Anna's Crossing

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  “A tongue as tart as a green apple, I see.” Georg burst out with a laugh. “I’d be delighted.” His eyes swept down her figure and returned to rest at her chest.

  She spun on her heel to turn her back on him. Him and his roving eyes.

  Georg moved around their temporary dwelling and frowned at the sight of the bulky household goods, the chimney backs and scythes, shovels and iron pots and frying pans, crosscut saws, axes and hatches. “So much, so much. This will cost you a fortune to transport.” He pointed to Christian. “I have a suggestion that will save you money. And time.” He clapped his pudgy hands. “Time and money!” He wheeled around to find Anna. “Girl! Come translate.”

  Anna explained what Georg had in mind and Christian’s eyes lit up at the thought of saving money.

  “I will trade your used goods for new ones of the same kind,” Georg said. “I can get the same items in lots of dozens, tightly packed so it won’t look like you have as much. You won’t run the risk of the captain refusing your passage.” He peered at Christian, who was looking to Anna to explain. “They can do that, you know. Refuse your passage. The captain’s word is law.” Georg folded his large arms over his chest. “And that would mean you must wait for another ship. Soon it will be late in the season.” He glanced around the tent. “It would be a pity to lose a chance to sail with Captain Stedman.”

  That name meant something to Christian. His eyes went wide. “We are sailing under John Stedman?”

  “Well, close,” Georg said, wagging his big chins. “Captain Charles Stedman. John Stedman’s brother.” John Stedman had a reputation among the Palatinate Mennonites as a blue-water captain, and word had trickled to the tiny Amish church of Ixheim. Captain Stedman had safely transported hundreds of German Mennonites from the Rhine Valley to the colonies. Christian excused himself and drew into a knot with a group of men, standing shoulder to shoulder, to confer.

  Anna watched Georg Schultz observe them and wondered if he looked at the men of her church and assumed they were all alike, long beards jerking, big felt hats flapping in the wind. From where she stood, they certainly looked alike, sounded alike, acted alike. But Anna could see how different they really were: Josef Gerber, a bulky, gentle man with a toddler in each arm, both towheaded, with straight-edge bangs above their nearly white eyebrows. Flat-faced Simon Miller, his hair and beard black as a crow. Lean and lanky Isaac Mast. Next to him was his gangly, sixteen-year-old son Peter, a fuzz of whiskers circling his chin to celebrate his recent wedding to Lizzie. And then there was Christian, their leader, bald and bespectacled with a long beard on his chin that was as tangled as a bird’s nest. The men’s heads bent together to hear Christian, shorter than all of them, and quieter too, but when he spoke, others always listened.

  Yes, the men were different in many ways, but underneath they were much the same, in all the things that mattered most: faith and family and tradition.

  Just then, as if they’d been given some invisible signal, there was a great nodding of heads and dipping of beards. Christian strode over to Georg Schultz to give him permission to trade off most of their household goods. Pleased, Georg Schultz promised him new goods would be waiting at the docks tomorrow to be loaded into the hold of the Charming Nancy.

  Anna hoped Georg Schultz’s word could be trusted, as they were entirely dependent on the Neulander. She thought back to warnings Jacob Bauer had written about Neulanders: they received a handsome commission on each passenger they brought to the ship, as well as free passage, so they were not always a reliable source of information.

  That night, as Anna lay on her pallet, she could hear the familiar voices of Christian and a few other men as they sat by the fire, talking over the day, in good spirits now that the journey was finally getting under way. Dorothea slept peacefully beside her. Even Felix seemed cheerful tonight. Anna felt the opposite—a rush of loneliness and longing.

  As she looked up at the stars, sparkly diamonds on black velvet, she tried to come up with a plan to get back home.

  June 28th, 1737

  Felix Bauer thought he might explode from nervous excitement. Tomorrow they would be climbing aboard a boat—a ship!—and sailing to the other side of the world.

  He wished his mother and Anna were more excited about this sea journey. His mother, well, he wasn’t sure she knew or even cared where she was since they had left Ixheim. And Anna tried to act like they were off on a jaunt to a neighbor’s house, nothing more. But Felix saw through her. She was no Catrina Müller, putting on performances. Anna had only one or two faces, maybe three, nothing hidden, nothing exaggerated. She never once said how exciting the trip would be. She just said that going was something whose time had come. That it had to be done.

