Racing Home (14 page)

“No it’s not,” she exclaimed, then squealed as Erik broke off a piece, causing the whole cookie to shatter.

“Now I have to eat it,” he said, picking up the plate.

“Don’t tease your sister,” said Inga. She leaned heavily on the table, watching Elsa bake the next cookie.

Other days, Inga and Elsa made wreath-shaped
Berliner kranser
sprinkled with sugar, and deep-fried, cardamom-flavoured
fattigmand.

On Christmas Eve, Erik took hay from the shrinking pile, feeding all the animals a bit extra, just as his grandfather had taught him. He filled a pail with oats for the chickens, noticing that one of the sacks was almost empty.

Last thing, he grabbed a scant handful of the grain, tossing it on the snow near the slough. In Norway, his grandfather would be feeding the wild birds specially saved stalks of unthreshed grain. Next year, Erik would do that, too.

There was no candle-lit tree waiting behind a closed door, but Elsa and Inga had arranged dried plants in a jar on the table and covered the open shelves with embroidered cloths. Beside Erik’s and Elsa’s plates were small brown-wrapped parcels. Erik tried to act as if he hadn’t noticed them as they ate their Christmas Eve supper of rice porridge, fish balls, and
lefsa.

“Now we have to sing,” declared Elsa, jumping to her feet and stretching out her arms. “Just like we did in Norway.”

“We can’t,” said Erik, “we don’t have a tree to circle.”

“We can pretend,” said Elsa, “that our lamp is a tree.”

Rolf and Inga both rose to their feet. Inga and Elsa each stretched out a hand to Erik.

“Stand up,” Rolf said, looking straight at Erik, “and we will circle around the table, like your sister wants.”

Erik looked away from Rolf. He wished he was back in Norway, holding his grandfather’s big, rough hand, circling the tree the way they had done for as long as he could remember. Suddenly he missed Norway worse than ever. Missed his friends, missed family, missed life as he’d known it.

“Erik?” His mother’s voice was soft, questioning.

“Hurry up, Erik.” Elsa’s voice was insistent. “Let’s sing
Jeg er sä glad hver Julekveld
just like we always have.”

Erik hardly heard them, his attention caught by Rolf’s face. He looked sad but encouraging at the same time. “Together,” said Rolf. “We’ll do it together.”

Erik stood. Slowly he reached his hands out to his mother and his sister. He moved with the others while they sang, “I am so glad each Christmas Eve, the night of Jesus’ birth,” but he couldn’t make himself sing.

When they opened their packages, Erik found a folding pocket knife with two blades.

“You can use it to skin rabbits,” suggested Elsa, admiring her own brush and mirror set.

“Takk, manga takk,”
Erik stuttered, knowing they didn’t have money to spend on gifts. “But…”

“It’s a good knife,” said his mother. “Rolf bought it in Moose Jaw.”

“It’s a small gift,” said Rolf, looking embarrassed, “compared to all you’ve done.”

Erik dropped his eyes to the knife, pulling out the blades and testing their sharpness. He was so happy he didn’t know what to say. After a moment he looked up and smiled.

“Together,” he said. “We did it together.”

The next day they drove the oxen into Green Valley for church and dinner at Lars and Kirsten’s.

Erik was excited to see
gjetost
served with the other special foods. “How did you make it?” he asked. “We haven’t had any since summer.”

“You’ll have to get a goat,” said Lars. “We bought this at the general store. They had it shipped up from Minnesota.”

Erik caught Elsa’s eye and they both smiled. Imagine
buying
cheese! Inga and Elsa made cheese, but they couldn’t make
gjetost
from cow’s milk.

When they’d eaten all the potato dumplings, beef, and mashed rutabagas, Kirsten set the cookies on the table. Seven kinds, just like his mother and grandmother had always made in Norway. While Kirsten refilled their coffee cups, Lars brought out a metal bowl filled with oranges. Erik took an orange, but slipped it into his pocket for later.

