“Must I truly be first?”
“Ye do!” John pointed to the head of the line.
“Then ye have to be second and Ingeborg third.”
“Mighty bossy for a man who’s leaving town.”
“Ja, you Norwegians taught this wandering Irishman how to do that.” With everyone laughing, the lines formed on either side of the long table, and people filled their plates.
Plate in one hand, fork in the other, Devlin wandered around visiting with people. When he came to Thorliff, he asked, “Did ye agree to umpire?”
Thorliff nodded. “Ja, I would rather play, bat the leather off the ball, but not yet.” He lifted his weak right arm.
“I be right proud of you, son.”
Thorliff tightened his jaw and inhaled as if running out of air. “Enough, please.”
“Pa, Roald is eating dirt.”
Thorliff rolled his eyes, and while unable to return the laughter from around him, he reached for his toddling son.
“Let me take him, please?” Ingeborg asked softly.
Thorliff nodded. “Be my guest.” He set his empty plate down and rose to his feet. “You want some coffee?”
“Please and thank you.”
Inga leaned against her grandma. “Pa has sad eyes.”
“Ja, he does, but someday his happy eyes will be back.” She snatched a leaf out of Roald’s fat little fist and hugged Inga close with her other arm. “Let’s see if we can keep him on the blanket, all right?”
Inga heaved a sigh and shook her head. “Roald will eat anything.”
“You want to go get him a cookie?”
“Me too?”
“I’ll watch Roald, Grandma, if you want to go visiting,” Emmy offered.
“How about you go with Inga and bring us a plate with cake and cookies on it to go with the coffee Thorliff is bringing.”
“Okay.” Emmy smiled. “I’ll take Roald for a swing later.”
“Takk.” Ingeborg watched the two girls, who were best friends, run off.
Astrid swooped over and picked up Roald, making him giggle. “You getting in trouble again, Roally?”
“At the rate he is going, he is always going to be in trouble of one kind or another.” Ingeborg smiled up at her son, who held out a cup of coffee. “Takk.” She shifted back to Astrid. “I’m glad to see you here.”
“No emergencies at the hospital, so I left Dr. Johnson in charge. He can handle most anything. I sure will hate to see him go.”
“When does he leave?”
Astrid sat down on the blanket, one hand locked in Roald’s suspender. “Another week. He asked if he can come back here when he finishes his residency.”
“Really? I thought he was a city boy.”
“He thought so too. If only we could afford him. I think the hospital would rather send us interns than pay a full-time staff member. I don’t know. We have to do more talking.”
Daniel and his mother joined them on the blanket, and Roald made a beeline for him. Ever since Elizabeth’s death, Astrid and Daniel had spent more time with both Inga and Roald, helping take some of the pressure off Thelma, the Bjorklund housekeeper, since Thorliff spent so much time in his printshop.
Daniel lifted Roald up in the air and made him giggle even more. “How about washing this guy’s face?”
Inga and Emmy brought back plates of dessert, just in time for Inga to advise, “Roald does not like to have his face washed.”
“Hands either,” Emmy added as she passed the plate around.
“Five minutes to game time,” Reverend Solberg announced. “I’ll read off the teams as soon as everyone gets to the diamond.”
“You sure you want to do this?” Daniel asked Thorliff.
“Ja, you going to play?”
“He better. His name is on the list.” Astrid elbowed her husband. “No rest for the weary, you know.”
“I thought that was for the wicked.”
“I was trying to be nice.”
“Onkel Daniel isn’t wicked.” Inga looked at Astrid like she needed scolding.
Ingeborg and Astrid exchanged headshakes.
“You tell ’em, Inga.” He handed Roald back to Astrid. “Let’s go play ball.”
Ingeborg watched the two men walk off. Maybe a baseball game would help Thorliff think of something else for a change. Grief could eat one up if you allowed it. Losing his pa was hard enough, but losing Elizabeth along with good use of his right arm had hit her son horribly hard.
