Dakota December and Dakota Destiny (20 page)

Letters came weekly from Kenneth Oien, and Mary grew to look forward to them. While she had yet to go home to visit, his letters were like a window into the life of Soldahl. He wrote of the antics of Joey and Jenny and their new friend, Mews, a half-grown cat that had shown up on their doorstep one day. He described the changing of the colors with the frost and the geese flying south. He said they all missed her and looked forward to her coming home.

There’s a poet hiding in that man’s soul,
Mary thought as she read the latest letter.
But can I ever think of him as more than a friend?

When the phone rang one evening and Mrs. Williamson called up the stairs to say it was for her, Mary felt her heart leap into her throat. Was something wrong at home? Was Daniel sick again?

“Hello?” She knew she sounded breathless, only because she was.

“Mary, this is Kenneth.”

“Kenneth? Oh, Mr. Oien . . . uh, Kenneth.” She felt like an idiot. Surely they could be on a first-name basis by now, in fact should have been a long time ago.

“I wondered if I could come and get you on Friday afternoon, if you would like to come home, that is. I would take you back on Sunday, after church. I . . . ah, that is—”

Mary took pity on his stammering. “I would love that. Thank you for the invitation.”

“Would you like me to come to the school?”

“No, I’ll meet you here at Mrs. Williamson’s.” She gave him the directions and hung up the receiver. She’d heard a click on the party line. Now everyone around would know the new teacher had a beau. Whether he was or not did not matter.

“I think of you a lot,” Kenneth said when he stopped the automobile in front of the parsonage that Friday night. Dark had fallen before they reached Soldahl, and traveling the rough roads by lamplight had made them drive even more slowly.

What could she say? “I enjoy reading your letters. And thank you for the ride home. Will you be coming to dinner on Sunday?”

“Yes.” He smiled at her in the dimness. “And we have been invited to supper on Saturday at the mansion. That is, if you would like to go.”

“Why, of course.” Mary fumbled for her purse. “Thank you again for the ride.”

He got out and came around to open her door, leaving the motor running. “Till tomorrow then.” He helped her out and carried her valise to the door. “Jenny and Joey hope you will come see them while you are in town.”

“Oh.” Mary wondered what had happened to her tongue. Suffering from a lack of words was a new experience for her.

Looking back, she couldn’t remember having a nicer time in a long while. While she was fully aware that all her friends and family were playing matchmakers, she couldn’t fault them for it. Kenneth Oien was a very nice man.

But a few weeks later, when he asked her to consider marriage, she shook her head.

“Please don’t pressure me,” she whispered. “I just cannot answer that yet.”

“Yet?” His eager voice came through the darkness. He’d just brought her back from another weekend at home. He touched her cheek with a gentle caress.

Mary held herself still. If that had been Will, the urge to throw herself in his arms would have made her shake. All she felt was a longing to feel more. What was the matter with her?

The world went crazy on Tuesday, November 11, 1918. Victory Day. The war to end all wars was over. School bells rang, radio announcers shouted, the people cheered. Some sobbed at the thought their sons might still make it home in one piece. Others cried for those who would never return.

Mary was one of the latter. While her head said, “Thank You, Father, for finally bringing peace,” her heart cried for the young man she had seen leave for war.

While the children were out on the playground after eating their lunches, she walked out beyond the coal shed and leaned against the building wall. Letting the tears come, she sobbed until she felt wrung out. When she could finally feel the cold wind biting her cheeks and tugging at her hair, she wiped her eyes and lifted her face to the sun that played hide-and-seek in the clouds.

“Will,” she whispered, “I loved you then and I love you now, but I guess it is about time I got on with my life. One more Christmas is all I will ask for, and then if God wants me to marry Kenneth Oien, I will follow His bidding.” She waited, almost hoping for an answer, but all she heard was the wind and it was too light to look for that star.

Kenneth and the children joined the Moens for Thanksgiving dinner after the church service. Pastor Moen had thanked God for bringing peace to a world torn asunder by war, and the congregation heartily agreed. Mary refused to let the tears come again. She sat in the front pew but didn’t dare look directly up at her father, for she knew the love in his eyes would be her undoing. Why was it always so hard to keep from crying in church?

