“What do you suppose happened to all those supplies?”
“Finances have changed, but,” I said, “we have plenty of beef and corn.”
“But corn. Ugh! In Germany we fed that to cattle.”
“Pretend you’re an animal, then,” I told everyone. “We’re having cornbread and beans for lunch. But first you all need to find some cooking wood.”
Sophie’s eyes grew wide with surprise. “You’re cooking?”
“Of course,” I said. “Anyone can cook.” I’d watched Mutter do it a hundred times.
When the cornbread was finished, Sophie declared that we had rockbread with beans for lunch. Karl chewed away on his small piece and declared that it was delicious. Mutter said nothing, just nodded and smiled as she chewed. Deep inside I felt a little strange. I had broken my resolve not to help. But I hadn’t done it to help. I had done it to impress Karl. However, to my surprise I also felt like smiling. The cornbread wasn’t good, but at least I had done something.
Just before dark Emil came trudging down the beach. His shirt tail was out, and he was covered with grease and sand, but triumphantly he carried three pieces of wood for our roof. About ten steps behind him, like a shadow hurrying to catch up, was a short, egg-shaped little lady wearing a pink gathered skirt that made her look even rounder. She wore tiny, thick, round spectacles perched upon her upturned little nose. Her thin gray hair, rolled into a skinny bun on the back of her head, had wiry wisps sticking out that made the bun seem ready for flight. Her round face was red from sunburn except for little white rings underneath her glasses. On one arm she carried a heavy bucket. With her other hand she dragged a huge black valise that moved so fast fantails of sand flew out behind it.
Emil deposited his load of wood and wiped his sunburned face on his grimy sleeve. “I’ve brought a guest. Or, to put it bluntly, a guest has brought me.”
I couldn’t believe it. How could he bring a stranger into our already packed hut? I looked him straight in the eye. “We’re already crowded.”
But Sophie hugged the little round lady and declared that she looked like Oma Gruenwald in Germany.
“Good evening. I am Frau Anna Gunkel, once removed from Hamburg.” She bowed low, set the bucket down near the stove, opened the valise, took out an apron, which she tied around her bountiful middle, closed the valise, and put it inside the house. “Your dear Emil spotted me stumbling off the lighter and gave me kind assistance. He assures me that this is the best end of the beach for a house, so I announce my intention to build one tomorrow.” Out of breath, she paused to look inside the cold stove as the assembled group looked on in amazement.
Karl leaned close to my ear and whispered, “We have been invaded.”
“You have, indeed,” agreed the Frau Gunkel, whose hearing we discovered was excellent.
Mutter stepped forward. “Welcome to our tiny home. We haven’t much, but it is partly yours. Please call me Anna.” She held out her hand.
But Frau Gunkel opened her arms and enfolded Mutter in a tight hug. “My name is also Anna,” she said at last as they disentangled from each other.
“You’re Oma,” declared Sophie, running into the open arms.
Like an invading whirlwind Oma Gunkel began supper. From her bucket she took four oranges, two huge pieces of jerky, a small loaf of white bread, and a small bag of jelly tart candy. When asked how she came by such delicacies, she simply asked if from the looks of her we thought she would leave Galveston without extra supplies. She told us she had found that Texas jerky, made of dried beef or deer, would keep indefinitely. One thing, though, she cautioned, “Jerky does make you thirsty.”
I remembered her caution later when Sophie collided with me as I lifted our pan of water. I watched the precious drops disappear into the sand. “Sophie, you dummy, look what you made me do!”
“M-made you do? Y-you did it. Y-you spilled the w-water!”
“But it was your fault. You bumped into me.”
“No harm done,” said Oma Gunkel.
Who was she to say such a thing? She hadn’t been here for weeks going thirsty. “No harm done? That was our drinking water for tonight and tomorrow!” I said angrily.
Sophie sobbed, stuttering her apologies over and over until Mutter grabbed her shaking shoulders in a big hug and held her tightly. “It was an accident. Don’t worry, honey. We can get by.”
