One morning during those whirlwind weeks, Paul and I are in the west pasture sketching the sheep with a new urgency, since soon they, too, will be gone. The light is wonderful, shining with early morning clarity on their faces, casting cool shadows onto the tall, dewy grass. Paul and I sit side by side on the split-rail fence, the sun warming our backs, the air still cool enough to allow us to concentrate, as it will not be by late morning.
As I have gotten older and practiced drawing and painting faithfully, Paul has become less a teacher, and more a supportive companion. He is fifteen now, slim and strong, and the gold of his hair has darkened to warm brown hues. The older he becomes, the more he is like Papa in appearance, though his nature is more adventurous. Everyone says that I am taking after Mama, which makes me proud.
After that visit when Papa’s friend brought the terrible news about the people with the strange clan name threatening us, I have never seen Mama cry, even though the world of her home is vanishing piece by piece around her. Instead, she seems to stand even taller than usual, to set her mouth yet more firmly. She moves from task to task as she once moved from one wounded soldier to the next while making no distinction between blue-clad or gray, simply performing any service necessary to the dreadful emergency.
Today, as Paul and I draw, Mama is packing up her china and crystal from Bavaria to give to Cousin Hilda, saying that it will not survive a trip across the country in a wagon, and that it is better to make space for food than for fancy dishes. Yet yesterday she helped me to wrap up my china doll Greta, and to put her to sleep safely in our trunk of clothes.
I am erasing my last few pencil strokes and trying again to capture the shadows in the curls of the sheep’s coat, when a rider arrives in front of our house. Paul and I look at each other fearfully.
“Do you think it could be one of those clan people?” I ask Paul.
“I don’t think so. Those men were in a group, the way bullies usually like to be. This man seems to be alone.”
We jump down from the fence, and hurry toward the side of the house while the man ties his horse and walks up the front steps. I am relieved to see that he is not one of the men who was here before. When he knocks, it is politely. Papa comes to the door.
“Mr. Lotz?”
“Yes, Johann Albert Lotz. And you are Mr. Robert G. Buchanan, I believe?”
They shake hands. Paul and I breathe more easily as they disappear into the house and we run around to the back door and through the hallway. But they are still in the hallway, talking, and we quickly duck into the dining room to listen.
“Yes, I built the house myself in 1858. I am a master woodworker, and I put a lot of careful attention into the floors, the windows, the mantelpieces, and especially the staircase. But as I explained in detail in answer to your letter, the house suffered a great deal of damage during the 1865 battle, and between scarcity of materials and scarcity of time, I have not been able to make the repairs as well as I wanted.”
“Yes, yes, of course. I fully understand, sir. We do not, any of us, live as we did before the war.”
They stand a moment in profound silence.
“May I give you a tour of the house then?”
Papa leads Mr. Buchanan from room to room of our home, the home in which I have spent each day and night of my nearly eleven years. Papa displays the spaces of our shared life as he has displayed so many of our cherished belongings, calmly, matter-of-factly. Mr. Buchanan remarks often on the fine quality of Papa’s woodwork, murmurs dismissively when Papa apologizes for one or another of the hasty repairs. When they walk outside to view the rebuilt workshop, kitchen house, smokehouse, and barn, and the restored pastures, Paul and I watch from the back porch. Over the past five years since the battle, our new pecan, apple, and peach trees have thrived, and now give our grounds an appealing look. There is no doubt that Mr. Buchanan likes what he sees.
They return to the house and enter the library, out of our view. Paul and I take our perch on the stairway to catch what we can of their conversation.
“I am definitely interested in purchasing the property, Mr. Lotz. What is your asking price?”
“I am asking for one thousand dollars, Mr. Buchanan. My family and I will need that amount to relocate.”
Mr. Buchanan whistles and chuckles. “It would take me until some time early next year to raise that amount. But if you would take $850, I can make the transaction by the end of November.”
