A Land to Call Home

by Lauraine Snelling

  A silence fell, as if no one wanted to break the heavenly spell. Kaaren rose to her feet and turned to face the parents. “I think these children deserve a mighty hand of appreciation, don’t you?”

  When the clapping, stomping, and “here, here” died out, Kaaren continued. “We would like you all to keep your places, for the children have another surprise for you.” As she called their names, each child went to the tree, found his gifts, and took them to his parents. “Mange takk,” echoed around the room. When the last present had been given, Kaaren spoke again. “We have hot cider and cookies on the back table. The children will be serving.”

  “No, not yet!”

  Kaaren turned to find three children bringing a wrapped present toward her.

  The oldest girl, Beth Johnson, stepped forward. “Mrs. Knutson, we made you this gift with our thanks and grati . . .” She stumbled over the word, took in a deep breath, and said it again. “Gratitude for starting and teaching our school. We have learned a lot, and we want to say . . .” She paused again. With one breath all the children shouted, “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Knutson, and a blessed and happy new year!”—in English.

  Kaaren blinked several times and had to start over again when she tried to thank them. She opened the gift, a beautiful quilt with a pupil’s name embroidered in each plain white square. Bright strips of colorful patches were placed between the white squares and bordered the outside edges.

  “Thank you, mange takk, thank you.” She could barely squeeze the words past the lump in her throat.

  The children clustered around her and their parents around them, all marveling at the wonderful evening. Olaf invited everyone to come to church at eleven in the morning, and after the things were put away, people began to slowly leave, as if not wanting the evening to end. Outside, the air crackled, and to the north, the blazing and dancing aurora borealis looked much like angels’ wings. Jingling sleigh bells and “God Jule” put the final blessing on the night.

  At church in the morning, all people could talk about was the wonderful program the night before. When Olaf pronounced the benediction after a gentle and loving sermon, all rose and as one voice sang “Joy to the World” as if they really meant it.

  Back home, after enjoying the good roast goose dinner and opening their presents, talk turned to counting the good things that had happened in the last year.

  “We are indeed blessed,” Kaaren said, a twin sleeping in each arm. She smiled at her husband.

  “Ja, with more things than we can count.” Haakan bounced Andrew on his knee, causing the contagious belly laugh to bring forth answering smiles and laughter from the others.

  Thorliff looked up from his pad of paper. “I can write a list.”

  “That would be a good idea,” Ingeborg said. “Make two and we can have one at each house. Who knows when we will have to be reminded of the blessings we counted?”

  January 1885

  The year of 1885 blew in on the back of a blizzard.

  Thank you, Lord, that we got the ropes strung before this hit. Ingeborg stared out the window into total white. While the bit of daylight coming in the window told her it was not snowed over, she could see nothing else. The wind howled like the train on which they’d traveled west. It only changed pitch and whine at times, never slacking in intensity. She had laid sand-filled sacks sown in a tube at the bottom of the door to keep out both the draft and the drifting snow. But unless she worked right next to the stove, she felt the cold. At the table, Andrew played with the wooden puzzles Olaf had made for him at Christmas.

  Ingeborg thought of Auduna Booth in her soddy all alone. Hopefully her husband had stayed inside with her, knowing how she feared the wind. If she feared the normal blowing, this must be terrifying her. “Please, Father, help her today and every day.” She stirred the pot of venison stew simmering on the stove, finding it nearly done. The apple pie in the oven filled the house with a cinnamon fragrance. The bread was rising on the lid of the reservoir, for away from the stove was too cold for it to raise.

  She took pencil and paper and sat down at the table, returning Andrew’s sunny grin. Even with two lamps lit, the room was dim, but his smile brightened it.

  He dumped the pieces out again, laughing at the clatter they made. When one fell to the floor, he climbed off his chair and retrieved it, chattering all the while.

  “Dear Far and Mor and all my family,” Ingeborg wrote.

