Dakota Dawn (11 page)

“More.” Kaaren leaned back against Nora’s shoulder and Nora closed her eyes. They sang it again. “Yes, Jesus loves me, yes Jesus . . .”

“What are you doing?” Carl’s voice cut like a knife.

Nora felt like she had been stabbed. Her eyes flew open to clash with his, limpid pond against glacier. Confusion to fury.

Kaaren stuck her finger in her mouth and whimpered, her chin quivering as she stared from her father to Nora.

“Pa-a-a!” Her wail floated on the breeze spun up by his leaving.

“Shhh.” Nora comforted her. “You sit here in my chair and take care of Peder. I will come back.”

At Kaaren’s nod, Nora rose to her feet and set the little girl back in the chair. Then, she gathered her skirts and ran down the path to the barn.

Carl had the horses backed up on either side of the wagon and shaft and was hooking the traces when she stopped in front of him.

“Why are you angry?” She stumbled over the words, wishing she could use Norwegian instead of English.

He ignored her, continuing the harnessing.

“Carl!” She might as well have been talking to the barn door. When he lifted a foot to mount the wagon, she placed a hand on his arm. “Carl, what did I do?”

He spun around, reins in his hand. “Do? The Bible. That song. How can you sing and worship a God who kills innocent mothers and children?”

“But your son lived!” Carl stepped forward, towering over her in his fury. “But his mother didn’t! She died and he might as well have.”

“What are you saying?” She clenched her hands in the sides of her skirt. She would rather be pummeling his chest.

“I’m saying I don’t want you teaching my daughter those songs and filling her head with lies about a God who loves her.”

“But Jesus—God loves us all. He will help you, if you ask.”

“I don’t need His kind of help.”

“But, Carl.” She placed her hand on his arm.

He threw her hand off, the wind of it whistling by her cheek. Leaping up onto the wagon, he flicked the reins. “Ha, boys.” Without a look back, he drove down the lane.

Nora stared after him, tears burning behind her eyes. “Oh, God help you, poor, poor man.” She bit the knuckles on her right hand, her left pressed against her throat. “Only God can help you. Father, please take away Carl’s bitterness. Bring him Your love. Restore his faith. Father, forgive me. I cannot do what he asks.”

Dust from the wagon’s churning wheels hung in the still air. It smelled like despair.

Nora opened the barn door and wandered inside. Clean floors, harnesses draped over pegs in perfect order—all showed a man who cared about his farm. Outside, the fat cows switched their tails in the shade of the barn, a newly replaced fence post anchored a gate that swung smoothly on oiled hinges. She wandered over to the pigpen. The cow and her piglets lay on a pile of straw under a roof to keep off the hot sun. Carl loved his animals.

On the way up to the house, she thought about him . . . tossing Kaaren in the air to make her laugh . . . of his sitting with the chattering child, answering her myriad questions. Yes, he loved his family . . . the fields, green and growing . . . the rosebush he had brought her. Here was a man with love locked away in his heart, with wounds deep in his soul. Where was the key to that lock? What salve would heal his hurt?

Back in the chair with Kaaren on her lap, she rocked and thought—and prayed.

May flowed into June and Carl continued working from before dawn until long after dark. With the fields planted and up, the cultivating began. Endless hours of riding the metal seat of the cultivator pulled behind two sweating horses, their heads bobbing in time to the plodding of their hooves.

Nora walked everywhere with Peder in the sling and Kaaren clutching her hand or running ahead. One day, they found wild strawberries along a fencerow. She made preserves from the berries and baked biscuits for shortcake.

Carl only grunted when served the treats.

Nora was not sure if the grunt meant “Thank you” or “Give me more.” She didn’t.

The temper she had prayed so earnestly over for so many years, simmered and, once in a while, spit.

Haying season began. One evening, Carl drove the team up after dark and found Nora milking the cows. Kaaren was playing in the aisle; Peder was sleeping peacefully on a mound of hay.

“I didn’t ask you to do this,” he said.

Nora continued to squeeze and pull, the milk singing into the bucket. “I know.” She kept her forehead against the cow’s red flank.

“Take the children up to the house. I will finish.”

“Carl Detschman, you are the most stubborn, bullheaded, prideful man I have ever had the misfortune to know.” Nora reverted to Norwegian. She did not know enough of the right words in English. She pulled a bit too forcefully and got a mouthful of cow’s tail.

“Nora.”

“No,
you
take Kaaren and your son Peder to the house. Maybe you’ll have time to soak your head before I get there.” She stripped the last of the milk from each teat and, setting the bucket aside, rose to her feet. “I have one more cow to milk.”

