by Adele Dueck
When they stopped at noon to eat tinned beans, Lars admired the rising walls.
“Perhaps you should start filling in the cracks,” he said to Erik. “Olaf can keep laying sod. What do you think, Olaf?”
Erik looked up from his plate. Filling cracks sounded easier than hauling sods, but he didn’t want them to think he couldn’t do the hard work.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Olaf indifferently. “It all needs to be done.”
“What do we fill the cracks with?” asked Erik, trying to remember what Mr. Johnson had told them.
“Mud from the slough,” said Lars. He glanced at his son. “Olaf can show you how to do it.”
“I can figure it out,” said Erik. He didn’t want to ask Olaf anything.
“Good,” said Lars, handing mugs of coffee to his silent brother and son. “Isn’t it great working together?”
No one replied, but Lars didn’t seem to mind. He took a sip of his coffee and glanced at Rolf. “The slough water’s not bad now,” he said, “but later on you’ll want to get water from the spring.”
“A spring?” repeated Erik. “There’s a spring around here?”
“Surely is,” said Lars. “Couple of miles northwest. I’ll draw you a map so you can find it.”
After they ate, Rolf and Lars stretched out on the grass and closed their eyes, appearing to fall asleep immediately. Erik looked at them, surprised that brothers, separated for so many years, could still be so similar.
He gathered a metal pail and spade and headed for the slough. The cattle lay in a contented group; the chickens scratched in the dirt nearby. The calf bounced up as Erik approached, running to hide behind its mother. Erik held out a hand, talking softly, but the calf watched him warily, not moving.
“Next time,” he said, dropping his hand. He filled the pail with mud, then lugged it back to the sod house.
Olaf was at work already, lifting a sod from the wagon. He turned to glance at Erik. “Pack it tight,” he said. “So the snakes can’t get in.”
Snakes? How could they keep snakes out? They lived in dirt.
Erik sighed and forced the first handful of mud into the cracks between the layers of sods, determined to keep anything from creeping through.
As he reached for another handful, he saw Olaf still watching him.
He looked less angry, so Erik risked a question. “Have you built a sod house before?” he asked.
“Ja,” said Olaf. He swung the sod onto the wall. “I’ve worked at many things. I build with Gunnar Haugen and my –” he stopped speaking as he positioned the sod perfectly, then started again. “I’ve built with wood and I’ve built with sod. Sometimes I dig holes for people, or I drive wagons. I do any work I can to earn money.”
Erik looked at him with respect. “What do you do with your money?” he asked. “Do you give it to Uncle Lars?”
“No. He says, ‘Keep the money, Olaf, and buy yourself some land.’” Olaf reached for another sod and glanced over his shoulder at Erik. “So I put the money in the bank in Hanley, and one day I’ll buy myself some land.”
“When?”
“When I’m eighteen, or maybe seventeen.” Erik looked at him, wondering how old he was now. “I’ll be sixteen soon,” said Olaf, answering Erik’s look.
“In September,” said Rolf.
Erik looked up in surprise. He hadn’t seen him coming.
“September 9th,” Rolf added. “I’ll never forget that day.”
Olaf carried the sod to the wall without looking at Rolf. Rolf watched him lay the sod in place, then turned away, his shoulders sagging.
Two days later Olaf laid the last sods on the walls of the house. He made the front wall of the house two layers taller than the back wall, then sloped the sides toward the back.
Erik dug handfuls of mud from his pail, trying to smooth the inside walls, keeping one eye on Lars and Rolf laying poles above his head. When Rolf spread tarpaper across the poles, the house grew dim.
Erik refilled his pail with mud. On the way back from the slough, he saw the men were laying the sods on the roof with the grass side up.
Inside the house, dust sifted through where the sheets of tarpaper overlapped. Rolf poked his head in the door and glanced around. “It won’t be so dusty when the sods settle,” he said.
“What will happen when it rains?” asked Erik, but Rolf was already gone.
