Gus turned from hanging his coat and hat on the pegs on the wall. He hesitated a moment, then blurted, “Maybe you ought to go with me and visit with somebody. Sophie or…”
“If I needed to visit, I could go over to Dorothy’s.” With the snow so frozen, she could easily walk across the small field to Knute and Dorothy’s house. The person she’d really like to discuss some of these things with was working at the telephone switchboard. Now, wouldn’t that cause a to-do if she strolled in and announced she wanted to talk with Gerald for a while? Perhaps she would see him on Sunday after church. He was so level-headed and such a good friend.
Gus’s frown made her realize she’d been snappy again. “Maybe I should bring Sarah over here to play.” Sarah was five years old and wishing she could go to school like her big brother, Swen, who would soon turn seven. She was not partial to staying home and helping with “the baby,” as she called her two-year-old brother, Hans. She didn’t yet realize that another baby was on the way.
“The kids all have colds again.” He sat down at the table then, but at her look, he got up and washed his hands before sitting down again.
Rebecca set the steaming pan in the center of the table, the golden brown top crust making her mouth water. Shame they hadn’t invited Knute over for dinner so that Dorothy wouldn’t have had to cook too. She served both of their plates, then passed the bread and beet pickles.
Two more days until the party with her friends. Surely just thinking about it would perk up her spirits.
Gus swallowed a mouthful of rabbit pie. “Are you sure you don’t want to go along?”
First he yelled at her, and now he was being too nice. Make up your mind. “No, I need to finish the dress I started for Sarah. She’s growing so fast, we can’t keep up with her.” Rebecca picked up the pencil she’d kept on the table and added dark brown thread to the list. “Make sure you check for mail.”
Gus rolled his eyes. “You’d think you were waitin’ for love letters the way you go on about the mail.”
“Just catalogs.” At the look on his face she was glad she’d not mentioned the round tables and the red-and-white gingham.
“What a waste of time. Patching my pants would be time far better spent.”
“Gus Baard, if you have some complaints about the way I take care of this house and us, you just get yourself a wife now, and I’ll move into town and go to work for someone else.” The pay would be better; that’s for sure.
“I won’t have you spending money we haven’t got for a dream that might not work out.”
“Oh sure, you can buy machinery when you need it, but if I try to do something, then it is only a dream.” The ends of her hair sizzled. The nerve of him. Dreaming never cost a dime. And she wasn’t stupid.
Gus glared at her and stabbed a slice of bread off the plate with his fork, daring her to comment on his lack of manners. “Besides, we haven’t bought any machinery lately.” He leaned forward. “Because there is no money.” His voice cracked like a whip. He shoved his chair back, stomped to the stove, and poured himself some more coffee.
At the moment he looked so much like their father that Rebecca caught her breath. Back before Mor died, back when Far had been healthy and ordering his growing sons around. When there had been love and life and happiness in this house, in spite of occasional temper spells or blowups. She sipped her coffee and looked around the kitchen, deliberately not giving her brother the satisfaction of a fight. They’d had arguments before, but right now this felt more like a battle. Only she wasn’t sure who was fighting and over what.
“Make sure you take the kerosene can.”
He blew out a sigh. “I will. If a storm comes up and the north looks some black, I’ll stay in town, so don’t worry. But I should make it home before then.”
“Don’t take any chances.” People died in blizzards, some just inches from the barn. He and Knute had strung ropes to the barns and across the field in case the blizzards were so bad they could get lost between the house and the barn.
Gus bundled back up, picked up her list, and headed toward the door. “I just don’t want to see you hurt again,” he said quietly before closing the door carefully behind him, in spite of the pull of the wind.
Through a film of tears Rebecca set about clearing the table and putting the food away. Any noise helped keep the wind at bay. But it didn’t seem to help calm her thoughts.
