The Long Road Home Romance Collection

by Judi Ann Ehresman

  I tried again and again. The Spanish words felt uncomfortable in my mouth, asking my tongue and lips to do strange rolls and swallows. Finally, I learned parar for “halt” and ¡andele! for “get a move on there.” My mind could not comprehend getting the horse to hold still, estarse quieto o callado, which I yelled again and again at Baya. The wagon train was moving out of sight when Carlos called to Karl with instructions for a verbal shortcut: Slap the horse on the rear with my hand and yell, “Aquietarse!”

  It worked! I soon found myself arranging my strangely tied skirts on the even stranger horse.

  Despite the scorching heat, Mutter grew colder, and her skin turned a deeper blue. From time to time Karl gave her water, and I helped her with the frequent toilet stops. Our wagon lagged farther and farther behind. Fearfully I watched the occasional solitary groves of six or eight trees for signs of lurking Karankawas. To give her something to do, I asked Sophie to help me play “I Spy” for Indians. It was a mistake. She became more and more fearful and kept asking if an Indian would eat her. As I scanned the trees, a tingling sensation played up and down my back as I wondered the same thing, but each time we passed safely.

  Following the prints of the wagon train, we made our lumbering way mile after mile, halting for rest and food where the others had stopped. At one stop we found a little bucket of berries between the worn wheel ruts. Another time a tin plate of corncakes and dried beef was placed on a big rock between the wagon wheel marks. I knew who was responsible and imagined her picking the berries. How did she hold the bucket? And how, with only one hand, could Frau Kellerman pat out the corncakes? Considering her thin body in the patched, shapeless dress, how could she afford to share with us? Suddenly I was warmed with respect for this woman I didn’t know. But perhaps I knew the important thing about her. She cares.

  Frau Kellerman’s surprises were the only glimmer of brightness in an otherwise painful day. Although Mutter was freezing under her blankets, my head was on fire from the relentless burning sun. Even the part in my hair was burned and blistered. That morning Baya had sidestepped me into a bramble tree, and when I finally freed myself, I was so distraught I hadn’t even missed my blue-flowered sunbonnet that was probably still dangling from a bramble.

  It was dark when we caught up to the halting place. Carlos motioned us to a fire burning near but not in the circle of wagons. Over the fire hung a big cooking pot bubbling with beans, and stacked neatly on a hot rock near the fire were steaming tortillas. Carlos smiled, lifted his hat, pointed to the beans, and disappeared to his own fire. The surprise gesture, especially from someone I thought had been leering at me for three days, overwhelmed me to tears, and I fled out of sight in back of the wagon. Exhausted and afraid, I leaned over the salt block and gave in to silent tears.

  The day had sent too many assaults on my senses. Mutter had lost so many body fluids her skin looked like a dried prune, and the smell of her even now left my stomach queasy. My entire body ached from the part of my hair and my eyeballs to the blisters on my ankles. All day Sophie had whined and cried and Karl, though hotly denying he was hurt, had limped and his shoulders had the same droop of fatigue I had seen when Emil came home from working in the warehouse.

  My silent tears turned to sobs as I remembered the mounds of dirt with crude wooden crosses at Chocolate Creek. Next to them had been no longer needed possessions. And along the trail at a distance we had seen sheets and clothing covering mounds of what I guessed were partly decomposed bodies. Would we become wooden crosses or lumps under covers?

  Just then the stump of an arm rested on my shoulder, and a husky voice said softly in my ear, “Texas is hell.”

  I flung my arms around her neck and wept my gratitude and fears onto Frau Kellerman’s thin, bone-sharp shoulders.

  Mutter’s only chance for survival would be a doctor, and the nearest doctor would be in Victoria. Frau Kellerman said if all went well, the wagon train would arrive at Spring Creek the next evening. It was rumored to be only two or three miles from Victoria, a Spanish town in which a group of German immigrants had settled. We would look for a doctor who spoke German. I had to leave the wagon train. There were things I must do, like them or not. First, I had to deal with my frightened sister, who was clinging to a lifeless-looking mother. I opened the trunk and took out Sophie’s doll.

