“Oh, I hope not, Nancy.”
“Me, too. Gerta, my middle girl, has her eye on him.”
“And Ingrid? Does she have a young man?” asked Katrina.
“Ah…that one’s too smart for them boys that live around here, but everybody says she looks more like you every day now.”
“Really?” asked Katrina.
“That’s good,” said Lordor, “better than looking like me. And everybody else is good?”
Nancy said, “Oh, sure. But my Henry? He’s not so good. He don’t walk good anymore, and he coughs and he coughs. It’s a surprise I’m here first.”
Katrina said, “Yes, it really is. What happened to you, Nancy?”
There was a long pause, then Nancy said, “Too much beer.”
Katrina wondered if she had heard correctly. “Too much beer?”
“Yah.”
They waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. They didn’t want to pry. It would be rude, but they did wonder how too much beer could kill you.
A little while later, Katrina said, “I hate to ask, Nancy, but how is Sweet Potato?”
“Ack! That pig. What a waste of good sausage, but she is still herself.” Katrina was relieved to hear it.
—
AS EXPECTED, RIGHT AFTER New Year’s, Henry Knott came up to Still Meadows and joined his wife. One of the first things he said to Katrina and Lordor was, “Hey, did Momma tell you how she got drunk and fell out of the back of the wagon coming home from the dance?”
“Hush your mouth, Henry,” Nancy said.
“We found her the next day, in the ditch by the old Tildholme farm, frozen solid.”
“Henry!” shouted Nancy. “Hush up!”
“Oh.”
Then, by way of explanation, Nancy said to Katrina, “I told him a hundred times that old board was loose, but he don’t listen.”
Lordor and Katrina were very happy to have their old friends join them, but there was still the matter of Evander Chapman’s sudden and mysterious disappearance. They decided not to mention meeting Mr. Chapman to Henry and Nancy or tell them what had transpired. It might be too upsetting for them. They were also not sure if it would ever happen again. They still wondered where he had gone and whether he would ever come back.
Young Ted Nordstrom, the new mayor of Elmwood Springs, had good common business sense like his father. With his share of the money from the sale of the dairy farm, he purchased several downtown buildings. And as there was still a large number of Swedish in the area, he opened Nordstrom’s Swedish Bakery, using a lot of his mother’s recipes, the same ones she had brought with her from the old country so many years ago. Needless to say, it was successful. Swedish or not, who doesn’t love a good bakery?
After his mother died, Ted had gone out with a few girls. One from Joplin, Missouri, and, later, with the new dental assistant who had just moved to town. However, as Nancy Knott had guessed, he eventually wound up marrying Gerta Knott. Everyone said it was a perfect match. Ted loved to bake, and Gerta, a sweet, plump girl, like all the other Knotts, just loved to eat. They were as happy as two peas in a pod.
But the dating and marriage situation with Ted’s sister, Ingrid, was an entirely different situation. People had hoped that she and Ander Swensen would marry someday, but they had grown up together and were too much like brother and sister.
Although she was a pretty girl like her mother, and many boys asked her out, she simply wasn’t interested and would turn them down.
When she was not in school, she either had her face in a book studying or else she was busy at her job working for the local veterinarian. People began to wonder if Ingrid would ever make a wife. She seemed to like animals more than boys.
In fact, once, when a boy named Morris Shingle was not treating his horse the way she thought he should, she’d punched him in the nose.
1919
The next to arrive up at Still Meadows was Mr. Lindquist, who had been buried with his fiddle, and the first thing he said was, “Well, hell, if I had known I was just heading up the hill, I’d have told them not to get me so dressed up. So, Lordor, what’s it like being out here?”
“It’s, well, I don’t know exactly how to describe it. Oh, it’s just…Katrina, you’re so good with the words. You tell him.”
“Oh my, thank you, Lordor, but I’m afraid this is just one of those times when mere words are just not adequate. It’s certainly beyond beautiful or euphoric. I would say ‘sublime’ is the only word that comes close, and even that doesn’t capture it. All I can say is it’s a feeling you never dreamed existed, and it just keeps going.”
Lordor said, “Exactly!”
A few months later, when Birdie Swensen arrived at Still Meadows, just like everyone else, she was amazed. One would have thought, aside from the usual misconceptions about being deceased, that if anything, it would certainly be boring, but it was not. Everyone said that no matter how long they had been at Still Meadows, they had not been bored for one second. True, they couldn’t move around like before, but they could talk to anyone there at will. All they had to do was call out their name. And no matter what time of day it was, there was always someone to converse with.
But, most importantly, without all the distractions of everyday life, there was the endless panorama of nature to enjoy. Sunrises, sunsets, rain, snow, cloudy days, and sunny days, plus many unexpected and thrilling events: a shooting star, a sudden glorious ray of sunshine after a storm, rainbows, silver lightning bolts flashing across the sky. And the moon. Just the moon alone was a show unto itself. Some nights, it was big and orange, sometimes a half moon, a big white moon, or just a little white fingernail of a moon. And each season brought its own special joys. Endless flocks of ducks and geese flying overhead in the fall; the trees blossoming in the spring. In the summer, on warm, balmy nights, the air was full of the fragrance of honeysuckle and wisteria. And in the winter, when the air was full of wood smoke, some of the older men could name the type of wood being burned, and they would call out cedar, oak, or hickory. Winter was so lovely. Sometimes Still Meadows would be covered with snow, but they always felt cozy and warm. Bored? Good heavens, no. Birdie said to Katrina, “Why, I can hardly wait to wake up and see all the wonderful things the day has in store.”
Thanks to the efforts of their young mayor and his city council, and much to the delight of everyone in town, a huge water tower was built with ELMWOOD SPRINGS, MISSOURI written on it in big black letters. You could see it from miles away. Nobody knew why, but it made them feel important to look up and see it.