Love Finds You in Amana Iowa

by Melanie Dobson

  “Some of them were lost or wounded. Some were captured.” He paused. “And at least four thousand of them died on behalf of the rest of us.”

  Friedrich ground the tip of the scythe’s blade in the dirt. He hadn’t asked these soldiers to fight in his place. He didn’t want anyone to die for him.

  “We need to replace these soldiers,” Colonel O’Neill continued. “To protect our people and to stop those who beat and kill men like Joseph because they believe people of color are meant to be their slaves.”

  Friedrich swallowed hard, the man’s words warring in his mind. Even though he believed there were better ways to resolve conflict than battling one another, he couldn’t help but admire men who stood up for what was right. What would it be like to go into a battle to fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves?

  Even as his mind churned with questions, something began to stir in his heart.

  Colonel O’Neill thumbed through the envelopes and pulled one from the stack. “Your address is in Amana.”

  The colonel lifted another envelope from the stack, reading the name. “Do you know a Matthias Roemig?”

  “I do,” he said. He didn’t tell Colonel O’Neill that Matthias was his best friend.

  The colonel handed him two envelopes. “Will you deliver his letter to him?”

  Friedrich nodded as he took the envelopes.

  Colonel O’Neill climbed back on his horse, flung his pant leg onto the other side, and tucked his cane into the saddle in front of him. “Five more of the inspirational men in Middle and South Amana have been conscripted to join the Iowa regiment as well. Unless you decide to hire someone else to take your place, you are required by law to report to the enlistment office in Marengo on Monday morning.”

  The colonel turned his horse toward Middle Amana. “I would encourage you and Mr. Roemig and the other men of your colony to come fight for your brothers like the rest of us. Fight to save men like Joseph from the abuse of men who call themselves Christians but hurt their fellow man.”

  Friedrich watched as Joseph turned his own horse around and followed the colonel. The men galloped away.

  What would it be like to wear the pressed uniform of a soldier, ride with a company of other men who fought with integrity and passion? Men who fought together for what was right.

  He stuffed the envelopes into his pockets, then pulled his scythe out of the dirt and twisted it in his hands. What would it be like to fire a shotgun at a person instead of an animal?

  His stomach turned like the tool in his fingers and then he swung the blade through the alfalfa. With the soldiers gone, the men around him returned to their singing, but the lyrics lodged in Friedrich’s throat.

  In an hour, over supper, he would give Matthias the conscription letter. He knew exactly what Matthias would say, but this time, he wasn’t sure he would agree with his friend.

  Though devils all the world should fill, all eager to devour us,

  We tremble not, we fear no ill, they shall not overpower us.

  Martin Luther

  Chapter Three

  Tree limbs snagged Amalie’s dress as she raced through the trees. The sharp branches struck her bonnet, cut her face, and her heels tangled in the overgrowth. She yanked her boots forward, trying to flee the gunshots, but it seemed like the entire forest was conspiring against her.

  A man called out, yelling for her to stop, but she kept running. She didn’t even look back, at the man or the road or her friends or the precious pots and pans she left in her wagon.

  She could hear the horses now, panting behind her, trying to stop her. In seconds they would overtake her and she wouldn’t be able to divert them, but until they stopped her, she continued to run, praying for God’s mercy on her life. Praying that if it were time for her to go home, He would take her quickly to Him.

  Beside her, a black horse pushed through the overgrowth, and seconds later, four horses surrounded her. She stopped, struggling for breath as she turned to face her pursuers with confidence.

  The confidence faded as she looked at the riders. They were the most unkempt, the most motley group of men she’d ever seen. Even more rugged than Mr. Faust or the men who came to their colony in search of work. Their cotton shirts were tattered and stained. Their trousers faded. She couldn’t tell if their uniforms were blue or gray, but since they were traveling through Ohio, she assumed they were Yankees. The Confederates, she’d been told, were much farther south in Kentucky and Virginia.

