‘‘Oh. You weren’t spying, were you?’’
‘‘Mor!’’ Astrid snapped off one of the last of the pea pods and squeezed it so the peas lay against the heavier seam, lined up like a treasure boat. ‘‘Besides, the boys went fishing.’’
‘‘I think you better play closer to the house,’’ Ingeborg said, knowing the boys’ penchant for skinny-dipping after they fished. She rocked back on her heels, her knees on an old gunnysack she kept on a post by the garden for just that purpose. Weeding with the sun on her back and knees to bare toes in the earth always made her feel close to God, closer than church even. No doubt that was why God met his first two human creations in the garden. ‘‘Why don’t you three go to Tante Penny’s and offer to play with Gus and Linnea for a while. I’ll give you each a penny for candy. You may take them out of the tin on your way.’’
‘‘Really?’’ Forgetting the ‘‘need’’ to go to the river, Astrid leaped over the rows of carrots, beans, and potatoes. The corn was a little too high to leap so she ran through and around it. Her laughter floated back, sweet as a house wren’s song.
After weeding the two rows of carrots, Ingeborg rose and dug her fists into her back right at her waist. Ever since the rain the garden had grown inches overnight, as had the weeds. While Andrew had hoed between the rows, one still had to pull the weeds up close to the plants or lose some in the process. She stooped to check the beans, but while covered with blossoms, they weren’t ready yet for picking.
She dusted off her hands, picked the dirt out from under her closely cut fingernails, and entered the springhouse to cut a hunk off the wheel of cheese she kept there. That plus the bread sitting on the counter would go in the basket for Mrs. Nordstrum. She had put off the visit until after dinner, but now with everyone off busy on their own, she would hitch up the buggy and go on.
A few minutes later she trotted the horse out the lane, waving at Haakan, who was cutting hay now that the grass had finally dried out enough. The rain had lasted for three days.
She stopped when closer to call to him. ‘‘I’m going to visit Mrs. Nordstrum. I won’t be long.’’
He waved to show he’d heard and slapped the reins on the team’s rumps again.
‘‘What a good man you are, letting the boys go fishing before haying really starts,’’ she said aloud even knowing Haakan couldn’t hear her compliment. But the horse flicked his ears as he trotted along, listening to her and keeping track of everything going on around him. ‘‘You know, I’d much rather be riding you than driving you.’’ She thought of how long it had been since she’d gone riding for pleasure or enjoyed the thrill of hunting for their food. Years, would it be?
‘‘Lord, how life has changed these last years. Everywhere we look, there are men working the fields. There are houses, barns, and fences. And it’s only been fifteen years since we left Norway.
Counting our blessings takes plenty of time, that’s for sure.’’ She thought to her Bible reading that morning, how God’s thoughts for his people are more numerous than the sands on a seashore. Not that she’d seen many sandy beaches along the sea. The Norway coast she’d seen was mostly rocks, but she’d seen sand along the river, and she was fairly certain God would count that too. ‘‘I will sing praises, O Lord, most high. I will glorify your name.’’ She turned north on the road the men had scraped and widened beyond track width and passed the Solberg place, wishing she were going there instead. She hadn’t had a good visit with Mary Martha in a long time. Good thing there was church on Sunday, not only for worship but for a chance to see her friends.
Ingeborg wheeled the buggy into the Nordstrums’ yard, stopped the horse by the hitching post, and stepped down, but there was still no sign of life. Perhaps the Nordstrums had gone somewhere. She snapped a rope to the horse’s bridle and tied him to the post, took her basket from the buggy, and walked up to the porch. ‘‘Anyone home?’’ She shaded her eyes with her hand to see if Mr. Nordstrum was out in the fields and finally saw him off to the north. Or at least the figure riding the mower behind the horse seemed near enough it might be him. She took the steps to the front door and knocked. Then knocked again. Thinking to leave her gifts on the table, she opened the door and went in.
Dishes still sat on the table, and a boiler of diapers simmered on the back of the stove.
‘‘Mrs. Nordstrum? Betty?’’ Ingeborg checked the lean-to, which she found was divided into two bedrooms by a flimsy wall with a passage between the two next to the house wall. There was no one in either room, but the dirt smell of a soddy reminded Ingeborg of their early years when the two Bjorklund families lived in one main room.
