Magda had so little compared with me—a tiny, rented house full of ragged children; a sporadic income; a husband who showed her little affection. Why couldn’t I appreciate the bounty Friedrich’s labors had produced? His church was thriving, his sermons so popular with the new mill workers that his congregation had doubled to eighty families. With the increase in pay, he no longer needed to work at the mill but was studying books on theology and Greek, preparing to apply for ordination. We’d been given a milk cow and some chickens, we had fruit trees and a garden—all that we could ever need or want. Yet Magda thrived and I was miserable.
* * *
In July of 1899, I discovered that I was in a family way for a fourth time. Unwilling to lose another child, Friedrich hired one of the Metzgers’ plump, teenaged daughters to help me with the cleaning and washing. Sophie, who would turn four the following month, adored her.
That August we learned that my brother Emil had been drafted after completing only two and a half years at university. When he finished his military training he was shipped to the German colonies in the Far East. Emil’s letters read like adventure novels. He was so excited by all that he saw and did that he didn’t have time to be homesick. He sent me a photograph of himself in his uniform, and it brought a rare smile to my lips. “He’s finally seeing the world,” I told Fritz. “That was his Someday dream.”
I was relieved to discover that I didn’t need to learn English, since I could talk to Magda and most of the other villagers in German. Friedrich had learned to read and speak English quite well after nearly four years in America, so he would translate the newspaper for me, especially any news that involved Germany or the Far East, where Emil was stationed. I would sit in the rocking chair in the parlor every evening after dinner, or on the front porch if the weather was nice, and listen while Friedrich read me the news of the day.
Then on a rainy day in April of 1900, Emma was born—a child of a new century, a new homeland. As Friedrich baptized her in his musty-smelling church, I realized that unlike her parents and older sister, Emma was an American.
Caring for her brought me more pleasure than I’d known for a long time, and my health was much improved. The only dark cloud on the horizon was the news of the Boxer Rebellion in the Far East and the fear that my brother would be swept into the maelstrom.
* * *
On a scorching summer evening in late August, the telegraph boy rode his bicycle into our backyard. I had just rocked four-month-old Emma to sleep and laid her in her basket, clad in only her diaper. Sophie, who had just turned five, was cooling off with a bath, happily splashing in the kitchen washtub. I stood by the kitchen door listening to the sound of crickets and katydids, watching the fireflies wink on and off in the tall grass beside the barn.
Friedrich was hoeing a row of pole beans in the garden, stripped to his singlet and trousers in the blistering heat. When he saw the telegraph boy, he propped his hoe against the shed and walked across the yard. I watched him as he studied the envelope and saw his shoulders sag as if he’d just hefted a heavy sack of grain onto his back. When he glanced up at the house, I was gripped by a terrible dread. He dug a coin from his pocket for a tip and the boy wheeled away. I saw Fritz glance at the house again before ripping open the envelope.
I couldn’t watch. I turned away and pulled Sophie from the water, wiggling and protesting. “No, Mama . . . wait! I want to play some more.”
“It’s time for bed.” I towelled her dry, none too gently.
“But it isn’t dark yet. Can’t I catch fireflies with Papa?”
“No. Put your nightgown on. Now.” I was immediately sorry for speaking sharply, promising to read Hansel and Gretel to make it up to her. I moved through the routine of bedtime—unplaiting her braids, brushing her hair, reading the fairy tale, saying her prayers—as if slogging through deep water.
I was upstairs when I heard the screen door slap shut. Friedrich’s work boots echoed on the linoleum floor as he paced around the kitchen. I hugged Sophie so tightly she squealed. After tucking her in, I slowly descended the stairs. Friedrich waited for me in the kitchen, his face white with pain.
“Is it Emil?” I whispered.
He nodded. “The Chinese rebels attacked a train carrying allied troops to Peking. Emil . . . Emil was killed.” He held his arms out to me, waiting to comfort me, but I couldn’t run to him. I didn’t want his comfort. He and God were all wrapped up in one package and I felt betrayed by both of them, abandoned and angry.