  “Sophie, I think Glorianna is feeling sad. Why don’t you hold her while we travel. She would feel much better.”

  “R-r-really? You m-mean it?” She hugged Glorianna.

  “Yes, I mean it. Just keep her away from Baya, or he will bite her clothes. Why don’t you take her to bed with you tonight?”

  Sophie squealed with delight. “Glorianna, you have n-never s-slept under the s-stars. W-wait until you s-see them.”

  The next morning Karl called me to help him yoke the oxen. As we worked, he said, “You must know that without these oxen and the horse you dislike, we will never make it to New Braunfels. They deserve your best care.”

  “I’ll help you take care of them,” I said.

  Karl looked at the ground as he spoke. “You’ll have to do it alone. I am going on to New Braunfels with the others.”

  My breath caught in my throat, and every muscle in my body tensed. What could I say? Angry thoughts tumbled through my head. He was deserting me when I needed him most. I can’t manage the oxen. In fact, I can’t manage anything. Then I remembered that he had spent the last of his money for us and had been yoked with such grim responsibility that the carefree soldier had disappeared. To be fair, I shouldn’t make him feel guilty.

  I studied the face of the grimy, unshaven person before me and said the only phrase that came to mind: “Texas is hell!” I could feel my face go hot and red.

  It was out of character for me and made him laugh. I laughed, too, and we both laughed for a long, long time, but it wasn’t really funny. We only covered our tension.

  Between stops to help Mutter, when Baya was plodding along behaving himself, I tried to untangle the anger I kept feeling. I could be enraged at Emil for leaving us. Or I could hate Karl for not even considering what would become of me. For a moment, I even played with loathing myself, but it was too painful. By nightfall, as I climbed off the hated horse and faced another sleepless night, I was able to focus my genuine anger at Vater. He was the only one who had wanted to come to Texas.

  There weren’t many choices after I pulled away from the wagon train the next morning. All I could do was try to hold the oxen to the packed dirt leading toward Victoria. When the oxen behaved themselves and everything was calm, I remembered our departure. At the last minute everyone had given me instructions until I had become totally confused. My mind became numb, and I couldn’t remember anything. Finally, I had written down Spanish words for Baya, commands for Buck and Bright, the amounts of feed for the animals, Frau Kellerman’s instructions for Mutter’s sanitation and care, and the name of Dillman Mantz, whom Engel had met at the Galveston Verein compound. I got it in writing, but I was in a fog and strangely couldn’t feel anything. My body seemed detached and just going through necessary motions…until something happened that I would replay in my mind for days to come.

  As we said good-bye, Karl reached for my hand, slowly interlaced his fingers with mine, and pulled the hand close to his chest. My hand tingled, and my heart raced as our eyes met and the back of his other hand tenderly brushed my cheek. I couldn’t breathe.

  “You’re very special,” he whispered. Then he pressed his lips to mine in a long, mouth-tingling, body-jangling, good-bye kiss. My lips responded. Surprised by our reaction to the kiss, neither of us spoke. We just stood there slightly apart, looking at each other.

  In the background, Sophie had cried and begged him not to leave her with me, the old “pain in my neck.” But after promising to tell Vater we were in Victoria, he waved and walked away.

  “You can’t leave us,” Sophie called, “you’re family.”

  But he kept walking. It was true he had bec
ome one of the family, but I had hoped for more. Frau Kellerman knew it. And she knew me. As I struggled to get Baya and the oxen moving at the same time, I had heard her call, “You can do it. You can do it.”

  It took us most of the day to get to Victoria in the zigzag course the oxen took. As we entered the town, people stared at the strange horse tied to the strange wagon with a sheet tent tied over Mutter, and I felt their eyes intent on the sunburned, grimy girl driving, of all things, oxen!

  But there sat Sophie on the wagon’s seat, clutching Glorianna and smiling and waving to everyone as if she were in a parade. Soon the stares turned to words of welcome, and by the time we reached the Street of the Ten Friends at the square, a few people offered to help. I was wary. Everyone looked strange with handkerchiefs covering their lower faces, and we could barely see their eyes. Then I noticed that the square had been dug into a mass grave. Across the square, a large man was unloading stiff bodies into the pit. I looked away.

