“I p-promise,” Sophie said solemnly.
Vater picked up his coffee. “You are such a big girl to promise, I will let you have a sip of grownup coffee.” He put the cup to her lips.
She took a sip. “O-oh y-yoik!”
Vater and I laughed.
I smiled at her. “I guess you’re not ready for coffee just yet.” I tilted my head toward Vater. “You surprised me by the bold way you handled Lucas. You’re very brave standing up to him, but you surprised me when you gave him a second chance to be a good neighbor. Why did you do that?”
“Make no unnecessary enemies.” He drank from the cup.
“Is that a German proverb?” I asked.
“No, my dear. It’s a Texas proverb.” He chuckled.
We laughed together as I told him another Texas proverb and how Frau Kellerman found me leaning against the wagon crying over Mutter and had said what might be another Texas proverb, “Texas is hell!”
Vater was appalled. “Rika! Watch what you say. Little pitchers have big ears.”
I looked at Sophie and knew with certainty that I would hear Frau Kellerman’s words again.
Chapter 16
The night of the dance was warm with just a hint of October cool in the air. Unpredictable Texas weather surprised all of us who at home in Germany by October would be wearing woolens. What to wear to the dance had been the main topic of conversation for days. Should it be summer clothes or something warmer? Practically no one could afford a new dress, so we determined to spruce up what we would wear. My summer calico for church and special occasions dress looked good after I trimmed it with extra lace cut from a night gown. Considering that I didn’t know how to sew and had stuck my fingers with the needle over and over, it turned out well, and I enjoyed getting dressed for the dance.
“How could this happen?” I shouted at myself. “Just when everything is beautiful!”
Sophie came running. “W-what’s the m-matter? Oh, you l-look b-beautiful!”
I thought so too—at least the part of me I could see in Vater’s tiny mirror. My hair, pulled back into a bun and shiny from washing, looked exceptional. Then I looked at my feet, the ones that had walked 200 miles in wide, heavy, brown oxfords. They had spread out. Once again I leaned over and felt the smooth satin pumps with bows and pleated rosettes, the ones I had secretly carried all the way from Germany, the ones I had saved for this very special occasion. The ones that were now so tight on my feet that my toes felt like they were on fire. “Oh, Sophie, the shoes are so tight it feels like my feet are burning. What shall I do?”
“S-suffer,” Sophie decided after a minute.
It was Sophie’s new word. These days she picked up everything like a bath sponge I had once seen. After she had objected to eating the same menu day after day, I once told her to just suffer, and then I’d heard the word for days, not always used in the proper way. This time she was right. I’d just have to suffer pinching shoes. The thought of wearing my ugly brown oxfords made suffering desirable.
I forgot the tight shoes later when I saw Lux looking handsome in what he called his funeral suit, made of dark homespun with a dressy shirt and strange-looking necktie. As we walked toward the party, my feet felt light as feathers.
The town square danced with lights and shadows from dozens of lanterns hung on posts and trees. In the center lay the elegant, smooth wooden floor that Lux had so carefully assembled on top of thin, rough-hewn logs. Along one side of the wooden floor, a row of tables decorated with trumpet vine and ferns held lamps, bowls of popcorn, and pitchers of juice. A few people arrived with delicacies that they proudly placed on the table. Hardly any families had white flour, and even fewer had enough to share, but some generous persons had used their flour to make molasses bars and nut cookies. Oma brought plates of gingerbread for the table and was immediately surrounded by families who hadn’t seen such a treat for months.
People gathered at the edge of the dance floor waiting patiently for the musicians to begin, and a flurry of feet flew into action at the first note. Joy seemed to fill the air.
I had waited so long for this moment, my heart beat wildly, and I kept thinking to myself over and over, I can’t believe it! Is it real? I can’t believe it.
