A Touch of Grace (22 page)

“Maybe, but I might not have known what I was looking at.”

“When you come to New York, I’ll make sure you get to try all kinds of new things… .”He paused.

She could feel him staring at her. But she couldn’t nod and smile like she could tell he wanted her to. Instead she shook her head. “Whatever makes you think that I will come to New York City?” She shook her head again, smaller movements but nonetheless emphatic. “I have no desire to leave Blessing at all, let alone travel all across the country to a huge city that I can’t even begin to imagine the size of. Sophie is the one who wants to travel, not me. Not me at all.”

Jonathan stiffened slightly. “My father and I are hoping your entire family, you and the Bjorklunds, will come visit us to allow us to repay the hospitality all of you have shown me. There is an incredible school for the deaf that I think you would be interested in.” He got off the railing and dumped his broken pieces into her basket. “It is one of the leading schools in the world for deaf people and it trains people who work with the deaf. I thought perhaps you would like to learn new things to use in the school here.”

Grace tried to soften her reaction. He was just being considerate, and she was being rude. “I think Mor has corresponded with someone there. You’ll have to ask her.” She tumbled the ends of the beans into a bucket to feed to the chickens. “How do you happen to know about such a school?”

“I wrote and asked my father what he could find out.”

“How kind of you.” She knew she was being more formal than she’d been with him before, but the thought of a trip like that and visiting a house like he’d described made her shudder. Nothing about it appealed to her—or did it? What if she could indeed learn something to help the students here? Would it help or hurt her family financially with the school? “I’d like to learn new things to help Mor, but I don’t think I’d like to go there.” She stood. “But I think you are very kind to offer.”

Grace took her basket of snapped beans into the house and rinsed them with water from the bucket kept clean by a dish towel that covered it. The water ran into another bucket set under the drain in the dry sink. Perhaps this year the men would have time to run a pipe from the well like they had at the well house, and they could have running water in the kitchen. Especially since they’d have no stock probably for a long time to come. Running water had been one of her mother’s dreams for years. Just like making the school even better was one of her dreams. If that school could help here, why was she being so pigheaded about looking into it? Grace stared out the kitchen window to see Jonathan walking down to the machine shed, where her pa was going over the steam engine to get it ready for harvest. While the wheat was nearing harvest time, there were still greenish patches among the gold. She’d read somewhere that the wind blowing the wheat looked like a golden sea. What would it be like to see the Atlantic Ocean? What would it smell like? she wondered.

They officially announced the late-afternoon party after church, but most people already knew about it and were planning on coming. Grace looked around the people gathered outside, but Toby was nowhere to be seen. Did he not even come to church anymore? Maybe that’s when he went to Grafton.

Talk of the slaughter was avoided by discussing the wheat harvest in the men’s circles, and gardens and canning dominated the women’s conversations. Grace joined the gaggle of girls, staying toward the outside. Ellie joined the women, and Sophie returned immediately to the boardinghouse. Grace looked for Astrid, but she was missing too.

Rebecca Baard wore a long face, and Grace watched her talk.

“I was almost ready to open my ice cream parlor, but you can’t make ice cream without milk or cream. I don’t know when it can happen now.”

“It looks really pretty inside,” one of the other girls commiserated.

“The book I read said the ice cream parlor is an ideal place for young people to meet.”

We meet all the time. Why do we need something like that?
Grace took the thought out and looked at it again. That really wasn’t a very nice comment, so she was grateful she’d not said it. Blurting out something before thinking was more Sophie’s trait than hers, but even Sophie had changed a lot. Between the children and the boarding house, she was so busy, she rarely had time to talk. Besides, Grace had tired of hearing how wonderful Garth was.

A tap on her shoulder caught her attention. Jonathan smiled at her.

“May I walk you home?”

“We can take the wagon with everyone else.”

“I know, but I thought a walk might be nice.”

Grace thought a moment. “But we need to get ready for the party.”
We don’t have cooks and maids to do the work for us
. She was glad she hadn’t said that too. What was the matter with her today? Much as she looked forward to the party, she was really in a crabby mood.

“I see. Maybe next Sunday, then.” He bowed slightly, reverting to his more formal demeanor, and turned away.

She watched him go. The sun caught the dark curls that tumbled over his forehead, and his face held a darker tan than the rest of the men’s. Had his shoulders broadened this summer too? It looked as if his shirt was tighter. He walked with an easy grace and joined the group of young men who’d gathered under one of the other trees. Where earlier he’d stood back, now he was a welcomed member. Trygve clapped him on the shoulder and said something that made them all laugh. She didn’t mean to hurt his feelings, but she couldn’t let him get the wrong idea about her either. But he was leaving soon. Surely she could be a friend. It seemed like every thought she had lately had to have an argument to go with it.

Grace gratefully climbed into the bed of the wagon when her pa motioned it was time to go. Maybe planning a party for this afternoon wasn’t such a good idea after all. Curling up on the porch swing with a book to read sounded much more appealing. Now that she thought of it, walking home with Jonathan might have been a pleasure. He at least made her laugh. Sometimes. Except when he looked at her like Garth looked at Sophie.

Even without ice cream, all those who came to the party at the Knutsons’ had a good time. The raspberry swizzle tasted just right. It was like there was a silent rule that no mention be made of the disaster they were still reeling from, and everyone played ball, teasing the other team as well as the spectators. When they started the bonfire, the mosquitoes left and food arrived. Haakan brought the last of the smoked sausages from the well house, and they stuck them on the end of sticks to brown in the flames. The noodle salad disappeared as quickly as the hot dogs, and the pans of chocolate cake followed suit.

