A New Day Rising (14 page)

She nodded her head. "I see. You look a mite young to be so skilled." Just then someone called her name and beckoned to her from behind one of the pillars that reached clear to the arch of the domed ceiling. "You wait over there, out of the way of the traffic, and I will be back with you soon." She darted away before he had a chance to answer.

Hjelmer did as she told him, his rolled wet clothes under one arm and his new quilt and blanket under the other. A bench ran along one wall, and as soon as an old woman vacated her seat, he took it and leaned against the wall. The rise and fall of voices seemed to circle the cavernous building and bounce down to pound upon his ears.

The family next to him were stuffing themselves with sausages and bread, making his stomach rumble in response. The child drank from a mug, the white mustache betraying his drink.

Hjelmer thought of the cows at home, remembering the rich taste of milk still warm from the cow. The cheeses his mother made, fresh bread, lefse, sild, and even the hard biscuits his sister had packed marched like a vision through his head. He didn't dare add up the hours since he'd had any food, let alone known a full stomach.

He took his bundles and went in search of a drink of water. Surely they didn't charge for water, although according to what he saw, they charged for everything else. After a long drink that did nothing to stop the rumbles in his belly, he returned to the bench to wait.

"Now then, Mr. Bjorklund, are you ready to go?" The woman stopped in front of him, a shawl covering her dark dress and the apron folded over her arm.

"Yes, ma'am." Hjelmer stood and adjusted his bundles.

"My name is Mrs. Holtenslander, and we have about a mile to walk to the ferry to Brooklyn where I live."

A mile on flat land like this New York City seemed like nothing to the young man used to the hills and mountains of Nordland. He found himself gawking at the brick buildings, some three, even five stories tall. He was dumbfounded by the crush of people speaking in a myriad of strident tongues and the manner of drayage on the streets: horse cabs, phaetons, heavy wagons carrying wood, stone, or beer, lighter wagons with a wooden cover that had pictures of milk cans painted on the sides, fancy carriages pulled by matched teams, and carts hitched to lame nags. Never had he seen and heard sich chaos. A steam train thundered by on tracks over his head, making his ears ring and his legs shake.

After it passed, he looked down at his companion to see her smiling. "That's the El or elevated train. Built some years ago, it's one of the wonders of New York. It provides more room on the streets for other kinds of transportation."

"Oh." Hjelmer spun around to see what caused the clanging that had other folks crossing the streets and heading for the sidewalks.

"Fire engine," Mrs. Holtenslander yelled at him over the clamor.

Around the corner raced six white horses, two abreast with ears flat against their heads. The driver slapped the reins as they straightened out, the wagon behind them a tanker painted red with yellowand-brass trim. Uniformed men hung on the sides of the wagon.

The thunder of the horse hooves and screaming wheels made him long to follow. The way they drove that wagon, they surely needed a blacksmith every day.

As the ferry chugged across the East River to Long Island, he couldn't take his eyes off the city lit up behind them. Up river, huge sand-block towers rose against the night sky, a promise of the Brooklyn Bridge to come. Once on land again, they walked a few more blocks, past small businesses and stores now closed for the night.

Lamplighters, making their way from post to post, lighted their way through the dusk. When Mrs. Holtenslander stopped in front of a narrow two-story house made of brown cut stone, Hjelmer looked from the carved front door at the top of the short flight of stairs to his hostess.

"You live here?"

Hjelmer stared up and down the tree-lined street that ran between similar houses, their walls butted against each other so as not to waste an inch. The noise of the streets they had walked seemed like in another land. A woman pushed a baby buggy and nodded as she passed. A man in a bowler hat, his black overcoat over his arm, did the same.

Windows glowed, welcoming the homeward bound.

Mrs. Holtenslander climbed the four steps to her door, inserted her key, pushed it open, and stood there waiting for Hjelmer. "Please, come in."

Never in his life had he been so conscious of his dirty and still wet boots, the pant legs that didn't quite reach his boot tops, and the smell that had seeped into his skin while on the ship and from his swim in the litter-strewn harbor. His mor would be horrified if she saw him. His ears burned like he'd been standing too close to the forge.

"I ... I cannot." He shook his head. "Surely you have a barn or a shed where I could sleep. I do not need a bed. I-I'm ..." He stuttered to a stop.

"Mr. Bjorklund, I would be most pleased to offer you a room in my home until you find some employment and another place to stay. Surely you would do the same for a young person of your own nationality who was in a difficult situation through no fault of his own. If you hadn't been more concerned for that child's life than your belongings or even your own life, you would be on the train for your new home. And that little boy would be dead, his parents grieving their loss, would they not?"

Hjelmer nodded. "But I never thought-I ... I mean, your house is so grand, and I am so dirty."

"We have a bathtub, young man, and tomorrow, Fulla, the maid, will wash your clothes good as new. In the meantime, I know my cook has supper ready, and if you are not hungry, which I am sure you are, I am." She waved to the inviting hallway. "Please, come in."

Hat in his hands, Hjelmer mounted the stairs and stepped into a whole new world.

On her travois, two poles with willow branches woven between them to carry the results of her hunt, Ingeborg had piled six geese and the gutted carcass of one deer with the horns still in place because she needed new spoons. Deer antlers could be formed into spoons, combs, and all manner of things needed around the house. The brains, mixed with lye from the ashes, would be used in tanning the hide. So Metiz, the old half-breed woman who'd lived and begun to farm the land before the Bjorklunds filed on it, had taught her. Like the Indians, Ingeborg wasted nothing.

Paws yipped and danced around her, meeting her out on the trail and announcing to all that she had come home. Thorliff came running from the barn, a grin lighting his face.

