Love Finds You in Amana Iowa

by Melanie Dobson

  “I need you to take charge,” he said.

  Instead of waiting to give commands to Brother John or Niklas or one of the other men, he steered his horse toward the fire and rode off.

  Amalie patted the ox beside her one more time, trying to assimilate her scattered thoughts. She had no problem being in charge, but she wasn’t sure how the men would respond to her. Though if Mr. Faust were able to ride toward the danger instead of away from it, she supposed she could organize the group as well as any of the men on this journey.

  Karoline nudged her arm. “What can I do?”

  She took a deep breath. “Go get the men at the back of the train and bring them here.”

  As Karoline scurried off, Amalie turned to the wagon in front of her. “Brother Niklas!” she shouted. “Brother John!”

  Twenty-two-year-old Niklas Keller and his father rushed to her side.

  Niklas rubbed his hands together. His eyes were on the black smoke funneling into the sky, his voice passionate. “Someone needs our help.”

  She shook her head. “Mr. Faust said there might be danger.”

  He skimmed the forest line and glanced at the wagons behind them. “I see no danger.”

  “He said we should group together and wait for him.”

  Niklas leaned back against the rear of the wagon. The elders had put Mr. Faust in authority over them for this trip. If he said to wait, they would all wait. But the minutes crept past and Mr. Faust didn’t return.

  A low rumble echoed through the tangled forest on the left side of their train, like the roar of hooves in a stampede. Amalie squinted into the shadows of the foliage and shuddered.

  Maybe it was a stampede.

  The men and Karoline thronged around Amalie’s wagon. Peace filled each of their eyes, a peace that passed understanding, and she wondered if she was the only one whose heart raced.

  “We will pray,” Brother John announced, and he began petitioning their Lord for wisdom and for His hand of protection.

  The roar drew closer, and her heart beat even faster.

  What were they supposed to do? Christian Metz spoke regular testimonies to them in Ebenezer, inspired words from the Spirit to give them direction, but Brother Metz wasn’t with them on this journey.

  She glanced up at the sky, as if God would write His direction for them in the clouds, but God was silent for the moment.

  A gunshot blasted through the trees, the sound echoing around them. She looked into the faces surrounding her. Fear flickered in some of their eyes. Questions. Several of the men had shotguns to hunt game, but they would never use a gun on their fellow man. They had only one choice.

  Amalie steadied her voice, pointing toward the trees. “We need to run. Hide.”

  A second shot rang out and the people around her didn’t hesitate this time. Karoline vanished into the forest along with most of the men standing around Amalie.

  She looked at her wagon one last time, at the pots and kettles she’d spent hours cleaning and polishing and preparing for this trip. Kettles that were supposed to feed her brothers and sisters in the new kitchen.

  Niklas pressed his hand on her shoulder. “Run, Amalie.”

  She looked back at the wagon one last time. And then she ran.

  Love, which overcame and conquered

  my perverse and wayward heart;

  Love, by which I’m bound and anchored

  that from Thee I would not part.

  Johannes Scheffler

  Chapter Two

  Friedrich Vinzenz swiped the curved blade of his scythe through the alfalfa and flung the fresh grass over his shoulder, into a mound by the wagon. The other field hands were supposed to stack the alfalfa and toss it into the wagon, but he didn’t turn around to see if they were doing their jobs. Here in the Amanas, one man had to rely on another. Trust one another. Wilhelm Hauser, the farm baas, ensured the work was done correctly, but he rarely had to make sure the men were doing their jobs. In an intricate, precise rhythm, they worked together to harvest the grass for the animals to eat over the winter.

  Friedrich was a clockmaker by trade, but he hadn’t built many clocks since he moved to the new Kolonie. The elders assigned him and most of the other men in the Amanas to build, plant, and harvest for their community. They would work wherever they were needed most, under the leadership of their great God and the elders He had put in authority over them. Friedrich liked the variety of the summer work. It kept him focused on the task at hand instead of feeding the wanderlust that sometimes crept into his mind and rooted itself into his soul when he was tinkering with a clock.

