Ingeborg clasped her hands under her chin, then swiped away a trickling tear with one finger. “Mange takk,” she breathed, staring deep into her husband’s soul.
His blue eyes glistened like the high mountain lakes of home. “Velbekommen.”
“Mor, don’t you like it?” Thorliff gave her a puzzled look.
“Ja. Very much!”
“Then why are you crying?”
“Women do that,” Roald answered, clamping a hand on Thorliff’s shoulder. “It means they are happy.”
Ingeborg nodded. It certainly did.
Ingeborg regained her strength quickly and soon had the baby in a shawl tied to her bosom so she could hoe the garden. She even took the baby fishing when Thorliff pleaded for a chance to try out his worm collection. As long as Andrew was full and dry, he was a happy, mostly sleeping baby, growing as fast as the lambs gamboling after Thorliff on their forays for pasture.
That summer, with pasture in abundance and plenty of land yet to hay, Roald bought more livestock: two cows, ten ewes, a sow that had ten piglets a month later, a team of mules, and a bull.
Joseph Baard bought a boar with his sow with the agreement they would trade off breeding services. During haying they exchanged labor, and when it was time to cut and bundle the grain, they did the same.
“That’s just what neighbors and good friends do for each other,” Agnes Baard was heard to say more than once. She, too, was in the family way again. Her little girl had been born in the last blizzard of the winter.
One day Thorliff came crying into the house. “Mor, the hawk took the chicks. I chased him off, but the mother hen is hurt too.” He held a limp little body in his hand. “Why, Mor?” Tears brimmed over again and ran down his cheeks.
“Far told you not to let them out of the chicken house, didn’t he?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“That is why. The hawk needs to eat, too, and now we won’t have so many chickens to butcher or young hens to lay eggs.”
“I’m sorry. But I was cleaning the chicken house like Far said, and the chickens were in the way. I didn’t want them to get trampled on.”
“I know.” Ingeborg smoothed a finger down the new feathers of the three-week-old chick. “You can go bury it in the garden. How badly is the mother hurt?”
“She won’t let me see. She just pecks at me and keeps her wings over the last two chicks. I let her in the barn.”
“We will put her back in the chicken house after dark. You’d better check on your sheep, or a coyote might get them.”
“In the corral?” He left to check on his charges.
The Baards and the Bjorklunds worked together cutting and binding the wheat and oats in preparation for the threshers to come. Since this year they had sufficient acres planted, and Roald had seen the metal monster called a threshing machine on his trip to Grand Forks, he had contracted with the owner to stop by the Bjorklunds to help with their harvest.
Kaaren, Ingeborg, and Agnes had been cooking for the last two days.
Thorliff danced and shrieked in delight when the huge rig, pulled by twelve mules, clanked its way to a halt south of their sod barn. As soon as the men had eaten breakfast, they lit the firebox and soon steam puffed from the stack. When the long belts began to turn, the men forked the grain bundles into the clattering mouth where chain belts pulled the bundles inside. Straw blew onto a growing stack on the south side, and golden grain poured into the gunny sacks at the other end.
Roald had a hard time keeping his stern demeanor. Inside he felt like dancing in delight like his son.
“Far, come see.” Thorliff’s shout could be heard above the clamor of the machine.
Roald came and watched the man sew the full grain sack closed after hooking another on the metal frame that held the sack open. He helped oil the monster and tossed more wood into the firebox. All the while, he dreamed of owning one. Surely the two families could buy one together.
At dinnertime, the three women set venison stew, fried chicken, new potatoes, bread, cheese, pies, and gallons of coffee on boards covering sawhorses for tables.
“Your two wives sure know how to fill a man’s stomach,” Lars Knutson, the owner of the machine, said to Roald as they sat together on one of the long benches. “You’ll have no trouble getting machine help with a table set like this.”
“Mange takk. We are indeed blessed here with good crops and our growing families.”
