The Last Letter Home (30 page)

“The King, the Queen, and the Princess Lovisa have given the sufferers in Småland 1,000 riksdaler: on King Carl’s name day a ball was given at Växjö to help the suffering in the Province, where masked persons representing diverse characters collected money. This brought in 586 riksdaler. Another 140 daler was collected at the Opera Cafe . . .”

Karl Oskar counted in his head: altogether 1,726 riksdaler, almost 500 dollars, really not bad.

Klas Albert laughed. Wasn’t it lucky for the hungry people in Småland that the King’s name day happened to fall in the middle of the winter, when the famine was at its worst? A royal house was indeed of great help to the people in years of hunger; the bigger the royal family, the more royal name days, the more bread for the starving subjects.

This king was rumored to have sense enough to admit that he was human; no Swedish king before had admitted as much. About King Carl XV it had been written that no false pride prevented him from bending his head and entering the humblest cottage.

“I’ve thought about something,” said Karl Oskar. “I would like to send a load of my wheat to the hungry in Ljuder.”

“What a Christian deed!” exclaimed Klas Albert. “Good, white American bread for the hungry!”

“But how can I do it?”

“I’ll take care of everything! And I’ll pay the freight!”

The businessman from Center City thought and planned quickly. He had connections with a freight office in Stillwater and he was certain they would send the wheat to Sweden. It was sure to get there, especially if they addressed it to the officials in Växjö, with instructions that it was for the sufferers in Ljuder parish.

But Karl Oskar was suspicious about officials in Sweden.

“Suppose they eat the wheat themselves?”

“Oh no! They wouldn’t dare! Don’t worry, Karl Oskar! You deliver the wheat to me and I’ll handle the rest!”

Said and done.

Karl Oskar had thought Klas Albert just happened to drop in this evening, without any special errand. Now it came out that he did indeed have a reason. Tonight all of them were told why the storekeeper of Center City had spent so much time on the road to their house this winter. One of the children in the house knew in advance: This evening Mr. C. A. Persson told Karl Oskar that his oldest daughter, Marta, had promised to become Mrs. Persson. They would be married a week from Saturday.

Klas Albert and Marta had got to know each other when he came to look after the lamp, and he had found many excuses to service that lamp. His real errand had been another all the time: It was for Marta’s sake he had come evening after evening.

Klas Albert had come to their house to take away one of the children. The years had fled and Karl Oskar had not realized he had a marriageable daughter in the house.

—3—

Karl Oskar Nilsson sorted twenty bushels of wheat, of the best he had, to be sent to Sweden. He packed it in strong jute sacks that ought to hold during the long journey to Småland. It made a good load and he drove it with his team to Mr. Persson’s store in Center City. This Minnesota wheat would make fine white bread for the hungry people at home.

Why did he give this grain to Sweden? He was not paying a debt with it, he was under no obligation to his native land. There he had wasted the best years of his youth in labor that had only increased his poverty. In Sweden those who governed had so arranged things that it did not pay to work. And he had no close relatives in need. His parents were dead, and hungry no more. And his sister Lydia had written at Christmas that she and hers had all they needed. Nor did he send the grain because he wanted to feel he was a good and helpful person. He did it because he knew what hunger meant. He had seen one of his children die because of hunger. It was in memory of little Anna that he sent this load of wheat.

Klas Albert had surprised him by offering to pay the freight. Why was the storekeeper suddenly so generous, he had wondered. Five minutes later he had been given the answer: Mr. Persson was going to marry Marta; the son-in-law-to-be wanted to be in with his father-in-law.

Karl Oskar Nilsson of Korpamoen would have been greatly honored if the church warden’s son, one of the best catches in Ljuder, should have proposed to his daughter. But among the Chisago people men were valued with other measures than in Sweden. The settlers did not ask who the parents of the intended were, they asked only what he himself was good for. Here it was Klas Albert who ought to feel honored in obtaining the daughter of the first settler at Chisago Lake.

