Dakota Dawn

by Lauraine Snelling

  After setting the table again and finishing the preparations for company, Nora sank down into the chair and, lifting Grace to one knee and Kaaren to the other, gathered Mary and Knute as close as she could. Oye was eye and toyebiyn, eyebrow. The game continued just like teaching a baby he had a nose and mouth.

  They were all laughing over nothing when the door opened with a blast of cold air.

  “But you must have some help,” Reverend Moen was saying as they stamped snow off their feet and entered the house. “You can’t take care of all your livestock and the children, too. How will you manage?”

  “I don’t know. I . . .”

  “Here, now. See how nicely Nora has prepared things for us. Let’s just sit down to eat and talk things over.” Ingeborg helped the younger man off with his coat and hung it up with her own. “You can’t go off without something warm in your belly.”

  Nora flew to set the coffeepot on the table and dish up the søtsuppe. Mary carried the cream pitcher and set it in front of her father.

  “Pa!” Kaaren attached herself like a limpet to her father’s leg.

  “Is no one else coming?” Nora asked Ingeborg in a voice only they could hear.

  Ingeborg shook her head. “It was getting late and they needed to get home before dark.”

  Nora finished the comment in her mind. Or so they said, whoever “they” were.

  “Why don’t you leave the children here for a few more days,” Reverend Moen suggested after everyone was served. “Peder is getting stronger, but we haven’t found a wet nurse for him, yet. And Kaaren is doing fine here. What do you say, son?”

  Carl glanced over at Ingeborg as if asking her permission.

  “Ja,” she said with a nod. “I feel that is best, too.”

  “I appreciate what you are doing, but I—”

  “No buts, then. It is settled.” John clapped a hand on Carl’s shoulder.

  Nora refilled the coffee cups and wished she knew for sure what they were saying. In a moment of silence, she took all of her courage in hand and announced, “I could go out to help Mr. Detschman with the house and the children. If we get Peder to take a bottle, there wouldn’t be any problem.” She stopped to look at the Moens’ faces, took a deep breath and continued. “You said there wasn’t anyone else and . . . and this way I could earn my passage money back home . . . to Norway . . . that is . . . if Mr. Detschman can afford . . . ah . . .” This time she could not pick up the words again.

  “Certainly not!” Reverend Moen shook his head. “Why he couldn’t—you couldn’t—”

  “What he means to say is that you’re not married,” Ingeborg interposed softly, “and if you, as an unmarried woman, went out to work for Carl, your reputation would be ruined. No one would ever marry you.”

  “But . . . but . . .”

  “Thank you, Miss Johanson.” Carl answered after Reverend Moen translated the conversation for him. “But they are correct.”

  Nora tried to remember the good reasons she had thought of earlier but, in the face of their unified disapproval, she fell silent. She had thought things might be different here in the new country, but the old customs still held sway.

  “I just thought this might be a way out of a difficult situation for both of us.” She raised her chin and sat up even straighter. “I need work and you need a worker.” She thought she saw a ghost of a smile soften his mouth and eyes, but she must have been mistaken—when she looked again, the glacier had taken over his eyes and voice.

  “I thank you for all your kindnesses. I’ll return on Sunday for church and to pick up the children, if that will be all right.” Carl whispered in his daughter’s ear and set Kaaren down on her feet. When she clung to him, he gently disengaged her fingers. “I’ll see you on Sunday and then we’ll go home,” he promised.

  “Thank you again, Miss Johanson.” He nodded in her direction and, after shaking hands and thanking the others, he shrugged into his wool coat and bent over to plant a kiss on his daughter’s wet cheek. “You be a big girl now.”

  “Pa!” The forlorn child leaned her head against the door after it closed after him. “Ma-a-a. I want Ma.”

  Ingeborg scooped the whimpering child up into her arms. “Your ma has gone to live with Jesus in heaven, little one.” She kissed away the tears and crooned soft words until Kaaren quit crying.

