“Far, can we go out to the big trees today?” Bjorn asked.
“You think you two can handle that big crosscut?” The twinkle in his eye let them know Rune was teasing. “Ja, I told your mor last night we would be doing that. I will tell Einar too, so maybe he can quit worrying so much.”
“How come he is so mean to Tante Gerd?” Leif asked.
“What are you talking about?” Rune asked.
“Well, you were all at the cellar, and I came back to check on the sows. I could hear him yelling at her clear to the barn. He was calling her names, even.” A frown wrinkled Leif’s forehead. “He made Kirstin cry too.”
“She will not be left alone with him again.” Nilda spoke softly, but those who knew her knew she could be formidable.
Rune’s eyebrows raised. “Still have that temper, eh?”
“If you only knew,” Ivar muttered into his cornmeal mush.
Nilda gave her younger brother a look that made her older brother chuckle.
“Gerd!” The order came from the bedroom.
Rune waved the women back and headed for the bedroom.
Nilda heard Rune speak in a determined voice without yelling, but she knew she would not want to cross him when he used that voice. “Einar Strand, listen to me and listen well. If you want any more of your trees cut before you can get out there again, you will not yell or roar at Gerd, Nilda, or Signe. We are going out to the woods today, but we will not go back if I hear you have been yelling at them again. They are doing their best for you, and you will keep a civil tongue.” He paused. “Do you understand me?”
Einar started to growl but stopped.
Nilda smiled into her hand. This was a new side of her brother that had come about since he left Norway. He had always been so quiet. She nodded at Signe. Yes, the two of them were in agreement, just like all those years as best friends.
Gerd hurried into the kitchen. “I-I’m sorry, why didn’t you wake me?” She cocked her head and turned around.
“You sit down and eat, I will go get her.” Signe patted Gerd’s shoulder as she went by.
“I will!” Leif was up the stairs before Signe got to them. In a minute or so, he carried his grinning baby sister into the kitchen. “She sure is wet.” He dodged Kirstin’s questing fingers and handed her to Signe.
Kirstin babbled at him and her mor.
“You slept so long, no wonder you are so happy.” Signe changed her while the others ate their breakfast, then sat down and touched a spoon of milky mush to her daughter’s mouth. Kirstin tongued it around before shoving it out again.
“Put a bit more brown sugar on it,” Gerd suggested. “She should be hungry.”
“Oh, she is hungry all right, but cornmeal is not her idea of what to eat,” Signe said.
“She does okay with oatmeal, though.”
“When I cook it to death and mash it.” Signe added a bit more brown sugar and repeated the feeding. Kirstin mouthed it, some dribbling down her chin, and finally swallowed.
“Good girl,” Leif said from across the table.
Kirstin looked at him and waved her fist.
“Two down,” Rune announced when the men returned at noon. “Leif is at the barn. The remaining gilt has had her first baby.”
“So he will be staying there?” Nilda asked.
“Yes.” He nodded toward the bedroom and dropped his voice. “How is he?”
“Quiet. Got him up in a chair for a bit, then back down. I offered that you and the boys will help him to the rocker out on the porch before you go back to the woods.”
“Good.”
“Ivar learns really fast,” Bjorn said between bites.
“The teeth on that big saw are different than the crosscut we had at home, but better I think. Trading off, we dropped one earlier, then just did another before we came to eat.” Ivar flexed his shoulders. “I cannot believe how big those trees are. I mean, when you are right there on the end of the saw, they are huge!”
Nilda set another bowl of rabbit and beans on the table and dished up more corn bread. “Perhaps tomorrow you will want dinner out there?”
“We’ll see.”
After dinner, Rune and Ivar went into the bedroom. “You ready to go out on the porch?” Rune asked Einar.
Nilda moved to the door to watch and listen.
Einar nodded. He swung his legs to the side of the bed and slowly pushed himself up to standing.
