Swede Hollow

by Ola Larsmo

  Born in Derry, Ireland, Edward Phelan was a soldier from the military outpost of Fort Snelling who had settled in that long valley. In 1839, he was discharged from the U.S. Army in the middle of what would someday be called Minnesota. There he built himself a house with a proper stone foundation. Phelan left few traces behind, other than the suspicion that he’d been involved in the killing of another settler, as well as in some sleazy land dealings, which had forced him to flee to California. On his way there, he was murdered. His sole remaining legacy was a misspelled name on the first maps, as his name was assigned to the current that ran through the old glacial ravine. It became known as Phalen Creek. He also left behind the plot of land on which he’d built the wooden house, perched high up in the middle of the ravine, which one day in 1897 would become the dwelling place of Inga Norström from Dalsland, Sweden.

  A wind from the north is gathering speed over Lake Phalen, driving snow flurries through the morning, gusting through forests and then falling as whirling bits of ice onto the smokestacks and wheat silos along the banks of the Mississippi, where work has been going on nonstop all night, then making its way between the vertical, tall dark, brick façades in the warehouse district. Almost meditatively the wind wanders back across the river and follows the narrow glacial channel, circling down upon the rooftops that have otherwise been sheltered through the night.

  Ellen steps out onto the front stoop of the one-room house she has called home for the past two months and brushes off the fresh snow from the railing of the as-yet-unfinished porch. The steps up to the house had rotted through, and in order to get her mother to agree to move in, her father had to promise to build a new railing and stairs. They had turned out nice and solid, almost more solid than the rest of the house, which is already tilting a bit toward the bank of the creek, but the work has stopped for lack of boards and nails. Then more snow fell, and now they’ll have to wait until spring to finish building. But the wood under the snow is still fresh and bright, and Ellen likes the feeling of the wood grain under her fingertips. None of the other small houses farther down toward the creek has new-built steps. And none of them has a porch.

  A man starts singing hoarsely on the other side of the alderwood thicket next to the path. In the dim morning light she can’t yet see anyone, but she knows who it is. Then he comes into view, a tall and stooped elderly man, dressed all in black. He walks along, looking straight ahead without a glance to either side, as he sings loudly “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” It’s old Jonsson, the father of Horrible Hans, who has once again been overcome by the urge to sing. Whenever that happens, the old man sings nearly all day long without stopping, as he switches between hymns and comic ballads while he goes about his tasks as usual. Ellen sometimes wonders whether he even notices that he’s singing. But he does no harm to anyone, except for the fact that he often sings off-key. Right now he’s headed to his long, narrow, and dark house farther down in the Hollow—the house he shares with his nasty son Hans; the son’s thin, fair-haired, and silent wife, Agnes Karin; and the couple’s two equally thin and silent little girls. Now Jonsson disappears behind the empty herring barrels that are stacked against the end of the house, continuing to sing off-key, although now his voice is more muted.

  And though this world, with devils filled,

  Should threaten to undo us,

  We will not fear, for God hath willed

  His truth to triumph through us.

  Ellen is waiting for Elisabet. Even though her hands are freezing, she can’t resist running her fingers through the pillow of loosely packed new snow on the partially finished porch railing. It looks so soft, and each time the feeling of scorching cold is just as surprising, making her a little more alert.

  It’s still barely light outside, and the Lincoln School is only three blocks away, but they can’t be late. Elisabet always takes such a long time to get ready. Their teacher, Miss Swanson, speaks passable Swedish, but she has made it clear to her students that coming from Sweden gives them no advantage, and they are not allowed to speak their own language in the classroom. If they arrive late, Ellen will once again have to apologize to the entire class in English, and that’s something she can’t yet manage. For her and her little sister, the schoolwork is like long gray tunnels of incomprehension. Trying hard to concentrate and looking straight ahead, she has to make it through hour after hour of words that mean nothing to her. But it’s better to go to school than to sit home and not be allowed out at all, the way it was in New York.