Franny, her fluffy gray cat, rose from the box behind the stove, arched her back in a stretch, and wandered over to the door. “You need to go out?” A flick of her tail was the answer, so she opened the door. “Don’t take too long, all right?”
A few minutes later she checked the door because the howling wind effectively drowned out any sound. She’d not even heard the jingle of the bells on the horse harnesses as the sleigh left the yard. Franny stalked in, nose in the air.
“Sorry. I wasn’t sure how soon you would be ready to come in.” Rebecca pushed the rolled rug tight against the bottom of the door to keep out the draft. She’d laid towels along the bottoms of the windows for the same purpose. Leave it to her hardheaded brother to insist on going to town in weather like this. It could get a lot worse before it got better, but at least the sun was still shining.
With the dishes done and knowing she had plenty of leftovers to warm up for supper, she pulled the rocking chair closer to the stove and sat down with her bound accounts book and a pencil to work on her lists again—in spite of Gus and his dire predictions. She had everything written down in there. She’d spent hours figuring and planning, putting it all away, then taking it out again, finding receipts and trying some of them out—her caramels had been a real hit at Christmas—so why did he think he had to keep reminding her of things like money? They’d talked it over more times than she could count.
If only her cousin Penny were here to give her business advice and answer more of her questions. It was probably about time to gather up her notes and send another letter to her. She knew she had to wait for the milking herds to build back up; at the moment there wasn’t enough extra to make ice cream. But if she was ready then, she could save time.
After all, no one was looking at her like the girls did at Gus. Would he already be married if he didn’t live with his sister? Even if her dream depended on a white knight, she could at least open the door for him.
It would help if Penny answered as quickly as she received the letter. Deep inside Rebecca had an idea Penny wasn’t very happy living in Bismarck. But then, who would be happy at having to give up your business and move away from all your family, friends, and … well, life? Was marriage always like that? Maybe she was better off single.
2
“FAR, MOR, DID YOU HEAR about that dairy herd for sale?”
Ingeborg looked up at her elder son. So this was why Thorliff had skied out from Blessing in the middle of the day and burst through their door. They caught up on the news as she cut three pieces of apple cake and spread applesauce over the top, adding a bit of thick cream. What a treat it was to have cream again after those months without. “The coffee will be hot in a few minutes. How did you hear about the dairy herd?”
“A letter from someone who knew of our plight here. It came to the newspaper office.” Thorliff turned his backside to the stove. “It’s cold out there, that’s for certain.”
“How’s Inga?” Ingeborg set the plates on the table and brought the cups and saucers out of the cupboard. At the same time she checked to make sure there were sugar cubes in the clear glass sugar and creamer Haakan had given her after her surgery. Every time she filled them or noticed them, she thought again how much she loved this man of hers.
“I’d have brought her with me if the weather were better.”
“Did you see your far at the barn?”
“He’ll be right up. He wanted to finish fixing the stanchions he’d torn out.” Thorliff rubbed his hands together. “Leave it to Far, fixing the stanchions even before he has enough cows to fill
the barn again. He is always looking ahead.”
“Ja. That is one of his gifts.” Ingeborg smiled at her newspaper-owning son who also was partial owner of a family-owned company that built not only houses but had built and then rebuilt the flour mill after the explosion there. “That’s something you both have in common.”
“That would be a very good thing.” He paused, thinking for a moment. “Elizabeth wanted me to ask if you are still concerned about his health.”
“He seems better. But he is also not working as hard as he was during the summer and fall.” Ingeborg checked on the coffeepot, then using a bundling of her apron as a pot holder, she poured coffee for both of them. “I’ve been praying for him every night after he goes to sleep. He says I worry needlessly, but I tell him I’m not worrying, just being observant and concerned, but”—she shrugged—“you know your far.”
“And I know you. There is no one’s faith that I admire and appreciate more.”
