by Ola Larsmo
“David’s in jail.” That’s what Mrs. Lundgren had said, looking gloomy and much older, when Inga came in.
“In custody,” Constable Olsson corrected her, as if there were any real difference. She ignored him and exclaimed, “He’s killed Horrible Hans!”
“We don’t know that yet,” replied Olsson, sitting up straighter and looking annoyed, before adding, “I’m the one doing the talking here.”
The widow didn’t seem to be paying much attention to him.
It took a while before Inga could piece together the whole story, based on Olsson’s questions and Mrs. Lundgren’s curt replies. Inga wished more than once that David’s brother had been there to spread the great sense of calm that always pervaded him, although some people in the Hollow continued to insist it was nothing more than sluggishness. Again she recalled how David, without saying a word, yet unrelentingly, had compelled all of them to come to this place called Swede Hollow. He had done it so convincingly that they’d simply been caught up in his wake and could do nothing but follow along.
This is what happened. David had taken the train to Mankato, where his brother’s acquaintance had claimed to have seen a man who resembled Horrible Hans. At first he could find no trace of either Hans or his family. So he stayed in town and found various odd jobs, in particular with the local blacksmith, while he continued to ask around. Eventually he heard about a “German” family who had settled on an abandoned farm out by Lake Crystal. Many people had left the area after the harsh winter and depression of 1893, so there were still a number of houses standing empty, sometimes with farming equipment and other items left behind. The family had moved into the farm where the creek curved toward the lake, and it took a while before anyone found out they were there. But it was said the family consisted of a middle-aged man, his wife, elderly father, and two young daughters.
David remained in town where he’d gradually gained a reputation for being reliable and hard-working. But he never took any jobs on the Sabbath, not because he was religious, as he explained, but because he wanted time to look for “a place of his own.” Then he’d set off on long hikes through the area.
One day he came into the general store looking cheerful and said that he thought he’d found an abandoned house over toward Lake Crystal, but a bit farther out on the prairie. It was a windswept place, but he thought he’d be able to cultivate the fields even though they’d lain fallow for many years and needed to be reclaimed. He said there was an old plow that he might try to repair. He didn’t yet have any horses, and the house needed to be fixed up before it was even habitable. With some reluctance the shopkeeper allowed David to buy on credit a number of things he needed. He also advised him to go to the courthouse to inquire whether any documents needed to be signed.
After that no one heard much from him except when he showed up in town to work enough to make some cash to pay for essentials.
Spring arrived late that year. But when all the ice had melted away, the body of a man was found washed ashore along the Blue Earth River. He’d been there a long time, but his clothing was still intact. And in his pocket was a note from a store in Mankato. It was an IOU. The signature could no longer be deciphered, but when the note was shown to the shopkeeper, he knew what goods it referred to. The note belonged to that surly and morose “German” named Hans Johnson who hailed from the region of Kinna in Västergötland. The man was also known as Horrible Hans, although nobody in his new place of residence had ever heard him called by that name.
When the sheriff’s men went out to the remote location of his farm, they found Agnes Karin and her two girls living there. They said that Hans had left the farm one morning about a month earlier and had never come back. The fact that they hadn’t asked anyone for help was due partly to the language barrier, explained Agnes Karin, whose older daughter assisted her in talking to the men. Also, her husband had left before, although he’d never been gone this long. Agnes Karin stated several times that it was not unusual for her husband to take off on long expeditions in order to find various ways to make money, and they never knew where he went or when he would return home. But as it says in the records of the hearing, it was clear that the two spouses were not on the best of terms.
What was strange, as the sheriff’s deputy later stated at the hearing, was that the corpse was wearing only a waistcoat, shirt, and pants. And the man’s winter coat was still hanging on a hook inside the big dilapidated parlor. When Agnes Karin was asked what her husband was wearing when he disappeared, she said she wasn’t quite sure because he’d left early in the morning when she and the children were still asleep. When she was later asked whether he really could afford to have two winter coats, and in that case the river might have carried off one of them, she said that her husband didn’t like her to “poke around in his things.”
