The Last April

by Belinda Kroll

  Karl figured no one would kill him in the kitchen, even though they liked waving their revolver around. He sat down.

  Tante Klegg grunted as she wound the rope around Karl’s ankles, lashing them to the chair legs. She led the rope up, over his lap, and around his wrists. She wrapped it under his armpits and over his shoulders to the back of the chair.

  “Where did you learn to do that?” Gretchen said.

  “Lift and shut your mouth,” Tante Klegg said.

  Karl stiffened with a gasp when he was airborne. His fingers gripped the edges of his seat to stabilize, not that it helped. Ropes strained across his sunken chest, wound around his waist, and spiraled down his legs. They did not cushion Gretchen and Tante Klegg’s jarring missteps across the kitchen.

  Karl could not help it. He whimpered as they reached Werner’s room.

  “It’s not any fun down here, either,” Gretchen grunted between clenched teeth.

  “This is the consequence of your impetuousness,” Tante Klegg said. She stumbled, and Karl tipped forward, his knees slamming into her shoulders. “Gretchen, hold onto him!”

  Gretchen dropped the back legs so Karl and the chair were safe on the ground. “Let’s leave him out here,” she suggested, panting. “He won’t be comfortable anywhere we put him if he’s stuck in that chair.”

  “Y’all could let me loose,” Karl suggested.

  Tante Klegg grabbed the back of the chair and began to drag him. “My sister is not a terrible shot,” she grunted. “Do you think she will forget your unfortunate allegiance because of Alina’s betrayal?”

  That was a good point. Gretchen helped push Karl into Werner’s bedroom. Maybe she was good for nothing. But at least she could help Karl stay alive another night.

  Thirteen

  Monday, 17 April 1865 / Grove City, Ohio

  Karl’s head rung so hard he could not keep his eyes open. He cupped his hands over his ears and fell with his head bowed and his knees hugged to his chest. He whispered prayers to himself, hoping it would all be over soon. Screams erupted around him, man and animal. He looked up to find large sausages spilling from what had been a fine thoroughbred.

  He watched, horrified, at the steam rising from the disemboweled horse. Karl’s stomach rebelled. He retched up the wormy hardtack he had choked down that morning. When there was nothing left to retch, he joined in the screams that surrounded him. He screamed until he was guttural. He screamed past having a voice.

  He was not supposed to be here.

  “Wake up!”

  A hand shook Karl hard. His head slammed into a wall, or headboard, or something upright and wooden.

  “Are you trying to wake the entire county?” Tante Klegg said.

  Karl squinted, his head throbbing. Through a fog, he realized he was not caught in a battle. He tried wiping the sweat from his forehead, but could not move his hand. Panicking, he rocked from side to side.

  Tante Klegg loomed over him in the darkness. Her white nightdress pooled at her feet. She had thrown a knitted shawl over her shoulders. “Are you done?” she asked.

  “I told you we shouldn’t have tied him up,” Gretchen said from behind Tante Klegg. She shuffled closer, barefoot. One hand held her cotton shift off the floor; the other clutched a dripping candle.

  Tante Klegg shrugged in the dim, flickering light.

  Karl blinked a burning bead of sweat from his eye. “Y’all have a bad habit of creeping up on a person.” The tremor in his voice marred his attempt at bravado.

  “You’re drenched,” Gretchen said.

  He was, right through Werner’s shirt. Gretchen’s mother would be unhappy when she found out.

  As if hearing his thoughts, Gretchen glanced at the empty trunk at the end of Werner’s bed. “We only have that one set of clothes from Werner. We don’t have anything else to change you into.”

  “Do you want to tell us why you screamed?” Tante Klegg asked, pulling the candle from Gretchen.

  Karl shook his head, not wanting to relive his nightmare. Bile rose in his throat, and sweat streamed down his back. He did not understand why Tante Klegg and Gretchen wore shawls with their nightgowns. There he sat, sodden with sweat, and they shivered in the nighttime air.

  Tante Klegg turned away, taking the candle with her.

  “Please don’t take the light away,” Karl whispered.

