The Settlers (14 page)

He looked about in the room: “Could I be permitted to use this home for a communion?”

Karl Oskar and Kristina looked worriedly at each other, then they answered, both at the same time: “Our home can be used, of course . . . if our simple log cabin is good enough . . . of course we will . . .”

“Thank you! Then we will invite the people and set the Lord’s table here in this house!”

And the minister waved his long sleeves with increased liveliness; it was already decided, then!

But it was late, their guest was tired and needed rest. Kristina said she would make a bed for Johan and Harald on the floor and let the minister sleep in their bed.

“Don’t awaken the boys for my sake, Mrs. Nilsson!” he insisted. “Last night I slept under a pine tree. I’ll sleep on the floor, as long as I’m under a roof.”

Kristina then offered her own and Karl Oskar’s bed and suggested they sleep on the floor. She had an old mattress cover they could fill with hay. Karl Oskar took the cover and went out to the barn where there was hay from last year. Outside, the rain still fell in streams. In the barn, he filled the mattress with the dusty old hay and carried it inside and prepared a bed on the floor against the hearth.

“An excellent bed for me!” said the young pastor.

But Kristina would not give in: they could not allow a man of the Church to sleep on the floor, in the fireplace corner, as beggars and hoboes did at home. They could not remain in their own bed and send God’s anointed to the shame-corner. It would be degrading to the Church; they would commit a grave sin. No, their best bed, their own, must be given to the guest. And she spread a clean sheet on it.

Their guest explained that he really was not a churchman, since he no longer held a position in the Church, but as their bed was offered him with a good heart he would accept.

And Pastor Törner undressed and lay down in the settler couple’s bed, where he fell into a deep sleep within a few minutes.

“Poor man,” said Kristina. “He was completely worn out.”

And so they themselves again went to bed. This time they lay on the hay mattress, in the chimney corner, while the minister from Sweden snored heavily in their bed. Karl Oskar still wondered about him; he had given up a good position in the homeland and was wandering here through the wilderness, without food or shelter. Otherwise, his talk and general behavior seemed to indicate that he had his senses intact.

Kristina felt a blessed assurance in her heart; a stranger had come to them in the night and promised her the Lord’s Supper. One night in early spring she had in her anxiety directed a question to the Almighty: What should they do about their sins here in their isolation? What must they do to save their souls?

Tonight she had been given an answer.

—3—

Before Pastor Törner awakened the following morning, Kristina had found thread and a needle and mended the torn places in his coat and the hole in the seat of his pants. To have a minister walk about with pants that had a hole in the behind was a disgrace to the Church which she must at once erase. Then she brushed and cleaned his muddy clothes.

When the pastor awoke and put on his suit he hardly recognized it. He praised Kristina: “Give a woman a needle and thread and as much cloth as she needs and she can turn herself into a queen and her home into a palace!”

Kristina smiled. She was walking about in such old rags it would be a long time before she looked like a queen. But it would be a shame if a woman with a needle and thread couldn’t baste together a few holes in a garment.

After breakfast Pastor Törner made ready to continue on his way. He opened his black leather bag, which contained a flask of communion wine, a small sack of communion bread, a couple of white, newly starched minister’s collars, and a dozen small jars of a remedy for fever and chills. This was quinine and the price for each jar was seventy-five cents. In his bag the pastor carried remedies for both soul and body.

Another minister from Sweden, Pastor Hasselquist in Galesburg, Illinois, had come across the medicine and sent it along by Pastor Törner for those Swedish settlements where fevers and chills constantly plagued the people. Pastor Hasselquist had also hoped his colleague might earn a little by selling the medicine. But the settlers had little cash, and most of the time he had to leave the jars without payment. Many of them needed quinine for their bodies as much as they needed communion wine for their souls. He presented Kristina with a jar of the remedy as a small reward for bed and board.

He promised to return within a short time and set the date for the communion in their house. But first he wanted to call on the other Swedish settlers in the St. Croix Valley.

Karl Oskar walked a bit on the road with Pastor Törner to show him the way to their nearest neighbor, Petrus Olausson from Helsingland.

