Dakota Dawn (10 page)

Kaaren ran across the floor to the hay and slipped and slid until she perched on top of the mound. Then, she sat on the edge, legs straight in front, and, like sledding down a hill, slipped down the incline. She landed with a thump, giggling and calling, “See, Ma. Come, slide.” She turned and scrambled back up. This time, she lay back flat and slid down again.

“Well, this hardly makes up for the hills in Norway, but we’ll make our fun where we can,” Nora muttered to herself as she laughed and encouraged Kaaren. When Nora left Peder on the hay and slid down the hay pile, Kaaren laughed and raced back up.

Nora lay back on the hay and looked up at the dust motes dancing in the light streaming through the high window. On the other end of the barn was a square door. It took up most of the wall and was meant to be opened to bring in the new hay. What a wonderful place to have a dance. When she thought about it, she missed the dances at home. People laughing, whirling, and tapping to the music. One thing Norwegians knew how to do—dance and have a good time.

Kaaren plunked down beside her. When Nora did not get up, the little girl snuggled down and laid her head on Nora’s shoulder. “Hungry, Ma. Eat now?” She patted Nora’s cheek with her grubby hand.

“Ja, we’ll eat.” With Peder propped in her arms and Kaaren sitting cross-legged in perfect imitation of her, they devoured their dinner. Between bites, Nora sang the first line of the new song she had learned. “Jesus loves me, this I know” rose to the rafters and echoed back to form a heavenly chorus.

When Carl returned home that evening, he brought in the supplies. One little sack he handed to Kaaren.

She carefully opened the top of it and squealed. “Candy. Yummm.” She plopped down on the rug and stuck one piece in her mouth. Sucking on it took all her concentration.

Nora opened her package carefully, too. “So much?” She held up the light blue cotton material with small, dark blue flowers.

“You need a summer dress, too.”

“Thank you.” Nora held the fabric up to her cheek. “It’s beautiful.”

“You’re welcome.” He continued to move packages around until he pulled something out from behind the flour sack. He set the burlap packet on the table in front of Nora. “For you.” He spoke like he had a rough patch in his throat.

She stared at him, wondering what else there could be. Carefully, she folded back the edges of the burlap. Inside, the roots still planted in a clump of moist soil, was the start of a rosebush. Tiny red nubbins, ready to sprout into new growth, glowed on three dark green, thorny stems.

Tears filled her eyes and blurred the gift. “Thank you.” With the back of her hand, she dashed away the falling drops. When she raised her gaze to Carl’s, he dropped his.

The silence vibrated between them like a fine piano wire tapped by the hammer. Unheard, unseen—the music crept into their hearts.

Carl cleared his throat and the silence tinkled to the floor to lie in quivering fragments. “Uhhmm.” He started to say something but had to clear his throat again. “I’ll be putting the horses away . . . and milking . . . If you could have supper ready later?”

“Ja, I will.” Nora whispered, never taking her eyes off his face. While there was no smile, she realized the lines between his eyebrows had smoothed away.

The next day, while Nora dug a hole by the front porch and planted her rosebush, Carl readied the garden spot. Now the soil was loose and flat, clods breaking down as the team and harrow cut pass after pass across the land.

“You can plant now.” Carl reined the horses in and stepped off the harrow to stand in front of Nora. “The hoe is in the cellar.” He made hoeing motions with his hands and pointed to the cellar door slanted against the side of the house. “After dinner, I’ll begin plowing the fields.” He pointed off to the east. Stubble from the previous fall lay gray on the land. “Wheat first, then oats, and finally corn. Maybe potatoes, too.” He took off his broad-brimmed, black hat and the teasing breeze lifted his hair.

Nora stood transfixed. He glowed—burnished by the sun and the wind—his love for the land, part and parcel of his soul, shining from his eyes.

She looked out across the fallow land, flat as her eyes could see. A meadowlark soared and sang above them, its notes trilling down like bits of sunlight to be caught in her heart.

Later, serving the dinner, Nora laid one hand on his shoulder while she set a plate on the table in front of him. The need to touch him, to feel the strength of this man, welled up from that same place within her that hoarded the sunbeams. How right it felt.

“Thank you, Nora, for the good food.” Carl pushed back his chair. “See you tonight.”

Nora stared after him. Was God working His miracle?

Nora stacked the dishes in the sink and fed Peder. Then, taking a shawl, she settled him in it crosswise and, knotting two opposite corners together, formed a sling that she lifted over her head. She tied another shawl the opposite way and now the baby was clasped snugly against her chest.