I took refuge in the parlor. It was dark and gloomy in the waning twilight, the curtains drawn against the heat. Emil’s photograph beckoned me from the mantel shelf. He looked so different in his uniform, his square jaw set, his posture a stiff military pose. He had plastered his dark hair flat across his forehead, but I could imagine his cowlick sticking up beneath his hat just the same. His wide mouth wore the faint curl of a smile, as if laughing at some private joke, and I had a sudden memory, crisp and clear, of Emil’s unfettered laughter—of all of us laughing a lifetime ago. If only we could have remained safe in that happy world.
“Louise, are you okay?” Friedrich asked from the doorway. He had followed me into the parlor.
“Well, you were right,” I said bitterly. “Right about all of it—the war, the destruction, death . . . It all happened just as you said it would.”
“It gives me no pleasure to be right.” Friedrich’s voice sounded strange. I looked up from my brother’s photograph and saw tears glistening in his eyes. “Emil was so bright, Louise, so talented, so eager to embrace life. He could have been anything he wanted to be.” He crushed the telegram in his hand as he wiped his tears with his fist.
I couldn’t weep. In my mind I saw myself beating down the flames of rage and despair once more. Clouds of smoke and steam engulfed me, blocking my husband from sight.
“Louise?” Friedrich’s voice sounded far away. He stood with his arms outstretched to me again, his eyes pleading. I shook my head, rejecting his embrace, but his next words surprised me.
“I need you, Louise. Please hold me.”
TEN
* * *
“Look, Mama! A sunbeam, a sunbeam!”
I turned from the sink full of dishes I was washing and saw Emma, who was four years old, standing in a beam of sunlight. It slanted through the kitchen window like a theatrical spotlight, illuminating the floor where she stood.
“Isn’t it beautiful, Mama?” She lifted her face and stretched out her arms, dancing and twirling to a song that only she could hear. The sun illuminated the fine tendrils of hair that had escaped from her braids and bathed her head in a golden halo. It was a dance of pure joy, performed by a child who was happy simply to be alive.
“The sunshine won’t last,” eight-year-old Sophie told her. “There are too many clouds in the sky. See? It’s disappearing already.” She was so different from Emma, so serious and practical. Friedrich called her his little worrywart.
“Come on, Eva, you’ll dance with me!” Emma grasped two-year-old Eva’s chubby hands and pulled her to her feet. The baby giggled until she hiccuped as her sister twirled her around the kitchen floor. From the time she could walk, Emma had skipped through life with a song, dancing among the fireflies in summer, catching snowflakes on her tongue in winter, embracing mounds of colored leaves in fall. Where had it come from, this optimism of hers? Had being born an American given her this nature, just as being born a German had given Sophie hers?
“Eva and I are doing an Indian rain dance,” Emma announced.
“No, Emma. You do a rain dance if you want rain,” Sophie said. “We have too much rain already, right, Mama?”
“Yes, I’m afraid we do.”
It had rained for the entire month of April that year, 1904, and showed no sign of stopping. Added to the snowmelt from an unusually heavy winter, the rain had swollen the Squaw River to its highest level on record, twenty feet above flood stage. From our front porch, I could almost watch it rising steadi
ly, hour after hour. The grassy bank along the river was now submerged, bringing the rushing, chocolate-colored rapids nearly level with the road. The trees alongside it waved their branches out of the water like drowning men. If it didn’t stop raining soon, the river would spill across the road and into our front yard. There were already huge puddles in all the low spots by our barn, and the churchyard where the wagons parked every Sunday was flooded halfway up the hitching posts.
I heard Friedrich’s boots clumping up our cellar stairs and watched him duck his head as he emerged through the door with a crate of potatoes in his arms. Winter-long tendrils sprouted from the potatoes like pale worms. “This is the last load,” he said. “Is there room for them in the pantry?”
“I’ll make room.” I was weary after the long morning’s work, but since the water was slowly seeping into our root cellar, the perishables had to be moved.
