We hurried downstairs, Aunt Martha rushing behind us. We found Elisabeth hysterical, her face was white as death. I grabbed the baby from her, thinking something had happened to Meg. The baby was screaming, too, but seemed to be more upset by Elisabeth’s frantic screams than by anything else. Robert turned on the light and tried to calm Elisabeth down as I tried to settle the baby. “What’s wrong? What happened?” he asked her, his hands on her shoulders.
She was shaking with fear. She pointed to the parlor window. “Ein mann! Ein mann! In der garten!” A man! A man. In the garden! She could hardly speak. Robert went over to the window to look, but turned back to her with a puzzled expression. “He vas taking Louisa’s food, in da garten. Den, vhen I saw him, he came up to da porch and looked at me through the window. He just stared at me. Vhen I started to scream, he ran off.”
Robert’s eyes spoke for him. We were thinking the same thought. It was the same man whom I had seen, the same man who was in William’s pictures. But only I was convinced it was Friedrich Mueller.
“What’s happening to this town?” murmured Aunt Martha, more to herself than to us.
Elisabeth finally calmed down long enough to go upstairs. She got Dog out of William’s room to come sleep with her. She had fewer nightmares when Dog kept her company. Robert checked the locks on the doors. “Whoever it is, I don’t think he’ll be coming back.”
“Whoever it is, he is getting bolder. Maybe out of desperation. Especially after you started locking the church up,” I pointed out.
“Who could it be, Robert?” asked a nervous Aunt Martha.
“Just a drifter. A hobo. I’m sure he’ll be moving along soon, now that he knows he’s been spotted,” he reassured her.
I tried to go back to sleep, but it was a restless night for each of us, except for William who slept peacefully through the drama.
Surprisingly, Robert started the day especially cheerful despite missing sleep due to our strange nocturnal visitor. After lunch, his eyes distant and a little mysterious, he said he had an errand to run. Only Elisabeth could go with him, not even William and Dog. Elisabeth scrambled into the car, happy to be singled out though she had no idea where they were headed.
They were gone for hours. Finally, right before dinner, Robert’s Chrysler pulled into the driveway. I hurried to meet them at the kitchen door, curious about this mysterious errand. “Where have you been?” I asked him.
I looked behind Robert at someone getting out of the car beside Elisabeth. Elisabeth’s face was transformed. Her eyes sparkled. Her eyes had never sparkled! She had a broad grin on her face and took the hand of the boy, pulling him towards me. “Louisa! Here is my Danny! Da Reverend brought me my Danny!”
My eyes widened, and my expression changed from confusion to surprise to delight. I was stunned. Robert had never said a word to me about trying to bring Danny here! I looked at this boy standing in front of me, brown eyes large like Elisabeth’s, but soft whereas hers had been so hard. He was nearly as paper thin as she was, hair cut in a crew cut, thick horn-rimmed glasses that were held together on one side with a bent paperclip. A boy on the verge of becoming a man. He looked at me shyly, politely waiting for a reaction, hoping for acceptance.
Elisabeth burst in between us. “Look, Danny. Here is dat noisy baby dat I told you about.”
I handed baby Meg to Elisabeth, and took Danny’s face in my hands. “Welcome to our home, Danny. To your new home.” I reached over and pulled him into my arms and held him for a long time.
“See, Danny? I told you she vould vant you.” Elisabeth dragged Danny inside to find William and Dog and Aunt Martha. Right before she closed the door behind him, she hurried back to my side and whispered, “Now Danny knows dat he is not alone.”
Robert closed the car door and walked up to me, a sheepish grin on his face. “You don’t mind, do you? I didn’t think you’d mind. She talked about him so much, and when I found out that he didn’t have any relatives…well…after Alice. Well, do you remember when you told me that everyone wants to be found?”
I nodded, dizzy with the surprise of it all.
“I realized you were right.” He grinned. “Like always. So that very day I sent the Red Cross Tracing Service a telegram, and next thing I knew…they sent me back a telegram. Danny was going to be transferred to the Displaced Persons Bureau in Germany that week because they had given up on locating any of his relatives. That very week! Talk about providence. And then the Red Cross expedited some paperwork…and the judge’s nephew helped with the red tape…and suddenly I received news that they were on their way. I didn’t have much notice. But you don’t mind, do you? The more, the merrier, isn’t that right?” He searched my eyes for the answer.