Several of the boys, now turned men, had returned from the service already, making it easy for some families to give thanks. One even brought back a French wife, and if that didn’t start the gossips buzzing . . .

Mary felt sorry for the shy young woman. If only she could speak French to help her out.

They had stuffed goose for dinner, two given them by one of the hunters in the congregation. Ingeborg had been cooking for a week, or so the amount of food on the table testified. Afterward they played charades, and when the two little ones woke up from their naps, they played hide the thimble. Jenny ignored the game and came to sit on Mary’s lap, leaning her head back against Mary’s chest.

Mary looked up to catch a glance between her parents.
Please, don’t push me,
she wanted to cry. Cuddling Jenny was so easy. Would cuddling with her father be as simple?

“You know, Kenneth is a fine young man,” John said after the company had left.

“Yes, Father, I know you like him.” Mary bit off the colored thread she was using to embroider a rose on a handkerchief for Mrs. Williamson. Making Christmas presents had begun.

“He will make a fine husband,” Ingeborg said without looking up from her knitting.

“All right. I know how you feel and I know how he feels. All I want to know now is how God feels.”

“And what about you?” John kept his finger in his place in the book. “How do you feel?”

“Like I cannot make a decision yet.”

John nodded. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to go through Christmas first. I will make a decision after the first of the year. Then it will have been a year since we got the final word. But I know one thing for sure, no matter what my decision, I will finish my year at Valley School.”

John and Ingeborg both nodded. Daniel wandered back down the stairs, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “I heard you talking, and it made me hungry.”

Mary laughed as she rose to cut him another piece of pumpkin pie. “You should be as big as Knute with all that you eat.”

The weeks before Christmas passed in a blur of preparing a school program and party for the families around Pleasant Valley. They decorated a Christmas tree someone brought from Minnesota and hung chains made from colored paper around the room. But the music made Mary the most proud. The children sang like the angels had from on high, and during the performance even the most stoic fathers dabbed at their eyes more than once.

Mary left for home with her presents completed and bearing treasures given her by her students. Her favorite, if she were allowed to pick, was a card decorated with pressed wildflowers and lettered, “To my teechur.”

A snowstorm hung on the northern horizon, so she took the train, rather than allowing Dag or Kenneth to come for her. While it would take a lot of snow to stop the train, automobiles buried themselves in drifts with the ease of children finding a mud puddle.

Her father met her at the station with his horse and buggy. He took her valise and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Do you have anything more?”

“Father, at Christmas?” Her laugh pealed out. She pointed to two boxes tied up tightly with twine. “Those are mine. What happened to all the fancy automobiles?”

“Too much snow.” John loaded the boxes into the area behind the seat and helped her up. “I sure hope we don’t have a blizzard for Christmas.”

She told him about the school program on the way home, her arm tucked in his and a robe covering their knees. When her story finished, she said, “You know one good thing about horses?”

“No, what’s that?”

“You can talk and hear the other person answer.” She leaned closer to him. “Without shouting.”

“I know. Sometimes I think if the congregation offered me an automobile, I’d turn it down.” He slapped the reins, clucking the gray gelding into a trot. “General, here, and I, we’ve been through a lot together. An automobile won’t take me home if I fall asleep after a late call or listen to me practice my sermon. If he doesn’t like one, he shakes his head and snorts. Then I know I need to go back to the desk and keep writing.”

Big white flakes drifted before the wind, glistening and dancing in the streetlights. Two days until Christmas. This year they could truly say peace on earth and goodwill to men.

They spent the next two days baking
julekake
, the Norwegian Christmas bread,
sandbaklse
, and
krumkake
and frying
fatigman
and rosettes. The house smelled of nutmeg and cardamom, pine and cedar. No one was allowed to open a door without knocking or peek into closets or on shelves.

Ingeborg spent the late hours of Christmas Eve afternoon beating
rommegrote
, a rich pudding, until the melted butter from the cream rose to the surface. When anyone tried to sneak tastes, she batted them away with her wooden spoon. “If you want some, you’ll have to wait or make your own.” She’d been saying the same thing every year that Mary could remember.