While the men headed for the field, the women gathered up their blankets and moved over to watch. Ingeborg showed the girls where to spread the blanket under the cottonwood tree that Inga had fallen out of. Since she broke her arm, others had fallen from the big tree also, causing various scrapes and bruises. She remembered the day they had planted the sapling to grow up and help shade the schoolhouse. Now there were other trees getting of shade size too. The whole town looked like it had been in place a long time as the trees had grown. Trees made a town feel more welcoming. Main Street used to be dusty in the summer, muddy in the spring, puddles when it rained, and frozen solid in the winter. The early pictures they had did not look welcoming.
“Where did you go, Mor?” Astrid asked.
“Sometimes I just get lost in memories.” She smiled and grabbed Roald’s suspenders again. “I have a feeling this young man needs a diaper change.”
“I’ll take care of him.”
“Batter up!” called Devlin from behind home plate. “Blue team first. Rebecca promised free sodas to the winning team.”
“I sure am going to miss Devlin,” Ingeborg said with a sigh.
“Not as much as John will, and we have yet to find a schoolteacher for the high school, let alone the woodworking program at the Deaf School.” Amelia Jeffers still taught English to anyone who wanted to come. She always had a big class but had started a new one on reading. Many of the immigrants could now converse in English, albeit with heavy accents, but they needed to be able to read too and know their numbers.
By the time the five-inning game finished, with blue winning by one run, Roald had slept for an hour, some of the spectators were hoarse from cheering their team, and all the players were dripping wet. Devlin announced the winning team and handed out tickets to be redeemed at the soda shop in the future. The ice cream makers who had been cranking the ice cream earlier announced the flavors, and everyone lined up for their bowl of ice cream. Big jugs of lemonade had been hauled over from the boardinghouse.
“What a celebration,” Ingeborg said as she accepted the bowl of ice cream Inga brought her. “Takk.”
“I got you strawberry ’cause I know you like that best.”
“What kind are you going to get?”
“Strawberry, with chocolate syrup.”
Devlin brought his dish over and sank down on the blanket. “I sure am going to miss this place and all of ye.”
Ingeborg watched his face as he watched Anji Moen help dish out the ice cream. Leaving her behind would undoubtedly be the hardest thing of all for him. Being turned down when in love was never easy either.
Epilogue
Anji watched Thorliff fight a losing battle with his typewriter. “I can do that for you, you know. Just tell me what you want to say, and I’ll type it.”
“No!” Thorliff turned from the typewriter and his painfully learned left-handed typing. After more than four months of therapy, he could use his right arm and hand, but his fingers were stiff, clumsy, and terribly weak. “How many times do you suppose you’ve said ‘The more you use your hand the better it will become?’ Well, I’m trying. And nothing’s happening. But your doing it for me isn’t going to make it happen either, so stop offering.” His clipped words grated. They stung. The dark circles around his eyes had grown larger in these last months, rather than diminishing.
“Sorry.” She could do clipped too. All right, she understood he was frustrated. But she was only trying to help get the paper out on time, this time
. The hours were speeding by, and he could be setting type, which he did adequately one-handed. “Do you want me to start setting?”
“No!” He used the back of his hand to kick the carriage back. He blew out a breath. “Look, Anji, I’m sorry I blew up. You have been and are a big help!” His tone slammed like the carriage. “I appreciate it. But I have to do this myself.” He scrubbed his left hand over his hair, smearing ink on his forehead. “I sure wish Devlin had stayed here.”
Yeah, well, so do I! Keeping her mouth shut took a major miracle. “So it’s all right if Thomas Devlin helps you, but not Anji Moen.” Sarcasm bit.
“I didn’t mean it that way.” He leaned forward to look at his page. “Stop taking me wrong.”
“How many months have we been having this discussion, Thorliff? You can’t manage, but you don’t want me to help.” Anji caught herself. She truly believed God had assigned her this calling. But right now! She sucked in a deep breath. “Sorry.” A calling was not necessarily an easy thing.
