You better cut if off,” Lars muttered a day or so later.
“No, not yet. There must be something more we can do.” As Kaaren and Ingeborg stood by the side of the bed, Kaaren reached for the whiskey bottle.
“If you’re going to pour that over my foot again, give me a swig or two of it first. What a waste of good whiskey.” Lars reached for the bottle, at the same time lifting his foot. “Looks awful bad, don’t it?” He tipped the bottle to his lips and chugged. “Whew.” With a grimace, he handed the bottle to his wife and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Now, if I was a drinkin’ man, I might appreciate that, but as I ain’t, that burns something fierce both inside and out.”
Ingeborg studied his swollen foot. “What if we made a dressing and soaked it in the whiskey. That would keep the alcohol in place and might do some leaching of the poison.”
“Well, put me under first. I can hardly stand to have you touch the thing, let alone wrap it.”
Kaaren went for the laudanum, while Ingeborg, with one finger on her bottom lip, continued studying the foot. Father God, I just don’t understand. I’ve been praying for you to heal this foot and also for wisdom to know what to do. Do you want Lars to lose his foot? That doesn’t seem fitting with what I read in the Scriptures. She looked from the foot up to Lars’ face. How could she ask him such a personal question?
She sucked in a deep breath. This could be no more difficult than birthing the twin lambs with a fractious, frightened ewe. “Lars, you remember the stories of Christ healing the lepers in the Scriptures?”
He shrugged. “Well, kind of . . . I mean, I heard them a long time ago when I went to church with my family and all. Ain’t been no church out here, you know.”
“I know, but Kaaren reads out of the Bible every day.”
“Sure, but we ain’t been reading about the lepers.”
Ingeborg nodded. Knowing Kaaren, she was reading from her favorites, the Psalms or Proverbs. Whenever there was trouble, those were the first places she headed. “For some reason my Bible fell open to one of the leper passages, so I read it and then the others. In all cases, the lepers had to ask for Christ to heal them, and then do something He commanded.”
“So?” He closed his eyes and leaned back against the pillows Kaaren had stacked behind him. “You think I haven’t been praying for this foot of mine? What kind of idjit do you think I am? Of course I’ve been praying.” He sat forward, wincing at the action. “I pray and pray, and my foot looks worse and worse. You got an answer for that? Do you?” He shook his finger in her face.
Ingeborg stepped back. Was this what she’d been like when she had questioned God? No wonder people stayed away from her. “I don’t have an answer.” She softened her voice. “All I know is that God loves us and promised to be beside us through all the trials on this earth.”
“Yeah, well, right now I think God is looking the other way, too busy with some other part of the world.” He laid the back of his hand over his eyes. “Thanks for trying, Inge, but I need to resign myself to losing this foot, and if we don’t take care of that soon, I’ll lose my life, too.”
“If onlys” flashed through Ingeborg’s mind. If only they hadn’t gone to town; if only they had listened to her; if only . . . if only .. . She closed her eyes and mind against the memories. Blizzards, indeed, had taken their toll on the Bjorklunds.
“We have to deal with what’s now.” She said the words as much to herself as to the man in the bed.
“Mor!” Thorliff threw himself through the door and stopped in front of her, puffing heavily.
“What is it?” Ingeborg looked from her grinning son to follow where he pointed. “Metiz!”
The old woman, a descendent of marriages between the French Canadian trappers and the Lakota and Chippewa Indians, stood grinning in the doorway. She’d lost a front tooth to the winter, but her silvered hair was still pulled back in a single braid, her black eyes still snapped with delight, and the lines in her face resembled a dried apple more than ever. “We come back.”
“We?” Ingeborg crossed the room and, extending her hand, drew her old friend into the room. “Oh, Metiz, I am so glad you came. We need your wisdom so desperately.”
Metiz gestured behind her. A sturdy boy with the same bright eyes and dusky skin as hers stepped forward. He wore a combination of skin vest, bright red shirt, and leather leggings, while a thong held back his thick, black hair. “My grandson. Baptiste. He friend for Thorliff.”
