A New Day Rising (2 page)

Once he'd finished his business, he returned to the cookshack porch and drew his letter from his pocket.

"My dear Haakan," his mother wrote. "I hope and pray this letter finds its way to your hands and that you are well. Your far and I watch the mail for a message from you, but so long, now, we have been disappointed." Haakan sighed. He hated writing letters. What could he say to them? How many trees were cut, who beat whom in cards, and that two men were caught by a tree that fell wrong? One died and the other wished he had. Life in the north woods took all a man had to give and then bled him again.

"I pray that you have found a church where you can hear God's Holy Word and draw near to the foot of the cross." His mor had no idea how far and wide this land of America stretched and how many were the miles between towns. No minister came to this logging camp or to the mill downriver, and the farm where he worked one summer lay ten miles from the nearest town. No, a church he hadn't seen for more than a year or two.

After giving him the news of the family at home, she continued. "You remember your cousins twice removed, Roald and Carl? Both of them died in the terrible blizzard and flu epidemic last winter in Dakota Territory. I would have told you sooner, but I just learned of the dreadful tragedy myself. I believe you could be of help to their families and perhaps could spend Christmas at their farm. You are the closest family to those two poor grieving widows who are so young to suffer like this, and I know they would be beholden."

Haakan swung his arms to warm himself. He shook his head. Mor talked like he could ski right over to the cousins' houses and help them do the chores of an evening. He checked the date at the top of the precious paper. Sure enough, early November. Besides being so far away, he had steady work here. And if Mrs. Landsverk agreed with him, he'd soon have a family of his own. Perhaps they'd stop by the Bjorklunds on their way west.

The blast of the steam whistle forced him to stuff the letter in his shirt pocket and return to the front of the cookshack, where he loaded on to the sledge along with the others. Ignoring their banter, he thought about what it would be like to have a family of his owna fine wife, sturdy sons to help in the fields, and golden-haired daughters who laughed like their mother. Fifteen years he'd been in America, and while he'd seen a lot of the country and worked anywhere at whatever he found, he was no closer to the dream of owning land than when he left home.

"Hey, Bjorklund, you going to Hansen's tonight?" The sledge driver threw the words over his shoulder. Everyone stopped talking to hear the answer.

"Nei, I got better things to do with my money than fill Hansen's pockets."

"Ah, that ain't it. He's hoping to spend a bit of time with Miz Landsverk. Widow woman like her needs a man. Why else you tink she come to da logging camp?"

"Ja, but you better get a push on. I heerd she done got a beau."

Haakan felt like someone slugged him in the back with a tree trunk. He forced himself to turn slowly and look at the last man who spoke. Raising one eyebrow, Haakan waited for an answer to the question he kept himself from asking. Ears, so named for the appendages that nearly waved in the breeze but for their frostbitten tips, nodded. "Dat's vat I hear."

Haakan shrugged as if it meant nothing to him. He knew they'd never let up if he showed any reaction at all. Keeping secrets was well nigh impossible when twelve men bunked in a ten-by-twelve room.

"Ah, he yoost repair tings for her 'cause he got nothing else to do." Swede, his partner and best friend, managed to stick up for him as usual.

Haakan had found the best way to get along was to keep his mouth shut and his fists ready. He used them rarely, only in emergencies, but everyone knew that when he started swinging, he meant business. He shut down many a brewing brawl on his reputation alone.

At each stop, more men bailed off and headed for the marked trees to be downed and stripped that day. As those felling the trees moved on, teams of horses skidded the logs to the clearing where they would be loaded onto sledges and hauled to the bank of the river. After the ice left the river in the spring, they'd be floated down to the main sawmill. Keeping the logs from jamming up took another kind of skill and daring as the logrollers jumped from one floating log to another, using their peavey, a pronged spike, to break things up. While he had good balance, Haakan had chosen instead to work in the mill itself, feeding logs into the buzz saws. The noise alone fair to deafened a man, but at least he didn't have to worry about a dunking in the frigid water.

