She would have to do something about the children before she left, but, with increasing concern, she pushed that thought aside. She finally made it to the other bedroom and found Maria lying in the bed, her youngest beside her clutched in the crook of her arm.
Talbert sat in a straight-backed chair next to the bed, head bowed. Elli realized Talbert was sleeping sitting up, holding Maria’s hand.
“Maria,” Elli called softly. “Maria!”
The woman slowly opened her eyes. “Elli?” Her eyes were unfocused, glazed in fever.
“Ja, Elli,” she answered keeping her voice low. But Maria’s eyes had closed in sleep again.
Elli reached to take the baby from Maria, thinking, This one will likely need a clean diaper!
She lifted the tiny bundle from Maria’s arm and took it into the kitchen. Once in the light, she peeled back the baby’s blanket.
The chubby little face was gray and still.
“No,” Elli moaned, her knees buckling. “Oh, no, no, no!” She held her hand to her mouth but could not stifle her sobs. “Oh, dear Lord! What am I going to do?”
She covered the baby again and laid him on a chair in the living room. She sat trembling near the still little bundle. O Father God! How am I going to tell Talbert and Maria! Even as she quelled her grief, the possibility began to dawn on Elli that the Beckers were suffering from something much worse than a cold or flu.
At a faint groan from Maria, Elli jumped up. She twisted her hands in her apron for a moment. She heard Maria’s voice again, this time weakly calling, “Wasser! Bitte, Elli!”
Elli steeled herself and placed a mug of broth and one of water on the tray. She carried it into the bedroom and found Talbert flung across the other side of the bed, sleeping soundly. Elli took the chair he’d been sitting in and sat down.
“Here,” she murmured, spooning water into Maria’s mouth. “All of it, please. Alles, ja? After the water, she fed Maria the broth. Talbert did not stir.
“Meine kinder?” Maria begged. Elli could tell the woman’s mind was fogged with fever and pain, but still she was concerned for her children.
“Ja, gut,” Elli answered, not looking at her. She returned to the kitchen and put a large pot of water on the stove to brew the herb tea. The fire was nearly out, so she built it up again, using the last lump of coal in the box—and a small one at that.
I lied to Maria, Elli groaned. How will I ever be able to tell her the truth?
She pushed down her mounting anxiety and made the rounds again with honeyed tea for the children and Maria. Talbert had not moved.
Long after dark she heard an ox-drawn wagon pull into the Beckers’ yard. She knew it had to be Jan. When she had not returned by dusk he would have become worried and come looking for her.
She stood in the doorway and spoke across the yard. “Please come no closer, Jan! Do not come closer.”
He jumped from the wagon and faced her from several yards. “What is it, Elli?” She could see the worry on his face.
“I don’t know . . . but it is bad. All of them are sick, even Talbert.” A sob escaped from her throat. “Oh, Jan! Their baby died.”
“Father in heaven!” Jan ran both of his hands through his hair, a gesture of frustration so familiar to Elli.
“Jan,” she swallowed, “I can’t take care of all of them by myself.”
“What should I do? Tell me, Elli. I will do it.”
“Fetch Fraulein Engel, I think,” Elli replied.
Fraulein Engel was the spinster sister of the farmer who raised bees, both members of the German church. As the neighborhood had no resident doctor, Adeline Engel was often called upon to nurse the sick—and she readily came. The near-fifty-year-old woman had no children of her own to care for, only her unmarried brother.
Jan looked away a moment. “Ja, I will go for her.” He glanced back and fixed her with a fierce look. “Then you must come home!”
Elli knew her husband was terrified for her.
Jan took the team of bays; still it was midnight before he arrived back with Fraulein Engel. She had packed a sparse bag for herself and stuffed another with remedies and notions based on what Jan had been able to tell her.
Elli was relieved to see her and, even more so, that Fraulein Engel immediately took charge. The spinster allowed Jan to help her down and carry her bags partway to the house. As they approached the door she stopped. “Danke, Herr Thoresen,” she said kindly.
