Chapter
21

That laudanum works pretty well,” Rune said at supper that night.

“Whenever he started to grumble, I gave him some more,” Signe answered.

“Best thing for him.” Gerd glanced toward the bedroom.

Best thing for us. Signe didn’t say what she was thinking. She’d made sure Einar had something to eat, groggy or not, and was relieved when he went right back to sleep. At least he was not trying to get up and falling down. “Anyone want more ham and beans?”

“Should I try to feed him?” Gerd asked.

“We will after supper.”

“Any more cookies?” Leif asked.

“You all go work out in the garden, and I will make some pudding for dessert.” Gerd pushed her chair back. “Kirstin and I will, that is.” She leaned over the rocker and untied the sash that kept the grinning little girl from falling on the floor.

“I could take her outside in the sling.” Signe thought a moment. “We need to figure out a way for her to ride in the wagon.”

Gerd looked toward the bedroom when Einar grumbled, and sighed. “Signe, you and the others go out to the garden. I will make sure Einar has some supper.”

She smiled. “You need not worry about him.”

Gerd rolled her eyes. “Hardheaded as he is, he most likely thought he’d be back outside today. By tomorrow he will be yelling.”

Signe picked up her daughter, who gurgled in delight. Kissing the round little face, she wrapped the sling around Kirstin and settled her in front, looking out. “There now, we’ll see how long this lasts.”

Gerd stared at her, nodding slowly. “If we cut holes in that sling for her legs . . . I will work on that tomorrow.”

Nilda announced, “I will do the dishes. The rest of you get out of here.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Ivar and the boys headed outside, while Rune held the door for Signe.

“I think we should move the rocker outside onto the porch, and you and Kirstin can sit and enjoy the sun setting.” He tickled his daughter’s cheek, and she reached for his hand, always ready to chew on fingers.

“Let’s see if we can finish the planting,” Signe said. “That would make me much happier than sitting down right now.”

When dusk had darkened so they could no longer see the garden rows and Kirstin was soundly sleeping in the sling, they made their way back to the house.

“Wash your hands, and we can take the pudding out onto the porch to eat. There is coffee or buttermilk to drink.” Nilda held the jug of buttermilk above the glasses. “Who wants what? Gerd, you first.”

Gerd pulled back, shaking her head. “Nei. Not me.”

Leif stopped in front of her. “You want coffee or buttermilk? I will bring it out for you.”

“C-coffee.”

Knute picked up one of the bowls and a spoon. Ivar picked up a chair. “Come, show me where you want to sit.”

Signe nodded as the others surrounded Gerd and eased her toward the door. She sputtered all the way out, and Signe felt her heart fill at her boys’ kindness.

Snores reverberated from the bedroom as Rune and Bjorn brought out two more chairs. “All the men can sit on the steps or floor.”

When they were all settled outside, both cats followed Signe, still carrying the sleeping baby, out to the porch and found a lap to purr in. Signe leaned her head against the back of the rocking chair. Surely this was a little bit of heaven come down for them all.

A red-gold line still marked the horizon as the evening star stepped out and beamed down at them. A breeze lifted hair and kissed cheeks.

“Did you finish the planting?” Gerd asked while spoons scraped bowls and one of the boys went back in the house for more buttermilk.

“Corn, beans, and squash are in. Along with the lettuce and most of the beets. Cucumbers and dill to do yet. Oh, and that second planting of corn, but I want to wait until this one is up first.” Signe rocked gently. “Takk to everyone.”

“We brought some more seeds. Perhaps tomorrow we can unpack the crate.” Nilda looked at her older brother. “You finished planting the oats?”

“Ja.” Rune sipped his coffee. “Einar had that seeder working perfectly, far as I could tell, but we’ll know for sure when it comes up.” He tipped his chair back on two legs, then thumped it back down when Signe cleared her throat. “Once the corn is in, we’ll move the cows and horses over to the smaller pasture so that field can grow up for hay.”

Lightning forked and flickered to the north.

“Heat lightning,” Rune said softly to Ivar’s nudge. “Not unusual here. Doesn’t necessarily mean rain, but that would be fine now. Water the oats in good.”

Signe sighed with pleasure. “And the garden.”

“I am getting up for breakfast,” Einar announced the next morning when Rune went in to help him.

“Let’s see how you do.”

“And no more of that—that—”

“Laudanum. If you say so. Do you need help getting dressed?”

Einar glared at him. “No!”

Rune shrugged.

Signe watched the interchange from the door. What an impossible man. She nodded at Rune’s questioning look.

“Get out,” Einar growled.

“Ah, no,” Rune said calmly but firmly. “I am waiting to see how you do. Head injuries are nothing to fool around with.”

