A Promise for Ellie (20 page)

“Come, I’ll show you the inside.” Andrew took her hand, and she had to almost run to keep up with him. They stepped in through where the main door would be.

Ellie stared up through the floor joists of the haymow, clear to the rafters, where shingles covered some of the one-by-fours, but most of the eastern side still showed blue sky. “Will you have enough shingles?”

“The boys are trying to keep up, but a square of shingles doesn’t go very far up there. We should have been splitting shakes all winter.”

“Did you really know it was going to be this big?”

“Well, we added an extra fifteen feet in length, but the width stayed the same. Far decided that since we were doing it, we might as well go the whole size.” He turned to the western wall. “Over there in that corner is where we’ll put the chickens at first. I doubt we’ll get a chicken house built this year. The pigs will be over there too. The milking stanchions down the east side.”

“So you won’t milk over at the home barn?”

“Not if we get more cows like Mor wants. I thought at first I’d have all the hogs here, but the cows need to be inside in the winter, so we’ll see. I can always add more stanchions later.”

“Andrew Bjorklund, I am so proud of you I could just pop.”

He turned to look down at her. “Why?”

“You are so sure of what you are doing. I’ve been dithering about leaving home, and here you talk like you’ve been farming for years.”

“I have been. All my life.”

“No, I mean with your own barn and livestock. It’s different.”

“Not really. Now if we moved west and homesteaded or bought a homestead someone didn’t prove up, that would be different.”

Ellie rolled her eyes. “You just don’t understand.”

“Come on, I’ll show you the cellar for the house. We got part of that dug out.” He took her hand, and she trotted beside him across the packed earth to a hole in the ground, squared off with strings tied to stakes pounded into the ground.

“Our own cellar.” When she closed her eyes, she could see shelves against the walls, filled with jars of peaches, apples, green beans, corn, and pickles. The jams would glow like jewels. There would be bins for the potatoes and carrots, barrels of apples, crocks of pickles and sausages.

And if the tornadoes came, they would hide down there, safe from the storms above.

“Ah, Andrew, we must be grateful for all that God has given us.” She turned to look back at the barn. “So much.”

“Well, we work hard too, you know.”

She stared up at him. “Yes, but still, all this comes from His hands.”

He half shrugged. “I didn’t get to the garden.”

“Oh.” She crossed the grass to her plot. Someone had been hoeing. The radish row was recognizable with carrots interspersed. That way when they pulled the radishes, it left room for the carrots, which were much slower to grow. Her mother had taught her that trick. She looked closely, checking the stakes at the ends of the rows, not that she’d forgotten what she’d planted where. The corn and potatoes were up, the beans struggling against the weeds. The opportunistic peas were using the weeds as climbing posts. She let out a sigh. She’d left the garden in Grafton without a weed.

Glancing down at her dress, she shook her head. She needed to change into a work dress and apron and get busy. With no place to change here, she strode resolutely back to the wagon.

“Do you want to take me back to the house, or shall I drive myself? There’s work to do here, or we won’t have anything to eat next winter.”

“I’ll take you. Sorry about the weeds. How about if we band your chickens and put them in with Astrid’s?”

“Fine.” She climbed up over the wheel without waiting for his assistance. She should be able to get much of the garden cleaned out before dark that night. How come the weeds grew so much faster than the vegetables? How come that little worm of discontent took up residence?

S
O MUCH FOR SPENDING
the evenings with Ellie.

“You’re going back out tonight?” Ingeborg set the last platter of food on the table and took her seat.

“It would be a shame to waste the full moon.” Haakan bowed his head, and the others followed suit. “I Jesu navn . . .” They joined in the table prayer, and at the amen all reached for the serving bowls, helped themselves, and passed them on around the long table. Both Toby and Gerald, along with two of the German young men who were working for the Bjorklunds for the summer, ate suppers with the family.

Astrid helped with the meal preparation, spending only part of her day at the surgery since her mother needed her at home too.

“I saw Ellie today when I went for the mail.” She grinned at Andrew when he looked up. “She likes working at the store. Tante Penny said she’s the best worker she’s ever had.”

Andrew nodded. Everyone saw more of Ellie than he did. Instead of going calling like he wanted to, he would dig the cellar by moonlight, and after the horses were put away, either Haakan or Lars would come to help him. Three men were the most that could dig without getting in one another’s way. The night before, Haakan had backed the sledge down the dug-out ramp, and they had shoveled the dirt on that for the team to drag out. Tossing the dirt over the walls had taken too much time. Leave it to Haakan to figure a way to make things easier.
Now if only I could figure a way to add a
few more hours of daylight. Or learn to get by on less sleep
. He and the men were already milking by lantern light before the dawn.

The girls were doing most of the evening milking.

Andrew shoveled the food into his mouth without taking part in the almost nonexistent conversation.

“Oh, Thorliff said he’d come over to help dig tonight.”

Andrew nodded, finished chewing, and asked, “Did he say what time?”

“No, just after supper.”

“Please pass the bread.”

Andrew did as asked, even though the request had been in German. He’d never realized the Norwegian and German languages were so much alike.

He held up his cup when Ingeborg came around the table with the coffeepot. “Thanks.”

She laid her hand on his shoulder and squeezed before going on to the next.