With her hands free, she picked up the box of seeds. On the porch waited the hoe that Carl had brought up from the cellar. “Come Kaaren, we are going planting.”

The sun had passed the midafternoon mark when Nora looked up from her labors at the sound of the dog barking. She shaded her eyes, looking off to the west where the sound came from. Two men strode across the field.

“We have company,” she announced to Kaaren, who was busily digging a trench with a stick she had found. Nora watched them come closer. Dark hair, long, held back with a band. Dark faces, tattered shirts, leather leggings. One carried a rifle.

“Indians.” Nora clutched the baby to her. All she had ever read and heard of the thieving, murdering, American savages flooded her mind.

“God, help!” Nora leaned over and grasped Kaaren by the hand, jerking her to her feet. The Indians stopped at the edge of the garden. They stared at her.

She stared at them. Her heart pounded in her chest, loud enough she was sure that they could hear. “You must welcome strangers.” Her mother’s words could barely be heard over the bellows of her lungs.

Nora tried to swallow. Not even enough juice to spit, let alone swallow—or talk. What good would talk do anyway? What language did they speak? Certainly not Norwegian. She stepped forward like she had a board stuck to her spine. “Hello.”

Black eyes did not blink. The taller one surveyed her from the crown of her braids to her boot tips that peeked out from under her black skirt and back up again, slowly. When he muttered something, the shorter one shrugged.

Welcome strangers, welcome strangers. What do you do when strangers come, especially if they are the type that might take your hair and scalp with them when they leave?
She clamped her teeth against the bile that rose from her stomach, threatening to make her disgrace herself.
What do you do with company like this?

Offer them food, of course. “You, eat? Drink?” If that slight motion of the tall one’s head was agreement, Nora needed no second response.

“Come.” She clutched Kaaren’s hand and strode across the planted rows, girl in tow, head high. “Never show fear,” was her father’s advice for dealing with both strangers and animals. Nora fought to hang onto those words of wisdom.

“Sit.” She motioned to the porch steps and, without looking back to see if they obeyed, strode with Kaaren across the porch and through the door, letting the screen door slam behind her. She untied the sling contraption from around her shoulders and laid Peder in his cradle. Back in the kitchen, her hands shook so much she could scarcely pick up the knife. She sneaked glances at the door, sure that it would slam open at any moment and they would come to . . . She sliced bread and poured milk into cups. With bread, milk, leftover chicken that she had planned to have for supper, and cookies on the plates, she paused at the door.

The dark-skinned men sat on the stairs like she had ordered, leaning against the posts with their arms draped across their bent knees. One carved on a piece of wood with a knife that glinted in the sun. The gun rested against the outside of the porch, right near the owner’s leg.

Please, God . . .
Nora never finished the prayer as she pushed the door open and crossed the porch. “Here.” She handed each of them a plate, then dug into her apron pocket for forks. When she held the silver out, they ignored her and ate with their hands.

Nora eased her way backward and, fumbling with her hands behind her, opened the screen door and slipped inside. She stood watching them through the screen.

The taller man scraped his plate clean with the bread and raised his cup in her direction.

“M-more?” If she could just quit stuttering.

He nodded.

She brought the jug out and refilled both their cups.

When they drained the cups, they set them and the plates on the floor. Slowly, they stood. The tall man picked up his gun. The shorter one slid his knife back into its sheath.

Nora now knew what the rabbit felt like when facing a fox.

“Thank you, Carl’s new woman.” The tall man spoke in better English than she did. He nodded—once. Their long strides eating up the ground, the two Indians headed east.

Nora felt a gurgle of laughter churning in her middle and pleading to be let out. She stepped out onto the porch and bent to pick up the plates. As she stood again, she looked out across the land. The taller Indian raised a hand high in the air—and waved.

When she told Carl the story that night after dinner, she watched his face carefully. His lip twitched, his eyes crinkled. He had a dimple in his right cheek. When she repeated the Indian’s “Thank you, Carl’s new woman,” Carl bent over double. The laughter exploded from him like a shot from a cannon; the kitchen echoed with his chortles.

Kaaren giggled along and banged her spoon on the table.

Nora sat back and let the music of his mirth flow over, around, and through her. She was not sure which she was laughing at more—her story or his enjoyment of her story.

When he wiped his eyes with the heel of his hands, she said with a lift of her chin, “He say better English than me.”

