Unto a Good Land (51 page)

Mr. Abbott looked at Karl Oskar’s feet, at his shoes. To save his boots, already quite worn, Karl Oskar now wore his wooden shoes even for walks to the village. People in Taylors Falls stared at his feet in the wooden shoes, they had never seen such footgear. They apparently thought that people who wore wooden shoes were impoverished and wretched, he could see in Mr. Abbott’s eyes. The Scot pitied the wooden-shod settler, the poor Swede who did not have even fifteen cents to pay for his letter from the homeland.

If there was one thing Karl Oskar detested above all else, it was to be pitied. “All right!” he said, as if the letter did not concern him. And he felt he pronounced those words like an American.

“Sorry,” Mr. Abbott repeated. “But I have to keep the letter.”

News from Sweden, the first in a year, again lay hidden in the postmaster’s drawer. All that the settlers had wanted so long to know about their relatives at home—if they were well or ill, if all were alive, or if someone were dead—this long-awaited news was pushed back among the letters in the drawer. There it must remain until the fee was paid. Karl Oskar had nothing to reproach the postmaster with, it was not his fault if the addressee lacked the fifteen cents. The mail company granted no delay in payments. Mr. Abbott worked for the mail company, he did only his duty when he kept the letter.

Karl Oskar nodded a silent good-by and walked toward the door.

“Sorry!” Mr. Abbott said, for the third or fourth time.

His expression was still unchanged, but there was sadness in his voice. The postmaster was sorry for Karl Oskar, because he was unable to redeem his letter.
Sorry,
he heard that word often when Americans talked, it sounded as if they were constantly grieving for others. But he had sometimes heard the word uttered so lightly and unconcernedly that he wasn’t sure real sorrow was always felt. This time, however, he believed Mr. Abbott was genuinely sorry he had had to leave without the letter.

The day had been almost wasted. A walk to Taylors Falls and back was tiresome, his wooden shoes were heavy and clumsy, his feet always felt sore after a long walk. Must he now walk back nine miles without the letter?

But Anders Månsson lived in the village only half a mile away; he could borrow the fifteen cents from him, go back to Mr. Abbott’s post-office, and lay the money on the counter!

The Månsson fields lay deserted today, all was quiet. Fina-Kajsa sat in the sun outside the cabin, patching one of her son’s skin coats. She sat slumped and her glassy eyes wandered listlessly as if following something far away in the forest. She did not look at the work in her hands, she stared in front of her as if in deep worry; perhaps she was still brooding over the journey of disappointment she had undertaken to her son’s fine mansion in Minnesota; as yet she had not arrived.

Her cream-pitcher lips moved vaguely in answer as Karl Oskar greeted her and asked for Anders.

“He lies flat-back today.”

“Flat-back?”

“Yes. He lies flat on his back inside.”

Fina-Kajsa’s voice sounded hollow. Karl Oskar looked at her in surprise. Did Anders Månsson lie in bed on a weekday for no reason, without working? Or had something happened to him? “Is he ailing? Is that why—”

The mother gave no answer, she only pointed to the door meaningfully: Go inside! And he entered the tiny cabin into which the whole group of Swedish newcomers had packed themselves last year.

A strong, sweet odor struck him as soon as he was over the threshold and in the stuffy air of the cabin. It was a work day, the middle of the day—but Anders Månsson lay in his shirt on his bed, stretched out on his back, sleeping and snoring. The door creaked loudly on its un-greased hinges, and Karl Oskar clumped noisily on his wooden shoes, but the sleeper was not awakened by these sounds. Anders Månsson had not lain down for a light nap, he was sunk in deep slumber.

Karl Oskar went to the bed. As he leaned over the sleeper the rancid-sweet odor grew stronger. He discovered its source: his foot struck a wooden keg that lay overturned on the floor near the bed.

