RR05 - Tender Mercies (11 page)

With a couple of tentative toe pressings, she got the rhythm, and the needle flew across the fabric, leaving a line of stitches in its wake.

“Well, I never.” Goodie breathed from over Penny’s shoulder. “Ya done it.”

“It takes some practice to sew curves and angles and such, but I will teach you all of that. You’ll be sewing up a storm before you know it.” He patted the machine as though it were a favorite dog or horse—or wife.

“My turn?”

Penny hated to get up. She wanted to learn more immediately. She liked the song the treadle made and the whir of the needle. The speed amazed her.
Every woman needs one of these
. She couldn’t get the idea out of her mind.

Goodie stood up a few minutes later with the same look of delight and awe. If this was the way Hjelmer felt when he first saw the binders, no wonder he nearly went loco.

“How soon can you have us one?” Olaf asked, cupping his elbows in the opposite palm. He rocked back on his heels, then dug in his pocket for his pipe.

Hjelmer looked up from studying the gears to Penny’s face. “Make that two, and you better send an extra so there’s one to sell. I know Haakan will want one for Ingeborg.”

Penny smiled at her husband, but it did no good, he’d gone back to studying the gears.

Later, after Mr. Drummond left with the Wolds for his bed in the sack house, Penny turned out the one lamp and set the other beside Hjelmer’s chair. He looked up from the mail he was slitting open with a letter opener he had made.

“Here, this one’s for you.” He handed an opened envelope to Penny.

She studied the handwriting and the postmark. Iowa. Who would be writing to her from Iowa?

Chapter 9

“What happened?” Mary Martha rushed through the bedroom door.

“Ma-a.” Deborah flung herself in her new mother’s arms.

“Gently, little one. There’s no need to cry.” Katy patted the little girl’s back. “Here, let me sit up.”

“No, you just lie there and tell me what happened.” Mary Martha sank down on the edge of the bed by Katy’s knees. Blue and purple shadows beneath Katy’s eyes looked like bruises on her pale face.
How much weight has she lost? She looks like a ghost. Why haven’t I been more observant?

Deborah lifted her tear-stained face. “You ain’t gonna die, are ya?”

Katy smoothed the sandy wisps of hair back from her daughter’s face. “Why, whatever made you think that?”

“ ’Cause you look like my real ma did.” Deborah dashed the tears away with the backs of her hands. “She was sick something awful.”

“Well, I’m not ‘sick something awful.’ I just didn’t feel well and thought I better lie down so I would feel good when you got home from school. Why don’t you go get me a drink of water? Ask Manda to fetch a fresh bucket from the well. Cold well water would taste so good right now.”

“I will.” Deborah pushed away and darted from the room.

“What really happened?”

“I . . . I found blood. Mary Martha, I don’t want to lose this baby.” She clutched her sister-in-law’s hand.

“Now, lots of women have bleeding before the baby comes. You just take it easy for a couple of days, and it’ll be gone. You’ll see. My ma takes care of lots of women. She’s the midwife for our parish, and I’ve heard of all kinds of different things. You can always send for Ingeborg or Metiz, too, you know.”
Please, God, let this be all there is. Oh, I wish my mother were here
.

Katy shook her head. “No, no need to bother them. You already made me feel better.” She started to roll to her side to get up, but Mary Martha laid a hand on her shoulder.

“You are to take it easy for a couple of days, remember?”

“Surely that don’t mean lying around like this. I got supper to make. Zeb will be home soon, and . . .”

“It won’t be the first time my brother has eaten my cooking, and it surely won’t be the last. How about you go over Deborah’s letters and numbers with her while I see about the supper? And if I can get Manda in here, she needs review on her times tables.”

“She’ll be down working with the horses.”

“I know. That girl would live at the barn if ’n we let her.” Katy lay back with a sigh. “I hate feeling like this. There’s so much to get done before the winter comes. I thought to begin banking the house today.”

“Ah ’spect my brother can do some of those things, you know? And if he brings up a wagonload of straw and manure, Manda and I can pitch it up against the house.”