  “Tell us what made you scream,” she said. Her voice was quiet, calm, and demanding.

  “We should let him rest, he’s feverish again,” Gretchen said after brushing the wet hair from his forehead.

  Tante Klegg glared at Gretchen, looking even more ominous in the faltering light. “The boy needs to remember who he is. He has no time for being coddled now that Pastor Baumbach thinks you are to marry him.”

  “But he’s—”

  “Gretchen!” Tante Klegg said. She moved for the door, the room darkening with each step.

  Karl’s breath quickened. His shoulders tensed. His stomach flipped. It was too dark. The dark smothered him. Karl closed his eyes and saw a flash of the disemboweled horse. He cried out. “Horses,” he said, “torn to pieces right in front of me. Could’ve been me!”

  Tante Klegg turned around, and the light shone in Karl’s eyes. “What else?”

  He stared into the candle’s firelight until spots danced. Karl shook his head. He could say no more. Nothing would stop the nightmares now. Karl and the other prisoners—they had realized that in Camp Chase. A man could talk until he lacked a voice. Nothing stopped the nightmares or waking dreams.

  Gretchen gathered her nightgown and knelt beside him. “Was the war that bad?” Some emotion that Karl could not place shone in her eyes. He almost thought it was concern for him. He was quick to remember he was nothing more than a stand-in for her brother.

  “Don’t think I lost my memory because the war was so great,” Karl said. The ropes bit into his wrists and ankles.

  Gretchen scowled. “Well, there’s no cause to get feisty with me. I’m trying to be nice.”

  “Nice?” Karl echoed. “By giving me a name that don’t belong to me?” If he had the ability, he might have thrown the chair across the room. Instead, he ground the ropes tighter into his skin as he fought against them.

  Gretchen scrambled away, tripping over herself as she avoided Karl’s thrashing.

  “Forcing me to be your betrothed in daylight and tying me to a chair at night?” Karl laughed. “How’s a man to remember a lifetime under these conditions?”

  “Would you rather we left you to rot in our barn?” Gretchen asked.

  Karl stared at Gretchen, whose expression was earnest and indignant. She was actually insulted. The girl had no idea what she was doing, like her aunt and mother kept telling her. “First off, that barn’s the best thing that’s happened to me since joining the war. A roof over my head and real straw to sleep on? A man could do a mite worse.”

  Gretchen sputtered.

  “Do you think you’re being charitable? I left that prison knowing if I didn’t make that train, I’d be a dead man. And maybe I already am. Your brother’s returning. He killed people like me. You think since the war’s over he’s going to welcome me? I’m the enemy, Gretchen!”

  “You don’t know that,” Gretchen said. “You could be a good man still, if you wanted, and Werner wouldn’t hurt you.”

  Karl shook his head. “Being a Confederate didn’t make me a bad man. It just meant I believed something different than you.”

  The room fell silent.

  “Gretchen,” Tante Klegg said, still hovering by the doorway.

  Gretchen stood. “That something different you believed in? It kept humans enslaved, beaten, and killed for generations. We aren’t Quakers, but even we see that’s wrong. And if that doesn’t make you a bad man for believing in… that peculiar institution, then I don’t know what does.”

  Karl’s mouth hung open. “Peculiar institution.” She said it was such disdain. That was the code word for slavery; he had
learned it in the prison. He could not remember owning any slaves. He had no idea if all Confederate soldiers had slaves back home. It could be a Yankee legend about the rebels for all he knew.

  “You missed a train?” Tante Klegg said.

  “What?” Karl said, startled.

  “You said you left the prison, and you missed a train.” Tante Klegg rubbed her collarbone. “You did not escape?”

  Karl stared at her. “I didn’t escape?” he echoed.

  “Escaped prisoners don’t take the train,” Tante Klegg said.

  “General Morgan did,” Gretchen said. She touched Tante Klegg’s arm. “The newspapers said he walked right out of the penitentiary. That he took a train from Columbus to Cincinnati. How could you forget that? It was the only thing we talked about for months.”