They are silent for a while. In my mind’s eye, I can see Papa’s sincere, intelligent face as he considers the balance between our need for haste and our need for money.
“I would accept $900, if you could complete the transaction by the end of November. I will be staying with relatives near Memphis and could meet you to finalize the transaction. And I will include the piano you liked so well.”
Paul nudges my arm and we exchange a knowing look. Our Papa is a very clever businessman—that piano with the eagle gripping the flags is the spark that ignited all our trouble in the first place. Surely Papa is very glad to be rid of it, and the bullies will forget all about it once we are gone.
There is another moment of silence.
“Done,” Mr. Buchanan says.
“Let’s have a glass of cordial to seal our agreement,” Papa offers. As they move across the room, we lose the rest of their conversation.
Papa tells us the news at supper.
“I had to make a great sacrifice, though,” he says with a wry smile. “I have included the fancy carved piano in the sale.”
“Gott sei Dank!” cries Mama. “Thanks be to God!” And we all laugh.
*****
SEPTEMBER 1869
(TWO WEEKS LATER)
Franklin, TN
We are seated in our wagon, surrounded by our few possessions. Though Mama and Papa have not spoken again of the urgency of our preparations to leave, I am sure that I am not the only one who is relieved that the pig man and the other clan bullies have not come back yet.
We have sacrificed most of what we owned, and now we will give up our home. Mama has been telling me, and I tell myself, that I am a big girl—ten years old, nearly eleven. I am with the ones I love. I can endure this thing.
Papa is taking a last survey of the property, making fast the locks, making sure that all is left in order for the new owner. His face is like the faces of the Old Testament prophets in our family Bible—Elijah or Isaiah—neither happy nor sad, but wonderfully steady. We wait for what is probably only a few moments, but what seems an hour, suspended between what our life has been and what it will become.
We are leaving times of fear and of suffering, yes, but, even recently, many times of sweetness. I memorize the lines of the stately white house, its pillars, its porches, its tall windows framed with black shutters. In memory, I see Amelia, her long, graceful neck bent over the piano. I see Mama in the kitchen, proudly surveying loaves of golden-brown bread. I see Papa in his library, staring thoughtfully into the fire. I look up into the black walnut tree that has grown so tall and broad in the years since we replanted. I have often leaned against it in the afternoons, sketching in its cool shade. Our animals are all gone now except for Obsidian, our proud black stallion that is harnessed to the cart, and he will need to be sold in Independence when we buy oxen to pull the loaded wagon on our journey next spring. But it is neither Obsidian nor Bertie and her calves that I fix in my memory now to take with me. It is Mattie, gone these five years, with her spritely, funny turn of head, still looking up at me in memory, ready for mischief.
*****
FEBRUARY 1, 1870
(A LITTLE MORE THAN FOUR MONTHS LATER)
Alcove Spring, Kansas
We are completing the first day of our long journey to California. This morning at dawn, we left Independence, Missouri, the “jumping off point,” as everyone in the wagon train strangely calls it, as if we were jumping off a riverbank into the water instead of plodding down a dirt trail. In Independence, we sold Obsidian t
o buy two sturdy oxen and provisions. We watched a while for the weather to warm a bit, which it did this week—right on cue by God’s mercy, Papa says. I do not understand what God’s mercy has to do with those clan bullies making us leave our home.
It is odd that we are already in another state now, but last night Paul showed me in his book of maps how Independence is right near the state border, so we woke up today in Missouri and will go to sleep in Kansas. Paul is having a high time mapping out our route.
It did not take long to leave the farms on the outskirts of Independence and to enter the wilderness. It is a little frightening, but mostly exciting. Papa, Mama, Paul, Amelia, Gus, and I are together, and I will not be afraid.