  “We are well here, and while a blizzard is blowing right now, we are safe and warm. I pray it is the same for you. As to your questions about available land, there is none for homesteading around here, but there is some to buy. The bank is very good about extending credit to both seasoned farmers and new immigrants. It will be so wonderful to see familiar faces from home. . . .”

  She continued on, describing the Christmas pageant and telling about the used lumber mill Haakan and Olaf hauled on skids back from Minnesota, and the new steam engine and boiler brought from the train depot at Grafton.

  “Although they want to finish setting the machinery up so they can begin sawing the stack of felled trees into boards, this weather is keeping them in the barn. Thorliff and Baptiste are there, as well, splitting shingles to sell in the spring.”

  She signed off with messages of love and folded it for the envelope. Paws barking at the door announced the arrival of the men for dinner. “Put your puzzles away now, Andrew. It is dinnertime.”

  “I knew we should have built a covered porch this fall.” Haakan held the door from slamming while the others came in, Paws included. The dog looked up at Ingeborg, and when she said, “You can stay,” he wagged his tail and shook off the snow clinging to his caramel-colored fur.

  “Are you froze clear through?” Ingeborg asked, removing the pie from the oven and setting it in the middle of the table.

  “No, that stove in the shop works real well. It’s just between the barn and the house that there’s a problem.” Haakan sniffed and rubbed his hands some more over the stove heat. “You knew how wonderful apple pie would taste today. How good you are to us.”

  Olaf agreed. “Don’t think I’ve eaten like this for the last five years. Never did like cooking for myself.”

  “Mor, Baptiste and I split two squares apiece this morning. Far said that was good as some men do.” Thorliff wiped his nose on his sleeve, drawing a reproving look from his mother. “Sorry.”

  “Good, then you are ready for lessons this afternoon.”

  Both boys groaned.

  “But I thought since we can’t get to Tante Kaaren’s very good . . .”

  “I know what you thought.” She pointed to their chairs. “But I thought to surprise you.”

  They groaned again.

  After grace, with Andrew as always tailing with the last emphatic amen, they fell to their meal. Olaf and Haakan launched into a discussion about the lumber mill, which had become a daily occurrence. But when Ingeborg served the pie, no one said anything. They were too busy making their warm pieces disappear.

  By the end of the second day of the blizzard, with the wind still howling at banshee levels, Ingeborg wanted nothing more than to get out. Crossing the field to see Kaaren would help, but Haakan discouraged her from taking the chance.

  “Even with the rope, there is danger of getting lost should you fall down, and . . .”

  “Be blown down, more likely.” Ingeborg shuddered. Memories of the terrible blizzard of ’82 still lurked in the dim corners and pounced on her when she least expected it.

  Haakan put his arms around her and held her close. “I won’t let anything happen to you,” he murmured in her ear.

  But Ingeborg had learned the hard lesson that some things were beyond a strong man’s control, and life could change in an instant. She locked her hands around his back, praying that he was right.

  That night the nightmares returned, those she’d thought banished and dead.

  “Ingeborg, wake up.” Haakan shook her shoulder gently. “You’re dreamin
g.”

  “Wha—?” She sat straight up, her arms flailing, one catching him square on the jaw.

  Her heart thundered and her lungs heaved, as though she’d been running and running.

  “Ouch, you didn’t have to hit me.” He rubbed his jaw, fingers scraping against the stubble on his face.

  “Oh, Haakan, I was so . . .” Ingeborg switched to Norwegian to find the words to describe her terror. She leaned against him, and he pulled the quilts up over them. Her voice came through the darkness, bleak as the wind screeching so close to their ears. “The black hole is back. What if I fall into it again and never get out?”

  “Inge!” He grasped her shoulders and shook her. “Listen to me. You will not fall in the hole again. You—we will get through this winter, and by the grace of God, you will never spend another in a dark hole like this soddy. Tomorrow you are coming out to the barn where there is at least light and space.”

  “It is so cold.” Far away, the tone of her voice cried. Far away. She shivered, her teeth clicking together. Like a lost child clinging to its mother when found, she hugged herself to Haakan’s chest and tried to find sanctuary in his arms.

