The Redemption

Chapter 6

Robert & Sven

I watched my father change in front of me. He read the words he’d written before I was born. The color came back into his previously gaunt face. The rugged lines that marked the years in his face smoothed and his faded blue eyes began to sparkle as he read softly but with all the volume necessary for someone hanging on his every work.

As he told the story, he left the journal we’d started from on the table. Now he read directly from memory. He saw what he was telling me and while it was no less upsetting at times, knowing what it meant, it was mesmerizing to hear his devotion so long after Sven left his life. These words were mostly from when he was there on the farm with my father.

He stood at the window as he recited, using two fingers to separate the curtains that were now stained and faded. The glass was too dirty to see out of clearly, but my father saw Sven as he’d seen him on the first day.

He spoke of his mother’s interest as if she knew Sven was to become important to all of us. He talked about how his father dismissed their curiosity and assigned work to him before going out.

There was a salty conversation that made him believe that Sven was making fun of him. My father thought him arrogant considering his situation. Sven was a man who knew who he was and what his life was about. He’d work for another man, but you wouldn’t abuse him if you were smart.

Nonetheless, he left a sour taste in my father’s mouth at first. He was far too blunt and dismissive for my father to understand where he was coming from.  My father didn’t know what to make of him and simply kept his distance at first.

“I was jealous of your Uncle Ralph,” he explained, “…and Ralph took right up with Sven. He was always full of himself. By that time he was making the rounds in town and out, making afternoon visits after school to the girls he left to giggle with his direct suggestions and close personal attention.”

“Uncle Ralph?” I chuckled around his name. “He’s a sour puss.”

“Not always. He angered me because I saw him as the answer to my problem. Ralph was a natural farmer. He could spit in the wind and corn would grow on the moisture. He loved the farm but he was young and wasn’t going to give up the girls. He’d come in late to dinner, not exactly recommended at Pa’s table. Mama would have a plate set aside for him and Pa would complain he ought to go hungry.

“As quick as he saw Sven, he latched onto him. They had nothing in common, except Sven was in a strange place and Ralph made him feel welcome. I was still put off by him and all the more so with Ralph hanging on his shirttail.”

“What happened to him? I don’t recall ever seeing the man smile,” I said, wondering about my father’s memory.

“He went to war. Your Uncle Ralph was the most happy-go-lucky person I’d ever seen. I didn’t like it because it didn’t fit my plans, but Ralph didn’t care what anyone thought. Then, Sven came along. He was a man of the world. Ralph couldn’t get enough of him. They worked together, joked together, and sat in the evening without ever getting enough of each other.

“Ralph left with Jacob. One of the boys who came to help us after Pa was hurt. I think they were looking for Jacob’s mother down south. There was Pearl Harbor and the next thing we knew Ralph was in the army. He was hard to keep track of. Even when he wrote he didn’t say much about much. Then came Normandy. We heard he was there once they began broadcasting on the radio and giving the accounts.

“We didn’t hear for a long time. We didn’t know if Ralph was dead or alive. We knew where everyone else was, but no word from Ralph. After we’d all given up hope he’d survived Normandy he called. He was coming home. We were all thrilled to death that he was alive and coming home.

“He never did come home. Not my brother Ralph who loved life and everything in it. The Ralph who came home is the stern sober Ralph of today.”

“What happened to him?” I asked, not knowing this story at all.

“The war. We were all in the house when he came home. We were like bees and he was our honey. We asked him questions and then he showed us his arm. Mama told us not to make a fuss over it. We were to ignore his missing parts. No one was to question him.

“We didn’t have to say anything. He took off his shirt with some difficulty. His body was marked with scars and crevices, not the least of which was the missing arm. We all gasped in horror once we saw the extent of the damage. He’d been months in a hospital in England, and he spent more time in a hospital stateside. He put his shirt back on, wanting no assistance. Only Mama could touch him. He grabbed his duffle bag and hoisted it up on his shoulder as we all admired his strength. It was the sign the interview was over. He stopped on the stairs just as he was about to disappear out of sight.

