Believing the Dream

by Lauraine Snelling

  “And we filled the barrels in the worst of it.” Andrew joined his brother in the doorway.

  “You’re letting all the heat out,” Haakan said.

  Thorliff and Andrew rolled their eyes and stepped back to close the door. “Is there anything else here that needs doing?”

  “Ja, plenty, but Mor must have dinner ready for us so we will eat first. Andrew, you gather the eggs, and Thorliff, you return the yokes and buckets to the well house. I’ll go check on the cheese house if I can find it.” They hadn’t pounded in poles and rope to the cheese house, knowing the milk could stay in the well house for a few days. The straw and manure they’d banked against the walls and on the roofs of the well house and cheese house, along with the sod walls, kept the milk and cheese from freezing. At least they hoped and prayed it would.

  With the lighter sky, they could see the rope lying atop the snow six feet or more ahead of them. While the well house was a mound of white, the house itself loomed through the falling snow.

  “It’s stopping.” Andrew burst through the door just ahead of his older brother. He set the bucket, eggs nested in hay in the bottom, by the cupboard and unwound his muffler.

  “Mor, may we go skiing if it lifts?” Astrid turned from setting the last knife in place.

  “Or take the sleigh out?” Andrew hung his coat on the peg by the door.

  “We’ll see. Fill the woodbox now and we’ll eat. Where is Haakan?”

  “He’s checking the cheese house. I’ll get the wood,” Thorliff said when Andrew started to put his coat on again.

  Instead of taking what wood was stacked inside along the porch walls, he stepped back outside to the woodpile lining the east wall. The stack reached clear to the porch eaves. He brushed snow off the pile and loaded his arms. Three armloads and the kitchen box was full, so he hauled in some more for the much depleted stack on the porch. Haakan joined him, and together they made sure there was plenty of wood on the porch in case the blizzard returned.

  “They use coal in Northfield?” Haakan brushed the chips off his jacket.

  “Ja, black dirty stuff. But it burns more slowly, and no matter how many trees, there would never be enough to cut to take care of the towns. Some places have steam radiators to heat the rooms. Like at school.”

  “Steam boilers, eh? Must have someone watching them all the time.” The two stamped the snow off their boots and used the broom to brush off their coats. Haakan returned to the outer door and watched the snow falling.

  “Better not plan on going anywhere yet. This could change any minute. Remember how fast it hit before.” He slapped his leather gloves against his thigh. “I got a feeling it ain’t over yet.”

  Thorliff glanced up at the skis and back to see his father watching him. Haakan shook his head ever so slightly and motioned his son to precede him into the warmth of the kitchen.

  Does she even know I am home? Less than a mile away, and I might as well be in Northfield.

  Just like earlier, they hung up their things, washed, and sat down to eat.

  “At least we can hear ourselves think.” Ingeborg set the last bowl on the table and took her place. At the first word of the grace, they all joined in.

  The day before Christmas Eve and no company, no last minute preparations, no laughter.

  At least not in Thorliff’s heart.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “It’s cleared enough. I’m going to see Anji.”

  Haakan shook his head, twin furrows deepening above his nose. “That’s not a good idea. Look to the north. This is only a breather.”

  “On the skis I can be there in ten minutes. If it starts to snow again, I’ll come right home.” Thorliff pushed his sweater-clad arms into the sleeves of his heavy coat and wrapped a muffler around his throat. When he hazarded a glance toward his mother, he could read the fear in her eyes. “I promise I’ll watch the weather.” I have to see Anji. Can’t you understand? I have to! He pulled his knit cap down over his ears. “See, the sun is even shining.”

  The last glance he had was his parents standing shoulder to shoulder, his mother’s lips moving in what he knew to be silent prayer, Haakan shaking his head, and Astrid with her hands clapped over her ears and reading at the kitchen table.

  Out on the porch he took the skis down from the pegs on which they were stacked and grabbed the poles hanging on pegs by their wrist straps.