But Sophie sobbed until she fell asleep, and we all felt our spirits dip as, thirsty from the jerky, we sorted ourselves out for another crowded night with the added bulk of Oma mounded in one corner of the hut. My mouth was so dry my lips cracked, and my back was crowded uncomfortably against a trunk. I felt my tangled hair, imagining that it represented my tangled life. I didn’t like Texas; I was mad at Sophie. I resented Oma Gunkel’s intrusion in our crowded hut. And I was afraid we would get sick.
Worst of all, I feared for Vater. Could he possibly be all right in such a harsh land? Could he even be alive after all this time? For hours I tried to untangle the web of worries.
Chapter 5
Although she had recruited him to build her hut, Oma hovered over Karl’s every move. It took two days to complete the hut, partly because of her interference and partly because he knew nothing about building. The walls caved in, or the floor filled up with water, or the doorframe leaned precariously. I had drawn a plan the first day, could have organized the project better, and several times started to the building site to make a suggestion, but each time Mutter called me.
“Rika, help me find the needle I dropped,” or, “Here—try on this bonnet,” she called again and again from our doorway. Finally, she came straight to the point. “I want to talk to you. Sit close. What I want to say is private, and nothing is private at Indian Point unless it’s whispered.”
I sat on the floor next to her.
“He’s attractive, isn’t he?” she asked.
“Who?”
“Kris Kringle, of course.” She laughed. “I think Karl is a very nice young man. He has good manners.”
“You noticed that, too?”
“Noticed it first thing,” she said. “I also noticed the ripple of his muscles, the slight swagger in his military walk, and the way you smile at him.”
“He smiles at me, too. Do you think I’m flirting with him?”
“No, not too much. It’s very natural for you to talk to him. After all, he lives with us, and…”
“And?”
“And you are a very pretty girl, one of many pretty girls Karl has been near.” Mutter hesitated to go on.
“And?”
“And you are a bright girl with unusual education for your age. You know how to figure facts, and you think, in many ways, like a man.”
“And?”
“And, Rika, you will have to be very careful if you wish Karl to admire and feel something special for you.”
“Why are you telling me this, Mutter?”
“Because I think you are falling in love with him, and before you go over there giving him advice on how to build a house, you need to stop and remember the proverb: ‘Talk is silver; silence is gold.’ You must think of silence as a golden duty.” Mutter twisted the sunbonnet sash in her hands.
“What does that mean?”
“You have noticed that only Emil may go for our food and water rations. Men do that.” Mutter now worked furiously at the wrinkles she had put in the sash. “Men build houses. They do that. If the houses fall in, the men learn from that. But no woman may insult a man by telling him how to do his job.”
“But I figured it out on paper. Here.” I pulled out the scrap of paper on which I had drawn the hut with the dimensions noted for each wall.
Mutter looked at the paper a long time. “If you give this to Karl, he will be put down. Never put a man down. This is a military man filled with pride and self-confidence. Silence is a duty that doesn’t take those things away from him.”
“But I could help.”
“That would subtract
from his sense of worth. You sit in here and think about it. If you go out there and talk too much, you’ll come up with a mouth full of sand that grits in your teeth, maybe for a long time.” Having finished her motherly duty to me, she gave me a self-conscious hug, put on her bonnet, and left with a threaded needle still stuck in the lapel of her blouse. I sat on the sand floor thinking.
Without my help, the hut was finished, and we gathered to admire it. Oma complimented Karl and announced that since he had worked so diligently on the house, she had invited him to share it with her. And, she said, proudly hugging his waist, the part of him she could reach, he had accepted. I felt as if someone had slapped me and opened my mouth to say that he belonged in our house, but Mutter placed a finger across her lips to signal silence.
“What do you think of the house?” Karl asked me as the two Annas and Sophie went inside to arrange things.
