The Proud Shall Stumble

by Gerald N. Lund

  “Are you kidding?” Adelia cried. “My children think this is the neatest thing ever.”

  “Did the girls choose upstairs or downstairs?” Mitch wondered.

  “Upstairs. And my Liesel and your Tina will sleep up there with them. When we’re finished here, I’ll go up and sleep with them too.”

  “Oh no, Adelia,” Edie said. “We have the guest room ready for you and Jacob. Our kids will watch the little ones.”

  “I know that,” Adelia said with an impish look in her eyes, “but I don’t want to miss out on all the fun. Marta and Heidi begged me to come back and sleep with them.” She looked at her husband. “So you’ll have Annaliese in here with you. I’ll leave a bottle with you just in case.”

  “And who’s with the boys?” Edie asked. “Not just Benji and Noah and Charles, I hope.”

  “That’s what they wanted,” Adelia said, laughing, “but both MJ and Rowland have volunteered to ride herd on them.”

  “We have church tomorrow,” Edie reminded them. “So we can’t let them stay up too late.”

  Jacob patted the sofa beside him. “Come and sit, Adelia. We’ve just been sitting around talking.”

  She did so, tucking her legs up underneath her. As Edie watched her, she remembered that first day the Reissners had driven up in front of the house. Edie had been watching surreptitiously from the window. When Adelia got out of the car and Edie saw the very expensive, very chic clothes she was wearing, she had immediately decided that they were not going to get along. But once inside, it was Adelia who was embarrassed. When they had stopped at Green River for gas, they had asked some of the locals if they knew the Westlands down in Monticello. She had come away with the idea that the EDW was the largest cattle ranch west of the Mississippi and that their ranch house was a palatial western-style mansion and so had dressed accordingly. With that cleared up, she had slipped into something much more practical, and the two women had gone on to become as close as sisters.

  Adelia noticed that Edie was looking at her and smiled. “Tell me about Tina,” she said. “She is an amazing young woman.”

  “That she is,” Edie said. “Well, she will be twenty this Christmas.”

  “She’s a beautiful girl,” Jacob said. “Any suitors?”

  Mitch answered that one. “Yes. In fact, she is engaged. Or more accurately, she and her fiancé will be formally engaged on her birthday, when he will give her a ring. But that’s just a formality.”

  “A local boy?” Adelia asked.

  “Kind of,” Edie replied. “His name is Lamont Perkins, and his family lives in Bluff. Everyone calls him Monte. He’s one of the many members of the Perkins clan. Not from Monticello but a San Juan boy through and through. He’s a fine young man, and we’re pleased to have him join our family. Monte is four years older than Tina. They have been sweet on each other since she was seventeen. He is now in his third year of medical school at the University of Utah.”

  “Oh!” Jacob said. “That’s not far from the building I usually teach in. You’ll have to give me his address and we’ll invite him to Sunday dinner sometime.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Edie said. “They will marry about this time next year. Tina will continue at BYU for one more year and graduate at about the same time that Monte finishes medical school.” She pulled a face. “Then they’ll be off to wherever he gets a residency. The only thing that makes that bearable for us is knowing that both of them are committed to coming back to San Juan County and settling here, him as a doctor, her as a teacher, depending on whether they have children by then or not. Tina’s worried that she may be like me—children don’t always come just because we want them.”

  They fell quiet, and then Jacob looked at Mitch and Edie. “Do you hear much from Hans Eckhardt anymore?”

  “Not Hans,” Edie answered, “but we hear from Inga and Emilee and Paula on a regular basis. Every two or three months or so.”

  “Oh.” That seemed to disappoint Jacob a little. “We hear from the family only occasionally, but Hans and I have carried on a regular correspondence since we were all there in Oberammergau.”

  “Did he tell you that Inga has now moved up to Munich permanently?” Edie asked. “She’s living with Hans and Emilee and the children. Oh, and by the way, they have three now. I assume you heard that.”