On that occasion the two men made do with a round of questioning. Before they headed back to town, one of them asked, a bit anxiously, how the woman and her daughters were going to manage way out there on the farm. Agnes Karin told them that for a time at least her elderly father-in-law would continue to be part of the household, and they also received a good deal of help from their new neighbor, who had recently moved into the abandoned farm a bit farther downriver. Luckily enough, the man was also from Sweden.
There are several photographs of Agnes Karin and also one of David Lundgren. Agnes Karin has a thin face with slightly bulging eyes. In the picture where she is not wearing a kerchief, her hair appears to be quite thin. She looks young and childish, yet she was already past thirty when the picture was taken.
The photo of David Lundgren is from the prison in Stillwater after he’d served nearly half of his sentence. He’s looking down, at some spot below the camera lens. His gaze is dark, but there is a strangely affable look to his face. The droopy mustache gives him a melancholy air. He still had thirteen years left in his prison term.
After the suspects were arrested and transported to Mankato from Iowa, it didn’t take long for the trial to begin. It lasted a whole week. Jonathan Lundgren had done his best to be present, getting there with the help of his fellow workers on the Great Northern. But it was hard for him to be away from work too long.
The person who ended up talking to the sheriff was Horrible Hans’s old father. Previously, he hadn’t said anything during the initial interviews, when Agnes Karin and David were already in custody. But when the authorities sat him down and questioned him with the aid of an interpreter, the old man had plenty to tell them. He said that everything had been fine until David Lundgren had again appeared in their lives. Both Hans and Agnes Karin had recognized him at once. One day he was simply standing out in the road, staring at their house. He never came to the door, just appeared occasionally and stood there looking at the house. This was a familiar situation. Horrible Hans’s innate bad temper grew worse, turning as fierce as before. According to what Agnes Karin later testified, he’d started beating her and the children worse than he’d done in a long while, even though this time they didn’t dare exchange a single word with David Lundgren. From the house they would see him appear off in the distance, and after a while he would leave. That was all. But his presence was constantly felt, even when they couldn’t see him.
The statements and testimonies diverged widely as to what actually happened on the day that Hans died. The only thing about which everyone could agree was that he set out on the same morning when the big snow storm blew in. Agnes Karin noticed that he got up earlier than usual, and she heard the front door open and close. But that was all. As of that morning he was gone, never to be seen again. Outside, the snow was coming down so hard that it was impossible to see the road. It was impossible to see anything at all.
The prosecutor had his account ready, and he presented it to everyone in a loud voice. He agreed that it wasn’t plausible that David would have stood outside in the storm, waiting for Hans to appear. But maybe he was simply on his way to town and happened to pass his neighbors
’ house at the very moment when Hans came down to the road. Possibly both men had caught sight of each other and started arguing. Maybe it was all a chance encounter, as was often the case in such situations. But the prosecutor did not want to rule out the possibility that David had been on the lookout or at least had been waiting for just such an opportunity and may have seen his chance in the bad weather. Hadn’t he followed the family by moving here? Didn’t that signify intention? Suddenly, no matter how it came about, he’d caught his enemy and rival alone, with no one else in sight.
The attorney for the defense had a completely different theory. He reminded the court that David Lundgren had never owned a gun. Everyone could testify to that. He’d never had one in town, and he couldn’t have afforded to buy one after moving out to the country. It was true that the dead man had been gunned down, shot in the back. There was one individual, however, who did in fact own an old firearm—someone who had made a habit of carrying it with him wherever he went on his property. And that person was the deceased. He was also said to sleep with the gun propped against the headboard, which meant that at times Agnes Karin feared for her life and never dared fall asleep before her husband did. It might well be, said the attorney, that the honorable prosecutor was correct and the two men had assaulted each other in the storm. But wasn’t it more credible that it was the deceased who had set off that morning with a loaded gun in order to get rid of his rival once and for all? Or maybe he had dashed outside in his shirtsleeves, holding the gun in his hand, when he saw Lundgren down on the road. Wasn’t it more likely that a scuffle had ensued when the accused, in self-defense, struggled with the deceased for control of the weapon? And the gun may have fired spontaneously, since the weapon in question was an old and outdated model from Civil War days. And the attorney then triumphantly held up the old gun high over his head.
