A Clearing in the Wild (9 page)

He assured me he would not be far away and that he’d post letters. “South,” he said. “I’m going back to the hills of Kentucky. The government leaves people alone there. Or maybe the hollows of old Virginia.” He stopped, thoughtful for a moment in the midst of pulling on his boots with the jack. “Did you know that when Virginia colonized, only the Anglican Church was recognized there? But when the Scots-Irish Presbyterians and Calvinists came south from Pennsylvania,
the Virginians let them have their preachers so long as they settled in the hills and acted as a buffer between them and the Indians the aristocrats feared. Isolation served them well, and it will us too. They’re hard-working, these potential converts, and not interested in gaining wealth through owning land. They just want to lead faithful lives and hunt and fish and worship as they please and do what is right for their families. They are whom we wish to bring to Bethel.”

“How long will you seek them?”

“I don’t know. But you’re in safe hands here,” he said. “Taking care of each other while one is gone is another gift our colony gives to one another.” Then he kissed me soundly, picked up his valise, and left.

Perhaps I was naive and inexperienced, as Helena suggested, but I had a sense that Christian’s leaving had been purposeful, meant to separate us. But it would not be a wedge between us unless I let it. We’d married. Our leader would one day have to come to terms with that fact.

In the weeks that followed, I began to pay more attention to those married in our colony, how they tended their families.
Frau
Giesy and I often met at the storehouse, where we would pick up flour as we needed. I took more time to listen to young wives expecting a child, knowing one day I’d be there, cherishing this precious gift of life. Mary Giesy, Sebastian’s wife, wore a loose dress, but I could still see that she was pregnant. She never stopped her working, and it seemed to keep her healthy, unlike stories I’d heard of women in Shelbina who stayed in bed while their babies grew.

I watched my parents more closely to see the tender ways my father expressed affection with a touch to my mother’s waist as she stood at the tin-lined sink washing potatoes. At night, when their soft laughter rose up through the floorboards from their bedroom, I let it comfort me, to soothe the ache of missing Christian and the humiliation of a married woman still sharing her bed with two sisters. One day, I told
myself, my husband and I will laugh beneath the comforter again, just us.
It will be my husband’s warmth I feel against my back and not my younger sister’s knees
.

Summer came and with it the outdoor work we all contributed to. We hoed and weeded the large cornfields that surrounded Bethel town. My father said Bethel was arranged, as in the old country, where people lived next door to one another, farmers and butchers and tailors. They knew their neighbors’ business and could also help in time of need. Even though farmers rode their carts out to their fields each day, they weren’t separated from other families by miles and miles, each living on isolated farmsteads, making their ways alone for weeks at a time. It was that way in many frontier settlements, with farmers not aware of town concerns and town people thinking they had little interest in the ways of laborers far away. They didn’t come to help when a man was injured by a bullock or when a wife had trouble giving birth because they didn’t know of the need. In Bethel, farmers rode out together to their fields and returned back each night. We helped one another. And like disciples of old, we went out to transform the world around us.

Christian had been “sent out.” The other Bethelites who recruited in the South were all single men. I saw advantage to that now as I ached to start my life with Christian but couldn’t.

Autumn pushed in through the steaming summer, bringing with it flocks of geese migrating south that sometimes settled in our cornfields before we could hurry them on with our shouts. Once the corn shocks were in our barns, we let the geese waddle over stubble. For me, everything seemed more vivid that autumn: the sounds of the geese calling, the scent of pork being smoked, the taste of apple cider on my tongue after a day helping with the harvest. My mother said this happened when a woman fell in love; the world seemed brighter, more intense. “Maybe I fell in love after I married,” I told her.

“
Ja
, it would be like you to find a contrary way.”

The colder nights and river fog in early morning brought bursts of color change to Bethel. Near the gristmill’s pond, the maple trees turned red and yellow and all shades in between, and reflected like a mirror in the water. I held my breath one day walking past, and Mary, Sebastian’s wife, bumped right into me as I stopped to stare. “Such beauty in this place! I wish that I could paint it,” I told her. “So I could hang it on my wall one day. The white walls of the mill a mate to the blue water—”

“
Ach
,” Mary said. “You shouldn’t covet such things to hang on your walls. Only portraits should hang there or maybe your stitching.”

I wondered if I blasphemed to think that man’s creations could enhance what God designed. Or if wanting to remember such beauty could truly be a sin.

We Bethelites heard much about sin that fall, and our leader referenced “coming troubles at the end” that stirred his words to such frenzy at times that when I left the church I felt beaten as an egg. He’d give no date, unlike some communal leaders, my father said, who would tell their followers to prepare for Christ’s coming on a certain day and then find they had to retract and explain when the date arrived without incident. Our leader spoke of ends, but he always finished with what I suppose he thought were hopeful words, saying God would provide a way out for us, a way for His followers to begin again. I could never tell if he forecast a heavenly change or if he referred to possible political disasters right here in Missouri.