She pointed Jan back to the wagon with a firmness that broached no question. Casting a look over his shoulder at Elli, Jan retreated to his wagon.
Fraulein Engel stepped inside the dimly lit house. Elli showed her the baby first. The woman clucked her tongue sadly and then, as she unwrapped the still infant, became quiet. She raised the candle and pointed to the thick rash on the baby’s chest. Elli wasn’t sure what to make of it.
Fraulein Engel lit a lamp and carried it into the first bedroom to examine the other children. At the light the children fussed and one of them cried piteously for them to turn it off. Fraulein Engel handed Elli the lamp and gestured for her to keep the light over the children.
The woman wrinkled her nose at the smells in the room and then checked each child, feeling their foreheads, looking at their chests, examining their arms and legs.
While Elli held the lamp, Fraulein Engel pointed to a number of scratched and reddened bites. She lifted one of the children to sitting and scrutinized the bedding. She found and squished between her fingers several tiny black fleas.
The children showed unmistakable signs of flea bites, and their bedding and clothing were more than likely infested with them.
I should have seen! Elli chided herself, But I was more concerned with the children’s coughs and fevers.
When Fraulein Engel finished with the children she examined Maria and Talbert. Maria moaned and asked for water. Talbert remained asleep. Fraulein Engel was quiet when she and Elli returned to the kitchen.
“Was ist?” What is it? Elli demanded.
Fraulein Engel shook her head, clearly puzzled and unsure. Finally she muttered, “Typhus?”
Elli froze. Typhus! Here in Nebraska?
~~**~~
Chapter 20
Jan could not bear waiting in the dark and doing nothing. He lit a lantern, circled the house, and found Talbert’s axe lying in the dirt next to a pitifully small pile of wood for kindling. He frowned as he picked up the axe.
Within a few minutes he had chopped an armful of kindling and laid it next to the back door. Then he went in search of the Beckers’ coal bin. It was nearly empty.
It is still cold at night and this family is in real need, Jan realized. He filled a bucket with what was left of the coal and set it on the back stoop next to the kindling. Later he would make a trip home to bring back more wood and coal.
He let himself into Talbert’s barn to check on their animals. In the lamplight their lone cow lowed mournfully, begging to be milked; their mule stamped in agitation.
Likely these animals have not been cared for this day, Jan surmised.
He filled a pail with water for the mule and looked for grain to feed him. As he neared the grain bin, holding the lamp before himself, the scurrying of mice caught his attention.
They do not have a mouser? Jan wondered. Ach! Not good for the grain or for healthy living.
Jan held the lantern aloft, opened the grain bin, and saw droppings. Mice had indeed been in the grain. He searched for and spied nesting material behind the bin. Had the Beckers been eating from this bin as well as feeding their animals? Jan began to get a very bad feeling.
Inside, the two women retreated to the kitchen. There they scrubbed their hands and forearms with strong soap and hot water. Since they had both been handling the children, Fraulein Engel inspected Elli carefully for fleas and then Elli did the same for Fraulein Engel.
They bound clean kerchiefs about their heads, taking care to tuck in all of their hair. Then they placed kerchiefs ov
er their noses and mouths, tying them behind their heads.
Elli found the kindling and bucket of coal on the back step and built up a good fire to heat more water. When the water was boiling, they set to work cleaning the children and their bedroom.
To say it was difficult work would be an understatement.
Elli and Fraulein Engel stripped the children and their beds. In a few minutes the women had the four sick, naked children huddled under a thin cover in the corner of the kitchen next to the stove. Then they scrubbed the bedroom’s bed, floor, and walls. Elli helped Fraulein Engel to remake the bed with the few clean bed linens they could find.
“Be careful,” Fraulein Engel admonished in German. She pantomimed to Elli her concern over the soiled clothing and linens. Through Fraulein Engel’s gestures, Elli understood that all the clothing and bedding were to be boiled.
“Ja,” was Elli’s sober answer. She bundled the filthy things in a soiled sheet and took them out the back door, making a pile several yards from the house. Jan watched her from the barn. He noted Elli’s covered head, mouth, and nose with concern.
