A Heart for Home (25 page)

Inga took a bite and chewed, a thoughtful look on her face. “I like crunchy cookies like this.” She took another bite. “But they aren’t real sweet. Maybe sprinkle sugar on them like we do the sugar cookies.”

Ingeborg and Freda exchanged raised eyebrow looks.

“Or maybe raisins.” Inga reached for another one. “I like gingerbread men better.”

“You don’t have to roll these out. I think that is why somebody came up with this idea.” Freda dunked her cookie in her coffee and took a bite. “Now, that is perfect.”

Ingeborg drained her coffee cup. “I’m going over to Kaaren’s for a session with our nursing students, so you stay here and help Tante Freda with the beans. I’ll be gone about an hour.”

“Back for dinner?” Inga reached for another cookie.

“Ja. And then we’ll pick raspberries. This will probably be the last picking.”

“Shortcake?” Inga’s eyes lit up, but then her smile dimmed.

“Grandpa won’t be here for shortcake.”

“We’ll make shortcake out of the canned berries when he comes back.” Ingeborg took off her apron and hung it on a hook. “I’ll hurry.” She picked up her black leather bag and strode down the walk to the front fence gate.

Walking along the lane now that the short pasture was fenced off for the heifers, Ingeborg hummed a tune to herself. When the meadowlark flying above loosed a trill of notes down on her, she smiled, watching him settle on a goldenrod, bending the top over.

“So you sing better than I do. Show off.”

When she arrived at Kaaren’s, she entered the two-story building through the school door rather than the family door. “Where are you?”

“In here,” Kaaren called from the first classroom.

Ingeborg joined the small group of ladies and sat down, setting her medical bag on the floor beside her.

“We have been studying different types of wounds and how to recognize them. Do you want to talk about burns?”

How do I talk about burns when they don’t know the language?
“Ah, how are you communicating?”

“Signs and wonders. Pictures help. Here in the medical book is the section on burns, but since we don’t agree with the common treatment, I would use the pictures.”

Ingeborg nodded. She stood and moved to the front of the room, picking up the book. “There are three levels of burns.” She held up three fingers. “First-degree burns make the skin red.” She showed the picture. “Sunburn, steam, touching a hot kettle. The surface skin is burned.” They nodded at the pictures.

Deborah looked up. “But this burn can still leave a mark?”

Ingeborg nodded. “Sunburns peel, and the skin can bubble after a few days. Cold water helps relieve the pain. I’m thinking that powdered willow bark worked into a salve might be effective too. After all, we make willow bark tea to reduce pain and fever.” This was something to think on. What if it could help bites and stings too?

Gray Smoke, the shorter of the two Indians, spoke up. She patted her skin. “No sunburn.”

“Really?” Ingeborg remembered Astrid saying that the women understood more English than they could speak. “Darker skin doesn’t burn?” She patted her skin, then Gray Smoke’s arm.

“Maybe we should ask Mrs. Sam,” Deborah volunteered.

“Good idea.” Ingeborg smiled at her students. By the time she had explained the other levels of burns and treatments, noon was near. Today Ellie was feeding the few men left at home to do the chores, so when Kaaren suggested they eat at her house, Ingeborg telephoned home and asked Freda and Inga to walk over.

When Inga greeted the two ladies in the Sioux language, the two smiled and responded with a stream of words. Inga stared at them, obviously trying to listen hard. When they saw she didn’t understand, they laughed and patted her shoulder.

“You good,” Gray Smoke said while Shy Fawn nodded.

Inga looked up at her grandmother. “Emmy only taught me some words. I don’t know very much.”

“What do you know?”

“How to say hello, good-bye, hungry . . .” She wrinkled her face, trying to remember. “Horse, food, friend.” She gave the Sioux words along with the English. “I wish I had learned more.”

“I wish you had too, and I wish I had learned more from Metiz. But hers was a mixture of Sioux and French, and I have forgotten much of what I did learn.”