“You ever made soap before?”

“Many times. And dipped candles too. During the war we didn’t have kerosene or oil, so we melted down some old beeswax and had the purtiest candles you ever saw. I was just a little girl, but I could dip candles just fine. We had a mold one time, but when some scalawag Yankee soldiers raided our place, they stole anything they could. We had to make do or die after that.”

“Where was your pa?”

“Off to war. He come home without an arm, leaving both it and his will to live on some battlefield.” Mary Martha shook her head. “He never was the same loving papa again. Near to broke my mother’s heart, but she’s a strong one. Kept right on caring for the farm and anyone who needed help until Papa finally got some better again. Zeb’s been doing the work of a full-grown man ever since he was eight or ten.”

Katy propped herself on one elbow when Deborah returned carrying a cup full of water. She tried to drink, but instead the water dribbled down her chin, making the little girl giggle.

“This is silly.” Katy handed the cup back and pulled herself upright, crossing her legs under the covers. After drinking, she cocked her head, listening to the thunk of wood dropping into the box and the clattering of stove lids.

“That’s Manda.” Deborah snuggled herself against Katy’s side. “She said for you to stay in bed, and she would make supper.”

“What about her chores?”

“She done them.”

“Did them.” Mary Martha couldn’t resist correcting the little one’s grammar.

“That’s what I said.” Deborah used both hands to brush from her eyes the wisps of hair that had come loose from her braids.

The two women exchanged smiles as Mary Martha got to her feet. “You say your numbers and letters now for your ma, and I’ll go help in the kitchen. Tell her what all went on today at school too.” She patted Deborah’s head gently and headed for the door, pausing before going through it. “You need anything else?”

“Just permission to get up,” Katy said.

“Since that’s not likely to happen, lie back and enjoy the rest.”

“She’s going to die, ain’t she?” Manda slammed the last lid back in place.

Mary Martha shook her head. “You and Deborah. Why, no. Sometimes mamas just need a little extra help in the early months.”

“My ma was just like this, and she died.”

Mary Martha wanted to wrap her arms around Manda and hold her close, but the rigid shoulders and squared jaw told her that wouldn’t be appreciated, nor even tolerated. She sighed. “Let’s just pray for her and make her take it easy around here, and she’ll be fine.”

“God don’t much care one way or t’other.” Manda filled a kettle with water and set it on the hot part of the stove.

“Why, yes, He most certainly does. Whatever gave you that idea?”

“We prayed, but Ma died anyway, and I prayed lots when Pa didn’t come home, and it never did any good at all. So why spend all that time prayin’ when you could be doing something instead?”

“I pray while I’m doing.”

“You don’t close your eyes and fold your hands like the preacher says?” Manda looked at Mary Martha as if a heretic had wandered in.

“Sometimes, but not always. The Bible says to pray unceasingly, but if you kept your hands folded and eyes closed all the time, your family would starve to death. I think God means us to live our lives like He would have us and keep on talking with Him, just like you and I are talking now.” She could tell by the look on Manda’s face that she had a long way to go to get any convincing done. “You just think about it. If Jesus is right in our hearts, He knows our thoughts.”

“Durn.”

Mary Martha couldn’t resist. She laughed and grabbed Manda’s arm, pulling her into a hug. “Ah, child, He loves you so much, and so do I.”

Manda relaxed into the embrace for a moment before pulling away. “I got to get to peeling some spuds.”

Letting her go, Mary Martha caught a sheen in Manda’s eyes.
She’s really frightened. Dear God, what all did these two lambs go through before Zeb found them?
While her brother had given her snips and bits of his two years on the run, they’d never sat down and talked about how he ended up with a ready-made family. One of his comments stuck in her mind. “
Mother wouldn’t let me do anything else but bring them along.”
She knew for a fact her mother had been living in Missouri on the homeplace, for that’s where she’d been too.

