A Touch of Grace (8 page)

By the end of the driving session, Jonathan had mastered handling four lines instead of two, weaving the lines between his fingers so as to have control over four bits in four horses’ mouths. He backed the hay wagon, turned going forward and backward, and set the wagon bed right under the hay lift outside the barn wall. Andrew’s praise rang in his ears, the kind of accolades he’d wished to have heard from his father.

But there was no team driving at home, nor any other of the manual things he was showing such an aptitude for. He thought on this as he drifted off to sleep that night. If the choice were studying or working here with this family, he feared he would choose this sort of work quite joyfully. Whatever would his father and grandfather think of this? Would they be pleased he chose a path for himself or see it as a desertion from the family business?

Sunday gave him even more time to think. He attended church with the Bjorklunds as he had before. While he knew some of his church’s background, his family did not attend services often, only on specific community occasions, and they’d not told him he couldn’t attend church in Blessing. The hymns and the liturgy all were unfamiliar, but he had no trouble following along in the hymnbooks. The psalms he’d been taught by his grandmother on his mother’s side. Any spiritual heritage had come from the little he learned from her. He wondered if the Bjorklunds knew of his background, but he had no desire to share it unless someone asked him.

The words of the Scripture for the day were read in Norwegian. His mind leaped forward two rows to where Grace sat next to her father with Trygve on her other side. Would that he were sitting in her brother’s place.
Do I have a crush on her?
The thought jerked him upright in his seat.

Pastor Solberg caught his attention when he read the verses again in English. “Jesus was talking with the disciples when one of the leaders of the synagogue stood and asked him this question. ‘Master, which is the great commandment in the law?’ Jesus said unto him, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ Simple, isn’t it?” Solberg continued. “We’re asked to do only two things—to love our God and to love those around us.” He smiled out over his congregation. “So simple and so easy to say, but what about when someone disappoints you? When someone gets angry at you or you get angry at them? And the last line, ‘love thy neighbour as thyself,’ does that mean you have to love yourself? And how do you do that without seeming prideful, a nasty sin according to other Scriptures?”

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?

“W
E 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.”