With toes scrunched up inside the tight satin shoes, as if by magic my feet flew, barely touching the floor as Lux and I danced the “Double Shuffle” and “Wired.” He even taught me how to cut the “Pigeon’s Wing” so fast it seemed splinters flew from the floor as everyone got into a frenzy. When I took a turn with Kurt, we laughed about our dance in Seguin on the dirt floor and how people with shoes had let those who were barefoot borrow them so they could move faster. During the waltz I danced with Kurt, a strange feeling came over me when I saw Lux over Kurt’s shoulder. He had paired with Elissa Fink, holding her a little too close, and I thought, they were both smiling a bit too brightly. I shuddered slightly with the realization that I had become jealous for no reason at all. After all, Lux was only a friend. My special beau, the only one I had ever kissed, had gone off on an Indian expedition. Then I remembered no one had heard from the expedition. Karl could be dead.
Engel Mittendorf asked me to dance with him, and when the harmonica music started playing the “Chicken Dance,” we laughed so hard we couldn’t dance. In both our minds we could see him flapping his wings behind the wagon each time his mother hen clucked for him to come climb on the wagon “right this minute.” We stood to the side of the floor laughing and talking as Engel told me about hard work on the farm to which he had been hired out, and I told him how I had learned to cook, carry water from the spring, and take care of Baya.
“Does Baya still biteya?” He grinned at his own joke.
“Believe it or not, that animal is getting better.” I told him about how I discovered Baya liked my singing, and he laughed when I told him how astonished I was when I thought about singing German to a Spanish-hearing horse and even caring that the horse liked it. Still laughing, we wandered back to Lux and Elissa.
The gentle voice of a woman spoke from behind me as Engel handed me back to Lux. “I told you that you could do it.”
I turned to see a very pregnant Frau Kellerman and her husband, Herman, who had so graciously shared oatmeal with me in the dark. My heart leaped as I stood mute, studying her. Gone was the gaunt, sad woman from the wagon trail. Here stood a beautiful woman with braided, shiny blond hair and pink cheeks and wearing a blue-flowered dress that could not disguise her condition.
“Where have you been? I have looked everywhere for you,” I said.
Then we flew into each other’s arms.
“You were right about everything you told me, Frau Kellerman. All those dreadful miles, I kept hearing your confidence in me. ‘You can do it! What you must, you will!’ and I just kept walking and walking and doing what I had to do.” Then I leaned close to her ear, whispering. “And, yes, Texas is hell.”
She looked surprised. “I had forgotten I said that.”
“Said what?” asked Lux.
Embarrassed, Frau Kellerman said, “Sorry, it’s a lady’s secret.”
“Lux, this is the lady who taught me how to take care of Mutter,” I said.
Lux shook her hand and bowed. “Thank you for that.”
“Rika, we have found Texas to be a little bit of heaven,” she said.
Herman held out his hands palms up, proudly displaying many thick callouses. “When you are establishing a farm, heaven can be heavy work. But it is ours, and we love it.”
Herman and Lux talked farm talk while Frau Kellerman and I talked about the baby that was due in only two months. Hesitantly she asked about Mutter. I guess my face must have darkened into a frown.
“Don’t worry, Rika. No news is really good news. Your Mutter is probably on her way to New Braunfels right now.”
With promises of visits, the Kellermans moved on to the dance floor and were lost in the music, and Lux and I swirled, glided, and shuffled until people drifted a
way toward their homes and we joined them.
As Lux and I wandered quietly down the dark streets toward home, I felt excited, yet strangely comfortable with Lux. My first official date seemed like something from a fairy tale, and I didn’t want it to end.
Apparently Lux felt the same. He walked slower and slower, occasionally stopping to face me to ask my opinion of the dance floor he had built and how I thought he ranked as a dancer. He even stopped in the middle of a street to tease out the secret Frau Kellerman and I shared.
“That’s for me to know.” I laughed. “A lady keeps secrets.”
We moved on into the cool night that seemed to take on a golden glow. “Apparently, Rika, you have several secrets. You didn’t tell me Kurt and Engel both had moon-eyes for you.” Lux reached for my hand.
I took his hand. A tingling came into my fingers, and I felt my face get warm. The golden glow around us seemed brighter.
“Rika?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for being beautiful and for making the dance so much fun.”