And here the girls were facing again the fear of losing a mother.
God, please take care of Katy, for the sake of these two girls, if not for Zeb and the rest of us
. Mary Martha took the knife from Manda. “I’ll do this. You go on and work with the horses, like you usually do. I thought to fry up some steaks cut off that pork shoulder. What do you think?”

“Uh-huh. I’ll go dig some carrots then.” Manda left without looking her aunt in the eye.

If she’s embarrassed about a near tear or two . . .
Mary Martha shook her head. Katy had a lot to deal with here—new husband, a baby on the way, and two girls who needed help making up for the years the locusts ate.
God, you promised to do that for us, and I sure do hope you plan to take care of this little problem here. To me, these are big problems, but to you, they’re nothing at all
.

As she peeled the potatoes and sliced the meat, she kept sending up the petitions, grateful she didn’t have to close her eyes and fold her hands, as Manda thought.

Katy joined them for supper, and with her presence and laughter, the big cloud that had been smothering the house picked up and floated away. Zeb, the girls, and Mary Martha herself joined in, each trying to outdo the other in outrageous stories.

“You won’t tell Zeb, will you?” Katy whispered after the girls left for bed and Zeb had gone out for a last check on the animals.

“Not if you will.”

“I will, but not right now. Let me see how things go and—”

“And that’s not fair a’tall.”

“I know, but this is woman’s worry, and he’s got enough of his own.”

Mary Martha shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“If it’s as you said, then I’ll be fine in a day or so, and he would have worried for nothing.”

“I’ll stay home tomorrow, and then we’ll see.”

Katy shook her head this time. “No, then he’ll know something is wrong. You go on about helping at the school, and I’ll take it real easy here, and everything will work out right for everybody.”

Mary Martha now figured she knew what a fly felt like when trapped in a spider’s web. “You promise?”

Katy nodded.

“And you’ll tell him yourself if the bleeding keeps up more than a couple days?”

Another nod.

“It’s not like Pastor Solberg couldn’t do without me.”
Half the time he tries to pretend I’m not there anyway
. But she didn’t tell Katy that, knowing the young woman would blame herself.
And it’s not her fault he is being so standoffish
.

“Where’s Katy?” Zeb asked, hanging his jacket on a wall peg.

“I sent her to bed. She’s looking a mite peaked.” Mary Martha put the last dish up in the cupboard and hung the wet dish towel over the oven handle.

“Good. I thought so too.” He leaned his hips against the reservoir on the stove. “So, how did school really go today?”

“I think that while Pastor Solberg wanted help, he didn’t want it to be me.” She straightened the dish towel again. “I seem to make him very uncomfortable.”

Zeb’s eyebrows disappeared under the lock of hair that fell across his forehead. “Really?”

“Now don’t you go getting any ideas. Or I won’t go back.”

Zeb held up his hands in surrender. “No ideas. Not a one will cross my mind. I am going to bed, since that seems to be the safest place in the house right now.”

Mary Martha thumped him on the arm as he walked past her. “Just remember,
baby
brother, I didn’t come here looking for a husband, and I plan to go back home before Christmas, so I won’t be helping out too long with the school. Besides, the thought of being a pastor’s wife is one of my worst nightmares.” She even shuddered for emphasis.

“Wait till after Christmas to go. Ma and Uncle Jed can do without you for one year. They can go to Eva Jane’s house instead of them all coming back to the farm.”

“We’ll see.”

“And who said anything about you being a pastor’s wife anyhow?” Laughter floated back over his shoulder as he left the room.

Mary Martha banked the stove and wandered off to her room, stopping to check on the girls on her way. They slept soundly in the double bed they shared. Manda had an arm thrown over her sister, protecting her even in sleep. “Father, bless them and hold them in the palm of your hand,” she whispered, refraining from tucking the covers in more snugly.

After her prayers and crawling into bed, she promised herself that she would ride over and talk with Ingeborg after school the next day. Mary Martha finally drifted off to sleep but not until banishing from her mind a thought of Pastor Solberg as he smiled at little Anna Helmsrude.