Johann didn’t care for the sound of any of that, but the sun was almost fully risen and he should get back. He stood and reached out his hand again. “Robert McDonnell, I thank you.”
“Don’t thank me till I’ve done something for you.”
“You have made me a little less ignorant. This is good.” Johann started to leave, then stopped. “Did you hear that scream, perhaps half an hour ago?”
McDonnell shook his head as he walked over toward the tool shed, speaking over his shoulder. “No, not a scream. Was it like a woman or a man?”
“No, like an animal.”
“Might be a bobcat. They get into arguments. Or maybe an Indian who wanted to sound like a bobcat. Or a Frenchman who wanted to sound like an Indian wanting to sound like a bobcat.” He turned to his tools, then looked back. “Say, Herr Oberstrasse, you might keep this in mind. Winter comes on fast. And it stays for a hell of a long time.”
Back on the path, Johann thought about what McDonnell had said, especially that last part. One of the sailors had talked about the winter in Maine, but they had winter in Kettenheim. It got cold and snow fell. This couldn’t be very different. Johann resolved not to mention McDonnell’s warning to Christiane.
When he reached the clearing, Christiane was helping another woman lift a large kettle with stout sticks. They guided it to a hook over the now-blazing fire. The way Christiane straightened and placed her hand at the small of her back reminded him of how she moved when she was pregnant. Was she with child again? It would have to be from before the voyage, that much he knew.
He didn’t speak until there were no people around them. “Has Herr Leichter come ashore yet?” Johann asked.
Instead of answering, Christiane held Walther against her shoulder, pointing his face toward his father. Johann grinned and nodded to the baby. “Yes, yes, good morning, young master, and to the mistress as well. You slept well?”
Walther answered in his own tongue, neither English nor German.
They sat on a log to the side of the firepit. “I think your son prefers the land to the sea,” she said.
“That may not be for the best. It seems the people here spend much time on the water.” He waved at the cabins. “Everyone has a boat. They must use them for fishing and for moving things.” He extended a finger to Walther, who began to gnaw on it with his four teeth. Peter, Christiane said, had more trouble when his teeth were coming in, but Johann didn’t remember that. He had been with the army in those days.
“Even with these boats,” she said, “they always sleep on the land?”
“Probably, yes. So what of the young master’s mother? Does she prefer the land?”
“Absolutely, yes. Also breathing air that doesn’t stink and also not hanging over the sea to use the privy.”
“Ah, the tastes of a fine lady. America may be a difficult home for such a one.” He smiled.
“And no,” she said, “Herr Leichter has not come ashore. He probably prefers to eat his porridge first, something we might do as well.” She nodded toward the fire, plainly looking forward to a meal without hardtack. She lifted Walther to her shoulder.
“How much flour is there?”
She tilted her head and ran her eyes over him, then back at Walther, who was making insistent noises and reaching for her blouse. “Not much. Not for all of us. A few days, maybe.” She began to move Walther off her shoulder.
“Yes, yes.” Johann straightened and nodded to Fritz Bauer, who was emerging from the shelter. Two women were stirring the kettle. Johann found the smell of hot porridge seductive. “I’ll get the bowls and spoons.” He stood.
“I have them here.” She pointed to the ground next to her feet.
He sat again and began twisting a twig. “They say we are all to farm together, to prepare, plow, and plant one large plot that everyone will build on in the spring. You know what that means?” Busy with Walther, she didn’t answer. “That means, of course, that some will not do their share.”
“There’s no time for growing anything before the snow,” she said. “They say the winter is hard. Very hard.”
When she sat next to him, he reached over and placed his hand on her midsection. She put her hand on top of his, then looked up with shiny eyes. She nodded.
“Were you going to say?” he asked.
She smiled. “I wanted to be sure.”
“God is blessing us in this new land. He will be the first of the American Oberstrasses.”
“Perhaps she will be the first.”
“Yes, yes, of course. In the spring?”
“Yes, the baby will bring the warm weather.”