This evening, we have left the trail and gone about a mile to a campsite at Alcove Spring, where the spring becomes a beautiful waterfall that runs from rocks above into a pool below. Mama lets Paul strip off his dusty clothes and join the other boys in plunging into the icy pool. I can hear them splashing and laughing as I help Mama prepare supper. I wish I could join them, but since I am a girl I must be content with going later with the women to wash our hands, faces, and feet. The water is so cold that my skin tingles, but it is worth it to get the dust off my skin.
Our supper is simple—beans cooked with bacon and a few pieces of lettuce. Amelia says we should be grateful for the fresh vegetables we have brought from Independence, because it could be a long while before we taste the likes of them again.
It is an adventure to sleep outside on the ground. Papa and Paul put down tarps and cover them with the few blankets we have been able to carry with us in the scarce space available. This forms only a thin layer between my bones and the stony ground. As I lie first on my back, then on my side, trying to go to sleep, I am startled by barking in the hills beyond.
“How can there be dogs way out here?” I sit up to ask Paul, who is wrapped in a blanket nearby.
“They’re not dogs, Tillie. They’re coyotes. They look kind of like small, skinny, furry dogs. They run together in packs, and we’re going to be able to sketch some, maybe even tomorrow.”
“Do they eat people?”
Paul laughs. “Oh, all the time. Especially eleven-year-old girls who are trying to draw them.”
I pummel his arm, which makes him laugh harder until I start laughing, too. When we get quiet again, we lie on our backs for a long time, looking at the stars sparkling in the black velvet sky where no town lights dim them. At last, I fall asleep thinking of Paul’s book of strange western animals, and I dream of furry creatures like small, skinny dogs, romping together across the prairie like Paul and I are.
*****
FEBRUARY 1870
(LATER THAT SAME MONTH)
Somewhere in the middle of Kansas
Most people on the wagon train who can walk do, to stretch their legs and to make contact with the ground, they say, and that’s fine for Paul and me sometimes. The seats next to the driver also have their own merits, since it is possible to look ahead from a height to discover the new terrain, and to be reassured that we are in the company of many wagons like ours, snaking their long line into the wilderness. But our favorite spot is the back opening of our wagon, where Papa has set up his wonderful carved table, the only piece of fine furniture we have brought with us as a sample of his work. It is the perfect size, small but with enough of a surface to spread out papers, and Papa has covered it with canvas and set it in front of two water barrels, so Paul and I can perch on the barrels and draw what we see. Papa even got brown paper from the butcher in Germantown before we left, so that we can make rough sketches and save our fine paper for finished work.
Riding in the back of our covered wagon, we are the masters of all we see. No one else we’ve talked with wants to ride inside a wagon, where every step of the oxen and every jolt of the wheels jostles a body with the roughness of this journey without roads. Paul and I do, though, because we know what can be seen from the back of a wagon.
We met the first new, wonderful creature only hours after we left Independence, Missouri. There are few benefits to rising before five in the morning, but one of them is that we can sometimes encounter animals that would be hiding in the light of day. That morning it was quite early, perhaps seven; the sun had just risen and frost was still on the ground. We passed the outskirts of town where there were farms with open, empty fields waiting for spring planting, and grazing cows and sheep. Then we came quite suddenly into open prairie. Paul is teaching me with his picture book about the dry prairie of flat grasslands reaching across Kansas and Nebraska. Many of the animals hide in the tall grasses, but we are lucky that all the wagons passing over this trail have flattened the grasses in a wide swathe, so that some adventurous creatures are revealed.
This first was a small creature, peeking out of a hole to the left as our wagon passed. He had a sleek head like a squirrel, but as he emerged from the hole, he revealed a body bigger than most squirrels—plump, and maybe two feet long, with light-brown fur fluffier than a squirrel’s, and bright black eyes watching us with such curiosity that he scrambled up out of his hole and stood on two feet, like a little man. Then he held up his front paws to his chest like a pet dog begging for a treat. His tail was long and nearly as furry as a fox’s, and tipped in black as a fox’s is. We sketched him as fast as we could while the wagon jolted ahead slowly. The picture book told us that he is a prairie dog, and we have seen many like him this past week. Paul and I are glad for these creatures’ fearlessness that brings them so close to our wagon. We have enough good sketches that we will surely be able to do some finished drawings later.