“No need to thank me, Lux. You were a wonderful companion.”
An instant later a man and his son ran from the shadows past us. “There’s a fire,” the man said, pointing.
Lights came on in houses around us, and I realized the golden glow I thought was romance had turned to red. People hurried past us, carrying buckets and calling to each other. “Hurry. Hurry.” Calls of, “Get your bucket,” and “Tell John to hurry,” echoed around us. A woman’s voice called, “Bring the water pail. It’s the Muellers’.”
“Fire! Lux, my house is on fire,” I screamed.
We ran with Lux still holding my hand and dragging me along, my tight shoes pinching with every hurried step. Just as we got to the corner, the wind suddenly fanned the low-burning fire into huge flames that licked tongues of red into the dark sky.
The crackle of dry wood burning roared in our ears and the acrid smoke filled our lungs as the wind blew it our way. People ran in and out of the door carrying things, and from a distance I heard Sophie screaming.
Vater yelled for the neighbors to bring water, and people appeared from everywhere carrying buckets. I didn’t know that I had stood frozen in one spot until Lux grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the burning house to search for Sophie. I found her clinging to Baya’s halter, her eyes wide with terror. As she screamed, Baya pumped his head up and down, his eyes wide with terror also.
“It’s okay, Sophie. We are all safe,” I called. Back at the door I yelled to people carrying things, “Get the trunk! Get the trunk!”
Mounds of belongings grew in the yard as people dropped what they had rescued and headed back for more, but the flames were too much. I heard Vater yelling for them to stop, that it wasn’t safe. People yelled directions to each other and ran for more water, but it was hopeless. Despite their best efforts, fast, hungry flames consumed the house. Slowly, as we watched, unbelieving, the roof caved in, and our home burned itself into a pile of useless, black rubble with only the iron cookstove visible in the red, burning ashes. By the light of hot coals, our friends and neighbors murmured to themselves about the tragedy and congratulated each other that no one was hurt and everyone accounted for. I hugged Vater, whose soot-covered face had clean trickles down his cheeks from watering eyes.
“Oh, Vater,” I said, “you worked so hard to build our house. I’m so sorry. How did this happen?”
“Sophie knocked the lamp…Rika! Where is Sophie?”
Her screaming had stopped long ago, but in the noise and confusion we hadn’t noticed.
“She got out of the house. I put her by the horse shed and told her to stay there.” Vater raced inside the shed, returned shaking his head, then ran around the yard calling her name.
“I saw her there hanging on to Baya,” I said. “Where is Baya?”
He was found behind the shed, sheltered from the layer of smoke settling to the ground.
Frantically we searched the garden behind the shed, the piles of furniture and odd belongings, and the word went out: “Find Sophie.”
People scattered every direction calling her name. Others pounded on the doors of distant neighbors who hadn’t been awakened by the fire, and in every house a light appeared and sleepy people turned out with lanterns forming themselves into groups to search the streets and woods. From my seat on the ground next to the burning embers I could hear them calling in the distance. For hours the calling continued as men of New Braunfels turned out to look for Sophie.
Toward morning people wandered back to report failure and gathered fearfully next to the still-hot ruins of our home, trying to plan how to make an extended search on horseback along the riverbanks.
Our greatest fears deepened, and I put my aching head on my arms, trying to think where Sophie might have gone. Poor Sophie must be scared to death and well hidden to avoid punishment, or she might be lost and wandering in the woods amidst wild animals. Or had she fallen in the river and been swept away?
From behind me I heard, “Psst. Psst.”
I turned toward the sound. At the edge of the dark ring of bystanders, half hidden by a big yaupon bush, stood Otto.
“Rika,” he whispered, “come quietly. Your father has said he would shoot my legs if he ever found me here.”
Quickly I got up and went to where he stood half hidden. Draped across his arms was the sleeping form of Sophie, her dress dirty and torn with little holes burned in it, one shoe missing, her whole body covered with soot and her face streaked from tears and soot. Otto gently thrust Sophie into my arms and disappeared into the darkness.