“There’s so much I must do,” he said.
He kissed her forehead and pulled her to him, not caring who might see. “Christiane, I walked out to see the land. This meadow I found. It was green and gold. The soil is dark. The trees, they’re like giants. It’s hard to imagine them falling at the hands of mere men.”
“I could see from the riverside.”
“It’s beautiful here.”
“And we will have fifty morgens of it,” she said.
“We will have our fifty morgens.” Another woman was stirring the porridge, so Christiane stayed with him. “I just met an Englishman,” he said, “a Scotsman. I can work for him, learn from him how to live here.”
“He’s a good man?”
“Yes, his yard was neat. He measured his wood. The corners of his cabin were squared.”
He stood and stared at the sloop standing offshore. “The food for us, the tools, they must all be out on the ship. There’s nowhere here on land that they could be. I’ve looked.” Christiane reached down to stroke Walther’s cheek. Johann kicked at the ground. “But I don’t know where they could be on the ship either,” he said. “That ship, it’s not so large.”
He looked back at the shelter. It was made out of a few timbers, with brush interwoven for walls and roof. Turf was laid on top. It looked flimsy, not likely to survive a harsh winter. It already had stood for at least a year or two, he told himself. It would have to do.
Where in Christ’s name was Leichter? He feared the man was a scoundrel. And that the general was too.
CHAPTER SIX
†
With Walther burrowed into a basket on her arm, Christiane picked her way along the rocky shore. Her heart felt lighter than it had since they left Kettenheim. Up ahead, Ursula and Sigrid Bauer carried a heavy pot between them and sang a song about a cat who sneaks into a house to drink cream. Other women were farther in front. Christiane hummed her own tune to Walther. The sky was grey and cold without threatening rain.
Her mood surprised her, for the news hadn’t been good. After a week of evasions, the settlers knew the truth for certain: General Waldo’s promises meant nothing. The Broad Bay settlers would have to make their own way. The sloop had held enough food for them for two weeks, if managed carefully. A few bags of coarse flour, some salt beef, plus corn and squash and beans.
“It is better,” Johann had said. “We must know this country, not wait on that rich turd to put food in our mouths.” Christiane wouldn’t have minded having some food put in their mouths, but now she thought Johann might be right. They would make their own way.
Johann had worked for Robert McDonnell the day before, earning a pail of buttermilk. At night, she and Johann drank the rich liquid slowly, sharing it out to Walther. As it filled their bellies, they began to feel giddy and brave. Johann said the best thing about working for McDonnell wasn’t the milk, but what he was learning. Johann had watched the McDonnells eat clams and lobsters. Robert said they could be found near the shore, there for the taking at the right time and in the right place. She and Ursula and Sigrid were going to the place Robert said, at what should be low tide. They were hoping for bounty.
“Look,” Sigrid shouted, her voice between a squeal and shriek. She dropped her handle of the pot and ran out onto a rocky beach, then down to the damp sand lapped by waves. Out in the bay, the wav
es rose to frothy white tips.
Here the river widened to become the bay. Christiane hurried to Ursula and lifted the other pot handle. At the water’s edge, where Sigrid shouted and pointed, the water boiled with dark-shelled creatures who darted forward, then paused, then darted in another direction, sometimes climbing over each other, apparently oblivious to the arrival of hungry humans. They looked like giant bugs. Farther on, three women stood shin-deep in the water, pouncing to grab lobsters and dump them in baskets as quickly as they could, flinching from the evil-looking claws.
Sigrid began to cry. A dark object fell from her hand with a splash, then scurried away. “It bit me!” the girl called out.
While Ursula comforted her, Christiane placed Walther on spongy ground just above the high-water mark, where he could do little but pick up stones and eat sand, a dish he wasn’t likely to enjoy. Pulling off her shoes and cape, Christiane tucked her skirt up into her waistband and pushed up her sleeves. Taking a breath, she waded into the icy water. She instantly lost the feeling in her feet.