I smiled. “Of course I don’t mind.” Then I saw the “they” that Robert referred to. In the car was another man, waiting. Slowly, cautiously, he stepped out of the car. He smiled a little and tipped his head toward me.
When I saw his face, dread rose in my throat like bile. My heart started racing.
Robert noticed that I noticed him. He turned to the man and said, “Forgive my manners. Louisa, this is Karl. Karl Schneider. He’s the gentleman from the Red Cross who was kind enough to escort Danny to America.”
“Hello, Mrs. Gordon,” Karl Schneider said politely, as if we’d never met before.
Robert glanced nervously at the kitchen. “I’d better get in and check on Aunt Martha. This will be a bit of a shock for her. Excuse me for a moment.” He gave a nod to Karl and went into the kitchen.
Karl walked up to me. “Hello, Annika.” His voice was gentle.
I felt my cheeks grow warm. Hot, actually. “Karl, what are you doing here?” I stammered.
“I volunteered to be the Red Cross escort to bring Danny to Copper Springs.”
“But…why?” I asked, nervously glancing behind me through the kitchen window to see where Robert was. I turned back to Karl, narrowing my eyes suspiciously. “Why did you come? Why are you here?”
“I had some news for you. Good news. And when Reverend Gordon’s telegram arrived, well, it seemed like a wonderful opportunity to deliver the news in person.”
He stepped closer to me, eyes dancing with delight. “Annika, I made you a promise and I intend to keep it. I have a lead on Friedrich Mueller. He’s here, I’m sure of it, somewhere in Copper Springs.”
Chapter Fourteen
Karl Schneider seemed in no hurry to leave. After dinner, Robert politely offered to let him stay at our home. Thankfully, as if on cue, just after Robert extended the invitation to Karl, baby Meg started to wind up like a siren. Elisabeth showed Danny how to put cotton in his ears. Aunt Martha scooted upstairs to listen to her radio show. Dog scratched at the door to go outside. Only William seemed unaffected.
“Does she do that often?” Karl asked, looking horrified.
“Oh yes!” I answered, hoping that would convince him to decline Robert’s invitation.
Karl quickly insisted that he planned to stay at the Copper Queen Hotel in Bisbee. The louder Baby Meg got, the more eager Karl looked to leave. Robert volunteered to drive him over to Bisbee but Karl insisted that he would find his own means.
Robert started to tell him that there were no such means in Copper Springs but I interrupted him. “Karl found his way to Copper Springs, Robert. He can certainly find his way to Bisbee. Even back to Germany.” From the way Robert’s eyebrows shot up, my words must have come out harsher than I intended. I tried to smooth the look on my face.
“Nonsense,” Robert said, frowning at me. “Borrow my car, Karl. I won’t need it for a few days.”
“Thank you, Reverend. I’ll take good care of it and return it soon. I plan to stay in the area for a while and take a much needed holiday.”
I glared at Karl but he avoided my eyes.
As we settled Danny into William’s room, Elisabeth actually volunteered to help change sheets, show Danny where to keep his toothbrush in the bathroom, and even helped him to unpack,
which didn’t take long.
As I studied her face, I realized that I had never seen her look happy, truly happy, before this evening. Robert gave her that by bringing Danny here. He gave her happiness.
William, too, was beaming. He had the older brother he never knew he wanted.
We found some old pajamas of Robert’s for Danny to wear, though the pants legs folded in puddles around his ankles. I took Danny’s tattered clothes downstairs so Aunt Martha could wash them for school in the morning. She looked the clothes over and shook her head.
“The next time we go to Bisbee, we’ll have to get Danny some new clothes,” I said.
Aunt Martha picked up the clothes with two fingers. “Well, that Danny has done something no one else could do.”
“What is that?”
“Elisabeth finally stopped talking. Not a word during dinner. She just stares at him as if she was seeing Lazarus back from the dead.”
She was right. Elisabeth’s eyes followed Danny’s every move as if she thought she was dreaming and might wake up.
