“Thank you.” If you only knew. Jonathan turned around and watched as the other men flipped back boards that held the stanchions closed, and as if choreographed, each cow backed out, turned toward the back wall, and followed the other cows out the door to the water trough and pasture. He turned back to find Haakan watching him. “How do they all know what to do?”
“The older ones train the younger ones. Old Boss is our bell cow, meaning she leads the herd. In Norway the cows wore bells so they could be found in the high pastures. Here, we don’t need bells. Barney, our cattle dog, goes and gets the stragglers, but you’ll find most of them lined up at the door about milking time.”
“How do they know the time?”
“I don’t know, but they do. Animals are wiser than we give them credit for. Here, grab the handle and let’s haul this load to the well house to cool. Later we’ll load up and let the horse pull a wagon over to the cheese house.”
Jonathan took hold of the wagon handle and leaned into the weight. Stretching his shoulders felt good until he lifted off one of the milk cans to carry it into the low-set stone house, where a trough of cold water waited for the cans. It was heavier than he’d thought it would be, or his arms were weaker. By the time they’d set all the cans in the water, his admiration for the man working with him had doubled. He might look old, but he was still strong and never wasted a motion.
“Ready for breakfast?” Haakan clapped him on the shoulder.
“Yes, sir.” Probably more ready for a meal than I’ve been in my entire life.
Grace and Astrid were already in the kitchen helping to get the food on the table when Jonathan, who had just learned to wash up at the outside wash bench, including rinsing off pant leg and boot, followed the others inside and took the chair that Andrew pointed him to. All this work they do and no running water in the house. Another one of those things he’d taken for granted in New York. The outdoor privies had been another lesson from the day before.
As soon as everyone was seated, they bowed their heads and joined in a grace that he’d heard his father say at times, but he’d never learned the Norwegian words. His father had learned it from a young Norwegian nanny when he was a boy.
Astrid set a bowl of oatmeal in front of him, and Trygve passed the cream and brown sugar.
“Thank you.”
As soon as the oatmeal bowls were empty, Astrid removed them, and Grace helped Ingeborg set platters of fried eggs, ham, and pan-cakes on the table. He watched as they moved like a dance, smooth and light. These girls were just as attractive as the New York society crowd but had a complete lack of airs, which he found refreshing. They managed to combine openness and modesty. His little sister Mary Anne would be impressed.
At first arrival he had not remembered that Grace was deaf until she spoke. Though he had to listen carefully to understand her, her tonal speech had a softness to it. A big bowl of applesauce passed from one to the other along with a pitcher of hot syrup. Ingeborg and the girls finally sat down, and when he started to stand as his mother had taught him was polite, the others looked at him with questions. He sat back down and looked up to see Ingeborg smiling at him. Another lesson for the morning. Some manners were different out here.
When Jonathan could stow in no more, he listened while Haakan gave out the assignments for the day. Jonathan was to learn to harness the horses with Andrew and Trygve. Samuel was to work with his father, Lars, on the tractor plowing, one team pulling a seeder and another discs.
“When you’re done with harnessing, you can help with spading the garden and raking.” Haakan nodded at Jonathan. “This afternoon we’ll give you lessons in driving a team, unless you’ve learned that already.”
“I have a feeling that driving on city streets and roads out on the island is far different than driving a team pulling machinery.”
“You are so right. What have you driven?”
“One horse with the buggy and the team at my grandfather’s. We don’t keep a team at the house in the city any longer.”
“I see. Never four up or six?”
“No, sir.”
“We need to finish fencing that pasture at my house also,” Andrew said.
“I know, just as soon as the oats are all planted.” Haakan looked at Jonathan. “Our wheat is already up, but the barley, oats, and corn that we use for cattle feed get seeded last.”
“You don’t make flour with anything but wheat?”
“No. We grind the other grains into feed. Sometimes people make flour out of rye and I guess other grains, but wheat has gluten that helps bread to rise. The others either don’t or it is much less. Other grains can be used for food like cereals when they are rolled or cut or ground.”
