A Measure of Mercy (17 page)

13

B
LESSING
, N
ORTHDAKOTA

I
miss Astrid.”

The sheets flapping on the line held no answer. Ingeborg felt like shouting to the heavens,
Lord, bring my daughter home safe.
But she knew Astrid was where she was supposed to be—wasn’t she? Sliding the last clothespin over the end of the folded sheet, she picked up the clothes basket and returned to the house, stopping with one foot on the bottom step. Why was she so fluttered about this? Flustered was the proper word, but she felt she was like the sheets, snapping in the wind. Were it not for the clothespins, she’d go fluttering off, whipped and tossed by the wind.

“Lord, I thank you that you are my wire, my post, and you are pinning me in place. Let me cling to you, for you are never changing. You send the sun and the wind, the birds and the butterflies. Thank you for all the land you have given us.” She shaded her eyes with her hand and searched the fields in the distance to see where the men were finishing the haying. Wheat rippled like waves in the wind, the color changing from green to yellow and on toward gold as harvest approached. A shimmery light green kissed the oat fields as the grain started to head out, leading toward the yellow to come.

Off in the distance one of the high-stacked hay wagons neared Andrew’s barn, ready for the hay to be swooped up into the haymow. Haakan said they’d have to start stacking hay outside because all the other barns were already full.

Surely they would have a letter from Astrid any day now. After all, she’d been gone a week.

“Ingeborg, would you like me to make the pies for supper?” Freda asked from the doorway.

“If you feel up to it. I have one more load to rinse and wring, and then the washing will be finished.”

“You keep babying me like this, and I’ll turn into a fat toad.”

“I doubt that. The canned apples are down in the cellar. I checked and the strawberries are done for.”

“The raspberries made wonderful jam. I thought with all the eggs we could make a jelly roll for a treat and use the skimmings.”

“What a wonderful idea.”

The ringing telephone made Ingeborg climb the rest of the steps and enter the house. The stove heat smacked her in the face when she opened the screen door. Crossing the kitchen, she lifted the earpiece from the wooden box that hung on the wall.

“Hello.”

“Ingeborg, this is Elizabeth. Thelma is making meatballs for supper, and I thought you could all come here before the town meeting.”

“I’ll ask Haakan when he comes in for dinner. I don’t see why not. We’re mostly talking about the hospital proposal and plans tonight, aren’t we?”

“As far as I know. Thorliff has some rough plans drawn up, and I’ve prepared a report on how many cases we’ve handled through our surgery and how we see the need for a full-service hospital. Or at least the beginning of one.”

“I know we discussed it at the last quilting meeting. So many don’t want to take on any more debt, but with the flour mill doing so well, we can funnel those monies into more community services, like the hospital.”

“I think Thorliff is going to suggest that those who want to could buy bonds.”

“Really? He didn’t mention that here.”

“He was talking with somebody somewhere who said his community had done that.”

Ingeborg rubbed her chin. “We’ve come a long way.”

“We have. I’m hoping we can encourage a dentist to come to town too. Office space at the hospital might be a drawing card.”

“Ah, my dear, you do dream big.”

“Well, if Kaaren’s school grows the way we think it will,” Elizabeth said, “we’ll need more services here to take care of people.”

“I know. But remember, it wasn’t that long ago that I was the only person here with any medical background at all.”

“You could look at it this way: See what I started.”

Elizabeth’s chuckle made Ingeborg laugh. “Uff da, such goings on.”

“We do live in exciting times. Anna didn’t come for her appointment.”

“Anna doesn’t want to come for anything. Any suggestions?”

“We have to get her out.”

“Kaaren sent the children over to Ellie’s,” Ingeborg said. “All Solem can talk about is going back to Norway.”

“How can they afford that?”

“They can’t. And Freda has no desire to go back.”

“Have you heard from Astrid?”

“No.”
But I have a bad feeling, and I don’t know why. Lord, still
my heart. I know you can take care of her in Chicago too
.

“She’ll be okay. Althea would contact me if she thought something was wrong.”

“Ja, I know. You want me to bring anything for supper?”

