A Harvest of Hope

by Lauraine Snelling

  “Enough for tonight. Let’s go cook some supper.” He felt a lot stiffer than he would ever let on, especially where legs meet torso. And Manny looked about as bedraggled. The boy hobbled into the house using his cane heavily and plopped on a chair at the table.

  With that cane, Manny couldn’t carry much, so it took Trygve two trips to haul the bedrolls, kerosene, bag of food, and bag of utensils into the house. He left the manure fork they’d brought in the barn.

  Trygve plopped the burlap food bag on the table and crumpled up some crackly yellowed newspaper to start a fire in the stove.

  Eagerly, Manny unloaded the bag. “She sent us corn bread! And eggs and bacon! And butter. Is this beans in this can? I never ate beans out of a can before. And some of them little taters! And here’s syrup!” He wrenched the lid off the jar and tasted. “Real syrup, not molasses.”

  “I thought we’d have bacon and beans and those potatoes tonight, because it’s easy. And eggs and pancakes in the morning. You also need eggs to make good pancake batter. Will you slice some rashers off that slab of bacon, please?”

  “Man, we’re gonna eat like kings.” Manny sat back and pulled out his knife. He sobered. “This here’s the knife Mr. Haakan gave me. Onkel Haakan. Sure is a good one.” He slapped the bacon slab down on the table and started slicing off rashers with a very sharp blade.

  “Tante Ingeborg says he showed you how to sharpen it.”

  Manny nodded. “And whittle. I sure do miss him.”

  “We all do.”

  “And I don’t care what everybody says. If I hadn’t of fallen asleep, he’d prob’ly still be alive.” He sawed viciously at the bacon.

  Trygve didn’t argue the point. He knew what everyone said, and so far it wasn’t sinking in for the boy. Would it ever? Does guilt ever really go away?

  He had not brought a can opener. Manny stabbed the can open with his knife. He was going to have to sharpen it again, for sure.

  Manny stopped being talkative, and Trygve didn’t mind. He tried not to think about Miriam, but she kept popping into his head anyway. Did she feel guilt the way Manny did? And what in the world could she ever feel guilty about? She was right up there next to angels.

  He put the potatoes on first, taking away the stove lid and setting the pan right on the open hole. It took the little iron stove an hour to warm up, but once it was hot, it cooked beautifully. He moved the potatoes back and put the iron frying pan on the stove. It heated up in less than five minutes. He laid the thick rashers out in the pan, dumped the beans on top, and listened to the warm, welcome sizzle.

  Manny was slicing the corn bread, or trying to. His knife really did need sharpening now. “That bacon smells so good. I wish my brothers coulda ate like this, maybe just once. We mostly ate stuff we caught. Or shot. Ate a coyote once. Didn’t do that again.”

  Trygve slipped a spatula under the bacon. “Almost ready. Do you miss your brothers?”

  “Yeah, and that’s crazy. It’s not like they treated me good or something. Shack would haul off and whack me until Jed would say, ‘Do that once more and I’ll knock you into next Tuesday,’ and he’d quit. I try to work as much as I can for Grandma, ’cause she really needs me. My brothers made me work just so’s they wouldn’t hafta. Hit’s a big difference.” He unwrapped the oilcloth from around the butter and set it out.

  Trygve couldn’t think of anything to say. He couldn’t imagine a family like that, a life like that. He picked up a bowl and scooped bacon, beans, and potatoes into it. “Here you go. I saw salt and pepper in the bag somewhere.”

  “Right here.” Manny scooted himself closer to the table, snatched up a spoon, and paused. He looked at Trygve.

  Trygve bowed his head. “Dear God, please give Tante Ingeborg rest and peace. Strengthen Astrid and Elizabeth. Help us find the money, please, and bless this food and our hands to your service. Amen.”

  “Amen.” Manny salted his potatoes and slathered butter on them. He tasted. He closed his eyes. “Mm, mm! Heaven.”

  And that tickled Trygve. He had just made life a little bit happier for a boy who needed all the happiness he could get. He scooped out his own dinner and settled at the table. As he savored that first flavorful mouthful of baby potatoes, he had to agree with Manny. Heaven.

