More Than a Dream (19 page)
‘‘Ah, thank you.’’ He’d read of sweaty hands but never before had the sensation been so overpowering. He half bowed, but that only brought him closer to her.
‘‘Ah, there you are, Thorliff.’’ Phillip to the rescue. ‘‘I see you’ve met both the Kingsleys.’’ He nodded and smiled, at the same time easing Thorliff closer to a group of men, some of whom were also wearing less formal attire.
‘‘Are you all right?’’ Phillip asked as they finally turned and sauntered toward the group.
‘‘I . . . ah, of course. Why?’’ Thorliff wanted to loosen his necktie, but he refrained under the strictest self-discipline.
‘‘Annabelle sent me to retrieve you, saying she thought you needed help.’’
Thank you, Lord. Whatever you tell me to do for Mrs. Rogers to
return this favor, I shall do with my utmost ability
. ‘‘I will thank her myself. And you, sir, for listening.’’
‘‘Are you sure you are all right?’’
‘‘I am now. Who was it you wanted me to meet?’’
Thorliff spent the rest of the evening visiting with those people his employer thought necessary and with others who stopped to tell him how much they enjoyed
The Switchmen
and the articles he had written for the newspaper.
‘‘When you chose my daughter to win in the under-twelve-year-old category, you changed her life,’’ said one of the women. ‘‘Now she is absolutely certain she wants to become a writer, and her grades have gone up accordingly. I no longer have to remind her to do her homework.’’
‘‘Thank you, ma’am. She wrote a very good story. I’m glad it has been a help for her.’’ While he smiled and nodded when he should, his mind went leaping off on another tangent.
What if. . . ?
Blessing, North Dakota
‘‘There must have been a lot of celebrating last year after harvest.’’
‘‘What do you mean?’’ Ingeborg rolled on her side to look into her husband’s moonlit face.
‘‘Well, the rash of babies you’ve been birthing of late.’’ Haakan ran a calloused finger down the bridge of her nose.
‘‘There is nothing more satisfying on this earth than helping a baby into this world.’’ Ingeborg smiled at the memory of the night before when she’d ushered a baby boy into his waiting family. Firstborn and a son. The father and mother were both pleased beyond measure.
‘‘The
most
satisfying?’’
Ingeborg elbowed Haakan in the ribs. ‘‘You know what I mean.’’
His chuckle banished any shadows in the corners.
Some time later when she was finally on the verge of sleep, Ingeborg thought back to the boy, Robbie, who’d had the head injury and was still alive. She sighed. Tomorrow she would take a loaf of bread over to Mrs. Nordstrum and find out how they were doing.
Ingeborg rolled on her side, laying aside even the sheet. Sometimes she thought of sleeping in the cellar or the cheese house where it was cooler, but Haakan’s gentle snores usually lulled her to sleep.
The next morning Astrid came running out to the garden. ‘‘Mor, can—’’ She caught the lift of her mother’s eyebrows and started over. ‘‘May I go play with Sophie and Grace? Please? We need to go wading in the river.’’
‘‘Need to?’’ Again the eyebrows lifted, this time accompanied by a smile.
Astrid nodded. ‘‘I heard a bullfrog croaking, and we haven’t been to the river in forever.’’
‘‘What are the boys doing?’’ Ingeborg pulled a carrot from the rich soil and, wiping it off on her apron, took the first sweet bite. She held it out and Astrid ate the rest. ‘‘I meant only to share it, not for you to take it all.’’
Astrid bent over and did the same, offering her mother the larger end. They both tucked the carrot tops back in under the fluffy row to return to the soil as they decomposed.
‘‘Well?’’ Astrid said.
‘‘If it is okay with Tante Kaaren, it is with me. Why don’t you ask Ilse to go with you? She never has time to play anymore.’’
‘‘All Ilse thinks about is the deaf school and Mr. McBride.’’ Astrid tilted her head. ‘‘Are they getting married soon?’’
‘‘Why?’’
‘‘Because I saw them kissing out behind the barn.’’
‘‘Oh. You weren’t spying, were you?’’
‘‘Mor!’’ Astrid snapped off one of the last of the pea pods and squeezed it so the peas lay against the heavier seam, lined up like a treasure boat. ‘‘Besides, the boys went fishing.’’