Gradually it stopped raining, and in the late morning the sun came out. Kristina picked up the mattress she and Karl Oskar had slept on; the cover seemed moist to her, perhaps it had got wet when Karl Oskar went to fetch the hay, and she wanted to dry it. She carried the mattress to the barn and emptied it near the door. She had barely finished when she let out a piercing scream. Something that looked like a dry tree branch had come out of the mattress with the hay, but she had paid scant attention to it; now she saw that it was a wriggling, living thing she had shaken out.

Karl Oskar, who was just returning, was near the stoop when he heard his wife’s cries from the barn. He ran to her as fast as he could.

“A snake! Karl Oskar, a snake!”

Kristina shrieked as if someone had stuck a knife into her. She stood with the empty mattress cover in her hands, staring at the hay wads inside the door.

“What happened? Have you hurt yourself?”

She pointed in front of her: “That thing . . . it was in the mattress . . . in the hay . . . !”

Karl Oskar, standing beside her, saw in the hay a snake, extended to its full length. It was light gray with brown stripes and thick rings on its tail. A rattler!

The sight of the reptile had frightened Kristina so, she was unable to move from the spot. Karl Oskar grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away. “Get out of his reach! He might strike!”

He pushed her still farther away, while he looked for something to kill it with. “Be careful! The snake might throw himself at you!”

As yet he had never killed a rattler. He had seen such snakes, curled up in low places, but none had attacked him and he had not disturbed them. They were not so easy to dispatch as the snakes in Sweden which only crawled on the ground. Rattlers were more dangerous—they could raise themselves on their tails and throw themselves at a person as fast as an arrow from a bow. But this evil thing must not escape; if it crawled under the barn they would live in eternal fear of it.

Under the oak at the side of the barn was a pile of fence posts. He grabbed one, and took down the scythe which hung in the tree. He held the scythe in front of him in his left hand and the post in his right. Thus armed he stole slowly, with bent back, toward the reptile at the barn door.

The rattler was still lying quite still in the hay; it seemed drowsy in the sun.

“Karl Oskar! Don’t go so close! Be careful!”

It was Kristina’s turn to urge caution. She had found a rake which she held in front of her; couldn’t she help him kill the nasty creature?

Karl Oskar was a few steps from the snake when the animal raised its head. Its tongue, red and shining like a flower pistil, shot out of its jaws—the reptile was showing its stingers where death lurked. And now the rattling sound was heard from the tail rings—the warning signal; the rattler had begun to coil to throw itself against its enemy.

Karl Oskar jumped at the same time as the reptile; he threw himself forward at the very last second. With the scythe he met the snake halfway, pressed the back of the scythe against the snake, and pushed it to the ground. But the wriggling monster fought wildly and furiously, twisting and turning itself under the pressure, throwing its head back and forth until the scythe steel tinkled. The tongue’s red pistil shot forth, it hissed and sizzled like a boiling kettle. Against the soft hay the flexible snake body with its sinuous motions struggled to get away from the scythe-hold.

Now the monstrous creature raised its head against the barn sill, and this gave Karl Oskar an opportunity to use his second implement; with a few heavy blows of the post he crushed the rattlers’ head against the sill.

“The Lord is protecting you, Karl Oskar! You risked your life!”

Kristina stood behind him, the rake in her hand, her lips blue-white, every limb trembling.

“Don’t be afraid! I’ve killed him now!”

Karl Oskar lifted the rattler with the point of the scythe; the crushed head hung limp. Then he stretched out the snake on the ground to its full length. The first rattler he had killed was also the biggest one he had seen. It was over five feet long and had seven rattles. He had heard that this kind of snake got its first rattle at the age of three and from then on one each year; this one must be an old devil.

“That sting-eel was a little dazed and sluggish; if he had been quicker he could have killed me!”

Karl Oskar’s hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. Kristina felt her legs give way; she sank down on her knees in the hay, timidly eyeing the dead snake. The critter’s upturned stomach was greenish and glittered prettily in the sun. The wild animals in North America were dangerous and beautiful.

“He purred like a spinning wheel,” she said.