  Maria Müller, Catrina’s mother, had no hesitation about sharing her opinion. She didn’t want to leave Ixheim and didn’t mind if everybody knew her feelings. It struck Felix as funny when Maria would start out saying, “I’ve kept quiet long enough” and then out would come another list of worries about the journey ahead. She liked to repeat horror stories she’d heard from some of the Mennonites who were waiting in the tent city, like they were, to book passage on a ship. Esther Wenger, a Mennonite, told Maria about a ship that ran completely out of food. “They left Rotterdam with one hundred fifty on board,” Maria told Christian, “and they arrived with only fifty persons alive.” Felix lurked nearby, fascinated by the gruesome tale. “In the end, they had to eat rats. Rats!”

  Christian’s spectacles flashed her a warning, but by suppertime, everybody knew everything. The notion of running out of food was a particularly frightful one, stirring up the mothers, so Christian decided that as a safety measure, they would take additional provisions on the ship. “We will not go hungry,” he reassured the anxious mothers. That afternoon, he and Josef Gerber set out to buy smoked meat, cheese, butter, peas, barley, and zwieback from the stores in Rotterdam that catered to ship passengers. Felix tagged along to carry the purchases, happy to have an excuse to get away from Catrina, who was always pestering him about one thing or another.

  Christian Müller, Felix observed, had an impressive way of ignoring his wife. He would tilt his head and nod as if he was listening carefully to Maria’s woes, then turn his attention to something else entirely. Felix would like to try to manage the horrible Catrina as skillfully, especially since he would be stuck with her for the next few months. Just this morning, he had stopped peeling potatoes for one moment—hardly one minute—because he had spotted a long line of ants and wondered where they were headed.

  Catrina noticed. “Felix needs help,” she said in a loud voice.

  “I do not!” Felix said, but what he was thinking was, A pox on her! He picked up his peeling knife, sat down again with the stupid potatoes, crossed his eyes at Catrina, and she promptly told her mother.

  Catrina was born with an eyeball that was kind of lazy. Instead of looking where it should be looking, it floated off to the side. She’d tried exercises, looking this way, then that, up and down, down and up. Anna’s grandmother gave her a patch to wear on her good eye to make the lazy one work, but nothing helped. Felix had perfected a way to get even with Catrina: whenever she talked to him, he would act flustered, as if he didn’t know which eye to look at, which made her all the madder.

  Catrina Müller was the only blight on this trip.

  No. There was one more. His worry about his mother. She was quiet and sad and would eat hardly at all. And she was always tired. She would sleep the day away if Anna let her. When she was awake, there was fear in her eyes, fear of the far-off. Felix did what he could to cheer his mother up, but nothing seemed to help. Anna said that being reunited with his father was the only thing that would help his mother. But that was still a long time away.

  Tonight, Felix stayed up practically all night long picturing what lay ahead. First, he considered the other side of the world: America. It was hard to have an idea of what it would be like—in his mind, the world he knew in Ixheim kep
t fanning out around him. So he would shift his imagination to the world nearly at hand—the sea journey. He saw himself high in the crow’s nest on the ship, shielding his eyes from the sun with one hand, searching, searching, searching for the first sign of land. He spotted pirates and whales, and the captain praised his keen eyesight. He shimmied down the long poles, just like the other sailors did, and climbed the ropes like a monkey. Even better, he saw himself behind the big wheel in a ferocious storm, saving the ship from running aground.

  All winter, Johann had read stories of sailing on the high seas, spinning tales and igniting his imagination of what the journey to the New World would be like. Whenever he thought of Johann, dozens of times a day, his stomach hurt. When he had something he wanted to tell Johann and had to remind himself that his brother wasn’t here anymore, his head hurt. When he thought of all that Johann was missing, his heart hurt.

  One thing hadn’t changed. Felix would see his father at the end of this adventure. He imagined his father—a big, tall man with a long salt-and-pepper beard—waiting on the dock for their ship to sail in. Felix would spot him first, naturally, and gallop down the gangplank into his arms, stretched out wide for his son to run into them. Everything would be all right again.

