More Than a Dream (13 page)
‘‘You can count on my never giving you a chance to find out. And you can quit sweet-talking me now.’’ Cook’s voice had the bite of lemon juice, but the quaver sneaked past her crust and bubbled over like filling from an apple pie in the oven. She turned and gave Elizabeth a quick squeeze.
‘‘I washed and ironed those dresses you took with you last year. Uff da, you have nicer clothes than those. You better not let your mother see what you are packing.’’
‘‘I am taking another trunk of city clothes for when she comes. There is no sense ruining my frocks with blood and spills that happen in spite of the white aprons we wear. Dr. Morganstein wears only dark skirts and white waists, all covered with the ubiquitous aprons. I thought of wearing just the apron over my chemise but . . .’’ She stopped at the gasp that she’d hoped to evoke. She patted Cook’s shoulder. ‘‘I just thought about it, that’s all.’’ She left the room, whistling, secure in the knowledge she’d taken Cook’s mind off the coming departure.
‘‘Whistling girls and crowing hens . . .’’ followed her across the music room.
‘‘Always come to some bad ends,’’ she sent back.
‘‘It won’t be long until you come for me and we go shopping,’’ Elizabeth said to comfort her mother the next day at the train station. ‘‘You know how fast the summer went last year.’’
‘‘I know.’’ Annabelle wiped her nose with a square of calico. ‘‘You will write . . . at least once a week?’’
‘‘Or perhaps I shall call on the telephone.’’
Annabelle shook her head. ‘‘What is this younger generation coming to?’’
‘‘They’re getting ready for the twentieth century, my dear.’’ Phillip patted his wife’s hand, tucked securely within the crook of his arm.
‘‘All aboard!’’
Elizabeth hugged her mother and father and accepted the conductor’s hand to assist her up the stairs. She waved and made her way to the first empty seats that faced each other. She’d just settled down by the window and waved again at her parents when the train lurched forward, wheels squealing and steam billowing past.
If only I’d heard from the medical school in Minneapolis,
she thought.
I guess I must just gird up my loins as the Scripture says
and resign myself to Pennsylvania. I’m sorry, Father, that I’m not more
appreciative of your answer. I guess I want things my way again.
Please forgive me and help me do my best at the hospital
. She leaned her head against the seat and watched the farmland fly by the window as the train picked up speed.
Stop whining, you goose.
After all, what can go wrong under Dr. Morganstein’s tutelage?
Blessing, North Dakota
July 1895
Rain veils drifted across the plains.
‘‘Please, Lord, let it rain right here on us.’’ Ingeborg and Astrid stood at the edge of the garden watching the dancing gauze, the darkening sky, and listening for the thunder, yet so faint as to seem only a murmur, a figment of the imaginative ear.
June had received only one visit from the life-giving rain, and now the land, baked under a brassy July sky, panted for the water that tantalized and then blew over.
The breeze that fluttered the sheer curtains hanging from the sky kissed their faces with cool lips and lifted hair pasted in curls on their foreheads and necks. Ingeborg opened her mouth to taste the breeze.
Lightning forked the western sky. Purple shadows leaked sunshine in shimmering spears of gold, then snapped the trapdoor shut as black triumphed over royal purple.
‘‘It’s coming closer.’’ Astrid glanced up at her mother. ‘‘We could run to meet it.’’
‘‘Where’s your father?’’
Astrid shrugged. ‘‘Over at Onkel Lars’s I think.’’ She listened for the banging of metal on metal. The men were back at their eternal job of keeping the machinery running and were now getting it ready for the harvest.
The wind blew cooler.
Please, Lord, no hail. We look to have a good crop this year. Please
let us harvest it
. Ingeborg sniffed again. Nothing smelled fresher than rain. Even the trees seemed to be raising their branches in supplication.
They heard it before the drops splattered the dust, drumming on the hard-packed earth, the shingles of the barn, and finally their faces.
Astrid stuck out her tongue, tasting the wetness, then arms in the air, she twirled and dipped, her hair plastered to her head and rivulets coursing down her face. ‘‘Come on, Mor, dance with me.’’ She grabbed her mother’s hands, and they danced to the music of the rain.
Giggles vied with chuckles; laughter broke free not to be stifled by the thunder that crashed directly overhead. Instead of running for the house, the two faced each other and raised their joined hands to the heavens in praise of the downpour.
A bark behind them brought Astrid running to the porch steps. ‘‘Oh, you poor baby, come play in the puddles.’’ She scooped the puppy up in her arms and, spinning around, found puddles for stomping. Barney licked the raindrops from her neck, making her giggle again. She swung him in her arms, cradle style, until he leaped to the ground and landed in a puddle with a
woof,
his pudgy body immediately a ball of dripping mud.
The rain continued to pelt the ground and form puddles in the ruts and hollows as the thunder and lightning drifted eastward, over the river and beyond.
‘‘Mor, let’s wash our hair.’’
‘‘Better hurry, or it might be gone.’’
Astrid flew into the house for the rose-petal soap she’d received for her birthday and, grabbing towels, left them on the porch to keep dry. The two of them rubbed the soap into their drenched hair, and after Ingeborg scrubbed and sculpted Astrid’s, the girl did the same for her mother. Wearing foam-formed turbans, they dipped water out of the already full rain barrel under the downspout at the house and rinsed each other soap free.