They all sat down at the table, and after Kaaren said the grace, they passed the bread, meat, and cheese around the table, along with sliced pickles and lettuce. Kaaren demonstrated how to make a sandwich, and everyone laughed when her pickle fell out as she took a bite.

“You have to cut them in half or hang on tighter.” She demonstrated as she spoke, and the others made their own sandwiches. Everyone enjoyed the glasses of cold milk, but as usual, the cookies were the biggest hit.

“Emmy would really like this,” Inga said, dunking her cookie in the milk.

The two Indian women copied her, and the delight on their faces made everyone smile and chuckle.

“What will you do this afternoon?” Ingeborg asked.

“Practice making beds, changing beds with people in them, and rolling bandages. We have started a box for the reservation and will fill it as we go. Sterilizing things will be tomorrow, including boiling laundry. Astrid said she taught them some of that down on the reservation.”

“Do you need my help?”

“No, but I want to get to bandaging and dressing wounds the day after.”

“I’ll be here.”

Ingeborg walked home with Freda and Inga, Inga swinging between them. Her laughter was indeed contagious, even making sober Freda chuckle. The three of them picked the remaining raspberries, and while Freda made a batch of raspberry jam, Inga and Ingeborg finished snapping the beans and packing them in the jars for canning.

“Since we only have one potful, we’ll set them to boiling once the sun goes down so the kitchen won’t get so hot. We’ll dry the rest.”

“Do I get to spend the night again?” Inga asked, red juice from the berries dripping down her chin.

“What did your mother say?”

“I didn’t ask. You ask better’n me.”

“I see. I take it you want to spend the night?”

“And go fishing with Carl in the morning?”

“And if we catch lots of fish?”

“Then everyone can come here for supper. A fish fry again.” Inga clapped her hands.

Ingeborg glanced up to see Freda rolling her eyes. Knowing that Freda thought she spoiled her granddaughter, she tried to be more firm but never could keep from laughing, at least inside, at Inga’s antics.

“But what if we don’t catch a lot of fish?”

Inga sighed. “Then I guess they have to cook their own supper.”

Even Freda smiled.

But they did catch a lot of fish, and the next evening when everyone gathered at Ingeborg’s, one of the guests was Daniel Jeffers, thanks to Thorliff’s invitation.

“Why didn’t you bring your mother with you?” Ingeborg asked when he entered the house.

“She’s busy teaching English to the immigrants and said she hated to miss even one evening. They are trying hard, and she is excited about their progress. Even Boris is doing well, although he had some catching up to do.”

“Is he back to work full time now?”

“Yes, and the second man is half time. He had a much lighter case. Thanks to the Bjorklund doctors, these men are nearly finished digging cellars, and we will start pouring concrete next week on the first two.”

“One of those being your house?”

“Yes. Although now I’m thinking Mother is doing better at the boardinghouse. I thought a home of her own would be the best for her, to help her get through the mourning.”

“Your mother has a mission now. We all do better with a mission or two.” Ingeborg glanced down when she felt a hand on her skirt. “Excuse me. Yes, Carl? What is it?”

“Inga push me down.”

“I did not. I touched him and he fell. He doesn’t want to be it.”

Andrew stopped behind his niece. “Let’s go outside and talk about this. Grandma is busy right now.” He lifted Carl in one arm and took Inga’s hand. “Sorry,” he said over his shoulder.

Ingeborg turned back to her guest. “Why don’t you come out on the back porch, where it is cooler. I think the others are gathering there.”

“Thank you. I mean, you didn’t know you were having extra company.”

“Mr. Jeffers, you need to understand something about this family. We welcome everyone to our homes. When you moved to Blessing, you became part of our family. Especially when you partnered with my son. Our town is too small to not be all family.”

“Thank you. Someday I’d like to tell you how much I appreciate the way Thorliff has stepped in and helped me realize my father’s dream. You are an amazing family.”