  “What’s going on here?” I called to a man.

  He shrugged, said, “English?” and walked away.

  From the shadows of a doorway stepped a tiny lady whose straw hat perched on top of curly gray hair. “German?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “You are welcome here, but if I were you, I’d turn that wagon around and leave. People have died of cholera,” she said in her high-pitched voice.

  All hope evaporated. My shoulders slumped in defeat. “But I can’t leave,” I said softly.

  The little lady came nearer. “There is the blackness of death here. See?” She pointed across the square to the man unloading corpses. “We call him Black Peter. Day and night he unloads bodies. And here”—she pointed to an approaching wagon—“is Dillman, his helper. I watch them from my window day and night. You must leave.”

  “I have brought my sick mother to a doctor. She has cholera.”

  The petite lady stepped quickly away and fled across the street to her house, slamming the door behind her.

  “Dillman! Dillman!” I shouted at the approaching wagon that halted near where I stood. “Are you Dillman Mantz?” I directed my gaze at his eyes, trying hard not to look at the corpses piled high in his wagon.

  Sophie threw herself into my arms. “They’re all d-dead!” she cried hysterically.

  Dillman remained calm. “Yes, I’m Dillman Mantz. Do you have a body for me?” He eyed the prostrate form of Mutter.

  “N-no! N-no! N-no!” Sophie cried shrilly.

  I continued looking at his eyes, afraid to look at the bodies. “Engel Mittendorf said I should find you.”

  Dillman’s eyes brightened, making him look instantly younger. He seemed my age with blue eyes and long, straight blond hair showing under the black hat that matched the rest of his black clothes. Quickly I told him my story, and he directed me to the doctor’s small house a few blocks away, saying he would meet me there later.

  A crowd of worried people gathered around the front door of the doctor’s house. They shifted restlessly, some talking softly to companions, others staring into space, concern showing on their faces. They scarcely noticed when I pulled my strange wagon to a halt.

  “Excuse me. Excuse me.” I tried to get through the crowd, but they were locked in their own world of concern.

  Sophie charged ahead. “M-m-move,” she shouted.

  A path opened before us.

  Inside, the doctor’s house was chaotic. There were beds everywhere, with many pallets made on the floor, all filled with people moaning from various symptoms of being sick. The stench made my stomach churn, and I put my hand over my nose and mouth. Loud moans made talking to the doctor impossible. The doctor turned from a patient and followed me outside.

  “Pretty bad,” he said. He was gaunt and unkempt with a face that told me he had seen too much suffering. Also, he was dirty, and I thought of Frau Kellerman’s sanitation instructions. But he was Mutter’s only chance. After he examined her, he said that it seemed she had survived the worst stages of the cholera but had rattles and rales of pneumonia. She also showed signs of malnutrition and dehydration. Without nourishing broth and medicine, he said, her chances for recovery were not good. I spent my last small coin on tonic and medicine but declined his offer to keep Mutter at his chaotic, sour-smelling house. Leaving her in such filth would be a death sentence.

  But where would Mutter go? We couldn’t live in the wagon without food and water. And Mutter needed rest, broth, and peace.

  In the end, it was Dillman Mantz who became my hero, riding up in his empty, rattling wagon. His aunt, whom he described as ancient but able-bodied, might take Mutter in.

  And she did. Two people had been nursed to health under her care. There was a catch, of course. She demanded professional payment. She stood there filling the kitchen doorway with her plump, busty frame on which was draped a faded but clean dress and long, starched apron. There would be no admittance until finances were arranged. We haggled, my temper flared, Sophie cried, Dillman pleaded, but she was immovable. Mutter was carried to a clean bed only after I brought out Emil’s gold trumpet and some of our pewter dishes. Until I thought of how much it would cost to care for Mutter, I considered Dillman’s Aunt Mathilde a swindling crone, but after I paid her, she turned friendly, even fed us fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy for supper. We gloried in eating real food.