When the roof was covered with sod, they carried the furniture in from the wagon, piling it in the centre of the room. Erik chased a chicken out of the house, then stood in the doorway to keep it from coming back.
Even with the windows, it seemed dark in the house. Dark as a barn, dark as a cave.
“We’ll buy wood to divide the rooms,” Rolf added. “Later.”
“You should whitewash the walls,” Lars said. “It will be brighter for your Inga.”
“Ja,” said Rolf, but it was Erik who ended up brushing the mixture of lime, salt, and water on the walls. Olaf rode up on a horse the next morning while they were mixing the whitewash.
“Your brother thinks you need more help,” he said, not looking at Rolf.
“Don’t you have more lumber to bring from Hanley?” Rolf asked stiffly.
Olaf shrugged. “He says it will wait.” He glanced around, gesturing to a few poles left from making the roof. “What are you doing with those?”
Rolf glanced at the pile. “I’ll need most of them for the outhouse,” he said.
“If there’s extra,” suggested Olaf, “you could start a corral.”
“Do we need one?” asked Rolf. “The cattle seem content being tethered.”
Olaf shrugged his shoulders. His expression said he didn’t care. It wasn’t his farm.
“It might be good,” said Erik, “especially for the calf.” Right now the calf never strayed far from its mother, but it would grow more adventurous.
Erik listened to Olaf and Rolf rummage through the small pile of poles while he stirred the thin whitewash mixture. He wondered why Rolf and Olaf had so much trouble speaking to each other. It was even worse than him and Rolf.
After a few minutes, Rolf dragged a few of the poles behind the house, while Olaf began cutting the others in half.
Erik dipped his brush into the pail and ran it down the wall. When he dipped a second time, specks of dirt floated in the whitewash. After he painted a section, he stepped back and looked. He could tell where he’d brushed, but he couldn’t call it white.
While he worked, Erik thought of life in Norway. He’d never worked this hard there. He’d helped Grandfather in the mornings before breakfast, and sometimes he’d go out again before supper, but he and Elsa were both at school much of the day.
No one had mentioned school since they’d left Minnesota.
They stopped briefly at noon to eat soup Kirsten had sent with Olaf, then went right back to work. An hour or so later, Erik stopped for a rest, laying his brush across the pail.
Hearing a raised voice, he looked out the open doorway. Olaf stood by a corral post, glaring at Rolf a couple of metres away.
“I’ve been helping all week,” said Olaf, “and you haven’t said a word.”
“What do you mean? I talk to you every day.”
“Right,” said Olaf. “About work I should do and if the wind will stop blowing. Not one word about how you didn’t want me. Gave me away. Never wrote in all the years we were here.”
“I wrote to Lars,” Rolf protested. “I didn’t know what to say to you. You were just five years old.”
“Ja! Five years old! I come and work for you every day. For free! And you talk about me being five years old!”
“That’s not what I meant,” exclaimed Rolf, his voice rising. “You are a man now, I see that. I don’t know –”
“That’s for certain you don’t know,” said Olaf angrily. “You don’t know how to be a father and I doubt you know how to be a farmer, either. What farming have you ever done?”
“I will learn,
” Rolf began, but Olaf threw his spade to the ground and strode angrily toward his horse.
“I’m going back to my real parents,” he said over his shoulder. “You can build your own farm. You and your new son.”
Rolf yelled something to Olaf, but Erik could barely hear it over the sound of the horse’s hooves. It sounded like “I came here to find you.”
CHAPTER SIX
Discovery
Erik stepped backwards into the house. Grabbing the paintbrush, he finished the first coat of whitewash and started the second. While his hands worked, Olaf’s words echoed in his head. “You and your new son.” It could mean only one thing.
Rolf was Olaf’s father.
They were father and son, but they hadn’t seen each other in ten years.
Erik stood still, the brush suspended in the air. He hadn’t seen his father in nine years. It was bad enough having a father who died. Wouldn’t it be worse if his father had given him away?
