Carl stepped back before she could trod on his feet.
Nora picked up a clean bucket and her stool and plunked them down beside the next cow. “So-o-o, boss.” She settled the bucket between her skirted knees and her head into the cow’s flank. With the same easy rhythm, she squeezed and pulled, ringing the milk into the bucket.
She refused to look up when she heard Carl leave. She did not tell him her hands and arms were cramping either. When she peeked over her shoulder, the quilt where Peder had lain was gone.
Nora hid her smile of relief in the warm sweet cow smell, the fragrance of fresh milk foaming in a bucket. Maybe what he needed was to be stood on his ear once in awhile.
So, Nora added the evening milking to her chores. And caring for the gray-and-white barred chickens, as well as the garden and the house.
One day, with the hay cut and cured, Carl wrestled the high racks for hauling hay onto the front and back of the wide wagon bed.
Nora wished for her brothers to come help him. Why didn’t he share the haying work with some of his neighbors? The answer came to her immediately. He was too proud to ask for help. And, as Ingeborg had told her in the spring, Norwegians did not always take kindly to superior-acting Germans. That Carl could act superior, she knew for a fact.
“Why do you care?” she asked herself one hot afternoon. She sank into the rocker with a jar of water in her hand. Some she sipped and some she dripped onto a cloth to cool her forehead—she had been hoeing the potatoes.
Down at the barn, Carl had parked the hay wagon under the four cast-iron prongs that would lift the hay into the steadily filling hayloft. She could see his weariness in the slump of his shoulders. Climb up onto the hay wagon, set the forks, climb down, go around the barn, have the horses pull the rope toward the pile. Trip the prongs and begin all over again. He needed some help.
Nora put Peder in the sling. A jug of water in her one hand, she took Kaaren’s small grubby paw in the other. Down to the barn they strolled.
“Hi, Pa.” Kaaren announced their presence.
Brownie lay panting under the wagon, his feathery tail fluffing the dirt. Kaaren crawled under with the dog and giggled when he licked her face.
“Here.” Nora held out the cool water. Carl wiped his forehead and reached for the drink.
“Thank you.” This time she understood his answer.
Carl chugged the drink and, when finished, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I will help you.”
“You would do that?” Carl stared at her over the rim of the jar.
Nora nodded.
“Even after the way I’ve been acting?”
She nodded again. “Just tell me what you want me to do. I’ve driven horses before at home and I’ve also helped with gathering the hay.” She tipped her head back, the better to study him from under the straw brim.
“But you have the baby.”
She patted the sleeping form in her shawl slings. “He’s fine. Peder likes being close, being carried like this.”
“All right. But you’ll tell me when . . . if—” His gaze dropped to the sling and flicked back to her face.
“His name is Peder.”
“I know.” He sighed deeply. “When Peder needs you, he comes first.” They heard a giggle from under the hay wagon and a smile flitted across Carl’s face.
“Would you please go around the barn and drive the team forward when I tell you to? I’ll tell you when to stop, also.”
Nora nodded. She leaned over and peered under the wagon.
“Come, Kaaren.”
Like Mary in the Scriptures, Nora pondered these things in her heart. For a German man to admit he had been wrong was like . . . like . . .
She could not think of anything to compare it with. And he had finally said his son’s name—for the first time in a long while.
Thank You, Father. Thank You. Her heart sang.
Dusty, thirsty, and with sunburned cheeks, Nora waved as Carl left for the hay field and his last load of hay. They would hoist it into the hayloft in the morning. Now, she just had the cows to milk and supper to fix. Peder whimpered and twisted in his sling—and a baby to feed, first of all. She turned and trudged up to the house.
“Nora. Nora.” The call carried on the evening breeze.
Nora shaded her eyes, staring after the wagon. Carl stood on the front rack, waving his arm and yelling at her.
“What?”
“Leave the cows for me to milk.”
She waved back in agreement. “Your pa is a good man,” she said to Kaaren in particular and the world in general. The words sounded puny compared to the chorus in her heart.
