by John Jakes
Joe left the Union League Club shortly after two. His carriage headed north for Larrabee Street. He knew he should be pleased that his subtle strategy had resolved a significant problem. Instead, his mind immediately fixed on another. Where was the boy?
There had been no word from him. He ought to write his sister Charlotte and inquire, just as a precaution. No doubt he had waited too long already. Then again, perhaps he was worrying needlessly. How was the boy supposed to communicate? He probably knew little or no English.
Assuming that he simply showed up one day, how would he get along? Would he be happy in America, or grow disillusioned and leave? Should he have more schooling, or a job? The most troubling concern was the first one. Would Joe and Ilsa’s children fully accept a newcomer into the family?
There were three children in the Crown household; three problematic responses to the arrival of a stranger. The oldest, Joseph Junior, was seventeen. He was a small-boned boy with a triangular, almost elfin face, and a quick mind. Ilsa had trained him to read avidly. Very much like his father physically, temperamentally he seemed to reject everything Joe Crown stood for; to revel in rebellion. He had been dismissed from no fewer than three schools of high quality. In desperation, Joe had put him to work in the brewery. There he’d promptly fallen in with the worst element, the radical socialists whose ringleader was Benno Strauss.
Frederica, called Fritzi, was eleven. At the moment she said she hated boys. She was a skinny child, with a lot of wild blond hair that must have come from Ilsa’s side of the family. Fritzi was lively, sometimes stridently so. She was always competing for attention. She lived under a double burden: being the second child, always compared to the firstborn, and being a female in a family, and a world, dominated by men. Joe adored her but she often taxed his patience. He feared he’d never understand her completely.
Carl was the youngest. He would be ten in November and he was already as tall as his sister. His face resembled Ilsa’s, but his shoulders were so wide, his trunk and waist so thick, he looked like he’d come from a different set of parents. Carl appeared rather slow-witted until he talked or smiled; then his charm, and his smile, won every heart. He was sometimes clumsy around the house but never in games and sports, which he loved.
Carl was a complex little boy. Almost as strong as his passion for athletics was his love of things mechanical. At four, he had nearly driven Joe and Ilsa mad with a sudden interest in padlocks, safe dials, locks and keys of every shape and kind. Each year thereafter brought a new and different obsession.
Three children, all wary of the coming of a new and permanent member of the household. They were not eager to have their lives disrupted that way. They made no secret of it.
Joe tried to believe that the children would accommodate themselves to their cousin, but he wasn’t sure.
11
Pauli
FOUR PEOPLE DIED IN the blaze that consumed Die goldene Tür. Frau Geizig, Liesl, and two greenhorns sleeping in the loft on the third floor.
Herr Geizig had come back just as the blaze broke out, and didn’t raise a hand to help those inside. The arsonist, Magda’s jealous friend, was never caught.
Pauli’s left leg had been wrenched so badly by the jump from the second floor that he couldn’t take a step without excruciating pain. Magda suffered two broken ribs and many bruises.
The local police questioned Pauli but didn’t hold him. He was, after all, something of a hero. He told the officers that Geizig owed him wages. They said the jailed owner claimed to have no money. A station house detective, a man with a German last name, heard about Pauli’s situation and gave him five dollars from his own pocket.
Pauli’s plan to ride freight cars to Chicago wouldn’t work now. With his leg injured, he didn’t dare try to jump aboard a moving train. He was worried about the lateness of the season. The weather was sharply cooler. Leaves were turning yellow and scarier, and falling.
Magda went with him to the depot. She helped him buy a second-class ticket for four dollars; the rest he’d use for food, as long as it lasted. The ticket agent said four dollars would take him as far as Pittsburgh. Pauli marked one of his map tracings with a dot and the letter P.
“But what will you do after Pittsburgh?” Magda wanted to know, standing with him as bells rang, steam hissed, and the train prepared to depart.
“Walk,” Pauli said, with far more assurance than he felt.
