She had the silly urge to fly after her. Life at the hotel might be far easier than here in school.
But instead, she answered Mr. Brevick’s questions as best she could. No, she hadn’t had Latin, yes to arithmetic through to Algebra, yes to United States history, no to world geography. Yes, she had a fine hand for penmanship and could write essays. In fact, she had brought one with her just in case. She handed him the paper with her best work written in a clear hand.
He perused the essay, reading over the tops of his gold-rimmed glasses. “Very good.” He sounded surprised. “And you are fourteen?”
“Fifteen next month.”
“And you believe you can complete the program here in two years?”
“That is what my teacher at home thought. She said I may have to take some tests.”
“That you do.” He nodded, handing back her paper. “I am going to turn you over to Mr. Radisson, head of our English department. He will ask you questions and give you several tests before deciding where you are to be placed. Follow me.”
Their steps rang in the empty wainscoted hallway and up the stairs. Arched windows let in the watery sunlight. Mr. Brevick opened a door and motioned her to enter. After introducing her to the bespectacled Mr. Radisson, who wore the look of a scholar with ease, the principal left. With each exodus, Penny was feeling more cut off from any world she had known. Whatever had possessed her to think she wanted to get more schooling? As Uncle Joseph had said, surely she knew enough to make a good wife already.
She turned back to face the man behind the desk. “Welcome to Fargo High School, Miss Sjornson.” His smile set creases into his cheeks and warmed his brown eyes, taking away the fear from her heart.
By the time she left the school building when the final bell rang, she had met five different teachers with one more to go, realized she would need to sew some different clothes, and at least fifty times wished she had stayed home. When she finally climbed the three steps to the front porch, the hotel seemed like a friendly haven after her first day at school. She pitched into the preparations for supper, happy to be so busy she didn’t have time to think.
By the next morning she had talked herself out of returning home and into braving the school again. But she left the hotel early to make sure she didn’t get lost either on the way or inside the confusing building. To a girl accustomed to a one-room soddy with two lean-tos, the three-story brick building seemed bigger than a small town. The two side wings looked out on a courtyard where horses and wagons were held in stables for the pupils who came in from the surrounding country. Penny looked out upon the courtyard in time to see a big box on runners with a stovepipe coming from the roof pulling up. When the four-horse hitch stopped, a door opened in one wall of the box and young men and women stepped to the ground and hurried into the building. What a marvelous idea. She would have to write to Kaaren about it. When the bell rang, she crossed the hall to her first class, taking the seat toward the rear she’d been assigned the day before.
“Hi, my name is Becky. What’s yours?” The friendly voice and tap on the shoulder caused Penny to swivel around in her seat and return the cheerful smile. The slim girl behind her wore her strawberry blond hair cut in bangs across her forehead and the rest rolled up somehow in the back. A wide smile showed one slightly overlapped front tooth.
“I am Penny Sjornson, new from up north near Grafton.” She didn’t say Grafton was ten miles from home. It sounded better to be near somewhere.
“I hope you like it here. Where do you live now?”
“At the Headquarters Hotel.”
Just then the bell rang, and the teacher rapped on his desk. “Order, class.”
Having Becky in three of her classes and walking her halfway home made the day go a whole lot better than Penny had dreamed possible. This was only her second day here, and she already had a friend at school. After she said good-bye to Becky where she turned to go home, Penny sent her thank-you prayer heavenward. Maybe this was going to work out after all. But . . . when was she going to find time to study? Or look for Hjelmer?
“Kaaren,” Solveig asked one Sunday afternoon, “have you noticed anything different about Grace?”
“Ja, but what are you thinking?” Kaaren looked up from putting on the baby’s woolen soakers. She picked up the yawning infant and laid her against her shoulder, patting her back and assuming the side-to-side rocking motion that put the little one to sleep so quickly.
“I think she cannot hear.”
The words hung stark between them.
Kaaren started to deny the possibility but couldn’t. She’d been sure something was wrong herself the last two weeks, actually since the babies were only a few weeks old, but had refused to put a name to it and say the words out loud.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because yesterday she was lying with her eyes open, and I clapped my hands near her head. She never paid the slightest attention. When I did the same with Sophie, she flinched and turned to see what was going on.”
“Do it again now before she falls asleep.”
Solveig did as asked, clapping her hands right behind the baby’s head. Grace never moved. They tried banging a kettle, tapping a cup, whistling. There was no response—no turning of the head, no startled jerk.
Kaaren held the baby even closer. “Ah, my little one, how are we to help you?” Her eyes filled with tears but she blinked them back. “I wonder if Lars has noticed anything.” She laid the baby back in the cradle next to her sleeping sister. They had tried putting them in the separate cradles Lars had made, but both infants cried so pitifully, they put them back together.
Standing over the little bed, watching her two precious babies, Kaaren saw Sophie reach out an arm and place it over her sister’s back. They both slept on.
That night in bed, Kaaren confided the discovery to Lars.
When she had finished talking, he lay beside her for a while without answering. Finally he sighed. “I never knew anyone who couldn’t hear from the time they was born.” He sighed again and turned over on his side, his back to Kaaren.
