Follow Your Heart. Rosanne Bittner

pounded on the door, and Albert jerked awake from an afternoon nap in his favorite wooden rocker near the fireplace. Ingrid looked up from her knitting as her father rose.

      “I’ll get it,” he said, grimacing at the pain in his back as he stretched. He walked over and slid aside the wooden bar that kept the door tight. “It’s Carl.”

      “Oh, my!” Ingrid set her knitting aside and hurried over to the stove. “I will heat some coffee.” She knew the likely reason for Carl’s visit, although he would come up with an excuse, probably the foul weather. Not long ago Carl had again talked to her father about marriage, which irritated her. Carl apparently took it for granted she would want to marry him. Good and hardworking as he was, the man didn’t have an ounce of gentlemanly manners, or any idea how to properly court a woman.

      Carl was ten years older than she, a huge man, at least six foot six, barrel-chested, loud and clumsy. Without a mother or any other woman around to teach him the gentle side of life, Carl was reared by a Swedish immigrant father who to this day barely spoke English, never having bothered to learn.

      She removed a grate and stuffed some extra pieces of twisted corn husks inside the stove top where a few embers from breakfast quickly set fire to the fresh fuel. With hardly a tree in sight, corn husks or cobs and even dried buffalo chips or horse manure provided necessary fuel. All left a bigger mess than wood, but there was no other choice for heating and cooking.

      “Vell, come in!” Albert greeted Carl in his own strong Swedish accent.

      Ingrid replaced the grate and set what was left of the morning’s coffee on the burner.

      “Hello, my friend!” Carl answered. “Your porch is dry, so I left my rubbers and my jacket there,” he continued in a familiar singsong accent they all used. “I don’t vant to get Ingrid’s floors vet and muddy.” The two men shook hands as Carl came inside. Johnny streaked out of his room to greet Carl.

      “No running, Johnny,” Ingrid reminded her brother. Her mind rushed on, wondering what to say to Carl. She’d not given the slightest hint that she even remotely cared to be his wife. Still, he visited often and paid no heed to her obvious lack of interest. Her father was no help. He liked Carl and encouraged her to see the man socially.

      “Hello there, Ingrid!” Carl greeted her.

      “Hello, Carl. I am surprised you came all the way here in such a downpour.”

      “Ah, vell, ve cannot do any vork, that’s for sure,” Carl answered in his booming voice.

      “Ya, and I fear flooded fields,” Albert told the man. “But then, I never mind an excuse to sit once in a while.”

      Both men laughed, and Ingrid smiled. For the next few minutes all three of them spoke Swedish, joined at times by Johnny, who’d been raised to know the language of his parents and ancestors. Still Ingrid knew it was important for her brother to speak good English, and she’d taught him as best she could, always practicing correct pronunciation herself. She’d learned from weekly trips to a tiny school at Plum Creek when she was younger. Albert had taken her there for lessons, insisting she learn “American” in every way. She was proud of how well she spoke English, her accent very subtle now. Johnny spoke even better English than she, having been born and raised in America.

      Albert motioned for Carl to sit down at the wooden kitchen table, and then he and Johnny joined the man while Ingrid sliced some bread.

      “I am vorried,” Carl said, losing his smile.

      Albert waved him off. “The rain vill make the ground easier to vork,” he told Carl. “It vill stop soon, you’ll see. Things vill be fine.”

      Carl shook his head. “It is not the rain that vorries me.”

      Ingrid set a wooden bowl of butter and some knives on the table, along with a plate of sliced bread.

      “Then what is it that bothers you, Carl?” she asked, sitting down to join them, glad the conversation was not about her and marriage.

      Johnny grabbed a piece of bread and began buttering it. “Have some, Carl. Ingrid makes real good butter.”

      Carl nodded. “Ah, yes, I vill have some of Ingrid’s fine bread and butter.” He beamed at Ingrid as he took a piece of bread, then sighed as he began buttering it. “It is the railroad that vorries me.”

      “And why is that?” Ingrid asked, alarmed at the worried look on Carl’s face.

      Carl finished buttering the bread and set it on a plate. “Vell, I vas in town two days ago, and the clerk at Hans Grooten’s dry goods store told me that George Cain from the bank just came back from Omaha—big meeting there with other bankers about possibly losing money loaned to settlers on railroad land, because now the government says that land should not have been sold to us. He said crooked real estate men told us the land vas ours to settle and buy at cheap prices later on.”

      All grew silent for a moment as Ingrid and Albert pondered the statement.

      “I do not understand,” Albert said with a concerned frown.

      “Nor do I,” Carl answered. He bit into his bread and chewed for a moment. “The clerk, he said he thinks nothing is final yet, but this vorries me. After all our years of vork on this land, getting it to the shape it is in now, how can they come along and tell us it does not belong to us?”

      A soft whistle from the coffeepot reminded Ingrid that the brew was warming. She rose to check it. “Surely that could never happen,” she suggested, wanting to reassure not just Carl and Albert, but also herself. “What on earth would we do if someone came along and told us we had to get off this land? It is like a part of us.” She turned back to face them. “Someone will come and tell us everything is just fine,” she added. “Neither the railroad nor the government would do this to us.”

      She began pouring coffee into china cups, then set them on the table. She had to smile at how big and stubby Carl’s fingers looked against the dainty cup as he lifted it. She actually worried that if he squeezed it too hard it would shatter in his hand.

      Carl looked at her with big blue eyes, and again Ingrid felt guilty for not being able to find feelings for the blustery, loud man. He had a good heart and was a hardworking man who, anyone knew, would always provide for his family.

      “I do not like the sound of it,” Carl said after thanking Ingrid for the good coffee. “In this country the railroad is king. Ve all know that the government is owned by the railroad, and also the other vay around. If there is a legal problem, the railroad vill abide by what the government says because it is the government that gave them the land grants. There is big money involved here. This is a free country, yes, but it is run by the very rich. Do not forget that.”

      Although Ingrid was relieved that Carl’s visit was not necessarily an excuse just to see her, she did not like the real reason he’d come. He was right about the railroad and the very rich. The two walked hand in hand.

      “I think we should pray that these people are guided down the right path,” she told her father and Carl.

      “Praying for rich people does not alvays bring answers,” Albert said despairingly. “The very rich are usually far from God and His vill.”

      “God works in his own ways, Far,” Ingrid assured him. “A person’s station in life means nothing to Him, and only He can change men’s hearts. And we must remember that this land does not really belong to us, or to the railroad or even the government. It is God’s land, loaned to us to care for and to provide food for us.”

      Carl scowled, and for the first time ever Ingrid saw a rather frightening anger in his eyes. “This might be God’s land, but He chose us to love and care for it. He brought my father to America and led him here, and for many years my father and I have vorked it and slaved over the land. My mother is buried here, as is yours, Ingrid, and no man—no power of any kind—vill take my farm from me, and most of all not from my father. It vould kill him!”

      Ingrid’s