Anna's Crossing

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  He’d discovered one thing of importance during what he’d come to think of as his time of survival. He would make his own way, find his own route to happiness. He would never again let himself depend on people, not on a woman, not even the captains, nor on anyone else. He would survive, and he would do it on his own.

  He found the galley empty and the kettle simmering on the furnace. He took a long-legged stride back down the deck toward his small carpentry shop, holding the kettle of hot water with a rag, pondering Christian’s request. He wondered what made him think there was something brewing between him and Anna. Had she said something about him? Had Felix told him about the shoes?

  Nay. It probably had more to do with that meddlesome wife of his. Hadn’t Felix told him the minister’s wife was on a mission to see that Anna meet and marry a worthy Peculiar? Bairn was about as far from being a worthy Peculiar as a man could be. It was a thought that should have made him grin, but instead, it gave him a sense of inferiority, of loneliness and self-doubt, as if he had lost something precious and didn’t know how to reclaim it. He agreed with the minister about one thing: he needed to distance himself from that girl, starting now . . .

  As he crossed the threshold, he stopped abruptly. Heat climbed up his neck. Anna stood in the middle of his shop and all words and thoughts dropped out of his mind.

  Anna’s gaze roamed slowly from the tools hanging tidily on the wall to the barrels that held up the workbench, to the tall carpenter that filled the door space, feet spraddled wide as if against a heavy wind. With his fancy coat removed and his sleeves rolled back to reveal his strong forearms, his white shirt tucked loosely into his trousers, he was as fetching a sight as any she’d ever seen. Her breath caught. He looked so right standing there.

  She held out her palms. “I found these in Felix’s pockets.” Handfuls of tacks. “I was concerned he might have taken them without permission. He can be . . . dishonest in small ways.”

  “A pettifogger in the makin’?” A corner of Bairn’s mouth lifted. “Nay, he was cleanin’ the floor of me shop and asked if he could keep them.”

  “If he were to keep them, I fear Catrina Müller would find herself sitting on them at an inopportune moment.”

  Now a full grin spread across Bairn’s face. “I’ve heard him bring up that name once or twice.” He walked around her to his workbench. “Ne’er with much fondness.”

  He nearly surprised a smile out of her, the way he took note of people. She set the tacks in a pile on top of his workbench. She smoothed out her apron and said in a quiet voice, “I thought perhaps you might want to join us for church tomorrow. Christian is holding a special service.” She saw him stiffen and regretted her words. She had felt so happy about how the ship weathered the storm, about how the cracked beam had been fixed, and the thought occurred to invite him to church to thank God for what He had done. She’d had plenty of time to think down below. It seemed right to invite him to church, but now, it seemed like she had made a terrible mistake. The silence stretched long and uncomfortable. Why had she come? She shouldn’t have come.

  Bairn turned away from her and set the hot kettle on two bricks, letting her words and her smile hang suspended in the air, until they both began to fade. “What makes you think I’d want to go to yer preachin’?”

  “So that you can come to know us, to see how we are, what we’re like.”

  He picked up the kettle and poured the water into a barrel, his face an impassive mask.

  “Why do you put hot water in the barrel?”

  “Dried-out barrels will leak when they’re first filled with liquid. Addin’ hot water is a quick way to get the wood to swell so the joints become watertight.” He set the kettle back on the bricks and looked up at her. “I ken more than you give me credit for. I ken enough about yer people to know I would nae be welcomed.”

  She couldn’t deny the truth of that. What purpose would it serve for him to know their ways when he could never be one of them? “I suppose I thought it would be an opportunity for you to gather with us to worship God. To thank Him for delivering us through the storm.”

  His gaze lifted from his workbench to her face, and she saw something in his eyes, a sort of wary pride. “I have nothin’ at all to do with God.”

  “You may think so, but God has everything to do with you.”

  He blushed red as a beetroot, but he answered coolly enough. “Y’know nothin’ at all about me.”

