Petrus Olausson had paced off the foundation: “Too much of a house! Remember I told you so, Nilsson! You can’t build that much!”
Kristina had told him the same thing, but a woman couldn’t understand much about building, he had thought. Now, when his new neighbor raised the same objection, he became thoughtful. Perhaps he had laid out too big a house, perhaps it would be too much for him to build. Possibly he might have to shorten the foundation timbers. .
But there was still something to show Olausson, something near the east gable. There, six or eight feet beyond the sill, Karl Oskar pointed downward with the look of one disclosing a great secret:
“Look here! See that thing growing there? It is from Sweden!”
In a little dug-up bed a small plant, six or seven inches tall and tied to a stake, poked its head up from the black soil. The plant had a few small dark-green leaves, and the bed around it was well tended.
“It came from home!”
Olausson bent down and pinched the leaves of the tender plant. “An apple seedling, eh?”
“A real fine tree! An Astrakhan apple tree!”
“From Sweden? Well, well. .”
It was for his wife’s sake he had planted the seedling, said Karl Oskar. She longed for home at times and it would be a pleasure and something to divert her thoughts to have a growing plant from Sweden to tend and look after. He had written to her parents for seeds from an Astrakhan apple tree, and they had arrived a year ago last fall, glued to a sheet of paper and well preserved. And so he had planted them here at the east gable of their new home, at a depth five times their own thickness, as they used to do when planting trees at home. And this seedling had come up; it was growing slowly, but it was growing.
It was Kristina’s apple tree, she took care of it. With this tiny plant, as yet so puny and tender, they had in a way moved something living from their old homeland.
“You might get some other kind of apples when you plant a seed,” said Olausson.
“Yes — sometimes you get crab apples. We’ll see!”
Karl Oskar had now shown his neighbor the fruit of all his work. Petrus Olausson could see that they had improved themselves during their first three years on the claim. If Petrus only listened to what Kristina had said about their loneliness out here, he might think all they did was walk about and sigh for company, doing nothing beyond getting their food from day to day.
The men went back to the cabin. Kristina wanted to warm up whatever coffee was left in the pot, but Uncle Petrus couldn’t stay away any longer from his timber felling.
He had looked about closely, he said, and he had seen how much work they had done on their claim and what great improvements they had made. This was the beginning of a fine farm. But as a fellow Christian he wanted to add something before he left: work alone was not enough for a human being; daily prayers were also needed. As neighbors they ought to get together to help instruct each other in religious matters and share other useful thoughts.
“We’ll see each other often, I hope! And my dear Swedish fellow Christians: don’t dig yourself down in worldly matters so that you forget eternity!”
— 4—
When Karl Oskar and Kristina went to bed that evening they began to talk about this day which had become unlike all other days on their lonely claim.
“I think I like him,” said Kristina.
“He seems a capable man with good ideas. He’ll do here.”
“He talked as godly as a minister.”
“But he wants to have you do things his way. He wants to correct others. I don’t like that.”
“He meant well when he spoke that way. .”
“I don’t need a guardian — I’m old enough. .”
“Yes, of course, but we must try to get along with them.”
“They can take care of theirs and we’ll look after ours. Then we’ll get along as neighbors. .”
“He must have thought we were heathens, not saying grace,” said Kristina, after a pause.
Karl Oskar yawned loudly. He turned over on his side to go to sleep. In his deep fatigue after a long day’s work he was glad to surrender to rest. But when he had walked a great deal, as today, he felt the old injury to his left leg, and it took longer for sleep to come. Tonight his leg ached persistently.
Kristina gathered her thoughts for her evening prayer. Petrus Olausson’s exhorting words at his departure still rang in her ears. And as she thought about them, they sounded as a warning to her from God himself.
In this out-of-the-way place they neglected their spiritual needs. But someone coming from the outside and looking at them with a stranger’s eyes could see how things were with them; they put religion aside. They neglected their souls and jeopardized their salvation. They were so busy gathering food for their table that they could not take even a moment to say grace. They hurried hither and yon from morning to night, and were so rushed one might think they feared they had not time to reach their graves. For in the grave they would end up at last. Here they labored, striving, and were so overloaded with daily chores that both their bodies and souls were submerged in worldly concerns. They lived the fleeting life of the moment and forgot that eternity awaited them.
Kristina sinned every day in many ways, gathering on her back an ever greater burden of sin. In Sweden, she had been relieved of this burden once a month through the sacrament, the Holy Communion. But now she had not been a guest at the Lord’s table for three years. During this whole time she had not once cleansed herself in the Savior’s blood.
From time to time she would talk of religious matters with her Uncle Danjel and confess her anxiety about her sin burden. But he considered himself so great a sinner that he was unable to help anyone else; each one must worry about his own soul. But Danjel did pray for her.
Karl Oskar at her side turned and tried to find a more comfortable position: “If those screech-hoppers out there ever could shut up!”
Outside, the crickets had started their unceasing noise. The penetrating sound screeched like an ungreased wagon wheel moving at a dizzying speed. The hoppers were never seen, but their noise was worse. These ungodly creatures had wings it was said, but unable to fly, they used them for their eternal complaint.
Kristina wondered what could make the poor critters wail like this all night through, as if they were suffering eternal torture. And she would lie and listen to that sound until it echoed within herself, the torture of her own anxiety responding to the crickets’ wailing.
“Karl Oskar,” she said, “you have a good remembering. .”
“Yes?” he said sleepily. “What about?”
“Do you recall when we last had the sacrament?”
“The last Sunday before we left home.”
“That was three years in April. Three years since we last received absolution.”
He turned to her and sought her face in the dark but his eyes could not see her. He sounded surprised: “Are you lying there worrying about Communion?”
“I’m worrying about our sin burdens. They have gathered on our backs for a long time.”
“We live in a wilderness, Kristina,” he replied, “with no churches or temples; we can’t get to a minister or to our own church. It can’t be helped if we’ve had to be without the sacrament for three years. No one can take what he can’t reach. God must know this and overlook it. .”
“Perhaps he will forgive us. . I don’t know. .”