The Reaper's Song

by Lauraine Snelling

  “But you can’t care. I don’t.” Anner leaned against the post. “I want to die.”

  The words lay on the floor with no will to rise.

  “Well, Anner, I guess God isn’t ready for you yet.” Joseph Baard rose from the bench where he’d been mending harness and rebraiding tie ropes. “And we need you here.”

  Anner looked down at his empty sleeve. “I ain’t good for nothin’ anymore. If God didn’t want me yet, why’d He take my arm?”

  “No one knows the answer to that part, but as for the other part of you, He still has a place for you here. Something for you to do.”

  “What a pile of—” He stopped himself.

  “Anner Valders, stop beating yourself to death.” Reverend Sol-berg’s voice sounded like God himself. It rang in the barn, setting the hens to flight in the haymow. And both words and tone rang in the men’s hearts, clear deep into their souls.

  “We come to help you, to bring you back to us. We have missed you.” Joseph reached with his left hand, took Anner’s limp hand and shook it. He covered their two hands with his other. “I don’t know what God has in mind for you, but He has something.”

  “But why would all of you keep coming back when I . . . I even struck one of you and tried to scare off others? Even your womenfolk.”

  “Anner, listen to me. We are a family, the family of God, and the Good Book says when one hurts, we all hurt. You’ve been hurting, so we have felt the pain. Now you can begin to get well. Then we will all be well again.”

  “But my arm.”

  “Yes, it is gone.”

  Anner stared at Joseph, as if willing him to take back his words. He looked around at each of them, perhaps really seeing them for the first time. “You would do all of this for me?”

  “And more if need be.”

  “Well, I never.” Anner sank down on the bench Joseph had vacated. “Farming with one arm ain’t easy.”

  “Farming with two arms ain’t easy. There ain’t nothing easy about farming,” Haakan said, giving everyone a much needed chuckle. “So you hire someone to help you, or you sell the farm and do something else.”

  “What else can I do? All I know is to farm.”

  Hjelmer cleared his throat. “I been thinking. Maybe you could work in my wife’s store. Now that the post office is in place, and with her serving dinners and all, she needs more help.”

  “Really?”

  “But you know the women—they don’t tolerate no boozing.”

  Anner studied Hjelmer. “Did she offer?”

  “No, but she’ll think this a grand idea. She’s been right worried about you . . . and your missus.”

  At that Anner’s face crumpled. He covered his eyes with his remaining hand. “Yes, and she was right to be. But I cannot do this, don’t you see?” He stood and made his way to the door, listing to the right side as if carrying something heavy. But the right arm was no longer there and dragged all the heavier because of its absence.

  For the next three weeks, each of the men took turns spending the day with Anner, and sometimes the nights. Ten days into the vigil, Haakan showed up right after supper.

  “How you be?” He removed his hat and coat as he talked.

  “I don’t need you here anymore,” Anner said. “You go on home and spend the time with your family.”

  Haakan peered across the table to Anner. The man wouldn’t look him in the eye. Dear Lord, now what? He sniffed. Was that whiskey he smelled?

  He looked over at Hildegunn, who kept stirring something in a bowl on the counter. She refused to look at him either. And whatever she was mixing was indeed being beat to death. All the while he stood there, Haakan sent prayers heavenward.

  “Surely you have a cup of coffee to offer a man who rode clear over here on such a frigid night. Why, that north wind like to froze my bones.” A sense of utter rightness brought him a feeling of peace. He was where he was supposed to be. “You hear it howling? You wouldn’t send me out in that, would you?”

  Anner sighed and flopped back in his chair. “No, I guess not. Hildegunn, pour the man some coffee, why don’t you?”

  Haakan looked over just in time to see her shoulders shake. She used the corner of her apron to wipe her eyes and turned with a smile, trembling at first but growing more confident as she moved to the cookstove.

  The hand she laid on Haakan’s shoulder as she set the coffee cup in front of him gripped with the strength of the distraught. “Thank you for coming in spite of the weather.” Gratitude shone in her eyes, eyes that had come to life again in the last weeks.

