A Land to Call Home (50 page)

At the end of October Kaaren had her baby, a boy they named Trygve after Lars’ father. Since it meant brave victory, Kaaren felt it fit their son. She had thought to name him differently since they were in the new land, but Lars looked at her shocked when she mentioned it.

“Trygve is a fine name.”

“Ja, it is.” Kaaren looked down at the infant in the crook of her arm. “A brave name for a brave little boy to have two older sisters.”

Metiz brought her a cup of her special mixtures. “Drink now. Need milk for new baby.”

“I am glad you stayed to help me through this.” Kaaren took her hand. “After that other birthing, this one was easy.” She looked over to where the twins usually slept in the trundle bed that fit under the other. Ingeborg had taken them home when their mother went into labor.

Lars sat down on the edge of the bed. “How are you going to feed all three of them?” The looks he sent his son warmed her heart.

Kaaren shook her head. “Ingeborg volunteered to take turns with the girls. I think Sophie will soon be eating enough table food that she’ll be all right.”

“And Grace?”

She looked up at him, surprise widening her eyes. He so rarely even said the baby’s name, and to this day he had never held her. One day soon, when she felt stronger, she knew she would have to approach him about it again. Couldn’t he see what he was doing? “She will catch up soon.”

Lars merely nodded. “May I hold him?”

Tears sprang into Kaaren’s eyes at the look on her husband’s face as he fairly glowed down at the infant in his arms.

“My son. I—we have a son.” Reverence painted the last word in gold.

“Ja, and two daughters.” Kaaren could feel herself slipping away into sleep. She felt him lay the baby back in her arm and tried to say thank you as she fell into the healing sleep she needed.

A few evenings later the opportunity arose. Goodie had gone back to Ingeborg’s after helping Kaaren during the day. They had decided the twins would alternate nursing, once with their mother and then with Ingeborg. Sophie had been with her aunt for the last several hours and would be coming home soon.

Trygve had just begun nursing when Grace set up a clamor. Lars sat at the table reading. Kaaren waited. Grace wailed.

“Would you pick her up, please, and walk with her or something until your son is finished?” Kaaren raised her voice to be heard over the lone twin’s cries.

“She’ll be all right. You won’t be much longer, will you?”

Kaaren’s jaw hit her chest. What could she do? “Then hand her to me and I’ll let them nurse at the same time.”

Slowly, with obvious reluctance, he rose to his feet, crossed the room, and stood looking down at the crying child. He rocked the bed, murmuring soothing words at the same time.

“You know, if you just pat her tummy that might help. She cannot hear you.”

He whirled around, hands on his hips. “I know that!” The words stabbed through the air.

Kaaren stared at him, shaking her head. “What is the matter with you, Lars, that you cannot or will not touch that child? Just because she can’t hear, she isn’t a leper or something.” She saw his head drop forward, the slump of his shoulders, the futile clutching of his fingers.
Oh, God above, how do I reach him? What is the matter with this man? What kind of sickness lets him ignore that poor baby?

“Don’t ask it of me right now, Kaaren, for I cannot. I will care for the others, but please, don’t ask me to hold Grace. Maybe when she is older.” His words nearly disappeared in his shirt front.

Kaaren pushed herself up from the rocker with one hand, cuddling Trygve with the other. She crossed the three paces and stood in front of her husband. “Oh, Lars, how can you?” She handed him the bundle in her arms and picked up Grace, who by now was red of face and sweaty from crying.

“Look at her.” Her fierce tone snapped his head up. “She is perfect in every way but one. And you cannot even see that. This child needs her father just as much as the others do.”

At the tone of her voice, both children screwed up their faces and began to cry.

“I . . . I’m sorry.” At the look of despair on his face, she could feel her heart melting. She steeled herself.

“Lars, I will not let you do this to her. If you are a believer like you say you are, then you had better pray for God to teach you to love this baby, to let His love flow through you. Or . . .” She shook her head, patting Grace’s back as the baby snuffled into her mother’s shoulder.

The one word quivered on the air between them. The silence stretched.

“You think I haven’t been praying about this? What kind of a man do you think I am?”

“I wish I knew.” She returned to the rocker and set Grace to the other breast. Lars walked the length of the soddy to stand by the stove, out of Kaaren’s sight.

The trickle of the lullaby he sang to Trygve shattered his wife’s heart like nothing else. She let the tears roll down her cheeks unchecked.
Dear God, what is happening to us?