Each Sunday, Nora felt tempted to beg Carl to take them to church, but each time she remembered his anger at her Bible reading. How she would love to visit with Ingeborg. And hear the organ playing in church, Reverend Moen preaching in Norwegian, and people visiting after the service. On Sundays, she missed home and her family the most.
The first Sunday in August burned so hot even the birds hushed their singing. Nora spread a blanket out in the shade of the cottonwood trees. She sat propped against the tree trunk, her Bible in her lap, fanning herself and singing to Kaaren. Peder lay beside her, entranced by the shifting leaf patterns.
Between songs, Nora eyed the western horizon, praying to see the mounds of black clouds that brought the cooling rain they so desperately needed. Hauling water to her garden used every bit of energy she could find. But, she reminded herself, Sunday is to be a day of rest, the good Lord said so Himself. She turned away from thoughts of Carl cultivating the corn.
When Kaaren’s eyelids drooped, Nora took the most recent letter from Norway from her pocket and read the beloved words again. When she closed her eyes, she could hear her mother saying the words she wrote. How far away Norway and the life there seemed now.
Her eyes must have been closed longer than she thought. She jerked awake. No, everything was the same. Kaaren slept, sprawled like a puppet with broken strings. Peder lay on his tummy, cheeks pink from the heat, his breath even and deep.
What bothered her?
She scanned the horizon again. A flat, black band separated the green prairie and the blue sky. Flat, not piled and puffed up like the life-giving clouds. She read her letter again. The black band grew wider.
Go to the house, an inner voice prompted.
“Don’t be silly,” Nora argued with herself. “The children are sleeping better than they have for days. It’s cooler out here than anywhere else. There’s nothing to fear.”
The black band darkened, spreading now across the entire western horizon.
A grasshopper flew onto her skirt.
Nora brushed it off and bit her lip.
The band, no longer flat, undulated like a blanket settling onto a bed. A fat, green grasshopper crawled over Peder’s back. Still asleep, Kaaren brushed one off her face. The action woke her. She sat up, whimpering and rubbing her eyes.
A sound like nothing Nora had ever heard seemed to come from the widening river of black.
A wave of fear brought Nora to her knees, scrambling to gather their belongings. “Kaaren, run to the house.” She set the little girl on her feet and pushed her in the general direction.
“No-o-o!” Kaaren wailed and wrapped her fist in Nora’s skirt.
Nora clutched Peder to her chest with one arm. With the quilt flung over the other and the basket in her hand, she had no hand for the whining girl. She stared over her shoulder.
The apparition flowed nearer. The sound, like the buzzing of angry bees, filled her ears.
She looked down at her skirt. Three grasshoppers had landed there. She could feel another in her hair. Were they, too, afraid of the approaching menace?
“Kaaren, help me carry the basket.” She bumped Kaaren’s arm with the handle.
In spite of her blue eyes welling with tears, Kaaren obeyed. She grasped the basket with a chubby hand.
“Now!” Nora forced
a smile on her face and a lilt in her voice. “Let’s run.”
In the past, she dreamed of running and never getting to her destination. Now, it was so. With the baby bouncing in her arm and the basket thumping her thigh with every step, Nora felt like she was running through a quagmire. Instead of coming closer, the house seemed farther away every time she looked up.
After an eternity, they collapsed on the porch. Kaaren held up her arm and giggled at a grasshopper with iridescent wings and bobbing feelers.
“See, Ma. Big bug.” She poked him with her finger. Instead of hopping off, he flew away.
Nora looked from Kaaren to the porch posts. Bugs had landed all over, their wings whirring and clicking. They crawled onto her skirt, the quilt, and Kaaren’s dress. She brushed several off Peder.
“Ugh.” She looked up at the sky now dusky with flying insects. “Kaaren, brush them off and go inside. Now!” Her tone allowed no chance of resistance. She brushed the marauding insects off the baby’s things, her skirt, and apron. When the door closed behind them, she grabbed one from Kaaren’s shoulder and threw it outside.
