Love Finds You in Amana Iowa (5 page)

When my God brought upon me terror
And the danger has gone by,
Then I will bring offerings of thanks
And sing with mighty voice.

Amalie didn’t sing, but in her heart she offered her thanks for those who had returned. And she prayed again for those who had not.

From the corner of her eye, she saw another face in the trees, and Karoline Baumer stumbled out to the trail. Her sunbonnet was gone, and her golden hair fell tangled across her shoulders.

“Karoline!” Amalie ran to her. Blood matted the girl’s hair, and there was a gash near her ear. She put her arm around Karoline’s shoulders. “Did the soldiers hurt you?”

Karoline shook her head. “There was a horse, running toward me. I tried to get out of its way.”

Amalie shuddered. “Its hooves—”

“I fell.” Karoline put her hand to her head, touching the wound. “And I hit my head on something, a tree or maybe a rock on the ground. I don’t know. Something sharp.”

Gently Amalie directed the younger woman toward the kitchen wagon. “I will clean your wound.”

Karoline stared down at the red on her fingers. “I didn’t know I was bleeding.”

The women passed by Brother Niklas and John as they walked out of the forest.

Twenty-three and twenty-four.

The singing grew louder behind them. Only one more person left to return from the woods, and they would all be together again.

Amalie lifted several sacks out of the kitchen wagon to make room for Karoline and unrolled her canvas bed sack on the wooden floor. She removed her pillow, comforter, and several blankets from the roll and she smoothed the comforter on the floor. Two of the men helped Karoline step up into the back of the wagon.

Karoline leaned her head back against the roll of blankets, and as Amalie dabbed her friend’s forehead with a cloth to clean the wound, she thought Karoline would murmur with the pain, but she was silent instead.

The doctor in Ebenezer had provided Amalie with a medical kit and instructions on how to use the different remedies in case someone was hurt on the trail. She took out a bottle of ointment from her trunk, rubbed the ointment onto a piece of fabric, and tied the cotton material around Karoline’s head. Hidden in the bottom of the trunk was a tincture of cannabis for the pain, and she spooned the medicine into her friend’s mouth.

Amalie smiled. “You’re almost as good as new.”

Karoline closed her eyes. “I don’t feel new.”

Even with the summer heat, her friend shivered, and Amalie pulled a blanket up to her shoulders.

“You rest now,” she told her. “We’ll find a doctor in Lisbon to look at your head.”

She didn’t want to think how long it would take them to get to Lisbon.

“I don’t feel the pain anymore,” Karoline said.

“Good.” Amalie closed the trunk. “I’ll make you some soup to eat tonight, and you’ll be well again soon.”

Karoline opened her eyes, staring up at the canvas wagon top. “Do you see the stars?”

Amalie glanced up and then looked back at her friend. “It’s still light, Karoline.”

“But I see stars.”

Amalie squeezed her hand. “You need to rest now.”

Karoline muttered something else, but Amalie couldn’t understand her. She patted her friend’s hand gently until Karoline’s breathing indicated she was sleeping, and then she climbed back out of the wagon.

Niklas was waiting for her outside. “Is she going to be all right?”

“I pray so,” she said. “But she needs to see a physician.”

“Faust will get us to Lisbon as soon as he can.”

She glanced across the heads of the men loitering in front of the wagon, waiting to move on. “Did the last person come out of the forest?”

“Everyone is accounted for.”

Her eyes grew wide. “But I only counted twenty-four people.”

Niklas silently counted the heads around them and then smiled. “I believe you’ve neglected to count yourself, Sister Amalie.”

She thought back over her counting and then sighed with relief. He was right—she had forgotten to include herself.

As she and Niklas walked toward the rest of their community, Mr. Faust lit his pipe and smoke rolled from his lips. When he reached the circle of men he began speaking.