  Tante Klegg jerked her arm away from Gretchen. The candle flickered, threatening to go out. “That was two years ago. Have you heard of anyone else escaping? There is a reason the cemetery is so full.”

  Karl shuddered. The Camp Chase cemetery was full; that was true. Last winter had been frigid. There had been little to protect the prisoners or staff from the smallpox outbreak. Karl pushed away memories of a bedmate carried to the pest house, never to return. Karl would never know why he was not moved to the pest house. He should have been. He should have died. He shared that bed with three men who died of the pox.

  All Karl knew was what that nurse told him, the one who said he had to go on the train. Karl had been so malnourished that not even the pestilence had any interest in his skinny body.

  Tante Klegg pointed at Karl, capturing his attention. “I am telling you, this boy is not a soldier. Even if he was, he is not anymore. And I do not think he escaped that prison. They let him go.”

  “That was a mistake we will not repeat, yes, Edelgarde?” Gretchen’s mother said from the hallway. Her voice was soft. Gretchen and Tante Klegg whirled around.

  “What are you doing?” Tante Klegg demanded.

  Karl straightened in his seat. Something about Tante Klegg’s voice made the hair on his arm stand on end. He peered around Tante Klegg and found Gretchen’s revolver pointing at him. He hid behind Tante Klegg.

  “Mama, where did you get that?” Gretchen asked. “That isn’t yours to use.”

  “It was Werner’s,” her mother said in that soft voice. “I will use it in his honor, and with his permission.”

  “Mama,” Gretchen warned, “you should go back to bed. We’re handling this.”

  “Yes, I could hear you handling it with my door shut,” she sneered. “The entire country heard you handling it. We are all traitors with him in our house, and you let him scream to the high heavens?”

  “Stop talking to me as if I’m a child.” Gretchen clenched her hands. “I know what we risk keeping Karl. It’s what I hope some girl in the Confederacy is risking for Werner.”

  “His name is not Karl,” her mother said. “He is not a good German boy. He is a dirty rebel. He is killing us by staying here.”

  “He is feverish and bound,” Tante Klegg said. “No one would think him a guest in our house.” She paused. “Gretchen’s intentions were good, don’t you think? The hopeful actions of a good… sister?”

  “But where is Werner?” Gretchen’s mother said. “He is lost to me. Lost…”

  “Not according to Alina,” Gretchen said. She nudged her aunt.

  Tante Klegg’s brows rose, and she stepped closer to her sister.

  “That brat,” Gretchen’s mother snarled. “Hiding Werner’s letter from us. Mark my words—she will not set foot in this house unless Werner himself forces me to make peace with her.” Her hand slumped and the revolver dangled from her fingers.

  Tante Klegg handed the candle to Gretchen. She took the revolver from her sister and wrapped an arm around her heaving shoulders.

  “Keep watch over him,” Tante Klegg instructed Gretchen. She led her sister to the kitchen and back to her bedroom. “If he screams, you will listen for clues and wake him if it is nonsense. You will learn who he is.”

  Gretchen protested, but fell back when Tante Klegg pointed the revolver at her.

  “I am not in the habit of shooting children. This is no longer a lark, Gretchen. You will do as I say.”

  Gretchen held her hands high as she backed into Werner’s bedroom.

  “Think she’d shoot you?” Karl said in the dark after Tante Klegg shut the door.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Gretchen said. She crawled into Werner’s bed and pulled the thin blanket atop her head. “Best get some sleep. We have chores in the morning. Know how to milk a cow?”

  Karl shuddered. That cow was another lady waiting to have words with him. He closed his eyes and hoped he would have no more dreams that night.

  Fourteen

  Monday, 17 April 1865 / Grove City, Ohio

  Karl picked at a straw, ripping one thread off its length while Gretchen milked the cow. Her rhythmic pulls shot streams into the pail. “Milk seems thin.”

  “We keep a tight rein on her. People were having their livestock stolen, and we can’t afford feed anymore. She eats the grass around the barn since that’s all she can get to.”

  Karl nodded. That explained why the barn yard was barren, while the grass near the house was green.