Thorliff wore a grin that would have split a more tender face. He looked up at Ingeborg.
She nodded. “Perhaps you’d like to show Baptiste your sheep.”
“Come on.” Thorliff straightened his back, shot a grin over his shoulder at his mother, and walked over to the newcomer. “You want to see my new lambs? I have,” he wrinkled his forehead in thought, “twenty-three. Two black ones.”
Baptiste nodded. He glanced up at his grandmother for permission and, at her nod, followed Thorliff out the door.
Thorliff whistled. “Paws, come here. That’s my dog.” His words floated back into the silent soddy.
“They be good together.” Metiz nodded. Her mixture of French, English, and her native tongue, along with a smattering of Norwegian made it possible for them to communicate. Sometimes they needed no words, using signs and actions to convey what they meant.
“I am so happy you came. I don’t know what else to use to make Lars’ foot better.”
“What happen?” She moved to stand beside the bed and looked the sick man in the eyes.
“Frostbite. We got caught out by that last blizzard.”
“Bad one, that.” She sniffed, leaning over the bed to peer at the swollen reddened foot, now seeping from the open sores. “Foot bad.”
“Ja, that it is.” Lars shrugged his shoulders, but the furrow between his brows belied the lighter words. “I think we need to cut it off before it poisons the rest of me.”
“What done?” She turned to Ingeborg.
“Rubbing it, hot and cold soaking, willow bark tea for pain, now laudanum, and I poured whiskey over it to clean it again.”
“I drink the stuff, too. Maybe it does more good on the inside than out.” Lar’s attempt at humor fell as flat as the lefse Kaaren had made the day before.
Kaaren entered the house. She’d been outside hanging clothes on the line and stirring the wash in a kettle over the fire outside. “So good to see you, Metiz. Welcome home.” Kaaren’s knowledge of French made it easier for her to talk with the old woman.
In French, Metiz asked, “Has he run a fever?” Kaaren nodded. “Out of his head at times?”
“Only with the pain. He sleeps a lot now that we have the laudanum for him.”
Metiz nodded. She cupped her hands over the foot, pressing gently, exploring the festering member.
Lars blanched, sweat popped out in his forehead, and he clamped his teeth together. Kaaren took his hand, wincing at the force with which he grasped it.
Metiz sniffed again, and closing her eyes, she pressed up the leg. She turned to see the man’s reaction. “Better?”
“Up there, yes. I ain’t never had anything hurt like this.” He took in a deep breath and let it out, the air whooshing from his lungs.
Metiz pondered the man in front of her, one finger tip massaging her chin. “I think not cut off whole foot. Two small toes, save rest. Put foot up high. I bring medicine.” She turned and headed for the door. “Boy stay with your boy?”
“Of course.” Ingeborg followed the old woman out the door. “What can I do?”
“Make him drink.” She mimicked tipping up a bottle. “We have the laudanum.”
“Later. Make knife sharp. Very sharp. Heat poker.” She set out for her encampment at the ground-eating trot that Ingeborg had learned Metiz could endure for hours.
Ingeborg watched her go and then headed across the field to her own soddy. She could hear the boys talking from the barn when she reached the door. Off in the distance, Haakan continued to widen the rich brown strip of field as the plow laid over furrow after furrow. “Thorliff,” she called, “I need you for a minute.”
“Coming.” The two boys appeared in the barn door, Paws at Thorliff’s knee. The boy trotted up to his mother. “What do you want?”
“Would you please go get Mr. Bjorklund for me? Tell him it isn’t an emergency, but I need help soon.”
Thorliff nodded and with a “Come on, Baptiste,” the two boys raced each other across the rippling prairie grass.
Ingeborg watched them go. How good it would be for her son to have a friend, someone that lived close enough to be with often and to do boy things with. She worried sometimes about this lad growing up with no one his age, always the oldest and responsible beyond his years. When she was eight, she had brothers and sisters both older and younger and went to school. They needed to get the school going, that was one sure thing. And now Kaaren’s husband might not live. “No, I will not even think such!” Her words rang loud and firm in the prairie silence.
