A Touch of Grace

by Lauraine Snelling

  Jonathan waited for him to answer his own questions. He knew he had disappointed his father on many occasions, often no matter how hard he tried. He knew that sometimes he was jealous of his older brother Thomas, who it seemed could do no wrong. He shifted in his seat. His mind took off across the continent to remember one of the times he’d stood before his father’s desk, knowing he deserved the scolding but wishing for one word of approbation. He remembered the sorrow in his father’s eyes. Was God like that?

  Last Sunday the pastor had talked about how much God loves His children. Did he believe in a God who loved His children or in a God who set up rules too numerous to be fully obeyed? And most important, wasn’t this the same God of the Old Testament and, according to Pastor Solberg, the New Testament also? So go talk to him, he heard himself thinking. I will. Or maybe I should ask Ingeborg. While he always called her Mrs. Bjorklund to her face, in his mind she’d always been the Ingeborg of his father’s memories.

  As everyone rose for the final hymn, he watched Dr. Elizabeth, who was playing the piano. She looked to be a bit green around the mouth and eyes. Go tell her you could take her place and play for Sunday services if you could have some practice time on the piano. He flexed his fingers. He’d not played for more than a month, but that was one thing he did well—even his father said so.

  As the congregation was dismissed, instead of playing until everyone was out of the church, Dr. Elizabeth got up and hurried out the back door.

  Within a few minutes, while the men gathered in small groups talking, the women had brought the food from their wagons and were setting dishes and pans out on the long tables set up on sawhorses in the shade of the cottonwood trees planted years earlier. The children ran between the church and the schoolyard, laughing and playing.

  Jonathan kept watch, and when Dr. Elizabeth rejoined her family, taking Inga from her father’s arms, he approached her. “Dr. Bjorklund?”

  “Yes, Mr. Gould, how can I help you?” She looked better than she had in the church.

  “Well, I’m thinking that perhaps I could help you, and please, I am not Mr. Gould. That is my father.”

  “Jonathan, then. How is it you could help me?” Her smile welcomed him closer. Her little daughter leaned her head against her mother’s shoulder, eyes drifting closed.

  “I saw that you weren’t feeling too good, and I thought … well, I have played the piano since I was six, and with a bit of practice I could learn the service and play the hymns.”

  “Have you ever played for church before?”

  “No, but I read music well, and I’m sure Pastor Solberg would translate or tell me what to do. If you want some help, that is.” He held his hat in his hands and reminded his fingers not to crush it. Perhaps this wasn’t a good idea after all.

  “Jonathan, I would be most grateful if you could do this. Let’s go find Pastor Solberg and ask him about it.”

  “I’d best ask Haakan too. I mean, I really would need practice time, and there isn’t a lot of that lying around.”

  “You go get Pastor Solberg, and I’ll meet you at our buggy. I’m going to lay this sleepy one down before she breaks my arm.”

  Pastor Solberg led the singing of the grace and then joined them at the buggy as he said he would. “So you could be a replacement for Dr. Elizabeth for a while. Is that right?”

  “I think so. I mean, if you would like we could go inside and I’ll play for you.”

  “The only problem would be the liturgy. You don’t know Norwegian, but I could write it out in English so you could follow along.” He rubbed his chin as he spoke and nodded, obviously giving it some serious thought. “Have you mentioned this to Haakan yet?”

  “No, but here he comes.”

  Within minutes they’d all agreed on the new plan and joined the others for Sunday dinner. Jonathan would be staying after church to practice for a couple of hours, giving up his first chance to go fishing with all the young men that afternoon. His gaze sought Grace’s across the gathering. She nodded and smiled wistfully. How had she already learned what was decided? And why was she looking so sad?

  “WE NEED PARTIES MORE OFTEN.”

  “I agree.” Kaaren swiped the hair from her face with the back of her hand. “Good thing our fishermen did well.” She took a cake pan from Ingeborg’s warming oven and added the four fish she’d just finished frying to the growing stack.

