Dakota Dream (11 page)

When they entered the church, the heavenly chorus from outside seemed to follow them in. Clara found herself sitting between Dag and Will, right behind Nora and her family. Ingeborg turned from her place in the front pew and wiggled her fingers. The old familiar hymns soared to meet the stars and the reading of the Christmas story settled into every heart.

When Dag shifted on the words, “Peace among men with whom He is pleased,” Clara slipped her hand into his. He stilled immediately. Wasn’t that what friends were for, to help each other out?

She could feel him looking at her. She stared straight ahead, concentrating on the sermon.

As they stood for the final hymn, their hands touched, holding the hymnbook. When she allowed her glance to travel up to his face, he stared back—and smiled.

Silence fell after Reverend Moen pronounced the benediction. A silence deep and full with the promise of Christmas. As they turned to leave when the organ swelled in triumphant joy, Dr. Harmon made his way to Clara’s side.

“Clara, I hate to ask this, but I have a sick family with no one to help. Could you come?”

“But my family.”

“I know and this is your first Christmas in this land, but I’m afraid if I don’t have help, the Ahmundsons won’t see another Christmas.”

“I could go,” Mrs. Hanson volunteered.

“Thank you, but someone younger and stronger could help me more. Besides, Clara seems to have that healing touch.”

“I will go.” Dag’s strong voice came from beside and above her.

“Thank you, Dag. I can use you both.”

“We will save the presents until you come back.” Mrs. Norgaard patted Clara’s arm.

“And the dinner.” Mrs. Hanson nodded her head, setting the rose on her hat to bobbing.

Everyone seemed to be making the decision for her. Clara felt trapped. She looked back at the altar, the golden cross shimmered in the candlelight. He, too, was telling her to go.

Clara turned to the doctor. “I am ready.” She reached across the pew and hugged Nora and the children.

Carl shook her hand. “We will come for you when you have finished. Then we will all celebrate our Christmas.”

“Go ahead like we had decided,” Clara whispered to Mrs. Hanson. “I just won’t be there to hear its first song.”

They dropped off the other passengers and followed Dr. Harmon and his cutter out of town. Only the jingle of bells and harness and the snorting of the horses broke the stillness of the midnight air.

The stench of illness smote them in the face when they opened the door to the farmhouse. They found the mother collapsed on the floor beside the cradle of her dead infant.

Dag fired up the stove as soon as they had the woman in bed beside her delirious husband and soon had warm water so Clara could bathe the sweating bodies.

“Give them as much water as you can get them to drink and keep sponging their bodies to break the fever.” Doc glanced at the cradle. I’ll take care of that one later, when we have time. I brought onions to make a poultice, see if we can’t help them to breathe easier. Soon’s the stuff’s cut up and steamed, we can apply it. Mr. Ahmundson needs it the most.”

Clara listened with one ear while she moved from bed to bed checking on the five children. Only one was cool to the touch and sleeping normally. “Let’s move this one to a bed by himself,” she suggested. “He’s either had a light case or not sick yet.”

Dag tenderly lifted each of the children while Clara changed the filthy beds and bathed the dehydrated bodies. When the littlest girl cried out and thrashed around in her agony, Dag crooned a little song that reached her fevered brain and let her relax. Working together, Dag and Clara were able to accomplish their tasks much more quickly.

The three of them worked through the night and the next day, taking turns sponging hot bodies, forcing water between parched lips, and collapsing on the spare bed when there was a moment. One by one, the children cooled, slept, and awoke. Only the parents suffered on.

Dag took time the next day to check on the livery, while Dr. Harmon looked in on other patients. Clara dragged herself around, caring for the children and keeping the parents as comfortable as possible. At three the next morning, the father passed the crisis and slipped into an easy healing sleep.

“Thank You, Father.” Clara dropped down by the bed, resting her head on her hands. “Please” and “Thank You” had been her litanies for the last few days.

Dag returned in the morning with a kettle of soup, another of chicken broth, and clean sheets for the beds. He sent Clara to bed and took over the care again. When Clara awoke in the afternoon, the mother was tossing from side to side, mumbling and calling for her baby. Mr. Ahmundson slept in a chair by the fire, a towheaded three-year-old asleep on his lap.

“Thank you, miss,” he muttered, clutching her hand. “You’re an angel for sure, come to save my family. Thank God for ye.”

Clara patted his hand and headed back to her post beside the mother.

“She seems quieter when you are here with her.” Dag stood to let her have the chair. “Doc said he would be back later tonight. He thinks the crisis will come soon.”