By the time Metiz returned with a bundle on her back, Ingeborg and Kaaren had all the supplies ready. Haakan had come in from the field to help hold Lars down if need be. Ingeborg had put Andrew down for a nap with strict instructions to Thorliff that he must stay by the house to hear the baby when he woke.
“I’m not drunk, yet,” Lars sang, a silly grin belying his words. He hefted the bottle and took another swig.
“I think I could use a swig of that, too,” Haakan muttered for Ingeborg’s ears alone.
She shot him a nod of agreement. Her stomach was doing small flip-flops at the thought of the work ahead. Would it be enough to just remove the toes? Or would they have to repeat it with the remainder of the foot? God, help us, guide us, and bring healing to this son of yours. And please, I’m so frightened. Give me strength. She caught Kaaren’s eye and knew she’d been thinking and doing the same.
“Drink more.” Metiz sat on a chair by the bed. “We use table?”
“I know,” Kaaren answered. “I have a sheet ready to put on it. We can get more light over there. I have all the lamps ready to light.”
Ingeborg looked around and saw that it was so. The room felt stifling with the fire going to heat plenty of water. The poker she’d brought back with her lay on top of the stove, ready to insert in the firebox. She closed her eyes at the sight of the knives, their edges gleaming in the lamplight, newly ground on the whetstone to a fine edge. Dear God, please get us through this.
“Are we ready then?” Haakan asked. At their nods, he leaned over the bed and slipped his arm under Lars’ shoulders. “All right, my friend, let’s get this over with. You use your strength, and I’ll use mine, and we’ll get you on that table before you pass out.”
Lars mumbled some kind of answer but did as ordered. Once they had him standing on his good foot with his arms over the shoulders of Haakan and Ingeborg, they half carried, half walked him to the table, and he crumbled onto it. He slipped into unconsciousness from the alcohol and the pain of the jarring.
“You hold him.” Metiz nodded to Ingeborg and Haakan.
“How about if we run a rope around him and the table from chest to foot?” Haakan asked.
“Good. You do.”
Haakan wrapped a rope around the snoring man and the table. Then he and Ingeborg took their positions, Haakan beside the diminutive woman. With a quick slash, Metiz began the operation.
Behind them, Kaaren gagged and rushed out of the house.
Ingeborg was torn between caring for her sister in distress or for the man beneath her hands, but she held to her post. She turned her face away from the sight of the welling blood. By the time the toes and part of the side of the foot were cut off and another area cut open to bleed and drain the poison, she felt dizzy from the heat and the smell of blood and putrefaction. Don’t you dare faint, she ordered herself. This is no different than butchering a deer. If only she could believe that. But the deer were always dead, and this was a living, breathing human being cut.
Metiz motioned for Haakan to retrieve the poker from the stove where it now glowed white at the end. “Place there.” She pointed to the cut side of the foot.
Haakan did as told but looked across the man on the table and into Ingeborg’s eyes, as if asking permission. She nodded slightly and shut her eyes against the sight. The stench of burning flesh made her gag, but with all the strength she possessed, she held her place. She gripped Lars’ leg till her muscles screamed in protest as, in spite of the rope binding him, he bucked beneath their hands.
Sweat poured down her face and into her eyes. The tears streaming down her cheeks added to the flow. She peered across the table to see Metiz spreading a paste on the ravaged foot and gently wrapping clean cloths around it.
“Now, him we put in bed.”
“Let’s carry the table over there. It will be easier on him.” Haakan, too, wore rivers of sweat, the hair draped over his brow glistening dark with it. Together they lifted the table, and once it stood by the bed, they untied the unconscious man and laid him on the bed.
“Make high place for foot. Evil drain away.” Metiz piled the quilts and propped up the leg.
“I’ll bring in the feedbox. That should work better.” Haakan dashed the back of his wrist across his forehead. He laid a comforting hand on Ingeborg’s shoulder as he passed and headed out to the barn.
“I . . . I’m sorry.” Kaaren crossed the room and stood shivering by the table. “I couldn’t keep it down. I’m so sorry.”