Though life on the trail has its discomforts, it also offers sweet freedom. As long as we do our chores, obey the rules, and keep moving with the wagons, our days and several hours of our nights are at our own command, and we have the chance to draw for long stretches without the interruptions of school or home projects. It was not so for those long months in Germantown near Memphis, while we waited for winter to come and go. There, our uncle was a dictator and we were all under his heavy shadow.
*****
OCTOBER 1869
(ABOUT FOUR MONTHS EARLIER)
Germantown near Memphis, Tennessee
“Kinder, seid stille!” Herr Schotter bellows, commanding us children to be still, which to him means absolutely still.
Paul and I have made the evidently horrible mistake of whispering to each other about the beautiful carpet, lamps, and paintings surrounding us. Papa flinches at our host’s outburst, but then simply looks at us mildly and says nothing. We have visited the homes of neighbors often enough to know that Papa will not soon contradict the way a man manages his own home.
We are standing in the foyer of Mama’s cousin, Tante Hilda, and Tante Hilda’s husband, whom we have been strongly cautioned to address only as Herr Schotter. We have just arrived in Germantown to stay in safety from the clan bullies until we are able to leave for California in the spring. Mama and Amelia are hugging Tante Hilda, while Papa and Herr Schotter are shaking hands. Herr Schotter glares at Paul and me, perhaps waiting for us to tremble and cower as we will learn he has taught his own children to do. But Paul and I have not been taught to tremble or cower, and when we do not do so, it is clear that he does not approve. It seems to me that Herr Schotter would like for us children not only to be still, but to disappear into the air for good, and he is angry that we do not. “Kinder auf irhe Zimmern!” he calls to the servant, who bows and obediently begins to lead all the children off to our rooms as if leading animals to their pens so that the people—the adults—can carry on their business. Gus has been clasping my hand fearfully, and now he runs to Mama, who circles him with her arm.
Mama, never at a loss, chooses this moment not to argue, but to present each one of us to our relatives with exquisite politeness, and of course, in German. “Moment mal, Anna. Herr Schotter, darf Ich vorstellen: unsere Tochter, Amelia; unser Sohn, Paul; unsere Tochter, Matilda; und unser jungsten Sohn, Augustus.�
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Paul bows slightly. I try to curtsey as gracefully as Amelia does, but I have neither her practice nor her natural grace, and I stumble a little. Gus hides his face in Mama’s skirt.
Herr Schotter glares at me again, and then at Gus, but does not address us. “Also, Sie haben viele Kinder,” he says to Mama and Papa. “Wir machen das Beste aus dieser Situation.”
Now it is Papa who speaks, and in English this time, so even Gus understands. “Herr Schotter, we have always considered that to have these many children is the very best of situations.” He looks from one to the other of us, delivering his love and protection. “I am sorry that you will not meet our eldest son Joseph, who is staying in Nashville for the time being.”
Herr Schotter answers only, “Humph,” and straightens himself, as Tante Hilda leads us, all of us, into the dining room for refreshments. Evidently, now that we have been presented formally, it is expected that we also should be entertained. My clever mama and my gentle papa have won a battle for us, but the struggle with the tyrannical husband of our aunt continues for four more months until we depart.
We live from day to day with Herr Schotter’s vehement disapproval, and the house, when he is present, feels the way a prison must feel. We are compelled to be here, but we are neither wanted nor comforted by the one in authority. Anything we do—walking into the wrong room at the wrong time, being late to supper or being early to supper, taking a second helping of potatoes or not finishing our soup, smiling (which he interprets as insolence), or not smiling (which he calls sullenness)—anything can anger him and start his terrible shouting in German. At home, I loved the rich, strong sounds of the German language, but now I flinch at its harshness.
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