In Sheep's Clothing (7 page)

Aunt Sissy perked up and looked over my shoulder. “Who owned it?”

“Uh … Roy Hendrickson bought it in 1878. Isn't that when you said a new house was built?”

“Yes,” she said. “He must have been the one who built it.”

“Who told you that was the year a new house was built?”

“Oh, um, the Olsons told me.”

“They must have researched it some themselves,” I said.

“What else did you find?” Roberta asked.

“Well, the Hendricksons bought it from a James Rogers in 1878, who bought it in 1861,” I said. My stomach sort of flip-flopped. If our Swedish girl had moved into the house in 1858 and somebody else bought it in 1861, that meant that her family hadn't lived there very long. That gave me a most disturbing feeling. I flipped more pages, more pages, and then I traced the lines with my finger until I found it. “Here it is. Karl Bloomquist.”

Nobody said anything for a minute. We just sort of let the name hang in the air. “Karl Bloomquist bought the land in 1857. That's right. Because in the novel, she says they lived with a cousin while the house was being built. They moved into the house in 1858.”

“That's weird,” Roberta said.

“Why? What's weird?”

“Isn't it strange that not one of those people willed their land to any of their offspring? I mean, how many other tracts of land would be sold time after time and never pass from father to son?”

“That is pretty unusual,” I said. “Now that you mention it.”

All three of us were quiet a minute. I tapped Roberta on the shoulder. “Hey, you're all right, Roberta.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Anytime.”

“Oh, don't make that offer,” I warned.

“Why not?”

“Because I'll take you up on it,” I said and smiled. “And you may regret it later.”

“Now what?” Aunt Sissy asked.

“Well, next on the list is the census. We know for sure that the Bloomquists owned the land in 1860 when the census was taken. So, now we need to find out if the Bloomquists had a son named Sven and a daughter.”

“And whoever the daughter is, she's the author of the book?” Aunt Sissy asked.

“It seems too easy,” I said. “But I guess so.”

“I can't believe it,” Aunt Sissy said.

“But I'm no closer to finding the ending of the book.”

“The ending of the book?” Roberta asked.

“Yes, the novel has no ending. Aunt Sissy thinks I'm going to be able to find the end of the story by finding the author. I think she probably got bored and just didn't finish it,” I said.

“You haven't finished reading it yet,” Aunt Sissy said. “There is no way that she could have just not finished the novel.”

“Yes, something I must remedy tonight,” I said, thinking about the pages waiting to be read. “Guess I should open this census book and find our novelist.”

“I can't stand the wait,” Roberta said. “Open the darned book.”

“Did you index it?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I flipped to the index in the back and found the name Bloomquist. I found Karl and flipped to the page that he was listed for. “This can't be right.”

“What?” Aunt Sissy asked.

“Well, there are no Bloomquists on this page.”

“What do you mean?” Roberta asked.

I scanned the heads of households and none of them had the last name Bloomquist. Then it occurred to me. This was 1860; what if the fire had already occurred? Then the Bloomquists wouldn't have had any place to live. They would be staying with somebody else. I scanned each household and found: Bloomquist, Karl. Age 43. White. Male. Born in Sweden. Occupation was laborer. Meaning that he was most likely a farmer but as a guest in somebody else's home. A laborer.

“Here he is,” I said.

“Who is he living with?” Roberta asked.

“What do you mean?” Aunt Sissy asked.

“If he's in the index, but he's not a head of household, that means he's staying with another family.”

“Well, who is it?” Roberta asked.

“Johann Hagglund.” Most likely, at one time, the last name would have had the two little dots over the
a,
but a few years on the frontier and you just got the spelling that the census taker felt like giving you.

“By himself? Where's his family?”

“His son, Sven, is the only one listed with him,” I said. I couldn't believe it. We were that close to finding out who the author of the book was and then, boom, it was gone. The disappointment was indescribable. All three of us sighed.

