Vilhelm Moberg - The Settlers

A pregnancy reminded a woman that God trusted her — it was a sign of his confidence in her, a blessing. Barrenness was a curse, a punishment, which, when it struck biblical women, caused them to lament.

Thus Kristina, again blessed, dared not offer the prayer in her mind. How could she ask to escape a blessing and pray for a curse? But couldn’t she ask the young minister if it would be sinful to pray that this pregnancy might be her last?

But when Pastor Törner came to say goodby she was embarrassed to ask him the question; her tongue refused to speak the words. He was too young. If he only had been an old minister, one she could have looked upon as a father, then it would have been different. With a man so near her own age, she felt too much a woman. And the pastor, himself unmarried, could hardly be expected to know much about these matters. She might embarrass him with her question.

Pastor Törner promised to return in the spring and help them establish a Lutheran parish in the St. Croix Valley. He had become deeply attached to his countrymen here. Now he counseled them not to become confused by the arguments between the many religious groups in America. After all, a fight for souls was better than spiritual indifference.

Kristina watched the young pastor from the door as he departed. She had not told him that on his return next spring there would be one more in the log cabin. Her seventh child so she calculated, would come into the world next May.

— 3—

The shores of Lake Ki-Chi-Saga were most beautiful in fall when the color of the deciduous trees mingled with the pines. There stood a green aspen next to a brown oak, here a golden elm beside a red maple. The maples had the largest leaves and the thickest foliage — the scarlet flame of the autumn forest. When the sun shone it seemed the stands along the shore were on fire, burning with clear flames, so intensely did the leaves glitter. In Ki-Chi-Saga’s sky-blue water this leaf fire was stirred into billows. In the depths of the lake the shores’s maple forest burned with a strange, unquenchable fire.

In mid-October the leaves came loose from the trees and fell into the lake, swimming about on the surface, forming into large, multi-colored floats. The oak still held its leaves, but leaf-floats from maples, aspens, ash, elm, and hazel separated from the shore and started on long voyages. Inlets and sounds were covered with the summer’s withered verdure. The shore forest undressed with approaching winter and its garments floated away, while the trees stretched their naked branches over the water. Reeds and shore-grass rustled and crackled in the wind, and Ki-Chi-Saga’s water darkened earlier each day. The hood of dusk fell over land and water and thickened quickly into the dark autumn night.

In the evenings enormous flocks of wild geese, flying southward, stretched over the lake. Kristina heard their calls and honks as they followed their lofty course — the birds up there knew what to expect and moved in good time; winter was near.

Their fourth winter lurked around the corner, ready to pounce on them any day now. For the next five months Kristina would have to live imprisoned by the snow, chained by darkness and cold. She would have to bend before the sharp sickle of the winter wind, trudge through the snow in her icy, slippery wooden shoes, blow into her stiff, blue-frozen hands to try to warm them with her breath. And the frost-roses would bloom around the door inside her home, bloom the cycle of their season.

In the sky whizzing wings carried away the migrants; down here on the ground she stood and listened. She was chained here, she had her home here — here she would remain forever.

Then at times she caught herself thinking she was still on her emigration-journey; this was only a resting-place; one day she would continue her journey.

— 4—

November came and no more calls were heard from the sky. The oaks lost their leaves. The weather was still mild, the ground bare.

Karl Oskar was readying himself to drive to Bolle’s mill at Taylors Falls before the first snowfall. He loaded the wagon the evening before: two sacks of rye, two of barley; with two bushels to each sack it made a good load for his trundle cart, as heavy a load as the ox could manage on the bumpy forest road.

He arose before daylight and yoked Starkodder to the cart; he wanted to start at the break of dawn to be back before dark. Johan, always awake early, wanted to ride with his father, who once had promised to take him along to Taylors Falls. But today his load was heavy and Kristina felt the boy should stay at home; he would only get cold riding on the load such a long distance. It wasn’t freezing yet, replied Karl Oskar, and as the boy kept on pleading he relented. It would be good for the boy to get out a little; he would soon be eight and children ought to get around a little at that age.

Children should be hardened was an old saying, but Kristina wound her big woolen shawl around Johan to keep him warm on the journey. She lingered in the door and looked after them as they rolled away into the forest; Karl Oskar walked beside the cart, the reins in one hand, while he steadied the wagon with the other. Johan sat on top of the sacks and waved proudly to his mother; the gray shawl, covering everything but his face, made him look like a wizened old woman.

The ox cart rocked and bumped in the deep ruts — how easily it could turn over on the bumpy road.

“Drive carefully, Karl Oskar! The boy might fall off!” Kristina called after them.

Her husband and son disappeared from Kristina’s view, enveloped by the gray mist of dawn. She sat down in front of the fire with her wool cards; she ought to card wool days on end, all of them needed new stockings before the winter cold set in, and besides the work made the hours fly. But she could not get the cart out of her mind; so many things could happen to Karl Oskar and Johan. Suppose they had to wait at the mill for their grind — then they wouldn’t be home until after dark and could easily lose their way in the forest. The cart might turn over and pin Karl Oskar under the load, badly hurt and unable to move. The cart might break down on the wretched road, preventing them moving from the spot, or Johan might fall off and break an arm or a leg. Busy with her carding, she still could not help thinking there was no end to all the things that might happen to an ox cart.

In the late afternoon she began to listen for the sound of the wagon; wasn’t it time for her to hear the heavy tramp of the ox and the rolling trundles? But she heard nothing. At last she put the wool cards aside and walked out to the edge of the clearing. Once outside she understood that there was still something else that might have happened to Karl Oskar, something she had not imagined — the very thing that must have happened.

Indeed, they had been forewarned. She should have remembered the previous evening — the sun had set fiery red as a peony.

— 5—

The forest had much to offer a child’s eyes and the road to Taylors Falls was all too short for Johan. From his high seat on the load he had a good view of all the creatures of the forest. The flying squirrels, so much shyer than ordinary squirrels, fluttered among the distant branches like enormous bats. The woodpecker hammered his arrow-sharp beak into a dry tree trunk until the noise echoed through the forest. At the approach of the noisy wagon, large flocks of blackbirds lifted from the thickets, and the long ears of curious rabbits poked up from the grass in meadows and glades, their white tails bobbing up and down as they took off, their hind legs stretching out behind them. But the skunk, that evil-smelling animal, was not so easily scared — he sat down among the bushes and examined the wagon; better avoid that critter or it would piss on you.