by Adele Dueck
“Ah, you wouldn’t be any help,” said Erik. “Uncle Lars needs someone who can pile lumber.”
“It’s raining outside,” Inga reminded Elsa, shaking her head. As she spoke a drop of water dripped from the roof onto the table. Erik glanced up and saw another drop hanging on the edge of the tarpaper, ready to fall. Inga set a bowl to catch the drips. The sod roof always leaked when it rained for more than a couple of hours.
“I’m sorry for the men sleeping in tents at the townsite,” said Rolf.
“I slept in a tent last night,” Erik reminded him. Trust Rolf to sympathize with strangers rather than his own stepson.
“Were you cold?” asked Elsa. “Did you get wet?”
“Rain came in at the edges.”
“Bring your bedding in here to stay dry,” suggested his mother.
Erik glanced at the pool of muddy water accumulating in the dish. “It’ll be all right.”
“I’m coming to the townsite later,” said Rolf. “Lars asked me to help him for a few days.” He chewed thoughtfully on a piece of bread. “Then I’ll look for work in town. I expect it will pay better than stooking.”
Rolf had stooked for a neighbour for a few days, but instead of cash he’d been paid a roll of barbed wire and two sacks of oats.
Someone pounded on the door. It flew open and Lars and Kirsten stepped inside.
“They’re moving my house,” said Kirsten with a laugh. “Hope you don’t mind if I spend the day with you.”
“Of course not,” said Inga. She hurried over to take Kirsten’s wet coat and hat.
“You ready to go, Erik?” asked Lars. “Olaf has the wagon loaded with lumber and is already on his way to the townsite. As soon as we buy a lot, we’ll unload it and go back for more.”
“You’re moving the building today?” Erik asked.
“Ja! I’ve got Rolf and another fellow lined up for that.”
“Is it going to be a store now, Uncle Lars?” asked Elsa.
“That it is. I spent the last few days getting it ready.”
“My kitchen has become a long sales counter,” said Kirsten. “I tell Lars he has to build a house for me soon. I can only live in a store for so long!”
Erik pulled on his thick jacket and peaked hat and stepped out into the rain. He needed a wide hat like the cowboys wore, he decided, to keep the rain off better. The horses stamped their feet impatiently. Erik greeted them both, then climbed into the buggy and picked up the reins.
When Lars joined Erik, he took the reins with a friendly smile. “I’m glad Rolf brought you along when he came here.”
Erik wondered if Rolf felt the same way.
The Green Valley townsite was just east of the valley with the big trees. The last time Erik had gone past, it was still a wheat field, but now the grain was gone and the lots were surveyed and staked.
Erik was amazed at all the tents he saw. Parked beside them were every kind of wagon and buggy and even some automobiles, the first Erik had seen since coming to Canada. The auctioneer stood in a buggy where he could be seen by everyone, giving information about the sale. There were a few boys in the crowd, but Erik couldn’t see any women. In the excitement, no one seemed to care about the rain or the mud.
Erik scanned the crowd, looking for a familiar face. Most of the men looked like businessmen, with long coats over their black suits. The few people he recognized as neighbours looked warmer in their work jackets. Occasionally he heard someone speaking Norwegian, but most of the talk was in English.
“Good morning, Erik. Isn’t this a fine day?” Erik felt a hand rest heavily on his shoulders. He glanced up to see Gunnar Haugen. “All ready to buy a lot and start a business?”
Erik grinned back. “I think I’ll just watch today.”
“You watch us, then,” said Mr. Haugen. “We’ve got some good ones picked out.”
The first lots sold for more than Rolf was paying for their hundred and sixty acres. Erik looked anxiously at Lars. Maybe he couldn’t afford that much.
Lars wrote something in a notebook. Gunnar Haugen, on his other side, nodded.
A few minutes later they bought two lots, side by side.
Mr. Haugen went to arrange payment in the auctioneer’s tent while Lars looked around the crowd. “Where’s Olaf?” he asked. “We need to unload that wagon.”
