A Promise to Love

by Serena B. Miller

  “You tell me when, and I’ll help you,” Joshua said.

  As they began to walk toward Foster’s camp, Hans’s face lit up with a smile so familiar that it made Joshua’s heart long to see Ingrid again. “Now—you tell all about children. I have nephews, nieces now?”

  “When we get you back home,” Joshua said, “you will have nephews and nieces coming out your ears.”

  23

  There had been a smoky haze developing over the land for several days, and Ingrid was worried.

  “Where is the smoke coming from?” Ingrid filled the teakettle with a half quart of precious water to make tea for Hazel, who had come for a visit.

  “Don’t worry,” Hazel said. “There are always a few fires in Michigan this time of year. A lot of farmers burn their fields off in the fall. This is normal.”

  “But everything is very dry,” Ingrid pointed out. “It is dangerous to start fires when it is no rain.”

  “True. I’ve lived here for a long time and I’ve never seen such weather.” Hazel reached for a sugar cookie from the mounded plate in the middle of the table. “If you’re worried, you can bring your family to my place until we get a good, soaking rain. I practically live on top of the lake. It might ease your mind.”

  “I like that very much.” Ingrid lifted the tea canister off the top of the warming oven. “But I not want to leave Joshua’s animals.”

  “It’s just something to keep in mind,” Hazel said. “By the way, did you know Susan and Lyman are getting married in the spring?”

  “No! Lyman not tell me.” Ingrid measured a small spoonful of tea into the chipped teapot. “I hope he not planning for Susan to live in my barn!”

  “From what I understand, they’ll be living with her parents.”

  Ingrid poured boiling water over the dried leaves. “Do her parents like this idea?”

  “Emma’s thrilled. Susan’s father probably won’t even notice. Last I heard, he had a crate of books shipped in from Boston. An old friend of his passed away, and his widow sent them to the Cains. Emma says he hasn’t stopped reading since.”

  “Very much learning!” Ingrid clucked her tongue. “His head be too heavy to hold up.”

  “I hope not!” Hazel laughed. “Susan wants him to do the wedding ceremony.”

  “I have a good idea! I make Swedish wedding cookies for them,” Ingrid said. “They melt in mouth.”

  “If they’re anything like these sugar cookies, I imagine they will.” Hazel bit into a second one. “Any word from Josh?”

  “No. I hope he is all right.” Ingrid poured the hot water into two cups.

  “It’s hard for the men to get letters out,” Hazel said. “Spring will be here before you know it.”

  “You are right.” Ingrid lifted the steaming cup to her lips.

  Mary was upstairs working on lessons with the little girls. Bertie was napping on Agnes’s lap, and Agnes was absorbed in an assignment her grandmother had given her. It was a rare luxury for Ingrid to be able to simply sit quietly and have tea with a good friend. She was savoring every second.

  “How is your livestock faring?” Hazel asked.

  “The creek has low places where some water is, but it will be dry soon.”

  “Me and She-Wolf are glad we live next to the lake.” She ruffled fur on the dog’s head. “Aren’t we, girl?”

  “Where do you find such fine animal?” Ingrid asked.

  “I found her half-starved when she was small,” Hazel said. “It was right after my husband passed. I needed that pup every bit as much as she needed me.”

  “God has a way of giving person what they need,” Ingrid said. “Sometimes before they know they need it.”

  “I hope you are talking from experience?”

  Ingrid blushed. “Joshua . . . he care for me now.”

  Hazel chuckled. “Well, it’s about time!”

  She-Wolf, who had been asleep, stood up, yawned, and stretched her back.

  “I’ll be leaving now,” Hazel said. “She-Wolf wants to go home. She knows I have some nice venison waiting for her, and she’s all excited about it.”

  At the word venison, She-Wolf trotted to the front door and stood there until Hazel opened it, and they walked out together.

  Agnes looked up from her assignment at the closed door. “Hazel does know that She-Wolf can’t really talk, right?”