Ingeborg snatched one of the quilts and wrapped it around the quivering woman. “Here, sit in the rocker and drink something hot. You needn’t feel bad. Things affect you more when you’re increasing.” She poured a cup of coffee and laced it with honey. “Drink this.” Placing the cup in Kaaren’s hands, she watched Metiz move silently about the injured man, settling the covers, laying a hand on the green-tinged brow. The old woman seemed to be listening as she moved, as if sensing the inner workings of the man she cared for. She’d stop, close her eyes, then lay her hand on the foot, the knee, the shoulder.
The sound of Kaaren sipping the sweetened coffee kept time with the stentorious snoring of the man on the bed. Lars sounded more drunk than wounded, and for that, Ingeborg was glad. She had the laudanum ready if he should begin to stir. Surely the pain from his mutilated foot would intrude on his drunken stupor soon.
“Here.” Haakan returned with a feedbox from the barn. He wrapped it in a blanket and slipped it under the foot when Metiz raised it. Lars snored on.
Metiz looked up from her study of the injured man. “We done all.” She nodded and looked at each of the others in the room, waiting until they met her gaze. “Now we pray. You to your God, me to Great Spirit. Me”—she touched her chest with her thumb—“me, I tink one and same.” She raised her hands above her head and, face looking upward, began a chant in a language all her own.
Ingeborg took Kaaren’s hand in hers and reached out for Haakan. “You take hold of Lars’ hand,” she said softly. When he had done that, she bowed her head, waiting silently for the man beside her to begin praying. When he didn’t, she looked up to see a look of total consternation, fear, resentment—she had no idea which was plastered on his face. When he caught her gaze, he shook his head.
Oh, my. Ingeborg bit her lip. So the man doesn’t pray? Doesn’t he believe either? She was sure he did. Hadn’t he joined in on grace at the supper table? Yes, he had.
The soft words of Metiz bathed them like a song.
Ingeborg bowed her head again. “God in heaven, our Father. You have commanded that we pray for what we need, and healing Lars’ foot is surely that. Please, we ask that you restore life to the frozen flesh and heal the part that was cut.” She could feel herself begin to shake. Never had she led prayer like this, with a group of both men and women, and for healing.
“Father, forgive my weakness and give my husband the strength to mend and the grace to ask you for help.” Kaaren’s gentle voice whispered the pleas of her heart.
Ingeborg could feel Haakan’s hand begin to relax in hers.
Lars shifted on the bed and slipped into the easy breath of one asleep.
Ingeborg knew that if she looked up, she would see their prayers winding heavenward like tendrils of smoke or the incense she read about in the Bible. Never in her life had she felt such peace, such an absolute certainty that God heard their prayers, that He cared beyond human understanding. She kept her eyes closed, suddenly afraid that if she looked at the foot of the bed and Jesus wasn’t standing there like she saw in her mind, she’d break down with sobs too deep to stop.
“Amen.” Haakan’s strong voice broke the spell. Only at that instant did she realize there had been a male voice adding words of prayer.
Like a cloud on a mountain, silence rested upon the room.
When Ingeborg opened her eyes, Metiz was gone.
Haakan wiped away the tears that had overflowed and streamed down his tanned cheeks.
Kaaren blew her nose and leaned her head against the back of the rocker.
Ingeborg could hear her pastor from Nordland as if he stood beside them. “The Lord bless thee and keep thee, the Lord lift his countenance upon thee and give thee his peace. Amen.”
“Amen,” she whispered in return. “Amen.”
“Mor,” Thorliff called from outside. “Can we come in now? Andrew wants you.”
“Ja. We will have some dinner now. I know everyone is hungry.”
Kaaren levered herself up from the rocker. “I have soup hot on the back of the stove. Inge, you cut the bread, and, Thorliff, you go out to the cellar and bring a jug of milk out of the water tank.” She swept Andrew up in her arms and, squeezing him tight, plunked him on his raised chair.
Ingeborg looked over at Haakan, who still hadn’t said a word. He raised one eyebrow in a question mark. She shook her head and shrugged. She really didn’t know what had happened to them all either. But time would tell. Indeed, time would tell.