  She put on a cheerful face in the morning, seeking her Bible for comfort when the men went out to milk and feed the livestock. But every verse she turned to shouted of the wrath of God on His disobedient people. Even the Psalms. The wrath of God might be in the blizzard that still howled outside their home.

  She kept thinking about Mrs. Booth and wishing she had brought her home with her whether her husband wanted or not. Guilt at taking the easy way out stole into her heart, making the day darker still.

  She went about her chores, but the laughter in their home had fled before the wind.

  Even Andrew moped around and clung to her skirts, whining to be picked up instead of playing like he usually did.

  When the blizzard broke early in the morning of the fourth day, Haakan loaded her and the children, along with Olaf, into the sleigh and trotted the horses across the frozen drifts to the Baards’.

  Agnes took one look into Ingeborg’s empty eyes and shook her head. “It is back.” She wrapped Ingeborg in her arms and led her over to the stove. Sitting her down in the rocking chair, she took Ingeborg’s hands in hers.

  The children played around their feet as Agnes prayed for her friend.

  “Mange takk,” Ingeborg whispered when the silence between them had stretched for some minutes. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me, it’s . . . it’s as if the lights have gone out, as if God has gone away . . . again. Agnes, I thought I was stronger than this. Why am I sinking backward? I have everything I need and want.” Tears filled her eyes. “Why?”

  Agnes sniffed herself. “I wish I knew. But you are here, and you have Haakan who is so worried. We will not let this take over you again.”

  They heard sleigh bells jingling outside and a “whoa” as the sleigh reached the house.

  At the knock on the door, Agnes rose and opened it. Hagen Booth stood there alone.

  “Come in, come in before you freeze.” She took his arm and drew him inside the warm house when he paused. He removed his hat and held it in front of him, turning it in his hands.

  “I . . . I come to tell you some hard news.” His eyes swam with tears he refused to shed. “Auduna, my wife . . .” His voice choked. “She done wandered off in the blizzard. I didn’t think to tie her down, and . . . and . . .” He raised his face to look fully at Agnes. “I didn’t hear her go. I slept through it all, and in the morning she was gone. Even the dog couldn’t sniff her out after all that snow.”

  “Come, sit down.” Agnes stuffed her handkerchief back in her apron pocket. “I have the coffee hot.”

  He pulled away. “No. I thought to tell the others.” He turned and left, the door slamming behind him.

  “Dear God, dear God.” Ingeborg rocked forward and back against the rhythm of the rocker. “We let her die. All of us, we let her die. Oh, God, forgive us.” Her hands hid her face, but the tears streamed between her fingers. Would that . . . could that happen to her, too?

  “I think it just crept up on me,” Ingeborg said in answer to Kaaren’s question the next day. They, along with Solveig, sat around the cookstove at Kaaren’s, knitting needles clacking, Andrew and the twins sleeping. “I could find no comfort in my Bible either.”

  “I wondered how the black spell came on so fast.” Kaaren looked up from where she was turning the heel of a long stocking. “But I can see that today you are better. Why, do you think?”

  “Agnes prayed for me and wrote out two scriptures I’m to keep with me all the time.” She dug in her apron pocket to produce the two bits of paper and read aloud, “ ‘The Lord is my shield and deliverer, whom shall I fear,’ and”—she switched papers—“ ‘And lo, I am with you always.’ They help, and the strangest thing now is that when I pick up my Bible, I can find many verses like this with promises to hold on to. I tell you, those verses I read in the days earlier put more than the fear of God into me.”

  “What about Mr. Booth? Such a tragedy.”

  “I think that is one of the things that helped me too. The thought of ending up like her frightened me so much that I stepped back from the black pit and have been stepping farther back every minute.” She studied her swiftly moving hands for a moment. “I really think God gave me a miracle.” Her eyes swam with tears when she looked up. “And I thank Him for it.”

  “We will too.” Kaaren sniffed and smiled, though her lips trembled. “I am thankful to God that we have one another, that we live so close, and only in the worst of storms do we have to be separated.”

