The Promise of Dawn

by Lauraine Snelling

  After breakfast, Einar reached for his coat. “I will meet you at the barn.”

  Gerd turned from fixing the dinner basket and pails. “Can you see five feet in front of you out there?”

  “Nei, but I know the way.”

  “My boys are not going to school,” Rune said. “They could get lost in this. We are going to build the stairs today.”

  “No wind, so no blizzard.”

  “As you have often said, that can change in an instant.” Rune buttered another biscuit. “You might as well sit down and have another cup of coffee.”

  “You do not tell me what to do!”

  “Just making a suggestion.”

  “We are cutting trees like every other day.”

  “You are. We are not.”

  Kirstin started to wail.

  “There, now look what you did. Scared the baby! Einar Strand . . .” Gerd shook with anger, but she did not raise her voice. “You . . . you go cut trees, and God help you if you get lost.” She handed him the dinner basket. “It would serve you right.”

  Rune pushed back from the table and went into the bedroom to find Signe trying to calm the baby while she struggled to get her nightdress shifted around enough to let Kirstin nurse.

  “Here, let me hold her.” He took the squalling baby, who had kicked off her blanket, and rocked her in his arms. “There now, little one, Mor is trying to feed you. But you ate not so long ago. Surely you are not hungry again so soon.”

  “She is always hungry. At least it seems so.” Signe held out her arms, and within moments the impatient wailing ceased and the sounds of a nursing baby took over. “She does not like loud, angry noises.”

  “Who does?”

  “Are you really going to start on the stairs?”

  “Ja, and even a handrail on the outside. It will be steep.”

  “Rune Carlson, you are an amazing man.”

  “I’m sorry it took an accident to stiffen my backbone. We . . . well, I hope the pounding does not disturb her.”

  Rune smiled down at the baby, trying to remember if he had felt this way about the boys. He didn’t think so. Perhaps all those years of losing babies had changed him too.

  He heard Einar stomp back in the house. “Rune!”

  Rune nodded to Signe and returned to the kitchen. “Ja?”

  “You come to the woods with me now, or I will ship you and your family back to Norway.”

  Rune started to respond but caught the look on Gerd’s face out of the corner of his eye.

  “Einar Strand,” she said, “I will say this only once. If they leave, I will leave with them.”

  Chapter

  32

  After a long, tense moment, Einar said, “Put the stairs in the parlor.”

  Rune stared at him. “If you want.” He did not ask why. “Against the kitchen wall?”

  “Load the lumber in the wagon and put it on the back porch.”

  Rune nodded. He’d thought of that, but with the wagon out in the woods . . . He turned to Bjorn. “Go hitch up the wagon, and you boys do as he says.”

  All three of them headed for the coatrack.

  Rune caught the fearful glances the two younger ones sent Einar’s way. Bjorn had learned to ignore his cutting remarks, not that there had been that many when they were out in the woods. Einar was a different man out there. What a shame that the younger boys were afraid of him. “So we will use the opening that is already there for the ladder?”

  Another curt nod.

  Rune nodded, thinking on the changes. He had figured a stairway in the kitchen would allow more heat to rise to the attic. Now they would need a grate. The stovepipe did not heat the attic sufficiently for the winter. The inside of the windows were already painted with ice in the mornings.

  In the parlor, they shifted the furniture away from the wall and measured the distances, Rune writing them down.

  “Did you get two-by-fours for the wall?” Einar asked.

  “Nei. I thought to leave it open with a handrail.” It would have been nice to discuss this before I bought the lumber. “That will be easier.”

  Einar’s answer this time was only a grunt.

  Gerd called them to dinner at noon. The hot ham and beans eaten at the table tasted much better than cold ones out in the woods. Hot coffee also was a treat. The snow was still falling but was no longer a white curtain.

  “How deep is it?” Rune asked the boys.

  “About six new inches,” Bjorn answered.

  “We’d better run a rope down to the barn.”

  “I chopped the ice on the water tank this morning.” Knute looked at his far. “What if it freezes clear to the bottom?”

