“Hawk,” he answered, laying his arm across his mother’s shoulders. He turned to face her, a grin appling his cheeks. “Big bird.” When she smiled back and tickled his tummy, he chortled with the most infectious laugh in all of Dakota Territory.
“Those boys are so brown, the only way to tell Baptiste apart is his dark hair.” Kaaren shifted on the high wagon seat they had padded for her with a quilt. Although her baby wasn’t due for another two months, she looked ready to deliver any minute. “Uff da,” she murmured, using both hands to move her abdomen into a more comfortable position. Pointing to her ponderous belly, Kaaren asked, “Are you thinking this is twins as much as I am?”
“There were twins in the Bjorklund family. Bridget told me so a long time ago. She warned me in case it happened.”
“I know. Carl always thought having twins would be a wonderful gift from God.” A cloud flitted across her eyes at the memory of her first husband, who had died of flu one winter. She sighed. “Lars says two for one ain’t a bad return.”
“Ja, but he don’t have to nurse and diaper them. Diapers for one baby is hard enough, especially in the winter. I remember taking them off the line frozen stiff and finishing the drying over the stove in the soddy.”
“Not so long ago either. I’ve been hemming flannel and knitting soakers, but if I have twins, I won’t have enough.” They stopped the horses at the hitching post in front of the barn.
“You wait and I’ll help you down.” Ingeborg wrapped the reins around the brake handle and climbed over the side, using the spokes of the front wheel as a middle step. She lifted Andrew down and hung on to his hand to walk around the wagon. “Just you be patient, son. You cannot go after Thorliff. Remember, Gus is in the house waiting to play with you.” She reached up to give Kaaren a hand.
“I’m going to have to sit back in the wagon bed from now on. This climbing up and down from the seat is getting to be too much.” Kaaren gripped the wagon seat while she felt for the spoke with one foot. Ingeborg placed the searching foot on a spoke and reached to give leverage for Kaaren to sit against if she felt weak. Once they both had their feet on the ground, Kaaren shook her head. “Two more months. How will I ever manage?”
“Like women everywhere. One step at a time.” Ingeborg slipped the bridles from the horses and tied the ropes from the hitching post to their halters. “Those boys better come back and take care of the horses or they’ll get whatfor from both me and Agnes.”
They retrieved their quilting baskets from the rear of the wagon and walked toward the soddy that lay dozing in the sun. The air wore the crisp dress of Autumn, with the sun valiantly trying to warm it. After a frost that blackened the gardens, Indian summer settled in for an extended visit.
“My land, I never even heard you drive up.” Agnes bustled to the door at their knock. “Come in. Come in.” She ushered them in, then stepped outside. “Knute, Swen, you two come take care of the horses now!” Her holler could be heard in the next township. “Boys!” She shook her head when she came back in the soddy. “How they can get that far away so fast is beyond me.” She shook her head again when Kaaren removed her shawl. “Merciful God, please don’t let her have that baby right here today.” She clasped her hands against her bosom. “Are you sure you figured right?”
Kaaren nodded. “Lars thinks maybe I should go down to Grand Forks to the doctor there, but other than needing a wheelbarrow in front of me, I’m fine. He said we should take bets on whether there’s one or two in here.” She patted the huge bulge as she spoke. “If it’s two, we’ll need the money.” With a sigh she sank into the rocker. “Maybe what I should do is put my rocker in the back of the wagon for traveling.”
Ingeborg and Agnes exchanged looks. “What a wonderful idea. Why didn’t we think of that earlier?” Ingeborg gave Andrew, who had buried himself in her skirt, a gentle push. “You and Gus go play now. See the blocks?”
“I fixed them up a pen in the back of the house with hog wire from the edge of the lean-to to the back of the soddy. That way they can dig in the dirt and not head out across the prairie.” Agnes went to the door. “Penny!” She turned back to her guests. “She can leave off with the churning and help Anji get these little ones settled. We got something to discuss before she comes in to help with the quilting.”
Penny wiped a strand of hair from her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand as she came through the door. She greeted the two women, took the hands of the little ones, and led them out the back door.