“Takk.” She smiled at the man who sat across the table and looked so much like his real father she might have thought Roald had come back to life and sat across from her. The differences? The smile lines around Thorliff ’s mouth and eyes, his ease of talking, and the fact that he was sitting in his mother’s kitchen in the middle of the afternoon. She reached over and patted his hand. “I am so proud of you that I cannot begin to thank God enough. What a fine man you’ve become.”
“Well, listen to us. Compliments flying like geese heading north.” He pulled a letter from his pocket and handed it to his mother. “I think we should go buy the cows and do like we did with the last carload—let your milk families buy them at cost, and if there are any left, put them up for auction. Perhaps when Far and Lars go look at them, they might find other stock on nearby farms that could be purchased also. I know Andrew would buy more pigs if he had a chance, and maybe you want a few sheep or goats.”
“Not goats.”
“Their milk makes good cheese.”
“Ja. Just because I don’t want any doesn’t mean others might. I could do goat cheese if some got goats, but we’d need enough to do a batch.” She had to rein in her imagination as it flew off to figure how to do even smaller batches of cheese to use the goats’ milk. Here she didn’t have enough milk to make any kind of cheese and she was planning on using goats’ milk.
“I was teasing, Mor.”
She brought her attention back to the laughter in his voice. “Oh. But it’s not a bad idea.” She could hear the sound of Haakan kicking the ice off his boots on the porch steps. Pushing her chair back, she returned to the stove to fill another cup.
“Temperature is dropping,” Haakan said as he opened the door, “and the clouds to the north keep getting blacker. You better be thinking on heading home, Thorliff.” While he talked he hung his outer clothes on the pegs.
“Trying to get rid of me before we even begin to talk about why I came?”
“No, never. But I don’t trust those clouds.” He nodded his thanks to Ingeborg as he sat down at his place and cupped his hands around the hot cup. “Ah, apple cake. That’s what I thought I smelled. You going to send part of this home to Inga?”
Their granddaughter loved sweets of any kind, especially if made by her bestemor.
“I have ginger cookies for her.” Ingeborg pointed to the round cookies with raisins for eyes, nose, and a smile. She knew Inga loved to pick off the raisins and eat them one by one, then nibble all around the cookie, keeping it in a circle until the last bite. Astrid had instructed her niece in the proper way to eat a ginger cookie.
With Astrid spending most of her time in the office and surgery with Dr. Elizabeth, Thorliff ’s wife, who was training her as her assistant, Inga and Astrid had more time together. No matter how busy the medical practice was.
“As soon as she sees those, she’ll run with one in each hand to find Astrid. One day we found Inga giving cookies to two little children who were waiting with their mother. Next thing you know, she’ll be running the whole house.”
Ingeborg rolled her lips together to keep from laughing out loud. Their little Inga was indeed a busy little charmer. Shame that God had not seen fit to bring Elizabeth’s last two babies to full term. But at least Elizabeth had gained her strength back. Ingeborg handed the letter Thorliff had brought to Haakan as soon as he’d eaten his cake and warmed his insides with hot coffee.
He read it, nodding all the while, then looked up at Ingeborg. “Looks to be a good thing. Holsteins. We’ll need to find some Jerseys to add in enough cream. You show this to Lars yet?”
“No. It just came to the newspaper office,” Thorliff said. “I would have sent it home with Astrid, but then she and Elizabeth decided she would stay overnight. They have a patient that needs watching.” Since this happened so often, Astrid now had a room of her own up in the attic that Thorliff had finished for her, including a heating duct so she wouldn’t freeze.
“When spring comes, we need to run the telephone lines out here,” Thorliff said. “That instrument sure is handy. As soon as it rings, Inga runs for her mother. She even knows that two rings are for us. You need to come in and visit, Mor. Inga’s different at home than out here.”
“Ja. At your house she’s a little tyrant, and out here she gets all the attention she wants.”
“I know. We call her Queen Inga.” Thorliff pointed to the letter again. “I can telegraph them that you want the herd, so they don’t sell it. Then you can write to make the arrangements.”
