Love Finds You in Amana Iowa (20 page)

Scattered slats of white-painted wood dotted the grass and fields, fragments of the white fence that circled the property at one time. The barn on the other side of the trees was empty, and a charred foundation marked where the grand house once stood, a black eye on the bruised land.

Friedrich shuddered to think that Union men probably burned the structure and ravished the land. He understood why they might have roasted any livestock left in the barn—hunger was a powerful motivator no matter how strong the man—but he didn’t understand why they had to cut down so many beautiful trees and destroy the home and fence that the homeowners had worked so hard to build.

Or that the slaves had worked to build for their masters.

He scanned the devastation again with new eyes. Maybe it was fitting for the property to be destroyed. Perhaps it would give these men and women a fresh start at their new life without the monuments of their past to remind them of all they’d endured.

Still, he wished the soldiers had left the main house on the hill untouched and several animals in the barn. Then the freed slaves could move up to the bigger house and have food to eat until this war was over.

He didn’t understand why either army, North or South, did what they did. He didn’t understand why so many of the Yankees were arrogant about winning this war in spite of all their losses. Even with the destruction of their country and the tens of thousands of casualties, they were still intent on winning this war by power instead of peace.

And he didn’t understand why the Confederates continued to insist this war was about state rights instead of slavery, since the only right they were set on protecting was the one that allowed them to own slaves. Friedrich glanced over the ruined land again, over the stumps and broken pieces of fence and circles of stones where the soldiers had burned campfires.

If they kept fighting like this, one side losing a battle and then the other losing the subsequent one, there would be few men left in either the North or the South by war’s end. And the slaves would have either run away or starved to death.

The clouds darkened above them. They’d spent a second night out in the woods as they slowly trekked north, but with the rain clouds compounding this morning, Friedrich was grateful to be so close to shelter, no matter how poorly thatched the roof. Sergeant Mitchell stopped walking in front of him, and together they knelt down to place the stretcher on the grass. The wounded soldier didn’t awaken.

Sergeant Mitchell stepped toward one of the doors and the eyes rushed away from the window. He called toward the closed door. “We’re not here to harm you.”

Friedrich glanced over again at the Union soldiers that accompanied him and the sergeant, their uniforms tattered and many of them streaked with dirt and blood. How could the slaves not be afraid? He couldn’t even imagine what they had seen from these buildings. Or experienced. They were free now in body, but it might be a long time before they were able to loosen their spirits from the chains.

A Negro boy stepped out into the sunlight, and the child watched them closely, more curious than afraid. He wore only trousers, as tattered as the soldiers’ behind them, and his brown hair was matted against his head. Friedrich stayed on his knees, and the boy wandered slowly toward him. When the child reached him, he lifted his dark hand to touch the yellow stripes on Friedrich’s cap. Friedrich took off the cap and placed it on the boy’s hair.

“Eli!” someone shouted from inside the house. The boy grinned and raced back into the log house.

“You’ll never get that back,” Sergeant Mitchell said.

“Oh, he’ll bring it back,” Friedrich said. “Once he shows his mama.”

Sure enough, the boy raced back outside moments later to return the hat, leaving the door into the shack open. As Friedrich replaced the cap on his head, the sergeant mumbled something about lice. Friedrich shook his head, smiling. Lice was the least of their worries.

Lightning flashed across the sky, and Friedrich glanced at the doorway of the shack. Rain began to sprinkle down as he and Sergeant Mitchell lifted the stretcher, rushing the man into the house.

It took a moment for Friedrich’s eyes to adjust to the dim light inside the room. An elderly woman sat on a chair in the dark corner while Eli and a little girl played by her feet on the dirt floor. A fire smoldered at the other end of the room, stifling the room with its heat. A young woman dressed in rags stirred something in a ceramic pot, and Friedrich’s stomach growled at the smell.

Rain beat against the roof and raced across the floor in small streams. It dripped through the cracks in the walls as well, as if it were perspiring from the stress of the storm.

Friedrich’s mind wandered back again to the beautiful homes in Amana, each room neatly swept and cleaned. The bountiful gardens and valleys and all the beauty. There was nothing on this Georgia plantation except loneliness and despair.