“Now, quick.” Agnes seated herself in the chair she pulled away from the table, making a triangle of the two rockers and the chair. She leaned forward and dropped her voice to a whisper. “I thought maybe we could make the next quilt for Penny and Hjelmer.”
“She’s heard from him then?” Ingeborg asked.
Agnes shook her head. “No, only that one letter, and it is worrying her some awful. That scalawag. When I catch up with him, he’s going to wish he’d been faithful about putting pen to paper. I keep telling myself it’s only two months since he’s been gone, but I got a bad feeling about this.”
“We haven’t heard either, and I’m sure he hasn’t written home. His mother asked about him in her last letter.”
“Be that as it may, and knowing how long it takes us to get something finished, I’d like to start a wedding ring pattern for them. Every bride needs that quilt on her wedding bed, and maybe the stitching of the quilt will bring Hjelmer home sooner.”
“Fine with me. I just thought maybe we could quick piece up another baby quilt, just in case.” Ingeborg nodded toward Kaaren. “We could work on that today while Penny is helping us. I’ll ask around at Sunday meeting tomorrow and find out who else wants to join us.”
“Good.” Agnes nodded. “We could do the baby a nine patch or a four square and plain.” She rose to go to her trunk under the window. “I have some scraps in here. We could do a crazy quilt.”
Penny came in just as her aunt knelt in front of the chest. “Here, let me do that. You know Onkel Joseph said to—”
“Don’t care what he said. A woman’s got to get in her trunk now and again, and you can see I’m not climbing on anything.” She tempered her words at her niece with a gentle smile. “You go ahead and pour us all a cup of coffee.”
Penny started to say something, thought the better of it, and flashing a grin that asked “what to do with her?” went to the calico-skirted cupboard for cups.
Before long the women were taking turns cutting pieces, laying the squares out in a pleasing color pattern, and stitching them together. Their conversation flashed as fast as their needles. The fragrance of beans baking with salt pork and molasses, the laughter of the children outside, and the comfort of one another’s company made the morning fly by. As soon as they’d served all the men and children, they ate quickly and returned to their stitching. Penny washed up the two small children, tucked them into bed for a nap, and returned to the job at hand.
“I have some of the head and leg wool from the spring shearing carded for quilt batting,” Ingeborg said, smoothing her latest square out on her knees. “There now. Don’t that look nice?” They all admired their handiwork and kept on stitching. “Don’t seem like we should wait a month to tie this. Might be needed before then.”
“Inge!” Kaaren shifted in her chair, grateful for the footstool Penny had placed beneath her swollen feet. Sitting for more than a few minutes in one position was becoming increasingly difficult. “Uff da.”
“What is it?” Ingeborg leaned forward, as if ready to leap out of her seat.
“Those little feet are beating a tattoo on my ribs. There must be more than one in there. Sometimes I think it’s a whole army” She rubbed the upward curve of her belly. “Hush now, little one, hush.”
“Ones.” Ingeborg kept her gaze on her stitching, but everybody could see her mouth twitch.
With the squares of nine patch stitched together, Agnes sorted through her store of cloth. “I have blue for the
solid squares or yellow. Which would you like?” She held up the cloth in the colors mentioned.
“I think the blue—no, the yellow.” Kaaren shook her head. “Making up my mind even over little things is a big chore.”
“The yellow it is.” Agnes cut one square and used it as a pattern for the next. When Penny gently but firmly took the scissors from her hand, the older woman straightened and dug her fists into the curve of her back. “I don’t remember being so stiff and tired with the others.” She rubbed her back again. “Must be getting old.”
Back in their chairs to finish the final seams, the women turned the talk to the new people who had moved into the area during the summer.
“I know someone who will be at the service tomorrow. Someone who’s been asking after our Penny.” Ingeborg nodded and winked at Agnes.
“Who could that be?” With innocent wide eyes and smiling mouth, Agnes looked up from her handiwork.
“That nice Mr. Clauson, that’s who. He said he was looking for a wife, and when he saw Penny, he was sure he’d found the one.”
“Of course. She’s the only unattached female for five square miles,” Kaaren added.