“I wouldn’t want to ship them in this winter weather. We’d probably lose some.” Haakan read the letter again. “But they say they need to sell soon. I wonder what the hurry is.”
“You can always write and ask.”
Ingeborg watched the two men. Haakan and Lars had brought back a train car of cattle in November to begin replacing the herds destroyed in the hoof-and-mouth epidemic the summer before. At least they had enough cows now to give everyone milk and cream again. Instead of hauling milk cans to Ingeborg’s cheese house, those that had milk shared with the others. Ingeborg had only a couple of cheese wheels ripening in the cheese house. She’d sent the last shipment on the train eastward before Christmas.
She still had nightmares at times of the sound of rifle shots killing the animals and of the awful stench as they burned the carcasses. A pall of smoke hung over the entire Red River Valley for weeks.
They’d managed to stop the spread of the disease at the Mississippi River. The two new cows had yet to become pets like some of the others in their old herd had.
“I’ll take this”—Haakan waved the sheet of paper—“to talk over with Lars, and we’ll get a letter off. Thanks for bringing it out.”
“Do you need money to help pay for them?”
Haakan shook his head. “But mange takk.”
“We have another problem creeping up, I’m afraid.”
Ingeborg motioned to his coffee cup, but Thorliff shook his head.
“What’s that?”
“Harlan Jeffers at the store.”
Haakan huffed out a sigh. “Now what? Thought sure he’d give in and close on Sundays like we asked, but he is some stubborn.”
“This may just be gossip, since I’ve not seen it with my own eyes, but …” Thorliff paused and rubbed the side of his nose.
“Spit it out.”
“I heard he is selling liquor under the counter.”
Ingeborg closed her eyes. No matter how hard she’d tried to make the man feel welcome, he’d not fit in. And refusing to close on Sundays had set the entire community off. They’d talked to him politely and then boycotted. But he refused to give in, not that he had much business on Sundays anyway, other than folks off the train.
“He’s carrying less and less stock. I’ve wondered how he can stay in business.”
“I don’t think he’s ordered much new merchandise since he took over.” Thorliff leaned back in his chair. “What do you think we should do?”
“What can we do?�
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“Run him out on the rail?” Ingeborg adopted an innocent look to get laughs from the two men.
“Tar and feathers? At least he’d be warm for a while.”
“You heard anything from Penny lately?” Thorliff asked his mother.
“A week or so ago.”
“Did she mention if he was paying on the contract? Or if he was behind?”
Ingeborg shook her head. “She didn’t mention anything about the store, nor even ask many questions about the goings-on in Blessing. The letter was pretty short.”
“I thought she sold it outright.” Haakan rose and went to the shelf behind the stove to get his pipe and tobacco.
“I did too until he mentioned something one day about business being hardly enough to pay the mortgage. That’s why I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he is selling hooch.”
“Unless he borrowed from someone else to pay Penny off.”
“True.” Haakan used his penknife to clean the burned tobacco out of the bowl of his pipe, then tapped the blackened remains into the stove and returned to the table. “You know, I’ve said all along that we need to set some town ordinances in place. So far, we’ve all agreed on the way we want to run things, but with all the new people coming into the area …” He shrugged with his hands, pipe in one and tobacco can in the other. He set the things on the table, then lowered himself into the chair. “We need a town meeting.”
“But how do we deal with Mr. Jeffers? Short of catching him in the act.” Ingeborg wet a finger and picked up cake crumbs from the tablecloth.
“But, Mor, this is an unwritten law all you women forced into place. Nowhere is it written that there will be no liquor sold in Blessing. We just sort of agreed there would be no liquor at the dances and barn raisings.”
“Well, we didn’t all agree.”
“But most everyone’s gone along with the rule in order to keep the peace.”
“True. Or the wives would take care of things.” She rolled her lips together. There had been some rather loud discussions at the quilting meetings.
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