“I am curious. Are there many other immigrant children who do not speak good English?”
“Several, but they are in the lower grades. I thought we might have to keep your boys back a grade, but it wasn’t long before I knew that was not necessary. History and literature are their hardest, of course, because they involve so much reading on their own and understanding what they have read. Again, Mr. Larsson helps with that.”
“So they are not failing?”
“Not at all, but they both spend more time on their homework than others do. They both do well in Latin, and young as he is, Leif is tackling Greek. He said his teacher in Norway started him on it.” He shook his head when Gerd offered to fill his coffee cup again. “Thank you, but I need to be on my way in a few minutes.” He pushed his chair back and stood. “I hope I can meet Mr. Carlson soon, and thank you again for the delicious pie.”
Signe stood to walk him to the door. “Are you any relation to the family who owns the lumber mill and yards?”
“That is my father and uncle. Grandfather started it all.”
“And you are teaching school?” Gerd gave him a puzzled look.
“Both my brothers excel in the lumber business, so I had the freedom to do what I wanted.” He smiled. “And I wanted to teach.”
She nodded. “I see.”
When Signe returned from seeing the teacher out, Gerd seemed to be fretting. “He didn’t say what he wanted from us.”
“He wants to meet all the parents, Knute said.”
“No, he wants something more. They always want something.”
“Now you sound like Onkel Einar.”
“Sometimes he is right.” Gerd paused and looked at Signe. “At least he was in the past.”
Signe often wondered how much of the discord between the Strands and the surrounding community was because of Einar’s attitude. But did it really matter what came first? That was all behind them now. At least in her own mind. If Einar learned of the teacher visit, he would most likely not be happy. Inhaling what she hoped was courage, she smiled at Gerd. “It seems to me that Mr. Jahnson was just doing his job, and since the boys seem to be doing well at school without complaints, what if we add dumplings to the leftover stew, and I go down in the cellar and see if I can find any jars of corn to make scalloped corn like my mor used to?”
“Are there any beet pickles left?”
“I’ll see.”
Signe lit a lantern and hung on to the rail as she walked down the narrow stairs to the cellar. Soon the snow would be gone from the outside door, and she could begin to clean this out. Holding her lantern high, she inspected the dwindling number of jars on the shelves. Next year she would be sure to make more beet pickles for Gerd. Finding none, she took a quart jar of corn and one of carrots back up the stairs. There was still one jar of peas. Good thing they had canned lots of green beans and dried plenty too. This year she would plant more corn and dry some of that. With Nilda here to help, they could make the garden larger.
Back upstairs, she found Gerd rocking Kirstin, who was reaching up with one finger until Gerd nibbled on the end of it and made Kirstin giggle. What a happy sight.
Right on time, the boys trotted into the yard, and both came through the door. “Look, the sun has not gone down yet. The days are getting longer.” Leif set their dinner buckets on the counter. He slung another sack off his shoulder. “Homework.”
Kirstin waved her arms at them and spoke her baby language. Both boys smiled at Gerd and grinned and made baby noises back at their baby sister. She reached out, waving her arms.
“Nei, can’t pick you up right now. I got to head for the woods.” Knute let her grab his finger but when she tried to chew on it, he pulled back. He waved at her, took the sandwich Signe held out to him, and headed outside to ride down to the woods.
Leif knelt beside Gerd’s knees and took Kirstin’s hands in his to clap them together. “See, you can do that.” As soon as he let go, she reached for him with both arms.
“Go ahead,” Gerd told him. “I think she can tell when it is time for you to come home. See how happy she is?”
Leif scooped her up in his arms and jogged her around the kitchen on his hip. Kirstin laughed, told him something, and grabbed his hair with her other fist. “Ouch, that hurts.” He untangled her fist and bounced her up and down again. “Pretty soon you can ride on my shoulders, baby.” He handed her back to Gerd. “Gotta go do chores. Mor, when will she be big enough to ride in the wagon?”