  He never even looked at the baby, Nora thought, as she and Mary cleared the table. And I still think mine was a good idea.

  Up in her room that night, before falling to sleep, Nora carefully penned a letter to her family. When she told them about Hans’s passing away, she did not mention the lies. She described the trip and the Moens. And said she would be looking for work.

  She fell asleep thinking of eyes the blue of a glacier ice cave, shimmering in the sun. But the eyes were so sad as to bring tears to her own.

  Saturday, the entire house had to be cleaned and the food prepared for Sunday. Nora and Ingeborg worked with a rhythm that showed how close they had become. The naming game continued with new words thrown in to make sentences.

  “This is a table,” Nora said as she waxed the shiny surface. Kaaren and Mary clapped their hands. “This is a chair.” Big smiles. “This is a . . .”

  “Rug,” the girls chimed. “This is a rug.”

  “And it needs to be shaken. Take it out on the back porch,” Ingeborg told her daughter. The two little girls picked up the corners and carried the woven rag rug out the back.

  Nora raised her hands in the air and shrugged.

  Late in the afternoon, Ingeborg sat nursing baby Peder and Nora had the children gathered around her, telling them a story of trolls. Even Kaaren laughed at the funny faces and voices Nora used for each character. When the story was finished, Nora hugged each of them and set the two littlest girls off her lap.

  “You will make a wonderful mother,” Ingeborg said after the children trooped off to play. “You are so good with the little ones. And what a help you’ve been to me. I’m spoiled already.”

  “Thank you. You make me feel like one of the family.”

  They rocked in companionable silence. Little Peder burped once into the stillness and continued his soft nursing noises.

  “What will happen to Carl?” Nora finally asked, softly. “How will he manage?” She knew she should refer to the man as Mr. Detschman, but he could only be Carl in her mind.

  “I don’t know.” Ingeborg leaned her head against the back of the rocker and stared up at the ceiling. “He has family in Minnesota, but he doesn’t think any of them can help. His sister is still too young to come out here and the others all have families of their own.”

  “What about a bottle for Peder?”

  “We’ll start him on that tonight. I wanted to give him as much breast milk as possible.” She lifted the baby to her shoulder and rubbed his back. “Since he’s so much stronger now, I think he’ll be all right.”

  “Then I can feed him.” Nora looked across the dimming light to her friend in the other chair.

  “That you can. He’ll have two bottle-feedings before we go to bed and then I’ll nurse him in the middle of the night.” She chuckled softly. “God certainly knew what He was doing when He created mothers and babies. This one is such a love.” She trailed a finger across the baby’s closed fist. Her sigh seemed to come from deep within her heart. “I love babies so.” She kissed the baby’s cheek and looked up. “Here, you hold him for a while and I’ll get the supper going.”

  Nora accepted the bundled infant and settled him into her arms, like Ingeborg had done in her arms. She watched the baby’s eyelids flutter and the perfect little mouth pucker and relax. “He is so beautiful.” How could one do anything but whisper in the face of such a miracle?

  Several hours later, she felt the same awe but only more so when she got the baby to take a bottle. While he fussed at first, he finally sucked on the nipple and settled down to feed. Nora felt like she had climbed the highest mountain near the farm at home.r />
  Sometime later, in the middle of the darkest night, Nora awoke to the sniffling and tears of Kaaren, crying for her mother. Nora gathered the sobbing child into her arms. With hands of love, she brushed the straggles of hair from Kaaren’s face and wiped away the tears.

  “I . . . uh . . . want . . . my . . . ma. Why doesn’t she come?”

  Nora murmured responses in her own language, wishing she could say the things in her heart to this grieving child. Ingeborg had told her that her mother had gone to be with Jesus. That she was not coming back. But how could such a little one understand that?

  Softly, so she would not wake Mary, Nora began to sing. “Jesus loves me . . .” As the words and love in the song crept into that silent night, she felt the child relax against her shoulder. Jerky, leftover sobs that racked the small body tore at Nora’s heart. “Yes, Jesus loves me . . .” She finished the song on a whisper and removed her arm from under Kaaren’s neck.