  “We did,” Adelia said. “Hans Otto Jr. Hans is so proud.”

  “He sent a photo of him with the baby,” Jacob said. “That says a lot. That’s the first photo he’s ever sent me.”

  “So what is Hans telling you about how things are there?” Mitch asked.

  “Well, for one thing, he told me why Inga moved to Munich. It’s a situation similar to yours. The family down in Graswang is growing. Ilse and Karl now have five children, and Heidi and Klaus have four. And they’re not little children anymore. So the two families have divided the dairy farm between them. They invited their mother to stay with them, but Inga said no. In addition to actually having more of her family in Munich now, she can now go to church every week, which she loves.”

  “And guess what happened?” Adelia said.

  “What?” Mitch asked.

  “President Schindler was finally released as branch president after eight or ten years. In the shake-up that followed, Rudi was called to be a counselor in the new branch presidency. Paula is the new Relief Society president.”

  Edie clapped her hands. “She’ll be wonderful. We really came to love Paula.”

  “And Emilee is one of her counselors,” Adelia went on. “And Inga is over the Relief Society’s efforts to help the poor.”

  “And,” Jacob broke in, “Anna is now the president of the YW-MIA and has charge of the young women in the branch.”

  “My, my,” Mitch said. “Sounds like the Eckhardts are a pretty central part of that little branch now.”

  “Oh,” Adelia added, snapping her fingers. “And one more thing. Alisa was baptized last month. She turned eight in November of last year, but they waited until the weather was warmer, I guess.”

  “So they now have a second generation Latter-day Saint in their family,” Edie said. “That can’t be true of every family there, I’ll bet.”

  “And what about Hans and his leg?” Mitch asked. “Does he talk about that at all? Emilee has said in a couple of her letters that it seems to slowly be getting worse.”

  “Though I have asked him several times about it, he just ignores my questions,” Jacob answered. “But in this last letter he told us that he finally gave in to Emilee’s constant prodding. I guess that all along Emilee has not felt good about what the army doctors did. She didn’t feel that they were the most qualified, and since they were operating on a prisoner, she felt they weren’t highly motivated, either. So she’s been after him to go see one of the doctors in the surgery unit of the biggest hospital in Munich. That is the one that operated on his father for cancer several years ago. And she showed him an article saying that X-ray technology has advanced rapidly. Hans’s answer to that was always that they didn’t have the money. Now with the new job with the Nazi Party, I guess they do. So Hans finally agreed and went in. The doctors believe that they can remove the bullet, or at least move it enough that it no longer presses on the nerve. So, he’s going to do it next fall. I guess he’s going with Hitler to several different cities to hold party rallies this summer and wants to wait until those are over.”

  Edie spoke up. “Emilee told us that Hans downplays the whole thing because he’s afraid it’s not going to make any difference, but she said that the doctors were quite optimistic. He may end up with no pain at all.”

  “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” Adelia said.

  “All right, so back to this new job Hans has,” Mitch said. “It must be paying pretty well. What is it?”

  Jacob turned to Mitch. “He’s in charge of recruiting and attracting more mem
bers to the party. Their goal is to get enough members to eventually start winning some seats in the state parliament.”

  “And they pay him for that?” Edie asked.

  “Yes they do, and pretty handsomely,” Jacob said. “He gets some kind of bonus for every ten thousand new members he recruits.”

  Mitch snorted. “Ten thousand? What does that take him? Ten years?”

  “Not quite,” Jacob said with a laugh. “When he accepted the job, the party was down to about twenty-five thousand members. There are now”—he paused for effect—“one hundred and eight thousand members!”

  Edie and Mitch gaped at Jacob, causing Adelia to laugh. “That’s right. So he’s now recruited about eighty-three thousand new members.”

  “Which means,” Jacob added, “that Hans has increased his salary eight times in three years.”

  “Wow!” Edie said.

  Mitch was thinking of something else. “I read an article that said they’re calling these last few years in Germany the ‘golden age of the Weimar Republic.’ The economy is stable. Unemployment is down. The French are finally pulling out of the Ruhr Valley and the land along the Rhine River.”

