A Clearing in the Wild (3 page)

“
Ach
, Emma!” my mother chastened. “How you talk. Young Father Keil married before he came to know the Lord as he knows Him now.” Her hands shooed me out the door toward the rest of the family.

“He’s been a colony leader for many years, and his wife Louisa still has diapers to change,” I said, walking backward to keep chatting with my mother. My father held a lantern so we could see to walk to the church on the crunching snow, and he used it to signal me to turn about, gather up my younger brothers and sisters.

“Wiser now he is, so he shares his wisdom with us, and we must listen,” my mother finished.

“Who is wiser?” my father said as we joined him beneath the stars.

“You,” my mother offered, taking his arm.

I didn’t pursue the subject, but my disagreement with her and with our leader’s view gave me yet another reason to be joyful about my unseen ruffle. After all, isn’t part of wisdom thinking on one’s own, doing not what everyone else does but making distinctive marks, as distinctive as … as a Turkish instrument carried by a German man?

Now we sat and listened to the bells of the
Schellenbaum
tinkle at this early hour service. Surely our leader didn’t think young men and women would forgo marriage or families for the sake of the colony? How would it grow? Would he rely on new conversions of men going with courage into the outside world, men too strong to be lured into the world’s ways?

The tall man standing next to our leader moved to center the
Schellenbaum
on its stand beside the altar. My heart pounded with anticipation. He was my father’s good friend, our leader’s emissary most recently into Kentucky and the Carolinas. His name was Christian Giesy, and it was him I hoped to marry, though I wasn’t sure if he even knew my name.

Christian Giesy
. I prayed I’d aged enough that he might see me this Christmas morning as a young woman and not just a snippet of thread tethered to the weaving of my parents.

He did not look my way but instead stared off as though he saw a glorious place somewhere far beyond this room, his eyes as shining as the lantern light flashed against the
Schellenbaum
. I swallowed. Perhaps he too believed as our leader did, that the finest way to honor God meant remaining celibate and unmarried.

I pitched away that disappointing thought.

Our leader raised his voice, large before us. Even errant thoughts of mine were pulled into the cymbal clang of his call to worship. His eyes
were deep pools of churning water that nearly frothed with intensity and yet a kind of joy. We young women stopped shuffling our slippers. Men muffled their coughs. Mothers whispered quietly to their children, “Be silent, now.” His oldest son, Willie, gazed up at his father as though he were a saint. Only the sizzle of candle wax and the fire’s roar and the occasional tinkle of the
Schellenbaum
bells moved by the fire’s draft interrupted our leader’s words as he drew our faces toward him, toward the words my parents first heard in Pennsylvania, words that took us all in and changed our very lives. The fire waned in the brick church. I felt a chill. We remained awake in the cold and with
his
words. When he raised his voice, a mesmerizing sound echoed words I’d heard so often as a child from him and then from my own father, too, who preached, though without the fervor of our leader. I didn’t need to pay attention now. But I willed myself to keep staring at him, to not let my eyes wander onto Christian Giesy.

A tinsmith, Christian, who also served as one of the missionaries our leader sent south to bring in new communal members, was a man one year younger than our leader but wiser and more handsome than our leader had ever been, though Christian’s build was leaner, a sturdy pine beside Father Keil’s squat oak. The recruits, whom we hoped would eventually convert, were usually people who could advance the colony: wagon makers, farmers, coopers. I wondered if we were contributing to their souls by making them colonists as much as they contributed to our coffers.
Sacrilege, such thoughts
.

My eyes ached from staying open. I refused to blink for fear the lids would overtake me and embarrass me with sleep. Maybe just for a second I could close them.

My head dropped onto my mother’s shoulder. “Emma,” she whispered. “Sit straight!”

Catherine pursed her lips as I wiped my drooling mouth with the
back of my hand, hoping no one else had seen my lapse. Catherine was “too good” and would never sleep in church. Some unseen force moved my eyes to Christian’s. I willed my face to heat no crimson blotches on my cheeks as I looked boldly at him. He stared, his dark hair as silky as a beaver pelt, no part, combed back. Long sideburns rolled up into a mustache thick and trimmed. Dark hair acted as a picture frame for a strong face, straight nose, and eyes as blue as the feathers of a blue-winged teal and just as soft. I sighed despite myself and my mother elbowed me. Had he seen me fall asleep? I hiccupped. My mother frowned. When I saw that Christian let his eyes rest on mine before he eased them toward our leader, I couldn’t control the racing of my heart.

“Ve never neglect the children,” our leader said when his sermon about Christmas joy ended and the children swarmed around him. My father said we American children were spoiled now, no longer having to fear the arrival of
Peltz Nickel
, the frightening, chain-dragging, bell-ringing companion of
Belsnickel
and
Christkind
. The former frequented the old country, prepared to punish us for wrongdoing through the year while we waited for presents from the Christmas hosts. Instead, we German-American children of the Bethel Colony witnessed our leader in the form of
Belsnickel
, who brought us goodies and who celebrated with tiny
Schellenbaum
bells instead of ugly chains. Still, I wondered whether even in this colony, because of our German history, joyous things came with the threat of later punishment and chains.

