The Orphan Band of Springdale

by Anne Nesbet

  “Well, that’s that,” said Josie when Gusta got back home. “Don’t be so disappointed. You’ve done what you could.”

  And they folded sheets together for a while, slapping the air out of them so the folds would stay crisp, so that this one small corner of the universe would be, at least in this one small way, orderly and rational and fair.

  Gusta had just about reached the end of her twenty-three hours’ worth of work for Mr. Bertmann, but from hints he had dropped, she hoped he might be willing to keep her on even after the eyeglasses had been paid for, fair and square.

  She sat in his office-workshop now, making neat columns of numbers in his account books, while at his tall worktable, Mr. Bertmann tinkered with all the tiny little parts of a future camera, to be worn someday by Mabel or Nelly. It was a quiet Wednesday afternoon.

  Then suddenly it was no longer so quiet. There was a brisk knock at the front door, and men’s voices. But there were no Aviation Cadet exams on the schedule. Gusta looked over at Mr. Bertmann, and he shrugged and went out into the hall to see who it was.

  “Oh!” he said at the door. Something about the way he said it made Gusta sit up straighter.

  “Hello there, Bertmann!” said a voice. “Some bits of official business to clear up. May we come in?”

  They came clunking into the room, the sheriff (with his star on, so you knew who he was) and two other men. Gusta swept the desk clear as she stood up — nothing like a sheriff’s star to make you feel everything should be tidy and you should be standing up.

  “Run on home, Gusta,” said Mr. Bertmann.

  “No,” said the sheriff. He didn’t say it with any meanness, but somehow it was a little frightening, all the same. “Let’s just all stay here, for a moment.”

  There was a silence.

  “There’s this thing about the registration, you know, Bertmann,” said the sheriff.

  Mr. Bertmann looked hunted and awkward and proud, all at once.

  “I don’t like registrations,” he said. “I don’t like lists being made of good people and bad people.”

  “Well, but there’s a war brewing,” said the sheriff reasonably. “And the bad guys are Germans, aren’t they? And here you are — and you, too”— he took Gusta entirely by surprise, turning to her —“And you’re Germans,” he said. “So it just doesn’t look so good, does it, not putting yourself on the registered alien list? I don’t want to cause you trouble, Bertmann. But when there are complaints that come in —”

  “Complaints? What complaints?” said Mr. Bertmann.

  “Look here, Mr. Bertmann,” said the sheriff. “Let’s not get all riled up here. Maybe you just misplaced the registration form. I’ll bet that’s what happened.”

  Gusta looked at the emotion crackling across Mr. Bertmann’s face, and she looked at the stubborn blandness that the sheriff was wearing like a mask, and she found herself speaking right out. Apparently she was no longer as good as she used to be at keeping quiet or backing down.

  “Then I’ll find his form,” she said. “You don’t need to be troubling Mr. Bertmann about it. I’ve been helping with his records. I’ll find whatever the form is, if it’s missing.”

  They all stared at her, of course, but she stared right back. With the new glasses, she could stare much better than in the old days.

  “Well, now,” said the sheriff.

  “What complaints?” said Mr. Bertmann again.

  The sheriff shifted his feet back and forth a little.

  “Those pigeons of yours, carrying messages —”

  “Oh, well, the pigeons!” said Mr. Bertmann. “What harm do they do? They always only fly home! Messages from myself to myself! But if you’re worried about my pigeons . . .”

  “It’s the combination, Bertmann,” said the sheriff. “It’s not just the pigeons; it’s the being German, together with the pigeons. You can see why people might think —”

  All of a sudden Mr. Bertmann simply ruffled up with anger, spitting mad. “You people,” he said. “Do you know what you are saying? Do you know what I am? Do you know why I’m here? You think I am German? You think maybe I would work to help the Nazis? Well, but they wouldn’t call me German! I am a Jew! Do you know what that means? A Jew! Do not tell me about the Nazis. Nobody here can tell me anything about the Nazis. Nobody here can possibly hate them as much as I hate them.”

  Gusta could see that the sheriff hardly knew what to say.