Erik ran beside Lars as he strode toward his new lot. Olaf was already there. “I saw you bid,” he said, pulling a long timber from the wagon. “I knew you’d want to move quickly.” The cowboy, Jim, grabbed the other end of the board.
Lars pulled out a plank. Erik caught the end as it came off the wagon.
Together the four of them unloaded the wagon in minutes. Jim left to see if Pete had bought a lot, while Olaf and Lars climbed onto the wagon seat.
Lars looked at Erik. “You coming along?” he asked.
Erik climbed into the wagon box, kneeling behind the seat. Now that the rain had stopped, he hoped the sun would come out and dry his clothes.
Gunnar Haugen waved as they drove away. “Hurry back,” he said. “I should have this all sold by then.”
“What are you going to do with the land where you’ve been living?” Erik asked.
“It’s not mine,” said Lars. “I just rented the land for a few months. We wanted to be close to town so we could do what we’re doing right now.”
“Move your building as soon as you bought a lot?” asked Erik.
“Ja, and sell lumber as soon as people want to buy it.”
On the way they met two wagons loaded with lumber. “It looks like other people had the same idea,” said Erik. “Maybe there will be no one to buy your wood.”
“Not everyone hauled their own lumber from Hanley. We’ll sell it all, you’ll see.”
Up ahead, Erik saw a building where there hadn’t been one before. Fascinated, he watched it move toward them, seeming to float over the prairie. As it drew closer, he wasn’t surprised to see it was Lars’s house, pulled by six oxen. Rolf walked beside the building and a man Erik didn’t know walked by the oxen. The last two oxen were Black and Socks.
Heavy ropes stretched between the skids and the oxen.
“This is what I like to see!” exclaimed Lars. “Hard-working men.”
“Don’t tell us you didn’t buy a lot!” Rolf called back.
“Don’t worry, we have two!” Lars replied. “They’re in the northeast corner. Gunnar is there.”
“Oxen move too slow,” said Olaf as they drove past.
“But they’re strong,” Erik defended them.
When Lars, Olaf and Erik got back to town with a second load of lumber, the house was in its spot, looking just like the store it was now going to be. Erik looked proudly at the building, the first in the new town of Green Valley.
The auction was over, but people still milled around, ignoring their wet clothes. Builders laid out lumber on some of the lots. The ring of hammers was heard from several directions. The lumber Erik had helped stack earlier was gone. Some of it might already be part of a new building, he decided, liking the thought.
He reached to help Olaf unload the second wagonload just as a stranger laid his hand on the board. “We’re building today,” he said. “I need to buy this whole load.”
A man talking to Mr. Haugen looked up. “Sorry,” he said, “I just bought most of it.”
“Then I’ll take the rest,” said the first man.
Olaf stopped unloading and leaned against the wagon. “So where do we put the lumber?” He grinned at Erik. “No reason to load it again if we don’t have to.”
Lars hired Erik for several days to watch the store while he and Mr. Haugen built a lean-to onto the back of the former house. Olaf and Rolf worked non-stop, hauling the lumber piled outside town to the new lumberyard. Olaf drove Lars’s wagon and horses while Rolf used his own wagon and oxen. When they drove into the yard, Erik joined them outside to help unload.
Aunt Kirsten was in the store, too, but she hung s
heets to divide the space so she could spin or bake out of sight of the customers. “I’m not going to live in a lumber shop,” she told Erik. Erik knew his mother would have said the same thing, but he liked the smell of the sawdust and the look of the milled lumber.
He sold other supplies, too, almost anything people needed to build. He counted change from the big wooden cash register and weighed nails. Every time a customer walked into the store, he practiced his English and learned new words.
Most of the people Erik saw were men, though he knew there were women and children on the farms. He expected the men would bring their families to Green Valley when the businesses were built.
