“The horse really belongs to you,” I said, remembering the moment I had been lying in the gulf water with my eyes shut and had opened them to look into the strange face of Baya.
“I’ll talk to Sebastian about that later. For now, I’m going to buy supplies while you get cleaned up. Afterwards we can have a proper visit. I have a lot to tell you.” Karl turned away.
Mutter called to him, “Karl, eat supper with us. Simple German food, but good company.”
“Of course,” he said. “Thank you. About five?”
“Fine,” Mutter said.
“Bye, Karl,” called Sophie.
“I’m glad you’re back. Good-bye, Karl,” I called.
He nodded and walked down the street, picking his way carefully around puddles of mud.
“W-what’s the m-matter w-with K-karl?” asked Sophie.
“We’re dirty, and he’s tired,” I said. But I wondered, too.
“Remember that his friends were killed. Give him time to be his old self. Meanwhile, you sooty folks clean yourselves.” Mutter pointed her finger at Sophie’s smudged nose and the damp soot on her dress and began laughing. We caught the laughing like measles and couldn’t stop, for when one person stopped laughing, someone else started. I noticed Baya’s head pumping up and down, and once in a while he kicked a hoof against the shed.
“Sophie, look.” I pointed at Baya and laughed. “Horses can laugh, too.”
“Not all horses,” Mutter chimed in. “Baya is very special—strange but special.”
We giggled our way through trying to wash off the soot with water from the kitchen, making no difference in the color of our faces, then tried more water from the horse barrel. Finally we went to the spring, taking with us a bar of homemade lye soap. Splashing the cold water on our arms and legs brought on more giggles and squeals, but they turned to shudders when we tried to wash our hair in the frigid water. Having no towels, little rivulets of gray water crept down onto our dresses, and we were suddenly sobered by remembering that we also had no dry clothes. They had burned.
What followed was frantic activity by Mutter, who propped our damp clothes in front of a fire she built. Meanwhile, she admonished us about what she called our grimy giggles and the folly of getting ourselves in such a mess. She put us under warm covers in the shed.
But when late afternoon sun warmed the shed, our clothes became dry enough to shake out the charred dust and Mutter added to the fire and put a pot of stew on the ashes. Ecstatically I kept repeating, “Karl’s home! Karl’s home!”
“The dress is a mess, but you look pretty anyway.” Karl took my hand and rubbed it against his freshly shaved cheek, a possessive gesture that made Lux glower from across the trunk that served as our table.
For supper, in addition to bread, Mutter had created a delicious stew using spices from the trunk and leaves from the sage bush in the yard. Elissa Fink had called Lux from his work on our porch to get a freshly baked loaf of brown bread and deliver it to Mutter, who had noted that Elissa had, as Sophie called it, “moon eyes” for Lux. Our meal had been free and easy with discussion about the burned house, the addon porch, stories of Mutter’s stay in Victoria, and questions from Vater about Karl’s adventures with the scouting party. The Comanche raid that brought about the death of most of his companions was told in a somber voice I had never heard from Karl. It was very touching, but I noticed the old Karl swagger to the rest of his tales. Whatever had bothered Karl in the afternoon seemed gone, and as we cleared away the odd collection of dirty dishes, he took my hand, pulling me toward the door.
“We are going outside for some privacy,” he announced.
Indecision held me back. I should help with the cleaning up, and besides, Karl had announced, not invited me. I looked at Mutter for a clue.
Mutter nodded at me and said, “First, help me finish collecting the dishes. I’ll wash them later.”
I did as she asked, being very careful with the few dishes we had left. Even the hated pewter plates now seemed precious.
Karl watched me work. “I believe you have become good in the kitchen.”
“She is good at many things,” said Lux.
Again Karl clasped my hand, tugging me toward the door. “You’ve done your Housefrau duties. Now we are going outside for some privacy.”
I hung back. He had told me what to do. A gentleman would invite a lady outside, but I was so happy to see Karl safe and sound that I gave in.
Lux quickly got out of his rickety chair and followed us outside, stopping in the doorway to observe rather than intrude.
