A Touch of Grace (7 page)

“Sorry.”

“Are you all right now?”

“Ja. I just needed space.”

“You and my mor. Is there something wrong?”

Grace hesitated. Would Astrid understand? Maybe, but she also had no use for romantic notions right now, and Toby was not a favorite after what happened with Andrew. “No, just the heat, I think.”

Astrid quirked a brow at her. “Okay. I’ll start the pie dough. You go to the cellar for the canned apples. We’ll get these pies made and then go help Samuel.”

“What are we making for supper?”

“There’s enough stew left over. We’ll put biscuits on top and bake it. The pies will make it seem better. I wish someone would go fishing. Maybe a fish fry for Sunday supper.”

Maybe Toby would come. Should I invite him? If only I had someone
to talk to about whether I should go find him and talk to him or keep
waiting for him to come to me
. She’d had that wish more than once. Sophie would be the obvious choice, but she had enough on her mind at the present.
Why do I care about him?
Two misfits was the way she’d seen them through the years. Besides, he’d needed someone to care when he and Andrew got into it. Toby had teased the other children, but he’d never teased her. Instead, she’d found him backing her up more than once, never saying anything but being right there when someone hurt her feelings. He cared for her; she cared for him. Had he outgrown that and left her behind? How would she know if this was really love or just the silly dreams of a young girl, especially if she couldn’t even talk to him?

J
ONATHAN FINISHED ADDRESSING
the envelope and yawned. He could hardly keep his eyes open, but he knew his parents would be anxious to hear from him, so he shook his head and smoothed the blank piece of paper.

Dear Mother and Father,

I had meant to write to you before now, but there has simply been no time. Work starts before sunrise, and by the time we’ve eaten supper, I only want to collapse on my bed. Tonight I am putting that off long enough to write. They say telephones are coming here soon, but I am sure I will be back in New York before that happens. I have learned to milk cows, feed calves and pigs, repair harnesses, spade a garden, hoe potatoes—did you know that you have to mound the dirt up around the plants to make sure the spuds, as they call them, are not sunburned? I will never take vegetables for granted again. Buying them at the market is easy; growing them is not.

I can harness and unharness a team as quickly as anyone, and tomorrow I am to learn to drive four up. We are preparing for haying. It is a good thing my hands are callused now, so I shouldn’t get blisters again when we fork hay up onto the wagon. Trygve says haying will be easier and faster this year due to a new piece of machinery called a loader.

Sophie’s baby twins, a boy and a girl, are doing well but seem to have a touch of colic and are keeping the family busy. The big news is that Penny and Hjelmer Bjorklund are moving to Bismarck, and people are wondering if the Blessing General Store will go up for sale. This is making everyone sad. Such intimate knowledge of one’s neighbors’ lives is so foreign to me. People in Blessing really care about one another—even those like Mrs. Valders, who manages to offend everyone on a regular basis. She wants to run their lives, as both busybody and bossy.

There are new houses going up, and the men are hurrying to get the flour mill back in business before harvest starts. That brings up something else. I had no idea there was such animosity between the farmers and the railroad. It looks to me like our railroads are gouging the very people they were designed to serve.

Well, my eyes are shutting, so I will close now. Oh, Grace is going to teach me to sign, and everyone is teaching me Norwegian.

I have learned of muscles I didn’t know I had.

Your affectionate son,

Jonathan Gould

He slid the folded paper into the envelope and dropped a bit of wax on it to seal. Perhaps someone going to town would mail it for him. He groaned as he rolled into bed. He’d promised to write every week, and it was now past one week. So much for living up to his word, one of the lessons he knew his father had hoped he would learn.

Locking his hands behind his head, he stared up at the ceiling. While he attempted to think on his family in New York, Grace took over his thoughts, as she so often did lately, which kept surprising him. What pluck she had not only to learn sign language but to learn to speak like she did. Granted, sometimes he had to listen very carefully to understand what she said. But still, what would he have done had he been born with such a difficulty? How aptly they had named her. Her hands so nimbly fashioning the signs were a song in motion. When she walked, she glided; no finishing school could have taught her with more expertise. And her smile was enough to melt the hardest of hearts. He found himself thinking up things to say just to see it. What fresh air she was compared to the silliness of so many of the girls he met at social parties back home in New York.

Sometime in the night he awoke with shoulders aching from his hands locked behind his head.

No longer did he wait for a second call. His feet hit the floor before Astrid could finish saying his name. They were used to his pouring cream and sugar in the coffee that he gulped down before heading out the door. Still the last one out, he paused and inhaled the morning: the cool air, the lilac- and rose-scented dew, and the birdsong that made him want to whistle too. The wren building her nest on the front porch eave, the meadowlark from the fields to be hayed, and the rooster announcing dawn all sang to him in songs he’d not heard “before ND,” as he called those days.

Following the others, he took his pail and three-legged stool and sat down at his assigned cow. He buried his forehead in her flank and fell into the rhythm he could hear all around him as the milk splashed into the buckets. All his senses were tuned to the young woman milking the cow behind him. Grace. He’d gone to bed thinking about her and arose with her name on his mind.

With a strike faster than a rattler, the cow’s tail caught him around the head and mouth while in the same flash, her foot filled the milk bucket. Milk showered him, and the words that flew through his mind almost made it out his mouth. His pants, his shirt, his face, and his hands were drenched. The urge to pummel the mean and nasty bovine fled as he lumbered to his feet. He glared at her, and she stared back, placidly chewing her grain, her tail still twitching.

Never mind the guffaws of the other milkers, chagrin dripped from him along with the milk.

“Just give her a nudge to get her foot out of the bucket and save whatever you can to feed to the pigs.” Haakan covered his laugh well. “It’s happened to all of us. And we all know exactly how you feel.”

