Metiz studied the paper as if trying to divine the words herself. “Land for me?”
“Ja, and if you want more, I will deed you more.”
“Why want more?”
Ingeborg shrugged. “I just want you to own the land your husband should have filed on. It is now yours, and no one can take it away from you.”
Metiz stood unmoving but for her eyes. Her eyes spoke of gratitude, of something deeper. “Man not own land, land own man.”
“Or woman.”
The old woman nodded. “Thank you.” She folded the deed and carefully stuck it in her backpack. “Mange takk.” She nodded first to Ingeborg and then to Haakan.
“When we eat, Mor?” Andrew crawled up on his chair. “Ellie coming?”
“No, they are eating over at Tante Kaaren’s.”
When Haakan sat down, he looked again at Metiz. “We will help you build a permanent house if you like. It can be of sod or wood, whichever you want.”
“I think about it.” She sat down and joined their circle of hands while Haakan led them in grace. At the end of the Norwegian words, he added, “And thank you for bringing Metiz back to us after the long winter and for her helping our daughter into this world so safely. Amen.”
A couple of days later, Agnes and her two little ones came calling with a knitted bonnet and blanket for the new baby. “She is a beauty, look, not a mark on her.” She touched the fine down on the baby’s head. “So precious.”
“Go get Tante Kaaren,” Ingeborg said to Andrew. “Tell her Mrs. Baard is here.” So while Ellie stayed with the two Baard young’uns, Andrew scampered across the center field.
By the time Kaaren and the twins arrived, Goodie had set out the coffee cups, given each of the children a cookie, and sent them outside to play. She called the others to come for coffee. When they sat around the table, she set a plate of cookies in the center and filled the cups.
“What do you hear from Penny?” Ingeborg asked after they talked about the gardens and how close to flooding the Red River came.
“She writes regular, that one.” Agnes dipped her cookie in the steaming coffee. “I sure do miss her sorely.”
“Have you told her that Hjelmer was here?”
Agnes shook her head. “She didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell her.”
“Agnes!” Kaaren and Ingeborg blurted as one voice.
“Ja, well, she seems so happy with Donald Moen that I couldn’t bring it up. I didn’t lie.”
“What if she had heard he’d been here?” Ingeborg adjusted the blanket over her nursing baby.
“Then I’d have told her. But he weren’t here long enough to talk to many folks.” Agnes wiped her brow. “That was a relief. Inge, you saw the light on her face that’s been missing ever since Hjelmer left. She’s happy in school and loves to work at the hotel and this young man is . . . seems so . . . so responsible. He’s older than her other school friends, you know.”
Ingeborg kept her opinions to herself and watched Kaaren do the same. If Hjelmer ended up with a hurting heart, it was his own fault. But he’d seemed so much more like a man when he came through during the winter. He’d taken care of the Peterson family. Didn’t that show his maturity?
“There is no hurry, that’s for sure. Hjelmer said he’d find Penny when he went through Fargo this spring, but we haven’t heard from him either. I thought maybe he’d be working the spur line. Haakan said he heard they started it.”
When the men came in for dinner, Ingeborg watched as Goodie served Olaf first. The smile he gave her brought enough pink to her cheeks, you’d think she was a young girl again. So that was the way the wind blew. Ingeborg leaned back in her chair. They probably should get another wedding ring quilt started. One finished and put away for Penny and another on the stretcher for Solveig. At this rate the women might have to start meeting twice a month.
In June, with the spring fieldwork done and the fields already sprouted, everyone joined together to raise the sack house, a warehouse for storing the hundred-pound burlap sacks of grain. Since school let out, Uncle Olaf had spent his evenings laying out the sixty-by-forty-foot building and hauling lumber to the site. While it hadn’t seasoned like he wanted, everyone knew the building had to be ready for the fall harvest. Haakan and Lars helped him set the three rows of pier posts deep into the ground, then string beams from post to post and nail the two-by-ten flooring in place over the joists.
