A Promise for Ellie (12 page)

Haakan nodded. “Since we got the spring work done so soon and the house isn’t here yet, I couldn’t see any sense in waiting.”

“You going to buy more cows?”

“Not if I can help it.” In spite of his parents’ trying to keep their disagreements from the children, Andrew knew his mother wanted to invest in more cows for milk for the cheese making and plant some of the wheat fields to hay, especially since the flour mills of the Twin Cities had again cut the price they would pay for North Dakota wheat.

Haakan disagreed. Strongly. So the discussion had gone on, mostly in the privacy of their bedroom.

Haakan sniffed as they washed at the bench beside the house. “Smells like fried fish.”

“Ja, Trygve and I went fishing this afternoon after I finished seeding that field. Fool things wouldn’t hit my hook for the longest time.”

“Metiz used to say that fish came only to those of a peaceful mind. Not her words exactly, but the gist was the same.”

“Well, I did catch enough for supper. Oh, and there was a spike coming up from the river.”

“Really? Don’t tell your mor, or she’ll decide to go hunting tomorrow.”

While Ingeborg had hung up her guns and britches years before, the family still teased her about it. The last time she’d taken a gun out, after a few practice shots she’d still outshot all of them. Thorliff dubbed her “Annie Oakley” after the famous western woman shooter.

“Astrid still over to Thorliff ’s?” Haakan asked as they sat down at the table.

“She’d live there if she could. How she loves that baby.” Ingeborg set the platter of fried fish in the center of the table between the bowl of string beans and one of creamed canned potatoes. “I will sure be glad when the garden comes in.”

“There’s a big patch of dandelion greens out by that big oak in the pasture.” Andrew thought a moment. “And I saw fiddleheads down on the riverbank. I’ll go get some tomorrow.”

Ingeborg set the bread plate down. “Or Astrid can. Perhaps she and the twins will get some for all of us.” She glanced around the table at the empty chairs. “One missing sure leaves a hole.” She took her seat and looked to Haakan.

He nodded. “Let’s pray. I Jesu navn, ga°r vi til bords. . . .” They all joined in the Norwegian grace, ending with the amen. Each started passing the serving plate closest to them, and other than “Please pass” or “Thank you,” they ate silently.

Andrew could feel the tension between the man at the head of the table and the woman across from him. They must have been “discussing” again. Since all the land was planted, it didn’t make much sense to buy more cows now. They didn’t have enough pasture or hayfields for much more stock than they had.

“Did you pick up the paper when you were in town?” Haakan asked.

Andrew shook his head. “Wouldn’t have been out yet. Soon as we’re done with supper, I’m going out to scrape the grass off the house site.” He’d planned to start that tomorrow, but this way he’d get a head start.
Maybe I can start digging the cellar
.

“I’ll help you in the morning. Trygve and Lars will come too.”

“I’ll make a picnic and bring it over,” Ingeborg said. “What about little Sam? He’ll help, I’m sure. Remember how you and the Baard boys split the shingles for our barn? It’s a good thing Samuel and Trygve have started doing it for yours.”

“Astrid was good at it too.”

“Astrid is good at most anything she does.” Haakan leaned his chair back, caught the glance from his wife, and set the two front legs back down gently. “Maybe we should put a salt lick out on the game trail again.”

“Maybe I’ll go out in the morning.” Ingeborg got a faraway dreamy look in her eyes.

Andrew caught a frown on Haakan’s face that came and went fast as a blink. He wasn’t the only one unhappy with the man. Mor was too. He watched as Haakan rose, took his pipe from the stand on the shelf behind the stove, opened a lid on the stove, and using his knife, cleaned the bowl, the ashes and tailings dropping into the fire. He took the worn leather tobacco pouch from the same shelf and brought it all to the table.

“You’ll get your skirt full of burrs.”

“I could always put on my britches again.” Ingeborg pushed her chair back, the legs scraping against the floor. She never scraped the legs, always lifted her chair so as to not mar the wax she so laboriously rubbed into the pine planks.

“Hmm . . . thought you burned your britches.” Haakan tamped the tobacco down in the pipe bowl, then with pipe stem clamped between his front teeth, he raked the match tip with his thumbnail. It took two scrapes before the match flared, filling the room with the scent of sulfur. He sucked on the pipe stem while holding the match to the tobacco, then nodded, blew out the match, and set the charred remains on his saucer.

He used to hold that match for Andrew or Astrid to blow out.

Ingeborg’s muttered uff da as she cleared the table said far more than words about her lack of appreciation for the pipe smoke.

It wasn’t like his mor to hold a grudge. Andrew couldn’t remember when there’d been tension like this at mealtimes.
Ellie and I will
never carry on like this,
he thought. He pushed his chair back. “I’ll go get the paper.”

Not too many days now and Ellie would be living at Penny’s, and then they could go for long walks in the evening. Why did a week seem like a month—or more?

May 23, 1900
Dear Andrew,

How I hated to get on that train and leave you behind. Actually, leaving you is getting harder and harder. I am counting the days until I can come back to Blessing and to you.

