The Last Letter Home (36 page)

The evening inspection would take quite a while for old Charles O. Nelson. His limp made him move slowly, he had to lean on his stick each time he moved his left foot. He took one long step with the healthy leg and two short with the injured one. He walked with bent back, he limped; shuffling along he found his way. It was a great effort for him and when he returned to his room he was completely exhausted. But it was his best hour of the day.

Today he was waiting for that hour, and he had an occupation that helped speed the time. He sat up in bed and pulled out a drawer in the table beside him. He picked up a large folded paper and began to unfold it, slowly, methodically, as if in so doing he would cheat the pain.

It was a map of Ljuder parish. It was his home district that was spread before him here on the blanket. Charles O. Nelson always had the map handy, was always eager to look at the thick, heavy paper with a miniature of his home village. Many years ago he had acquired this map from his son-in-law, Mr. C. A. Persson, “in exchange for his daughter” as he called it. He had lost his oldest daughter but he had received instead a map of his home village.

The map of Ljuder during the years had become worn from frequent handling by the old emigrant. It was made of good paper, but he had fingered it so often and turned and opened it, that it was wrinkled and barely held together at the creases. That was why he handled it so carefully.

Here before him he had his whole home parish with well-marked borders, from Lake Laen in the north to Lake Loften in the south. Across this paper his index finger found the markings, followed the roads he once had walked, stopped at places he knew well, familiar names of farms and cottages. Here was the crossroads where he had danced in his youth, the grove where they had celebrated sunrise picnics, wastelands where he had hunted, lakes, rivers, and brooks where he had fished. He followed lines and curves, he stopped at squares and triangles. There was so much to look for, so much to find. And at each place where his finger stopped his memories awakened: This was his childhood and youth.

How many times hadn’t his fingers wandered over this map. But he was never through with it. Each day he started his search anew. When he had found everything he was looking for, he began all over again. He had been thumbing and reading the map of Ljuder day in, day out, at night with the help of his oil lamp, when the ache assailed him, when sleep fled his bed, weekdays and holidays, summer and winter, year after year, until the thick paper was worn thin from all the thumbing and was ready to fall apart.

The map of Ljuder, spread over the blanket before him, had the shape of a heart. Somewhere near the center of that heart lay a farm where the old emigrant had taken his first steps on earth.

The old man in the bed was shut out from the present and had nothing to expect from the future. To him remained only the past. Again he found the paths of his childhood. Charles O. Nelson, Swedish-born farmer in Minnesota, was old, lame, and stooped, and moved with difficulty over the ground of his new homeland. But here in his bed he walked freely and unencumbered over the roads of his native village.

MAP

of

Ljuder Parish, executed 1847–49

by

Frans Adolf Lönegren, Official Surveyor

The map was well drawn and colors had been freely used. Lakes, brooks, fields, meadows, hills, groves, moors, bogs—each had its own color. The lakes’ surfaces glittered blue, like large ink spots, while smaller ponds and pools were only specks. Rivers and brooks showed their blue veins across the white skin of the paper. Meadows blossomed in green like fresh spring grass, and tilled fields were as yellow as buttercups in bloom. Hills and wastelands lay black, almost like dirty thumbprints. The pine forest was indicated by narrow black lines, like pine needles, and the deciduous forest with light rings, resembling the crowns of lush trees. In the meadows the surveyor had placed men with scythes, and in the wastelands horses, oxen, cows, and sheep grazed. Moors and bogs were gray stripes across the paper, almost like a splash of mud. Everything was there, everything was recognizable to the old one in the bed.

It was a well-illustrated map—he almost smelled the ripe crops, the pungent pine pitch, the sweet birch leaves, fresh milk, sheep wool, bog myrtle, meadow flowers.