Carl dug into his back pocket for a handkerchief, then he blew his nose and shook his head, laughter still quivering in his shoulders. “The tall one is called One Horse and his shorter brother is Night of the Fox. They’ve been walking through here ever since I bought the farm. Sometimes, I find a deer carcass as a gift. Sometimes, they sleep in my barn. You could say we’ve become friends the last few years.” The grin split his face again. “All Indian stories you’ve heard, that was long ago.”

“Next time I’ll know.”

The corners of his mouth remained tipped up all through the English lesson and while Nora tucked both Peder and Kaaren into bed. When Nora returned to the kitchen, she took her place in the rocker and picked up the pieces of blue-flowered material she had cut out for Kaaren’s dress. In between stitches, she sneaked peeks at the man caught in the circle of lamplight. His smile had faded but so had the lines from his nose to his mouth and those in his forehead.

“Thank You, Father,” she prayed that night on her knees. “He is so beautiful when he laughs.” She rested her chin on her clasped hands. “But, next time, maybe he could laugh with me instead of at me.” Her lips curved up at the thought. “But thanks, no matter what. I’m not choosy.”

Before she drifted off, the rest of a Bible verse her mother used to recite floated through her mind.
“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

Funny looking angels,
she thought.
And I was so scared.
She pictured the scene in the garden again. But, it was worth it.

Within a week, Nora had her garden planted. New growth on her rosebush jutted out several inches with more new leaves unfolding every day. When she looked toward the horizon, newborn grass sprouted, cloaking the unplowed land in green velvet.

“When you look across the prairie,” she wrote her sister Clara, “you can see clear into next month. While I miss the mountains and fjords, I can see the beauty in this part of God’s creation, also. It is not a forgotten land as I had first thought.”

When Carl drove into town one day, he took her letter and returned with another. This one was in answer to his advertisement for a housekeeper.

“Bah. She can’t speak English, either,” he growled after dropping the letter onto the table. He flicked the paper with his fingers. “Why did she even bother to write? I said specifically that the woman must speak English.”

When Nora brought out her papers for their lesson, he waved her away. “I’m too tired to concentrate on that tonight.” He heaved himself out of his chair. “Good night.”

Nora could hear his weariness in the measured tread with which he climbed the stairs.

Sitting under the lamplight, stitching away on Kaaren’s dress, Nora searched her heart. Was it joy she felt when he said the woman would not work out? Surely not. Her dream was to return to Norway, and she would not be able to do that until Carl found someone to take her place.

Each day Peder seemed to do something new. He not only smiled now, but laughed when Nora blew on his round tummy. He waved pudgy arms and, when he reached for an object, sometimes he got it. When Nora laid him on a quilt either on the floor pleading or outside on the grass, Kaaren would dangle a rubber jar ring or the bright red stuffed dog Nora had sewn for him. Hearing them laughing together always made Nora smile.

Carl ignored them.

“How can he?” Nora fumed one night after seeing him take a wide track around the two little ones on the floor. Kaaren was on her tummy, legs waving in the air while she and Peder laughed and chattered, her mimicking Peder’s cooing.

One evening, Nora sat rocking and feeding Peder his bottle when she heard a thump, bump . . . silence . . . and then a scream to strike fear in any mother’s heart.

Carl leaped to his feet, picked the screaming Kaaren up off the floor at the foot of the stairs, and tried to comfort her.

“No!” She arched her back and screamed louder. “Ma-a-a! I want my ma!”

Nora could see blood streaming from a wound above Kaaren’s right eye. She stood, handed Peder along with his bottle to Carl, and took the little girl over to the sink. With a cold cloth pressed to the site to stop the bleeding, Nora murmured words of comfort. She turned to see Carl, wooden-faced, holding the baby stiffly in his arms.

Peder began to whimper, wanting the remainder of his supper. Without looking at his son, Carl walked into the bedroom, laid the bundle on the bed as if it were no more than a package from the store, and stalked out the door.

Nora struggled between vexation and pity. She wrapped a bandage over the tiny cut above Kaaren’s eye. Then she retrieved Peder and resumed feeding him, still petting and comforting Kaaren.

Vexation swelled into fury.
That man! That insufferable, hard-headed, coldhearted—
she ran out of words harsh enough to describe him.
Who does he think he is anyway? Other people in this world lose their loved ones and they still love those left. How could he not love such a darling baby as Peder?

