Believing the Dream (10 page)

“Thorliff, you came.” Andrew looked up from pouring milk from the bucket into the strainer set on top of the milk cans. A bit splashed over as he poured fast, set the bucket down, and met them halfway down the aisle.

Thorliff reached to shake his brother’s hand, but Andrew grabbed him in a hug instead.

“Thorliff,” Haakan called from behind one of the cows. “Over here, milking Jezebel.”

“He’s the only one who can.” Andrew kept his voice down. “She kicked me halfway down the barn.”

“Did you put the kickers on her?” Thorliff stopped behind the only Holstein in the barn.

“Of course. Didn’t do no good.” Andrew and Thorliff stopped where they could see their father, forehead clamped into the cow’s flank, fingers stripping the last of the milk from the now slack udder. The cow switched her tail and shifted her back feet.

Haakan grabbed the full pail and rose all in one smooth motion before she could move farther.

“At least she gave you a warning.” Thorliff stepped back out of his father’s way.

“Here, please dump this.” Haakan handed the froth-filled bucket to Andrew, then drew Thorliff into the circle of light from the kerosene lantern. “You’ve lost weight.”

“Ja, some.”

“Don’t they feed you there?”

“Ja, they do.” Thorliff looked into his father’s eyes, somewhat shaded by the poor light. Was there a shine there, one that most likely matched his own?

“Good to have you home, son.”

“Mange takk.” Thorliff cleared his throat. “You need another hand?”

Haakan shook his head. “Just finishing. Why don’t you and Astrid go on back up to the house.”

“I can haul the milk cans to the springhouse.”

“Only this one left.” Andrew joined them again. “I took the others on the sled. You hear that wind?”

They stopped talking to listen. A northerner howled around the eaves of the barn, shrieking like banshees wanting in.

“Hit like a freight train, didn’t it?”

Haakan checked the world outside the door and laid a hand on a shoulder of each of his sons. “We have a problem. We’ve got a whiteout.”

“The line isn’t up to the house yet.” Andrew closed his eyes. “I was going to do that this afternoon, but I forgot.”

In spite of the warmth of the barn, Thorliff shivered.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Blessing, North Dakota

“I can’t see a thing.” Astrid’s voice quivered.

“Whiteout. Thorliff, you take the lead. Just stay on the shoveled path. The sides will keep us safe this time. We’re going to rope up though, just in case.”

Thorliff reached for the coiled rope hanging on the wall. “You want I should pound stakes as we go?”

“I’m sorry, Pa.” Andrew sounded close to tears.

“I know, but this is the way we learn our lessons. I should have checked myself to make sure. We’ll be all right. At least I sent George and the others home early.”

Thorliff tied the end of the rope around his waist and then looped it around Astrid’s. When he handed the rope to Andrew, he managed a pat on his brother’s shoulder. “We’ve been through worse.”

Andrew nodded and roped himself in.

“Now I’ll tie the end to the hook outside the door and then I’ll pound the first couple of posts in. Andrew, once you reach the house, give three tugs. Land, this storm came down faster than any I’ve ever seen.”

Thorliff and Andrew both pushed against the door to get it open and then staggered as the wind fought to slam them back inside.

Shuffling his feet along the shoveled-out path, Thorliff could feel the snow depth already over the tops of his boots. The path would be filled within the hour at this rate.

After what seemed an hour but he knew to be only minutes, he felt a break in the solid wall of snow and knew that to be the path to the springhouse. Pushing forward, he caught the opposite side of the path and continued until he banged against the steps to the house.

“Go on in.” He shouted to be heard over the roaring of the wind and handed Astrid up the steps where Andrew helped her open the door to the porch, which they’d added to and enclosed since he had left for school.

Ingeborg, her shawl wrapped around her head and shoulders, stepped from the house into the porch. “I was beginning to worry.”

