The Reaper's Song (17 page)

Ingeborg waved back and reminded Sophie to wave too. Since the twins weren’t ready to be weaned after Trygve was born, she had nursed them. Now, both of the girls treated her like a second mother. And while Grace had been the one needing it longer, Sophie seemed to have developed a special kinship with her aunt.

Setting Ellie and Andrew to playing with Sophie in the fenced plot in the shade of the house, Ingeborg pumped water into a basin and took it into the sickroom. Two long days now her husband had been like this. How else could she help him?

Haakan blinked and tried to smile, but the swelling made even that simple task an effort. “I hear you brought company?” The sound made her throat hurt in sympathy.

“Ja, and some good news also.” She took the telegram out of her apron pocket and read it to him.

Haakan groaned. “Some way to greet company.” He sighed. “What a mess.”

Ingeborg debated. Maybe some further good news would help cheer him. “How about some cool water here, and while I do that, I have something wonderful to tell you.” She dipped the cloths and, wringing them only partially, laid them across his body.

“So?”

“So you are going to be a father—again.”

“Ahh.” This time the smile almost looked like one. “That is good.”

“Good?” She planted her hands on her hips. “Is that all you can
say about something this important?” She chuckled and sank down on her knees beside the bed. Taking his hot hand in her own cool ones, she kissed his knuckles. “I think Metiz already figured it out. She gave me one of those looks of hers yesterday.” At his sort-of smile again, she continued. “You could be thinking of names while you lie here.”

“Wasting time?”

“I’d say getting better isn’t really a waste of time. I could prop the Bible on a pillow so you could read that. Maybe you’d find a good name in there.”

“We’ll name her after your mother.”

“You better think of a boy’s name this time around.” Ingeborg returned to cooling the cloths. “Let’s see, August, July, three months back, we should have another April baby.”

“Give Astrid a birthday present?”

Ingeborg smiled into his face. “Ja, and you too.”

“Did Thorliff bring a newspaper?”

She nodded. “Perhaps someone will read it to you later. You want the Bible?”

He shook his head. “My eyes don’t focus right.”

“Can you sleep?”

“Get me a few swallows of that rotgut and I will.”

After dosing him with willow-bark tea and a chaser of Anner’s homemade whiskey, she left him dozing just in time to hear Astrid stirring. She checked on the three playing in the shade. Andrew and Ellie were telling Sophie a story using sticks and bits of cotton to make people. After changing Astrid, Ingeborg settled into her rocker and put the baby to her breast. She could hear Goodie in the kitchen. A fly buzzed against the window, trying to bang its way back out. The rocker sang its own song, playing the bass line for the guzzling baby.

Ingeborg let her head rest against the chair back. She could be reading to Haakan while the baby nursed, but she was so tired her bones seemed to melt into the chair. How easily one forgot the harder things of bearing children, tired inside out, swollen feet, aching back. She looked down at the silken-haired infant in her arms.

“You’re worth every bit of it, you know.”

Astrid drew back her head and smiled up at her mother, a bit of mother’s milk dribbling from the side of her mouth. Then she sucked again in earnest, her blue eyes fast on her mother’s face.

“I pray to God you are always healthy like this,” Ingeborg whispered.
“And that our new baby will be just like you. Fat and sassy and the best baby ever.”

Astrid gurgled and waved her fist.

“Please, God.” A shadow drifted across the sunlight streaming in the window.

T
hat Anner! I swear he is going to break his neck looking the other way when he sees me.” Hjelmer shook his head. “You’d think I robbed him or something. He could have done the same as I did if he’d been paying attention.”

Penny looked up from her account books spread across the kitchen table. “He’s jealous, that’s all.”

“Short of giving him the Booth property, I don’t know what else to do.” Hjelmer stared out the window.

“He’d never take that.”

“I know. He says he’ll never take or buy anything from me again.”

“How do you know that?”

“Oh, someone told me.” Hjelmer glanced back over his shoulder. “You think he is hurting your store too?”

Penny tapped her front teeth with the end of her pen. “Not so’s I’d notice. Some come in spite of him. They don’t want to take sides, but they don’t want to go all the way to Grafton either. You watch, he’ll come around.”

“You know Mor and the others are coming in tomorrow. I wish we had room for them with us.” Hjelmer changed the subject.

“We can always add on.”

“You say that like adding on is easy as . . . as baking a pie.”

“Speaking of which . . .” Penny got to her feet and crossed to the stove. Taking up potholders, she opened the oven door and stood back a moment to let the rush of heat out.

“Umm, that smells like heaven itself.”

“I didn’t know heaven would smell like apple pie.” She removed the three pies and set them on the counter to cool. “Now, take the
blossoms on those red roses at Ingeborg’s—that’s what heaven will smell like.”

Hjelmer inhaled again. “You set those on the windowsill where the folks from the train can catch a whiff, and you’ll be baking pies twenty-four hours a day.”

Penny spun around, sending her skirts above her ankles. The sight brought an appreciative grin to her husband’s face. “Yes, pies would do it.”

“Do what?”

“Bring more people into my—our store.”

He waited for her to continue.

“If we had a sign out front, ‘fresh pies’ . . .” She shook her head. “No, that wouldn’t work. Everyone around here bakes their own pies.”

“The men on the train don’t. Like your bread, they buy a whole loaf at a time, you know?”

Penny nodded. “Well, we’ll be plenty busy soon as harvest starts.”

“They started cutting at Baards’. Haakan is laid up, you know.”

