A Land to Call Home (24 page)

He just nodded. “You’ll get it.”

She set her tools again, slammed the mallet down, and the shingle split clean away, falling between her knees on the pile Thorliff had started.

“You did it!”

A corner of her mouth tipped up in a near smile. When she hit the next one cleanly, too, Solveig let out a whoosh of held breath that dropped her shoulders several inches. “I think I got it.”

“Ja, you do.” Thorliff sat down on the other three-legged stool and picked up his own tools. With a smooth motion born of long practice, he set the froe, and the pile of shingles at his feet began to grow.

Solveig watched him for a moment longer, then set her froe, slammed the mallet, pulled the froe toward her so the shingle finished splitting, and set it again. When her pile reached ten, she laid the tools down and picked up the shingles to set them in the frame for tying. With each bundle, she felt an increasing sense of satisfaction.

She was doing something new, something useful, and it didn’t
matter that her leg wasn’t quite straight or her face bore the reminder of the terrible accident.

When Thorliff flashed her a smile, she smiled back before she thought to keep a sober face. Maybe just getting out of the soddy helped her feel better. Much as Solveig hated to admit it, Kaaren had been right in encouraging her to do just that.

Paws leaped to his feet and darted around the corner of the sod barn. When Thorliff heard Baptiste greet the dog, the boy dropped his tools and ran outside.

“Baptiste, I thought you’d already left.”

“I come to stay.” The two boys entered the barn.

“But, Metiz, is she here too?”

Baptiste shook his head. “She gone. She say I must follow my vision.” He pulled the pack off his back and set it off to the side. “I can still stay with you . . . go to school?”

“Ja.” Thorliff danced in place, his feet refusing to stay on the ground with the news.

“You want your place back?” Solveig asked.

“No, I’ll set up another.”

By the time Ingeborg rang the dinner bell, Solveig could hardly lift her arms. With each slam of the mallet, her left shoulder burned like a poker had been laid to it. She’d tried shifting arms and that helped for a time, but the end result was a heavy aching in both arms and across her back. When she stood, her good leg nearly gave way. If she hadn’t propped the crutch first, she would have tumbled into the bundling frame.

The boys grabbed the twine handle of a bundle in each hand and hauled them out to stack by the barn wall. One side of the upper roof was finished and the bottom three rows on the other. The newly shingled roof glinted nearly white in the sunlight.

Solveig leaned on her crutch and lifted her face to the sun, eager for any warmth. She breathed in a deep breath of wood-scented air, the smell reminding her of her father’s workshop at home. When she opened her eyes, a pang of homesickness caused her to look for mountains and pine trees. The flat land that stretched as far westward as she could see seemed ugly in comparison.

Surely she had made a big mistake in coming to America. Not for her would there be the handsome husband and the white frame house she’d dreamed of. She clamped her lips together and limped toward the soddy that wore a crown of dried prairie grass. Now she understood why Ingeborg liked to work the fields. Anything to get
out of the dark, close cave they called home.

They had just sat down to dinner when Paws announced they had company. They heard a horse coming in at a dead run. Haakan leaped to his feet and got to the door as young Knute Baard bailed off the heaving horse.

“Mor says she wants Ingeborg to come quick, and Metiz, too, if she is still here.”

Ingeborg dashed outside. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s the baby. Mor’s in big trouble.” His lip quivered. “Please hurry.”

Haakan was already at the corral to catch one of the horses.

“You go get Penny while I get ready.” Ingeborg spun around back into the house and knelt in front of the trunk where she kept her medicinals. While her hands sorted through the packets, she spoke over her shoulder. “Thorliff, you’ll have to watch out for Andrew. Solveig, can you manage at Kaaren’s?”

“Ja, I can. You want Andrew should come there too?”

“That would be good. You’ll have to make supper. Thorliff can help if you need him.” She pulled the strings tight on her deerskin bag and got to her feet. Dropping a kiss on Andrew’s forehead, she reminded him to be a good boy and, snagging her coat and hat off the pegs, out the door she went, just in time for Haakan to boost her up on the mule.

“One of these days we have to buy a saddle,” he muttered as he smoothed the wool blanket he’d folded for a pad. “You be careful now. You fall off or something and who’ll be there to help Agnes?”

Ingeborg leaned over and kissed him quickly. “Mange takk.” She pulled the reins and Jack wheeled around, breaking into a lope before he’d taken three steps. Her sharp commands and the drumming of her heels in his ribs convinced him she meant business.

Ingeborg’s pleas for God’s help for her friend kept time with the pounding hooves of the mule.

The baby girl, born just before dawn, lay inert in Ingeborg’s hands. She handed the still form to Penny and shook her head. The baby had been dead for some time. She turned back to her patient. She had to keep Agnes in the land of the living, and with the flow of blood, she knew that might take a miracle of its own.

Palpitating the unconscious woman’s belly, she prayed for the
afterbirth to come quickly and the bleeding to stop. Agnes moaned but didn’t open her eyes.

“How will we tell her?” Penny whispered, tears streaming down her face.

