Bonds, Parris Afton

by The Flash of the Firefly

  She was aware of steps behind her. "Good morning, Mrs. Maren," Peter said, catching up with her. He politely removed his floppy hat, and a thatch of carroty hair fell across his forehead. With a callused hand he shyly pushed it back. "I thought you might like to know we should reach Adelsolms tomorrow―by noon most likely."

  A chill came over Anne. The end of her journey. The beginning of her life as Otto's wife. Cold thoughts―like the cold day.

  "Thank you, Peter," Anne said with a warm smile in spite of the emptiness she felt. "We can't get there too soon―with so many people sick. I'm worried about Frau Von Roemer. She's been―"

  "Peter," broke in the petulant voice.

  Anne watched with mild amusement as the slim youth whirled to see seventeen-year-old Johanna Meusebach. Her icy blue eyes gave lie to the smiling red lips. "Can you help me carry water from the river?"

  Caught between the two young women, Peter twisted his hat in his hands. "The buckets are so heavy," Johanna prompted.

  "Excuse me, Mrs. Maren," Peter muttered ,moving to join the tiny but voluptuously curved young girl. Johanna tossed her head at Anne, her crown of wheat-colored braids glistening with raindrops like the tiara of an ice princess.

  Somewhat dejectedly Anne proceeded to the Von Roemer wagon. She knew it was not only Peter's attentiveness that generated Johanna's dislike for her. There were other factors. Anne had known all along she would be out of place there in Adelsolms among a foreign nationality―different customs, different language, and even different religion though her parents, lapsed Catholics, had not really objected to Otto's Evangelical Protestantism. And yet, not all the Germans were like Gustav Jurgens or Johanna Meusebach. Not all disapproved of her. Perhaps with time ...

  Anne turned her thoughts to the Von Roemer woman. Had Sophie, the Dresden―like doll who had no more business crossing the Texas wilderness than she herself had, survived the night?

  Elise, a blond child who was all legs, pulled back the canvas cover at Anne's soft call. One look at the child's large blue eyes, so much like her mother's, told Anne Sophie would not make it ...that Elise would be among the countless other orphans whose parents had not survived the rigors of the trip.

  The short, fair lashes quivered. Confusion at the presence of death paled the usually cherry cheeks. "Meine Mutter―she iz blue―like Vater vaz―and she does not catch her breath gut."

  Quickly Anne pulled herself up onto the wagon seat and moved past Elise into the dim interior. There, covered by a threadbare quilt was Sophie's still form. Anne dug beneath the quilt and felt for a pulse at the cold wrist. But there was none. Still now forever was the laughing young wife who had looked forward to this journey as if it had been a great adventure.

  Anne laid a hand over Elise's small, braided head. "Go wake Delila, dear. Tell her to fix you some of her hoecakes."

  When Elise had gone, Anne carefully closed Sophie's delicately veined lids, shivering at the cold, clammy feel of the skin. Then she pulled the quilt up over Sophie's body until it covered the head of glorious, flaxen hair.

  Near Sophie lay the thin, tattered textbook Sophie's husband, Kurt, had brought from Prussia. A German-English dictionary that Anne had more than once overheard Elise painstakingly reciting to her mother. Anne picked it up, thumbed through the pages, and wondered at this determined family who had left Prussia under religious persecution from the Catholic forces there and who had had such high hopes for Elise.

  And now, with both parents dead, what would become of the girl? Anne knew her own mind must be touched by the fever as she tucked the dictionary inside her cloak. She must be half-crazy to consider taking on a child when she still felt herself a child in some ways. And what would Otto say about bringing an orphan into their home? Well, she'd worry about that later.

  "Crazy! Verrückt, meine Liebe!" Matilda repeated, clicking her false teeth and looking from Anne to Elise, who stood timidly at the side of the Scottish girl.

  "You know there's no more room in your wagon, Matilda. Why couldn't I drive the Von Roemer wagon? It'd be senseless to leave it behind to rot."

  "Und have you ever driven one, eh?"

  "It's useless, Miz Matilda," Delila said. "When dis chile gits it in her mind to do some'n, there ain't no stopping her. Stubborn as those oxen, she is."

