Unto A Good Land

by Vilhelm Moberg

  One morning at daybreak as Karl Oskar stepped out of the shanty, his eyes fell on an unusually large stag with immense antlers drinking from the lake less than fifty yards from him. He picked up his gun—always near by and loaded with a bullet—and fired at the buck. The animal fell where it stood, shot through the heart. The fallen stag with the multipronged antlers was heavy, as much as Karl Oskar could handle by himself, but he managed to hang his prey by the hind legs to a pole between two trees. He skinned and drew the animal before Kristina was up; when she came out to prepare the morning meal, Karl Oskar surprised her by pointing to his morning kill—she had not even heard the shot! He cut a few slices from the carcass, which she fried for their breakfast.

  The weather was still warm, and meat would not keep long; if only they had had vessels to salt it in, they could have had meat for the whole winter.

  At Lake Ki-Chi-Saga there was little concern about meat at this time of year. But bread they must use sparingly. They had paid dearly for the flour in Taylors Falls. Kristina herself cut the loaf and divided the slices at each meal: the menfolk doing the heavy work rated two slices each, while she and the children had to be satisfied with one slice apiece. This made eight slices to a meal and left little of a loaf. The flour in the barrel shrank with alarming speed; here it was easier to find meat for the bread than bread for the meat.

  Anders Månsson had given them a bushel of potatoes, and they had bespoken a barrel for their winter supply. Butter, cheese, and eggs they must do without, since they had no cows or chickens. And milk! As yet they had no milk. Always, it seemed, they missed the milk. The children often pleaded for it, for sweet milk, as they had during the long journey.

  Kristina looked out over the vast, grassy meadow: there grew fodder for thirty cows! But they owned not one. If she had only one—one lone cow to milk mornings and evenings! In Sweden they had owned cows but were often short of fodder—here they had fodder but no cows. Why must this be so? And how could her children survive the winter in good health without milk?

  Why hadn’t Karl Oskar thought about this? He was the one who managed and decided for all of them. She spoke to him: “You must get a cow, to give us milk for the winter.”

  To her surprise, he didn’t answer at once; he turned away, embarrassed.

  “Why haven’t you bought one already?”

  “Kristina—I should have told you before. I am sorry. . . .”

  He looked pained, as though pressed to admit something shameful. He looked away from her and spoke with obvious effort: “We have nothing to buy a cow with.”

  It wasn’t easy for him, but now he had managed to say it; he should have told her before, since she would have to know sooner or later.

  “Nothing to buy it with! Are things as bad for us as that?”

  “Most of our money is already gone.”

  And he explained to her: When they arrived in Taylors Falls he had had ninety silver dollars in his belt. Ten dollars he had had to give the greedy wolves who freighted their goods from Stillwater; besides the barrel of flour and other foodstuff, he had bought a load of boards, some nails, a felling ax, and a few essentials for the building; these supplies had cost more than fifty dollars; now he had only thirty-eight dollars and a few cents left in his purse. Yes, they had had great expenses, everything they had bought was unchristian dear; and yet, Anders Månsson had not requested any payment for either their lodging with him or the loan of the oxen. He must repay him by doing favors in return, by and by. Yes, the money had gone awfully fast. But he had bought only essentials, things they couldn’t do without.

  It had originally been his intention to buy both oxen and cows as soon as they arrived. But he hadn’t known the price of cattle; a good cow cost thirty dollars, almost as much as they had left. And he still had to buy a few essentials for the house-building if they expected to have shelter for the winter. And next spring he would have to buy seed grain. He must lay aside money for the seed. If they had nothing to plant next spring, all their troubles in emigrating would have been in vain.

  That was how things were with them. They had already spent so much that a cow was out of the question; and yet, he had been as careful as he could with his outlays.

  “Have I bought anything unimportant, Kristina?”

  “No—I can’t say that you have. But a cow that gives milk is as important as anything else.”

  “Not as important as the house!”

  “But a whole, long, milkless winter, Karl Oskar! How can the children live through the winter without a drop of milk?”

  And she added: The children had lately gained in weight and strength, but without milk, there might be nothing left of their little bodies by spring. She had heard him say many times that above all they must keep healthy through the winter. To do this, they needed a cow. They had been poor at home, but they had always had a drop of milk for the children, all year round.

  Karl Oskar repeated: First of all they must build a house; they could get along without a cow, but not without a house. If the children were given other food they would survive the winter without milk, but if they were forced to live in the shanty, they would freeze to death. And she mustn’t forget that they awaited yet another tender life—that one, too, would need a warm shelter, that new life must be saved through the winter. They couldn’t live in a shed with a newborn baby through the winter; they couldn’t live in this hovel where daylight shone through the cracks, where it would be as cold inside as outside.

  He was right; but she insisted that she too was right. They must save their lives, and the question was how best to do this. Timbered walls gave protection against cold, milk against hunger and illness. They needed the cow as well as the house, she was not going to give in on this point—they must have the indispensable cow. Couldn’t he at least look about for one? Now that they had land, mightn’t they be allowed some delay in payment, wouldn’t people trust them?