  “I know enough,” she said gently. “I know you are not the unfeeling man you would like people to believe you are.” She dipped her chin. “And I know you need to make peace with God.”

  His head rocked back a little, as if he’d just been slapped. “Are all Peculiar lasses like you? Bold tongued and bossy?”

  “No, not most. But some.” She lifted her head and looked out the tiny window. Sun wash flooded through the window, limning the floorboards with planes and angles. “My bold tongue has always been my weakness.”

  He said nothing. Squaring his shoulders, he turned back to his workbench and picked up a barrel stave. She wondered if he had a response to give her, but he kept his head down, silently shaving the stave with an adze. She should leave. She should. She knew her curiosity didn’t excuse her staring or prying. She should have kept her curiosity to herself; she should not stare at his long black eyelashes and tanned skin. But before she had a chance to look away, he caught her staring at him.

  “What?” He spoke calmly.

  “What is it you want, Bairn? Out of life?”

  He sat down on a barrel and laced his fingers behind his head. “To be captain of me own ship one day. Don’t misunderstand. I’m loyal to Captain Stedman.” He cast her a sly grin. “I’m a completely loyal man. Entirely devoted to me own interests.”

  “Why do you want to be captain?”

  “To be rich.”

  “And then what?”

  “What more is there?” His mouth took on that teasing look of his. “Surely even you can understand a man’s desire to seek wealth. Isn’t that what yer all doing by goin’ to America? Y’said you want to own land, didn’t you? I suspect it’s the finest land yer pious church leaders are after. To get it before it’s gone.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right. But it’s not our way to take pride in one’s own worldly possessions, nor to covet those of others.”

  “But yer fine morals won’t stop you from grabbin’ the best land. To claim it and tame it.”

  A silence came between them, and he regarded her with inquiring eyes, his head slightly tilted, as if he was waiting for her to defend her people, but of course she wouldn’t. He didn’t understand. It hurt her to hear the bitterness in his voice, the hard assumption that their faith didn’t set them apart, that they were just like everyone else. She struggled to find words to fill the silence and break the uneasiness that lay between them.

  She turned and started toward the door, when suddenly he bolted around the bench, blocking her exit. “Anna, wait.” He was looking down at her, his face serious. Time seemed to slow into a breathless stillness, and Anna thought she could hear her own heart beat. She stood too close to him, close enough for her to smell the scent of sandalwood, close enough that she noticed a smallpox scar on his right temple.

  He raised one hand, tracing the path of her chin with the back of his hand.

  The way he touched her, the lazy afternoon light streaming in the window, the silence in the air—the setting suddenly felt too intimate. She backed up a step, withdrawing to a safe distance, and wiped her damp palms on her apron. She couldn’t let this man with those compelling and mysterious gray eyes think she thought a thing about him. Because she didn’t. Hardly at all. Maybe once or twice. “I’ll let you get back to your work.”

  She was almost out the door when she heard him call her name.

  “Anna, they dinnae want me. They’ll whisper to each other in that peasant dialect and you’ll be the one they whisper about.”

  She spun aroun
d. In the dimming light of the day, his face was awash with concern, doubt, maybe even a bit of frustration. “You underestimate my people.”

  Then he said, “Mayhap I’ll come. Not tomorrow, but before we reach Port Philadelphia, mayhap I’ll come to yer preachin’ one Sunday morn.”

  14

  August 5th, 1737

  A week passed. Then another. The air had grown cold. So cold that Felix’s nose seemed to stop and not let him get air.

  “Ahoy! Whale to the larboard!” All hands on deck rushed to the larboard rail for a look. Felix took the opportunity to climb up the tangle of ropes that Bairn called the ratline. Four feet, six feet, ten feet, fifteen feet. He stopped at that point and looked over the larboard side to view the whale. She was enormous, as big as the Charming Nancy, and he was sure she turned her curious eye toward him.

  “Felix!”

  He looked down to see Bairn peering up at him from down below. “You need t’come down before you hurt yerself.”