  Andrew joined him on the porch. “You sure you remember how?”

  “Of course. You want to race me?”

  “Nope. I’m not so hardheaded as to think I could outski a blizzard.”

  “You’ll understand one day.” Thorliff sat down on the steps to buckle the straps across his boots. “Thanks for keeping them waxed.” He stood, checked his bindings and, with two strides, dug in the poles and started his journey across the drifts. Progressing cross-country with no fences to block him or roads to follow, he slitted his eyes against the dazzling brightness. The wind blew up crystals, and the cold knifed his chest, but neither mattered. He was on his way to see Anji at last.

  He tried to pick up speed on the down sides of the drifts, but it was hard work going up drifts and even cutting through the deep snow where it hadn’t drifted. The shushing sound of the skis against snow was as crisp as a bite out of a fall apple. With the wind at his back he covered the mile in fair time.

  The barking dog announced his arrival as he skied around the house to the back door. No sitting on the front porch like they had last summer. No walking out across the fields. No Agnes. That thought caught him in the chest as he bent to unstrap his bindings.

  “Thorliff, what in the world—” Knute bounded down the steps and clapped Thorliff on the back, nearly sending him headfirst into the snowbank. “What are you doing out here? The blizzard is coming back.”

  “Hello to you too.” Thorliff propped his skis against the back stoop. Besides, we have no guarantee the blizzard will return, and don’t remind me to look north.” He kicked the snow off his boots against the steps and, removing his mittens, stuck out a hand for shaking.

  “Everyone, look who the wind blew in.” Knute, taller even than Thorliff and filling out his shirt like a man, ushered their guest into the kitchen.

  Anji turned from stirring something on the stove. “Thorliff, you’re home.” She started to move toward him and stopped.

  “Ja, on the train yesterday. Then the blizzard struck, or I would have been here earlier.” Why is she looking at me like she’s not sure who I am? The desire to take her in his arms made his hands twitch. He studied her face. She looked tired, like she’d aged ten years in the three months that he’d been gone. Where had her warming smile and merry eyes gone, leaving behind trembling lips and eyes dull with fatigue, despair, what?

  “Anji?” A quavering voice came from the bedroom off the kitchen.

  “Excuse me. Pa needs something.” She left the room in such a hurry he wasn’t sure she just didn’t want to stay.

  “So how’s school?” Knute sat at the table his father, Joseph, had made when they first came to homestead, making all they needed as had the other settlers.

  “Sit, sit. Have coffee with us,” invited Swen, Knute’s older brother, although to look at them, both broad of shoulder and chest like the men they needed to be, it would be hard to tell which was which, they looked near enough alike to be twins.

  Why can’t I go in there with Anji? The thought crossed his mind and set his feet in motion. “I need to go greet your pa first.” He stopped and looked back. “Watch the weather for me, would you please? If it starts to snow again, I have to head home.”

  “Ja, we will. You took a chance on that blizzard coming back.”

  “I know.” Thorliff slipped into the bedroom, his nostrils pinching at the odor of just what he wasn’t sure—sickness, dying by inches? One look at Joseph’s skeleton lying in the bed told him it was the latter. If he hadn’t known where he was, he’d have had no idea who it was.

  Anji leaned over the be
d, propping her father’s head and shoulders up so he could drink from the cup she held to his lips with her other hand.

  “Pa, Thorliff is home and he came to see you.”

  No, I came to see you. But he pasted a smile on lips that would rather shout his horror and went forward to take the old man’s hand. “God jul, Mr. Baard. That was some blizzard yesterday, wasn’t it?” What do I say? I’ve known this man since I was a small boy and now . . . His throat closed, and he looked to Anji for help. But she was gone.

  “Thorliff?” The voice was so weak he had to bend to listen.

  “Ja. I came home from college for Christmas.”

  “Sorry.” His bleary eyes closed again.

