The Last April

by Belinda Kroll

  Karl shifted the pail from one hand to the other. “That makes sense. Everyone said the prison was four miles from the city. They must’ve been talking about Columbus. But I’ve never been there. Don’t think I made it a mile out of the prison before they gave up on me.”

  Gretchen opened the kitchen door. “Well, you walked far enough to collapse in my garden. I guess that was pretty far in your condition.”

  She set up a bowl on the table and spread cheesecloth on top of it. She took the milk pail from Karl and poured the bucket over the bowl to strain it of the fat, foam, and other surface dirt. Karl watched, fascinated. She motioned for him to open the ice box, which was little more than a metal box submerged in the ground to keep milk cool. He retrieved the empty glass bottle. Gretchen filled it with the cleaned milk and capped it. She rinsed the bucket out with water.

  “You were in the war,” she said finally. “Wouldn’t you have walked from battle to battle?”

  Karl followed as she trotted back to the barn. He said nothing as she grabbed a burlap bag and tossed the corn and watched the chickens scramble around for their share.

  “Do you think everyone’s serious about us marrying?” Karl asked instead of answering, since he did not know the answer.

  “My aunt will do anything to keep the family from ruin. She cares a lot about reputation. Mama’d be glad to be rid of me, even to a Confederate.” Gretchen laughed. “My papa’s the only one who saw me as worth anything. Even Werner thought I was his pesky sister who never could avoid trouble.”

  She hung the burlap bag on its nail. “It’s not like I look for trouble. I just… I don’t know. I have to learn things the hard way, I guess.”

  Karl nodded. “I live in that world.”

  Gretchen glanced at him over her shoulder, her expression suspicious.

  He held up his hands. “I mean it. If I could learn who I was, I would, wouldn’t I? Instead, I have to wait around. I have to make mistakes and put other people in danger. You think I enjoy this?”

  “Well, you’re a Confederate, aren’t you? Isn’t it a pleasure to know you could sentence three Unionist women to death for housing you?” Though the words were accusatory, Gretchen’s tone was genuinely curious.

  Karl sighed. “There were many reasons to be a Confederate. I knew southerners who were Unionist in the prison. I suppose you know Yankees who are sympathetic to their Confederate kin?”

  Gretchen shifted her weight and would not look at him, confirming his suspicion.

  “If there’s one thing I remember from the war and about prison, it’s that nothing’s as clear as we want to believe. It’s muddy. I heard Yankee boys complaining about how they went to war to save the Union, not to free the slaves.”

  Gretchen nodded. “That was why Werner left. All his friends went off to war when spirits were high. They were going to protect the Union, keep the states together.”

  “I don’t know why I went to war,” Karl admitted. “But I don’t have many thoughts about slaves or slavery, so I don’t know that I went off to protect the Confederacy.”

  Gretchen looked at him askance. “How do I know you’re not saying that to protect your own hide?”

  Karl shrugged. “I guess you don’t. What about your pa? Why did he leave?”

  Gretchen stiffened. “He went to war for moral reasons.”

  “Keeping the union together isn’t moral?”

  “Not if the union is corrupt. Which isn’t what Pa said was happening, but he did say the country was poisoned.”

  Karl rubbed his chin. There had been a book thumper in the prison that used to talk about slavery like it was poisoning the country. Something about a proclamation that was the first step to a true cleanse. “So your pa was abolitionist. What did he think of the… proclamation, then?”

  Gretchen stared at him, eyes wide. “What do you know about abolitionism and proclamations?”

  “Camp Chase.” He shrugged. “There were more than Confederates in that prison. There were defectors and deserters and all sorts of men there.” He scratched the bandage holding his head together. “Your brother might even be one of them, if he got all mad about the war changing under his feet. Have you asked?”

  “Have I—? Ooh, you shut your mouth,” Gretchen breathed, picking up her bucket and stomping to the other end of the garden. “My brother would never desert the army because of the proclamation. It didn’t even free the slaves in the Union, only the Confederate states. Who could get upset about that?”