She laid Peder on his quilt on the floor and returned to stand at the screen door. Where was Carl? What was happening?
The cows bellowed from the pasture by the barn. As she watched, they stuck their tails straight in the air and the animals charged off across the pasture.
Should she go down and let them into the barn?
She looked out at her rosebush—its stalks writhed like living things. She bit her knuckles to keep from crying out. The bush was buried in gnawing, buzzing creatures.
Clouds of insects turned the day into dusk. Was the sun, too, being eaten alive by the invading hoard?
Her garden!
“Stay here!” She cracked the order and pointed to the quilt. Wide-eyed, Kaaren sat down by the baby. Nora grabbed another quilt off the bed and, clapping the straw hat onto her head, stormed out the door.
She ran to the garden, waving the quilt then, using it like a club, to beat the bugs crawling over her plants. She shook it in the sky and screamed at the avenging hoard, but they kept coming. The crunch of their feeding filled the air. They covered her hat, her arms, her face. She spit out the one that was crawling in her mouth.
Her arms ached from brandishing the quilt. “Fire. I’ll burn them out.”
She turned to the house. Kerosene, a torch of kerosene, would that work? How to get it burning? Would smoke drive them away? But what would she burn?
Hay! She ran to the barn with her tattered quilt in hand.
Slipping in with the door open only a crack, she spread the quilt on the floor and forked hay onto it. Then gathering up the corners, she half-carried, half-dragged it back to the garden. Her side ached; her legs quivered. She did not dare open her mouth to draw in the deep breaths she so desperately needed—the thought of swallowing a grasshopper made her gag.
She staggered to the house, grabbed a kerosene-filled lamp and the matches, and dashed back outside again. “Stay there, Kaaren,” she panted as she closed the door behind her.
She unscrewed the top of the lamp and poured the kerosene on the pile of hay. She scraped the match across the sole of her shoe and tossed the flaming bit of wood into the hay. The fuel caught; smoke rose in tendrils, then billowed up. Grasshoppers fell. But when the fire dimmed, the horde resumed as if nothing had happened.
Carl found her, kneeling in the dirt, now bare of the beans nearly ready to pick and the corn that had been starting to tassel. Rivulets of tears streaked across her skin darkened by smoke and dirt.
He picked her up and gathered her into his arms, brushing a kiss across her cheek.
Nora sobbed against the wall of his chest. “I . . . I tried so hard.” She hiccupped between words. “N-nothing stopped them.”
“I know. Shhhh, now.” He murmured comfort, but Nora was beyond hearing.
“I worked so hard and this flat land—it hates me. My garden gone—my family—no one.” She thumped a shaking fist on his chest. “I want to laugh again—and dance—and see my friends. There’s nothing left. Not-h-i-n-g.”
“I know.” Carl picked her up in his arms and carried her back to the house. He brushed the crawling insects off the porch steps and sat with her in his lap.
“Pa?” Kaaren stood inside the door, peeking through the screen.
“You be a good girl and stay there.” Carl stroked the hair back from Nora’s eyes and laid her head on his shoulder.
“But Ma’s crying.” Her voice quivered with tears.
“I know. Ma’s sad.” Carl continued to rock Nora in his arms. “Go see how Peder is.”
“Pa, I want my ma-a-a.”
Deep in her own fog, Nora heard the cry of her child. She sat up, only then realizing the comfort and strength of the arms that held her. She hiccupped again and wiped her eyes with the edge of her tattered and filthy apron.
Oh, to be able to sink back and let herself float on that sea of calm that follows a cleansing cry. To stay wrapped up in arms so warm and safe. To listen again to the heart that thumped in perfect rhythm beneath her cheek. His two-day growth of beard scratched the tender skin of her cheek. How good it felt.
“M-a-a-a-a!”
Nora stood. When she swayed, Carl caught her around the waist. She looked up into his eyes so close and lost herself in their shimmering blue depths. With a sigh, she leaned her head against his chest again. This was home.
