Chapter
13

Simmering inside did not feel good at all.

“You have to let go of this,” Rune said to her several nights later. “His bark is always worse than his bite.”

“Gerd says the same thing. I know God says to not hold on to anger, but . . .” She rolled her head from side to side on the pillow. “I am so looking forward to having our own home. It cannot happen soon enough.” She clung to his hand, which lifted hers to his mouth. His gentle kiss brought tears that leaked into her ears. “Is he like that when you are out in the woods?”

“Not as much.”

“Then why does he hate me so? I do my best to be pleasant, but nothing ever seems to make a difference.”

“At least he does not mistreat the boys, even though Leif is so frightened of him.”

“No, only me.”

“Have you asked Gerd about this?”

“Nei, I hate to make her feel bad. She has enough to bear. I know she works in spite of pain. I see it in her eyes. Kirstin is the delight of her life.”

At the sound of Rune’s gentle breathing drifting into sleep, Signe lay beside him, watching the moon paint square patterns on the floor. The part she had read in the Bible that morning said to give thanks for all things. How was she supposed to thank God for Einar Strand? For the way he acted? Surely God didn’t really mean that. She could be grateful for the house they lived in, for Gerd, that was easy.

Be thankful. Full of thanks. That made no sense at all.

Spring thaws in Minnesota are pretty much like the spring thaw in Norway, Rune mused to himself. The tract of land—his tract of land!—inched ever closer to spring. Every day, bit by bit, bare ground showed through the snow, followed by green shoots that appeared like magic. Mud followed, but that meant the ground was thawing. Thawing ground led to plowing the garden and corn fields and digging out their cellar.

Rune marked the boundaries of his cellar with stakes, double-checking that the angles were exact, and he and his boys spent every spare moment digging the frost-free soil off so that the sun could warm the next layer.

Then came a task Rune was not sure he wanted to tackle.

“We’ll start dynamiting stumps today,” Einar announced at the breakfast table.

Bjorn grinned at his far. This would be a new experience.

Rune asked, “Start with the line along the hayfield?”

Einar nodded.

“Can’t we stay?” Knute glared down at the table when Rune shook his head.

“There are plenty of stumps to clear. You’ll get your chance.” Rune nodded to his boys. Leif looked relieved; Rune knew that the farther he could stay from Einar, the happier he was.

Bjorn harnessed the horses as Rune and Einar loaded tools and hooks, pulleys and cables, the garden spade, and a couple of large garden trowels. Einar put three old axes into the wagon, axes that would never be properly sharp again, but Rune held his peace.

When Einar set the crate of dynamite sticks in the wagon bed, Rune’s peace shattered.

Einar might be crotchety and unreasonable, but he was careful out in the woods. Rune should trust that Einar would put safety first.

But he couldn’t.

The leaf springs on Einar’s wagon box were old and tired and had lost half their bow, so the wagon bounced at every rough spot in the track. The ruts were soft mud in the sun and still mostly frozen in the shade, making the wagon jostle wildly when it moved from mud to hard ground to mud to hard ground. Rune winced at every jounce. When the wagon bucked over a thick stick in the track, he broke out in a cold sweat. All he could think about was a huge gaping hole where he, Einar, Bjorn, the wagon, and maybe even the horses had been moments before.

As they rode out into the stump field, the ground softened, but now the numerous tree roots made the wagon bounce. Rune could not settle his intense foreboding.

Einar drew the horses to a halt and explained, pointing, “We’ll start here. Pull these, drag them to a pile there, then burn the pile. We can spread the ashes across the meadow. Good fertilizer.” He got down, picked up one of the dull axes, and walked over to a huge stump. “Cut the surface roots first.”

He slammed the dull ax into the ground, and it bounced. Ah—now Rune understood. The ax had struck a root. Einar chopped at it from an angle. When the ax sank deeper into the spring dirt, he found another root and started chopping.

How clever! Chopping into dirt and clay dulled an ax quickly. So they might as well use tools that didn’t matter.

Bjorn had figured out the process just as Rune had, and Rune felt a happy little surge of pride. What a fine son! They cut the roots on four stumps. Then Einar shouldered his ax and walked off toward the wagon, so Rune and Bjorn followed.

When Einar pried the lid off the crate of dynamite, Rune broke out in a cold sweat again. Now the nightmare would begin.

Einar stuck a trowel in his belt and scooped up as many sticks as his two hands would hold. “Bring a shovel.”

He walked back to the first stump they had chopped around. He took the shovel from Bjorn and dug deep beside the stump. Rune noticed how dark the soil was at the surface and how quickly it changed into pale clay and gravel. In fact, the soil was very much like most of the lowlands in Norway.