  He answered, as yet they had no paper on their claim; an impoverished squatter was not trusted for anything out here. The Scot in Taylors Falls wouldn’t give him credit for a penny’s worth. Moreover, how could they expect to be trusted, strangers as they were? No one knew what sort of people they were. Here in America a newcomer must show that he could help himself, before he could expect help from others.

  Kristina thought this sounded uncharitable; a person unable to help himself needed help above all others.

  “Isn’t there any way we could get a cow?”

  “It looks bad. I can’t buy without money.”

  But she had made up her mind to have her own way, that he understood. She said, as a rule he made the decisions alone, but there were times when he must listen to her. He had persuaded her to emigrate.—She had never before reminded him of that, but he often reminded himself of it and felt the responsibility he had assumed. If she had wanted to, she could have said: You never told me we would be without milk out here! You never mentioned in advance that we must be without a cow. Had you mentioned that fact the time you persuaded me, then perhaps I mightn’t be here now.

  Karl Oskar thought long over her words about the children and the milkless winter. It could be a question of life or death. He handled their money, he was the one who had to choose—and the choice stood between two indispensables; there was no choice. How could he decide—when life or death might depend on his decision?

  —3—

  Robert was not very deft with his hands, he had never learned anything about carpentry, he had no feeling for working with wood. Karl Oskar could rely on him for only the simplest chores. Together they had felled the timbers and prepared the logs, and after this was finished Karl Oskar told his brother to grub hoe the meadow. His feeling was that the two of them, as brothers, ought to stick together, that Robert should remain and help him until he was of age and could take a claim for himself; he would pay his brother for this as soon as he could. Robert was now eighteen, in a few years he could choose his own farm from the thousands of acres
that lay here waiting on the shores of Lake Ki-Chi-Saga.

  “I’ll never take land!” exclaimed Robert with conviction.

  “What do you mean? Wouldn’t you like to be on your own?”

  “Yes! That is exactly what I want! Here in America everyone decides for himself. That’s why I wanted to come here.”

  Karl Oskar stared at his brother in surprise: Didn’t Robert want to be the owner of one hundred and sixty acres of this good earth? Was he so shiftless that he wouldn’t claim all the land he could on such favorable conditions?

  “If you don’t take land before it’s claimed, you’ll regret it,” Karl Oskar insisted.

  “Maybe. But I don’t think so.”

  And Robert thought to himself as he said this: Karl Oskar was not his guardian, he had never promised to serve as farm hand for his brother here in America; he had paid for his emigration with his own inheritance, which Karl Oskar had kept; he didn’t owe his brother anything, he was not bound to him in any way.

  Yet here his brother put a hoe in his hand and asked him to break land! He felt almost as though he were back home again, in his old farm-hand service; he had cleared land many long days, back in Sweden—now it was the same here. The tools he had thrown away in Sweden he had had to pick up again. And the American grub hoe Karl Oskar had bought was much heavier than the one at home. What advantage had there been in his emigration if everything was to be the same as before? To stoop all day long until his back ached in the evenings—this he had done enough of in Sweden. He had not emigrated to America in order to hoe.

  Robert could not understand his brother’s joy in squatting on a piece of land that required so much labor—a patch to plow, seed, and harvest, year after year, as long as he was able, all his life. A patch of soil he could never get rid of. Robert only wanted to do the kind of work that would liberate him from work. Only the rich man had no master, only the rich were free to do as they pleased; and no one would grow rich from hoeing the earth, even if he hoed to the end of eternity.

  Never, never would Robert become a squatter. While he hoed for his brother he kept listening to his left ear: through that ear the Atlantic Ocean had called to him, and he had listened to the call and crossed the ocean. He had come here to get away from cruel masters, from the servant law, from drudgery with hoe and spade—and now he turned the clods and lived the same life he had fled from. Again he heard the humming call in his ear: Come! Don’t stay here!

  In New York Harbor he had seen a ship with a red banner, its soft-sounding girl-name beckoning him: Angelica. In his ear he could now hear that name again, the name of the speedy, copper-plated ship with her singing and dancing passengers. Why hadn’t he stepped on board and joined them? Why hadn’t he gone with the Angelica?

  In the New World there were other fields than farmers’ fields. And Robert listened so intently to his own ear that he didn’t hear when Karl Oskar spoke to him; his brother had to repeat his words.

  “Have you lost your hearing?”

  “No. But I only hear in English.”

  The fact was that Robert would not admit his hearing was bad. He now explained to Karl Oskar that he tried to close his ears to the Swedish language, he wished he could listen to English only; in that way he would learn the language sooner.

