Unto A Good Land Page 23

  And after she had promised not to divulge to a living soul what he was about to tell her, he related what had happened to Arvid and himself on Broadway Street in New York: He had saved Arvid’s life. An enormous, sinister-looking man had rushed toward them with a long knife in his hand, ready to stick it into Arvid and steal his nickel watch. He had been one of the fifty thousand murderers who lived in New York and who every day except Sunday commit at least one murder. The murderer had managed to get the watch away from Arvid and was aiming the knife at his heart, already piercing the cloth of his vest, when Robert had rushed up and given the man such a hard blow with his fist, right on the man’s temple, that he had immediately fallen backward and fainted. Then Robert had pulled the knife from the murderer’s hand and recovered Arvid’s watch. Police had arrived and had jailed the fallen bandit, and Robert had understood enough of their English to realize that they had lauded him profoundly: Thanks to his coolheaded interference, one crime less than usual had been committed that day. If he had wanted to, he could easily have stayed in New York and joined the police force.

  But Elin must promise not to whisper a word to anyone about his saving Arvid’s life: he was not one to brag about his deeds; if he were able to do a favor for a friend, he liked to keep it to himself. Nor must she mention it to Arvid, who might feel embarrassed about the incident.

  Elin listened to Robert in great admiration and gave him her promise of silence. In turn, she wanted to confide something to him: She was not going to remain with Danjel when they arrived in Taylors Falls, she intended to find employment with some upper-class American family. And he promised to help her with this, now that he could speak English with ministers and other learned Americans. As a matter of fact, he himself had no intention of working for Karl Oskar. He had other prospects of getting rich.

  “What are you going to do?” the girl asked.

  “I’m not going to work as a farm servant all my life. I remember Angelica.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked curiously.

  “It is the name of a woman, but it means much more than a woman ever could mean.”

  And he was about to tell her of the clipper ship with the gold diggers and the red pennant which he had seen in the New York Harbor, when he suddenly lowered his voice and then stopped speaking: someone was approaching them from the other side of the bush. It was Arvid, picking raspberries. He did not notice them, although they could see him through the bush. Elin whispered: Arvid still had the hole in his vest, right over his heart. Yes, Robert said, that was the tear slashed by a murderer’s knife, on the most beautiful street in the world. Now she could see for herself that Robert always spoke the truth.

  The others were ready to resume their walk, and the youth and the girl, their hunger lessened by forest raspberries, rose to join them. Arvid caught up with them and complained to Robert that he had just torn his vest on these darned big thorns on the bushes here; he must have it mended at once or he might lose his watch. Robert glanced around rather nervously to make sure Elin had not heard.

  The travelers now felt rested and well pleased. Evil and good fortune shifted quickly for them: yesterday they had been lost, hungry, and wet; today the weather was pleasant and they rested in fresh grass under a shady oak and ate fresh fruit. They were pleased with the land they saw about them; it gave good promise: this was the land where they would settle. They felt almost repaid for the arduous journey and its great inconveniences.

  “Fair is the country hereabouts,” Danjel Andreasson said. “The Lord has led us to a blessed land.”

  All agreed with these sentiments. Danjel had just finished his table prayer and now he took out his Bible: before he rose from his first meal-rest on the ground of the new land he would like to bend his knees and thank the Lord God who so far had led and aided them.

  He knelt near the great oak and read from the Bible the Lord’s words to his servant Joshua, who, with the tribes of Israel, was ready to ford the river Jordan to dwell in the promised land after the many years of wandering in the wilderness: “Be strong and of good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I sware unto their fathers to give them.”