  “What did I say?” Karl asked, tottering after her with his limp. “Didn’t mean to upset you. Wouldn’t be alive without your help.”

  “And Mama would love to count that in her list of reasons why I marry you and get out of her hair,” Gretchen said. “How can you remember stupid things like the proclamation, and abolitionists? What about your name?” She grabbed her skirts and scrambled to standing. “Who cares about why Werner and Papa went to war anyway? They’re gone, and they might never come back. But you,” she pointed her finger at him, “you’re here. And you might have killed the president. And I struck my pastor’s daughter, Karl! And—oh Lord, my pastor thinks I’m going to marry you!”

  Karl blinked, unsure what to do. He did not much care what the pastor or anyone else thought Gretchen was going to do. But he did want to know, more than he cared to admit, whether Gretchen thought he was worth marrying.

  Fifteen

  Monday, 17 April 1865 / Grove City, Ohio

  Gretchen skidded to a halt on the porch when she heard her mother and aunt arguing again. Arguing was all anyone did anymore. She had thought, with the war ending, that the arguments would stop.

  “Alina tells us that our Werner returns, and yet we are still harboring that… that criminal,” her mother said.

  “Either you believe Alina that Werner is coming home,” Tante Klegg said, “or you do not believe her, and I never want to hear her name again. I cannot listen to your hysterics about that girl’s betrayal much longer.”

  “You can listen a little longer. It has only been one day.”

  Tante Klegg snorted.

  “Whether Werner returns to us or not,” Gretchen’s mother insisted, “we still have the problem of the criminal.”

  “We do not know he is the criminal,” Tante Klegg said. She, like her sister, refused to name the man who murdered Mr. Lincoln.

  “It hurts my heart,” Gretchen’s mother said. “My son and husband went to war for Mr. Lincoln. Yet his killer pulls weeds with our daughter.”

  Gretchen inched closer to the window so she could peek into the kitchen.

  Tante Klegg rubbed her temples. “This is not our first war, or have you so soon forgotten?”

  An uncomfortable silence fell.

  Karl caught up with Gretchen on the porch. He bent, his hands on his knees and his shoulders heaving as he panted. Gretchen threw her hand over his mouth. She shook her head, hoping her mother and aunt did not know they were eavesdropping.

  Karl stopped breathing.

  Gretchen dropped her hand as if his lips burned her. Karl shoved his hands in his pockets. He would not look at Gretchen, which was fine by her because it was exasperating to feel embarrassed by a boy.

  “I know, I know, how could I forget? Our parents dying of cholera. Our poor brother Baldemar, conscripted to the army. Without your clever thinking, I never would have met Gregory. We would not be in America at all,” her mother said.

  Gretchen wiped her hands on her apron. She knew her mother and aunt had left Germany under sad circumstances, but that was it. She never would have guessed her grandparents had died of cholera. She had no idea she once had an uncle.

  What else had they kept from her?

  “Yes,” Tante Klegg said. “I have always taken care of you. Do you think I would risk all that we have for one of Gretchen’s schemes? I will figure something out with Karl.”

  “Well, if you know so much, what are we to do about the warden?” her mother asked.

&
nbsp; Karl dropped his hands from his pockets and pressed his ear to the wall. Gretchen exchanged a worried glance with him. Apparently, they had spent too much time in the barn and missed a warden’s surprise visit. What luck.

  Tante Klegg was silent.

  “He knows,” her mother said, insistent. “This warden, he comes to our farm because he knows we have this Karl.” She spat his name out like spoiled milk.

  “I do not think he was a warden at all,” Tante Klegg said. “He was a boy shaking in his boots. He did not want his captain to discover he lost prisoners during the exchange.”

  Gretchen held her breath. Maybe Karl was telling the truth after all that he was not Mr. Lincoln’s infamous killer. That should please her mother.

  “Who would honor those exchanges now that Mr. Lincoln is dead?” her mother said. “Why would we send one more murderer home to hunt after my husband and son?”

  “Because the exchange for Karl could have been for your husband or son,” Tante Klegg said.

