A Land to Call Home

by Lauraine Snelling

  Kaaren took it and stared at him a moment before she could speak. “Schoolteachers are never supposed to be speechless, but I am. Thank you.” She faced the congregation. “Thank you very much.” She returned to her seat, fighting tears at the smiling faces she had passed. Afterward the children said how they missed her, but that Mr. Wold was a good teacher. The men and women shook her hand and thanked her again.

  When she counted the money at home, she looked up at Lars, her mouth an O to match her eyes. “They couldn’t afford this much.” She shook her head.

  “Oh, I expect some felt more guilty than others and made up for those without.” His eyes twinkled. “Those without guilt or money, I mean.”

  “I knew what you meant.” She dropped the bills and coins back in the soft deerskin pouch. “I’m just glad it is all over.”

  “I’m proud to have a wife who could go to those . . .” He stopped at the look of caution she gave him. “Those saintly women?” His left eyebrow cocked. “And do what you did. You set a fine example, my Kaaren.” He rose and came around to drop a kiss on her forehead. “I have a wife like no other.”

  In late March Hjelmer approached his boss at the roundhouse. “I need a week off so I can do some family business. It can’t wait any longer.”

  The man, sporting a bent nose and the body of a wrestler, looked at him through squinted eyes. “You’ll come back?”

  “Ja, I’ll be back.”

  “I don’t usually do this, you know, but you been a good man. . . .”

  “Thank you. I didn’t think you did. And I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.” He waited a moment before the man nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

  The next day he caught a train to Moorhead and then one to Grand Forks. He’d been to the bank in St. Paul and withdrawn all but a thousand dollars of his wages and gambling money in the form of a check to deposit at the bank in Grand Forks. With the map in his pocket that showed the proposed spur-line route, he headed for the courthouse first, where he made a list of all the landowners along the stretch he was interested in. The next morning, dressed in the same clothes he’d worn to the card games that were enabling him to make his fortune, he entered the bank.

  “I’d like to talk to the manager,” he said to the man at the teller window.

  “I’ll get him.” The green eyeshade bobbled as he scurried off.

  “Hello. I’m the owner and manager, Daniel Brockhurst.” The man’s dark three-piece suit matched his eyes. He held out his hand, soft from lack of manual labor. “How can I help you, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Bjorklund. Hjelmer Bjorklund.” Hjelmer shook the offered hand.

  “You by any chance related to the Bjorklunds up St. Andrew’s way?” he asked as he ushered Hjelmer into his office.

  “Roald and Carl were my brothers.” He sat down in the leather winged chair in front of the desk.

  “Fine men. Even in the little time they lived here, they made their mark on the area. Their families all right?”

  “I . . . I’m not sure how they are right now. I’ve been working on the railroad the last few months.” Hjelmer kept himself from looking down at his hands. He leaned forward. “I have been sending all my wages here for deposit, so you have a sum of my money.” He laid his check on the desk. “And here is more. I want to buy land in the valley.”

  Brockhurst turned the check so he could read it better. “You’ve done all right for yourself, young man.”

  “I have, and I want that to continue. As I buy up the land, if I need more than this and what I have in your bank, will you back me?”

  “How much more are you thinking?” Brockhurst leaned back in his leather swivel chair.

  “It all depends on how much I can buy, or what’s available. I plan to go talk to the homesteaders in that area and see if anyone wants to sell. With this hard winter we’ve had, there might be some who want to leave.”

  “There’s railroad land available, too, should that interest you.” The bank manager steepled his fingers, elbows on the chair arms.

  “Depends on where it is.” Hjelmer, too, leaned back and crossed one ankle over the other knee.

  “Your family know about this?”

  Hjelmer shook his head. “I’ll stop by there. Would like this to be a surprise.”

  Brockhurst drew a ledger out of the bottom drawer in his desk. He flipped the pages, stopped, and ran his finger down the lines. “Ah, here it is. You have a total of $2,380.78 in your account. How much do you propose to take?”