Carl stepped back before she could trod on his feet.

Nora picked up a clean bucket and her stool and plunked them down beside the next cow. “So-o-o, boss.” She settled the bucket between her skirted knees and her head into the cow’s flank. With the same easy rhythm, she squeezed and pulled, ringing the milk into the bucket.

She refused to look up when she heard Carl leave. She did not tell him her hands and arms were cramping either. When she peeked over her shoulder, the quilt where Peder had lain was gone.

Nora hid her smile of relief in the warm sweet cow smell, the fragrance of fresh milk foaming in a bucket. Maybe what he needed was to be stood on his ear once in awhile.

So, Nora added the evening milking to her chores. And caring for the gray-and-white barred chickens, as well as the garden and the house.

One day, with the hay cut and cured, Carl wrestled the high racks for hauling hay onto the front and back of the wide wagon bed.

Nora wished for her brothers to come help him. Why didn’t he share the haying work with some of his neighbors? The answer came to her immediately. He was too proud to ask for help. And, as Ingeborg had told her in the spring, Norwegians did not always take kindly to superior-acting Germans. That Carl could act superior, she knew for a fact.

“Why do you care?” she asked herself one hot afternoon. She sank into the rocker with a jar of water in her hand. Some she sipped and some she dripped onto a cloth to cool her forehead—she had been hoeing the potatoes.

Down at the barn, Carl had parked the hay wagon under the four cast-iron prongs that would lift the hay into the steadily filling hayloft. She could see his weariness in the slump of his shoulders. Climb up onto the hay wagon, set the forks, climb down, go around the barn, have the horses pull the rope toward the pile. Trip the prongs and begin all over again. He needed some help.

Nora put Peder in the sling. A jug of water in her one hand, she took Kaaren’s small grubby paw in the other. Down to the barn they strolled.

“Hi, Pa.” Kaaren announced their presence.

Brownie lay panting under the wagon, his feathery tail fluffing the dirt. Kaaren crawled under with the dog and giggled when he licked her face.

“Here.” Nora held out the cool water. Carl wiped his forehead and reached for the drink.

“Thank you.” This time she understood his answer.

Carl chugged the drink and, when finished, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I will help you.”

“You would do that?” Carl stared at her over the rim of the jar.

Nora nodded.

“Even after the way I’ve been acting?”

She nodded again. “Just tell me what you want me to do. I’ve driven horses before at home and I’ve also helped with gathering the hay.” She tipped her head back, the better to study him from under the straw brim.

“But you have the baby.”

She patted the sleeping form in her shawl slings. “He’s fine. Peder likes being close, being carried like this.”

“All right. But you’ll tell me when . . . if—” His gaze dropped to the sling and flicked back to her face.

“His name is Peder.”

“I know.” He sighed deeply. “When Peder needs you, he comes first.” They heard a giggle from under the hay wagon and a smile flitted across Carl’s face.

“Would you please go around the barn and drive the team forward when I tell you to? I’ll tell you when to stop, also.”

Nora nodded. She leaned over and peered under the wagon.

“Come, Kaaren.”

Like Mary in the Scriptures, Nora pondered these things in her heart. For a German man to admit he had been wrong was like . . . like . . .

She could not think of anything to compare it with. And he had finally said his son’s name—for the first time in a long while.

Thank You, Father. Thank You.
Her heart sang.

Dusty, thirsty, and with sunburned cheeks, Nora waved as Carl left for the hay field and his last load of hay. They would hoist it into the hayloft in the morning. Now, she just had the cows to milk and supper to fix. Peder whimpered and twisted in his sling—and a baby to feed, first of all. She turned and trudged up to the house.

“Nora. Nora.” The call carried on the evening breeze.

Nora shaded her eyes, staring after the wagon. Carl stood on the front rack, waving his arm and yelling at her.

“What?”

“Leave the cows for me to milk.”

She waved back in agreement. “Your pa is a good man,” she said to Kaaren in particular and the world in general. The words sounded puny compared to the chorus in her heart.

Each Sunday, Nora felt tempted to beg Carl to take them to church, but each time she remembered his anger at her Bible reading. How she would love to visit with Ingeborg. And hear the organ playing in church, Reverend Moen preaching in Norwegian, and people visiting after the service. On Sundays, she missed home and her family the most.

The first Sunday in August burned so hot even the birds hushed their singing. Nora spread a blanket out in the shade of the cottonwood trees. She sat propped against the tree trunk, her Bible in her lap, fanning herself and singing to Kaaren. Peder lay beside her, entranced by the shifting leaf patterns.

