An Untamed Land (2 page)

Gustaf nodded, a small movement of the head that took all his willpower to perform. “Ja, that is the best way. Now then . . .” His deep blue eyes gazed around the table, meeting the eyes of each of his children, never leaving one for the next until he had searched their intent through the window of each soul. Was it inevitable that they all wanted to leave Norway so badly? Would their hearts never yearn for home? “The money—it will cost a king’s ransom to send Roald and his family to the new land.”

Halfway down the table, nineteen-year-old Carl cleared his throat. “Far, I’ve been thinking I should go along. Two can work better than one, as you’ve always taught us.”

“Ach.” The cutoff sigh that sobbed of pain and sorrow escaped from Bridget. Gustaf turned to his wife and watched as she quickly smothered a second sigh with her hand, knowing the thought of
losing yet another son to Amerika pained her deeply.

Looking back at Carl, he asked, “You’d turn a man’s wisdom against him, then?” With the sharp retort, Gustaf disguised the surge of pride he felt in his fine strong sons. They
had
listened to him through the years. He knew that by the way they often quoted him.

“Only when necessary.” Carl’s quick answer, along with a cheeky grin, brought warm smiles from the others gathered around the table.

“Then we’ll need to save the price of another ticket,” Roald said, nodding to his brother.

“More like two,” Carl quickly added. “I would marry Kaaren Hjelmson before we leave.”

Amidst smiles of approval and a slight gasp from Bridget, Gustaf remained silent. He looked at Carl’s clasped hands upon the table in front of him, hands like his father’s that could shape a piece of wood into whatever he asked of it. This third son of his was gifted with many talents.

“And you can support a wife already?” Gustaf asked as he leaned back in his chair. “I understood you didn’t want to farm.”

“That was when there was no possibility of land. I don’t want to work myself into a grave for someone else.”

A murmur of agreement flashed around the table.

Gustaf felt it like an arrow piercing his side. Was this what
his
father had felt when brother Thorliff insisted on emigrating? They’d never seen him again and only received one letter from him before a friend wrote to say Thorliff had been killed in a logging accident in the north woods of a place called Minnesota. The new land everyone claimed to be so welcoming of immigrants had already extracted its own severe price.

Gustaf dug in his vest pocket and removed his favorite pipe. Even though he’d been rationing his scant store of tobacco, tonight was surely one of those times when a good smoke was needed. He cradled the familiar piece in his hand, drawing a measure of comfort from it before he tapped, tamped, and lit it, sending rings of gray smoke spiraling toward the ceiling. When it was drawing to his satisfaction, he leaned forward.

“I’m sure you have a plan in mind.” He directed the comment to Roald.

“Yes, sir, with your permission.” At his father’s nod, Roald took a piece of paper from his shirt pocket and unfolded it. “In fact, I
have several plans so we can decide what will work out best for all.”

“We can decide? Wouldn’t it be better to lay those plans of yours before the good Lord and let Him choose the best path?” Gustaf watched his son bite back a retort. Roald had never been one to ask for or expect divine guidance.
Where did I fail him?
Gustaf shook his head. Enough of that. Look ahead. Looking back never did anyone any good.

Gustaf wasn’t surprised that Roald chose to ignore his father’s question and instead continued as if he had not spoken.

“I say that I should go work on Onkel Hamre’s fishing boat as soon as I can leave my work here,” Roald said, laying out the first step of his plan.

“I’ll go with you,” Carl spoke up. “Onkel has begged us both to come and help him for the last couple of years.”

“It is dangerous work,” Roald reminded him.

“More so for you than me?”

Roald took in a deep breath and returned to his list. “Anna can either return to live with her parents, or stay here. That way we won’t be paying rent on our house.”

“And we can sell our furniture and put that money toward the tickets.” Anna flashed a smile that showed she agreed wholeheartedly with her husband.

“Anna, if you stay here and help Mor, I can find a position in the city and send the money home,” Augusta, the eldest daughter, added.

The discussion continued far into the night as everyone suggested possible ways they could help the emigrants prepare for their journey to Amerika.

As Bridget refilled coffee cups around the table, she relocked the door to her heavy heart. Her children would go to Amerika, and she would grieve a long, long time. Yes, they would write letters home. And yes, this was for the best. For them. Already she could feel the wrenching.

I
ngeborg Bjorklund shifted on the hard bench and fingered the tattered newspaper article in the pocket of her reticule. She lifted her face to the offshore wind that brought a fresh breeze to nostrils filled too long with only salt-scented air.

They had safely crossed the great Atlantic Ocean. In spite of several cruel, unrelenting storms at sea and a ship that moaned its desire to join comrades now crushed in the ocean depths, they could smell the robust fragrance of land, even though they couldn’t yet see it. Seagulls screeched around the sides of the ship, harbingers of the new life that waited for them. Bonanzaland, some called it.

She didn’t have to reread the article. In the last months Ingeborg had read it so many times that she had every word memorized. Paul Hjelm Hanson, a Norwegian-American journalist from Minnesota, had sent his articles to newspapers all over Norway, writing of rich, flat land that lay empty, pleading for the bite of the plow. “New Canaan,” as he called it, had land free for the claiming, land that promised untold wealth and farmsteads for their children. It was the promise of land that fed their dream and pulled them from the security of Norway in that year of our Lord, 1880. And Ingeborg had promised herself that once they left the shores of Norway, she would not look back. There would be no regrets, only dreams of the new life that lay ahead. Together with Carl and Kaaren, she and Roald would build a good life in a new land. God had made possible this journey to Amerika, and God would be with them here, just as He had been with them all along the way.

