Tender Mercies Read online

  When he looked up at her, his blue eyes so much like his grandfather’s, she felt her heart turn.

  “Did you say good-bye?” he asked.

  “No.” A simple word to cover a world of regret. Had Gustaf needed her, and she slept? Had he said good-bye, and she didn’t answer? What she wouldn’t give to hear his voice again, even if only asking for a cup of coffee. To see his boot marks across a clean kitchen floor, to sweep up curls of wood from his incessant carving, to hear his laugh, his wonderful laugh that made everyone around him laugh too. However, in the later years he had become more serious, bent over by the troubles of farming on land that wasn’t large enough to support his family, thus watching his sons leave for the new land. Never to return.

  She left a fluff of flour under her eye when she backhanded away the tear that overflowed. You should be done with the crying now, you crazy old woman. After all, dying is part of living.

  “I don’t like to say good-bye.”

  “Ah, Andrew, neither do I.” She stopped rolling the cookie dough. “But you see, God didn’t offer me a choice.”

  “Going along is better than saying good-bye.”

  Bridget stared at her grandson. So often she had thought that very thing. Why didn’t God take her too? “Have another cookie, and then you must go bring in the wool for carding. I hung the fleeces out on the clothesline, and they should be dry by now.”

  Andrew nodded and reached for another cookie. “I wish I knew Bestefar. Thorliff did.”

  Bridget wiped her hand on her apron and brushed his curly blond hair off his forehead. “You have such a gift for saying the right thing.

  Go, now, before there are no cookies left for the others and I have to start all over again.

  “Put your coat on,” she called just as he started to slip out the door.

  His chuckle, a younger version of his grandfather’s, floated over his shoulder before he closed the door.

  Bridget dabbed away a bit of lingering moisture and went back to rolling out sour cream cookies. With Astrid down for a nap and no one else in the house at the moment, she returned to dreaming up plans for her boardinghouse. If she could get the men to build it, that is. Supper last Sunday evening had turned into a heated discussion, she recalled.

  “And so, if I am going to stay here in America, I need to have something of my own,” she had said, looking from one astonished male face to another. Where had they been when the women were talking about her boardinghouse? Men! Did they never listen until you took them by the ears and . . .

  “But, Mor, isn’t helping Penny and Ingeborg enough work for you?” Her last remaining son, Hjelmer, rocked back in his chair.

  She wanted to tell him to sit on the chair the right way so it wouldn’t break, just as she had those years when he was young, but right now she knew better than to start an argument over something like that. “No.” There, she’d said it.

  “But you are busy from the time the rooster crows until the lamp runs low on kerosene.” Haakan nodded to the yellow circle of light cast by the lamp in the middle of the table.

  And who do you suppose fills the lamp again? Through the years she’d learned to keep thoughts like that to herself.

  Ingeborg nodded when Bridget looked to her for assistance. “It seems to me that if Bridget wants to own a boardinghouse, she should do so.”

  “It isn’t as if we don’t need one in Blessing. You all know I’ve been thinking along those lines myself.” Penny, Hjelmer’s wife, was already expanding her store in town into an eating establishment too. She looked directly at Hjelmer, as if daring him to disagree.

  He dared. “But, Mor, aren’t you too old to start something like that now? After all you are—”

  “After all, I am your mor, and I still have the strength in these hands”—she held them up and looked to her son—“to wash and cook and bake the bread you are selling in the store.”

  “Not me,” he mumbled under his breath, but she heard him anyway.

  “Ja, you. You might be the big-shot banker in town, but you still got black under your fingernails like any other blacksmith.” She watched as he checked his hands. When he closed one fist, she knew she’d hit on his weak spot.

  While Hjelmer had always been a good blacksmith, he liked handling money better. But the bank hadn’t been in business long enough to pay him much, so when someone needed a blacksmith, he donned his leather apron again and fit wheels, repaired machinery, or shod the local horses.