As children gathered around
Belsnickel
, I held back. But then the childhood lure drew me, and I rushed in to reach for the candies and raisins along with the little ones. Peppermints are my favorite, and our leader’s wife, Louisa, had placed several inside little strips of cloth tied
with hemp. Her youngest daughters, three-year-old Aurora and five-year-old Gloriunda, pushed on either side of me, and I helped them forward, lifting Aurora to my hip, stepping in so my five-year-old sister, Louisa, could reach more easily too. The rest squealed in delight. Their voices sounded like tinkling bells and I loved it.

“Not so much with the little ones,” my mother said as I pranced back to her, my young charges now on their own and my hands filled with little cloth bags of sweets I handed out to William, barely three, and to mother and others too embarrassed to reach in with the children. Wool swirled around my legs. She shook her head. “Spending time with the children is easier, I tink, than acting of your age.”

“I might be unmarried forever, you tell me, so let my childhood fingers dip into
Belsnickel’s
bag, please?”

“
Ach
,” she said, brushing her hand at me dismissively, but she smiled and accepted the peppermint piece I gave her. “We help serve food now,” she told me, and I gave Louisa and Aurora a candy. Both scampered to our leader, who lifted them high and nuzzled their necks with his beard, a dozen other children still clamoring at his feet.

Arm in arm, my mother and I walked to where the women uncovered tins of sausages and scrambled eggs kept heated in their tubs. Breads of all kinds and
Strudels
and moist cakes with nuts quickly covered the table. Steins of wine set like sentries along the white cloth overlooked the bounty. Our leader said these common meals following his sermons were celebrations of the Last Supper, served as though the Lord Himself were present, and it did seem as though our community was blessed this day with love in abundance and the spirit of grace.

Dawn seeped in through the tall windows, but outside the ground lay comforted by snow that didn’t appear warm enough to melt. We’d have fine ice-skating later. I wondered what Christian would be doing. Enjoying his sisters and brothers and parents, I imagined, since he’d
been gone so long. I sensed where he stood in the room. His presence filled a space, and I could see glimpses of him towering above many of the other men as I set tubs of
Sauerkraut
on the table.

The band played now, and Jonathan and Willie—our leader’s oldest, my age—tapped their feet while marching notes rang out. Our leader didn’t play in the band but sometimes brought out his harmonica. Now he clapped his hands as the children gathered around him for new treats he gave each one. The Christmas celebration proved almost as glorious as when we celebrated our leader’s birthday on March 6. His wife’s birthday and year were exactly the same, but it was
his
years we all cheered over. Louisa cheered too and said on more than one occasion that her husband was nearly as blessed as our Savior. I wondered if all wives see their husbands as such. She didn’t even want us mentioning the day of her birth. My mother said she was a saint, Louisa was, and such a model of a wife and mother.

Perhaps.

The table now looked complete, and Louisa signaled to our leader the readiness.

“Christian will ask the blessing,” he said. This surprised me that our leader would permit another to speak on such a spirited occasion.

Christian stepped forward and clasped his hands in prayer, holding them before his straight, strong chest. People in our colony did not kneel to pray. We stood tall, our heads raised, our loyalty and worship given freely, not because it was required as it had been in the old country, in the old religion, but because we believed in our Lord and our leader and stood ready to move to follow both as required.

Christian closed his eyes, and yes, I know I should have too, as did other Bethelites gathered in the church, but the opportunity to watch him, without any others noticing or later chastising me for my boldness, was a gift as precious as the peppermints and twice as sweet.

Christian’s words came first in German, to make us feel at home, as one, though we are set apart. Then he spoke them all in English, for it was the language of our adopted nation, a language I’d just begun to learn. “The Lord bless this bounty prepared by grateful hands whose duty is set to minister to others. We thank the Lord for this provision, as for all provision. May we follow Your directives always to worship You and live in Christian love and not false luxury.”

He paused then. I thought to add more of what our leader might have said about our colony. Instead, I watched as he turned slightly and searched the crowd. He found my eyes. He smiled, winked, nodded once, and then he said, “Amen.”

The meal filled our stomachs. I watched as Helena, Christian’s sister, laughed with her brother. I hungered as Christian clicked his heels in recognition of one of Helena’s friends, closer to Christian’s age than I. The Giesys were of Swiss descent, prudent, hard-working, and wise. I served meals and talked with friends, always aware of where my soul was anchored: to Christian, to his dark eyes, his promise of adventure taking him places far from Bethel.

I never once spoke to him. He was the favorite of so many. He never looked my way again, and so the wink became a question for me. Perhaps it hadn’t happened.

Just before we’d set to leave, with Jonathan and David Jr. carrying out the
Strudel
pans, my mother and Catherine and Johanna bustling about making sure we left the church without a crumb beneath a table, and Louisa still skipping with Aurora, I noticed Christian Giesy stood beside my father. I straightened my shoulders, hoping it made me look older. I walked to the men then, bold as a bull calf, and heard my father
say “trouble.” I wondered if they spoke of Shelbina, but then Papa said, “move one more time,” and I knew they must be talking of a new colony somewhere. Michael Forstner, a friend of my father’s and a carpenter, had built up four colonies already following our leader, most in Pennsylvania: Harmony and Phillipsburg and New Harmony in Indiana, and then Bethel in Missouri. My father spoke often of the intricacies of keeping our colonists separated from the world’s influences while still allowing commercial interaction that sustained us all. Our grain and gloves and whiskey were sold to outsiders. We sometimes even talked of mulberry trees and silk production just as those at Harmony did. Harmony was the colony where discord reigned, and my father seceded from it along with all the Giesys, eventually finding our leader to follow to Missouri.