  "What else can we do?" Anne asked of the old woman. "The other wagons are already full of sick people and orphans like Elise. Besides, driving a wagon can't be too much more difficult than Papa's buggy."

  It was worse than she could ever have imagined. It was one thing to drive the light buggy on the occasional trips to the various shops in Bridgetown or in making the customary social calls to the other plantations, but quite another to wield a bullwhip over four oxen. Anne's hands became raw from handling the reins in spite of the cotton gloves, and her shoulder blades ached with every move.

  Elise, sitting beside her, had tried to help, tried to show her how her father had flicked the whip over the oxen's back. And Delila had repeatedly gotten out of the wagon and waded through the mud to pull at the oxen's yoke, muttering oaths in the ancient Swahili dialect of her people.

  When they finally made camp that evening at a horseshoe bend of the San Bernard, just a half day's journey from Adelsolms, Anne crawled into the back of the wagon and fell asleep. It was Delila who aroused her what seemed only minutes later.

  "Baby, I've saved some fried liver and hard bread for you. Come git it 'fore it gits cold."

  Anne pushed herself up to a sitting position and brushed the loose strands of hair from her face. Outside a gray, eerie mist concealed the other wagons. "Elise―has she eaten yet?"

  "Yes'm. That chile sitting at the campfire with that book. Says she's gonna learn English good ...and askin' me all sorts of questions. Glory be, Ah don't know how to read myself, much less answer her."

  "Then it's time you both learned, Delila. After I've eaten, we'll do some studying before the camp beds down."

  Delila looked at Anne slyly. "I think that young man, Peter, is waiting out there for you. A nicelooking fellow, he is. Of course, nutin like that Mr. Colin you been hankering after."

  Anne glanced up sharply at the big woman. "What makes you say that?"

  "Lordy, baby. Ah done raised you all these years. Don't you think ah ought ta know what's a goin' on in that noggin of yo's?"

  Anne struggled to stand up, giving indignant attention to the task of straightening her rumpled skirt. "Well, you're wrong. Colin is just an old friend. I'll probably never even see him again."

  Delila's velvet brown eyes glowed in the darkness of the wagon. "The obeah say different, Miz Anne."

  Lately when the black woman became like that, mumbling about her obeah, it had begun to unnerve Anne. She was no longer her mammy but some high priestess with supernatural powers. "And just what does your obeah say?" Anne asked, forcing a lightness to her words she did not feel.

  Delila's voice took on an eerie pitch. "Yo' Mr. Colin is in the night. The breath of them buffalo in the winter. What you see ain't there by the time you put out yo' hand. The one for you, Miz Anne, is as steadfast as 'dis prairie grass ...as lasting as them old oaks."

  Anne brushed past the woman. "You're getting too old, Delila, to meddle in voodoo!"

  VII

  The noon wind whipped her cloak about her long legs, biting through its velvet material, through her organza dress, to numb her bones. But Anne's body was no more numbed than her thoughts were as she stood looking across the San Bernard River as the few scattered huts perched on the chalk bluff.

  Sweet Jesus, was that Adelsolms? Was that the glorious town Otto had promised her he would build? Why, those miserable huts were covered with straw, with moss roofs. And where were the windows?

  A small hand slipped in hers. "Is that vhere ve'll live, Tante?" Elise asked, her eyes wide with disbelief.

  Anne stooped and put her arm around the girl's waist. "The men will build better homes later, dear, I'm sure. These huts are just to shelt
er us until crops can be put in. The crops must be put in first, or we'll have nothing to eat this fall."

  A figure appeared on the cliff, waving both arms, then began to run down a narrow trail that led to a crudely constructed dock. The sun gleamed on his mustard-colored hair. Several men scrambled down the trail behind him. As they reached the flat, grassy bank, Anne recognized the one in the lead as Otto.

  She watched the men as they fell to untying the flat-bottomed barge moored at the dock. And while they grappled with long wooden poles, slowly pushing the ferry closer, Anne felt as if a net were closing over her, ensnaring her, stifling her. "Run! Run!" her mind screamed out. And she knew she would not. She would not run home like a little girl. She was a grown woman now―with the responsibility of a six-year-old girl and an old black woman ...and a husband.