  Behind them, in the village of Amana, he could hear the echo of hammers pounding against nails with a steady beat, inspiring all of them to work hard for the day, work unto God instead of man. The carpenters were building an addition to the woolen mill and a new barn that Friedrich and the other field workers would fill with the harvested hay. And the masons were building two homes for the colonists who were supposed to arrive from New York in about three weeks.

  He tossed another bundle of grass behind him and smiled at the thought of Amalie finally coming to Amana. Beautiful and determined Amalie.

  She’d caught his eye while they were still in Lehrschule. He’d had to fight to get her attention, and there was nothing Friedrich liked better than a good challenge. Amalie Wiess challenged him in so many ways.

  He was almost twenty-six now. The minimum age for the men in their Kolonie to marry was twenty-four, and if the Grosse Bruderrath— Great Council of the Brethren—permitted it, he and Amalie would wed. Then he planned to spend the rest of his life trying to teach his wife, the newest and probably most efficient Küchebaas in the community, how to enjoy life as well.

  The challenge exhilarated him, almost as much as the thought of seeing Amalie again. They would be together every night after evening prayers and in the early hours of the morning before she would leave to prepare the food that would fuel their community for the day. After a lifetime of being brother and sister in Christ, they would be husband and wife.

  “O we ain’t gonna thresh no more, no more,” one of the men started singing, and Friedrich joined him with his baritone voice. “We ain’t a gonna thresh no more.”

  The work out here was monotonous—and hard—and the elders didn’t mind if they broke up the threshing work with a bit of song. It kept the men alert and focused on their job. And it kept them from dozing off in the afternoon hours when their bodies were begging for sleep.

  Life would be different when Amalie arrived. Different but good. One day they would have children, and even if Amalie never joined him for singing, he would teach their children to sing. They would be a family who loved each other. A family who enjoyed each other. Just like the family he’d left behind in Ebenezer.

  This autumn his mother and father and his younger sister would be joining them in Amana, when his father was no longer needed to supervise the last harvest of their fields in New York. Then he would have Amalie and his parents alongside him.

  Amalie’s parents wouldn’t come to the Kolonie for a year or two, when the final group traveled here. He and Amalie would start their lives together long before her parents arrived, and they would thrive.

  “What’s that?” one of the men said, stopping the song, and Friedrich’s eyes traveled across the field, toward the banks of the Iowa River.

  Two men were riding toward them on horseback, both of them dressed in the steely blue uniform of the Union Army. Yellow stripes lined their trousers, and the gold buttons on their uniforms gleamed like the eyes of an opossum caught in a lantern’s light. Friedrich glanced around for their baas, but he didn’t see Wilhelm among the workers in the field.

  As the horses trotted toward the workers, Friedrich glanced at the men surrounding him, but no one volunteered to meet the soldiers.

  One of the men nodded toward him. “You speak with them.”

  Grasping the wooden handle of his scythe, Friedrich carried it alongs
ide him as he approached the soldiers, curious about why these men were visiting their Kolonie.

  The buttons of the man riding on the first horse bulged around his midsection, and his frock coat displayed a red patch in the shape of a shield along with three other badges across his left breast. His white beard was trimmed; his boots looked spit-and-polished.

  The other man was a few decades younger than his companion. He had dark skin and a crooked nose. Friedrich had seen only a handful of Negros in his life, and those had been strung together like fish after they’d been trying to escape across the border to Canada. He would never forget those slaves, just like he would probably never forget the black soldier in front of him.

  “We are representatives of the U.S. government,” the older man said.

  Friedrich sighed. They’d moved all the way from Ebenezer to escape the intrusion of the government and battles over the property rights of their land.

  He swept his hand across the fields and trees. “We are the rightful owners of this valley.”

