Margaret nodded, her expression grim. “I wish I could say that it is hard to imagine humans treating each other in such a way. But then I witness things here every day that make me question all of humanity.”
Her eyes went to Jeremiah again. “There’s no reason everyone shouldn’t be treated equally, Peter,” she said. “No reason at all.”
And then, early on the morning before Christmas Eve, Peter and Maus were working on the eastern edge of the sugarcane fields, about a quarter mile from Margaret’s farm, when they heard screams. Margaret’s screams. Peter didn’t hesitate before taking off at a full run toward the sound, and Maus, cursing, ran after him. Behind them, Peter could hear the yells and the footfalls of the guards chasing them, but he was faster, far faster, because he was propelled by an icy, desperate fear.
Still, nothing prepared him for the scene that awaited in the trees just beyond Margaret’s house.
Jeremiah was hanging from one of the branches of a huge slash pine, his neck twisted precariously, his feet jerking wildly, and his bare chest streaked with blood.
Margaret was still screaming when Peter arrived, her arms wrapped around Jeremiah’s thighs as she tried to lift him up, taking the weight off his neck. She was wearing a white cotton dress, and it was drenched crimson in Jeremiah’s blood.
Peter rushed to her side immediately and hoisted Jeremiah up from the waist. He was relieved to see that the boy was still breathing, albeit shallowly.
“Margaret, are you okay? Are you hurt?” Peter demanded as Maus ran up begin him, exclaimed in disbelief, and rushed over to help Peter to support the boy’s weight.
Within a few seconds, Harold and another guard, a squat man named Carl, burst into the small clearing, guns drawn, yelling for Peter and Maus to get down on the ground. But they both stopped in their tracks when they saw the scene before them.
“What in God’s name?” Harold breathed, holstering his gun. He hesitated only a second before ordering Carl to get up on his shoulders. In silence, Peter handed Carl his cane knife, and Carl hacked through the thick rope until Jeremiah, heavy and limp as a sack of flour, fell from the tree. Maus caught him and lowered him gently to the ground, and in an instant, Margaret was draped over him, sobbing as she tried to make sure that he was still breathing.
Peter, Maus, and the guards straightened up and stared at one another in silence. “I thought you were trying to escape,” Harold finally said to Peter.
“No, sir,” Peter replied. “I heard her screaming.”
They all looked at Margaret, and Peter ached to go to her, to hold her, to comfort her, but he knew he couldn’t do it in front of the guards. The things he felt for her, the things he hoped she felt for him, were forbidden.
“Miss, what happened here?” Harold asked. “Who’s responsible for this?”
“I don’t know,” Margaret sobbed. From the way she avoided meeting his eye, Peter knew she was lying. “Please, can someone help me get him to my house? We must summon a doctor.”
Harold and Carl exchanged looks, and Harold looked at Peter. “Dahler, you grab his arms. I’ll take his legs. Maus, you support him in the middle. Gently now.”
Without a word, the three men hoisted Jeremiah slowly from the ground. He moaned, and Peter could hear Harold murmur under his breath, “He’s just a boy, for God’s sake. How could someone do this to a boy?” Behind them, Carl was helping Margaret to her feet, and as she leaned into him for support, Peter felt a surge of jealousy, surprising in its power. He should be the one comforting her, the one letting her lean on him, the one drying her tears. Instead, Carl—a man his own age—was holding her close and murmuring to her. Peter swallowed back his anger and focused on Jeremiah, who, still and bloodied, looked far younger than his twelve years.
The men carried Jeremiah to Margaret’s house in silence, and for the first time, Peter stepped over her threshold. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light and he helped the others lift Jeremiah to a worn-looking couch in the living room, he drank it all in. This was Margaret’s life, the place she’d come from, the place she spent so many of her moments. He wanted to remember it all: the warped wooden floors, the sun-bleached yellow floral curtains framing the windows, the scent of fried fish clinging to the air, the dust particles dancing in the morning light. It was mundane, but it was also somehow magical.
Margaret was still crying as she came in the door with Carl, and Peter took a step toward her.
Maus reached out quickly and put a hand on his arm. “Mach nicht,” he said firmly, quietly. Do not. And instantly, Peter was reminded of where he was, who he was.
He watched helplessly as Margaret hurried down a small hall, emerging a moment later with a roll of bandage cloth and a bottle of grain alcohol. “Can you clean and bandage his wounds, please?” she asked, walking right up to Peter. “And keep him calm and comfortable? I’m going to call the doctor.”
“Ma’am,” Carl said, stepping forward and giving Peter a dark look. “This boy here’s a prisoner. A German. We’ll take care of things.”
“No.” Margaret’s answer was immediate and fierce. “I saw the way he carried Jeremiah here. He was gentle with him, and kind.” She glanced at Peter and held his gaze for a moment. He could read determination, sadness, and fury in her eyes, and he ached again to hold her, to comfort her. Maus’s grip on his arm was the only thing holding him in place. “He will stay. I trust him. I need you to go get the sheriff.”
Carl hesitated, but Harold answered for him. “He’ll go. Carl?”
