Believing the Dream (13 page)

“Ja, we will. You took a chance on that blizzard coming back.”

“I know.” Thorliff slipped into the bedroom, his nostrils pinching at the odor of just what he wasn’t sure—sickness, dying by inches? One look at Joseph’s skeleton lying in the bed told him it was the latter. If he hadn’t known where he was, he’d have had no idea who it was.

Anji leaned over the bed, propping her father’s head and shoulders up so he could drink from the cup she held to his lips with her other hand.

“Pa, Thorliff is home and he came to see you.”

No, I came to see you
. But he pasted a smile on lips that would rather shout his horror and went forward to take the old man’s hand. “God jul, Mr. Baard. That was some blizzard yesterday, wasn’t it?”
What do I
say? I’ve known this man since I was a small boy and now
. . . His throat closed, and he looked to Anji for help. But she was gone.

“Thorliff?” The voice was so weak he had to bend to listen.

“Ja. I came home from college for Christmas.”

“Sorry.” His bleary eyes closed again.

For what?
Thorliff laid the frail hand back on the covers. “Goodbye, Mr. Baard.” Thorliff didn’t know if he meant for now or until they met again in heaven, but surely no one could live long in the condition Joseph was in. Thorliff left the room and sucked in a deep breath of cinnamon-scented air as he walked to the table.

“H-how long has he been like this?”

“Ever since the fall. Must have broken his back in several places. He’s in such pain all the time that Anji gives him the laudanum regular like.” Knute slowly shook his head. “Things sure ain’t been the same since Ma died.”

“Do you like school?” Gus drifted over to stand by his arm.

Thorliff looked down at the little boy whose legs were sprouting out his pant hems. “Ja, I do, most of the time.”

“I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Reading is hard.”

“Ja, some things are.”
Anji, why are you so silent?

“Arithmetic is too.”

“I know.”

“It’s starting to snow again, Thorliff.” Swen turned from the door with the news.

“I better go, then.” He turned to Anji. “I’ll see you at church tomorrow night?”

She shrugged. “Depends on how Pa is. You hurry now before you can’t see.” A bit of life sneaked into her words but not her eyes. “Thank you for coming to see him.”

As he shrugged into his coat, Thorliff fought against the anger swelling his throat.
I guess if you don’t care more than this, that is my
answer
. “Knute, Swen, hope to have a better visit over Christmas.” He clapped his hat on his head and hesitated for a moment, hoping Anji would see him to the door, but just then Joseph called again, and she headed for the bedroom door instead. When he looked to Knute, all he saw was a slight headshake accompanied by a one-shoulder shrug.

Outside, Thorliff threw his skis down and stepped first on one and buckled the straps, then the other, but all the while his hands were busy, his mind ran faster.

What a waste of time. Here I thought to work things out, and she
can’t even make enough time to talk with me. If that is what she means
by love, I want no part of it
.

Skis on, he dug in with his poles and headed for home. The wind had already blown enough snow to fill his tracks. And while it was snowing and blowing, it wasn’t blizzard proportions yet.

Snow crusted on his eyebrows, and each breath burned his nose and pierced his lungs. He headed in the direction he knew to be home, knowing that if he overshot the farm, he’d run into the brush on the riverbank. While it was light enough to see, swirling snowflakes kept visibility to only a few feet. He skied, stopped to try to get his bearings, and pushed off again. Snow swallowed time and distance, and cold froze the sweat drizzling down his back. How could he be so weak in the knees and legs?”

Because you haven’t been working hard enough. Not much different
than starting up fieldwork after the winter off
. The voice in his head drowned out the wind for a brief moment.

Living in town, especially in a town like Northfield in a river valley, shallow though it may be, had protected him from the winds and storms from the north. While he told himself all of this reasonable information, his mind tried to figure how far he’d come. Shouldn’t he be home by now? He could most likely ski right into the barn before he saw it.

Fear tasted bitter on his tongue.

He stopped and shook his ski poles at the storm. “All this, and she didn’t even take the time to talk with me. She knew I came to see her, not her father.” The wind took his shouted words and hurled them right back down his throat. He leaned forward, gasping for air, ski poles dangling from the leather straps over his wrists as he cupped his mittens over his mouth to create a pocket of warm air to breathe.

What if I die out here? Serves her right
. The crazed thoughts whipped around his mind like the blizzard that whipped around his head.

“Stop it! Just stop it!” He pushed off again.
Lord, surely you wouldn’t
have brought me home to die out here in a snowstorm. Like my father did
. The thought caught him by surprise. While Roald had been on a mule instead of skis, had thoughts like this come to him too?

He should have been home by now
. If that thought had flitted through once, it had returned more times than she cared to count. Ingeborg clattered the stove lids onto the side so she could put more wood in the fire.
Father, please take care of him
.

“He most likely stayed at the Baards’.” Haakan looked up from the journal where he kept records of the farm. He’d entered Bell’s bull calf earlier in the month, and now he made a note of the blizzard on December twenty-second and twenty-third.