  “Maybe,” Ingrid said, “but sometimes it seem that dog knows every word that comes out of Hazel’s mouth.”

  “What I don’t understand,” Joshua said, “is what Bart thought he was going to do with you in the spring. He couldn’t keep tabs on you once you men and the logs hit the water.”

  Joshua and Hans were lingering, absorbing the warmth and scents of Katie’s cookhouse, their stomachs comfortably full. Joshua wished he could see Ingrid’s face when Hans showed up.

  “He kill us. He make plans for Indian river hogs to ride the logs.”

  Jigger, who had been helping Katie, took off his apron, came over to the table, and sat down on the bench beside them.

  “I’m Jigger—the head cook of this camp.” He looked over his shoulder at Katie and then raised his voice, as though wanting her to overhear. “There are some who make the mistake of thinking that that there red-headed woman is the head cook, but she ain’t!”

  Joshua glanced at Katie, who was most definitely in earshot. She seemed utterly unflustered by this comment. Without her hands pausing for an instant in kneading bread, she gave Joshua a big smile and a wink, as though letting him in on a secret. Evidently she had learned to deal with this ancient banty rooster by humoring him as much as possible.

  “What happened to the men that kidnapped you?” Jigger asked.

  “Loggers take them to Bay City to jail.”

  “Them men are lucky they didn’t get strung up on the spot. Loggers can be terrible rough. One camp I worked for, the men found a couple of river pirates while they was on the spring drive. The pirates had a little tributary off to the side where they was doing their dirty work. They was snagging other camps’ logs, cutting off the ends where they was branded with the other camp’s sign—and then putting their own brand on it.”

  “What happen?” Hans asked.

  “It was up in Maine and it had been a hard winter.” Jigger put both elbows on the table and leaned forward. “The conditions had been terrible. They never got a good, hard freeze where they could sled the logs out easy. Everything had to be dragged through mud. We’d only gotten out about half of the timber the foreman had hoped for. None of us were sure we’d even get our full pay. Without a good snow, the river was low that year and the drive was hard. And then, while they was trying to get the logs they did have down the river, they found those two weasly river pirates stealing their hard-earned lumber. The men strung them up on the spot. It weren’t pretty.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t,” Joshua said.

  “Men who steal other men’s logs, and those who kidnap because they run such bad camps no one wants to work for them—they deserve what they get.” Jigger spat on the floor with contempt and then sheepishly ducked his head and looked around at Katie.

  “You can clean that up later, Jigger,” Katie said calmly. “Go ahead and enjoy your conversation.”

  Jigger looked relieved.

  Katie dusted the flour off her hands and took something that smelled wonderful out of the oven. “I just baked some fresh molasses cookies,” she called. “Would any of you gentlemen like some?”

  Joshua saw Hans’s eyes light up. “Ja!”

  “I guess I’d better get back to work now,” Jigger said without moving. “That woman can’t cook worth spit without my help.”

  Katie brought a platter of molasses cookies to the table. They were the size of small dinner plates. Then she brought all three of them mugs of strong, hot green tea.

  “This and some good ‘chaw’ will pert’ near cure anything that ails you, boys.” Jigger took a big slurp of the green tea. “I ma
de an awful mistake a few years back. Took a job cooking for that health sanitarium down in Battle Creek. Thought I might teach them people a thing or three. I felt sorry for the poor things. Let me tell you something, boys. Them people are pitiful. No meat. No liquor. No tobacco. No tea. I give it my best shot, but after two weeks I had to hightail it out of there. Eatin’ that food just about kilt me.”

  Joshua tried not to smile. It was obvious that Jigger’s sojourn among the health-food enthusiasts had left him a haunted man.

  “But you’re back where you’re needed now, Jigger,” Katie said. “Can you show me again how to get these beans ready? I’ve got a good batch of coals built in the hole the boys dug, but I can’t seem to get this Dutch oven cover on just right.”