Grace sat on a log next to Astrid, and Jonathan placed himself on her other side.

“So how is this party compared to yours on the beach?” Grace asked, trying to make up for her rudeness earlier.

“What do you mean?” Astrid leaned forward. “I’m missing something here.”

Jonathan began telling about house parties on Long Island, and soon everyone was grouped around, listening.

“Don’t you ever have chores to do?” someone asked.

Jonathan paused and shook his head.

“Who does them?”

“The help.”

Astrid patted his arm. “You poor thing. No wonder you didn’t know how to work a shovel when you came.”

Everyone burst out laughing, including Jonathan.

Trygve clapped him on the shoulder, nearly knocking him off the log. “You have learned a lot, Cityboy. I wonder if your family will even recognize you.”

“Well, I haven’t changed that much. On the outside at least.”

“Shame you still can’t catch fish, though,” Samuel said, making everyone laugh again.

“Looks like this is tease Jonathan night,” Haakan said from across the fire. “But I have to say that I am right proud of the way you pitched in and never complained.”

“On the outside, that is.” Jonathan held up his hands. “Those first days my hands were shredded and my arms screamed all night long, not that I could stay awake to hear them.”

“You aren’t who we thought you would be.” Astrid poked her stick into the coals. “Funny how things work out.”

“Speaking of work …” Haakan groaned as he got to his feet. “We’ll be helping the Baards with haying, so morning will come early.”

“Thank you all for coming,” Kaaren said from beside Lars. “We’ll just take the pans and dishes into the house and wash them in the morning.” Everyone picked up something to carry back to the house, and the boys took shovels and threw dirt on the fire, then tipped pails of water over it.

Grace walked beside Astrid, aware the others were talking but not making an effort to take part. Communicating in the dark was near to impossible, other than the secret codes she and Sophie had devised using arm tapping. Sophie and Garth hadn’t come tonight. Come to think of it, the only time she saw Sophie was when she went into town and visited her. Somehow there seemed a vast gulf between being one of the young people and having a husband, four children, and a boardinghouse. But Andrew and Ellie came and Thorliff and Elizabeth. The little children were sound asleep in the house and would be carried home most likely without waking up.

She chewed on her bottom lip. If Toby had come, the evening would have been perfect. He would have realized he was making a mistake with the girl in Grafton and Grace was the one he really cared about. Grace paused. Maybe that was really true. He had no idea about her true feelings because she’d never told him. Maybe she should talk with him. If only she had someone she could ask for advice. She knew what her mor and far would say. Tante Ingeborg? Or would Tante tell her mother? Dr. Elizabeth? Grace wasn’t sick unless you considered an aching heart an illness.

W
HILE
J
ONATHAN HAD THOUGHT
haying hard work, shocking the bundles of wheat was another exercise in endurance.

He, Samuel, and Trygve walked behind the binder, grabbed two bundles of wheat, leaned them against each other, then stood another three to five against the shock and moved on up the field. Trygve made it look easy, but getting the rhythm took some doing, and having to go back to stand up a collapsed shock made him more careful. To put it mildly, wheat was a dusty and prickly business. His neck, under his shirt, itched like fire.

The girls bringing out water jugs were a most welcome break both morning and afternoon. He had the feeling that Grace was avoiding him by not making eye contact. He wished he had introduced the possibility of coming to New York in a more gentle manner. The look on her face had reminded him of their dog’s yowl when Mary Anne, as a toddler trying to walk, stepped on his tail.

At the end of the day, Jonathan collapsed on the ground, almost too tired to clean up and eat supper. Even worse than being hot and dirty, the bits of wheat spears that dug into the skin, especially under his shirt collar and pants waist, itched worse than a hundred mosquito bites. When Mrs. Bjorklund passed around a salve she’d made, he smeared it on immediately.

“You should market this,” he said as the fire in his neck died out.

“Metiz taught me how to make it. Have you heard of her?”

“The Indian woman with the wolf?”

“Yes. She taught us all so many things about living on the prairie. We might not have made it through that first winter without her. People rail about the Indians, but she was a true friend. I miss her still.” Ingeborg stared out the window. “She knew all about the herbs around here, which things are medicinal and which are good to eat. I keep a box of simples of my own now, and Dr. Elizabeth has been writing down all my receipts for the uses and mixtures.”

As the family sat down to supper, Jonathan couldn’t help but relive the shock he’d had that afternoon when he’d grabbed a shock and felt something moving in it. When the rattlesnake stuck his flat head out between the stalks of wheat, Jonathan dropped the shock with a yelp and leaped about five feet in the air and straight back.

“What’s the matter?” Trygve dropped his bundles and came running. Together they watched the snake slither away.

Jonathan laid his hand over his heart, hoping to keep the thundering organ in his chest.

“Yep, prairie rattler all right. Sometimes they get tossed up on the wagonloads of hay too. They like the cool of the shade.” He turned to grin at Jonathan. “Good thing they can’t strike without coiling. Saves us from plenty of bites that way.”

“That was too close for comfort.”

“As pa says, a miss is as good as a mile.”

But it wasn’t your arm that felt that critter moving
. “Shouldn’t we kill it?”

“Why? Did no harm, and they eat plenty of mice and field rats that do harm when they get in the granary and corncrib.”

“I see.” One more bit of information he filed away for future use. That, along with a vow to be more careful. “You could have warned me.”

Trygve half shrugged and dropped his gaze. “Sorry. I forget you don’t know all this stuff.”

Jonathan decided to take that as a compliment and looked up to see how far ahead of them the binder had gotten. “We better get back to it before we can’t catch up.”