The Last Letter Home (7 page)

“But I don’t know of anyone hereabouts who has gone,” she said. “You’ll be the only one from our settlement.”

“The others are too old.”

Danjel Andreasson and Jonas Petter were both near sixty; Petrus Olausson and Johan Kron were somewhat younger but both had reached fifty; Anders Månsson was a drunkard and useless for military service; Algot Svensson was about his own age, but last winter he had torn one of his eyes on a sharp branch and consequently was not able-bodied. The only one in their section who would have to go in a draft would be himself.

Kristina’s fingers returned to the piece of cloth in the machine. Would she have to prepare Karl Oskar for war? Then she must hurry up and get these shirts ready for his rucksack.

The memory of an evening long ago in another country came to her. The children were asleep, it was silent in their house, the fire had burned down to glowing embers. Then he had suddenly begun to talk: He had decided they would emigrate to America.

For a long time she had been against it; she wanted to remain in her home community. To emigrate seemed to her as perilous as to go to war. Many had fallen on the emigrants’ road. But he had thought through his decision carefully, and his will had prevailed. Now he wanted to go to war; this time too he had long pondered and weighed before he decided.

Kristina remained silent. Karl Oskar became uneasy. Had his decision hit her harder than he had expected? He added: It was not that he wished to participate in the singing of joyous war songs; it was not in happiness that he went, rather in deep sorrow. But he was forced to, he must not fail, his conscience bade him. If he threw off his duties on others, he would feel like a weakling, a clod.

“You mean you must enlist to set your conscience at rest?”

“Yes, to regain my peace of mind.”

“But your conscience says you must not kill your neighbor. Don’t you know the fifth commandment?”

“That commandment doesn’t hold in war.”

“The catechism doesn’t say war is an exception?”

“One must defend oneself.”

“The neighbor you’ll kill says the same: I must defend myself!”

Karl Oskar moved closer to his wife and took hold of her hand: “Kristina, are you against it? Are you absolutely against it?”

“I only want you to wait till you’re forced to go.”

“But I’d rather go of my free will than be drafted.”

“That’s because of false pride. It’s only vanity.”

She pushed back her chair from the sewing machine. “Do you want to know why I’m against it?” It came almost as an outcry. “I don’t want you to go out and kill people! I don’t want your hands to kill anybody! I don’t want your neighbor’s blood on you! I don’t want you to be guilty of people’s lives! I don’t want you to be a murderer, Karl Oskar!”

“Oh—in that way . . .” was his embarrassed reply.

“I don’t want you to go into eternity with blood on you! That’s why! It is your eternal life that is in question! If you take someone else’s you lose your own! I don’t want you to be lost forever! I am concerned with your eternal life!”

He sat quite dumbfounded for some minutes. This was not what he had expected to hear from his wife. He had thought she might say: You want to go to war before you are drafted? You want to leave your home of your own free will? Leave your wife and children, your fields and all you have built up here? Leave us alone with all the work to do here? You want to throw off everything on wife and children? Sacrifice your own life? How much do you really care for me when you are willing to make me a widow? How much do you feel for your children when you’re willing to make them fatherless?

How can you? How can you risk your life in war before you’re forced to? I pray you—stay at home! Stay and be my husband as long as this is allowed you! Remain here and be a father to your children as long as you can! Please, Karl Oskar, stay here!

Thus he had long in advance heard her persuade him, and that was why he had dreaded this moment. But now when it was here none of these words escaped her lips. She said nothing about herself or the children or the home. She only said:
I am thinking of your eternal salvation!

As a citizen he had received a call from the nation’s leader, a reminder of his duty. From his wife the husband and father now received another reminder, another call. But it did not concern this world, rather the eternal one.

—2—

Kristina had accepted her fate and made the best of her lot in life. Nothing could happen to her. That was why she didn’t ask him to consider her. She was not afraid to be left alone. Here at home she and the children would have God’s protection.

