A New Day Rising (20 page)

Once his eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room in spite of the two-story tall windows that formed the walls on either side, he saw a man walking from forge to forge and talking with the smiths. Hjelmer strode down the aisle between stacks of iron pigs and flat steel bars. The pigs would be melted for cast iron and the steel formed into implements and parts for machinery.

How would he be able to work in a place like this? At home the forge had been on one wall of a three-sided shed, open to a view of the pastures and trees, where a breeze off the hills blew the smoke away and wafted in scents of pine and growing grass.

He waited until the man finished giving instructions to the smith on the nearby forge and then cleared his throat to get the foreman's attention. The man walked on. The man on the forge turned to draw out a white-hot steel bar.

"Sir, Mr. Torlakson." Hjelmer started after him.

"Ja?" The man turned around, a frown creasing his forehead. "1 am Torlakson. Who are you?" His voice rose in a shout to be heard.

"Mrs. Holtensland sent me. She said you would talk with me, and perhaps I could be hired on here."

"Oh." He nodded. "To be sure." He turned back the way they had come. "Follow me."

Hjelmer did as ordered, keeping his eyes open so he didn't get hit in the head by a bar being swung into place by the overhead hoist.

He followed the foreman up a narrow set of stairs to an office on the second floor with windows that overlooked the work below. As soon as the door closed behind them, the roar subsided to a rumble. Hjelmer took in a deep breath and' let it out with a sigh.

"Now then, young fellow, I told Mrs. Holtensland I was hiring if I could find a good man. You look to be but a boy, big though you are. What makes you think you could hold your own with the men you saw below. They have years of experience."

"My father trained me well, said I seem to have a natural bent for working with metal."

"Your father, you say. Have you not worked for anyone else, apprenticed perhaps?"

Hjelmer shook his head. "I did some work for my uncle once, fashioned him an anchor for his fishing boat. I've sharpened plows, pounded out new plowshares, brackets for the wagon bed, refitted rims on wooden wheels, all things needed on our farm and for some of the neighbors." Hjelmer could feel his heart sinking as the man shook his head. "Please, I need this job."

"So do all the men who come to me." Torlakson studied the young man before him.

"Please, let me work today, and if I cannot do what you need, you owe me nothing."

"A day's free labor? I'd be a fool to turn that down. Get yourself an apron from those on the pegs and gloves if you didn't bring your own. I'll meet you back on the floor." He turned to answer a question asked by a man sitting on a high stool in front of a slab of wood that made a writing surface. - - - -- - - - - - - - - -

Hjelmer did as told. He had the knee-length cowhide apron tied in place and the gloves tucked into the strings and folded over like he'd seen the others wear before Torlakson made his way back down to the work area. When the man beckoned, Hjelmer followed. They stopped in front of a forge that was lit but not hot enough for reforming steel. A young boy, black with the dirt of the place, leaped to his feet and began cranking the bellow, adding its ascending scream to the torrent of sounds.

At the end of the day, Hjelmer laid his hammer down and felt like following it to the floor. Never had his arms ached so, or his head rung, or his mouth been so full of grit. He spit but nothing came. He needed water to spit with, and the only water he'd seen all day was what he'd stuck his forged pieces in to cool.

The other workers made their way to the tall doors open now to the street in front of the foundry. Hjelmer followed them until he came to the stairs leading to the offices. They looked steeper than the rock faces of the Nordland mountains where he'd climbed as a boy. It felt like several life times ago.

Was he to find the man or wait here? His stomach rumbled and his knees shook. Tomorrow, if there was to be a tomorrow, he would bring something to eat and drink.

"We start at six." Torlakson appeared beside him. Had he been dozing on his feet that he didn't hear the man approach?

"You mean-"

"Ya, you be here. Payday is on Saturday. You'll get five dollars a week. If you don't show up one day, don't bother to come back the next. I need men who will do a day's work, every day."

"Mange takk, I will. You'll see." Hjelmer felt life flow into his limbs and hope into his heart. Five dollars in a week was more than he'd ever dreamed possible. Four weeks he would have to work, and then he could buy his train ticket west.

