Unto a Good Land (28 page)

Kristina’s eyes had come to rest on the men sprawling in the grass, and suddenly she burst out laughing: “Ulrika—look at those shaggy-bearded, long-haired men! Don’t they look worse than scarecrows?”

Unmarried Ulrika of Västergöhl joined in the laughter. None of the men had had scissors or razors near their heads since leaving Sweden, and now their hair hung down on their shoulders. Danjel had always worn a beard, but Karl Oskar and Jonas Petter, accustomed to shave at home, had left their beards unattended—it had been difficult to use razors on the journey. Arvid had a thin growth of beard and seldom needed a shave, and Robert had not yet begun to shave, but their hair had grown long. Gathered together in a group, all the men seemed equally shaggy and rough. On the journey, Kristina had not paid much attention to their appearance, but alone here in the forest she was suddenly conscious of their uncombed hair and beards: they seemed like a group of wild highway robbers. And she said, if this had been the first time she had laid eyes on Karl Oskar, meeting him like this in the forest, she would have been scared to death of the man and would have run away to hide as fast as her legs would carry her.

“Hmm,” said Jonas Petter. “The worst part is, my beard itches like a louse nest.”

“Our poor men are pale and skinny,” Ulrika said. “That’s what makes them look so frightful.”

Yes, Jonas Petter thought he had lost about fifty pounds from heat and diarrhea, his trousers hung loose around his waist as though fastened to a fence post. Their bodies were only skeletons covered by sun-parched skin. But all American men were thin; they were Americans now—and by and by they would also be rich.

Ulrika admitted that the men in America were skinny. But she insisted they were courteous and well behaved and kind and considerate toward women. She had never before seen a man like that priest they lodged with last night—he had even grabbed the pail out of her hand when she wanted to fetch water and had gone to the well himself. A minister in America fetching water for Ulrika of Västergöhl—what would people in Ljuder say if they had seen that!

Ulrika kept an eye on her daughter, who was now busy picking flowers.

Elin called to Robert: “Come and see! Such beautiful cowslips!”

Robert hurried to her side; he looked on the ground between the lush bushes but could see neither cowslips nor any other flowers. “Where are they?”

“They flew away!” the girl exclaimed in surprise.

“The flowers flew away?”

“Yes! Look, they are flying up there!” Elin was staring wide-eyed at a great many butterflies, beautiful yellow ones, sailing about above their heads. “I thought at first they were flowers.”

She had mistaken butterflies for flowers. And Robert thought perhaps she hadn’t been so much mistaken. After all the strange animals and plants they had seen in this country, he would not have been in the least surprised had he suddenly found flying flowers. Hadn’t they seen a flying squirrel today—a squirrel that flew between two trees and used his tail for a rudder! If squirrels in North America could fly, why not flowers also? “Anything might take flight!” Robert said.

They sat down near a raspberry bush and ate the juicy red berries.

Robert and Elin had made peace again, they had agreed they had nothing to quarrel about. She ought not to have been so talkative in New York, she ought to have kept to herself what he had confided about the captain’s slave trade. She had not asked Robert to forgive her for this treachery, but he had forgiven her in his heart. Besides, she had admitted to him that he had spoken the truth when, before leaving the ship, he had insisted that the Åkians would be unable to speak English when they stepped ashore, even though they were convinced they had been given the tongues of apostles. The only English words Elin knew, she had learned from Robert and not from the Holy Ghost.

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 noticed 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.