Blessing in Disguise (12 page)

“What’s up, boss man?” Sam looked up from the piece of steel he was working in the forge.

Hjelmer rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Boss man, eh? I wish.”

“You goin’ then, huh?”

“You ever tried arguing with
my
mother?”

Sam shook his grizzled head. “No, an’ ah don’t plan to. She a woman with a mind of her own, but she got a heart big as this plain round about heah.” His soft voice still bore traces of his southern upbringing. “Somewhere ah heah tell that Norwegians be a hardheaded folk.” The twinkle in his dark eyes brought a smile to Hjelmer’s face. “But then you don’ likely know ’bout that.

Hjelmer shook his head again and hooked his thumbs in his pockets. “Other than my mother and missing sister, how have things been going?”

“Ah keeps busy.”

“I
know
that. I take it Eulah left with Haakan and Lars’ threshing crew?”

“Yes, suh. She and Lily Mae took the little ones along too, and they’s driving the cook wagon all over the countryside. Miz Bjorklund say they won’t be home for a month or so, depending on the harvest.”

“If it isn’t any better than here, it’ll be less than a month.”

“Ah figured that. Us coming to Blessing be a right good thing.” Sam gave the bellows a pump to keep his fire hot. “You got time to help rim a couple wheels this afternoon? Lemuel’s goin’ to help get the fire goin’. We chopped wood half the night. Keepin’ wood to heat the rim is the hardest part.”

“I know. Your idea to keep a couple of extra wheels handy has paid off well.”

Sam ducked his head at the compliment, then flashed a smile at the man beside him. “You ready to put off your go-to-meeting clothes and come do some
real
work?”

Hjelmer laughed and clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Let me go talk with Anner, and then I’ll be back. Let’s get those wheels fit as soon as possible. I saw a few more wobbly ones on wagons in line over at the sack house.” A good part of the blacksmith business was shrinking the metal rims to fit on the wooden wheels of the area wagons, and while some farmers looked ahead and got this done before harvest, others didn’t. Heating the rims and putting them back on the wheels, then shrinking them was a two-man job, along with a boy to keep the fires burning hot enough.

“Sorry I haven’t been here much.”

“Got to get that constitution done too.” Sam pushed the metal bar back in the white-hot coals. “I been reading the paper ’bout all the arguin’ goin’ on. Give me a hot fire and iron to work any day. Guess I’ll be helpin’ milk cows for t’other Miz Bjorklund too.”

“You wouldn’t believe the fighting that goes on. Bunch a crooks, those railroad people. If they had their way, they’d be running the whole West, and we’d all be working for them instead of the other way around.”

Sam took a hammer and, laying the now white bar on the anvil, began the shaping that would make a heavy chain.

“See you later.” Hjelmer tapped his shoulder and raised one hand in a salute.

Sam nodded and kept on with his labors.

Having just returned the night before from his meeting, Anner Valders nevertheless had the account books spread on the table in front of him and ready for Hjelmer’s inspection. With one sleeve tucked in where his arm—lost in a threshing accident several years earlier—had been, he flipped pages and wrote in entries with the other hand as if he’d been one-handed all his life.

“Harvest is down, no thanks to the dry summer and that thunderstorm, and the shipping charges are up. Won’t be as much capital to work with as in the past.” Anner never had been one to look on the bright side.

“I know. Anyone having trouble keeping up with their loan payments?” Shifting gears from blacksmith to banker had never been a problem for Hjelmer.

“Not so far, but I hear talk that could be coming. If so, this would be the first fall we have defaults.” He ran his finger down the page and pointed out a couple of names. “Here and here, maybe.”

Hjelmer nodded.

“Your mother paid her entire loan back already.”

“She did?”

“Talking about building on.”

Hjelmer nodded. “Not surprised. There most likely will be some new regulations coming through after the constitution is ratified. I’ll keep you up-to-date.”

“If they let us alone, we could do business better.”

“I know.” Hjelmer looked around the room off the back of the store, noting the heavy safe, the ledgers lined up on the shelves alongside the books they’d accumulated on banking. Since both of them learned banking because the community decided to organize a bank, thanks to the women, they had collected as much as they could to help them do it right. So far, the First Bank of Blessing was a profitable concern, with all the investors having a say in who received loans and where the money was invested.