  “If it is the money worrying you, I will sign a note and pay it all back just like anyone else. I ask for no favors.” She glanced at Penny, who had talked with her about how things like that were done in America, and got a brief nod in return, along with a swift glimpse of the dimple in the young woman’s cheek. Penny had learned much with the opening and running of her store.

  “Ja, well, the board of directors will have to vote on a loan and . . .” When Hjelmer grew agitated, his accent deepened.

  “Okay, let’s call a truce here.” Haakan laid his hands flat on the table.

  “You think this is not a good idea?” Bridget turned to look at him, her knitting needles lying idle in her lap.

  Upstairs the children could be heard playing Thimble, Thimble, Who’s Got the Thimble. Andrew’s laugh rose above the rest.

  If we build a boardinghouse, I will no longer live here where I can hear the children. The thought caught Bridget unprepared. Her shoulders slumped. Perhaps they were right. Maybe she was too old to think of such a thing.

  The slamming of the kitchen door brought her back to her cookie baking. She slid the last pan into the oven and checked the firebox. After adding two more sticks of wood, she set the round lid in place and dusted off her hands.

  “Where do you want these?” The fleece were longer than Andrew was tall. He looked like a walking mountain of fluffy sheep fleece.

  “In the parlor by my spinning wheel. You can fold them against the wall.”

  Andrew did as he was told, then returned to the kitchen. “Astrid’s awake.”

  “How do you know? I haven’t heard her cry.”

  Andrew shrugged. “She is.”

  Just then a whimper preceded a weepy, “M-a-a-a.”

  “Uff da.” Bridget hurried into the bedroom behind the kitchen. Astrid sat in the middle of her mother’s bed, her cheeks bright red and round as apples. She held up her arms, a sunny smile breaking out as soon as Bridget picked her up.

  She felt the child’s diapers and, since they were dry, whisked her over to the pot in the corner. Sliding down diapers and soaker, she sat Astrid on it. “You be a good girl and go now.”

  “Mor?”

  “She’s at Tante Kaaren’s.”

  “Drink?”

  “As soon as you go.” Bridget picked up a flannel square from the pile on the bed and began folding while she waited. She held one to her face, inhaling the fragrance brought in fresh from the clothesline. Soon they would no longer be washing diapers in this house, if the look on Ingeborg’s face at times was any indication.

  Trying to understand why God sometimes failed to bring more babies to a home was about like trying to understand why Gustaf had died so unexpectedly. God was God and, as such, beyond understanding.

  But He could work miracles, and getting the men to build her a boardinghouse might just be a bit easier than parting the Red Sea. “Uff da,” she muttered again, folding another diaper.

  “I done,” Astrid sang out. The odor emanating from the corner said as much.

  “You sit still. Have to wipe.” Bridget pulled one of the rags from the edge of the diaper pile. After wiping the little girl’s bottom and setting her on her feet again, she dropped the rag in a bucket kept for that purpose. More to be washed. Maybe Hjelmer was right. She should stay here and help care for the babies.

  “Gustaf, what am I to do?” But, like God, her beloved husband didn’t answer either.

  Chapter 3

  “Now don’t go getting all het up over i
t.”

  “But I don’t understand.” Katy shook her head, setting the golden curls flowing down her back to bouncing. “John is never abrupt like that. He was downright rude.” She shook her head again, this time more with sorrow than indignation.

  “Maybe he had something on his mind.” Zeb MacCallister propped a lean shoulder against the post holding up the porch roof that aproned his house. From this vantage he could see the corrals that surrounded three sides of the two-story main barn like a woman’s skirts. In the paddock to the west, Manda had one of this year’s crop of colts, haltered and on a lead line, following behind her like a docile dog. He knew for a fact she’d just begun to work with the young one the day before. Talk about a gift—that ornery young girl could gentle an animal faster than anyone he’d ever seen.

  “Zeb, are you listening to us at all?”

  “Sure enough, sugar.” His drawl, laced with warm molasses, made both his wife and sister giggle. Only when he’d been somewhere far away in his mind did he slow his Missouri drawl like that. It gave him time to think. What had they been discussing? Could it still be the way Pastor Solberg had cut them off?

