Believing the Dream (43 page)

“Metiz came for us.” Thorliff took her hand, wanting to take her in his arms and wipe away her tears. “I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry for—”

“I know. But he’s not in all that terrible pain any longer. I have to remember to be thankful for that.” She squeezed his hand and took hers back to stroke Becky’s hair.

“I’m going for Pastor.”

“Thank you.” She turned her attention to her little sister. “Come now, we must wash up and get dressed. Gus, the chickens need feeding, and I know Swen needs your help in the barn.”

Thorliff watched them for a moment, wishing there were something more he could do, but finally turned away and went back out to the buggy. Knowing his mother and Metiz would be washing and dressing Joseph’s body, Thorliff clucked the horse into a trot, heading for the Solberg place.

After the funeral the next day, Thorliff found Anji alone for the first time since he’d come home. While the people of Blessing visited outside or inside or wherever, she was standing at the window in the bedroom where her father’s chair had sat for the last year so he could look outside.

“Anji, can I get you something?”

She shook her head slowly, like the weight of care made it too heavy to move easily. “This is all he saw . . . out this window.” She clutched the white cotton curtain with one trembling hand. “That’s no life.”

“No, but up until the accident, he had a good life. Good family, good farm, all he wanted.”

“He never wanted to live after Ma died, then the accident. Took him a long time to die.”

“But you took good care of him.”

“I know. I did my best, but sometimes your best isn’t good enough. I prayed, oh, how I prayed, asking God to make him better, to take away the pain.”

“He has.”

“But not the way I hoped or wanted.”

Thorliff tried to think of something to say, but nothing would come. He laid a hand on her shoulder, but somehow she drifted away from him without hardly moving.
Anji, I want to hold you like we did last summer. I love you. You said you love me. But such a mess this has all been
.

“Anji, I . . .” Mr. Moen stopped in the doorway. “Oh, excuse me.”

Thorliff bit back the words that surged behind his teeth.
Get out of here. You don’t belong
.

“I’ll be out in a minute, Ivar.”

“Anji, we need to talk.” Thorliff knew he was rushing in, but what else could he do?

“Soon, Thorliff. Let me get through the next couple of days, and then we will talk.”

“But . . .” He saw the sorrow on her face and stopped. “Of course. If there is anything I can do, you will let me know?” Such stilted words and so useless.
God, give me the words. What do I do here?

She nodded, closed her eyes for a moment, and straightening her shoulders, walked ahead of him back to the crowd.

A week passed. The wheat fields wore their mantle of green, gardens needed hoeing already since the weeds always outgrew the seeds, and several new calves in the pen bawled for their mothers.

“I’m going over to see Anji,” Thorliff said after supper. “Do you have anything you want to send along?”

“Not that I can think of.” Ingeborg glanced around the kitchen. “Astrid took over bread this morning.”

“I’ll be back later then.” Thorliff set off, thinking back to this time last year. Should he have stayed home? He shook his head. Should he have come home? Again he knew the answer. She hadn’t let him. So why had she not written?

Was there more to this whatever-his-name-was from Norway than anyone was saying?

“Come, let us walk out among the apple trees,” she said after the first greetings were over.

He nodded and wished she would put her hand under his arm like she used to. But instead they walked side by side with a canyon between them.

She stopped at one of the trees and looked up into the leafy branches. “Looks like we’ll have a good apple crop this year.”

Why did you not write?
“Yes, us too.”

A silence, not the comfortable kind of two longtime friends finally having a good visit, but one fraught with twanging and crashings, felt but not heard.

“Thorliff, I’m sorry.”

He left off studying the bark patterns of the tree and looked at her.

“For what?”

“For not writing, for not . . .” She stopped, cleared her throat, and tried again. “Things change, that’s all.”

What changed?
He waited.

She blew out a breath. “I truly thought I loved you this time last year.”

“Past tense.” He swallowed, but nothing went down.

“I planned to write, and then time went by, and what with taking care of Pa and missing Ma and . . .” She lifted hands and shoulders, and when she let them fall, she looked close to collapse herself. “This is so hard.”

Even in the gentle dusk he caught the glimmer of tears in her eyes and trickling down her cheeks.

But he could find nothing to say. His thoughts darted around like a hungry bat catching bugs in the evening, but he could make no order out of them.

“Thorliff, my dear friend . . .”

I am not your friend. That is far too common a word. I love you. Can you not hear me? I love you.

But how was she to hear words never spoken, especially when she struggled so hard to find words of her own?

She took in another deep breath and looked into his eyes. “I loved you with all my girlish heart, but now that I am a woman, I . . .” She didn’t bother to wipe the tears away. “I . . . I have to say . . . I no longer love you more than as that friend of my childhood.”

Thorliff closed his eyes, wishing he could close his ears. A picture of her standing beside Moen in church and then again at the funeral blasted through his mind.

