The Reaper's Song (6 page)

We are well here, as I hope and pray all of you are too.

A soft grunting from the child captured Ingeborg’s attention at the same time as a ripe odor floated upward. “Uff da. Astrid, could you not wait even a few minutes longer?” She glanced over to see the concentrated gaze of the child filling her pants.

“Here, let me take her.” Goodie lifted the little girl and wrinkled her nose at the same time. “Pew! Let’s get you presentable for your admiring onkel.” She paused. “Or would you rather keep her as she is now?”

Olaf shook his head. “I’ll wait.”

The leaves of the cottonwood tree Ingeborg had planted when the soddy was built rustled in the breeze as she continued reading the letter aloud.

We have our tickets to leave Oslo on the first of August, so if God wills that all go well, we should see you before the end of the month.

Ingeborg laid her hands in her lap. “They won’t be here for the wedding after all.”

Olaf moved his chair into the shade. “There will be plenty of folks there anyhow. With harvest so near, we are cutting things close, but if we do not get married now, there will be no time for the next two months.”

“Or more. I’ve never seen the wheat so thick and heavy. This is to be a bumper year for certain.”

“Ja, and the price fell again.”

Ingeborg groaned. “How are we to get ahead when they keep dropping the wheat prices?” While she knew Olaf had no answer, she still voiced the complaint of all the farmers. The prices per bushel had dropped for the last two years. Rumor had it that the grain buyers for the Minneapolis flour mills had joined together to
make sure they made a huge profit, at the expense of the farmers. And the railroads were charging more to ship the grain too.

She shook her head and returned to the letter.

I am bringing Katja with me, as there are no young men here who catch her eye, and you said single men are the majority in the west. I want her to marry a God-fearing man, and if he owns his own farm, it would be like the frosting on the egge kake.

Ingeborg chuckled at that. Bridget was renowned for her egg cake, and her frosting recipe had been handed down from her mother. “Hard to believe that little Katja is ready to think of marriage. They grow up so fast.” Her gaze returned to the paper. “Oh, dear.”

“What is it?” Olaf had removed his pipe from his pocket and was scraping the bowl with the small blade on his knife.

“She is bringing Onkel Hamre’s grandson with her.” She returned to reading aloud.

Hamre is now twelve, and since his mother died of the chest congestion, he has been living with me to help us out with the chores. Johann wants him to stay here so there is someone in the family to help him with the home farm, but Hamre is determined to go to Amerika. He says he wants the new life too. Such a strong mind for such a young boy.

Ingeborg looked up again, her forehead wrinkled in thought. “This should work out well, then. We will let them have this soddy, since Goodie and her two will be with you in your new house when it’s built.”

“Mayhap we could put a wood floor in it for them before winter.” Olaf tamped his tobacco down with his thumb.

“Ja, and a new coat of whitewash.” She smiled at the man now heading into the soddy to get a light from the stove for his pipe. When he returned, he nodded. “I heard tell these old soddies are warmer in the winter than wooden frame houses any day. As used to dark winters as those Norskys from the old country are, this shouldn’t be such a burden.”

“Humph.” Ingeborg shook her head. Nothing pleased her more than the many windows Haakan had insisted on for their new house. She stared across the short space to the two-story frame house with a porch facing the west. The look of it still thrilled her
deep into her soul. This year perhaps the howling winds wouldn’t bring on the inner darkness that seemed to attack her most in the winter. The long winters in Norway had never caused the darkness of her soul that the winters in the soddy had brought upon her after her first husband, Roald, died. Sometimes now, even with Haakan and the children, she felt herself being sucked back down into the pit.

She shook the specter away and returned to the letter.

I hope this will not be an extra burden for you, but Sarah Neswig desires to come also. She is the daughter of my second cousin and a good worker. When her parents heard we were leaving, they made a special trip clear from Oslo to ask if she might go along. How could we say no? Her fiancé was drowned in the same storm that took Hamre’s far to his watery grave. Onkel Hamre still blames himself, believing that if he had been along, the boat would not have gone down.

“There’s a mite too much snow on his mountain for him to be fishing the north seas any longer, isn’t there?” Olaf shook his head, the smoke from his pipe circling around them.

