A Heart for Home (27 page)

“Ja. Well, Hjelmer has always marched to his own drum. He is a born salesman.”

“Then perhaps we should send him out to these meetings. I’d much rather stay here. Do you think he’d go?”

Thorliff nodded. “I think you just came up with the best idea of the day, maybe the week. When you get back, we’ll talk about it. Hope you can find us some new employees at the same time. Someone who can set type and run a printer part time would be good.”

“My list keeps growing. I need to go pack.” Daniel stopped at the door. “Do you think your sister would be offended if I wrote to her?”

“Not at all.” Thorliff raised an eyebrow. “Do you want her to write back?”

“That would be hard. I’ll be moving around so much. Thanks.” He shut the door behind himself. Why had it been so hard to ask such a simple question? Leave it to Thorliff to raise one more question.

He stopped to knock on the door to his mother’s room.

“Come in.”

He found her studying manuals for teaching English to her students. “How are you coming with this?”

“I’m glad I didn’t try to teach the women and the men together.

They would have been terribly uncomfortable.”

“The women or the men?”

“Both.” She reached up and patted his cheek. “I suppose you are getting ready to leave?”

“I am. Will you be all right here?”

“What do you mean? Of course I’ll be all right. For a woman in mourning, I am having the time of my life. There are people who need something that I can do. Bless you for suggesting this for me. I teach the women in the morning and the men in the evening. Now they come here rather than my going to the schoolhouse – the men I mean. Young Johnny takes me in the buggy out to the Knutsons’ and picks me up again. How could I ask for anything more?”

Her wide smile told him she meant every word.

He leaned down to kiss her cheek. “It is wonderful to see you so alive again. I must tell you, I was worried about you after Father disappeared.”

“I was too. It was all the uncertainty. Once I knew for sure he’d gone to his heavenly home, I could grieve and trust that God was taking care of both him and us. Thank you for talking me into coming to Blessing. I believe we will both have new lives here.”

“Me too. I’ll write.”

“Thank you, but you won’t be gone that long – or will you?” “Probably two weeks, anyway. I need to be free to follow some leads, if I find any. Thorliff and I just discussed having Hjelmer be the salesman for the company. If he would do that, I would be really pleased. He loves travel, and I would rather stay right here and get the parts into production. We will have a real celebration when those first orders ship.”

“Your father is so proud of you.”

“I hope he would be.”

“No, he is.”

“Good.” He squeezed her hand and turned to the door.

“Go with God.”

“I will and do. You always said that to Father too. Thank you.” He closed the door behind him before the tear that was trickling down his mother’s cheek could slow him down. They didn’t talk much about his father, and he just hated to see his mother cry. She had shed rivers of tears, enough that she had seemed to be melting away before his eyes. Now, even though she wore gowns of gray instead of the hateful black, she looked her more beautiful self. His father had always been so proud of his wife and so in love with her. He hoped to find someone to love like his father had loved his mother. So far none of the young women he had met interested him. Until Dr. Bjorklund. At first he thought she was spoken for. But apparently she’d turned Landsverk down, because he’d talked of leaving.

While he felt sorry for the man, he rejoiced on his part. Whistling, he packed a deep carpetbag with his clothes and another with the brochures Thorliff had printed for him. Increased grain yields and ease of adaptation were the hallmarks of their new product.

Packed and downstairs, he set his bags by the door and entered the dining room, where Miss Christopherson was inspecting the dinner seating and preparations.

“Good morning, Mr. Jeffers. You are early for dinner.”

“I know. I’m catching the noon train and wondered if I could have a sandwich to take with me.”

“Of course. You sit right down there, and I’ll bring it out to you. Would you like some coffee while you wait?”

“No, thank you. I’m fine.” He watched as she hurried back to the kitchen. Mrs. Wiste was certainly blessed to have a woman like Miss Christopherson in charge of the dining room. She made everyone feel right at home. He’d watched the immigrant workmen last night. They always sat together at the tables over in the corner. How long would it take for them to begin to feel like they were part of the community? He pulled a small pad of paper from his chest pocket and jotted a note for Thorliff. Finished, he folded it and wrote
Thorliff
on the outside. Surely someone would deliver it for him.

Later, on the train heading east, he pulled his journal out of his bag to write some reminders to himself. While he didn’t keep a formal journal like his father had, this book was never far from reach. Of course his mother had told him not to bother to write – he remembered her saying that to her husband too – but Daniel also remembered her great joy in receiving letters. When traveling, his father had made it a habit to write to his wife twice a week and always include notes for the children.

He added a typesetter to the list of needed employees and made a note to price a more up-to-date printer for Thorliff. The purchase was long overdue. Norwegians were famous for making do rather than investing in something new. He’d seen it in action with his partner. But the Bjorklunds farmed with the latest machinery, so they were forward-thinking business men too. He wrote himself some more notes before putting the journal away and bringing out his latest novel,
Tom Sawyer, Detective,
by Mark Twain.

A desire to read was one thing his mother had instilled in him. While he read a great deal and a great variety, fiction was his favorite. And as of right now, Mark Twain was his favorite American author.