Haakan, Swede, and Huey swung off the sledge at the end of the track. The three were known as the best team in camp. They wedged the trees for the sawmen, then stripped the huge pines with greater speed and fewer accidents than anyone in this logging camp or the three surrounding it.

Haakan paused and sniffed the air. "Snow coming."

Huey shook his grizzled head. "You be better'n anyone I ever met for knowing the weather like you do. Yoost smells cold to me."

"And piney."

The three slogged through the drifts to the next tree, marked with a notch about chest high. Within a few strokes they were back to their natural rhythm, and the blows of the axes fell precisely on beat. Haakan resolutely kept his mind on the task at hand. With the letter burning a hole in his chest and the nagging voice that said he'd lost the woman he loved, he maintained a speed with the rise and fall of his ax that would have felled a lesser man.

"Enough, man. What you tryin' to do? Kill us off?" Swede stepped back to watch the tree drop to the ground and mopped sweat off his forehead with a frost-encrusted sleeve.

Haakan looked at the third member of the crew to see him nodding and puffing hard. Plumes of steam rose and frosted his bushy eyebrows.

"Sorry." Haakan leaned on his ax handle, only then realizing his lungs were pumping like bellows. He looked up to see the first snowflakes drifting in the stillness. A last branch broke through the ice-crusted snow with a pop, while in the distance another tree crashed to its death. The forest wore that peculiar silver-blue look of winter's early dusk, when the sun has fallen beyond the trees but not yet fully set. Directly above, a gray cloud sent more snowflakes drifting downward.

"We should be able to down another before the team arrives."

"If they can find us. We got so far ahead."

"Even that lazy driver we got should be able to follow the felled trees." Haakan slapped Swede on the back. "Come on, I promise to let up on you."

That night in the warmth of the cookshack, Haakan tried to catch Mrs. Landsverk's gaze. Was she deliberately not looking at him? The thought made the possibility of the gossip being right even more worrisome.

As half the men shouted and shoved their way out to the strawfilled wagon for the hour-long ride to Hansen's saloon, Haakan bided his time, counting on her to come by again with coffee refills for those few who still lined the benches. Instead, Charlie, her young helper, carried the pot around.

"More coffee, Mr. Bjorklund?"

Haakan held out his cup. "There isn't, by chance, more of that dried apple pie in the back, is there?"

The boy's cheeky grin split his face. "For you, there just might be." He took the pot with him and hurried to the kitchen, leaving the man sitting farther down the table unattended.

With one finger, Haakan traced the red lines in the checkered oilcloth covering the table. Should he try to talk to her tonight or wait till morning? With it being Sunday tomorrow and half the camp hung over from their carousing the night before, breakfast was always served later and then dinner in the middle of the afternoon so the kitchen help had part of the day off.

"Here you go, sir." The boy leaned closer. "I din't tell her who it was fer. Herself's not in too good a mood."

Haakan thought of asking Charlie what was happening with Mrs. Landsverk, but a shout from the other logger stopped him. Be sides, he'd never been one to ask a boy to do a man's job.

"Hey, boy, bring some of that coffee down here- You want I should have to fetch it myself?"

"No, sir." Charlie scooted off, but only after a wink at Haakan.

Haakan took his time over his pie, removing the letter from his pocket and reading it again under the light from the overhead kerosene lamp. The words hadn't changed. His mother surely did expect him to head for Dakota Territory immediately. And on skis no less, as if he'd had any time to make skis. He thought of the long hours he'd spent playing cards with the other loggers. Skis hadn't seemed important. Where would he go anyway? Deeper into the woods?

