More Than a Dream (7 page)

‘‘I see. They’re at the house?’’

‘‘Ja.’’

‘‘All right then, Astrid, you go get Andrew to bring over some ice. That will help a lot. Needn’t be a big piece.’’ Andrew would chop off a chunk of ice they’d cut from the river during the winter and stored in the icehouse, well insulated by thick layers of sawdust.

‘‘I will.’’ Astrid set off at a dead run.

Ingeborg and Sophie hurried up the steps to the two-story house that had been added on to so that now it housed all the students of the deaf school along with the Knutson family. With most of the students gone home for the summer, the house seemed huge.

‘‘In here, Ingeborg.’’ Kaaren beckoned from the downstairs bedroom. ‘‘I didn’t dare try to set it alone.’’

Trygve lay on the bed, his face white with a green tinge, one arm, already swollen, propped on a pillow. Sammy sat on a stool beside the bed, sniffling every time he looked at his brother. ‘‘My fault. It’s my fault.’’

Grace, Sophie’s twin who was born deaf, took the cloth off his forehead, dipped it in cool water, wrung it out, and lovingly laid it back in place.

‘‘Well, Trygve, this is sure going to put a bump in your summer.’’ Ingeborg smiled at her nephew as she gently probed his arm. When he yelped, she nodded. ‘‘Broken all right.’’

‘‘What are you going to do?’’ Trygve’s voice quivered.

‘‘I am going to hold your shoulder, and your mother is going to pull until we hear that old bone snap right back in place.’’

‘‘Do you have to?’’

‘‘Ja, if you want to be able to use your arm right ever again.’’

‘‘Oh. It’s going to hurt bad, huh?’’

‘‘I’m sure, but you’re a big boy. You want a stick to bite down on?

He shook his head.

Ingeborg took a brown bottle out of her basket and pulled the cork out with her teeth. ‘‘Sophie, go get a cup of water to mix with this. That will make setting it easier on him.’’ The girl scuttled out of the room while Kaaren and Ingeborg both studied the arm. ‘‘Good thing it’s not at the elbow. A forearm like this will heal real quick.’’

‘‘Will I be able to go swimming?’’

‘‘No, nor milk cows.’’

‘‘But don’t worry, you can hoe with one arm and still pull weeds.’’ Kaaren took the cup of water from Sophie, mixed several drops of the brown liquid in the water, and held the cup to her son’s mouth with one hand while she propped his head with the other.

‘‘Ugh.’’

‘‘I could have put some honey in that.’’ Ingeborg pushed the cork back in the bottle.

‘‘Anyone who falls out of a tree is strong enough to take his medicine straight.’’

‘‘But, Mor, I went up to help Sammy down.’’ Trygve started to raise up to state his defense but yelped instead. He eased back down, glaring at his painful arm.

Kaaren turned to her younger son. ‘‘And what is your excuse?’’

Sammy tried to become part of the stool on which he sat. ‘‘I-I saw a bird’s nest, and I wanted to see the babies,’’ he muttered into his knees.

‘‘And you were going to go way out on the limb to see them?’’

He shook his head. ‘‘I thought if I got higher, I could look down. And then I saw how high I was and got scared.’’

‘‘And how come Trygve fell?’’

Sammy shrugged, the suspender on his skinny shoulder sliding down his arm. With an unconscious gesture, he thumbed it back in place. Growing into his brother’s outgrown clothing sometimes took a bit of time.

Kaaren turned back to her son in the bed. ‘‘How come?’’

‘‘I got up to him, and he kicked at me. He wouldn’t let me help him, so I was hurrying back down to get Andrew or Pa and a ladder.’’

Sammy flung himself off the stool and into his mother’s aproned skirt. ‘‘I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for Trygve to get hurt. I was so scared.’’

Kaaren patted his head. ‘‘And how did you get down?’’

‘‘I-I—he screamed and c-crashed through the b-branches, and he was hurt, so I had to help him. I went down as fast as I could, and his arm and . . .’’ Hiccupping sobs punctuated his slurry of words. ‘‘I-I am s-so sorry.’’ Tears soaked her apron.

‘‘I know you are, but sometimes being sorry after a bad thing happens isn’t enough. You need to think ahead and not make foolish choices.’’ Kaaren nudged him back toward the stool. ‘‘You sit there now and see what we have to do to help Trygve. Let this be a lesson the next time you do something without thinking. I think you will have to take over the chores he cannot do with only one hand.’’