“What? No, I didn’t know. What happened to him?”

“Caught the mumps. All the kids had it.”

“So?”

“So when a grown man gets the mumps, the swelling travels to other parts of his body.”

Penny raised her eyebrows. “So?”

He stared at her without saying a word, only one eyebrow cocking in that way he had.

What is he talking about? So the swelling went to
. . . “Oh no.” “Ja, he can hardly move. Think I’ll go ask if they need some help. You could send someone out to get me if need be.”

She knew he meant if someone needed some blacksmithing done immediately. “You could take Ephraim with you.”

Hjelmer nodded. “He’s got enough wood split to size every wheel for a five-mile radius. I figure I can do that while they wait in line to empty their wagons there at the sack house. We’ll go on out in the morning, and I’ll be back in time for the train. Then I can take Mor out to Ingeborg’s. She’ll find plenty to do taking care of Haakan and Astrid.”

“Saturday we have the house-raising for Olaf and Goodie.”

“I know. He’s got enough sod cut for the lower walls, and we’ll frame the rest. Haakan said he’s donating the lumber.”

“Well, I have curtains sewn for two kitchen windows. And the quilt will be done in time for the wedding. You’d think they could have waited until after harvest to get married.”

“Like we could have waited longer?” There went that eyebrow again.

“We didn’t dare wait. You might have taken off again, and then where would we have been?”

“Pretty sad, at least on my side.” He sat down in his big stuffed chair. “Come here, wife, and I’ll show you why we didn’t wait.”

“Now, Hjelmer.”

He crooked his finger and patted his lap. “You scared?”

“Scared? Me?” Penny flounced to her feet and, crossing the room, plopped herself in his lap. “What if someone comes in?”

“Like who?”

“Oh, Cousin Ephraim.”

“He’s sound asleep over in the sack house. He believes wholeheartedly in working from dawn to dusk. Up with the roosters and to bed with the hens.”

“Hjelmer!” She thumped him on the shoulder at the leer on his face.

“Chicks, hens . . .” He nuzzled her neck with gently biting kisses. “I was scared, you know. Half out of my wits.”

“Why?” She turned and leaned her forehead against his.

“I kept hearing about some Donald fellow, and it sounded like you were pretty serious about him.”

“I was, until I realized I had to settle things with you first.” “So.” He kissed her, butterfly kisses on her nose and eyelids. “Are we settled?”

“More or less.” The warmth his kisses always brought was traveling from her middle out to her fingers and toes.

“More?” He settled his lips on hers.

“More what?” She whispered back after a time of silence.

“I love you more each day, Mrs. Bjorklund, and I can’t wait to introduce you to my mother. She still can’t believe someone actually got her youngest son to settle down.” He set her off his lap, rose, and took her hand. “I think it’s bedtime. This rooster is getting mighty droopy eyed. And he needs his hen.”

The two of them blew out the lamps and, giggling, made their way to the bedroom. Later, with Hjelmer snoring gently beside her, Penny lay still, watching the wind flutter the white curtains. She had heard so many things about Bridget, all of them good, but all of them
leaving her wondering if she’d measure up.
If I was carrying a babe by now, then
. . . She quickly shut off that line of thinking. She’d prayed for a baby, and as Ingeborg had reminded her, “The good Lord sends babies when He decides the time is right.”
But please, God, let your time be soon. I want a baby so I can have a real family of my own
. She thought of the brothers and sisters she’d never seen after they were split up among the relatives. Five children, with her the oldest. But at least Ephraim had given her news about those who were alive. How exciting to hear that she still had brothers and sisters. Were any of them wanting to find their family as she did?

The next afternoon the train whistled its arrival.

The wooden platform was buried under Bjorklunds. Hjelmer stood off to one side with Penny glued to his side. Her cousin was minding the store, but anyone who had come to town had come to the wood-planked stretch from the sack house to the tracks to see what the ruckus was about. Once their questions had been answered, they stayed. Happy occasions like this didn’t occur every day.

Kaaren and Ingeborg tried to keep track of their children and keep them clean long enough to greet this new and much heard about group of relatives. Andrew, bouncing back from his head injury with the speed of children, tried to keep Sophie in hand. Between him and Ellie, the giggling twin only fell down twice.

Andrew brushed her off and hissed, “Stand still.”

“Andoo, run.” Sophie tried to slip by him, but Ellie headed her off.

“Sophie!”

The little girl came to a skidding halt. She knew better than to keep going when her mother’s words wore
that
tone.

Grace clutched her mother’s skirts with both hands. Her eyes took up her entire face.

Trygve waved his arms and crowed as Andrew ran by.

“He wants down.” Ingeborg rocked Astrid on her hip, calming the child against all the noise.

Thorliff and Baptiste corralled all the young ones, threatening them with bodily harm if they didn’t stop the running around.

“Do you think she’ll recognize me?” Thorliff asked his mother.

Ingeborg nodded. “All she has to do is look for a young Roald-and-Carl
combination. You look more like them every day.”

“Both of them?”

“Well, parts of each.”

He smiled at her, nearly on eye level with her now. He’d spurted up these last months, and he wouldn’t be eleven until November. He swung Sophie up into his arms, much to her delight, and motioned Andrew to stand beside their mother.

Lars joined Kaaren and bent down, picking Grace up and settling her on his hip. The love shining in her eyes when she patted his cheeks and looked him straight on brought a catch to Ingeborg’s throat. It took so little to make that one happy. Gentle Grace was already living up to her name.