Marriages took place quickly in America; a man and a woman might decide one day and go to the pastor the next. People got married on the run, as it were, like making a purchase in a shop while the team waited on the road. Only a week before the wedding Karl Oskar learned that Klas Albert and Marta would be married. They had not asked him if he had anything against it. The girl was of age this spring, the father had no say over her any longer. But the father-in-law wasn’t quite satisfied with his son-in-law-to-be. The light-hued storekeeper was capable and industrious, and Marta would be well taken care of as Mrs. Persson. But in her father’s eyes Klas Albert followed an occupation he did not think much of. And during the war he had made clever deals when his duty should have called him to war. To Karl Oskar, such a man was not to be trusted fully.

Moreover, he still needed his oldest daughter at home. Ulrika was not yet fifteen; it would not be easy without Marta. Yet Karl Oskar could say nothing: He himself had left his father at fourteen, although he had been much needed in Korpamoen. Now it was his turn to be deserted by his children. No one could change this: The young ones, in order to live, deserted the old ones, to let them die. Thus one generation succeeds another.

But there was something he wanted from Klas Albert in exchange for his daughter.

In the store in Center City he had several times seen a map of Ljuder parish. The year before Klas Albert emigrated he had been a surveyor’s helper at home, and when he left he was given a map as a parting gift from his boss, as a reminder of his homeland. Every time Karl Oskar had been in the store he had studied the map of Ljuder; it was on good, thick paper that he beheld his home parish in miniature.

And now that his neighbor in Sweden was to be his son-in-law he said to him, “Klas Albert, if you take my girl from me you ought at least to give me your map of Ljuder!”

Klas Albert thought at first it was a joke, but Karl Oskar insisted he meant it. He wanted the old map in payment for Marta. If this was not worth an even deal he was willing to pay for the map, whatever was asked.

This was a peculiar exchange. But as his future father-in-law was so anxious, Klas Albert did not wish to refuse; he gave him the Ljuder map. But he could not understand why Karl Oskar was so anxious to have the old map. What could he use it for? Why did he value the old parish chart so highly?

But Karl Oskar said nothing more on the subject. He folded the map carefully and put it under his arm.

The boy could not understand why he wanted it, and Karl Oskar did not wish to enlighten him: He would never again see the place where he had been born, but it was some small consolation to have it on a paper, where he could look at it. A paper was better than nothing to the farmer from Korpamoen who must die on another continent.

—4—

And one Saturday in March Karl Oskar’s Marta became Mrs. C. A. Persson. The first child had flown from the nest.

Karl Oskar felt rather disappointed that his oldest daughter married in such a hurry: Klas Albert and Marta ought to have been engaged for some time, as they would have been in Sweden. If they had delayed the marriage till summer he could have given them a real wedding. He could afford a big party for once. Now he confined himself to inviting a few old neighbors and friends—Jonas Petter and Swedish Anna, Algot and Manda Svensson, Mr. Thorn, the Scottish sheriff, and a few friends he had made while serving on the jury in Center City. One uninvited guest came, Samuel Nöjd. He brought a collar and muff of silver fox for the bride: with these he wanted to indemnify the brides father for the sheep his dogs had killed many years ago. The old trapper had broken a leg last fall and had been in bed all winter, and during this time he had grown kinder and more mellow. Karl Oskar accepted the gift as payment for the sheep.

Already early in the evening the newly married couple had left for their home in Center City, and Karl Oskar was left behind in the bridal house with his guests. He had brought home a couple of gallons of whiskey and a keg of beer, and the preparation of the food was in the charge of Swedish Anna, assisted by another Swedish woman from Taylors Falls. The dishes were many and well prepared and there was room for all the guests around the table in the big room.

Karl Oskar Nilsson himself sat at the upper end of the table with Jonas Petter, his oldest friend, to the right of him. Soon the men were perspiring and red-faced from whiskey. The clear, friendly light of the kerosene lamp spread its glow over full glasses and abundant dishes and over the faces of sated and happy guests.

Samuel Nöjd sat blinking against the lamp, fingering its oil chamber in curiosity. Jonas Petter warned him that the lamp might explode, he mustn’t set the house and the wedding guests on fire.

“That whiskey you’re drinking is more liable to catch fire than the oil in the lamp,” said the old trapper.