  She leaned back against the tree, trying to breathe before she spoke. “Why are you chasing me?”

  The soldiers looked over her shoulder, and she turned to face a tall man with an arrowhead-shaped beard on his chin and a mustache that curled up on both ends. Even with the summer heat, he wore a gray jacket, the collar encircled in stars.

  “We are chasing you—” he started, and then he laughed. “We are chasing you, miss, because you are running.”

  “But—”

  “Allow me to introduce myself,” he interrupted. “I’m General John Hunt Morgan of the Confederate Army, and these are my men.”

  “The Confederate Army?” A wave of nausea swept over her. She hoped the rest of her brothers and sisters had run far away from these soldiers, a place where they were safe.

  The edges of his lips peaked upward to his mustache. “Have you not heard of me?”

  “I have not.”

  The general laughed again, seemingly pleased by her lack of knowledge about him. “The Yanks calls us savage beasts.”

  Beasts. She cringed at the word and the crassness in his tone.

  “But we think of ourselves more like troublemakers.”

  “There’s—there’s not supposed to be any fighting in Ohio.”

  He laughed again. “Well, there’s no time to educate you at this moment. We have people chasing us as well.”

  He glanced back toward the trail and then motioned his men to ride around them. She didn’t know how many horses to expect, but it seemed like there were hundreds. “Your Yankee friends can tell you the stories about me and my fine men though.”

  She clung to the tree as the horses stomped by her. “I don’t have any Yankee friends.”

  His eyebrows slid up. “You should be grateful for that. A Yank will say he’s your friend, and then he’ll shoot you in the back.”

  She tried to stand taller. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the South?”

  His grin grew even wider. “Our orders are to wreak havoc across the North, and I must say, we are quite good at it.”

  “You’re burning things?”

  “Ah,” he said. “You saw our handiwork firsthand.”

  “We saw the smoke from it.”

  “Are you traveling to Lisbon?”

  She nodded. “For the night.”

  “I’m sorry to say it, but the loss of the bridge will lengthen your journey.”

  Hope sprang up inside her. Perhaps he would release her to continue her journey.

  His horse stomped on the ground, and he inched back the reins. “We had to stop the men chasing us, you understand, but even with the fire, some of them will make it across the water. I think they take pleasure in chasing us, almost as much as we enjoy raiding their land.”

  She marveled at how he could smile in spite of the danger, or perhaps because of it.

  “You and your friends best keep moving along the trail,” he said. “It isn’t safe in these parts right now.”

  “Nor will it be if you don’t stop wreaking your havoc.”

  He laughed one last time, and then clucked his tongue. She ducked behind a sheath of leaves as General Morgan and the rest of his solders ran past her. As the general predicted, another band of men and their horses raced through the forest behind him minutes later.

  Through the leaves, she saw their fine uniforms made of blue, but thankfully, they didn’t seem to see her hidden in the trees. She prayed the Union soldiers would be as genteel to her brothers and sisters as the
company from the Confederacy had been to her.

  Even when the soldiers were gone, she didn’t move. There could be more men behind this wave, trailing the Union men. As the minutes passed, the clamor of shouting and gunshots and the pounding of horses’ hooves were replaced by the soft brush of leaves dancing in the breeze.

  Quickly she moved back toward the trail. None of the other Inspirationists had returned, but the ox teams remained at the side of the path, eating grass along the trail. None of their animals or wagons appeared harmed.

  She breathed another prayer of thanks that the general hadn’t wreaked havoc on their wagon train.

  She climbed into the back of her wagon and cinched the cord to block out the sunrays. Running her hands over a wrought iron kettle, she hoped they could all celebrate together the Lord’s provision for them. Tonight they would rejoice as a community. The meal would be simple, biscuits and stew, but it would still be a celebration.

  She waited inside the wagon until she heard the galloping of a solitary horse. Peeking out the front, she saw Mr. Faust ride up, and she climbed off the wagon.

  He jumped off his horse when he saw her. “You are safe?”