“Ugh! What’s that white stuff in your hair, Papa?” Sophie asked.
“Probably cobwebs. The rafters are covered with them.”
Emma tugged on her father’s pant leg. “What do they feel like, Papa? Can I touch them?” Friedrich had to be tired after countless trips up and down the steep steps, but he crouched beside his daughter, still cradling the box of potatoes, and bent his head toward her. Emma’s eyes shone with delight as she combed them from his hair with her fingers. “Ooo, they’re real sticky! Come feel them, Sophie.”
“No, I hate spiders.”
“Do you know why cobwebs are so sticky?” Friedrich asked as he rose to his feet. “It’s so that when an insect flies into them, they’ll become trapped. Spiders eat insects, you see.” He deposited the crate on the pantry floor and returned to the kitchen. “Louise, I think I’d better go over and check the church basement too. There are some old hymnals and church records stored down there. I should move them to the belfry.”
“You’ll need a rowboat to get there,” I said. “The churchyard has turned into a lake.”
“Can I go with you, Papa?” Emma begged. “I want to play in the puddles.”
“It’s pouring rain!” Sophie said. “You’ll catch your death!” She sounded much too fretful for an eight-year-old.
“We’ll take a humbrella, won’t we, Papa.”
Friedrich smiled down at Emma and gently tugged one of her pigtails. “Not this time, Liebchen. It isn’t safe to play in the water when there’s a flood like this. It might carry diseases from all the flooded outhouses. It can make you very sick.”
“See, Emma? I told you you’d catch your death.” Sophie looked too smug. Quick as a flash, Emma wiped her hand on Sophie’s head, then stuck out her tongue.
“Now you got cobwebs in your hair!” She raced from the kitchen with Sophie close behind, wailing and scrubbing her head with the dish towel. I thought their behavior shameful, but Friedrich could barely keep from laughing out loud.
“That Emma’s a regular imp, isn’t she? Who do you suppose she gets it from?”
“Emil used to tease Ada and Runa with snakes and spiders and things like that all the time,” I said without thinking. A huge lump suddenly caught in my throat. I hadn’t spoken Emil’s name in nearly four years.
For a moment, I could see my brother so clearly in my mind—his crooked grin, his wild tangle of dark hair—then a flash of pain scorched my heart when I remembered that he was dead. I dried my hands and turned away from the sink to tackle the job of reorganizing the pantry. I would beat down the flames of sorrow with hard work.
“Louise . . .” Friedrich’s voice was gentle as he stood in the pantry doorway behind me. “Tell me what else you remember about Emil.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t talk about my brother. I couldn’t talk about my family in Germany at all. I read their letters in silence, wrote back to them in silence. My daughters had never heard tales of my childhood in Germany.
“I thought you were going over to the church,” I said without turning around.
“It can wait. Louise, if you would only talk about him, maybe it would help you grieve.”
When I didn’t answer, Friedrich sighed. A few minutes later the kitchen door closed behind him.
* * *
Late that afternoon it was still raining hard. I could tell by the way Friedrich gazed through the window of his study at the muddy river across the road that he was worried. The wind had begun to blow so violently that when Peter Schultz, one of Friedrich’s parishioners, banged on our back door, I thought at first that it was a loose shutter or a tree branch striking the house.
“Pastor Schroder, I’m terribly sorry to bother you,” Peter said, “but it’s my father. The consumption is about to take him, and he’s asking for you to come and pray with him.”
“Of course, Peter. Let me get my coat. Should I follow you in my wagon?”
“No sense risking two wagons getting stuck in the mud. I’ll bring you home again after supper.”
“All right, if you’re sure . . .”
“It’s the least I can do for troubling you like this.”
Peter appeared to be drenched to the skin, and as I watched Friedrich put on his hat and coat, I knew he would probably be just as soaked by the time they reached the Schultz farm three miles upriver.
The three girls were lined up like stairsteps, watching. Friedrich caressed each of their heads briefly, then kissed my cheek. “Bye. I probably won’t be back until after dark. How were the roads, Peter?” he asked on his way out the door. “Is there much flooding?”