  “Anyway. I filled out your forms,” Mr. Bertmann continued. “Years ago. When there was hope, I did file them. The I-intend-to-become-a-citizen papers, whatever it is you call them.”

  “Oh, now!” said the sheriff. “That’s good. The Declaration of Intention. When did you do that, Mr. Bertmann? Should be a record somewhere.”

  “Don’t know,” said Mr. Bertmann. In fact, he shrugged. “In the last decade, some one of those years. What does it matter?”

  “Now I’m surprised at you, Bertmann,” said the sheriff. “Of course it matters. Otherwise, looks like you are avoiding lawful alien registration, but if you’re in line for citizenship —”

  “No,” said Mr. Bertmann. “By the time they wanted more papers from me, it was too late. There was no hope anymore. What good was your citizenship to me then? So I stopped with the papers.”

  “Oh, come now, Bertmann!” said the sheriff, but his heartiness was beginning to sound a little hollow. “What are you saying?”

  “I will tell you, since you ask,” said Mr. Bertmann. He straightened himself up, but his expression was all shadow. “It is because of a human being, a dearest human being, with the name Rachel Ada Bertmann. Yes, I had a wife. Why did I come all this way, so long ago? Because I saw what was happening in our country, and I thought, in the United States of America there is room for a good man, a Jewish man, to make a life for himself and his wife. But my wife, who was much younger than I was, still had an elderly father, clinging to his old home. She said, ‘I will stay a while, so he is not alone. Maybe I can convince him. And you go on ahead to America and make a new home for us and send for us when you can.’ So I came here. I came to Springdale, in Maine. I have worked hard. There is room here for a wife, yes, and even a wife’s father. I had hope then, and yes, I put in the first paper. I thought to become an American, to help my wife. And then came November 1938, the terrible night between the ninth and the tenth. You may know it.”

  The sheriff looked puzzled.

  “The Nazis went out in the streets of the towns to murder us that night in November. They broke down the windows of my wife’s father’s shop. He could not withstand the horror of it. His heart just broke — broke into pieces, stopped working — and he died.”

  The sheriff shifted his weight from one foot to another. He was looking more like a human being, at that moment, and a little less like a sheriff.

  “Very sorry to hear it, Mr. Bertmann,” said the sheriff. “But then, if her father is gone, why doesn’t your wife come over here now, to live with you in Springdale?”

  “Because, sir, when she applied for the document, the visa, to come to the United States, she was not accepted. They turned us down! They do not understand what it means to be a Jew in a land run by Nazis! They said, ‘We see you have this man Bertmann willing to sponsor you, but who will be your other sponsor?’ they said. ‘Where are the documents from the bank, for this man Bertmann and the other sponsor you do not have?’ And they did not give her the document, the visa. She wrote to me, and the ink was, I tell you the truth, half ink and half tears. And of course I wrote to everyone I could think of. What else could I do? I even wrote to the president of these United States, but he is very busy and did not respond to the desperate letter of one little foreign man in Maine. And then one day comes another letter from Germany, in handwriting I do not know, and I learn I do not have a wife anymore. A kind person who knew us wrote: ‘Your wife, Herr Bertmann, has sickened and died in these sad times.’ And maybe that kind person has herself sickened and died by now,
in that awful place. And now, you come to me and you call me an alien, you threaten me, and you say my pigeons must be spying for the very ones who killed my wife, because yes, even if they did not shoot her or hit her on the head, they surely destroyed her spirit so she could not continue to live —”

  He broke off then. All those words had tumbled out of him, and it was as if there was nothing left for him to say.

  And in the room, everything was frozen into a stunned silence.

  “Well, now,” said the sheriff after a while, sounding a little pale, sounding like someone trying to feel his way back into sheriff-ness. “Now, then. That’s a sad story, and I’m truly sorry for your loss. I guess it’s not so much your pigeons we’re after, Bertmann, anyway. Everyone in this town knows about you and your pigeons! Get the registration letter in, old man, and we’ll do what we can. We know your service to the U.S. Recruiting Office. Anyway, that’s not the point. It’s Miss Neubronner we’re after.”