Between songs, Nora eyed the western horizon, praying to see the mounds of black clouds that brought the cooling rain they so desperately needed. Hauling water to her garden used every bit of energy she could find. But, she reminded herself,
Sunday is to be a day of rest, the good Lord said so Himself.
She turned away from thoughts of Carl cultivating the corn.

When Kaaren’s eyelids drooped, Nora took the most recent letter from Norway from her pocket and read the beloved words again. When she closed her eyes, she could hear her mother saying the words she wrote. How far away Norway and the life there seemed now.

Her eyes must have been closed longer than she thought. She jerked awake. No, everything was the same. Kaaren slept, sprawled like a puppet with broken strings. Peder lay on his tummy, cheeks pink from the heat, his breath even and deep.

What bothered her?

She scanned the horizon again. A flat, black band separated the green prairie and the blue sky. Flat, not piled and puffed up like the life-giving clouds. She read her letter again. The black band grew wider.

Go to the house,
an inner voice prompted.

“Don’t be silly,” Nora argued with herself. “The children are sleeping better than they have for days. It’s cooler out here than anywhere else. There’s nothing to fear.”

The black band darkened, spreading now across the entire western horizon.

A grasshopper flew onto her skirt.

Nora brushed it off and bit her lip.

The band, no longer flat, undulated like a blanket settling onto a bed. A fat, green grasshopper crawled over Peder’s back. Still asleep, Kaaren brushed one off her face. The action woke her. She sat up, whimpering and rubbing her eyes.

A sound like nothing Nora had ever heard seemed to come from the widening river of black.

A wave of fear brought Nora to her knees, scrambling to gather their belongings. “Kaaren, run to the house.” She set the little girl on her feet and pushed her in the general direction.

“No-o-o!” Kaaren wailed and wrapped her fist in Nora’s skirt.

Nora clutched Peder to her chest with one arm. With the quilt flung over the other and the basket in her hand, she had no hand for the whining girl. She stared over her shoulder.

The apparition flowed nearer. The sound, like the buzzing of angry bees, filled her ears.

She looked down at her skirt. Three grasshoppers had landed there. She could feel another in her hair. Were they, too, afraid of the approaching menace?

“Kaaren, help me carry the basket.” She bumped Kaaren’s arm with the handle.

In spite of her blue eyes welling with tears, Kaaren obeyed. She grasped the basket with a chubby hand.

“Now!” Nora forced a smile on her face and a lilt in her voice. “Let’s run.”

In the past, she dreamed of running and never getting to her destination. Now, it was so. With the baby bouncing in her arm and the basket thumping her thigh with every step, Nora felt like she was running through a quagmire. Instead of coming closer, the house seemed farther away every time she looked up.

After an eternity, they collapsed on the porch. Kaaren held up her arm and giggled at a grasshopper with iridescent wings and bobbing feelers.

“See, Ma. Big bug.” She poked him with her finger. Instead of hopping off, he flew away.

Nora looked from Kaaren to the porch posts. Bugs had landed all over, their wings whirring and clicking. They crawled onto her skirt, the quilt, and Kaaren’s dress. She brushed several off Peder.

“Ugh.” She looked up at the sky now dusky with flying insects. “Kaaren, brush them off and go inside. Now!” Her tone allowed no chance of resistance. She brushed the marauding insects off the baby’s things, her skirt, and apron. When the door closed behind them, she grabbed one from Kaaren’s shoulder and threw it outside.

She laid Peder on his quilt on the floor and returned to stand at the screen door. Where was Carl? What was happening?

The cows bellowed from the pasture by the barn. As she watched, they stuck their tails straight in the air and the animals charged off across the pasture.

Should she go down and let them into the barn?

She looked out at her rosebush—its stalks writhed like living things. She bit her knuckles to keep from crying out. The bush was buried in gnawing, buzzing creatures.

Clouds of insects turned the day into dusk. Was the sun, too, being eaten alive by the invading hoard?

Her garden!

“Stay here!” She cracked the order and pointed to the quilt. Wide-eyed, Kaaren sat down by the baby. Nora grabbed another quilt off the bed and, clapping the straw hat onto her head, stormed out the door.

She ran to the garden, waving the quilt then, using it like a club, to beat the bugs crawling over her plants. She shook it in the sky and screamed at the avenging hoard, but they kept coming. The crunch of their feeding filled the air. They covered her hat, her arms, her face. She spit out the one that was crawling in her mouth.

Her arms ached from brandishing the quilt. “Fire. I’ll burn them out.”

She turned to the house. Kerosene, a torch of kerosene, would that work? How to get it burning? Would smoke drive them away? But what would she burn?