“No, we’ll be fine.”

Ingeborg said good-bye and set the black earpiece back in the pronged holder. How quickly they had become dependent on this new instrument. Thorliff had a crew out planting telephone poles so that all the farms could be connected to town and each other. The switchboard, run primarily by Gerald Valders, had filled so they’d put in a new panel. The men were talking about one day needing a second person on the switchboard. Deborah had finally agreed to take one of the daily twelve-hour shifts, and while Mrs. Valders could fill in, they really needed another person part time. Who’d have ever thought they would have more jobs than people to fill them?

She turned and told Freda to skip the pies and go ahead with the jelly roll. They would use the leftover gingerbread with applesauce for dinner. Back out on the porch to finish the wash, she marveled at how fast she could get the wash done these days. Thanks to Penny, who’d brought in washing machines like she had the Singer sewing machines and made all the women’s lives easier. No more rubbing one’s fingers raw on the scrub boards. She lifted the last of the work pants from the rinse water and carefully fed them into the wringer with one hand while turning the crank with the other.

“How about a cup of coffee?” Freda asked from the doorway.

“That sounds good. Let me hang these first, and then I’ll drain the rinse water onto the roses.” A hose connected to the bottom of the square tub could be opened and none of the water wasted. Not that she’d ever wasted any, carrying all the used household water out to her flowers and the garden when it needed it. So far this year they’d had just enough rain. She turned the spigot and hoisted the clothes basket up on her hip. Nearly eleven already, and the men would be in at twelve or when they heard the clanging triangle.

How she loved wash day when the sun shone. The wind dried the clothes about as fast as she could hang them, larks trilled from the fields or swooped and dove overhead, scattering notes like iridescent flower petals.

Nothing smelled better than linens and clothes right off the line.

“What did Dr. Elizabeth say about Anna?” Freda asked in Norwegian, since her growing English vocabulary was not sufficient for nonessential words yet.

“She’s concerned,” Ingeborg said as she sat at the table.

“Anna needs to take care of the children she has and her husband. You are all being too soft on her.”

Ingeborg sighed. “The children are well cared for.”

“True, but not by their mother. Since Grace came home, she has taken over all the children.”

“She does love the little children. She says younger ones like ours here are so much fun after all her school-age students. And these can hear, so she gets more practice in speaking.”

“I do not know how she has learned to talk. I didn’t know deaf people could learn to do that.”

Ingeborg took a sip of her coffee and a bite out of her applesauce cookie. “I know. She has worked so hard.”

“And Anna . . .” Freda shook her head. “I know she had a bad time. I lost two or three babies through the years. You are sad, but you get up and keep going.” She stared out over the fields. “To not like it here, I do not understand either her or my son. They will never have anything like this in Norway.”

“Does Solem really want to go back, or is he wanting to do that for Anna?”

Freda shrugged. “Who’s to know? He does not want to talk to me about it. Does he think I forced him to come with me? I thought I was giving him a gift, a new life with a chance to own land.”

“Has he thought of going farther west to homestead? There isn’t much land left to buy around here.”

“The only money he has is what he has earned here. As you know, that trip took everything we could save.” She propped her elbows on the table, her round face crowned by a circle of braided hair, concern carving deeper lines from nose to the corners of her mouth and between her eyebrows.

Ingeborg remembered her as the laughing girl from their summer weeks in the high mountain meadow saeters, where they took care of the cows and turned the milk into cheese.

“Does Gilbert feel the same too?”

“No, he loves it here. As do the little ones. I will cut the curds this afternoon on that last setting of milk. You want the whey for the hogs?”

“Ja. The chickens like it too. And Andrew will take home some of the full cans for the animals at his place.”

“I am so amazed at all you have managed to do in the years since you left Norway. If only my husband had been willing to come when you wrote so long ago.”

“God has indeed blessed us, but it has never been easy. I sometimes dreamed of going home, especially when the wind was howling like wolves in a blizzard. When we lived in the soddy, I thought of Mor’s snug house, with the animals sheltered right below us, not across the yard in the barn. You wait. This winter the men will again string ropes on posts to get to the barn without getting lost.”