“Or ten.” Ingeborg finished the sentence.
Penny could feel the heat staining her cheeks, making her wish for a cold wet cloth. “But you know I’m promised to Hjelmer. He’s your brother-in-law, after all.”
“Ja, well, who knows about Hjelmer, and Mr. Clauson is here with land of his own and an itching for feet to meet under his table. Not that I wouldn’t mind being that woman, ’twere I but a few years younger.”
“Tante Agnes!”
“Just teasing, my girl, but nonetheless, there’s wisdom in those words.”
But what about Hjelmer? Penny could hear the wail echoing and re-echoing in her mind.
Thunderheads darkened the westering sun.
Hjelmer Bjorklund looked up from the iron bar he was hammering into a coal scoop and watched lightning fork through the black expanse above. In spite of the chill fall wind, he wiped the sweat from above his eyes and thrust the flattening bar back into the bed of white-hot coals. He nodded to the boy whose job it was to pump the bellows and switched to a broader hammer. He wanted to get the coal scoop done before dark, and with the storm, darkness was almost upon them. The cook had been badgering him for it, threatening no supper unless Hjelmer brought the finished product with him.
“Could snow. It’s almost that cold,” shouted Leif Ransom, his friend since Hjelmer joined the James J. Hill company as it pushed the tracks of the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway toward the Pacific Northwest. The two met one night in the chow line, lined up bunks one above the other, and soon developed a reputation as hardworking, honest young crew members who stuck up for each other and for those who needed a champion.
“Ja, it could.” Hjelmer waved at the jovial young man carrying a sledgehammer over his shoulder and then went back to his coal scoop. He thinned the metal even more at the open end and bent it up first on one side then the other. Thrusting the formed piece into the water bucket, he watched it sizzle and steam. Just as he pulled it out, the steam whistle echoed across the flatland, announcing the end of the workday and time for chow. Hjelmer’s empty stomach rumbled in response. He banked the coals in the forge and shed his apron, making sure his heavy leather gloves were tied to the apron strings, then he folded the equipment in half and stuck it in his wooden chest. If things weren’t properly stowed, they had a habit of disappearing. He rotated shoulders nearing ax-handle width and rolled his grimy white sleeves over arms corded with well-formed muscles.
Arnie, his bellows boy, finished dropping all the tools into their proper slots around the forge bed, and the two leaped to the ground. “See ya tomorrow, Mr. Bjorklund.” The boy sent Hjelmer a grin, showing one front tooth missing. The way the boy talked, Hjelmer had an idea the gap was compliments of the father the boy had left behind in Minnesota.
Away from the sweltering heat of the forge, the cold wind knifed through Hjelmer’s black wool coat. He wished he had one of sheepskin like some of the other workers. The leather outside and the wool turned in made for better wind protection, and with nothing between the camp and the northerners howling across the prairie, he knew he would soon need added protection. He pulled a black wool watch cap farther down over hair that had deepened over time from tow-colored to the amber of honey left late in a bee tree.
Thoughts of the snug soddy he’d so reviled last spring when he arrived from Norway made him shake his head. So much he had learned in the last six months. Those at home in Nordland would never believe half of it if he told them. That thought prompted a twang of guilt for not writing his mother, and that one reminded him of an even worse sin. He hadn’t written a second letter to Penny. Asking her to wait for him had taken all the gumption he possessed, and now he’d let her down again. Visions of her sparkling blue eyes and curls that captured the sun made him sigh. He fingered her letter he kept in his pocket, so worn at the folds that he cradled the paper in his hands to read it again lest it fall totally apart.
One letter. She had promised to write every week, and while he hadn’t traveled that far, he did say he would answer, that he would keep in touch. He would come back for her, and they would build a building by the school to house their home and their store, with his own blacksmith shop set right next door. He wondered if they had built the school yet. And who was the father of Mary Ruth Strand’s baby? One thing he knew for certain, it weren’t him, accusations by her or no. He knew what it took to make a baby, and he had never gone that far, not with her or any woman.
