A Dream to Follow (5 page)

“Eleven good ones. Pa says to knock the runt on the head, but I won’t.” Andrew held the smallest baby to a nipple. “Come on. You can suck,” Andrew urged. “I’ll keep the others away.”

The sow grunted, lying flat on her side so her brood could nurse.

“She been up to drink yet?”

“Once. I put molasses in the warm water. She likes that just fine.”

“You want me to make up some warm mash?”

“If you want.” Andrew moved one of the more aggressive babies away from the runt.

“You can’t stay out here all night, you know.”

“I know, but he has to have a chance.” Andrew looked up. “You think Tante Kaaren might take him for a pet for one of the school kids?”

Thorliff shrugged. “Maybe, if you ask her nice.”

“If I can get him to nurse good a couple of times, he’ll have a better chance.”

“She’d still have twelve.”

“I know.”

Thorliff headed for the feed bin where they kept the hog mash they’d run through the grinder. He scooped out enough for half a bucket and took it to the house for hot water and whey from the last cheese pressing.

“How is she?” Ingeborg dipped water from the reservoir into his bucket.

“So far all the babies are alive. That sow doesn’t dare lie on them with Andrew there.” He stirred the mash with a wooden spoon. “But you know he won’t leave her.”

“Not even for a baseball game?” Kaaren turned from where she was slicing bread on the sideboard.

“Not even.” Thorliff headed back out, waving at the others as he passed. Haakan had told the other children not to bother the sow right now, so they all stayed away. The women were carrying food outside to the tables, and the men stood in a circle by the coffeepot simmering over a low fire.
I should have snuck upstairs and gotten my tablet. I could have stayed with Andrew in the barn
. Thorliff shook his head as his stomach rumbled. Maybe he could take Andrew a plate of food and still do that. Anything for some writing time.

“Hurry up for grace,” his mother called.

Thorliff poured the warm mash into the trough, and the sow surged to her feet, baby pigs flying in all directions. Andrew scrambled to pull them back before she stepped on any, and he gently herded them under the cross board in one of the corners. A gunnysack hung over the board from the wall above to trap heat, and if it got too cold, they would put jars of hot water along the wall to keep the piglets warm.

“You want I should stay?”

Andrew shook his head. “They learn fast.”

Thorliff joined the group of men just in time to hear his uncle Lars mention his story.

“He really did sell it,” Haakan said, thumb and forefinger cradling the bowl of his pipe. “Going to get paid too.”

“I always told you he was a fine writer.” Pastor Solberg added, “Don’t know what we’ll do for Christmas programs with him gone.”

“Just because he’s graduating don’t mean he’ll be gone.” Tension sang in Haakan’s reply.

“No, but he’ll be a man, and who knows if he’ll want to write school programs. After all . . .”

Haakan cleared his throat. “You know how I feel about him going away to school, John. We need him here.”

“I understand. He’ll be a big help on the threshing crew this year, but . . .”

“No
buts
. He wants to keep writing—that’s fine—but he can do that in the evening like he always has. Me ’n Ingeborg, we built this farm so our sons would have this land. We have a good life here. Why would anyone want to leave it?”

“Farming isn’t for everyone, my friend.”

“Dinner’s ready. Would you lead us in grace, Pastor?” Ingeborg broke into the circle.

Thorliff watched his father’s face. The tight jawline spoke of Haakan’s displeasure as he knocked his pipe against the heel of his boot to dislodge the used tobacco. Changing his far’s mind would border on the miraculous.

Bowing his head, he joined in praying the age-old Norwegian words. “I Jesu navn, går vi til bords . . .” As he stood even with Haakan’s shoulder, the thought of leaving this place and these people struck Thorliff like an arrow. He glanced down, half expecting to see a shaft quivering in his chest. At the amen, he looked around, studying the faces of all those who meant so much to him. Tante Kaaren, who had instilled in him a love of reading and first told him that he wrote well. Far, who had come to them across the prairies the year after his real father died in the blizzard. Mor, who always said he could do anything he set his mind to. Uncle Lars, so quiet until he figured he had something important to say like “Do your best. That’s all the good Lord and I expect of you.” The twins—Grace who couldn’t hear and Sophie who loved to tease. Astrid, his baby sister, who made him feel as if he stood ten feet tall. Mrs. Solberg, who helped him rewrite, then pushed him to send his stories to magazines, as did Pastor. If it hadn’t been for Pastor Solberg, Thorliff wouldn’t have a solid knowledge of Greek and Latin, of the classics and the great philosophers, of his Bible and Bible history. Did he really want to leave them? Was going away to college necessary, or could he continue to learn and to write here at home as Haakan insisted?

CHAPTER FOUR

Northfield, Minnesota
May 1893

“I don’t think you want my father to know about this, do you?”

“Probably not.” Hans raised his head. “But it’s not my fault you’re so pretty and all. I just lost my head there for a minute.”

Elizabeth Rogers gave a decidedly unladylike snort. “Hans, you been at the still or something?” She took out a handkerchief and, turning to the side, wiped her mouth. If that’s what kisses from the male species felt like, she wanted none of it. Not that Hans’s lips had quite made it to her mouth, but . . . She rubbed her cheek too, her handkerchief coming away with the black stain of ink. “Oh, my word.”

“Now what?”

“Do I have ink on my face?”

When Hans stepped closer to peer at her cheek in the dim light, she forced herself to hold still and not flinch. Her heart still thudded some after his advance. She could hardly call it an attack, and yet that’s what it felt like.

“Yep.”

“Bother.” She stuffed her handkerchief back in the heavy duck apron she wore to protect her clothes and turned on her heel. “See that you get that ad set in type. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“But Eliza—er, Miss Rogers, you know you pick type faster’n I do.”

