An Untamed Land (5 page)

“But . . . but those stories of people being turned away. What if they won’t let me in?”

“You’re not ill with tuberculosis or something contagious. You just had a baby and a rough voyage. That’s all. Many were seasick; surely the authorities will understand that. I will tell them you’ve never before been sick, not a day in your entire life.”

“That is true.” She attempted to return his confident smile.
But
why, then, have I nearly died? Women have babies all the time and get right up and go back to baking bread or whatever else they were doing.
She shook her head. “I’m just not very good at riding on a ship, I guess.”

“Roald and I should have taken you fishing on Onkel Hamre’s boat so you could have gotten your sea legs. Riding out a raging storm in the North Seas will take the seasickness out of anyone.”

She transferred her hand from his face to his fingers. On his left hand he carried the badge of a fisherman: a missing finger. He’d lost it in the rigging during a bad storm one night. She shuddered at the thought. “And you think farming will be any safer?”

“At least you can’t be washed overboard.” When he smiled that way, she could refuse him nothing. He leaned forward and touched his lips to hers. “Think, my love—our own land. Crops to feed our children and sell to a hungry city. Wheat for bread, hogs to fatten, cows to milk, butter and cheese to make. A white house of our own with sunlight streaming through the windows. A great shiny black stove where you can bake and cook anything you want.”

Kaaren closed her tired eyes and let him paint the pictures on the back of her eyelids. She would be the mistress of her own home, not at the beck and call of the lady of another house. For the last three years she had worked hard as a hired girl. Now
Kaaren
would be the lady of the house, and one day mayhap they would have their own hired girl. And hired men to help Carl and Roald work the fields. She could almost see the golden wheat swaying in the wind.

“Are you ready, then?” Roald’s deep voice cut into her daydream.

She turned her head to brush a kiss across her daughter’s forehead.
God of heaven and earth, give me the strength to make it through the inspection. May your heavenly angels be with me now.
She gently laid the infant down beside her. “Please help me with my coat, Carl. Ingeborg has all our things gathered together.”

“I found a handcart,” Roald said, entering the cabin. “A good man on the dock loaned it to me.” He began to load their valises and bundles onto the two-wheeled dolly. “Once we’ve been through Castle Garden, we’ll come back for our trunks that are stored in the hold.”

Kaaren could sense Roald’s excitement, even though his face was set in its normal sober lines. Sometimes she wondered how the two men could be brothers, they were such opposites in temperament. She looked into the eyes of her husband as he carefully slipped the buttons of her coat through their holes. She gave him an answering
smile when he winked at her, his full lips tilting up in the grin she loved.

“Ready?” he whispered.

She nodded and picked up the still sleeping babe. “Ja, I’m ready.”

Slipping his strong arms around her shoulders and under her knees, he lifted her and Gunhilde in one smooth motion. “Ready or not, Mrs. Bjorklund, we have arrived in Amerika!”

Sheer terror cut off the scream choking Ingeborg’s throat.

The blue-coated officer loomed in front of her. “Ma’am, what is wrong?” His voice sounded clipped, gruff, like a soldier’s.

If only she could understand what he was saying. “Thorliff, I must find Thorliff!” She broke away from his restraining hand and darted down the side of the wooden pillars to see if the little boy had hidden there. If only she could make them understand. “I must find my son, Thorliff.” She screamed his name again, the desperation of her voice turning many heads.

“Here, now. Calm down. Acting crazy will get you nowhere.” The officer grabbed her arm again, this time with no doubt that he planned to hang on to her.

By then a crowd had gathered, their various languages rising in discordant noise.

“She’s looking for something—or someone.” A man in a black wool coat stepped forward. “I think she’s speaking Norwegian, or maybe Swedish. Have you someone around who can speak the language?”

The officer looked at the stranger, then shrugged and loosened Ingeborg’s arm. “Mayhap we do. If ye’ll keep track of her, I’ll go inside and ask around. Can’t have a crazy woman disrupting the proceedings, now, can we?” He gave Ingeborg a little push that sent her bumping into the tall man.

Ingeborg broke free and headed for the other end of the log fence. “Thorliff! Thorliff!” A ship’s whistle echoed her plaintive cry, sobbing along with her. Her heart pounded so hard she could barely hear herself crying. Where had he gone? How could he have gotten away so quickly?
Why? Oh, dear God, why?

“Fraulein, how may I help you?” the man asked.

She spun around. So near her own language—German, the man spoke. “Thorliff, my son, so little.” She held her hand about waist
high from the packed dirt beneath them. “He’s gone. Disappeared. I was right there with our things and he—why would someone take so little a boy?” Her Norwegian words tripped over themselves, hastening for expression like a creek bounding down the mountains of home.

“You must calm down”—he held up a soothing hand—“for I cannot understand you.” He spoke slowly, enunciating every word clearly.

A woman wearing a white bibbed apron came running out of the gate. “How can I help? I hear you need someone who speaks Norwegian.”

At the sound of her own language, Ingeborg swallowed her tears and drew herself erect. “My son, Thorliff, is missing. Mr. Roald Bjorklund, my husband, said for us to stay here with our belongings, but when the man in the blue uniform made us move closer to the fence, Thorliff disappeared. I . . . I . . .”

The woman clasped Ingeborg’s icy hands in her own. “We will find him; you pray.” She turned and gave orders in English to those around her. Then turning back to Ingeborg, she asked, “Now what does this Thorliff of yours look like?”

Ingeborg drew in a deep breath. “His hair is gold like the summer wheat, and his eyes are blue like his father’s. He is five years old and wearing a black coat with a cap I knitted myself.” Her hands moved swiftly, describing height and size.

