Swede Hollow

by Ola Larsmo

  “This is Mr. Lundquist,” he said. “Lundquist takes care of our Swedish-speaking clients, and he needs more girls to handle his correspondence. Why don’t you have a seat here, Miss Klar, and show us what you can do.”

  He pointed at a low desk with a typewriter that was bigger than any she’d ever seen before. It was a wide machine with big keys that made her think of some sort of musical instrument. The younger man set a sheet of paper next to her and said curtly, “Copy that.”

  It was an invoice addressed to the Anderson furniture company in Minneapolis. She did as requested.

  “So,” said Lundquist when she was finished. “Type it again, but this time in Swedish.”

  It was now that she got scared. Some of the words in the invoice seemed impenetrable to her, words she had seldom or never encountered in the newspapers. She typed as fast as she could, hoping she’d guessed at the correct Swedish words, without looking up from the page. Now she was truly sweating, but she no longer cared.

  After a moment she thought it was all over and they’d show her the door. She didn’t remember any of the other girls spending this long in the room. But they kept giving her more papers to copy and translate. A short business letter about the transfer of a vacant lot, and an order on company letterhead from a printing press in St. Paul. She was starting to feel a little dizzy.

  Then the paper flow stopped. She sat on the chair without turning around, but she could tell that both men had gone over to the window and were conferring in voices so low that she grasped only a few words. She swallowed and swallowed, longing for a glass of water. Soon they’d tell her to leave. That was what she wished for most at the moment, to get out of this stifling, narrow room, out into the wintry air. In her mind she went over what she would say to Liz when she dropped off the sweat-soaked garments. Maybe she could get Elisabet to take them over to the laundry, though she didn’t know whether she dared entrust her sister with such an important task. Then the men came back and stood behind her.

  “I see that Miss Klar is self-taught,” said the younger man in English.

  She stood up, since it felt impolite to sit there with her back turned, but she wasn’t sure that was the right thing to do. She stood ramrod straight next to the chair, not looking at him.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s true. But I’ve had many chances to study others typing.”

  “No coursework? No certificate to show us?”

  She shook her head.

  Now Lundquist stepped forward. This time he too spoke in English.

  “You’re quite young, Miss. Some of your word choices were a bit . . . original,” he said with a brief laugh, as if he were genuinely amused by what he’d said. “But I’ve never seen anyone type so fast. And correctly. Both in Swedish and in English.”

  She didn’t know what to say. She curtsied, still without looking up, and Lundquist went on. “English is the language we use here in the office, of course. But I need at least two girls who can take care of our growing Swedish clientele. Not many people can make themselves understood in any language but their own. Were you born here, Miss Klar?”

  She shook her head. “No, Mr. Lundquist. But I was very young when we came here.”

  “Well, there’s certainly nothing wrong with your English,” he said. She sensed rather than saw the two men exchange looks. Then the man with the pitted face said, “What do you think, Miss? Can your father do without your help starting on Monday next week?”

  She looked up and saw that his eyes were green. There was something about one of the pupils; it was irregular and made it hard to meet his eye. But he was smiling.

  “I’m sure that will be fine, Mr. Shelby,” Ellen said as calmly as she could.

  She was back in the alleyway, standing next to the pile of boards with one hand pressed against the brick wall, noticing suddenly that she needed to pee so badly it hurt. She didn’t know what to do. So she squatted down behind the boards and hitched up her skirt. After that it took a while to find where she’d hidden her coat. It had frozen into a solid lump during the hours she’d been inside the Phoenix Building, and she realized she wouldn’t be able to put it on the whole way home. The temperature was still falling, and it would soon be evening. For a moment she thought she might throw up, but then she realized the ache in her stomach was because she hadn’t eaten anything all day.