One day Kirsten sent Erik to the general store for eggs, giving him a chance to walk through the town. The store was in a tent, run by a Norwegian named Nilson. Erik looked at all the supplies, seeing what he could buy with the twenty-five cents Uncle Lars gave him each day. It would be food for sure, that’s what the family needed most. He could buy three tins of pork and beans for fifty cents, but it didn’t seem like much for two days’ pay. Like the nails he was selling, they were expensive because they were heavy and had to come to Hanley by train and then to Green Valley by wagon. Potatoes might be better. Mr. Nilson sold half a bushel for fifty cents, but Erik wondered if a local farmer would sell for less.
It was hard to believe what he was seeing as he walked back to the lumberyard. A week ago this was a field, and now it was a town. Wooden buildings rose in every direction, but businesses weren’t waiting for them. A bank and a real estate office were working out of tents. An implement shop was almost framed across the street from the lumberyard, and a hotel was going up on the corner. Everyone was working. Even Jim pounded nails on Pete’s new livery stable.
Several times a day, Erik stood in front of the lumberyard, watching the town grow. Coming from a country where most of the buildings were old, it was exciting to be part of something so new.
In their hurry to finish, the carpenters kept going after sundown by the light of kerosene torches. At night, when Erik rolled up in a blanket behind the counter in the store, he could see the flickering light of the lamps through the front window, and when he drifted off to sleep it was to the pounding of hammers.
Gunnar Haugen needed to get back to the business in Hanley, so he and Lars worked long days on the lean-to. As soon as the shell was finished, Erik helped move Lars and Kirsten’s household belongings into the new rooms.
When all the lumber was transferred to town, Rolf went to work building a drugstore and Olaf returned to hauling lumber from Hanley. With Lars now working in his own store, Erik went back to the farm, bringing with him a bushel of potatoes purchased with his earnings.
Being home seemed very dull after his days in Green Valley.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Threshing
It was September. In Norway or Minnesota or even Hanley, school was starting, but not for Erik and Elsa. “We could go to school where we went to church the day it hailed,” suggested Elsa.
“It’s too far,” said Inga. “Even if you took the oxen, it would be more than an hour each way. You’ll have to wait till they build a school closer to home.”
“What about Green Valley? I could walk there. It’s only five kilometres.”
“We’ll see when they build a school,” said Inga, “but it will still be a long walk.”
Erik didn’t miss sitting in a desk studying numbers and history. He needed school to learn more English and meet boys his age, but it wasn’t going to help him with the only thing he wanted to do – farm.
There wasn’t time to go to school, anyway. The slough was dry, so Erik had to haul more water. They hadn’t worked on the well since before the town auction; Rolf was just too busy. Erik frequently thought of the man who’d dug fifteen dry wells, wondering if Rolf would ever hit water. The well in Green Valley was dug in a spot chosen by a man with a forked stick. They’d found water, so maybe Rolf should have let him choose the location for their well, too.
One day after the garden froze, Erik and Elsa harvested the vegetables, finding small potatoes, short carrots and not much else. With the garden gone, the oxen and cow were allowed to find their own feed. Erik didn’t tether them anymore, but sometimes he had to look for them instead. Fortunately, they came back to the yard for water.
He put another post in the shed so he could tie up both Tess and the calf on cold nights, but far enough apart to prevent the calf stealing the milk.
When he wasn’t hauling water, Erik searched the river hills for cattle feed and firewood, piling it together, then bringing it back in the wagon. Once he saw horses travelling toward the river. There were three or four riders trailing the herd, all wearing wide-brimmed hats. Erik had learned that cowboys weren’t common in farming country. The only ones he’d seen around Green Valley were Jim and two or three others who worked with Pete in his livery stable. It seemed strange that twice now, herds of horses had gone through the area.
The train hadn’t reached Green Valley yet, but Erik knew the track was being built from Moose Jaw. It was supposed to reach Green Valley sometime in November.
A couple of times, Lars asked Erik to come to Green Valley with Rolf. Then Erik minded the store while Lars worked on the stable at the back of the lot.
There was always something to see or do in town. Lars had hired a man to bring coal from Hanley, while Olaf hauled more lumber. Wagons came and went at all hours as other businessmen hauled their supplies from Hanley.