He yanked the paper out of the carriage. “Proofread this for me and then I’ll get it set. If nothing more goes wrong, we’ll get this printed yet tonight.”
Or die trying? She didn’t say that, but she couldn’t hold back the “You’re welcome.” She hoped the ice dripping from her tone caused bleeding. He had resented her from the first time his mother showed her how to move his right leg, shoulder, arm, and lastly the hand. The hand that would rather become a claw. With both her and Ingeborg working with him, he had finally been able to walk with barely a limp, but the arm and the hand were as stubborn as his manly pride. Why was it so hard for a man to accept help? Especially help from a woman?
Ten o’clock had come and gone by the time they had the paper printed, folded, and bundled, ready for Lemuel to distribute in the morning. Her hands ached, her shoulders, back, and clear down to her feet. If she felt this beat, what about him? “Serves you right” itched to be said.
Under normal circumstances, even when she and Thomas had filled in while Thorliff was still bedridden and until he got on that train, the job should have been done by five. There were weeks without a paper in Blessing, but when he was finally able to oversee the press with Anji doing the labor, things had gone more smoothly. Several times they had been forced to skip a week, taking two weeks for an edition, especially when he decided he should be able to do it himself again. She had written most of the news, almost like dictation, but when he decided he would type too . . . She would rather teach school any day.
At the sink she scrubbed the ink off her hands and watched him struggle through cleaning both of his hands. He refused her help there too, so she had stopped offering. If only he were not so stubborn, stubborn and proud, life could be so much easier for him.
And for her. She damped the stove, he blew out the lamps, and they shrugged into their coats. Wrapping her scarf over her head and around her neck, she tucked the ends in her coat.
“Winter is coming early.” Stepping into the cold, she tried to ignore the bite of the November wind.
He paused. “Anji? Thank you.”
The shock of those simple words took her breath away more than the wind. Especially after this miserable evening. “You are welcome.”
She stopped at the gate, then turned to watch him mount the steps, one foot on a riser, the weak foot up beside, then one up again. Halting, using the hand rail on the left. She always made sure he got into the house since the night he had slept in the newspaper office because he was too tired to make it to the house. She only knew that because Thelma had told her.
Wind scudded the clouds in front of the moon that lit her way. While some snow still hid in the shadows, most of the first snowfall of the year had melted. Replaying this paper production in her mind and not any closer to answers to questions she wasn’t clear on either, she hurried up her walk. Grateful that Mercy had set a lamp in the window to light her way, she opened the front door and stepped inside to warmth.
“I’m home.”
Mercy rose from the rocking chair near the heat vent from the coal furnace. A textbook slid from her lap to the floor. She yawned and stretched. “I must have dozed off.”
“Mercy, I’m thinking that on the nights we put the paper out, you should plan on staying here, especially now that winter has blown in.”
“If you’d like. I usually make breakfast when Miriam works the night shift, but the others can do that.” She bent over to pick up her book and yawned again. “Starting next week?”
“Good, then you can go to bed when you want to.” Anji dug in her purse and pulled out a quarter. “Thank you again.” She walked Mercy to the door and watched her leave, then took her place in the rocker. The warm air reminded her she needed to stoke the furnace and damper it down for the night. Tomorrow she would teach Norwegian again at the high school. But instead of moving immediately, she rocked and enjoyed the heat, her thoughts turning heavy.
She and Thorliff never used to fight like this. She should be able to ignore his anger and impatience, but sometimes she almost walked out on him. Perhaps that would make more of an impact than staying silent or slipping into sarcasm. Or better for her so she didn’t have to live with “You shouldn’t have said that” or “You should have said . . .” Lord, I just don’t know how to handle this. I’ve been so happy to be back in Blessing, and I truly felt . . . She paused. Felt. Did she no longer feel that helping Thorliff was what God had called her to do? Had was another stumbling word. Anji Moen, you do not give up because something is difficult. If you learned nothing else from your mor, you know better. But sometimes knowing better and slogging through created an interior war.