“The bridge to Lisbon has been destroyed.” He lifted his hat and raked his fingers through his dark hair. “We will supper at the banks of the river tonight, and then tomorrow we will have to ford the water.”

Amalie stepped forward. “Sister Karoline is not well.”

Mr. Faust contemplated her words for a moment. “We can send one of the men ahead tonight to get a doctor from Lisbon.”

She sighed with relief.

He looked up at the sky. “We have at least two hours left of light tonight so we best be moving.”

They all dispersed to travel alongside their appointed wagons, and Amalie walked slowly back to hers. Her stomach rumbled, ready for the supper meal. When they stopped, she would make soup for Karoline and stew for the rest of them from dried meat and their remaining vegetables.

Her mind wandered back to Ebenezer and then forward to Amana. Friedrich and the others were sitting down for their meal now. The baas and her assistants were probably scrambling to place slices of roasted, warm meat on the platters and pour milk into pitchers for the diners. She would give just about anything for a cold glass of water or milk.

In a few weeks she would be back in the familiarity of a kitchen. Her own kitchen. Since the time she was fourteen, she had spent almost every day cooking and cleaning. She’d spent her summers canning and the winters creating new recipes from their bounty. Some women felt confined inside a kitchen house, but she thrived in it. Sometimes, when her baas was gone for the day, she imagined herself to be a queen, reigning over the kettles and pots in her kingdom. She would never tell any of her friends about her imagined queenship—they would be right to accuse her of being proud instead of humble, even in her imagination—but it was a game she played nonetheless.

Mounted on the side of her wagon was an oak barrel, and she ladled the water from it into a tin cup. The water had been baked by the sun, more hot than tepid in temperature, but as she sipped it, she pretended it was a glass of milk.

In three weeks she would be in her new kitchen…and she would be with Friedrich. Was he as nervous about seeing her as she was to see him?

As the months and then years went by, his letters became less frequent though they were always signed with his undying love for her. Over the years she’d wondered if he would wait for her, worried that by the time she arrived in Amana he would already have given his heart to someone else. Sometimes she even wondered if the years apart would sever the relationship they’d once enjoyed.

Friedrich had always been passionate, even as a child. Instead of weighing every consequence like she did, he made his decisions on a whim; often she wished he would just sit down and think for five minutes before he made a choice that would affect his—and now her—life.

The elders had given Friedrich the choice to come to Amana three years ago or wait for her. He’d chosen to come to the new Kolonie. Not because he didn’t love her, he said, but because he thought waiting together in Ebenezer until he was twenty-four would be torture. But now he was two years older than the age required to marry, and she hoped they were both mature enough to rationally think through their decisions instead of act upon their emotions.

Even though his letters weren’t as frequent as they used to be, every time Friedrich wrote he said he was faithful to his promise to her, that he waited for her. Her heart remained true to him as well. Never once did she even consider marrying one of the other men who remained behind in Ebenezer. For more than a decade, she’d believed that she and Friedrich were meant to be together.

Still, she had changed over the past three years, and he must have changed as well. And the moment she saw him, she believed she would know if she would become his wife.

Lifting her skirt, she climbed into the back of the wagon, beside Karoline. The younger woman was sleeping on the comforter, breathing softly. There wasn’t much room among the stacked crates and trunks and barrels, but Amalie tucked her knees close to her chest and leaned her head back against a trunk. Until they left Ebenezer, she hadn’t realized how important the seemingly simplest comforts were to her. A bed. A bathtub. A clean place to wash her clothes.

Mr. Faust shouted, and the wagon lurched forward.

Turning, she reached into the chest and pulled out a small, handcarved box Friedrich crafted for her before he left New York. It was made of dark walnut wood and polished until it almost glowed. She opened it slowly and looked at the rose petals inside, from the flowers Friedrich had given to her to remind her of his love for her while they were apart.