He scraped the last of the rich pie juice off the plate. He knew he should write his mother a letter. Since her letter had taken so long to arrive, she believed he was already there. Wherever there was. Surely she understood he had a life of his own to lead. As the eldest son, he'd always taken care of the younger ones, especially after his father died in a fishing boat accident when he was ten. Only after his mother remarried did he feel he could leave Norway for the new land. And now she expected him to run save the wives of two of his cousins, cousins so far removed he'd only met them once and their wives never.

A guilty conscience weighing him for not writing in so long, Haakan headed for the bunkhouse to get paper and pencil. Since the light was better in the cookshack, he returned and took his place again on the long plank bench. Besides, if he remained in the cookshack, he might get a chance to talk with the woman he'd been dreaming of.

"Dear Far and Mor and all my family, I am as well as can be expected and still logging in the north woods of Minnesota. I am sorry to tell you that I cannot leave here right now-your letter took three months to find me-as my boss depends on me in many ways. Perhaps I can travel west in the spring if they don't hire me on at the mill." He stopped and chewed the end of the pencil. What was there to tell them? He knew they didn't want to hear of the fights and drinking, the accidents, and the frostbite. What they wanted to hear was that he was married and raising a family. A shame it was, because deep down he really did like the logging life. He signed the letter "With love from your son, Haakan," and addressed the envelope, sticking the last stamp he owned up in the corner. The room had grown too quiet.

He stared at the now darkened kitchen. Mrs. Landsverk hadn't come to join him for a last cup of coffee like she usually did. He shook his head. There was trouble in the hen house for sure.

In spite of his concern, when Haakan fell on the rough bunk, sleep hit him on the way down. He heard the carousers return sometime in the wee hours, but since no fight erupted, he slept on. When he awoke, it was with the determination to confront Mrs. Landsverk, tell her he loved her, and ask her to marry him. The sooner the better. He crossed his hands over his broad chest and stared at the rafters above. Is this really what he wanted?

"Ja, it is!" He leaped to the floor with a thud, slapped Swede on the shoulder to wake him, and, still in his long red underwear, rattled the grate and added fresh wood to the nearly dead fire.

"Hey, keep the noise down over there!" The man in the corner added a few pungent words to the first, and the grunts from the others said they agreed.

"If you'd been sleepin' rather than drinkin', you'd be ready to greet this glorious new day." Haakan slammed the lids down on the stove with more than necessary vigor. He broke the ice in the top of the drinking bucket and ladled water into the kettle to set on the stove. Today he would wash and shave to greet his beloved looking his best. He dug out his last clean shirt, whistling a tune and dreaming of what was to come.

When Haakan entered the cookshack with his corn-silk golden hair still darkened by the water he'd used to make it lie flat against his head, a strange man in a black wool suit sat at the end of the bench closest to the kitchen. With one hand on his shoulder, Mrs. Landsverk was refilling the man's coffee cup. His hand covered hers and he was looking up at her with eyes brimming with love. The man certainly didn't look old enough to be her father. Where on earth had he come from?

Haakan tried to take a deep breath, but the ax that split his breastbone wouldn't allow it. He started to turn, but she caught his movement and, with a smile to dim a summer sun, said, "Come, Mr. Bjorklund, I want you to meet a very good friend of mine from home. We lived on neighboring farms growing up."

Feeling as if his life's blood were running down his shirt, Haakan did as she asked. After the introduction and a stiff handshake, which took every ounce of civility he possessed, he shook his head at her offer of coffee.

"Then I will tell you my wonderful news. Since his wife died, Reverend Jorge has been looking high and low for me, and now that he found me, we will be married next week in Duluth. Isn't that wonderful?"

The axhead drove deeper into his heart. Haakan dipped his head in the briefest of nods. "I am very happy for the two of you. Now, if you will excuse me ..." He turned and forced his legs to walk, not run, to the outside door, and he straight-armed it open. The resounding bang sent ice and snow crashing from the roof to the stoop. He headed out one of the skid roads, his long legs covering twice the ground as usual. When he was out of sight of the camp, he broke into a run, his corked boots spurting snow behind him.