During this war summer she had often thought of her mother’s mother, whom she remembered from her childhood home in Duvemåla where the old one had lived on her “reserved rights” for thirty years. She had been left a widow while still a young woman. Toward the end of the last century the Swedish king had made war against the Russian empress, to gain honor and praise, and Grandfather had been forced to go to war. It was always the little ones who must go out and kill each other so the big ones could get along. And Grandfather never returned; he fell on the field of battle. His widow was left alone with seven children on a small plot. She was thirty years of age. For twenty years she slaved stubbornly, in great poverty, for her children. When she was no longer able to work, the farm was sold and she moved into her “reserved room”: Grandmothers reward in life was thirty years of loneliness in this little hole of a room—a farm woman’s life, not much noted or remarked upon because it was the fate of thousands of other women as the result of war.

So it was with women and war; the men went out but the wives were left home with children whom they alone must look after, feed, and foster. The men went out to destroy life, the women stayed at home to preserve it. The men must be alone, without their wives, the wives must be alone, without their husbands. And yet God had created man and woman for each others aid and comfort.

So it had been of old, so it was still, and so it might remain. Kristina had already reconciled herself to the lone woman’s lot in war-torn America.

—3—

Now Karl Oskar replied to her: She had got it all wrong. He could not become guilty of blood—in the eyes of neither God nor man—if he killed enemies in the war. The guilt would lie with the slave powers who had started the bloodshed. The North had done no injustice to the South. It was the South who wanted to rule America with force, and that they mustn’t allow or suffer.

Didn’t she know how badly they used humans in the slave states? Whoever taught a Negro to read must pay a fine of five hundred dollars for the first offense, and if he were caught a second time five thousand dollars! And should a person be caught a third time teaching a black person to read he would be hanged! Down there they forced the Negroes to work in the infernal heat in the cotton fields so they could sell the cotton cheap. If a Negro fled from the slavery-whip he was pursued by starved bloodhounds and these beasts tore out his entrails as soon as they caught up with him. Could any decent person be on the side of the slave states?

Had they lived in the slave states, he would have been sent to war long ago; all men between seventeen and fifty-five had been drafted. Had they lived in the South, it would soon be time for Johan to go. Here in Minnesota they were still free from the draft but by the first of next month it might begin. And he would feel ashamed and humiliated if he didn’t volunteer before then. Old Abe must think he was a shirker if he must be forced to do his plain duty. Therefore he must volunteer of his own free will, but he did not do it out of false pride: He was forced to by his conscience. He must gain his peace of mind.

Tomorrow he would go to Stillwater and join the Swedish company with other men from the old country who wished to perform their duty to the new one. He had just read in the paper that there were many others who felt the way he did. He presumed that, like him, they wanted to get rid of the pain in their consciences.

“Well, I guess you must then,” she said, as if talking to herself. “If you think you’ll have peace in your soul afterward.”

Karl Oskar was not very concerned as to whether or not he jeopardized his eternal life, she thought. She knew him; his mind could not be changed once it had been made up. It had never yet happened that he had changed a decision. Therefore there was nothing more to say.

Karl Oskar went out, and Kristina resumed her work, starting her sewing machine again. The pedals went up and down, the balance wheel whirled, the machine buzzed. If he was going to war she must finish his flannel shirts. And there were other garments he would need. Now she was in a hurry. Besides, she had other things to do than sit at the sewing machine. Yes, Karl Oskar’s clothing must be the most important of her concerns for the moment.

It must always have been that way, about preparing the husband’s clothing, when he was to go to war.

—4—

The following evening Kristina was again at her sewing machine after supper. She was expecting Karl Oskar back from Stillwater, but he was late. The children had gotten hungry and so they had eaten their supper without the father at the table. What was left of the corn pancakes she had put into the Prairie Queen to keep warm for him.

It was already bedtime when Karl Oskar returned. The sewing machine kept buzzing and muffled her ear so she didn’t hear him before he was inside the kitchen. She stopped the machine and went to take the plate with the pancakes from the oven; she poured milk into the pitcher and cut a few slices of bread. He threw his hat onto a peg and sat down silently at the table.