“’Don’t ever ask me to talk about it again. Never!’ he growled as if we were some how feeding off him, and I don’t recall seeing him again for months. He stayed up in his bedroom, the one he had shared with Junior. Your bedroom in fact. Pa would ask about why he wasn’t at the table with us, and Mama would tell him, ‘He’s home. Be satisfied our son came home.’ Pa wasn’t capable of understanding Ralph, but by God he understood your grandmother. It was the only time in my life that I heard my mother jump down Pa’s throat. It only took once and he never mentioned Ralph’s absence again.

“Mama took him dinner every night and when he wouldn’t open the door she’d leave it on the floor outside, picking up his empty plates. Lucky I’d gotten the indoor plumbing put in because of Pa. I believe that boy would have done his business on the floor of that room if not for the bathroom next to his room.”

“My room?”

“Yep, the corner room upstairs. He started coming downstairs in the spring and we knew not to question him about what was wrong. I’d never been to war and neither had Pa or Jake, and so we pretended Ralph hadn’t either. He didn’t have much to say and we’d say hello and talk about the weather and if he was in a good mood he might nod and then again he might act like he couldn’t hear, but he was home and I was thankful for that, even if the best part of him never did come home. I was no longer hard on my brother. I regretted the times I wished for him to act more mature. I longed to hear that Ralph cut a fart for everyone’s pleasure or make lewd statements to the girls we passed when we were boys.

“It was in the fall. The war had ended. We’d never heard about Jacob. He was in one of the black units, once they were allowed to fight beside the white boys. The Japanese surrendered and there was no word. Finally, months after he was killed, we got a letter from the government. ‘We regret to inform you.’ Ralph and him were close. This word finished your uncle off. He disappeared back upstairs for a time. He came down one day, kissed my mother on the cheek, and left through the front door. We never used the front door. Only when the preacher came or ladies from church, but no one came after Pa was hurt. He didn’t want to see anyone and let it be known. When I was told he left out the front door, I knew he wouldn’t be back. Whatever demons chased him ran him out of the house. Maybe he was only waiting for Jacob to come home.

“I’d hear of Ralph from time to time. He was always drunk somewhere making a nuisance of himself. I’d go looking for him but he was always gone by the time I got to where he was said to be. They wouldn’t arrest him because of the war and all. No matter what he did, they looked the other way. Then, I stopped hearing anything or people simply stopped tormenting us with what they knew of him.

“Jake died a few years after Ralph disappeared. Pa wanted him put out in the meadows. Jake had mentioned it to him while they were out walking one time. They’d grown close and we were all out there where he was buried. Ralph came. How he knew, unless he’d been in touch with Junior or Kaleb, I don’t know. He was dressed up in a coat and tie and his hair was cut and there was no sign there was any trouble in his life.

“He was working over in Omaha. Married the boss’s daughter, your Aunt Lula. They were busy pumping out kids as quick as they were able. Ralph hadn’t lost his way with the ladies it appeared. He came to visit us quite often after that. The old rules applied. No one asked about his absence from our lives, or where he’d been, and he was back on good terms with all of us as long as you didn’t want any deep conversation, but it was better than not knowing if he was dead or alive. We were glad to have him back under any terms he set.”

“I never heard any of this,” I said, amazed by how the words flowed out of his memory without even turning a page in the journal that told the whole story.

“No, you wouldn’t. It all took place before you were born. I need more coffee,” he said, standing to bring back the pot.

It was dark out and I didn’t have any idea what time it was or how long we’d been sitting at the table.

“Be careful,” he said, this stuff will keep you up nights.

“Not you?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t sleep at night. By mid-afternoon up until sunrise. That’s when all the stuff in that journal visits me along with a lot of stuff that never made it into print.”

“Why’d your Pa give you the history of the farm and not Grandma?”

“He passed the torch, Son. I had no intention of taking over the farm and he knew it. When I did, he turned it over to me. Whatever I said, even if he strongly disagreed, became law. It was the price he paid once he saw I had taken over. The history was mine and the farm’s. I’m sure he saw it going on and on, because even the farms here seemed to have recovered from the Depression.

“Everything changes if you give it enough time. Junior can use the extra land, grow feed corn, but better yet, put in feed grass so his cows can graze without so much labor being needed to feed them. I don’t even know who owns most of the land around here now. They come in to plant. They come back to harvest, and they use a few hands to go from field to field to tend the corn when it needs it.”