She returned to the big room and continued back out the door. No one was in the garden, weed choked now since the rain. ‘‘Mrs. Nordstrum!’’ Ingeborg cupped her hands around her mouth to help the sound travel further.
‘‘Here.’’
She followed the sound to the granary, where Betty Nordstrum sat on a pile of gunnysacks, her baby asleep in her arms, her daughter sound asleep on other gunnysacks, and Robbie curled in the corner, eyes closed and thumb in his mouth as if he too were three instead of eight.
‘‘Are you all right?’’ Ingeborg kept her voice low to let the children sleep.
‘‘It’s Robbie. Sometimes he gets such terrible fits, and this is the only place that seems to comfort him.’’ Betty Nordstrum raised eyes that looked like she’d not slept since they left the icehouse. ‘‘I can’t leave him alone or he screams. Only sleeps a little at a time. So sometimes we come out here where he used to like playing in the oats. You saw the house?’’ At Ingeborg’s nod, she shook her head. ‘‘Can’t get nothing done.’’ Her sigh bled despair. ‘‘He’s like a baby again, needing diapers and all. But he won’t let me put them on him. Such a mess.’’
Ingeborg nodded again. ‘‘Well, I come to help, so I will do just that. I’ll start with getting those diapers on the line, and what do you want washed next?’’
‘‘I can’t have you doing that.’’
‘‘You have no choice. That’s what we do here in Blessing, help each other out. Now you stay right here, and perhaps you can take a rest along with your children.’’
Before long Ingeborg had diapers and sheets on the line, children’s clothes soaking, and the kitchen cleaned back up. How she wished she had brought Astrid along. She was needed more here than at Tante Penny’s.
I should have come sooner, Ingeborg scolded herself. I had no idea things were this bad. What can we do to help that boy? What did she mean by fits?
Thoughts continued to plague her as she found salt pork in the well house and sliced it to fry for supper. She stirred up biscuits to go along with the meat and set potato water and flour to rising for bread the next day.
She heard them coming long before they got to the house, Robbie’s plaintive cry tugging at her heart. Lord, what do I do?
Mrs. Nordstrum laid the baby in a wooden frame with a quilt on the floor. ‘‘Mister built that so when he’s older he can’t crawl out the door.’’ The three-year-old clung to her skirt, and Robbie, holding his head with both hands, sat rocking against the wall.
‘‘Do you have any laudanum?’’ When Mrs. Nordstrum shook her head, Ingeborg nodded. ‘‘I do. Let’s give him a bit, enough to make him relax, and if it is pain in his head that is causing all this, that will help.’’ Dropping a couple of glugs in a cup, she added water and handed it to Betty. ‘‘Do you have any honey or sugar? Good. Add some of that so it is more palatable.’’
While Betty followed the instructions, Ingeborg swung the little girl up in her arms and stood rocking her, shifting her weight from one foot to another, all the while crooning the comforting singsong that girls learn at their mother’s side as they care for younger children. By the time they are mothers, the rocking and the songs come naturally.
While Robbie made a face, he drank the cup dry and resumed his rocking.
By the time Ingeborg and Betty took another bask
et of clothes to the line, the diapers were dry and ready for folding. While they pinned the pants and shirts on the rope, Ingeborg asked Betty to describe Robbie’s fits.
‘‘Well, he screams and then falls down, twitching and jerking, sometimes flailing his arms and legs, then he wets himself and falls into a stupor. I’m afraid he’s going to burn himself on the hot stove or fall and bang his head again.’’ She bowed her head, then raised tear-filled eyes. ‘‘You think this is from that clout on the head?’’
‘‘Ja, I am sure of it. We’ll have to pray that God takes this away too. He kept Robbie alive for a reason. That we know.’’
‘‘Sometimes I ain’t so sure. It’s like the stories in the Bible about demons and such. Ingeborg, I am so scared. What if Robbie is like this for the rest of his life?’’
Ingeborg put the last carved wooden clothespin in place and picked up the empty basket. ‘‘The Lord says to take one day at a time, and that’s what we will have to do.’’
