The New Land

by The New Land (retail) (epub)

  On an evening in June, Johann was working late when Franklin started up again. Johann tried to stop his ears to the din, but then heard a soft, almost mewing sound. Christiane. He put down his tools and walked into their darkened room. She sat slump-shouldered on the edge of their bed, a hand on Franklin, who was on his back, screaming. Johann could tell that Walther and Hanna were awake, their eyes following him. Only Richard slept.

  He reached down and lifted the baby to his shoulder and placed his hand along Christiane’s cheek. “Rest,” he said. She nodded, then twisted onto her side, facing away.

  Grabbing a cloth to wrap around the baby, Johann carried him into the courtyard, then opened the gate.

  “Captain,” a voice came from the watchtower. “That’s not permitted.”

  Johann said nothing. He closed the gate behind him. Everyone would thank him for taking Franklin away.

  Johann walked to the river, his arm under Franklin’s bottom, a hand on his back. He bounced the baby gently and sang to him. He walked up and down the shore, back and forth. Franklin didn’t relent. His spine was like iron. He threw his head back, his mouth open in the light of a thousand stars and a sliver moon. His cries grew more frantic, more urgent. Johann could feel the baby’s fury infect him. The hideous noise was blotting out his human feelings, the kindness and warmth that are every baby’s right.

  Johann felt jittery, his muscles strung taut, a terrible weariness and anger in his soul. It had been building for days, weeks, now months. He had to fight the reasoning that formed in his mind, reasoning that seemed so seductive, so obvious. The baby is miserable. The baby is making everyone else miserable. The noise never ends, it crawls under your skin and into your brain and never lets you alone, noise that no human should have to endure. Everything else has been tried. So only one course is left. There’s only one way to stop the noise.

  He shook his head. This was madness.

  Franklin carried on for another minute, then broke off. He choked for a second. Johann looked down and saw him fight for breath. Franklin widened his eyes and belched. He took a breath, closed his eyes, and screamed again.

  Johann sat on the ground with his back against a tree. He faced the river, holding his son before him, leaning the small body back against his drawn-up knees. Franklin’s screams suddenly sounded sad. The boy was inconsolable. Somehow he knew the horrors of this world he had been dropped into, the bloody death and disease, the viciousness and fear and loneliness. Johann felt himself open up inside. A tear came from his eye. He smiled at Franklin and brushed his knuckles against the baby’s cheek. Ah, poor baby, he thought. Poor, poor baby. Tell me about it, he whispered. It will be less terrible if you share it.

  Franklin broke off in mid-cry to take a double-breath, one with a hiccup in the middle of it. He opened his eyes and looked at Johann, then shifted his head. Johann nodded to him. “Hello, Master Franklin,” he said. He felt this tiny being enter his heart. Franklin peered into the dimness to one side. His spine of iron relaxed. He yawned. Soon he was asleep.

  Sitting by the river with the exhausted baby, Johann had a waking dream. Christiane was next to him under the tree, her head on his shoulder, her hand holding his arm. He hadn’t felt her touch in so long. When the dream ended, Franklin was looking at him, turning his head side-to-side in a grey dawn. The baby began to grunt and push his hand into his mouth, chewing on it. He was hungry. Johann smiled. “For that,” he said, “we need mama.”

  Christiane said nothing when he sat on the bed. She sat up and held her hands out. Franklin greedily locked his mouth on her breast. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall. When Walther approached, Johann put a finger to his lips, then helped him dress. The boy was six now, not big for his age. No Overstreet would be. Walther’s blue-grey eyes were calm. They conveyed a self-possession unusual for a child. Like his mother. Perhaps, Johann hoped, like his father too. He wondered if Peter would have had that. The other two slept when he and Walther began to slip out of the room.

  “Johann,” Christiane said softly. He looked back. “You’ll come back to walk with him?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  Franklin didn’t change completely, not right away, but the screaming part of his days became shorter, then shorter still.