For his part, the prosecutor didn’t hesitate to remind the court that the deceased had died from a shot to the back. And he mentioned again where the gun had been found.
A couple of weeks after the body had been discovered, both sheriff deputies went to pick up Agnes Karin to take her to Mankato for questioning. But she wasn’t there, and no one knew where she’d gone. Horrible Hans’s old father was still at the farm, but he spoke little English. The older daughter did speak English fairly well, and she was able to tell the men that her mother had set off a week ago, leaving the two girls behind with the elderly man.
When the deputies then went over to David Lundgren’s house farther along the road, they found the place locked up. There was no sign that anyone had lived there for quite some time. The last snow from the storm ten days earlier had begun to melt, but there were no footprints or tracks left from wagon wheels in the yard.
The ticket seller at the train station was able to report that he’d sold tickets to a man and a woman who matched the description of Agnes Karin and David Lundgren. They’d bought tickets all the way to Sioux City, Iowa.
When the two deputies arrived in that city, they probably thought at first that they’d hit a dead end in their search. But at the station a gatekeeper told them that a couple who sounded like the pair they were looking for had gotten off the train a couple of days ago and asked about cheap lodgings. He’d advised them to inquire at the home of the widow Miller, right across the street.
The widow opened the door and told the deputies that was correct. A few days earlier a married couple named Bertha and Erik Swanson had rented a room facing the yard. They were tired and wanted to take to their bed at once. She hadn’t seen them since.
The rented room was in a separate outbuilding. With their weapons drawn, the deputies warily approached the door, which turned out to be unlocked. One of the men gave the door a swift kick and shoved it wide open.
Stretched out on the rumpled bed were Agnes Karin and David Lundgren, fully dressed and seemingly sound asleep. At first the deputies thought they’d arrived too late and the pair was dead, but then David opened his eyes and looked at them. He didn’t say a word. Between Agnes Karin and David lay the gun, but he made no attempt whatsoever to reach for it.
Great Northern Railway, Somewhere along the Line between Fargo and Grand Forks, North Dakota
June 1900
THE TRAIN HAD MORE THAN THIRTY CARS, and it had been traveling for an eternity. Leonard sat in the brakeman’s cabin in the freight car in the middle of the train, having dozed off for a while. He’d covered his face with his jacket as protection from the gusts of wind blowing through the open apertures. When the car suddenly careened, he jolted awake. Far away, as if on the other side of a dream, came two blasts of the engine’s steam whistle. Instantly he was on his feet, still so groggy with sleep that he swayed as he stood there, held upright only by the wooden boards on the walls of the cramped cubbyhole. Then he reached out through the open cabin door and grabbed hold of the ladder, which was still icy cold even though the sun had been up for an hour. His foot found the bottom rung, and all of a sudden he was hanging outside in the wind. He grabbed his cap and stuffed it in his pocket before starting to climb. He had only one minute until the next signal from the engine, which would be the second and last. He leaned over the brake control wheel on the roof of the freight car, taking a firm grip with both hands as he planted his feet to counter the swaying motion and began turning the wheel. Then came the second, longer signal. Now he was turning for dear life. From below he heard the sound of screeching brakes.
The entire length of the train slowed until it finally came to a halt. Leonard straightened up and scanned his surroundings. There was almost nothing on which to fix his gaze. Stretching out in every direction was a green expanse, with the morning sun hovering just above the horizon. A light breeze rippled through the prairie grass. He had no idea where they were. He stood there with sleep still clouding his peripheral vision. A slow and rhythmic hissing came from the engine’s boiler, which was now at rest. There was not a soul as far as the eye could see, and no houses anywhere. Off in the distance the landscape seemed to fold into several low hills. Nothing more. He could have been all alone in the world.