  Felix descended the sturdy rope ladder to within six feet of the deck and then dropped onto the wooden planks with a respectable thump. He was thoroughly pleased with himself and more convinced than ever to be a sailor as soon as he was old enough. He wondered if his father might let him apprentice to Bairn. After Squinty-Eye died, he’d heard the captain talk to Bairn about choosing a new carpenter’s helper. Felix would rather apprentice for Bairn on the high seas than go to Penn’s Woods and cut down trees to plow and plant fields and tend woollies. He’d had enough sheep tending to last him a lifetime.

  He thought of the summers in Ixheim, laboring under pale blue skies in the hills with Johann and his father. His father would cut hay with a scythe, he and Johann would fork it onto wagons and hoist it into the loft of the barn. They would work from sunrise to sunset. His father believed that work was an end in itself, that it straightened a wayward soul, and that no amount of it was too much.

  He doubted his father would agree to a life at sea. Dooted it, as the captain would say. Felix’s father was a landlubber. That was another sailing term he’d learned. His English vocabulary had increased tenfold from being around the sailors, but he wasn’t always sure what the words meant. Especially the words used when the sailors slipped on the wet deck or dropped a tool on their bare toes or when a fight got started between them, which happened rather often. Johann would have known what those words meant. If not, he would have borrowed books from the baron’s house to find out.

  Felix would like to call the baron a few choice sailors’ words. He thought of how the baron had accused Johann of stealing books from him and that wasn’t true. Johann always put the books back. His clever brother knew how to slip over the garden wall and pick the lock of the window in the baron’s library to borrow and return books. He did it carefully and he did it frequently.

  On that April day, he was returning a book—the last book he would ever borrow from the baron—when he was caught. The baron had a dog—an ugly, vicious dog—and he came after the boys. Felix, quicker and more agile, scaled the garden wall and slipped away, but Johann had trouble getting his breath when he was startled or frightened. He couldn’t move fast enough and the big dog cornered him against the garden wall. Felix climbed a tree to see what was going on. To his horror, he saw the baron order his servant to beat Johann. Once, twice, three times, four times. Johann cried out, but by the tenth time the whip hit his back, he went still.

  Felix hated the baron. He hated the servant. Even though he knew he wasn’t supposed to hate, that it was a sin. He would like to kill them, even though he didn’t know how to go about killing anyone and his church didn’t like killing. He wondered if Bairn had ever killed anyone—because Maria said he was worldly and unholy and probably wicked—but he decided that no, Bairn was too nice to kill anyone. And then his thoughts drifted to a sermon his father had given right before he left for the New World, how he had told everyone to forgive their enemies. The baron, his father had meant. The sailors had an easier time forgiving their enemies than Felix did. One time, when the ship was anchored in Plymouth, Felix had peeked into the seamen’s quarters and watched two sailors drink from a brown bottle. They grew loud, then angry, then started pushing and shoving each other. One sailor bit off part of the ear of the other sailor, and then that sailor punched him so hard in the mouth that he lost a tooth. But the next time Felix saw them, the two sailors were friendly again.

  “Where have you been?”

  Felix jerked his head to find Anna staring at him, an annoyed look on her face, as he made his way down the companionway. “To the top.” To the very, very top, the crow’s nest, but he didn’t think she would be happy to know that. He thought that if he could just look over the curve of the earth, there America would be. But it wasn’t.

  “Again?” She shook her head, then grinned. “They are going to sign you on to be cabin boy soon.”

  “Anna, did you know that birds who live on the side of a hill lay square eggs so they don’t roll away?”

  Anna had turned around and didn’t hear him over the din of the noise in the lower deck. But horrible Catrina did. She appeared out of nowhere, like she always did. She could never wait to stick her nose into anything that might be happening. “Who told you that?”

  He scowled at her. “Cook.” Squinty-Eye’s awful dog found him and panted beside him.

  “That sounds like twaddle to me.”