  Mother pushes Elisabet out the door and Ellen wraps the yellow kerchief around her sister’s head as a scarf, knotting it under her chin. Ellen knows Elisabet will take it off as soon as they’re out of sight, but she does it anyway. Then they go down the three steps to the ice-covered path and head for the footbridge across the creek. Ellen worries that her little sister, stubborn as she is, will want to take the route through the tunnel instead of the stairs up to Seventh Street. She takes a tight hold on Elisabet’s arm, prompting an angry squeak in reply. But neither of them speaks. They’re both too sleepy to resort to words.

  The wooden stairs up to Seventh Street are steep and slippery. In places the railing is missing, but it’s still better than the Drewry Tunnel, where Mr. Lambine was run over by a brewery wagon while on his way to work. He died on the spot. That was four years ago now, long before they came here, but everybody still talks about it. Lambine’s widow received compensation from the brewer, Mr. Hamm, which enabled her to move out. Since then she has not set foot in the Hollow. But you can still see the mark where the wagon scraped against the tunnel wall and where Lambine died, crushed between a wagon wheel and the cement wall. That’s what the older children say.

  Ellen clutches her sister’s hand all the way up to the street, and neither of them glances around because then they might get scared and fall. Several of the steps have split apart and come loose, and the girls know they have to tread lightly on the third step from the top before they can reach the street. The steps are almost hidden underneath brushwood that no one has bothered to clear away, yet everybody knows the steps are there—like so much else, when it comes to the Hollow.

  They turn onto Bradley Street and hurry past Larson’s grocery store, its windows still covered with steel shutters for the night. Then they round the corner onto Collins Street, where the school looms, three stories high. A single window, belonging to the principal’s office, shines with a cold electric light from the top floor under the school’s clock, its dial also lit from within. Sometimes the principal’s silhouette can be seen in the window as he keeps watch to make sure all the pupils arrive on time. Ellen has never seen him close up, and she wouldn’t recognize him, although she knows his name is Mr. Watkins. The ice-covered schoolyard is now dark with children who are all heading for the stairs, so the two sisters wait until there is less of a crowd.

  Then everyone lines up outside the classroom doors, with the girls on the left, the boys on the right. Above them, from the white-plastered ceiling, hangs the only lit kerosene lamp beneath its bloom of soot. Suddenly the air is hot and so filled with the smell of wet clothing and kerosene fumes that Ellen finds it hard to breathe. All she wants is to go inside the classroom so this incomprehensible day can begin. Everyone is quiet except for a few of the Flaherty boys, who also live in the Hollow. As usual, they are whispering and jostling each other at the back of the line. She feels their sharp eyes looking at her and takes a firmer grip on Elisabet’s hand.

  By the time they emerge from the school again, the sky is covered with dark snow clouds. A faint glow comes from the city far away on the other side of the river. She is hungry. Her sister quietly intones a chant they learned in class to practice their numbers: “One little, two little, three little Indians, four little, five little, six little Indians.” Ellen doesn’t like the song. She doesn’t like the fact that her sister can’t carry a tune, and she hates the words. Elisabet pays her no mind, continuing her mumbled song as she walks. Ten li
ttle Indian boys.

  They pass Larson’s again, and now the store is open. They slow their pace. Ellen is dawdling as she peers through the window at the rows of wheat bread and, farther inside, the more or less forbidden glass jars of peppermint sticks. She squints her eyes to quell her hunger, which is again making her stomach churn. Today Mr. Larson is the one standing behind the counter, allowing a customer to scoop snuff from a cask. He refuses to touch tobacco himself, being a member of the Baptist congregation and not a snuff user, but he lets people buy it if they serve themselves. Inga says Larson lived in the Hollow when he first came to the city, but he pretends that never happened whenever anyone goes in to buy groceries.

