Adelsverein

by Celia Hayes

  “I’m being a help, Mama,” Willi called back.

  Dolph added, “Not to worry, Auntie, we’ll get some hard work out of this little teamster, yet!”

  Liesel nodded, although she wished she could tell Willi to come away from the busy stable-yard. He had overcome his babyish timidity in the last year or so. Now he followed his older cousins and his brothers everywhere, among the horses and wagons and the talk of men and their doings.

  Past the new part of the house, the extension of the shop and Vati’s old workroom, the new plaster crisp and still as white as chalk. Hansi and the boys had laid out flat stones set in white river gravel to make a pathway free of mud, going out towards Market Street. Liesel walked a little faster, wishing this errand to be already over and done with.

  “Not that far,” Liesel whispered to herself. “Not that far.” Just along Market Street, down towards the Baron’s Creek, then along to the Richter’s town plot, where she and Hansi had first planted a vegetable garden in soil so rich and soft that a man could easily put an arm into it up to the shoulder. Later Hansi had built a tiny cottage for them to use when they came to town for Sunday services at the Verein-Church.

  She briskly passed their next-door neighbors’ house, then the one after that; all very well so far, and her spirits rose. She had walked from Vati’s house to the creek thousands of times, bringing food to her husband when he was living in the fields and woods, evading those who would try and force him to serve in the Confederate army.

  And just as she passed the fourth house along, Liesel shuddered and suddenly anxiety leapt through that widening crack of her resolve; fear, pitiless and clawed like a gigantic cat, striking without mercy or warning. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Her chest hurt, and it seemed as though an endless roll of thunder drowned out every sound. She made a tiny, pitiful moan, as feeble as a newborn kitten mewing. The whole world spun violently around her, sky and houses and the tall bare trees lining Baron’s Creek. The street itself reared up and smashed into her and Liesel went spinning down into roaring darkness for a long, long time.

  When she floated up to the surface of awareness, it was to a murmur of voices in the next room: Vati, her sister Magda, Fredi, and Doctor Keidel. Their voices all merged together, but it hardly mattered to her, because Hansi was there with her. He held both her hands, entirely enveloped in his large one. She lay on the chaise in the parlor, still wrapped in her shawl, although someone had thought to take off her bonnet.

  “… Nerves,” she heard Doctor Keidel say, and added as if he were quoting someone, “Who can minister to a mind diseased…?”

  “… Not anything of the sort!” Magda answered indignantly.

  Vati chimed in, “… not of the most even temper, assuredly.…”

  “I’m not going mad,” Liesel quavered, “am I, Hansi? Tell me I’m not … it’s just that things frighten me so, things without reason!”

  “Oh, Lise-love,” Hansi rumbled comfortingly, “you should have told us.…”

  “I didn’t think you would understand,” Liesel answered, her voice wobbling with a mixture of reaction and relief. She ached all over, as if she had been beaten. Her hands, her shoulder, even her face—all bruised where she had fallen, fallen so hard on the hard ground. “Everyone says there is nothing to fear, but I can’t help it. Suddenly I feel like something is choking me. It’s a waking nightmare … the sky is too big and I am as tiny as an insect that you squash with your thumb without even noticing it.”

  “How long have you felt like this, my heart? Shush, love, don’t cry again.”

  “Since we buried Christian.” Liesel gulped. “It seemed to happen a very little at first. I was better when you came home, for at least a little while, but then it came on again. I tried to prove that I was the master of such fancies, but . . . ”

  “Such a fancy as would have killed you, dear-heart,” Hansi sighed and ran his free hand through his hair, setting it wildly astray. “Doctor Keidel told us that such continued agitation would over-exert your system. He would prescribe another tonic, but that he fears such would not have nearly as good effect as a quiet life! And now I understand; you should not force yourself into such excursions, Lise. As your husband, I forbid it. If you value a home life, a home life you shall have. I didn’t realize what I was asking of you, until this moment.”

  “Truly?” Liesel breathed, hardly daring to believe. It was as if a tremendously heavy weight had fallen off of her shoulders, the burden of denial and deceit, no longer having to pretend. No one would be asking of her what was not in her power to provide. “You would not ask me to go to the coast with you, Hansi?”