“Ja, coming to America was a good thing,” Carl, on the other side of the man, added. “I have never seen such a thing.” He nodded toward the machine.
“You ought to go watch or work harvest on a bonanza farm. Lasts for days.” Lars held his cup up for a refill as Ingeborg made her way around the table. “Mange takk for maten, Mrs. Bjorklund. That was right tasty.”
The next day they repeated the process at the Baards’.
Thorliff and the two Baard boys ran after the thresher for a time as it left and then came panting home. “Someday, I want a machine like that,” Swen, the older of the Baard boys, said. “I want to travel all over the country and bring home bundles of money.”
The adults looked at one another and shook their heads. Ja, their children understood the American way already.
With the threshing done, Roald and Carl sat at the table the following morning for a second cup of coffee. “We’d better get started on that soddy of yours pretty soon,” Roald said, rubbing the side of his nose with his finger. “If’n we want it all finished before it gets too cold.”
“Thanks be to God!” Kaaren clasped her hands to her breast. To have the new soddy built and ready in time for the baby—such a blessing.
Ingeborg insisted that Kaaren rest more frequently now that her time was nearing. The heat of summer had not yet let up, adding to her discomfort. One afternoon as she leaned back in the rocker and put her feet up on the stool, she said to Inbeborg, “I think you were the wiser.” She wiped the sweat from her brow with the edge of her apron.
Ingeborg looked up from carding the wool they had sheared from their own sheep. “Why is that?”
“You gave birth to Andrew before the heat and the flies came.”
“Ja, but the screen door has made a big difference. At least we can leave the door open now.” She heard Andrew fussing and immediately her milk let down. She put the carding paddles down on top of the fleece and went to pick up the baby. “You surely do have your mother trained well, my son.” She unbuttoned her dress front and settled him against her breast.
“You want this chair?”
“No, you need it more than I.” The gurgling and suckling of the nursing babe sounded peaceful in the quiet room. Gunny slept in her trundle bed, the men were in the field, and Thorliff was out herding the sheep.
While Ingeborg sometimes wished she could be out in the woods or the garden, right now she was where she most wanted to be—nursing her son.
On Saturday the Baards came, and together they set the other soddy. Carl had marked out the house and barn about two hundred yards away, just on the other side of the property line. Now they would be completely up to the letter of the homesteading law. A dwelling met the requirements. The sod barn was extra.
“Here, I made this for you.” Agnes handed Kaaren a wedding ring quilt, the colored patches glowing in the late afternoon sun. “And these should help, too.”
“Curtains for the window.” Kaaren held them up with delight. “What riches.”
By the time they moved half the meager furniture into the new soddy, both houses looked empty. They left the big bed for Thorliff and Andrew, so Ingeborg had sewn a new sack for the corn husk mattress for Kaaren and Carl. “This goes to your house too.” She took the down quilt and folded it into Kaaren’s arms. “Now you will be plenty warm. And with more elk robes this year, we can keep all of our beds warmer.”
The first night she and Roald were alone felt strange. With the boys asleep, they sat in front of the fireplace, Ingeborg carding wool, and Roald sm
oothing the wooden legs for a new chair. She watched him as he rubbed his calloused hands down the satiny chair leg. Most men used whatever branches they could find to fit for chair legs, but Roald, craftsman that he was, turned each piece of wood into a thing of beauty. The shelves on the wall that held her precious china were testimony to his skill. She leaned her head against the curved back of the new rocker she so enjoyed using. Roald had finished it late last spring, so that she would have one too when they moved the other to Carl’s soddy. Roald thought so far ahead, sometimes she wished she could look into his mind and see his plans.
“Ja, what is it?” He caught her staring.
“Nothing. I . . . I . . .” She had almost said, “I love you.” Would that be such a terrible sin, since they were here alone? “Would you like a cup of coffee before we go to bed?” At his nod, she got up and poured their cups full from the pot always set just off the fire. She rested one hand on his shoulder as she handed him the cup.