“You look like you lost your last friend.” Leif clapped him on the shoulder. “And I know you din’t, ’cause I’m right here.” As short and stocky as Hjelmer was tall and broad of shoulder, Leif laughed at his own joke. Life, according to the gospel of Leif, was one long, continuous joke, the kind that if a man didn’t laugh he might never quit crying. When he threw back his head and laughed, summer mink curls bounced on his forehead, the combination attracting broad smiles from anyone present, especially those of the women, young and old alike.
“Ja, you are.” Hjelmer broke into a jog to outrun his biting thoughts. “If we don’t hurry, the food will all be gone.” They dodged in and out of the line of men plodding toward the cook car. Kerosene lanterns hung from the box cars to light their way. Just as they stepped inside, a peal of thunder shook the sky and the clouds let loose a deluge, as if they’d just turned a heavenly bucket upside down to drench those foolish enough to have dawdled.
“Just in time,” Hjelmer said, whipping the hat from his head and stuffing it in his coat pocket. Rosy lantern light softened the bare tables lined with benches and the life-hardened crew taking their places. With the workday finished, laughter bounced from the smoke-gray wooden walls to meld with voices loud enough to be heard above the noise. It was nearly impossible for anyone to carry on a conversation lest they be side by side. Young boys toted steaming bowls of vegetables and platters of meat from the cook car to the front of the dining car—if it could be given such a dignified name. Most called it the cookshack. Serving only two meals a day, the cooks fixed enough food to feed twice as many men as the crew, and the food always disappeared before the late arrivals got enough.
The two were just scraping the last of the apple pie off their plates when the foreman stopped behind them. “You two boys want to join the poker players tonight? Big Red over there asked me to invite you.” He nodded toward a man at the far trestle table who laughed just then at something his neighbor said. The laugh rolled over the tables, bounced off the walls, and caused more than one man to turn to look, hoping to get the joke too.
Hjelmer never failed to wonder how such a deep laugh could come from such a narrow chest. The man stood just over five feet, his hair flaming in the lamplight. Red at least suited him, but big? The reputation that rolled outward like waves toward shore said otherwise. Big could possibly refer to his temper. Soon as a
nyone came to camp they were warned to stay on the sunny side of the banty Irishman. No one, on pain of severe injury, made remarks about his size or lack thereof.
All these thoughts raced through Hjelmer’s head as the desire to feel the cards in his hands again made them tremble. Could he play just one or two hands, have a few laughs and a beer or two, then leave it alone?
A rippling up his spine reminded him of giant Swen from the foundry in New York, the man who threatened to kill him for supposedly cheating at cards. Hjelmer knew he didn’t have to cheat to win. And he hadn’t.
“Thanks anyway, but I better not. You go ahead, Leif, if’n you want to.”
“The men are gonna think you’re scared,” Leif whispered behind his hand. “You get invited here, you play.”
Hjelmer studied his friend from under sandy lashes. He shook his head. “Thanks, Mr. Hanson, but if it is all right with you, I’ll come another night. Tell Big Red thanks for the invite.”
Hanson cocked an eyebrow. “You know, if you’re scared or don’t know how to play, we can show you how it’s done.”
Hjelmer half turned on his bench. “That’s right kind of you. Maybe another night.”
Hanson studied them a moment more before turning to make his way back across the trestle-table-and-bench-clogged room.
Hjelmer watched him go. A feeling down in his gut said he’d just made a big mistake. The look on Leif’s face said the same. Should he tell his new friend what had happened in New York? That he’d made a vow to never gamble again? Instead, he said, “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
The two ducked their heads as they strode through the slanting rain that bore a mighty close resemblance to sleet. Reaching the door to their home on wheels, they pushed it open and quickly stepped inside. The remodeled boxcar looked as if someone had plunked down a one-room house that was too large for the wheel bed, so it hung over two to three feet on both sides, and then built portable steps up to it. A potbellied stove in the center of the car radiated heat for about five feet around it, an inviting gathering place for those not ready to hit the straw-stuffed sacks frequently referred to as louse houses. A pot of coffee strong enough to pound into spikes steamed on the flat surface.
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