Ellie tapped the pencil against her teeth. How she wanted to share her newfound feelings with him, but somehow that didn’t seem quite proper. All the letters she’d read in books never mentioned the heat that rose from her middle at just the thought of him. Perhaps something was wrong with her; perhaps she was a wanton. She’d read that word in a story once, and it was not a very nice term. Nice girls only allowed chaste kisses on the cheek, if even that. Her mother had drilled the proper behavior of a young lady into her daughter’s head for years. She’d never mentioned feeling on fire with melting knees. Ellie laid her hands on her hot cheeks. At least everyone else in the house was long in bed, so she wasn’t giving herself away. She’d planned to write Hans a letter too but caught herself daydreaming about Andrew until she should be blowing out the lamp.

Mother has finished the quilt she was making for our bed.

The thought of the two of them and a bed made her eyes widen. She rolled her lips together and kept writing.

Rachel is embroidering us a set of dish towels. She says we cannot get married until she finishes them. Is everyone in cahoots at putting off our wedding?

In cahoots. She’d once read that in a western novel. There were some delightful terms coming from the West, although Thorliff had explained to her that to the publishers, most of whom lived in New York, the Dakotas were considered the West too.

Manda peppered her letters with western terms, the few that she took time to write anyway. Since she and Baptiste had gone to Montana with Zeb those years ago, her letters were shared around the community when they did come. She said Zeb was off putting up windmills these days, while she and Baptiste took care of the horses and the home ranch, which had been moved to Wyoming.

What would it be like to travel west and visit with them, just she and Andrew?
My goodness, but my mind is just flitting all over the place
tonight. Finish your letter, Ellie, and get to bed. After all, you need your
beauty sleep
. She giggled at the thought. While she knew Andrew thought her pretty—he’d told her so—she didn’t. Except in the dress she’d made for her wedding. In that she did feel beautiful.

I told Penny I would be there a week from today, although if I had my way, I’d put what I have in my trunk and get back on that train tomorrow. I know you are angry with Haakan, but please let that go. The Bible says to not let the sun go down on your anger, and I know for certain there have been several sunsets on yours. The time will fly past. You just watch.

Love from your Ellie

She folded the paper and inserted it into the envelope with a pansy petal she had dried, then dropping wax from the candle she lit for just that purpose, she leaned the already addressed envelope against the base of the kerosene lamp. Black smudged the glass chimney. Time to wash the lamps and trim the wicks. Surely Rachel was old enough to learn how to do that. Perhaps she would give a lesson on lamp cleaning in the morning. Strange how her little cousin had grown as close as a sister, while she often felt more like a mother than a sister to Arne.

She blew out the lamp and made her way up the stairs by the moonlight that kissed the lightly dancing Priscilla curtains at all the open windows. Upstairs she undressed in the room she shared with Rachel, carefully hanging her dress on one of the pegs along the wall. With her nightdress in place, she knelt by the window and crossed her arms on the sill. The moonlight silvered the maple leaves that whispered secrets in the breeze. Off in the distance a dog barked. Would she and Andrew have a dog to watch their place and bring in the cows? While they had talked of so many aspects of their life together, each day or even each hour she thought of more. Her mother had promised her a few chickens from her flock—somehow having chickens of her own seemed like wealth in abundance. She could sell the extra eggs to Penny so she would have money to store in a tin like her mother did. The wages paid her by Penny would allow her to buy some things for the house. Already she’d had promises of starts from flower gardens and seeds to begin her own.

My goodness,
she thought,
there is far more to making a home than
I ever believed
. No wonder Olaf had crafted her a large trunk to put all her treasures in. Treasures she’d been making and collecting since she was eight, when she finished embroidering her first sampler on linen she’d woven herself from the thread she’d been given for a present. While she’d learned to card and spin wool that she would knit, spinning flax was not so simple.With her chin propped on her hands, she thought of all the sheets she’d hemmed on her mother’s sewing machine and the pillowcases she’d sewn and then embroidered. Fine handwork was almost as much of a delight as sewing on the machine. She’d made most of the clothes for Arne and Rachel, since her mother would rather cook and bake than sew.

Her eyes grew heavy, but before she fell asleep, she looked up to the sky and found the star she and Andrew both wished on every night. “God, please take good care of my Andrew and help him see that good will come of this time we are preparing for our marriage. And teach me to be the woman you want me to be, a good example of all the fruits of the spirit—love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.” They had been part of her memory work for the last week as she continued to commit the book of Galatians to memory. Pastor Solberg always stressed that memorizing the Bible made it your own so that you could dwell on it, as the heavenly Father ordered.

“Thank you, Father. I believe you love me and want the best for us all. Amen.” She’d hardly lain down before she joined Rachel in peaceful slumber.

“As soon as we finish washing the lamps, we can go to the post office, and perhaps we will stop by Pa’s shop and ask him if we can have an ice cream cone at the drugstore.”
And I can mail my letter to
Andrew, but more importantly, perhaps there is one from him
.

Rachel sighed. “The boys are going fishing over at the creek. I was gonna go too.”

“Rather than eat ice cream?” Ellie kept a serious look on her face. She knew how much her cousin would rather play with the boys who lived in the house next to them than do chores of any kind.

Rachel sighed again. “No, I guess not.”

“If you’d rather go fishing . . .”

“Wouldn’t you rather go fishing than clean sooty lamps?”

“Well, when you put it that way . . .” Ellie grinned at her young cousin’s hopeful look. “No, I’ve never been one to like fishing much, especially when you have to put the worm on the hook. Now grasshoppers, I’ll skewer them any day, but not worms.”