How I wished that Christian sat beside me on the porch so we could discuss our leader’s words. I had to write instead. When Christian wrote back, I took his missives to my room, pushed the little ones out the door, and savored them, alone.

He wrote with precise characters marching along the pages, his
words providing details of what he saw and heard and even of the weather. He honored me with political talk, of how men in Carolina spoke less of slave and free than the idea that there might be aggression from the North, that one state could somehow impose its will upon another.
Even men who own no slaves will take up arms against the North should they invade
, Christian wrote.
Most living here are as poor as slaves, but they resist ideas imposed by aristocrats, Bostonians, New Yorkers. Yankees. Indeed, for them this disagreement isn’t about slaves at all but independence, life without intrusion, something we at Bethel understand
.

But what I treasured most in Christian’s letters was that he told me how he felt, how the sound of the Ohio River gurgling in the morning while he fixed coffee over a campfire made him think of my laughter. He described the elegant elms soaring up to blue sky and that the sight of them as he rode through their cool shade reminded him of my compassionate embracing arms and the strength I would give our children one day. He wrote of picking up a walnut, saying it was the color of my eyes. He wrote of missing me.
For so long I missed no one while I traveled, or so I thought. You often came to mind as I watched you grow up, Emma Giesy, and I imagined you as a loving niece who would one day find joy with a husband like Willie Keil or one of a dozen other young men smart enough to see the strength in you
.

Willie Keil? Surely Christian suffered a fever to ever imagine such a union as that.

That you should choose me
, Liebchen,
and that I should at last see you as the woman you are instead of only the daughter of my friend, is truly one of God’s great gifts. An old man I am and yet not too old. But I might have passed you by if not for your eyes meeting mine on Christmas Day and the prayer I saw in them that only God could answer
.

We became closer by this separation, something I suspect our leader
hadn’t planned for, and I wondered if I didn’t get to know Christian better this way than if I’d moved into his parents’ home and heard their stories about him. This way, I learned to tell my own.

I loved the way his words flowed across the page, and I read them again before I slept at night, hearing the low tones of his voice, feeling the quiver of my skin as I imagined his hands upon my body. I could hardly wait for his return, for then I imagined my life would truly begin.

I prepared for another Christmas without Christian. I worked hard not to hold resentment toward our leader. It would do no good to blame another for what was, only keep me filled with irritations that would grate at my soul like a file. In his letters, Christian gave no indication of when he’d return, but I hoped he’d come north as the geese flew south. I’d memorized a poem in English called “The Night Before Christmas” that I planned to recite to him, but I’d settle for brothers and sisters and my parents as my audience if no one else. I’d stitched a special pair of gloves for Christian, helped tan the hide myself, and they were wrapped in brown paper tied with ribbon. We called the Christmas Eve gift bearer Kris Kringle now, who’d leave his gifts snuggled within the branches of the tree. Our leader said it was more American to do it this way, and he wanted anyone who might ask or wonder to know that we Germans were loyal to the country.

It was Christmas Eve, and my father called to me to hurry down, to bring a candle so he could restart the fire. I mumbled something about letting it go out and Jonathan or David being capable of such, but I did as I was bid, only to be swung into the arms of my husband, who nearly smothered me with kisses.

“You’re back!”

“Rode all last night,” he said. “And through this day, which the Lord blessed with sunshine instead of snow. It is good to be home.”

Christian brought me fruit and raisins, and when we opened gifts, he took from the branches of our tree a wooden box that had my name on it. It was a pair of woolen mittens like every other pair available at the colony store. I hid my disappointment at wanting something just for me, something purchased on his travels to reassure me that I’d been on his mind. But I soon pitched that thought, grateful he was home for this holiday.
That
would be his gift to me, that he’d arrived. He unwrapped his gloves and admired the special stitching. “I could have used these,” he said. “The days are cold alone in Carolina.”

Upstairs, as we prepared to bed, he pulled out another package from his pack. He removed the twine covering it.

I held up a new crinoline, one with rows of ruffles circling the skirt.

I never wanted to stay in bed so much as I did on Christmas morning. We lingered in each other’s arms. “It’s our bridal tour we never had,” I told Christian as I ran my fingers through his now-f beard, tinted auburn. “Taken in my own bedroom where I grew up.” He squeezed my hand, kissed the palm. Then I asked, “Did you come back on your own, or did he call you back?”

“Both. I said I thought it time to return and brought several families with me. He did not protest and so I’m here, to stay now for a time. To go back to tinsmithing and begin my life with you.”

My family had already left for worship, and because we’d found it difficult to leave the comfort of each other’s arms, it was nearly 4:00 a.m. before we’d crunched over the snow and reached the church. Like schoolchildren caught after the bell, we separated and slipped onto the
benches, facing each other across the aisle. The service had already begun, with Willie carrying the
Schellenbaum
this time and standing beside his father, though a step below.

Christian looked toward me often. At first I wondered if he minded that last year he’d been standing beside our leader, and now he sat across from me. But then my face grew warm as I read into his eyes not the envy of a man replaced by our leader’s son, but the memories of our sweetest holdings from the night before.