

“Fine men. Even in the little time they lived here, they made their mark on the area. Their families all right?”

“I . . . I’m not sure how they are right now. I’ve been working on the railroad the last few months.” Hjelmer kept himself from looking down at his hands. He leaned forward. “I have been sending all my wages here for deposit, so you have a sum of my money.” He laid his check on the desk. “And here is more. I want to buy land in the valley.”

Brockhurst turned the check so he could read it better. “You’ve done all right for yourself, young man.”

“I have, and I want that to continue. As I buy up the land, if I need more than this and what I have in your bank, will you back me?”

“How much more are you thinking?” Brockhurst leaned back in his leather swivel chair.

“It all depends on how much I can buy, or what’s available. I plan to go talk to the homesteaders in that area and see if anyone wants to sell. With this hard winter we’ve had, there might be some who want to leave.”

“There’s railroad land available, too, should that interest you.” The bank manager steepled his fingers, elbows on the chair arms.

“Depends on where it is.” Hjelmer, too, leaned back and crossed one ankle over the other knee.

“Your family know about this?”

Hjelmer shook his head. “I’ll stop by there. Would like this to be a surprise.”

Brockhurst drew a ledger out of the bottom drawer in his desk. He flipped the pages, stopped, and ran his finger down the lines. “Ah, here it is. You have a total of $2,380.78 in your account. How much do you propose to take?”

“I plan to take twelve thousand with me so that I can offer hard cash. Men are more inclined to make a quicker decision when you lay cash on the table.”

“Right you are, but isn’t that a bit dangerous?”

“I won’t be gone long. You could help me by pointing me in the direction of anyone wanting to sell.” Hjelmer narrowed his eyes. “And backing me with another five thousand should I need it.”

Brockhurst studied the young man before him. “The land would be the collateral.”

Hjelmer nodded.

“Will you be needing machinery and the like?”

“Not right away.”

Brockhurst tapped a manicured fingernail on the desk blotter. “Done. Two point five interest for five years.”

“Two percent for eight years.”

“Young man, you trying to rob me?” His half smile showed he was teasing.

“No, sir.” Hjelmer shook his head. “Just wanting to make the best deal.” He sat waiting, grinding his toe into the carpet to keep it from tapping in impatience.
Remember this is just like a card game. Wait and watch and play your cards close to your chest
.

The bank owner smiled and nodded. “We have a deal. I’ll have the papers drawn up, and we can get them signed. I assume you want to get on your way as soon as possible.”

“That I do. I have one more question, though. Could you prepare me some blank deed papers? Then I can fill them in when I buy the land and will bring them back to town to file when I am finished. Would that be legal?”

“The signatures need to match those on the original deed, that’s all. Usually we would ask both parties to come in, but since you are offering them cash, this should work. They would need time to get moved.”

“That’s no problem. I might offer some of them to stay on and farm through to the fall.”

Brockhurst rifled through some files in his desk drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Well, let’s get the paper work filled out, then you can come back in an hour to sign it. I’ll have your cash ready then too. How were you wanting that? Hundreds?”

An hour later Hjelmer had a packet of hundred-dollar bills, another with blank deeds, pen and ink, and he had rented a horse and saddle from the livery. He’d thought about a horse and buggy but knew he could make better time this way. He rode out to the southern most parcel and began to make his way north.

He would ride up to the house, in most cases a soddy, and ask for the landowner by name. He’d introduce himself, and by then the housewife would be offering him a cup of coffee.

“I’m looking for land to buy,” he’d say. “Cash money. You know anyone who might be interested in selling?”

The wife, who usually looked about worn down to the nubbins with a babe in her arms and another twisting a hand in her skirt, would sigh. If he took a moment to look up, she usually wore a face colored in hope, perhaps the first in a long time.

The man would lean back—that meant he needed to be persuaded—or forward. That’s when Hjelmer usually offered less cash than he had planned, because the man wanted out. But, to his own surprise, Hjelmer let himself be led by his conscience or a sense of pity for these folks with so little, and he never paid less than a quarter under the market value of $2.50 per acre.

As he rode the snow-covered prairie, Hjelmer realized how well his brothers, and then his brothers’ wives, had done with so many acres planted and reaped after the hard sod-breaking. Their buildings were tight, they owned much livestock, and already they brought in money from the sales of produce to the store and the Bonanza farm. No wonder they had earned such a good reputation with Brockhurst. Hjelmer’s respect for Ingeborg climbed with each family he met. She had kept them all from the defeated look he saw so often on the faces of both women and men.

By the end of the third day, he had purchased four sections and had one pair of brothers who wanted to think about his offer for a couple of days. With the weather holding sunny and cold, he made his way northward toward the spot on the map known as Drayton. When he spent a night with families in the soddies, he tried to offer them some cash for their hospitality. In spite of their protests, he tucked some bills under one of the plates before he left.

One farm he only found by the smoke curling up from a snowbank. A woman came to the door at the dog’s barking, a gun in her hand.

“Good morning, ma’am. Are you Mrs. Peterson?” He tried English first. At the shake of her head, he switched to Norwegian and repeated his question.

She nodded, turning her head sideways a bit, and studied him. A child wailed behind her. A cow bellowed from the barn. The dog wagged his tail by the horse’s knee, but the rising hair on the back of the dog’s neck and shoulders warned Hjelmer he’d best stay where he was.

“Is Mr. Peterson here?”

She shook her head, tightening her jaw.

“Will he be coming home soon?”

She shook her head again. “He’s out in the barn.”

Hjelmer thought for a moment. Had she misheard his question?

“Could I speak with him?”

“Mighty hard. He died three day’s ago.” She raised her chin a bit and blinked.

“I . . . I’m sorry.” Hjelmer thought a moment. “My name is Hjelmer Bjorklund and . . .”

“From the Bjorklunds up north some?”

“Ja."

She stepped back. “You come right on in.” She set the rifle back inside the door. “Tie your horse right there to the house or take him out to the barn. We got some hay left. You can give him a bit.”

Hjelmer looked at the walkway to the barn not shoveled out but marked by footsteps. He smiled and nodded. “Mange takk.” He set the horse along the path to make it deeper and pushed open the barn door. In the dimness, he saw two sawhorses covered by two boards on which lay the frozen body of Mr. Peterson. How she had gotten him up there was more than he could understand. He led the horse into the vacant stall next to the slack-bagged cow, and after loosening the saddle girth and hooking the bridle over the saddle horn, he used the rope on the manger to tie to his horse’s halter. He tossed a bit of hay to the cow, some to his horse, and on his way out checked the feed bin. Empty.