  Manny ate in silence for a couple minutes, then paused and waved his fork. “Been thinking a lot as we rode out here. We’re not going to keep watch tonight, are we?”

  “I wasn’t planning on it. Do you think we should?”

  “No, sir. It’s just, when me and my brothers were here, we had to, a-course.”

  “That’s why Tante Ingeborg showed us how to get here the back way. We figured you’d keep watch.”

  Manny nodded. “So I think I have it figured out, how it all happened. They didn’t wanna take the money into town when they were goin’ to spring me from the hospital. If one of them got caught, that money’d be gone. So they’d hide it here until they came back. Someplace easy to get it if they had to leave in a hurry.”

  Trygve finished off his beans. “Good so far.”

  “Now, Shack is all right, I guess. You just can’t trust him. Or Gabe either, really. And I know Jed wouldn’t trust either of them. So now I’m gonna think like Jed. He and Gabe and Shack hide the money so everyone knows where it is. Then during his night watch, Jed moves it to a different hiding place the other two don’t know about. That way one of them can’t sneak off with it while the others ain’t looking.”

  “Your brothers were that dishonest? Really? And selfish?”

  Manny pondered that a moment. “Yeah. I think selfish is the perfect word. Dishonest for sure. They robbed banks, right?”

  Trygve smiled.

  “Shack and Gabe would hide it somewheres right here in the house, ’cause they’re too lazy to go out to one of the other buildings. Maybe tear up floorboards or something. In here. So that means Jed would most likely move it to the barn.”

  Trygve was grinning now. “Let’s go look.”

  Manny bobbed his head. He started to stand and quickly sat down again. “Trygve, thank you for dinner. It was very good.”

  “You’re welcome.” Trygve sat there for a moment, flabbergasted. This boy, who did not so much as string two words together at first, was actually a fairly polite young man.

  His ma must have instilled good manners in him well enough that when his hostility, fear, and distrust were all peeled away, the polite behavior surfaced.

  Trygve followed Manny out to the barn. The boy was headed straight to that stack of hay. Trygve picked up the hay fork.

  Manny kicked at the stack, poked it with his cane. “Jed would know that neither of those two was about to fork hay or do anything else in the barn here that’d look like work. This right here is my first guess.”

  Trygve lifted off the top of the stack and forked it aside. He lifted off another large forkful. Dry dust poofed and rose, a lot of dust, as he moved the old hay. He sneezed, coughed, and lifted off another swatch. Another.

  Manny broke into the most infectious grin. “Bingo! Lookee there!”

  On the floor at the very bottom of the stack, toward the back, there lay the satchel with its broken latch. It was still covered with loose hay, but you could see what it was. Manny plopped down beside it, reached in, and brought out a handful of one-dollar bills.

  “Manasseh McCrary, you are a brilliant young man.”

  Manny sat there with both legs out straight, just sat and stared at Trygve’s boots. Then he looked up at Trygve. “Your tante Ingeborg and onkel Haakan really had me confused. They were caring about me and doing stuff for me and all that. And the people in town here too, well, excepting the banker, a-course, all caring about me and even paying off the debt I owed. That wasn’t like nothing I’d ever seen. Nobody treated me like that.”

  Trygve extended a hand to help Manny to his feet. “That’s a strange thought to think just now.”

  “No it ain’t.” Manny lurched up to standing. �
�Tonight we’re gonna wrap up in bedrolls and go to sleep. All night. Don’t have to keep watch, right? I can sleep knowing you ain’t gonna steal the money from me, and you can sleep knowing I won’t steal it either.”

  “That’s true.”

  Manny wagged his head. There were tears in his eyes that Trygve realized didn’t come from the cloud of irritating dust. “I ain’t never had that before in my whole life. And now that I got it, I ain’t never gonna let go of it.”

  Chapter 17

  You found what?” Ingeborg turned toward Manny and Trygve, who were barging into her kitchen.

  “Grandma! We found the money, the bank money. My brothers hid it and we found it out at that farm where you went.” Manny grinned at Trygve. “Seems she don’t believe us.”

  “Guess you better show it to her, then.”

  Manny gimped back outside and returned with a satchel that looked to have died and been resurrected more than once. Manny untied the whipcord holding it closed and opened it so Ingeborg and then Freda could look inside. “We counted it. The whole fifty-five dollars. Now we have to figure what to do with it.”