Later, in my bedroom, after baby Meg gave up her last howl for the night and fell into a sleep so deep that an explosion couldn’t wake her, the time had come to tell Robert about the past Karl and I shared, but I…I just couldn’t make myself do it. Not now.
Soon, though.
Maybe, I reasoned, Karl might just return to Germany.
Or maybe, just maybe, it could be true that Karl was close on the trail of Friedrich Mueller.
In my mind, Karl’s only redeeming feature was that he was willing to pursue Herr Mueller. The judge’s nephew, on whom rested my greatest hope for justice, showed no interest despite my repeated pleas. Repeated badgering, Robert would call it, if he knew, which was exactly why he didn’t know I was still trying to locate Herr Mueller. Last month, the judge’s nephew sent me one terse, typed reply: “Find proof, Mrs. Gordon. Then, we’ll talk.”
Perhaps Karl had discovered irrefutable evidence. As I brushed out my hair, I decided to write to the judge’s nephew tomorrow, imploring him to come to Copper Springs at once.
In the morning, Elisabeth and I walked Danny to the high school to register him for tenth grade. Mrs. Olasky’s eyebrows were raised in alarm as we entered her office. “Another one?” she asked, looking distressed, as she pulled out registration forms to fill out.
I steeled myself for a three o’clock phone call from the school, expecting a litany of complaints about Danny just as there were for Elisabeth. But the call never came. I went outside with baby Meg to watch for their homecoming. After a while, I saw Danny turn the corner, reading a book as he walked, with Elisabeth hurrying behind to keep up with his long stride. In the kitchen, Danny ate a snack, then two more, went straight up to his room to do his schoolwork, finished, came downstairs and asked if he could help.
Aunt Martha raised an eyebrow at Elisabeth, sitting at the kitchen table with her school books spread open. She still hadn’t even started her homework. Before Aunt Martha could think up a chore, William offered to show Danny around town. Elisabeth slammed her math book shut and hopped out of her chair to join them but Aunt Martha pointed at her empty chair. “Sit. Do your spelling.”
Elisabeth glared at her but plopped back down in her chair. She had found a worthy opponent in Aunt Martha. When it came to mule-headed stubbornness, I’d say they were evenly matched.
After dinner, Robert flipped on the radio to hear the evening news while we were all in the parlor. The announcer said a team of five hundred German scientists, led by Wernher von Braun, had been scooped up by the Americans after surrendering. The U.S. Army had installed the team in Texas to help develop rockets.
“Have you heard of Wernher von Braun, Danny?” Robert asked, noticing the thoughtful look on Danny’s face.
“Ja,” Danny replied, a serious look on his face. “Wernher von Braun created the first self-contained rocket.”
“That’s right! The V-2,” Robert said, looking pleased.
The ‘V’ was for ‘Vergeltungswaffen,’ meaning weapons of reprisal. Revenge. Robert had recently shown me an article about the V-2. One had recently been confiscated and brought to the United States to dissect; it was discovered to have been based on the design of American scientist Robert Goddard.
“Danny, how did you ever learn so much about rockets?” Robert asked, turning the volume down on the radio.
Danny cast a sideways glance at Elisabeth. “There vas a man in the camp who vas sent to Dachau from Mittelwerk.”
My eyes went wide. “Mittelwerk? The plant where they made the V-2’s?”
“Ja.” Danny nodded.
“Then he worked with von Braun?”
Danny looked uncomfortable. “For him. Not vit him.”
“He worked for von Braun?” Robert asked, practically jumping out of his chair.
“Ja,” Danny answered solemnly. Danny didn’t look quite as excited as Robert did.
Neither did I. To be fair to Robert, he didn’t know what Danny and I knew about Wernher von Braun or about Mittelwerk. Von Braun had joined the Nazi party in 1933 and later became an SS guard. Next to Mittelwerk was a concentration camp; Von Braun’s team used slave labor to help build the V-2’s.
“Where is your friend now?” I asked Danny, hoping the man was still alive.
Danny pushed his glasses up on his nose. “The Nazis used him for a while, to help create the rockets, then after he taught them all he knew, they sent him to Dachau. He vas a Jude.” He lowered his head, then lifted it up, symbolically.