  “I plan to take twelve thousand with me so that I can offer hard cash. Men are more inclined to make a quicker decision when you lay cash on the table.”

  “Right you are, but isn’t that a bit dangerous?”

  “I won’t be gone long. You could help me by pointing me in the direction of anyone wanting to sell.” Hjelmer narrowed his eyes. “And backing me with another five thousand should I need it.”

  Brockhurst studied the young man before him. “The land would be the collateral.”

  Hjelmer nodded.

  “Will you be needing machinery and the like?”

  “Not right away.”

  Brockhurst tapped a manicured fingernail on the desk blotter. “Done. Two point five interest for five years.”

  “Two percent for eight years.”

  “Young man, you trying to rob me?” His half smile showed he was teasing.

  “No, sir.” Hjelmer shook his head. “Just wanting to make the best deal.” He sat waiting, grinding his toe into the carpet to keep it from tapping in impatience. Remember this is just like a card game. Wait and watch and play your cards close to your chest.

  The bank owner smiled and nodded. “We have a deal. I’ll have the papers drawn up, and we can get them signed. I assume you want to get on your way as soon as possible.”

  “That I do. I have one more question, though. Could you prepare me some blank deed papers? Then I can fill them in when I buy the land and will bring them back to town to file when I am finished. Would that be legal?”

  “The signatures need to match those on the original deed, that’s all. Usually we would ask both parties to come in, but since you are offering them cash, this should work. They would need time to get moved.”

  “That’s no problem. I might offer some of them to stay on and farm through to the fall.”

  Brockhurst rifled through some files in his desk drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Well, let’s get the paper work filled out, then you can come back in an hour to sign it. I’ll have your cash ready then too. How were you wanting that? Hundreds?”

  An hour later Hjelmer had a packet of hundred-dollar bills, another with blank deeds, pen and ink, and he had rented a horse and saddle from the livery. He’d thought about a horse and buggy but knew he could make better time this way. He rode out to the southern most parcel and began to make his way north.

  He would ride up to the house, in most cases a soddy, and ask for the landowner by name. He’d introduce himself, and by then the housewife would be offering him a cup of coffee.

  “I’m looking for land to buy,” he’d say. “Cash money. You know anyone who might be interested in selling?”

  The wife, who usually looked about worn down to the nubbins with a babe in her arms and another twisting a hand in her skirt, would sigh. If he took a moment to look up, she usually wore a face colored in hope, perhaps the first in a long time.

  The man would lean back—that meant he needed to be persuaded—or forward. That’s when Hjelmer usually offered less cash than he had planned, because the man wanted out. But, to his own surprise, Hjelmer let himself be led by his conscience or a sense of pity for these folks with so little, and he never paid less than a quarter under the market value of $2.50 per acre.

  As he rode the snow-covered prairie, Hjelmer realized how well his brothers, and then his brothers’ wives, had done with so many acres planted and reaped after the hard sod-breaking. Their buildings were tight, they owned much livestock,
and already they brought in money from the sales of produce to the store and the Bonanza farm. No wonder they had earned such a good reputation with Brockhurst. Hjelmer’s respect for Ingeborg climbed with each family he met. She had kept them all from the defeated look he saw so often on the faces of both women and men.

  By the end of the third day, he had purchased four sections and had one pair of brothers who wanted to think about his offer for a couple of days. With the weather holding sunny and cold, he made his way northward toward the spot on the map known as Drayton. When he spent a night with families in the soddies, he tried to offer them some cash for their hospitality. In spite of their protests, he tucked some bills under one of the plates before he left.

  One farm he only found by the smoke curling up from a snowbank. A woman came to the door at the dog’s barking, a gun in her hand.

  “Good morning, ma’am. Are you Mrs. Peterson?” He tried English first. At the shake of her head, he switched to Norwegian and repeated his question.

  She nodded, turning her head sideways a bit, and studied him. A child wailed behind her. A cow bellowed from the barn. The dog wagged his tail by the horse’s knee, but the rising hair on the back of the dog’s neck and shoulders warned Hjelmer he’d best stay where he was.