“You want some more coffee?” Ingeborg held up the pot.

“I guess.” Haakan pushed his cup closer to her. He glanced at the clock again. “Half an hour since it started snowing again.”

“Ja.” She poured his coffee, chewing on the inside of her lower lip. Worrying, something she said she no longer did.
Lord, please take care
of my son, for there is surely no way I can. But I swear when he . . . no,
forgive me, I don’t swear, but if he is out in this, he deserves a trip to the
woodshed. Or at least a few hours splitting the huge chunks
.

Haakan stood and stretched, closed his journal, and put it back on the shelf above the trunk that Roald and Ingeborg had brought from Norway. He stopped on his way past, took another swallow of coffee, and headed for the back door.

“Where are you going?” Ingeborg glanced at the clock. It wasn’t time to start chores yet.

“I’m thinking if he is near to home, he might hear the triangle. Too easy to ski right on by us in a storm like this.”

“Or a gunshot?”

“We’ll try the bell first.” Haakan shrugged into his black woolen coat and wrapped a muffler around his neck. “You keep praying.”

“Ja.” Ingeborg prayed against the pit that seemed to lurk behind the stove right now. She fought the memories.
Lord, forgive my doubts,
but I’ve been here before, now with my son rather than a husband. Please,
keep him safe and bring him home. Oh, Lord God, bring him home. But
then, maybe he is safe and warm at the Baards’, and they are having a real
good visit. Perhaps he and Anji are working out their difficulties
.

The clang of the bell echoed through her prayers.

All they’d ever found of Roald was his pocketknife and the bit of the mule’s bridle. The wolves had taken all the rest. For so long she’d thought perhaps he was holed up somewhere injured or ill, but everyone searched every house and barn with no trace of the man who’d taken on the responsibility of seeing to all the neighbors. So many had died that winter, and in the spring some of those who made it through left, unwilling to fight any longer for the land that was supposed to be free. Free meant paid with blood and sweat instead of cash money.

“Is Thorliff all right?” Astrid leaned against her mother’s arm.

“I pray so.”

“He didn’t stay at the Baards’.”

“How do you know that?”

“He promised to come home, and Thorliff always keeps his promises.”

Andrew came into the kitchen and headed for the back door.

“Where are you going?” Ingeborg asked.

“Out to relieve Pa. Ringing like that wears your arm off.” Andrew slid his arms into the sleeves of his coat. “I think we should take the rifle out to the other side of the barn. Sound might carry farther that way. I’ll ask Pa.”

“Takk.”

“Ja.”

Astrid slid her arms around her mother’s waist. Ingeborg wrapped her arms around her daughter and leaned her cheek on the top of Astrid’s head. “I’ve been praying, Ma. God is listening, isn’t He?”

“Ja, He hears.”

While the bell continued to ring, Haakan blew through the back door, crossed to where the rifle lay on pegs on the wall, and took it down. He poured shells from the box into his hand to drop in his pocket. “I’ll be out behind the barn. Send someone for me if he comes past without my seeing him.”

“Ja.”
Lord, please. Please!

Haakan gave her a hard hug and, gun in hand, headed back out the door. The bitter cold blew across the floor and attacked Ingeborg’s ankles, even through the wool socks that covered her legs. She shivered and hugged Astrid closer still. Her litany of
please, God, please
, flowed through her mind, gusty as the wind and just as imploring.

Surely I’ve gone by the farm. Where am I?
While the wind came from the north, he knew he’d been skiing not so much against it but across it. Had the force of the wind sent him south? But it wasn’t at his back. Thorliff stopped to figure where he might be. The river must be straight ahead. Or had the wind changed directions? The thought made his stomach clench.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Northfield, Minnesota

I sure hope no one decides to have her baby now
. Elizabeth stared out the window at the unrelenting snow.

“Got a foot or so,” her father said when he came in from shoveling the front and back porches. He’d also been out to the stable to care for the horse. “I’m heading down to the office; you need anything from downtown?” When Elizabeth and Annabelle both assured him they were fine, he went out the door, whistling.

While the wind whistled around the eaves and blew drifts over the front fence, Elizabeth felt snug and safe in the chair before the hearth. She closed her eyes, enjoying the fire and the smells, redolent of Christmas. Peace seeped into her bones along with the warmth of the fire. Some time later she heard the bells of a sleigh as it turned into their lane and shortly after her father’s voice teasing Cook in the kitchen. When he came into the parlor, he warmed his backside in front of the blaze.

“The telegraph says there is a terrible blizzard to the west of here in the Dakotas. Trains aren’t running. Everyone’s holed up to wait it out. I sure hope Thorliff made it home safely.”

Elizabeth tapped her pencil against her teeth.
He must have. He
left early yesterday. Lord, please keep him and his family safe
. Jerking her thoughts back, she picked up her physiology book and went back to taking notes. Only by constantly reviewing could she remember the names of muscles and know where they were attached to the skeletal system. So in spite of the Christmas break, she kept on studying.