“About the same time it warms up enough out there. She is sitting up and getting stronger all the time.”
He waved at her, sandwich in his other hand, and asked over his shoulder, “Need anything from the well house?”
“Nei, but we need wood in the box.”
“You always do.” He wolfed down his sandwich, carried in a couple armloads of wood, and headed back out.
Dusk had nearly given in to dark when the men came in from the woods. Signe watched as they stopped at the barn. Einar parked the wagon by the machine shop to unload the tools before Bjorn unhitched the team, drove them back to the barn, and took off their harnesses. They had moved the wagon bed from sledge runners to wheels that morning, a sure sign of spring.
Spring, though, was arriving in bits and pieces. Snow was still piled on the north sides of all the buildings, but parts of the pasture and the lanes were drying up, with green sprouting where the sun had melted the snow.
Signe heard the clunk and scrape of boots on the porch. “Bring in wood,” she called as the door opened.
Einar still refused to answer her greeting, and he did not bring in an armload of firewood.
“Supper in about ten minutes,” Gerd announced.
When everyone was washed and seated at the table, Gerd and Signe removed the stew with dumplings from the oven and the scalloped corn from the warming oven. Sliced bread and butter along with glasses of milk for the boys were already on the table.
“Let’s have grace,” Rune said as he did every night.
Einar sat still until he finished, then reached for the bread plate. “Who was here today?”
Signe and Gerd exchanged a look, and Signe shook her head. How did he know someone had been there? She filled his plate and passed it around to him, since the pots were too hot to pass.
He growled this time. “Who was here today?”
“Mr. Jahnson, the schoolteacher. He makes calls on all the families of his students.”
Einar slammed his fist on the table. “How many times do I have to tell you, no one is to come here!” His angry voice made Kirstin wrinkle up her face and whimper.
Signe picked her up and started the swaying waltz of comforting. “Shh, shh, all is well.”
“All is not well! I don’t want anyone coming here, and you all know that.”
“Onkel Einar—” Signe started, but with a slashing hand, he cut her off.
“Enough!”
Kirstin broke into a full, red-faced cry.
“Let’s just finish our supper, and we can talk about this later.” Rune spoke softly but clearly.
“Nei! This is still my house and as long as you live here, you will all do as I say.” He tried to nail Signe with his glare, but she kept her attention on the rigid baby in her arms, who had a voice louder than Einar’s. Perhaps someone could outyell him.
Gerd planted her hands on her hips and met him glare for glare. “Einar Strand, this is my house too, and I live in it all day and night. And I like having company, and I will have company. If you would rather sleep in the barn, so be it.”
Everyone stared at her, mouths hanging open. This was the second time she had opposed him. Einar shoved his chair back, pushing the table enough to topple Leif’s glass of milk and send it spreading across the table. He stomped out.
“Put a slice of bread in the spilled milk and let it soak up.” Gerd sat back down. “Now we will finish our supper in peace.”
Chapter
13
&n
bsp; Simmering inside did not feel good at all.
“You have to let go of this,” Rune said to her several nights later. “His bark is always worse than his bite.”
“Gerd says the same thing. I know God says to not hold on to anger, but . . .” She rolled her head from side to side on the pillow. “I am so looking forward to having our own home. It cannot happen soon enough.” She clung to his hand, which lifted hers to his mouth. His gentle kiss brought tears that leaked into her ears. “Is he like that when you are out in the woods?”
“Not as much.”
“Then why does he hate me so? I do my best to be pleasant, but nothing ever seems to make a difference.”
“At least he does not mistreat the boys, even though Leif is so frightened of him.”
“No, only me.”
“Have you asked Gerd about this?”
“Nei, I hate to make her feel bad. She has enough to bear. I know she works in spite of pain. I see it in her eyes. Kirstin is the delight of her life.”