  “Is Mr. Peterson here?”

  She shook her head, tightening her jaw.

  “Will he be coming home soon?”

  She shook her head again. “He’s out in the barn.”

  Hjelmer thought for a moment. Had she misheard his question?

  “Could I speak with him?”

  “Mighty hard. He died three day’s ago.” She raised her chin a bit and blinked.

  “I . . . I’m sorry.” Hjelmer thought a moment. “My name is Hjelmer Bjorklund and . . .”

  “From the Bjorklunds up north some?”

  “Ja."

  She stepped back. “You come right on in.” She set the rifle back inside the door. “Tie your horse right there to the house or take him out to the barn. We got some hay left. You can give him a bit.”

  Hjelmer looked at the walkway to the barn not shoveled out but marked by footsteps. He smiled and nodded. “Mange takk.” He set the horse along the path to make it deeper and pushed open the barn door. In the dimness, he saw two sawhorses covered by two boards on which lay the frozen body of Mr. Peterson. How she had gotten him up there was more than he could understand. He led the horse into the vacant stall next to the slack-bagged cow, and after loosening the saddle girth and hooking the bridle over the saddle horn, he used the rope on the manger to tie to his horse’s halter. He tossed a bit of hay to the cow, some to his horse, and on his way out checked the feed bin. Empty.

  Back at the house, Mrs. Peterson had water steaming on the stove, heated by twists of hay.

  “Sorry, I have nothing better.” She set a cup of weak coffee before him, a small child clinging to her skirt. When he took a sip, he knew it to be made from roasted grain of some sort. “The cow went dry, so I hope black is all right.”

  “This is fine. Hot is what helps.” He heard a weak cough from the bed on the far wall. At his glance in that direction, she sighed.

  “That’s Hans, my son. He has outlived his far, but I don’t know . . .” She squared her shoulders that slumped for a moment.

  Hjelmer thought to some of the stories Ingeborg had told him of the terrible life some settlers endured. This was indeed the worst he’d seen, and two of the farms he bought hadn’t been a whole lot better. But at least there, those husbands were still alive.

  “Mrs. Peterson, what are you going to do?”

  She shook her head. The cough came from the bed again, deep and wracking. She got up and took the boy a cup of warm water, spooning it between his lips. The smaller child stared at their guest out of eyes sunk so far back in her head they looked black. Under the bulky sweater that covered her to her knees, Hjelmer was afraid she had arms and legs of sticks. Either she had been terribly sick or she was starving.

  The woman came back to the table and slumped to the stool that served for a chair. “I don’t know. S’pose I better butcher the cow before she dies, ’cause we been burning the hay. That’ll at least give us something more to eat.” She sighed. “I hate to butcher the cow. She’s all we got left.”

  “You have any family to go to?”

  She shook her head. “In Nordland.”

  Hjelmer studied the weak dregs in his cup. He couldn’t leave these people here to die.

  “I can pay you cash money for your land. How many acres do you have?”

  “Half a section, 180 acres. Only busted about forty, though. My Elmer, after that terrible flu in ’82, he weren’t a strong man. We should never have come here.” She wiped the child’s runny nose with the edge of her apron, then looked across the table to Hjelmer. “What good would the money do until spring? I got no way out of here.” She gestured to the boy in the bed and the child at her knee. “We can’t walk through the snow.”

  “You won’t have to.” Hjelmer counted out the money and laid it on the table. “I have some supplies on my horse. You have enough hay to last for two days?”

  She nodded, looking at him again out of the side of her eye. “Ja, why?”

  “Give your cow a good feeding. And bring in whatever you need for fuel. Is there any wood?”

  She shook her head.

  “How about the sawhorses and planks in the barn, the mangers too?”

  As if afraid to hope, she let her fingers reach out and touch the money. “I hate for the rats to feed on my Elmer.”

  “Okay. I’ll put the body in the grain bin and make sure nothing can get in there.” Hjelmer got to his feet.