But she couldn’t help thinking of her family—Mor, Far, Katrina, and the baby—would she ever see their beloved faces again?
No, don’t think of all that’s left behind
, she ordered herself sternly.
Only
look ahead to the future, and all the good things it holds.

She laid a hand on her stomach, queasy again from the constant pitch of the ship. Long rolling swells raised and lowered the prow of the complaining steamship as they surged westward. She knew for certain now that the nausea didn’t come only from the motion of the sea. Ingeborg would tell Roald the joyous news after they landed. She carried within her their first child, the first Bjorklund to be born in the new country.

“Mor,” called five-year-old Thorliff, interrupting her thoughts. He dashed across the heaving deck to clutch at her dark wool skirt. He’d called her Mor from the first time his father introduced the boy to his new mother, just a little over a year before. “We’re almost to our new farm. Far said so.”

Ingeborg couldn’t resist the beaming smile on his round little face. She tucked his curly wheaten locks back under his black wool cap and cupped his rosy cheeks in her mittened hands. “Yes, my son. But you must hang tightly to your far’s hand. A large wave could come and wash you into the sea. Then what would we do?”

He stared reproachfully out of eyes as deep blue as the Norwegian fjords, eyes that matched those of the man standing behind him. “But I have something to tell you.”

“What’s that, den lille?”

“Far said I can have a baby dog.”

“A puppy?”

“Ja, for me.” His eyes danced above cheeks made ruddy by the biting wind. “And a horse, and a cow and”—he scrunched up his eyes to remember—“and two sheeps.”

Ingeborg laughed, the sound lilting above the hiss of the surge against the prow like the trill of a songbird in flight. From the railing, two men turned to see where the laughter came from and smiled at the tableau of mother and child.

“Land, ho!” The call passed from one eager passenger to the next, spoken in a symphony of languages. Those brave enough to face the wind crowded to the rail, hoping for a glimpse of solid rock.

In her excitement, Ingeborg leaped to her feet and started toward the rail. But when she recognized the narrowing eyes and straight brows of her husband’s frown, she stopped midstep and returned to her bench in the lee of the funnel, Thorliff beside her. She clasped her mittened hands, wishing she could crowd the rail like the men. If allowed, she’d have been standing in the foremost inch of the prow, straining to catch the first sight of land. But according to
Roald, proper women didn’t do such things. At least not his woman.

Ingeborg’s sigh of disappointment drifted away on the stiff wind. Wishing did no good. Her mother had diligently instructed her daughter on this and many other principles of behavior becoming to a Christian woman, such as never wasting even a minute and always obeying her husband. As she’d been reminded by her mother more than once, Ingeborg, at her advanced age of twenty-two, was fortunate to have married such a fine man. An upstanding Christian, a good farmer, a man strong and brave enough to leave the old country and go to Amerika to start a new life. It didn’t matter that she felt no love for him when they first married—only a deep and abiding respect. But love had blossomed later, as her mother had promised it would.

A second sigh floated on the wind after the first. If only he would smile, even once. She thought of the new life growing safely inside her. Mayhap
that
would bring a smile to his sober face.

“Mor, why are you sad?” The small voice drew her back to the windy deck.

Ingeborg drew in a deep breath of land-and sea-scented air. “Let’s go see if Tante Kaaren is feeling better. We’ll help her with the baby.” How rich and refreshing a first glimpse of land would be rather than sitting in that fetid hole-in-the-wall they called a cabin. True, she should be grateful they weren’t crammed together like the poor souls down in steerage. And she was grateful, but, oh . . .

“I want to see the new land.” Thorliff dragged at the firm hand that pulled him toward the stairs.

“Me, too, but Far wants us safe from all the pushing and shoving. A little boy like you could get squashed like a bug.”

“Ugh,” Thorliff said, puckering up his face.

“I know. Far will come for us when it is time. We must be patient.”

Roald Bjorklund escorted his wife and son to the companionway and saw them start down before turning back to shoulder his way to the crowded rail. Amerika! The land of his dreams for far longer than he’d been married to Ingeborg, his second wife. Beautiful Anna—the love of his youth—was gone forever. Together they’d dreamed and scrimped and saved to buy tickets for passage to Amerika. But then she had died and taken his heart with her. The son
she’d labored so hard to bring into this world had died only a few hours later. Sometimes he still dreamed of her, but when he awoke, it was Ingeborg’s face on the pillow beside him. Comparisons did one no good.

He tugged his black felt hat farther down his forehead. Off in the distance he could see the dark shoreline of his new country. Here, he would have his own land, unlike in Norway, where only the oldest son could inherit the family farm.

Roald blew his nose on a handkerchief pulled from the pocket of his black wool pants. The time for mourning was long past.
Ingeborg is a good, strong woman
, he reminded himself again.
A woman built to bear many sons and help me face the hardships I know are coming in this new land.
And he had come to care for her as he knew he would. That was why he wanted her safely below. It was too dangerous for her and Thorliff to be in the thick-pressed crowd on deck.