It was a whisky keg, rolling in a dark-brown wet spot on the floor, where some of the contents had run out. But not much had been wasted: Karl Oskar suspected that the keg had been practically empty when it was turned over. And the man who had emptied it now lay on the bed after his drinking bout, with open, gaping mouth, breathing noisily in deep jerky snores. His breath rattled in his throat, and his chest heaved slowly up and down. It seemed as if each new breath might choke him, stick in his throat, and be his last.

Anders Månsson was dead drunk today, a day in the middle of the week; he lay unconscious on his bed in full daylight, he lay flat-back as his mother had said. But his face bloomed red, his cheeks blossomed.

“Why are you so red in the face?” Fina-Kajsa had asked her son when they arrived last summer. And Karl Oskar remembered one time when he met Fina-Kajsa at Danjel’s; he had asked about Anders, and she had answered: “He lies flat-back at home.” He had wondered what she meant.

He looked at Anders Månsson with disgust and pity: he slept a drunkard’s sleep and nothing would wake him now, nothing but time could stop that rattle in his throat. But his face looked healthy and red; “if you have red cheeks you are far from dead,” the saying was. . . .

Karl Oskar walked slowly out of the cabin. The drunkard’s mother was still sitting outside; he had nothing to say to her.

But she asked: “Was it something you wanted with Anders?”

“Nothing to speak of. Just wanted to look in as I passed by.”

“He wakes up toward evening.”

“Well. . . is that so? Does he often—”

“As often as he has money to buy drinks with.” Old Fina-Kajsa spoke to the air in a low, hollow voice—without reproach or sorrow. “He got started on it when he lived alone.”

“I suppose so.”

“He ailed from lonesomeness.”

“I see.”

Karl Oskar felt embarrassed and ashamed, as though he had surprised her son during some natural but private occupation which concerned no one except himself and which usually is not performed in sight of others.

Fina-Kajsa continued: “Anders says he grew lonesome here. He says it can affect one’s head, to emigrate and grow lonely. . . .”

Karl Oskar searched for words of comfort for the old one. But strangely, comforting words were far away when needed. He could not find a single one—he had nothing to say to Fina-Kajsa. He greeted her from Kristina, and then went his way. The old woman remained sitting, her vacant eyes staring over the wilderness forest.

Her son who lay flat-back on his bed had grown lonesome . . . hmm. . . .

Now Karl Oskar knew why Anders Månsson had been unable to improve his circumstances during his years in the Territory—now he knew the secret of Fina-Kajsa’s son.

—4—

Karl Oskar could now go to Lake Gennesaret and borrow the fifteen cents from his neighbors, but then he would not have time for a second walk back to Mr. Abbott’s store. He must let the letter from Sweden remain in the postoffice drawer for the time being; after all, it was not floating in the lake, Postmaster Abbott had it in safekeeping.

Karl Oskar walked straight back home. Kristina met him in the door: “Did you get the letter? What did it say? Are they well?” Three anxious questions, and she found time for a fourth before her husband had said a word: “Hasn’t the letter come?”

“It has come. But it must be redeemed. It costs fifteen cents.”

“You couldn’t redeem it?”

“No.”

“You walked all the way for nothing?”

“Yes.”

Kristina had been waiting eagerly for his return, she was sure he would bring the letter from Sweden. Now she felt like a child who is chased away from the Christmas tree after waiting long at the door.

A silence fell between husband and wife. And Karl Oskar felt another question coming, but this one his wife need not utter. He said he had not wished to borrow from anyone in Taylors Falls, he was too proud to ask for a loan of fifteen cents; he did not wish to advertise his poverty among all the Swedes in the St. Croix Valley. Their letter was in good hands in the store, they need not worry, no one would take it away from them.

“Did you see the writing on the letter?”

“No, I wasn’t that close.”

“You don’t know who wrote it?”

“No. It could be my father, or it might be yours. One or the other, I guess.”