  “This was my hospitality,” Aunt Mathilde said in her ancient scratchy voice. “It is all. I cannot board all of you or feed your animals.”

  I am a pauper, I thought, with a child to care for. And I’m trapped in a dying town. I became suddenly chilled with fear. Shivers made my hand shake as it stroked Sophie’s hair.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I said simply.

  “You probably think me a hard woman,” Aunt Mathilde said, “but desperate situations call for desperate decisions.” She cleared away the dishes as she talked. “How did you get yourself into this situation?”

  “I didn’t,” I said bitterly. “My Vater got me here.” Too tired for emotion, I simply poured out the story, leaving out nothing, even my disappointment when Karl abandoned us.

  Aunt Mathilde wrung out her dishrag, carefully hung it on a wooden drying rack, and turned her wrinkled face toward me. I felt her bright eyes were seeing to the core of my being.

  “Will you listen to the advice of a 70-year-old ancient aunt?”

  I nodded my agreement.

  “You must go back to join another wagon train going to New Braunfels. Their supply wagon will feed you, and men will help with your wagon.”

  The thought of leaving my wonderful Mutter behind brought a ringing to my ears, and I thought I would faint. What would Vater want me to do? What about Emil? Would he leave Mutter behind? I asked myself. But they aren’t here. What would Mutter want me to do? Burning with fever and unconscious, she couldn’t make her wishes known. If she lived, would she think I had abandoned her to death?

  Frozen to the chair with fear, I thought so hard the ringing got worse. I pictured Mutter bravely standing on the dock in the burning sun and again stoically bathing and saying her prayers and reading her Bible in our makeshift beach home. I thought of her selling her dowry furniture to finance the trip. “Find a way,” Mutter would say. But what way?

  “I can’t leave Mutter,” I said to the piercing eyes of Aunt Mathilde.

  “But you must. Live or die, out of her head as she is, you must leave her. Think of Sophie and yourself and get out of Victoria before you get sick. You must move quickly.”

  “I feel frozen in the chair. I can’t move.”

  “Do you want to live?”

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “You are well-educated and intelligent.”

  “Yes.” I sat up in the chair, wondering where she was going with the questions.

  “You have dutifully obeyed your parents in the past, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. Except for being lazy at Indian Point. I’m ashamed of that.”

  �
�That is the past. In the present, here in my crowded kitchen with death in the wind and no one to tell you what to do, you are in charge. You must make the decision. Whatever you decide has consequences for your entire family. Which consequences are the most promising?” Never once did Aunt Mathilde’s eyes waver from mine.

  We sat in silence.

  Finally I said, “I choose to go to the wagon train. It’s our only chance.”

  “A good choice,” said Aunt Mathilde, hugging me. “You are strong, and you will make it.”

  Chapter 10

  By the time Sophie woke up the next morning, still dressed and clutching Glorianna, Mutter’s bedding and soiled clothes had been burned, and her clean clothing was moved inside. As I repacked the wagon, I set aside items Mutter might use when she got well, including some sewing supplies, our beloved family album with the music box, and a heavy plow she could sell for her keep with enough money left for transportation to New Braunfels.

  Under the watchful eye of Aunt Mathilde, I yoked the oxen and tethered Baya to the wagon’s side. The animals sidestepped and shifted back and forth, apparently as nervous as I was, especially Baya, who reached his razor-sharp teeth toward the buttons on Aunt Mathilde’s blue blouse. She ducked backward just in time and slapped his nose. “Keep your teeth to yourself, you deceitful animal.”

  Wide-eyed, he pumped his head up and down as if to say, “Getcha next time.”

  “This is a Spanish-hearing horse,” I said. “You’re wasting good German advice.”

  Aunt Mathilde laughed. “He understands. Especially the slapped nose. Be firm, Rika, but be careful.”

  I struggled to hold the nervous oxen steady.

  “Here let me hold the yoke while you say good-bye to your Mutter.” Aunt Mathilde stretched out her muscled arms and grasped the yoke with such authority that the oxen stood still.