I looked at the low-slung little hut with a funny, lopsided wide-enough-for-Oma door. The walls were made from raw, splintery crate boards, and the crooked peaked roof was of smoother sawmill lumber from the warehouse. It looked like a bald-headed porcupine. I wanted to burst out laughing, but in a flash Mutter’s words, “Silence is a duty,” came to mind.
It took me a minute to think of something to say: “Why, I think it’s the most beautifully unusual architecture in the world. The door is just right for Oma.” Then, unable to control myself, I broke out laughing. “But how will you ever get in?”
Karl looked crestfallen, then examined the door objectively and also began to laugh with deep guffaws. When he had recovered, he said, “Why, I’ll just bend over.”
I laughed until tears flowed down my cheeks. I imagined short, plump Oma going in the square door dragging her valise with the fantail of sand spewing out behind, and next to her, folded double, ape-like, to get in the door, was Karl.
For the next few minutes Karl walked ape-like, bent double, hands dragging in the sand.
Sophie came out of the ridiculous house, joined the fun, and when she fell exhausted on the sand, said, “Texas is really a funny place.”
We knew that Sophie would never know why we were laughing, and it started all over again.
That night, for the first time in a week, I slept well. It was a relief to have more room in our house. I watched the shadow of Oma’s campfire on the tent roof and realized Karl had struck it rich. For indeed, Oma had money, and she had used some of it to buy wood to burn for cooking and warmth. People all around were struggling to put up a roof, and Oma Gunkel appeared extravagant. But I liked her spirit.
The next morning Karl met me at the water’s edge. “That woman is cuckoo,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“After we ate our stew, I started down to the water to wash the dishes, but Oma said, ‘No, don’t do that. I’m expecting company.’”
“Company?” I asked. “Who?”
“Well, we sat by the fire, and Oma crossed her arms, closed her eyes, and started to rock back and forth. After several times of doing that, she began to say, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ Then she rocked back and forth and said, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ After several times of repeating it, she opened her eyes and laughed and laughed, then closed her eyes, folded her arms, and rocked back and forth.”
I liked her, admired her spirit, and didn’t want to think ill of her. “You think she is crazy?”
“I said she was cuckoo, didn’t I? But you haven’t heard the end yet. After she quit rocking, I told her I was going to bed and asked if she still expected company. She laughed and said, ‘Oh, didn’t you enjoy his visit?’ When I asked whose visit, she became indignant. ‘Whose visit indeed! Why Gustav Gunkel’s, of course.’”
“What did you say to that?”
“What can you say about a man who has been dead three years? I said, ‘Good night, Oma’ and went to bed.”
The days passed. Somehow I idled away the time watching Mutter shake out the sheets and wet down the sand floor. Karl and I read The Galveston News. I rescued Sophie from one of the fighting Kessler boys who socked her in the eye. Every evening at sunset I met Emil up the beach when he came home from the pier. We shared news of the day.
When told of Oma Gunkel’s long-departed husband, Emil became protective.
“The woman’s crazy, so stay away from her. And keep Sophie away from her. There’s no telling what she will do next.”
I shrugged, planning to keep an open mind. I liked her independent spirit, one very much like mine.
I looked at the sunburned and peeling protective brother who had been my playmate, teasing brother, friend, and now confidant. There was something about the way he held his teeth together tonight that made him look different, and for the first time I realized that the responsibility of getting the Mueller family safely to New Braunfels was taking its toll on Emil. His shaggy hair, the ragged tears in his pants, and the patched places in his shirt where the heavy crates had ripped the sleeves told of his character. I felt swollen with pride at the way he handled this horrid place. At least he was doing something important with his time.
Paying only a minute’s notice to the tinge of guilt whirling in the pit of my stomach, I touched his shoulder. “Emil, I really admire you.”
“Why?” He shifted the three pieces of rough wood he had brought home.
“Because you never complain, and you are very responsible. You work harder than anyone. I don’t think we could survive this short layover at Indian Point without you.”