  A snowball strikes Ellen’s temple, and for a moment the world goes dark. When she opens her eyes again she sees tiny stars against the gray sky and shadows coming along the street, jumping over the snow drifts. The shadows take shape, turning into the Flaherty boys, all four of them, along with two of their pals whose names she doesn’t know, but they also live in the houses on the other side of the railroad tunnel. Ellen pushes Elisabet behind her, between her back and the wall of the building, and stands with her head bowed, hoping the boys will simply go past. But not today. The next snowball hits her right in the stomach, but it doesn’t hurt as much. Then the boys crouch behind the snow drift left by the plow and begin pelting the sisters with a barrage of hurriedly made snowballs mixed with gravel, but they do little damage because they aren’t made of ice. Ellen closes her eyes and waits for it to be over, as Elisabet wraps her arms around her sister’s waist. Today the boys have apparently decided that one onslaught is not enough, and she hears them shouting in unison, “Norskies! Norskies! Norskies!” It was when she had tried to explain that they were Swedes and not Norwegians that they had become enemies, and ever since the Flaherty boys have yelled “Norskie” after them.

  Ellen is standing there with her head bowed and arms crossed when she hears a cracking sound followed by a sharp cry, like the yelp of a little dog being kicked. When she opens her eyes, she sees Micheál, the oldest Flaherty boy, lying in the snow drift with his hand over his mouth. She hears with surprise that he’s crying loudly. The other boys are holding ready-made snowballs in their hands, but they’re glancing around uncertainly, as if they’d woken from a dream. And bending over Micheál Flaherty is a big shadow.

  The man—or boy, he’s somewhere in between—straightens up and aims a kick at the boy lying in the snow, who cringes with fright. But the kick was only a threat, a “watch out or there’ll be more.” The big boy casts a quick glance in the girls’ direction and then turns back to watch the boys grab Micheál under the armpits and haul him to his feet. He is still holding his hand to his cheek and crying, but more quietly now.

  The big boy turns toward Ellen and Elisabet, and Ellen recognizes him at once. It’s Leonard Hammerberg, the only son of the widow who lives at the very bottom of the Hollow, among those who have lived there the longest. He left school in the spring. He’s wearing the gray jacket and cap of a railroad worker, along with a pair of real boots with steel-tipped toes. He looks like a grown man, but when he comes closer, Ellen can see his plump face and the brown fringe of his hair under the visor of his cap. She doesn’t know what to say so she lowers her eyes.

  “Damn micks,” says Leonard, and then a little louder, as if he thought they might not have heard. “Damn micks!”

  The little bell jingles as the door of Larson’s grocery store opens behind them. Larson himself comes out onto the steps, wearing a waistcoat and shop apron. He peers down at them as they stand there in the rectangle of light cast by the bare bulb from the store.

  “I don’t want any trouble here, Hammerberg,” the man says. “You need to settle any scores down in the Hollow.”

  Ellen stands up straight and opens her mouth to protest that it was the Irish boys’ fault, but Leonard merely touches a finger to the visor of his cap and replies, “Sure thing, Mr. Larson.” The door closes. Ellen sees that Elisabet has now stepped forward to take the big boy’s hand. Ellen raises her own hand, as if to pull her sister back, but she doesn’t know what to say. He did help them, after all.

  “Thanks, Leonard,” she says then. The girls start walking, with Leonard between them, and she notices that he’s heading for the Drewry Tunnel. She wants to refuse to take that route, but he’s going with them, and he’s practically grown up, so maybe it will be all right.

  “What cowards,” Leonard says, “attacking a couple of girls.” Ellen merely nods.

  “You’re the Klar sisters, right?” he says as he gives her a sidelong look. She nods. He asks how long they’ve been here.

  “Since before Christmas,” she says, adding without knowing why, “It’s hard to figure out English.”

  “It’ll come,” he says. “It’ll come.” Elisabet is still holding his hand.

  “Do you work for the railroad?” she asks, mostly just for something to say.

  “The Great Northern,” he tells her, seeming to savor the words, as if wanting them to go on and on. “Started after Christmas.” Then he smiles with embarrassment and adds, “Though I mostly do odd jobs here and there. Waiting for an opening, as they say.”

  They enter the tunnel’s lower vault, and their footsteps echo in the dark. Elisabet shouts at the top of her lungs, “AHHhhhhhh!!!” She does it partly so people will know they’re there, but mostly to make the echo as loud as possible. They walk through the dark, and Ellen thinks everything is fine, even though her temple still hurts. Everything turned out as it should, and they’re together and helping one another, as Inga always says they should. But when Ellen closes her eyes, she pictures Leonard bending over Micheál Flaherty, twice as big as the boy lying on the ground, and she recalls how he kicked at the air and how his face then broke into a big smile when he saw the other boy’s fear. She opens her eyes. It’s still dark all around them, with the sound of their footsteps on the gravel and ice echoing off the tunnel walls.

