The Reaper's Song (30 page)

“Nope, none.”

“You think he could find his way back there to your homestead?”

“I s’pose. Why?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to find out the legal proceedings. I think we better talk all this over with Hjelmer and Haakan and Ingeborg. All together we’ll find some way, I promise you that.”

At the look that turned Manda’s face to sunshine, Penny bit her lip. Lord,
please don’t fail us now
. But as she well knew, sometimes the good Lord seemed to take an awful long time to answer the requests of His children. And sometimes the answer was no.

I
t’s all yours, Metiz. We should be able to finish the inside after the weather turns.”

“Many windows.” She looked up at Haakan, her eyes sparkling in the sunlight.

“Just like you wanted. And with it raised like that, if it floods, you won’t get a house full of water.”

“Just in under room.”

“The cellar. Ja, can’t do much about that. But now you won’t have to go outside in the dead of winter to get things from the cellar.”

“Never did.”

“I know. This will be your first winter with us.” Haakan looked from Metiz to the house. “Probably should’ve built it bigger.”

“No want bigger. Too big now.”

“I suppose, compared to your tepee, this house is a mansion.”

“What mansion?”

“Huge, fancy house. Many, many rooms. Big like a hotel.”

“Ah. Whole tribe live in mansion.”

“Sure enough could. I hope that idea of Lars’s works—filling the walls with sawdust. But it works with an icehouse, so why not houses? And why didn’t we think of it earlier?”

“Icehouse?”

“Big building to keep ice in for summer.”

“Ice melt.”

“Not if you pack enough sawdust around it. You’ll see. Next summer we are going to have ice cream in July.”

“Really, Pa?” Thorliff looked up from the butt he was splitting into shingles. He and Baptiste had already split the ones for Metiz’ house and were now working for Lars and Kaaren’s.

“You can’t have ice cream in July.” Manda split off another smooth shingle. After coming back from Penny’s, she’d got the hang of it real quick, much to Thorliff’s dismay.

“If’n my pa says it is so, it is so.” Thorliff spoke so emphatically that his hair bounced. He brushed it back with one hand and reset his porkpie hat.

“’Tain’t.”

“’Tis.”

“All right, you two, that’s enough.” Haakan raised his hands for silence.

“’Tis,” Thorliff muttered under his breath.

“Thorliff Bjorklund, what’s got into you?” Haakan looked down at his son seated on a chunk of wood and tapping the froe just right.

Thorliff split another shingle without looking up. His lower lip stuck out far enough to rest one of his shingles on.

Baptiste looked up at Haakan and grinned. “Fish are biting.”

“They are, huh?” Lars stopped beside them. “Now wouldn’t a mess of fish taste good for supper?” He looked at Haakan. “I think all these hard workers deserve some time off to go fishing, don’t you?”

“Up to you. It’s your roof they’re splitting now.”

“Then, fishing it is.”

Baptiste leaped to his feet. “Come on.” Thorliff, the Baard boys, and Hamre followed him.

“Me too.” Andrew darted after the big boys.

Katy leaped and snagged him by the shirttail. “Hold up, short stuff.”

Barefeet churning the dirt, he pulled against the restraint.

“Nei. No,” his father told him, but Katy sent Haakan a pleading glance.

“Hey, Andrew, my boy, you can go when you get bigger.” Haakan lifted the boy in the air and whooshed him down again, the breeze fluffing his near white curls. “Right now you can put all those chips in a basket, you and Ellie. Maybe Anji will help too.”

Andrew stared longingly after the big boys. “I’m bigger now.”

Haakan whirled him around and set him down with a tickle. “First one with a full basket gets a . . . a . . .” He closed his eyes to a squint. “A cookie?”

Andrew squinted back at him, hands on hips. “Two cookies.”

Haakan nodded. “Two cookies.”

“He’s a horse trader already.” Lars shook his head. “What a boy.”

The tap of the mallet on the froe caught Haakan’s attention. “Manda, did you want to go fishing too?”

She shook her head. “Not with them dumb boys.”

The men swapped glances and raised their eyebrows.

“You don’t like to fish?” Lars asked.

“Don’t know. Never been. But if I did, I’d catch more than all of ’em put together.” Tap, crack, and another shingle fell to the ground.

Zeb joined them just in time to hear Manda’s growling. He raised his shoulders in the age-old shrug of men who have no idea why women or even young girls do what they do. The others matched it and, gathering their tools, headed for the place where Lars had dug out his cellar. If they hurried, they could get some of the cellar groundwork done before chores. With all the boys gone fishing, the men would have to do the milking too.

But Ingeborg had the female crew from Bridget to Ilsa in full steam, and they took over the milking, even going to the Baards. By the time they returned, the strings of fish were already cleaned and ready for the frying pan. The batter-fried fish, fried potatoes, and green beans with bacon made a meal that left everyone patting their stomachs after second and even third helpings.

“I thought we were going to fry fish clear on till morning,” Ingeborg said when the last filet had disappeared down someone’s gullet.

“Ran out right time.” Metiz handed Ingeborg a plateful of food. “Kept for you.”

“Thank you.” Ingeborg sat down in the rocker with a sigh and wiped her forehead with her apron. “This was just like feeding a threshing crew.”

“They building crew. Same thing.” Metiz picked a fish bone out of her teeth. “Good fish.”