Rune smiled. “Good. Now we can walk with one of us on each side of you. Put your arms over our shoulders.”
“The chair.” Einar nodded to the one by the bed.
“Bjorn, you bring that chair behind us.”
Half carrying, half walking him, they got the big man through the kitchen and out to the rocking chair on the porch, where they let him down slowly while he puffed and panted as if he’d been running.
“You all right?” Rune asked.
“Ja.” Einar rested against the back of the chair.
Nilda watched from the doorway. “Can Signe and I get him back in?”
“In a couple hours I’ll come back. After we fell the next one,” Rune said.
A while later, Gerd took a bowl of beans and a cup of coffee out to Einar on a tray. “I am lying down with Kirstin. Do you need anything else?”
“Water.”
She brought him a glass, along with a plate of cookies. “To go with your coffee.”
Nilda thought she heard him mutter something about wasting time baking cookies, but she wasn’t sure. She nodded as the realization hit her. The only way he would be happy was if they were all out felling and limbing trees.
She turned to Signe. “He’d even have Kirstin out dragging branches if she could walk.”
Gerd shook her head and rolled her eyes at the joke.
Later that afternoon, Nilda heard Leif out on the porch. The last time she had checked, Einar had been sleeping in the chair.
“Onkel Einar, we have eighteen piglets. That gilt rolled on one, but the others are all under their corner. Just think, eighteen, and two more sows to go.”
“Killed one, eh?”
“Sorry.” Leif came in the house, shaking his head. “I thought eighteen was pretty good.”
“It is.” Nilda handed him a cookie. “You are a good animal husbandman.”
The next time she checked on Einar, he was asleep again. Thank you, Lord, for small favors.
“I’m going out to weed for a while,” she announced. “Signe, you too?”
“Ja, be right there. Let me tell Gerd.”
They were mopping their faces with their aprons after hoeing for an hour when they heard a roar from the porch.
“I need help!”
They both took off for the house at a run.
He shook his fist at them. “I got to get up and—”
“Hold on!” Signe yelled.
But before they could get to him, Einar pushed himself upright and fell forward, flat on his face.
Chapter
25
The next morning, Rune and the women stared down at Einar, sleeping again after breakfast and a dose of laudanum. They had carried him from the porch to the bed the night before, and Rune had spent the night on a pallet next to the bed. Einar had awakened with garbled speech, his usual hostility, and definite weakness in his right side.
“We will have someone with him at all times. That’s all we can do,” Signe said.
“I will stay with him,” Gerd answered.
Rune shook his head. “No, we will take turns. Leif needs to stay near the barn to watch the pigs, so he can do turns here too. The other three boys will go back to limbing and cleaning up brush out in the forest. They can cut firewood too. I have told them to leave the standing trees until I get back.”
“You will have the lumberyard deliver the lumber for the house?” Signe asked.
“Ja. I will bring back what we need for the cellar, so I should be back by early afternoon, if I start right now.” He looked at each o
f the women. “If he starts to get agitated . . .”
“He should sleep for three or four hours with what I gave him,” Nilda said. “You might buy some more laudanum while you are in Blackduck. We have enough for one more dose.”
“I will hurry.” He shook his head. “If only he would listen to others.”
“He never will.” Gerd wagged her head. “Never has, never will.”
“We’ll do what we can. If he starts flailing those long arms, you just get out of his way,” Rune urged them. “If he gets agitated and falls out of bed, let him lie there until either the boys come back or I do. I do not want one of you to get hurt.”
All three women nodded in response.
“We could tie him down.” Gerd gave Rune a questioning look. “Feet and hands. We’ve got some sheeting we could rip into strips.”
“The laudanum should be enough,” Nilda said. “When we bring him coffee for dinner, I will give him a bit more.”
“Tie him if you must, but do not try to keep him from falling, and do not argue with him. He might be calmer when he wakes, but he might be worse.” Rune thought a moment. “Maybe I better stay here.”