‘‘Even feeding the pigs?’’

‘‘I expect so.’’

‘‘I think he’s drowsy enough now that we can set it,’’ Ingeborg said.

The screen door banged and Andrew charged into the room, a chunk of ice in a gunnysack over his shoulder. ‘‘Where do you want this?’’

‘‘In the pan in the dry sink. Chip off enough to pack around his arm. Sophie, you go hold the dish towel for him. We’ll lay his arm in that when we get it set.’’

Ingeborg and Kaaren exchanged glances and each took her place. ‘‘Now this is going to hurt, but we’ll do it as quickly as we can. You can help us most by lying still.’’ Ingeborg laid her hands on the boy’s shoulder and elbow while Kaaren took his wrist in both hands.

‘‘Now.’’ Kaaren leaned back, and in one smooth pull they heard the bone click back together.

Trygve clamped his teeth on a scream and lay back, sweat popping up on his forehead.

They could hear Andrew chipping ice and Sophie saying something that made him laugh. Grace took the cloth and, dipping it again, wiped Trygve’s brow and patted his cheek. ‘‘You be better.’’ She spoke slowly, carefully forming the sounds she could not hear. While her hands were fluent in speaking, her mouth was still learning.

‘‘Here you go.’’ Andrew brought the towel and ice and handed it to his mother, who folded it into a square and slid half under the boy’s arm, laying the rest on top.

Trygve nodded. ‘‘Thank you,’’ he said in the slurred way of a drug-induced almost sleep.

‘‘You must not move your arm. We’ll bind the splints in place in a little bit. Do you understand?’’ Ingeborg touched his cheek and received a brief nod.

‘‘I’ll stay.’’ Grace glanced from her brother to her mother. Her fingers flew as she continued. ‘‘I won’t let him move.’’

‘‘All right.’’ Kaaren stroked the hair back off her son’s forehead and turned to Sammy. ‘‘You stay and watch too. Tante Ingeborg and I are going to have a cup of coffee, and then we’ll come and splint this.’’

‘‘Where’s Astrid?’’ Ingeborg asked Andrew after sitting down at the table.

‘‘She took over the team for me so I could run fast. I need to get back out there. She was so worried about Trygve.’’ Andrew snagged two cookies off the plate on the counter and with a wave headed back out the door, leaping from the top step of the porch to the ground. ‘‘Mange takk.’’

They heard the words fly back as if carried by the breeze his speed created.

‘‘He has grown so much this year, I can’t find my little Andrew anymore.’’ Kaaren poured two cups of coffee and set them on the table. ‘‘Sophie, you need to get the table set. They’ll be up for dinner soon.’’

‘‘Where’s Ilse?’’ Ingeborg took a ginger cookie and dunked it in her coffee.

‘‘Gone to help Penny for the day. They had a shipment come in for the store, and Penny needed someone to watch the babies.’’

‘‘I could have sent Astrid.’’

‘‘And I could have sent Sophie, but neither of them want to be nearer to George McBride.’’

Her comment made them both smile. Ilse, orphaned by her parents dying on the ship, had come to them when Bridget Bjorklund, the mother of their first husbands, emigrated from Norway.

Now Ilse was Kaaren’s right-hand woman, both helper and teacher at the School for the Deaf, which Kaaren had founded several years after the birth of the twins. Kaaren had determined that Grace, never having been able to hear, would somehow learn to communicate with the hearing world in which she lived. David Jonathan Gould, a friend from New York, had sent Kaaren a book on a newly developed sign language, and many of the residents of Blessing learned to use it because Pastor Solberg taught signing at school.

The two women caught up on whatever news each had heard and in a few minutes returned to the sick room, where Trygve snored with little puffs of breath. They eased the ice away, laid the padded splints on either side of the tanned arm, and bound them in place with strips of old sheets.

‘‘I’ll put a sling on him when he wakes.’’ Kaaren turned to see Sammy sound asleep on the floor by his brother’s bed. She nodded and Ingeborg came around the bed to see him too.

‘‘Some of us seem always to need to learn our lessons the hard way.’’

‘‘Ja, that is so. But thank you, Lord, this lesson was no harder than it is. When I think what could have happened . . .’’ Kaaren closed her eyes. ‘‘Thank you, Jesus, for watching over my boys.’’

Several days later Ingeborg called to Astrid, ‘‘I am going over to visit Metiz. Please take the cake out when it is finished.’’