  “Where you going?”

  “Out to the barn. If you want to come, you can bring in the beans, and—”

  “Beans?”

  “Ja, I have some in my saddlebag. You have any flour?”

  “A bit. Been making gruel out of it so my children got something to eat.”

  Hjelmer closed his eyes for a second. Never in his life had he gone hungry for more than a day or so, and then it had been his own fault for not packing enough on a hunting trip. “Come with me.”

  “You mean it about buying my land?” she asked when they reached the barn.

  “Ja, I’ll buy it, but first we need to get you and your children out of here.”

  An hour later, Hjelmer declined her offer to share the beans she now had cooking and headed north for the Bjorklund farms. Ingeborg would take these poor souls in, and perhaps, if the boy made it that far, she would use her herbs and knowledge to keep him alive.

  He passed the other farms he had planned to visit without a backward glance. With the drifts frozen solid, his horse trotted on, not even breaking through the snow. Will they run me off? he wondered as his breath plumed in the frigid air. What if Ingeborg won’t take these people in? What if they are sick too? How will I tell them where I’ve been? What do I say when she asks why I’ve never written? The questions plagued him as the miles passed and guilt rode heavy on his shoulders like a yoke carved of green wood. They made good time and trotted into the farmyard with dusk turning the skies and snowfields luminous with lavender hollows.

  Paws met him with a stiff-legged stance and the deep-throated bark that announced a stranger.

  “Hey, Paws, you know who I am.”

  The dog changed to wagging from his nose to the tip of his tail. He whined in apology and darted toward the house, returning as if to say, “Come on, what are you waiting for?”

  Hjelmer stared at the new barn rising like a monolith from the land. Here the yard was tramped solid and the front of the soddy cleared of snow. Sheep bleated from the corral of the sod barn and cows bellered from the big barn. Smoke plumed from the house chimney and one at the end of the new barn too.

  “Who is it, Paws?” Thorliff called as he pushed open the smaller door on the front of the two-story barn.

  “It’s your onkel Hjelmer.” He rode his hors
e toward the boy. “Things sure look good here.”

  Thorliff turned and shouted over his shoulder, “Onkel Hjelmer is come home!”

  “Tell him to get his sorry hide in here before he freezes,” Haakan called back. “Then go tell your mor to set another place at the table. The prodigal has returned.”

  Hjelmer had trouble swallowing.

  “Here, I’ll take your horse. Far and Onkel Olaf are milking.” Thorliff reached for the reins. “You want I should feed him too?” He looked at the sweaty neck of the horse. “I’ll give him a drink later.”

  “Mange takk, Thorliff.” Hjelmer laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You look like you grew a foot while I was gone.”

  Thorliff stared up from eyes that crinkled when he grinned, so like Carl’s. “We missed you.”

  Hjelmer nodded. “Me too, son, me too.” He entered the barn, pulling the door shut behind him.

  A line of cows stood in their stanchions facing the wide center aisle, chewing their hay. A shallow ditch to catch the manure had been dug in the dirt floor between the end of the stalls and the rear aisle. From the side of a cow up the way, Haakan rose, a foaming milk bucket in his hand. He reached down to grab the three-legged stool, stepped to the aisle, and setting both bucket and stool down, strode toward the guest with hand outstretched and a smile wide as the prairie creasing his cheeks.

  “We were afraid we’d never see you again. Thank God, you are all right.” When their hands clasped, he clamped his other hand on Hjelmer’s upper arm and squeezed. “Thank God. Come, let me introduce you to Kaaren’s onkel, Olaf Wold. He immigrated years ago.”

  They walked down the length of the barn to the last stanchion, where Olaf was milking. He looked up and nodded.

  “Good to meet you.”

  At that moment the outer door flew open, banging against the wall and startling the cows, let alone the men.

  “Hjelmer, you have come home!” Ingeborg ran down the aisle and threw her arms around her brother-in-law. “Uff da. I thought never to see you again this side of heaven.”