Carl gave him a dark look, but he hurried out the front door. Harold stood there for a moment, surveying the room, and then his eyes landed on Peter, who had finally pulled away from Maus and was bent down beside Jeremiah, applying alcohol to the boy’s wounds. Jeremiah twitched but didn’t awaken.
Peter looked up and caught Harold watching him. The guard stared at him for a moment, as if deciding something for himself, and then his expression softened. “You are comfortable caring for the boy, Dahler?” Harold asked.
“Yes, sir,” Peter replied. “I know basic first aid. I can help him until the doctor arrives.”
Harold nodded. “Well, then, we will leave you to it. Maus and I will keep watch outside until the sheriff comes, in case the boy’s attacker comes back.” He turned to Margaret. “That okay with you, ma’am?”
Margaret nodded. “Thank you.”
Harold glanced once more at Peter, smiled sadly as if he understood everything, and gestured for Maus to follow him outside. When the door had closed behind them, Peter looked up at Margaret.
“He knows,” she said simply. “He must know about us. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have left me alone with a prisoner.”
Peter nodded. “And he didn’t try to separate us.” The enormity of this was almost staggering, but Peter was too numb to absorb it. “Margaret, what happened to Jeremiah?”
The boy’s breaths were coming in ragged spurts as Peter applied alcohol to every spot where his flesh had been ripped open. His chest, Peter realized now, was shredded with what looked like lashes from a whip. More than twenty lines crisscrossed his dark skin, and there was blood everywhere. His face was oozing blood too. “Dear God,” Peter murmured.
“They were trying to kill him, Peter,” Margaret said. “If I hadn’t arrived and scared them away . . .”
Peter looked up at her in astonishment. “You came upon the attack?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I wish I could have killed those men myself. To do this to a boy . . .” She closed her eyes as her voice trailed off again.
He reached up and squeezed her hand. He wanted to embrace her, but he had to tend to Jeremiah first, and there was so much blood. “What happened?”
Margaret took a deep breath and looked at him. “A man named Raymond Chambers accused him of stealing chickens from his farm.”
Peter shook his head. “Surely Jeremiah didn’t commit this crime.”
Margaret shook her head. “Of course not. He’d sooner
starve than steal. But Chambers, well, he’s a bad man. A bad, bad man.”
“What did he have against Jeremiah?”
Margaret bit her lip. “Jeremiah did some work on the Chambers farm last week to earn some extra money, which he desperately needs, and Chambers refused to pay him afterward. Chambers called him names and said he and his people should still be slaves. Jeremiah went to the sheriff about his wages, and the sheriff laughed him right out of the office. But the sheriff must have gone to Chambers about it. It can’t be a coincidence that a week later, Jeremiah is suddenly accused of something like this.”
“And so they . . . lynched him?” Peter asked, looking back at Jeremiah in horrified disbelief. “You can’t stay here, Margaret. You can’t continue to live in a place like this.”
“What choice do I have?” she asked. “I have no money to start a life somewhere else. But I have to figure out a way to send Jeremiah away. He’ll be in danger now.”
Peter was silent as he continued to clean Jeremiah’s wounds. What they’d done to the boy was almost unthinkable. He would certainly have died if Margaret hadn’t come along, and even now, there was a chance he wouldn’t survive. He’d lost a lot of blood, and Peter had seen men die on the battlefield from wounds less substantial than these. War was one thing, but to string a man—no, a boy—up by a noose and whip him within an inch of his life was inhuman.
It was Margaret who broke the silence between them. “There were four men there with Raymond Chambers,” she said, so softly that her words were almost inaudible. “One of them was my father.”
Peter’s head jerked up. “Your father?”
She was crying again now. “Peter, the way he looked at me when I burst into the clearing . . . There was such hatred in his eyes. How could he do something like this?”
Peter stood quickly and wrapped her in his arms. “You’re not safe here, Margaret.”
She looked up at him. “He won’t hurt me. Not with my mother here. I will be fine. I just—I can’t imagine that I’m the daughter of a man who’s capable of this kind of cruelty.”
Peter thought of his own father, a cold, hard man. “We aren’t fated to become our parents,” he told her. “We can choose to be better.”
“Thank God for that.” She cried into his chest for a minute, and he held her tightly, his own eyes filling with tears. He was powerless to help her, and that destroyed him. As long as he was a prisoner, he couldn’t be there to look out for Margaret. He wouldn’t be there to save her if someone tried to hurt her.
Outside, they could hear a vehicle arriving, and then men’s voices. Peter hoped it was the doctor, that he’d be able to hand Jeremiah over to someone capable of saving his life. “I hate that I cannot protect you,” Peter murmured into Margaret’s hair. “I hate that I cannot make things better for you.”
She pulled away and looked at him. “Peter, you make everything better.”
They stared at each other for a second, and then, before he could second-guess himself, he leaned in and kissed her. She responded immediately, her mouth soft, her tongue gentle, and in the kiss, he could taste the future. For the first time in this seemingly endless war, in a world turned upside down, he could truly imagine a life beyond this moment.
The voices outside were getting closer, and Margaret pulled away. “I love you, Peter Dahler,” she whispered.