Is that all you have to say about it? Kaaren’s mind raced with questions. What were they to do? What could they do?
A gentle snore told her Lars had fallen asleep already. Kaaren felt like poking him until he woke. Didn’t he understand?
December 1884
More of our relatives want to emigrate.” Ingeborg waved the letter from Nordland she’d been reading.
Haakan hung up his things and motioned for Thorliff and Baptiste to do the same. “Who now?” He stopped at his usual place, rubbing his hands over the heat of the cookstove.
“A cousin of mine and one of Roald’s. His uncle Johann’s second son—oops, no, his eldest. His eldest?” She looked up. “He’ll be the one to inherit the Bjorklund land in Valdrez. Why would he want to come?”
“Because he can do much more here in America than on that small piece of land in Norway.”
“It’s been supporting the family for generations.” Her gaze skimmed back to the letter.
“Ja, barely. I don’t blame him for wanting to come here.” He took an unopened envelope she offered him. “For me?”
She nodded, then looked up from her reading, her mouth open in shock. “Roald’s mor, Bridget, wants to come. Now that she is alone, she wants to come see her children here. Nothing is said about if she will stay. She wouldn’t come and then go back, would she?”
“Why not?” He smoothed the creases out of the paper now in his hands. “Other people do.”
“That long hard trip? And so costly?” She could tell he was no longer listening.
“My brother and sister both want to come. They each have three children and would come together. They are asking if there is more land around here for homesteading. A cousin, a single woman, would come with them.” He looked up at his wife. “What will I tell them? There is no more land to homestead around here, only land to buy”
“There
is homesteading in the west of Dakota Territory, but you know we’ve heard the land isn’t so good as this.”
Ingeborg finished her letter, folding it carefully and placing it back in the envelope. She would give it to Kaaren to read in the morning. “What do you mean there is more land to buy?”
He waved his hand in a signal to wait a moment, finished reading the letter, and looked up. “What?”
“Land to buy?”
“Ja, the railroad has released several more sections. One is directly southwest of us and would connect at the corner. I think we would be wise to get it now. If we don’t want to farm it, we could sell it to one of our relatives. Heaven knows we better buy everything we can. They’ll be coming like herds of migrating reindeer.” He stared a moment longer at the letter before putting it away. “If you agree to buy, then I think we should go talk with Lars and Kaaren after supper. If we don’t do this immediately, there will be none left.”
“Unless some who are already here want to move on. I think men like to get the itchy foot and the women have to go along.” Ingeborg had heard one man telling another how there was free land in the Pacific Northwest, and now that the trains ran out there, he thought about moving on. There were trees there big enough to dance on the stump and no blizzard winters like in Dakota. Oh yes, there would always be those with a restless soul.
Haakan left the next morning for Grand Forks to take out another note and to buy more land. He planned to see if he could find a used sawmill they could mount on skids to bring home as soon as possible. Besides felling trees, Olaf and Lars had used the crosscut saw to form some of the trees into beams on which to mount the saw when they got one. It would have been easier to wait until the saw arrived, but it wouldn’t work without mounting. They took some leftover beams from the barn raising to put up a roof frame, planning to side the north wall so they could work even in bad weather.
Ingeborg took Andrew in the sleigh with her to pick up Agnes to go to quilting at the Booth home. With Agnes’s two little ones joining Andrew under the elk robes in the back, the giggles and laughter rang out with the sleigh bells, bringing smiles to the faces of the women bundled in front.
“You think she really wants us to come?” Agnes asked.
Ingeborg shrugged. “Don’t know, but Mr. Booth said she did, and I guess he would know. Maybe if they would have had children, she wouldn’t have minded the winter quite so much.” She gestured to the youngsters in the back of the sleigh. Turning slightly to speak over her shoulder, she said, “Andrew, you stay covered up. I don’t want any part of you to get frostbit.” He crawled back under the robe.
“Sometimes even with little ones at my feet, I fear the wind.” Agnes shivered. “Joseph says it will be different when we have a house with more windows, but I don’t know. The wind will still shriek about the eaves and plead to be let in.”
“I know. For me it is the long dark days. Think I’ll move out to the barn this winter.”
“Well, Haakan wanted to build you a house, but you insisted on the barn, remember?”
“I know, and I was right. The cows have to come first.” She clucked the horses into a faster trot. “This way, when the house comes, I will appreciate it all the more.”
Agnes made a rude noise.
As soon as they arrived, Mr. Booth unhitched the team and led the horses off to the barn. Several parked sleighs showed that others had arrived before them. The women greeted one another, settled the children to playing, and found places for themselves. Sitting in a chair by the stove, Auduna Booth just nodded when they greeted her. When Ingeborg brought her some pieces to stitch together, they eventually fell from her lap. Even sewing costumes for the Christmas pageant failed to bring any kind of response. She accepted a cup of coffee when Brynja Magron handed it to her but never answered when Hildegunn asked where she kept the sugar. Andrew brought her the plate Ingeborg fixed for her at dinner, but even his cheery smile brought no acknowledgment.