The aproned woman quickly translated the description of the boy and sent people scurrying in different directions. “Now then, my dear, you and I will wait right here so they can find you when they need you.”

“No, I must go look, myself.” Ingeborg tried to pull away, but another aproned woman blocked her path.

Ingeborg sniffed back a fresh onslaught of tears. What was the matter with her? She knew that crying never did any good. They must think she was a hysterical female, one who couldn’t even keep track of a small boy. She drew her shoulders straighter and dug in her reticule for a handkerchief. And she’d been worried earlier about losing her hat!

“I’m better now.” Ingeborg straightened her back as she spoke to the kind woman beside her. In the distance, she could hear voices calling out her son’s name.
Dear Lord above, watch over your wayward lamb. You, who said a lost sheep was worth searching for, please help these good people find my Thorly
. While she wasn’t sure how
closely God was listening, nevertheless, the prayer made her feel better. Could even the eye of God find one lost boy in all this confusion?

A few minutes later a shout went up some distance away, and Ingeborg turned her head in that direction. What were they saying? Oh, to be able to understand the language!

“Come, I think they may have found him.” The woman in the apron pointed down the street bordering the enclosure.

Ingeborg looked up the street and then back at the pile of belongings stacked against the wooden posts.

“I will care for your things.” The other aproned woman smiled and gave her a bit of a push. “Go now.”

With a hasty “mange takk,” Ingeborg followed the woman’s advice and darted down the cobbled street. Tall wooden buildings rose on either side of her, blocking the sun. She could hear the sounds of a crowd up ahead and made for the noise. As she ran, her mind kept time with her feet.
Please let him be all right, Lord. Please.
She pulled up short at the sight of a small boy snagged in the clutches of a blue-coated officer. The ruddy-faced man was handing the squirming child to an officer wearing a uniform and badge.

Thorliff clutched an apple in his hand.

“Thorly!” Ingeborg’s screech could have crossed the North Sea.

“Mor!” The little boy reached for her with open arms.

She grabbed the child away from the police officer and hugged him close.

“E’s a thief, that’s whot ’e is.” The man brusquely took ahold of her arm above the elbow.

Unable to understand the man’s words, but sure of the look on his face, Ingeborg thrust Thorliff behind her and turned on him like a banty hen defending her lone chick.

“You leave him alone! I don’t care who or what you are, you leave my son alone.”

At that moment, one of the apron-garbed women from Castle Garden puffed into the intersection. “Now then, missus, what seems to be the problem?” She spoke in the dialect of Oslo that Ingeborg could well understand.

The policeman crossed beefy arms over a chest broad enough to dance on and glowered down at them. “Blasted furiners! When they gonta learn to speak the king’s English?”

His scowl made Ingeborg stutter. “He . . . he had Thorliff.”

“And what did the mite do to bring your wrath down on his
innocent head?” The woman in the apron planted her hands on hips that well filled out the gathered garment.

“He stole that apple, he did.” The officer jabbed an accusing finger in Thorliff’s direction.

The man from behind the corner fruit stand joined the growing crowd. “There were three of them hoodlums. One distracted me while the other took my apples and tossed them out to others. Then they all ran off.”

“All but this little one,” the woman said, planting herself in front of Ingeborg.

Behind his mother, Thorliff took another bite of his apple. Ingeborg heard the crunch and instantly turned around. Bending over, nose to nose, she demanded, “Did you steal this apple from that man?”

“No, no. The nice boys . . . they gave it to me.” His chin quivered and a single tear hovered on the tip of his blond lashes. “Mor, they gave it to me. I promise.” He tried to hide the evidence behind his back.

“Give it to me.” When she had the apple in her hand, Ingeborg tried to hand it to the stern-faced policeman. “He did not know he was doing wrong, sir. Surely you can understand that. Where we come from, when someone gives you a gift, you say ‘mange takk’ and enjoy it. When my husband comes . . .” At the thought of Roald, her heart dropped to her ankles. She caught her breath and continued. “He will pay for the apple.”

The woman acting as interpreter finished conveying what Ingeborg said to the police officer. “And where are the ruffians who actually did the stealing?” She glared at the tradesman and the officer. Then laying a hand on Thorliff’s head, she asked, “Why aren’t you chasing after them instead of scaring this poor innocent?”

Ingeborg looked from one to the other, trying to follow what was happening by the expressions on their faces and their tone of voice. If
only
she could speak Amerikan; the thought hardened into resolve. She
would
learn to talk right. There had to be a way. If only they had learned to speak Amerikan before they came. She just hadn’t realized how important it would be.

Her protector kept on talking, jabbering so fast that Ingeborg thought no one would understand the torrent of her words. But before her very eyes, the storekeeper threw his hands in the air and strode back to his fruit stand. The policeman shook his head and,
after giving what sounded like a serious warning, headed back toward the wharf area.

“Come, dear, it is all right now.” Taking Ingeborg’s arm and Thorliff’s hand, their newfound friend led them back across the busy street and down another.

The buildings on either side of them appeared totally unfamiliar to Ingeborg. Where was she taking them? Ingeborg could feel her stomach tie itself up in knots again. Whatever had she done to deserve this? She had not even had time to thank God for saving Thorliff, and they were off again. She planted her feet on the cobblestone walk and refused to go any farther.

“My things, I must get back to guard them.”

“Oh, my. I didn’t tell you. We are just taking a shortcut to get there sooner,” their guide said. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh.” Ingeborg felt as she had when scolded as a child by a schoolmarm. But the woman wasn’t scolding her; the smile that turned her cheeks into round buns assured them of that. “I’m so sorry.”

“Never you mind. I know this has all been terrible for you, not understanding a single word of what’s going on and all. You just come with me, and we’ll get you back to Castle Garden and to your husband.”