  She nodded.

  He glanced around the wagons, like her friends might be hiding inside as well. “And the others?”

  “I pray they are waiting in the forest.”

  Mr. Faust reached back into his leather bag and took out a horn. The bugle blast rattled the pots hanging behind her, and she put her hands over her ears until the sound died out.

  “The Rebels burnt the bridge to Lisbon,” Mr. Faust said, his voice grim. “There’s no other place for us to cross in miles.”

  She didn’t tell him about General Morgan and how, in his pride, the man had laughed at the destruction. Or how the general seemed charming in spite of his actions. That’s how Satan himself would be, she guessed, if she ever met him. Charming and destructive. He would take as much pleasure in stealing and destroying as the general did.

  One by one, men clad in flannel shirts and trousers slipped out of the forest, onto the trail. Her heart leapt at the sight of each face, and she counted them as they joined her and Mr. Faust by the wagons.

  Nine. Ten. Eleven men.

  Mosquitoes swarmed around her bonnet, and she brushed them away as she squinted into the trees, looking for Karoline. They had left Ebenezer with twenty-five people, and they would arrive in Iowa with the same number.

  Minutes crept past, and the number of people walking out of the trees trickled.

  She counted sixteen now. Seventeen.

  Eight people were still out there, and she prayed silently that they weren’t lost in the woods.

  One of the brothers gathered the travelers into a circle. Mr. Faust stood on the outside as they beseeched the Lord for the people still in the woods. She didn’t close her eyes during the prayers, watching instead for Brother Niklas and his father. For Karoline Baumer.

  The days of all of their lives were numbered, but she didn’t want to lose a single one of their members. Not today.

  One of the men began singing a hymn, the words and tune memorized from the Psalter-Spiel.

  When my God brought upon me terror

  And the danger has gone by,

  Then I will bring offerings of thanks

  And sing with mighty voice.

  Amalie didn’t sing, but in her heart she offered her thanks for those who had returned. And she prayed again for those who had not.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw another face in the trees, and Karoline Baumer stumbled out to the trail. Her sunbonnet was gone, and her golden hair fell tangled across her shoulders.

  “Karoline!” Amalie ran to her. Blood matted the girl’s hair, and there was a gash near her ear. She put her arm around Karoline’s shoulders. “Did the soldiers hurt you?”

  Karoline shook her head. “There was a horse, running toward me. I tried to get out of its way.”

  Amalie shuddered. “Its hooves—”

  “I fell.” Karoline put her hand to her head, touching the wound. “And I hit my head on something, a tree or maybe a rock on the ground. I don’t know. Something sharp.”

  Gently Amalie directed the younger woman toward the kitchen wagon. “I will clean your wound.”

  Karoline stared down at the red on her fingers. “I didn’t know I was bleeding.”

  The women passed by Brother Niklas and John as they walked out of the forest.

  Twenty-three and twenty-four.

  The singing grew louder behind them. Only one more person left to return from the woods, and they would all be together again.

  Amalie lifted several sacks out of the kitchen wagon to make room for Karoline and unrolled her canvas bed sack on the wooden floor. She removed her pillow, comforter, and several blankets from the roll and she smoothed the comforter on the floor. Two of the men helped Karoline step up into the back of the wagon.

  Karoline leaned her head back against the roll of blankets, and as Amalie dabbed her friend’s forehead with a cloth to clean the wound, she thought Karoline would murmur with the pain, but she was silent instead.

  The doctor in Ebenezer had provided Amalie with a medical kit and instructions on how to use the different remedies in case someone was hurt on the trail. She took out a bottle of ointment from her trunk, rubbed the ointment onto a piece of fabric, and tied the cotton material around Karoline’s head. Hidden in the bottom of the trunk was a tincture of cannabis for the pain, and she spooned the medicine into her friend’s mouth.

  Amalie smiled. “You’re almost as good as new.”

  Karoline closed her eyes. “I don’t feel new.”