He stared at her in disbelief. How was it possible that she would love a man like him? “I love you too,” he said. “And when this war is over, I will come back for you, Margaret. I know they will send me home to Germany, but I will come back and take you away from this place. I will protect you. I will build a life with you.”
“And I will wait, Peter. As long as you are alive, I will wait for your return.”
There was a knock on the door, and as she stepped away from him to answer it, Peter already felt like he was losing her. As he watched the doctor rush to Jeremiah’s side, dread and love in equal measure flooded Peter’s heart.
CHAPTER TEN
* * *
I drove back across the sprawling sugarcane fields and pulled into a small gas station, the first business I came upon along the main road leading out of town. I put my car in Park and gently extracted one of the letters from its yellowed envelope. It was dated July 1946.
Dearest Margaret, it read in neat script.
I am writing again from the camp in England in the fervent desire that this letter will reach you. I must admit, the long silence from you has frightened me. I am hoping there is merely a complication with the mail delivery, but I fear the worst, and I lie awake at night wondering if something terrible has happened.
The days here are bleak and dreary, even in the summer. Often, the sun shines for hours on end, but the earth is charred and broken, streaked with rubble from the bombs Germany dropped on the innocent countryside. I work each day until my fingers are raw and bloodied, atoning for the sins of my countrymen. How could we not have seen, when Hitler marched us into battle so long ago, that this would be the end result? Sometimes, I find shoes and spectacles and hats that no longer have owners, and I wonder what happened to the people who once inhabited them. I wonder if they are dead, and I feel that guilt too. The towns can be rebuilt, but there is no way to replace the lives that have been stolen.
I do not know when I will be sent home, and I dare not ask. There are too many people on this shattered isle who have lost sons and fathers and brothers in the war. The fact that I am alive is enough for now.
I dream of the day when I will see you again, and I pray that it will be soon. In the interim, you live in my heart always, and I find solace in my memories of you. I will love you forever, Margaret, and I pray I will hold you in my arms again soon.
Yours always in love, Peter
I read the letter twice before folding it and slipping it back into the envelope. My confusion had deepened. Where had Peter Dahler been writing from? Some sort of prison camp in England? It certainly sounded like he was being forced to stay there, but who was doing the forcing? It seemed as if prisoners of war would have been returned to their home countries after the fighting was over. But in July 1946, more than a year after hostilities had ceased in Europe, somehow Peter still hadn’t made it home.
And yet he’d been thinking about Margaret. Unless he was lying, he still loved her deeply and was still planning to come back for her. So what had changed? Had he eventually gotten frustrated by her lack of response? But if that was the case, how had he not guessed that her family was keeping his letters from her?
The other two letters, dated October 1946 and January 1947, were shorter. The first one read:
Dearest Margaret,
It has been more than a year now since I last held you in my arms, and I fear I am beginning to forget the feel of your body against mine. I try to hold on to those memories when I close my eyes, but as time passes and I do not hear from you, I begin to wonder if you were merely a dream. It would be fitting, would it not? After all, this war has been a nightmare, a terrible vision from which I cannot seem to find my way out. Perhaps you were the sweet interlude, the salvation in all that darkness. But I must believe that you are real, that our love is real, that one day I will hold you again. When that day comes, dear Margaret, I will never let you go.
Yours always in love, Peter
The final letter was even briefer, and I could feel myself tearing up as I read it. Peter had written:
Dearest Margaret,
The new year has arrived in darkness, for you are not with me, and I have not heard from you in more than a year and a half. If you are gone from my world, I no longer believe that the spring will come, that the flowers will bloom, that the world will once again give birth to new life. For you, sweet Margaret, are my reason for existence. You are the light in the blackness, but each day, I can feel that light growing dimmer. I wait for you, dear Margaret, and I carry my love for you forever in my heart.
Yours always in love, Peter
I r
ead the last letter a few times, savoring the almost poetic words, before slipping it back into its envelope and placing it back on the passenger seat with the other two notes. I felt strangely breathless as I stared at the envelopes, which had made their way across the Atlantic seventy years ago but had never reached their intended recipient.
Five minutes later, I was still sitting there in silence, studying the letters, when I realized something: Peter was still writing to Margaret in January 1947 from somewhere in England. And yet the letter Jeremiah had given me, the one that told Margaret that Peter wasn’t coming back for her, had been sent in December 1945, more than a year earlier, from Germany. Although the handwriting seemed remarkably similar, there was no way that the rejection letter had come from Peter himself. Someone back in his homeland had written to Margaret to break her heart. In fact, especially given the words in these letters, it seemed he’d never meant to leave her at all.
My heart thudding, I turned the key in the ignition and pulled back onto the main road. Someone had set out to deliberately separate Margaret and Peter, and they’d both seemingly fallen for it. But who? And why? My grandmother’s family had played that role here, hiding the love letters from Peter. Had there been someone similar across the ocean who was concealing Margaret’s letters to him? I was increasingly sure that the answers to my questions lay in Germany, where the painting had originated. But most of the people involved in my grandmother’s story here in the States were dead. Perhaps the same was the case in Germany; after all, these letters had been written seven decades ago.
When We Meet Again Page 9