  “So Sophie and the babies and the boardinghouse are doing well?” Ingeborg put glasses on a tray, along with silverware, to be taken outdoors.

  “Ja, Mrs. Sam is making her toe the line. Not that nursing twins gives Sophie much time for anything else. That little Joy latches on and sucks her mother dry. Hamre has to be encouraged more.”

  “I’ve noticed that with boy babies. I think girls are stronger.”

  “Only because they have to learn early to fight to live.” Kaaren laid another cornmeal-coated fish in the frying pan and pulled it back to keep from spattering grease so wildly. “Ingeborg, I know I loved my children, but there is something so special about holding grand-babies.”

  “I know. It’s hard to keep from spoiling Inga something terrible. When she screws up that little mouth and narrows her eyes when she doesn’t get what she wants, I have to swing her up in my arm and kiss the daylights out of her. Then we both giggle, and she is back to being her sunny self. I watch little Carl and wonder what he will be like. Right now he is more content to sit on my lap and cuddle and watch his cousin running on her tippy toes.”

  “I am so glad and grateful that Sophie came home, and I get to be there with her. I might have had to take that train to Seattle more than once a year.” She turned the fish in the pan and went back to dusting more.

  “Here’s the last of them,” Thorliff said as he set another half-full bucket on the table. “Do we have enough?” He scratched at a mosquito bite on the back of his neck. “Pesky things near to ate me alive.”

  “How’s the ice cream doing?”

  “You’ll have to ask Pa. I was in charge of fish. But they have three cranks going. The cranking contest is between Trygve and Jonathan.” He looked around. “Where’s Elizabeth?”

  “Lying down with Carl. Inga is out with the big girls, so she’s happy as a little pig in the mud.”

  “You want me to start taking things out?”

  “Please.” Ingeborg watched him pick up the tray laden with glasses and utensils and leave by the back door, whistling as he went. Was it wrong to be so proud of her elder son she was sure her apron strings would pop? Often she wondered if Roald was watching down from heaven and rejoicing in this son. Thorliff and Andrew were so different but both such fine young men.

  Haakan came in a bit later, announcing, “Ice cream is all packed in ice. When do we eat?”

  “Any time. These are the last pans of fish. Are Penny and Hjelmer here yet?”

  “Nope.” He snatched a fish off the top of the stack, dodged his wife’s playful attack with the pancake turner, and grabbed the handles of the two biggest baskets of food waiting on the table. “Anything in the well house?”

  “Potato salad and rice salad. And please bring in a jug of milk too.”

  As he went out, Astrid came in. “Need anything else done?”

  “The pan of rolls in the oven is done. Butter the tops and turn them out. That basket is for the rolls.” Ingeborg motioned to a clothlined basket on the counter. “Where’s Grace?”

  “Swinging with Inga. Good thing Pa put the swing back up. Inga loves it.” Astrid set the oven-sized pan on the table and, dipping her fingers in the butter, spread the golden butter over the hot rolls and then flipped the pan over onto the waiting dish towel, sticking one finger into her mouth.

  “That’s why we have pot holders.”

  “I know.”

  “Please make sure the tables are set right. And ring the triangle. We’re ready to serve.”

  “You will miss Astrid come fall,” Kaaren said as they took care of the last tasks. �
�And I know this will be hard on Grace again too. If not for Astrid, Grace would not have managed Sophie’s elopement.”

  “They are good for each other. But Grace knows Astrid will return, and now Sophie is here.”

  “But she’s retreating again even with them both here, and that’s not like her.”

  Hearing footsteps, Ingeborg switched to signing. “Give her time. She has great depth to her. She just needs space to make this adjustment to being grown.”

  Barney’s barking told them the other Bjorklunds had arrived. Ingeborg glanced at Kaaren. “Perfect timing.”

  “Should I wake Elizabeth?”

  “No. Let her sleep. She’s looking mighty peaked. Between her and Thorliff they do enough work for three people.”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  “I’ve been slowing down some. What about you?”

