The Settlers (6 page)

Karl Oskar picked up his youngest son and held him gently in his arms. It wasn’t his oldest but rather his youngest child he wanted to show to his visitor; this little tyke was two-and-a-half and the only one of his brats born in America, the only one of his family who was a citizen of this country, he told Olausson. His youngest son was an American, almost the only one among the Swedish settlers in this valley. He had been baptized with the name Danjel but had already lost half of it—they called him Dan, a more suitable name for an American.

The Helsinge farmer patted the little American on the head. The boy, in fright, glared at the stranger.

“I’m Uncle Petrus, and you are Mr. Dan Nilsson. Isn’t that right, boy? You were born here and you can become President of the United States. Neither your father nor I can be President, we’re only immigrants . . .”

Karl Oskar laughed, but his youngest son did not rejoice in the great future that opened before him. He began to bawl, loudly and fiercely, and clung to his father’s neck with both arms.

“He’s shy, hasn’t seen any strangers,” said Karl Oskar.

Johan felt neglected and pulled his father by the pant leg: “We saw a snake, Dad!”

“A great big’un!” added Lill-Marta, all out of breath.

“A green-striped adder, Dad!”

“He crawled under the house . . . !”

“Well, snake critters will crawl out with the spring heat,” said the visitor. “Better be careful, kids!”

Four-year-old Harald stood with his index finger in his mouth and stared at the strange man who had come home with Father. Harald ran about without pants; the only garment on his little body was an outgrown shirt, so short that it reached only to his navel. Below the shirt hem the boy was naked and his wart-like little limb pointed out naked and unprotected.

Petrus Olausson quickly took his eyes from the child as if uncomfortably affected.

“Lost your pants, did you, little Harald?” asked the father.

“Mother took them . . . she’s patching . . .”

“He tore a big hole in his pants,” volunteered Johan.

“Poor boy—has to show all he has . . .”

Karl Oskar was holding his youngest son on his right arm; he now picked up his pantless son on his left. Sitting there some of the little one’s nakedness was covered. It seemed as if the sight of the child’s male member had disturbed Petrus Olausson; he no longer looked like a mild “Uncle Petrus.” Did he pay attention to what a four-year-old showed? The child could have gone entirely naked, as far as that was concerned.

“The kids grow awfully fast; they outgrow everything. Hard to keep their behinds covered up.”

Olausson stroked his long beard and said nothing. Karl Oskar felt ashamed before the visitor that his children had to wear rags. They had hardly been able to get any new clothes at all. All four were dressed in outgrown, worn-out garments, patches on patches. After the long winter inside they had been let out in the open again, and now one could see how badly off they were. The bright spring sun revealed everything as threadbare, ragged, torn, shabby.

“I’ve seeded flax—last year, and this year too. The kids will soon have something to cover them.”

“Well, at least they aren’t cold while summer lasts,” commented Olausson, as he threw a look at the father’s own pants, patched over and over again.

Karl Oskar walked ahead to the door with two children in his arms and two at his heels. The door opened from within and Kristina’s head covered with a blue kerchief, appeared.

“You’re late—I almost thought something had happened . . . ?”

“Yes, Kristina,” said Karl Oskar solemnly. “Something has happened—we have a neighbor now . . .”

The Helsinge farmer stepped up and doffed his hat.

“Yes, here comes your neighbor . . .”

Perplexed, Kristina remained standing in the door opening. Then she dried her fingers quickly on her apron before she took the guest’s hand. He told her his name and his home parish in Sweden.

“Svensk!!?”

“Still for the most part a Swede, I guess. We’ll be next-door neighbors, Mrs. Nilsson!”

“What a surprise! What a great surprise!”

In her confusion she forgot to ask the visitor to come in. She remained standing on the threshold until Karl Oskar, laughing, wondered if she wanted to keep them out.

Once inside, Kristina welcomed the farmer from Alfta.

“A neighbor! What a welcome visitor!”

Petrus Olausson looked about the cabin with curious eyes, as if to evaluate their belongings.

“Have you made the furnishings yourself, Nilsson?”

“Yeah—a little clumsy . . .”

“No! You’re learning from the Americans. Very good! They do things handily.”