  “Ja, I think God is working all kinds of miracles.” Solveig lifted her leg, no longer crooked but straight and true. At a baby’s whimper, the three looked toward the cradle. “All kinds.”

  Another blizzard followed on the coattails of the first, but this one only closed them in for two days. From then on, each time a blizzard arrived with its yawning pit, Ingeborg clung to the verses Agnes had given her and to others she found herself. The louder the wind howled, the louder she proclaimed her verses, shouting them sometimes into the teeth of the wind.

  When the sun broke through, the men again headed for the lumber mill set about a quarter of a mile upriver from the houses. Since they already had the saw and gears reassembled and set into a frame of tree trunks, shortly after dinner they had the steam engine skidded out and set too. They let the boys start the fire in the firebox and assigned them the job of keeping it going. The flames snapped and ate at the pitch wood they threw in, and soon it was roaring under the water tank, sending steam into the boiler. They watched the needle on the gauge wobble and begin to climb. When it reached the proper pressure, Haakan pushed the lever forward and the long belt strung between the engine and the saw began to turn.

  Thorliff let out a shriek and the men a yell. As the gears turned beneath the saw, the great blade spun. Haakan ratcheted a trimmed tree trunk into the saw carriage and the blade bit into the wood. A ripping scream split the air, wood chips flew, and the saw cut off the first slab of bark-covered wood.

  “That’ll be used for firewood,” Haakan shouted to be heard above the whine of the saw.

  Olaf drove the team that dragged another log up the ramp, and Lars used his pike to push it onto the carriage where the log moved forward until its turn to become one-inch slabs of siding.

  They reset the saw blade, and the next tree became four-by-ten beams. By the end of the day, they had also cut two-by-fours, beams, siding, and two-by-eights. As dusk fell, sending a rosy glow over the glittering snow drifts, they cut the slab wood into lengths for the stove.

  “Why is the belt crossed over in the middle?” Thorliff asked when they shut the machinery down to go do the evening chores.

  Lars walked to where the ten-inch-wide canvas belt crossed, making a long figure eight. “You know, Thorliff, you sure are observant.” He laid his hand on the belt and pointed to the two drums at th
e ends. “If the belt went straight from one to the other, which is what you think it should do, as the drums spun, they would spin the belt right off. You want to be real careful not to get in the way of a flying belt. I saw it kill a man one day when it broke. But with the cross, the belt stays in place.”

  Thorliff nodded. “Did you think of that?”

  Lars laughed and slapped the boy on the shoulder. “No, but I wish I had. The man I worked for taught me, and now I’m teaching you.”

  “And me,” Baptiste added, matching his strides to that of the men as they walked back to the soddy.

  “Now that we know it works, you have to come watch tomorrow,” Haakan told Ingeborg. “All you women should come. Thorliff can stay with the babies for a little while.” He shook his head in amazement. “It really worked and the first time we fired it up too.”

  “Must be another of God’s miracles,” Ingeborg said with a broad smile.

  “Miracles?”

  “Ja, we must watch for them so we can thank Him.” Ingeborg patted his shoulder as his look changed from puzzlement to acceptance.

  “If you say so.”

  The next morning Baptiste and Thorliff brought the sleigh around, and after dropping Thorliff off at Kaaren’s, Baptiste drove the women and Andrew out to the sawmill. The shrieking whine of the saw blade cutting through the timbers made Andrew look up at his mother with wrinkled eyebrows.

  “That’s just the saw blade,” she reassured him, wishing she could cover her ears with her hands herself. But as the logs slid into place, the saw bit into them, and the slabs of wood fell free. Andrew clapped his hands and crowed in delight.

  “Now, you must always stay away from the saw,” Ingeborg told him, holding tightly to his mittened hand. “This is no place for little boys.”

  “Baptiste here.” Andrew looked at her, reproach darkening his eyes.

  “Baptiste is a big boy now, and he helps a lot. When you get that big, you can help too.”