“And you love another. Is your word so weak that you could not wait?”

“I take it all upon myself. I am sorry. That is all I can say.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know. I’ve asked myself the same question a hundred times. I think . . . I think it is that he needs me.”

“And I don’t?”

“No, Thorliff. You are building a new life, and I do not see you living it here.”

“I would. I would give up school and—”

She drew herself straighter. “No! You will not. The price is too high.”

“But what about the price I am paying now?” He felt a shudder start at his feet and race toward his head. “I cannot wish you God’s blessing.”

“I don’t expect such right now, but someday . . .” She paused and gazed at him through her tears. “Someday you will know the dream to believe. I know you are on the right path for that dream. God gave you a big dream, and now you can grow into it.”

“But we were to do this together!”

“I know. I’m so sorry, but . . .” She shook her head again and began walking back to the house.

He watched her go, knowing that to forgive was all that was needed, but the rage that soured his mouth and stomach burned the thought of forgiveness like paper in the fire pit.
How to get even? Make that intruder pay!
He locked on to that thought and strode off toward home, pounding the dirt beneath his feet, wishing it were Moen.

CHAPTER THIRTY

July 1894

Storm clouds do not rain make.

Thorliff stared at the black thunderheads on the western horizon. They looked just like he felt, but they could either send the life-giving rain or blow over. Neither of which seemed possible for him. About the time he got the hurt and rage under control, he’d see Moen with Anji at church or hear someone talk about what an interesting man they had living in their midst.

On top of all that, he owed the Norwegian a thank-you. He should have written a letter before he left Northfield.

He stopped the team to put some grease on the moving part of the sickle bar. All he needed was a breakdown to make the day complete. He climbed back up on the seat, now baked hot by the sun, released the lever to lower the bar, and nudged the horses forward. If the seat branded his own, what of it. One more pain that would be small in comparison to that of his heart.

Watching the tall grass fall behind the sharp chattering bar and keeping the horses going straight was not enough to occupy all of his mind. Too much of it had time to go off on schemes, schemes to get even, get rid of the man, or get back at Anji.

Black flies bit both him and the horses, and while the horses could swish their tails, he needed both hands on the reins. A fly landed on the back of his hand, the bite sharp and vicious. Sweat trickled down his back and blackened the flanks of the team. A meadowlark broke from the grass in front of the horses and sang in spite of the interruption. Rabbits hopped away, and gophers dodged back down in their holes.

The grass continued to fall, lying in sheets behind the mower. By the time he made a second pass around the field, the sun was already doing its work, leaching the green from the stalks, readying it for the rake. Right now during haying would not be the best time for rain, though the gardens and the pasture surely could use it.

“Why did he have to come here anyway?” The horses responded with ears that swiveled to hear him better. “Sure she wasn’t writing a lot, and to be sure, she didn’t want me to come help her, but that was Anji, thinking of what was best for me instead of herself.” He gritted his teeth, nostrils flaring at the injustice of it all. “Lord, you know all things. You could have stopped this.” He felt like shaking his fist in God’s face, but what would be the sense of it?

The clanging of the dinner bell broke into his ruminations. He stopped the horses, unhitched them, and walked behind the team back to the barn. His hands and shoulders no longer ached from the labor, and calluses now hardened the skin. No longer winter hands, but the tan and toughened hands of summer.

Now if he could only harden his heart the same.

He and Andrew drew up their teams in the shade of the barn at the same time, the shade bringing instant relief from the unremitting sun.

Andrew nodded toward the west. “You think we’ll get any rain?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t smell like it.” Thorliff unbuckled the harness and pulled it off, hanging it over the pegs on the wall for just that purpose.

“You all right?” Andrew paused in his return for the second harness and studied Thorliff ’s face.

“Yeah, why?”

“You mad at Anji?”

“Andrew, sometimes you ask things that are none of your business.”

“And Mr. Moen?”

“Leave it alone!”

“I thought so. Mor said you would be all right eventually.”

Thorliff clenched fists and jaw and swung around, the harness buckle slashing around and catching him on the side of the face. He uttered one of those words that he knew should never be used and almost threw the harness against the wall. It caught on the pegs but only because habit prevailed. A red glaze sheeted his eyes, and he charged at Andrew, head down and fists balled.

The snarl that came from his chest lent speed to his feet. He swung, and only through Andrew’s quick footwork did the punch miss his brother’s jaw and land on his shoulder instead.

“Thorliff!” Haakan’s voice cut the charge before he had time to land the second one.

Thorliff plowed to a stop, shook his head, and stared at Andrew. What had he done? Struck his brother? In all their years growing up, he’d never . . .”I . . . I’m sorry, Andrew.” Guilt and shame warred with each other, using him as the punching bag. “Please forgive me?”