FATHERLANDS
A Short Story by Basil Sands
Balch Homestead
Wahpeton, North Dakota
November 3, 1930
A crowd dispersed from the small Lutheran church on the cold late autumn day, shaking hands with the priest as they passed. Behind the church, in the small graveyard reserved for original Swedish pioneers who homesteaded the area, grave diggers shoveled dirt back into the hole where the coffin had been laid. Their shovels smacked the soil with a sound that made ten-year-old Joe think of being slapped in the face. Dirt tumbled into the pit, pebbles rattling on the casket.
At the house people milled about, sucking down bits of a gifted feast brought a dish at a time by friends and neighbors. Grandma had laid it out on the long table as well as the wide buffet surface against the dining room wall. The early afternoon sun spread beams of light across the steaming plates of food, illuminating what for many would be the last big meal they had for a while as the depression slowly tightened its grip on the country, particularly in their part of the Midwest agricultural belt.
Joe understood nothing of the financial woes bearing down on America, all he knew was that his grandpa Torvald was dead. He’d been old, but Joe did not know how old. Grandpa had not been particularly loving or kind to him, especially after the outhouse prank but he’d not been mean to him either. After Joe’s parents died in a car crash, grandpa had taken him and his little brother Pete in to raise them. They’d learned farming, animals, physical labor, even finance and management, at least, as much as a seventy-five-year-old man could teach a pair of young boys. They’d both received lickings with the leather strap, always deserved, but they’d also learned a lot more than many boys their age, few of whom even got schooling past the third or fourth grade. Joe was already in fifth grade. Grandpa had promised he and Pete that he’d pay for school through eighth grade, a solid education for most Dakota boys at the time.
The only thing grandpa held back from them were the contents of the old suitcase under his bed. His aunts and uncles had no idea what was in it either. Everyone knew they were not to touch it.
While the adults busily chatted at the wake downstairs, Joe and Pete snuck into grandpa’s bedroom. They dropped to their knees and peered beneath the heavy quilt draped across the bed. There it was, just the right size to fit under the iron bedframe. Joe grabbed the handle , and slid it out. Sunlight streamed in through the window, illuminating its brown leathery patina.
“You can’t open that Joey,” Pete said. “Grandpa will be mad.”
“Grandpa’s dead,” said Joe.
“His ghost might come and haunt you if you make him mad,” Pete hesitated, “I heard about ghosts from Jimmy Bjorklund last week at school. He said his grandma haunts his house and sometimes bites people on the behind when they do things she doesn’t like.”
“That’s nonsense,” Joe said. “Dead people are in the ground and their teeth are with them. Ghosts are just spirits, they don’t have teeth.”
“Jimmy said he had a mark on his butt where she bit him,” Pete pointed to his own rear end.
Joe thought about this for a moment. He’d not considered a haunting or Grandpa’s ghost coming after them.
“Grandpa ain’t coming back,” he made up his mind. “He even said…”
The door suddenly opened and in walked their aunt Elsa. Both boys started, eyes wide with guilt. Joe tried to push the trunk back under the bed with his foot.
“What are you boys do…oh…you have father’s suitcase out.”
Elsa walked around the bed. The boys stood at terrified attention. Elsa was the nicer of their aunts, a thirty-year old unmarried maiden, she was the youngest of their two aunts and two uncles.
“What are you thinking coming in here to look in there on a day like today?”
“I’m sorry auntie,” said Pete, “it was Joey, he made me do it.”
“I did not make you do it,” Joe shot Pete a cross look.
“Yes you did! You said ‘come and let’s look in grandpa’s trunk’.”
“But you didn’t have to!”
“But you said you’d…”
“Enough boys,” Elsa stepped closer and put a hand on each of their shoulders. “No one is in trouble.”
She smiled down to them, then turned toward the trunk. She stared at it for several seconds, gave a quick look back to the boys, then walked across the room and closed the bedroom door.
“To be quite honest,” she paused, took in a breath and continued, “I’ve always wondered too,” she gave a mischievous wink, then reached down and hefted the trunk onto the bed. “He brought the family here to America before I was born, and he kept the contents of this thing secret for all of our lives. I think now is a good time to open it, don’t you?”
The boy’s faces immediately shone bright with anticipation.
“Yes auntie, yes,” Pete blurted, “do you think there is treasure in it?
Is there pirate gold or maybe a king’s crown or something?”
“I don’t know, but let’s find out.”
She studied the brass clasps for a moment, then pushed the button in the middle of each. It did nothing.
“Hrm…it must need a key to….”
Before she finished the sentence, Joe reached up and flicked the buttons to one side then the other. There was a click and a quiet whoosh of air as the lid popped up a fraction of an inch. All three of them stared wide eyed at the trunk, as if it had come alive.
“Or a special touch,” Elsa muttered. They leaned in to peer inside.
“Papers,” Joe said in a defeated voice.
“Where’s the pirate gold?” Pete whined.
Elsa reached in and picked up some of the papers inside, glancing over them, “These look like ledgers or accounting sheets for a business.”
As she shuffled through them the bottom of the suitcase wobbled slightly.
“What’s this?”
She pulled out the rest of the papers and tugged at one corner of the case’s bottom panel. It gave. Beneath was a hidden compartment filled with very different items. Some were folded single sheets, others were small bound booklets. Most had pictures of younger versions of her father, mother and siblings. Many had the same picture of the individual persons, but each had writing in different languages. They were passports from when her parents were young, in their thirties.
She opened another Swedish passport that showed her father a little older, closer to forty, his age when they moved to America but with a different name beneath his picture. She found more passports, and some birth certificates. Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Russia, Estonia, and Poland. Her mind spun. Beneath that were several bundles of money. Swedish krona, Danish and Norwegian kroner, Polish zloty, Russian rubles, German marks, and British pounds, as well as others she could not identify. She had no idea their value, but each nation, at least a dozen, was represented by an inch-thick wad of cash.
“What in the world was dad up to,” she whispered to herself.
Pete looked up at her, “No pirate treasure?”
“Oh,” Elsa started, “there is definitely treasure in here.” “Are we rich,” asked Joe.
“We’re…uh…,” Elsa paused, “something.”
Alley near the Swedish Riksdag (Parliamentary Building)
Stockholm Sweden
May 30th, 1896
The coppery taste of blood rushed through his mouth, forcing him to suck air across his teeth, for fear his own blood would come gushing out. He got that same sensation whenever he killed.