Jonathan shook his head. “I had no idea.”
Astrid paused right behind him in her table clearing and whis- pered loud enough for the cows in the pasture to hear. “That’s why your pa sent you to us.”
Jonathan managed to keep from rolling his eyes, on the outside at least. Did she think she was superior because she knew more of farming than he did? “Wait until you come to New York.” He couldn’t see her response but figured the giggle was aimed at him. He glanced up to see Grace smile at him. What a difference there was between the two cousins—Astrid so outgoing and Grace so quiet but in a restful way. He knew Grace had been born deaf. His father had told him as much about the families as he knew from all the correspondence through the years between him and Ingeborg. At the graduation and the celebration afterward, Jonathan had seen many people using their hands to sign, and he knew that Mrs. Knutson had started a school for the deaf years earlier.
“All right, let’s get going.” Haakan pushed his chair back and stood. “Takk for maten.”
Astrid caught Jonathan’s questioning look. “Takk is thanks. He said thank you for the meal or food.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Bjorklund. I’ve never eaten that much at one sitting in my entire life.”
“You are most welcome. You’ll find you need every bite for energy to work like our men do.”
Did she think she did nothing? At home they had Cook and her assistant to feed only five people, while here, Mrs. Bjorklund’s helpers were out in the barn milking, so she did most of the preparation alone. Jonathan followed the men out the door. Milking cows, harnessing horses, speaking Norwegian—what else was he going to learn here in Blessing?
“I SAW YOU WERE VERY PATIENT with him in the barn,” Grace said in her careful way as the men left the kitchen. While they’d all learned to sign when they were children, Grace had fought and struggled to learn to speak like those who could hear, along with learning to read lips.
“Thank you. I was so sure he was going to be …” Astrid made a face, searching for the right word. “You know, snobbish, thinking he is better than we are because he comes from New York.” She drawled New York and rolled her eyes, making both her mother and Grace chuckle. “His hands and forearms were really hurting by the end of the third cow, but he tried not to let it show.”
“Wait until he spends a couple of hours on the end of the spade and rake. I wonder if he brought leather gloves.” Ingeborg squinted, thinking. “Not sure if I included that in my letter. Do we have any new gloves?”
“Why new? He can use some old ones out of the box like we do.” Astrid stood at the stove to wash dishes and poured hot water from the reservoir into the rinse pan. Grace took a towel off the rack behind the stove, and the two girls did the dishes while Ingeborg scalded milk for making bread. While she had sourdough starter growing all the time, now they often used prepared yeast purchased at the grocery store. Like a fine perfume the yeast, when stirred into warm water, filled the room with fragrance.
“If we work on our garden today, we’ll do yours tomorrow,” Astrid said, setting another plate into the rinse pan.
Grace watched Astrid’s lips, since signing was difficult with their hands in the dishwater. “Or the next day. Mor and Ilse are cleaning the bunk rooms today. George is
building new shelves for those rooms, and we are making new curtains too. Mor wants to refurbish a lot of the school building.”
By the time they had the kitchen cleaned up, Ingeborg had browned the three rabbits Samuel had snared and cleaned, and had them baking in the oven.
Grace saw Jonathan knock at the back door. Tante Ingeborg’s face was turned from Grace, but from the look on his, she was already telling him he was family.
“Sorry.” He cleaned his boots off at the brush boot scraper on the porch and removed his hat as he came through the door.
“Did you by any chance bring leather gloves?” Astrid asked.
“Yes. They’re upstairs in my trunk.”
“Good. Go get them, and we’ll get on out to the garden.” She started for the door and stopped. “There are rakes and spades and hoes down at the machine shed on the south wall, if you’ll fetch a couple of each, please.”
“Of course.”
Grace smiled at him as he made his way to the staircase. She leaned close to Astrid. “That young man has fine manners, and he is really trying hard.”
“He’s the same age as you are. How come you call him a young man?”