This year there would be no grain hauling to Grafton or to the paddle-wheeler.
“I thought sure we would be building the church next,” one of the women said while they were setting up the sawhorses to make tables for the food.
“Me too,” another answered, wiping the perspiration from her forehead. “Got hot awful soon, didn’t it?” They all turned at a shriek from the group of children playing around the school. When one of the girls ran from around the school, Knute Baard behind her with a garter snake in his outstretched hand, the women turned back to their labors.
“Uff da. Don’t boys never change?” Chuckles and head shakings greeted her sally.
“No, and they always think they was the first to dream up that mischief. I remember throwing a snake back one time. The boy didn’t like that one bit.” This time chuckles tickled the air like a breeze in a cottonwood.
“I’ll take a water bucket around,” Solveig volunteered.
“And Mr. Carlson’s not even here.”
Solveig brightened up like a bad case of sunburn. “Is he coming?”
Her question did it. Chuckles turned to outright laughter, but of the gentle kind that says, “I’m laughing with you and this is a wonderful day to be together and laughing.”
“If you don’t know, deary, how are any of the rest of us to know?”
Solveig fled toward the well in the school yard.
“On the count of three now.” Olaf’s voice could be heard above the sawing and pounding racket of building. “One, two, three.” The men on the ropes pulled, and the east wall that had been framed on the floor rose slowly into its vertical position. With men holding ropes from both sides, others scurried about nailing braces into place and pounding pegs into the ground to nail to. By dinnertime, the four walls stood gleaming in the sunlight, all braced together and squared off by Olaf himself. When he checked his measurements and nodded, a great cheer went up.
When Lars walked by Kaaren, who carried a twin on each hip, he chucked Sophie under the chin, making her giggle and wave her arms. But he ignored Grace as if she weren’t even there.
Ingeborg watched the frown deepen between Kaaren’s eyebrows at the slight. Ingeborg shook her head. She’d been afraid of something like that when she never saw him holding the deaf baby, but this was too obvious to miss. What would happen when the new baby came? Should she say something to Kaaren? Oh, Lord, here’s another problem for you. I sure don’t know what to do. She thought a moment more, then crossed to take Grace from her mother’s arms. “Come on, Gracie dear, let’s go for a walk.”
Kaaren stayed with her as they ambled toward the cemetery. “You saw?”
Ingeborg nodded but continued playing with the baby, making funny faces and blowing on the delicate hand.
“I don’t know what to do. One minute I want to scream at him and the next, cry in his arms. What is the matter with a man who, just because a child is deaf, can’t bear to touch her?”
“I’ve heard there are people like that. They can’t abide something that isn’t perfect.”
“Well, if that’s the case, all he needs to do is look within.”
The bite of her comment made Ingeborg raise her eyebrows. la, but in case you haven’t noticed, some men don’t do that so well. In fact, some women don’t neither.” She raised Grace in the air so they were looking face-to-face. “Now you, little one, I think you will not only look within yourself, but you will see deep within others. Your eyes seem to see so far.”
Grace smiled and reached for her aunt. The sun kissed the baby’s hair and
turned the white down on her head to shimmering gold.
“Ja, I know you are an angel, and God gave you to your far and mor for a very special reason.” She settled Grace back in her arm and kissed the rounded cheek.
“I don’t know what to do.” Kaaren stopped walking and jiggled Sophie on her hip.
“Me neither, but someone once told me that when in doubt, pray, for God knows the answers.”
“Ja, well, it’s easier to say to someone else than to do yourself.”
“Really?” Ingeborg adopted a surprised look that quickly turned to love and caring.
“One day at a time is the way we will do this, just as we do with everything else. I imagine there will come a time when you have to say the same things back to me. Let’s go eat.” They continued on around the building and back to the party.
“That Olaf, he be one good foreman.” Joseph Baard set his heaping plate down and, sticking his skinny legs under the table, took a seat on the bench.