Standing on the porch, their heads wrapped in towels, they watched the rain continue to soak into the thirsty ground.
‘‘I can hear the trees sighing in delight.’’
‘‘And the garden,’’ Ingeborg answered. She slid an arm around her daughter’s shoulders and hugged her close, both of them shivering now in the breeze tugging at their wet clothes.
‘‘We better get dried off.’’
‘‘I don’t want to miss a minute of it.’’ Astrid leaned her head against her mother’s upper arm. ‘‘You think it will ruin the hay?’’
‘‘Not if the wind doesn’t knock it down. So far we can rejoice in the gentleness of it. Such a gift, a perfect rain.’’
Astrid shivered again, so hard that her teeth clicked together.
‘‘You’re cold.’’
‘‘I know, and it feels so good.’’ She turned her head to look up to her mother. ‘‘You think Thorliff gets to play in the rain anymore?’’
‘‘I don’t know.’’ Ingeborg wrapped her other arm around her daughter. ‘‘But I’m sure grateful we got to.’’
‘‘Me too.’’
‘‘Oh, the windows!’’ Ingeborg spun around, and they both headed for the west windows to slam them shut. They spent the next half hour mopping up rainwater from the floor and laughing all the while.
The rain continued through the night until the rooster’s crow chased it away.
While she stretched her arms over her head and pushed her toes toward the bed’s foot, Ingeborg inhaled the rain-washed air blowing in their bedroom window.
Haakan propped himself up on one elbow, the better to see out the window. ‘‘Guess we won’t be cutting hay today.’’
‘‘I guess not.’’
‘‘Ah, well. It wasn’t quite ready anyway.’’ He lifted the long braid she wore at night and sniffed. ‘‘Your hair smells good.’’
‘‘Washed in rainwater.’’ Shivers tickled her middle.
He trailed a finger down her nose and rested it on her lower lip, moved it to her chin, and kissed her. ‘‘You smell good.’’
Some time passed before he called to Andrew to come get started with the morning chores. After they went out the door, Ingeborg found herself humming as she rattled the grate to reveal the remaining embers. A good rain made everyone happy.
Galloping hooves pounded up to the house. The sound set the hairs on the back of her neck upright, a frisson that made her head for the door.
‘‘Mrs. Bjorklund, come quick.’’ The call, accompanied by a fist thundering on the screen door, made her hurry.
‘‘What is it? Oh, Mr. Nordstrum, how can I help you?’’
‘‘It’s my boy. A cow kicked him, and he banged his head on the wall. There’s blood coming from his ears.’’
‘‘Go to the barn and ask Andrew to hitch up the buggy. I’ll get my things together.’’ Ingeborg spun around to see Astrid entering the kitchen and reaching for an apron from behind the stove.
‘‘I’ll take care of breakfast, Mor. You go.’’
Ingeborg snatched her medical basket from its place in the closet and swiftly checked to see all was in place.
A head injury.
Oh, Lord, whatever can I do? Ice. Would ice help? Do I need Metiz?
Lord, please give me wisdom and lay your healing hand upon this
child
.
While she waited for Andrew to back the horse between the shafts, she recalled seeing Robbie Nordstrum playing with Trygve after church last Sunday. The two looked enough alike to be brothers and thought of enough mischief to make up for three families.
‘‘You want anything else, Mor?’’ Andrew snapped the last trace in place.
‘‘I’m thinking ice could help. Do we have any left in the icehouse?’’
‘‘Some. Pa was saving it for the Fourth of July celebration.’’
‘‘Better to save this boy’s life. Bring some as soon as you can.’’
Ingeborg climbed up on the buggy and flapped the reins. ‘‘Get up, boy.’’
Water splashed out of the ruts as they trotted out the drive, the wheels throwing up mud behind them. What rain hadn’t soaked into the thirsty ground had turned the upper layer of soil to the slippery gumbo that clogged wheels and weighted down horses’ hooves. The sky sat upon the earth, creating fog pockets in the hollows and turning the world gray. A thin line of gold in the east promised that the sun had not forgotten to rise but at the moment was bowing to the hovering clouds for dominion.
The rich smell of rain-soaked earth lent life to the breeze, with the dust washed from air and plants. Ingeborg exhaled worry about the injured boy, leaving him in God’s gracious hands, and inhaled renewed rejoicing for the life-giving rain.
The horse’s flared nostrils and heaving sides told of the weight of hooves and buggy by the time she stopped him in the farmer’s yard.
‘‘Here.’’ Mrs. Nordstrum flapped her apron as she called from the back door of the soddy that had yet to be replaced by a frame house. The couple had moved to Blessing the summer before and, like those before them, had built the barn first. They’d bought the farm from a family who had given up and moved back East like others who’d been chased away by the drought.
Ingeborg stepped down from the buggy, taking care to walk on grass so that she would not slip in the mud. Even so, she slid once, catching her balance by a bit of arm waving, her basket cover flapping in the motion.
She scraped the bottoms and sides of her shoes on the steel plate embedded upright between two blocks of wood and entered the soddy.