When Olaf finished his orange, Erik followed him outside. Tapper nickered as they walked into the stable.

“He’s completely healed,” Erik exclaimed, seeing the layer of thin skin over the gashes.

“Just one open spot on his shoulder,” said Olaf. He ran his hand over Tapper’s back. The horse quivered but didn’t move. “But he’s not ready for a saddle yet, not quite.”

On New Year’s Day, Kirsten, Lars and Olaf came to the sod house for dinner. Rolf invited Mr. Johnson as well, the bachelor who’d lent them his sod-cutting plough.

He complimented them on their house. “Norwegians make the best sod houses,” he said. “I lived in Nebraska before moving up here. Some of them there barely lasted a year.”

“If we did it well,” said Rolf, “it’s because you told us how.”

Erik nodded agreement. It was good to learn from those who’d come earlier.

There wasn’t room for everyone at the table, so Olaf and Erik took their plates of roasted rabbit and potatoes to a blanket-covered trunk.

“Your snares are still working, I see,” said Olaf.

“I have to set them far from the house to catch anything. I guess I’ve frightened the rabbits away from here.” He took a bite of the meat and chewed thoughtfully. “I still want to learn to shoot a rifle. I see the wild chickens sometimes when I check my snares at the far slough.”

After dinner, Kirsten persuaded Inga to lie down.

“You need to take care of yourself,” she said. “Elsa and I will do the dishes, while Erik and Olaf bring in some more snow to melt.”

They found a spot behind the house where the snow had drifted, then used a pail to heap the washtub.

“Too bad that well isn’t finished,” said Olaf.

“If it ever is,” said Erik.

“What do you mean?”

Erik shrugged. “I just worry that we’ll dig and dig and there won’t be water.” He grabbed the handle of the washtub. “Then I’ll be doing this forever.”

“That would make me worry too,” said Olaf, struggling with the tub as if it was too heavy to lift.

Erik looked up at him, confused. Olaf met his eyes and burst into laughter.

They were both laughing as they set the washtub on the packed dirt floor by the stove.

Back outside, Olaf leaned against one of the fence poles watching the oxen. They had trampled everything in the corral, so they stretched their necks out over the fence to eat the snow. The cow and calf were there, too, along with Molly and Star, Lars’s team.

“My grandfather has horses,” Erik said. “And goats. I never saw any oxen till we got to Minnesota.”

“They must eat a lot,” said Olaf.

“Less than horses,” said Erik. “That’s what everyone says. We never give them oats.”

Olaf grunted, pulling his wide-brimmed hat down to shade his eyes from the glare of the sun. “Have you heard about the cattle that died a couple years ago when there was so much snow?”

“Ja,”
said Erik. “Men on the threshing crew spoke of it.”

“Jim was working for a big ranch south of Swift Current,” said Olaf. “The Turkey Track. More than half their cattle died. In the spring they found bodies hanging from trees.”

The calf, pushed out by the oxen, came to Erik. She was big now, almost as large as Tess. He scratched her head, trying to imagine snow so deep that cows seeking shelter under trees were really far off the ground.

“The men tried to help the cattle, but there wasn’t any feed to give them,” Olaf went on. “The cattle just roamed, scratching for grass, but it was buried so deep they couldn’t find it. By springtime, there were so few cows, most of the cowboys lost their jobs.”

“So that’s why Jim works for Pete?”

“I guess so.”

“This Pete,” Erik began. “Colin O’Brien said he might be
crooked.”

Though they were speaking Norwegian, Erik used the English word to describe Pete.

Olaf threw his hands in the air in an expression of disgust. “What does Colin O’Brien know about it? He’s just a kid. A kid like you.”

Erik shook his head, but didn’t say anything as the older men came out of the house dressed in their heavy coats and hats with the earflaps pulled down.

“This corral,” Rolf was saying. “Olaf put in the fence posts and Erik strung the wire and made the gate. I didn’t do anything at all.”