I noticed he didn’t answer my question.
Danny looked at Robert. “I think that God sent me to the camp to meet that man. I vant to go to University and become a rocket scientist. But I vant to use them to go to outer space. Not to kill people, like the V-2.”
I glanced protectively over at Elisabeth. Her face looked tight, her lips in a thin, white line. Her fingernails dug into her palms. I could see her anger building; she looked as if she was just about to explode. In my mind popped a countdown: Five, four, three, two, one.
“Stop!” she shouted, just as I expected. “Stop talking about it!”
Danny calmly turned to her. “I don’t vant to ever forget, Elisheva,” he softly answered, calling her by the Hebrew version of her name. “Do you vant to forget the villager who threw apples at us over the fence every so often? Or the day vhen a voman threw a loaf of bread at us, sliced vit butter, vhen ve vent outside the barracks to collect lumber from the train? There vere good people, too, Elisheva.”
She jumped up and faced him, eyes blazing. “And do you vant to forget the day vhen you voke up in the barracks and found dat man dat you talk about—dat rocket man—vas dead? Do you vant to forget dat you took his clothes off and vore them yourself? Do you vant to forget how hungry ve vere? So hungry dat ve ate vood one day! No! I do not vant to remember dos tings.”
Unfazed by her outburst, Danny said quietly, “Elisheva, ve do not have to be chained to our memories. But ve must not forget.”
“Steig ab! Sprich nicht davon!” Stop talking!
“Elisheva, if ve do not remember, it could happen again to our people.”
She stared at him for a long moment, before she flew upstairs to her bedroom. I exchanged a sorrowful glance with Robert and followed her up, finding her face down on her bed.
“Go avay. I vant to be alone,” she sputtered as I rubbed her back.
I knew she wanted me there, but I also knew to stay silent. What could I say, anyway? What words could heal that hurt?
Soon, she rolled over and sagged onto me, sobs racking through her tiny body. She began to weep, great heartbreaking cries. A healing cry, I hoped.
Later that night, Robert turned toward me in bed, head propped up on his elbow. “Louisa, were you ever as hungry as Danny and Elisabeth? So hungry you would eat wood?”
I switched off my bedside lamp and lay facing the ceiling. “No, not like that.”
“But you were hungry?”
“Yes. Often.”
“I remember how thin you were when you arrived here. The bones of your wrist were as light and delicate as my mother’s china.”
“No longer,” I said, holding my hand up in the air. I had gained plenty of weight since moving to America. And, as Aunt Martha frequently pointed out, I still hadn’t lost extra weight from my pregnancy.
“I’m so sorry.”
I glanced at him in the dark. “It was in the past, Robert. And it’s in the past for Elisabeth and Danny.”
He took my hand and kissed its palm, then held it close to his heart as he laid his head on his pillow.
Now, Louisa, I told myself. Now would be the time to tell him about Karl. Say it, Louisa.
But then I heard Robert’s steady breathing deepen into sleep.
Not tonight, then, but soon.
The next morning, before breakfast, Danny picked up William’s Slinky on the counter. “Interessant,” he murmured under his breath, looking at it with the same fascination that Robert had. He pulled it apart. “It must be based on Hooke’s law of physics.”
“Hooke?” Robert asked, putting down his coffee cup. “Robert Hooke?”
“Ja,” Danny answered knowledgably, eyes glued to the Slinky. “A scientist of the seventeenth century. His law explains these coil springs.” He glanced over at Robert. “The change in dimension is proportional to stress.” Danny continued to play with the Slinky, putting it on the top of the kitchen table, letting it roll down and continue on its path, undeterred by Dog’s persistent barking.
Robert watched Danny with an unmistakable gleam of admiration shining in his eyes.
Even Aunt Martha seemed pleased Danny had joined our family. Well, pleased would be a strong adjective to describe Aunt Martha. Not unpleased might be more accurate. Somehow, though, I think her sweetening temperament had more to do with the judge’s frequent visits to the kitchen than with Danny’s arrival.
Later that day, the judge found me at the clothesline hanging up diapers. “Louisa, any chance that you know of something Martha is particularly fond of?”
The Copper Series Page 44
