The Last Letter Home (25 page)

Coming from far away they had sought a new home in a new country, and here they had found their permanent home: They had returned to man’s sure and everlasting abode.

Their resting place in the field, from early morning till late night, was marked by a thick swarm of big, black, fat flies. An uncountable number of these winged creatures held a wake over the dead settlers. A black cloud of the air’s buzzing life hovered over their corpses. The flies kept the wake faithfully, untiringly. They gathered and formed their dark cloud around the bier as soon as the sun began to shine over the field in the morning, and they did not part when twilight fell in the evening. During the night the swarm disappeared, it was invisible to the eye, but its sound told of its presence.

Uninterrupted, through day and night, the buzzing, whirring sound of the flies continued. From the black swarm over the field it rose like the surging peal of an organ; a monotonous playing as from eternity’s depth, it strained on through day and night. A buzzing, whirring psalm was sung over the unburied corpses. From the swarm of small, whirring lives organ music was played over humans who had returned to the dust.

Play, black organ, play over this field, and over the other hundreds where the tiller has come home. Play over these dead, sing the whirring psalm for those who here enjoy rest in the earth! Play and whir through day and night, strike up a hymn for a funeral aboveground for these tillers who here have settled for eternity!

On a hundred settlements all life had ceased; this black cloud was the wakers’ organ.

And the black organ hummed, it whirred, it buzzed its psalm over Danjel Andreasson and his son, and for all those who had fallen back upon the earth that owned their bodies.

On this day the black organ played at seven hundred funerals in the settlers’ country. It would play at other places, still waiting.

—3—

On one of the oldest farms only the husband and wife were left behind. Their children had been evacuated with their neighbors, who had left their homes and sought safety.

The wife lay sick and the husband sat beside her bed. He watched over her through day and night. While she slept he had sent away the children and he worried lest she should ask for them when she woke up. But only once did she wonder why she didn’t see them or hear their voices. He told her the boys were busy with the harvest and the girls were picking berries in the forest. The wife did not seem to suspect the husband was lying to her.

The sick one was not able to take any food, but as she suffered from fever-thirst she drank a great deal of water. From a bottle on the table beside the bed, the husband poured a yellow-brown, syrupy fluid into a spoon and gave it to the wife, who swallowed reluctantly.

On this farm quiet and inactivity reigned. No chores were performed; neither inside nor outside was there any sound of activity. No children ran about and played and laughed. The cattle had been let out into the forest, and in the evening the cows came to the gate and waited for their milkmaid. But she did not come to meet them with her pail and stool, she did not sit down to lean her head against their sides. In her place a man attempted to relieve their swollen udders with his rough, clumsy fingers which squeezed the teats awkwardly. In the fields the crops were left overripe and the heads grew heavier and bent lower each day. No scythe was touched, no straw cut, no sheaves bound, no shocks built, no ricks brought the crops to the barn. No one called any longer from the stoop, announcing mealtime, no one went to and from his work, no one went to rest or rose from his bed.

The place seemed desolate, deserted. But a man and a wife remained. She lay in her bed inside the house and seldom made any sound, he moved cautiously when he approached or left her. He went in and out of the house without her noticing. He answered her when she spoke but did not speak to her if she lay with her eyes closed.

During the last days he had not noticed any change in her. She herself had said she knew she would pull through.

Thus a husband kept watch over his wife. Only for the shortest moments did he leave his chair at her bed and stroll outside. Under the clear sky a serene peace reigned over his land these days. There lay his farm with all the crops, trees, fruit, grass—surrendered to itself. Under the flaming sun the earth enjoyed a long, lazy dinner rest. His claim sloped toward the shore, and it seemed as undisturbed and peaceful as the day he had discovered it, resting here and waiting for him since the day of Creation.

When he stepped outside he looked and always peered in the same direction: to the west, where there rose a sandstone cliff which had the appearance of a man’s head, but a hundred thousand times larger. There rose a high cliff wall, glittering red in the sunshine—a wall of threat and danger. The Indian head!

