Authors: Lynn Austin
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
steadily, 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.
Then, above the drumming of the rain on the porch roof, a steady roaring sound gradually grew in my consciousness like a mighty crescendo until it seemed to fill the night.
The river
. Swollen and angry, it prowled in the darkness just beyond my doorstep, stalking my family. Any moment now, it might rise up like an angry monster and devour us all. I finally understood what Herr Metzger had been desperate to make me understand.
My family
. I had to get my family to safety.
I had always depended on Friedrich to make the decisions and decide on a course of action, but this time I couldn’t wait for Friedrich to save us. For once in my life I was responsible for my own life—and for my daughters’ lives. They were depending on me to make the right decision.
What a heavy burden of responsibility Friedrich carries every day.
As quickly as I could, I laced on my sturdiest high-top shoes, then put on my winter coat. Kerosene lantern in hand, I waded across the flooded yard to the barn, the rain lashing my face. On my left, the church floated like an island in the middle of a lake, completely surrounded by water. Inside, the barn smelled of hay and manure and old wood, reminding me so strongly of Papa’s barn that I nearly called out his name. Then I remembered where I was and what I needed to do.