by Dean Hughes
“How about a little for us then?”
The old man laughed and then coughed again. “I couldn’t possibly give you any,” he said. “But you are guards, and you should check one of the cans—to make sure I’m not a smuggler. You may even have to pour a little milk out to be certain. These things are sometimes necessary for officials like yourselves.”
“You’re right. Pull one of those cans down. I must check. You look like a smuggler to me. I’ll find something to pour the milk in.”
Both men laughed, and then some time passed before the guard’s voice sounded at the back of the wagon. “Pour a little right in there, and let’s see whether it’s really milk or not.”
Brother Stoltz heard the old man grunt as he pulled the top off the can. Then he heard the milk spilling out and the guard saying, “Fill it right up to the top. I need to test plenty of it. It could be poison you’re carrying to the creamery.”
“Yes, yes. I’m a saboteur.”
In another minute or so, the can thudded as it dropped back into the wagon, and the guard said, as he was walking away, “Go on. Move on through. But I may have to check your milk again in a day or two. I don’t quite trust you yet.”
“It’s fine,” the old driver said. “I understand what it’s like for you men. I was in the Great War, back in 1914.”
And the wagon rolled on. Two or three minutes went by before the driver said, “Sorry, my friends. I wasn’t expecting that. It happens with new guards. We don’t have far to go now. In twenty minutes you’ll be out of the wagon.”
It seemed longer than twenty minutes, but after a rather rocky ride up an apparent dirt lane, the driver got down and began pulling milk cans out of the back of the wagon. And then he lifted the boards and set the Stoltzes free. When they climbed out of the back, a woman was waiting. “I’m Frau Riedel,” she said. “You can call me Inge. Come with me. Quickly.”
“Everything good, I wish you all,” Herr Engelmann said.
“Thank you so much,” Brother Stoltz said. “You were very clever with that guard.”
“They always want milk,” he said, and then he climbed back onto the wagon.
Inge was leading the way, and Brother Stoltz hurried to catch up. She walked to the back of her farmhouse and on to a barn. She opened a wooden latch and pulled the door open, and then she walked a few steps inside. “Here’s the ladder,” she said. “You can’t see it very well now, but it will soon be light. Climb up to the loft. I have bedding up there. For now, you can get some rest.”
“Will we stay here long?” Anna asked.
“I don’t know, my darling. I only take people for as long as needed. I don’t ask questions, and I usually know very little. I can take you into the house later, perhaps, if you stay that long, but for now we have to be certain that you haven’t been traced.”
“Are you putting yourself in danger?” Sister Stoltz asked.
“I suppose. But it doesn’t matter. What will they do to an old woman?”
“We can pay you something,” Brother Stoltz said. “We have a little money.”
“Keep that. You might need it. But I’m alone. My husband has been dead for some time now. Some who stay here are able to give me help with the farm, and that I appreciate.”
“We’ll help,” Peter said.
“Yes, I know you will. But hide for now. And rest. I’ll bring you some food after a time.”
And so the Stoltzes climbed into the loft, and they found blankets and feather ticks. But no one seemed sleepy now. Gradually the sun was coming up, and light was seeping in through the cracks of the boards on the barn walls.
“One more time we’ve stayed alive,” Sister Stoltz said. “But now what? Where can we go from here?”
“Maybe we can stay,” Peter said. “We can work and—”
“Yes,” Sister Stoltz said, “and how long before someone starts asking questions? Who are we this time?”
Brother Stoltz heard the discouragement in her voice, and he didn’t blame her. He was feeling the same fatigue. “It’s not quite so bad as it seems,” he said. “I made new identity papers for us before I left. I prepared them in case something like this happened. I also have travel visas—with official stamps. I think it’s possible we can get out of Germany.”
“Where would we go?”
“Switzerland, I’m thinking. And if we get that far, maybe there’s a way to get to England.”
“Or to America?” Anna asked.
“I don’t know, Anna. I’m not sure what country would let us in. But if we could get out of Germany, we could wait out the war much more easily.”
“Oh, Heinrich, I don’t know. How can we keep doing this?”
It was the same old question. But there were no easy alternatives. That decision had been made long ago. “Frieda,” Brother Stoltz said, “we can rest a little now, and then we’ll feel better. We must keep finding ways—and not give up.”
“This time we’ve lost everything. At least I had my little plate till now.”
“I lost my diary,” Anna said. “And my picture.”
Brother Stoltz knew she meant her picture of Elder Thomas. He put his arm around her shoulders, and she turned to him and began to cry. Her pain seemed somehow a reproach, although he knew she didn’t mean it that way.
“Papa, we prayed for Herbert and Hannah, and for Benjamin,” Peter said. “Why didn’t the Lord help them—if he helped us? Or is it all just luck?”
“I have no idea why things happen the way they do,” Brother Stoltz said. “But maybe the Lord will save them yet.”
“Let’s at least pray again for them,” Peter said.
Brother Stoltz heard the desperation in his son’s voice. “Yes,” he said. “Let’s do that now.”