He didn’t like the second-class car. It was dingy, the benches were hard, soot and cinders constantly flew in the open windows to sting his eyes and settle in his hair. Two ceiling lamps provided light, but of such dimness that he had to strain his eyes to read his phrase book. Second-class cars in Germany were much better.
Passengers got on and off at each station, most of them country people. A different person sat next to him every hour or so. No one bothered to make conversation, especially after they heard a few words of his broken English.
He bought a small bag of licorice twists from the news butcher who walked through the train. He ate candy and stared out the window, trying to lift his spirits by studying the changing landscape. The coastal plain gave way to hills, then to low mountains, their slopes aflame with the foliage of autumn. It turned cold that night, and the conductor lit a wood fire in the iron stove at the head of the car. Smoke billowed out, producing coughs and smarting eyes. But at least the car was warm. No, it was hot. It was an oven. How strange that Americans liked such heat in their rooms and public spaces. He wondered if he’d ever get used to it.
He was thankful when the smoky, dirty train lurched into a huge shed and the conductor shouted, “Pittsburgh!”
In Pittsburgh he spent the rest of his money on a sack of apples, crackers, and hard candies, which seemed the best foods to carry on the road. He set out westward on foot, asking directions of anyone who’d speak to him—schoolchildren, tramps, women hanging wash in their yards when breezes blew. The first few days he made very slow progress because of his leg. Each step was a struggle; often he had to clench his teeth against the pain. Several times he had to sit down by a roadside fence, gasping and sweating, till the pain passed. But he wouldn’t be deterred.
The sky in the late afternoons was a dark blue. The light slanted; the sun hung a little lower every day. Fields were already harvested for winter. His wool coat was already too thin.
He slept in haymows, or burrowed into frost-withered weeds on the side of a hill. His sack was soon empty, and after that he ate when and where he could. Sometimes he begged water and food at a farmhouse, in exchange for work. He split logs at one place. At another he carried jars of preserved fruits and vegetables to an underground cellar for over two hours. At a third he was asked to feed pigs, an experience decidedly foreign to a boy raised on the streets of Berlin.
Now and again he rode a few miles with farmers driving wagons, or peddlers traveling between towns. One of these, an itinerant tinsmith, carried him for almost thirty miles in the state of West Virginia, then bought him a huge meal of beefsteak, onions, and beer, before sending him on his way.
Just over the border in the state of Ohio, in a cold twilight pricked with sparkling stars, he crept into an orchard where a few unpicked apples hung withering on the boughs. He plucked a gnarled brown apple and bit into it voraciously because he’d had nothing else for twenty-four hours.
“Hello, who’s that yonder?” The gruff voice took him by surprise. A hound started to bark. He heard the farmer running toward him in the dusk. He snatched up his grip and ran in the other direction.
He stepped into some kind of animal burrow and was hurled down, smacking his forehead on the trunk of an apple tree. The farmer came up with a leveled shotgun. Pauli spent seven days and nights in the village jail for the crime of stealing one worthless apple.
At least the food in the jail was plentiful and good. Corn meal mush, homemade breads and preserves, tasty stews, thick strong coffee. The jailer’s sister was married to the local physician. He cam
e by with his leather bag. He looked like a consumptive but he had a gentle touch, and he examined Pauli’s leg carefully. The skin was still purple and yellow in places, and Pauli had trouble putting his full weight on it.
“Nothing broken so far as I can tell,” the doctor concluded. “I have some liniment you can rub on. You must be careful, though. Not strain it. How far are you going?”
“Chicago.”
The physician shook his head. “That’s a long way. How will you make it?”
“I don’t know. But I will.”
The doctor sniffed. “Before you travel, I want you to come by our house. My wife will heat some water. You need a bath. If you keep smelling the way you do, you’ll be arrested as a public nuisance.”
Pauli didn’t understand the word “nuisance.” But he enjoyed the bath, in a zinc tub, and a generous meal set out by the doctor’s stern wife. (“I’ve never seen a human being eat so fast, is that a German trait?”) After the meal came a blissful night’s sleep in a real bed, under a thick comforter.
Under gray skies threatening winter, he set out west again, his clothes clean, his leg smelling of liniment, still limping.
