Gifts of the Spirit

by Patricia Eilola

  Two weeks went by. No word. “I’m tempted to go there myself,” Arvo said in exasperation one day when, again, nothing came in the mail. “I know it’s impossible, but this waiting…”

  The waiting was getting on both of our nerves. Christmas past, it felt as if we didn’t have anything to look forward to or to think about other than Ronny and the state of affairs at Green River Ranch, which seemed a whole continent away.

  When news finally arrived, Arvo ripped open the envelope before he even brought it into the house. By the time he got in, he had scanned it and then handed it to me.

  “Dearest family,

  “When first I arrived in Grand Forks, Mr. Jorgensen was waiting with his buckboard to take me to their ranch. We talked along the way, and he expressed his gratitude for all of the hard work Ronny had done. “I don’t know what I would have done without him,” he said.

  “‘Thanks to him, we have the pastures all fenced in, the mountain lion that was lurking around the cattle is dead, and we got in a bumper crop of hay and potatoes. I can’t begin to tell you how sad we feel about what happened to him. One minute he was riding next to me, talking as he does nonstop, and the next he was lying on the ground, not moving or talking at all. It took two of us to load him into the buckboard, which we had padded with as many blankets as we could get out of the bunkhouse and the house itself, but he didn’t move at all. Once we got him inside the house in one of our extra bedrooms, he just lay there, and that’s all he has done for weeks ever since. We’ve tried to get him to swallow water and broth, and sometimes my wife is successful, but other times it simply flows out of his mouth and down his chin to his chest.

  “‘We called the doctor from Grand Forks. He said with a head wound like his, he may wake up and be good as new or never wake up but just slowly slip away. We’ve monitored his breathing closely to try to make sure that doesn’t happen. So far so good.

  “‘But we would do anything for the lad, anything at all to help him.

  “‘I’m so grateful you came. Perhaps hearing your voice—your familiar voice—will pull him back from wherever he is now.

  “‘At any rate, please accept our hospitality. We have room for you to stay as long as you wish—as long as you need to. My wife and the other workmen and I are deeply concerned, and we want you to know we will do anything we can to help.”

  “That was the gist of what he told me as we were riding. The land there is very different from our home. The fields stretch on and on, seemingly forever. There are very few trees although the Jorgensens have planted rows of pine trees and oak and maple around their house and yard, and the house sits just above a river. It is beautifully built of lumber the Jorgensens must have ordered from Sears & Roebuck because there isn’t enough to build a house in this area—except for the trees they’ve planted.

  “They must have homesteaded here in the mid-1800s because the grandfather and grandmother, who are still living, stay in a small house next to the large one, which holds Mr. and Mrs. Jorgensen and their two boys. Neither of them old enough to be of much help with the ranch. They do, however, have about five ‘hands,’ as they call them, who live in the bunkhouse and work on the ranch. Mrs. Jorgensen is a good cook, and I’ve learned a lot from her—especially with regard to making cheese, for which she’s relatively famous. She ships her cheese all the way to Minneapolis, where it’s sold in grocery stores. I learned the basics, which I hope to put to use when I get home.

  “The big news came as soon as I entered the house. I’ll leave that for another letter because this one is so long already. But I think, on the whole, the news is good—or as good as might be expected although what has happened is completely unlike anything I have ever seen before.

  “With all of the love I have in my heart to all of you—Nonny, Susie, Elsie, Junior, Arvo and to you, my dear daughter,

  “Your mother”

  What was the news she didn’t tell us? She said it was good, but obviously with some qualification. We waited with bated breath for the next letter, expecting one in the next delivery of mail, and sure enough, there it was.

  What happened left us surprised and not a little bewildered. What had happened to Ronny that had caused such a reaction?

  31: Losing Ronny

  Milma had sent word to us that Mother and Ronny would be arriving on the late afternoon train and would Arvo please arrange to pick them up?