“I know, but everything is all right.” Thorliff clapped his mittened hands together to dislodge the snow. From the pinched look around his mother’s mouth, Thorliff knew she had progressed beyond the point of beginning to worry.

“No, it’s not, Mor. I forgot to put up the line this afternoon after Pa reminded me.” Andrew stood hunched over, as if braced for a solid pounding about the head and shoulders.

“Then you’ve learned a good lesson. Where is Haakan?”

“Driving in the posts to hold the rope.”

“I’m going back to help.” Thorliff tugged on the rope three times, waited for the answering tug, and tied the end to the wooden railing built along the steps.

“That’s my job.” Andrew clung to the rope.

“You wait here in case one of us needs a spelling.”

“If you bring some posts this way, we could all do it.”

“Good. I will if Pa agrees.”
That boy has a good head on his shoulders
was Thorliff’s last thought as he stepped back out to battle the wind. The cold burned clear down to his lungs with every breath, even though he kept his long scarf wrapped around the lower part of his face. Ice pellets daggered any skin bared to the elements. Keeping his hand on the rope, he followed their trail back toward the barn.

“Get more posts.” Haakan shouted in his son’s ear to be heard above the shrieking wind.

Thorliff continued on to the barn, the gusts pushing him forward, then fought that same wind with all his strength to open the door. The snow drifting in front of it joined forces with nature to keep him out. Once inside he leaned against the wall for a moment, dragging warm air into lungs that felt like ice crystals. The roaring wind called him back outside so, grateful for the still burning lantern hooked over a nail in a post, he found another sledgehammer and, carrying the stakes, dove back out into the fury. He handed some of the posts to Haakan and followed the rope back to where Andrew waited to pound in spite of the storm. Without the rope they’d never make it back and forth between barn and house to care for the livestock.

By the time he and Haakan made it to the house, his eyebrows wore a curtain of ice, and he could barely feel his feet. Sweat, trickling down his back from the exertion of pounding the posts through the ice crust, felt like an icicle stabbing him when he removed his jacket.

“Thank the Lord you are all right.” Ingeborg helped them remove and hang up their outer things, then poured them each a cup of coffee. “Your hands and feet—no frostbite, is there?”

The three men checked their hands and faces for white spots and wiggled their toes in their socks. “Nope, just pure cold is all.”

“Did you blow out that lantern in the barn?” Haakan turned to Thorliff.

“Yes, sir. Didn’t think we’d be going back.”

“Good.” Haakan rubbed his hands together over the heat from the stove. “Sure hope everyone else was ready for this. This is the first winter alone for the Baards. I should have checked on them.”

“Joseph is able to advise even though he can’t do anything.”

“Ja, if he is awake.” Haakan scrubbed a hand over his hair.

At the mention of Anji’s family, Thorliff paused his hand rubbing and turned so the heat warmed his backside.
Anji, with a blizzard like
this, when will I see you?
He knew how much time it took to water cattle and horses by hand. In the early years they had kept a hole cut in the river ice so they could lead the animals down there to drink. Now with the well, they would haul water from there and melt snow on the stove for the house.

“How are they all doing?” He studied the cream- and sugar-laced coffee in his cup, one of his mother’s antidotes for intense cold. Normally he drank it black.

“Well as can be expected. Neighbors helped with the fall work.”

That wasn’t what he really wanted to know, but asking after Anji would—would what? They knew he loved Anji.

But did they know she no longer loved him? The pain in his heart flared anew, like a stove fed a pitch-drenched stick.

“Anji asks after you.” Ingeborg’s look made his ears burn. “Was there a reason you no longer wrote?”

Thorliff stared at his mother, fighting to keep the anger from staining his face. “
I
no longer wrote?” His voice squeaked on the last word. What had Anji been telling them? Did they not know of her telegram for him not to come home? Did they not know of the anguished letter he’d written after that, the letter that never received an answer? And then another letter, even though he hadn’t heard from her.

Thorliff clamped his jaw to keep the words from rushing out.

