The Reaper's Song

by Lauraine Snelling

  Zeb felt a weight crushing down on his shoulders. Mr. Norton had never made it home. And he hadn’t run out either.

  “You go straight west of town, about a day’s ride, I guess. Not too many folks out there. Them bare hills don’t grow much. Tell him Mrs. Abrahamson said hello, and I sure am glad he made it home. The storm that night was a killer.”

  Zeb dug in his pocket and withdrew the soft leather pouch that held the last of his cash. He paid the bill. “Thanks for the information. I surely will pass your greeting on to Elmer.” He picked up his packet and turned to leave.

  “Here, wait.” Mrs. Abrahamson unscrewed the lid of the candy jar and took out two peppermint sticks. “You give these to those two girls of his. They’re the light of his life, they are.”

  “Thank you again.” Zeb clapped his hat on his head as soon as he stepped out the door. Was another lie in the offing? He who never told a lie after the last whupping from his ma was getting right into the habit of it. And the one to the deputy would now haunt him.

  Within half an hour they were trotting east. Maybe the Stoltz-fusses could use a hand for a while. At least Deborah would have fresh milk to drink.

  Blessing, Dakota Territory

  August 1, 1886

  Uff da.”

  Ingeborg Bjorklund straightened from picking beans and pushed the basket ahead with her foot. Only about five feet to go and she would have the row finished.

  Sixteen months old and with a voice that carried clear across the Red River, Astrid scrunched her face and cried again, louder this time. “M-m-a.” She used her hands to boost herself back to her feet and, arms in the air for balance, toddled over the rough garden clods of Dakota dirt toward her mother. Wearing a yellow gingham dress as dirt-stained as her face, the child ignored the green bean her mother held out and reached instead for the front of her dress.

  “Astrid, see? Look to the end of the row. You can wait that long, can’t you?” Ingeborg pointed to the post at the end, then swiped a lock of hair back from her forehead with the back of her hand while glancing at the sun. “Not even midmorning yet.” She drew in a deep breath, the fragrance of string beans, both leaves and pods, heightened by the shimmering heat of the August sun.

  Astrid shook her head and pulled again at her mother’s dress.

  “Ja, and it feels more like midafternoon.” Goodie Peterson stood upright and kneaded the middle of her back with her fists. “Why don’t you and Astrid sit in the shade and snap these while I go punch down the bread? The men will be heading in before we can finish the picking.”

  Ingeborg nodded, pushing her faded sunbonnet back so she could tuck the stubborn strand of hair under the golden-hued braids she always wore wrapped around the crown of her head. Tall at five foot seven and strong of both chin and frame, she wore her dark skirt and white blouse with an air that commanded respect. Except from her young daughter.

  Baby Astrid raised the volume on her demands.

  Ingeborg bent to finish picking the row, feeling the seepage from her milk-laden bosom. Often she felt like one of the milk cows, but they let their milk down only twice a day, while she did every time she heard a baby cry. “Uff da,” she muttered again. Now she would have to change before dinner. “Little one, if you could have waited only a while longer.”

  “You mark my words, that one will never willingly wait for anything.”

  “She is impatient, isn’t she?” Ingeborg sent a smile to the other woman working across the bean rows. “So soon she’ll be racing after her brothers. They grow up so fast.”

  Astrid plunked herself back down in the row and buried her face in her skirts, the cries enough to break a hardened heart, let alone her mother’s.

  “This Dakota country, it grows everything fast.” Goodie Peterson set her basket of beans on the bench in the shade of the sod house, which had become home for her and her two children after the Bjorklunds had built the frame house that spring. Up till then, they’d all shared the soddy. Goodie had come to live with the Bjorklunds after her husband died the winter before. “You want we should dry these instead of canning them? My mother used to hang pairs of bean pods, hooked together by their stems, over a string above the stove. Called them leather britches and cooked them along with bacon or salt pork.” She held up two connected pods as an example. “You dry them before the beans inside get very big. Tastes a whole lot different than dried shelled beans.”