  We were overjoyed. The news must be good! He was coming home! They were coming home. We couldn’t wait for Arvo to return with them.

  But there was a qualification to our celebration.

  Mother drew us aside as soon as she got out of the car. “Be prepared,” she whispered. “He only speaks Finnish, and he doesn’t remember much about… anything. I’ll explain later. For now, please just go along with him—act natural, as if it’s ordinary that he…” She broke down, tears running down her face.

  “Of course,” I said, as reassuringly as I could.

  “He didn’t recognize Arvo when we got off of the train. I had to introduce him… to my own son-in-law!” The tears kept flowing.

  I took a deep breath and proceeded as if it were perfectly natural to have to introduce him to the children. “Ronny, I want you to meet our son Nonny.”

  Ronny looked at him as if he wanted to say something but didn’t so I continued, “This is our oldest daughter, Susie, and our second daughter, Elsie. The baby—Junior—is sleeping upstairs in his crib. You’ll see him soon.”

  Turning to Mother, Ronny said—in Finnish—“I want a sauna.”

  “Of course,” I said, hating myself for being repetitious but then, under the circumstances… “Do you want Arvo to go with you?”

  “No. Mother,” he said, searching for her.

  She reached out a hand to draw him closer. “Let’s go into the house, shall we?” she asked in Finnish. “I can get some towels and clean clothes for you.”

  “I remember where my clothes are. Upstairs in the bureau,” he said.

  “Well, yes, they were,” Mother tried to explain, “but when you were gone so long, Nonny put his clothes into that bureau. We’ll just take your fresh things out of your carpetbag.”

  “Oh,” he looked down. “Yes. I remember now,” he told us—in Finnish.

  Mother hurriedly drew fresh clothing for him and for herself from their carpetbags, took towels and washcloths off the pantry shelves and started for the sauna. “Wait for me,” Ronny said, sounding frightened.

  “I’m right here,” she assured him.

  “Okay, then, let’s go.”

  And down the path they went, heading toward the sauna.

  “Mama,” Nonny started to ask, “why is Mother taking a grown man into the sauna?” He got about as far as the fourth word when I shushed him and told the children to go into the living room to play while I made dinner.

  “But…” Susie started.

  “Go,” I asserted. Arvo made motioning moves with his hands, too, and they listened, turning back to the game of marbles that had been going on when the car had driven up.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered to Arvo.

  “I have no idea. It’s as if… he’s reverted… to… childhood? Again? I thought he spoke very good English before he left.”

  “He did. I don’t understand…”

  “Neither do I. We’ll just have to wait until Mother has time to explain.”

  “I guess so.” I set about taking the venison roast with new potatoes and tiny carrots I had prepared for supper out of the oven. Using a scoop, I lifted the meat and potatoes onto a tray for serving and began making gravy, mixing flour with cold water in a jar, ready to add it to the juices in the pan. I had made a rhubarb pie for dessert and blueberry muffins, too. Once we had received word Mother and Ronny were on their way, I had decided to make a Sunday kind o
f dinner on a Friday night—in celebration.

  I had just finished the gravy when the two of them returned, their faces still red from sweat and heat.

  “I’ll bet you would like some ice cold water,” I offered, in Finnish.

  “Yo,” Ronny answered, and Mother nodded.

  I had the children help me set the table nicely using the blue-willow pattern dishes on a pretty tablecloth. It was a red-checked linoleum that served us well for our daily meals because it was so easy to wipe off and never got stained.

  “I sit down… here,” Ronny said, moving toward the chair where he had always sat but that had been used by Nonny since he had left.

  Nonny, entering the kitchen, started to say, “But…” when I caught him. “Let Uncle Ronny be comfortable, please?” I gave him a pleading look, and thank God he understood right away and sat down opposite Ronny next to Susie. Elsie had “graduated” from a high chair to a regular chair using a couple of books to hold her up higher. I placed her next to Ronny, who studied her for a long time before looking away, watching for Mother again, I noticed.