  “Ah ’magine we’ll understand sooner or later.”

  Mary Martha hooted at his roundabout comment. “Zebulun MacCallister, that is the most farfetched bit of boondoggling I’ve heard since I left home. I know you got the gift from Uncle Jedediah, but he’s much better at it than you.”

  Zeb had the grace to look sheepish. “Yes, but he’s been at it longer.”

  “I know exactly what was going on with the preacher. He’s not still mooning over Katy, but . . .” Mary Martha had to pause at the gasp of horror from her sister-in-law. “Come on, Katy, surely you knew he was in love with you.”

  Katy shook her head, so golden beside these two with the dark curls. “Pastor Solberg was—is—one of my best friends, but I never . . .” Her look of horror grew. “I never did anything to . . . to . . .” Her gaze darted between the brother and sister, whose grins grew wider with her discomfort. “Zeb, you know I—when you . . .”

  “Darlin’, take it easy. I know you fell in love with me the first time I rode into the yard at Ingeborg’s and that you are pure as gushing springwater, but you are such almighty fun to tease.”

  Katy swatted him on the back pocket from her position in the rocking chair.

  “Tease me all you like, but I still think—”

  “Solberg took me aside one day and warned me that I better take good care of you, or I’d have to answer to both him and God.”

  Katy flopped back against the chair. “He didn’t!” Her Bjorklund blue eyes grew rounder. “You didn’t.” Heat painted roses on her cheeks to match the pink climber that dressed their porch.

  “Sure ’nuff.” He leaned forward to run a gentle fingertip down the bridge of her nose. Silly how after six months of marriage he still couldn’t resist the urge to touch her. . . . He jerked his thoughts back in line. This was the middle of the afternoon, and if the laughter dancing in his sister’s eyes carried any warning, he’d soon be the brunt of her teasing.

  “Well, I . . .” Katy lapsed back into her native Norwegian when she couldn’t find the right words in English.

  “I have a feeling that Pastor Solberg may still be nursing his wounds,” Mary Martha added. She smiled up at her brother. “First you take his sweetheart, then you parade your sister by him. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Poor man.”

  Zeb rolled his eyes. “Poor man indeed. He’s got every matchmaking mama in the countryside courtin’ him in her daughter’s stead.”

  “I rest my case.” Shaking her head, Mary Martha continued. “Why anyone would want to be a minister’s wife is more than I can guess.”

  Zeb gave her his “don’t ask me” look and glanced out at the barn where thirteen-year-old Manda Norton, now MacCallister—he and Katy had formally adopted both Manda and five-year-old Deborah just before harvest—was jogging and stopping, the colt obeying her every move. Manda’s sister had stayed over at the Bjorklunds’ to play with Andrew and Ellie. The three would be going to school for the first time next week.

  His thoughts wandered back to the days he and Katy had spent in Montana rounding up wild horses. The mountains drew him with their grandeur, and he knew Katy would go there with him if he asked. But they had a fine farm here and family and friends close for her to enjoy. Not that he didn’t also, but he knew homesteading was harder for the women, and it was important for them to have other womenfolk nearby.

  Manda had put away the weanling colt and was bringing out one of the young fillies he and Katy had rounded up from the wild horse herd. Now that he had purchased the heavy stallion, in a couple years he would have some fine workhorses for sale, a much needed commodity out here on the Dakota prairies, especially farther west where homesteaders were still breaking the sod. Here in the Red River Valley farmers were trying to improve their stock and plant as many acres of wheat as they could beg, buy, or lease. The coming of the railroad had made shipping easier, and the territory now produced more wheat than several of the eastern states combined.

  Mary Martha watched her brother, the pride of him evident on her mobile face. While she’d give anything to get him to come back to the MacCallister homeplace in Missouri, she could tell he was happier here than she’d ever seen him. With the threat of the feuding Galloways finally over, Zeb was a free man and living that freedom with a joy that pleasured her heart. If only her mother would come west also, she could stay here. There was an excitement underlying life here on the prairie that she didn’t find in Missouri, where folks still talked about the war as if it were last week.