“Lady sick,” he informed his mother in a whisper heard clear to St. Andrew.
Hildegunn nodded. “Out of the mouths of babes.” Mrs. Odell and Mrs. Magron, who always took the chairs on either side of her, nodded in unison like puppets on a string.
The women exchanged looks of concern and confusion, and soon after dinner everyone gathered up their things.
The women left early.
“Mr. Booth, Hagen, why don’t you let me take Auduna home with me for a couple of days? Maybe a change of scenery would help her?” Ingeborg asked as she loaded their things back in the sleigh.
He shook his head. “Mange takk for the offer, but I don’t think so. She hates to go anywhere, even out to our barn. She will be better when we get closer to spring again. The winters are always the hardest on her.”
“But isn’t she much worse this year?”
He shrugged. “Only God knows that. We will see you in church on Sunday.”
Obviously dismissed, Ingeborg started to say something else, then thought the better of it. Surely this man knew his own wife better than she did.
But when she told Agnes what had happened, Agnes shook her head too. “Men can be so stubborn, as if asking for help was a mortal sin or something.”
“I just wish there were something we could do.” Ingeborg clucked the horses into a trot, and the jingle of harness bells rang across the prairie. “Maybe even a ride like this would help her.” She turned to Agnes. “Should we go back and just throw her into the sleigh?”
“I don’t think Hagen would like that, nor would Auduna. I heard of a person who did something like this. Heard it called ‘prairie madness.’ It’s not uncommon, you know, and it ain’t just women who catch it. Sometimes men do too.” She shook her head and huddled farther into the furs. “Ain’t no cure far as I’ve heard, except maybe to leave and go back somewhere else.”
When she got home, Haakan had returned, jubilant with the news that he found a sawmill for sale. He and Olaf would take two sledges with teams of four, and since the river was frozen over, they could head due east to pick up their new piece of equipment.
“Should only take two or three days each way. If the weather holds, we’ll leave on Monday next.” Haakan rubbed his hands over the heat of the stove. “We have to go to Grafton to pick up the steam engine tomorrow. If we leave well before dawn, we should make it back in one day, but that will be heavy pulling, even on the snow.”
Ingeborg smiled at the look on his face. She’d seen one similar when Thorliff pressed his nose against a counter window at the Mercantile trying to decide which candy he wanted. She stopped behind her husband and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“You are like a child with a new toy.”
He turned and enclosed her in the circle of his arms. “You don’t mind the extra borrowing?”
“Ja, I mind. But I know you are doing the right thing.” She leaned her head against his chest, his heart thumping in her ear. “Just please be watchful of the weather. I don’t want you caught in a blizzard again.”
“Not to worry. I learned my lesson.” He tightened his arms. “You know, you are becoming more of an armful.”
“Ja, babies do that to their mothers.” She looked up into his eyes and read there the deep love she knew lived in his heart. The lips she raised to meet his said it all.
Kaaren threw every bit of energy and talent she possessed into helping the children with their presents and preparing for the Christmas pageant. At the same time, she developed a routine so that all their subjects were covered and the children were learning not only reading, writing, and arithmetic, but geography, history, and English as well. Some were memorizing poems for the pageant, others were learning songs. Each child would have his moment of glory, or agony, depending upon whom you asked. The bigger kids helped the middle-sized, and the middlers helped the little ones. Since Solveig could now move around without her crutch, she helped, too, whenever the twins were sleeping.
Kaaren invited Joseph with his fiddle an
d Olaf on the harmonica to come and practice two songs the children would all sing together. The harmony of “Jeg er så Glad Hver Jule Kveld” soared along with the fiddle until Kaaren had tears in her eyes at the end.
“That was wonderful. You sound just like an angel chorus must. If you sing like that the night of the program, you’ll have some mighty pleased parents.” She blew her nose and led them into the second number, a Norwegian folk song, “Ingrid Sletten,” about a little girl with a colored cap of wool. Then drawing the benches around the stove, they practiced all the carols.
“Oh, my,” Solveig said on the way home. “I never thought those children could sing like that. You’d think you were a concertmaster and been working together for years. And the looks on their faces.” She drew a square of cotton from her pocket and blew her nose. “This cold weather surely does make my nose run.”
Trying to find time to make presents for her own family seemed impossible. She knew Lars was making something out in the barn, and Ingeborg had whisked something out of sight one afternoon when she stopped there. Even Thorliff and Baptiste snickered once in a while, their eyes on her. She wanted to give each of her pupils some bit of a gift too. As the days grew shorter and the cold deepened, she was tempted a few times to remain at home. But she knew the children would show up, and she needed to have the schoolhouse warm for them.
One morning Lars rode the horse over to the school to start the stove so she could rest a bit longer. “You’re looking peaked,” he said to her. “Maybe this teaching while nursing the twins is too much. We don’t need no one sick here before Christmas, or after, either, for that matter.”
She could tell he was worried about her and trying to hide it behind a gruff voice.
“If the weather does what it normally does, we probably won’t have school in January anyway, possibly February too. I will get some rest then.”
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