Gifts of the Spirit

by Patricia Eilola

  Nonny and Susie had done their part by making signs out of construction paper “loaned” to us by the Prairie Star School, signs they placed all along the driveway with arrows pointing toward the house. Our kitchen had been filled to capacity, the whole house had been that afternoon, and Eino had received gifts—usually money in an envelope—enough for him to purchase his own fountain pen, for $4.98, a gift we had wanted to buy him for Christmas, but Christmas that year had been especially sparse. All we could afford to buy him was a copy of Webster’s Home, School, and Office Dictionary, for sixty-five cents instead of the unabridged version I knew he had wanted. But that cost $6.75 even without an index. Mother had requested embroidery floss so we bought her six skeins for nineteen cents, and I had made her a new apron, which I had embroidered and lined with lace at an extravagant twenty-nine cents. I had ordered plain hemmed pillow cases for twenty cents each, which I had embroidered to give to Jennie and Emil. I had found a pattern that cost nineteen cents, which could be adjusted to fit two to eight-year-olds, and some bargain chambray material for fifteen cents a yard, so I could make dresses for the girls, using Jennie’s sewing machine and getting some help from her. For Nonny I ordered a yard of blue-and-white-striped chambray to make him a shirt, and a copy of the Jack London’s Call of the Wild for sixty-five cents. Each of the girls received a book, too—Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter for Elsie, who didn’t need to be taught to be good but might enjoy it when she got older, and Tarzan of the Apes for Susie. I remembered how much I had coveted that book when I saw it upstairs at Haualas.

  For the whole family, I ordered a couple of Louisa Mae Alcott’s books—Little Women and An Old-Fashioned Girl—both containing good lessons for the children and reminding all of us about the importance of having a loving family and showing good manners.

  Books were my only extravagance except for Arvo’s gift. He desperately needed new work-boots, and I knew the ones in the catalog cost from $2.99, which seemed too cheap to me to hold up under hard work, to a whopping $6.49, which I chose because they had been made of “double-tanned leather” and “kept out water and moisture.”

  When he opened the box, he looked up at me with tears in his eyes. “You shouldn’t have done this,” he said.

  “You know they aren’t a luxury. They’re a necessity,” I countered.

  His gift to me had not been a book, which I had expected, but rather he, too, had splurged—on a new dress. I opened the box with tears in my eyes, too, because I knew how much it had cost. I had studied it in the catalog for weeks, falling in love with its drop-waist and “finely tucked vestee with pockets to match.” It had cost $3.98—almost double the cost of the housedress he could have bought. I would have been perfectly happy with that.

  He reached over to give me a kiss, “I wish it were a diamond ring or a pearl necklace. But you do need a new dress—to wear to church and to games and to your club meetings.”

  He was right. I had grown out of my old clothes—gaining a little bit of weight with Susie and a little more with Elsie—so I no longer looked like a scarecrow or a grasshopper. Arvo said he loved my “new” breasts, which he kissed and fondled happily in bed while we waited for the children to fall asleep.

  But the small amount of money we had spent for Christmas—including a book for Aini’s and Karl’s Ernie—had set us back almost $16.00, a huge amount considering that Mother still made only ten to twenty cents on her baked goods and maybe fifty cents a week on her dairy products. Arvo had sold his trappings for forty cents for muskrat, sixty-five cents for beaver, and up to seven dollars for mink. If he caught one muskrat and one beaver a week, he’d make about ten dollars. That certainly wouldn’t be adequate to support our growing family.

  “Please, please, please don’t go,” I’d begged in the dark, holding him close.

  “How else are we going to keep up with… everything?” he asked, leaning back and pulling me against his chest. “We can’t get along without a car nowadays, and our Tin Lizzie has had it. I’ll have to hook a ride into town as it is. And the kids need shoes for school and winter coats and so do you and so does Mother. We can’t keep going on a penny and a promise. I’ve done everything I can do to make the farm more profitable, but I’ve reached the end of my rope. We have all of the land we own cultivated, and we can’t afford to buy more—even if there were more available. You and Mother do a wonderful job of canning and preserving all of the vegetables we raise in the garden, don’t get me wrong. I appreciate all of the hard work you do… and berry-picking, too. You manage to gather and to save every single bit of what grows. By the way, your idea about building a roofed root cellar was a great one.”

  I had thought about having a root cellar for years and envied those farmers who had one because potatoes and carrots and rutabaga especially kept really well when they were stored in one.

  Finally, I had broached the subject with Arvo. At first neither one of us could figure out where we could build one because our land was so flat, but then Arvo figured out a place near the bank of the creek where the ground sloped down. We would have to chance a flood, that was for sure, and if one came and entered the root cellar, all would be lost, but it had turned out to be a great place for us to store our vegetables—not so far that they weren’t accessible even during the winter, but not so close that we would go in and out too often either.

  “But,” he came back to his earlier argument, “even with that saving, we don’t earn enough money from the farm to keep ahead. We just manage to stay… well… even, kind of,” he continued. “And now that the car has gone to pot and Ronny’s left—although that makes one fewer mouth to feed—we also will miss his strong arm when it comes to hauling wood and splitting it, not to mention chopping down trees. And I’m not sure how I can manage all of our fields alone when spring comes. Eino just isn’t strong enough…” he concluded.