  “Well, isn’t this nice?” she asked in Finnish. “Maria, you’ve out-done yourself tonight.”

  “And I made rhubarb pie for dessert,” I announced.

  “I hoped we would have your pie, Mother,” Ronny said.

  “Now, now. Maria makes her piecrust just as I do mine, and she has a deft hand with the filling. I think you’ll enjoy her pie.”

  “I suppose so,” he said.

  “Mother, will you cut my meat?” he asked. “And serve me my potatoes and carrots? And isn’t there any bread?”

  “I made muffins instead. Look, they have blueberries in them,” I said, opening one for him to see.

  “I miss Mother’s rieska.”

  “I think there is a loaf in the pantry,” I said, receiving a grateful look from Mother. “I’ll just cut you some.”

  “Kiitos,” he said, obviously happy with the change.

  Nonny began to say, “Mama says we have to eat whatever she serves—at least a little bit—so we learn to try every new food.” But again I cut him off after the word “says.”

  We finished dinner—in unusual silence. The children seemed spellbound by this grown man who had asked Mother to cut his meat! And who had refused to eat one of Mama’s muffins!

  Even Elsie, usually a chatterbox, kept still that night. She kept looking Ronny up and down though, as if carefully assessing the amount of danger he was bringing to the house. I could almost hear her wondering “Is he the man who keeps galloping about?” But, thank God again, she kept still.

  Ronny had asked for Mother’s pie but had accepted mine and finished it with obvious relish. After dinner, as I was clearing the dessert plates, he stood up and said, “I think I’ll go for a rest now. It is good to be home.”

  Mother stood up to give him a big hug and a kiss. “Sleep well, my dearest son,” she said.

  I also reached up and gave this tall gangly stranger a hug and a kiss, “Welcome home, brother.”

  Arvo had stood up to shake his hand, and the children had all sat transfixed. He was going to bed before they did? It was unheard of.

  We waited until we heard the bed springs indicate he had lain down before Arvo and I virtually pounced on Mother. We allowed the children to hear what she had to say, too, because each of us seemed to feel they, too, deserved an explanation.

  Pouring herself another cup of coffee, she began at the beginning, thank the Lord.

  “Soon after I arrived at the Jorgensens and entered the bedroom, touching Ronny’s arm and stroking his face and hair, he awoke,” she told us. “He spoke only in Finnish. His first question was ‘Where am I?’

  “I told him he was in North Dakota at the Green River Ranch where he had come to work.

  “Then he recognized me: ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘I’ve been dreaming you were here, and you are. But I can’t remember anything about ‘North Dakota’ or the ‘Green River Ranch.’ Can I go home? I want to be at home.’”

  “I looked at Jorgensen’s and they looked at me, and Mr. Jorgensen nodded. ‘We could fill the back with blankets so he can lie down along the way. It’ll be a bumpy, jerky ride.’

  “‘Please can we go home right now?’ Ronny asked, in desperation, it seemed.

  “I had checked to see if he hurt anywhere and if he could move his arms and legs. I told him he had fallen from a horse and hit his head, and that he had been ‘asleep’ ever since.

  “When he looked at the Jorgensens, he told me, ‘All they talk is English or some other foreign language. I think it might be Norwegian.’

  “I said they had been very good to him.

  “He looked at them. ‘Thank you,’ he remembered to say, and then he repeated, “Can’t we go home? Please tell me I’ll be home soon.’

  “‘You will.’

  “When I explained we needed to take a train ride in order to get home, he just continued to say, ‘I’m frightened. I want to be at home. I don’t remember anything except home. I’m very frightened.’ He repeated that over and over again all along the way.

  “I soothed him as we sat in the back of the buckboard with his head on my lap, smoothing his hair and making sounds, sometimes singing to him in Finnish, sometimes just telling him where we were and what I was seeing.