  As she waited for the streetcar, the streetlights came on, block by block. It was so cold she was shaking, but she watched with delight as the light gradually spread along Fourth Street. She wondered whether someone was sitting in a room somewhere, pressing big light buttons and slowly illuminating the city each evening. The streetcar stopped almost without a sound in front of her as she stood there, looking the other way. Shivering, she climbed onboard with her token in one hand and her frozen coat in the other. As the streetlights floated past on the other side of the frost-covered windows, she sank into the rhythm of the wheels rolling along the tracks and of all the languages that were being spoken, gently and quietly, around her. She tried as best she could to stay awake.

  :: :: ::

  Jonathan Lundgren said that the worst of it was not, in fact, that everything had become more dangerous. It was that greater risks had to be taken for no good reason. That was the hardest thing to accept. He could understand that the younger men were the first to be let go when times were bad, since they had no family to support. But there were too few workers left, and eventually something was bound to happen. In the long run they couldn’t carry on with so few men. He thought they really needed at least a third more in order to keep the trains and tracks in good condition. Yet nearly a third of the men living in the Hollow had no work or were only able to pick up odd jobs here and there. He said it couldn’t go on like that. They needed to have more men working, and there were far too many without jobs. It just couldn’t last.

  Lundgren, who had formerly been so taciturn, had begun unburdening his heart about one thing or another. Gustaf Klar thought this was probably because Jonathan now lived with Inga, who had an opinion about almost everything. No doubt she was filling her husband’s head with all manner of ideas, which he then brought with him to work. But it was actually wrong to blame Inga. Jonathan had become a little more talkative after he had told Gustaf about his brother, David.

  “I suppose it’s because there’s no money,” ventured Gustaf. “Prices are high everywhere.”

  Lundgren merely snorted at this attempt to explain the world. “They’re stuffing their money into stocks in New York,” he said. “That’s where it’s all going. If we kept the money here in the Twin Cities, there’d be enough to build the railroad all the way to the West Coast and back, like that man Hill wants to do. But right now every dollar is disappearing in other directions—places where the money does nobody any good.”

  Then he said no more about the subject.

  There was work for those who had a family to support, including the newly married Leonard Hammerberg, though he gave his father-in-law as wide a berth as possible while on the job. But they’d all been forced to accept lower wages, so that for every dollar they used to get, they now received only seventy-five cents. Next month their wages might sink to sixty-five. No one knew for sure. Yet there was more and more work to do.

  The men would head off as usual in the wintry dawn, but when they reached the rail yards, they were now met with a desolation that sapped from their bodies all desire to work even before they picked up their tools. The area in front of the loading dock used to be a bustling commotion in the mornings, with crowds of men of all sorts—Finns, Swedes, Italians, and Irishmen—looking for odd jobs. But now it was deserted. There was no work for day laborers. At the end of the week Gustaf would come home with barely even five dollars. He would jam the coins in his pocket, and the whole way home he’d think angrily that he’d worked an entire day for free for the Great Northern. But, as another voice in his head told him, it was either that or no work at all.

  If not for
Ellen’s fancy new job in Minneapolis, the Klar family would have had a hard time making ends meet. She had to get up at the crack of dawn, almost an hour earlier than Gustaf. She would wash with green soap and then a special lavender soap that no one else was allowed to touch, scrubbing herself so vigorously that she woke everyone else. Then she’d take her fine clothes from the hanger up in the loft, quickly get dressed, and disappear into the dark night to make her way to the streetcar stop. She didn’t get back home until a good hour after her father. By then she was so tired that it was hard to get a word out of her about her day before she climbed into bed and instantly fell asleep. No one was allowed to touch her clothes, not even Elisabet when she came over to sleep at home on those nights when Leonard was away for a few days for work. On the other hand, Elisabet was so big now that she couldn’t climb the ladder Gustaf had made for the girls when they were old enough to sleep up in the loft. Now she had to sleep in her old bed next to the stove.