When they finally trooped off on the walk to church, Mary stayed in the midst of her family. Kenneth finally sat in a pew a few behind them, a look of puzzlement on his face.

With Daniel glued to one side and Beth, her youngest sister, on the other, Mary put her arms around them and let them hold the hymnal. She didn’t need to see the words; she’d known the carols all her life. And for a change she could sit with her family since other people now played the piano and organ Mrs. Norgaard had donated two years earlier. The music swelled, and the congregation joined in. “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright.”

Two people stood to read the Christmas story. “And it came to pass in those days . . .”

Mary could say the words along with the readers. “And they laid the babe in the manger for there was no room for them in the inn.”

A hush fell as Reverend John stepped into the pulpit. He stood there, head bowed.

Mary heard a stir in the back but kept her eyes on her father. When he raised his head, he gasped. He looked to Mary and then to the back of the room.

The buzz grew with people shifting and murmuring.

Mary turned and looked over her shoulder.

The man coming up the center aisle walked as if he knew the way. Well he should. He’d helped lay the carpet.

He stopped at the end of the pew. “Hello, Mary. Merry Christmas.”

“Will.” She rose to her feet. Her gaze melted with his. Her heart stopped beating and then started again, triple-time. She shifted so there was room for him to sit beside her. Hands clamped as if they’d never let go, they raised their faces to the man standing openmouthed in the pulpit.

“Dearly beloved,” John’s voice broke. He blew his nose and tucked his handkerchief up the sleeve of his robe. “I’m sorry, folks, but never have those words been more true.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “We have been given a gift, as you all know. Welcome home, Will Dunfey.”

Mary heard no more of the sermon.
Will is alive! Thank You, God, thank You.
Over and over the words repeated in her mind. Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks, and while her chin quivered, she couldn’t quit smiling. Not that she wanted to.

When the benediction sounded, she rose to her feet along with the others. At the final amen, when the organ poured out its triumphal notes, she turned to Will and melted into his arms. Proper or no, the kiss they shared spoke of all their heartache and all their joy. Will Dunfey had come home.

“It was my destiny,” he said later after he’d shaken every hand and been clapped on the back a hundred times by all the congregation. He and Mary were sitting in the parlor at the parsonage with all the Moens, the Weinlanders, and Mrs. Norgaard. “I told Mary I would come home, and Dag taught me to always keep my word.”

A chuckle rippled through the room.

“Where were you?” Daniel held the place of honor at Will and Mary’s feet.

“In a prisoner-of-war camp. I lost my dog tags, and for a long time I didn’t know who I was. I’ve been trying to get home ever since the signing of the peace. Kept me in a hospital for a while, then told me I was dead.” He raised his left hand, leaving his right hand still holding firmly on to Mary’s. “I said I might have been, but I was alive now and my name was still Willard Dunfey.”

Mary laid her head on his shoulder. “Everyone insisted you were dead, but my heart didn’t believe it. I thought I was going crazy, so I asked God for a sign and a couple of days later, your dog tags arrived.”

“When that happened, we were sure they had buried you over there.” Mrs. Norgaard took a lace handkerchief from the edge of her sleeve and wiped her eyes again. “Must be something in the air.”

“Of course,” Dag managed to say with a straight face.

“They would have except for this.” Will took the Testament Mary had given him from his shirt pocket and held it up. A hole showed through the upper half.

“Good God,” John breathed.

“It slowed the bullet so it couldn’t penetrate my ribs. I bled like a stuck pig, but flesh wounds heal. So you see, Mary, you saved my life.”

“The Word of God is powerful in more ways than one.” Gudrun wiped her eyes again. “Pesky cold.”

Later when everyone else had gone home or gone to bed, Mary and Will put on their coats and stepped out on the porch. The storm had blown over, and the stars shone like crystals against the black sky. Will pointed to the end of the Dipper.

“You don’t need to look for me up there anymore because I am right here, and here I will stay. My love for you has only grown deeper, your face kept me from ever giving up, and,” he patted his chest, “I have a scar to remind me how close I came to losing you.”

Mary laid her hand over his. “And I you.”

When he kissed her this time, she could have sworn she heard someone laughing. Was it that man dancing on the last star in the handle of the Big Dipper? Or the angels rejoicing with them?