‘‘I think you better play closer to the house,’’ Ingeborg said, knowing the boys’ penchant for skinny-dipping after they fished. She rocked back on her heels, her knees on an old gunnysack she kept on a post by the garden for just that purpose. Weeding with the sun on her back and knees to bare toes in the earth always made her feel close to God, closer than church even. No doubt that was why God met his first two human creations in the garden. ‘‘Why don’t you three go to Tante Penny’s and offer to play with Gus and Linnea for a while. I’ll give you each a penny for candy. You may take them out of the tin on your way.’’
‘‘Really?’’ Forgetting the ‘‘need’’ to go to the river, Astrid leaped over the rows of carrots, beans, and potatoes. The corn was a little too high to leap so she ran through and around it. Her laughter floated back, sweet as a house wren’s song.
After weeding the two rows of carrots, Ingeborg rose and dug her fists into her back right at her waist. Ever since the rain the garden had grown inches overnight, as had the weeds. While Andrew had hoed between the rows, one still had to pull the weeds up close to the plants or lose some in the process. She stooped to check the beans, but while covered with blossoms, they weren’t ready yet for picking.
She dusted off her hands, picked the dirt out from under her closely cut fingernails, and entered the springhouse to cut a hunk off the wheel of cheese she kept there. That plus the bread sitting on the counter would go in the basket for Mrs. Nordstrum. She had put off the visit until after dinner, but now with everyone off busy on their own, she would hitch up the buggy and go on.
A few minutes later she trotted the horse out the lane, waving at Haakan, who was cutting hay now that the grass had finally dried out enough. The rain had lasted for three days.
She stopped when closer to call to him. ‘‘I’m going to visit Mrs. Nordstrum. I won’t be long.’’
He waved to show he’d heard and slapped the reins on the team’s rumps again.
‘‘What a good man you are, letting the boys go fishing before haying really starts,’’ she said aloud even knowing Haakan couldn’t hear her compliment. But the horse flicked his ears as he trotted along, listening to her and keeping track of everything going on around him. ‘‘You know, I’d much rather be riding you than driving you.’’ She thought of how long it had been since she’d gone riding for pleasure or enjoyed the thrill of hunting for their food. Years, would it be?
‘‘Lord, how life has changed these last years. Everywhere we look, there are men working the fields. There are houses, barns, and fences. And it’s only been fifteen years since we left Norway.
Counting our blessings takes plenty of time, that’s for sure.’’ She thought to her Bible reading that morning, how God’s thoughts for his people are more numerous than the sands on a seashore. Not that she’d seen many sandy beaches along the sea. The Norway coast she’d seen was mostly rocks, but she’d seen sand along the river, and she was fairly certain God would count that too. ‘‘I will sing praises, O Lord, most high. I will glorify your name.’’ She turned north on the road the men had scraped and widened beyond track width and passed the Solberg place, wishing she were going there instead. She hadn’t had a good visit with Mary Martha in a long time. Good thing there was church on Sunday, not only for worship but for a chance to see her friends.
Ingeborg wheeled the buggy into the Nordstrums’ yard, stopped the horse by the hitching post, and stepped down, but there was still no sign of life. Perhaps the Nordstrums had gone somewhere. She snapped a rope to the horse’s bridle and tied him to the post, took her basket from the buggy, and walked up to the porch. ‘‘Anyone home?’’ She shaded her eyes with her hand to see if Mr. Nordstrum was out in the fields and finally saw him off to the north. Or at least the figure riding the mower behind the horse seemed near enough it might be him. She took the steps to the front door and knocked. Then knocked again. Thinking to leave her gifts on the table, she opened the door and went in.
Dishes still sat on the table, and a boiler of diapers simmered on the back of the stove.
‘‘Mrs. Nordstrum? Betty?’’ Ingeborg checked the lean-to, which she found was divided into two bedrooms by a flimsy wall with a passage between the two next to the house wall. There was no one in either room, but the dirt smell of a soddy reminded Ingeborg of their early years when the two Bjorklund families lived in one main room.