  Gretchen’s mother gasped, though she could not tell whether it was from shock, dismay, or disgust.

  “That boy searches the countryside because he lost three prisoners,” Tante Klegg said. “It was an even exchange, a Unionist for a Confederate, and the Confederates want what they think is due to them.”

  Muffled sniffles came from Gretchen’s mother.

  “They do not know we have Karl,” Tante Klegg said.

  Gretchen peeked through a gap in the doorway hinge. Tante Klegg had her back to the door, but it was clear she held her crying sister in her arms.

  “Selfish, these men,” Gretchen’s mother whined into her aunt’s shoulder. “Running around shooting at each other to prove a point. I cannot understand them.”

  “We are not meant to, else we would be men ourselves,” Tante Klegg said.

  “Do you believe if we returned Karl to Camp Chase, Gregory or Werner would come home?” Gretchen’s mother asked.

  Gretchen shivered, seeing them for the first time. They were not her aunt and mother only, she realized. They were sisters. They were immigrants in a strange land holding onto all that remained of their family.

  “I do not think it is possible to know,” Tante Klegg said.

  Gretchen’s mind raced. She had not thought Karl could be a deterrent to her brother’s and father’s return. Last she knew, they were not prisoners of war.

  They could return before Karl left, though. Gretchen shivered. For all she knew, Werner and her father might start the war again at the sight of a Confederate in their house.

  If there was one thing Karl had taught Gretchen, it was that nothing matched expectation. She could not expect her father to be the gentle philosopher or her brother the family favorite.

  Gretchen looked up to find Karl watching her, wary. She motioned for him to follow her as she tiptoed back to the barn.

  Once out of earshot, Gretchen grabbed Karl’s arm. “I don’t think you’re John Wilkes Booth!”

  He looked down at her hand on his arm. “Who?”

  Gretchen frowned, not understanding why he was not as excited as she. She dropped her hand as realization struck.

  Of course, Karl would not know the name of John Wilkes Booth. He did not have access to their newspaper; her mother ensured that. And no one ever mentioned the murderer’s name out of superstitious spite. One did not invoke the devil’s name.

  “John Wilkes Booth,” Gretchen explained. “The man who killed the president.”

  Karl nodded. “Guess it is a good thing to know who I’m not, on the way to knowing who I am.”

  Gretchen shrugged, the excitement wearing off. Karl made a good point. She only knew who he was not. She did not know if he was a killer, philosopher, farmer, businessman. He was a nameless, hopeless, Confederate.

  “He’s the one who killed the president?” Karl asked. “Your president?”

  “Yours too,” Gretchen reminded him. She punched his arm and he stumbled. “The Confederates surrendered last week.”

  Karl cleared his throat, rubbing where she hit him. “Guess I should work on not saying things like that.”

  “You can’t say things like that around Alina or Pastor Baumbach. Or anyone. You can’t make mistakes like that. You’re a part of the Union now.”

  Karl traced the edge of the bandage still wrapped near his temple. Something about what she said rang in his mind. When he left the prison, he could not leave until pledging his allegiance.

  “Part of the Union,” Karl echoed. He shook his head. He lost the memory, whatever it was. He kicked a tuft of grass and shoved his hands in his pant pockets. “You said your pastor thinks you’re marrying me.”

  Gretchen planted her hands on her hips. “And?”

  He did not like her accusatory tone. “I’m asking what you want. If you want to marry me.”

  Gretchen’s expression was wary.

  “Well, I mean, if you want to pretend you’re marrying me. So I can get strong enough to leave.”

  Gretchen took one of her braids and fussed with the string keeping it together. “I can’t lie to my pastor.”

  “Your family seemed fine lying to him, and in the church no less. And you’ve lied plenty since I’ve known you. What’s so different?”

  “I don’t lie to my pastor,” Gretchen insisted. “And I don’t think my aunt and mother lied to him, either. As long as you’re around, they’re going to marry me to you.”