Trying to respect the powerful pincers that each creature waved menacingly, Christiane found a stone that seemed to fit her hand. She tried to sneak up on the creatures, but they scooted off each time she lunged. Off-balance, she sometimes fell into the water, banging her knees on rocks. She looked back at Walther, who was crawling toward her, his small voice somehow cutting through the sound of waves and wind.
Ursula snatched a creature up by its tail. Twisting around, it swiped at her with a claw. Ursula dropped it with a startled cry.
“Sigrid,” Christiane called to the girl, who was sniffling and sucking on a finger. “Come help me.” The girl took careful steps into the water. “See those two?” She pointed at lobsters between them. “Chase them, toward me.” The girl nodded. She splashed at the lobsters, shouting but not getting too near. One veered away from Christiane but the other did not. On one knee, she brought her stone down hard. It splashed and cracked against the creature’s shell. She handed the lobster to Sigrid, who took it with her good hand and ran to drop it in the pot, whooping all the way.
To sharpen their tactics, they studied the creatures’ ways. Christiane and Ursula, rocks at the ready, stationed themselves about twenty feet apart, with Sigrid between. The girl chased creatures toward one woman, then toward the other. Then they shifted down the shore, or farther into the water, or up toward the land. Many lobsters scurried safely away on zigzag paths, claws swaying in triumph. But some fell to the smashing rocks. Christiane began to anticipate their patterns, how far they would run before changing direction. Sigrid learned to approach slowly, then spring and splash. Each time a stone smashed down on another shell, a shout of triumph rang down the beach. Walther joined their shouts from the shore.
Soon enough, two dozen creatures lay in the pot, covered with water to keep them fresh, a few still feebly waving feelers.
Grinning, the huntresses sat on the shore, rubbing the feeling back into their feet and gazing at the bay while seagulls circled overhead. Two especially bold gulls stood nearby, stealing sidewise glances at the pot.
“What part do you eat?” Sigrid asked.
“Inside the shells,” Christiane said, pointing. “There’s meat there. Sweet meat.”
The girl wrinkled her nose. “Really? And it tastes good?”
Ursula pulled the girl to her, bringing happy laughter. “It’ll be delicious—our first feast in America!”
“How do you cook them?”
“We boil them up in this big pot, and we must do it soon.”
“Now, young mistress,” Christiane said, “it’s time to hunt for the clams.”
Sigrid flounced back into her mother’s arms. “I’m tired.”
“Can you watch Walther? Keep those horrid creatures from biting him?”
When Sigrid nodded, Christiane handed the baby over. He had worked his arms free from the blanket and was sucking on a fist. Christiane headed back into the frigid bay.
The water soon numbed her feet again, so she teetered precariously over the rocky bottom. Johann had brought clam shells from the McDonnells so she would know what to look for, but nothing under the water looked right. Several times, she reached for what turned out to be stones. She steeled herself to wade in deeper.
The water was at mid-thigh before she saw what must be a clam. To get it, she had to plunge her arm into the water up to her shoulder. A close look revealed that this was indeed the clam. “See?” She held it up for Ursula, still in shallow water. “Like this.” Looking back down, she saw another. Then another. They surrounded her.
Her teeth were chattering by the time her basket was full. When she reached the shore, her whole body was trembling.
Ursula ran up with Walther and Christiane’s cape. “You’re shaking like a wet dog!” she scolded, wrapping her up and shielding her from the breeze. “We should have brought another blanket.” They knelt on the shore, and Christiane and the baby huddled in her arms. Christiane’s vibrations slowed, then stopped. “Sigrid,” Ursula called, “bring the shoes.”
* * * * * *
Propped against the wall of their room in the dark, her cape over her shoulders, Christiane sank into the unfamiliar feeling of a full stomach.