  Ingeborg rolled her eyes. What was Anner going to think of this?

  “I say give it back to the bank. Thataway Mr. Valders can’t be mad at me anymore.”

  Oh, if only life were that simple! Ingeborg exchanged a raised-eyebrow look with Trygve, who wore a smug look that made Ingeborg want to laugh.

  “I think this needs to be part of the shareholders meeting,” she said.

  Trygve frowned. “Is that scheduled?”

  “Ja. They are pushing to make it Thursday night. Not that everyone will come, but I’m sure the school will be full.”

  “Another reason for a new school?” The quilting group had discussed the need for a new school more than once. Right now they had a one-room school for the grade school and another nearby for the high school. The grade school needed another teacher and thus another room. The women even had the audacity to dream of offering more classes at the high school, as they did in other places.

  She glanced at Manny, who was shaking his head. “What about Mr. Valders?”

  “Here’s what we should do.” Trygve nodded as he spoke. “At the meeting, you bring the bag forward and offer it to Mr. Valders. We’ll see what he does.”

  Ingeborg asked, “But what if he accuses Manny of hiding it?”

  “How could he? Manny was in the hospital, and he never saw his brothers again. That’s what we remind him.”

  Oh, I think we are playing with fire here. But right now, the thought of Anner Valders getting his comeuppance made her mother’s heart smile. It wouldn’t help the situation for Thorliff, but it might help Manny.

  “You had a good time camping?” Emmy asked as she came into the room.

  “We did.” He told her what they had done.

  She cocked her head. “You have bad brothers?”

  He nodded and hung his head. “They are in prison. In Kentucky.”

  “Kentucky is far away. I’m happy you are here.” Emmy’s smile made Ingeborg smile. Emmy too was coming out of another life and making a new one. Blessing was a good place for that.

  Trygve glanced out the window. “Sure looks like it’s going to rain out there. I better get my horse back home. Thanks, Manny. Let’s get Joker unsaddled, and you can let him out in the pasture.”

  “Thanks. But I can do that now.”

  “Ja, I’m sure you can. But I don’t want Dr. Astrid after my hide. Let me help. Okay?”

  Manny shook his head, a grin tickling his cheeks.

  That evening Ingeborg was stitching the buttonholes on the waist for Emmy with Manny reading to her from his reader. He stopped and looked at her. “Can you help me write a letter to my brothers?”

  “Of course. Where will you send it?”

  “To the jail, I guess, in Louisville. That’s where we pulled the first job. I wish . . .” He let out a sigh.

  Ingeborg waited, then asked. “Wish what?”

  “To know how they are.” His jaw squared. “They’re still my brothers.” He studied the pages in front of him before looking up at her. “Do you have brothers and sisters?”

  Ingeborg laid her handwork in her lap. “Ja, in Norway.”

  Emmy came and sat at her feet. “Far, far away. Across a big la . . . ocean.” She sought and found the right word.

  “Ja, that is right. Across the Atlantic Ocean. I came to America when I was young. We came in 1880. Thorliff was just a little boy.”

  “How come your brothers and sisters din’t come too?”

  “I don’t really know. We invited them. Freda is my cousin.”

  Emmy leaned against Ingeborg’s legs, her dark eyes watching Ingeborg’s face. “Grandma has sad eyes.”

  Ingeborg nodded and stroked the little girl’s dark hair, which she braided every morning. “Ja, I know I have sad eyes. But you make my heart glad.” She rested her cheek against Emmy’s head. She sat up straight, sniffed, and sighed. “Would you like to write that letter now?”

  “If’n you don’t mind.”

  “How far until the end of the chapter?”

  He flipped through the pages. “Two to go.”

  “Good. You finish reading that, I will complete these buttonholes, and then we will move to the table and write that letter.” Making a decision, even one this small, felt good. Somehow her decision-making skills had been drowned in her grief. At least she hoped that was what it was.

  She let Emmy coach him through the rest of the chapter as she knotted the thread and clipped off, then did the last buttonhole. She would cut them open when the light was better. She retrieved paper and a pencil from the drop-front desk Haakan had made one winter, and the three of them gathered at the kitchen table.