  For what? Thorliff laid the frail hand back on the covers. “Goodbye, Mr. Baard.” Thorliff didn’t know if he meant for now or until they met again in heaven, but surely no one could live long in the condition Joseph was in. Thorliff left the room and sucked in a deep breath of cinnamon-scented air as he walked to the table.

  “H-how long has he been like this?”

  “Ever since the fall. Must have broken his back in several places. He’s in such pain all the time that Anji gives him the laudanum regular like.” Knute slowly shook his head. “Things sure ain’t been the same since Ma died.”

  “Do you like school?” Gus drifted over to stand by his arm.

  Thorliff looked down at the little boy whose legs were sprouting out his pant hems. “Ja, I do, most of the time.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Reading is hard.”

  “Ja, some things are.” Anji, why are you so silent?

  “Arithmetic is too.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s starting to snow again, Thorliff.” Swen turned from the door with the news.

  “I better go, then.” He turned to Anji. “I’ll see you at church tomorrow night?”

  She shrugged. “Depends on how Pa is. You hurry now before you can’t see.” A bit of life sneaked into her words but not her eyes. “Thank you for coming to see him.”

  As he shrugged into his coat, Thorliff fought against the anger swelling his throat. I guess if you don’t care more than this, that is my answer . “Knute, Swen, hope to have a better visit over Christmas.” He clapped his hat on his head and hesitated for a moment, hoping Anji would see him to the door, but just then Joseph called again, and she headed for the bedroom door instead. When he looked to Knute, all he saw was a slight headshake accompanied by a one-shoulder shrug.

  Outside, Thorliff threw his skis down and stepped first on one and buckled the straps, then the other, but all the while his hands were busy, his mind ran faster.

  What a waste of time. Here I thought to work things out, and she can’t even make enough time to talk with me. If that is what she means by love, I want no part of it.

  Skis on, he dug in with his poles and headed for home. The wind had already blown enough snow to fill his tracks. And while it was snowing and blowing, it wasn’t blizzard proportions yet.

  Snow crusted on his eyebrows, and each breath burned his nose and pierced his lungs. He headed in the direction he knew to be home, knowing that if he overshot the farm, he’d run into the brush on the riverbank. While it was light enough to see, swirling snowflakes kept visibility to only a few feet. He skied, stopped to try to get his bearings, and pushed off again. Snow swallowed time and distance, and cold froze the sweat drizzling down his back. How could he be so weak in the knees and legs?”

  Because you haven’t been working hard enough. Not much different than starting up fieldwork after the winter off. The voice in his head drowned out the wind for a brief moment.

  Living in town, especially in a town like Northfield in a river valley, shallow though it may be, had protected him from the winds and storms from the north. While he told himself all of this reasonable information, his mind tried to figure how far he’d come. Shouldn’t he be home by now? He could most likely ski right into the barn before he saw it.

  Fear tasted bitter on his tongue.

  He stopped and shook his ski poles at the storm. “All this, and she didn’t even take the time to talk with me. She knew I came to see her, not her father.” The wind took his shouted words and hurled them right back down his throat. He leaned forward, gasping for air, ski poles dangling from the leather straps over his wrists as he cupped his mittens over his mouth to create a pocket of warm air to breathe.

  What if I die out here? Serves her right. The crazed thoughts whipped around his mind like the blizzard that whipped around his head.

  “Stop it! Just stop it!” He pushed off again. Lord, surely you wouldn’t have brought me home to die out here in a snowstorm. Like my father did. The thought caught him by surprise. While Roald had been on a mule instead of skis, had thoughts like this come to him too?

  He should have been home by now. If that thought had flitted through once, it had returned more times than she cared to count. Ingeborg clattered the stove lids onto the side so she could put more wood in the fire. Father, please take care of him.

  “He most likely stayed at the Baards’.” Haakan looked up from the journal where he kept records of the farm. He’d entered Bell’s bull calf earlier in the month, and now he made a note of the blizzard on December twenty-second and twenty-third.

  “You want some more coffee?” Ingeborg held up the pot.