  The playing children were silenced and all the grownups rose and stood in a circle around Danjel; the men removed their hats, and men as well as women folded their hands and bent their heads. The little group of wanderers stood immobile and silent under the great tree. Danjel Andreasson knelt and bowed his head toward the sturdy trunk of the oak, now his altar, folded his hands over his breast, and uttered his prayer of thanks:

  “A strange land has kindly opened its portals to us, and we have come to live here peacefully and seek our sustenance. But we would have been like newborn lambs, let out to perish among the heathens in this wilderness, hadst not Thou, Lord, sustained us. Hunger would have ravaged us, pestilence stricken us, wild animals devoured us, if Thy fingers of mercy were not upon us. We have journeyed thousands of miles, over land and water, and Thou hast saved our lives and all our limbs. Be strong and of good courage! So Thou spakest to Thy good servant and to his folk. Thou hast promised to give us this land and we want to be Thy servants. Aid us in this foreign and wild land, as Thou hast helped us until now. We have here eaten our meager fare in Thy forest, and we call on Thee from this ground which Thou created on the First Day. We are gathered in this church which Thou Thyself builded and whose roof is raised taller than any other church—Thy heaven is its roof. O Lord, here in Thy creation, in Thy tall temple, we wish to praise Thee and sing to Thy glory as well as we may with our singing tongues! Turn Thine ear to us and listen, O Lord!”

  Then slowly and haltingly Danjel Andreasson, still kneeling under the oak, began to sing a psalm. He sang in a weak and trembling voice. The group around him joined in, one after another, as they recognized the hymn:

  Eternal Father in Whose hand,

  From age to age, from land to land,

  All mortals comfort seek,

  Ere mountains were, or man, or field,

  Ere pastures gave their season’s yield,

  You were, and are, forever. . . .

  The wind had died down and the voices echoed through the forest—weak voices and strong, rough voices and sweet, husky and clear, trembling and steady, men’s and women’s voices. And the chorus rose for each verse higher and higher under the lush ceiling of branches and leaves of the wide tree; a hymn in a foreign language, by a little group from far away, a song never before heard in this wilderness:

  The lilies bloom with morning’s breath,

  Yet eventide beholds their death

  So Man must also meet his doom,

  A flower, a mere withering bloom. . . .

  When the song to the Creator’s glory had rung out to an end, the immigrants again loaded their burdens on their backs and resumed their walk with increased confidence. And over their resting place with its downtrodden grass stillness and silence again reigned, disturbed only by a faint whispering in the thick foliage of the oak.

  —3—

  They knew how quickly dusk could fall in this country, and a good while before sunset they began to look for a place to camp. They chose a pine grove where the ground was covered with thick moss. They collected fallen branches in a great pile, and so dry was this excellent fuel that the very first match ignited it. Karl Oskar, Danjel, and Jonas Petter each had a box of matches brought from Sweden, which they used sparingly, each box being used in turn for fairness. The women cooked their evening meal in Fina-Kajsa’s limping iron pot; they fetched water from a running brook and to the water they added various leftovers to make a stew: Kristina donated a piece of pork, a few bread heels, and a pinch of salt, Ulrika scraped together a few spoonfuls of flour from the bottom of Danjel’s food basket, and Jonas Petter contributed a dozen large potatoes, which he had got from one of the cooks on the Red Wing in exchange for some snuff.

  This stew was eaten by all in the company with such great appetite that none n
oticed how it tasted. Then Kristina offered as dessert one of the last things she had left in her Swedish food basket: a small jar of honey, which they spread on their bread. Each of the grownups got a small slice, each child a large slice.

  After supper they gathered more faggots for the fire, which they had to keep burning, less for the sake of warmth than to keep off the swarms of mosquitoes. Nothing except smoke seemed to drive them away. Jonas Petter expressed the opinion that the North American mosquitoes were far more dangerous than the Indians, whom they hadn’t seen a sign of today; no heathens or cannibals could be so thirsty for Christian blood as were these bloodsucking insects, flying about everywhere with stingers sharp as needles. All complained about this new plague, and Fina-Kajsa most of all: she had been able to escape the scurvy and the tempests at sea, the fire in the steam wagon, the cholera on the steamboat—was she now to be eaten by these hellish gnats before she reached her son and had a chance to see his beautiful home? No, God wouldn’t allow this to come to pass. He ought to give her credit for the thousands of miles she had walked in her life to hear His word every Sunday. If God had any sense of justice He undoubtedly had written down in His book the many miles she had walked to church.