On the journey he encountered many strange new names. Wheeling. Erie. Bucyrus. Toledo. He tried to learn and pronounce each one. It wasn’t easy.
He saw advertising signs with strange pictures and legends on them. Voluptuous young women in diaphanous gowns held up bars of yellow soap. Fetching little girls in nightdresses bit into brown biscuits. Stalwart farmers in straw hats held out plugs of tobacco. APPLEBAUM’S DIGESTIVE ELIXIR. FENWICK & HERMAN, MORTICIANS. HOLY GHOST TENT REVIVAL. He understood most of the pictures but few of the messages. Still, he was fascinated by the zest and brashness of the signs; their bright colors. This, too, was something new; singularly American.
He traveled into the state of Indiana with an itinerant blacksmith. It was by now December, and the bleak weather had unexpectedly reversed itself in a spate of sunshine and warmth. The blacksmith said such weather was very unusual for the Middle West so late in the year.
The blacksmith let him off at a crossroad, waved and drove away on the road leading north. Pauli trudged on for about a mile, reaching another small farm town with a single unpaved main street. He stopped at an apothecary’s, a crowded, fragrant shop which also sold harness, shirts, bonnets, work boots, ear trumpets, artificial limbs and glass eyes.
The apothecary was a craggy middle-aged man with a fan beard and a right leg that seemed stiff, as if he had an injury like Pauli’s. Pauli got out his phrase book for help with his question. The apothecary listened gravely, then said Chicago was but a couple of hundred miles away.
“I advise you to conclude your trip speedily; this weather won’t last. We could have a snowstorm any day.” He cocked his head as he studied the visitor. “On the other hand, you look like you could use at least one night’s rest in a real bed.”
“I could, yes, very much.”
“Splendid. I’ll be glad to have the company.”
He led Pauli to rooms above the shop, there opening the door to a large bedroom that smelled of dust and disuse. “My wife and I shared this room for years. A heat seizure took her a year ago August. I’ve slept in the small bedroom ever since. Can’t bear this one. You make yourself comfortable. Here’s one of my nightshirts. Put it on and I’ll wash your clothes. My name is Llewellyn Rhodes.”
“Pauli Kroner. Sir, very much I thank you.”
Rhodes cooked Pauli a big supper. He ignored his shop and stayed in the upstairs kitchen with a mug of coffee, as if hungry to talk to someone, even someone much younger. He told Pauli that he served as unpaid choir director for the little church in town.
“Germans sing much,” Pauli said. “Always they have singing clubs.”
With melancholy eyes, Rhodes seemed to look at some place far away. “We sang a lot in the war. In the early days anyway. I served forty-six months with the 20th Indiana. Volunteers, all of us. Indiana farm boy volunteers, green as new corn. You’ve heard of our Civil War, have you?”
“The war to free the Neger? Yes.”
“The war to save the Union. A lot of us gave up parts of ourselves for that. Do you understand what I’m saying?” He stretched out his right leg and raised his pants. Pauli’s eyes widened. Rhodes’s leg was wood.
“It’s wood clear up to the knee. How old are you?”
“Fifteen years.”
“I wasn’t but four years older when I lost it, at North Anna River, in Virginia. I’ve never felt bitter about it. The war was the greatest experience of my life. Most men my age who served feel that way. It was like marching in the Crusades. Everything else since has been pale and tame. We all had a purpose then. Now I just live to make a little money, take care of my business, get through the days.” His haunted eyes held Pauli’s.
“You need a purpose like that. Something you care about. Money is all right, money’s necessary. But it isn’t enough. Not nearly enough. Do you understand?”
Pauli nodded, though he wasn’t absolutely sure.
In the morning, Pauli prepared to leave. Despite a good night’s sleep, he felt strange. His teeth clicked and he was alternately sweaty and chilled. The apothecary noticed and put the back of his hand on Pauli’s forehead.
“You’re ill. You’d better stay another day or two.”
“No, already I have taken too long. I must hurry to Chicago.”