By the time he walked the mile and a half to Mrs. Holtensland's house, he could barely place one foot in front of the other. Everything hurt, and what didn't hurt, he couldn't feel. His hands looked like they'd been fed through a meat grinder, and his shoulders-his shoulders burned like he'd been beaten with his own hammer.

"Uff da," said Fulla, the maid, when she opened the door for him. Her nose twitched at the foundry stench that rose from his clothes. "Mrs. Holtensland is in the library. I suggest you don't go in there like that."

Hjelmer nodded. He hadn't planned to. "Is there hot water that I can wash?"

"For certain." Her look asked him what kind of house he thought she ran. She pointed to a room off the back porch. "In there."

"Mange takk."

"Supper will be served in one hour."

The sting of soap on his bloodied hands held little importance to Hjelmer. He scrubbed with both soap and brush to remove the filth of the foundry. Twice he threw out the water and started again with clean. After donning his only other set of clothes, he reentered the kitchen.

"Do you have some strips of cloth I could use to bandage my hands?" he asked the cook who seemed more disposed to be cordial to a newcomer.

"Land sakes, boy." She dropped her stirring spoon and took his hands in hers. "Didn't you wear gloves?"

"Ja, but traveling softens the hands." He wished he could put them in his pockets and forget the favor, but he knew his hands were to be his salvation. If he couldn't hold a hammer, he wouldn't last at the foundry.

Tearing an old sheet into strips, Cook wrapped his hands, tisking all the while.

After a supper where he'd endured the sniffs of the maid, he joined Mrs. Holtensland in the library at her request.

"How was it for you there? Can you understand the language well enough to make a go of it?"

"Mr. Torlakson, he speaks Norwegian to me and many of the others." A pang caught him midsection. Roald and Carl had written, telling him to learn the English language before he came, but he'd been working hard to earn passage money, and no one near home knew the language either. The thought of his sister who'd been exchanging washing laundry for English lessons nipped at his mind.

"You are fortunate now to be in an area where many people speak Norwegian. That is why many of the immigrants settle here. It is easier than crossing the country without the English language. We have classes at the Settlement House in the evenings. You could attend there."

Hjelmer nodded while at the same time wanting to pull his collar away from his neck. Was it so hot in the room? Was she scolding him? He studied the edges of his fingernails where black crescents outlined the skin.

"I will think on it." Right now all he could think about was falling on the bed and never getting up. He stared into the fire where flames curled around chunks of coal in oranges and yellows, not the white hot of the coke fires at the foundry. There was something he'd been meaning to ask Mrs. Holtensland. What was it? He hardly remembered stumbling up the stairs and collapsing.

The next evening when he dragged back to the house in the same filthy condition, the maid sent him around to the back door. "People such as you don't use the front door," she hissed. "People like you shouldn't even be here. Mrs. Holtensland is too kind for her own good, bringing home filthy immigrants like stray kittens. And with just as many diseases."

Hjelmer blinked in astonishment. What had he done to make this woman resent him so? But the rebuke stung, getting under his skin like a bee stinger never removed. He recalled what had been bothering him the night before. He'd planned to ask Mrs. Holtensland for a recommendation on a place for him to rent. He hadn't been planning to stay here indefinitely. He might be an immigrant, but he wasn't dirty and ignorant. His mor would be wounded to her soul to hear one of her sons referred to as a filthy immigrant. - - - -- - - -- - - --- --

That night he scrubbed doubly long, but still he could see traces of grime under his fingernails. When he returned fully clothed to the kitchen, Cook bustled over and picked up his hands. "Uff da." She shook her head. "There." She pointed at a chair and Hjelmer sat. Cook didn't say much, but when she did, everyone around her jumped to. She smoothed salve over the seeping flesh and applied another bandage, wrapping the strips of cloth around and around to cushion the palm and tying tight knots on the back of the hand. "Two, three more days and the calluses will form. Then you be good again."

"Mange takk." Hjelmer turned his hands both front and back. "You sure know how to bandage good. Never would have gotten through the day without them." He thought to the filthy, bloody strips he had pulled off when he washed. "You want I should wash the used ones?"

"Nei." She shook her head. "1 do that. Leave them by the basin."