  “I guess.” Haakan pushed his cup closer to her. He glanced at the clock again. “Half an hour since it started snowing again.”

  “Ja.” She poured his coffee, chewing on the inside of her lower lip. Worrying, something she said she no longer did. Lord, please take care of my son, for there is surely no way I can. But I swear when he . . . no, forgive me, I don’t swear, but if he is out in this, he deserves a trip to the woodshed. Or at least a few hours splitting the huge chunks.

  Haakan stood and stretched, closed his journal, and put it back on the shelf above the trunk that Roald and Ingeborg had brought from Norway. He stopped on his way past, took another swallow of coffee, and headed for the back door.

  “Where are you going?” Ingeborg glanced at the clock. It wasn’t time to start chores yet.

  “I’m thinking if he is near to home, he might hear the triangle. Too easy to ski right on by us in a storm like this.”

  “Or a gunshot?”

  “We’ll try the bell first.” Haakan shrugged into his black woolen coat and wrapped a muffler around his neck. “You keep praying.”

  “Ja.” Ingeborg prayed against the pit that seemed to lurk behind the stove right now. She fought the memories. Lord, forgive my doubts, but I’ve been here before, now with my son rather than a husband. Please, keep him safe and bring him home. Oh, Lord God, bring him home. But then, maybe he is safe and warm at the Baards’, and they are having a real good visit. Perhaps he and Anji are working out their difficulties.

  The clang of the bell echoed through her prayers.

  All they’d ever found of Roald was his pocketknife and the bit of the mule’s bridle. The wolves had taken all the rest. For so long she’d thought perhaps he was holed up somewhere injured or ill, but everyone searched every house and barn with no trace of the man who’d taken on the responsibility of seeing to all the neighbors. So many had died that winter, and in the spring some of those who made it through left, unwilling to fight any longer for the land that was supposed to be free. Free meant paid with blood and sweat instead of cash money.

  “Is Thorliff all right?” Astrid leaned against her mother’s arm.

  “I pray so.”

  “He didn’t stay at the Baards’.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He promised to come home, and Thorliff always keeps his promises.”

  Andrew came into the kitchen and headed for the back door.

  “Where are you going?” Ingeborg asked.

  “Out to relieve Pa. Ringing like that wears your arm off.” Andrew slid his arms into the sleeves of his coa
t. “I think we should take the rifle out to the other side of the barn. Sound might carry farther that way. I’ll ask Pa.”

  “Takk.”

  “Ja.”

  Astrid slid her arms around her mother’s waist. Ingeborg wrapped her arms around her daughter and leaned her cheek on the top of Astrid’s head. “I’ve been praying, Ma. God is listening, isn’t He?”

  “Ja, He hears.”

  While the bell continued to ring, Haakan blew through the back door, crossed to where the rifle lay on pegs on the wall, and took it down. He poured shells from the box into his hand to drop in his pocket. “I’ll be out behind the barn. Send someone for me if he comes past without my seeing him.”

  “Ja.” Lord, please. Please!

  Haakan gave her a hard hug and, gun in hand, headed back out the door. The bitter cold blew across the floor and attacked Ingeborg’s ankles, even through the wool socks that covered her legs. She shivered and hugged Astrid closer still. Her litany of please, God, please, flowed through her mind, gusty as the wind and just as imploring.

  Surely I’ve gone by the farm. Where am I? While the wind came from the north, he knew he’d been skiing not so much against it but across it. Had the force of the wind sent him south? But it wasn’t at his back. Thorliff stopped to figure where he might be. The river must be straight ahead. Or had the wind changed directions? The thought made his stomach clench.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Northfield, Minnesota

  I sure hope no one decides to have her baby now. Elizabeth stared out the window at the unrelenting snow.

  “Got a foot or so,” her father said when he came in from shoveling the front and back porches. He’d also been out to the stable to care for the horse. “I’m heading down to the office; you need anything from downtown?” When Elizabeth and Annabelle both assured him they were fine, he went out the door, whistling.