“M-a-a-a.”
She could hear the rumble of Carl’s answer to his daughter through his shirt. She took another deep breath and stepped back. “Let’s go in. She needs us.”
With Nora still supported by his arm, they walked up the steps and opened the screen door.
Kaaren hurled herself at their legs.
Carl picked up his daughter and patted her back. Kaaren reached for Nora and wrapped her arms around them both.
“Big bug.”
Nora looked up to see Kaaren picking a grasshopper from her father’s hair.
“Here, Ma.” Kaaren dropped it into Nora’s hand and giggled when Nora made a face and threw the insect out the door.
After feeding Peder, Nora took a pan of tepid water into the bedroom, closed the door, and took off her clothes. The water on her skin raised goose bumps, but with each swipe of the cloth, she felt closer to being herself. When she had dried herself and changed into clean clothes, she bundled her dirty ones, tempted to stuff them into the stove and burn them.
She shook her head. All they needed was a good washing. She tied on a clean white apron and, picking up the pan of now-black water, reentered the kitchen.
Carl, too, had washed. Moisture darkened his sun-bleached hair to deep bronze. When he smiled, his teeth gleamed white against the tan of his lower face. That stubborn lock of hair half covered the white line across his forehead left by his hat.
Her fingers itched to brush that lock of hair back into place. Instead, Nora emptied her pan of water into the sink and dipped new water into a pitcher. She unclasped her hair and leaning over the sink, poured the water over her scalp. With the last of the rose-scented soap she had brought with her from home, she washed her hair.
“Let me help.” Carl removed the pitcher from her hand and poured the water over her hair to rinse it.
Nora twisted her head from side to side so all the soap could be rinsed away. How wonderful it felt to have someone help her like this. How wonderful to have Carl, stern Carl, rinse her hair. She felt a warmth pool in her middle and spread upward to her heart.
“Thank you.” She wrung her hair out and, with the towel she had laid beside her, began drying her waist-length tresses.
“I . . . I think I’ll go get started on the milking.” Carl backed away. The urge to reach out and touch that rippling mass of gold caught him by surprise. He had only offered to help her. What was wrong with that?
As he brought in the cows, the questions remained in his mind. When he poured their feed, he stared at the flowing grain.
Would there be anything left to harvest? What would he feed the livestock this winter? While he had had a good hay crop, hay alone was not enough. The pigs and chickens could not live on hay.
He thought back. The flood of Nora’s tears weighed him down until he felt like his shoulders dragged on the floor. Was she really so unhappy here? She had never said so. But why would she? When had he encouraged her to talk with him, other than to learn English?
He picked up his stool and started on the second cow. One bad thing about milking, it gave you too much time to think.
When he had finished and let the cows out again, one resolve shone clear. He had promised to send her back to Norway and that he would do.
He picked up the brimming pails. But, if he paid for her ticket, how could he hire a housekeeper? Where would he find the money to buy grain for his cows, food for his household?
He knew what life was like after the grasshoppers came. They ate everything in sight. Only those vegetables below the surface were saved. But his potato field was not mature enough to have set potatoes yet.
“God, help me, I don’t know what to do,” Carl did not realize he had uttered a prayer. He poured the milk into the skimming pans in the cool well house, keeping half a pail out for the house.
He stopped with one foot on the porch steps and looked up at the heavens. Stars peeked out through their windows in the black velvet of the sky. A breeze rattled the bare branches of the cottonwood trees.
He listened carefully. The whirr and crunch of the invading horde was no more.
He walked into the kitchen and set the milk bucket in the sink. “I’ll go into town tomorrow and telegraph reservations to New York for your ticket back to Norway.”
Chapter 12
“But I don’t want to go,” Nora said.
“I will live up to my word,” Carl answered. “When we married I promised you could return to Norway.”
Nora could feel her mind running like a crazed thing caught in a maze. “B-but, you have no housekeeper for my . . . the children.”
“I will work something out.” He turned from her and went to stand at the window.
Dakota Dawn Page 12