  “What?” said Mr. Bertmann.

  Gusta would have said the same thing, but she couldn’t get a word out.

  “Augusta Neubronner,” said the sheriff. “Daughter of August Neubronner?”

  “Yes,” said Gusta.

  “Well, now, see, that’s serious. He’s an alien and a German and a Communist and a fugitive from justice at this point, young lady. That’s a powerful combination of trouble. And we understand from the school that you have been unwilling or unable to furnish a birth certificate. Questions have been raised about your nationality and your loyalty. We’ll need to have a conversation with you.”

  “Don’t be absurd!” said Mr. Bertmann, coming back to himself somehow. “This girl is a child. She is not just a child: she is a good child. She is the best of children. I tell you, you will not — threaten — this — child. If you have questions about her, you will of course discuss these matters with her grandmother, Mrs. Clementine Hoopes. Gusta, go on home.”

  Fugitive from justice! Gusta was thinking, and her heart was galumphing on in her chest like a crazy thing. Her papa was still a fugitive from justice! But that meant — they STILL hadn’t caught him yet. Oh, Papa!

  “We’ll all go together,” said the sheriff. “Got my car out front there waiting.”

  They all crowded into the sheriff’s car; Mr. Bertmann kept a protective arm around Gusta all the way down Elm Street.

  When they pulled up in front of the old home, one of the boys was out front, took one look, and ran around to the back fast as a blur, carrying the message: “Sheriff’s car! Right out there in front!”

  So when they stomped up the steps of the porch and knocked on the door, Gramma Hoopes was already there to meet them.

  She looked like a queen in the hall of her house, Aunt Marion beside her, and the hint of boys watching from the shadows, all the way as far as you could see.

  “What’s the trouble, Darnell?” she said to the sheriff.

  The sheriff lost a whole dollop of his grandness right there.

  “It’s about this Augusta Neubronner you’ve been harboring here,” he said.

  “That would be Augusta Hoopes Neubronner, of whom you’re speaking,” corrected Gramma Hoopes. “My granddaughter.”

  “That’s the one,” said the sheriff. “We need a look at her birth certificate, please. She’s the daughter of a fugitive from justice who’s also an alien and a Communist, so you’ll understand the need for some concern.”

  “She’s the daughter,” said Gramma Hoopes, “of my daughter Gladys Hoopes.”

  “Her father, though — the criminal, on the run —”

  “He’s not a criminal,” said Gusta, because she just couldn’t help herself. “He’s a labor organizer.”

  “Well, now,” said the sheriff, and Gramma Hoopes said, “Gusta, child, hush.”

  “It’s just he’s not a criminal. They were going to deport him back to Germany,” said Gusta, instead of hushing. “Germany, where he would have been killed.”

  “And that is quite true,” said Mr. Bertmann. “They are not kind to labor organizers now, in the fatherland.”

  “Probably not,” said her grandmother. “That it, Darnell? You finished?”

  The sheriff wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. “There’s still the birth certificate, Mrs. Hoopes. People saying the girl has no right to be here.”

  “Who says such a ridiculous thing, I wonder?” said Gramma Hoopes.

  “Now, now,” said the sheriff. “People with a certain weight in our community.”

  “Mill-owner types,” said Gramma Hoopes, and there was so much ice in her voice that the sheriff actually flinched.

  “Now, now, Mrs. Hoopes,” he said, but anyone could see he was losing this battle.

  “I’ll have you know, Darnell,” said Gramma Hoopes, “that this granddaughter of mine was born in this very house. Yes. Upstairs there. You know how I know?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Hoopes,” said the sheriff.

  “Because I was there,” said Gramma Hoopes. “Because that’s what I do, isn’t it? When I’m not raising children, I’m helping them get born. Is that right, Darnell?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Hoopes,” said the sheriff.

  “In fact, as I recall,” said Gramma Hoopes, “when you were born, Darnell, the people in the room that day were your mother, and you (eventually), and me — have I got that right?”