  “I don’t doubt your ownership of the land, son, but I do question your service to our great Union.”

  Friedrich’s back stiffened. He prided himself in his service to God, his community, and to his country. “I’ve never been disloyal to the Union.”

  “Loyalty means you fight when you are needed.”

  “No one has asked me to fight.”

  The man leaned down toward him and tapped one of the bronze pins on his chest. “Do you know what this badge means?”

  Friedrich stared at the engraving of a soldier shaking hands with a sailor. The award probably meant the man was important by worldly standards, but Friedrich had no idea about the scale of importance.

  “Abraham Lincoln himself gave it to me, for gallant conduct in this bloody war. It was made from a cannon we took from those blasted Rebels.”

  He nudged the horse to the right, and Friedrich looked down at the man’s trouser leg, dangling over the barrel of the horse. Friedrich’s stomach rolled when he realized the man was missing the bottom half of his leg.

  “Now they’ve got me back here recruiting instead of soldiering, but it doesn’t mean I’m any less loyal to the war.” He slipped a roll of paper from a burlap bag. “My job in I-o-way is to find other able-bodied men like yourself to fight for freedom, since they won’t let those of us who were wounded fight any longer.”

  Friedrich glanced back over his shoulder, wondering where Wilhelm had gone, but all he saw were his fellow brothers, who had returned to their work harvesting the grass.

  The soldier hopped down from the horse and balanced himself with a wooden cane. He was inches shorter than Friedrich, but his very presence demanded respect.

  Friedrich’s fingers twitched, and he felt like he should salute the man or something. Worldly men saluted each other, honoring their fellowman instead of God, but he wasn’t sure if a salute would show proper respect to their government or if it would esteem one man more than another.

  He kept his arms at his sides.

  “You think those Confederates are going to let you keep your valley if they make it to Iowa?”

  Friedrich didn’t reply. The Southern rebellion seemed so far removed from their peaceful Kolonie; he couldn’t imagine Confederate troops marching on their land.

  “With prime property like this,” the soldier said as he glanced over the field, “they’d probably burn all your pretty new buildings and take over your land.”

  Friedrich bowed his head slightly. “Our plans are not always the plan of God.”

  “You think God might want to destroy this?” When Friedrich didn’t respond, the soldier continued. “Would you stand by while the Rebels burned your village?”

  He shook his head, confused. “I don’t know what I would do.”

  “My name is Colonel Liam O’Neill.” The man unrolled the brown scroll in his hands. “What is your name?”

  “Friedrich,” he replied. “Friedrich Vinzenz.”

  “And you’re one of the inspirational people?”

  “Inspirationists,” Friedrich corrected him. “We belong to the Community of True Inspiration.”

  Colonel O’Neill glanced down the piece of paper, repeating “Vinzenz” over and over again until he flicked the paper. “That’s what I thought.”

  Friedrich looked over the top of the paper at the long list of names. “What is it?”

  “We are forming a new regiment from the boys here in Iowa County.” He reached in his pocket and withdrew a small stack of envelopes. He thumbed through them and then handed one of them to Friedrich. “You’ve been conscripted to serve as a soldier to fight for the Union Army. In the 28th Iowa Infantry.”

  The rhythm of the hammers faded behind him, his mind racing. The government had passed a new law earlier this year, requiring every man in the North to be ready to serve in the military if he was called. Some of the men in the Amanas and over in Ebenezer had already been conscripted, but he didn’t know who had been called to fight. Each time someone was called, the Bruderrath paid commutation fees to excuse them from service.

  “We are conscientious objectors,” Friedrich said, the envelope weighing heavy in his hands. “Our faith doesn’t permit us to fight.”

  The colonel limped forward, his eyes on Friedrich’s face. The intensity in his green eyes unnerved him. “Do you have children, Friedrich?”

  “No.”