  Almost everything.

  3

  June 29th, 1737

  There were so many rivers here, fast-flowing streams in a hurry to wind around the city triangle of Rotterdam and spill into the sea. Anna trailed along in the line of Amish who followed Christian Müller, and remembered that Johann had told her on a cold winter afternoon that Rotterdam was once nothing but a small fishing village. “Now it’s the main access from Europe to England.”

  And now to America.

  Anna had never been to a city. She had never been anywhere but her small German village. Now, standing on a rise that overlooked Rotterdam, looking out at the great hulls of ships in the harbor, the tall buildings that impaled the smoke and steam and heat haze, listening to the cacophony of shouting people and squeaking chains, she didn’t know whether she found it beautiful or frightening. It was a much bigger world than she had thought possible.

  Today, at long last, they were finally going to board the ship and set sail for the New World. Georg Schultz had been surprisingly true to his word. Yesterday, their household belongings had been placed in the hold of the ship for ballast as Christian and Josef Gerber and Isaac Mast counted everything.

  The only belonging Anna cared about was her rose, wrapped carefully in burlap that she moistened with water each day. This rose would not be kept deep in the ship’s dark hold. She kept it with her, in a basket by her side, at all times.

  As they left the tent city to head toward Rotterdam’s harbor, Anna noticed a group of women drenching their dirty linen in the river and slapping it against the rocks. The women, with their sleeves rolled up to reveal strong, red arms, skirts pulled high, feet bare to spare their shoes, were gossiping, cackling, singing as they washed. Anna felt a sweeping sense of loss, missing all that was familiar. Simple everyday tasks—washing clothes in the kettle with her grandmother, hanging them on a wooden clothesline, bringing the sheep down the hillside, gardening beside her grandfather—they seemed so precious to her. When would life feel familiar again? Would it ever?

  “Anna? Are you all right?” Felix stood in front of her, alarm sparking in his blue eyes. “Is your leg hurting?”

  She walked with a slight limp, a remnant from a childhood accident, but that wasn’t the reason she had slowed to a stop without realizing it and had fallen behind. “I’m thinking too much is all.” Gently she brushed the hair out of his eyes. She hardly had to reach down to do so anymore, he was getting that big. He would be nine years old come winter. “Where is your hat?”

  Felix’s hands flew up to his bare head. “Oh no! It must have blown off!”

  “So, boy, you finally noticed,” Maria Müller said, holding out Felix’s black hat. A woman of considerable girth, she consistently lagged behind the others and brought up the rear of the group. Fitting, Anna thought, because she knew—why, everyone knew—that Maria was unhappy about leaving home. Anna took the hat from Maria and plopped it on Felix’s head. She gave him a look. “You must not lose it. Your mother has no extra money to replace it.”

  All the Amish had barely enough money left to book their passage on a merchant ship—one thousand guilders per person.

  At least Felix knew better than to fuss right then, with Maria looming, for he had a contrite look on his face without his usual commotion.

  As they neared the wharves, the streets grew more congested, packed with people buying and selling, begging and thieving. Church bells clamored from every street corner, vendors bargained, dogs barked, cats slithered, shoppers stomped about on thick clogs, holding their hems up from mud puddles. Anna’s nose filled with the smells of coils of sausage ropes, bins of produce, bags of spices, beeswax candles, fine perfumes, sides of raw meat. Peddlers called out their wares: turnips, spring carrots only slightly withered, salted cod, salt-cured pork, salted beef, salt! “Vissen, Vissen!” a rosy-cheeked gray-haired woman shouted with a tray of silvery dried fish, laid out like knives, hanging from her neck.

  Carrying their belongings in the stifling, humid heat, the Amish walked on the market fringe toward the docks, staring up at the great hulls of ships. Soon the air brought a new scent Anna didn’t recognize: a salty, briny, tangy smell. The sea. How curious!

  When they reached the docks, they found a port busy with afternoon activity. Orders were shouted, drums rolled, pulleys squeaked, timbers creaked, waves lapped against the pilings. Even Anna, who knew nothing about ships and sailors and sea journeys, could sense excitement in the air.