  “Once we boarded the train, I told him not to worry. He was able to walk in with some support, and we found seats in the back near the washroom. I kept telling him we would be home soon, and I would make him a fresh loaf of pulla.

  “When he asked about you, Maria, and whether you were home from Lappalas, I realized the forgetfulness had reached farther than I had realized. I said that you were home, that you are married to Arvo Jackson, and you have four children—Werner, Susie, Elsie, and Junior, who is just a baby.

  “He told me he didn’t remember them and he was frightened again. I kept trying to reassure him, saying, ‘Don’t be afraid. They’ll remember you, and we all love you.’

  “‘I love you, too,’” he said, laying his head down onto mine. Eventually we worked out a situation whereby we simply took over two seats. He kind of lay back, leaning against me, and I kept talking to him, sometimes describing what I saw outside of the window, sometimes singing him old Finnish songs.

  “All of a sudden he sat up, asking, ‘Nonny, is he all right?’ He remembered Nonny’s misadventure in the creek. I reassured him and reminded him that Susie had pulled him out using a big stick.

  “He answered, ‘Oh, yes, I kind of remember that,’ and settled back.

  “‘And Eino,’ suddenly he remembered him. ‘Will he be waiting at home with the others?’

  “I told him Eino is living in Minneapolis now, that he has a good job as a barber, is saving money so he can go to college, and almost has enough to pay for his first semester!”

  Then, as if Mother needed sustenance and a break before she went on, she got up, poured herself another cup of coffee, offered some to us, and sat down again, obviously perturbed.

  We were… appalled… and disturbed… and taken aback.

  Arvo said, “He obviously didn’t remember me when I met you at the train depot. Thank you for thinking quickly enough to introduce us. It could have been a very awkward moment.”

  We sat at the table, looking at each other in bewilderment. “On one hand, he looks like Ronny, but he certainly doesn’t sound like him,” I said.

  Mother agreed. “It’s as if he were a child again and found himself lost without a way home. Over and over again, he asked—always in Finnish, ‘When will we be home?’”

  “Well,” Arvo said, “he is home now, and we will take such good care of him. Before you know it, he’ll be his normal self.”

  “I pray that will happen,” Mother said, with a worried look
.

  “Me, too,” I said, getting up to bring our cups onto the side table, where I stacked them, ready for washing the following morning.

  But we didn’t wind up washing cups right away the following morning.

  Instead, when Nonny woke up, he came to the side of our bed with a solemn, frightened look on his face.

  “I think there’s something wrong with Uncle Ronny,” he said.

  Sure enough. There was.

  Death had crept in, like Carl Sandburg’s fog, “on little cat feet,” quietly at some point during the night. It had rested its haunches on Ronny and carried him away in the mist. He had been so happy to be home, so glad to have Mother with him, so grateful to be clean.

  We woke Mother right away, and she came upstairs to check.

  She sighed a deep deep sigh. “All he wanted was to be home. I think he held on as long as he could, but once he was here, he thought it would be all right to let go.”

  I nodded, tears streaking down my cheeks like the rain pattering on the windows. We had needed the rain. The fields had been dry. The garden had needed watering.

  We welcomed the rain. It felt as if the earth, too, were grieving.

  Mother sent Arvo to tell our closest neighbors—Irma for sure and the Kivimakis, the Leinonens, the Haualas, the Kymbergs, and the Musakas. Everyone else from our church could be informed by word of mouth. We were sure the news would spread quickly. Ronny had been well-known and well-liked within our community. He had always been there to lend a hand whether it was with hay-making or threshing or butchering a hog or a cow or shooting some bothersome animal.

  He had been missed.

  Now we had to face the fact that he would never return.

  “He wasn’t himself,” Mother said later that day. We had washed his body and laid it out in the living room to rest while Arvo worked on building a wooden coffin for him.

  “I know,” I said. “It was as if—once he was home—he could relax and… be himself.”