  “You want to tell me about it?” asked Haakan some time later.

  Hildegunn had gone up to bed, and the two men had moved their pegs halfway around the cribbage board.

  Anner looked up from studying his cards. “I was going to get roaring drunk tonight.”

  Haakan waited. Please, Lord, let all the men be praying. I don’t know what to say or do. Help me.

  The ticktock of the clock on the mantel marked the seconds like an anvil pounding in the stillness. The north wind wept around the eaves, crying the desolation of the damned.

  “I . . . I thought to . . .” Anner waited. A sniff, a hawk of his throat. With shaking hands, he drew a red handkerchief from his back pocket and blew his nose. Then he spit into the fabric and used a corner to wipe his eyes. “I thought to walk out that door after Hildegunn went to bed and just keep on walking. They say freezing to death is painless. You just go to sleep.”

  God in heaven . . . Even Haakan’s thoughts froze. “And . . . and n-now?”

  Anner’s attempted smile went back into hiding. “Now I’m beating you at cribbage, and I don’t hear that wind calling my name any longer. Or maybe it wasn’t the wind after all. Maybe it was the devil himself.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And maybe God not only brought you here tonight but kept you here?” Anner gave Haakan a questioning stare.

  “There’s no ‘maybe’ about that, Anner.”

  Silence again. The clock ticked away steadily and the wind fell still. The cat got up from its place on the rug in front of the stove and wound around Anner’s ankles, mewing for attention.

  Anner leaned down and picked up the animal, settling it on his lap, from where the purring now filled the silence. The coals in the stove settled with a whoosh.

  “Would you pray with me?” Anner stroked the cat and slowly raised his gaze to meet Haakan’s.

  “Ja, I would be glad to.” At a feeling of insistence, Haakan got to his feet and walked around behind Anner. He set his hands on the man’s shoulders and closed his eyes. “Father God, we come before thee with thankful hearts. Thank you that Anner is not lying in some snowbank but is here and seeking thy face. Thank you that I didn’t stay home tonight when it would have been so easy. We see thy hand at work and we praise thee.” He stopped. And waited.

  “I give up,” Anner whispered. “Whatever you want is fine with me. You take the whiskey. I don’t ever want any again. Only you, heavenly Father. Only you.”

  Haakan waited again, only this time there was no tension in the room or in his hands or in Anner. “Amen.”

  The day Hildegunn came back to quilting, the women crowded around her, patting her shoulders, grasping her hands, wiping their eyes with handkerchiefs gone soggy.

  “And to think Easter is nearly on us,” Agnes said. “This winter has fairly flown.”

  “Ja, that is because it is early this year. Hard to get the spring housecleaning done when there are still blizzards in the works.” Ingeborg wiped her eyes again.

  “I didn’t think to see another Easter,” Hildegunn confided. “But thanks be to God, we will.”

  On Palm Sunday a plain hammered-iron cross hung above the new altar, which was fashioned from a slab of maple burl that Olaf salvaged from the sawmill. The gleam of the burnished natural wood looked nothing like the intricately carved altars they were used to in Norway, but as Petar said, “It suits us.” A cross was carv
ed through each of the three-inch-thick sides that supported the altar, and Olaf had curved the fronts and backs of the legs.

  “Now ain’t that beautiful?” breathed Agnes.

  “We dedicate this altar to the glory of God, with thanks to Olaf Wold and Hjelmer Bjorklund, who so willingly have used their gifts to fashion such beauty for us.” Reverend Solberg looked from the altar to the congregation. “How blessed we are. And now let us sing.” The music rose triumphant as they celebrated Jesus’ ride in majesty into Jerusalem.

  “I think this Easter means more to me than any other,” Ingeborg said.

  “Why is that?” Katy asked.

  “One of our own has come back from looking into the grave, and we can truly rejoice. Thanks be to God. That was a close one.”

  “I heard that Anner isn’t the only one to have seen the pit,” Agnes said with a barely perceptible wink.

  “No, and probably not the last. So thank God for Easter every day.”