  “Heavenly Father, comfort this family,” she prayed. “Bring back the love they’ve lost and, if You want me to care for them, please find a way. Amen.”

  Forgotten were the tears of the night as the two girls bounced up to greet the sun sparkling around the feathery frost patterns on the windowpane. They ran, giggling, down the stairs, leaving Nora to stretch and twist her body from one side to the other in the softness of the deep feather ticking. When she heard a baby crying, she leaped from the bed, put on her wrapper, and made her way downstairs.

  Ingeborg was jostling James on her hip while warming a bottle for Peder, who was crying in Mary’s arms in the rocker.

  “And a good morning to you, too,” Nora said with a laugh while relieving Mary of her squalling bundle.

  “Good. Now I can take care of this one,” Ingeborg sank gratefully into the other rocker. “He thinks his mother should drop everything the minute he cries. What a spoiled little boy.”

  Nora tested the warmth of the bottled milk on one of her wrists and then sat down to begin the feeding. Peder fussed a bit, not quite willing to take the bottle. “Come now. We did this beautifully last night. Ingeborg isn’t going to be here to feed you anymore.”

  Peder looked up at her as if he understood every word she had said. When she prodded his closed lips with the nipple again, he took it and began to suck like she might take it away before he could fill himself.

  Nora chuckled. What a precious baby. And smart, too, she could already tell.

  “Mary, you set the table. We’ll have mush as soon as I finish here, so put the cinnamon and cream on the table.”

  “Where’s Pa?” Mary asked as she handed the bowls, one at a time, to Grace and Kaaren.

  “Starting the furnace at the church. Then he’s planning to work more on his sermon. I told him it was too cold over there and that he should come home to finish.”

  “And?” Nora set the chair rocking.

  “And he’s over there in the cold because he says he can’t work with all the noise around here.” Inge’s glance around the kitchen included the chattering children as all four went about their chores, Mary firmly telling each one what to do. The teakettle sang merrily on the stove and, up until a few minutes ago, there had been two babies crying. “I just don’t understand why he thinks this is noisy.” Her eyebrows nearly met her hairline.

  Nora laughed along with her friend. “This is the way homes are supposed to be. Someday, I want one just like this.” She put the baby up to her shoulder and patted his back. “Just like this.”

  “With two babies at a time?”

  “Well . . . maybe one by one.”

  The clock bonged eight times.

  “We must hurry if we don’t want to be late to Sunday school. Here, Mary, you take James while I finish making the breakfast. The table looks lovely.”

  While Ingeborg was giving out assignments, Reverend Moen let in a blast of cold air as he came through the door. “What a beautiful day we have,” he said as he hung up his coat and hat. “Why it’s ten degrees above zero and getting warmer. Pretty soon, the chinook will come sighing across the plains and, before you know it, spring will be here.”

  He rubbed his hands together, warming them above the stove. “Wait until you see spring here on the prairie, Nora. It is like no other season.”

  Nora, like a good guest, kept her doubts to herself. What could possibly be beautiful about this flat country? Now, spring in Norway—that was sight and sound to behold. The cracking thunder as the rivers broke loose from their winter dungeon and the logs cascaded down with the ice floes. The birds returning in flocks to darken the sky and the masses of green bursting forth from the soil as the sun shone longer each day.

  The ache of homesickness caught her by surprise. To stem any tears that threatened to overflow, she swallowed the lump in her throat and rolled her eyes upward. Better remember that Old Man Winter still held her beloved homeland in his icy grip.

  “I . . . I’ll take Peder with me while I go get ready. Unless you need me for something else first?”

  “No, no. You go on.” Ingeborg shooshed her away with fluttering hands. She went back to stirring the mush that was thickening under her watchful eye.

  “I’ll hurry.” With the baby in one arm and the pitcher of warm water from the reservoir in the other, Nora went up the stairs. She propped the infant against the pillows and continued talking with him as she washed her face and hands. Before she was half done, he had fallen asleep.