So they prayed again. And after, Peter lay on his bedding. Brother Stoltz heard him crying but trying not to let the others hear. Brother Stoltz knew the anguish that Peter was feeling for his little friend. He wished he could cry, too, and get some relief, but his anxieties seemed to fill up his heart.
Chapter 23
President Thomas was in charge of the paper drive in Sugar House. All the shipping of weapons and food and equipment to soldiers required a tremendous amount of paper and cardboard. Most scrap metal had already been scavenged, and discarded tires had been collected, but newspapers continued to circulate, and everyone had some sort of paper in the house that could be turned over to the drive. President Thomas set out to pull off the drive with a minimum of vehicles—to avoid gasoline use. He asked kids to get out their red wagons, and he instructed people to bind their paper in bundles that could be easily carried. He set up a receiving station in the center of Sugar House on Twenty-First South and Eleventh East. He recruited Bea and LaRue and Beverly, along with some of his stake leaders, to separate the paper into several categories and then pile it onto the trucks that would transport it to Union Station.
But all that was to happen in the afternoon, and his factory still had to operate. It was April 29, a Saturday, but there was no letup in the long days or the six-day-a-week work schedule. The huge demand for parts and munitions had actually slowed a little as the nation, at full production, was finally meeting the demands of the war. Some people thought they even saw a light at the end of the tunnel with the Allies gradually getting the upper hand.
But all that was only talk to President Thomas. The great push of the war was still ahead. Europe had to be invaded, and Germany and Japan had to be fought in their own lands. So far, he saw no falloff in the demand on his plant. Some fly-by-night operations had opened at the beginning of the war, and failing to meet the deadlines and specs of the big defense companies, they had gone under, but a company like President Thomas’s, which made excellent parts, still had all the work it could handle.
Even though President Thomas never admitted it, he was getting rich. He was putting away more money than he had ever dreamed of having. So far, his life hadn’t changed much. He was still careful with his mo
ney, and he refused to spoil his children, but he had begun to think a little differently about the future. Sometimes it crossed his mind that he, or perhaps one of his sons, might want to go into politics. The Thomases had a good name in the Valley, and if they had the backing of some wealth, why not have some influence on the direction the state—maybe even the whole nation—would take after the war?
The last thing President Thomas wanted was to grow proud, or to let his family be corrupted by a sense of self-importance, and so he said little to them about the accumulating savings. But he thought, often, about a day when everyone would be home again and he could see the fruition of all this work. He longed to see his children in nice homes, raising his grandchildren, holding leadership positions in the Church.
It was all a distant dream, with so much to get through in the meantime, but it was what kept President Thomas going. His life was pressured and busy, and he sometimes felt overwhelmed by all the things people expected of him. But if America could get this war won, and his children all made it safely home, he could look forward to better days.
Bea had told him one morning, when just the two of them were at the breakfast table, “Al, I don’t think you’ll ever slow down. You’d rather work than play.”
“I do enjoy work,” he told her as he chomped down his eggs and toast. “I like to get things done. But I want to ease off a little one of these days. When the war ends, you and I are going to take a boat to the Hawaiian Islands and see if it’s as nice over there as Bobbi says it is.”
“Really, Al? Do you want to do that?”
“I do. I want to see the Holy Lands, too, and maybe Greece, or . . . I don’t know . . . a few other places.”
“Al, I would give anything to have a little time to relax. I wouldn’t even have to go anywhere. I’d just like to know what a full day is like when I didn’t have so much to worry about.”
“Well, we can’t think too much about it yet,” President Thomas told her. “But better times are ahead for us.”
The whole idea seemed too good ever to be true, but President Thomas thought of it every day. And Sister Thomas mentioned it often. If they could just get through this war, and their children could be kept safe, better times were waiting.
But this particular Saturday was a busy one. Early that morning Sister Thomas got the girls out of bed, and the whole family drove to the plant. President Thomas had a “B” card for gasoline, because his factory was involved in the war effort, and he therefore got enough gas to drive to work. Sister Thomas usually didn’t stay as many hours, and so, most often, she took a bus home. Until the war, she had never driven, but that had gotten awkward, and so she had finally taken the test for her driver’s license. Now and then President Thomas actually let her take his beloved ’41 Nash—the last model produced before the wartime pressure had shut down the production of cars. Today, however, they would all drive back together, park the car at home, and then walk to the receiving station in town.
LaRue and Beverly usually helped out at the plant on Saturdays. LaRue had learned to operate some of the machinery, but most often she worked in packaging, where she packed parts for shipping. Beverly normally ended up sweeping or picking up scraps.
President Thomas hired a number of high schoolers, who came in on evenings or Saturdays. The boys, until this year, had treated LaRue like a kid sister, but at fourteen she was “blossoming into womanhood,” as her mother liked to say. The older boys were definitely taking notice.
On this particular morning, a young man named Nolan Sharp was working, and he soon managed to trade places with a friend at the packaging table, where he could stand across from LaRue. “I didn’t think you would be here this morning,” he told her. “I read in the Trib that your dad was in charge of the paper drive out in Sugar House. I thought you’d all be out there.”
“Gee whiz, I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Do what?”
“Read.”