“Well, fiddlesticks,” Roberta declared.

I just looked at her. Only my grandmother says fiddlesticks.

“Now what?” Aunt Sissy said.

“Now I check the church records. We know they were here.”

“Yes, but if she wasn't baptized or married or didn't die during that time, she's not going to be listed,” Roberta said.

I didn't say anything. Aunt Sissy knew what I was thinking. There was a reason that the Bloomquists were not in their home. Most likely it was the fire. And if the fire was truth, not just a myth, then the possibility of the Swedish girl meeting her demise in the cellar could be the truth, too. The fact that neither she nor her mother was listed with the father and the brother just made that possibility all that more likely.

Roberta realized what we were thinking. “Wait. Now wait, I know what you're thinking. But couldn't she be living with somebody else? Maybe the Hagglund family didn't have room for everybody, so they had to split up.”

I checked the index for more Bloomquists, but there were none.

“Not unless she and the mother changed their last names or moved out of the state.”

“Well, spit fire,” Aunt Sissy said.

I was going to have to teach these people how to curse.

“Come on. I think the church records are our best bet.”

Seven

It was nearly noon before we made it over to the church. My stomach rumbled as if it hadn't been fed in days. But I suppose that's what happens when you eat breakfast before the sun comes up. I said nothing and just hoped that Aunt Sissy would hear my stomach growling and suggest lunch. It was a crisp day and I could smell the oxygen heavy in the air. The sun was golden yellow, everything was in early bloom, and it was on days like this that you thought, it can't get much better than this.

The Olin Lutheran Church was a white clapboard building, oblong, with a steeple. A newer part of the building sat off to the left-hand side—the office, I presumed. The cemetery began about two hundred yards from the back of the church, and there was a large field off to the right with picnic benches and lots of trees. A cluster of birch trees sat almost perfectly in the center of the field. Funny, at that moment I thought that I could have sat there beneath those trees all day.

I grudgingly went inside the office part of the church, following closely behind Aunt Sissy. The office seemed dark, since we'd just left the brilliant sunshine just seconds before. “Well, Sissy. How are you?” I heard a voice say.

“I'm fine. Lisa, this is my niece, Torie.”

“Hi, I've heard so much about you.”

“She's my brother's daughter,” she said. “Of course, we just all recently found out he has two daughters.”

Lisa, a woman of about twenty-five years with bobbed blond hair, raised her eyebrows at that remark.

“Very sweet girl,” Aunt Sissy said.

“Well, are you just sightseeing?” Lisa asked.

“No, actually,” Aunt Sissy said. “We're here to see the records.”

Lisa raised her eyebrows again. “Records?”

I interjected, finally. “We were wondering if we could see the baptism, marriage, and death records that you may have on file here?”

“For what year?”

“Oh, it would be like … well, when do your records start?”

“The church was built in 1854. Our records start in 1854.”

“Well, then, I guess, give me the records for 1854 to about 1861,” I said.

“Sure,” she said. “Come on.”

She led us to the back of the office and to a door that connected with the church. It also connected to another door that opened into the basement. Lisa flipped on the light. “You have to forgive us, but we don't have a whole lot of room.”

I've seen worse basements. This one was dry, with concrete walls and that green plastic turf on the floor for carpeting. The whole room was nothing but filing cabinets. There was a funny smell to the room, even though it seemed to be perfectly dry. Maybe it was just the smell that all basements have, regardless. Except my mother-in-law's. Hers smelled like Febreze.

Lisa opened up the top drawer on the first filing cabinet. “Here you go.” Inside were big leather books. One was marked: Marriages 1854–1875 A–M. I found the N–Z book right below it. Below that was births and baptisms. The last one was deaths. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

“All right,” I said. Lisa walked back up the basement steps to her office and I let out a deep breath. “I don't even know her name to look up a death record.”

“Can't you just look under Bloomquist?”