“How’d it make you feel, Daddy?” I asked.

“Closer to Pa than we’d ever been. He had to die for us to get there. I always stood in his shadow until that day. I knew he would be dead soon. I knew the farm was mine when he called for me to sit beside his bed.”

“He was that sick.”

 “We knew he intended to die. Even Grandma had given up trying to make him want to live. He wouldn’t let anyone put him in the wheelchair. When he sat at the table he was in too much pain to eat. He’d ask to be put back in bed. Now for him to stop dinner to go back to bed, the man was in serious pain.”

“You? You in a lot of pain, Daddy?” I asked, breaking into his concentration.

“Comes and goes. Good days. Bad days. I got pills. I do have pills up the ying yang. They make me dopy.  More dopy,” he smiled at me as a father might smile at his son after making a joke on himself.

I’d seen my father through the eyes of a nine year old boy all my life. I was glad to be able to see his depth of courage. I held a grudge for how the man treated me as a boy and it was a weight I gladly shed at his table. The picture was more complete as was my maturity. I wanted to know more.

I wanted to know it all, but there wasn’t the time. I had work, a flight to catch, people waiting for me in Portland. One more cup of coffee and a few more questions wouldn’t take long, but it was late. I finished filling our cups and set the pot back on the stove as I pondered what to ask next.

“Jake kept him going,” he said, after stretching his legs and gazing out at the dark for a few minutes before he sat back down. “They fussed and argued over checkers, walked the fields when Pa was up to it, and they were two old birds cut from the same cloth. We all laughed at them.

“It never changed. An old crippled-up white man, an even older crippled-up black man, and as close as two peas in a pod. That seems so long ago,” he said, looking back as he stirred cream into his coffee in spite of his disdain for weakening the brew.

“Jake made coffee makes mine taste like a cup of quick brewed tea. His biscuits were taken out of the heavens off a cloud. He could make a stew by simply passing a fresh bone over a pot of water, when there was no meat for cooking. I suppose he learned how to cut corners from when he was young.”

“Sven mentioned his coffee in one of those letters as I recall.”

“Those came after we received the notice of his death from the government. They sat on our dresser for a long time before they were read. I cried every night for him. I couldn’t see to read and I was in no hurry and they weren’t going anywhere. It wasn’t going to change what was. That was the last line in his last letter to me. ‘I sure would like a cup of Jake’s coffee right now.’ I read them so often they’re memorized now. I read them in my head while I worked, when I walked where we walked, and when sleep wouldn’t come. Not so much any more.”

“So, you were jealous of Uncle Ralph? I find that hard to believe.”

“Oh, Ralph was full of life once. Nothing got his goat but me. I was his older brother. We’d been close. All of us were close as kids. Then, we hit a rough patch and Ralph could do no right. He was too busy enjoying himself to take life seriously and I took life very seriously. If I couldn’t get what I wanted I wasn’t going to let him off too easy.

“Soon as Sven showed up they were as thick as thieves. Sven was new and Ralph was his friend. He didn’t think he was arrogant or full of himself. Neither did I once Ralph took up with him, but it was too late to undo my bad  attitude from our first meeting.   I knew when faced with the prospects of being my friend or being Ralph’s friend, anyone would choose Ralph.”

“Ralph must have changed a lot. Couldn’t he be your friend too, Daddy?”

“Too simple a concept for my mind. I was an either-or kind of guy. Besides, I told you I was on the outs with Ralph and someone taking up with him over me was a personal defeat that could not be ignored.”

“What did you do?”

“Sulked. I sulked, blamed Ralph and let him know it. I couldn’t tell him what I blamed him for any more than I can tell you. Why I felt so opposed to how he lived his life makes no sense. It was simply more of the same with Sven being another reason for my bad disposition. When you live a life you think you hate, everything goes wrong.”

“How’d you guys ever end up closing the divide.”

“It started with Pa’s accident. What he was doing up under that machine without blocking it up first I never knew. There’s nothing like a bolt of reality to make a nineteen year old kid see that the world isn’t about him. My father could just as easily have died that day as ten years later. We did know he’d live when we got him to the hospital.”

“You took him to the hospital?”