  But it was more than that which held her rooted there on the banks of the San Bernard. There was the image of Colin. Those emerald eyes that danced with merriment at some shared secret. Some day she would see him again. And that would be enough. That would keep her going.

  "Your husband should be most happy to see you, Frau Maren."

  Anne turned her head to meet Johanna's sapphire blue eyes, gleaming from narrowed slits. She was undoubtedly attractive with the braids coiled at each side of her head, emphasizing the slightly tilted eyes below thick, fair brows. Anne found it difficult to like the girl. She knew the girl returned the feeling and that Peter's friendship for herself had nothing to do with their mutual dislike.

  "I'm sure he will," Anne replied coolly and turned back to watch the approaching ferry.

  "It'z very thankful he vill probably be to learn that Brant Powers haz brought hiz bride to him."

  "Brant Powers?" Anne whirled to face the girl. Others from the wagon train were gathering at the bank, joyful to finally reach their destination, and Anne lowered her voice. "What do you know of Brant Powers? What does he have to do with ..."

  "Then again, your husband might not like it that hiz vife vas traveling alone with such a man."

  "I was not traveling alone with the man."

  Ignoring the dangerous flash in the gray eyes, Johanna continued. " 'A blackguard,' Zelda Jurgens told me. 'A pirate! And Frau Maren sleeping alone at nights vith that man! Vhat vill Herr Maren think?'"

  "That iz utter nonsense, Johanna," Matilda said, breaking in on the girl's mimicking of Zelda Jurgens. The old woman thumped her cane on the ground. "Frau Maren vaz properly chaperoned. And your Vater reprimanded you about Herr Powers because you vere flirting with him like some Dirne. Now get back to your family. Your Mutter needs your help."

  "That chile's name is trouble," Delila muttered after Johanna departed, casting one last spiteful glance at Anne.

  Trouble, Anne thought, was already here. Her husband moved through the crowd pressed around him with the two brothers, both jewelers, who had helped organize the Adelsolm immigration. Otto shook different hands in the crowd, but his lanky strides brought him ever closer to her. An expectant hush spread over the settlers as the two came face to face for the first time since their vows almost half a year before.

  "I'm relieved you made it safely," Otto said. His face was suffused with excitement. "I've been worried with these heavy rains."

  The settlers went back to the business of getting their wagons across the shallow river, and Matilda and Delila disappeared in the confusion with Elise. Anne was left alone with Otto. She looked at the face of her husband, splotched now with freckles by the harsh prairie sun. But it was not the freckled face of a boy, but a man―a man bent on a purpose, filled with dedication.

  Was this then what Delila had foreseen, her lasting oak? Was this what she herself had overlooked as she had sat and listened those many nights in Bridgetown to Otto as he told of his plans, showed her the way the town would be surveyed and laid out, described the large church that would one day enfold his congregation?

  "And you," he had finally said, "will be the fitting mate God has chosen for me. There is a strength and determination in your face. I have prayed about this and believe the Lord has led me to you, has picked you among other women to go with me into that primitive land, that Canaan, and save the souls of His children."

  At that moment, there in the plantation's garden, where the jasmine and the orange flowers permeated the very breath of the planter's daughter and the

  Evangelical minister, Anne found herself swayed by Otto's eloquence, moved by the zeal of his vision, eager to brave a new land as her parents had.

  But now, facing the fervor in Otto's pale blue eyes, she felt unaccountably shy―as shy as Peter had been with her. "It's good to be home, finally, Otto."

  There. She had said it. Had committed herself emotionally more than the vow she took could ever have done. She laid her hand upon his forearm and felt the involuntary tightening of the muscle. "Show me what you've done, Otto."

  "We've got so much more to do," he began, "but it is a start. The barge will eventually be used to haul cotton and corn down to Velasco. Hans and Rudi, they're the brothers who've been working with me, have put in a field of corn and cotton―though I fear these continuous rains will destroy our feeble efforts. Last week, we started work on the Vereins-Kirche―"

  "Wait, Otto. Not so fast. What is a Vereins―" Anne struggled with the last word.

