The Settlers (19 page)

He replied that they had gone through so much, as emigrants, that they were in reality older in body and soul than those of the same age who had remained at home.

This would be her seventh child. Her concern for her children would now have to be shared by one more, and she felt depressed not only for her own sake, but for the children’s sake. The more of them there were, the less each could expect.

If she and her husband stayed apart, she would not become pregnant again, but the holy bonds of matrimony intended that they should know each other bodily and beget children. God wanted them to enjoy each other in that way. And the physical attraction was so powerful between Karl Oskar and herself that they couldn’t stay away from each other for long. What took place between them was according to the Almighty’s will; through them He created new people. And now He had again created a life in her. What could she do about it? It would be sinful to attempt to avoid pregnancies by such devices as long breast-feeding. No one could expect to fool God with such tricks.

A pregnancy reminded a woman that God trusted her—it was a sign of his confidence in her, a blessing. Barrenness was a curse, a punishment, which, when it struck biblical women, caused them to lament.

Thus Kristina, again blessed, dared not offer the prayer in her mind. How could she ask to escape a blessing and pray for a curse? But couldn’t she ask the young minister if it would be sinful to pray that this pregnancy might be her last?

But when Pastor Törner came to say goodby she was embarrassed to ask him the question; her tongue refused to speak the words. He was too young. If he only had been an old minister, one she could have looked upon as a father, then it would have been different. With a man so near her own age, she felt too much a woman. And the pastor, himself unmarried, could hardly be expected to know much about these matters. She might embarrass him with her question.

Pastor Törner promised to return in the spring and help them establish a Lutheran parish in the St. Croix Valley. He had become deeply attached to his countrymen here. Now he counseled them not to become confused by the arguments between the many religious groups in America. After all, a fight for souls was better than spiritual indifference.

Kristina watched the young pastor from the door as he departed. She had not told him that on his return next spring there would be one more in the log cabin. Her seventh child so she calculated, would come into the world next May.

—3—

The shores of Lake Ki-Chi-Saga were most beautiful in fall when the color of the deciduous trees mingled with the pines. There stood a green aspen next to a brown oak, here a golden elm beside a red maple. The maples had the largest leaves and the thickest foliage—the scarlet flame of the autumn forest. When the sun shone it seemed the stands along the shore were on fire, burning with clear flames, so intensely did the leaves glitter. In Ki-Chi-Saga’s sky-blue water this leaf fire was stirred into billows. In the depths of the lake the shores’s maple forest burned with a strange, unquenchable fire.

In mid-October the leaves came loose from the trees and fell into the lake, swimming about on the surface, forming into large, multi-colored floats. The oak still held its leaves, but leaf-floats from maples, aspens, ash, elm, and hazel separated from the shore and started on long voyages. Inlets and sounds were covered with the summer’s withered verdure. The shore forest undressed with approaching winter and its garments floated away, while the trees stretched their naked branches over the water. Reeds and shore-grass rustled and crackled in the wind, and Ki-Chi-Saga’s water darkened earlier each day. The hood of dusk fell over land and water and thickened quickly into the dark autumn night.

In the evenings enormous flocks of wild geese, flying southward, stretched over the lake. Kristina heard their calls and honks as they followed their lofty course—the birds up there knew what to expect and moved in good time; winter was near.

Their fourth winter lurked around the corner, ready to pounce on them any day now. For the next five months Kristina would have to live imprisoned by the snow, chained by darkness and cold. She would have to bend before the sharp sickle of the winter wind, trudge through the snow in her icy, slippery wooden shoes, blow into her stiff, blue-frozen hands to try to warm them with her breath. And the frost-roses would bloom around the door inside her home, bloom the cycle of their season.

In the sky whizzing wings carried away the migrants; down here on the ground she stood and listened. She was chained here, she had her home here—here she would remain forever.

Then at times she caught herself thinking she was still on her emigration-journey; this was only a resting-place; one day she would continue her journey.

—4—

November came and no more calls were heard from the sky. The oaks lost their leaves. The weather was still mild, the ground bare.