At the sound of Rune’s gentle breathing drifting into sleep, Signe lay beside him, watching the moon paint square patterns on the floor. The part she had read in the Bible that morning said to give thanks for all things. How was she supposed to thank God for Einar Strand? For the way he acted? Surely God didn’t really mean that. She could be grateful for the house they lived in, for Gerd, that was easy.
Be thankful. Full of thanks. That made no sense at all.
Spring thaws in Minnesota are pretty much like the spring thaw in Norway, Rune mused to himself. The tract of land—his tract of land!—inched ever closer to spring. Every day, bit by bit, bare ground showed through the snow, followed by green shoots that appeared like magic. Mud followed, but that meant the ground was thawing. Thawing ground led to plowing the garden and corn fields and digging out their cellar.
Rune marked the boundaries of his cellar with stakes, double-checking that the angles were exact, and he and his boys spent every spare moment digging the frost-free soil off so that the sun could warm the next layer.
Then came a task Rune was not sure he wanted to tackle.
“We’ll start dynamiting stumps today,” Einar announced at the breakfast table.
Bjorn grinned at his far. This would be a new experience.
Rune asked, “Start with the line along the hayfield?”
Einar nodded.
“Can’t we stay?” Knute glared down at the table when Rune shook his head.
“There are plenty of stumps to clear. You’ll get your chance.” Rune nodded to his boys. Leif looked relieved; Rune knew that the farther he could stay from Einar, the happier he was.
Bjorn harnessed the horses as Rune and Einar loaded tools and hooks, pulleys and cables, the garden spade, and a couple of large garden trowels. Einar put three old axes into the wagon, axes that would never be properly sharp again, but Rune held his peace.
When Einar set the crate of dynamite sticks in the wagon bed, Rune’s peace shattered.
Einar might be crotchety and unreasonable, but he was careful out in the woods. Rune should trust that Einar would put safety first.
But he couldn’t.
The leaf springs on Einar’s wagon box were old and tired and had lost half their bow, so the wagon bounced at every rough spot in the track. The ruts were soft mud in the sun and still mostly frozen in the shade, making the wagon jostle wildly when it moved from mud to hard ground to mud to hard ground. Rune winced at every jounce. When the wagon bucked over a thick stick in the track, he broke out in a cold sweat. All he could think about was a huge gaping hole where he, Einar, Bjorn, the wagon, and maybe even the horses had been moments before.
As they rode out into the stump field, the ground softened, but now the numerous tree roots made the wagon bounce. Rune could not settle his intense foreboding.
Einar drew the horses to a halt and explained, pointing, “We’ll start here. Pull these, drag them to a pile there, then burn the pile. We can spread the ashes across the meadow. Good fertilizer.” He got down, picked up one of the dull axes, and walked over to a huge stump. “Cut the surface roots first.”
He slammed the dull ax into the ground, and it bounced. Ah—now Rune understood. The ax had struck a root. Einar chopped at it from an angle. When the ax sank deeper into the spring dirt, he found another root and started chopping.
How clever! Chopping into dirt and clay dulled an ax quickly. So they might as well use tools that didn’t matter.
Bjorn had figured out the process just as Rune had, and Rune felt a happy little surge of pride. What a fine son! They cut the roots on four stumps. Then Einar shouldered his ax and walked off toward the wagon, so Rune and Bjorn followed.
When Einar pried the lid off the crate of dynamite, Rune broke out in a cold sweat again. Now the nightmare would begin.
Einar stuck a trowel in his belt and scooped up as many sticks as his two hands would hold. “Bring a shovel.”
He walked back to the first stump they had chopped around. He took the shovel from Bjorn and dug deep beside the stump. Rune noticed how dark the soil was at the surface and how quickly it changed into pale clay and gravel. In fact, the soil was very much like most of the lowlands in Norway.
Rune took the shovel when Einar stopped digging. On his hands and knees, Einar used his trowel to dig down under the stump. He forced several sticks of dynamite down as deep under it as he could get them, then stood up and snapped at Bjorn, “Go get the reel of fuse.”