Grace shrugged. “I don’t know. Strange, isn’t it?”
“Strange or not, let’s get the seeds and get out there before it gets any hotter.”
“Put your sunbonnets on,” Ingeborg reminded them, as she had many times before.
“Mor, you know I hate sunbonnets.”
“Then take that wide-brimmed straw hat or you’ll burn your nose again.”
Grace and Astrid wrinkled their noses at each other. Grace snagged a blue calico sunbonnet by the strings, and Astrid clapped one of her brothers’ old straw hats on her head. They both grabbed the bags with seeds and headed out the door.
“I wish I could put on men’s britches like my ma used to wear,” Astrid said as she and Grace strolled to the garden at the back of the house.
“You wouldn’t dare. Can you imagine what Mrs. Valders would have to say about that!”
“Lots, but why do I care?”
“Because all the women would go atwitter and complain to our mothers and raise all kinds of ruckus.” Grace looked down at the apron covering her faded brown calico skirt. “Besides, men’s pants would be heavy.” She thought a moment, spreading her skirt with her hands. “What if we cut up the front and back of a skirt to about here and sewed a seam from hem to hem?” She looked up to see delight dancing in Astrid’s eyes. “Then it would still be full like a skirt but with the ease of pants.”
“I have an old skirt we could use.”
Grace nodded, scrunching her mouth as she thought. “We need to both do it at the same time.” She tucked an escaping strand of honey, aged to amber, hair back behind her ear.
“You think we could sew them tonight?” Astrid asked.
“Ask Tante Ingeborg if you can sleep over.”
Astrid twirled her seed pouch around her head like a sling. “Look out, Blessing, we have a new style coming.”
“Wouldn’t Sophie love to be in on this?” Even with Sophie back now from her flight to marriage and Seattle with her new husband, Grace missed her. Just being in Blessing was not the same as her being at home. Actually, even being with her now wasn’t the same. Everything they talked about felt stilted. Or I guess I feel stilted because Sophie still says whatever is on her mind.
“She’s so busy taking care of the boardinghouse and the twins, she hasn’t time to sneeze. She has to be a proper lady now.” Astrid looped her seed pouch over a fence post and, picking up the two sticks with string wound on them, pushed the end of one stick into the soil they had raked the day before and started unwinding the string as she walked backward to mark the row.
Grace started laughing. When Astrid looked up, she signed, “Sophie … proper?”
“Why can’t we use the frozen bean plants as the row markers?” They’d planted much of the garden several weeks earlier. A late frost had turned the bean shoots brown and dead. They’d managed to cover the potatoes, and the peas could take a frost and survive.
“Good idea. Mor said that besides replanting these, we needed two more rows. We’ll do the carrots after that.” Astrid nodded toward Jonathan, bringing in more tools.
Grace turned and smiled at him. “Thank you.”
“Where do I start digging?”
“Well, it’s not exactly digging. Spading turns the soil so we can break up the clods with a rake and hoe.” Why is he staring at me like that? Grace took a step backward. Surely he knows I can read lips. Or is he even aware I cannot hear? “You start over there.” She pointed to the corner where the plow and disc pulled by one of the teams had, as always, missed turning the soil.
“All right.”
She reached up and touched the brim of her sunbonnet. “Do I have mud on my face or something?” I can’t believe I said that.
“No. Sorry. I’ve not seen a hat like that before. You look lovely in it.”
Grace could feel heat streaking up from her neck, and it wasn’t due to the sun. “I … ah … thank you.” Her fingers fluttered into motion as her tongue stumbled over the words. Whew, she needed a fan. Where had the breeze gone? Then remembering that he couldn’t sign, she clenched her hands together.
He started working close to the fence, pushing the shovel in with his arms.
Grace and Astrid stared at each other. With a mischievous smile Astrid motioned with her head for Grace to go help him. Grace gave a quick shake of her head and mouthed, “You.” Astrid pushed the second stake in at the end of the row, picked up her hoe, and started trenching back to the other end of the garden, effectively ignoring Grace by keeping her back to her.
