The Last Letter Home (35 page)

We have a heat of 100 degrees here in Minnesota, it is the American counting called Fahrenheit, it nearly burns in bed at night, it is cooler to sleep on the floor.

My memory begins to fail me in many matters but my Childhood is clearer to me as the years fill up, I can see every place in the village and my childhood home. Is the Post with the Rooster that pointed the Compass still standing in the yard? What became of the rosebush to the front of the House? Do you remember when we played hide and seek around that bush?

I send you a draft for ten dollars, you can buy some thing you wish as my gift. Forgive my Poor writing and don’t forget to write to your Brother. Whole years run away between our writings. Only we two are left from our old home, we must not stop letters while we still are in Life.

My wish for Health and all Good.

Written down by

Your Devoted Brother

Karl Oskar Nilsson.

Epilogue

I

THE MAP OF LJUDER

Charles O. Nelson, a Swedish-born farmer in Minnesota, was lying quietly on his back in his bed in his house at the Nelson Settlement. It was midday, midweek, at the height of the harvest season. In the fields the crops were ripe, or drying in shocks; innumerable farm chores waited to be done. But they no longer waited for him; he stayed inside, in his bed.

In the evening the laborer takes his ax under his arm or his scythe on his shoulder and goes to his home. Charles O. Nelson was the laborer who had gone home from his work forever.

His bed was turned so he could see through the window and look out over his fields. What were the boys doing today? Were they mowing the wheat? Were they busy with the fallow? He could still perform small chores if they asked him. He could mend a harness, sharpen a plane, put a handle in a hoe or hayfork. But they must be chores he could do in a sitting position. He moved slowly, with much difficulty; he could not move without his stick. The old injury to his left leg had turned into a limp, and pains and aches assailed his back. It was because of the ache that he mostly stayed in bed in the old house, the one he himself had built. But when he built it he had not imagined that he would one day occupy it single and alone.

About a hundred yards away a new white main house had been raised, and there lived the new owner of the farm. It was a fine house, with two stories. It was the house he himself had wanted to build. In his mind he had built it many times, figured out how everything must be. He had placed the doors and windows, put on the roof, separated the space into rooms and closets to the smallest detail. And how many times hadn’t he described it to his wife: Next time I build . . . !

But it had not been granted him to raise that house. He had wanted to build it for his wife, and he wanted to occupy it with her. But after he had used some of the planks for her coffin he never did anything more about the house. The piled-up timber was used for other purposes, and at last the boys had built the house, and now there it stood. His sons had grown up, they were men in their best years, yet he never called them anything but the boys.

A new generation had completed his plans—it was John and Dan Nelson who had built the house he had planned. He himself was Old Nelson, the old man, in the old house, lying in his bed and looking out through the window at the men working out there.

Nelson Settlement was known as the oldest place at Chisago Lake, and sometimes curious people came to look at it. Some even wanted to see Old Nelson himself, since he had been the first to settle here. But he did not wish to see people he didn’t know; he might admit a neighbor or a friend, but he preferred to be left in peace. And he did not want to be in the way of the young people on the farm. He stayed by himself and followed the life at Nelson Settlement, his old claim, through the window.

The day seems longer to one who has left his work, the hours drag without occupation. In the past when he went to bed he used to plan his work for the following day. He lived through the morrow’s chores in advance. But this he need do no longer. He knew what he would do tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, he knew what he would do on all the following days—the same as today. He would lie here in his bed and watch life on the Nelson Settlement.

If time dragged too much for him inside, he tried to follow what was going on outside. He kept track of what the boys were doing, he participated in their chores: How many bushels of corn had they harvested? How many bushels of wheat had they sown? How many gallons did the maples give? What was the price of pork in St. Paul? What did they get for the potatoes they hauled to Center City? All this concerned him as much as before. This he couldn’t give up. But whatever the boys replied to his questions he knew what they meant: It was none of the old man’s business.

His past had been filled with activity. Every day had been a measure, running over with work. He had lived for his labor, it had been his lust, his worry. In his old age his concern was that he had nothing to worry about any more.

He had lived and worked one day at a time, and thus the days had fled and gathered into one great, heavy pile: old age. And that pile pressed a person down to the ground. A day came when one was no longer useful, when one lived to no one’s joy, when one was only in the way here on earth, an annoyance to oneself.

When his good days of work were over, he became awkward, irresolute, stood there fumbling and helpless as if he had dropped something but hadn’t noticed how or when he lost it. He was closed out from the present and had nothing to hope for from the future.

This suddenly came over him one day when his life was near its end.

Charles O. Nelson lifted his head from the pillow and looked out. Loud laughter and mirth echoed from the new building—healthy, young exclamations, cries of joy from children’s throats. The little ones were playing among the fruit trees that had been planted round the new house.

Old Nelson’s grandchildren were playing in their home at the Nelson Settlement. The laborer who had gone home was lying here listening to still another generation. Their laughter and cries and noise disturbed him, yet the sounds were good to hear. They would not have been heard if he hadn’t lived.

Yes, those kids playing there were his grandchildren. His oldest son John and his Irish wife had presented him with four, and his daughter-in-law was carrying a fifth. Two of them were so redheaded one could almost fire kindling with their locks. Who could have imagined that he, the farmer from Småland, would become related to Stephen Bolle, the Irish miller at Taylors Falls. The first time John had seen the girl he was still so Swedish that he was called Johan. That was the time they had been caught in the blizzard and almost lost their lives. Johan had thought the girl, thumbing her nose, looked ugly as a troll. She had made faces at him and stuck out her tongue and he had been afraid of her. But later, when he met the miller’s wench after she was grown, she didn’t make faces at him but probably something much nicer. Anyway, he went almost crazy if he couldn’t see her every week. And when she finally moved in as mistress there was nothing left of the sniveling child at the mill.