  “Yes, yes, Mrs. Hoopes,” said the sheriff. “That’s what I’m told. All right, all right. But why didn’t you put in for a birth certificate for the girl?”

  “Didn’t get around to it right away,” said Gramma Hoopes. “Gets busy on a farm. Guess I’ll get around to it, when I have a moment. Are you quite done here, Darnell? Because I was working on supper.”

  And the sheriff and his men slunk right back out of that door and back to their car.

  Mr. Bertmann turned down the offer of another ride, and then he turned down Gramma Hoopes’s offer of supper, too, although he was grateful for it. He wanted to get back to his pigeons, and he wanted some fresh air and quiet on the way.

  He did put one of his old hands on Gusta’s shoulder before he left, though. And he said, “This, Mrs. Hoopes, is a good child.”

  And Gramma Hoopes said, with a sniff, “Yes, Mr. Bertmann, she is. I would say that they are all reasonably good children, in this house.”

  Praise from Gramma Hoopes! A shimmer of happiness sped around the crowded shadows of the hall: the boys were pleased.

  “Stop gaping at me, Gusta,” said Gramma Hoopes, but Gusta was in awe.

  Her grandmother had just told a whole bushel of lies on Gusta’s behalf. Hadn’t she? Born in this very house? Gusta was quite, quite sure that none of that bore the slightest resemblance to the truth. Well!

  That thought warmed Gusta’s soul right up. She figured that to tell lies as wide and deep as that must take more than just a quick and wily mind. It must take something a lot like love.

  The thing about summer: on the one hand, all that extra time when you’re not in school and therefore could be out in the woods or sitting on the porch. On the other hand, canning.

  “If I never see another pea,” said Gusta, shaking out her stiff fingers, “I’ll be happy.”

  “It’s not the peas that are the problem, silly,” said Josie. (Her fingers never seemed to get stiff.) “It’s the pods they come in.”

  They had already been shelling peas at the worktable in the kitchen for approximately three million years, and there was still a huge green heap left waiting for them, and when were they ever going to go walking in the woods, ever again? Of course, it would be wrong to complain. They could have been Aunt Marion, for instance. She was at the stove, handling the jars and the pressure cookers, her face glistening from the work and the heat and the steam.

  It was the start of the canning season, the time of year when Aunt Marion came into her own. The strawberries from the garden had come and gone in a blink of an eye — turned into jewel-red jars of jam. And now it was the turn of th
e peas.

  “You’ll be glad enough for the peas, come winter,” said Aunt Marion from the stove. There was a kind of feverish intensity to her, and not just because of the heat. Some of the fever could be chalked up to enthusiasm.

  Aunt Marion was very enthusiastic about canning.

  “Blue-ribbon peas!” she said. “Remember that’s our aim: no squished peas allowed, and no pebbles or anything else to which the judges might object.”

  “Or rusty lids,” said Josie, giving Gusta a wink.

  Gusta had already heard that sad story, and more than once: about the year when Aunt Marion’s strawberry jam had been kicked out of contention at the fair due to a single streak of rust on a lid.

  “How many different canned goods can one person enter in a single year?” asked Gusta. She was wondering, secretly, how many more days would be spent in this kitchen, preparing fruits and vegetables for their mason jars.

  “As many canned goods as the canner can can, I suppose,” said Josie, and she gave a little bark of a laugh.

  And just at that moment there was a clamor out in the main hall: a knock on the door, followed by the staccato pounding of boys’ feet racing to open up and see who might be there.

  That was intriguing, but stranger yet was the silence that fell next. Whoever was at the door, it must be someone the boys didn’t know. Josie and Gusta looked at each other, and even Aunt Marion paused to wipe a wisp of steam-dampened hair back out of her eyes and listen for a moment to the sudden hush out in the hall.

  Larry poked his head in through the kitchen door.

  “There’s someone here for Gusta!” he whispered.

  “What, now?” said Aunt Marion.

  “For Gusta!” he said in his normal voice. “A lady came!”

  They all left the peas behind and crowded into the hall.

  And there, with an awkward object dangling from her right hand, and a look of determination (mixed with a little distress) on her face, was Miss Kendall.