“What does she say?” Jan asked.
Elli hesitated. It was now the middle of the night. She was exhausted and needed to re-wash her hands and arms in strong soap as soon as possible. There was still much to be done in the house. She did not have the energy to deal with Jan’s reaction.
Elli pulled down the kerchief covering her mouth. “She . . . thinks it could be some form of typhus, but I do not think she is certain because of how uncommon it is in these parts,” she answered softly. “But, in fact, the children are covered in flea bites.”
Jan stared across the distance between them. When he did not say anything, Elli turned toward the house.
“Elli.” Jan spoke her name roughly. She turned back. They stared at each other across the yard until Elli, shaking her head, walked back to the house.
She removed a large tin tub from a nail outside the door on her way in. She placed the tub on the kitchen floor near the stove and began to pour hot water into it. When the bath was ready, she and Fraulein Engel bathed the children, one by one, drying them and dressing them in clean nightclothes.
The children moaned and cried as they bathed them. Elli and Fraulein Engel scrubbed every inch of the sick little bodies with hot water and lye soap and afterward doused them with flea powder. Once they had cleaned a child, doused him with powder, and put him into fresh night clothes, Elli placed him on the other side of the stove where he would still remain warm. When all four children were bathed, they tucked them into the clean bed.
The night flew by in a blur of work and patient care for Elli and Fraulein Engel. Elli had built a fire in the yard and boiled all the soiled clothing and bedding. For hours she had toiled, scrubbing, rinsing, and hanging sodden quilts and clothes on a fence to slowly dry, while Fraulein Engel tended Talbert and Maria.
Fraulein Engel lectured Elli on eradicating the fleas and “flea dirt” (flea droppings). She emphasized taking care not to inadvertently breathe the droppings in—hence the kerchiefs over their mouths and noses.
It was the flea droppings that carried the sickness, the older woman pointed out. The scarcely visible droppings could carry the infection inside when breathed in or carry the infection into the bloodstream when flea bites were scratched raw.
Elli understood the gist of Fraulein Engel’s warnings from her gestures—and from the fear lurking in the woman’s eyes. They took care to clean themselves every time they touched a patient.
Jan went home and returned in the morning with coal, kindling, clean bedding, strong soap, and hot food prepared by Amalie. He also brought a burlap sack that struggled and yowled in the wagon bed.
Elli stepped out the front door. She hugged herself in the chill morning air and spoke to him across the yard. “Talbert is very sick now. Maria may be improving a little.” She looked down. “Fraulein Engel is unsure about the children. The oldest seems a little better but the other three . . .”
Jan licked his lips. “I sent Søren to the Andersons and Bruntrüllsens. They will pass the word to the church to pray. We are all praying.”
What he yearned to say—to shout and insist—was, Elli! Just come home before you become ill! Please! Yet he knew he could not ask it of her.
Elli stared at the ground. “Will you bury the baby?”
The horror of the request was not lost on Jan. “Ja, I will. Give me an hour.” He sighed, grabbed the burlap bag, and went inside the Beckers’ barn.
He untied the neck of the sack and released a scrappy orange tom cat Kristen had named Ginger. The cat shot across the barn, his tail standing straight up.
“Ja, you’ll have all you want here,” Jan murmured. He knew that to eradicate the fleas, one must eradicate the mice.
He milked the cow and left the pail on the back step, knocking to alert Elli of its presence. He pumped water into the trough and turned the cow and the mule out into the small pasture.
Then he sought out Talbert’s shovel and pick and trudged toward a lone tree to dig a tiny grave beneath its branches.
Elli and Fraulein Engel cared for the Beckers for three weeks. Fraulein Engel’s brother brought more flea powder and other remedies his sister requested. Jan came daily, as did other neighbors, to do Talbert’s chores and bring food and clean clothing.
No one in the community could believe it was typhus and Fraulein Engel herself was uncertain. Jan attested to the mice in the grain bin and the fleas Fraulein Engel had uncovered in the house. It just didn’t make sense this far north, but the evidence was there, and the community took precautions accordingly.