  Ingeborg looked at the bucket and basket, both full of slender bean pods. “I didn’t pick mine with the stems on.” While she talked, she picked up Astrid and carried her to the bench beside the soddy. Sitting down, she loosened her shirt and set the baby to her breast with one arm encircling the child, leaving her hands free. Ingeborg adjusted her pose to make Astrid more comfortable and reached for a handful of beans. “We can dry yours and snap mine. Leather britches, hmm.”

  “You want a drink of water?” Goodie shaded her eyes at a squeal from the barn. “Those two are playing in the haymow again.”

  “Yes, to the water, and can’t hurt about the children.” Ingeborg loosened the ties of the sunbonnet she’d finally consented to wear and let it fall behind her. Her wide-brimmed man’s felt hat shaded better than the calico bonnet, but the bonnet kept her hair cleaner. She’d finally succumbed to the pressure from the other women, and from Haakan too, to put away her man’s attire. A breeze tickled the damp hair on either side of her face. She sighed and leaned against the soddy wall.

  Just past four and large for his age, her younger son, Andrew, had assumed full charge of Goodie’s nearly four-year-old daughter, Ellie. The two were now responsible for feeding the chickens, and Andrew was teaching Ellie which were weeds and which were vegetables in the burgeoning garden. Between the two, they kept the sweet corn and potatoes weed free and collected potato bugs in cans of kerosene. Whenever loosed from chores, they headed straight for the hay-filled barn, sliding down the side near the trapdoor to the lower level. Goodie feared they might forget to close the trap, shoot right down to the rock-hard dirt floor below, and break an arm or leg in the landing.

  Ingeborg snapped beans, dropping the broken pieces into her skirt basket and listening to the contented guzzling of her baby. Astrid nursed as she did everything—with gusto.

  “Here.” Goodie handed Ingeborg the dipper of water, cold from their well, and set another basket on the bench. At a halloo from the road to their town of Blessing and the railroad siding at the southwestern corner of Bjorklund land, she shaded her eyes again. The heat of the golden sunlight shimmered around a man wearing a hat, wider brimmed than most men wore in this area, and carrying something tall and stick-looking on his right shoulder. He waved again.

  “It’s Olaf.”

  Ingeborg looked over the rim of the dipper to see Goodie’s face about to break with the smile so wide. “Fancy that.” Ingeborg took another long draught of water, chuckling inside at the red that swept from Goodie’s neck clear to her cheekbones and up to the hairline. “Maybe he brought mail. Why don’t you go see?”

  Goodie didn’t need a second invitation. She shot Ingeborg a grateful smile and headed out. “Uff da,” she muttered for Ingeborg’s ears alone. “You’d think I was a young maid again.”

  Ingeborg set the dipper down on the bench and smiled to herself. She hadn’t felt so different not that long ago, and like Goodie, she had been married before and widowed too. Thoughts of Haakan striding across the plain with his axe on his shoulder made her smile again. He’d come to Dakota Territory in answer to his mother’s plea for him to help his distant relatives, and he never returned to the north woods of Minnesota to log the giant pines. Instead he’d set up his own logging outfit here on the banks of the Red River and, together with Ingeborg, farmed the rich alluvial soil of the valley.

  She glanced down at the child on her lap. Astrid reached up and patted her mother’s face, milk trickling out the side of her mouth. She belched, giggled at the sound, and slid to the ground.

  Ingeborg gr
abbed the fleeing one’s arm and wiped her mouth. “You needn’t waste that milk, you little piglet you.”

  “See Andoo.” Astrid pulled away, giggling all the while. Her laughter rippled out over the garden much like the song of the larks in the early morning.

  “God dag,” Olaf called. “She sounds happy, that one.”

  “God dag to you too. Come sit. I see you brought your own chair.” Ingeborg peered around the corner of the house, letting them know she was decent again. “I’m sure Goodie will fill this dipper for you. Sweet well water on a hot day like this is always welcome.”