  “No, Liesel-my-heart.” And he sighed again. “I don’t see how you would want to live your entire life between four walls, but if that is what you wish and what your continued good health demands, then that is what you should have.”

  “It is not much, when you are with me,” Liesel ventured, “to venture a little way . . .perhaps to the Nimitzes, or out into our garden.”

  “Might I then persuade you to take the water cure some day?” Hansi asked. He clasped her hands again, “Oh, do not look so, Liesel-my-heart. That would only be if you wished it, and I promise I would accompany you every step of the way. Be easy in your heart, love—I will not ever force you to go against your feelings.”

  “Promise, Hansi?” Liesel nearly wept with gratitude; her faith in Hansi’s devotion restored.

  “I promise.” Hansi enfolded her in a rough but fond embrace, repeating solemnly, “I promise, Liesel-my-heart. So I promised when we married, so I promise now.”

  Chapter Five: The Young Patrón

  “So what was that all about, Cuz?” Peter asked quietly. Doctor Keidel’s trap had rolled away from the front door of the house on Market Street. Peter had seen nothing much other than Liesel, in her cherry-red Turkey-weave shawl, walking around the end of the house, past the stable yard. He and Dolph had been busy loading supplies for a long scout to the Beckers’ long-abandoned farmhouse, a project which Dolph had long had his heart set on. They had alternately been hindered and helped in this by the efforts of Hansi’s youngest son, an agreeable little lad who had just lost his front baby teeth. When he heard a man shouting, farther down the street some minutes later, he’d thought nothing much of it, until Fredi flung aside an armful of tack with a mighty oath and vaulted the corral fence in one leap, followed by the younger boys.

  “Just Auntie Liesel’s megrims,” Dolph answered, quietly, although he had been close at his uncle Fredi’s back. “She fainted from fright, in the middle of the street. Mama says she’s been more and more peculiar ever since our cousin Christian died of the diphtheria, especially with Uncle Hansi being away and all.”

  “Christian . . . which one was he?” Peter asked, mentally running his mind over the tally of the Richter offspring, all the stair-steps between the delectable Miss Anna down to the solemn toddler Grete.

  “Halfway between Eli and Willi,” Dolph answered. “Just about all the children in town were sick from it then. Madame Keidel drove the doctor’s trap from house to house so he could sleep between house calls. Mama says that Auntie Liesel has always taken grief and misfortune hard. In her moods she is always on top of the steeple or down in the deepest cellar.”

  “Hard for Miss Anna, then,” Peter commented, and he thought that Dolph’s amusement was broad enough to skip stones over. “And for your uncle as well, I daresay.”

  “I don’t think Uncle Hansi minds, too much.” Dolph still looked amused. “He’ll know she’ll always be fluttering around the house, making it comfortable for him, and she’ll sure as hell never run away with a Yankee soldier, the way Mr. Ransleben’s first wife did.”

  “When was this?”

  “Years ago, but the old folk still talk. Don’t let on you know about his wife and the soldier if you should meet him. He married again and moved to Comfort, near my father’s place. He’s a decent old stick, but it prolly drove him wild, knowin
g that everyone was wondering if he wasn’t enough of a man to keep her content.”

  “A Yankee? For damn sure everyone would be wondering,” Peter answered. A tiny part of him questioned whether there was enough of his own self remaining to keep a woman content, him with his arm that ended halfway up from his elbow. Maybe if she weren’t real particular.

  His cousin laughed, not privy to Peter’s inmost thoughts, and added a battered wooden toolbox to the top of a wagon-load of lumber. Seeing that, Peter added, “I guess you and Fredi are still serious about re-building. You got enough in this here wagon, you could just about head west to California, if you wanted.”

  Dolph shook his fair head, gravely. “Nothing out there that I need. Besides, Uncle Fredi’s been there and he says it’s hardly worth the trouble of getting to it. Nothing but crazy miners and holes in the ground and everyone mad for gold or silver. Me, I’d rather go home, even if I have to build it again from the ground up.”

  “Your choice, Cuz,” Peter sighed.

