A Promise for Ellie

by Lauraine Snelling

  Andrew ignored the barb. “How’s Gerald?” Toby’s older brother had returned from the Spanish-American War in ill health, although he’d not been wounded.

  Toby shrugged. “Malaria comes and goes. He’s helping Pa out, getting the bank and post office building ready.” The new building was across the street from Bridget’s boardinghouse. “I heard the sheriff came to see about that body burned in the fire.”

  Andrew shook his head. “I was in school.”

  “Yeah, that’s right, still one of the kids.” Toby pushed on by to go into the store, his mocking laugh floating back behind.

  Andrew gritted his teeth, but if this was the worst Toby had to dish out, he’d not have a problem keeping his promise to Ellie.

  Once again he waved to Penny and headed back to the schoolhouse to harness up the wagon. His cousin Trygve would have to be in charge of the wagon next year. Hard to believe Trygve would be the oldest Bjorklund boy in the school next year. Not that Astrid, Sophie, or Grace couldn’t harness the horse and drive the wagon, but the task had always fallen to the boys.

  Astrid leaped off the steps, as did most of the other students, and within minutes Andrew had a wagonful of laughing and shouting children.

  Reverend Solberg waved them away. “Remember, tomorrow we clean, so bring soap, buckets, and rags.”

  “No more homework, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks.” Sophie led the chant and had them all laughing.

  Tomorrow he’d see Ellie again. Andrew clapped his hand over his pocket. He’d forgotten to read her letter.

  Dear Ingeborg,

  Thank you for the invitation to come to Andrew’s graduation. I do wish we could attend, but spring came late here, and Kane is just now seeding the wheat. He feels he cannot take any days off, and while he said we should go ahead without him, I would rather wait and come after harvest. I know I will miss the celebration, but I hate to leave him. It seems I always do that. How I would love to see Mor more often. I wrote to her also, and I know she will be as disappointed in not seeing her three grandchildren. They are disappointed too. They were so looking forward to playing with their cousins.

  Forgive me for not being a better correspondent, and I will try to write more often. Give my love to all my family in Blessing. I wish you could all come down here. We have plenty of room on the ranch and Kane says he’ll even round up some horses for the boys to ride, after they break them, of course.

  Better close and get to making supper.

  Yours affectionately,

  Augusta Bjorklund Moyer

  Ingeborg sighed and refolded the letter. Having the entire family here would have been nice for a change. Doesn’t Augusta understand her mother is getting up in years? After the last spell that Bridget had, Ingeborg had come to the realization that her mother-in-law might not live forever, in spite of her protestations to the otherwise. Bridget did not appreciate any advice suggesting she slow down%. When guests came to her boardinghouse, they expected good food, a clean bed, and a cheerful time. She was known far beyond the outskirts of Blessing since Henry Aarsgard, her husband of nearly ten years, had been a railroad man. He always said it was her cooking that caught his attention and her smile that caught his heart.

  Ingeborg’s knees creaked when she stood up. She shook her head. Her coronet of braids was not as bright as when she was younger but was still thick and her husband’s delight, especially when, sitting on the edge of their bed, she let the braids down and brushed her requisite one hundred strokes a night.

  Something nagged at her.

  “Uff da, I’m getting to be an old woman, forgetting things, creaking when I walk. What was it I said I’d do?” Lines deepened on her forehead and between her eyebrows. She pulled the coffeepot to the hotter part of the stove. Perhaps a cup of coffee would revive her memory.

  She checked the bread baking in the oven, not quite brown enough, and glanced over at the pies waiting to be put in the oven. She’d used the last of the dried apples, and the two pie shells would be used for chocolate cream, Andrew’s favorite. While everyone in Blessing would share the dinner after the graduation ceremony, she wanted some left here for their personal celebration.

  Barney barked a welcome, the tone saying it was someone he knew.