  Kaaren half shrugged. “That’s what we have children for, to help pick up the slack when we get older.” Using two pot holders, she lifted one of the pans of fish and headed for the door. “Let’s eat before this gets cold.”

  After the pause for grace, everyone served themselves at the food table and found a place to sit, the young people using the stairs to the front porch and the railing too while the folks took the chairs at the other tables.

  Ingeborg made sure everyone was taken care of before she filled her own plate and took the chair between Haakan and Penny. “My, that breeze feels good.”

  “Keeps the mosquitoes away too.” Haakan sighed on his first bite of fish. “I don’t know why we don’t have fried fish more often.”

  “There’s no one with the time to go fishing since you put Samuel in charge of feeding all the young stock. He hardly has time to run his snares either. Sophie was asking when she could have rabbit on the menu again.”

  “Maybe that’s another thing young Gould should learn.”

  “I’d love to get that buck that took out part of a row of corn.” Ingeborg glanced over at the porch to see Grace feeding Inga, who was sitting on her pa’s lap. A burst of laughter said someone had told a funny story. Interesting how Jonathan fit in so well when they’d been expecting him to be a problem. She watched his face and realized he was watching Grace. Come to think of it, he watched Grace a lot. Was Kaaren aware of that? And did it matter? After all, he’d be heading back to New York at the end of August and Grace would start teaching with her mother at the Blessing School for the Deaf.

  “I thought I’d come tell you first.”

  Ingeborg jerked her attention back to the conversation going on around her. She stared at Penny, sure she knew what was coming.

  “I have agreed to sell my store to move to Bismarck. I really debated on finding a manager, but I think a clean cut might be better—” Her voice broke. She blinked and raised her chin. “Better in the long run. Otherwise, I will be tempted to give up and come back.”

  Recognizing how hard it was for Penny to keep from breaking down, Ingeborg willed her own eyes not to leak. While she wanted to take Penny’s hand, she clenched her own in her lap. She and Penny were much alike, not wanting to weep in public. And these would be not only tears of sorrow, but tears that tore one’s heart out and dashed it against a stone wall.

  Even Hjelmer stammered when he said he was grateful that Haakan and Lars were buying the machinery business, since that made it so much easier for him to part with it.

  Ingeborg stared from Hjelmer to Haakan. When had that transpired? And without talking it over with her? She glanced at Kaaren to see a look of astonishment on her face too. Here, she’d been wanting to talk to Haakan about the possibility of their buying the store with the agreement that Penny could buy it back at the same price if she so desired down the road. Meaning if things didn’t work out in Bismarck for Hjelmer.

  Shock and disappointment moved on to disgust, finally flaring from a bed of burning coals. Hadn’t they always discussed everything? Hadn’t she depended on that for trust and wisdom? “I think I’ll go check on Carl.” She felt like she had a steel bar up her spine and she was chewing on glass. Lord, please help me get through the rest of this day without letting the others know of my anger—no, resentment—no, I am so mad at him I could scream. I haven’t been this mad for years. I thought I was over such displays of temper. Temper, my right foot. Both small child and Elizabeth were still sleeping soundly. She heard footfalls on the back steps and steeled herself, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. One more and she could turn and be civil.

  “You didn’t know that, did you?” Penny’s voice sounded soft in the twilight.

  “No, and neither did Kaaren. When did it come about?”

  “Just this afternoon, I think. Hjelmer has said he hoped they would do that. He went to them with a good offer.”

  Ingeborg turned, shaking her head. “I was hoping to buy your store, but now I don’t see how we can swing both. At least not for cash, and I know you need the money to buy a house.”

  “Everything I have is tied up in my store.” The tone of her voice said far more than money was involved. Penny had loved her store ever since she first dreamed of it, long before it actually came about.

  More steps and Kaaren pushed open the screen door. “You might as well fill me in too.”

  “It happened just a little while ago.”