Clara could hear Dag in the other room, setting out bowls of hot soup for those well enough to come to the table and feeding those who couldn’t. Neighbors had come in to do the chores, she heard him tell Mr. Ahmundson. Clara continued dripping spoonfuls of water between the mother’s lips and sponging her heat-ravaged body.

“You go get some sleep,” the doctor said when he returned late in the evening. “I’ll watch with her now.”

Clara shook her head. “I can’t.” She nodded to where the frail woman clutched her hand. “She needs me.”

The candle flickered and died and Doc went into the other room to find another. Clara could feel death hovering in the corner. Prickles chased each other up and down the back of her neck, making her afraid to look in case she should see his face.

“No!” She gritted her teeth. “Father, hear us. Her children need her. Please, come with Your Spirit and breathe life into her body.”

The woman’s breath grew fainter. The exhalations farther apart.

Clara breathed for her, with her. With each intake she whispered, “Live,” and with each sigh, she called on the name of the Father.

Mr. Ahmundson stirred from the chair on the other side of the bed where he had drifted off. Tears ran down his sunken cheeks as he took her other hand and pleaded, “Don’t leave us, my Inge. Please come back, we need you so.”

“Come on, you must fight to live.” Clara wanted to jump to her feet and pound her fists on the wall. Instead, she smoothed the cool cloth over Inge’s forehead again and down the sides of her face.

“You must let her go,” the doctor said softly.

Clara shook her head. She laid her face down on the woman’s hand and let the tears bathe the dry skin. “Go with God, Inge.” The woman’s hand twitched in hers. Clara could hear a breath, a shuddery breath, and a long pause.

Inge breathed again and then again. Her breathing steadied and a slight smile touched the corners of her mouth.

“She’s sleeping. Thank the good Lord, He brought her back.” Dr. Harmon gripped Mrs. Ahmundson’s shoulder. “She’s turned the crisis.”

Clara sank down on her knees beside the bed. This time tears of joy helped cool the hand she held. “Thank You, Father, thank You,” she repeated over and over. When she looked in the corner, all she saw was a dress hanging on a hook.

The first thing Clara heard when she returned home a couple of days later was the trill of a canary. She followed the song to the sitting room, where Mrs. Norgaard sat in the window reading her letters. Mrs. Hanson occupied another chair, her knitting basket at her feet and turning the heel on a gray wool stocking.

“Child, you’re back.” Mrs. Norgaard rose to her feet so swiftly, her letters scattered across the floor. “Come, sit down. Mrs. Hanson, the coffee. Are you all right?” Her words ran over each other in her haste.

“Oh, isn’t he beautiful?” Clara stopped in front of the cage where the small gold bird with a patch of black on his wing eyed her from a beady eye. She continued over to be enveloped in a hug that left no doubt of her welcome. “And yes, I am fine. Just tired.”

“Have you eaten?” Mrs. Hanson joined them, alternating between patting Clara’s shoulder and removing her coat and hat.

“Thank you, my dear, for my songster. He woke us on Christmas morning with a trill of joy. Our Savior is born and even the birds rejoice.” Mrs. Norgaard leaned toward the cage and made chirping noises. The little bird cocked his head and responded in kind. “I think he would talk if he could.”

Mrs. Hanson appeared with a coffee tray and set it on the glass-topped coffee table. “The soup’s warming and after you get something filling in you, you’re going up for a wash and bed. You look like you haven’t slept for a month of Sundays.” Mrs. Hanson bustled them both over to the couch and had coffee cups in their hands almost by magic.

“Dag told us how you cared for the Ahmundsons. Dr. Harmon says that without you, he’d have lost half the family.”

“I saw death hovering in the corner, black and ugly.” Clara shuddered in remembrance. “But God’s love drove him back. I don’t know, I’ve heard stories like this but—” She paused. “Inge says she heard us calling her, so she came back. It was so hard to tell her the baby had died. You can’t imagine how those poor people lived. Your soup made all the difference.” She patted Mrs. Hanson’s plump hand after accepting a steaming bowlful herself.

“It was them grasshoppers that did it for the farmers. They ate everything showing above the ground. Vile things.” Mrs. Hanson shook her head, her tongue clicking in time.

“What can be done for them?”

“You just get some rest and leave that to us,” Mrs. Norgaard said firmly.

Clara slept for two days, only rising for the necessary bodily functions. When she made her way downstairs after dressing after a bath in the hip tub, she heard voices in the sitting room. Following the trail of both masculine and feminine voices, she found all the chairs occupied. When she smiled at the folks gathered, she realized all the leaders of the town were gathered.