“I could go order the lumber, since you have the sizes and amounts all written out,” Signe volunteered. “Or Nilda could.”
“And when they start asking you questions about the structure of the house, or do we want this instead of that . . .” He shook his head. “And paying for it. I do not have enough money to pay for it all at once, and I can almost guarantee they do not accept installments from women.”
Nilda shook her head. “Shame, isn’t it?”
Gerd stared Rune right in the eyes. “I—we would help pay for it.”
“Nei! No!” Rune said, then caught himself. “Tante Gerd, I would do business with you, but not Einar. Not ever again. My house has to be bought and paid for by me. I appreciate your offer, but please understand why I am saying this.”
Gerd reached for his hand. “I do understand, but you all mean far more to me than money. If I have it, I want to share it with you.”
Signe sniffed. “Gerd . . .”
Rune felt overwhelmed too, but he had two women to thank God for. Thank you, Lord. I asked for a family here, and you have given us one with Gerd and now Nilda and Ivar.
Signe let the tears drip. Easier than fighting them, no doubt.
Rune laid his hands on Gerd’s shoulders. “Thank you. I cannot begin to tell you how much this means to me and to Signe and to our boys too.” He blew out a breath. “Now I will be on my way and home again as soon as I can.” He started to the door. “Remember, Ivar and Bjorn are strong as full-grown men if you need them.”
“Here. Take the eggs and butter with you for Benson’s.” Signe handed him the baskets she had packed.
He gave her a swift kiss on the cheek. “Be careful, hear me?”
He climbed up on the wagon that had become the flatbed used to haul the hay, waved to the women, and set the team at a trot down the lane. The boys had the other team out in the woods, so Rosie was alone with the cows in the pasture.
He waved at Mrs. Benson, sitting out on the store’s porch, as he turned the corner toward Blackduck. Drawing the team to a halt, he called, “I brought you eggs and butter. I’m going to order the lumber for the house today. Can I get you anything?”
“Wonderful. Wait just a moment.” She disappeared into the store, so Rune climbed down and carried the baskets Signe had given him to the front porch and set them in the shade.
“Here.” Mrs. Benson handed him a bag. “Some to take home, and some to eat on the way. Holler when you get back, and I might have something else to send. Should the mister round up the crew?”
“Not yet. We need to get the cellar framed so the foundation is ready to set the house right on it. We are going to have a celebration for certain when this house is ready to move into.”
“That we will. A real party. How is Mr. Strand doing?”
“Worse. He fell again. Can’t get it into his head that he needs time to recuperate. Just because he’s not bleeding and nothing’s broken.” Rune shook his head. “Takk for asking.”
“Can any of us help?”
“Not that I can think of. “ He peeked in the bag and grinned at her when he saw the cookies. “For me?”
“I know Leif and Knute especially like those too.”
“I will share. Lord bless you, Mrs. Benson. You are a true friend. Oh, wait a moment. Do you have any laudanum?”
“I do, order came in just yesterday. I’ll have it ready for you when you get back.”
“Good, saves me a stop in Blackduck.”
“Takk for these.” She picked up the baskets.
Nibbling on the two cookies he’d allowed himself, he took the next five miles at a slow jog to keep from wearing the horses out. They’d been hitching the teams the way the former owner had suggested, one of Einar’s old team paired with one of the green team. Probably he should have hitched up the other team too, but they’d not driven the four together yet.
Sweat streaked the horses’ shoulders as he turned into the lumberyard. He drew them to a stop in the shade, swung down, made sure all his papers along with a good part of the cash he had saved were in the packet stuffed in his shirt, and strode toward the office. If only he knew things were safe at home, he could enjoy this long-dreamed-of day, rather than needing to hurry home.
“Good to see you again, Mr. Carlson,” Mr. Hechstrom greeted from behind the counter. “How did those skis work out? You get them finished?”
“Not yet, but they will be for this winter. I sure have learned a lot.”