  They gathered moss to sleep on and covered themselves with warm clothing and a few blankets. The children went to sleep the minute they lay down. All were tired from the day’s walk and their heavy burdens; they would sleep soundly in this camp during the night. But they didn’t forget that evil people and dangerous beasts might be in their neighborhood. The four men each in turn kept a two-hour watch; they must tend the fire, guard the sleepers, and rouse them in case of danger.

  Robert was too young to keep watch, but he couldn’t go to sleep. He lay under a pine tree with his head toward the trunk. He had gathered enough moss to make a soft bed, but he felt as though his body were broken to pieces. Every muscle ached. And the forest had so many sounds to keep him awake. The leaves rustled, bushes and grass stirred, he wondered what kind of reptiles might lurk in the thickets. Buzzing insects swarmed in the air, the mosquitoes hovered over him with their eternal plaintive humming. There were sounds everywhere—hissing, whizzing, chirping. But the most persistent sound of all came from some small animal in the grass, it screeched and squeaked like an ungreased wagon wheel. It reminded him of a cricket, but it was louder and more intense, and it hurt his ears. He looked for the animal but could not find it; how was it possible that an animal could be so small and yet make such an infernal noise?

  From his Description of the United States of North America Robert remembered all the wild beasts of the American forests; all of them might now lurk quite close to him in the dark, waiting their moment: the bear and the wolf to bite his throat, the rattlesnake to wreathe its body around him, the crocodile . . . But Captain Berger had said there were no crocodiles in the northern part of the country. Wild Indians, however, were here in the forest, even though they hadn’t yet encountered them, and Indians could move without the slightest sound: before he knew it, without the least warning, he might lie here with his scalp cut off, wounded and bleeding to death. An Indian could cut off a scalp as easily as a white, Christian person could cut a slice of bread.

  As herdboy at home Robert had never been afraid, but here he lay an his bed of moss and scared himself until he felt clammy with perspiration. Arvid slept only a few feet away from him, snoring loudly; he did not hear any sounds, not even the ones he made himself. And Robert could see Karl Oskar, who had taken the first watch—he moved like a big shadow near the campfire, now and then poking the embers with a branch, making the sparks fly into the air until they died high up among the treetops. His brother was not afraid: Karl Oskar and the others didn’t know enough to be afraid, they didn’t realize how dangerous it was to lie here and sleep. Had they possessed all the knowledge Robert had concerning lurking dangers during the night in Minnesota Territorial forests—if they only knew what he knew about the unbelievably sharp knives the Indians carried, and with what complete silence they could sneak up—then they wouldn’t enjoy a moment’s sleep.

  Each time Robert was about ready to go to sleep he was disturbed by the screeching noise like an ungreased wheel from the small animal in the grass. And his injured ear began to hum and throb as it often did when he lay still. What kind of a sound could it be in his ear, never ceasing? Sometimes he wondered if some buzzing insect hadn’t managed to get in there. And as this noise had continued he had grown to hear less and less with his left ear. For two years now the sound had pursued him; it had followed him from the Old World to the new one. Perhaps it would stay with him and annoy him for the rest of his life, perhaps he would suffer from it until he died, and by then there would be small joy in losing it. And all because of that hard box on the ear which his master, Aron of Nybacken, had given him when he served as hired hand in Sweden; all this a hired hand suffered undeservedly because of the master. He had secretly shed many tears at the memory: How had God allowed this injustice to befall him?

  Now he lay listening to his ear until the noise sounded like a warning: Don’t go to sleep! You may never awaken again! Or you may wake up with a knife cutting through your scalp! You will cry out and feel with your fingers and find warm, dripping blood. . . . Better not go to sleep! Listen to what your ear says!