Einar swung his legs over the side of the bed and pushed himself upright. “See, I am fine. Get out now.”

“You are a big man, and if you fall, you are not easy to pick up.”

Einar tried staring him down, but Rune just stood there.

Signe swelled with pride over the way her husband was handling the situation. Poor Gerd had to put up with Einar all these years. No wonder she had aged and gotten sick.

Signe started to turn around but stopped when Einar pushed up with his arms and attempted to stand. He sank back onto the bed, sweat breaking out on his forehead. He blinked repeatedly, attempting to focus. “G-get me a chair. Must be that stuff you made me drink.”

Signe brought a chair from the kitchen and set it beside the bed.

“Your fault, that . . .” A string of expletives followed her back to the door.

“Einar Carlson, you may not talk to my wife that way. She has done all she can—we all have—to help you. But now you are on your own.” Rune headed to the door and smiled at Signe. “Let’s have breakfast. We have a lot of work to do.”

She smiled back and laid her hand on his cheek. “Takk.” What would it take to make that man . . . She knew there were no answers.

“Last day of school tomorrow!” Knute shouted over his shoulder as he and Leif headed out the door. “We get out early today too.”

“Takk for filling the woodbox.” She turned back to the kitchen.

“You ready for breakfast?” Gerd asked from the stove.

Signe glanced toward the bedroom door. “Did someone take his breakfast to him?”

“I will after we eat.” Gerd broke more eggs into the frying pan. The boiler steamed on the stove, awaiting the first load of clothes. Kirstin gurgled as she rocked her chair.

Rune looked at Bjorn. “Do we have enough firewood?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s Knute and Leif’s job.”

Rune stared at him.

Bjorn looked down at the table. “I’ll go check.” He pushed his chair back and headed out the door.

“So what’s for today?” Ivar glanced at his older brother but had a hard time keeping a straight face.

“You and Bjorn get the team hitched to the plow. I’ll do that, and the two of you can plant corn. There’s about an acre out there that is ready.”

“Will that be enough?”

“Probably not, but we are out of cleared land. Einar had planned on seeding the new field to corn. So that is what we will do, as soon as we get it plowed and disked.”

Bjorn dumped another armful in the woodbox. “We need to chop wood too.”

Rune drained his coffee. “I thought to feed Einar, but . . .”

“He’s snoring again,” Gerd reported.

“I’ll make sure he gets some breakfast.” Nilda glared at the doorway. “How bad do you think he is hurt?”

“I wish I knew.” Signe shook her head and smiled at Gerd, who set the plate of eggs and fried cornmeal on the table.

“He is always worse than a bear with a ripped paw if he gets hurt.” Gerd sat down, then started to rise.

Nilda put a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll get the coffee.”

“You come get me if he falls or causes trouble,” Rune said as the men left the kitchen. “I’ll be plowing that new section.”

Signe nodded. “Ja. If we need to.”

A few minutes later, Nilda finished her coffee and set the rest of the dishes in the pan steaming on the stove. “My brother has changed a lot in this year.”

“Ja, he has.”

After breakfast, Signe stirred the first load of sheets into the broiler, then showed Nilda how to get the washing machine ready. Together they took turns cranking, then running the clothes through the wringer to rinse.

“I like this machine a whole lot.” Nilda admired the wringer. “Never dreamed of such a thing.”

“Ja, Gerd says Einar brought this back from Blackduck one time.” Signe lifted the clothes basket. “Gerd, would you like to hang these up?”

“I would.” She took the basket and headed for the clothesline.

“Now that she can do it, she so enjoys hanging clean clothes on the line,” Signe murmured to Nilda.

With the two of them cranking and stirring and Gerd hanging, and the wind and sun doing their drying job, the sheets were dry before the fourth load could be hung.

When Einar woke up, Nilda took a tray in to him, and between the two of them, she and Signe helped him sit up to eat.

“Are you feeling dizzy or sick to your stomach?” Signe asked.

He glared at her. “Ja.” He looked down at the tray. When he lifted the toasted bread with a fried egg on top, his hand shook so hard that he had trouble finding his mouth. The egg fell on his chest.

“I will help you,” Signe said.

Einar shook his head. “Gerd.” He used his other hand to assist the first.

Signe left the room to find Gerd tucking Kirstin into her downstairs bed. “I think he wants you to help him.”

“Really? All right.”

Nilda returned to doing the wash, but Signe hovered in the bedroom doorway, just in case.

Gerd stopped beside her husband. “So you want me to help you.” She scooped up the egg with a spoon and held it to his mouth. He scowled furiously, but he ate it. She asked, “How is your head?”

“I’ve got to get up. Too much to do.” He leaned forward as if to try standing again, but fell back with a groan.

“You want more to eat?”

“Nei. I want to get up.”