“Trial and error can be pretty good teachers. How can I help you today?”
Rune took the papers out of his shirt front. “I’m here to order the lumber for my house.”
“Well, good for you. Congratulations are in order. Hang on.” Mr. Hechstrom called to the back. “Petter, you come out here and run the front while I help this man?”
A young man jogged out of the warehouse bay, his face sweaty. “Yes sir, Mr. Hechstrom.”
“Mr. Carlson, here—”
“Rune Carlson.” Rune failed to mention anything about Einar Strand. He’d learned that the name Strand could bring out bad feelings.
“Okay, Rune, this is my nephew, Petter Thorvaldson.”
When the two shook hands, the young man asked, “Carlson! Are you the Carlson that Miss Nilda Carlson and her brother Ivar came to help?”
“I’m their older brother. My wife and I came last year to help our relatives.”
“Well, I’ll be snookered. I heard a lot about you and your wife and, what, three boys and a baby girl? From Valders, Norway, and Ivar was going to help fell the big trees, and Miss Carlson was so looking forward to seeing her best friend again. We got to know each other pretty well. How are they?”
Rune smiled at the young man’s enthusiasm. “Ivar took the other end of a crosscut saw yesterday for the first time, and we brought down three trees. His shoulders were pretty sore last night.”
Petter grinned from ear to ear. “Well, I am so glad to meet you. Greet them from me, please.”
“I will. If you make it out our way, I know they will be glad to see you again too. They talked of you like friends.”
Mr. Hechstrom nodded. “Perhaps Petter can drive one of the loads. He’s told us a lot about his friends from the ship.” He pointed toward a door along the back wall. “Come to my office, and let’s put your order together.”
Rune took the chair Mr. Hechstrom indicated.
“You want something to drink? Coffee, cold water?”
“Ja, both would be good. My team is in the shade, so they should be good for a while.”
Mr. Hechstrom called for someone to bring the drinks and then sat in the other chair. On the desk in front of him were tablets and pencils, along with pen and ink. “Now, tell me about your house plans.”
“I drew them out, much as I was able. I was trying to estimate
how much lumber I’d need, but I know this is nowhere near accurate. I was going to build a one-and-a-half story, but I decided we better go with two full stories.” He pushed the papers over to the other man. “You might have this already figured out, but we need a real second floor, not just an attic like at Einar’s house.”
Mr. Hechstrom nodded, leafing from page to page of Rune’s drawings. Probably in his eyes, the plans were laughingly crude. He nodded. “Pretty standard farmhouse style. Good. This what you’ve dug for the cellar?”
“Ja. Today I need to take home posts and joists and whatever else I need to frame that in so it will be ready for the rest.”
“You got some helpers?”
“My brother and two sons, but the men of the church have said we are going to have a house-raising.”
“That the Lutheran church at Benson’s Corner?”
Rune nodded.
“Those are good people there, some real good carpenters too. This house’ll go up real fast. They know how to do it, raising walls and such. Good for you.” Mr. Hechstrom pulled a list of materials out of the drawer under the table. “How about this: We load your wagon today with the cellar materials like you said, then I get an estimate together and come out to your place so we can make sure we have at least most of it. I will include roofing and siding and doors and windows. We’ll deliver the framing supplies first, and the roofing and remaining supplies when you are ready for them.”
“Sounds good. Can we talk about money?”
“If you want. Tell you what I have done plenty of times. You tell me how much you can pay now, and then we’ll divide the rest up into payments, due when the trees are sold. I figure that is what you will use to pay with.”
Rune stared at the man across the desk. “You would do that?”
“Well, yes, unless you would rather go through the bank. I figure you got enough trees out there to pay off your house in the next year or so.”
“We are not talking Einar’s trees here, but those on my five acres.”
“How many acres already cleared?”
“About one and a half.”
“And the rest is white pine?”
A Breath of Hope Page 21