People around me turned and shouted to pass the word along. “She’s found. Sophie is found. Sophie is safe.” Cheers broke out, and everyone crowded closer to touch the child they had been looking for.
Sophie stirred and mumbled, “I-m s-sorry.”
Vater ran to take her from my arms. “It’s all right, child. Go back to sleep.” He turned to the crowd, telling them of his immense thanks and praising them for their diligent search.
After everyone was gone, I told Vater that it was Otto who had found her.
The surprise made him thoughtful. Then he smiled at me. “My new motto, ‘Make no unnecessary enemies,’ has paid off. Just think, Rika, if we had sent Lucas and Otto to jail, this might have had a different ending. Tomorrow we will give him proper thanks.”
By daylight Vater, Lux, and I had sorted out some of the more badly scorched things to stay in the yard and stashed our remaining belongings inside the horse shed. The precious flat top trunk and heavy contents including my music had been saved and would serve as a table for the few pewter dishes we had left, and some bedding heaped in the corner held the still sleeping Sophie. There were two chairs, two cooking pots, a clock, and three books with singed corners. I felt like singing as I had on the trail from Indian Point, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” for all of us were safe and, thanks to Lux and his careful work to winterize the horse shed, had a snug roof over our heads.
Then I remembered the winter coming on and looked at us in a dark horse shed wearing sooty, half-ruined clothes. How would we ever make it through the winter without clothes? How could we cook? Then I remembered Vater cooking meat over a fire in front of his tent. There was hope. He had made it. But our food and our seeds for next year’s garden were gone, as were most of our blankets. Sophie’s school slate would have to be replaced, and she needed shoes. Our winter coats hanging on pegs in the house had probably been the first things to burn.
“Vater, how will we ever make it?”
He looked awful. His hair was singed, and below his rolled-up shirt sleeves little crisp pieces of skin had blistered around the edges. His trousers, already loose from weight loss, hung in fire-streaked folds around his hips. Shoulders drooped and head bowed, he dropped onto a chair and stared blankly at the scorched trunk. “I have no idea, Rika. It was so hard. How can I do it again?”
“This will help you get s
tarted.” Elissa Fink walked briskly through the open door carrying a metal bucket that she set on the trunk. From the bucket she unloaded a jar of hot bean-coffee, two cups, and a plate stacked high with hoecakes. “It’s not much, but we can spare it. Keep the bucket and the cups. Sorry, Lux, there are only two cups, but there are enough hoe cakes for you.” Hoe cakes, the Texas equivalent of German pancakes, were made with ground cornmeal mixed with water and salt then fried in a skillet. Although corn was plentiful, it cost money to have it ground. Almost no one had extra cash and time, so the hoecakes came as a Fink family sacrifice.
Vater, too dazed by the fire to move, just nodded to Elissa, but I jumped up to hug her. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, welcome, welcome.” She laughed. “By noon, I expect you will be surprised to see how everyone helps. See you later.” Then she was gone.
Lux grinned. “People will help out. I know they will.”
Remembering Indian Point and how everyone kept apart, barely speaking to us, I doubted it. “Those who have little, share little. If I learned anything at Indian Point and on the trail, it is that when food is scarce, family comes first. Except for the Kesslers and their cow, Wilma, no one gave us anything. I will be surprised if by noon we have anything.”
My first surprise came within the hour when a tired-looking young soldier rode into the yard on a worn-down horse. Covered in grime and dust, the soldier seemed all the same color from his uniform cap to his boots and his faithful horse. Behind him were bulging saddlebags and bedding rolls. At first glance, I thought it might be Emil, but when he spoke, I was disappointed.
“Is this, er…was this the Mueller house?” he asked.
Lux helped the soldier from his horse. “Yes, it was until last night.”
“I’m sorry.” He eyed the smoldering embers. “Was anyone hurt?”
I offered my hand to shake. The soldier wiped the grime from his hand onto his even dirtier pants and shook mine. “I’m Rika Mueller. And no one was hurt, thank God.”
The Long Road Home Romance Collection Page 54