“I’m thinking we oughta ask him to run this here operation when harvesttime comes. Someone has to be here to check the grain sacks in and see they get loaded on the train,” said Eric Johnson from west of the Baards’ place as he copied Joseph’s movements.
“Then who will teach the school?” a man across the table asked. “Good as he is, even Olaf can’t be in two places at once.”
“Well, they ain’t too far apart.” Joseph measured the distance with his eyes.
“Mrs. Knutson?”
Lars shook his head. “She won’t be teaching. She’ll be tending a new baby and the twins. That’s enough to keep anyone busy.”
“ ’Specially if Solveig happens to move on.” Haakan nodded toward the approaching buggy. “How come he always knows when the food is on?”
George Carlson stopped his horse and buggy by the other horses and leaped to the ground. “I see I’m just in time for dinner.” He tied his horse to the wagon next with a long enough lead for some grazing, just as the others had done.
“No dinner for one who ain’t put in the morning working.” The man stared the grinning George up and down. “And you ain’t dressed for no building work. You look more like you come courting.”
“I’ll work for a while. Have to prove my worth, you know,” George said, then ambled off to where the food-laden table awaited.
“She’s hiding behind the schoolhouse,” Ingeborg whispered. “She hates being embarrassed, and they been teasing her like—”
“Like they never saw a pretty woman blush before?” The look in his eyes let her know he knew all about the teasing and probably had done his share at times.
Ingeborg clutched his comment to her heart to share with Solveig later. If Solveig knew George saw her as beautiful, maybe she would quit worrying about the nearly disappeared scar and faint limp. But how could she not know? That thought came when George’s face lit up at the sight of Solveig walking back to join the women, bringing another bucket of cool water from the well.
The joy on Solveig’s face, no matter how much she tried to disguise it, said it all.
“If they wait until fall to be married, I’ll eat my apron,” Ingeborg whispered to Kaaren.
“Good thing the last letter said a niece of mine was hoping to come this summer. She can take Solveig’s place.” Kaaren carried a wide awake, smiling twin on each hip. “These two are getting much too big to carry together.”
“Goodie will come help you.”
“You seen the looks between her and Olaf?” Kaaren raised one eyebrow. “You ask me, falling in love must be in the water or something.”
“Or something.”
The summer chores of gardening, making cheese and butter, butchering the young chickens, and harvesting fruits and vegetables both for their own storage and for Solveig to take to the Bonanza farm kept everyone busy from before dawn to moonrise. When there was enough moonlight, the men continued to break sod until about midnight. Ingeborg wished to go to the freedom of woods and fields, but there was no time. Baptiste and Thorliff, with Hans tagging along to learn from them, became intrepid hunters and fishermen, bringing back deer, rabbit, ducks and geese, game hens, and fish. The smokehouse sent up fragrant smoke continually, and there was always another hide that needed tanning. In between their other chores, the boys continued to split shingles, still racing with the Baard boys as to who could produce the most.
By mid-July, when the corn was higher than the horses’ knees, the cultivator could no longer work the rows, so anyone with an extra minute took out a hoe to chop weeds and loosen the soil. The rains came as if on demand, and with the hot summer sun, Ingeborg often said she could measure how much the plants grew overnight.
The chief topic of conversation at the quilting bees that summer was what to do about a school teacher. Olaf would be minding the sack house and making sure the water tower was kept full for the train. The only way he could teach school was to wait until after all the grain was harvested and shipped. That might be near Christmas.
Kaaren kept out of the conversations. Deep in her heart still dwelt a hurt feeling or two from the slight last winter. But she never thought beyond caring for her two growing daughters, rejoicing in the babe within. She continued to wonder why Lars not only paid no attention to Grace, but he seemed to deliberately ignore the silent child. Sophie had already decided she was her father’s girl, turning on every ounce of charm in her wriggling little body when she saw or heard her father. Kaaren stroked the cheek of the silent baby in her arms. How would she help this one learn to talk when she couldn’t hear? How could she forgive the father who ignored one of his daughters?