“No. Just a much blessed family that wants to share what God has given to us.” She motioned for him to follow her to the porch, where Thorliff, Elizabeth, and Astrid were having a discussion, one that appeared from the tone of their voices to be getting warmer and warmer.

Then again, maybe you don’t want to get in the middle of this.
But Ingeborg kept her thoughts to herself. “Perhaps we can continue this discussion after supper?”

“But it has been more than a week with nothing further done on the hospital.” Astrid leaned forward. “The deadline is drawing close, far more quickly than I think you realize.”

“We said we would meet the November first dedication date, and we will do that. You just take care of your part and stop fussing about the construction.”

“Thorliff.” Elizabeth laid a hand on her husband’s arm. When he ignored her, she spoke louder. “Thorliff. Astrid. Your mother is speaking.”

“We’re doing the best we can. Who could have planned for a typhoid scare?” Thorliff glared at his sister and sent his wife a look too. He turned his attention to his mother. “Sorry. What was that you were saying?”

“I’m saying that we have company, and Freda is about done frying the fish.”

“I know we have company. I brought him. Actually, he should be helping defend me from this unprovoked attack.”

Astrid rolled her eyes. “All I did was ask when the hospital would be ready for occupancy.”

“By occupancy,” Daniel Jeffers started, keeping his voice calm and his attention focused on Astrid, “do you mean ready for patients or finishing the interior enough to be ready to move equipment in?”

“Not the patients. We won’t be ready for patients until December at the very earliest. But setting up the operating rooms will take more time than we originally thought.”

“As I said, everyone, we are ready to sit down to eat,” Ingeborg said firmly. “Make sure the children are washed up. Andrew, will you say the grace tonight?” Ingeborg turned and opened the screen door, motioning the others to go ahead of her.

What was happening that Astrid and Thorliff should get into a heated discussion like that?
Haakan, come home. I need you here.

22

Astrid couldn’t remember ever being put out with her brother like this.

“All right, you two,” Elizabeth said firmly the next evening. “This has to stop. You both have been so polite that I am about to scream. What in the world is going on?”

Astrid stared at her fingernails, knowing Elizabeth was right. Why did everything Thorliff said or did set her teeth on edge? She understood why they had taken the crew off the hospital to work on the houses to get them started. She knew better than to blame the typhoid scare on him, and she knew she really didn’t, but that was one thing that came up – from him. She glanced up to see Thorliff staring at her, stone-faced and cold.

The nerve of him, acting as if this was all her fault. She clamped her jaw on the words of apology she’d been about to utter, then locked her arms across her chest. Were all men like these two? First Joshua messing up his life and now Thorliff. Men! Why in heaven’s name did she think she wanted one in her life? Elizabeth was already married to this stubborn, bull-headed man, so she had to remain in this house with him, but Astrid was his sister, and she could leave – anytime.

“You two are acting like children. This isn’t like either one of you. What is the matter?” Elizabeth stood, shaking her head.

Astrid was glad Inga had stayed out at her grandmother’s place again.

“Thank you for your wise observations. I have work to do.” Thorliff turned, and while his shoulders said he was stomping the floor as he left, his shoes didn’t make a sound.

“You know what, Elizabeth? I’m going out to stay with Mor for a while. Maybe he can work his temper off. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Astrid, don’t be silly.”

“Now I’m silly, along with childish? The way I feel, I’ll end up picking a fight with you too. Much better that I hoe the garden or something like that. Hard physical work is a good antidote.” She fetched her medical bag. “Once I figure out what is going on, you’ll be the first to know.”

She tried to pray, but even that didn’t work. Striding along the road, which was barely more than a lane, she kicked a clod of dirt and flinched at the pain in her toes. Red River black dirt dried harder than concrete. And as heavy. Why had she ever snapped back at Thorliff like that? Why did what he said bother her anyway? What was it he said? Something about . . . She felt like yelling. But then surely someone would see her, and in a flash the news would be all over town. Dr. Astrid Bjorklund is losing her mind, screaming at something all by herself out in the country.