Rune took the shovel when Einar stopped digging. On his hands and knees, Einar used his trowel to dig down under the stump. He forced several sticks of dynamite down as deep under it as he could get them, then stood up and snapped at Bjorn, “Go get the reel of fuse.”

He dug a deep hole alongside the next stump and handed the shovel to Rune. “Dig out the next one.”

When all the dynamite had been nestled in place under the four stumps, Einar positioned his fuse as Rune held the reel. Rune had trouble keeping up, as Einar kept yanking on the fuse, demanding more. Grinning, Bjorn stepped in beside Rune with an ax and ran the ax handle through the center hole of the reel. Of course! In spite of his extreme fear and tension, Rune cackled out loud. He gripped the ax on either side of the reel, using it as an axle. The reel spun freely. Rune backed up as Bjorn played out fuse to meet Einar’s needs.

Did Einar notice how quickly the operation was going now? Apparently not. Rune could see no change in his face or scowl. Much less did Einar notice the excellent improvement Bjorn had figured out. But then, wasn’t that always how Einar was?

When Einar stood up from attaching the fuse at the fourth stump, he barked, “Leave the wagon there and unhitch the horses, boy. Take them to that chokecherry at the far end and tie ’em up good.”

Rune felt better instantly. At least his son would be well away from danger.

But no. Bjorn led the horses at a trot out to the chokecherry and then came running back as Einar laid his fuse out along the ground and stopped beside the wagon.

“This is far enough.”

Rune licked his lips. “Are you sure? We seem kind of close yet.”

“It’s far enough.” Einar lit the fuse. It took three matches to get the fuse to catch, but suddenly it sputtered and sparkled brightly. As Rune’s heart pounded in his chest, the brilliant, hissing little flame moved swiftly down the line of laid fuse.

It reached the first stump.

Boom! But it wasn’t so much a boom as it was a bwahp, or maybe the world’s biggest shotgun being fired, or—

Bjorn whooped with surprise and joy as the stump lifted, trembling, in the midst of a cloud of dirt and stones. It dropped back at an angle as earth rained down all around it.

The burning fuse reached the second stump. Boom! Not just boom, but boom-boom, for the third stump exploded simultaneously. Dirt and stones were blown treetop high, and some of them landed so close that you could hear them hit the ground. Rune was convinced now that they were not nearly far enough away. A sudden wave of dirty air smacked him in the face; his ears rang.

BOOM! Einar had set the fourth stump with two sticks more than the others, and it went off with a horrific explosion. Earth and rocks and splintered wood blasted upward and outward in all directions. Rune could feel the ground vibrate beneath the soles of his boots. He had never been so terrified.

Stones rained down, and the three of them buried their heads in their forearms. Poor Bjorn! He must be terrified. But no, he was laughing boisterously.

Whunk! A rock the size of a chicken landed on the wagon and punched a hole through the wagonbed. Einar swore. Rune stood aghast. If that rock had landed on one of them, it could have killed them. Suddenly he realized that the rock had missed the crate of dynamite sticks by only a foot or two. Had that rock landed on the dynamite . . .

He was terrified and horrified and wildly angry all at once. Einar could have killed them all!

Einar didn’t seem concerned. He dragged ropes and pulleys out of the wagon and ordered, “Boy, fetch the horses up.”

Bjorn stood, staring raptly at the stumps as the dirt cloud slowly thinned.

Einar snarled at Bjorn. “Boy! I told you to do something. Do it!”

Bjorn did not move or look at Einar. It was as if he hadn’t heard.

As if he hadn’t heard! Rune’s sense of dread before was nothing compared to his anger and terror now. Bjorn hadn’t heard!

Einar swatted Bjorn’s arm with the back of his hand, and Bjorn wheeled, wide-eyed. “Quit mooning around! I said, get the horses!”

“No!” Rune roared. “Bjorn, say your name.”

Now the boy looked terrified. “What? What did you say? Far! I can almost not hear you at all. It’s like you are very far away!”

Rune shouted and pointed. “Go to the house. Now!”

Einar shouted just as angrily, “No! I said get back to work! Go get the horses!”

Bjorn stood trembling for a moment, but thank God he knew better than to disobey his far. He turned and took off running toward the house.

Einar wheeled on Rune. “We need him to handle the horses while we’re pulling the stumps. He’s just faking it so he won’t have to work.”

“He loves this work, and he is not faking. That lightning strike last year deafened him, but he got his hearing back. Let us pray to God that it returns again. One thing is for sure, he will never again be near where we are blasting. Never! His ears are too damaged.”

Einar suddenly smirked. “Very well. If that lazy boy doesn’t want to work, we’re pulling the other one out of school. You understand? We need someone on the horses.”

Rune’s fury was past containing. “I cannot make you stop disrespecting my Signe. I cannot stop you from misusing me. But by God in heaven, you will not destroy my boys!”