“So, how will I find her?” Far to the west on the railroad track-laying crew, Hjelmer sat in the open door of the sleeping car, swinging his feet and enjoying the breeze blowing through the house on wheels.
“You spent enough time in Fargo. You think maybe she ain’t there anymore?”
“I even tried the school, but the old lady at the desk said they can’t give out the names and addresses of their pupils.” He mimicked the prim woman’s tone.
“You wrote to her aunt yet?” Leif asked. When Hjelmer shook his head, Leif slapped him on the shoulder. “You stubborn Norwegian, you. Wouldn’t that be the easiest way to find out where this wonderful young woman lives? I’m beginning to think you made her up. There can be no one as perfect as Penny.”
“Not even Katja?” Hjelmer sent a sly glance to the side.
“That’s different. She’s at least here and engaged to me, no matter what those foul-minded fools around the camp say.” He bumped shoulders with Hjelmer. “Took her a while to figure out who really was the best man, but I convinced her.”
“Why didn’t you just marry her and stay in St. Paul?”
“Can’t afford a wife yet. I didn’t make a killing on land sales like someone else we all know.” Leif tipped his head back and rolled it from side to side to stretch out his neck. “Think I’ll just buy one of those pieces of land from you and go back to farming like my father. If the land is as good as you say, we should make a fair living.”
“The Peterson piece would be a good one, though no one is farming it now. The barn and house are both sod but they seemed sound. Sorry, but I already sold the Booth place.”
“You told me all this more than once.”
“Then you know that it is there for you. Brockhurst at the bank in Grand Forks will give you a loan with no trouble with the amount you got saved.” Hjelmer jumped to the ground. “Think I’ll take a walk before turning in.”
“You better watch out for Big Red, he done heard you learned a mighty lot about poker over the winter.” Leif headed for the tents where his laundress lived. “See you later.”
“Uff da.” One more thing to worry about other than where was Penny? Had she forgotten him? Perhaps she’d found someone better?
“Why you wearing such a long face?” Mrs. Johnson asked Penny one hot and humid night in July. They were sitting in rockers on the back porc
h of the hotel, hoping for some stray breeze to waft by and cool them off.
“Huh?” Penny jumped in the near darkness. “I . . . I was watching the fireflies.”
“Fireflies might be pretty, child, but they don’t bring out such sadness in most people.”
“Donald wants to marry me.”
“So?”
“So.” Penny sighed and propped her chin on the heels of her hands. “So . . .” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “What’s happened to Hjelmer? Where is he?” Only the purring of the white cat threading its way between their legs broke the silence. Penny reached to stroke the fluffy head and down the back. “Is he still alive?”
“I thought you was falling in love with Donald Moen. Looks to me that way.” Mrs. Johnson set her chair to rocking.
“I could be. I just don’t know. How can I be sure until I see Hjelmer again?”
“Or find out what happened to him?”
“Ja, that too.” Penny picked up the purring cat and nestled him against her chest. The cat licked her chin with a raspy tongue, then settled in for some serious kneading of the girl’s thigh with feline front feet.
“Have you written about this to your aunt, asked her questions?”
“I used to, but she never had any answers for me. Now . . .” She stroked the cat, who purred so loud it drowned out the song of the crickets. “Now, I don’t want to make any decisions yet. I just want to graduate from school and . . . and . . .”
“And find Hjelmer.”
“Ja, I guess.” The sigh she heaved nearly dumped the cat on the floor. He nipped her hand in protest.
I had so hoped yours would be the first wedding in our new church.”
“Ja, well, it is not exactly new, but the schoolhouse makes a good church nevertheless.” Solveig stroked her hand down the rose watered-silk skirt of the wedding dress Kaaren and Ingeborg had made for her. After the wedding it would be her good dress, but for now, it made her feel like a beautiful bride. The high neck, trimmed in cream lace, framed a face that glowed with joy. The lace flowed down the sides of the front placket, edged the leg of mutton long sleeves, and banded the skirt.
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