  “Well,” Edie said, “I can’t think of anyone, anywhere, who deserves some stability more than the Eckhardt family.”

  Chapter Notes

  The figures for the growth in the Nazi Party between 1925 and 1928 come from Shirer (see Rise and Fall, 118).

  June 4, 1928, 9:37 p.m.—EDW Ranch

  They made a large bonfire out by the barn that evening and roasted marshmallows and hot dogs. With that finished, they let the fire die down to glowing embers as they sat around and talked. The younger kids soon left to play night games, with Jacob and Abby leading the pack. To Edie’s surprise, the older grandchildren chose to stay with the adults. As she looked around at them, she felt a warm glow inside her.

  That Benji and Liesel had stayed behind was no surprise. They sat shoulder to shoulder on a log, occasionally whispering something to each other but mostly content to listen. Noah and Edna June sat beside MJ and June. Noah was the firstborn of the Westland grandchildren and was a year older than his uncle Benji. He was a rancher born and bred, from the tip of his rust-colored hair to the toes of his boots. At fifteen, he was pulling a man’s load now along with his father and grandfather. After the Reissners returned home, he and Benji would help take the cattle up to the summer range and stay up there for several weeks. His sister, Edna June, was a year younger than the twins. She didn’t have much of the Westland look about her. She took after her mother, and Edie adored her. Soft, gentle, patient, quick to help, she was a joy to have around. She was going to make some lucky man a wonderful wife.

  Charles and Lem Redd sat beside their parents. Charles, who was Rena and Rowland’s oldest child, had been born one week before the twins, a point about which he frequently reminded them. Lem had come along seventeen months later. Here were two more budding ranchers. They would be the fourth generation of cattlemen in the Redd clan.

  Tina sat beside her mother, her arm interlinked with Edie’s. At nineteen, she was considered an adult, but to her mother’s surprise, she said little now, seemingly content to watch and listen and enjoy. Edie guessed she was missing Monte at times like these.

  “So,” Mitch said as the conversation lagged, “today’s Monday. You’re still planning on leaving on Saturday, I assume?”

  Jacob nodded. “Yes. Both Adelia and I have callings in our ward and need to be back Sunday.”

  “Then if we do the picnic tomorrow and teach the kids how to ride horses, that still leaves us three days. What else would you like to do?”

  “We’re fine to just stay here and hang around the ranch,” Adelia said.

  All six of the teens moaned.

  “No, Mama,” Edna June cried. “Let’s take them to go see things.”

  “Yeah,” Benji said.

  “I agree,” Liesel vigorously added.

  Jacob spoke up. “The other night you mentioned a hill outside of Bluff, the last major pull for the pioneers and their teams. How far out of Bluff is that?”

  “Only eight or nine miles,” Mitch said. “They call it San Juan Hill, because it’s not far from the San Juan River.”

  Rena raised her head. “And if we went there, we could see the cliff dwellings that are in the area.”

  “Cliff dwellings?” Adelia repeated. “Now that is something I would love to see.”

  Liesel sat straight up. “You mean, real Indian ruins? How old are they?”

  “No one knows for sure,” Benji said. “The archeologists say they are probably a thousand years old or more.”

  Liesel stared at him in open-mouthed amazement. “Really?”

  “Yes, really,” Mitch said. “And they’re all over the place down here.”

  Noah jumped to his feet. “What about the House on Fire?” he exclaimed, looking at his parents. “It’s better than the River Ruins by a ton.”

  Adelia was leaning forward. “House on Fire? I assume that’s not literal. Tell us about it.”

  Edie did so. “It’s my favorite of all the ruins. The ruins themselves are built right beneath this massive cliff, which is a pretty neat thing to see in and of itself. But what makes these ruins so spectacular is that the cliff face has variegated colored sandstone. But the way the cliff face has eroded over the centuries”—she used her hands to demonstrate—“it looks like the rock is actually great flames of living fire. That’s where it gets its name.”