Haakan cleared his throat. “Ah, Mor, I think what Thorliff and Anji do is beyond our . . . our . . .” He laid a hand on her shoulder with a gentle shake of his head. “They’re grown up now, you know?”

The look she gave him said clearly what she thought of how grown up they were, but she nodded. “If we don’t eat the rommegrot soon, it will be ruined. Astrid, refill the coffee cups while I fill the bowls.”

After they said grace, Thorliff sprinkled more cinnamon on the rich feast in front of him. He dipped his spoon down through the melted butter and into the rich, creamy mixture that tasted like nothing else but what it was, rommegrot. He savored each mouthful, letting it melt on the back of his tongue and slide down his throat.

They had served traditional Scandinavian delicacies at the Christmas festival at school, but now he realized something he’d known but never really appreciated. His mother was one of the best cooks anywhere. He took a slice of bread and laid the soft cheese, made especially for Christmas, on top. Again, he took the time to enjoy the bite of the cheese and the yeast-rich bread. No wonder people on the railroad had wanted to buy his mother’s cheese. He took the spekekjøtt, sliced so thin you could nearly see through it, from the passing platter and laid it over the cheese. They’d hung the haunches of lamb to dry in the upper rafters of the barn as soon as it grew hot enough and left them there until fall. Dry, hard, he’d heard it called a poor man’s ham, but in his mind the two were as different as horses and cows.

“Thorliff!” Astrid nudged him with her elbow.

“What?” He blinked, his focus jerked back to the table from wherever it had roamed.

Astrid giggled, then handed him the bowl of applesauce. “I thought you might like some of this.”

He spooned some onto his plate and nodded his thanks before passing the bowl to Andrew. “Where is Hamre?” Some cousin he was, not even aware when one was missing from the table. Cousin Hamre had lived with them since he came from Norway.

“Over to Kaaren’s.” Ingeborg glanced around the table to see if anybody needed something more. “I think he kind of likes Ilse.”

“Now that would be a fine match.” Haakan held up his bowl. “More, Mor?”

Astrid giggled at her father’s quip.

Ingeborg laid her hand on the back of her husband’s neck as she took his bowl, giving him a smile that Thorliff realized she kept for Haakan alone.

The smile and the hand, tokens of love that persisted through the years. And grew. Would he and Anji ever have that kind of love? How was it different from the heat that burned his hand whenever he touched her? Thorliff rested his chin in his hand. With the warmth of the stove and his full belly, keeping his eyes open took more effort than he had to give.

“Do you want dessert?” Ingeborg reached over his shoulder for his plate and bowl. “Astrid baked an apple pie just for you.”

He double blinked and sat up straight to look across the table to his laughing brother. “Ja, please.”

“Good thing or Astrid would have smacked you one.” Andrew held up two fingers.

“No, you only get one piece.” Astrid stood to help her mother clear the table. “And if you aren’t nice, you can count on a little bitty one.” She held her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart.

“You can give me the extra part of his.” Thorliff winked at his brother.

Astrid set the pie pan on the table in front of her father. “See, I even made an apple out of dough.” She pointed to the apple shaped crust in the center, surrounded by slashes for steam vents. A light dusting of cinnamon and sugar glistened in the lamplight.

“Astrid, you’re an artist.”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “I just like to bake and make things look nice.”

Thorliff gazed at his little sister.
You’re growing up, and I’m not here to see it. What would happen if I stayed, didn’t go back to St. Olaf? It would certainly save a lot of money. Far used to be so against my leaving, I wonder what he’d say if I decided not to return. Would it make a difference with Anji? Has the blizzard hit Northfield too? Or only tried to smother us here on the Dakota plains?
At a lull in the conversation, the wind seemed to increase its fury. Or had he just not noticed that it had been howling all along?

Too many questions, too little mind left. He smiled up at Astrid when she set the first piece of the pie in front of him. “Shouldn’t this be for Far?”