  Olaf set down the chair he’d been carrying on his shoulder and sat himself on it. “Ja, I knew the soddy needed another chair.” He drew a handkerchief from his back pocket and lifted his hat with one hand, mopping his sweaty brow and back over his thinning hair with the cloth. “’Tis a warm one, that is for sure.” He took the dipper Goodie offered and drank deeply. “Mange takk. This cold drink is welcome all right, and now I have something for you.” He withdrew a packet of mail from the breast pocket of his white shirt. “Here. This one from Bridget must tell us when she is coming.” He dug in another pocket. “Penny sent these for you. Said they came in on the morning train.” He put the packet of sewing needles with the letters.

  As she took the letters Ingeborg noted that he wore a clean white shirt and winked at him. “You look ready for church, and here it is only the middle of the week. Any special reason?” She ducked her head to hide the smile caused by his reddening neck. Those two blushed so easily it was impossible to keep from teasing them. Not that she or anyone else tried terribly hard—to refrain, that is.

  “And how are you today, Miss Astrid?” Olaf leaned forward, arms extended for the child to come to him.

  She threw her mother a laughing glance over her shoulder and, talking in her own language as if they all should understand her, toddled over to stand within the circle of his arm and the haven of his knees.

  Olaf took the baby hands in his and patted them together. “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man . . .”

  While he played with the child, Ingeborg carefully lifted the flap of the envelope. With paper so precious, they would reuse the inside of the envelope. Her eldest child, Thorliff, coveted every bit of paper for the stories he wrote. Drawing the thin sheet from the envelope, she started to read aloud.

  Dear Ingeborg and all of our Amerika family,

  We are well here, as I hope and pray all of you are too.

  A soft grunting from the child captured Ingeborg’s attention at the same time as a ripe odor floated upward. “Uff da. Astrid, could you not wait even a few minutes longer?” She glanced over to see the concentrated gaze of the child filling her pants.

  “Here, let me take her.” Goodie lifted the little girl and wrinkled her nose at the same time. “Pew! Let’s get you presentable for your admiring onkel.” She paused. “Or would you rather keep her as she is now?”

  Olaf shook his head. “I’ll wait.”

  The leaves of the cottonwood tree Ingeborg had planted when the soddy was built rustled in the breeze as she continued reading the letter aloud.

  We have our tickets to leave Oslo on the first of August, so if God wills that all go well, we should see you before the end of the month.

  Ingeborg laid her hands in her lap. “They won’t be here for the wedding after all.”

  Olaf moved his chair into the shade. “There will be plenty of folks there anyhow. With harvest so near, we are cutting things close, but if we do not get married now, there will be no time for the next two months.”

  “Or more. I’ve never seen the wheat so thick and heavy. This is to be a bumper year for certain.”

  “Ja, and the price fell again.”

  Ingeborg groaned. “How are we to get ahead when they keep dropping the wheat prices?” While she knew Olaf had no answer, she still voiced the complaint of all the farmers. The prices per bushel had dropped for the last two years. Rumor had it that the grain buyers for the Minneapolis flour mills had joined together to make sure they made a huge profit, at the expense of the farmers. And the railroads were charging more to ship the grain too.

  She shook her head and returned to the letter.

  I am bringing Katja with me, as there are no young men here who catch her eye, and you said single men are the majority in the west. I want her to marry a God-fearing man, and if he owns his own farm, it would be like the frosting on the egge kake.

  Ingeborg chuckled at that. Bridget was renowned for her egg cake, and her frosting recipe had been handed down from her mother. “Hard to believe that little Katja is ready to think of marriage. They grow up so fast.” Her gaze returned to the paper. “Oh, dear.”

  “What is it?” Olaf had removed his pipe from his pocket and was scraping the bowl with the small blade on his knife.

  “She is bringing Onkel Hamre’s grandson with her.” She returned to reading aloud.

  Hamre is now twelve, and since his mother died of the chest congestion, he has been living with me to help us out with the chores. Johann wants him to stay here so there is someone in the family to help him with the home farm, but Hamre is determined to go to Amerika. He says he wants the new life too. Such a strong mind for such a young boy.