  “Especially in the afternoon when the sun is full on it,” Benji explained to Liesel. “It is the neatest thing ever.”

  All the kids were up and clamoring to be heard.

  Mitch raised a hand. “The one problem with San Juan Hill is that the road to it goes down Comb Wash. We’ve had a wet spring, so we might have trouble getting down there. But. . . .” He held up a finger, as if a great idea had just come to him.

  The children leaned in closer, their eyes shining with excite­ment.

  “What if we don’t go down to Bluff?” he said to Edie. “Instead, we can go out and see the House on Fire and then go on over to Natural Bridges National Monument.”

  Tina clapped her hands. “Wonderful, idea, Dad. We could hike down to Owachomo Natural Bridge and camp there overnight.”

  Mitch was nodding. “If you guys are up to a two-day trip and some hiking. Neither place is too strenuous to get to. If we take our time, even the little ones can do it. And it’s only about sixty miles from here.”

  A chorus of yeses drowned out Jacob and Adelia’s reply.

  As soon as it died away, June spoke up. “Owachomo means ‘rock mound’ in the Hopi language. It’s an amazing sight. You can hike right under it. The bridge is about ten stories above the ground and has a span of over a hundred feet across. It takes your breath away.”

  Jacob reached out and took Adelia’s hand. “What do you think, dear?”

  Edie spoke up before Adelia could answer. “We could get Sister Browning to come stay with the babies so all the rest of us could go. She’s a newly married sister in the ward with no children of her own yet. And she’s wonderful with babies.”

  “Oh, Mama, please.” Liesel was wringing her hands imploringly.

  After a moment, Adelia smiled. “Sounds to me like we have a plan.”

  Rena turned to Rowland. “What do you think? We’ve already been here for three days. Can you take some more time?”

  “Are you kidding?” he exclaimed. “I’ve never seen either of those things! I’ll call my brothers and have them take care of things until we get back.”

  “Yay, Dad!” Charles said, leaping to his feet. “Come on, Lem. Let’s go tell Abby and the others.” He was striding away even as he spoke. Benji, Liesel, and all the rest followed right after him.

  June 6, 1928, 7:45 p.m.—Near Owachom
o Natural Bridge, Natural Bridges National Monument, Utah

  Adelia stood up, stretched, and yawned and then looked at the orange sky to the west. It glowed as if the whole state of Utah were on fire. “What an incredible place,” she said, turning around slowly, her hands outstretched as if she could pull it all down into her arms. “And it’s so quiet. When you live in the city, you forget how quiet it can be.”

  “When you live in San Juan County,” Mitch said dryly, “you sometimes long for noise of any kind.”

  “Oh, you,” Edie said, slapping at him playfully. “You know you like the quiet too.”

  Adelia laughed and came back and sat down beside her husband. She shivered and cuddled up against him. “Put another log on the fire, hon. It’s getting chilly.”

  Mitch was closer to the stack of wood they had chopped, so he reached over and tossed two pieces of dead cedar on the coals. “We are over eight thousand feet up here. Once the sun goes down, the heat of the desert kind of evaporates.”

  “I can get your coat from the tent,” Jacob offered.

  “No, no. Don’t wake the little ones up,” Adelia said. “Just hold me and I’ll be fine.” He put his arms around her and drew her in close.

  The sound of soft laughter floated to them as the bark on the cedar branches started to crackle. Tina turned and looked in the direction of the tent she shared with Liesel, Abby, Edna June, and Marta. She was smiling as she turned back. “The children are having such a fun time together.”

  “I know,” Edie said. “They’ve become best friends all over again this week, which is wonderful.”

  “Why aren’t we hearing anything from the boys’ tent?” Jacob wondered. “That’s a little worrisome.”

  “Because,” Tina said, “I told them that if they wake up the younger kids, they would be taking down all of the tents tomorrow by themselves and packing them into the cars.”