  Robert also wished to consult a doctor about his deafness, but he must wait until he could speak English fluently in order to explain the nature of his ear illness. In the language book there was not a single word about bad hearing under the heading: Conversation with a Physician. There was instruction about what to say when seeking a doctor for malaria: I shiver and my head aches. I have vomited the whole night. Another sentence concerned immigrants with sprained ankles; there was also one for those with irregular voiding, and lastly one for people who didn’t know what was the matter with them, since they were sick in every way. For immigrants with other ailments there was no help to be found in the book; it was of no use to one who must say: I don’t hear well with my left ear.

  And a youth of barely eighteen would feel ashamed to go to a doctor and say: “My hearing is getting bad.” At the height of his youth to admit that he was hard of hearing, like an old man of eighty!

  He still hoped that the climate of North America would heal his ear. This he knew, however: the weather in Minnesota Territory was so far of little help. His ear alone told him so; in fact, it told him to leave! He must travel farther, farther west.

  There were other fields in this new land where he now labored with his grub hoe—there were gold fields in the New World.

  Why must he hoe turf here, when in another place he could hoe gold? What pleasure could he get from crops that might grow here? Why hadn’t he sought the fields where a crop of gold could be harvested? A gold harvester need not work in the earth year after year. He would get rich from one single crop—he would become free.

  And again and again Robert heard a song that had remained in his ear, a song he had heard sung in a foreign language by the deck hands on the Mississippi steamer while darkness fell over the broad river—a song about the winds of the earth and the waves of the sea. It was the song of promised freedom his ear had sung to him, long ago in Sweden; then the ocean’s roar in his ear had called him to cross the sea: Come!

  This time too he must obey that call.

  —4—

  Now in late September the weather was cooler. The air no longer felt oppressive, it was easier to breathe. It was fine working weather.

  But climatic changes were violent and sudden; without any warning a thunderstorm would blow up, booming and shaking the earth. The bolts blinded one’s eyes, the rain fell, lashing the face like a whip, pouring from the heavens in barrelfuls; in no time at all, every hole and hollow would be filled with water, while the stream rose over its banks in its rush toward the lake. And when the wind blew, it swept across the ground as mercilessly as a giant broom with its handle in the heavens. No weather in America was just right; all was immoderate.

  As autumn progressed the leaves of the trees changed color, making the forest seem more beautiful than ever. There stood the red mountain ash, surrounded by brown walnut trees, the green aspens among the golden-yellow lindens. The oak—the master tree of the forest—still kept its leaves green, as did the aspen and the poplar. Here grew white oak, black oak, red oak, and now they could recognize the different types. The white oak grew in Sweden also, its leaves turned brown in fall. The leaves of the other oaks now took on a dark-red sheen resembling blossoms; the settlers said that it looked as though these oaks bloomed in autumn.

  The meadow grass remained as fresh and green as before. It bothered Karl Oskar that this splendid fodder would wither away to no use. He said to Kristina, if only they could send home a few loads to the poor cow his parents kept in Korpamoen!

  It had been impressed upon him ever since childhood that the growth of the earth must be tended and gathered. Once, as a small boy, he had stepped on the head of a rye sheaf; his father had then unbuttoned his pants and switched him with a handful of birch twigs: he must learn to respect the earth’s growth.

  Now he made a handle for the scythe blade he had brought from Sweden and cut the grass on the plot he intended to hoe. Here he could mow as wide a sweep as his arms could reach, here he need not rake the straws together in swaths, the hay fell in one long thick swath behind him. In a few side swings, he had enough for one feeding of a full-grown cow; in a day, he could gather enough fodder to feed a cow through the winter. In Korpamoen, he had struggled with the hay harvest a whole month, picking the short thin blades from between the stones with the point of his scythe. He had labored from sunup to sundown, mowed and sharpened and cut against stones—yet he had gathered such a small amount of hay that he had been forced to half-starve his cattle.

  As yet he had no cattle to feed, but he couldn’t help saving some of this good fodder. It might be of some use. And he made a row of haystacks along the shore. It was good hay weather; what he cut one day, he tu
rned the next, and stacked the third day. Stacked hay was not as good as barn hay, and he decided to build a shed later in the fall after the house was ready.

  His work with the scythe over this even ground was a joy, and every day he felt more and more remorseful over the six years he had wasted on his stone acres in Korpamoen. He had left that farm poorer than when he took over; it had gone backward instead of ahead for him; he had put in thousands of days of futile labor on the paternal home: these were lost years. He had wasted his youthful strength in the land where he was born, and he realized that had he instead spent those six years of labor in this country, he would by now have been a well-to-do farmer.

  However, at twenty-seven he still had his manhood years ahead of him, and his manhood strength he would give to the new country. Here he would earn something in return; here he worked with a greater zest than at home, because the reward was greater. He felt his ability to work had increased since settling here, his physical strength had grown. The very sight of the fertile land stimulated him and egged him on to work. Also, he enjoyed a sense of freedom that increased his endeavor to such a degree that he was surprised at himself when evening came and he saw all he had done during the course of one single day: that much he had never managed in one day in Sweden!