  With the coming of warmer days, Zeb took over the training of the young horses, breaking them for both riding and harnessing. He’d already done much of it over the winter, but now he had two teams of young oxen and six horses.

  “They’ve still some to grow, but they look to be settling in,” he told Haakan one afternoon. He had one of the young oxen yoked with an older, and the same with the horses, older teaching younger.

  “You have a good hand with them. You ever think of going into the horse-raising business?”

  “Costs too much.”

  “But have you thought about it? If you had a place, what would you do?” They both leaned against the corral, their backs to the sun.

  “If I had a place, I’d go west and round up some of the broomtails I been hearing about. I’d bring back mares and young stock, then buy a heavy stallion back east somewhere and begin breeding and training. I heard you can sell horses to the army too. Back home . . .” He stopped. “Ah well, it is all just a dream, anyway.”

  “Anything else?”

  Zeb gave him an appraising look. “I’d ask Katy to marry me and make her the happiest woman this side of heaven.” He looked down and scuffed a ridge in the dirt. “Fine dream, but dreamin’s for fools and simpletons.” He looked back at Haakan. “You got a dream?”

  “I’m living my dream, only when I came here, I didn’t know this was what I wanted. But God gave me a good shake and said, ‘Open your eyes, son. I have this home and woman for you and two strong sons.’ So I turned my back on the north woods, opened my eyes, and here I am.”

  Zeb nodded. “Wish to God all lives could be like that, but sometimes . . .” He heaved a sigh. “Sometimes things just happen.”

  Come on, tell me. Haakan waited.

  “Well, I better get back to work. That young filly won’t learn to pull on her own.” He turned away, then back. “Thanks for listening. And asking.”

  “Anytime.” Ask him. Haakan willed his tongue to say the words, but nothing came of it. A man’s business was his own, and until Zeb either volunteered or asked for help, he wasn’t one to intrude.

  “Zeb, I . . .”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Ah . . .” He couldn’t do it. “You’re doing a fine job with those animals. I appreciate it.”

  “Thank you.”

  Haakan strode off to the house, calling himself all kinds of names on the way. What if that had indeed been the prompting of God and he hadn’t followed through? What kind of a spineless, lily-livered so-and-so are you, Bjorklund?

  “Whatever is wrong?” Ingeborg asked after one look at his face.

  “Ja, do I wear my feelings on my sleeve or my face too?” The tone of his voice brought Andrew on the run.

  “Pa, are you mad?” His eyes rounded and his lower lip quivered.

  “Only at myself, Andrew, son.” Haakan picked the boy up and held him high to touch the ceiling.

  “Again, Pa,” Andrew shrieked in glee. “I can touch the ceiling.”

  Haakan held him up so he could touch the ceiling. Looking down, he saw Deborah in the doorway. “You want to touch the ceiling too?”

  She shook her head but her eyes pleaded for him to pick her up.

  Haakan set Andrew down on the floor, swatted his rear to make him giggle, and knelt down. He held his arms out and Deborah shuffled over to him, as though afraid if she ran like Andrew he would disappear. “You ready?”

  She nodded.

  Slowly, clasping her close to his chest, he stood. “Reach up high now.”

  As he raised her with his hands clasped firmly about her waist, she clutched his neck, then his hair. Slowly, her grin as wobbly as her hands, she reached up and touched the ceiling. He lowered her a bit, then raised her up again. Her eyes rounded. Her face split in a smile wide as the sun.

  “I touched the ceiling.” She laughed down at Haakan. “Again.”

  Haakan swallowed around the lump the little girl so often brought to his throat. Life had been mighty hard for her out on the prairie, up to now anyway. He looked over to Ingeborg to see her eyes glistening.

  Andrew wrapped his arms around his father’s leg and sat down on his boot. “Ride me?”

  “As soon as Deborah gets set.” He put the little girl down and she copied Andrew, sitting herself on his boot toe. “Ready?”

  “Yeah.” They hung on to his knees and he walked across the room.

  “You two are heavy.”

  “More, more.”

  “What is all the noise?” Bridget called from the parlor, where she sat at the spinning wheel, her foot pumping the treadle while she fed the wool into the spinning wheel to turn it into yarn.