“Times are hard all over,” the postmaster was saying, “but like you said, Mrs. Norgaard, we got to take care of our own. I got me a deer last week, I can put in that. And a sack of flour. Martha says we got extra spuds, too. Some reason those thievin’ hoppers missed our place.”

Clara felt tears sting behind her eyelids as everyone around the room listed what they could share.

“We’ll deliver things on Saturday, then.” Dag looked to Reverend Moen for confirmation. “From the church. You and Doc know who needs supplies the worst?”

Reverend Moen nodded. “The ladies’ll get together and break the sacks down into smaller pieces so’s there’s some for everyone.”

“We’ll take the coal out Friday. You say we have three tons, right?”

“So far.” Reverend Moen consulted a list he held in his hand. “We can always use more of everything, so pass the word along. As Christ said, ‘Whatever you do for the least of these my brethren, ye do it onto Me.’”

Clara thought to the account at the bank where she had been saving her earnings. It would pay for bags of beans or whatever they needed the most. Were Nora and Carl some of those in need? Wouldn’t her sister have said something if they were going hungry?

When she mentioned her concerns later to Mrs. Norgaard, the older woman shook her head. “No, Carl wasn’t wiped out like others of the farmers, even though he was stripped.”

“How do you know?”

“I own the bank, remember?”

“Oh.” Clara chewed on the tip of her finger. “I guess I knew Mr. Norgaard owned the bank, but when he died, I . . .”

“Who else could he leave it to? We have no children and his brother died before he did. I have a good manager and now that I am feeling back to par, I will be more involved.” Mrs. Norgaard leaned forward on her cane. “But let me tell you, the men of the town aren’t too happy about having a woman at the helm of the bank.” They chuckled together.

The belated Christmas celebration was more than Clara ever dreamed possible. The Detschmans sleighed into town and the Moens walked over after church. Dag and Will joined the group and Mrs. Norgaard’s wish of children laughing in her house came true.

There were presents for everyone. Toys for the children along with dresses for the girls and pants and shirts for the boys.

“How did she get the right sizes?” Ingeborg asked Clara during the middle of the melee.

“I’ll never tell.” Clara smiled at her friend.

Ingeborg stroked the heather gray, fine wool shawl she’d found in a package with her name. “I’ve never had anything so grand.”

“You had something to do with all this,” Nora said, after snagging Peder back from pulling himself up on the Christmas tree.

Clara just smiled. Never had she shopped and spent money like those last few weeks before Christmas. Since Mrs. Norgaard couldn’t manage the streets yet, everything not ordered from a catalog had come home under the steam of either Clara or Mrs. Hanson.

“Thank you, Auntie Clara,” Kaaren whispered, leaning against her aunt’s knees. “You made my doll good. I call her Clara.”

The lump that was never far away took up residence in Clara’s throat again. She watched Dag’s eyes open wide when Mary Moen handed him another package. When he read the tag, he looked over at Clara, his face inscrutable.

She watched him finger the muffler she had knitted out of wool to match his eyes. Those eyes had an uncharacteristic shine when he looked at her again.

There was one red-wrapped package left. Mary brought it over to Clara. Slowly she opened the box. Inside she found a white leather-bound Bible. When she opened it, the words were all in English. The front fly read, “From your friend, Dag.” She raised her gaze to meet his. The shine matched in both pairs of eyes.

By the time everyone had devoured the feast the women had prepared and gathered their presents, dusk crept over the land.

“We must be going,” Carl said, rounding up his brood. “Thank you for the wonderful party and all the presents. We will never forget your goodness.” He shook Mrs. Norgaard’s hand and put the other around the shoulder of his wife. “Who could know when we waved good-bye to Clara what wonderful things would come of it.”

Nora hugged her sister. Clara felt like she’d had a piece of home as they embraced. “I’ll try to come out more often,” Clara whispered in Nora’s ear. “I have so much to tell you.”

“And the man in the picture?”

Clara shrugged. “Who knows?”
And who cares?
she thought.

The winter months passed quickly with evening classes both at church and at the house. Clara was called to help sick families several times and, each time, she prayed for those ill as much as she cared for their physical needs. Each time she was gone, she looked forward to telling Dag about her experiences upon her return.

One night after she returned from a week of caring for a woman with a newborn, she entered the house to find Dag in his usual seat at the dining room table, splitting his concentration between the book he studied and the page of sums he worked over. Mrs. Norgaard, hand on Will’s shoulder, was explaining something to him, and he with his usual grin was making her laugh.