  “Katy, why don’t you go put your feet up for a spell and take a bit of a nap?”

  Katy’s eyes snapped open, and she set the rocker to creaking again. “No, I’m fine.”

  “You may be fine, but your snoring near to woke the bees.” Zeb turned from his study of the corrals and, taking his wife’s hand, drew her to her feet. “Seems that young’un of ours makes you a mite weary.”

  “Zeb, the way you talk.” The blush bloomed on her cheeks again while her other hand gentled her middle. She tried to catch a yawn but failed, and her eyes twinkled over the effort. “All right, if you insist.” She turned to Mary Martha. “Wake me up in a little while, you hear?”

  Mary Martha nodded, knowing she would let Katy sleep as long as she could. While Katy wouldn’t admit it, anyone with eyes could see the telltale blue shadows under her eyes. The heaves didn’t come just in the morning, and they should have been over by now. Once again, she wished her mother were there, her mother with all her years of wisdom, all the doctoring she had done, her herbs and potions.

  Surely there must be a wise woman in this area. She resolved to ask Ingeborg at the quilting bee on Saturday. Pastor Solberg wouldn’t be at the women’s meeting, would he?

  Wagons and teams were tied up at all the hitching rails and more still coming when Mary Martha followed Katy into the church on Saturday morning. If Mary Martha heard one “velkommen,” she heard twenty. Did none of them speak English?

  “Come, sit over here by me.” Kaaren Knutson patted the bench beside her at the quilting frame. “You do quilt, don’t you?”

  Mary Martha breathed a sigh of relief and nodded. “My mother made sure I knew all the womanly arts, even though my stitches aren’t near as tiny or perfect as hers. She finally gave up on me.”

  “Ja, well, only a few of us here are so particular. We just try to get the quilts done in time for the next wedding.” Katy nodded to the wedding ring patterned quilt stitched onto the frame. “Sometimes we have weddings so close together we have to tie them instead of quilt.”

  “Lawsamercy.” Mary Martha rolled her eyes heavenward and clutched her hands to her bosom, raising a chuckle from the woman with spun gold hair captured in a bun at the base of her neck.

  “Now that isn’t a phrase one would hear around here.” Kaaren’s smile invited one in return.

  “I know. I
haven’t heard many of the sayings of home since I arrived. I knew that things were different in other parts of the country, but I don’t believe I was prepared for how different.” Mary Martha looked around the room at all the women chattering and laughing while keeping busy with their hands cutting, piecing, stitching.

  “Ladies, can we begin now?”

  “That’s Penny Bjorklund. She owns the general store,” Kaaren whispered.

  “I know. We met her the day I arrived. Her husband runs the bank, right?”

  “And the blacksmith shop. We all have a multitude of jobs around here. Whatever needs doing, someone either steps forward to take it on or gets volunteered. With as small a community as ours, we do for each other.”

  Mary Martha threaded her needle and took up the stitching line where someone else had left off. Wouldn’t you know her predecessor had been of the perfection school.

  Penny clapped her hands to get the group to settle down. When the din had hushed, she smiled and nodded. “Good. Kaaren, would you read our lesson and lead us in prayer?”

  Kaaren smiled at Mary Martha and, pushing her chair back, got to her feet, Bible in hand. While she read in Norwegian, the woman on the other side of Mary Martha whispered the words in English for their guest. Kaaren had chosen part of the Sermon on the Mount, so Mary Martha knew what she read after the first lines were translated. Blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are they that mourn. . . . Her mother had read those same words so often, and no matter what her family had lacked, she always said they were indeed blessed.

  From what she could see of these women, they believed the same.

  Kaaren closed the Bible and looked out over the gathering. “We have been so greatly blessed with health, a good harvest, and with one another. Let us bow our heads and thank our God for what He has done. Then I will close.” She bowed her head, and after a few shufflings silence fell.

  Outside, the children could be heard laughing and playing, the older caring for the younger. Geese flying overhead sang their own wild song.