  The sound of the milk pulls was soothing in its repetition. Karl found himself wanting to doze the morning away. They had been in the barn since daybreak. Tante Klegg had ordered Karl to follow Gretchen during her morning chores. It turned out her chores happened to be caring for all the animals and the garden. In other words, her chores were everything on the farm. It seemed to Karl that Gretchen had to do everything that kept her out of the house.

  “Does your mother help?” Karl asked through a yawn.

  Gretchen shook her head, concentrating on milking.

  “Not at all?”

  “Tante Klegg usually helps, but she’s helping Mama this morning.” Gretchen’s voice held a heavy warning not to question further. “Are you sure you don’t know how to milk a cow?”

  “How can you even see what you’re doing?” Karl said, waving at the low, flickering light of the kerosene lamp. “Why not wait until daybreak?”

  “And make this poor girl suffer more?” Gretchen demanded. “We always milk her before daybreak, rain or shine, searing heat or freezing wind. It would be cruel to make her wait.”

  Karl stared at the cow’s big lashes. “Never thought about a cow suffering.”

  Gretchen leaned back on her squat stool and peered around the cow’s front to stare at Karl. “You weren’t raised on a farm then.”

  Karl shrugged. “Not a farm with cows at least.”

  With a thoughtful nod, Gretchen disappeared behind the cow. “We used to grow grain, but with Papa and Werner gone, it was too much to keep track of. We rent out the fields until they return. What do you know about growing grain?”

  “Nothing,” Karl admitted. He sat in the straw, leaning his back against the barn wall.

  Sunlight began to peek through a crack in the mortar holding the wall together. Karl watched, fascinated by the way the light danced across the dirt floor.

  A piece of straw turned to gold and back again. A dirt clod grew interesting shadows, almost making a face, and then was nothing but a pile of dirt again. Gretchen’s hair was brilliant fire, braided high atop her head, and then calmed to a dull red.

  There was something so interesting about light. Karl could not put his finger on why he was so obsessed. Colors, too. He loved identifying the names of different colors, even without telling anyone. Gretchen’s dress, for instance, was a rich chocolate. It contrasted with the dirt in the barn, which was more of a dusty, discarded gray.

  Karl did not want to admit to anyone he kept naming colors. He was too afraid they might think him mad. What sort of a person catalogued colors instead of fighting to regain his memories?

  “Do you know how to grow anything?” Gretchen asked, starting to soun
d irritated. “If I asked you to weed a garden, would you?”

  “Send someone else to do it, you mean?”

  The milking noises stopped. Karl chuckled.

  “Well, at least I’ve learned you think you’re funny,” Gretchen said. She lifted the bucket, only half full, and motioned at him to follow her. “I have to take this to the ice box, then we need to feed the chickens.”

  Karl saluted Gretchen, limping behind her. His ankles still hurt from the ropes they bound him with, but he refused to be more of a burden to Gretchen. Anyway, if he was ever going to leave, he had to regain strength.

  He was glad Tante Klegg had shoved soup and stew down his throat. He was starting to heal. He had his head wrapped still, but the bleeding had stopped. His arm and leg ached. Gretchen had applied poultices that burned, so that had to mean they were doing something.

  It would not be long before Karl would be strong enough to continue south. That was, if he could escape Alina’s schemes.

  “Where am I, by the way?” Karl asked.

  Gretchen’s expression was clear: she thought he was an idiot. “On my farm,” she said.

  He rolled his eyes. “You know that’s not what I mean. Thanks to Alina, I know I’m in Ohio. I didn’t even know that at Camp Chase. We were all too tired to care where we were when we got there.”

  Gretchen handed him the pail, which was lighter than it looked, and waved at him to keep walking. She avoided looking at him. “We’re close to Grove City; it’s a small town. It’s where we buy goods and go to church.”

  Karl’s blank stare did not surprise Gretchen. He was a Confederate; he did not know or care about Ohio towns.

  “You must have walked about five miles to get here. That’s about how far Grove City is from Camp Chase as the crow flies. Do you remember Columbus? That’s where you would have taken a train from Camp Chase.”