  Haakan waddled into the other room, the two children giggling and urging him on.

  “Looks like you got heavy feet.”

  “Ja, think I better sit down before I fall down.” Haakan sank into the rocking chair. He patted each of the towheads. “You two go play again. Oh, I know, the woodbox needs filling if we want mor to make supper.”

  The two little ones dashed for the door, grabbing their coats as they ran by.

  “Zeb talked with you about his feelings for Katy?” Haakan asked Bridget after the children had left.

  “No, and he better not bother. No drifter is marrying my daughter.”

  “I’d talk with him if’n I were you. I think we can help that young man out. You know Katy’s daft about him.”

  “Daft never hurt no one. Marrying a man with secrets does. When he comes clean with what happened in his life, then we can talk.”

  “Lots of people put the past behind them and begin a new life going west. He wouldn’t be the first one and certainly not the last. Just a suggestion, mind you.”

  With the arrival of spring, the Red River kept on rising until it overflowed the banks and filled every basement with silt and stink. Being only a mild flood, it receded within ten days and left behind enough mess to keep everyone busy.

  “Good thing we built the house up high,” Ingeborg said for about the fiftieth time as they scrubbed out the basement. They’d already cleaned the springhouse and the smokehouse. Haakan had the boys out scrubbing the barn walls and trying to catch the chickens who’d taken refuge in the haymow.

  “How is Metiz?” Katy asked.

  “She says tepees are easier. When the floods come, you just pack up and move.”

  “She’s right.” Bridget brushed a lock of gray hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “Spring cleaning will never seem hard again compared to this.”

  “It doesn’t happen every year. All depends on how warm it gets in Winnipeg. With the river flowing north, the head melts faster than the mouth. Can cause all kinds of problems.”

  “This dirt grows good food, but it sticks worse’n anything I ever saw.” Bridget picked a gob of gumbo off the doorjamb. With the cellar doors swinging upward, they’d had to scrape the wood before they could open the doors. They emptied the cellar, bucket by bucket, until only the ooze remained on the floor. They would let that dr
y by itself.

  “Good thing the floodwaters didn’t get as far as the town. Cleaning the church and school would have been bad.”

  “What about the store?” Katy shook her head. “Penny would have lost a lot of her supplies.”

  “What with Hjelmer staying in Grafton for his training at the bank, she would have really been in a mess.”

  Bridget put her hands on her hips. “I still can’t think of my son as a banker. Hjelmer is a fine blacksmith. Banking ain’t for him.”

  “How do you know, Mor?” Katy asked. “He’s never tried. He was always good with numbers, and like Ingeborg said, he made good money off selling land to the railroad. I think he’ll make a fine banker.”

  “So who’s going to run his blacksmith shop then?”

  Ingeborg dumped her bucket of dirty water over the rose bushes, where the new sprouts were already three inches long. “Anyone else need clean water?”

  “Ja, me.” They both handed her their buckets.

  Ingeborg stopped at the well and kneaded her aching back with her fists. She always got soft over the winter and paid the price in the spring. She lifted her face to the sun, rejoicing in the warmth. How wonderful to have heat and light again. But this winter hadn’t been so bad. As Haakan had promised, many windows indeed made a difference.

  The geese sang their song overhead. The meadowlarks couldn’t quit singing. Ah, to go for a walk and look for the first violet down in the shady places. She shaded her eyes to look across the prairie. The grass had already been coming up before the flood, and now it lay like a haze of green upon the land. She knew if she watched closely enough, she could see it grow.

  The lambs gamboled beside their mothers, and two new calves bellered out in the barn. The sow was due to have her piglets any day. With all the babies already born or about to be, Ingeborg couldn’t help but think of herself. All this time and no quickening in her womb. There would be no new baby in this Bjorklund household.

  Kaaren was a different matter, however. She was due in June.

  “I wouldn’t care when it was,” Ingeborg muttered as she drew the water and filled the buckets. “God, are you listening? I really want to give Haakan a son of his own. Is that such a terrible thing to ask?”