‘‘I will.’’ Astrid looked up from the dress she was hemming. ‘‘How long?’’

‘‘Check it in fifteen minutes or so. I just put more wood in the fire.’’ Ingeborg untied her apron and hung it on the hook.

‘‘You want me to frost it?’’

‘‘No. I think we’ll put applesauce on it. Applesauce always goes good with gingerbread.’’

‘‘If I know Andrew, he’ll smell that gingerbread clear across the field and come in for a piece.’’

‘‘Tell him it is for dessert. Dinner will be ready at twelve-thirty. He can wait that long.’’ Ingeborg picked up the basket that she’d packed with cheese, strawberry jam, and two slices off the ham now in the oven and headed out the door. Something inside her had said she should go check on Metiz. Metiz had been living on the land when they homesteaded it. She was of Lakota Indian and French Canadian ancestry. As a healer, she had shared knowledge with Ingeborg, and they had become fast friends. Ingeborg strode the trail to the river, thinking back to when they’d driven the cattle down to water and hauled water for the house. Ah, what a time-saver the well had been, and still was, for that matter. Water was something never to be taken for granted.

Metiz’ house sat under one of the few remaining big oak trees, not far from the bank of the river. She had rabbit hides tacked to the outside walls, drying so she could tan them to make mittens, vests, and even a hat or two, all to sell in Penny’s store or to give as gifts. Vests of the softened skins, with the fur side either in or out, were prized among the children of Blessing. Deer antlers hung on pegs on a post so she could turn the horn into knife handles. Either Hjelmer Bjorklund or Sam Lincoln would make the blades for her at the blacksmith shop. Penny ordered special steel for the knife blades, tempered so it would hold a fine edge. The knives were of such caliber that Penny could sell all that Metiz made and had customers waiting for more.

‘‘We need another dog,’’ Ingeborg said to the crow that announced her coming. ‘‘Days like this I miss Paws as much as Andrew does.’’ Paws, the dog given to Thorliff when the Bjorklunds first moved to Dakota Territory, had died more than a year ago, leaving a hole in all their lives. The crow flew off, screaming ‘‘intruder’’ as he flapped his wings.

A meadowlark sang, the notes hovering on the breeze as if loath to die away. Ingeborg whistled a close proximity to the lark’s song, but the bird failed to respond.

‘‘Guess you didn’t like my rendition, eh?’’
Thank you, God, for
such a glorious morning. Since Metiz is sitting in her rocker working
away as usual, perhaps you called me out to hear the meadowlark
and enjoy the bluebells
.

‘‘Ho,’’ Metiz called from her chair. ‘‘You come.’’

‘‘Did you need me?’’

‘‘Need? No.’’ She shook her head, the dark hair gone nearly white and worn in two braids tied by a bit of thong. ‘‘Want, yes.’’ She held up a deerskin vest she was beading with bits of porcupine quills and tiny glass beads she traded for. The black hairs from a deer’s tail wove a minute dark design just below one shoulder seam.

‘‘You do such beautiful work.’’ Ingeborg fingered the rust and tan beads and the few blue ones that added more color.

‘‘Need more beads for moccasins. Traded for elk hide. Good for moccasins. Harder to get now. Tell Andrew thank you for rabbit skins.’’

‘‘I will.’’ Ingeborg sank down on the lip of the low porch. ‘‘I brought you some extra supplies.’’

‘‘No need.’’

‘‘I know.’’ The two smiled at each other, the peace of two longtime friends settling upon them. ‘‘Are you feeling all right?’’

Metiz shrugged. ‘‘So-so. Hands, feet still work.’’

Ingeborg knew from the limp Metiz now wore all the time that the arthritis that bent her fingers had most likely settled in her hip too. But it would have to be pretty bad for Metiz to complain. She walked a bit slower, appearing smaller winter by winter, but like the rest of them seemed to blossom again come summer. The weathered boards of her house melded into the shade of the tree so that it looked as if it sprang from the soil like the grandmother oak above.

The house was just one large room with a door on either end, because that was the way she wanted it—‘‘to let the river through,’’ she’d told Haakan when he insisted they build her a better house than the shack she’d built herself for her and her grandson Baptiste. With Baptiste now married to Manda and raising and training horses in Montana with Manda’s adopted father, Zebulun MacCallister, Metiz was growing older alone but for her friends, chiefly the Bjorklunds.