  Dolph slapped his shoulder. “All that fresh country air, and rounding up cows on a fine spring morning? Nothing like it in all the world and better than any cure the sawbones could prescribe. Besides, Cousin Anna will still be here,” Dolph added with an impish sideways look at Peter, “being shrewish. Most likely, Uncle Hansi wants to take her to Indianola so’s she’ll have a chance to be courted by fellows who haven’t heard about her yet.”

  Peter refused to be drawn into the teasing, answering with a tragic face, “Won’t do me any good, Cuz—I am perishing with an unrequited and hopeless passion for that fair and unattainable Diana, “Mrs. Hunter” as I suppose I must think of her now. An angel beyond my reach, the fairest belle of the hill country . . .”

  “A fountain of tears, you mean,” Dolph answered, utterly unmoved. “I swear, during the last couple of years, our Rosalie splashed about in a constant puddle of salt water. At least Robert took her away and spared us all the risk of drowning in it.”

  “I cannot wait until you turn moon-calf over some girl,” Peter retorted, “because then I shall have the opportunity to sit back and point at you, laughing heartlessly all the while.”

  “Never happen, Cuz,” Dolph answered with his accustomed serenity. “Not to me. And if it does, I know better than to make a show of it.” He seemed to notice something on the wagon. “Speaking of putting a brand on a fine young filly, I’ve just remembered. . .”

  “What? Is there a single thing we haven’t packed in this here wagon, Cuz? I don’t believe the whole Yankee army packed so much of their trash when they marched from Atlanta to the sea.”

  “Irons with the new brand,” Dolph noted. “Uncle Hansi was going to see to it today, but he prolly forgot in all the ruckus about Aunt Liesel.”

  “A new brand?” Peter followed Dolph as the latter strode determinedly towards the house. Willi followed. He had to run to keep up with his elders. “I thought you were using Uncle Carl’s. That was your plan, anyway.”

  Dolph shook his head. “Mama and I and Uncle Hansi had a notion to form a partnership, with a new brand and all. Anna drew out the design. It’s already registered for us and all, but we just need to get the irons made. You see,” he looked over his shoulder at his cousin as he opened the door, “Papa’s brand was tied to his name. But during the war, because Duff and Waldrip and their friends called Papa an attainted traitor, the military governor had a confiscation order against any movable property of Papa’s, ‘specially if the Army could make use of such. Now we have a company with a registered brand. It’s a bit more work for outsiders to find out who has shares in that company, and who might be offended.” Dolph added, still looking over his shoulder, “Think of it like an ambush, laid in place and ready. Just in case, you see.”

  “You don’t trust anyone much, do you, Cuz?” Peter observed after a moment.

  Dolph answered bleakly, “Not much, Cuz, aside from kin and those who proved themselves true. Anyone with the power to give something precious to you has the power to take it back again on a whim.”

  The shop was empty at the moment except for Anna. She sat on a tall stool at the back, with her sleek brown head bent over a long leather-bound book of columns, half of them carefully filled out in ink. Still, Dolph added softly, “No one will ever take away anything that is ours by rights, ever again. Uncle Hansi feels the same—he’ll never be a hunted man living the brush and out in all weather, unless he has a damned better reason for it than running from the provost marshal!” In a louder voice he said, “Anna, did Onkel Hansi see to the branding irons and the new design?”

  Anna looked up from the accounts. She put her finger on a column to keep her place and answered in distracted irritation, “No, he did not. He and Auntie Magda are all taken up with Mama. I kept the design most carefully. I was afraid that it would be forgotten, or that Papa would roll a cigar with it, or write out an invoice on the front, unless I took special care.”

  She hopped down from the tall stool and vanished into the back room of the shop, returning in a moment with a sheet of heavy paper in her hand. “Here it is.” She handed it to Dolph, then looked to Peter and asked, “So what do you think of this design? Do you think it will assure our fortunes, Cousin Peter?” She shot him a meaningful look, and he relished it and considered it akin to the sound of foils clashing, the formal prelude to another duel of wits.

  “Your artistic efforts rival the great Italian masters, Miss Anna. By such merits alone, we are guaranteed success.”

  Anna pursed her lips, crisply retorting, “A pity the world does not run like a millwheel on the endless flow of your flatteries, Mr. Vining.”