  Ingeborg looked up again, her forehead wrinkled in thought. “This should work out well, then. We will let them have this soddy, since Goodie and her two will be with you in your new house when it’s built.”

  “Mayhap we could put a wood floor in it for them before winter.” Olaf tamped his tobacco down with his thumb.

  “Ja, and a new coat of whitewash.” She smiled at the man now heading into the soddy to get a light from the stove for his pipe. When he returned, he nodded. “I heard tell these old soddies are warmer in the winter than wooden frame houses any day. As used to dark winters as those Norskys from the old country are, this shouldn’t be such a burden.”

  “Humph.” Ingeborg shook her head. Nothing pleased her more than the many windows Haakan had insisted on for their new house. She stared across the short space to the two-story frame house with a porch facing the west. The look of it still thrilled her deep into her soul. This year perhaps the howling winds wouldn’t bring on the inner darkness that seemed to attack her most in the winter. The long winters in Norway had never caused the darkness of her soul that the winters in the soddy had brought upon her after her first husband, Roald, died. Sometimes now, even with Haakan and the children, she felt herself being sucked back down into the pit.

  She shook the specter away and returned to the letter.

  I hope this will not be an extra burden for you, but Sarah Neswig desires to come also. She is the daughter of my second cousin and a good worker. When her parents heard we were leaving, they made a special trip clear from Oslo to ask if she might go along. How could we say no? Her fiancé was drowned in the same storm that took Hamre’s far to his watery grave. Onkel Hamre still blames himself, believing that if he had been along, the boat would not have gone down.

  “There’s a mite too much snow on his mountain for him to be fishing the north seas any longer, isn’t there?” Olaf shook his head, the smoke from his pipe circling around them.

  “Ja, that is why his son Jacob had taken over. He, too, is—was a fine fisherman. Young Hamre will miss the sea here.”

  “He could pretend that wheat is the sea. Bending in the breeze like that, it looks like gentle sea swells, although a mite gold in color.”

  Ingeborg smiled at his sally. Olaf had never been addicted to the sea like Onkel Hamre. Fishing was all the old man could talk about or wanted to talk about.

  Goodie returned with a now sweet-smelling child. “You want her back, or shall I put her down on the quilt?”

  Ingeborg nodded toward the quilt they had spread in the shaded and fenced plot. They had put up the fence so Astrid could not crawl away. Now that she was walking, the fence was even more important. Goodie set the child down and handed her a hunk of bacon
skin to chew on. Two days earlier a second lower tooth had cut through, and the nub beside it would soon sparkle white. With her four sparkling teeth, Andrew dubbed her “rabbit.”

  Ingeborg finished reading the letter and returned it to its envelope to be read again at the dinner table. “So, we will have four new lives here with us.”

  “Good thing these you already got are moving on.” Goodie stood beside Olaf, close but not touching. She glanced up at the two laughing children emerging from the cow barn. “But those two will be lost without each other.”

  Andrew slammed the door shut and yelled, “Race you to the well.”

  Even from the distance, the adults could tell that he hung back and let Ellie win.

  “That Andrew, he will be a fine man someday, the way he cares for others, both human and animal.” Olaf puffed on his pipe, nodding as the smoke wreathed his head.

  Ingeborg sniffed in appreciation. “You use the same tobacco as my far did. I always liked the smell of pipe smoke.”

  “How about cigars? I saw a new box of them over at the store. Penny says they are selling good.” He chuckled at Ingeborg’s wrinkled nose.

  “Ishda to both that and those awful cigarettes some of the men are rolling. Mark my words, those are dangerous in this dry weather.”

  “You must be carrying water to your garden. Some others are looking pretty wilted by now.”

  “Thank God for the good well we have. At church on Sunday some were saying their wells are going dry.” Her hands busy with the snapping beans and her eyes on the child jabbering to the rag doll on the quilt, Ingeborg enjoyed the conversation.