And Olaf thought Erik was taking his place. What a joke! Erik didn’t consider Rolf his father, and Rolf certainly didn’t see Erik as his son.
Had he heard Rolf correctly? Had he come to America just to see his son again? But if that was his only goal, he had no reason to get married, no reason to bring a family with him.
Erik watched whitewash drip from his brush onto the dirt floor. Shaking his head, he dipped the brush in the pail. What did it matter, anyway? He, Erik, had come to be a farmer. Olaf didn’t make any difference to his plans. And Ma? Erik thought for a moment. It wasn’t going to matter to her either, because he was certain she knew about Olaf already.
Later, his pail empty, Erik cautiously poked his head out the door. There was no sign of Rolf. He peered into the hole Rolf had been digging.
“How’s the whitewashing?”
The sudden voice behind him made Erik jump and spin around.
“I need to mix up some more.”
“Then you better do it,” said Rolf, lowering himself into the hole.
“I’m about to,” said Erik stiffly. Did Rolf think he wasn’t going to finish the work? “I was just seeing if you needed anything.”
“What should I need?” asked Rolf, raising the pick high and driving it into the hard grey subsoil.
Instead of answering, Erik swung around and headed for the house, hot anger burning in his throat.
He avoided talking to Rolf for the rest of the day. It wasn’t hard, because Rolf didn’t talk to him either. The next day Rolf acted as if nothing had happened. He even smiled when he saw the finished walls. “Good work,” he said.
They moved the furniture into place and assembled the pipes for the small, round stove.
“I guess we can sleep in here now,” said Rolf.
Erik looked at the bed they’d put together for Rolf and Inga. There was no bed for him or Elsa. “I’ll stay in the tent,” he said. “At least for now.”
“If you like,” said Rolf.
Erik moved to the doorway, anxious to get out of the dim house, so different from their home in Norway.
“When are we going to get Mor and Elsa?”
“I need to finish the outhouse,” Rolf said.
“They would want to be here.”
“Ja. You’re right about that.”
Rolf passed Erik, going out into the sunshine.
“Soon,” he said. “Later this week.”
Erik wondered what day it was, how many days were left in the week. Since they’d left Hanley, every day had felt the same.
Rolf picked up the canvas that had covered the wagon and dragged it over to the hole. He dropped it to the ground nearby, then went back for the few pieces of wood left by the house. He looked at the pile, nudging the pieces with his foot.
Erik watched him silently. Finally Rolf looked up. “Why don’t we see what’s in that river?” he said. “Maybe catch us a fish for supper?”
They walked straight west from the sod house. Erik carried the fishing poles Rolf had bought in Hanley; Rolf had flatbread and tin cups in a pail.
The prairie was as flat as the land around their sod house. The grass grew thin and dusty green.
Erik kicked at a clump of grass. Unexpectedly, a flash of purple caught his eye. Looking closer he saw miniature flowers mingled with the grass. Further on he found scattered bones, bleached white, half buried in the sod.
Buffalo bones! Hoping for more, Erik was startled by a pale brown bird flying out of the grass right in front of him.
After crossing several quarters of land, Erik noticed the land changing. It fell and rose, then seemed to come to an end, just ahead, where Rolf stood without moving.
Erik stopped beside him.
Below lay the river – wide and swift and clear, the banks on both sides green with bushes. Erik hadn’t seen any sign of the trees Mr. Haugen had mentioned, but this was almost as good.
“What a strange land,” said Rolf after a long moment. “So plain, yet it hides such beauty.”
Erik agreed silently as he scrambled down the hill after Rolf. The slope was covered in bushes, most not reaching his waist. Birds watched from the brush, flying up when Rolf and Erik grew close.
Only a few minutes after throwing his line in the river, Rolf pulled out a striped olive-green fish. He killed and cleaned it, then gathered twigs and small branches for a fire. Erik watched curiously as Rolf drove half a dozen forked twigs into the ground around his fire, then cut the cleaned fish in half. He wove the fish onto sticks and propped them on the forked twigs so they hung over the fire.