  “So… there’s only one answer: I’ve got to get some kind of other work, and there’s mining. The Mahoning-Hull Rust Pit is going strong, and they’re always looking for good workers. I might even be lucky enough to get to work on one of the steam engines they use to haul the ore up out of the pit and on to the steel mills in Duluth. If I walk to Buhl or catch a ride there, I could get onto the trolley, which, I’m sure, stops at the mine headquarters. I’m sure it won’t be hard to find. Then I’ll just offer my services and hopefully be hired.”

  He had obviously thought the whole thing through thoroughly before he even broached the subject with me, which didn’t make me very happy. But on the other hand, perhaps it was better that way. I wasn’t subjected to the thinking process but instead offered a fait accompli. I’m not sure which would have been better—to have known about his plans as he was making them or to find out about them once they had been made. At any rate, he seemed convinced he had the only answer to our problem.

  The only facet he hadn’t quite thought through was the effect his leaving would have on Mother, the children, and me, especially with a new pregnancy just in its infancy, so to speak. Once he left, we missed him terribly. I especially felt all alone—despite Mother’s constant presence and the children’s loving kindness, because they were aware of how much I missed their father.

  Every day was worse than the day before had been until I wasn’t sure whether I could go on without his presence. Finally, Mother suggested that I go to spend a couple of hours with him. He had rented a room in a boarding house in Hibbing—really just a bed because once he got out of it, a fellow on another shift, fell in to sleep. So how and where could we “spend a few hours together”? Moreover, he had signed up to do twelve-hour shifts, which paid better than the eight-hour ones, so he had very few hours free.

  That question became the over-weaning problem I had to face—along with my loneliness—for the next couple of weeks. I knew he would leave in time to plow and plant the fields, but it was just March and a cold March at that. He wouldn’t be home
until at least May. How could I wait that long to see him?

  He sent us letters—one a day—although we didn’t receive them that way. They were delivered in bunches into the mailbox at the end of our short driveway.

  I wrote to him every evening although I wasn’t sure when or how he received them. I addressed them to the boarding house—Johnsons’ on Howard Street in Hibbing.

  In the meantime, I brooded. My pregnancy was advancing week by week. When he had left, I had been only perhaps four-months gone. Now that he had been gone for two months, I was at six-months and was already beginning to show the same symptoms I had had with some of the children—swollen ankles by the end of the day and difficulty leaning over to scrub the floors.

  Mother had taken over the bulk of the cooking and baking again, as she had with the others, but I tried to keep up with washing the dishes—and the separator—and Eino handled the milking and all of the outside work even though I knew he was yearning to leave—to go to a college somewhere somehow. His grades had been excellent, but we didn’t have money even to send with him so he could find a college and get a job to work for his tuition and room and board.

  He had been writing to every single college in the state of Minnesota, I thought, and he had received encouraging letters from Hamline, Macalester, and the University of Minnesota. He had even applied for the Teacher Training Program in Virginia, and he had been provisionally accepted—based on one’s high school grade point average. His had been a 4.0—a perfect series of A’s in every class, including agriculture, which he did not enjoy.

  “I don’t want to be a farmer… or a teacher,” he had announced in no uncertain terms years before. But if he wanted a higher education—better and bigger than high school—he might have to settle for what was available locally.

  In Duluth was a Working Man’s College, but it had strong Socialist, even Communist, tendencies. It would not have been appropriate at all for him.

  At any rate, at that point I was much less concerned about Eino than I was about Arvo and me. I had felt the strain in his letters—the extent to which he was missing me and the children and Mother and even Eino. I knew he could feel the strain in mine.

  But what could we do about the situation? That question haunted my every waking moment, and I could not seem to find an answer.

  27: Bliss and Abyss

  Finally a letter came that addressed our joint problem and seemed to offer a solution: I was to find a way to get to Buhl, where I was to rent a room—wherever I could for whatever price I had to pay. As soon as he had finished one shift, he would board the trolley car, ride to Buhl, join me in the room, where we would have maybe six to eight hours of time to be alone together before he would have to catch the trolley back to Hibbing in time to make his next shift.

  I was uncomfortable with the idea of renting a room, but hoped there would be a boarding house there or an inn of some kind, where I could rent one for just a day. I thought it made me sound as if I were a… . (well, the only kind of woman who voluntarily rents a room for just a few hours). I decided to bring along our marriage certificate just in case there was any question.

  We decided, our letters virtually crossing, to meet on a Saturday night in April. I arranged to ride to Buhl with Mr. Makela, who had been fortuitously planning a trip there to visit his sister and her husband. He had planned to stay overnight and head back home the following day. Irma was going with him.