The fat, red line across the map was the county road through the parish; village roads were marked in smaller lines of the same color, even paths, disappearing in the wastelands. The borders of farms were marked in red, each place was there, even the bridges, the cornerstones, the rights-of-way. Everything had its proper name in the right place, and the old emigrant found and recognized everything; he was again Karl Oskar of Korpamoen, strolling over his native ground.

The timber road through the pine forest, used only in winter, led all the way to Lake Loften. When the birches were just in leaf he had run barefoot on that road to fish in the lake, where the carp played in schools in the shallow bays, their yellow scales glittering in the sun as he pulled them out. From an alder bush he had cut a fork on which he hung the fish through the gills, and he could feel them dangling on his back as he carried them home, proud and whistling. Dried strips of bark in the ruts, from the winter timbering, scratched against his bare feet; some ruts were still moist and cool, sending shivers up his back. But he carried the glittering burden of carp, he was on the right road for a boy in spring; he was walking the barefoot path, the softest, the easiest path in the world.

He took a side road through the dark forest and came to a pool, all in shadow under the tall pines. The pool water was black-brown, the surface motionless. The ground swayed under his feet as he walked along the muddy edge. If you sank down here you would never get up again! He jumped in—the pool was bottomless. He would feel cold and shiver for hours after a swim in the ice-cold water. In that pool he had baited his hook for eel with white worms from the dunghill, and the fat, greenish eels he had pulled out were so old they almost had moss on them. Once he had caught a pike, and he had had to kill it with a stone it was so big—eight pounds it weighed, at least. So well did he remember the pool that he almost felt the chill vapor that always hung over it.

He continued on a road through a clearing to the sheep meadow, but first he had to climb two fences, which he did very easily by placing his hands on the top rail and swinging over it in one leap. It was fun to jump fences and stiles that way, but it was no sport for lame, aching old farmers.

Near the stile was the rabbit run, the finest in the village; he was always sure to get a rabbit there. On clear mornings in the fall, after the first frost-glitter on the grass, he would stand at this stile with his gun, waiting. He could hear the dogs pursuing the rabbit across yellow fields and through the underbrush until the sound echoed against the cliffs. This was the wonderful morning song of the forest, the sound of adventure to the boy, who stood motionless, tense, waiting for the rabbit to come along the fence toward the stile. He held the gun cock with his thumb—in a moment it would happen! The gossamer over bushes and branches glittered in the sun and the ground smelled of healthy autumn frost.

The boy had discovered the rabbit run at the stile by himself. And now the old man sought for it on the map and found it, and many other places that belonged to the time when he moved easily on the earth. His finger on the map was sure to find them.

There was Åkerby Junction, on the county road, where boys and girls met on Saturday evenings and danced under the open sky, and where those not yet men or women fumbled for each other in childish shyness. There were the crossroads, shortcuts, hidden, narrow paths where youth sought its way, and where he once had swung himself over gates and stiles. And of everything he had rediscovered on his village map he could say: Here I was rich and well pleased with my life. Of what use are my poor days now?

Charles O. Nelson adjusted the pillow behind his head. The auger of pain gnawed and dug into his back. An hour of pain had passed while he thumbed the old map. It was not a violent pain he suffered, but it was persistent, it never left him, it stayed where it once had lodged itself. On this he could rely: It would stay with him, for sure, as long as he lived.

But it was no danger to life: He would not die from his backache. Some people took a long time to die. Their strength ebbed but not their life. They kept on dying, day after day, through many years. They became useless, and lived to no one’s joy, least of all their own. But they were not allowed to die. They died stubbornly, through the long years, with plenty of time to stroll through old places.

A person ought to die when he becomes useless and not worthwhile any longer.

The old farmer folded the map and put it aside. He looked out through the window, up toward the sky, wondering if the good harvest weather would last. They had grown fine wheat this year, tall, heavy sheaves, shocked out there as far as his eyes could see. Now if they could only get it in all right.

Sometimes heavy rains fell in Minnesota this time of year. Once it had rained so violently that half his crop washed away.