“More medicine?”

He started to shake his head and instead swallowed and closed his eyes.

“Coffee?”

“Ja.”

“I am going to put some laudanum in his coffee,” Signe whispered when Gerd brought the tray out.

“Ja, good idea.” Gerd took the cup back in and held it so he could drink it without spilling.

He blinked. “Light too bright.”

“Then close your eyes.”

“Got to get up.”

“Here, finish this, perhaps you will feel better later.”

He sipped the rest of the coffee, and within a few minutes, the snoring resumed. Gerd picked up the tray and, shaking her head, returned to the kitchen.

“Should we send for a doctor?” Signe asked.

“If you want. But I think he will say we must wait to see what will happen. That he needs to rest so his head can heal.” Nilda laid a hand on Gerd’s shoulder. “We went through this with a neighbor. One of those things that take time. If it were winter, we could put ice or snow around his head to take away the swelling, but that bump is not as bad as it was.”

Gerd nodded slowly. “Ja, he is so hardheaded. Perhaps right now that is a good thing.”

“I think so.”

“I will bring in the things that are dry.”

Signe and Nilda ran the final load of laundry through the machine and the rinse. “That does it,” Nilda said.

“We’ll make egg sandwiches from the ones I boiled last night. I’ll get them from the well house. Perhaps Gerd would like to peel them.”

Signe paused on the edge of the back porch. She could see the two older boys out planting corn, and once she rounded the corner of the house, she saw Rune plowing the cleared land. Einar should have been disking with the other team. “Lord, help us. Help him,” she whispered as she reached the well house and unlatched the door.

Cool air flowed over her. The milk pans needed skimming, and they had more than enough cream to churn butter. Even after all Gerd had used for the egg and cream pudding last night. She picked up the bowl of eggs and returned to the house. She would skim the pans after dinner and have Bjorn carry the full churn to the back porch.

“Tonight we will unpack the crate,” Ivar announced after they had eaten dinner. He looked to Rune. “If that is all right with you?”

“Of course. Leif was asking me about it this morning.”

“Can we work on our cellar tonight?” Bjorn asked. “We should be able to finish planting the corn this afternoon.”

Rune smiled. “Sounds like a busy evening. When the boys get home, they can take over the corn planting, and you two could start digging. I’m hitching the other team to the disc.” He looked at Gerd. “I will help Onkel Einar sit in the chair, if he will let me.”

“If he wakes enough.”

That evening, when dusk shut down the digging, they gathered in the machine shop with the doors wide open to let the evening breeze blow out the heat of the day. Using a crowbar, Ivar lifted the boards of the crate, making the nails screech, so the boys could pull it apart.

“Look, Mor, a loom!” Knute pulled on another board, then dug a sliver out of his finger with his teeth. “Ouch.”

Signe lifted the lamp higher so they could see. “A loom like Gunlaug’s. And we have no room to put it together.”

“But we will when our house is done.” Rune unwrapped layers of wool from the loom. “And here you have wool to spin.”

“But no spinning wheel.” Signe sighed.

“Oh? You think so?” Nilda said with a twinkle in her eye.

“I will make you a spinning wheel,” Rune told Signe.

“Ah, Rune, look here.” Ivar pulled another package apart. “You just have to put it together.”

Nilda clapped her hands in delight when Signe covered her cheeks with her hands and the tears flowed. “I wanted to tell you so badly, but Ivar made me promise not to ruin the surprise. There is room in the parlor for a spinning wheel.”

“Gerd will be so pleased. She said we needed to buy sheep next year so we have wool. Mrs. Benson just doesn’t keep enough yarn in stock. Oh, I wish she were down here.”

“I’ll go get her.” Leif started for the door.

Signe shook her head. “She won’t leave Einar by himself.”

“Then I will stay there,” Leif bravely volunteered, despite his fear of Einar.

“That’s kind of you, but she knows what a spinning wheel looks like. We will tell her.” Signe stroked the smooth wheel. “Who made this?”

“Far did, last winter after you left,” Nilda said. “He said someone else would go to Amerika eventually and could carry it. Mor said to tell you that you must think of her when spinning and then weaving. She made those rugs wrapped around the spinning wheel for your new house.”

“Our new house.” Signe held one of the rugs in her lap, stroking the warp and woof. “She has always made such beautiful rugs.”

Rune stepped behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders. “We better dig faster. And this Sunday we will celebrate the baptism of our Kirstin with her tante and onkel there to be her godparents.”

“Will Onkel Einar be better enough that Tante Gerd can come too?” Leif asked.

Rune shrugged. “We can only hope and pray for that. Only God knows some things.”

“Leave it to Onkel Einar,” Knute muttered under his breath.

Signe heard him, but what could she say? For she had thought the same thing.