Authors: Lynn Austin
“Your Papa’s right. This flood doesn’t cover the whole earth like Noah’s flood did.”
“God sent a rainbow, remember?” Emma added. “That means He will keep us safe.”
“Where is Papa?” Sophie asked. “Is he safe?”
I remembered that Friedrich was farther up the valley, closer to the dam, and felt a deep, soul-shaking fear for him. I began to talk, saying the first words that came into my mind, hoping that a long, rambling explanation would serve as a distraction to keep all of us going.
“Back home in Germany there was a terrible drought the year you were born, Sophie. A drought is the opposite of a flood—when there is no rain for a long, long time and the river dries up. Floods and droughts are just part of the normal cycle of life. God promised not to destroy the earth, but sometimes He causes the river to flood and we’re so afraid it’s going to destroy us but it doesn’t, you see, because . . .” I had to stop as the flood of sorrow I’d been holding back all these years threatened to let go.
“Did we live by a river in Germany?” Sophie asked.
I cleared the lump from my throat. “Yes, it flowed through the little village where you were born, where your papa was a schoolteacher. When I was a girl I could see the river if I climbed my favorite tree in Papa’s pasture. My brother Emil and I would climb it together and play a game called
Someday
.”
“How do you play it?”
“Well, you take turns saying: ‘Someday I’m going to . . .’ Then you fill in whatever you’d like to do. It’s kind of like wishing on a star. My brother Emil wanted to see the world for his
Someday
dream.”
“Did he get his wish?”
“Yes. He traveled all the way to the islands in the Pacific Ocean and even to China.”
“What did you wish for, Mama?” I paused to rest a moment, shifting Eva to my hip. I was puffing from our uphill climb, so I knew we were probably high enough to be safe now if the dam broke.
“Oh, lots of things . . . but what I wished for the most was to marry a handsome baron.”
“What’s a baron?”
“A very rich man who owns a mansion and lots of land.”
“Papa is handsome, isn’t he,” Emma said.
I thought of Friedrich’s broad shoulders, his sandy hair, his gentle blue eyes. “Yes, darling. Papa is very handsome.”
We walked and walked, and for the first time in almost eight years, I began to talk about my family in Germany, telling stories my daughters had never heard before. I told them about Mama and Papa, my brothers Kurt and Emil, my sisters Ada and Runa, and finally my precious grandmother, Oma. A flood of words and memories poured out, held back for much too long.
I talked, and Eva stopped crying and fell asleep on my shoulder. I told about opening presents in the parlor on Christmas Eve, and for a while Sophie and Emma forgot that they were wet and cold and frightened.
An hour later, tired and drenched to the bone, we arrived at Magda’s door. Only then did I realize that the rain had stopped. And that my face was wet—not with rain, but with tears.
ELEVEN
In the morning, Gus Bauer left with one of the rescue parties to look for survivors—and to help bury the dead. We learned that some homes along the river had washed away during the night and several people were missing. We didn’t know yet if our home was among them. Gus made no mention of Friedrich, but when he tipped his hat to me in farewell, I knew it was his promise to find him.
“Be careful, Gus,” Magda pleaded as she said good-bye. I saw something in her eyes that I’d failed to notice before—she was in love with him. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t hold a job or that they had very little money or that she was pregnant again with their eighth child. She loved him. For better or for worse. For richer or for poorer. Until death parted them.
Later, as I stood at Magda’s sink washing the breakfast dishes, I remembered how Friedrich would sometimes wander up behind me and encircle me with his arms, resting his head against the back of my shoulder. I wondered if I would ever feel his arms around me again, and I couldn’t stop my tears.
“I know it’s probably useless to tell you not to worry,” Magda said as she wrapped her sturdy arms around me. “I’d be worried sick if I were in your place.”
“All I’ve ever thought about for the past several years was how much I hated it here in America . . . how much I wanted to return to Germany. And now . . . if my house is gone . . . if Friedrich is gone—”
“Don’t even think such a thing! Friedrich will be fine. Gus will find him, you’ll see.”