  “Everyone has a talent, Miss Anna; that one must be mine.” Peter looked at the paper in Dolph’s hands; truthfully a fair and draftsman-like sketch of a brand. A capital “R” was reversed and set against a capital “B” so the same down-stroke formed the vertical basis for both, then they were set over a sideways “S” like the lazy flow of a river bend.

  “Becker and Richter,” Dolph explained quietly, “for Mama and Uncle Hansi’s investment. The “S” is Steinmetz, for Uncle Fredi. Like me, he can put no money into this venture.”

  “Only hard work,” Anna observed. “And are you putting hard work into this venture, Mr. Vining, assuming you are capable of anything beyond pretty flatteries?”

  Before Peter could reply, Dolph pointed out, “I’m putting in nothing but hard work myself.” He sounded amused as he added, “For the purposes of this venture and this brand, Cuz, you are a Becker and bringing in nothing more than a strong back and willing hands.”

  “Well, one of them, anyway,” Peter observed wryly. He noted that Dolph looked quite discomfited at that, as if he was abruptly reminded of something he had forgotten. Miss Anna only sniffed in disapproval, as starchy as a maiden schoolteacher.

  “Tell Onkel Hansi that we have seen to ordering new irons, then.” Dolph said. “And that we have taken Willi with us.” Anna directed a chiding look at her youngest brother. She spoke to him sternly in German, something about chores and errands.

  Peter interjected in Willi’s defense, “Oh, let him play a little hooky, Miss Anna. He has been a help to us this morning with the horses.” Actually, Willi had been more of a hindrance, but he had followed directions so faithfully and eagerly that Peter couldn’t help but be amused. Willi and Horrie were much of an age, and Peter thought they might probably become friends, if they ever met.

  As they departed, with a delighted Willi trailing behind and chattering away in a mixture of German and English, Peter added, “It beats all, how hard your German settlers work, even the children. I had chores when I was Willi’s age, but my brothers and I had plenty of time to play, too.”

  “Not if Opa Becker had much to say about it, I’d have been willing to bet,” Dolph answered. “Papa said he was a terror for work. Papa and his brother were always running off into the woods and it sent Opa Becker into furies. He said once that Opa Becker swore if they woul
dn’t finish their chores proper, then they wouldn’t eat at his table. So he wouldn’t let them come to meals . . .not that it did any good, because they went hunting in the woods, and gathered nuts and such. Papa said they had a grand time. It was summer, you see. They stayed away for weeks, until Oma Becker put her foot down. Uncle Hansi isn’t so bad, really. Give him a pair of horses, some cattle, and an empty field and he’d be as happy as Adam in the Garden of Eden. It’s Mama and Cousin Anna standing taskmaster, these days.”

  “Enough to put a man off marriage,” Peter grumbled.

  They walked briskly the length of Main Street, shrugging their coats tight against the bite of the north wind, but relishing the mild warmth of the winter sun on their faces and the clear blue sky, scrubbed as clean of clouds as if Miss Anna had been at it with duster and broom. They passed storefronts pressing close against the roadway, and small tidy plastered houses sitting back comfortably in their gardens—or rather what would be their gardens, come spring.

  Suddenly Dolph asked, “D’you recall Opa Becker very well at all, Cuz?” And then he added, almost apologetically, “It’s just that we knew everything there was to know about Mama’s kin, and next to nothing at all about Papa’s. He never talked much about them, except for Aunt Margaret. And we knew of you, ‘course; but nothing much else.”

  “He was a hard, gruff man,” Peter answered, “with a tongue and a nature to flay the skin off a buffalo. He died when I was about the age of this little sprout here,” he tousled Willi’s fair head with careless affection, “so it’s not as if I can recall much, either. I didn’t like him much and I don’t think he cared much for me.”

  “I don’t think he cared much for Papa, either,” Dolph observed. “But Papa never said so, outright. He was fair, like that. When he talked of his folk, he always sounded . . .well, serious, but fair and generous. It’s only now it came to me that he talked of his father as if he didn’t care the least for him but didn’t wish to be thought rude and unfilial. How do you think of your father, Cuz?’