“There was no ambulance service or EMTs. You couldn’t call a helicopter to whisk you off to the emergency room. There was no emergency room.”

“How’d it happen?”

“Ralph and Sven were cutting fence posts. Out in the meadows near the picnic table where all those stumps still sit. I’d take ‘em lunch and bring back the posts. We’d been wasting time and I was taking them back early as I recall. I don’t recall why. Anyway, just we started back, Mama was coming to get us. By the time we saw her she was plumb wore out. She’d found Pa up under the machine. She knew the only hope was for us to rescue him. She ran around the field on the same road we drove. It was over a mile from the house when we found her.”

“She ran a mile?” I asked.

“More. It wasn’t like when you came along. There was no way to smooth the roads back then. The tractors tore ‘em up every time it rained. There were ruts as deep as your knees. The corn was eight foot tall on one side of her and the fence was up against the other side. Even in the truck you had to go ten miles an hour or you’d rattle your teeth out of your mouth.

“Once we got to her, we took off in the truck, fence posts flying right and left as I drove about twice the speed it was safe to drive. The truck didn’t matter. Mama said he might already be dead.

“We tried and tried to get that machine up off him, but nothing worked, and then I heard this ungodly grunt as Sven wedged himself up under that machine and lifted it so we could pull Pa out. That part of the machine was dead weight and over a thousand pounds. There were no alloys, no aluminum, cast iron. The man lifted it.”

“Damn, he must have been big,” I said.

“Not that big. No one is that big. He lifted it with guts and determination. Oh, football players today might have lifted it, maybe those huge weightlifters, but Sven was slim. He was big but there wasn’t any fat on him. All gristle and guts. He saved Pa’s life and then he saved the farm.”

“We took Pa to the hospital and Mama stayed with him. We went back to tend the harvest. Pa wanted to start the next day. That’s why I picked them up early. Now, the guy that ran the harvest was out of action and near dead. We were in a pickle. That was 1937.

“Sven asked if he could use the truck to go find his brother or some sharecroppers he knew. He wasn’t sure he’d find any of them but he’d look for help. He brought back Jake, Jacob, and Kaleb. If God had cursed us by crippling Pa, he apologized by sending us those three. Each of them had a talent that was invaluable. Jake, well, he even bought some of the food we ate. That’s downright unusual for an employee to feed the employer. I was inclined not to accept his offer of his life savings, but my crazy sense of right and wrong was overridden by Jake and Sven. I was a piece a work back then. We’d have all starved if I’d done things my way.”

“Well, you might say he got his money’s worth, Daddy. He found a home, a best friend, and someone who never forgot him. That’s a lot for the money.”

“Exactly five dollars worth. He had one of these old cloth purses that men kept in their front pockets. You’d keep change or bills in it and it was big enough you’d feel it if it started to slide out of your pocket. He had an old moldy five dollar bill in his. Sven and I went and spent it. That was a nice piece of change back then.

“We started the harvest on time and somehow got the work done and didn’t loose money that year. Ralph took up with Jacob and Junior took up with Kaleb. Sven told me how he felt about me, much to my surprise. I can’t say I’d lived until that moment. He changed everything for me.

“I don’t know how love is for most, but for me it was like getting a hold of my first breath. Of course Sven had a way of taking my breath away and I couldn’t be out of his sight. We were rarely out of one another’s sight. When I was, I couldn’t wait to be back beside him. It was like he was part of me.

“Pa came home. There was a big commotion because he wouldn’t let anyone touch him. Sven walked up to him and nodded. He picked him up and carried him into the house. Pa never said a word. He knew who Sven was. Sven had been given Sainthood by Mama, and Pa knew all about what he’d done. From that day forward if Pa needed to get somewhere he couldn’t get to easily on his own, Sven carried him.”

“He did walk some?” I asked, remembering stories my grandmother told me.

“Yep! He had his good days. Then there were some bad days. One time the bad days came and never let loose again, but for a spell he walked the farm without complaining about his pain, though you could see it.”

“What did Junior do in the war?” I asked.

“Uncle Junior was born with a golden horseshoe up his butt. He got his first ship shot out from under him. Within an hour after that boat sank he was rescued by another Navy ship and when the captain of that ship found out who he had, he immediately had him transferred to his command as his aid.”