  CHAPTER SIX

  †

  When Richard grew ill in the winter of 1758, seven Broad Bay settlers had already died from the smallpox. More had sickened and then recovered. One of those was Walther, who proved as resilient as he had been during the ocean crossing. This time, Walther was tired and feverish for a day, then developed a rash. But he never descended into full-throated smallpox. Christiane hoped that Richard, who trailed faithfully after his brother on most days, would be like Walther that way.

  They moved the children’s bed into Johann’s workroom next door. Johann slept there with the healthy ones while Christiane cared first for Walther, then for Richard. She couldn’t be sure if she’d ever had the smallpox. There had been two outbreaks in Kettenheim when she was a girl.

  Richard’s rash evolved into angry red sores, then welts formed on his arms and back and stomach and face. They sometimes oozed a clear, vile-smelling pus. He tried to be a brave boy, but he was hot and his head hurt. The mouth sores made him cry. It hurt to swallow, so he didn’t want to eat. Christiane made the porridge thinner and thinner so he could get something down past the sores.

  Every day, Richard looked forward to the times when Walther and Hanna stood at the door to his room and called out to him. They said they missed him, how he would be well soon and come play with them. Richard’s mouth and throat hurt so badly that he couldn’t make them hear his answers, but he never looked away from them. Johann, holding little Franklin, stood behind while they waved to their brother. Late at night, while the three small ones slept, Johann slipped into Richard’s room. Christiane wouldn’t let him near the bed—they weren’t sure if Johann had had smallpox either—but he stayed until she shooed him out to sleep.

  Richard’s sores started to scab over, which Christiane hoped was a good sign. When the blisters near his eyes seemed to heal, she worried less that he would go blind. She tried to keep him cool, wiping around his sores with a wet cloth. She prayed. She told God that no one would mind scars or pockmarks on such a fine boy. Richard didn’t need to be pretty, if he could only be spared.

  At the end of the second week, he vomited thin, green bile. He vomited again and then again that day, though there was nothing in his stomach to bring up but his own flesh and blood. She was losing him. She stopped praying. She lay with him in her arms, sometimes humming, sometimes whispering what a wonderful boy he was. She never let him see tears. When Johann and Walther and Hanna came to the door the next day, Richard couldn’t open his eyes to see them.

  She didn’t weep on the day he stopped breathing. She had been building the fire, cursing the winter, with her back turned. When she turned to him, he was gone. She knelt next to him, then placed his head on a folded cloth. From the door, she called to Johann. She handed him two buckets for clean water. He gripped her arms hard, but she shook her head, then let it droop against his shoulder.

  “I’ve set aside the boards,” he said. “It won’t take long.” She nodded. “I can help you wash him.”

  “No,” she said. “You mustn’t get sick too. You take care of us.”

  “Do you want Nungesser?”

  “No.”

  She washed Richard slowly. His ribs stuck obscenely from his torso, his icy skin stretched taut between the scabs. She gathered the cloths and blankets she had used with him and changed to her other dress. When she tied the apron over it, she had to adjust the top. It was loose. She hadn’t been able to eat either. They would burn her dress, Richard’s clothes, everything he touched. She sat on the bed’s edge and gazed at him, feeling her heart grow hard. She couldn’t do this again.

  Next morning, Johann and McDonnell built a bonfire at Mayflower Hof to soften the earth. They dug th
e grave, then returned to town. More than fifty neighbors joined the procession back to Mayflower Hof with the coffin, snaking along the still-frozen river. Most of the guards came. They carried muskets. Johann was surprised by how many people. There had been many burials since the smallpox struck.

  The grave was behind the cabin on the north side. It was the highest ground, looking out at the two firs Johann had left standing near the river. He stood behind the coffin, holding Franklin in one arm and his Bible in the other. McDonnell had brought three stools. Christiane sat between Walther and Hanna, her arm around each. It was too early for flowers, so each child held a small branch from a holly tree, the waxy green leaves bright against the snow. Christiane held one too. Johann had one for himself and one for Franklin.