  He saw the determined glint in her eye. Gretchen was going to help him; that was for sure. Either she would help him remember, or help him leave. Anything to avoid to marrying him. Karl knew he should have felt glad—relieved even. So it was more than a mite uncomfortable that what Karl felt was stung.

  Our National Affliction

  Tuesday, 18 April 1865 / The Ohio Daily Statesman

  Owing to the suspension of business after the announcement of Mr. Lincoln’s death, we have no Cincinnati or Cleveland Market Reports this morning.

  OUR NATIONAL AFFLICTION. We have been accustomed from infancy to read of the murder and assassination of kings, princes, and rulers in former times and in other lands. But we never dreamed that such foul crimes would come home to us, and be perpetrated by Americans on American soil. Yet the hand of the assassin has struck down the President of the Republic, and nearly taken the life of our Chief Minister of State, and that of one of his assistants.

  This is the saddest, most deplorable and awful event that has occurred in our whole history, from the birth of the nation in July, 1776, to the present moment. It may lead to consequences the most frightful, upon which we dare not reflect, much less write.

  Nothing but the overruling hand of that Providence upon which our Fathers relied in the darkest hour of trial can avert those consequences, and save our people from becoming the prey of anarchy, ultimating in an iron despotism.

  Sixteen

  Tuesday, 18 April 1865 / Grove City, Ohio

  It was Tuesday when Gretchen got a copy of Monday’s newspaper. She had sneaked to the neighbors instead of doing chores to bribe the youngest child for their copy. Gretchen chafed to know more about the president. She was days behind what it felt like the entire world knew. She had to know how John Wilkes Booth assaulted Mr. Lincoln. She wanted to know how Booth escaped and how terrible the president’s last minutes were.

  Gretchen hid in the hayloft with the Ohio Daily Statesman. Her hands shook as she spread the newspaper open.

  “Assassination of President Lincoln and Secretary Seward—Full Particulars,” the headline screamed.

  Thick black ink filled the newspaper margins. It was the newspaper’s way of showing mourning. It was like the entire paper wore a sheath of black, and it was difficult to read the paragraphs between.

  Gretchen squinted, angling the paper so she could read it in the slivered sunlight. She tried to imagine the world’s chaos outside her little farm.

  The Statesman described how Booth was identified by his discarded hat and boot spur. Kar
l had no boots, and his head injury prevented a hat.

  Somehow, Booth escaped despite panicked onlookers patrolling and picketing the streets. The Statesman described the attack on the Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, in his home. Everyone presumed the poor man had died along with Mr. Lincoln. Andy Johnson’s manner was solemn and dignified when sworn in as president. The entire matter was a national calamity. Booth and his compatriot, John Surratt, had apparently intended to flee to Canada.

  And then there were the special dispatches from sister newspapers…

  The Cincinnati Gazette claimed Surratt stabbed Secretary Seward and his son, Major Seward.

  Their second dispatch described the Lincolns attending the play Our American Cousin. The bullet came out of Mr. Lincoln’s temple, and Mrs. Lincoln fainted at the sight. The assailant was a man. He was about thirty years (too old for Karl) and five feet tall (too short for Karl). He had a spare build (that could have been Karl), with fair skin and a large, dark moustache.

  Gretchen was certain Karl could not grow much more than the stubble gracing his gaunt face. They had yet to find a shaving blade for him because he had not needed it.

  By one in the morning on Friday, the poor president was senseless with little hope of recovery. That was the same night Gretchen had collapsed in bed after celebrating the war’s end with dancing and bonfires. By the time Gretchen had fallen asleep, the president’s physicians knew he was dying.

  New York described a city of “intense sorrow…depicted on all countenances.” All flags were at half-mast by nine in the morning. Everyone directed their utmost rage at all known secessionists and rebel sympathizers. Voters decided thirteen “lucky” citizens would represent the city at the president’s funeral.

  Gretchen wiped tears from her face with the back of her hand, still dirty from weeding. She knew this was what her aunt and mother were afraid of. This was not the time to have associations with rebel sympathizers. No one wanted to be at the mercy of vengeful crowds, including Gretchen.