She returned to the big room and continued back out the door. No one was in the garden, weed choked now since the rain. ‘‘Mrs. Nordstrum!’’ Ingeborg cupped her hands around her mouth to help the sound travel further.
‘‘Here.’’
She followed the sound to the granary, where Betty Nordstrum sat on a pile of gunnysacks, her baby asleep in her arms, her daughter sound asleep on other gunnysacks, and Robbie curled in the corner, eyes closed and thumb in his mouth as if he too were three instead of eight.
‘‘Are you all right?’’ Ingeborg kept her voice low to let the children sleep.
‘‘It’s Robbie. Sometimes he gets such terrible fits, and this is the only place that seems to comfort him.’’ Betty Nordstrum raised eyes that looked like she’d not slept since they left the icehouse. ‘‘I can’t leave him alone or he screams. Only sleeps a little at a time. So sometimes we come out here where he used to like playing in the oats. You saw the house?’’ At Ingeborg’s nod, she shook her head. ‘‘Can’t get nothing done.’’ Her sigh bled despair. ‘‘He’s like a baby again, needing diapers and all. But he won’t let me put them on him. Such a mess.’’
Ingeborg nodded again. ‘‘Well, I come to help, so I will do just that. I’ll start with getting those diapers on the line, and what do you want washed next?’’
‘‘I can’t have you doing that.’’
‘‘You have no choice. That’s what we do here in Blessing, help each other out. Now you stay right here, and perhaps you can take a rest along with your children.’’
Before long Ingeborg had diapers and sheets on the line, children’s clothes soaking, and the kitchen cleaned back up. How she wished she had brought Astrid along. She was needed more here than at Tante Penny’s.
I should have come sooner,
Ingeborg scolded herself.
I had no
idea things were this bad. What can we do to help that boy? What
did she mean by fits?
Thoughts continued to plague her as she found salt pork in the well house and sliced it to fry for supper. She stirred up biscuits to go along with the meat and set potato water and flour to rising for bread the next day.
She heard them coming long before they got to the house, Robbie’s plaintive cry tugging at her heart.
Lord, what do I do?
Mrs. Nordstrum laid the baby in a wooden frame with a quilt on the floor. ‘‘Mister built that so when he’s older he can’t crawl out the door.’’ The three-year-old clung to her skirt, and Robbie, holding his head with both hands, sat rocking against the wall.
‘‘Do you have any laudanum?’’ When Mrs. Nordstrum shook her head, Ingeborg nodded. ‘‘I do. Let’s give him a bit, enough to make him relax, and if it is pain in his head that is causing all this, that will help.’’ Dropping a couple of glugs in a cup, she added water and handed it to Betty. ‘‘Do you have any honey or sugar? Good. Add some of that so it is more palatable.’’
While Betty followed the instructions, Ingeborg swung the little girl up in her arms and stood rocking her, shifting her weight from one foot to another, all the while crooning the comforting singsong that girls learn at their mother’s side as they care for younger children. By the time they are mothers, the rocking and the songs come naturally.
While Robbie made a face, he drank the cup dry and resumed his rocking.
By the time Ingeborg and Betty took another basket of clothes to the line, the diapers were dry and ready for folding. While they pinned the pants and shirts on the rope, Ingeborg asked Betty to describe Robbie’s fits.
‘‘Well, he screams and then falls down, twitching and jerking, sometimes flailing his arms and legs, then he wets himself and falls into a stupor. I’m afraid he’s going to burn himself on the hot stove or fall and bang his head again.’’ She bowed her head, then raised tear-filled eyes. ‘‘You think this is from that clout on the head?’’
‘‘Ja, I am sure of it. We’ll have to pray that God takes this away too. He kept Robbie alive for a reason. That we know.’’
‘‘Sometimes I ain’t so sure. It’s like the stories in the Bible about demons and such. Ingeborg, I am so scared. What if Robbie is like this for the rest of his life?’’
Ingeborg put the last carved wooden clothespin in place and picked up the empty basket. ‘‘The Lord says to take one day at a time, and that’s what we will have to do.’’
They entered the soddy to find Robbie curled up on his bed fast asleep, the other two playing in the pen, the baby slobbering on his bare toes and May poking at him to make him smile.