  Even with the summer heat, her friend shivered, and Amalie pulled a blanket up to her shoulders.

  “You rest now,” she told her. “We’ll find a doctor in Lisbon to look at your head.”

  She didn’t want to think how long it would take them to get to Lisbon.

  “I don’t feel the pain anymore,” Karoline said.

  “Good.” Amalie closed the trunk. “I’ll make you some soup to eat tonight, and you’ll be well again soon.”

  Karoline opened her eyes, staring up at the canvas wagon top. “Do you see the stars?”

  Amalie glanced up and then looked back at her friend. “It’s still light, Karoline.”

  “But I see stars.”

  Amalie squeezed her hand. “You need to rest now.”

  Karoline muttered something else, but Amalie couldn’t understand her. She patted her friend’s hand gently until Karoline’s breathing indicated she was sleeping, and then she climbed back out of the wagon.

  Niklas was waiting for her outside. “Is she going to be all right?”

  “I pray so,” she said. “But she needs to see a physician.”

  “Faust will get us to Lisbon as soon as he can.”

  She glanced across the heads of the men loitering in front of the wagon, waiting to move on. “Did the last person come out of the forest?”

  “Everyone is accounted for.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “But I only counted twenty-four people.”

  Niklas silently counted the heads around them and then smiled. “I believe you’ve neglected to count yourself, Sister Amalie.”

  She thought back over her counting and then sighed with relief. He was right—she had forgotten to include herself.

  As she and Niklas walked toward the rest of their community, Mr. Faust lit his pipe and smoke rolled from his lips. When he reached the circle of men he began speaking.

  “The bridge to Lisbon has been destroyed.” He lifted his hat and raked his fingers through his dark hair. “We will supper at the banks of the river tonight, and then tomorrow we will have to ford the water.”

  Amalie stepped forward. “Sister Karoline is not well.”

  Mr. Faust contemplated her words for a moment. “We can send one of the men ahead tonight to get a doctor from Lisbon.”

  She sighed with relief.


  He looked up at the sky. “We have at least two hours left of light tonight so we best be moving.”

  They all dispersed to travel alongside their appointed wagons, and Amalie walked slowly back to hers. Her stomach rumbled, ready for the supper meal. When they stopped, she would make soup for Karoline and stew for the rest of them from dried meat and their remaining vegetables.

  Her mind wandered back to Ebenezer and then forward to Amana. Friedrich and the others were sitting down for their meal now. The baas and her assistants were probably scrambling to place slices of roasted, warm meat on the platters and pour milk into pitchers for the diners. She would give just about anything for a cold glass of water or milk.

  In a few weeks she would be back in the familiarity of a kitchen. Her own kitchen. Since the time she was fourteen, she had spent almost every day cooking and cleaning. She’d spent her summers canning and the winters creating new recipes from their bounty. Some women felt confined inside a kitchen house, but she thrived in it. Sometimes, when her baas was gone for the day, she imagined herself to be a queen, reigning over the kettles and pots in her kingdom. She would never tell any of her friends about her imagined queenship—they would be right to accuse her of being proud instead of humble, even in her imagination—but it was a game she played nonetheless.

  Mounted on the side of her wagon was an oak barrel, and she ladled the water from it into a tin cup. The water had been baked by the sun, more hot than tepid in temperature, but as she sipped it, she pretended it was a glass of milk.

  In three weeks she would be in her new kitchen…and she would be with Friedrich. Was he as nervous about seeing her as she was to see him?

  As the months and then years went by, his letters became less frequent though they were always signed with his undying love for her. Over the years she’d wondered if he would wait for her, worried that by the time she arrived in Amana he would already have given his heart to someone else. Sometimes she even wondered if the years apart would sever the relationship they’d once enjoyed.

  Friedrich had always been passionate, even as a child. Instead of weighing every consequence like she did, he made his decisions on a whim; often she wished he would just sit down and think for five minutes before he made a choice that would affect his—and now her—life.