  :: :: ::

  What Anna remembered from those first weeks was how cold she was. A draft seeped in from every corner of the house they’d found, especially from around the only window. It made no difference how much they stoked the stove. She would lie awake at night, listening to the children breathing, especially Carl, as her uneasiness grew with every wheeze or gasp. Soon some form of sickness, all that was wrong in life, would overtake them; it always found its way forward. The boy still slept between his parents, and sometimes, as Anna hovered between sleeping and waking, she thought that would protect him from all invisible threats that tried to reach them the way the gusts of wind reached through the gaps in the wallboards.

  In late February a snowstorm raged for several days in a row, and the wind blew so hard it seemed to sweep right across the kitchen floor. The school was closed. From the window Anna could see nothing but white for as long as the daylight lasted, and she made the children stay in bed. When Gustaf went out to tend to an errand, he disappeared from view after taking only a few steps into the whiteness. Even the train stopped running for a day, and silence descended over the Hollow.

  Then the real cold set in. Overnight the snow was transformed into armor. The spring on the hill froze. She tapped at icicles to melt them for drinking water, and they broke off with a sharp ringing sound, as if they were made of metal. They would stick to her hand if she wasn’t careful. All sounds seemed louder than usual: the steam whistles from the boats far away on the river could be heard in the morning as clearly as the voices up on Bradley Street. All sounds seemed as close as the barking of the Irish families’ dogs. They barked ceaselessly down by the vaulted railroad tunnels, echoing so it was impossible to tell how far away they were. The train up on the embankment, which remained her constant fear, could now be heard over great distances. It was true that the engineer would always blow the whistle as the train neared the Hollow, but now the tracks started clacking only a minute before the locomotive appeared, practically hidden behind a plume of
loose snow and smoke.

  Inga came over, bringing warm loaves of bread she’d baked directly on the stove from cornmeal, which was something she’d learned from the Italians. The bread was crumbly and dry, but it tasted good while it was warm. Anna wished she had a little dab of butter to melt on top of the warm loaf, but no one had butter. The children ate the bread so fast that she was afraid they’d develop intestinal blockage.

  “That was fun,” said Inga as she swept up the crumbs on the table. “The snow was crusted so hard that I could walk on top of it almost the whole way. And I’m not a small person.”

  That was so typical of Inga. In her mind, so many things were fun.

  Gustaf hadn’t yet found steady work. Since New Year’s he’d gone out to shovel snow, and occasionally he was hired to break ice off the railroad tracks and switches. He had wanted to go across the river to seek work at the big mills, but everyone told him that wouldn’t be a good idea until spring. At this time of year so many men had been let go, even if they had a family to support. And it made no difference what language a person spoke. Yet up at the Hamm brewery, they required the workers to speak German.

  Gustaf would leave the house every morning, and sometimes he was lucky enough to have earned a few coins by the time he returned. Now and then Anna wondered if he stayed away out of sheer shame on those days when he could find no work. Right now she was so cold that she pulled the knitted shawl closer around her shoulders. Then she licked her fingertip to gather up the crumbs left on the table. The crumbs of cornbread shone yellow on the grained, gray surface of the table.

  “Things will be easier in the spring,” said Inga. That sounded comforting, but Anna reminded herself that Inga herself had not yet spent a spring in the Hollow. Yet she seemed to know more about everything in the area than those who had lived there ten years. She knew who was sick and who was well. Who was trustworthy and who was a liar. Where jobs were to be had whenever there were any at all. Every morning Inga would climb the stairs from the Hollow, just like the workmen on their way to the engine sheds and then proceed along the street, where she’d once again found work cleaning the homes of a number of elderly Swedish ladies, such as the widow Ingesson up on Seventh Street. Sometimes she also worked at the home of the pastor’s wife on Burr Street, though Inga didn’t care for the woman. Occasionally Inga would bring home small food packets that she would share with the Klar children.