“I will not pray for him tonight.” She knelt by the bed, hoping to hear Carl’s footsteps returning but was almost glad when they did not. “God, You don’t
really
want me to pray for him, do You?” She listened to the silence. Outside somewhere, an owl hooted in its nightly hunting forays. The breeze fluffed the lace curtains at the open window.

She started to climb into bed. “Oh, fiddle.” She knelt back down and scrunched her eyes closed, her teeth snapping together between words. “Please bless Carl and help him get through this time of sorrow. Make him love his sweet little son and . . .” She stopped to think. Nothing more came. “Amen.”

She climbed back into bed and pulled up the covers. “So there.” The silence crept back into the room. Was that God chuckling on the breeze? Nora turned over to sleep, a smile curving her lips.

With May, the beans leaped from the ground. Carrot feathers waved in their rows and the potatoes pushed up corrugated leaves to find the sun.

Nora leaned on her hoe, pride in her handiwork evident in the smile on her face. She pushed back the straw hat she had found in the cellar and wiped the sweat from her forehead. What her garden needed now was a slow-falling, soaking rain. She eyed the gray clouds mounding in the west. A lightning fork stabbed the sky.

“At least a storm can’t catch you by surprise here,” she said with a shrug. “And here I am talking to myself again. Better start giving myself orders, too. So get over there and take the wash off the line. It’s been wet once today. It doesn’t need to be wet again.” She suited actions to her words and paused only long enough to watch rain fall in gray veils across the land. She dashed to the house with a full basket just as the first drops pelted the dust.

Carl galloped the team up to the barn, the harrow left in the fields. Nora stood on the porch. “What happened to him?” Brownie whined at her feet.

“Are you all right?” she yelled above the rising wind.

At his wave, she turned back into the house. Expecting him to come up for coffee, she stoked the embers and added coal to the fire. Maybe she should start an early supper. Even though the clock said four, the sky said dusk.

She crossed to the open door and through the screen door watched huge, fat raindrops pound the earth. She shook her head. “Doesn’t this country ever do anything gently?”

“Ma?” Kaaren meandered out of the bedroom, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She leaned against Nora’s skirt until Nora picked her up and set the little girl on her hip.

Lightning forked beyond the barn and in a few moments thunder crashed. Nora stood in awe at the heavenly display. She heard the rain gurgle in the downspouts and into the cistern under the house. Lightning lit the sky again.

“Pretty.” Kaaren leaned her head against Nora’s shoulder. When the thunder boomed, she flinched, then giggled. Nora could already hear that the storm was moving to the east of them. Now, the rain fell in billowing skirts, gentle and kind. The cool breeze felt good.

She left the doorway and finished grinding the dark beans for coffee. By the time Carl stepped onto the porch, the aroma of coffee brewing floated out to meet him.

“Smells wonderful.” He sniffed appreciatively and hung his hat on the rack.

“Pretty lights.” Kaaren pointed out the window. “Big boom.”

Carl tousled her hair with one hand before picking her up. “Did you like it?”

She nodded, her blue eyes grave. “Hungry, Pa?” At his nod, she smiled. “Me, too.”

“Sit down. I have cookies. Supper will be soon.”

This time, when Nora rested her hand on Carl’s shoulder, she felt a tremor go up her arm—he had leaned into her gentle pressure. She finished pouring the coffee and took her own chair. When Carl smiled at her it was as if the skies had parted and the sun beamed down to melt the frost that had stilled the heart.

“Thank you,” was all he said but, with the smile, it was enough.

Nora rejoiced in the moments Carl spent with Kaaren. Though few and far between since he was in the fields at dawn and did not return to milk the cows until dark, the little one now met him at the door with a welcome grin. Even though he was so tired he would fall asleep at the table, he took time to listen to Kaaren’s chatter and admire her new dress.

Of Peder, he never questioned or mentioned.

One afternoon, Nora moved the rocker and cradle out to the porch so she could sew and enjoy the sun at the same time. For a time, Kaaren played quietly at her feet but soon demanded a song and a story. Nora stuck her needle into the material of the bodice for her new dress and set it in the basket at her feet.

“Here we go.” After hoisting Kaaren up onto her lap, Nora picked up the Bible written in English that she had in the same basket and turned to the Gospel of Matthew. Slowly, she read the story of Jesus and the children. Softly, she began singing, “Jesus loves me, this I know.” Kaaren joined in and together they finished the chorus.