  “Never has,” Einar grunted.

  “The well house does not freeze over either. Sometimes we have had to carry hot water out to melt waterers for the pigs and chickens.” Gerd’s comment caught them by surprise.

  Leif grinned at her. “Maybe we should bring the chicken waterer up to the house at night.”

  After dinner Knute and Leif picked up the dishes and set them in the dishpan. Gerd nodded her thanks.

  “You help with the dishes, Leif,” Rune said.

  He shrugged. “Knute can dry.”

  “You boys do the dishes, and I will bake cookies.” Gerd did not look at Einar, who snorted but didn’t say anything.

  “Really? What kind? Mor makes the best sour cream cookies ever.” Leif looked toward the bedroom when he heard Kirstin fussing. His wistful face told Rune how much he missed his mor being around.

  “Gerd, do you think Signe could make it out here if I help her?” he asked.

  Gerd nodded. “I wish we had a rocking chair for her and the baby.”

  Einar harrumphed.

  Leaning on Rune’s arm, Signe joined them in the kitchen, sitting on a chair by the stove. “I made it.” She smiled at the boys.

  “Can I bring Kirstin in?” Leif asked.

  Signe nodded. “She is in the sling, so just pick it up and bring her.”

  Gerd followed him and made sure he was careful.

  Leif’s grin as he handed the baby to his mor lit up the room. “She sure is little.”

  Signe unwrapped the baby and held her on her knees. All three boys gathered around her. Kirstin yawned and turned her head, as if she knew she had company.

  “She is awake more now,” Signe said.

  “Mor, how come calves and piglets and even chicks are cuter than babies?” Leif asked.

  “And they can eat and do things faster than human babies too,” Knute added.

  “I wonder if it is because people live longer than animals,” Rune said.

  “God made it so, and so it is.” Gerd nodded to the dishpan.

  Leif and Knute took the hint and started on the dishes.

  The men and Bjorn set up the sawhorses on the porch, brought up the saws, hammers, and a ladder, and set to building the stairs. With the door opening and closing so often, Rune helped Signe back to the bedroom.

  “Takk. It seems I will never be up and moving around again.” She sank against the pillows. “Just that little bit and I-I . . .” She sucked in a deep breath. “But I am stronger. Every day.”

  “Ja, good.” Rune patted her shoulder. “Every day.”

  When the snow finally stopped that afternoon, the sun managed to break through the clouds and turn the outdoors into a glittering world of white. Rune thought briefly of Norway. He did that a lot.

  The kitchen was warmer than the parlor, so he took the stair treads to the kitchen table to do the finish woodwork.

  Gerd and the boys seemed to be a smooth-running team. Rune was proud of that. Knute took over stirring the cookie dough when Gerd had to sit down to catch her breath.

  “You ever rolled out cookies?” she asked.

  Both boys shook their heads.

  “Then you will start now. Leif, sift flour onto the table, there.” She pointed to a spot. “Knute, dump half the dough on the flour and pat it into a circl
e.”

  The boys swapped wide-eyed looks but did as they were told.

  “Good. The rolling pin is in the first drawer of the pantry.” Leif brought it in, and Gerd pushed herself to her feet. “Now I will show you how to roll the dough.” She rolled out the dough and showed them how to cut the cookies, then lift them onto the baking sheet. “Now slide that in the oven.” She sat down again. “And pull the coffeepot forward.”

  Smiling to himself at his sons and their baking adventure, Rune finished planing and sanding the stair risers at about the same time the cookies were all baked and the mess cleaned up.

  Gerd instructed, “Now go tell Einar that coffee is ready.” She motioned for Leif to get cups and a plate for the cookies.

  “Mor will want some,” Leif reminded her.

  “Of course your mor wants some. They smell so good.”

  Leif grinned at Gerd, who managed a bit of a smile. “I can take her some?”

  Gerd turned to Rune. “Would you help her out here again?”

  “Cookies, such a waste of time,” Einar muttered as he sat down. But when he caught the glare Gerd directed at him, he wisely said no more.