  Ingeborg changed her apron and went to the door. “Elizabeth, what a wonderful surprise.” Her daughter-in-law smiled and waved, then stepped carefully down from the buggy. While she’d said the baby wasn’t due for another month, her girth said otherwise. But in the family way or not, Dr. Elizabeth Bjorklund had not slacked on her medical practice one bit.

  “I was hoping you had the coffee on. I’m in dire need of your outhouse and then sustenance.” She tied her horse’s lead rope to the hitching rail in front of the white picket fence that surrounded the white two-story farmhouse. “The Swenson baby came with no trouble, a boy big enough to start crawling next week. That woman’s pelvis must be made of elastic, the way she has such big babies so easily.”

  “I’ll pour your coffee. Will a sandwich be enough, or should I warm some soup too?”

  “Yes to all the above. Uff da.” Elizabeth smiled at adopting one of Ingeborg’s Norwegian expressions. She massaged her lower back as she made her way around the house and followed the well-worn path to the privy.

  She’ll not go another month, Ingeborg thought as she turned back into the house. Doctor or not, she will have that baby when it is ready to come. She smiled to herself. While she was still called to assist some births, Dr. Elizabeth did most of them nowadays. The people of Blessing and the surrounding area felt great relief at having a boardcertified doctor in their midst, taking much of the pressure off Ingeborg, who’d used her gifts of healing for anyone who called her. Her doctoring began when she and her first husband, Roald Bjorklund, staked out their homestead near the confluence of the Red and Little Salt rivers in the spring of 1880.

  Ingeborg went out to the well house, where they kept things cool, and brought in the kettle of soup she’d made the day before. Since it was time to begin dinner anyway, she’d have a bit of a jump on the preparations. Soup along with bread right out of the oven—dinner fit for a king, or queen, as in this case.

  She shaded her eyes to see Haakan and his team out plowing the acreage he’d been seeding in oats for cattle feed. He and Lars worked in tandem, one team plowing just behind the other, both with doublebottom plows and four up. When the sun stood straight up, they’d head for the house, both eating here because Kaaren’s school for the deaf was still in session. Both schools would be out tomorrow afternoon. Most of the deaf students would be picked up or put on the train to go home on Saturday morning.

  Ingeborg added more wood to the firebox and gave the soup kettle a good stir so the vegetables wouldn’t burn on the bottom. Taking two eggs from the basket on the table, she whisked them to a froth and, after measuring it in the palm of her hand, dumped salt into the eggs and beat in flour until she had a dry dough that she could drizzle into the soup to make spaetzle, tiny dumplings that looked like fat strings.

  Elizabeth washed her hands at the bench outside and entered the kitchen. “Much better. Oh, it smells so good in here. Ingeborg, you bake the best bread. No matter how hard I try, mine just doesn’t measure up.”

  “Thank you. I’ll have those loaves out in a minute or two, and you can take one home with you.” She gave the soup another stir. “Sit down. Rest yourself in that rocking chair.” She glanced down at Elizabeth’s feet. “Those boots look a mite tight. Better get your feet up too.”

  “I know. My feet started to swell last week when the warm weather hit. I can’t take long here. I’m sure I have folks lined up at the office.”

  “Just for starters.” Ingeborg handed Elizabeth a cup of coffee with a cookie on the saucer. “How’s Thelma working out there?” She smiled as she remembered the woman who had arrived on the train one day looking for a job.

  “She’s a godsend.” Elizabeth laid her head against the chair back. �
��What with Thorliff gone again, I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

  “He’ll be back for the graduation.” He was going to be the speaker at the service, so she knew he would be.

  “Of course. He said he’d be back on the train tomorrow.” Elizabeth closed her eyes with a gentle sigh. “Guess I never realized how carrying a baby would make me feel so tired.”

  “You might want to cut back on taking care of other folks and look to taking care of you.” Ingeborg opened the oven door, and the fragrance of baking bread filled the room. She inhaled deeply and heard Elizabeth do the same. Don’t you go giving advice where it may not be wanted, she reminded herself. She’s the doctor, not you. Ah, but she is carrying my first grandchild, and surely that gives me some kind of reason for my concern.