  Life went on. On some nights when Gustaf awoke feeling anxious, and if both girls were home, he’d imagine that things were back the way they used to be. But whenever such thoughts arose, his mind would drift perilously close to the images of Carl that would keep popping up if he wasn’t careful. Then he would go mute inside until he could make himself think about something else and try to fall asleep again. The family was getting by. It was a matter of taking one week at a time.

  In the morning Gustaf would set off like a sleepwalker with Jonathan Lundgren at his side. He heard his friend saying they were approaching some sort of limit as far as what was needed just to survive, and that the situation could get dangerous if things went on like this. Gustaf would merely grunt a few phrases like, “Yes, that’s probably true,” but he wasn’t really listening.

  Until, that is, one day in early March. The first hints of spring were appearing and the icicles, as tall as a man, outside the windows of the train repair shop began dripping in the midday thaw. Jonathan Lundgren came in, stomped the snow off his boots, and shouted so loud his words echoed in the huge, vault-like room, “Everyone outside, right now!” Gustaf realized the foreman must have sent him. He put down his tools and followed everyone else out to the slush and mud in the yard. About fifty men wearing gray jackets and caps stood there, and Gustaf again noted how few workers were left. He looked for Lundgren’s broad back and then went over to stand beside him as Foreman Lawson called for everyone’s attention from the loading dock. Gustaf heard him say, “Off the tracks,” and he knew what that meant. He went back to the shop to get sledgehammers and crowbars, and Lundgren followed him. This had happened before. One or more train cars would drive through a frozen switch and jump off the track. Then all the men and horses were needed to push the cars back in place. But Lundgren stared at Gustaf from under the visor of his cap and said, “Take the crowbar. It’ll probably be needed. This time I think it’s something much worse.”

  It turned out to be no ordinary accident. As many men as could crowd onboard climbed into an open boxcar, which they hitched to the old steam locomotive called the Mule. Usually it never left the rail yard. Those who hadn’t found room trotted behind. The engine chugged very slowly along the southbound track, down to the track closest to the river. They didn’t have to go far. At the curve near the still frozen Pig’s Eye Lake they found one of the bigger locomotives turned on its side with the front end over the embankment so that its forward wheels were hanging in the air. The tender and a boxcar were also lying on their side. Gustaf heard the other men around him swearing quietly. The scene scared them all. The engine must have entered the curve at too high a speed, and the switch had frozen solid in the open air. These kinds of disasters occurred only when at least two things went wrong. There must have been a horrendous bang, though they hadn’t heard anything.

  Several men were already standing around the wrecked engine, but they seemed bewildered, their shovels and picks hanging from their hands. Then Gustaf caught sight of a covered ambulance wagon on the far side of the engine. A hospital medic was sitting on the driver’s seat with his head in his hands, apparently incapable of doing anything at all. The closer they got, the clearer it became that Jonathan Lundgren had been right. Something terrible had happened.

  The boxcar stopped with an abrupt screech a short distance behind the overturned freight car. When Gustaf and the other men jumped to the ground, he saw that the boards of the wall lying on the track had shattered into splinters. Pieces of red-painted boards with fresh wood showing at the broken edges lay scattered across the snow-covered embankment in a peculiar zigzag pattern. He realized the car must have been dragged on its side for quite a ways. Off in the distance he heard shouts, but the Mule stood hissing loudly between them and the wrecked freight car, so they couldn’t hear what anyone was saying. Through the smoke Gustaf saw Foreman Lawson motioning the men forward, toward the engine, and he followed the others.

  They stood clustered next to the side of the locomotive facing away from the water. Lying on its side, the engine looked unnaturally big, as if it could never fit beneath the high-vaulted ceiling of the repair workshop. Lawson raised his hands and everyone fell silent.

  “Men,” he said, “a terrible thing has happened. Engine driver Rossi is dead. He’s stuck inside the engine cab, and we have to pull him out. He was with fireman Nelson, who managed to escape mostly unscathed when he fell out. He ended up bruised a bit from rolling down the embankment, but he’s going to be all right. I’ve sent him home. We can’t do anything more for Rossi, other than take his body home to his wife and children. But before we can pull him out, we have to get the engine more or less upright again. We have a few hours left before dark. Will you keep working until we get the job done—for Rossi’s sake?”