All his life until now he had followed this command: You must always help yourself! Always use your common sense and your strength! In every situation you must only trust your own ability. Never give up in danger! Never think there is no use going on! Always try once more! Never lose heart and say, there is nothing more I can do.

But these days he no longer made decisions as to what happened around him. What happened decided over him. He kept watch on the chair beside his wife’s bed, he walked outside and looked to the west.

And what he did did not help him any more.

—4—

No more reports about the Indian danger arrived. But Karl Oskar no longer kept track of the days. It had been in the early morning on Wednesday that Kristina took sick, and after that he didn’t count the days. With his whittling knife and a stick he started a new calendar: He cut a notch in the stick every evening—one more day. He cut the first notch on the evening the children had been sent to Cedar Island.

There were three notches now, and it was morning again. He was dozing on his watcher’s chair; fatigue had closed his eyes. He woke up startled by a noise outside.

No one had come to his house these three days. Now someone was knocking on the gable window. He rose and rubbed his smarting eyes. His face was pale gray in the dawn light.

Algot Svensson was outside, his gun under his arm and a good-sized food sack on his back. His torn eye shone dark red like a ripe cherry.

“It’s you, Algot! I thought maybe the redskins had come . . .”

“We’re building at the wall, back by the church. I’m only going home to do the milking.”

“Have you heard from the island?”

“I rowed over last night—all is well there. The kids are well and seem to enjoy it.”

“How near are the Indians?”

“Don’t know. Haven’t seen them hereabouts yet.”

About a hundred of the settlers were gathered back at Nordberg’s Island, said Algot. They were digging an entrenchment, and a small cannon had been sent with some men from Fort Snelling. A few more days of preparations and he felt sure they would be able to hold back the redskins at the church. Pastor Stenius himself was helping them, digging like a real farmer, he was so anxious to save the church from the savages’ violation.

But the men were uneasy about their families and farms; the crops were overripe, cows unmilked, calves and smaller animals unfed, and the loose cattle broke into the fields and did damage. This couldn’t go on very long. As far as Algot could learn every farm hereabouts was deserted.

He was going home to look after his animals and then he would take some food and other things to the people on Cedar Island. They had told him last night they had eaten all the potatoes and meat they had with them and had no milk for the children. The boys were chasing and catching rabbits but they had no salt. They had also caught some fish, but they were bothered terribly by mosquitoes and ants.

Algot said he would come back and pick up whatever Karl Oskar might wish to send over to the children, but he didn’t think they were suffering.

The neighbor left, and when Karl Oskar came in again Kristina had awakened. She was talking to herself, her eyes on the ceiling boards as if she were addressing them. He asked if there was anything she wanted but she replied in disjointed, incomprehensible words.

From his wife’s speech Karl Oskar understood that she no longer recognized him.

—5—

Another day passed with the sun shining unchangeably in a high, cloudless sky. From morning to night Ki-Chi-Saga’s surface glittered in its immobile smoothness. The leafy trees along the shores dipped their boughs in the lake’s water. In the reeds the young ducklings tried their wings, not yet quite ready for the long flight. No activities at the farms now disturbed the large flocks. Brave birds from the forest came and perched on the apple tree at the east gable, now tempting with fruit.

Karl Oskar cut a new notch in his time-counting stick.

Every evening after dark he saw fires in the forest, especially on a tongue of land in the lake to the east. But they didn’t disturb him; they were the settlers’ campfires across from Nordberg’s Island where the entrenchment was being built. The fires burned the night through and their glare was reassuring. The Indian watch was in order and ready. The tillers had gathered to defend their labor; the Chisago people would not be taken unaware.

The night fires in the forest were reminders of danger and war. But in daytime nothing could be seen that heralded imminent threat.