“But what did I do wrong?”

“Nothing, most likely. She just had an idea to move her foot. The tighter you keep your forehead in her flank, the easier it is to read her intentions.”

“Yes, sir.” He grabbed the handle of the bucket, gave the cow’s hind-quarter a shove, and snatched the pail before she could kick it clear over. The once white milk looked more green now. And they wanted him to feed this to the pigs? Of course, the pigs ate sometimes with their front feet in the trough, he reminded himself as he headed for the pigpen.

“Just pour it in with the mash,” Haakan called. The pigs heard him coming and crowded around the gate, squealing for him to hurry.

“Sorry, not yet.” After he dumped the milk out, he dipped the bucket in the water tank to rinse it out, but Haakan called for him to get a clean one from the wagon. He made sure he was thinking about the cow and the milk from then on, no matter how enticing it was to think on Grace.

“You’re now an official member of the milkers’ association,” Andrew teased as they scrubbed later at the wash bench. “Actually, you’ve done well for this to be your first time getting tricked by a milk cow.”

“My first accident,” Trygve told him, “the cow kicked me and the bucket into the gutter. I was so mad I coulda slit her throat right then.” Trygve dried his hands on the towel hanging from a hook on the wall.

“Tell him how old you were,” Lars said with a nudge.

“Oh, five or six. Young enough to bounce but old enough to get really mad. Didn’t help that they all laughed at me.”

Jonathan glanced at the young man next to him. Trygve’s shoulders were already broadening to match the older men, and the golden hairs on his arms glinted in the sun—even his hands already wore some scars and the look of wear. Trygve had been working like a man ten years already, and he was a year younger than Jonathan.

As always, the girls had gone before to help get breakfast on the table, and now to regale Mrs. Bjorklund with his mishap. She gave him a commiserating look when he filed into the kitchen, but he could tell she caught the humor in it too.

“You all right?”

“Only thing hurt was my pride, besides the waste of good milk.”

“Wasn’t the first time, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.” She handed him a cinnamon roll along with a tender pat on his arm.

Jonathan stared at the roll. She might as well have given him a medal of honor. He stopped his grin by filling his mouth with a bite of pure heaven.

“Leave it to Mor to spoil the hired help,” Andrew muttered with a sideways grin at his mother.

As the end of the meal neared, Ingeborg stood. “I have an announcement.” As all eyes turned her way, she smiled at each of them. “Kaaren and I have decided we will have a fish fry for supper Sunday. That means all you fishermen better dig a bunch of worms because we are going to need a lot of fish—cleaned fish.”

“And ice cream?” someone asked.

“Of course.” She glanced at Haakan. “If we have enough ice left in the icehouse.”

“We have plenty. Might make it clear to August.”

“According to Thorliff, we will have refrigeration in homes before long, like the railroad cars.” Andrew reached for the last cinnamon roll. “Gas now and electricity eventually.”

“I’ll take running water in the house before that.”

“Just think, if we had running water in the house, we could have one of those flush toilets. No more privy.”

“I can guess what Lars and I’ll be doing this winter,” Haakan muttered, pushing his chair back. “All these fandangle new ideas …”

“Enjoy your cultivator,” Ingeborg said sweetly and patted his shoulder.

Lars and Haakan led the laughter as they each snagged their hats off the rack and trooped out the door.

“You go on over to Andrew’s soon as you’re done with the driving lesson,” Haakan ordered Jonathan and Andrew. “I’ve got a few more rows with the cultivator, and I’ll be along. See if we can get that last section fenced today.”

Barney’s barking spun them all around.

“The pigs are out!” Andrew headed for the barn but yelled over his shoulder, “Go shut the garden gate. Ma will kill us if the hogs get in there.”

Jonathan headed for the garden, slamming the gate to the yard as he ran by.

“What’s the matter?” Astrid called from the back door.

“Pigs are out.” Jonathan dropped the wire loop over the post of the wire gate and trotted back toward the barn, where pigs of all sizes were darting out in every direction.

“What happened?”

“They took out one whole section of fence,” Trygve grumbled. “That old sow must have been working on that post forever. Someone ever tell you pigs are dumb animals, they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“Leastwise it didn’t happen when none of us were here.” Andrew whistled for Barney to round up a couple of deserters, as the herd was now digging in the soft dirt in front of the barn, grunting in satisfaction, tails coiled or flicking in delight.

“We need to get those weaners cut soon.”

“Weaners?”

“That last batch we took off the sow. Need to castrate the males so the meat doesn’t taste rank.”

“So who does that?”
This is one chore I do not want to learn—ever
.

“Usually Andrew. He’s best at it. Give him a sharp knife and we’ll have mountain oysters for supper.” Trygve grinned at the look of confusion on Jonathan’s face. “Ask Andrew. He’ll give you a better description.”

“Okay, Pa’s got the fence ready,” Andrew said. “Let’s herd ’em back nice and easy.”

Arms wide spread, moving slowly, they eased the pigs back around the corner of the barn. With Barney darting ahead of the sow, the hogs poured back into their pen and headed for the water trough. Lars, Andrew, and Haakan nailed the two-by-sixes back in place, adding another one right at ground level.

“That’s to keep that old girl from getting her snout under the board. Give her an hour, and I swear she could take the barn down.”

“But why? They have all the food they can eat, plenty of water, and a wallow to sun in.”

“Grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Besides, animals, like people, get bored. If they were out in the wild, they’d have to spend all their waking time foraging for food. Here they get fed good twice a day. If that old girl weren’t such a good mamma, she’d have been made into ham a long time ago. She just has this perverse attraction for fences—and their destruction.”