He watched her for a moment. She looked more like herself again, no longer pale. Had she lain down today like Dr. Elizabeth had ordered?

“Takk for maten.” He drained the coffee and pushed back from the table.

“You don’t want dessert?”

“Later.”

“You go to dig?” Heinrich asked, again in German.

“Ja.”

“I’ll come.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know. You need help.”

Together they walked out and headed across the field, their long shadows dark in front of them. As the moon rose, the world silvered. Andrew could hear digging before they got there.

“What took you so long?” Thorliff asked as he tossed a shovelful on the sledge.

“You didn’t stop by the house.”

“I know. I thought digging out dirt was more important than visiting.”

Andrew pulled his leather gloves out of his back pocket, grabbed a shovel handle, and pushed the blade into the heavy soil. Six feet down and still the black riverbed soil lay beneath their feet. How deep did it go, he’d often wondered. Another two feet and the cellar would be deep enough. While he planned to pour cement walls, the floor would remain dirt with support posts for the house on poured concrete blocks.

The three dug until the sledge was loaded, then tossed more dirt over the banks surrounding the sides. Haakan arrived with a harnessed team, backed them down the ramp, and hooked the traces to the double tree. With the chains jingling, he hupped the team, and the two dug in to pull the sledge up the grade and out to dump it. Heinrich went along to help shovel it clear.

“One more night and we should be done.” Thorliff leaned on his shovel handle.

Andrew wiped the sweat from his forehead. “I hope so. I think I milked four cows this morning before I woke up.”

“Good thing none kicked you awake.” Thorliff tossed a couple more shovelfuls over the bank.

“Would have been easier if the house came on time.”

“Why? You didn’t have this shoveled out then either.” They continued digging.

“Did you and Elizabeth talk about Mor?”

“Of course.”

“She’ll be all right?”

“Yes. But she has to take it a bit easier for a while.”

“Our Mor?”

“This scared her. She’s trying to listen. She has to find someone to take over the cheese house, at least for a short time.”

“But who?”

They could hear the horses returning, and the sledge backed down the ramp.

“That’s it for tonight.” Haakan unhooked the traces. “You can’t burn both ends of the candle and the middle too. All this will get done in good time.”

The men rammed their shovels into the dirt and followed the horses back to the barn.

“Good night.”

“God nacht,”
Heinrich called back as he headed across the fields for home.

“You want dessert?” Andrew asked.

“Nope. I want my bed. I print tomorrow.” Thorliff clapped his brother on the upper arm. “Get to bed before you fall asleep.”

Andrew took his boots off on the porch and hung his hat on the peg inside the kitchen. All this work, and Ellie didn’t like the house. She would like it when it was finished. The kerosene lamp on the table burned low, and a cake pan covered with a dishcloth and a couple of plates and forks sat beside it. The quiet house told him both Mor and Astrid had gone to bed. He paused at the table, cut himself a piece of cake, and ate it while he climbed the stairs to his room.
Thank you, God, for keeping us all safe today. Please . . .
His head hit the pillow, and he was out before he could finish the thought.

With three mowing machines, staggered so that they looked connected in tandem, the grass fell in wide swaths. They moved from one field to the next, leaving the long grass to dry in the warm sun. A gentle breeze assisted in the hay drying so that two days after cutting, two more teams went through with the rakes, leaving rounded tubes of drying grass across the fields. Thanks to the machinery, the real labor didn’t start until it was time to haul the hay into the barns.

In the meantime, Andrew, Trygve, and the Geddick boys kept on shingling the barn so it would be finished in time to protect the hay. Toby and Gerald laid the decking on the haymow floor. Hammers rang and Samuel grew adept at running squares of shingles up the ladder and hoisting them to those on the roof.

The June sun beat down, burning the backs of the men and giving all of the gardens the energy needed for growth. Roses bloomed along the porches while the lilacs faded, and daisies raised yellow faces to the sun. The peas climbed high on the strings the girls strung between the posts and blossomed white. They harvested radishes and leafy lettuce, staked the tomato plants, and poured manure tea over every plant in the gardens. On the advice of an article in the newspaper, Ingeborg had stirred cow manure into a barrel of water and let it steep like tea before using it as fertilizer.

With the ripening of both the wild and garden strawberries, they had strawberry shortcake for dessert and fresh berries on pancakes in the mornings. Ellie worked in her own garden in the evenings, when she could get free, so she and Andrew rarely had time for more than the briefest hello. But even the sight of each other from a distance was better than the miles between them before.

Grace and Sophie drove the hay wagons, pulling the loader behind. No longer did the men have to fork all the hay up onto the loads. Instead, two men worked with hay forks to distribute the loads and pack them down sufficiently. When more hands were needed, the men left off roofing and headed out into the fields. Always the push to get all the hay in before it rained took precedence.

They filled the big barns at Haakan’s and Lars’s and stacked more not far from the barns. The mowers moved on to the Baards’ and Solbergs’, while those hauling kept the wagons rolling.

“We’re taking Sunday off,” Haakan decreed on Thursday.

“Everyone needs a rest, and so do the horses.”

“How about going fishing and having a picnic down by the river,” Ingeborg suggested. The men were eating in her kitchen today. She and Kaaren were switching off days so they could make strawberry jam and can some for sauce.