  But Robert slept at last, and slept soundly, awakening only when Karl Oskar shook him by the shoulders: It was full daylight, they must resume their walk while it still was cool—they would rest again later in the day when the sun was high.

  The pot was on the fire again, the food baskets open. Blinking, still with sleep in their eyes, the immigrants sat down to their morning meal and scratched their mosquito bites. The men keeping watch had not once had to warn the sleepers. Several times during the night Karl Oskar had heard a howl in the distance—it might have been wolves but it could also have come from human throats, for it had sounded almost like singing, and he didn’t think wolves could sing. During Jonas Petter’s watch a sly, hairy animal had sneaked to the food basket and attempted to scratch it open. It looked like a young fox, it had a sharp nose, a long bushy tail, and was yellow-gray in color. He had shooed away the creature with a stake and hung the basket in a tree, to be on the safe side. But the beast had scared the devil out of Jonas Petter later—it had come back and climbed the tree to get to the food basket! He had had to throw a fire brand at the animal before he could get rid of it. He hoped he had burned the beast good and well—in fact, he was sure he had—he had smelled the singed hair for quite a while afterward.

  It couldn’t have been a fox or a wolf since those beasts didn’t climb trees. Jonas Petter thought perhaps their night visitor had been an ape or large wildcat: the animal was long but short legged, and moved as quickly as a monkey.

  Fina-Kajsa had her own opinion: “You say he was hairy? Then it must have been Satan himself. He must have tried to fetch you when you were awake alone!”

  “If that was the devil, then I’m not afraid of him any longer,” retorted Jonas Petter. “If he is so badly off that he must snoop about nights and try to steal our poor fare, he must be near his end.”

  But Fina-Kajsa knew that the devil was afraid of fire only, and if the brand hadn’t been thrown after him, Jonas Petter would have been missing for sure when they awoke.

  “Did you hear the screech hoppers?” Ulrika asked. “I thought at first it must be ghosts or goblins. I couldn’t see a sign of them.”

  All had heard the continuous screeching noise, but no one had seen the animal producing it. Kristina said that crickets and grasshoppers were, of course, also different in North America—perhaps they were invisible here.

  Their walk was continued, but today the immigrants moved at a slower pace than yesterday, their legs weren’t so limber. Karl Oskar was footsore from his heavy boots, and his left leg gave him trouble intermittently. Johan, riding on his shoulders, grew heavier and heavier and he tried to persuade the boy to walk on his own legs. But after a few
steps he wanted to ride on his father’s back again: “You carried me before, Father.”

  “But don’t you understand, dear child, your father is worn out,” said Kristina.

  “He wasn’t worn out before. . . .”

  Arvid had a strong back and could carry more than his allotted burden—he relieved Karl Oskar and carried the boy now and again. Karl Oskar was more heavily laden than the others, and Kristina felt sorry for him; she could hear him puff and pant as their trail led uphill, and she knew that his left leg wasn’t quite well yet. He didn’t complain, not one single word, but she wondered where his thoughts might be: Hadn’t their troubles and inconveniences been greater than he had anticipated when deciding to emigrate? Here he lumbered along like a beast of burden—had he ever expected to haul his children on his back miles and miles through wilderness in America? She was sure he hadn’t. Yet he would never admit this, he would never admit anything was more difficult than he had thought it would be.

  “It’s too much for you to carry two children,” she said.

  “You also carry two,” he reminded her.

  They kept up their walk during the morning hours when the weather was cool, rested for a while during the noon heat, and continued in the afternoon as the sun grew lower. During the second day they did not meet a single person, either red or white. This did not surprise them. The forests were vast, yet sparsely settled. But as long as they were able to manage by themselves, they were just as pleased to find the forest empty of people—strangers weren’t always trustworthy.

  The ridge with the trail wound its way through ravines and clefts in the rocks. The terrain was hilly, the soil poor, and for long distances the ground was bare, with no signs of the trail. Then they walked where the going was easiest and kept close to the river that was to show them the way to Taylors Falls.