Karl Oskar was readying himself to drive to Bolle’s mill at Taylors Falls before the first snowfall. He loaded the wagon the evening before: two sacks of rye, two of barley; with two bushels to each sack it made a good load for his trundle cart, as heavy a load as the ox could manage on the bumpy forest road.

He arose before daylight and yoked Starkodder to the cart; he wanted to start at the break of dawn to be back before dark. Johan, always awake early, wanted to ride with his father, who once had promised to take him along to Taylors Falls. But today his load was heavy and Kristina felt the boy should stay at home; he would only get cold riding on the load such a long distance. It wasn’t freezing yet, replied Karl Oskar, and as the boy kept on pleading he relented. It would be good for the boy to get out a little; he would soon be eight and children ought to get around a little at that age.

Children should be hardened was an old saying, but Kristina wound her big woolen shawl around Johan to keep him warm on the journey. She lingered in the door and looked after them as they rolled away into the forest; Karl Oskar walked beside the cart, the reins in one hand, while he steadied the wagon with the other. Johan sat on top of the sacks and waved proudly to his mother; the gray shawl, covering everything but his face, made him look like a wizened old woman.

The ox cart rocked and bumped in the deep ruts—how easily it could turn over on the bumpy road.

“Drive carefully, Karl Oskar! The boy might fall off!” Kristina called after them.

Her husband and son disappeared from Kristina’s view, enveloped by the gray mist of dawn. She sat down in front of the fire with her wool cards; she ought to card wool days on end, all of them needed new stockings before the winter cold set in, and besides the work made the hours fly. But she could not get the cart out of her mind; so many things could happen to Karl Oskar and Johan. Suppose they had to wait at the mill for their grind—then they wouldn’t be home until after dark and could easily lose their way in the forest. The cart might turn over and pin Karl Oskar under the load, badly hurt and unable to move. The cart might break down on the wretched road, preventing them moving from the spot, or Johan might fall off and break an arm or a leg. Busy with her carding, she still could not help thinking there was no end to all the things that might happen to an ox cart.

In the late afternoon she began to listen for the sound of the wagon; wasn’t it time for her to hear the heavy tramp of the ox and the rolling trundles? But she heard nothing. At last she put the wool cards aside and walked out to the edge of the clearing. Once outside she understood that there was still something else that might have happened to Karl Oskar, something she had not imagined—the very thing that must have happened.

Indeed, they had been forewarned. She should have remembered the previous evening—the sun had set fiery red as a peony.

—5—

The forest had much to offer a child’s eyes and the road to Taylors Falls was all too short for Johan. From his high seat on the load he had a good view of all the creatures of the forest. The flying squirrels, so much shyer than ordinary squirrels, fluttered among the distant branches like enormous bats. The woodpecker hammered his arrow-sharp beak into a dry tree trunk until the noise echoed through the forest. At the approach of the noisy wagon, large flocks of blackbirds lifted from the thickets, and the long ears of curious rabbits poked up from the grass in meadows and glades, their white tails bobbing up and down as they took off, their hind legs stretching out behind them. But the skunk, that evil-smelling animal, was not so easily scared—he sat down among the bushes and examined the wagon; better avoid that critter or it would piss on you.

Of all the animals, Johan was most familiar with the gophers, which were always visible near the house. Now he saw them wherever the ground was free of trees and bushes. The gophers had gray-brown coats with two black streaks along the back, and were bigger than rats but smaller than squirrels. They sat upright on their tails, blinking curiously at you, but if you tried to catch them they dove quickly into their holes. Gophers were not dangerous, Johan had been told, they neither clawed nor bit you. But the gray wildcat with its short legs and bobbed tail, which sometimes sneaked all the way into their house—he could both claw and bite, and if he was very hungry he might tear little children to pieces and eat them. Johan had been warned about that cat.

With a lumbering gait the black ox pulled the cart, the oak trundles turning slowly over stumps, into and out of ruts. The axles were well greased with bacon rind to prevent them from squeaking; Karl Oskar’s cart was no screech-wagon announcing a coming settler miles away. It was the first time in America he had driven a load with his own vehicle and his own beast, and the first time he was accompanied by his oldest son.

