Fields of Grace (5 page)

BOOK: Fields of Grace

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“Bah!” Reinhardt slashed his hand as if erasing his son’s words. “A man thinks of others before himself. But you think
only
of yourself.” He pointed at Lillian. “How dare you frighten your mother this way!”

For a moment, remorse flashed in Henrik’s eyes, but it disappeared when Reinhardt continued.

“You would sneak back to Gnadenfeld after all we have done for you? Everything we left behind, we left because of you!”

“Did I ask you to leave things behind for me? I wanted to stay! I would perform my duty and then come home again, but
you
said we had to leave!” Henrik’s voice, normally low-toned, came out as a screech. “It was not my choice!”

“I gave you no choice because you are still a foolish boy and I am your father.” Reinhardt banged his thumb against his chest. “I know what is best. You will honor me and do as I say.” He leaned forward, his nose inches from Henrik’s.

The two, nearly identical in height and build, squared off with matching brown eyes flashing. Each clenched his fists.

Lillian clapped her hands over her mouth. Might Reinhardt strike his son . . . or vice versa? She started to step forward and intervene, but a small body shot past her. Jakob wrapped his arms around Henrik’s waist.

“
Brooda
, my brother, do not be angry. Come with me on the ship.” The little boy lifted his face to Henrik, his expression pleading. “I want you to come with me.”

Henrik caught Jakob’s arm as if to push him away, but then his grasp relaxed. He dropped to one knee and slid his hand onto Jakob’s shoulder. “All right, Jakob. I will come.”

Jakob threw himself against Henrik’s chest, and Henrik scooped him into his arms as he rose. Carrying Jakob, he turned toward the gangplank without another word. Lillian shot Reinhardt a relieved look, but Reinhardt’s hard expression didn’t change. He cupped her elbow with one hand and reached toward Joseph with the other.

“Let us board before the ship leaves without us.”

Once on board, Henrik lowered Jakob to the deck but kept a grip on his hand. The little boy’s eagerness to explore matched Henrik’s desire to escape. Maybe by staying together, they could keep each other out of trouble.

Henrik glanced at his father’s stern profile. Guilt pricked, but anger squelched it. He shouldn’t feel guilty for resenting this move to America. Wasn’t he almost eighteen—a man? He’d been told his whole life he was intelligent; Ma often praised him for his ability to make good decisions. But Father treated him as though he were no older than Jakob. Embarrassment stung anew as he remembered being hauled to the ship’s boarding dock like a wayward child.

Jakob stepped on the lowest rung of the railing, and Henrik curled one arm around his little brother’s waist to prevent him from toppling. He clamped his free hand over the cool iron bar that formed the top rail and peered at the people standing on the boarding dock. His heart skipped a beat when he spotted a young woman with sunshine yellow braids much like Susie Friesen’s. Would he ever see Susie again?

He blinked, turning his attention away from the yellow-haired girl to others who clustered on the pier and lifted their hands in farewell. Jakob waved animatedly, as if he personally knew everyone down below. None of his brother’s enthusiasm touched Henrik. Dread sat like a stone in his stomach at the thought of leaving Susie, leaving Gnadenfeld, leaving all that was familiar. Yet Father insisted he had to go.

Honour thy father and mother
. The biblical command had been fed to him from his earliest memories. He’d had few opportunities to rebel, given the numerous watchful eyes and wagging tongues in Gnadenfeld that witnessed and willingly reported any misdeed, real or imagined. Henrik had obeyed partly out of honor and partly out of fear of unpleasant consequences. All the while, he had looked forward to the day he would leave the school in Gnadenfeld to attend a Mennonite-approved university.

But now his long-held plans had been thrust aside in favor of traveling to America. Did they have Mennonite-approved universities in America? Henrik snorted, his arm crushing Jakob tightly against his aching heart. Father and Eli called America
“de Launt üt
ne Je’laäjenheit”—
the land of opportunity. Well, once there, Henrik would be eighteen—a man fully grown—and he would seek his own opportunities, separate from Father’s plans.

“Come, Jakob.” Henrik caught Jakob beneath his armpits and lifted him from the rail. “Let us go below deck and find our bunks.”

Jakob huffed his disapproval. “But I want to look around the ship!”

“We can explore the rest of the ship when we are out on the water.”

Although Henrik sensed Father’s sharp-eyed gaze on his back as he guided Jakob toward the stairway leading to the lower levels of the ship, he didn’t turn back to look.

Lillian awakened to the sound of retching. Forcing her heavy eyelids open, she squinted into the deep shadows and tried to determine the source of the sound. Was it Jakob, who slept directly above her on his shelf bed?

The retching came again, longer and more intense. She was able to discern that it came from somewhere ahead and to her left, not from above. Ducking low to avoid bumping her head on the underside of Jakob’s bunk, she rolled from her lumpy mattress. She stood for a moment, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Lanterns glowed from the far end of the hallway, but little of the light reached the center of the sleeping hall.