“Ja, that is why his son Jacob had taken over. He, too, is—was a fine fisherman. Young Hamre will miss the sea here.”

“He could pretend that wheat is the sea. Bending in the breeze like that, it looks like gentle sea swells, although a mite gold in color.”

Ingeborg smiled at his sally. Olaf had never been addicted to the sea like Onkel Hamre. Fishing was all the old man could talk about or wanted to talk about.

Goodie returned with a now sweet-smelling child. “You want her back, or shall I put her down on the quilt?”

Ingeborg nodded toward the quilt they had spread in the shaded and fenced plot. They had put up the fence so Astrid could not crawl away. Now that she was walking, the fence was even more important. Goodie set the child down and handed her a hunk of bacon skin to chew on. Two days earlier a second lower tooth had cut through, and the nub beside it would soon sparkle white. With her four sparkling teeth, Andrew dubbed her “rabbit.”

Ingeborg finished reading the letter and returned it to its envelope to be read again at the dinner table. “So, we will have four new lives here with us.”

“Good thing these you already got are moving on.” Goodie stood
beside Olaf, close but not touching. She glanced up at the two laughing children emerging from the cow barn. “But those two will be lost without each other.”

Andrew slammed the door shut and yelled, “Race you to the well.”

Even from the distance, the adults could tell that he hung back and let Ellie win.

“That Andrew, he will be a fine man someday, the way he cares for others, both human and animal.” Olaf puffed on his pipe, nodding as the smoke wreathed his head.

Ingeborg sniffed in appreciation. “You use the same tobacco as my far did. I always liked the smell of pipe smoke.”

“How about cigars? I saw a new box of them over at the store. Penny says they are selling good.” He chuckled at Ingeborg’s wrinkled nose.

“Ishda to both that and those awful cigarettes some of the men are rolling. Mark my words, those are dangerous in this dry weather.”

“You must be carrying water to your garden. Some others are looking pretty wilted by now.”

“Thank God for the good well we have. At church on Sunday some were saying their wells are going dry.” Her hands busy with the snapping beans and her eyes on the child jabbering to the rag doll on the quilt, Ingeborg enjoyed the conversation.

“Ja. I been coopering barrels for hauling water,” Olaf said. Goodie glanced from the chair to his face. “Besides making me a new chair? Olaf, do you never sleep?”

“Sure, and I will be sleeping better soon.”

At his sly comment, Goodie’s face flamed again. “Ach,” she muttered under her breath, her hands furiously snapping beans.

Ingeborg hid her smile. These two were so good for each other. When Goodie and her children arrived, nearly starved and the boy sick unto death, there hadn’t been much laughter for a long time. When spring finally thawed the frozen ground, Goodie had been able to put her Elmer under the sod, freeing her from a heavy burden of grief. Now Ingeborg knew she would mightily miss working and visiting every day with her friend when she left. They’d become part of the family. The good Lord surely had been merciful to them all.

Andrew and Ellie skidded to a stop in front of her. “Ma, can we go find Thorliff and the sheep?”

“I thought maybe you would like to take a water jug out to your
pa and ride the horses in when they come for dinner. Tante Kaaren will be ringing the dinner bell before too long.”

Andrew, blue eyes sparkling above rosy cheeks, turned to his playmate. “You want to come?”

Ellie, her hair bleached pure white by the sun, nodded, setting her pigtails to flopping. “I can carry the jug for Onkel Lars.”

“There’s some buttermilk in the springhouse. Why don’t you take that too? Nothing like buttermilk to quench their thirst.”

As the two scampered off to their errand, Goodie shook the snapped beans into her basket from Ingeborg’s skirt. “I better be get-tin’ over to help Kaaren with the dinner. We got enough here for that and more. You going back to picking?”

Ingeborg nodded. “We should have a boilerful soon.” With the three stoves going, they could cook the meals at one place, can at another, and have the diapers boiling at the last. Four in diapers meant plenty to wash, about every other day. Kaaren’s twin girls, Grace and Sophie, were running around, Sophie caring for her deaf sister. Grace had been born without hearing, a severe trial for the younger couple, although more so for Lars. He still struggled sometimes against ignoring the silent twin, favoring her chattering sister.