They entered the soddy to find Robbie curled up on his bed fast asleep, the other two playing in the pen, the baby slobbering on his bare toes and May poking at him to make him smile.
‘‘Ah, Ingeborg, how can I thank you. The house hasn’t been this peaceful since, well, since the accident.’’
‘‘I have an idea. Why don’t I take May home with me for a couple of days and you give Robbie just a couple of drops from the brown bottle, again mixed with water and honey. Not enough to put him to sleep, but perhaps that will calm him down. And we’ll ask everyone to pray for all of you.’’
‘‘Thank you.’’ Betty looked around her home. ‘‘Thank-you seems so little for what all you did.’’
‘‘Someday you’ll do something good for someone else. That’s just the way things are. Now, do you mind if I take May with me?’’
‘‘If’n you want. I hate to be a burden, though.’’
‘‘Astrid will love having her. I’ll see if I can find someone to come weed for you.’’
‘‘The mister will be much obliged too. He’s been feeling bad because he has no time to help me. You really think the medicine will help our boy?’’
‘‘I certainly hope so. I’d best be going.’’ Ingeborg picked up her basket. ‘‘I’ll check back in a day or two.’’
Funny, she thought on the way home while dandling the child on her knee and holding the reins with one hand, when things get hard, some pull into their shells like turtles and hide, while others work themselves to exhaustion. Either way, we cut ourselves off from the comfort and healing the almighty God wishes to bestow on us through others. She hugged the squirming and whimpering child closer to her chest.
‘‘Mama . . .’’
‘‘I know, baby, I know.’’
‘‘Ma, where you been all this time?’’ Astrid came running to meet her when she whoa’d the horse in their own yard.
‘‘I told you I was going to the Nordstrums’.’’ Ingeborg handed the child to Astrid. ‘‘May is going to be staying with us for a few days. Her mama’s got her hands full with the others.’’
‘‘Can she walk?’’
‘‘Of course, but hold her for a while. She needs a bit of comforting, being separated from her family and all.’’
‘‘Andrew brought home a string of fish. He’s out scaling them now. I started new potatoes for supper and thought we’d cream them along with the last of the peas. Sure would be good if we had ham to go with that.’’
‘‘Astrid, you are truly a gift from God. You play with her while I go put the horse away. Don’t want to stop the fish scaler.’’
Ingeborg had just started up the stairs to the house when she heard pounding hooves and a ‘‘halloo.’’ Only an emergency would bring someone on a hard gallop like that.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘‘It’s Mira. She’s bleeding bad.’’ Abe Mendohlson fought to slow his runaway fear, but his stuttering speech gave him away.
‘‘Where is she?’’
‘‘Home. Here, you take my horse, and I’ll hitch up the buggy and bring it to you.’’ He swung to the ground, ready to give her a hand up.
‘‘I need my medicines.’’ Ingeborg looked to the house to see Astrid, child on her hip, bringing out the basket with her medical supplies. ‘‘Is there any laudanum in there?’’
Astrid checked, ran back into the house with May clinging to her neck only to rush out again. ‘‘There is now.’’
‘‘Thank you.’’
‘‘Please hurry.’’ Abe threw Ingeborg aboard the horse and ran to meet Astrid, meeting her at the bottom of the steps and grabbing the supplies.
‘‘Is anyone with her?’’ Ingeborg bent down with her arm outstretched and kicked the horse forward.
‘‘Anji was on her way.’’ Abe thrust the basket at her.
Without bothering to arrange her bunched-up skirts, Ingeborg clapped her legs against the horse’s sides and tore back down the lane. If only there weren’t so many fences, she could have gotten there more quickly across the fields.
‘‘God, please slow the bleeding, put your hand on her, take away the fear.’’
I didn’t even ask what started the bleeding. Is she in labor? Ingeborg knew the consequences of horrendous bleeding and labor this soon. Mira wasn’t due until sometime in August. And here it was only mid-July. What had happened to bring this on? The horse was heaving and throwing foam by the time Ingeborg stopped at the Mendohlsons’ soddy.
Anji met her at the door. ‘‘I tried to pack her to stop the bleeding, but it’s no use.’’
‘‘Is she having contractions?’’ Ingeborg spoke over her shoulder, losing no time in getting to the bed.