  Felix ignored her. “Cook said that when it gets very cold and still, the smoke from his galley stove goes straight to the moon.”

  Catrina rolled her eyes. One of them, anyway. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “I know plenty,” she said, hands on her hips. “I know your mother isn’t right in her head.”

  Felix whipped around and stuck his tongue out at her, but unfortunately Catrina’s mother, Maria, saw him. She raced down to them, clucking and fussing like a barnyard hen. He always did think Maria looked like a big chicken with a tiny head and sharp beak. He braced himself.

  Anna hurried over and gave him a gentle push. “Get your slate and wait at the table. I’ll handle Maria.”

  Felix found his slate and piece of chalk and sat down at the table to wait for Anna, grateful to narrowly escape another lecture from Maria.

  On the slate he wrote: cabin boy.

  Later that afternoon, Anna was hanging wet laundry up on a rope tied from the chickens’ cages to a hook in the beam when a loud explosion rocked the ship. There was a moment of utter, eerie silence, then a hazy smoke drifted through the lower deck. Orders shouted from above and feet started running along the deck. Off-duty sailors emerged out of their quarters, stunned looks on their sleepy faces. “Are we under attack?” one of them said, dazed.

  Bairn rushed down the companionway and stood planted at the bottom, sweeping the room with his gray eyes. “What in the name of God happened down here?” He waved away smoke with his hand. “Who shot off a cannon?”

  Oh no. Oh no. Where is Felix?

  “Which cannon?” Bairn thundered.

  “Over here.” A deckhand pointed to the far corner in the shadows, the cannon nearest the bow of the ship. Crouched behind the cannon was Felix, with his hands clapped over his ears.

  Bairn stood with his feet parted, hands on his hips, bellowing. “What have you done, boy? Y’could blow the ship and everybody in it to smithereens!”

  The boy quailed, then lifted his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug.

  “Have you nothin’ to say for yerself?”

  Felix pointed to his ears. “Vat? My ears not vork.”

  Bairn raised his arms in exasperation. “What have you done?” he shouted.

  “It jost . . . exploded . . . or someting.”

  Christian walked over to Bairn. He motioned to Anna to come join them. “Tell him that we will discipline Felix.”

  Bairn lifted a hand. “’Tis nae as simple as a talkin’ to. ’Tis a dangerous thing he’s done. How did he find gunpow
der? How did he have the time to figure out how to light it? ’Tis no one ever watchin’ over this laddie?”

  Felix’s hearing was starting to return. Tears filled his eyes as he grasped what Bairn was saying.

  Bairn’s anger softened at the sight of Felix’s tears. “Now, laddie, no harm has come. But you must think before you act.” He scowled at Anna. “Is he not yer charge? You ought to do a better job of it.” He stormed down the aisle and bolted up the companionway to placate the captain.

  The air grew thick and heavy, as before a storm.

  Maria stood with her shoulders pulled back and her bosom lifted high, as if she’d just sucked in a deep breath and didn’t want to let it go. “And a Bauer at that.”

  Dorothea was looking up the empty companionway with a sweet, bewildered look on her face, as if some wheel finally clicked over in her brain. “I feel all fuzzy headed, as if all my senses are wrapped in wool. I’m starting to see my Jacob everywhere.”

  Felix’s father would often warn his sons that trouble didn’t show up all at once, that it usually eased its way in with steps. He would point out that the worse the trouble was that the boys got into, the more steps it took to get them there. Then he would remind them to notice the little warnings on the way to trouble, little reminders that if they really wanted to, they could still turn themselves around.

  The first warning Felix should have listened to was when he decided to load the cannon ball into the cannon and it was so heavy it dropped on his fingers and smashed them. The second warning was when the ball rolled straight toward Catrina, who was carrying a load of clean laundry in her arms. She tripped and went headfirst into a wooden tub filled with water for the animals. The laundry went with her. She emerged from the trough sputtering and wailing, which brought her mother sailing down the deck to rescue her. Felix spent half the afternoon cleaning out the pigpen.