Then in the last week, as though to prove Fraulein Engel’s diagnosis, Jan and Henrik buried the Beckers’ three younger children . . . followed by Talbert. Only Maria and her oldest child, a boy of about eight years, seemed to be on the mend.
Elli called to Jan from the Beckers’ front door. “Fraulein Engel says I am to go home tomorrow. She can manage without me now.”
She saw the hunger kindle in Jan’s eyes and knew her own eyes radiated her need for him. Oh, Jan! How I long to feel your arms around me! her heart cried.
“Before I can leave, I must bathe and wash my hair. Fraulein Engel will check me to be certain. It will have to be back there in the yard.” Elli waved in the direction of the fire pit on the other side of the house where the infested bedding and clothing had been boiled. “Then I must put on all clean things.”
Jan nodded. “I will bring everything you need. Amalie will help me. I will bring our tub, too, and build a fire to heat the water and keep you warm.”
He paused and chewed his lower lip. “Are you truly coming home, Elli?” Elli saw his pain and longing even as he desperately tried to mask it. “It has felt like . . . such a long time without you.”
“Ja, my husband. I am truly coming home.” It was all she could muster without breaking apart.
Karl came with Jan in the morning. Together they built up a large fire and set the Thoresens’ hip bath near it. Karl set a grill over the fire and began to heat water. Jan spread a folded sheet on the ground. On it he laid towels, a washcloth, soap, and the clean clothes Amalie had selected for Elli.
When Elli’s bath was ready, Karl retired to the other side of the house. Jan intended to stay and help Elli, but Fraulein Engel would not allow him. With gestures and many stern, unintelligible words, she indicated that Jan should still stay clear.
For Elli, the bath and precautionary flea powder were rites almost spiritual in nature. Fraulein Engel scrubbed every square inch of her body and, while Elli huddled in the tub, carefully combed through her clean hair. If Fraulein Engel had found any evidence of fleas at all, she would not have permitted Elli to leave.
Elli emerged from the now cool water and was pronounced clean.
As Elli dressed, Fraulein Engel dumped Elli’s soiled clothing into the large cauldron over the fire, grated soap into the pot, and stirred the bubbling mass with
a wooden paddle.
Elli was ready to leave; she knew Jan and Karl were waiting for her on the other side of the house. She and Fraulein Engel stared wordlessly at each other across the sheet—across a divide they now dared not to cross.
They had battled death together and had prayed side-by-side on their knees over dying children, yet they now could not embrace. Tears sprang to Elli’s eyes and then to Fraulein Engel’s.
“Tusen Takk,” Elli choked out, her face awash in tears. A thousand thanks.
Fraulein Engel nodded and murmured, “Geh mit Gott, meine Tochter.” Go with God, my daughter.
Elli covered a sob with her hand and hurried away.
Fraulein Engel slowly peeled off her kerchief, allowing her head and hair to breathe. She stood motionless for a moment before swiping away the unshed tears. The strain of the past three weeks had exhausted her—but she had grown to love Elli, and to have her safely returned to her family was a great relief.
She unbraided her own hair, picked up the comb she had used on Elli, and began to pull it through, from scalp to end, looking closely at it after each pass.
~~**~~
Chapter 21
Near dusk a week later, Kristen gathered up the tablecloth from dinner and took it out the kitchen door to shake out the crumbs. A demanding meow greeted her.
“Ginger! You naughty boy. You were supposed to stay at the Beckers’ and kill all those nasty mice,” Kristen scolded.
Ginger wound his way between her legs, loudly begging. The Thoresen barn cats, like most farm cats, were hardly domesticated. They lived in or near the barn and its sheds and were accustomed to having people about, but they generally did not allow themselves to be picked up.
The cats haunted the milking shed during the morning and evening milkings. They would open their mouths, and the men would squirt milk into them, making a game of it. Kristen, who loved all animals, often set out dishes of cream for the cats. Only then would they allow her to pet them.
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