Katie's Journey to Love

by Jerry S. Eicher

  It was strange, Katie thought on the way down, how little things like sunshine on a rooftop became great blessings in times of trouble. Would she have that same experience once she arrived home? Here on this trip she was being given so many blessings almost daily. Surely this would continue. I’ll make it somehow, Katie told herself as they all slipped back down the tight stairs. Da Hah would see her through the rest of this trip, and He would also be there when she arrived home. She’d already seen plenty of signs that this was true.

  Chapter Forty-One

  The following week the girls’ car rocketed down the German Autobahn at speeds none of them had ever gone before. Katie forced herself to look away from the road ahead. She knew that Nancy was a good driver, but the speedometer had stayed well above ninety for some time now as the car rattled down the thoroughfare.

  What was even more amazing was that in the next lane other automobiles were roaring past like they were standing still. Thankfully, Nancy was staying away from that lane, except for brief moments during which she gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles grew white. Then one of the huge autos would approach from behind and flash its lights. Nancy would make a dive for one of the right lanes. Contrary to the habits on the highways at home, no one was passing on the right-hand side.

  None of the other girls seemed overly concerned. Sharon had her head back on the seat and looked like she was sleeping. Margaret was on Sharon’s laptop toggling through the collection of pictures Sharon had taken in the past few days. If the two of them could be so relaxed on this wild ride down the German countryside, she ought to relax herself, Katie decided. Nancy had everything under control.

  “Do you want to see them?” Margaret asked, not even waiting for an answer before handing over the laptop.

  Margaret leaned over to watch as Katie held the laptop so Margaret could see. “The ones from the Rhine River turned out really well,” Margaret said.

  Katie nodded, remembering back a few days. There was the hotel sitting one street away from the waters of the Rhine. There were the barges pushing their cargo on the river with little automobiles sitting near their steering houses. Some of them contained the captain’s whole family. When the barge docked at the end of the journey their transportation was readily at hand.

  “Excellent,” Katie murmured, coming to the picture of a castle, and Margaret nodded her agreement. There were many of those perched high above the riverbanks, looking like silent sentinels from the distant past. It was as if they’d been there forever and would be there long after the frail humanity around them had passed on. There was even a medieval castle in the middle of the river, the stories surrounding it equally ancient. Here a German general had outfoxed Napoleon, the guidebook had said. He had built the first major pontoon bridge of its kind to surprise the wily French emperor. Sharon even had a picture of the German general’s statue built along the Rhine riverbank in his honor.

  Sharon’s picture of the cliffs of Loreley was also gut. Only the cliffs hadn’t been that much to see. The tour boat had played beautiful music as they approached the cliffs. The music had been inspired by this place. Here legend said that a beautiful woman had once sung her song, which carried distracted men to their deaths on the river below.

  They had all laughed at that tall tale. No one took it seriously, Nancy had assured them—at least not in today’s world. Equally ridiculous was the story of the seven sisters who had been turned into rocks by their father. They now lay in the middle of the river. Sharon’s picture showed them more or less lined up, their backs sticking out of the water.

  The story claimed that once the seven girls reached marriageable age, they refused every suitor brought to them by their father. Either the men were too fat, or too thin, too short, or too tall. There was always something wrong with them. Finally in desperation the father threw a big party where he planned to marry off the seven girls, whether they wished to or not. In an attempt to escape, the seven took to the river in a boat. They succeeded, but in a fit of rage, their father turned them into rocks as a lesson to all rebellious daughters. According to the guidebook, this was a story that some German parents still use to rein in their children’s mischief.

  Margaret muttered as Katie toggled to the next picture, “I think I would have taken to the boat myself if my dad tried something like that.”

  Katie smiled. It was hard to imagine Jesse forcing her into marriage with anyone. He was way too kind and understanding for that. So things had apparently changed a lot since the old days. But then maybe these people hadn’t been very Christian either. These stories sounded pretty pagan, even if they were interesting.

  Sharon’s pictures of the old Roman walls in one town didn’t do them justice. They looked much smaller than they had in real life. Although Katie had seen them only from the tour boat, it was hard to imagine that something still existed from close to the time when Jesus walked on this earth. Yet that is what the guidebook claimed.

  Continuing to toggle on, Katie came to pictures of the castle Burg Eltz from the day before the Rhine River trip. It had been under construction, and Sharon had tried to capture only portions of the castle that showed no scaffolding, which didn’t do the castle justice at all. But they were still nice. The girls had walked down to the bottom of the tall hill where the castle lay and taken the guided tour. Two families still lived there in separate sections of the castle, which made it quite unique, the tour guide said.