  Scattered shouts of “Aye” echoed through the wintry air. Some of the men had removed their caps when they heard the news, but now they put them back on. Then they picked up their crowbars and walked in single file over to the engine.

  Gustaf ended up with Jonathan very close to the engine driver’s cab. It was slow work. Whenever they managed to raise the locomotive an inch or so, several men would run over and shove loose railroad ties between the chassis and the embankment. It was dangerous work, and there was a great creaking every time they let go. It was a matter of raising the engine enough so they could wrap chains around the entire body of the locomotive and then hitch them to the Mule. But it would take many hours of hard work before they could do that.

  Later in the afternoon, when they’d managed to raise the locomotive a few feet into the proper position, Gustaf got a good look inside the engine cab through the side vent. Shock rippled through his body when he realized he could glimpse Rossi inside. The engine driver was a man in his sixties, with a big gray mustache and a bald pate. The dead man was slumped forward with his head hanging and his eyes closed. He looked like he was asleep. But the angle was odd, as if he were hanging from the far wall.

  Then they heard Lawson shouting another order, and the entire, huge metal carcass of the engine shuddered as a hundred hands gripped their crowbars and pressed down with all their might. Gustaf was already drenched with sweat and freezing. He didn’t want to look up and see more of Rossi’s gray, slumbering face above them, but he couldn’t stop himself from looking. At first he couldn’t understand how the man’s body could stay seated in the same position while the whole engine was shaking as it was slowly forced upward.

  Then he realized what must have happened, and he felt an icy shiver that had nothing to do with his sweat-soaked shirt. A big hole gaped in the side of the engine cab, cutting right through the metal. In the opening he could now see more of Rossi’s body. The metal had been ripped open by the eccentric rod from the engine’s forward wheels. It had come loose and probably struck the tracks full force. Then it was hurled straight up toward the cab, stabbing Rossi through the chest and nailing him to the far wall, where he now hung with a strangely peaceful look on his gray face. Gustaf hoped it had happened as fa
st as he imagined. He cast a glance at Jonathan, who nodded. He too had pictured the chain of events.

  When it was close to four o’clock, a light snowfall began. The men took a short break and a wagon arrived with hot coffee and wheat rolls that were plain and dry. They stood in groups of three or four, exchanging a few words in low voices as they stamped their feet and drank their coffee. Everyone kept their back turned to the engine cab. Somebody said they’d also found a dead hobo inside the freight car. No one knew who he was, but that was not unusual. Several newly arrived men had now begun putting up a winch of block and tackle on the far side of the locomotive.

  After about ten minutes they all went back to work, without Lawson or any of the other foremen having to summon them. Everybody wanted to get out of there, but they knew they weren’t going anywhere until the Mule could be hitched to the chains around the wrecked engine and Rossi could be pulled free and placed on a stretcher. When they resumed the same positions and leaned on their crowbars on command, Gustaf tried not to look inside the cab, but his gaze was drawn there so swiftly that he forgot to keep his eyes fixed on the black steel of the steam boiler. Rossi’s face was as peaceful as before, but his skull was now covered with a thin layer of new snow. Gustaf looked away.

  They didn’t get home until after eleven at night. The snow had moved on, and the moon was shining through the drifting haze of clouds, illuminating the route through the Hollow, where all the houses were now dark. The men walked along saying only a few words in English, which each had mastered to a varying degree. A group of men accompanied Gustaf and Jonathan, who usually left work alone, but all day long they had worked together with the same goal in mind: to free their dead coworker. And besides, all of them had to go through the railroad tunnels. The Irishmen disappeared first, heading for their homes near the bridge abutment while the Italians continued a little farther up the hill. Then they too turned off, muttering “Good night” before they were gone. That was something new. Normally they didn’t say a word.