  "A meeting place, dear. But we will use it for a fort, our church, a school. Look, there it is―off to your left, near the grove of acacia. Of course, it will look better, once we are finished."

  To Anne, the uncompleted structure of stone and wood looked like an eight-sided coffee mill, but she could sense Otto's pride. "I can see it will be a grand building, Otto―a fine place for your first church."

  And so the hesitant conversation continued as the couple walked side by side back to the wagons waiting to ford the river. Only as Anne explained the problems she had faced in traveling to Texas―the gale in the Gulf of Mexico, the missed connections at Velasco, and finally the hunger and exhaustion she had encountered upon meeting up with the wagon train―did she recall Elise.

  "So you see, Otto, since I didn't have a wagon of my own and Elise's parents were dead, moving into the Von Roemer wagon seemed the only thing to do." She stopped to face him. "Otto, you won't mind, will you, having Elise stay with us? She had nowhere else to go―and there are more children like herself ―orphans. You'll hear all about the wretched journey from the others. Something must be done to help these children."

  "Don't fret, Anne. Something will be done. An orphanage will be started. We could put Delila in charge of it. It would be the perfect solution for our problem with Delila. For you must realize she cannot continue as your servant woman here. It is most unacceptable. And by all means Elise Von Roemer may continue to live with us until an orphanage is completed. It is the least we can do for the less fortunate than we. But in the meantime there are more important things to do ..."

  The expression had flickered quickly across the thin, scholarly face, but still, in the full light of the February sun, Anne caught the look ...and knew it as one of relief. Relief that Elise would be staying with them. And Anne was thankful, for she had worried so that Otto would resent the presence of a child interrupting the time to be spent with his bride.

  The fire burned low in the stick and mud chimney that night, and Anne expected any moment the flimsy hut of moss-and-straw would catch fire. The fire's warm light did nothing to relieve the harshness of the place―a one-room cabin, without a ceiling or windows, though there were small gunholes at eye level. And the floor was of hardpacked dirt.

  But at least there was to cheer her, the familiar objects of her home that Otto had brought with him ...her mother's rocking chair, the wedding gifts of fine china, a lacy tablecloth, and the sheets she had so laboriously embroidered with the initial "M" in the long months she had waited for Otto to send word to her. Soft, luxurious sheets for a mattress of cornhusk.

  Over the quietness of the room came Otto's somber voice as
king the Lord's blessing on the food and thanking Him for safely delivering his wife to him.

  The meal was eaten in a leaden silence which was broken only once when Otto addressed Elise, who, with a testy Delila, sat on packing boxes in one comer awaiting their turn to eat. "You must be thankful, Fräulein, that we have been gracious enough to accept you into our home. But you must do your share of the work here. And there is much to do. Do you understand?"

  Elise's head nodded, swinging her long pigtails jerkily. Anne's heart went out to the child, who cried nightly in her sleep for her mother and father.

  As if regretting his severity, Otto added, "I know you are saddened by your parent's deaths, but it will not be so bad here. In doing God's will, we will find great joy ourselves."

  Her appetite depressed, Anne pushed away the buttermilk cornbread and stringy venison stew―the last of the meat Peter had shot two days before. From across the table Otto looked at her with sparse brows raised questioningly. "I suppose I'm tired," she told him.

  Her gaze slid across to Delila, who took the last of the cornbread from the Dutch oven and gave it to Elise. Reluctantly Anne admitted to herself she was grateful for the presence of the two. For the fearless tomboy who had climbed the high palm trees and swum nude in the secluded coves of Barbados knew apprehension there in the lost wilderness of Texas. There where Indians attacked settlers and people died from cold and exposure. And to think that in Barbados Otto had deemed Delila primitive for her voodoo.

  Anne rose. "I'll clear the table so they can eat," she said.

  Delila marched to the table, throwing Otto a huffy look. "Ah'll take care of those dishes, Miz Anne. You go to bed. You' done plumb worn out a fight'n with them oxen."