Hjelmer turned in time to see the glare the maid daggered between his shoulder blades. He turned back to catch the look of disgust on the cook's face.

"Pay no mind to her." Cook levered herself to her feet with beefy arms pushing against her knees. The look she shot the maid could have fried eggs.

He left the room wondering at the attitudes of both the cook and the maid. Why was one so good to him, and the other would dump him in the mud without the slightest hesitation? He shook his head. Women!

"Mrs. Holtensland, please, I have something to ask you." The two of them were again seated in the library after a supper that filled his belly and astounded his mind at the variety of it all. He had to speak before the warmth of the fire put him to sleep.

"What is it?" Mrs. Holtensland looked up from the needlepoint she worked each evening.

"I ... I-please don't misunderstand me. I appreciate all that you have done for me, far beyond any thing I can say. But I must-I mean, I can't stay here."

"Why not?" She looked at him over the rim of her glasses.

"It ... it is not seemly. I mean, you took me in, and I don't want to overstay my welcome."

"Why don't you let me be the judge of that?"

"Please, I have nothing to pay you with. Surely there is some place I can go that won't put you at a disadvantage."

"Are you not comfortable here?"

He looked at her like she'd struck him. "Of course I am comfortable. I have never lived anywhere so fine."

"I see." She continued to peer at him over her spectacles.

"I ... I cannot pay."

She nodded. "I see," she said again.

Hjelmer was glad she did, for he certainly didn't. He should have just picked up his things and gone-but to where?

"I have a proposition for you, young man." She waited for him to nod. "Out in the carriage house is a phaeton that was my husband's pride and joy. After he died, I sold the horses because I can go any where I want on the El or the streetcars. As you'll see, the carriage has fallen into disrepair. Above the carriage house are the quarters where the groom lived. Now, if you will refurbish that carriage, you can live in those rooms. If you run out of work on the carriage, now that spring is coming, there is plenty of work in the yard. Cook likes her kitchen garden turned over, and the gardener I employ cannot find time for it all. Oh, and you will continue to take your meals with me. I enjoy your company. Is that too much to ask?"

Hjelmer closed his mouth with a snap. His sister would have been teasing him for letting the flies in. "No, not at all. I ... Imange takk. What more can I say?"

"Nothing more is needed. Good night, young man."

By the time Saturday night rolled around, Hjelmer had made an acquaintance with another young man, Tor Heglund, who also had no family of his own. After they picked up their pay envelopes, they followed the stream of weary workers out the doors.

"You want to join us down the street?" Tor asked.

"Where?"

"Down at the tavern. We have a drink or two, play cards, have a good time. Come on, you will like it. You'll find only Norwegian spoken there."

Hjelmer thought of the four dollars in his pay envelope. He'd won many pots on the ship when he played cards with both immigrant and sailor alike. It seemed like months since he'd had a beer. But he needed to start work early in the morning on the carriage.

Surely one drink wouldn't take too much of his money. And after all, he would make more next week. ' Ja, I will come. For one drink only."

His pay check was one dollar lighter when he left.

That night he called himself all kinds of fool after ignoring the sniffs of the maid, blushing at the raising of Cook's right eyebrow, and having to apologize to Mrs. Holtensland for being late for supper. Worst of all, he'd wasted a dollar. He'd have to get that back. The card tables and players at the back of the room marched through his dreams.

Guilt gave him speed in the morning. in spite of feeling like a tree being attacked by a flock of woodpeckers. Or was he banging his head on the log without knowing it? He went over the carriage, checking to see what parts needed to be replaced and what could do with only a cleaning or minor repair. The leather was split in places, the wood spokes and wheel pulling away from the steel rim. Everything needed painting. He looked around the carriage house and found a small forge, along with cupboards and shelves containing tools still in the same place the former owner had left them. He reached out and lifted down a plane, now rusty and dirty with disuse.

He traced the wooden frame. All it needed was some sandpaper, a bit of oil, and sharpening of the blade. Files of all shapes and sizes, hammers, screw drivers, all lined up waiting for him to come along and bring them back to life. What his far wouldn't give for such a wealth of tools. He was deep into cleaning and refurbishing the work area when Fulla appeared in the doorway.