Love Finds You in Amana Iowa (7 page)

A horse neighed, and there was a splash across the river. She looked up to see Mr. Faust gallop into their camp. As he pulled back his reins, his horse sprayed water down on her and Karoline. She cringed, brushing Karoline’s face off with the washcloth, and then she tried to search the darkness behind Mr. Faust. The fires and lantern light blocked her view of the river.

“Where is the doctor?” she asked.

He thumbed over his shoulder. “He’s waiting for her in his carriage, across the river.”

She stared into the black space beyond their camp, trying to see the outline of a carriage, but she couldn’t even see how far it was across the river. “Where is he going to take her?”

“To Lisbon.”

She stood. “I need to go with her.”

Mr. Faust shook his head. “We need you here to make breakfast.”

She stared at the stripes lining his flannel shirt, trying to capture the bitter words in her throat before they spewed all over him.

Was he speaking out of selfishness for his own belly or for the benefit of her people? Or was it selfish for her to go to town with Karoline and leave the men without someone to cook in the morning?

She couldn’t begin to question her motives now. Instead she stood up beside Mr. Faust as he dismounted from his horse.

“Someone needs to go with her,” she said.

Niklas was beside her again. “We can make breakfast without Amalie.”

Mr. Faust laughed. “Are you planning to cook?”

Niklas didn’t return the laughter. “We managed to boil potatoes tonight. I think we can cook oatmeal over the fire.”

Amalie held up her tin cup. “And they made coffee tonight as well.”

Mr. Faust glanced back and forth between them and then down at Karoline. Without another argument, he began barking orders to the men, telling them how they were going to transport Karoline across the water in the wagon, to the doctor’s carriage.

Amalie looked over at Niklas, and he shrugged his shoulders. Faust hadn’t told either of them who would be traveling with Karoline, so she sat back down beside her sleeping friend and waited.

At Mr. Faust’s command, the men set down their plates and moved toward her wagon. Two of them climbed into the back and began rolling the heavy barrels of flour and sugar to the men below. Then they picked up her grandmother’s trunk, and she held her breath as they lifted it over the back of the wagon and put it safely on the ground.

Mr. Faust turned toward John and appointed him to be a footman. “Take off your boots and roll up your trousers.”

Amalie heard him explain how they would prod the riverbed in the darkness, searching for the firmest possible ground, so that Amalie’s wagon wouldn’t get stuck in the soft mud. They would mark the chosen path with sticks.

Minutes later, the grass around her was strewn with burlap bags, barrels, pans, and her massive trunk. Mr. Faust and John secured the long sticks under their arms and each carried a lantern. As they waded into the current, they seemed to vanish in the blackness.

Niklas rehitched the oxen to the wagon, but there was nothing for Amalie to do except sit quietly beside Karoline and pray her friend would make it safely to Lisbon.

For the briefest of moments, Amalie entertained the thought of crossing the river like the men, but then her mind flashed to the feeling of mud oozing up between her toes. Slime clinging to her ankles. She shivered. The mud would swallow her feet if she stepped into the river.

And what if she slipped on a rock and soaked her dress? The water might pull her under the current. It didn’t matter how fast or slow the water was running. She didn’t know how to swim. Maybe it would be better if she stayed here to cook for the men in the morning. Someone who knew how to swim could escort Karoline in the darkness.

A whistle traveled across the river, and Niklas rushed back to her.

“Mr. Faust wants you to travel with Karoline.”

She brushed her skirt off, taking a deep breath as she stood up. “I can’t make it across the river.”

“You’ll be riding in the wagon,” he said

The men carefully lifted Karoline into the wagon. Amalie plucked up the satchel with her clothing from the ground, eyeing the remaining trunk, barrels, and all of her cookware. Surely the men would take care loading and carrying her belongings across the river.

Well, there was no use worrying about it now.

She climbed into the back of the wagon and settled in beside Karoline. Her stomach growled again and she wished she had eaten one of the boiled potatoes. It was ironic, an hour ago this wagon was filled with food, and now she was hungry with nothing around her to eat.

Mr. Faust whistled, and the wagon bumped as Charlie guided the oxen forward. The wagon dipped down toward the river, shifting Amalie and Karoline forward. Water sprayed the sides of the canvas.

In the dim light, Amalie scanned the wooden wagon floor and then breathed with relief. As far as she could see, no water bubbled through the tar that was supposed to seal the cracks.

The wagon rocked and she clung to the side with one hand, trying to secure Karoline with the other, as the wheels bumped over rocks and tree limbs hidden under the surface.

Only one time had Amalie been on a boat before, and that was on the steamer she and her parents had taken from Germany to New York when she was five. She didn’t remember much about the trip except she’d spent part of it playing on the deck with Matthias and part of it below with a chamber pot in her lap, unable to keep food in her stomach. Friedrich had spent almost the entire trip in his family’s cabin, sick from the wicked reeling of the waves.

The water didn’t reel tonight. It lapped against the sides of the wagon as the team lurched forward again. Then the wagon jerked to a stop. Mr. Faust shouted, and she heard the crack of the whip, but the wagon didn’t budge.

Slowly she crawled to the front of the wagon and edged back the canvas. She could barely see the outline of the oxen’s thick frames, but she heard their pants, straining against the hitches to pull the wagon through the water and the mud.

“Come on,” she whispered, wiping sweat off her face. The animals had to get them across to the doctor.

Karoline stirred and Amalie crawled back to stroke her arm.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered. “The doctor is waiting for you.”