  The man’s bushy eyebrows arched. “Surely you are married then.”

  “Not yet.”

  “But you’re willing to send another man to fight in your place. A man with a wife and children.”

  Friedrich stabbed the blade of his scythe into the ground. “I don’t want anyone to fight this war.”

  Colonel O’Neill clucked his tongue, the lines of his face drawn tightly toward his beard. “Do you even know what this war is about?”

  Friedrich’s gaze dropped to his boots for a moment. How could he admit to this man, decorated in awards from the president of their great country, that he didn’t know much of what happened outside the Amanas? His work was to make clocks and harvest the crops to feed their people and help build their new community. There was no need for him to know what was happening outside their Kolonie.

  “It is an unholy war among brothers,” Friedrich said, repeating what he’d heard their head elder Brother Schaube and the other elders tell the people in their community.

  “Unholy?” The man’s voice was incredulous.

  “Men are fighting for pride’s sake when they should be seeking peace.”

  Colonel O’Neill shook his head, and in a voice so low Friedrich could barely hear him, he said one word. “Joseph.”

  The Negro prompted his horse forward, his dark eyes focused on the horse’s mane.

  “Would you kindly show this gentleman your arm?”

  When Joseph looked up, Friedrich saw the humiliation in the man’s eyes. Pity ballooned inside him, and he waved his hands to stop the man. “I don’t need to see anything.”

  In spite of Friedrich’s protests, Joseph pushed up his long sleeve, and Friedrich saw swollen patches of pink on his dark skin. Skin that had been torn with a knife or a whip. The wounds had woven themselves together in healing, but the scars would be permanent.

  “Do you need to see his back as well?” the colonel asked.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Joseph was born in Georgia. He never knew his father, and he hasn’t seen his mother since he was a child, when she was sold to another plantation. As a young man he was beaten many times for seeking the freedoms you and I enjoy every day.”

  “How did you escape?” Friedrich asked the man.

  Joseph glanced at the colonel, who responded with a nod. “Go ahead, Joseph, tell him.”

  Joseph’s gaze remained fixed on his saddle horn. “The massa’s son and I—we was friends when we just boys. Phillip was afraid to stand up against his papa, and I cain’t blame him—his papa was a mean ol’ codg
er. But one night, while the massa was out travelin’, Phillip help sneak me away.”

  Friedrich could feel Colonel O’Neill’s intense gaze on him as Joseph fell silent.

  “Phillip might have been disowned or even killed for helping a slave escape,” the colonel said. “But he did what was right, and his sacrifice, like the sacrifices of our Union soldiers today, was far greater than a thousand words spoken out against slavery.”

  “But it is an unholy war—” Friedrich repeated.

  Colonel O’Neill interrupted him. “Some of us believe it is a holy war, fighting for our brothers and sisters like Joseph who cannot fight for themselves.”

  Friedrich tried to think of a response. Even though Joseph had covered his mutilated arm, he could still see the twisted, discolored scars in his mind. It didn’t matter the color of one’s skin. What kind of man did that to another man? To a brother in God’s eyes?

  “It’s been two weeks since the battle at Gettysburg.” The colonel drummed the stack of envelopes in his hands. “You have heard about Gettysburg, haven’t you?”

  “No…”

  Colonel O’Neill sighed, and Friedrich fidgeted with the handle of the scythe. The man didn’t understand their way of life. He and the men and women who lived in the Kolonie weren’t stupid. They chose to separate themselves, and in their isolation, they worshipped and served God instead of concerning themselves with the worries of this world.

  Even so, Friedrich was curious about the outside world.

  “How many people do you have living in your towns here?” the colonel asked.

  “Almost a thousand.”

  Colonel O’Neill drew closer, his voice gruff. “We lost twenty-three thousand of our soldiers when the Rebels attacked our army in Pennsylvania.”

  Twenty-three thousand. The number was too staggering to comprehend.

  “What—what happened to them?”