The next letter Agnes showed Ingeborg revealed Hjelmer’s creative use of language as he tried to say thank you forty different ways. Penny had written back, giving him her address in Fargo and permission to come see her. He would go there before coming home when the ground froze.

“ ‘I regret the pain I caused you,’ ” Ingeborg read, “ ‘but know that each day I pray for God to take away the fear I have that she will not see me after all. I know that I brought this misery on myself, but that makes it no easier to bear, in fact, it makes it worse. Please pray with me that God will see fit to work this out in His good time. Sincerely, Hjelmer.’ ” She looked up at Agnes.

“I know. Kind of takes you by surprise, don’t it? Never in my life thought I’d see words like this from that young man.”

“Haakan and I thought he had changed some. This just confirms it. Guess all we can do is do as he asks.”

“You think I haven’t been?” Agnes’s eyebrows met her hairline.

“Ja, me too.”

Several days later, Lars knelt in front of the rocker where Kaaren was again nursing Grace.

“I . . . I want you to know how sorry I am, that I . . .” He paused.
She could see his Adam’s apple jerk up and down. “Please, Kaaren, will you help me?”

Kaaren studied the thick dark hair that framed his strong face. When she looked in his eyes, she felt she was drowning in pools of sorrow. “Ah, Lars, but of course.” She cupped her free hand around his jaw and stroked his cheek with her thumb. Watching the life come back to his eyes was like seeing the sun return after a thunderstorm. First the dark clouds blew away, then the lighter ones seemed to shred so the sun could peek through before it burst forth in all its splendor and warmed the earth again.

He reached out with one finger and stroked Grace’s cheek as she lay against her mother’s breast. The little one turned, studying her father as if she had been waiting for him. When he touched her hand, she gripped his finger—and smiled.

“She bears you no grudge,” Kaaren whispered, “and neither do I.”

“I promise that every day I will do more for her.” He looked up at his wife. “I promise.”

“Does she know you are coming?” Leif asked for the third time.

“Not the day.” Hjelmer stared out the train window. The snowstorm from the night before had left the ground white. A few drifts blew up to the tracks, but not enough to slow the train. When the snow started coming down like the storm of the century the night before, he’d almost panicked. The snow couldn’t keep him away from Penny, not one day longer.

“You think she’ll . . . she’ll . . .” Katja stumbled over the words. She felt an elbow poke in her side and looked up to see Leif frowning at her. “Sorry.”

But Hjelmer knew what she’d been going to ask. He’d been driving himself crazy with the same questions ever since he got her letter. What if she had changed her mind? What if she wanted to see him to tell him off? While he’d written right back, there’d been no other word. Surely if she had fallen in love with someone else, she’d have said so in the letter. Wouldn’t she?

He chewed the cuticle on his left index finger. Maybe he should just get off in Grafton and head on out to the Bjorklund homesteads. There was plenty for him to do there, since it was too late to cut sod for his own house. He could build the blacksmith shop out of wood,
though, right near the sack house so that he could repair wagons when people came to pick up things delivered by the train. Surely just resetting wheel rims would keep him right busy.

He thought to the last letter Ingeborg had written, telling of the celebration when the first shipment of grain left the sack house, loaded onto the freight cars right through the building. He wished he’d been there. But then maybe it was better he hadn’t been. There were still some hard feelings over his land buying and selling.

Leif and Katja planned to move to their new home in the spring. If he didn’t go on to St. Paul with them and work in the roundhouse again, he’d see that whatever repairs needed doing on the Peterson place were finished before they came.

“Hjelmer?”

The tone said this wasn’t the first time he’d been spoken to. “Ja?”

“She won’t like you any better without one finger.” Leif and Katja laughed softly.

Hjelmer saw the dot of blood where he’d chewed off a hangnail. He wiped it away.

Were they never going to get there? The heaving in his stomach had nothing to do with the swaying of the train. He repeated to himself the same words he’d been saying for weeks now whenever he thought of Penny, whenever he thought of seeing her.
I am leaving this in God’s hands. If He wants me and Penny together, then we will be. He will work it out
.

But his stomach didn’t believe a word of it.

When the conductor finally announced, “Fargo, next stop Fargo,” he looked up at Leif, who had chosen that minute to whisper something to Katja. He could see on their faces the joy and love they felt for each other. It had been growing steadily between them since last spring.

Would he ever get to talk with Penny like that?

The train slowed and his stomach did another flip-flop.

“You want we should wait for you?” Leif asked when they stood on the station platform.