Mr. Faust waded by the wagon, shouting at the oxen to move. Karoline thrashed her head back and forth at the sound of his voice, and Amalie tried to secure Karoline’s head in her lap. She heard him whip their backs, trying to force them forward

Light from a lantern stole through the back of the wagon, sending shadows across the floor. Then Mr. Faust leaned in through the canvas.

“The wagon’s stuck,” he announced.

She brushed her fingers over Karoline’s head again. Before she spoke, she had to soften the panic swelling in her throat. “What are you going to do?” she finally asked.

“I don’t think I can do anything.”

“But Karoline needs to get across the river.”

After another shout at the oxen, Mr. Faust leaned into the wagon again. “The animals are tired.”

“Maybe you should let them rest.”

“They won’t rest as long as your wagon’s hitched to them,” he said with a shake of his head. “They’ll keep trying to pull.”

“Can’t you unhitch them?”

“Not if you want to take your things to Iowa with you. Once the oxen reach the other side, I’m afraid they won’t come back for the wagon.”

Karoline groaned again.

“What can we do?” Amalie asked.

“We need to lessen the load on the wagon and try again.”

With a quick glance around the barren wagon, Amalie reached for the only items left—her and Karoline’s satchels. She held them out to Mr. Faust, but instead of taking them, he just stared. “That’s not going to—”

She pushed the bags toward him. He needed to try. He mumbled something she didn’t understand, but he took the satchels from her and transported them to the river bank.

When the oxen pulled again, the wheels moved a few inches closer to the bank.

Mr. Faust nudged his head into the wagon again, his long hair falling into his eyes. “We need to get rid of some more weight.”

“But the men already took everything else out of it.”

His eyebrows slid up. “We can’t take Karoline out of the wagon.”

She eyed the water and slid back from the door. “I can’t get out.”

“Amalie—” he started.

“My name is Miss Wiese,” she barked at him. “And I’m not getting on that horse with you.”

“We don’t have another choice.”

Amalie whipped the canvas curtain shut. They had to get Karoline to Lisbon, and they couldn’t do it if Amalie remained in the wagon. She wasn’t getting on that horse with Mr. Faust.

Amalie groaned as she pulled her feet close, unlaced her boots, and yanked them off. If she didn’t ride the horse, she had no other choice but to walk through the water. She rolled down her stockings and tucked them inside her boots, listening as she did so for the sounds outside. The splash of the horse and panting of the oxen. She kept hoping they would suddenly lurch forward, pushing through whatever obstacle had gotten in their way, but the wagon didn’t move.

“I’m not leaving you for long,” she told Karoline, hoping the younger woman could hear in her sleep. “I’ll see you on the other side of the river.”

Standing up, she uncinched the canvas on the back of the wagon and hid her toes under her dress, feeling half-naked standing there without her stockings or boots. Mr. Faust coaxed his horse forward and offered her his arm to step onto the narrow ledge on the back of the wagon. She shook her head, keeping one of her hands on the canvas to balance herself and the other clenched around her skirt to try to cover the bareness of her feet from the man’s eyes.

And he didn’t even have the courtesy to look away, not when she climbed onto the ledge nor when she dipped her toes into the silvery water.

The chill stunned her for an instant. A shock of cold flared up her spine, and she almost hopped back into the wagon. But Mr. Faust was watching and so were the others. She wouldn’t let them see how weak she really was. Or that she was a coward.

She wasn’t doing this for herself anyway. She was doing it to help Karoline.

Closing her eyes, she pulled her skirt above her knees and slid her leg down into the water. The river climbed above her knee and wrapped around her thigh the moment her foot oozed into the mud. She tried not to think about the frogs in the river. Or the snakes.

Her stomach rolled again, and she was glad she hadn’t eaten supper.

Her head seemed to swim along with the current, but she refused to let her emotions control her body. Her dress floated like a sail behind her, the current spilling over her skin, and she skimmed her hand across the water. The ripples slid through her fingers, and she tried to focus on the top of the water instead of what was underneath.

With both hands, she tugged the hem of her skirt up to the surface and tied it in a knot above her knees. Then she stepped forward. If she kept pretending her boots were protecting her feet and she was walking on dry land, she would make it to the other side.

But the water that soaked her skirt weighed her down, and she struggled to take another step. In the midst of her struggle, she watched with a mix of gladness and horror as the ox team pulled her wagon away from her, leaving her behind. The current rushed over her waist, and she teetered.

“Take my arm,” Mr. Faust insisted.

She wouldn’t touch him. Not unless she absolutely had to. Instead her hands splashed beside her then in front of her as she struggled to stay above the water.

When she tried to step again, she tilted to the side, and Mr. Faust reached out to straighten her and her heavy skirt.

She thanked him and then shook his grasp away. She would make it across the river by herself and help take Karoline to Lisbon.

Left to ourselves, we shall but stray;
Oh, lead us on the narrow way.
M. Michael Schirmer

Friedrich hooked an earthworm with the sliver of metal, and from the tree stump he tossed his line into the Iowa River. The hook fell with a soft swoop inside the curved rock walls that Indians had built more than a hundred years ago, presumably to catch fish as well.

The river was peaceful down here by the Indian Dam. The water loped around a curve that nature had carved into her grassy banks before it continued on its path east. A piling of rocks in the shallow water had become a gathering place for walleye and catfish and black bass.

The draft letter was still in his pocket and its plea for help begged for an answer. He’d spent much of last night in earnest prayer, trying to convince himself that staying in the community, submitting to the leadership and the words spoken through them, was the right thing to do. But no matter how hard he tried to convince himself to stay, peace eluded him.

He’d learned long ago that his desires were not always what God wanted of him. He’d fought his flesh since he was a boy. Sometimes he won the battle; sometimes he lost. But this time he didn’t know what or whom he was supposed to fight.