  It took a number of tries with Dutch stevedores to find out where the Charming Nancy was docked, but the Amish eventually made their way toward the ship through a jumble of barrels, shipping crates, stacked cargo, impatient seamen.

  And then they got their first glimpse of the ship that was to sail with them to America. There, at the far end of a dock, rocking gently on the waves of the harbor, was the Charming Nancy.

  Light rain had been spattering on the deck on and off since morning, but the clouds were beginning to burn off. There was an urgency to get the voyage under way as Captain Stedman intended to sail on today’s outgoing tide. Sweaty stevedores filled the hold with trunks and crates and barrels as Bairn leaned over the open hatch. It was critical that the hold be well packed, highly organized, and expertly balanced to keep the keel settled deep in the water. Additional provisions would be acquired in England; afterward, there wouldn’t be room in the hold to swing a cat by the tail.

  Employing nearly the full extent of his Dutch vocabulary, Bairn shouted that the hold looked good and to keep going. Like he did in every port, he had picked up enough foreign language to communicate what needed to be said to the stevedores. He climbed the ladder to the lower deck, where the passengers would stay. If all went well, this would be the last time he would be in this part of the ship until it reached Port Philadelphia. He, as ship’s carpenter, along with the first mate and the captain, would never venture down below except for an emergency. The captain’s Great Cabin and the officers’ quarters might be small, but they were in the stern of the ship where fresh air came in through the windows, providing relief from the pervasive stench of the lower deck and bilge, and they were protected from crashing waves.

  Bairn climbed the companionway stairs to the upper deck. He heard a strange squeal—an animal in distress—and bolted over to the railing. He watched in disbelief as he saw a stevedore try to lead a large pig up the gangplank with a rope around its neck. The pig wasn’t cooperating. It eased back on its haunches and then down on its forelegs, refusing to budge off the dock, squealing unhappily. Bairn gripped the rail and leaned over the edge, watching the scene unfold with amusement. The stevedore tried to pick the pig up, but two hundred pounds of hog was too much for even the goliath strength of the man. The pig bur
ied its head under its front legs. The stevedore pushed the pig from behind and Bairn started chuckling. When the stevedore tried rolling the pig up the gangplank, he burst out laughing.

  If he wasn’t in a hurry to get this ship loaded and ready to sail the channel, he could have stood there all afternoon, enjoying the sight. Instead, he went to the galley and took a handful of oats from the crock, then went down the gangplank. The stevedore had worked himself to a frenzy. Bairn held one hand up to stop him from his wrestling match with the pig. He took the rope leash from the stevedore and spread oats up the gangplank. Like a docile dog on a lead, the pig followed the oats trail straight up the gangplank. When it reached the deck, Bairn tied the pig’s rope to a bollard. The stevedore ambled up the gangplank with an embarrassed look on his red face.

  “Y’need to think the way a pig thinks t’get it t’do what you want it t’do.”

  The stevedore didn’t comprehend what Bairn was saying, but he understood that he meant him no disrespect. He shrugged, then grinned, and Bairn smiled with him.

  “Bairn! Get the captain and get down here!”

  He spun around to locate the voice and saw the recruiter, Georg Schultz. If there was anyone who could set his teeth on edge, it was Schultz. To most, Schultz appeared to be a carefree fellow: a cockalorum, a jolly little man who drank for the pleasure of it. Bairn knew those small eyes bespoke a cunning shrewdness; he knew that every action Schultz took was motivated by money. He was a cagey character who was able to import a steady stream of innocent Germans, vetting them with visions of a land of milk and honey just waiting to be enjoyed on the other side of the ocean. Ultimately bilking them out of their hard-earned savings. Along the way he alienated more than a few people, but Schultz managed to keep the ship captains happy by filling the lower decks with passengers.

  Down on the dock, Schultz was waving frantically to Bairn. Beside him was a long line of bonneted and bearded people in dark, somber clothing, milling silently about on the dock, peering up at the ship. They were known on the docks as the Peculiar People. He scrutinized the faces, wondering what they were thinking as they waited to board. Did they feel fearful? Anxious? Certainly, they must be judgmental of the profane deckhands. But he read no hostility, no contempt, little anxiety, mostly simple curiosity.