She sniffed the rose petals, hoping for even the slightest scent to remind her of his love, but they’d long since lost their aroma. Closing the lid, she clutched the box in her lap. It was a very small sacrifice to leave the comforts of Ebenezer for their journey west. It would all be worth it when they arrived in Amana.

Her eyes drooped, and she tried to open them again, but they wouldn’t obey her. The wagon hit a hole, and everything around her and Karoline shook, but the clanging didn’t awaken her friend. Amalie reached behind her, placed her precious box back into the trunk, and rested beside Karoline.

When the wagon stopped again, Amalie rubbed her eyes and squinted outside at the fading sunlight. A river reflected a brilliant scarlet color from the setting sun, and she pulled herself to her feet to begin supper before the darkness engulfed them. Karoline was still asleep, but maybe Niklas or one of the other men could help her prepare the meal tonight. Even with two of them working hard, it would take a good hour to finish the biscuits and the stew for twenty-five of them, but if they were as hungry as she was, they would complete it as quickly as they could.

She stood on her toes, trying not to wake Karoline as she lifted a pan off its hook. Then she took a burlap bag filled with potatoes off the heap of supplies. She’d wanted to conserve them, but they were almost to Lisbon now. The boiled potatoes would help fill their bellies tonight along with the stew.

She started to climb over Karoline, and then she stopped. Karoline was quiet. Too quiet.

Amalie dropped the potatoes on the floor and knelt down by her friend, dropping her cheek to her chest.

“Karoline,” she said, quietly at first. Her voice trembled when she said her name again. “Karoline!”

When she shook her, Karoline didn’t respond.

“Niklas!” she screamed as she ripped open the canvas. “John!”

Seconds later both men were at her side.

Watch against thyself, my soul, see thou do not stifle
Grace that should thy thoughts control, nor with mercy trifle.
Johann B. Freistein

Friedrich wiped the cloth napkin over his mouth and paused before he took another bite of the tender roast pork and red cabbage. Forks clanged against the ceramic plates as forty men and women ate the roast and vegetables prepared by Henriette Koch and her assistants. No one spoke except to ask for the salt or to pass the basket of rolls. Conversation was reserved for time away from work and meals and their daily services in prayer and worship.

He lifted another bite to his mouth, but then he set his fork down, pushing away his plate of food. How could he eat when men like Joseph were getting beaten tonight? When they were being starved? He spent his days harvesting food for animals while there were men who were fighting and dying for what was right.

Loyalty means you fight...

Colonel O’Neill’s words played over and over again in his mind, and he couldn’t seem to rid himself of the burden of guilt that entangled him. By not participating in this war, was he being disloyal to the government God had placed over him? Was he a coward?

Sophia Paul stopped at his table with two pitchers of milk in her hands. Lifting Friedrich’s glass, she slowly filled it. Friedrich didn’t look at her, but he could feel her presence as she lingered beside him, filling the glasses of the men on each side.

When he glanced over at her, Sophia giggled, and he refocused his eyes on Matthias, across the table. One of Matthias’s eyebrows rose, and Friedrich’s eyes narrowed at the grin on his friend’s face. Matthias’s smile grew even bigger, and Friedrich wished he could reach across the table and wipe the smirk off his face.

Matthias knew Friedrich was planning to marry Amalie Wiese, and no matter how many times Sophia refilled his glass or brought him and the men in the fields baked goods for their lunch, he wouldn’t change his mind.

Sophia moved to the women’s table and placed one of her pitchers on it. Friedrich noticed she neglected to fill any of their glasses.

The man sitting next to Friedrich elbowed him and whispered, “Won’t be long before Amalie’s making supper for you.”

Friedrich nodded. Amalie’s cooking was renowned across the community. When her baas was ill in Ebenezer, Amalie developed a reputation as someone who demanded those under her to work hard, but all of their hard work paid off during meal times. Most of the brothers hoped they would be selected to eat in her new dining room, but as Amalie’s husband, Friedrich would be guaranteed a place at one of the tables.