“Well, yeah. But … that doesn't mean it will be the same person who wrote the novel. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless it actually gives her father's name,” I said. “All I can do is look.”

I pulled out the death registry and scanned the pages. Now, I'm not sure what the official date in Minnesota is, but in most states nobody had to report a birth or a death prior to 1910. In West Virginia, it's 1917. Therefore, any reports of births or deaths prior to about 1910 in this country were strictly voluntary. There were a lot more reported to the local parishes than one realizes. But fire on the frontier was a serious problem, due to the fact that most of the churches were built out of wood, and so a lot of the records were lost. Plus, trying to find the church that your ancestor attended can be a real problem. And sometimes churches just fell by the wayside or were incorporated into another church, so you never know where your ancestor's records will end up.

The point to all this is that as I stood there holding that death registry in my hands, I knew that even if the girl I was looking for had died in this county, between 1854 and 1875, I would only find the record in this book if her parents had voluntarily reported her death. I opened the book and held my breath as I scanned the names. They were not listed alphabetically, but rather by year. Most likely, the names had just been written in this book as the deaths were reported. So I had to read every name.

There it was. Bloomquist, Brigitta, age thirty-nine. Died on the third of June 1859.

“That can't be her. She's too old. That has to be her mother,” I said.

“What did she die of?”

“It says … it says … she died in a fire. Person reporting her death was her son, Sven. And then it gives her place of birth and who her parents were,” I said, amazed. “You go, Sven.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean, for as young as he was, Sven knew enough about his mother to put down her place of birth and her parents' names. I have an ancestor who didn't even know his own father's name.”

“How could he not know his own father's name?”

“Evidently his father died when he was really young and his mother never told him his name. So when he got married and they asked him for his parents' names, he said, ‘Father, unknown.'”

“Either that or his mother didn't know who his father was either.”

“Yeah, I considered that.”

“So, the girl. Is she in here or is it just her mother?” Aunt Sissy asked.

“I'm looking,” I said. “Oh, my God.”

“What?”

“She's here,” I said. Goose bumps broke out along the backs of my arms and down my legs. “Bloomquist, Anna. Age seventeen years, nine months, and ten days. Cause of death is fire. Oh, God.”

“What?”

“It says she lingered for five days. She died on the eighth of June 1859. Parents were Brigitta and Karl. Person reporting the death was her brother, Sven.”

“I don't know if I'm happy that we found her or not,” Aunt Sissy said.

“Yeah,” I said. I stood there for a minute taking it all in. It was true. Aunt Sissy's rumor was actually true. But as with all rumors, it wasn't exactly the same. The girl had not died in the fire, the mother had. The girl, Anna Bloomquist, had lingered for five days and died after the fire. I could only assume that if she had indeed fled to the cellar, as the rumor went, she had died of a fatal dose of smoke inhalation.

The next name on the page caught my eye. The name Bloomquist, once again.

Bloomquist, Emelie, age two months. Cause of death, fire. Parents were Anna Bloomquist and father unknown. Informant: Sven Bloomquist, uncle. “Oh, no,” I said. I covered my mouth and fought back tears.

“What?” Aunt Sissy asked.

“She had a baby.”

“What?” The look of horror spread across my aunt's face.

“Right here,” I said. “The baby died with her. She had a baby.”

“No,” Aunt Sissy whispered.

“I can only assume, since its last name was Bloomquist and she was at her father's house, that she was unwed. That means … that means Anna and her lover never married.”

“No,” Aunt Sissy said. “Oh, why did I have you look? I wish I didn't know.”

We both just stood there, completely numb. And then it hit me. She never finished the novel because it wasn't fiction. It was a diary. She never finished it because her death was the ending. “Aunt Sissy,” I said. “I need to finish reading what's written.”

“Okay.”

“Because I don't think it's fiction at all. I think it was a diary.”

Aunt Sissy nodded her head. “I've always thought so. Ever since I found the crooked tree.”