Feeling a tug on his rod, Erik found himself wrestling with his own catch. Twice he thought he’d lose it, but after several minutes he landed a large, spotted green fish, its mouth full of pointed teeth.
“A pike,” said Rolf with satisfaction. “We had pike in Norway. What we can’t eat now and for breakfast, we’ll smoke.”
Erik smashed a rock onto the wriggling fish, crushing its head. He cleaned it and dropped it into the pail. Picking up his rod, he caught one more fish before the supper was cooked.
The fish made the best meal Erik had eaten in weeks – if not forever.
They walked home in the cool of the evening, the long shadows from the setting sun stretching ahead of them. Erik filleted the fish, putting them to soak in salted water overnight. Rolf dug around in their scraps of wood and built an improvised smokehouse over a shallow hole in the ground.
Erik dragged a bench outside and sat on it, leaning against the sod wall. One by one, stars appeared. In the distance an animal howled.
Erik had never seen a sky so wide.
They ate fried fish for breakfast the next morning, then Erik put the rest of the fish to smoke. Afterwards he helped Rolf with the outhouse. They had wood for the seat and the frame, but used the canvas for walls and a roof.
“I guess we can’t move again,” Erik said, handing Rolf the last section of canvas.
Rolf looked at Erik, his eyebrows raised.
“Nothing to cover the wagon with.”
“That’s right,” said Rolf. His eyes rested briefly on the posts Olaf had dug into the ground. “We’re here to stay.”
That evening Rolf filled his jacket pockets with flatbread and gjetost.
“I’ll walk to Lars’s in the morning,” he said, “then take his horses to Hanley. It’ll be quicker.” He met Erik’s eyes, then looked away. “I’ll need you to stay here and tend to the animals.”
Disappointed, Erik nodded, saying nothing.
When morning came it was windy and cool. Erik watched Rolf set off across the prairie. He dropped to the ground, leaning against the house, feeling it solid and warm against his back. He watched a hawk swoop through the air, nearly touching the ground as it picked up a rodent. The oxen grazed nearby while Tess and her calf dozed by the slough. The chickens were scattered around the yard, scratching for insects.
Flat and unfriendly, that’s what the country felt like. Flat and unfriendly and lonely. It had been lonely enough when R
olf was there. It was worse when he was gone.
But he couldn’t sit all day. If they were going to live in this place, he’d have to make it work. They needed a garden patch for vegetables. Erik jumped to his feet and grabbed the spade. As he dug, he occasionally glanced at the grazing oxen, wishing he was strong enough to hold the plough in the ground.
The soil was hard and dry, the digging difficult. After a while, Erik set the spade aside and walked east. As he walked he was aware of rises and falls, but after the mountains of Norway he couldn’t call it anything but flat. No matter which way he looked, everything was the same.
How easy it would be to get lost.
Lost.
Heart thumping, Erik swung around.
There it was, in the distance, the sod house, small, brown, hugging the ground.
After that Erik looked back often.
He saw survey stakes in the corners of their quarter and caught a glimpse of a building further east. In a hollow he found an almost dry slough, thick with grass. Bushes grew along one side, some of them taller than Erik. As he approached, birds flew out, clutching berries in their beaks. Erik ate some of the purple berries, finding them juicy and sweet.
In the distance he could see a wolf walking across the prairie. No, not a wolf. It was too small. A dog, maybe.
Erik set off after it. The animal turned away, breaking into a run. Not a dog.
Hungry, Erik headed back to the sod house. He checked that the chickens were still alive, then heated a tin of beans. After eating, he used the pickaxe to break up the hard sod of the garden, but looked around often in case the wolf-dog returned.
By the fourth day, Erik knew their quarter section almost as well as he knew his grandfather’s farm in Norway. He spent the morning digging in the garden, then loaded one of the water barrels onto the wagon.
The oxen stood quietly while he fumbled with the yoke.
“You’re not horses,” said Erik, patting Black’s neck, “but for oxen you’re not bad.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