“Well, the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago runs through here. I’ll buy you a ticket to take you the rest of the way. Don’t say no, I’ve made up my mind.”
So Llewellyn Rhodes took him to a depot, just as Magda had done.
The sky was dark. Wind blew. The air had grown bitterly cold overnight. Rhodes seemed broken by sadness as he waved goodbye from the platform. America, Pauli thought as he gazed out the window of the local to Chicago. There are people here just as defeated as Aunt Lotte. It was a disillusioning lesson.
The passenger car was little different from the one he’d ridden to Pittsburgh. Within an hour, Pauli’s face was running with sweat. This time the cause was not the old stove heating the car. He was weak, intermittently dizzy; getting sicker. He huddled against the window and watched gray fields, wire fences, and bare trees through slanting snow that fell faster each minute.
Gale wind whined around the car, rattling the windows. Soon the train slowed to ten miles an hour. Then five. Everything outside disappeared in whiteness. The train was caught in a raging blizzard.
Drifts piled up. The train chugged, stopped, jerked forward, chugged again, then stopped a second time. This time it didn’t move.
The conductor jumped off. Soon he was back, snow on his shoulders and cap visor. “The track’s drifted this high. We’re stuck till a work train with a plow gets here. Shouldn’t be long.”
Twelve hours later, in the midst of a long freezing night, they were still waiting.
Wood for the stoves ran out. There was no oil to refill the lamps. The snow stopped, the wind slackened, but the train remained trapped. The hardiest travelers began to gather their belongings and leave.
“You’re damn fools,” the conductor warned.
“I ain’t goin’ to freeze to death here,” a man said. “How far’s Chicago?”
“Seven or eight miles. There’s a suburban station and switchyard about three miles up the line, but—”
“I’m goin’.”
Pauli picked up his grip. He was going too.
The snow along the right-of-way reached up to his thigh in some places. Behind him, false dawn grayed the east, but day brought no warmth to the earth or sky.
His bare hands turned stiff as he struggled ahead. A good way up the track, he saw the half dozen hardy passengers whose example, and trail, he was following. But they weren’t sick, and despite the drifts they outdistanced him easily. Soon they dwindled to specks against the snowscape.
The sunless day gripped him in its icy clutch. He staggered on, falling several times,
plowing face first into drifts and pushing himself out again by the power of his tingling arms, and the power of his desire to reach his uncle’s house. He’d come this far, he was damned if he’d be defeated by weather, sickness, or anything else.
About the middle of the morning, he came to the tiny suburban depot, lonely and isolated at one side of a switchyard. He saw no sign of a train with a snowplow. Nothing at all was moving. Two dozen boxcars were ranged along sidings, and in the extreme distance smoke curled from the tin chimney of a tall switch house.
He couldn’t walk that far. He’d shelter in the depot.
On the snow-covered platform, he gasped with relief when he reached the door. Turned the handle—
Locked.
Desperate, he searched the silent yards. He couldn’t stand out here, he’d die. But he was too sick to walk far. If he could get an hour’s sleep, he could move again.
Bleary-eyed, he staggered across one track, then another, and down a line of boxcars. Every car bore the same big and gaudy lettering, BIG “V” PACKING. Like so many signs he’d seen, Pauli had no idea what it meant.
The first car was padlocked. The second also. His numb hands bled from scrapes and nicks as he fumbled with the iron padlocks. After trying six cars he was ready to give up but he tried one more.
The padlock was broken. He lifted it out of the hasp and rolled the door back. Straw littered the floor of the freight car. The inner walls had a crystalline white coating: refrigerator piping, covered with rime ice. Pauli had seen similar piping at the Kaiserhof in Berlin.
He pushed his grip inside, flung his right leg up, dragged himself into the car, gasping again. He rolled the door shut and sank down in the darkness. He piled straw on his legs and chest. He shoved his frozen hands between his legs to warm them if he could. Lying on his side, he fell into feverish sleep.
He heard wind blowing; a low-pitched sound, like someone moaning. Cold powder drifted down on him; he felt it on his face and lips. He licked it and groaned.