One cool afternoon, Erik was sweeping the floor when he heard rumbles in the street. He poked his head out the door to see three wagons pass by, each piled high with trunks and boxes and household furnishings.
Erik’s eyes searched the wagons, looking for boys. The one on a lady’s lap was too young, and so were the two crouched behind the driver on the second wagon. But on the third wagon, leaning against a trunk as if he’d come all the way from Norway like that, was a boy who looked just the right age.
Erik waved as the wagon passed in front of him. The boy didn’t move but his eyes watched Erik as he passed.
He’ll be happy to see me when he learns how few boys are here, thought Erik.
Lars came around the side of the store. “Did you see the wagons?” Erik asked. “It must be the new settlers. I heard Mr. Nilson say there were some coming this fall.”
“They might be.” Lars started to pull the door closed.
“Can I talk to them?” Erik asked quickly. “I can tell them about the town and where the well is and about there not being a school yet.”
“Go along, then.” Lars took the broom and Erik dashed out of the store.
“Don’t stay too long,” his uncle’s voice followed him. “Rolf will be here soon.”
“I won’t,” Erik called back over his shoulder.
As he neared the wagons, he saw people gathered to greet the newcomers. Men shook hands, then turned to help the women down from the wagons. Erik didn’t mind that he wouldn’t be needed to give information. He just wanted to talk to the boy.
He saw him jump down from the wagon and look toward the buildings, the peak of his cap shading his eyes from the sun.
“Good day,” said Erik in Norwegian, running up to him. “Welcome to Green Valley.”
The boy looked at Erik, his face totally blank. After a moment he said something unintelligible.
Erik froze. The new settlers weren’t from Norway. They weren’t even from England. They spoke another language altogether.
The boys looked at each other for a long moment.
Erik smiled and tried again. “Good morning,” he said, this time in English.
“Good morning,” said the other boy. The words were English, but perhaps he was only imitating Erik.
“My name is Erik. Erik Brekke.”
“Colin,” said the other boy. “I am Colin O’Brien.”
“You speak English,” said Erik with relief.
“Yes,” said Colin. “And Gael
ic.”
Erik heard Rolf’s voice behind him, then a man from the wagons called for Colin.
“I must go,” said both boys at once.
“I’ll see you again,” said Erik.
Colin held out his hand to Erik. They shook, then he turned and ran back to the wagons. Erik turned to Rolf.
“They speak English and Gaelic. Whatever that is.”
“They must be from Scotland or Ireland. They’re part of Great Britain.”
They usually walked to town, but they’d taken the oxen that day to bring home flour and rice. After climbing onto the wagon, Rolf sat for a moment, staring at the oxen.
“I’m through building for now,” he said finally. “I’m joining a threshing crew. It pays better. Your mother, she thinks you’re too young and the work will be too hard, but if you want to come along, we’ll see if they’ll hire you on.”
“I’m strong,” Erik said, thinking of the sods he’d stacked and the grass he’d cut. “Least I’m as strong as I can be for my size.”
“That’s right, Erik,” said Rolf, “you are, and that’s what I told your ma. You’ve worked hard and you haven’t complained. I wouldn’t have got near as much done without you.”
Erik looked down at his feet. Rolf had never said anything like that to Erik before. It felt good that he’d noticed, just like a real father would.
The thought brought Olaf to mind. Would kind words make any difference to Rolf’s real son?
“The extra money will be a help,” added Rolf.
That was the important part. Maybe Erik could fish through the ice in the winter, and there might still be rabbits to snare, but there was so much they had to buy. The flour Rolf had bought today would last just a few weeks, and the potatoes Erik had bought would be gone even sooner. They would soon need kerosene for the lamps. Elsa had grown out of her shoes and Erik’s pinched his toes.
“I can work,” Erik said.
“Just while they’re in this area. When they move on, I might go with them, but you’ll stay here and take care of your ma and the livestock.”