RR05 - Tender Mercies Read Free

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.”