  Rune sat Signe down at the table. “This reminds me of a winter day at home,” she said.

  “Grandma liked to bake cookies, huh, Mor?” Leif said.

  “Ja, she did, and I am sure still does.” Signe smiled at Gerd. “Takk.”

  Einar slammed the final nail in the steps just before supper. “Done.”

  “We still need a handrail on the outside,” Rune said.

  “I will be out sharpening the saw.”

  Rune suppressed a sigh. “Bjorn and I will build it. Takk for your help.”

  Einar glared at him. “Two trees lost,” he muttered. “Maybe three.”

  I will build our bed after supper. Since the evenings were longer now that darkness fell so early, Rune knew he could do that. Perhaps also a cradle for Kirstin, but could he manage a rocking chair?

  That night after supper, he sat in the bedroom with Signe while the boys did their homework at the table.

  “Would you really leave here, move us somewhere else?” she asked.

  “If need be, but it would be easier to stay. Gerd surprised me, though. I think she surprised Einar too.”

  “She could not bear to be parted from Kirstin. I heard her singing to her the other day. It makes me wonder if she was ever around babies much. She has never mentioned a baby dying or being with child.”

  “I have a bad feeling that we have not heard the last of this yet. It is getting too cold for Einar to sleep out in the barn.”

  “Ja. And the boys’ pallets need to be filled with hay to keep them warmer.”

  “Now that the stairs are up, we will do that tomorrow after supper. I’m going to build rope beds after that. Then the pallets can serve as mattresses.”

  “So much to do.” She laid her hand over his. “But see how much better Gerd is?”

  “Ja.”

  Life resumed as usual the next morning, with the men preparing to leave for the woods and the boys to school. As usual, there was no talking at the breakfast table. Rune could tell, though, that Signe was getting stronger. Thank you, God! She sipped on a cup of coffee as the others bustled around her.

  Einar huffed out the door as usual.

  “Mor, what if they had school yesterday but we didn’t go?” asked Knute. “We’ll get a demerit.”

  “I’ll write you a note.”

  “Takk.” Leif leaned closer. “Today we have cookies in our dinner pails. And we helped make them. Bjorn said that was woman’s work, but I don’t care. Everyone liked the cookies, even Onkel Einar. How come he never says thank you?”

  Signe just shook her head as she carefully wrote a note to the teacher in English and patted each of her boys. “You are doing a fine job. Soon I will be fixing your dinner pails again.”

  Rune smiled. Signe knew the value of gratitude.

  After two days of felling three trees each day, the men were down at the machine shed, Einar sharpening, Rune cutting boards for the bed. “You ever build any furniture, Einar?”

  “Some. Why?”

  “Do you have a miter saw?”

  “Ja, but it got rusty.” He pointed to a corner where a couple wooden boxes were stacked. “Maybe in there.”

  Rune found assorted woodworking tools, some rusty, some missing pieces, and all filthy. “Do you mind if I take these to the house?”

  Einar shrugged.

  “You ever thought of enclosing this end of the shed and putting a stove in so you could work here on winter nights?”

  “Maybe someday.”

  The next morning, daylight seemed delayed due to the near blizzard conditions outside. As the world lightened slowly, the only thing visible was blowing snow.

  Einar stood on the porch. “Shoulda strung a rope to the barn yesterday.” He knotted a coil of rope to the porch post and spoke to Rune. “Play this out, but keep it taut. I’ll tug on the other end when I reach the barn. If I’m gone too long, follow the rope to come find me.”

  Bjorn and Knute joined Rune on the porch, and he told them what Einar had said. When he felt the tug on the rope, Rune breathed a sigh of relief. Holding on to the rope, he kicked a path through the snow, the boys behind him doing the same. When they reached the barn, he squeezed in the door and fetched the shovel.

  “You boys go ahead with your chores. We’ll haul water for the animals after breakfast.”

  “I will haul water,” Einar said. “You fork down hay for the horses and cows.”