Petrus Olausson praised the beds that Karl Oskar had made of split scantlings, fastened to wall and floor; there was something authoritative in his speech and manner, one felt he was a man accustomed to giving advice and commands. There was also a hint of the forty-year-old man talking to the thirty-year-old, but more than their difference in age was the fact that he had been in America four years longer than Karl Oskar.

The Swedish settler had invited Olausson to dinner without knowing what Kristina had to put on the table. She apologized; she had nothing but plain fish soup—boiled catfish. And maple syrup, bread, and milk—not much to offer a guest. It was the time of year when food was scarce: last year’s crops were almost gone and this year’s were still growing.

Karl Oskar remembered they had cooked the last of their potatoes only a few days ago.

“We have a bone of pork left,” said Kristina. “I can make pea soup. But the peas take at least an hour to cook, they’re tough . . .”

“Too long,” said Karl Oskar. “We’re hungry . . .” But it annoyed him that they had nothing better than fish soup to offer their new neighbor on his first visit.

“I can make mashed turnips for the pork,” said Kristina, thinking over what supplies they had. “We have turnips out in the cellar, they cook quickly.”

Karl Oskar picked up a basket and went to fetch the turnips, accompanied by his guest. He did not want to appear to Olausson as an inexperienced settler; rather, he wanted to show how well he had managed on his claim. He told him that more difficult than obtaining food was protecting it, against heat in summer and frost in winter. To build a cellar of stone as they did in Sweden required an enormous amount of work which he hadn’t had time for yet; he had used another device to protect the vegetables from spoiling. He had dug a ditch for the turnips behind the cabin and covered it with straw and earth. Under such a roof, about ten inches thick, the roots were protected against the coldest winter.

Karl Oskar stopped before a mound and with a wooden fork cleared away the earth and the straw. When he had removed the covering he knelt and bent down over the ditch. The mound had not been opened for a few weeks, and an evil stink filled his nose. An uneasy apprehension came over him. He stuck down his hand and felt for a turnip. He got hold of something soft and slimy. When he lifted his hand into daylight he was holding a dark brown mess with a nasty smell.

“Damn it! The roots are rotten . . .”

The older settler stooped down and smelled; he nodded that the turnips were indeed spoiled.

Shamefacedly, Karl Oskar rose. The turnips they had intended to offer their guest for dinner need not be boiled; down there in the ditch the roots were already mashed and prepared, a rotten mess.

“It’s on account of the early heat,” said the guest.

“I forgot to make an air hole,” explained Karl Oskar.

“Your covering is too thick,” said Petrus Olausson authoritatively. “Ten inches is too much—five inches would’ve been about right.”

“Then the turnips would have frozen last winter.”

“Not if you had covered the ditch right. You put on too much; you’re wrong, Nilsson!”

Karl Oskar’s cheeks flushed. He knew a ten-inch cover was required in order to keep the frost out. Only this spring heat had come on so suddenly he hadn’t had time to open an air hole. That was why the turnips had rotted.

With a wad of straw he wiped the mess of rotted roots from his hand. Those damned turnips weren’t worth a single dollar but he had wanted to show his senior countryman how well he preserved his food and kept it from spoiling.

And now, here he stood and received instruction from a master. It was not that he had done something wrong, he had forgotten to do the right thing. It was this that annoyed him.

They walked back to the cabin. Karl Oskar carried the empty basket, vexed and humiliated. Now what would they give their guest? He had seen in Kristina’s eyes that she was anxious to offer the best they had to their first neighbor, but not even she could prepare a meal from nothing.

However, at the door a delicious cooking aroma met them. Kristina had put the frying pan over the fire.

“I won’t bother with mashed turnips, I’ll make pancakes instead, it won’t take so long . . .”

She had flour, bacon grease, milk, and sugar, as well as some of the cranberries she had preserved last year. Now they would have cranberries and pancakes for dinner.

“Please sit down, you menfolk! I’ll serve you as I make them.”

The children might be a nuisance; if they smelled the pancakes she was preparing for their guest they wouldn’t leave her any peace. She had given each of them a lump of sugar and told them to stay outside and play.

Karl Oskar’s annoyance disappeared as he inhaled the smell of the frying pancakes.

“I believe you are a wizard, Kristina!”