“So,” Lars said, “it’s good to have sons.”

Rolf nodded, his eyes on Olaf. “It is,” he said. “Sons are a good thing.”

Olaf, not looking at Rolf, stepped back from the fence and turned away.

Erik watched Rolf’s eyes follow Olaf. He’d said
sons
but he only looked at Olaf. What if he meant Erik too? Would it be wrong to accept Rolf as a father when his real father was gone?

It was hard to understand Olaf. He could have two fathers, but seemed to have chosen to have none. Erik watched him walk over to the chicken hutch as if the hens were more interesting than the men’s conversation.

Shrugging, Erik returned to the house to warm his hands over the stove. His mother was sleeping. Kirsten and Elsa were already setting out coffee and cookies for lunch, though it seemed to Erik they’d just finished dinner. He broke off a small piece of a
krumkake
and popped it in his mouth.

Picking up a Norwegian book, he pulled a chair up close to the stove, wishing the book was in English. Turning the pages without reading, he half-listened to Kirsten and Elsa talk, glad they were friends.

A spider dropped from the tarpaper onto his book. Erik squeezed it between his fingers and jumped to his feet in disgust. How long did they have to live in a dirt house? He turned in a quick circle in the middle of the room and sat down again. There was nowhere to go. Nothing was going to change.

“Erik?”

Erik turned to his mother. She was sitting up, the blanket pushed to the side.

“What’s troubling you?” she asked, her voice low.

“I’m fine.” Erik forced a smile to his face. “I’m fine.”

“I hope you don’t mind about,” she hesitated, “about the baby.”

Where would they put a baby in a sod house? “Babies are good,” he said at last. “But we should get a real floor in here before it starts to crawl.”

His mother reached out a hand. “Did I ever tell you what a fine boy you are?”

Erik took her hand in his. He felt his face flush and found he couldn’t speak.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Brothers

Rolf and Erik built a wooden wall to divide the sod house into two rooms. Inga hung a curtain made of flour sacks over the opening. The second room had two narrow bunks built one above each other on the new wall. There was no window in the room, but Rolf made a small table for a candle.

“Are you going to sleep in the tent again next summer?” Elsa asked Erik as they lay in their bunks the first night.

“I don’t know,” said Erik sleepily. “I haven’t thought about it.”

“I hope you do,” said Elsa. “Then I will have this room all to myself.”

Erik looked around, seeing only blackness except for a dim glow through the curtain from the lamp in the other room.

He recalled the birds singing before dawn, the sun warming the canvas, flies buzzing in the heat.

“I might sleep outside again. In the summer.”

A few days later, his mother was still in bed when Erik got up. Rolf had the fire going in the stove and was stirring porridge.

“I want you to go to town,” he said quietly. “After breakfast. To bring back the midwife.”

“Should I take the wagon?”

“No, you can ski.” Rolf put Erik’s bowl in front of him and passed the pitcher of milk. “Lars said that when the baby came, he would lend us his sleigh.”

Erik got up from the table and went over to one of the windows. He had to scrape off a thick layer of frost before he could see the stars.

He went back to the table. “Do you want me to go right away?”

Rolf glanced toward the bed. Erik followed his look. Inga shook her head. “Wait till it’s light out,” she said. “You’ve already done one trip in the dark for me. That’s enough.”

She didn’t look sick like when she had influenza. Relieved, Erik nodded and picked up his spoon.

In the daylight, with no wind, the trail was easy to follow. The sun rose higher, and Erik, squinting against the snow, saw Green Valley in the distance.

He headed straight to the store. Lars stood behind the counter, selling coal to a customer. Erik waited impatiently till the man left.

“Rolf sent me to borrow your sleigh,” he said. “Ma’s going to have her baby.”

Lars closed his ledger. “Do you know where the midwife lives?”

Erik shook his head. Lars reached back and untied the apron around his waist. “I’ll talk to her. Olaf’s out back. Tell him to hitch Star and Molly to the sleigh.”