“I have a feeling she already knows.” Ingeborg motioned for Penny to hand her some clean rags. “Make a tea out of the herbs mixed in the largest bag. Make it strong and put honey in it. Then start some beef to boiling, bones if you have them. We’ve got to get food in her, too, so she gets her strength back.” She shook her head as her hands kept on with the kneading motion. “Why didn’t she send for me earlier?”

“Because she’s stubborn, just like the rest of us.” Penny threw the words back over her shoulder as she left the soddy, silent but for her aunt’s stentorian breathing.

“Come on, Agnes, you must try. Wake up and talk to me.” But the thought came to Ingeborg that letting Agnes sleep and postponing the sad news might give her a chance to build some strength first.

They spooned the herbal tea into the woman’s mouth, watching to make sure she swallowed. After several spoonfuls, Agnes’s eyelids flickered.

“Is it over?” she asked, her voice a mere hint of its usual life.

“Ja.”

“And . . . and the baby?”

“Was a girl.”

“Was?”

“Ja.” Ingeborg took Agnes’s hand in one of her own, the other continuing with the kneading. At last check the bleeding seemed to be slowing.

“One more for the cemetery” Agnes kept her eyes closed. “Have you told Joseph yet?”

“No. Only Penny knows.”

“I’ve been afraid for a long time.” She shifted on the bed. “Something didn’t seem right.”

Silence again.

“Drink this.” Penny returned and held the cup to her aunt’s lips, slipping an arm beneath her shoulders to assist her.

A tear trickled from the edge of the sick woman’s eye and into her hair. “A girl. A sister for Rebecca to have as a playmate.” Another tear followed the first.

Ingeborg fought back the swell that gathered at the back of her
throat. Agnes loved babies. She took good care of her older children, but babies were so special to her. Called them “little angels.” Whenever someone gave birth, Agnes was the first on the scene with soup for the mother and a knitted bonnet or blanket for the infant. And if a baby was fussy, it quieted immediately once in Agnes’s arms. Agnes loved them, and they always sensed it.

The thoughts made Ingeborg’s eyes blur. “Do you want to see her?”

“Ja.”

Penny brought the swaddled little body to the bed and folded back the blanket. She laid the baby in Agnes’s arms and stepped back. Suddenly she whirled and fled outside.

Ingeborg continued with her massage, finally feeling the contractions beneath her palms.
Thank you, Father. Please continue with your grace, for this family needs their mother
. She thought of the little ones sleeping out at the barn with their father. Anji and Gus trying to care for Rebecca, and Joseph watching over them all. Had other babies died in those years between Swen and seven-year-old Anji? Did that make this any easier?

Why had they never talked about these things? Ingeborg looked down at her friend, one of those who’d tried to drag her out of the black pit after Roald died. Losing those you loved never got easier. Agnes had never seen this baby, only felt it grow inside, yet she had longed for the day she would hold the sweet newborn in her arms.

“She died some time ago.” Agnes had unwrapped the quilt and was stroking the tiny body, the curved cheek, the eyes that would never light with laughter.

“Ja.”

“Is Kaaren up to leading the service?”

“I think so. She will not refuse to do this for you, no matter what.”

“Joseph could, but he has such a hard time with the little ones.” Agnes folded the blanket back in place, covering first the feet, then one side and the other. She smoothed the soft flannel between each fold, adjusting the curve around the neck, tucking in the tiny fist. “I have a cap for her. It is on the top right side of the trunk.”

Ingeborg fetched the finely knit bonnet. Agnes fit it in place and tied the strings beneath the dimpled chin. “Do you mind if we name her Elizabeth?”

Ingeborg shook her head. “We would be honored.”

“We would have called her Beth.” Agnes let her eyes drift shut.

“You rest now.”

The woman on the bed nodded, a small motion that tipped loose the shiny drop hovering on her eyelashes.

The next afternoon they laid Elizabeth Baard in the square plot just east of the schoolhouse, next to the stakes that marked the foundation for the church. A rail fence surrounded the graves already dotting the mowed yard. For now, boards carved with the name and date marked those graves, with all hoping to one day set granite headstones. Too many of the graves were tiny.

Kaaren held her Bible in her hands, the wind ruffling both the pages and the clothes of those gathered. “ ‘Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.’ ” She turned the pages. “ ‘Nothing shall separate thee from the love of thy Father, neither life nor death . . .’ ” And again. “ ‘I will not leave thee nor forsake thee.’ ” The rich Norwegian words continued to roll over the assembled people, promises from the Father to the children. His children, no matter the age.

Joseph, his nephew Petar, and two older sons set the small wooden box down in the hole dug for it. With tears streaming down his lined cheeks, Joseph shoveled dirt on the box lid. The thud rang in the stillness.

“Let us sing.” Kaaren’s voice rose in the Doxology. The voices quavered, then climbed above and around the thudding dirt, gathering power as the people drew closer together, giving strength and promise for the days ahead.

Kaaren looked over to the two small graves next to one long one. She, like Agnes, would see her babies again one day. God had promised.