She piled the pancakes in a bowl and even the Helsinge farmer looked pleased and appreciative.

“This is party fare, Mrs. Nilsson! Swedish food and Swedish cooking!”

Karl Oskar was pulling up his chair, ready to sit down at table, when Petrus Olausson, behind his chair, bent his head, folded his hands, and said grace in a loud voice:

We do sit down in Jesu name,

We eat and drink upon God’s word,

God to honor, us to aid,

We eat our food in Jesu name.

Kristina, busy with her pancakes, repeated the prayer with him. She was deeply conscious of the fact that nowadays they almost always forgot to say grace. And, as parents, Karl Oskar and she ought to set a good and godly example for their children. But the settlers had begun to forget their old Swedish table prayers. Only Danjel Andreasson, her uncle, never missed saying grace. And she had told Karl Oskar that they acted like hogs rushing up to the trough to still their hunger. To forget, in this manner, the giver of all good things was un-Christian, beastly. The difference between animals and people was only this: the dumb beasts couldn’t read.

But their new neighbor prayed over the food with a voice like a minister. He must be a religious man.

When she had finished at the stove, Kristina sat down at the table where the men were doing great honor to her pancakes. The guest told her that he intended to settle down in the neighborhood with his wife and three children.

“I never thought anyone would want to live this far away,” she said.

“Well, this is rich earth, and the lake has plenty of fish.”

Karl Oskar was eager to confirm that the earth was indeed rewarding. Last year he had planted four bushels of potatoes and had received forty-eight-and-a-half bushels in yield—almost thirteen to one. And rye and barley gave good returns: the seeds were barely out of his hand before they began to swell and grow and shoot up blades in great abundance. One could spread sawdust on this earth and it would almost grow.

Kristina thought however fine the earth was, it could never take the place of people. However great its yield, it did not help against the loneliness out here.

“We are not only seeking our living in America,” Petrus Olausson went on. “We are seeking freedom in spiritual things.”

He explained that he and his wife had turned their backs on the false and dangerous Swedish Church and had followed the Bible’s clear words and truths. After this they had been so persecuted and plagued by the clergy and the authorities of the home village that they had been forced to emigrate. They had followed Erik Janson of Biskopskulla and his group to Bishop Hill, Illinois, where they were to build the New Jerusalem on the prairie. But once in America, Janson had set himself even above God and had earned the contempt of all sensible men. After enduring Janson’s tyranny for three years, Olausson had left the prophet of Bishop Hill, the year before this despot was murdered. He had gone to Andover and joined a free Lutheran church.

Petrus Olausson helped himself to a few more pancakes.

“Have you broken out of the Swedish State Church, Nilsson?”

Karl Oskar explained that he and his family had emigrated of their own free will; they had not been banished, nor had they fled as criminals. But an uncle of Kristina’s and an unmarried woman in their group had been exiled by the court for heresy.

The rugged Helsinge farmer raised his bearded chin. In Sweden he had been fined two hundred daler silver because he had read a chapter from the Bible in his own house. In Helsingland and Dalecarlia many persons had been imprisoned for reading the Bible in groups. Holy Writ, the key to eternal salvation, was that dangerous for the wretched Swedish people. But here in America he could read the Bible from cover to cover, whenever and wherever he wanted, without punishment.

“Every evening in my prayer I thank the Lord God for my new homeland,” he said emphatically. “Sweden has been ruined by her iniquitous authorities.”

A scratching sound was heard at the window behind the guest’s chair; Johan hung outside on the window sill and stared through the glass at the people eating inside. He had barely managed to climb that high and his eyes grew large at the sight of the pancakes; his mouth moved as if he too were chewing. Lill-Marta’s flaxen curls could be glimpsed below the window—she was not tall enough to look through.

“Our young’uns smell the pancakes,” said Karl Oskar.

“Only curious,” said Kristina. “I just fed them . . .” The mother shook her hand windowward: how could they be so rude, looking at guests eating! The boy’s face and the girl’s curls disappeared immediately. Kristina looked uncomfortably at her guest; would he think her children didn’t have enough to eat? But he must see by their bodies that they weren’t starved. She herself never ate her fill until she knew they had sufficient. Well, perhaps a few pancakes would be left which she could give them afterward.