He smiled. Nolan was a boy from Pennsylvania whose father was stationed at Fort Douglas. Before the war, there had been few “outsiders” in Utah, but now, with the new Hill Air Force base near Ogden, the new Steel Mill in Provo, and all the defense installations up and down the Wasatch front, people were moving in from other areas.
Nolan was a tall boy with a sly smile that suggested mischief. LaRue and Beverly had talked many times about how cute he was, and clearly, even though he was seventeen, he had taken an interest in LaRue.
A radio in the package room was playing Johnny Mercer’s hit “G. I. Jive.” Nolan snapped his fingers to the rhythm a few times and let his head bob. “Sweetheart,” he said, “I can not only read. I can also sign my name.”
“Well, you eastern boys simply don’t receive a proper education the way we do in the more refined western states.”
Nolan laughed at that. “When I told my friends that I was moving out here, they wanted to know whether I’d have to worry about getting scalped by wild Injuns.”
“And what did they say about living around Mormons?”
Nolan had filled his box, and now he closed the top and began to tape it. He concentrated to get the tape straight, holding one eye shut, and then he looked back at LaRue, who was waiting for an answer. “They told me the truth,” he said. “They said that every man had a dozen ugly wives, and every one of them went around with long faces, singing hymns all day.”
“Come, come, ye Saints,” LaRue began to sing, solemnly, with a gloomy look on her face.
“See. It’s true.”
“You’d better go back East, where the girls are pretty.”
He stopped and looked at LaRue. “I’ll tell you the truth. In all of Pennsylvania, cross my heart and hope to die, I never saw a girl as cute as you.” He unleashed that wily smile of his, and LaRue was absolutely at a loss for words. She ducked her head and worked on her package again, and about then President Thomas stepped into the room and said, “LaRue, I have something I need to have you do.”
LaRue was saved but not sure she wanted to be. She gave Nolan a quick glance, which he was waiting for. He winked at her and said, “See you later, LaRue.”
She didn’t say anything, but she felt herself blushing. And then she followed her father to his office.
“LaRue, I want you to sort through all these invoices,” he told her. “Stack them according to vender, and then put them in order, by date. We’ve needed to do that for a while, and we’ve gotten behind. Can you do that for me?”
“Sure.” But she caught a little stiffness in his manner, and she knew there was more to this than he was admitting. “You wanted me out of the packaging room, didn’t you?” she said.
He was almost to the door, but he stopped and turned around, and then he shoved his hands into his pants pockets. He was wearing a white shirt and tie, with suspenders, but he had taken his suit coat off. “Well . . . yes.”
“I was getting my work done. We were just talking a little.”
“LaRue, I could hear everything you two were saying. You were flirting with him, and you’re too young for that.”
“Maybe he was doing the flirting.”
“No question. But you were too, honey, and you don’t know what you’re toying with there.”
“He’s not a Mormon. That’s what bothers you.”
“That is part of it.” President Thomas walked back toward his desk, where LaRue was beginning to sort through the invoices. She was looking down, avoiding his eyes—her way of showing that she was irritated with him. “Nolan is a good worker. But he’s cocksure of himself, and I don’t know what kind of standards he’s been taught. These people come in here from back East or California, and they think—”
“Dad, I was only talking to him. He hasn’t asked me out on a date or anything.”
“But how long until he does? And the kid is a junior in high school. I’m not going to let you go.”
LaRue actually had been hoping Nolan would ask her out, and even though she had been fair
ly sure what her dad would say, now she had forced him into taking a stand. She gave her father a hard look, one she knew would sting him, but she said nothing.
“LaRue, you’re the most self-willed of all my kids, and you’re too pretty for your own good. I hate to think of the trouble you can get yourself into.” But his voice softened as he said, “Honey, I have to look out for you. I’m your father.”
“You don’t give me credit for having any sense at all, do you?” She knew what she was up to. She had always been able to work her dad into corners.
“You’re fourteen, LaRue. You have a lot to learn, and I don’t want you to learn it the hard way. I know you’ve talked to your mother, but it’s one thing to talk to Mom, and it’s another thing to be with some boy who . . . well, there’s just more to it than you know.”
“Dad, I know about everything. How young do you think I am?”
President Thomas shook his head. “Just sort those invoices. And if Nolan asks you out, you have my answer. Tell him you’re too young—that your bad old father said so.”
“Fine. You’re the boss. Let me know when I can take my hair out of pigtails, all right?”
Dad groaned, and then he walked away, and LaRue actually felt some guilt—but she was also angry. She didn’t worry about boys “taking advantage” of her; what she worried about was never getting a chance to have a date with Nolan before he went off to the stupid war. So many boys were now signing up for the service before they ever got out of high school.
When LaRue was almost finished with the invoices, her mom came in and gave her some other assignments. Clearly, Dad had told her to keep LaRue busy—and away from Nolan. LaRue was still fuming over that when Lorraine Gardner stepped into the office. She had started out doing secretarial work for the Thomases, but she was now in charge of all the secretaries and bookkeepers. “Hi, LaRue,” she said. “What does your dad have you working on?”
“Anything to keep me out of the packaging room.”