  “You gotta seal it with bread dough, woman. To hold the steam in. I’ve told you a hundred times.” Jigger shook his head as he stood, as though unable to believe her foolishness. “See what I mean? For some reason, people get it into their heads that Katie is head cook—but they’re wrong. She can’t do nothin’ without my help.”

  The efficient and competent Katie humbly stood back and allowed Jigger to seal the cast-iron bean pot. It was the most Joshua had seen the fragile old cook do so far except blow the Gabriel horn to call the men to meals. It occurred to him that Robert Foster’s wife was an exceedingly kind and wise woman.

  Foster entered the cookhouse. “Well, that’s good riddance to bad rubbish.”

  “The bad men are gone?” Katie set the kettle for more hot water.

  “The bad men are gone, sweetheart.” He went over and kissed her cheek.

  “I heard that the law in Bay City is pretty lax,” Joshua said. “Do you really think that they’ll do anything to them?”

  “Sure they will,” Foster said with a smile. “The ones in charge don’t want anyone taking the loggers’ money except themselves.”

  “Is it still smoky outside?” Katie asked.

  “It is,” Foster said. “I think it might be getting a little worse.”

  “Do you think the camp is in any danger?”

  “I don’t think so,” Foster said. “Those fires are still pretty far off. It’s probably just some farmers burning off their fields.”

  “Awful dry to be burning off fields,” Jigger said. “I’d hate to go through what we did back in ’67. That was too close for comfort.”

  “What happened in ’67?” Joshua asked.

  “We got hit with a wildfire,” Foster said. “It was touch-and-go. If you’ve never been in one, you have no idea how fast a forest fire can spread.”

  “You keeping all them loggers you freed?” Jigger asked. “It’s gonna be a mite crowded in the bunkhouse if’n you do.”

  “Most of them want to go home after the ordeal they’ve been through and let their families know they’re alive. What about you, Hans?” Foster asked. “Do you want to go home or would you rather stay and work?”

  “Now that I know my sister is safe, I will stay and work.” He dug a playful elbow into Joshua’s side. “Me and my new brother will make much money, take it home, and give it all to my sister. Our Ingrid can turn a penny into a dollar.”

  “Find a bunk and get anything else you need out of the store. Josh will put it on the books for you.”

  As Joshua and Hans walked to the store, it seemed to Joshua that the smell of smoke was getting stronger.

  24

  “I hate to leave you and the children, ma’am,” Lyman said. “I appreciate you and the captain giving me a place to stay, but my boss says he’ll pay me extra if I sleep at the sawmill and make sure no fires start. There’s a snug little shanty there he says I can winter in.”

  “I understand,” she said. “I can take care of things here.”

  “I don’t know if you been out to the creek in the past few days,” Lyman said. “It’s completely dry now, but I did a trick my daddy told me about once. I dug a hole in the creek big enough to settle a barrel down into. There’s enough water still underneath the creek bed to keep those barrels full so the livestock will have something to drink, but you’ll probably need to check it every day.”

  “Thank you, Lyman.”

  “If the barrels dry up, about the only thing you can do is let the livestock go find water on their own.”

  “It will rain soon.”

  He looked around at the tinder-dry leaves and the parched earth. “Some of the old people are saying that this is the worst drought they’ve ever seen.”

  “Hazel offered we go stay with her,” Ingrid said. “Is it good idea, you think?”

  “None of the other farmers have started bringing their families into town. If I was you, I’d wait a bit longer. Those fires are still pretty far away, and rain should come any day now. It always rains the first part of October. Just keep a sharp eye out. If you see a glow on the horizon, put the children in the wagon and get out of here. I’ll come and check on you a couple times a week to see if you need help with anything.”

  “Take care,” Ingrid said. “You been big blessing to us.”

  “It was the least I could do. If it weren’t for Josh, I’d have never found my Susan.”

  As soon as Lyman left, Ingrid went out into the yard and turned her eyes westward. The land was so flat it was hard to find a vantage point.