When the train pulled into the Minneapolis station, he got off and made his way to the hotel his father had always stayed at. He had appointments at several farm machinery sales lots.

By the time he left for Chicago two days later, he had enough orders to make him pleased. Selling to the sellers was the best way to do business. Let them sell to the farmers.

Settled in his next hotel, he took some hotel stationery and sat down to write.

Dear Dr. Bjorklund,

I asked Thorliff if you would mind if I wrote to you, and he said he didn’t think you would, so that is what I am doing. I am in Chicago, Illinois, and have a list of appointments for this area. So far, the Twin Cities were remarkably open to our modification for seeders. My father was right when he said the product he invented would make a difference for not only wheat crops but other grains as well.

I enjoy seeing the country from a railroad car. The trip is so much faster than any other way, as you well know. I stopped by an automobile dealership and looked at some of the new designs.

As Hjelmer has said so often, automobiles will be the next big addition to travel. One man boasted that his Oldsmobile would cover ten miles in one hour. While I wanted to drive one, I did not have the time or the training.

I wonder why Hjelmer sold his. He always likes the latest thing, and these certainly are. The salesman said that one day there would be roads all over America for automobile travel. There were plenty of cars on the streets of Minneapolis. I saw a team of horses panic when the automobile near them backfired, which seems to be a common occurrence. Needless to say, I will not be bringing one to Blessing, at least not yet.

I hope the progress being made on the hospital building meets your approval.

Sincerely, Daniel Jeffers

He read through it again, folded it, and placed it in one of the hotel envelopes, addressing it to Dr. Astrid Bjorklund, Blessing, North Dakota. Then he wrote a letter to his mother, this time describing the flowers and houses he had seen, as well as a hat that he thought she might like, and assuring her that all was well and the trip profitable – so far, at least.

On Sunday he walked to the nearest Lutheran church and attended the worship service. The pipe organ alone was worth the walk. Singing along with an instrument like that made him wonder if heaven would have music to top it.

“Thank you for such an uplifting service,” he said to the pastor greeting people at the door. “Your organ is wonderful and the organist a maestro.”

“We are very fortunate in having them both. I hope you come again.”

“I’m just traveling through on business. If I am in Chicago again, I will be back.”

He responded to greetings from several other folks and made his way back to his hotel. Would Blessing ever have a church large enough for a pipe organ? Even a pump organ could add to the music they already had. Did Dr. Elizabeth Bjorklund play the organ? She sure knew how to make the piano sing.

The organ music remained one of the highlights of his trip, which was seeming longer than the days he was actually gone. When he decided to write to Astrid again, he realized he would be home before the letter got there, so he read his book instead. He was homesick for Blessing. It wasn’t as if he’d lived there for years, and he’d never really been homesick for the place he grew up.

Was it Astrid who was drawing him back?

24

“Grace is coming home today!” Sophie called from the doorway of the surgery.

Astrid excused herself and stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind her. She strode out to the waiting room, which at that moment was empty, thank goodness.

“Sophie, this is a doctor’s office. You must be polite here.”

“Not when Grace is coming home, this time to stay. I had to tell someone, and you were the closest.” Sophie clapped her hands and would have spun in place like she did as a little girl had Astrid not been trying to look stern.

Astrid hugged her cousin. “I have a patient, but if you will sit outside on the porch swing, I’ll be out as soon as I can. It shouldn’t be long.”

“Where’s Elizabeth?”

“Over at the hospital, talking over some changes with Thorliff.”

“All right, I’ll wait. But you hurry. The train could be here pretty quick.”

Astrid glanced at the watch face she wore pinned to her apron. “It’s at least an hour before the train comes.”

“Maybe Thelma has something good to drink in the icebox. See you on the porch.”

Astrid assured the little girl sitting on her examining table that the hair her brother had shaved off her scalp would come back and the cut would heal quickly. She turned to the mother. “Head wounds bleed severely, but this was just a surface cut. If you come back in three or four days, I’ll remove the stitches. Or if you have a slender scissors, you can do that at home. Just slide the tip of the blade under the stitch and snip. Pull it out with a tweezers or your fingernails. Don’t worry if a drop of blood appears. It will scab over.”

“Thank you, Dr. Bjorklund. I can’t believe he did this to his sister.”

“We were just playing barber, Ma. He didn’t mean to hurt me.”

Astrid rolled her lips to keep from grinning. This was a first. “Maybe you should play school or store instead. It would be a lot safer.” She accepted the payment and ushered them out the door.

Thelma was already in the room cleaning up. Even she snorted when Astrid told her the story. “Children nowadays,
tsk, tsk.
Too much time for playing.” She shook her head and bundled up the bloody cloths. “Mrs. Wiste is out on the back porch. She has your glass out there too.”

“Thank you, Thelma. You do such a good job of caring for all of us.”

Astrid wasn’t sure what Thelma’s mutter said, but she left the examining room with a light heart. One needed a good laugh now and then. Well, really more now than then.

She had another laugh when she told Sophie, who laughed and asked for the barber tale again.

“Playing barber. I never.”

“Good thing he didn’t try to pull her teeth.”