I stared out of the grimy kitchen window at the rain that continued to fall. “But what if he isn’t fine? I’ve been trying to imagine my life without him and I can’t do it. I suppose I could move back home to Germany again with Mama and Papa and my sisters and Kurt . . . but there would be a huge hole in my life. Part of me would be missing . . . like apple strudel without the cinnamon.” I glanced at Magda, afraid she might think I was rambling crazily, but I saw
that she understood perfectly. “I love him,” I whispered.
“I know,” she said simply.
“But I’ve never told him.”
She pulled me into her arms again and held me tightly. “Then I’ll pray that you will get a chance to tell him.”
Gus returned at noon without Friedrich. “We haven’t been able to get much news from your side of the river, since the bridge was washed away,” he told me. He spoke quietly so that the older children, who were eating picnic-style on the floor in the parlor, wouldn’t overhear us. “But if he went to the Schultz farm, he should be okay. They live a little ways back from the river.”
“Any news about the dam on Squaw Lake?” I asked.
“The dam is still holding, but I guess we won’t be completely out of danger until the water levels go down. Some men worked all night long sandbagging it. And I heard that two volunteers were drowned in the process. One of them lost his footing and fell in, and the other jumped in to try to save him. They haven’t found the bodies yet.”
“Did you hear who they were?” I could barely force the words out.
“No, I didn’t, but—” Gus stopped chewing. A stunned look froze on his face. “You . . . you don’t think Fred would have gone to help out at the dam, do you?”
I could only nod.
Gus groaned. “You’re right. He would do some fool thing like that.”
And Friedrich, who was a strong swimmer, would also leap in to save a drowning man. Gus pushed his chair back with a loud scrape and shoved his arms into his oil slicker.
“I’ll be back just as soon as I find something out for you . . . one way or the other.”
I sat stitching beside the parlor window all afternoon, helping Magda catch up with her endless mending. Baby Eva was sick and cranky, having caught a cold in the wind and rain, so I laid her down on Magda’s bed for a nap after lunch. Sophie disappeared somewhere with two of the Bauers’ daughters, but Emma sat on the floor by my feet with a pencil and a scrap of used butcher paper, drawing a picture.
“All done,” she finally announced. I laid the mending aside as she crawled onto my lap to show me. Five stick figures of varying sizes stood beneath the arch of a rainbow, holding hands. “That’s Papa, that’s you, that’s Sophie, that’s Eva, and that’s me,” she explained, pointing. All of the figures wore
curving smiles on their round faces except me. My mouth was fixed in a short, straight line, giving me a vacant, dazed look.
“Why aren’t I smiling?” I asked. Emma looked at me and shrugged. The gesture spoke for her—my daughter didn’t understand why I never smiled.
“Do you like my picture?” she asked.
“Yes. It’s beautiful.”
“You can keep it forever,” she said, sliding from my lap to go in search of the other children.
Emma had never seen me hold Friedrich’s hand either, but I was clasping it tightly in the picture, linking myself to him and to our three children. I could picture Friedrich’s hands so clearly in my mind—broad and strong and tanned, with veins like cords of twine. I saw them raised in benediction over his congregation, glistening with water as he baptized a child into God’s covenant family, folded in prayer as he knelt in his study every morning. I had loved Friedrich’s hands ever since we were first married, when I had watched him grade papers each night in Germany.
The clamor and commotion of children continued in the other rooms, but for the moment I was alone in the parlor. I folded my own hands together like Friedrich always did and closed my eyes. I wanted to pray like I had last night during the storm—to the God Friedrich talked with every day and preached about on Sunday, the God he loved and worshiped, the God I’d been angry with. But without my children to lead the way, I scarcely knew how to begin.
Almighty God
. . . That’s how Reverend Lahr back home began his prayers, and it had seemed right in the hush of that quiet sanctuary with its carved wood and stained glass. But that wasn’t how Friedrich prayed. I began again.
Heavenly Father
. . . Tears sprang to my eyes as I remembered running to my father’s arms when I was a child. It was the way my girls ran to Friedrich. Now I ran to God.