  “Was there such a hurry they couldn’t wait to talk with us? It’s not like we were gone or something. Or that Hjelmer was leaving tomorrow.”

  “Not tomorrow, but the day after. They’ll sign the papers at the bank tomorrow, and then he’ll take what he has and go looking for a house for us. He needs to start work next week.”

  “Hjelmer Bjorklund is not going to like working in an office on someone else’s time schedule. He likes his freedom too much.”

  “You know that and I know that, but he has to learn that for himself.” Penny mopped her eyes with a tatted-edged handkerchief. She reached for Ingeborg and collapsed against her shoulder, tears soaking the soft calico and her own shoulders shaking.

  Ingeborg’s tears dripped off her chin as she stroked Penny’s back and murmured comforting mother sounds.

  Kaaren gave the grate a good shaking and added small sticks to the glowing coals. She opened the draft, added bigger chunks, and slammed the lids back into place. “They don’t deserve fresh coffee.” Her mutter pierced the heavy gloom and made all three of them sniff.

  “You could make it with dishwater.” Ingeborg clapped a hand over her mouth. Uff da! What was she saying?

  “Adding pepper was more along my way of thinking.” Kaaren dumped the grounds from the bottom of the pot into the bucket for compost. They didn’t feed the coffee grounds to the chickens for fear it might taint the eggs. After rinsing the pot, she filled it with water from the reservoir so the coffee would be ready sooner.

  “Mor, is the lemonade—?” Astrid stopped and stared at the three women. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. We’ll talk about it later.” Ingeborg’s hands fluttered in a shooing motion, as if she were herding chickens. “The lemonade is in the well house. There should be ice out there too to put in it.” She reached out and patted her daughter’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, all right?”

  The look Astrid gave her said she wouldn’t let it drop forever, but she headed back out the door.

  That evening after all the others had left and the house was closed up for the night, Ingeborg sat on the edge of the bed and grimaced when her brush caught in a tangle. She gave it a jerk rather than gently disentangling the recalcitrant hairs and clamped her teeth together. I will not bring it up. He has to know how angry this makes me. She caught his steady gaze in the mirror.

  “I know you are angry with me.”

  “That I am.” She turned to look at him. “What was the hurry that we couldn’t discuss it?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t want to.”

  “How did you know that?” She tried to speak sweetly, but it sounded more like vinegar.

  “You don’t
want them to go.”

  “And you do?”

  “Not at all, but Hjelmer needs to do what he thinks best. Don’t you agree?”

  “Yes. If this is God’s will for them, then they must be about it.” If you don’t sound sanctimonious. Her strokes softened, then picked up speed again. “But I am not convinced this is what God wants them to do. They are rushing into it.” She watched his eyebrows go up.

  “You think God will run things by you?”

  “Haakan Bjorklund, what a thing to say.” Her eyebrows rammed against each other in the center of her forehead. Her jaw ached from the clamping teeth until her thoughts careened back to their discussions on buying more cows and how bullheaded she’d been. She still thought she was right. “I was hoping that we could buy the store and machinery all at once, so if they wanted, or needed to, they could come home again.”

  “What is stopping us? Just because you are angry that I went ahead … if that is what you were thinking, why are you … ?” He shook his head slowly, his jaw askew. “Ingeborg, sometimes you just have to trust me.”

  “You think this is about my trusting you?” It was her turn to shake her head. The newly purchased cows stood in a row between them. “It seems more like you not trusting me.”

  She braided her hair much too tight but tied a ribbon at the end and threw the braid over her shoulder. A gentle tug told her Haakan wanted to turn out the light and let this be done with. She clenched her teeth again and heard a voice in her head so clearly she dare not argue. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. The sun had gone down long ago, but the voice reminded her that she and Haakan had agreed early in their marriage to follow God’s Word, and this was one point they’d agreed to honor. She sucked in a deep breath. I cannot say I’m sorry. This isn’t my fault. It is Haakan’s.