Karl Oskar seemed depressed and listless after his journey to Stillwater. Nor had he been especially happy when he left in the morning. But he had never been one of those who kept singing “We are coming, Father Abraham” even though he had a good voice, well noticed in church at the psalm singing. And by now that war song was sung mostly by those stay-at-homes who never had any intention of hearkening to Honest Abe’s call.

Kristina wondered if perhaps he had changed his mind. Had he regretted his decision at the last moment? Maybe he had thought he wouldn’t go out and seek death of his free will. Could it be that he didn’t want to leave them all perhaps never to see them again? Maybe he had changed his mind and would wait until he was drafted for the human slaughter?

Something was wrong with him, that much she could see. But she would not ask. He must come out with it himself. Perhaps he had enlisted and now regretted it—when it was too late.

He mumbled something between swallows—the pancakes tasted awfully good; he had only had a sandwich in Stillwater, he was quite hungry.

He had stilled the worst of his hunger when he said, “Kristina do you want to know—I’m not going to war . . .”

“You’re riot! Didn’t you enlist . . . ?”

“No.”

“You changed your mind in the end? You’ll wait till they take you?”

“No. I didn’t change my mind.”

“What happened . . . ?”

“They rejected me in Stillwater. I’m not up to it . . .”

“They rejected you!”

A powerful feeling of joy pierced Kristina’s heart.

“I’m not good enough to go to war. Because of my leg. My lame shank . . .”

Karl Oskar pulled out his left leg from under the table, held it up for his wife to see. It seemed she had never seen her husband’s left leg before. Meanwhile he sat and looked gloomily at the floor.

She had been wrong a moment ago; he had not regretted his decision. Instead he felt disappointed, ashamed. Yes, by jiminy, he was ashamed and gloomy because he had been rejected!

He bent down and felt the leg across the injured bone which he held pointed toward her.

“Some doctor had to examine me first, to see if I could do military service. The doctor rejected me, because of my leg . . .”

She was told how everything had happened. The recruiting office in Stillwater was housed in the old tailor’s shop across from the bank, and Swedes and Norwegians who wanted to join the rifle company had to go there. It was called a rifle company because they were to use the new guns with rifles in them to make them shoot much faster than the old guns. An officer in gold-braided uniform with many stripes and tassels had received him and the other volunteers. His name was Captain Silversvärd; he was a Swedish nobleman who had emigrated and he spoke the mother tongue. So in the beginning it was quite like home there in the office. And that man, the captain, was quite a decent sort of fellow and treated them all as equals, since they were all in America where soldiers are free men who themselves select their company commanders. In Sweden a simple soldier had only one duty—to obey—but here he could help select his own officers. The captain had told him he would make a splendid soldier and warrior, so tall and strong as he was; most settlers were of course accustomed to heavy work and severe conditions. He had been a little embarrassed by this talk and had said that he thought his big nose might be in the way when he tried to find the sight to aim at the enemy.

He was promised thirty dollars recruit money the moment he was accepted. During his term of service he would receive fifteen dollars a month besides food and uniform. Old Abe was to his soldiers as a father to his children and saw to it that they received everything they needed, the Swedish captain had said. Karl Oskar would have nothing to worry about while he was in the war.

Then came the physical examination and he was shown to another room where a doctor took charge of him. He had to take off every thread of clothing from his body, standing there so naked in that room that he felt ashamed even though only the doctor and another man were in there. The doctor looked over every part of his body, listened to his chest when he breathed, peeked down his throat, felt him in the groin, as if he must be able between the legs also, or whatever it was for. Then the doctor went to a corner and whispered words he had to repeat and showed him a picture with terribly small letters he had to read. And the medical inspector said the same thing as the captain: He was a fine soldier. Lungs, heart, vision, and hearing were as good as they could be in a human being, each part of his body was in excellent condition, all his faculties perfect.