She blew out a sigh that tried to turn into a cough. “Lord, I want to do your will, but sometimes figuring it out is terribly hard. I want my family to be happy and healthy. I want to help Thorliff. Oh, how I miss Thomas.” Her mouth dropped open. That one had snuck up on her. She blew out another sigh.
And a vivid thought struck unexpectedly. Is a calling always forever? Or can it be for a season? A purpose?
She would say, and Ingeborg agreed with her, that Thorliff still needed her, but maybe he did not. He clearly resented any help she offered. What if her calling here in Blessing had ended?
He paid her a small sum to work on the paper, but that was different. That was a job, not a calling. Or was it all part of the same package?
Eyes closed, she remembered when they were young, feeling so grown up—so in love. She couldn’t be near him without feeling little zings and sizzles. She knew he had felt the same way, both in wonderment at the glory that was their love. Now there were no such feelings. She wanted to at least remain friends, but at times she wondered if that was even possible. It certainly was not probable, as short and snappy as he always was. And always with her, not with others. At least that’s the way it seemed to her.
Lord, it seems to me that you called me to stay here and help bring Thorliff back to health. Could that calling be complete?
Her mind floated instantly to Thomas Devlin.
Thomas had written to her only once in the months since he’d left, although to be fair, it sounded as if he was very busy with two churches in his parish. His letter was pleasant. He told how the congregation had given him a horse and buggy, and he had no idea whatever how to care for a horse. He was taking horse-care lessons from the parish boys. Working at odd hours, he was restoring his manse or rectory, as he called the house. He had mentioned the necessary repairs. No surprise there. She knew he was a master carpenter and woodworker. In his spare time he was carving gargoyles for the larger of the two churches. Gargoyles? He stated strongly that he missed life in Blessing but made no mention of love. Had his feelings toward her cooled, or was he simply the usual, practical Thomas?
He did seem to write to John Solberg regularly, so if he became ill or had a problem, John would find out first and tell Anji. What a curious relationship. But what if he had met someone else to spend his life with? Would John hea
r about that? Maybe not.
Her children asked after Thomas often. Even little Annika asked God to bless Mr. Devlin in her prayers at night. Perhaps moving from Blessing would not be as hard on them as she’d feared . . . if she could be with Thomas. They could come home to visit. They could write letters. But . . .
But! How could one little word have such heavy jobs to do?
The old saw said that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but sometimes it went the other way. Especially for practical people.
If Thomas were to find someone new, it would be because the old flame had flickered out. Absence can do that. And by doing nothing, Anji would be partly to blame.
Was there a future for Anji with Thorliff? She knew she could not simply sit on her hands when he struggled with something. She would keep trying to help him. It was the way she was. And he would probably keep resenting it, a constant source of friction. Too, it would take him years to get over Elizabeth, if at all. What if he never did?
Thomas.
Thorliff.
Thomas.
Thorliff.
Lord God, I want to walk in your will, like Ingeborg says. “Wait on the Lord . . .” from Psalm 27 was one of her favorite verses. She also said she’d been learning that all her life.
“I will wait. I will trust.” Anji spoke into the silence. Sometimes silence was a comfort, other times . . . But tonight, the silence did not feel heavy but full of peace. Tears burned the back of her throat and nose and trickled down her cheeks. Sniffing didn’t stop them, so she pulled out the handkerchief she kept tucked into her sleeve and blew her nose. Mopped her eyes and tipped her head against the back of the chair. Thank you. She nodded along with the rocker. Thank you.
During the week she wrote the articles Thorliff asked her to, taught her classes at the high school for two days, made sure her children did their homework, had supper one night with Rebecca and family, attended church on Sunday, in short did all the normal things of her daily life. Another snowstorm blanketed the area, the temperatures fell, and everyone admitted that winter was truly settling in.
Streams of Mercy Page 32