“The big boys will be helping with the picking this afternoon, ja?”

“We’ll let Baptiste run the fish trap so Metiz has plenty of fish to keep drying, and he can check the trapline too.” Ingeborg knew she was getting spoiled with the extra help, but there still were never enough hands to do all that needed doing. Thanks to the boys’ hunting and the leftovers from last year’s smoking, they hadn’t had to butcher anything but chickens.

She heard the shriek of a hawk flying above and automatically checked the chicken yard. The hens had heard the same cry and were flapping their way into the hen house to safety. They didn’t realize Haakan had stretched chicken wire over the top of the pen, preventing marauding hawks from helping themselves.

“You want I should help you pick the beans?” Olaf tamped the remains of his smoke from the pipe and ground the ashes into the dirt with his heel. “Or does anyone need more wood chopped?”

“Olaf, you are such a kindhearted man. I know you’d rather be with Goodie, so you two go on. Kaaren has plenty needing to be done over there.” Ingeborg brushed the black flies away from her now slumbering daughter. Astrid looked as if sleep had caught her midrock. Her bottom stuck up and tiny fists pillowed her right
cheek. Golden curls lay against her damp scalp. If the flies weren’t so fierce, she’d be tempted to let her sleep as she was. Instead, Ingeborg picked up the sheet on the fence and fluttered it down over the sleeping child, face and all. While she’d get warmer that way, she’d be protected from the flies and the sun by the cotton material.

Ingeborg took her now empty basket and headed for the bean rows. Sitting still never got the work done. The letter crinkled in her apron pocket. She would read it to the others over the dinner table.

When the triangle clanged for dinner, she kept on picking, knowing it would take some time for the men to make it in from the fields and for the boys to come from grazing the flock of sheep. Today Hans, Goodie’s ten-year-old son, would stay out with the sheep. The three boys took turns when they could.

Ingeborg thought longingly of taking the gun and setting up along the deer trail about twilight. They hadn’t had venison in a while. Baptiste said he saw an entire herd of deer tripping down to the river a day or so ago. The fawns would be weaned soon, but she wouldn’t take a doe anyway, not with the bucks available. Bringing in a deer or an elk close to home wasn’t as easy as it had been in the early years. What with all the settlers around them, game had been getting scarce.

She could hear the jangling of harnesses and the thudding of approaching hooves. A cow bellered, echoed by another, both greeting the returning horses. One of the horses whinnied back. The men would take different teams out for the afternoon of sod-breaking. Most likely Lars would choose the oxen. In this lull before harvest began, they were trying to finish breaking the last forty acres of the original homesteads. Some land they kept fenced for pasture for the horses and cows, but the rest was either hayfields or under cultivation. Not that they hadn’t already hayed those forty acres in June.

Ingeborg wiped away the sweat dripping off the end of her nose. They sure could use some rain and cooler weather. While the thunderheads frequently piled dark promises on the horizon, the rain never made it to their property. She grasped the handles on each side of her full willow basket and headed back down the row. She and Thorliff would finish the picking while Goodie and Kaaren snapped the already picked beans. Drying more for leather britches sounded more appealing by the handful.

She stopped at the carrot row, set down the basket, and sorted through the feathery carrot tops until she found one that looked
large enough to eat. She wiggled it loose from the dry dirt that did its best to keep the carrot growing and wiped the dirt away on her apron. Munching the crisp orange root, she closed her eyes to better appreciate the flavor. This was the way carrots should be eaten, not cooked nor dried nor limp from long storage in the root cellar.

“Forgive me, Lord,” she murmured around the carrot’s crunch. “I am grateful for the supplies that lasted us through the winter, but peas and carrots are best just like this, right from your good soil.” With the sun hot on her shoulders and the beans sharing their own particular perfume, she waited. God felt so near; surely He would answer her. She strained her ears. Was that Him in the chuckle of the cottonwood leaves? In the lilt of the lark? In the laughter of the men unharnessing the horses? She shook her head at her own fancy. God was indeed in everything around and within her.