Cedar Island was not visible from this shore, but he could see smoke from the other islands where people from other farms had gone for protection. In the old days these islands had been camping places for the Indians during their hunts. During their first years at Ki-Chi-Saga he had often in the gathering dusk seen the hunting people’s tall flames and heard their eerie cries, so unlike those of ordinary human beings. What they then saw and heard had frightened the newly arrived immigrants, and when the Indians had their powwows, the settlers had stayed away from their fields so as not to divulge their presence. Now the whites had fled their new homes and sought safety in the redskins’ old camping grounds.

The whole section was now empty of people. But one morning a rider from the legislature in St. Paul came by and asked the way to Taylors Falls. He had no special news about the Sioux uprising, which had happened so unexpectedly, but he felt sure Colonel Sibley would choke it. Several thousand settlers from the counties around St. Paul had also gathered and been armed.

The rider spoke of the prices on Indian scalps: Tuesday, last week, twenty dollars had been paid for a redskin scalp in St. Paul, but by Thursday the price had risen to fifty dollars, and by Saturday to a hundred. With each new report of the Sioux cruelty to the whites the value of their scalps rose. The man from the legislature thought the price of redskin scalps would reach two hundred dollars before the end of the war.

Karl Oskar pondered the remarkable in this: Only when dead was a red man valued highly. Before the uprising no white would have offered a tenth as much for a living Indian.

The days which he marked on his stick slid away from him in a strange drowsiness. He sat watch by his wife night and day, he dozed for short intervals sitting on the chair. Daylight and darkness followed each other, but day and night mingled in one endless, monotonous, unchangeable day. Time did not move forward one second. It had stopped still for him. Yet when he picked up the knife to whittle a new notch he knew another day had again passed.

He worked his way forward on the stick to Tuesday, August 26. And still Kristina did not recognize him.

—6—

Karl Oskar lived his present life in the events closest to him. Therefore, he didn’t know afterward on which of his watch-days the report finally came—the message that the Indian uprising had been put down.

A couple of settlers on their way back to their deserted farms told him about it. He thought he knew them, but later he couldn’t recall their names or where they lived. They said that Colonel Sibley had come in time to relieve Fort Ridgely and New Ulm, and since the Sioux couldn’t storm those portals to the Minnesota Valley they would not be able to reach the St. Croix Valley. The settlers could now return to their chores. All the refugees on the Chisago Lake islands could return to their homes.

Karl Oskar seemed rather surprised at the men’s tale; he listened to their report as if it didn’t concern him, as if the Indian fright in some way had not pertained to him. The panic was over? The redskins were stopped! All could return home? But he was already home. He had been in his house all the time. He was on his farm, he need not return.

He was the only settler in the St. Croix Valley who had remained in his house during the Indian panic those August days. He had kept watch over his wife as long as her life lasted.

XV

THE ASTRAKHAN APPLES ARE RIPE

—1—

The sun had just risen; it shone through the gable window and slowly searched its way to the bed where Kristina lay. She had opened her eyes. On her forehead near the hairline drops of perspiration glittered; her complexion was refreshed and rosy. Her cheeks blossomed: A young girl’s coloring had returned to her after twenty years.

A moment before she had complained faintly in her sleep. Karl Oskar had picked up a towel and gently dried her moist forehead. When he bent over her, he saw in her eyes that she recognized him. For the first time in three days she knew him again.

Her voice was so low he had to make an effort to catch the words.

“Is it already morning?”

“Yea—but pretty early.”

“So quiet—the others aren’t up yet?”

“No . . .”

“The children . . . all of them are asleep . . . ?”

“I think so.”

“Only you up . . . already?”

“I have not been in bed.”

“You’ve watched over me?”

“Yes . . .”

“How kind of you. I must have slept long . . .”

“You have slept a long while.”

“I dreamed I was swinging . . . you remember the ox thong I used to put up in the barn at home . . .”

The blanket on Kristina’s chest rose and fell in rapid, short movements. Her breathing had been quicker and panting these last days.