Unto a Good Land by Vilhelm Moberg Page A

group.
    When they were ready to take their seats, the guide showed them into the fifth wagon from the engine; they were disappointed not to be farther away from the fire. They climbed a small ladder, slowly and cautiously. Their wagon was about fifteen feet long and half as wide. A bench had been built on either side with a narrow passage in the middle. The seats were made of carelessly nailed-together rough boards. Two more groups, somewhat smaller than their own, were to share this wagon with them. Their knapsacks, food baskets, boxes, and bundles took much room, and they had to crowd together in order to find space for all. Those unable to find room on the benches stood or lay down on the floor. The immigrants felt as though they had been packed into a good-sized calf coop.
    On the end of one bench a place was made for old Fina-Kajsa, so that she might ride half-sitting; she was weaker than she would admit and could stand on her legs only a few minutes at a time. For the third or fourth time she inquired of the guide about her iron pot, and for the third or fourth time she was given the information that the pot rode with the chests and other heavier pieces in a special wagon.
    “But where is the grindstone?” asked Fina-Kajsa. “Where is it?”
    The grindstone, brought along by her husband who died on the voyage, had, through carelessness at the New York unloading, fallen into the harbor, and all said this was good luck for Fina-Kajsa, who need not now pay the expensive inland freight for it. But she thought they were telling her a lie. Her son Anders in Minnesota had written home that grindstones were scarce in America, and now she thought the Americans had stolen her stone as soon as they laid eyes on it.
    And Fina-Kajsa kept on complaining: “Oh me, oh my! What an endless road! We’ll never arrive!”
    In great harmony the immigrants shared the wagon space with each other; no one tried to spread out, all made room; they had learned on this journey to live closely packed in narrow quarters, and they endured it good-naturedly. In the wagon, too, they had more space in which to move than they had had on the river steamer. But the air in the wagon seemed thick and stuffy after a score and a half people had pushed their way into it. At daybreak a heavy shower had fallen and cooled the earth, but now the sun already felt burning, in spite of the early hour, and they understood that the day was to bring intense heat, hard to endure.
    As yet the wagon stood still, and the passengers were quiet in silent anticipation and wordless worry: What would happen when they began to ride? Unknown dangers lurked on this journey; what mightn’t take place when the wagon with fire inside it began to move? They had heard that some persons could not stand being freighted along on the railroad; it was said to be so hard on them that they fainted and lay unconscious for hours.
    Kristina had heard the same as the others; she sat in a corner of the wagon with Lill-Märta and Harald on her knees. Johan had climbed up on the knapsack standing between the bench and her feet. The oldest boy had also wished to sit on her knees, and she would gladly have let him if she had had three knees. But Johan wouldn’t understand that she had only two. The boy had grown impatient and troublesome since they landed.
    He pulled his mother’s arms: “Aren’t we going to live in a house now, Mother?”
    “Yes, soon—I’ve told you so.”
    “When is soon? When shall we live in a house?”
    “When we arrive.”
    “But Father says we have arrived in America now.”
    “Yes, we have. Please keep quiet.”
    “It isn’t true, Mother! You said we would live in a house when we got to America. Now we are in America—aren’t we going to live in a house?”
    “Yes, yes—please keep still, can’t you, boy?”
    Johan tired her beyond endurance, and she didn’t know what to do with him, except to let him be until he tired himself. After the night on the river