  I told her the truth about our plan. At first she was hesitant, but once she saw my face and heard the eagerness in my voice, she agreed to spearhead the expedition. They’d find a place for me to be to meet Arvo, and Mr. Makela would wait by the trolley depot to meet him so he could find out where I was. In the meantime, Irma offered to wait with me, to hold my hand, and to make sure I didn’t overdo—even with excitement—while I sat. It turned out that there was, in fact, a boarding house, which had a bedroom open for a week.

  Hesitantly I told the woman who met me at the door that I just needed it for one night. She looked askance at me, gazing up and down, gauging the extent of my pregnancy, and waiting for a fuller explanation.

  Irma made it. She simply said that my husband, who was working in the Hull Rust-Mahoning Iron Mine, was going to meet me so we could spend some time together in between his shifts. “They have a baby coming in a few months,” she explained, unnecessarily, “and this little lady had been very lonely with her husband gone. They’ve gone to some length to arrange a time for them to meet, and we hope you’ll provide a room for them to have some privacy.”

  Irma made it sound very romantic, and the woman, whose name, it turned out, was Mrs. Johnson—no relation to the Alango Johnsons—smiled at me, drew me inside, and said she had just the right place for us—“A lovely room just overlooking the snowy woods,” she told me.

  The snow had made the whole trip seem improbable even the night before, but by the Saturday morning we had set, the sky had cleared and Highway 25 was drivable, said Mr. Makela.

  Dropping Irma off to wait with me, he headed to the trolley station, waited for an incoming trolley from Hibbing, escorted an amazed and delighted Arvo to the boarding house, and, gathering Irma up, announced, “Now you two just take time to get reacquainted. You have at least six hours. I checked the return trolley schedule for the last one you can take and still make it to the mine in time,” and off they went.

  At first I felt as shy as if I’d never known Arrvo, but he soon managed to make me laugh and, while I was laughing, to divest me of my clothing and he of his, and before I could remonstrate, we were in the bed, kissing and holding each other as if we would never let go.

  I remember every minute of those five-or-so hours. We talked—oh, how we talked—as if we couldn’t get enough of hearing each other’s voices. And we loved… again and again, until, spent, we fell into each other’s arms, holding on tightly as if we would never let go again.

  It was our wedding night all over again. Sweet and quick, hard and fast, slow and quiet, quick and noisy—we loved.

  When the time came for him to go, I held on, knowing it was not right of me to do so, but so unwilling to part with him.

  “We’ll have to do this again,” he said, grinning down at me as he dressed hurriedly because it was almost time for the return trolley. “I like your ‘arrangements’!” Then he leaned over me, lying naked on the bed, pulling the sheet up and, trying not to cry, kissed me one last time long and hard, and left.

  I lay there and cried for hours it seemed. Finally I must have fallen asleep because the sun coming in my window awakened me early the next morning, and I knew I had to hurry to get dressed and straighten up the room before Mr. Makela and Irma came to pick me up.

  When they arrived, Irma jumped down from the front seat and asked, “Do you feel any better now?”

  “Yes,” I had to answer, although it was not really the truth. Well, it was, but it wasn’t. All the time with him had proved was that I needed him desperately near me and with me and at home.

  After Arvo left, he made a decision. No more “long-distance” loving. He collected the money they had paid him—$1.00 an hour for twelve hours a day was $12.00, and he had worked non-stop for over a month so the amount was multiplied by thirty and then by sixty. That made the check he received $72.00. It wasn’t a lot. It wasn’t as much as we needed, but it helped a lot.

  On his way home, he bought another Tin Lizzie, a newer Model T Ford, one not driven a great deal, according to the owner, who had to part with it because he’d had a heart attack and couldn’t drive anymore.

  He had paid the man the full amount he had asked—$12.00. But he said it was a steal! The car drove perfectly, had all of the new devices, and even started without being cranked!

  The remaining $60.00 we put into a bag and pushed it deep down into the flour can where Mother kept all of her wages, too. Altogether we had nearly
$100 when we added it all up.

  Mother, Arvo, Eino, and I sat down the first night Arvo was home to discuss Eino’s dreams and his future.

  “If we send you off with $20.00, do you think you could find work in Minneapolis—enough to pay your tuition, room and board, and books?”

  “I can certainly try my darndest,” Eino answered, hugging each of us.

  He left the next morning, dressed in the outfit we had bought for his graduation—dress pants, a tie, and a starched white shirt underneath his woolen jacket.

  Intending to try to get a job in Angora in order to earn enough money to pay his train fare to Minneapolis, he had plans—that was for sure.

  Arvo drove him to the general store in Angora where he did get a job stocking shelves and cleaning floors. The owner promised to pay him $5.00 a week. Train fare to Duluth was about $8.00 by then, and he would need to have enough to pay his fare all the way.

  It took him three weeks, but at the end of that time we got a letter from him telling us he had saved enough to pay his fare to Minneapolis and he would keep us posted about what he found when he got there.

  Waiting was hard—for two reasons: one was Eino, but the other was the new baby. Thank God Arvo was there when I felt my first contraction. He loaded me into the car and headed for Virginia as fast as the car would go because the contractions were coming hard and fast, harder and faster than they had with any of the other three. We just managed to make it into the hospital door, when suddenly I felt the baby coming.