‘‘Yes. Almost continuous.’’
Ingeborg sucked in a breath at the bloody bed, the gown, Mira’s face so white she could see the blue lines of veins.
‘‘Ingeborg, I . . . I knew you would c-come.’’ Her voice was as faint as her hands were clammy. Pain tied her in a knot again and rolled through, leaving her limp as a used scrub rag.
Ingeborg laid her hands on the belly that should have been distended but only showed a mound. ‘‘Lord God, please, we have no way to turn but to you. Help us, Father, help us.’’ She looked over her shoulder to Anji. ‘‘Help brace her with your back to the wall. She can hang on to your hands. If we can get this baby born, perhaps we can stanch the bleeding.’’
‘‘Too soon. Too soon.’’ Mira shrieked with another spasm, the sound trailing off in a whimper. ‘‘Too soon.’’
‘‘What happened? Do you know?’’ Ingeborg asked Anji.
‘‘No, and Abe was going so fast I couldn’t hear what he said. Just came as quick as I could.’’ Anji settled herself at the head of the bed and stroked back Mira’s hair with gentle hands. ‘‘Do you think. . . ?’’ Tears flooded her eyes before she could continue. She sniffed and wiped her face with the back of her hand. Laying her cheek on top of Mira’s head, she murmured gently. When the Mendohlsons had come to the Baards’ to help out when her pa was so sick, Anji and Mira had become good friends.
Keeping one ear for the sound of the buggy, Ingeborg encouraged the struggling woman through another contraction, this one weaker than the last. God, where are you? Are you listening? What can I do? She thought of the laudanum in her basket, but while that might deaden the pain, they had to get this baby born before its mother bled to death.
At least bring her husband back quickly. She needs him. That might give her the strength to go on. While the thoughts raced through her mind, Ingeborg continued her gentle ministrations. She dampened a cloth and wiped the sweat from the pale forehead, all the while murmuring encouragement.
Mrs. Mendohlson breathed her last just as her husband burst through the door. He dropped to his knees beside the bed and grasped his wife’s hands. ‘‘Try, Mira, try. Please . . .’’ He looked over his shoulder to Ingeborg. ‘‘She . . . she isn’t. . . ?’’
Ingeborg nodded. ‘‘She’s gone home.’’
/> ‘‘Oh . . . oh . . .’’ He put his big hands on both sides of his wife’s face. ‘‘Mira, please, hear me, Mira.’’
Ingeborg laid a hand on his shoulder and motioned to Anji, who was now sobbing also, to move away from the bed. The two of them went outside, leaving the poor man to his sorrow.
‘‘He didn’t even get to say good . . . good-bye.’’ Anji turned into Ingeborg’s arms, and the two of them cried together.
‘‘She was so young, not even as old as me.’’
‘‘I know.’’ Ingeborg patted her back. ‘‘These two have not had it easy, that’s for sure. And now he has to raise his children alone.’’ Ingeborg glanced around, for the first time realizing the two were not there.
‘‘Becky took them home to our house. Ossie would hardly leave, crying and wanting his ma, and Julia clung to her ma with both fists.’’
‘‘Poor little ones.’’ Ingeborg took in a deep breath and, with her arms around Anji, stared out across the fields. Such a high price this land extracted, bleeding some of the farmers dry until they either succumbed to sickness or left for what they hoped would be a better place.
‘‘Come, let us wash up, then after a bit we’ll go clean up in there.’’ They walked arm in arm to the well and let the wooden bucket down into the depths. After cranking a full one up, Ingeborg filled the dipper that hung on one of the wooden supports and handed it to Anji to drink first.
If things had gone differently, Anji would have been her new daughter by now, or they would have been planning the wedding and making things for her new home. Hers and Thorliff’s. In spite of the hurts caused by the two of them going different ways, Ingeborg knew she still loved this young woman, that Anji would always have a special place in her heart, if for no other reason than Anji was the daughter of her best friend. At the thought of Agnes, gone home what seemed like such a long time ago or just yesterday, Ingeborg’s eyes filled again. Lord, sometimes life is just too hard to bear.
I will never leave you nor forsake you. The answer came quickly.
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