“Mange takk.” He touched her fingers with his. That night sleep took a long time coming. Such freedom within their own four walls.
Three nights later, Baby Lizzie joined the family in the other soddy. Like Andrew, she let out a gusty wail, so they all knew she had arrived.
Ingeborg kept Gunny for the first few days and cooked the meals for the men. When she thought of the previous fall and her hunting days, she felt a pang of loss. This year, the closest she got to the woods was to haul water. If only they had gotten a well dug this year. Roald had promised, but always the fields came first.
Andrew began to cry and woke Gunny from her nap. She crawled into Ingeborg’s lap and stuck her thumb back in her mouth. Oh, for a few hours to walk the trails and admire the turning leaves. Winter, the long dark days of winter, were nearly upon them once again.
The blizzard struck on Christmas Day.
“We won’t be going to the Baards’, that’s for sure.” Roald stomped his feet and brushed the clinging snow off his coat. He’d just returned from following the rope he’d strung to the barn so he could care for the livestock no matter how fierce the blizzard might become.
“Can we get to Carl and Kaaren’s?” Ingeborg placed bowls of steaming mush on the table and set the coffeepot back on the cast-iron stove to keep warm.
Roald shook his head. “I would rather not take the chance. I’m sure the wind has drifted the path full of snow, so we could get lost between here and there. Glad we made that last trip to town before this hit.”
“But how can we have Christmas without Onkel Carl and Tante Kaaren?” Thorliff looked from one adult to the other as if pleading would change the weather. “I carved a doll for Gunny.”
“We will go as soon as the storm quits.” Roald sat down and dug into his breakfast. “Eat up now and maybe Mor will give us one of her fatigman for a treat.” The shriek of the wind tearing at the stovepipe made him look up at the roof. “Thank God, we have such a snug home and our animals are all under cover too. It isn’t fit for man or beast out there.”
Ingeborg sat in her rocking chair nursing the baby and thinking of home. Christmas in Norway meant that all the family would be together, gathered about the huge round oak table. Sisters and their husbands whom she knew only through letters, new babies and children growing so fast she would no longer know them. She dropped a kiss on the down-covered head of the son for whom she’d waited so long. At seven months, Carl Andrew had learned to get up on all fours and rock back and forth. It wouldn’t be long before he was creeping and getting into everything. He belched and stared up at her with the same blue eyes of his father and brother. A smile tugged one corner of his mouth and milk drizzled out the other.
“Had more than you need, I take it?” His smile stretched further, and he reached up to pat her cheek with one chubby fist. She nibbled on his finger, causing a chortle that made them all laugh. She smiled back in response and nibbled again when he stuck his finger in her mouth. Dimples came and went as he laughed at her and repeated the gesture again and again, until she tired of the game.
Ingeborg looked up to see a smile flit across Roald’s face at the sound of the baby’s laughter. The smiles came more easily of late, not only because of the baby but because the farm was earning enough money to pay their debts and buy some of the things they needed. She knew he was more content now that things were going so well. Such a sense of duty he had.
She glanced gratefully at the cookstove, her Christmas present that had arrived in the back of the wagon last week. As cold as it was outside, they might be more than just a little grateful for the increased warmth. Now the wood sent more heat into the room instead of up the fireplace chimney, since Roald had boarded up the fireplace to keep it warmer in the soddy.
“Mor.” Thorliff leaned against the arm of her chair. “Tell us a story.”
“Ja, that is a good idea.” Roald picked up the wood he’d been shaping into a large shallow bowl, rounding the edges with care. He settled back in his seat, made one slice through the wood, and held his blade up to the light of the kerosene lamp, running his thumb along the knife edge. With a grunt he put the wood down, picked up the whetstone, and spit on the center before smoothing the edge of the knife blade round and round to sharpen the edge.