Heavenly Father, I pray that you would spare my husband’s life. Fritz loves you and serves you and obeys you. I know I don’t deserve to ask anything of you. I’ve been angry with you and with him for so long. But please . . . if our house is still there, I promise I’ll plant flowers, I’ll make it a home, I’ll be the wife Fritz deserves
.
I wanted to do and to be all that the Bible asked of a wife. The Scriptures listed those requirements somewhere. I opened my eyes and took Magda’s huge old family Bible from the shelf where she kept it and began to page through the New Testament, searching for the verses that would tell me what
to do. I knew from my childhood catechism classes that the verses were in there.
The Bible was in German but was very old, the faded Gothic lettering hard to read. I persevered, scanning all the headings, page after page, with the same will to succeed that had helped me survive last night’s storm. I found what I was looking for in the book of Ephesians, under the heading “Christian Duties.”
Wives submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing
.
I was surprised to find only three verses. But as I continued reading, I discovered that the duties of a husband were much longer—nine verses.
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it. . . . So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it. . . . For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh
.
Those words described my husband. Friedrich had labored in a coal mine and cut ice in the river so that I wouldn’t have to travel in steerage. He had hauled loads of lumber and bricks at the mill for two years to furnish my home with everything I needed. Husbands were to give their very lives—a much greater sacrifice than what was required of their wives.
Friedrich had shown Christ’s love to me through his own, and I knew instinctively that God had heard my prayer, that He loved me just as Friedrich did, even though I had treated Him so coldly. God was patiently waiting, just as my husband was, for me to return His love. Friedrich’s God was a Father who loved me. And as I prayed for His forgiveness, I found I could also believe in Jesus, who loved me enough to lay down His life for me.
Gus still hadn’t returned when Magda and I fed the children their supper. Later, we tucked all but her two oldest boys into three overcrowded beds and turned a deaf ear to their whispers and giggles. Together, we waited for our husbands in the parlor.
It was dark when we finally heard voices outside. I peered through the parlor window and saw a knot of men moving toward the back door—gray, hunched figures without faces. A shrouded form lay in the back of a wagon. I heard their stamping boots and muffled voices as they came through the kitchen door and felt the same fathomless dread I’d felt the day the telegraph had arrived with news about Emil. Magda got up quietly and hurried into the kitchen, but I couldn’t move. I would wait in the parlor for the news to come to me. Even when I heard footsteps approaching in the hall, I couldn’t face the door.
“Louise . . .” I whirled around at the sound of Friedrich’s voice. He stood in the doorway, hat in hand, as if unwilling to enter the parlor in his muddy boots. I ran to him, clung to him. He was soaking wet and coated with mud—reeking of it. I didn’t care.
“Oh, Louise! I was so worried about you! Thank God you and the children are all right . . . I don’t know what I’d ever do without you!”
We were one flesh, our arms encircling, our lips joining. One. I thanked God for my husband.
“I’m getting you all wet!” he said when he could finally speak.
“It doesn’t matter. I want to hold you forever.”
“I know. Me too. But I have to go back out again for a little while. Do you mind? I want to offer what comfort I can to those who have lost loved ones. I won’t be long.”
As I brushed a streak of mud off his forehead, the dam I’d built to hold back my emotions suddenly burst, flooding my heart, bringing the burnt stubble to life.
“I love you, Friedrich.”
He went utterly still. “What . . .?” he whispered.
“I do. I love you.”
He went limp, staggering against me as if he lacked the strength to stand. He buried his face on my neck. Then, clutching each other tightly, Friedrich and I both wept.
It took more than a month to clean the muck and debris from our yard so that I could plant flowers in front of our house and around the church. The floor of the sanctuary had been ruined by the flood and would have to be replaced. Maybe the musty smell would finally go along with it.
I was rinsing my hands in the sink after planting some rosebushes when
Sophie came into the kitchen with Eva in tow. The baby was wailing loudly and I could see that they’d had more than enough of each other.