“Uff da. You have written of those, and I found it hard to picture. You realize your letters were passed around for everyone in Valdres to read, not just our family but anyone who visited. Johann Bjorklund kept the family land, but it can barely support him. I think he is sometimes tempted to sell out and come over too.”

Ingeborg shook her head. “All this talk of winter makes me shiver, even in this heat. I’ll make dumplings for the stew when I bring in the dry things.” She smiled at her cousin. “Back to your worry about Anna. I have an idea.”

THAT NIGHT AFTER the town meeting, Haakan yawned and stretched as they prepared for bed. “That hospital won’t happen overnight, you know.”

Ingeborg
tsk
ed as she pulled her nightdress over her head. “Nobody believes it will.” Sitting herself down on the edge of the bed, she unplaited her hair, running her fingers through the wavy strands, then picked up her brush and started her one hundred strokes.

“It will cost more than they are estimating, even if we do most of the work ourselves.”

“Like a barn raising, you mean?”

“Ja, with all of us donating our labor to assist a building crew. None of us have the training to put up a building like that. We’d have to hire an overseer.”

Ingeborg nodded. Haakan really believed in the hospital, but he always had to work through things in his own time and way. Talking it over with her seemed to help. “How would it be so different than building a barn? Two stories but with many rooms on two sides of a hall instead of one big one for the haymow?”

Haakan flipped back the sheet and lay down, locking his hands behind his head. “I hate to see us go into debt for this building. We did for the flour mill, but we knew that would bring in revenue from the beginning. This is far more expensive, and who can afford to pay the prices they will need to charge the patients in order to pay for the building?”

“You have a point there, and you said it well at the meeting.” She put down her brush and rebraided her hair in one loose plait. “Not to change the subject, but has Solem mentioned anything about his wife?”

“No, not a word. But I can tell something is weighing on his mind. He’s a quiet man, but he’s frowning much of the time.”

“Well, be ready. We are going to take Anna outside whether she wants to or not.”

“You’ll carry or drag her?”

“If it comes to that.”

Haakan rolled onto his side and patted his wife’s shoulder. “Leave it to you, my Inge. Anna doesn’t have a chance.”

Ingeborg listened as Haakan slipped into sleep, a little puff coming on every exhale.
Lord God, I have to believe this idea comes from
you, so I ask you to go before us and prepare the way. Give us the right
words, the love that can come only from you. Please heal her heart and
fill her with love for the two children she has
. She reminded herself to call Pastor Solberg in the morning and then tumbled into the well called sleep.

AFTER BREAKFAST AND calling Pastor Solberg on the telephone, Ingeborg sprinkled the clothes that were to be ironed that day while Freda cleaned up the kitchen. Today was Kaaren’s turn to fix dinner for the men, so after mixing and kneading bread and setting it to rise, she poured two cups of coffee.

“We are going over to Kaaren’s to get Anna.”

“Get Anna?” Freda’s eyebrow lifted.

“That’s right.”

The clop of trotting horsehoofs brought her to her feet and the window. John Solberg was dismounting to tie his horse at the gate to the fenced yard. After all these years, Haakan and Andrew had fenced in the yard to protect her flowers from marauding cows; not that they got out often, but one cow could decimate the tasty flowers in minutes, and what it didn’t eat, it stomped.

“Good. I figured he’d come.”

“Ingeborg, what are we doing?”

“Come and see.”

The three of them walked across the small pasture, as they called the stretch of field between the two houses.

“Care to enlighten me on how we are going to do this?”

“Put her in a chair and carry her, if we have to.”

“Down all those stairs?”

“That might be enough to get her up, don’t you think?”

“She is so weak.” Freda rubbed the top of one finger and tongued her lower lip.

“I know. That is why we have to get her out in the sunshine.”

Like an advancing army they strode up the steps of the Knutsons’ house and into the south-facing door of the school wing.

Kaaren met them with Samuel, who at sixteen was fast growing into man size. “I’ve been praying this works.”