Grace humphed and stomped over to where Jonathan had turned over three shallow shovelfuls. Remember, this is just like teaching Trygve or Samuel. But when he looked up from what he was doing, his smile made her swallow. “I-I could show you an easier way, if you’d like.” She hardly had enough spit to talk with.
“There is an easier way?”
“Ja, here.” She reached for the spade and moved back to the edge that was already plowed. “If you start here, that helps. And then you push the spade into the ground with your foot, like this.” She demonstrated the motion, paused, and continued. “Then you turn the soil over and put it right back where it was.” She looked up to see him studying both her and the ground intently.
“But why put it right back?”
“The purpose is to turn this grass under so it dies. Then we can break up the dirt to make it smooth enough to plant in. Like Astrid is doing.”
“All those rows are already planted and growing?” he asked.
She nodded and pointed. “Peas go in first, then potatoes and onions. After that we do small seeds like carrots and lettuce. We had another late frost that killed the beans, so we are replanting them. As it warms up, we plant corn, and a couple of weeks later we will plant more corn. Cabbages that Mor started in the house are ready to transplant, and the tomatoes will go in last.”
“This is a big garden. What will go in the corners?”
“Squash, cucumbers, and tomatoes over there along that fence. We have more potatoes and corn planted on the edge of the field. We have another plot this big at our house.”
“I see.”
But she could tell from the look on his face that he had no idea how much food they would grow. “Don’t you have a garden at your house?”
He shook his head. “Only a little spot where Cook grows herbs and specialty things. And there is the cutting garden with flowers for the house.”
“Where do you get your food?”
“At the market. Farmers bring their produce in, and Cook goes and buys it.”
“Cook?” Grace tried to stop her surprise. She’d read about families that hired cooks and maids, but other than stories Elizabeth had told, she’d never known anyone who had servants. She handed him the spade and motioned for him to follow her example. Why di
d he come to Blessing, then? He could pay to have anything done.
He stuck the spade in next to her spot, rammed it in with his foot, and turned it, just like she’d shown him. “Good enough?” He had one eyebrow raised, giving him a devilish air.
“Ja, good.” Grace forced herself not to spin around and flee like she wanted. Why was she feeling so flushed again? Instead, she walked back to where Astrid was bent over dropping in beans and thumped her on the shoulder as she passed. Then she jerked up one end stake, measured three steps, and stuck it in the ground, as Astrid had already done.
By the time she had dug her furrow, she was feeling calm again. How silly, she told herself. You know that you care for Toby and always have, so behave yourself. Dropping beans into a furrow, she remembered one of their girl parties when the others had been talking about the newly arrived Geddick young men and other single fellows in the area. All she ever thought about was Toby Valders. And yet she couldn’t tell the others that. Even though he was a man now, Toby did not have the best reputation, carried over from all those years in school when he’d tease some of the smaller children until cousin Andrew got fed up and punched him. As a way to teach them to control their tempers, Pastor Solberg, who also taught in the one-room school, made them both chop wood. Sometimes there was a huge woodpile for both the school and the church. Then when Toby and Andrew got in that big fight after the barn burned and Toby almost died, she’d cried herself to sleep more than once and spent hours praying for him.
One time he’d held her hand and stared deep into her eyes. She thought he might kiss her, but he turned away. She knew he’d kissed Sophie, but then Sophie was a flirt back in those days. If Mor and Far had gotten wind of it, Sophie would have been in terrible trouble. The thought of Sophie’s antics tightened her jaw, especially when they involved Toby. She’d never said anything, though, and then Sophie ran off with Hamre, a distant cousin who’d left Blessing to go fishing out in Seattle.
Would she be willing to run away with Toby if he asked her? He wouldn’t have to. Blessing was his home just like it was hers. Although, since graduation she had not seen him at all, which seemed odd.
A Touch of Grace Page 2