“That was the rattles. They’re two inches thick!”

Karl Oskar pushed the scythe end into the jaws of the snake: “He has teeth like a dog! Sharp as awls! Wonder if he was blind—they say rattlers are so full of poison they go quite blind during the summer.”

And Kristina knew that if a rattler bit a person in a blood vessel that ran directly to the heart, that person would die on the spot.

Her voice almost failed her as she tried to say:

“The snake was in the mattress I was emptying . . .”

Karl Oskar looked at the cover she had thrown on the ground, he looked at the rattler he had carried into their house with the hay last night. When he had filled the mattress, in the dark barn—if his hands had happened to . . .

They were both silent for several minutes.

What was there to say about what had happened during the night? They had shared their bed with the most poisonous snake in North America. They had slept their sweet sleep with death underneath them in the bed.

“. . . to think . . . that we’re all right . . .” he said in a low voice.

“Perhaps we’re saved because we gave shelter to a man of the Church,” said she.

With the scythe Karl Oskar cut off the tail with the seven rattles, which he wanted to keep as a souvenir. But Kristina could not understand how he could want to keep anything of the evil creature. Even though it lay dead in front of her, it still inspired fear in her.

Nevertheless, she could hardly take her eyes away from the glittering, color-changing snake body. Something so obnoxious, so slimy and repulsive, one ought not to look at willingly. But she couldn’t help it. There was something strangely fascinating about the old serpent. The tempter, the devil himself, had assumed this animal’s shape. It was the Evil One who had sneaked into their house last night—the Evil One had crept all the way into their bed.

Never had Kristina so surely and manifestly experienced God’s protecting hand over them.

—4—

Pastor Törner returned two weeks later. It was then decided that he would come back to the settlement of Duvemåla the following Sunday and hold the first communion for the Swedish settlers in the St. Croix Valley.

Kristina at once began preparations. A great honor would be bestowed upon them; their home would be used as a temple. Their table, which Karl Oskar had made of a rough oak log, would be raised to the dignity of an altar. Their simple log cabin would be turned into a holy room. In their own home Karl Oskar and she would be the Lord’s table guests.

She read in the Bible about the first Lord’s Supper, the first day of the feast of unleavened bread, when the disciples asked Jesus where he would go to prepare to eat the Passover: he sent two of them into Jerusalem where they were to follow a man who carried a pitcher: “Follow him into the house where he entereth in. And ye shall say unto the goodman of the house, The Master saith unto thee, Where is the guestchamber, where I shall eat the Passover with my disciples? And he shall show you a large upper room furnished: there make ready.”

Where is the guestchamber? When Jesus wanted to institute the Holy Supper, he, too, had looked for a place in Jerusalem where they could meet, as Pastor Törner had looked for a house among the settlers where he could give the sacrament for the first time. And in their cabin, at the Indian lake, Ki-Chi-Saga, the miracle would take place. They could not offer a great upper room, ready and furnished, as those in Jerusalem had at the first communion. They had only the single room in which they lived, in which they ate and slept and sheltered their children. But for the holy act she must put her home in order, clean it to the best of her ability.

Kristina scrubbed the floor more carefully than ever before, she washed the furniture and polished her utensils. Against the ceiling beams, and above the fireplace, she laid maple and elm boughs; the rich, fresh leaves made the room look festive. She pasted gray wrapping paper over the roughest and ugliest parts of the log walls. She picked the most beautiful wild flowers she could find but she had no vase to put them in. Her eyes fell on the spittoon at the door; she emptied it, washed it, filled it with flowers, and put it on the shelf above their table. No guest would recognize their old spit-cup elevated thus, filled with flowers and decorated with greenery.

On Saturday evening she inspected the room carefully: it was as fresh and green as a summer pavilion. Everything was in order. But what to do with the children, if it should rain and they couldn’t be outside? With all the guests, there would he no room for them inside, and they might disturb the service. They could not leave them in the barn, now that they knew rattlesnakes might be there. But if it rained they must be under a roof. They would have to shut them in the cowshed during the Holy Communion. In their worn rags they were not much to show to the guests anyway.