Robert stretched out on the floor before the fire and contemplated the cracked, sooty beams in the ceiling of the mill room. Again he thought of the farmhand who had chosen the left road instead of the right one.
Presently he asked Jonas Petter: “Do you remember Fredrik of Kvarntorpet who disappeared from home?”
“Fredrik Thron? Yes, I remember him, that cuckoo!”
He was a rascal, continued Jonas Petter. He was as lazy as a well-fed Christmas pig, and would rather steal than work. If anything was lost it was easy to know who had found it. Fredrik stole for pleasure rather than gain, but in either case it was unpleasant for the loser. And he was given to all kinds of pranks: he broke down gates, let the horses out of the church stables while people were in church, brought snakes into the church on Sundays. Every farmer in the parish was disgusted with the knave from Kvarntorpet.
The boy’s father was a cotter under the manse, and he had persuaded the owner, Lieutenant Rudeborg, to hire his son as a farmhand and try to make a man of him. When Fredrik had been in Kråkesjö for a week, he was asked by the lieutenant to fetch a pair of oxen bought at the Klintakrogen fair. They were fine animals, well broken in, and a child could have driven them this short distance with a loose thong. But Fredrik, who was twenty, could not manage it; he arrived at the manse with another pair. The lieutenant had never seen these animals before; the ones he had bought had measured seventy-eight inches around the chest, and now his farmhand brought a pair of steers measuring hardly sixty-six. These animals were not worth half the price he had paid for the oxen at the fair. Lieutenant Rudeborg was in a red-hot rage at his new man.
On the way home from the fair Fredrik had done some trading of his own, and had exchanged the master’s oxen for the smaller ones — with money in his own pocket, of course. But the damned fool swore up and down that these were the same beasts he had received: their color was identical, red with a white spot on the forehead. Fredrik was clever. These looked somewhat smaller, he admitted, but they had shrunk because they had been without fodder the whole day — that was all, they were indeed the same oxen.
Nevertheless, Lieutenant Rudeborg had witnesses who said the animals were not his, so Fredrik couldn’t wriggle himself free that time. Rudeborg, however, felt sorry for the boy’s parents. He didn’t want to put his servant in jail, but he couldn’t stand the sight of the fellow. He therefore suggested to his neighbors that they send Fredrik to North America; he would pay half the fare if they chipped in and paid the other half.
That country would suit Fredrik perfectly, said the lieutenant. America was a land for all rogues and misfits who could not live in law and order at home. Out there he could trade oxen with other villains to his heart’s content. If he remained at home and they put him into prison, he would be on their hands again as soon as his sentence was over. But once in North America, they would be rid of him for time and eternity.
The farmers quite willingly contributed a couple of riksdaler each to free themselves from Thron’s boy, who had been such a nuisance to them. So the money was collected, he was put on the coach at Klintakrogen, and Lieutenant Rudeborg even came down in person to see that his scoundrel servant started off to North America.
A few months passed by and all was well. No mischief was heard of and everyone said this was the wisest thing they had ever done — to send Fredrik to North America.
But one day the news spread that the American traveler was home in Kvarntorpet again.
He had never boarded the ship for North America. He had gone only as far as Gothenburg, and in Gothenburg he had remained the whole time. There he had stayed at an inn, and had drunk and caroused and lived like a lord as long as the money lasted. When it was spent he returned home, and now this debased youth looked honest people in the face as if expecting them to be happy to see him back again in good health. He had put on weight and he looked fine. On the money he had received from honest folk he had lived in idleness, gluttony, and debauchery. And the rogue said that if you wanted to live well you should not work. He was so shameless that he went around the village and thanked people for their contributions toward the journey, saying he had used them as well as he could, he had had much pleasure. And if they should have it in mind again, he would be most willing to undertake another American journey. He had always longed to get out and see the world, it was so useful and instructive for a person. And this parish was a dirty little hole not at all befitting decent, sensible people. He hoped that the contributions next time would be sufficient to take him a bit farther on his voyage to America.
By now people were so angry at the inveterate scamp from Kvarntorpet that they spit at him whenever they saw him. Evil was within him, and it “inclined him to evil, and disinclined him to good,” as it is written. And Lieutenant Rudeborg, who had paid half his American fare and himself seen him board the Gothenburg coach, had no mercy on him this time: he reported him to the sheriff for theft of the oxen. However, when Lönnegren arrived at Kvarntorpet to fetch Fredrik, he had disappeared, and the authorities had not been able to lay hands on him since.
“That’s fifteen years ago, now. No one here has seen Fredrik since that time. They say he took to the sea,” Jonas Petter concluded.
Angry words were mumbled by the peasants as the farmer from Hästebäck finished his tale. Probably, thought Robert, some of them had contributed toward Fredrik’s American journey at the Gothenburg tavern.
A few words in Jonas Petter’s story had especially impressed Robert and he pondered them: the lieutenant from Kråkesjö had said that a land existed which fitted all those who misbehaved at home.
If one disappeared from one’s service and from the neighborhood, one was written down under “End of the Parish.” He could hear the dean call a name at the examination next autumn: Farmhand Robert Nilsson from Korpamoen. No one present knows where he is. And the dean writes: Whereabouts unknown. So it would be written next year, and the following. And ten years, fifteen years later the dean would still write in the church book about the farmhand Robert Nilsson: Whereabouts unknown. Not heard from since 1848. For all time it would appear about him in “End of the Parish”: Whereabouts unknown.
It was thus written about those who were free.
How many miles might it be to North America? He dared not ask anyone present, they might begin to wonder about him. Perhaps he could learn from some book.
But America was the land for one who had taken the wrong road.
— 3—
Robert became drowsy from the heat in the mill room and from the monotonous din of the millstones; he went to sleep on some empty sacks in a corner. It was late afternoon when he awoke. Jonas Petter and the other peasants were gone with their grind, and in their place two other farmers who had arrived were waiting for their flour and eating their provisions. They no doubt thought Robert was a farmhand who was waiting for his grind. And one of them noticed that he had no food and handed him a slice of bread and a piece of pork.
The same farmer told about a death which had occurred that very morning: a young farmhand on his way to service in Nybacken had drowned in the mill creek. It appeared he had fallen off the bridge. They had found his jacket, and Aron of Nybacken had dragged the pool, but his body had not yet been recovered. Strangely enough, a maid from Nybacken had drowned in the same pool a few years ago.
The farmer also knew that the drowned servant was son to Nils in Korpamoen. He was only recently confirmed. As a child he had been somewhat peculiar: he would run away from home, and his parents had been forced to hang a cowbell around his neck to locate him.