Frau Reuter had shown her how to cook the strange creatures, then how to manage their protective shells. Johann was standoffish, still convinced of the Reuters’ thievery on the Mary Anne, but the woman seemed perfectly nice. The clams proved chewy with a strong salty flavor. Inside their shells, the lobsters were soft and tender, as sweet as Johann had said. They drank the cooking water as broth. Even Walther had gorged on his share, emitting happy squawks while he gobbled down mashed-up lobster meat. When he sighed in his sleep, the sound touched Christiane’s heart. What could he dream? Of the tossing of the sea, which he had known for nearly half his life? Of creatures with shells and strong claws who skitter across the bottom of the bay?
Johann snored next to her on their bower of branches and leaves. It wasn’t soft, but it kept them off the chill ground. Today, he had hauled timbers to a clearing that was set aside for the new settlers’ cabins. Fritz had come to the shelter at sundown, shaking his head. “Your husband,” he said to Christiane, “he’s a crazy man. No sun, no moon, not even stars, yet he works. He’s like a bat.”
An hour later Johann arrived, frustrated that he was too exhausted to keep working. He was desperate to build a cabin before winter, one based on advice from McDonnell. The cabin would only be for this first winter—he’d build something better for the next one—but he wanted to be out of this shelter, to have a place that was theirs alone. They hadn’t come to America to live with all these people.
Christiane was proud that she and Ursula and Sigrid had brought back dinner. They would keep gathering these creatures when they could, at least until the water froze. They also could catch fish and salt them for the winter. The English settlers lived on fresh meat that the men shot in the forests: deer and something they called moose, a great huge animal but not dangerous. Johann would have to learn to hunt, which meant he needed a gun. In Hesse it was forbidden to hunt, though some did so anyway. Either the Landgraf or his nobles owned the forests and also the animals in them. In America, you could hunt wherever you liked.
She lifted her knitting from her lap. As a girl, she learned to knit in the dark. When bad thoughts had come in the night, she couldn’t get out of the bed she shared with her three sisters. So she kept her needles and yarn within reach and knitted without looking. Her fingers told her what she needed to know. How much slack there was on the yarn, how wide each row was coming out, when to change pattern, and when a stitch slipped that had to be pulled out, which after a while was almost never. Her fingers worked without hurrying. Her hands knew what to do. They freed her mind to go where it pleased.
She had planned to knit many things on shipboard, but she hadn’t. First there had been seasickness. Then Peter fell ill, and she had no time to be sick. And then he died an
d she lost heart. She shouldn’t have, but she did.
She had been making a hat for Peter, but it would become a mitten for Johann. She would have to make hats for her and for Walther, warm ones, but Johann’s hands came first. For his working. He went through mittens so fast, faster than anyone she had ever seen.
Five years before, her father had arched his eyebrows when Johann came to say he wished to see Christiane after church services. Standing behind Johann, who was neither tall nor wide, Christiane waited for the answer, squeezing and twisting her fingers, too nervous to look. Her father gave his consent.
After Johann left that day, her father asked why she wanted him, this ordinary-looking man with no land. Christiane’s brothers were all big men, and her father was proud of that. And they had land, too, which all of the family was proud of. Christiane didn’t answer. Most people couldn’t see Johann’s strength, but she could. She had from the very first, from before Kettenheim’s folk started to speak of him, with a trace of awe, as the sergeant major, even though he was only a plain sergeant. The village granted him the higher rank because of how he carried himself, how he spoke, how determined he seemed, and the wars he survived. Kettenheim had never produced a sergeant major, not that anyone could remember, not out of all of its sons who went into the army. Johann said he didn’t feel bad about never correcting the mistake. If he had soldiered long enough, he told her, he might have risen to sergeant major. He liked having people make an error in his favor, for once.
Later, after they were married, her father said he understood why Johann was sergeant major. When Johann helped with the harvest, he took fewer breaks than her large brothers and he reaped more grain. She brought water to the fields and watched him work, his face locked in a neutral expression but his body filled with intensity, almost a rage. Her father taunted his sons with Johann’s example. Such big men they were, he would say, but still outworked by this slender fellow, barely half their size. Weren’t they ashamed? Her brothers had been glad to see Johann return to the army. She smiled at the memory.
The New Land Page 5