He dug a deep hole alongside the next stump and handed the shovel to Rune. “Dig out the next one.”
When all the dynamite had been nestled in place under the four stumps, Einar positioned his fuse as Rune held the reel. Rune had trouble keeping up, as Einar kept yanking on the fuse, demanding more. Grinning, Bjorn stepped in beside Rune with an ax and ran the ax handle through the center hole of the reel. Of course! In spite of his extreme fear and tension, Rune cackled out loud. He gripped the ax on either side of the reel, using it as an axle. The reel spun freely. Rune backed up as Bjorn played out fuse to meet Einar’s needs.
Did Einar notice how quickly the operation was going now? Apparently not. Rune could see no change in his face or scowl. Much less did Einar notice the excellent improvement Bjorn had figured out. But then, wasn’t that always how Einar was?
When Einar stood up from attaching the fuse at the fourth stump, he barked, “Leave the wagon there and unhitch the horses, boy. Take them to that chokecherry at the far end and tie ’em up good.”
Rune felt better instantly. At least his son would be well away from danger.
But no. Bjorn led the horses at a trot out to the chokecherry and then came running back as Einar laid his fuse out along the ground and stopped beside the wagon.
“This is far enough.”
Rune licked his lips. “Are you sure? We seem kind of close yet.”
“It’s far enough.” Einar lit the fuse. It took three matches to get the fuse to catch, but suddenly it sputtered and sparkled brightly. As Rune’s heart pounded in his chest, the brilliant, hissing little flame moved swiftly down the line of laid fuse.
It reached the first stump.
Boom! But it wasn’t so much a boom as it was a bwahp, or maybe the world’s biggest shotgun being fired, or—
Bjorn whooped with surprise and joy as the stump lifted, trembling, in the midst of a cloud of dirt and stones. It dropped back at an angle as earth rained down all around it.
The burning fuse reached the second stump. Boom! Not just boom, but boom-boom, for the third stump exploded simultaneously. Dirt and stones were blown treetop high, and some of them landed so close that you could hear them hit the ground. Rune was convinced now that they were not nearly far enough away. A sudden wave of dirty air smacked him in the face; his ears rang.
BOOM! Einar had set the fourth stump with two sticks more than the others, and it went off with a horrific explosion. Earth and rocks and splintered wood blasted upward and outward in all direc
tions. Rune could feel the ground vibrate beneath the soles of his boots. He had never been so terrified.
Stones rained down, and the three of them buried their heads in their forearms. Poor Bjorn! He must be terrified. But no, he was laughing boisterously.
Whunk! A rock the size of a chicken landed on the wagon and punched a hole through the wagonbed. Einar swore. Rune stood aghast. If that rock had landed on one of them, it could have killed them. Suddenly he realized that the rock had missed the crate of dynamite sticks by only a foot or two. Had that rock landed on the dynamite . . .
He was terrified and horrified and wildly angry all at once. Einar could have killed them all!
Einar didn’t seem concerned. He dragged ropes and pulleys out of the wagon and ordered, “Boy, fetch the horses up.”
Bjorn stood, staring raptly at the stumps as the dirt cloud slowly thinned.
Einar snarled at Bjorn. “Boy! I told you to do something. Do it!”
Bjorn did not move or look at Einar. It was as if he hadn’t heard.
As if he hadn’t heard! Rune’s sense of dread before was nothing compared to his anger and terror now. Bjorn hadn’t heard!
Einar swatted Bjorn’s arm with the back of his hand, and Bjorn wheeled, wide-eyed. “Quit mooning around! I said, get the horses!”
“No!” Rune roared. “Bjorn, say your name.”
Now the boy looked terrified. “What? What did you say? Far! I can almost not hear you at all. It’s like you are very far away!”
Rune shouted and pointed. “Go to the house. Now!”
Einar shouted just as angrily, “No! I said get back to work! Go get the horses!”
A Breath of Hope Page 10