  With Reverend Moen encouraging haste, they finished eating and cleaning up in time to be bundled up and out the door, arriving at the church as the first of the other families were hitching their horses to the rails.

  It felt like home to Nora and yet she felt strange and out of place. This was the first time in her life she had worshipped in a church other than the one at home. While people were speaking Norwegian around her, none of them were her relatives. At home her aunts and uncles and cousins, besides brothers and sisters, made up half of the congregation.

  Nora smiled as each person was introduced. But she kept waiting for one man, Carl Detschman, to appear. He had said he would join them for church but he still had not arrived as the organist played the opening songs.

  They had settled in the front pew. Nora rocked the baby in her arms, Kaaren was beside her, and Mary next. Ingeborg was shushing Grace and Knute. What a pew-full they made.

  Nora did not realize until the closing hymn how much she had been waiting for a tall, broad-shouldered farmer to join their group. She kept hoping he had sat in the back and, when they turned to leave, she thought she saw that familiar blond head leaving before anyone else. He had said he would join them for church. If it was him, why did he leave so quickly?

  Peder had slept through the service, much to Nora’s relief, but, when they stood for the benediction, he began whimpering. By the time she could get out the door, he had progressed into the demanding stage.

  “I’ll take him home and feed him,” Nora whispered to Ingeborg as she passed the Moens in the greeting line at the front door. At the top of the three wooden stairs, Nora stopped for a moment to look again for Carl Detschman. Was that Carl driving his sleigh down the street?

  “Don’t be silly,” she scolded herself on the short walk back to the parsonage. “It doesn’t matter one whit to you if the man came to church or not. Once he picks up his children, you probably won’t even see him again. Ingeborg said he was unpopular—an outcast—because of his German heritage. So just put a smile on your face and enjoy the day. You won’t have to worry about whether this darling bundle of baby eats or not. It’s his father’s problem.”

  So, then, why did her bottom lip feel like it wanted to quiver? And what was that stupid lump in her throat? How could she let these babies go without someone there to take care of them?

  She hurried through the door of the parsonage and slammed it shut behind her. In the time it took her to warm the bottle and settle down to feed the crying infant, the remainder of the family arrived home. They we
re chattering and laughing about their chores when a knock sounded at the door.

  “Welcome, Carl.” Reverend Moen ushered the visitor in. “I was happy to see you come to the service. Let me take your coat and hat.”

  “Thank you.”

  Kaaren made her usual beeline for her father’s legs.

  “Dinner is almost ready,” Ingeborg said while bending down to remove the roast from the oven. “You’re just in time.”

  Nora clutched little Peder tighter. How have I gotten so attached to these two children in such a short time?

  “Miss Johanson, Reverend, Missus, can we talk for a few minutes? Right away?” Carl ducked his chin, then squared his shoulders. “Please?”

  Ingeborg wiped her hands on the dish towel she had slung over her shoulder. “Of course. Mary, you take the children into the other room to play. Nora, Peder can go back in the cradle now.”

  Nora shook her head. She could not lay the baby down, not when he was to be taken away from her so soon. “I . . . I’ll just rock him. He was fussing a moment ago.”

  “No—I mean, please, could you join us?” Carl motioned to a chair at the table.

  Nora stood and, after laying Peder in the cradle as asked, walked to the table and sank down on one of the oak chairs. With the tip of her finger, she smoothed a spot on the table. Something strange was happening here.

  “Miss Johanson, Nora, would you marry me?”

  Chapter 6

  Nora felt her chin drop—clear to her chest.

  “I know this is sudden, but let me tell you what I am thinking. As the Moens said, you cannot come live at my farm without marriage. It would not be proper. But, if we were married, your living there and caring for my children would be all right. I will advertise for a housekeeper in the Fargo and Grand Forks papers and, when we find one, then we will have the marriage annulled and I will pay for your passage to return to Norway.”