  For Richard, Johann read the passage he used to read for his soldiers when they had been killed, from the book of John, about his father’s house having many rooms. Johann thought of Peter, too, when he read the last words, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” Richard and Peter never met, yet they were brothers. They might meet.

  Christiane met Johann’s eyes when he looked up. Then she looked out at the river. She longed for a fire. It had been so long since she’d been warm. Richard must have felt that way.

  Johann nodded to the group. The mourners shuffled by. Christiane didn’t stand. She murmured thanks for their words. When they were gone, all except for McDonnell and Ursula and her girls, they knelt again at the coffin. Johann and McDonnell set Richard in his grave. Each of them dropped a holly branch with him. Then the men spaded the earth in.

  * * * * * *

  “John, I’ll tell you one thing about Alec here,” McDonnell lit his pipe with a burning twig while he waved toward his slender son, who was tall for his thirteen years. “He’s clumsy enough for three people, but if you give him a solid base, he’ll hit a squirrel in the eye at a hundred paces.”

  Fair-haired, with porcelain skin that showed blood running blue beneath it, the boy blushed with pleasure under his father’s words. McDonnell was addressing Johann’s objection to meeting at McDonnell’s cabin for their weekly review of guards business. Evening visits to cabins were strictly forbidden, but McDonnell liked to argue his way around rules. “Alec’s better than most of our so-called guards, so we’re fully meeting the requirements that at least two guards be present with the owner.”

  “You twist the rules to suit yourself.” Johann hunched close to the fire, its light bouncing off the snow that McDonnell had cleared from the fire pit. With stiff fingers, Johann began to light his own pipe. He usually didn’t allow himself tobacco. He minded the expense of it, and also the whole idea of a substance that existed solely to burn up. But this was McDonnell’s tobacco. That was different.

  “Aye,” McDonnell agreed, “and thanks be to God that I do. What a torture to live by other people’s rules.” He drew on his pipe and looked toward the river, where only a few ice chunks flowed by. “Feels like more snow, don’t it?” Johann nodded. It was only mid-March. The snow would fly for a while longer. “Armstrong may be here soon. Will you have the furniture to trade?”

  “Two tables and six chairs.”

  “The chest of drawers?”

  “They’re not right yet.”

  “Ah, John, John. I love your honesty, but it’s a barrier to making a living. I’ll bet they’re fine.”

  “They’re not right,” Johann repeated. “You’re not worried that the French will get Armstrong’s sloop?”

  “Of course I am. But it’s either take the risk or eat the tables and chairs for dinner. We need to trade. Armstrong’s always made it through. I wouldn’t put it past him to have a side deal with the French.” He turned to his son. “That’s not the sort of thing to be said to anyone who’s not sitting at this fire right now.” Alec nodded. McDonnell asked Johann, “You’re still all right with me making the deal for both of us?”

  “Yes. He likes to do business with you. He doesn’t care for me.”

  “Why would he care for you, you being such a murdersome son of a bitch? He knows that old McDonnell, why he’s all right for a Jacobite. A bit of a lout maybe, but right enough with a few drinks in him. That Overstreet fella now, so quiet, and with the stare of a killer. I’d be afraid of you myself if I didn’t know what a sentimental fool you really are, mooning over that skinny wife of yours.”

  Johann smiled to be companionable, though he never liked talking with other people about Christiane. But McDonnell was his only real friend in Broad Bay, at least since Fritz. “If I’m such a killer,” Johann said, “then why would he cheat me?”

  “You and your German logic. It’ll be the death of us. You don’t follow at all. He would never cheat you. But he would give me a better deal.” McDonnell looked over his shoulder at his son, who was attending to every word. “Alec, why don’t you go check the woods on the other side.” The hectoring tone was out of his voice. When the boy was gone, McDonnell started again. “John. You see, Maggie’s been talking to me. She’s worried about your Christiane. She says the girl won’t eat. Maggie brings her food, good stuff that she should be saving for her lout of a husband, but she says Christiane don’t eat it. Is she all right?”