  “Now you sound just like my mother.” Elizabeth opened her eyes and smiled. “And yes, I know I should. Especially after we lost the first one. But that was so early in the pregnancy that the baby hardly seemed real.” She rocked gently. “But I’ve so often wondered, was it a boy or girl? And did I do something to make it happen?”

  “I still think about the baby I lost so many years ago.” Ingeborg paused in turning the loaves out of the pans and onto a wooden rack so they could air. “And when I had no more after Astrid, for a while I wondered if God was punishing me for my willfulness.”

  “And what did you decide?”

  “What I read in the Old Testament was about a vengeful God, but in the New Testament Jesus said His Father is love and that whoever has seen Him has seen the Father. I reread all the Gospels, and the only people Jesus spoke harshly to were the Pharisees for their hard hearts. Everyone else He loved and healed. I reminded myself of those verses over and over. ‘Come onto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Love one another, as I have loved you. . . .’ That’s running them together, but I chose to believe them all. And I did what the Psalms and Paul said. I ate those words. I meditated on them day and night. I had no choice, and it seemed that thinking on the Word in the hours at night when I could not sleep was better than pacing and fretting. Another good verse, a simple one—‘Fret not.’ ”

  “You are such a good example for me. It is easy to think all my training heals people, but I know that I just do what I can, and God does the healing.” Elizabeth smiled her thanks for the buttered heel of a warm loaf of bread. “You spoil me.”

  “My privilege. Just think, I now have two daughters and will soon have a third.” She stirred the soup again. The spaetzle were cooked enough, so she pushed the kettle to the cooler part of the stove to let it simmer. She patted Elizabeth’s shoulder and stepped outside to beat the iron bar around the insides of the iron triangle hanging by the back door. By the time the men arrived from the field, she would have the table set and the bread sliced.

  Dishing up a bowl of soup for Elizabeth, she set it on a plate and put the plate in her daughter’s lap. “There now, take your time.”

  “Do you think you can spare Astrid to help me part of the time? Even with Thelma helping, there is plenty to do, and Astrid has such an aptitude for caring for the sick. I’m hoping she will choose to go for a nursing degree or even study to be a doctor.”

  “Of course, although she usually helps Penny with her little ones and at the store in the summer.”

  “That Penny, now there is a wonder woman. How she manages the store, Hjelmer’s businesses, her family, and all her church things I’ll never know.” Elizabeth wiped her mouth on a napkin. “This soup is really good. Our cook at home made spaetzle like this.”

  “It’s easy. We like dumplings of all kinds.” The dog’s barking announced that the men were nearing the barn.

  “I better be on my way.” Elizabeth stood and set her dishes in the enameled dishpan sitting near the reservoir. “Mange takk for the refreshment.”

  Ingeborg wrapped a loaf of bread in a clean towel. “Here.” She added a wedge of cheese cut from a larger wedge sitting under a glass dome. “Try this sharp cheddar and tell me what you think. Now with the cows on grass again, we’ll be making plenty more cheese.”

  They tried to sell out their supply of cheese each year before the possibility of spring flooding so that none would go to waste. Orders came for Bjorklund cheese from as far away as St. Louis and Seattle. They’d even had orders from New York after she sent their benefactor, David Jonathan Gould, a small well-waxed wheel one Christmas. Since Onkel Olaf now made cheese presses of various sizes, they produced more variety. She’d thought of adding Swiss cheese this year and ordered the culture to begin experimenting with. Her gammelost was a permanent success with all the Norwegians, including the new wave of immigrants.

  She hugged Elizabeth and walked with her out to the buggy, where her horse dozed in the sun. “I’ll see you for supper on Saturday, then, if not before.”

  “Yes.” Elizabeth gave a discreet oof as she settled onto the seat. “If Mrs. Geddick has that baby anytime soon, shall I send them over here?”

  “Gladly.” She smiled up at the doctor. “You need to sleep through the night, and babies seem to want to come in the early morning hours. I think it’s so their entrance can cause a stir.”