“The water was almost up to my wagon hubs in some of the low places . . .” That was all I heard as the door closed behind them.
“Will Papa be home in time to tuck us in?” Emma asked as I helped the girls get ready for bed later.
“I don’t think so.”
“He has to wait for old Mr. Schultz to die,” Sophie said. She sounded very matter-of-fact, but when I looked at her, I saw that her eyes were brimming with tears.
“What’s wrong, Liebchen?” I asked.
“It’s spooky here all alone, without Papa.” The rain drummed hard against the slanted ceiling of their bedroom. I understood how she felt.
“Papa will come in and give you a good-night kiss, even if you’re asleep,” I said.
Tears spilled down her cheeks.“Peter Schultz said that his papa was going to die. I couldn’t bear it if . . . I would be so sad if . . .”
“Shh, Sophie. Don’t cry . . . .” I pulled her tightly to me, muffling her words before she could speak them. Her sisters watched us, wide-eyed, not quite understanding what was going on. “Mr. Schultz is an old man with grandchildren. He’s lived a long, useful life already.” I dried her tears, and because of the stormy night, I tucked all three of them into the big double bed in Sophie’s room, promising to stay with them until they were asleep.
I was in the parlor, pacing, when the mantel clock Friedrich had bought from Sears Roebuck struck nine. My ears had been straining to hear the sound of a horse and wagon outside, and I jumped in fright when the clock broke the silence. Once again I pressed my face to the window and peered out. It was too dark to see if the flood had crossed the road, but it had been raining steadily since Friedrich left five hours ago, so I could well imagine that it had. I decided to wait another half hour for him, then go to bed. Perhaps he had judged it best to wait until morning to return home.
At twenty past nine I finally heard a wagon pull up out front, and I rushed to open the door. But it wasn’t Friedrich who stood dripping on my porch.
“Herr Metzger! What’s wrong?” He appeared wild-eyed and dishevelled, as if the hounds of hell had been pursuing him through the wind and rain. My heart began to race.
“Where’s Pastor Schroder?” he asked breathlessly.
“He went to pray with old Mr. Schultz earlier this evening and he hasn’t come back yet.”
Herr Metzger groaned and clutched his forehead. “The Schultzes live even farther upstream!”
“Yes . . . Won’t you please tell
me what’s wrong?”
“The old earthen dam on Squaw Lake is threatening to give way. They’re warning everyone who lives near the river to evacuate. Grab your children quickly and come with us. We can make room for you in our wagon.”
“I’m sure Friedrich will be home any minute,” I said, forcing myself to remain calm. “He has likely heard the warning by now, since the Schultzes live near the river too.”
“There’s no time to wait for Friedrich. You must get your family to higher ground before the dam breaks!”
“Yes, of course . . . I understand,” I said. “But I think Friedrich would want us to wait for him.”
“There isn’t time! When that dam goes, all the water in Squaw Lake is going to come rushing down this valley faster than any of us can possibly run. The force of it could wash your house away. The river is almost on your doorstep now, as it is. Please come with us. Write the pastor a note. Tell him we’re going up to my brother’s house across the river, where it’s safe.”
I drew a deep breath, then exhaled slowly to prove I was calm. “Thank you for your kindness, Herr Metzger, but I want to wait for Friedrich.”
“But, Mrs. Schroder—”
“I appreciate your concern,” I said, “but I’m sure your own wife and daughters must be anxious to leave.” I planted my hands on his chest and began pushing him firmly toward the door. I wanted Friedrich to come back and take us to safety, not Herr Metzger. He gazed at me sadly, shaking his head.
“I tried . . . God knows, I tried. . . .” he mumbled, then hurried away.
I stood on the porch, shivering, watching the wagon until it disappeared from sight. The road was so flooded that his horses appeared to be walking on water, while the wagon plowed downriver like a boat. I turned to gaze in the opposite direction, hoping to see Friedrich coming to save us. But after watching for twenty minutes or more, there was still no sign of him.