"Mor, I never even heard the shots." He counted the geese and jogged up to add his weight to pulling by taking one of the travois poles.

"I missed one deer and wasted a shell," Ingeborg grumbled good- naturedly. "How did the sheep do?"

"They stayed right with me. Paws is the best sheep dog. You should have seen him when the ram thought he'd stay out to graze. Paws nipped his hocks and of Charlie came charging after us. Sheep is still the leader. She stays right with me."

Ingeborg stopped dragging her pole to tousle his hair and knocked his cap askew in the process. "You didn't let them graze too long in one place?"

He looked up at her with wounded eyes. "M-o-r."

"Sorry. I know you know better than to let them dig up the roots, but I have to check sometimes. That's what mothers are for."

"1 thought they were for cooking. I'm really hungry."

"Me, too. That's why Tante Kaaren said to come eat supper at her house tonight."

"Good!" He slanted a grin up at her. "You think she had time to bake cookies with Andrew there?"

They stopped the travois by the barn. She could hear Haakan's voice inside, calming the cow as he stripped milk from her udder.

"Mr. Bjorklund is almost finished with the milking. Wait till you see all the wood they cut. Onkel Lars says Mr. Bjorklund is a terror with that ax of his."

Ingeborg stopped and smiled at her son. He hadn't talked this much all last winter. Was he making up for lost time after the long winter that was so hard on all of them that no one talked much? She knew she hadn't. Guilt stabbed her anew. What trials she had put her family through in those months she raged against God for taking Roald and Carl and the two small girls. But now she lived anew in the light of His forgiveness. She sighed and looked up to see the evening star shining above the horizon as a reminder that God's love and forgiveness comes fresh each day and never changes.

Thank you, Father, thank you. Her prayers flowed freely once more as did the joy she passed on to Thorliff with a hug that made him wrap his arms around her waist.

"Let's get this deer and the geese hung. I'll skin and pluck them later." Together they dragged the deer inside the open barn door and attached the pulley to the stick she'd thrust through the tendons on the deer's back legs. With a couple of quick pulls on the rope, the deer hung head down from the rafter. Thorliff knotted the end of the rope around a peg in the post, went back outside, and returned dragging two gray geese.

Haakan stood from the stool beside the cow's flank, and picking up the milk bucket, he set it out of the way on top of the grain bin. He hung the stool on its peg on the wall and turned as Ingeborg brought in the last of the geese and strung them up beside the others from the line of pegs on another rafter.

"Six geese and a deer?"

"Ja, I missed the other. I didn't see any elk." Ingeborg turned to face him.

"Where did you learn to shoot like that?"

"My brother taught me when I was young, and I practiced since we came here." She wiped her hands on a twist of hay and dusted them together. "While we haven't had a variety of food sometimes, we have always had meat." She pulled some strips of bark from her pockets. "And medicinals. This willow bark, when steeped, is good for headache. I have dandelion greens on the travois. I know Kaaren will be glad for those. They are good for renewing the body in spring, just like their cheery yellow blossoms bring delight to the eye."

She looked up from the bark in her hands to meet his eyes. "The land is good to those who know how to find its treasures."

"Mrs. Bjorklund, you are an amazing woman." He leaned back against the edge of the grain bin and crossed his arms over his chest.

For one insane moment, Ingeborg wished she were wearing a skirt and shirtwaist with a clean apron and had her hair combed, instead of wearing blood-stained britches, a shirt torn at the shoulder where a tree limb had snagged her, and her much-abused straw hat that failed at keeping twigs from sticking in her hair or the sun from dusting freckles across her nose. The faint stinging on her cheekbones made her aware the sun had done its work there, too.

What must he think?

She raised her gaze again, along with her chin. "M-thank you. We will have supper with Kaaren and Lars tonight." She reached for one of the geese. "I'll take three of these over there. I nearly forgot."

"Let me do that." He swung three of them down and knotted a piece of twine around their feet. "How did you bring all this bounty back with you?"

"Mor made a travois, like Metiz taught her. You can carry a lot that way, more than one person could do alone." Thorliff walked backward out the door. "Come see."

As Thorliff described the value of the simple travois, Ingeborg went on to the house to wash the residue of the hunt from her hands. She'd just as soon have stayed and skinned out the deer, but Kaaren would have supper waiting, and she needed to retrieve An drew. After the boys were in bed, she would go back out to the barn. While the light wasn't good, she knew she could skin a deer or pluck a goose in her sleep by now.

After a quick wash, she changed back into her woman's garb, as she sometimes called the black ankle-length wool skirt and white waister, then she lifted her shawl down from its peg by the door and headed back outside.

"I strained the milk and set it to cool in the pans in the cellar." Haakan said as he swung the string of geese over his shoulder.

"Thank you."

"All the animals are fed and watered. I put six eggs in the basket in the cellar." Thorliff joined her on her other side. "Four of the hens are broody. You think we should let that black one set? She didn't do so well last year."

"If she hadn't laid all winter, she'd have been in the stewpot long ago." Ingeborg clasped the corners of her shawl around her bosom. With the setting of the sun, a real bite had come on the night air.

"She pecked me again." Thorliff rubbed his hand.

"That makes five broody hens then. I think that is enough for now. You let her have eight eggs, and this is her last chance. Some nice young frying chickens will taste mighty good."

When they entered the other soddy, Andrew banged his spoon on the table and crowed with delight. Ingeborg took him up in her arms and snuggled him close, kissing him on the neck to make him giggle.

"Thank you for caring for him," she said to Kaaren and pointed to the geese Haakan laid by the door. "1 brought you something. There are three more at our barn, so the down should go a long way to replenish our store."

"Thank you. Roast goose, tomorrow, with stuffing and the last of the rutabagas."