  “Cookies?” Emmy asked.

  “Of course.”

  “My writing is not good.”

  “But it is getting better, and before, you couldn’t have written a letter at all. You can do a practice one first.”

  Manny gripped the pencil as if it might try to get away. “How do you spell dear?”

  “How does it sound?”

  “D . . .” He sounded the e. “E.”

  “Yes, but this is one of those strange words. Instead of D-e . . .” She looked to him. “The last sound?”

  “R. D-e-r . . .”

  “Take two e’s for that sound,” Emmy said. “But that’s the animal. The dear you want is spelled d-e-a-r.”

  Manny stared. “Whyever for?”

  Emmy shrugged. Ingeborg shrugged. “Some words you just have to memorize the spelling. Don’t you have a spelling list this week?”

  Manny let out a sigh. “I do. But this ain’t on it.”

  “Don’t say ain’t,” Emmy said. “Say is not.”

  He glared at her. “You write it, then.”

  She smiled at him. “Your brothers. Your letter.”

  Ingeborg smiled despite her sadness. “All right. Tell you what we’ll do. You tell me what you want to say. I will write it, and you can write a line at the end and sign your name. How does that sound?”

  The look of utter relief on Manny’s face made her realize how hard he was trying. And how far he had come.

  She wrote what he said, including Grandma Ingeborg is writing this for me, but I am learning to read and write. I will write the next letter if you write back to me.

  She slid the paper over to him. “Now you write.”

  I am good and can walk with a . . . He looked at her. “How do I spell cane?” As she waited he rolled his eyes. “Kuh, k, a.” He made the sound for n. “N. K-a-n. Does it need an e?”

  “Sorry, Manny, but this word starts with a c, a hard c, which sounds like k. And you are right with the e at the end.”

  He crossed out the k and made a c. “Can I sign my name now?”

  “Yes. You’ve done a good job.”

  Tongue between his teeth, Manny signed his first name. Manny. “Next time I will write my w
hole name.”

  “Now fold it and put it in the envelope, and I will address it.”

  With the letter finally finished, Ingeborg glanced at the clock. How could the evening fly by like this?

  “I will mail it after school on Monday.” He pushed his chair back. “Thank you.”

  After both of the children went to bed, Ingeborg got out the inkwell and wrote a letter to her family in Norway to tell them that Haakan had died, along with other news, and reiterated her former invitation for someone else to come.

  I wrote you this before, but since we have not heard, I am wondering if the letter did not make it to you. Several people here in Blessing are looking for household help, and there is always plenty of work in construction here and farming too. I look forward to hearing from you. Please pass the news on to others.

  Ingeborg Bjorklund

  She addressed that envelope too and then headed for bed. When the telephone jangled, she stopped to pick it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Mor, I just wanted to tell you that you do not need to come in to sit with Mrs. Bach tonight. I think the regular nursing staff can handle it. And Mr. Bach is in her room also. She is still sleeping most of the time, but the blood flow has ceased, and we have been able to give her more broth and even mashed vegetables and rice in the soup.”

  “Oh, how wonderful. Takk for calling me.”

  “Sleep well.”

  “I will. Such glorious news.” As Ingeborg readied herself for bed, she made sure she focused on God’s Word rather than the empty side of the bed. She read and then repeated Psalm 23. “‘The Lord is my shepherd.’ Father, I miss having sheep. Maybe only two or three ewes, but I like taking care of them. Could you please find me some sheep again?” Pondering that thought, she knelt by the bed and thanked her heavenly Father for the day and the people she’d seen, church in the morning, and her family. She did not ask God to treat Anner the way he was treating other people, and then asked God to forgive her for even thinking it.

  “I know this is all in your hands. I want to leave it there. Only you can bring the healing that is needed, and I have no idea how you are going to do so. I know faith is seeing what’s not there yet. Please open the eyes of my heart to see clearly and trust you.” She thought back to what Reverend Solberg had spoken on. Faith and trust. Both of them were far easier to say than to do. But she loved the picture in her mind of the eyes of her heart. She folded back the blanket and sheet and slid into bed. Think on the Word rather than . . . than . . . She took in a slow breath. Than the empty bed beside her.