Dorothy Bolle became young Mrs. Nelson, not half as angry and irritable a woman as her fire-flamed hair would lead one to believe. She had a mind of her own which both old and young Nelson respected, but father-in-law and daughter-in-law got along well as long as they didn’t interfere with each other’s business. Nor could they understand more than half of what one said to the other, they couldn’t meet through words. And people can’t fight if they don’t understand each other’s invective.

Mary—once known in Sweden as Lill-Marta, later as Marta—had borne him three grandchildren with her husband Klas Albert Persson, the storekeeper in Center City. These three were begotten by Swedish parents, Swedish brats all through, yet they weren’t half as lively and clever as the four Johan had with his Irishwoman. Nor were they as good-looking, whatever the reason was. Some people said there weren’t better traits than Swedish traits in all the world but they might be mistaken. Those half-Irish brats out there made a hell of a stir and noise, as bad as the Indians in the old days when they camped at the lake. If they couldn’t get along in the world no one could.

The third son, Dan, was still single; he had stayed on the farm to help his brother and probably would remain there. But Harald had gone into business in Minneapolis and had married a German girl; he had two children. Old Nelson had met the girl a few times but there weren’t many words he could exchange with her, for she mixed German with her English and he used Swedish words. But he felt that this daughter-in-law was a kind, quiet, and capable woman. She was fair, and reminded him in some way of his dead wife.

Frank lived in Chicago and had married an American woman. Frank had not yet helped make him a grandfather. But Ulrika had married a Norwegian farmer in Franconia and she had three kids and was probably carrying a fourth, as far as he could judge last time she was home. This Norwegian son-in-law was bull-headed and difficult. He was stubborn as hell, like most Norwegians. He always bragged that it was the Norwegians who had shot Charles XII.

Old Nelson would soon have a full dozen grandchildren if he counted those on the way. And they were begotten and sprung from the four different races. When the parents came to see him he would always lift up the grandchildren and put them on his knee; he wanted to make sure they were healthy and weighed as much as they should. The children were unlike and spoke differently, but this was not to wonder at: a Swedish father, an Irish mother, a Norwegian father, a German mother. What a mixed group of children they were! No one could guess they belonged to the same family. But they did have something in common: the same grandfather. He was the father’s father or the mother’s father for all of them. Through Charles O. Nelson, the old one in the old house, these human plants were linked together.

When he emigrated his father had reproached him: You drag my family out of the country. Today he understood better than at that time what his father had meant: You take with you also coming generations and decide their fate; you decide for both the living and the unborn. If Nils Jakob’s Son now could have seen the great flock of his great-grandchildren at the Nelson Settlement he might have said: Karl Oskar, you have not only dragged my family out of the country, you have also mixed up my descendants with foreign races. In these brats not much is left of my race.

And the Lord only knew what might come of all this mixture of people with different roots from different lands. Would they form a race of their own? But there was no use speculating about this, he himself would soon be gone. At the most for only a few years he would see his grandchildren play around the house. Already a third generation was shooting up from his root, and soon the world would spin its turn without the originator of this family, without the old one in the old house. Nothing would change when he disappeared. People returned to dust every moment and nothing would change when his turn came.

Charles O. Nelson listened, annoyed and pleased, to the hubbub his grandchildren raised down in the yard. Undoubtedly they were up to something, perhaps ruining the new saplings his boys had planted last spring. He was proud of these new plum and cherry trees, he felt responsible for them in some way. They were tender yet could easily be broken; those kids should get a good spanking if they hurt them.

He could hear his son’s woman yell at the children; Stephen Bolle’s girl had a strong, piercing voice, but he couldn’t understand a word she said, she must be talking Irish. She and Johan shouldn’t be so soft with the children.

His own children hadn’t entirely forgotten their mother tongue. If they wanted to they could speak it. He reproached himself that he could no longer speak his native language well; when some newcomer arrived from Småland he realized how much he had forgotten. How could a man’s tongue change so much that he no longer could use words clearly which he had spoken thousands of times?

He looked up at the old creaking clock on the other wall. Only a quarter past two. Still many hours till evening and blessed sleep. But tonight it would be hard to sleep, the ache was coming alive. For a day or two his back would be all right, and then it would start again. The ache sat like an auger in his back, it had its home there, its designated place which it never left. The auger’s sharp, steel edge turned steadily, inexorably. It was drilling a hole in his back, but one that it never finished.

Cartilage had grown between the vertebrae, said the doctors in St. Paul and Stillwater. He had once received a blow across his back from the oak he was felling, and in that place the gristle lumps had grown. None of the doctors’ many salves, plasters, and liniments had been able to drive out the pain. He had tried all the remedies known, even those of the old country—lying on cat skins and dog skins, rubbing himself with sheep fat and pork bile, or concoctions of flowers and herbs, moss and ferns. Anything neighbors and friends suggested he would try, but nothing really helped. The auger remained in his back and kept on turning, and would keep on turning as long as he lived.

His backache was the final reward for his labor, for the farmer’s toil. He drew his pay daily in his old age, the sure reward for the oldster.

Charles O. Nelson moved a little in his bed, made his back more comfortable, turned and twisted a little to escape the auger. It hurt most in the afternoons, by evening it eased a little, and then he would walk about over the farm. This was an old habit, to inspect the Nelson Settlement before he retired for the night. At day’s end the old farmer walked to the houses that had been his, saw to it that every door was closed, everything put inside that might suffer from a change in the weather, that the animals were well, that all things—living and dead—were in good keeping. This was a farmer’s daily chore, and he had performed it through the years. Now, as he walked about and saw that all was well, he felt he was still the master of the Nelson Settlement.