  There was a maple tree near the house with low-lying branches that Ellie liked to climb. With no man around to see her shinnying up a tree, Ingrid hiked up her skirts and climbed as far as the limbs could hold her. To her relief, there was no red glow on the horizon.

  As she climbed down, she saw the strangest sight. A dozen or so domestic cats were running through her nearest field as though they were wolves running in a pack. Never in her life had she seen anything like that. Perhaps that was what cats did here. There was much about America that was new and strange, but still, it gave her a bad feeling.

  She went to check the barrels that Lyman had buried in the creek. His trick had worked. They were nearly full. The livestock would be all right—at least for today.

  “Lyman is leave us,” Ingrid said when she went back inside. “He will stay at the sawmill.”

  “It is just as well,” Mary said. “There’s little he can do here now. And it is one less mouth to feed. Not having a full-grown man eating a meal with us every day will make the food last longer.”

  Even though it should not yet be dark, she noticed that Mary had lit a lantern to see by. The haze of smoke had begun to block out the sun.

  “Is the smoke ever going away, Ingrid?” Agnes said. “I can still breathe all right, but it’s hitting Trudy hard.”

  Ingrid didn’t need Agnes to tell her that Trudy was struggling. The child had developed a dry, hacking cough that was a worry to her.

  “The rains will come soon.” Ingrid gave them the reassurance that Lyman had given her. “I will find something to help Trudy.”

  Joshua had four white handkerchiefs in his drawer. She whipstitched two ribbons onto one of them so that Trudy could wear it over her nose and mouth. Before she tied it onto the little girl, she dampened it—to make it more efficient at keeping the smoke out of Trudy’s lungs.

  She then wet a large dish towel and draped it over Bertie’s cradle. She could at least keep him from breathing in smoke while he was sleeping.

  “You watch children, Mary?” she asked. “I want to go see Richard and Virgie and ask what they think. They live here long time and know more.”

  Virgie was sweeping off her front porch when Ingrid arrived. Richard was just coming in from the barn.

  “Is something the matter with the children?” Virgie asked.

  “No, children all right. I wonder what you do if smoke get worse. You maybe go to town to stay until it rain?”

  “No,” Richard said. “There’s no call for that.”

  Virgie and Richard had a dog that was so old, it had pretty much lost interest in the world around it and spent most of its time napping on their front porch.

  Right at
that moment, it raised its head and began to howl.

  Virgie nudged it gently with her broom. “Now, you hush!” She glanced at Ingrid. “He’s been doing that for the past two days. Just lifts his nose into the air and starts howling. I don’t know what to make of it.”

  “I see strange thing this morning,” Ingrid said. “Many cats run across my field like pack of wolves. I never see anything like it. That thing happen here?”

  Virgie shook her head. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life, but I’ve been seeing a lot of wildlife crossing our property.”

  “I keep thinking it’ll rain soon,” Richard said.

  “If you think it is time to take children to town, you will tell me? Hazel say we can stay with her.”

  “I’ll come tell you if I think you’re in any danger,” Richard said.

  As she walked back home, she saw a sea of rabbits moving toward her, as though they were being pulled toward the lake by an unseen force. They parted at her feet and moved past her, showing not the least bit of fear at being so near to her. They seemed dazed as they went east.

  Everything within her said to pack up the children and leave, but the few people she had questioned made her doubt her instincts. Everyone seemed to think that they were safe.

  Then she saw a shadowy, huge shape in the semi-darkness and she froze. It was too big to be anything but a bear, and it was coming directly toward her. She knew it wasn’t wise to run, and so she stood as still as possible. She soon discovered that the bear, like the rabbits, seemed not to be conscious of her presence. It, too, looked half-dazed as it moved toward the lake.

  As soon as it was gone, she ran to her door and slammed it shut behind her. The strange behavior of the animals was far more frightening to her than the smoke.

  She considered her options. Tomorrow was Sunday. She would be taking her entire family to the village for church. Unless there was less smoke tomorrow morning than there had been today, she would move her family to Hazel’s, cramped conditions or not.