Ingeborg watched the ritual while she paused to decide which story to tell. The way her men had settled into their seats warned her that one story would not be sufficient, so she began. “In a time long ago there lived a young boy named David, who guarded his father’s sheep up in the hills of a faraway desert country.”
Thorliff sat cross-legged at her feet, his elbows on his knees, his chin propped on the heels of his hands. He flashed his mother a grin. “David and Goliath—my favorite!”
Ingeborg kept one eye on the window as she continued the story. By the end of the second story, a drift had blocked out what little daylight remained.
When she rose, Roald followed her actions and put away his carving. “I am going to dig out the door before it is stuck so fast we are trapped in here. Thorliff, you fill that big pan with snow so we can melt a bucketful for the cattle. I brought in extra water earlier so we would be prepared.”
Ingeborg felt a surge of admiration for this man who took such good care of his family and farm. She rose and checked on the goose roasting in the oven. The heat flushed her face and teased her nose with the heavenly fragrance. Cooking in the stove rather than the fireplace made her life so much easier, she almost felt guilty. They’d planned such a feast with all the Bjorklunds and the Baards. And now the bounty was all for themselves.
“Thorliff, would you please peel the potatoes, and then we’ll set the table.”
“When are we going to open our presents?”
“You think we have presents?” She tried to look surprised but ended up smiling into his upturned face.
He nodded, his eyes solemn.
“After your father takes care of the livestock again. We’ll play Hide the Thimble while he milks the cow, and then I have a surprise for you.”
“Presents?”
“No, something so delicious you won’t believe it.”
“Better than cookies?”
Ingeborg nodded.
“Better than lefse?”
Another nod.
“Candy?”
“You might say that.”
“Tell me.” Thorliff’s eyes danced, enjoying the age-old guessing game as much as she.
“When the time comes.” Ingeborg stirred the pot of dried green beans she’d seasoned with chunks of bacon and onion. What a feast they were about to have. Only having their family and friends all together could have made it better. She wanted to see Gunny open the doll Thorliff had carved and for which she’d sewn clothes. At two, Gunny would be such fun to watch.
For a change, Roald volunteered to say grace when they were all seated at the table. Usually he began eating before anyone could begin, and because he obviously didn’t want grace said, she’d let it go, too. Today, they said it together
, “I Jesu navn, gar vi til bords . . .” At the end Roald added, “And thank you Lord for this land and bounty you have given us. Amen.”
Ingeborg stifled the look of surprise she felt moving over her face. She dished up and passed their plates of food, served on the china she’d brought in the chest from Norway. She saved them for only the very best occasions, and the rest of the time they lined the intricately carved shelves Roald had built. Under the shelves stood the trunk painted in the rosemaling pattern of the Valdres area. While some of the paint was worn and chipped due to the hard wear, in the trunk she kept her linens and quilts. There, too, she saved her treasures, such as a curl from Thorliff’s first haircut, the first rose she’d picked from the bush by the door and dried between the pages of their English/Norwegian dictionary, and pieces of fabric she’d collected for a quilt.
She watched her two men devour their Christmas dinner as if they had to rush back to the field work. None of them were accustomed to a holiday; that was for certain. Ingeborg savored the mashed potatoes and rich gravy, the slices of crispy goose that she’d shot herself, the rolls and chokecherry jelly. Thorliff passed his plate again and again, as did Roald.
“Coffee?” She rose to her feet and returned to the table with the pot in hand. As she poured, she glanced again toward the window as if hoping something had changed. She could just see light filtering through the snow. Anytime there was a lull in the conversation, the wind whistling around the corners of the soddy, pleading for entrance with the wicked cold, made her shiver. For weeks now, she’d been more aware of the wind, especially since it always seemed to come from the north.
The first Christmas had been crowded with all six of them living in the one room, but they’d managed. Now, with all their added belongings, the same room was hardly big enough for four, and one of them wasn’t out of the cradle yet.
“Mor?” Thorliff’s question brought her back to the present. “Andrew is crying.”
An Untamed Land Page 30