The next day Lars took some good-natured ribbing about pouring sawdust in his walls, but he laughed it off. “You’ll be singing a different tune come winter. I bet you’ll all be knocking on my door, asking for a warm place to sit.”

“Makes sense to me,” Haakan put in. “I’m thinking there must be a way to get the sawdust inside the walls of my house, too, and maybe even the barn. Hey, even the soddies can be warmer than these wood frame houses.”

“Heaping manure and straw around the base will help. We did that in Ohio.” Joseph Baard finished nailing off the length of flooring. “Then you spread it out on the garden come spring. Does double-duty
that way. Horse manure works the best. Takes longer to rot.”

“The things we learn when we get together,” Haakan said, shaking his head.

As the walls went up, the men scurried over the building like ants at their nest. While to an outsider it might look haphazard, each one knew his best skill and did it.

“Sure do miss Anner on the measuring and cutting,” Joseph commented.

“He’s one who checks and double-checks so everything fits.” Haakan threw down a board. “We got to be more careful.”

Reverend Solberg looked up from sawing. “I went to see him yesterday. He’s not doing good at all.”

“The arm bad?”

“No, the arm seems to finally be healing, but . . .” Solberg shook his head. “I’m afraid for him, that I am.”

Haakan let it go until the others were out of hearing range. “Is it the drinking?”

“How did you know?”

“Oh, I got ears and eyes.”

“He’s angry, Haakan, so terribly, terribly angry. And nothing anyone says makes a whit of difference.” Solberg wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his shirt sleeve. “I’m afraid for him and for his wife. She looks twenty years older. She even walks like an old woman. How do we get him to understand that losing an arm isn’t the end of his life? Or the end of the world?”

“God only knows.”

“Wise words, my friend. Wise words.”

“So what are we to do?”

“Pray for him.”

“Anything else?”

“That isn’t enough?” His smile said he was teasing.

“You know, it ain’t easy being a two-handed farmer, let alone a one-handed one. Like the measuring here. It takes two hands.” Haakan demonstrated unfolding the wooden measuring stick, laying it out, holding it in place with one hand while marking the cut with the other. “See?” He refolded the tool and put it in his back pocket. “And have you ever tried milking with one hand?”

“It would take longer, but once the cow got used to it, would she give less milk?”

Haakan thought a moment. “I doubt it.”

“And if he sold the land, surely there is something else he can do.”

“Right now I can’t think of anything, but I’ll ask around. I just don’t know what kind of things he is good at besides farming.”

“And building. Measuring and cutting accurately, especially.”

By evening the house was framed, windows and doors set, sided on three sides, and the sheeting laid in close rows ready for the shingles.

“Pa, I bet I can shingle a roof now too.” Thorliff stood as tall as he could beside his father.

“If you do that, then who will split the shingles? You’re the best splitter we got.” Lars ruffled the boy’s hair, tipping off his hat in the process.

Thorliff leaned over and picked it up, dusting it against his leg before setting it back on his head. “Manda can take my place splitting. She’s good at it.” His tone said he offered this grudgingly.

“Well, we’ll see.” Haakan eyed the roof. “If you fell off there, your mother would nail my hide to the barn wall.”

“I wouldn’t fall.” Thorliff wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “Nailing shingles is easier than lugging them, and I been doing that long as we been using shingles for the roofs.”

The next day he lived up to his word. Slow at first, but when he gained the rhythm, he nearly kept up with the men.

“Son, you are right good with that hammer,” Lars said when they quit for dinner. “Between the four of us, we’ll have that house weatherproof in no time.”

“I could miss school to help finish. Lots of the older boys stayed home through the harvest.”

Haakan shook his head. “No, you missed today and that is enough. You can help again when you get home.”

“But it gets dark so early these days. And we’re going to have frost any night now.”

“How do you know that?”

“Metiz said to watch the moon—it will tell you. And last night there was frost in the low places.”

“Thorliff, you amaze me. You hear something one time, or read it one time, and you remember it from then on. What are we going to do with you?”

“Let me stay home and help finish the house.” Thorliff gave his father a sly look out the side of his eye. “I’m so far ahead of the other
kids, they’ll never catch up.” But when Haakan shook his head, the boy didn’t argue any further.

That night when Haakan told Ingeborg about the conversation with Thorliff, she just shook her head. But the light in her eyes told of her pride in her elder son. “So . . . are you going to let him stay home?”

“You crazy? I like my hide too well.”

“What?”

“Just men talk, dear. Come to bed.”

Since Saturday had become market day and Penny couldn’t leave the store, the women held their October quilting day on Friday at the church. The women gathered as soon as their older children left for school and the dinner had been set to cooking for those at home.

Kaaren started their time together with reading from Proverbs 31 about the ideal woman. “ ‘A good wife, who can find . . .’ ”

“Well, we do all that but the grape things. I’d guess our gardens and fields can take that place,” Agnes said when the reading was finished. “I sure could use a few more handmaidens and a slave or two. Or servant,” she added at the gasp that went up.

“We’re all slaves to the land, that’s what,” said someone else.

“But the labor is returning to us a hundredfold, wouldn’t you say?” Kaaren looked around the group. “And we have one another for both help and encouragement.”

“Speaking of help. I tried to do more for Hildegunn and Anner and she run me off.” Goodie shook her head. “They let Ephraim work out in the fields, but that is all. She’s trying to kill herself off, that’s what.”

“Or Anner is ordering her so.” Ingeborg looked around the group. “We got to do something here, and I don’t know what.”