  “Yes, Robert, she is.” Johann stopped. “No, no she’s not. She’s sad about Richard, about how we are living.” He had been thinking that day that his little boy had barely three years on this earth, most of it in that filthy stockade. That wasn’t what they’d come to America for. He ran a hand through his hair. “We’re both sad, but as you say, I’m just a murdersome soul, so I go back to work while she stays sad.” He had tried the other night, had put his hand on her hip as they lay together, in the way they both knew. She had whispered, “No,” then rolled away. He shook his head as though the movement would clear out an unwelcome thought. “I thought she was bringing up her food once, after dinner, spitting it out. She said she didn’t, that she was just spitting, but I don’t know.”

  “She’s not eating dirt, is she? A woman did that back home. She ended up crazy as a loon.”

  “Christiane’s not crazy.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, Maggie and me, we’re worried.”

  “I know.” Johann took a breath and looked up at the sky. “I’m worried too. It’s good for Maggie to keep coming by. I know Christiane’s glad to see her.”

  McDonnell puffed on his pipe. “I’ve wondered how they talk to each other. Maggie doesn’t know a word of German.”

  Johann smiled. “Christiane knows more English than she lets on. I’ve taught her some. When I speak it with the children, she listens.”

  Alec came back around the cabin. “Sit here and warm yourself, boy,” McDonnell said. He turned to Johann. “You know this great gawky thing has been mooncalfing around about a young girl?”

  “Pa, that’s not true.”

  “Nothing wrong with that, boy. McDonnell men like the girls, and vice-a vers-a, as they say. Mooncalfing is the first step. But,” McDonnell grinned, “I need to tell Mr. Overstreet which one.”

  “Pa!”

  “He’s like the father for that poor girl, so I need to speak of this. Your ma told me to, so you know that leaves me no choice.” He faced Johann. “It’s that other long drink of water, the daughter of your friend.”

  “Sigrid?”

  “That’s it! Sigrid. Right, Alec?”

  The firelight revealed the boy’s shame, embarrassment, and pride. He said nothing.

  “But Sigrid,” Johann said, “she has only, what, eleven years?”

  “She as tall as her ma, and as pretty as her ma, and any day now she’s going to fill out like her ma. I warned him that she probably doesn’t speak a word of English, but he’s at an age when that doesn’t matter much, and I’m not sure it should at any age. However you slice it, John, you”—he pointed his finger—”are going to be lying awake at night trying to figure out how to keep the yo
ung bucks away from that one.”

  Johann put the uncomfortable thought aside. He would need to speak with Ursula about this. Women understood these things better. He sat forward with his hand on his knees, signaling a change in tone. “Robert, do we have any business about the guards?”

  McDonnell sat forward, mirroring him. “There’s tomorrow night, Nungesser’s big meeting. He’s going to tell us we’re all damned. Most of the guards’ll be going to hear how the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are rampaging through Broad Bay.”

  Johann shook his head. “What were they? Pestilence, famine, war, death? They’re here. The people are without hope or spirit. They’re listening to him.”

  “Aye, it’s hard times. As hard as I’ve seen. With the boats running to Boston again, I wouldn’t be surprised if we lost more families. It takes desperate times to make people start listening to a numbskull like Nungesser. I’ve never known anyone less likely to know divine will.”

  “Something has to change, Robert. It’s more than three years we’ve been in the stockades, afraid of the Indians, afraid of the French, hearing all the terrible stories and not making our way.” Johann stood and paced before the fire. “We can’t go home because we spent our last shilling coming here, and we have nothing back home anyway. After more than six years here, we still have almost nothing. Land that’s turning back into forest.”

  McDonnell stared into the fire. After a minute, he said, “That’s about the size of it, at least until King Louis and King George decide the rest of us can live in peace.”

  “I came here so kings wouldn’t control my life, so I wouldn’t answer to them and their stupid quarrels. So I wouldn’t have to die for them. And yet every night I lie down in that damned pesthole with my poor family, having achieved nothing for another day, just waiting for the pox or some fever to take us away.”