“Too bad,” she muttered as she stormed down the hall. “You should have thought of that before . . . before . . .” She swung open the door and turned up the gaslight by the mirror. Sure enough, there was a black smear on her right cheek. “Ugh.” She dampened a cloth from the pitcher, rubbed it over the soap bar, and scrubbed at her cheek. Printer’s ink was near to indelible if not washed off right away. Her father’s hands were mute testimony to that, with ink under his nails and cuticles no matter how hard or how often he scrubbed with lye soap and a stiff-bristled brush.

With a curl of hair dangling toward her eyes, she whipped off the kerchief she’d tied over her hair to keep it out of the way and, tucking the errant lock back in a comb, retied the kerchief. Her glance in the mirror spoke the lie she’d heard from her father’s employee’s lips. According to her, her gray eyes lacked color, her nose was too upturned for fashion, and calling her chin firm or decisive didn’t begin to describe it. Stubborn and mule-headed were terms she’d heard more than once. Her unruly hair—the closest description came to dishwater brown shot with red flames—was best kept tied or braided back out of the way. Not that her description made much sense. Her legs were long enough to do what they were destined to do, but her hands, now that was where a hint of vanity came in. While her mother called them hands for a piano to entertain thousands, she saw them handling doctors’ instruments to save lives.

But then she and her mother never had agreed on much. Or rather she and her stepmother. Her real mother was a distant memory of soft voice, gentle hands, and a face growing paler day by day as she succumbed to the ravages of the babe growing within her. Neither she nor the baby survived, like so many other women who died in childbirth or shortly thereafter.

Elizabeth Rogers wanted to change what men took for granted. Women did not need to die giving birth to babies. No matter that the Bible said women would have travail in the birthing, it didn’t say so many of them needed to die.

She turned the lamp back to low, rinsed out the cloth, hung it on the bar near the sink, and returned to the pressroom where Hans had only half of the display ad set.
Tarnation, how can he possibly be so slow? Surely there are other men or boys Father could hire
.

“Look, Hans, you set to sweeping up, and I’ll finish the ad. Otherwise we will be here all night, and I have homework to do.” Thinking of the stack of books waiting made her fingers fly faster. Besides, she’d rather study than work at the newspaper any time. But the ads needed setting, and her father had a meeting that night. As a member of the Northfield town council, Phillip Rogers served the city in two ways. First, by keeping the council from spending money they did not have, and second, by taking notes for the next article he would write on what the town fathers were planning and doing. He also printed letters from citizens venting their opinions on the decisions made by the governing body. The people of Northfield held strong opinions. Having two colleges in town, St. Olaf on the hill and Carleton downtown, most likely had something to do with that.

With the ads set and the paper ready to be put to bed, Elizabeth locked the door behind her and walked with Hans to the corner, where she said good-night. Two blocks farther on she turned right and walked down a block to the two-story brick house she’d lived in since the day she was born. Letting herself in the front door, she hung her sweater on the hall tree.

“Mother, I’m home,” she called.

“That’s good, dear. Your supper is in the warming oven.” The voice floated down the curved walnut stairs. As usual when her husband was out, Annabelle Rogers, Elizabeth’s stepmother, had already retired. She loved to read in bed as much as Elizabeth did, but when Phillip was home, he expected her to sit with him in the parlor while he read, so she would work on her needlepoint then.

Elizabeth detested needlepoint or any other kind of handwork unless it involved sewing up an injury. She’d practiced on her dolls, cats, dogs—anything that needed suturing. Somehow that word appealed to her more than sewing, though the principles were the same. She’d been in her element the day her cousin split his knee open when they were out on a picnic. Elizabeth just happened to have her surgery kit along and sutured the wound as if she’d been doing so all her born days. There had hardly been a scar.

Elizabeth traversed the long hall, not bothering to turn on the gas jets. Jehoshaphat, her golden tiger cat, met her halfway, winding his way around her legs so she’d trip if she didn’t stop to pick him up.

Cuddling the monstrous cat under her chin and rubbing his ears until he set to purring so loudly she could hear nothing else, she bumped the kitchen door open with her hip and dropped the cat onto his chair by the stove.

“Now you stay there while I eat, and then we’ll go upstairs.”

The cat set to cleaning himself, carefully licking each paw and wiping it over his ears and head.

Elizabeth picked up a potholder and, opening the warming oven on the top of the cast-iron wood stove, took out her plate and set it on the table. Her place had already been set, including her napkin in a silver ring, sliced bread under a glass dome, and butter under another one. She filled her glass with milk and moved the teakettle to the warmer part of the stove. “A cup of tea would be nice, don’t you think?”

Jehoshaphat mewled an answer and continued his bath, his tongue rasping over the fur on his chest.

Before she sat down, Elizabeth fetched a book from the study and, opening to the correct chapter, began studying biology. She read from the text she’d purchased at the Carleton College bookstore and ate at the same time, stopping her fork hand to take notes on the pad of paper beside her plate, underlining and jotting notations on the book pages also. The teapot whistled, and she dropped a pat on the cat’s head as she retrieved the tea tin from a glass-fronted cupboard.

Muttering the phyla for vertebrates, she dumped tea leaves into the china pot, poured in the hot water, and set the teapot on the table, reaching for the knitted cozy as she passed the counter. With the tea steeping, she read on, fork mechanically lifting food without her paying attention.

She glanced up, mumbling the list again.

Jehoshaphat chirped again, but with no answer leaped to the floor and crossed to twine himself about her ankles. When that elicited no response, he put both front paws on her thigh and whined plaintively.

She left off eating and stroked his head with one hand, never giving him a glance. She even managed to pour her tea in between words. She’d just lifted her teacup to her mouth with her right hand when the cat leaped into her lap, banging her elbow and sending tea splattering everywhere.