  Inside, the barn felt warm, redolent with the smells of horse and cow, of hay and manure. The cow mooed from her stanchion, where they had wisely left her and the heifer overnight.

  “The pig bucket is frozen,” Leif reported.

  “We’ll bring down hot water to thaw it. What about the chicken waterer?”

  “It’s fine. I cleaned the sawdust out of it.” They had hauled sawdust down from where they cut firewood and spread it on the floor of the chicken house and pigpen.

  Leif dug two dried cobs of corn and entered the chicken house, scraping one cob across the other to break off the kernels, which set the chickens to fluttering and fighting. The dried cobs he threw in for the pigs.

  As soon as Rune forked down the hay, Leif forked it into the mangers. Knute finished milking and hung the pail on a nail so dirt would not fly into the milk.

  “Water is here!” bellowed Einar from outside. Rune pushed open the door and helped him pull the wagon inside. “Need to get the sledges out. We can do that tonight. If the snow lets up, we’re going to the woods.” He glared at Rune to get his point across.

  Rune dipped two five-gallon buckets in the water barrel, and Einar hauled them into the horse stalls. While the horses drank, Rune did the same with two smaller pails for the cow and heifer.

  “Are we going to school?” Knute asked.

  “Not unless it lets up.”

  The two younger boys grinned at each other as they stepped outside into the whirling, windy, snowing world.

  “Hang on to the rope,” Rune warned them.

  The snow was up to the boys’ knees on the path sides. Rune followed them to the house, which he couldn’t see until they were a few feet away. Stomping the snow off their boots, they grabbed the broom and swept each other off.

  “Shut the door quick,” Gerd ordered from her place in front of the stove. “You can bring in wood after breakfast.”

  After hanging up their coats and hats, both boys stood as close to the stove as they could without burning their clothes, rubbing their hands to get warm again. Rune peeked into the bedroom to check on Signe. She was sleeping. Good.

  He returned to the kitchen. “Bad out there.”

  “Is winter always like this here?” Knute asked.

  Gerd shrugged. “Sometimes, but usually it’s sunny, with really cold days.”

  “Do people go ice fishing here?”

  “Ja. Sta
rt your oatmeal.”

  “Before Onkel Einar?” The boys spoke in unison, their voices quivering.

  “Here, put this at his place.” She handed them a bowl of oatmeal. “Cream, brown sugar, and milk are on the table.”

  Einar pushed through the door, trailing snow behind him.

  Gerd bristled. “Sweep off on the porch! Even the boys know that.”

  Einar glared at her and went back outside. He returned with most of the snow brushed off, flipped his gloves into the warming box behind the stove, and sat down. When he picked up his spoon to eat, the others did the same.

  Leif sent Gerd an apologetic look before spooning in his oatmeal.

  After breakfast, as the storm continued to rage, Einar stood at the kitchen window. Rune heard him cursing under his breath. Then he bundled up and left.

  Rune motioned the boys to help Gerd with the dishes and told Bjorn to come help him sand down the handrail so there would be no slivers. He sent Bjorn to the top of the stairs, and he started at the bottom.

  Gerd came into the parlor. “Rune, we need to wash diapers again. Could you and Bjorn move the washing machine inside?”

  “You need more wood too?”

  “The boys are doing that, but there’s not much to bring in.”

  “Ja, you are right. Where is Einar?”

  She shrugged.

  He nodded. “We’ll get as much done as possible. Cutting wood is a good chore for when you can’t be out in the woods.”

  “Just don’t stay out long. Frostbite is dangerous too, you know?”

  “Ja, I know.”

  They moved the washing machine inside, made sure there was enough water heating, and headed out into the cold, scarves wrapped over their faces.

  They had to shovel snow to find the sawhorses and the chopping block. With two blocks and two people swinging axes, the split stack grew quickly. Gerd was right. There should already be a cord of wood or more stacked on the porch for winter. Rune should have realized this, but instead he did what Einar demanded. The boys could not keep up with the wood splitting and all the home chores too.

  “Let’s stack this on the porch to dry, then we’ll split the rest. At least you boys brought another dead tree in.”