He stopped walking, started to say something, decided against it, and moved on toward the house. “Thanks, Sis. I’d say nice things about you, too, but I’m just too tired to talk.” Wordlessly, he placed the three boards on top of the draped sheet roof, then ducked his head and entered the house.
During supper Emil ate automatically, constantly looking from Mutter to Sophie, then me. I asked him what was wrong.
“Nothing.”
“Then why do you keep staring at us?”
Sophie looked at Mutter. “Be-because Mutter looks awful.”
Mutter forced a smile. “The heat bothers me. So do the mosquitoes.”
“You should talk about awful, Sophie. Look at your black eye! You’ve been in trouble with every kid on the beach,” I said.
Sophie defended herself. “Y-you should t-talk. Y-you’re just a pain in my n-neck. A-all y-you ever do is sit a-around.”
I couldn’t defend myself. It was true.
Emil sounded tired. “I’m worried about your thin bodies. I hate seeing you grimy and sunburned.”
We sat in silence. Finally, Mutter spoke. “Virtue has its own reward. We are doing what we must do and will be rewarded.”
I tried to cheer Emil. “Besides, it’s only temporary.”
“No! I have to tell you…” Emil’s voice was scarcely audible as he folded his arms across his knees and put his head down on his arms. “The news at the warehouse is very bad. I’m glad you have stayed away from there. Everyone is sick. And on the other side of Indian Point they are burying dozens every day.”
“But we’re not sick, and any day we’ll leave for New Braunfels,” Mutter insisted.
Emil raised his head and looked wildly from one to the other. “That’s just it. We may be here for months. Most of the wagons returning from New Braunfels have been conscripted by the army. There is no one to help us here, and no way to go inland.” We sat in silence. “And we’re out of money.”
After a little while he continued apologetically, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He put his tired head down on his arms again.
We couldn’t take it in. No money. No transportation for months. How could we survive Indian Point? How long before hunger, malnutrition, or disease hit our family? Even sassy Sophie said nothing.
Chapter 6
Oma would not believe the worst. She talked gaily about the forthcoming trip to New Braunfels, chatted with Karl, and kept her nightly laughing vigil with long-departed Gustav.
Big Lucas Beck a
nd his shadow, Otto, continued to walk at the water’s edge every day, making certain I saw them. Feigning politeness, Lucas lifted his big, black hat. With a guilty black feeling in my soul, I wished both of them would catch the fatal typhus sweeping Indian Point.
Mutter cheerfully kept her daily routine, and with enduring optimism encouraged all of us. Each day she sat in the shade of the hut teaching Sophie the well-known proverbs that were the basis of all German education. I had heard them all again and again since I was three. What’s more, I had believed them all. But where had the proverbial honesty, hard work, and cooperation brought me? Grudgingly I admitted that I still believed in honesty but knew I wouldn’t participate in hard work and cooperation.
I divided my time between learning English with Karl and reading music from the trunk. With music propped against the water bucket, I practiced fingering a Robert Schumann song on my imaginary pianoforte. As I became more bored, I argued with Mutter every day about playing Emil’s trumpet or Vater’s flute. She forbid taking the valuable instruments out of their wrappings because, she said, the salt air would corrode the valves. I knew she was right, but even the arguments were diversions and gave me the chance to vent my anger at Vater for bringing us to this place.
Karl paced up and down the beach and trudged along the dune crests every day. Watching him, I began to understand the meaning of the term itching feet. He longed to move on. Finally, he went to Runge’s Store and meagerly outfitted himself for the trip. It was a gamble because the expenses of his trip inland with the Verein had been paid in advance in Germany. He said he still had some savings but could see no future in waiting at Indian Point. Every morning before daylight he hiked the trail toward Blind Bayou, where he waited for the chance to join an occasional group of immigrants leaving for Victoria or Cuero or Seguin or, as he said, “Just anyplace out of this God-forsaken mosquito-ridden pesthole.”
The Long Road Home Romance Collection Page 43