  “That they do.” Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Will you please untie that lead rope for me? How I manage to forget that little chore so often is beyond me.”

  “We were talking. That’s why.”

  “Hey, Doc, what’s your hurry?” Haakan called from where they were unharnessing the horses in front of the barn.

  “Got people waiting for me.” She waved and turned the rig around to jog down the lane.

  Ingeborg watched her go. If she knew anything about babies, this one for sure wasn’t going to wait a whole month, no matter what the good doctor thought. Perhaps she’d be delivering more than the Geddick baby.

  The men had just finished eating when Barney announced a stranger arriving. Haakan set down his cup. “I wonder who that can be?”

  Wiping her hands on her apron, Ingeborg went to the screen door. “Can I help you?”

  The man dismounted from his horse, flipped the reins over the hitching rail, and pushed open the gate of the picket fence. “Mrs. Bjorklund?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Sheriff Becker from Grafton. I’m here to see your husband if possible.”

  “Of course. Come on in. Have you had dinner yet? We’re just finishing.” She held the door open for him.

  He removed his fedora as he came through the doorway. “I think we’ve met before at some of the county meetings.” He nodded to the men at the table. “Haakan, Lars, I was hoping to find you where we could talk a bit.”

  “Sit down. Astrid, bring the man a plate.”

  “I hate to put you out this way.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “No.”

  “Then take that chair.”

  While the men spoke, Ingeborg dished up some soup from the kettle on the stove, and Astrid filled a coffee cup and set it and the silverware in place.

  “So, Charles, what brings you clear over here?”

  “That body you found after the Olsons’ shed burned. You know anything more about that?”

  “No. Since we’ve not heard of anyone missing, I think it was some bum off the train who holed up in there, and maybe it was him smoking that started the fire. We buried him over to the church plot. Didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Was there any kind of identification on him?” Charles took a spoonful of the soup. “This is mighty good, Mrs. Bjorklund. Thank you.”

  “Nothing remained from the fire. He was burnt near to a cinder.” Lars dunked his cookie in his coffee.

  “No one had seen a stranger around these parts?”

  “Nobody said they had. You know, the people here would come right out and say so if they knew something. We all just responded to the church bell tolling. Olson’s place is right near the church.”

  “So you don’t think there was any foul play?”
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  “In Blessing?”

  “Well, ya never know, and it’s my job to look into things like that.” He sopped the soup up with the last of his bread.

  “I have plenty more,” Ingeborg offered.

  “Thanks, but that was enough. I’m going on over to the Olsons’ next. Anyone hears anything, you’ll let me know?” The sheriff nodded to Ingeborg. “Mighty fine, ma’am. Thank you.” He shoved his chair back.

  “Thorliff was planning to put something about it in the paper. Perhaps that might bring out some information.” Haakan stood up. “Come again some time when you can stay longer.”

  Ingeborg watched the men file out the door. Someone, somewhere was missing a family member. How tragic.

  By the time they blew out the kitchen lamp, the sheriff ’s visit had been discussed soundly. Later, when Ingeborg and Haakan retired to their room, he lay against propped-up pillows, his hands locked behind his head, watching his wife brush her hair.

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  She turned to look at him. Even after all these years of marriage, the sight of his muscled chest and shoulders made her heart trip over its own beat. The silver in his hair caught the lamplight, silver that was getting more pronounced, as were the lines in his face. More scalp showed, giving his already broad forehead more skin, and a distinct line divided his tan face and the white of his hat-hidden head.

  “Thinking what?”

  “You know Andrew’s house is not coming on time?”

  “Ja.” She kept up her strokes, no longer needing to count but doing so anyway, content with the rhythm.

  “Perhaps they should put off the wedding. Wait until we get the house and barn both up and the harvest in.”

  “They are so young, but I sure don’t want to be the one to suggest this to Andrew.” Ingeborg shook her head slowly. “Guess we should pray about it first. If you believe this is what’s best, we need God to give you the right words and Andrew to have willing ears to hear it. He thinks he’s a man now, you know.”