“Why?”

“Junior was a wheeler and a dealer. If it could be got he could get it. This was particularly helpful aboard ship, because of the amount of time they were at sea. Junior would trade some piece of junk they didn’t need and didn’t want for the captain’s favorite ice cream, fresh fruits and vegetables, or the latest movies going around the fleet. The only drawback was that Kaleb was a cook on board the ship he got shot out from under him and the captain wouldn’t ask for no “colored boy” to join his cooks. It wasn’t done in his world. He was from Alabama, Junior said.

“How was Jacob killed?”

“I don’t know. Jake got the letter but all we know is that he’s out in the Pacific somewhere. He did what he wanted to do. He fought for his country in an all-black unit.”

“Was he like Kaleb?”

“Jacob was as much like Kaleb as Junior is like Ralph. Junior always saw the world as an opportunity. Ralph thought he owned the world, until he went to war, and then whatever happened happened and we were glad Ralph came home, even when we knew it wasn’t really him. I missed him most because I was ready to love him the way we loved each other as little kids. It wasn’t meant to be. Best part of Ralph is still over there. I don’t mean his arm.”

‘You’ve had your share of tragedy, Daddy. I’m sorry I’ve been so difficult. Like you with Ralph, I missed an opportunity to know you and now….”

“Have you had a good life, Son?”

“Yes, I have. I was married and divorced right after I got my first television job. I thought I was in love but I’m not so sure. Didn’t get you any grandkids. Didn’t last that long. I do love my work.”

“Don’t worry, Ralph’s had enough kids and grandkids to last the Sorenson family for another few generations. That’s one way he never changed. As long as you have a good life, Robert, that’s all that is important. You used whatever motivation it took to become the man you wanted to be. There’s no reason to have regrets. If we spend our time dwelling on the things that didn’t turn out so well, well… we’d do nothing but regret. Live the life you have and accept what you’ve made of it. Happiness is greatly overrated, Robert.

“It’s mostly a state of mind. You’ve got to learn to be happy where you are and not always think happiness is just over the horizon if you can only get there. Accepting the life you have means cutting back on the ambition that often destroys happiness. You need to learn to enjoy where you are. I’m happy here and it’s the same place I couldn’t wait to leave.”

“Are you really happy, Daddy?”

“Absolutely. I was a lucky man, Son. My dreams got derailed and because they did, I managed to fall in love with the best man I ever knew and he loved me to boot. I can’t conceive people having lives without having that kind of love in it. I lost Sven, but that didn’t mean I never had him for those years I did.

“Then, I got to love your mother. I certainly didn’t expect, nor did I have any right to experience love a second time, but I did and you are living proof. Good proof as far as I can see. Robert, it was never perfect, but it was the best life has to offer and it came to me twice in doses that were too small in my opinion, but would I give the memories of either one of them up, because they didn’t measure up in longevity? No, siree. I lived, I loved, I grew things, I feed people, and I had a son. Not a bad life if you ask me. Not bad at all. Now, all that’s left is the dying, and, like my father before me, I’m ready for that too. I thought he gave up on life, but now I see he simply realized it was time to finish up and get off the stage.”

“What about something to eat. I don’t know what time it is, but the meatloaf has worn off.”

“All that I have are the frozen dinners Lula brought over. They’re in the freezer in the pantry next to the microwave. I figured the freezer out okay, but I never know what that damn microwave is doing. I had to unplug it so that damn light on the front would quit flashing all the time.”

“That’s the clock, Daddy.”

“Damn poor excuse for a clock. All it does is blink. If it’s a clock, why don’t it tell me what time it is?”

“You’ve got to program the clock.”

“I don’t know what time it is, but I don’t claim to be a clock either.”

“Would you eat one if I fixed if for you,” I asked.

“Try anything once. Can’t say I’m hungry. Can’t say I’m not. Can’t tell any more. That meatloaf was good today. To bad the café ain’t open nights.”

The freezer had two stacks of twelve dinners in plastic containers in each stack. I picked one off the top of each pile figuring there was a greater chance of him eating one if they were different. I put both in at the same time and defrosted it for five minutes.