Then he turned around and the illusion evaporated. Ten cars up ahead he saw Vitale the Sicilian smoking his ever-present pipe and staring at the nearby locomotive. Something was going on up there, but Leonard didn’t know what it was. Johnston the engineer had come out of his cab and seemed to be dragging something off the cowcatcher. Maybe some animal had been on the track. Leonard wasn’t sure, nor could he tell whether it was anything important.
In the Hollow he was regularly reminded that being a brakeman was dangerous work. It was a job that a man took for a while in order to prove that he was capable; in the best case he would soon move on to something else. In the worst case he died. A brakeman could be crushed by a swiftly approaching tunnel entrance, or he might lose his footing while climbing the ladder and fall off onto the embankment or in between train cars. Leonard had personally helped to retrieve what was left of several brakemen who had died in that way. During the two years he’d worked for the Great Northern three men he knew had been killed, and one of them was from the Hollow. Yet he didn’t let such things bother him. He wasn’t afraid. If you died, you died; if you lived, then tomorrow was another day. He blinked his eyes and again surveyed the landscape.
He was no longer the youngest worker making a living at the Great Northern. Several boys who were barely out of their teens, just as he’d been a couple of years ago, had now started. They moved as if their bodies were a few sizes too big for them, and they were still intent on showing off. For his part, Leonard was becoming more like the other men, the ones who wore gray jackets and caps and spoke only when something needed to be said. After work they’d head back home, where they lived their other lives. He was starting to look more like those men, yet he was not one of them. And he didn’t think he ever would be.
But there were still things he wanted to do and skills he wanted to acquire. One of the older Swedes who worked on the railroad
was a man from Gästrikland named Larsson. He was the one who had taught Leonard how to couple the train cars—though not so much by telling him what to do, because Larsson was a man of few words. But he was an agile worker who could demonstrate how to lift up the link and at exactly the right moment drop it expertly into the coupler pocket. Then, with a swift turn of his body, he’d step out of the way as the train cars slid together with a deep sighing sound. Larsson had been on the job a long time without suffering any injury other than to his ring finger, which he could no longer bend. Leonard had wondered why the older man—who was well over forty—would choose to continue in the same job. Until, that is, he personally began to experience the giddy rush of heat to his temples every time the procedure went smoothly and at his command the train cars, weighing several tons each, would glide together with a dull thud. His pulse would race long afterward, steady and swift.
He’d also witnessed more of what Larsson could do. A short distance from the turnaround point in Fargo there was a side track leading nowhere. Occasionally, a freight train might be illegally pulling too many cars. That’s when some of them would be shunted onto the side track to wait for another locomotive to take them into the freight depot. If the train was running late, the train master would sometimes let Larsson tend to the matter all on his own. As the train approached the switching station, the engine driver would signal with three short blasts of the steam whistle, the sound echoing across the plain, and then he’d decrease speed. Larsson would be ready. Carrying a sledgehammer, he would climb between the cars and swiftly knock off the link-and-pin. The coupling would separate and the rear cars would roll slower and slower without an engine to pull them until the gap to the rest of the train was seventy-five to ninety feet. After the forward cars, still pulled by the locomotive, had accelerated past, Larsson would throw the switch in the track as fast as he could. Then the ten cars in the rear would roll onto the side track, clacking over the ties with Larsson still at the front, as if the small man were singlehandedly driving this engineless train into safe harbor. The speed gradually decreased, much like a boat soundlessly gliding toward the dock when the sail has been reefed in good time. Larsson would wave his sledgehammer in greeting, and the engine driver would respond with a brief and almost merry blast of the steam whistle. Crouched in the brakeman’s cabin in what was now the rearmost car, Leonard would feel a stab of envy, bordering on anger, toward the older man. He wished he was the one who sat in front on the coupling of a freight car that, without mishap, was coming to rest on this lonely side track surrounded by grass and silence.