“Haven’t you heard about the Emancipation Proclamation?” Sergeant Mitchell asked the woman cooking over the fire.

A wooden spoon in one hand, the other on her hip, she turned to him. “The what?”

“The President—” Sergeant Mitchell began. “Lincoln has declared that all the slaves in the South are free.”

“Free?” The elderly woman clapped her hands. “The good Lord be praised.”

The younger woman stared at both of them, her hair pulled back in a handkerchief. “The other soldiers say we be free.”

Friedrich looked across the bare surroundings. “Then why are you still here?”

She shrugged. “Where we s’pose to go?”

Friedrich glanced at the sergeant, hoping he would provide an answer. Friedrich had been wondering the same thing himself.

“We will come back for you, ma’am, when this war is over,” Sergeant Mitchell said. “To take you north so you can find work.”

She shook her head, turning back to the pot. “Something’s gonna happen to you ‘fore this madness end.”

“If we can’t come back for you, we’ll send someone,” the sergeant insisted.

Eli stood up beside Friedrich, his hands stuck in his pockets. “I’m gonna take ‘em north.”

“Are you now?” Friedrich said, bending down again toward him. “How old are you, Eli?”

He shrugged. “ ‘Bout five, I s’pose.”

“You have to be seven to guide someone up north.”

“I be seven soon.” He flashed a look toward the woman by the fire. “Won’t I, Mama?”

When she didn’t respond, Friedrich put his hand on Eli’s shoulder. “Until you turn seven, you better wait here. The war will be over soon, and then you can travel wherever you want without a guide.”

The woman muttered something as she turned toward the fire, seeming to confide in her pot instead of in them. She didn’t trust him or the sergeant, and why should she? They didn’t know when they would make it back to the camp or if they would make it back alive.

In the middle of the crowded floor, the man on the stretcher moaned and then coughed, tossing his head from side to side. Friedrich knelt beside him, wishing he could lessen his pain. As he drifted into consciousness, the man cursed the very God who’d made him. Friedrich cringed at his words. He didn’t know what he would do if he were ever in so much pain, but he prayed he wouldn’t curse God. He wanted to bless the name of his heavenly Father, even in his death. He didn’t have the courage to praise God in the face of death by his own strength though. The Spirit would have to help him be strong.

The elderly woman reached for Friedrich’s hand as if she felt the turmoil going on inside him. “God bless you, my son.”

“I wish I could take you all with me today,” he said as she stood up, and she squeezed his hand even tighter.

She reached forward, her eyes staring into space, and at that moment he realized she was blind. She held her hand out and patted his chest. “You take us all right here in your heart,” she said. “You keep fightin’ for us.”

He cleared his throat, wishing he had the right words to say. “I’ll keep fighting for you.”

“And we grateful, son. Eternally grateful.” She smiled. “My years ain’t long on this here earth, but I can see the glimmer on those pearly white gates in the distance and they sure is pretty.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He wished he could get a glimpse into her blindness and see those pearly gates as well. He could only imagine what a sight it must be to see the gates of heaven. To see their Savior.

The wounded man shouted out again as he sat up, his arms flailing as he called for a woman named Liza. Then, with a final scream, he fell back onto the floor.

Eli and the little girls stopped playing. The woman stopped stirring. The elderly woman dropped her hand back into her lap, praying softly under her breath—she could probably feel the shadow of death in this room.

Friedrich hung his head, not knowing what to do or say. After he’d risked his life to rescue this man, killing another to save him and then carrying him through the forest to get him to a hospital, he had slipped away.

Friedrich stumbled back against the rough logs. God’s will had been done today, no matter how hard it was to accept. There was nothing else he could do. Except—

Leaning forward, Friedrick patted the man’s shirt until he found the small silver disc pinned inside his chest pocket. The man’s name was Jonathan Everett.

There was nothing Friedrich could do to bring Jonathan back, but the soldiers could bury him on the estate and then they would find the camp so they could deliver the disc to their commander. If not, Liza would spend her life wondering if Jonathan was coming back to her.