Everyone laughed at this but Nöjd went on: He knew what he was talking about, for he had once had a horrible experience with a German hunter friend, Andreas Notte. The German had drunk about a gallon of Kentucky straight a day for many years. One evening Notte, with many other hunters, was sitting around the campfire eating elk meat and beans and after supper he wanted to smoke a cigar. He put it in his mouth and struck a match. Then it happened: The German caught fire.

The burning match started a fire inside his mouth and flames shot over his face and ignited his hair. He tried to choke the flames with his hands, but they burned too. Notte let out some horrible roars and his fellow-hunters rushed to a nearby brook for water and poured it over him, bucket after bucket. But his innards were burning by then and they couldn’t put out the fire inside his body. When at last they quenched the flames, Andreas Notte was dead. Of their good friend there remained only a smoking cadaver which spread an obnoxious stink, like burning dung. Nothing was left of his face. His lips were burnt away and his mouth was only a gaping hole with the tongue left like a well-baked piece of rusk.

The German’s body had been saturated with whiskey, his breath was flammable and when he lit the match it caught fire. There had been a long piece about him in the paper under the heading:
Drunkard burned to death through internal combustion.

Accidents of this kind often happened in his homeland, said the Scot, Mr. Thorn. And this reminded him of something he himself had been involved in many years ago and which had scared many whiskey drinkers. A friend of his, Charlie Burns, also a Scot, had been bitten by a rattler which struck at him and bit him in the right arm. They were hunting beaver in the fall along the Minnesota River and Charlie was climbing over a log and didn’t see the critter. The arm swelled up until it was as big as his thigh. Now a person bitten by a rattler was supposed to drink as much cognac or whiskey as he could, at least half a gallon at once. But they had no whiskey or cognac, and Charlie swore and hollered in pain. Then Mr. Thorn made a salve of tobacco, gunpowder, and beaver fat which he rubbed into the swollen limb. But nothing sucks out the rattler poison better than the earth itself, and he dug a hole in the ground for his friend and rolled him into it. For three days Charlie lay with his swollen arm in the ditch. The first day he was delirious, the second day he prayed, the third day the swelling went down and he was able to swear again.

By and by Charlie Burns got well, but his face had changed color: It was greenish, exactly like the belly of the rattler. This was not unusual in such cases, said Mr. Thorn.

Wherever Charlie went after that, his green face caused a hell of a fright. People stared at him wherever he was, and all were sure that he was a drunkard and that his color came from drinking whiskey. One day he met a Methodist preacher who wanted to exhibit him to his congregation as a revolting example of what drinking would do. So Charlie hired himself to the Methodists and was displayed at all the meetings as a warning against drinking. Charlie had always been a sober person never touching whiskey, but now he became known far and wide as the worst drunkard in the world. He got half of the collections and earned good money for many years, working diligently in the field of religion, serving the cause of temperance, and saving many drunkards with his green face. Finally he retired and bought a big house in Chicago—he was still living there in great comfort, Mr. Thorn concluded.

Chicago! cut in Jonas Petter. He had been to that town last winter, and some sight it was! The houses were dirty and black as if tarred. Chicago was a den of iniquity, a home of unnatural vices, filled with sinners of all kinds—murderers, thieves, swindlers, sodomites, whores, and pimps. The women he had met in that town were decked out in plumes and feathers, like peacocks. American women were of course lazy and haughty and didn’t want to do anything from morning to night except work on their faces and deck themselves out. And their wicked ideas had spread to some of the Swedish women in America; there were actually Swedish women who now refused to polish the shoes of their men.

He had heard it was predicted that Chicago—world capital of sin—would be destroyed next year. On April 16, 1870, the lakes and rivers round the town would flood it and swallow it up, dirt and all.

“Well, I think they would fish up Chicago again,” said Samuel Nöjd. “The Americans are so clever.”

The whiskey and the beer had loosened the men’s tongues at Karl Oskar Nilsson’s party, and even those of few words wanted to talk. But the host himself did not participate much in the talking, he was busy attending to the guests and their needs of food and liquor. He was never very sociable—weeks would go by without callers in his house—and this wedding day was not a day of joy to him. There was now one less in the house and the child he most needed had moved away from him. She had deserted her father to be with the man she liked best, and according to life’s order it was the father who suffered the loss, and a loss was nothing to celebrate. But a party must be given by the father when his daughter was married.