Now he saw that the sky was cloud-free as far as he could see from this side of the house, and perhaps the dry weather would hold. But everything changed so quickly in America, here no signs were to be relied on. When the sunset was clear in Sweden you could count on fine weather the following day, and when the sun set in a cloudbank you were sure of rain. But that didn’t hold true here, perhaps because America was on the other side of the globe.

With his eyes and ears he followed as much as he could of what happened outside. As far as he was able to, the old one took part in the young people’s life.

He saw his sons leave the field and go into their house; he raised his head and looked after them. The Irish wench usually had coffee and sandwiches for the boys about this time in the afternoon. But he couldn’t see the grandchildren, they had left the garden; now he heard them down at the lake, where they were playing and carrying on.

He tried to keep track of those brats, for some reason; he wanted to know where they were and what they were doing. If he didn’t hear their howling or shouts for a while he began to worry.

The auger kept drilling, today his ache didn’t give up for a second. Today he certainly received his full pay, his reward for toil and struggle. This was his pay for clearing forty acres of land in America. And much was still due him, many days’ pay; he didn’t doubt he would be paid in full.

But then again there would be days when he didn’t feel it, and those were good days. As yet he could take care of himself, he required no help. He cooked his own food and washed his own dishes and kept his room clean. His daughter-in-law helped him with the laundry and the worst scrubbing, and the grandchildren ran errands if he needed anything. And occasionally an old neighbor dropped in; such changes were good. He didn’t do much visiting himself, hardly ever left the Nelson Settlement. It was now several years since he had gone as far as St. Paul. But he remembered well that last time, for he had been with Harald and they had seen a panorama in a tent outside Fort Snelling for twenty-five cents. It was perhaps the most remarkable thing he had seen in all his life.

The panorama was painted on long sheets of sailcloth, ten feet tall, and a man explained what the pictures meant. There was a battlefield of the Civil War—bloody bodies all cut in pieces, fallen soldiers lying across each other, long rows of corpses piled like firewood. It made him feel as if the war itself was in his throat, he had a nauseating taste of blood as he looked at those pictures.

They had also been shown how the Southern rebels had tortured their prisoners: They pushed the Union flag into the mouth of the Northerners: Men who fought for the Union ought to be made to swallow their flag! If the victims choked or lost consciousness, cold water was poured over them to revive them.

The panorama was remarkable, yet repulsive.

If Old Abe had lived and remained in the presidential chair he would surely have forbidden fools to travel about and show such bloody, cruel pictures. The settlers’ own President meant the South and the North to be friends again as soon as the war was over, to live as brothers in the Union. Those who raked up the old dried-up blood from the battlefields and put it on sailcloth to show for money, such people were fostering new hatred. Jesters who made money from spilled blood ought to be flogged thoroughly. They weren’t any better than grave robbers. But people did exist who would sell human flesh if they could gain a quarter by it.

There was also another panorama that he liked better: The Mississippi River was shown in its full length on the sailcloth, from the falls at St. Anthony, now called Minneapolis, all the way to the Mexican Gulf. A clever painter had traveled on a raft all the distance to New Orleans and while he floated along he had depicted the beautiful shores on a roll of sailcloth, and here in the panorama tent one could see the great water in all its majesty. Looking at it was exactly like traveling on this river through the heart of America.

The old man would never make that journey in reality, indeed, he might never make any more journeys; not even to St. Paul, if another panorama should come again, it was too difficult for him to move about.

The old settler moved again in his bed, sought a place for his back where the auger might ease its work a little. Sometimes it was better when he stretched out on his back, other times on his left or right side. He never knew in which position he could best escape that torture tool.

But today he could find no escape, no comfortable position. And that was why he picked up the map, to wander those paths he never more would see, to return to the places of his past.

He had once moved from one continent to another. He had once been Karl Oskar Nilsson, at New Duvemåla. How many years ago was that? Now he was the old man at the Nelson Settlement, and only one last move remained for him—from one world to another.