The elderly woman leaned forward in her rocker. “Is he a friend of yours?”

“Not a friend, but he was still my brother.”

She sighed. “A lot of people are dyin’ on account of us slaves.”

“You were never a slave in God’s eyes.” Friedrich reached down and took her hand again. “Nor in mine.”

Her vacant eyes filled with tears again, and he could feel her tiny hand trembling in his. “This man paid a high price for my freedom. His life, it gone from him, and it don’t sound like he a-seein’ them pearly gates ahead.”

Friedrich didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what was in the man’s heart or if he knew their Savior. His curses must have boiled up from anger, burning those in its wake. But how could he curse God before he died? How could he be so angry at the God who created him?

“You keep them eyes on Jesus,” the woman said. “You keep focused on Him instead o’ the pain in this world.”

He nodded though she couldn’t see him. He had to keep his eyes on the Savior or he wouldn’t be able to make it through the war.

* * * * *

“He’s going to starve himself half to death,” Sophia said as she cleaned the few scraps off a plate and then scrubbed it in soapy water at the sink by the window.

“Matthias will do what he wants to do,” Amalie said. It was almost like the man enjoyed the secrets that enveloped him.

“He has to eat sometime.”

Amalie dipped the plate into the clean water and then dried it with a towel. She didn’t want to talk with Sophia about Matthias or his lack of appetite. She already felt guilty that her arrival seemed to push him away from the kitchen house and the food he needed to sustain him and his hard work.

She still couldn’t understand why he hated her so. A decade ago they’d been the best of friends—she and Friedrich and Matthias. Unmarried men and women were not supposed to mingle together in the Kolonie, but back when they were children, they’d traveled together from Germany to the States by steamer. Matthias tried to distract her and Friedrich from their nausea by playing games and making up stories about the sea and the giant waves. In Ebenezer they’d played together every day after school, like siblings.

But then the boys turned fourteen and went to work at the mill in Ebenezer. Matthias began learning carpentry from Friedrich’s father, and Friedrich was assigned to apprentice with the clockmaker. They’d become men while she was still a girl.

Once they all reached adulthood, they could no longer take her fishing with them or sledding in the snow. They no longer played for hours after school or concocted silly pranks to test on their schoolmaster.

Sophia didn’t seem to care about Amalie’s lack of interest in the discussion. She prattled on like a schoolgirl herself. “I suppose he lost his appetite when Friedrich left for that”—she lowered her voice— “for that war. He and Matthias were always together, at prayer and at meals and even working together when they could. We all miss him, but Matthias probably misses him most of all.”

Amalie’s heart cramped. “I think I might miss him a little more than Matthias.”

Sophia reached over, patting Amalie’s sleeve with her soapy hand. “Of course you do. I didn’t mean any offense. I’m just wondering why Matthias won’t eat.”

Sophia reached for another dish. “Henriette told me all about how Friedrich’s family took in Matthias while they were still in Germany. She said Matthias’s mother was a witch or something and that she didn’t particularly care who reared him as long as she didn’t have to do it herself.”

“Neither you nor Henriette should be repeating those crazy rumors.”

“Crazy?” Sophia asked, sliding her eyebrows up. “I think it’s mysterious. Romantic.”

“I doubt Matthias agrees.”

“So he was abandoned as a baby?”

“I—I don’t know,” Amalie stammered.

She should know the answer, she’d certainly spent enough time with Matthias when they were young, but she’d never asked because Matthias had never wanted to talk about his family.

Matthias had lived with the Vinzenzes for as long as she could remember. When they traveled to America, their new community became family. Most of them never discussed the relatives they left behind.

“Matthias just turned twenty-six,” Sophia said.

“You aren’t old enough to marry him.”

“Who said I was talking about marriage?” the young woman asked, like she was shocked by Amalie’s question.

While men had to wait until they were twenty-four to marry, the minimum age for a woman to marry was twenty. But they could become engaged before this age, as Amalie had been when Friedrich asked for her hand. And there were probably many women like Sophia who hoped Matthias might ask for them as well before they turned twenty.