In a few moments, she was able to make out a woman’s form leaning over the edge of her bunk with her arm clamped over her stomach. After two weeks aboard the ship, Lillian had become accustomed to the gentle up-and-down movements of the great boat on the water, and she had no difficulty advancing the few feet needed to reach the woman.

An unpleasant odor reached her nostrils as she neared the woman, but she swallowed hard and touched the woman’s pale cheek. The heat surprised her, and she yanked her hand back.

The woman stared at her with glassy eyes. “Oh, please help me. I am sick. So sick . . .” Apparently the fever that had begun sweeping across the passengers less than a week out to sea had captured a new victim.

“What is it?” A cranky voice came from farther down the line of bunks. “Who is talking?”

In a whispered tone, Lillian replied, “Someone is ill. I am assisting her. Go back to sleep.”

“Ill?” The voice became more shrill. “Another one? Get her to the sick bay!”

The shrill-voiced woman’s lack of compassion stirred Lillian’s indignation, even though she understood the worry behind the demand. She didn’t want her Jakob, who slept in the women’s bay rather than the men’s because he was so young, exposed to this fever. At least two people had succumbed to the illness despite the doctor’s prescription of caudle and bed rest.

“Are you going to get the steward to move her or not?” The woman’s strident voice roused several others, and a distressed murmur carried through the sleeping hallway. The ill woman would need to be moved to the sick bay quickly before a disturbance broke out.

“
Jo, jo
, I will get the steward.” Lillian pressed the feverish woman back into her bunk with a whispered promise. “You stay here. I will get you some help.”

Lifting her skirts, she stepped around the evidence of the woman’s sick stomach and made her way to the stairway that led to the middle level of the ship. The crew’s quarters were at the opposite end of this level. Lillian could never remember the official name for that end—stern? aft?—although Jakob would know. The little boy followed the crew members and asked endless questions. To her maternal delight, the men seemed quite taken with him and never sent him away.

The timbre of the sea filled her ears as she moved down the hallway to the steward’s cabin. Below, in the sleeping hallway, the engines’ noise covered almost every other sound, but here on the next level, the sea’s music reached her. The ocean’s vast openness—a sound difficult to define yet impossible to ignore—made her long for the open prairie of home.

The surface of the water, stirred by the wind, gave the appearance of a wind-tossed wheat field. The sound of the sea was the same gentle swoosh as wind coursing over tall, untamed grasses. Of course, here on the ocean, the swoosh was accompanied by the steady slosh of water against the sides of the ship. Yet, in spite of the unfamiliar harmony, Lillian couldn’t deny the ache of homesickness the song of the ocean created in her soul.

She reached the steward’s cabin, tapped lightly on the door, and waited. Snuffling noises and an irritated grunt let her know the man had awakened. The door swung open to reveal a disheveled man with hair standing on end.

He looked at her, blinked twice, and then groaned. “Another one must be moved to sick bay?”

Lillian nodded, shifting her gaze away. The steward hadn’t bothered to button his shirt to the top, and the sight of the pale, smooth wedge of exposed skin made her clutch the high collar of her own frock in embarrassment.

“Very well.” He closed the door, and Lillian listened to more shuffles, thuds, and muffled curses before the door opened again. He stepped out, fully clothed and with a hat covering his hair. “Ready.”

He followed Lillian to the women’s sleeping hall, and she assisted him in drawing the ill woman to her feet. The steward made an awful face when he saw the mess on the floor, and he muttered something about sending down a cabin boy to clean it up. The other women remained in their bunks, covers pulled up to their chins, and watched in silence as Lillian and the steward guided the ill woman out of the sleeping hallway. Three abreast on the stairway to the lowest deck, where the ship’s doctor had set up a crude hospital ward, was a tight fit, but Lillian turned sideways and they managed.

The steward opened the door to the ward, and the smell that wafted from the room nearly turned Lillian’s stomach inside out. Slop buckets sat in a row, waiting to be carried out and emptied. Lanterns swung from hooks in the ceiling, casting an eerie glow over the rows of cots where patients lay, their faces pale and shiny from fever. Groans and soft sobs competed with the roar of the engines, creating a heartbreaking symphony of suffering.

Lillian helped the woman into an empty cot while the steward roused the doctor, who slept sitting in a chair propped against the wall in the corner. She stepped back as the doctor placed his hand on the woman’s forehead and heaved a sigh. Then he caught Lillian’s arm and gave it a shake.

“You get out of here now.” The doctor’s stern voice, coupled with the fierce downthrust of his eyebrows, made Lillian’s pulse race. “And stop in the washroom to scrub yourself good before you go back to your bunk.”

With her hand over her nose, Lillian turned to go. Her gaze skipped across the cots once more, and the sight of a head of wavy black hair fired her heart into her throat. She dashed forward and dropped to her knees beside the cot. “Reinhardt!”