“You heard anything about the possibility of building one of those grain elevators here?” Anner closed the book they’d been looking at and put it back on the shelf.

“Ah, that rumor’s been going on for years.”

Anner shook his balding head. “No, but I heard from Henry over at the boardinghouse that a company is seriously thinking of building one here.”

Hjelmer narrowed his eyes and, nodding slightly, worried his bottom lip. “Not if we build one first. They aren’t going to control us here in Blessing like they do in other places. I better check with the Farmers’ Alliance board, see if they’ve heard anything. Is the amount of grain going through here getting to be too much for the sack house?”

“I don’t hear Olaf complaining. ’Sides, there was more last year, and he did all right.” Olaf Wold managed the sack house, where farmers brought their sacked grain to be weighed and stored until it could be shipped. They had never had a graft problem like in so many other areas of the state.

All this to be done, and I have to go looking for Augusta
. Hjelmer kept his face blank. No sense letting the whole world know his family business.

“So you going to look for your sister?”

Hjelmer stifled a groan. Of course the women had been discussing things again. How they got any quilting done when they spent so much time solving the world’s problems, or at least the problems around Blessing, he never knew.

“Ja, not because I want to, though.” He studied the noncommittal look on the face of his friend and employee. “All right, I can tell you have something you want to say, so just say it.”

“I’m not one to intrude.”

“I know, I know, but the women . . .”

A twitch of the corner of Anner’s narrow lips said the comment made them totally in agreement.

“It’ll be worse’n finding a needle in a haystack.” Anner shook his head, giving Hjelmer a pitying look. “Glad it’s you, not me.”

“Thank you so very much. You come up with any ideas on how I should accomplish this, don’t stand on ceremony—tell me.”

“Ja, I will. You thought about putting an ad in the papers?”

“No. She can’t read English.”

“No, but if someone is helping her, they could.”

“True.” Hjelmer fingered his chin. “Anything else?”

“When you are asking, you might mention the color of her eyes. Not too many people got the Bjorklund eyes. If your sister is like the men in your family, her eyes will stand out.”

“Good point.” Hjelmer thought again. “And she is tall—for a woman, that is.” He knew that her bossiness wouldn’t be something that others would notice, but that’s what he remembered most about her. But then he hadn’t seen her for over five years. “Thanks, if you think of anything else, let me know. If she doesn’t arrive, or we don’t hear from her today, I’ll be leaving on the early train tomorrow.”

Hjelmer greeted several people shopping and visiting while waiting their turn for Penny in the store and made his way upstairs to their bedroom to change into work clothes. If only he had a picture of Augusta, that would be a big help. But he’d asked and Mor said no. And she had no idea what Augusta might have been wearing. She was given clothes often by the people she worked for and so was able to dress more fashionably than many others.

Setting wheel rims was preferable to setting legislators straight any day. Though his shoulders ached by suppertime and the burn on one hand reminded him that he needed to be more careful, when he sat down at the table, he knew he had accomplished something that would stay fixed for a while at least.

“What?” At Hjelmer’s groan, Penny stopped ladling up the stew.

“Just trying to stretch these tired muscles of mine.” He tilted his head to the side and flinched.

She set the plate in front of him and one at her place. “You say the grace.”

They bowed their heads, and in the Norwegian they both learned at their mothers’ knees, he said, “I Jesu navn, agår vi til bords . . .”

At the amen Penny looked up. “You want I should give you a back rub tonight?”

“Do you have to wait until night?” Hjelmer looked outside. “Seems to me it is getting dark enough now.”

“Hjelmer, you can wait that long.” She passed him the plate of freshly sliced bread. “Besides, I made apple pie for dessert.”

He made no comment and continued to stare out the window.

“Ephraim won’t be able to run the store tomorrow, so I’ve asked Anner to take care of it.”

Hjelmer gave her a puzzled look.

“We have quilting tomorrow.”

“Ah.”

“And I have a new idea to propose.”

“Ah.”

“Hjelmer, you are not listening to me.”