A few days passed. Spring had come to the valley. The ice on the river had broken up, the steamboat had come with the letter from Sweden; it now lay in a drawer in the post office in Taylors Falls and could be redeemed for fifteen cents. Kristina thought, what luck that the sun and the warmth came to people without having to be redeemed; had they been forced to pay fifteen cents for the spring, the winter would still be with them.

Karl Oskar and Kristina said nothing more about the letter, but their thoughts hovered around it. They could not get it off their minds, they wondered and mused: What was in the letter? A whole year had run away since they had climbed on the wagon for the drive to Karlshamn—how much might have happened in that time! And everything that had happened was written in that letter, and the letter had finally almost reached them, it was only a few miles away, yet as far away as ever. It cost fifteen cents!

Kristina thought it would have been better not to know about the letter. It would have been better if Karl Oskar had kept quiet about it. Now she was wrought up and worried about news from home. It was so close, yet not within her reach.

Karl Oskar was resigned to waiting patiently until the time he could redeem it, and he thought Kristina should do the same. He was busy all day long making his new breaking plow. He was making it entirely of wood, and he must have it ready when the frost left the ground. He had been promised he might borrow his neighbors’ oxen and he was anxious to begin the plowing. A plow was far more important to him than a letter. He talked about it every time he came inside for a meal, it was on his mind early and late. It was the first time he had made a plow, the farmer’s most important implement, and it required clever hands. He cut and carved, he chiseled and dug, he tried various kinds of wood, discarded and began anew, improved and finished each part from day to day. The blade must have the right curve, the pull tree the right turn, the shafts and handles the right angles. The plow body must be light, sensitive to the steering hands of the plower, it must cut its way easily through the sod. He would follow this plow in its furrow for a long time, he would follow it every day until the whole meadow was turned into a field. The new plow would give them the field for their bread to grow in.

But Kristina wished to hear no more of the plow he was making, she wanted to talk of the letter they must redeem.

Karl Oskar was too proud to borrow a mere fifteen cents from his neighbors. If a poor man could afford nothing else, at least he could afford his pride. This was a lesson he had learned in Sweden. But it might be that this lesson was neither good nor useful for an impoverished settler here in the wilderness. He could not live by his pride. And whence would he get the fifteen cents if he did not borrow it from Danjel or Jonas Petter?

A few more days went by and Karl Oskar kept busy at his plow. Then Kristina could wait no longer: Did he intend to get the letter soon? He replied that the letter was in good hands, Mr. Abbott would not give it to anyone else, she must not be impatient, the work on the plow was much more urgent.

Kristina made her own decision: She would go to her uncle and borrow fifteen cents.

Without Karl Oskar’s knowledge she would set out early next morning through the forest to Danjel’s settlement. She would show her stubborn husband that
she
could redeem the message from Sweden. His pride could not keep her letter from her any longer!

Strangers rarely came to the log house at Lake Ki-Chi-Saga. Occasionally a pelt trader might walk by. But the day Kristina had made her decision a stranger dropped in on them.

He was a man from the lumber company in Stillwater; he had walked through the forest staking out new roads and had lost his way. The stranger arrived at the new settlement as the family was sitting down to the noonday meal and he was asked to share their dinner: Would he be satisfied with their simple food?

Karl Oskar and the American could barely make each other understood, but he seemed a kind man. He thanked them for the dinner and before he left he patted Johan on the head and gave him a coin.

The stranger was hardly outside the door before Kristina turned to the boy and looked at the gift. It was a ten-cent piece.

She turned the thin coin in her hand, deeply disappointed. It was not enough, she was still five cents short. She would still have to borrow, and a five-cent loan would reveal their poverty more than a fifteen-cent one.

“That was close!”

“You mean . . . ?” Karl Oskar gave his wife a quick glance.

“You know what I mean!”

“But you wouldn’t take the coin from the boy?”

Johan was pulling his mother’s arm: “I want my money, Mother!”

“Give it to the boy,” said the father. “It’s the first coin he’s ever had.”