The autumn chill made me pull Mutter’s shawl closer around my shoulders. Karl put his arms tightly around the shawl and said, “How’s my girl?”
He had never called me that before. No one had ever called me that before, and the idea made me feel warm inside. I basked in the warmth without answering.
“Well,” Karl insisted, “how is my girl?”
From the doorway came an unexpected answer as Lux cleared his throat and loudly said, “Rika is not your girl. She is my girl if she wants to be. It’s her choice.”
Karl quickly dropped his arms from my shoulders, spread his feet apart in a formal military stance, and crossed his arms on his chest as he stared at my face for a clue. When I didn’t answer, he said, “Well?”
Whirling through my head came memories of kindness and kisses, challenges and abandonments, his swagger and cockiness. So many things whirled through my head I couldn’t think clearly.
Then, suddenly, something happened like a wind blowing clear air in after a rainstorm, and I knew.
“Karl, you have been my special friend and the only man I have cared for since we met at Indian Point. You are exciting, and your life will always be filled with adventure. But I can’t go share those adventures with you.”
“Oh, but you can,” Karl insisted.
“Oh, but I can’t. You ask me to take dangerous chances. If you loved me, you would want to keep me safe.” I hated to hurt his feelings, but it had to be said.
“Rika, you have lived dangerously ever since I met you.” Karl’s voice became louder.
“The dangerous things I did were forced on me by circumstances. They changed me. Don’t you see that my life has changed, and while you were gone, I grew up? I also grew to cherish Lux.” Saying it out loud made me feel as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. How long, I wondered quickly, had I been struggling with this realization?
“Lux! I can’t believe it. How dull. You will never be happy with the German traditional life of Kuche, Kirche, and Kinder.” Karl stomped his foot.
Evenly Lux said, “Rika will not be in the kitchen all the time unless she wants to. She will have a cook, and instead of the three ks, she will be doing the four ks of her own choosing: Klingen, Kirche, Klub, Kinder. You know, music, church, socials, and children.”
The strange declarations on my part and those of Lux left me breathless and speechless but strangely lightheaded. Lux stared warmly and deeply into my eyes. It seemed for moments that sparks flew between us just in the look.
Karl shouted, “It will never work. You’ll see.”
Lux stepped toward Karl. “You can come see for yourself. Will you come to a musical social? That is, if you are in town.”
Indignantly, Karl turned and stomped away. Even in the twilight, his cocky military swagger was unmistakable.
Lux pulled me close and whispered in my ear, “I love you, Rika.”
The admission that Lux was my choice had suddenly revealed to me that admiration and friendship had bloomed into love. The surprise sent sparks through me. “Lux, you knew it all the time, didn’t you? You knew I loved you!”
“Of course.” Lux hesitantly then firmly put his lips on mine.
A shivery tingling coursed all the way from my head to my toes as our kiss lingered, and I was enveloped in his strong arms.
We pulled away only when Vater opened the door to the shed.
Vater s
imply cleared his throat and said, “Ahem. A later time.”
About the Author
Naomi Mitchum, a writer and public speaker, has degrees in Christian education and a special interest in disabilities, acting as Coordinator of Special Needs Ministry at a large church. For over 35 years, she has published mainstream and religious magazine articles, curriculum and teaching packets for teenagers, adults, and teenagers (Graded Press), online articles concerning special needs, children, and worship (Methodist General Board of Discipleship), plays (most recently, Help Me! I’m Bent! At Houston Country Playhouse), and books, including Harps in the Willows: Strengths for Reinventing Life (used in Salvation Army counseling centers after 9/11) and Abingdon’s Intergenerational Programs and Fun with Drama and More Fun with Drama (Abingdon).
She often writes from her vacation home in the Texas Hill country, where she first became interested in the German settlement history of the area when she heard men speaking German at their morning coffee Klatsch at a local restaurant. “I visited Indian Point, Rika’s point of Texas entry, and traced the wagon trails to New Braunfels. Along the way I experienced mosquito hordes, ankle-deep mud, beautiful landscapes, and visited the point of the long-gone Guadalupe River Ferry,” Naomi says.
naomimitchum.com
www.oaktara.com
The Long Road Home Romance Collection Page 57