Johan had a mind ahead of his years, always quick to notice things around him. He had begun to help his father, looking after the cows and the pigs when they were let out, carrying in water and wood. He was a willing helper as far as his strength went. In time the boy would be a great aid to Karl Oskar.

“If you’re cold, come down and run beside the cart!”

No, Johan wasn’t cold; he wanted to ride on the load. The weather was mild and he was warmed by the excitement of his new experience, by all he saw and heard. He was only afraid the road might come to an end, and only too soon he spied the river; they had arrived.

Stephen Bolle, the Irishman, had built his little mill near the rushing stream above Taylors Falls. The mill house had been raised without a single nail; the walls were held together by pegs. The millstones were only eighteen inches in diameter; the small stones could grind only a rough flour. It was really a dwarf mill, a little makeshift contraption, but it was the closest one. Marine and Stillwater could boast of steam mills to grind the settlers’ crops.

The miller looked out through the door of his dwarf house, frightening Johan. Bolle was a thick-set, fat man with heavy white hair hanging down to his shoulders like a horse’s mane. His face was black-gray with white spots, like hardened, cracked clay, and in the cracks, dirt and flour had gathered; Bolle never washed his face. In the center of this black-gray, flour-white field, his mouth opened like a hole with one long, black tooth. To the boy the miller looked like an old troll.

One of his daughters, a widow, took care of the miller’s household, and a little granddaughter with fiery red hair ran around his legs, peeking curiously at the newcomers.

Stephen Bolle was a laconic man who grunted like an Indian; Karl Oskar could not understand half of what he said. But the Irishman understood the purpose of a man with grain sacks, and Karl Oskar knew the cost of grinding per bushel; further conversation was unnecessary.

There was one load before them; Karl Oskar would have to wait an hour until the other settler’s grind was finished, then his own sacks would be poured between the grindstones. Meanwhile, Karl Oskar and Johan opened their lunch basket: bread, potato pancakes, fried pork, milk from a bottle Kristina had tied in a woolen sock to keep warm. As they ate Bolle’s granddaughter, the little girl with the flaming hair, eagerly watched them. She tried to talk to Johan but he couldn’t begin to understand what she was saying. Her forehead above her snub nose was covered with freckles; she was the troll child and her grandfather the old troll; Johan disliked them both.

He asked his father about the miller and the girl and Karl Oskar told him that the Irish were a special race of people, unlike the Swedes except for the color of their skin. They were ill-tempered, always fighting among themselves or with other people. They quarreled willingly and worked unwillingly. But English happened to be their mother tongue and so they got along well in America, in spite of their bad behavior. That was the strange thing about this country—you might meet all kinds of people. So Johan mustn’t be surprised at the way people looked or acted.

The Irishman’s ramshackle mill ground slowly and it was one o’clock before Karl Oskar’s grain had been turned into flour. While they were waiting, the weather had unexpectedly changed. The sun was no longer visible, the whole sky had clouded over, and suddenly the air felt much colder.

The old miller dumped the last sack onto the cart, squinted heavenward, and granted, “Goin’ to get snow—pahaps—uh . . .”

The Swedish settler nodded goodbye to the Irishman and hurried to turn homeward. His ox cart would need four hours on the road and the day was far gone; he had no time to lose if he wanted to be home before dark. Of course he was familiar with the road and could follow his own tracks so he was sure to reach Duvemåla even if he had to travel the last stretch in darkness. Nevertheless . . . he urged Starkodder: “Git goin’! Hurry up!” But the black ox had once and for all set his own pace, and moved his heavy body with the familiar slow speed, shuffling his hooves in the same rhythm; this steady beast was not to be ruffled by whip or urging.

Johan had again settled himself on top of the sacks but after a couple of miles he complained of being cold. Karl Oskar helped the boy down and had him walk beside the cart to keep warm. Karl Oskar buttoned up his own heavy coat. It had indeed turned cold, and there was a peculiar thickness in the air, indicating a change in the weather, the kind that took place so suddenly in the Territory. Men said the temperature could fall from twenty above to twenty below within a few hours. And the Irish miller had croaked something about snow. Well, it was time, of course . . .