“Sure I am.” He took another bite of stew.

“The house is on fire.”

“Ah.” He nodded.

“I’m in the family way.”

“Good.” Another nod.

Penny slammed her fork down on the table. “Hjelmer Bjorklund, where in the world are you?”

“Huh?” Hjelmer blinked and looked at the furious face of his wife. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong. You have no idea what I’ve been saying, and here you are going off again tomorrow, and you might just as well have left tonight.”

Hjelmer had the grace to look embarrassed. He reached a hand across the short space between them. “I’m sorry, Penny, this trip to find Augusta has me flying in all directions. I have so much to do here, and I need to be in Bismarck. Instead, I’m taking the train to Minneapolis on a wild-goose chase.”

“What a thing to say! Your own sister is lost, and you think all that other . . . other . . .” She threw both hands in the air and shook her head so hard a pin fell out of the roll she wore around the base of her head. “Your mor is right.”

Hjelmer half squinted his eyes, certain he wouldn’t like to hear what his mor was right about. He kept his mouth shut, but his wife had the bit between her teeth, and like a runaway horse, she kept on going.

“Ever since you got elected to the Constitutional Congress, your work and your family have taken bottom place.”

“Now, Penny . . .”

“Don’t ‘now Penny’ me. You know I want to have a baby more than anything in this whole wide world, but how can we ever hope to have children if you aren’t around to father them?”

“So how is my going to look for Augusta going to help that, unless you want to come with me?”

“Oh, sure. I come with you, and who will mind the store? And if we don’t have the store, how will we have money to buy the train tickets so you can run all over the country?” Penny threw her napkin down and pushed back her chair. She surged to her feet so quickly that the chair tipped, making the red spots on her cheeks ever brighter. Oh . . . oh, you . . . you . . .” She spun away and headed for the stairs to their bedroom, stomping so hard on the risers that he thought they might break.

“Well, I’ll be . . .” Hjelmer slowly shook his head and watched the door curtain swirl in the wind from her passing. “Whatever did I do to deserve this?” He put the bread back in the bread keeper, scraped the dishes into the cat’s bowl on the back stoop, and set them in the enameled pan Penny had ready with soap curls and water on the back of the stove. After brushing the crumbs off the tablecloth, he washed and rinsed the dishes and dumped the water on the rosebushes by the back door.

The kitchen seemed twice as big without Penny beside him and dreadfully silent. Even the chiming of the clock and the cat scratching at the back door couldn’t penetrate the silence. Did she feel this silence when he was gone? On one hand he figured maybe he should go apologize, but on the other he couldn’t see where he had done anything wrong. Other than miss a few words his wife said, but then . . . he thought back to the scene at the table. Had she said something about the house on fire? Surely not.

He banked the fire so that couldn’t happen, and instead of moving the lamp over to the table by his chair so he could read the Grand Forks paper, he lit a candle and blew out the lamp. An early night wouldn’t hurt; that was for sure.

“Penny?” He paused in the doorway to their bedroom.

The moonlight silvered the hair that now hung down over her shoulders as she sat by the window looking out at the moon-bathed fields. With her elbows propped on the windowsill and her back toward him, he could still tell she wasn’t happy with something or someone, him in particular. Otherwise she’d have answered.

He set the candle in its holder on the dresser and crossed to stand behind his wife. Putting his hands on her shoulders, he began to work on the tense muscles of her neck and shoulders, then moved his thumbs up, massaging the base of her head. Leaning forward he inhaled her scent, fresh like she’d been bathing in the dew of the rose petals and hollyhocks.

Her head dropped forward so he could reach the sore places more easily. “I’m still angry at you, you know.”

“I know.” His hands made their way forward up her shoulders to the base of her slender neck. “I’m sorry, my love.” He brushed her hair aside and kissed the tender skin at the back of her neck. “You smell so good.”

“Keep rubbing, there.” She tipped her head to the left, and a giggle escaped when he nibbled her neck rather than using his fingers.

“Aren’t you getting chilly here in front of the open window?”

Penny sighed and let her head fall backward, revealing her throat for his questing lips. “It won’t be long until we can’t have the windows open anymore.”