  Sharon’s next pictures showed the land lying around the town of Bastogne in Luxembourg. It was through this rolling country that Hitler had launched his last major offensive in World War II, known as the Battle of the Bulge. Sharon had insisted that they at least drive through, which they did, spending the night in a hotel in Bastogne and briefly visiting the memorial site outside of town. She hadn’t wanted to stop, Katie remembered. War and evil were something she didn’t want to hear more about. It seemed to the girls that the history of the world was the history of war.

  But the place had deeply affected her once they arrived. The haunting memory of more than 70,000 lives lost in that horrendous battle hung in the air. It was as if the whole place still wept in sorrow. Young men had come here, far from home, to die and suffer for a cause. Did their vision hold out unto the hour of death? Katie wondered. Did it seem wasted to them, a thing soon forgotten by the coming generations?

  Katie handed the laptop back to Margaret. She’d seen enough for now. Sharon must have pictures on there of the windmills of Holland and of the Corrie ten Boom house. Katie decided she would look at them later. Right now she had to get her mind ready for another day of touring. This one she had no objections to though—at least not now. Perhaps she would wish afterward they hadn’t stopped at a concentration camp, but it was too late to change her mind. Nancy was already slowing down for the exit to Dachau as the voice on the GPS intoned instructions. He had been extra quiet this morning on the long stretches of highway, or perhaps she hadn’t noticed his voice when she was looking at the pictures.

  Nancy parked the car, and they got out and followed the signs. They entered a low-slung building to purchase tickets. The man at the counter offered them headphones, but all of them declined after Nancy whispered, “We don’t have time for all that. Those don’t tell you more than the signs do.”

  “As you wish,” the man said. “There is also literature you can take along.”

  So they armed themselves with what was available and approached the front gate of the camp, which was a short distance away. The sign outside directed their attention to a section of old railroad tracks that had been excavated a few years ago. These were the actual rails used by the trains that brought in loads of prisoners.

  They looked like ordinary railroad tracks near home, Katie thought. But after studying the grainy photo of the camp commander’s house a short distance away, she could begin to imagine how it might have been. Here long rows of railcars had been brought in, packed with desperate, starving people. Behind them the i
ron bars of the camp gate looked menacing. They would have appeared even more so coming here as a prisoner, Katie figured. She read the words in German imprinted in the gate’s metal work: “Arbeit Macht Frei.”

  “Translate that please,” Margaret told her.

  “Work makes free.”

  “An appropriate slogan for a prison camp,” Margaret snapped. “The liars.”

  “No one was thinking straight in those days,” Nancy said. “I suspect there is much worse to come than slogans.”

  And there would be, Katie thought, as they entered the immense enclosed prison yard. For hundreds of yards in each direction the tall, barbed-wire fence that kept the prisoners inside stretched high in the air. Smaller wires ran along the lower levels on the other side of a small ditch.

  “Electrified,” Sharon said, following Katie’s glance.

  Katie kept silent as Nancy led the way to the concrete prison blocks to the right. They entered to read the writings posted on the walls from prisoners who had suffered here. Katie read several, tales of political persons primarily, who had angered the Nazi regime. The words soon began to run into one another, the tragedy too much for comprehension. So many people had been hated, and so many had suffering from no justifiable cause.

  “I’ve seen all I want,” Margaret whispered, long before they reached the end of the long block of prison cells.

  “I agree,” Nancy said, leading them outside. There they took a peek into the main building that now housed pictures commemorating more of the brutality at the camp.

  “I’ll also pass on that,” Margaret said. No one disagreed.

  In front of the main building a grotesque steel memorial had been erected. An appropriate gesture to the horror they’d already seen, Katie thought as her stomach was twisting into knots.

  Two low-slung wooden buildings were next on the tour, and the girls entered one of the doors, pausing to read the signs. Here prisoners had been housed, lying on these bunk beds. They were required to keep everything immaculately clean, the signs said. This was a form of torture in itself. Even a fraction of an inch difference in height between the bunk beds could bring quick punishment. The favorite method was suspension by one’s wrists while they were tied behind the back. This took place in the prison yard.

  Margaret looked quite pale by the time they exited to walk toward the back of the prison yard. For a long way they walked past rows and rows of concrete foundations where similar buildings had once stood.

  “This is the worst yet,” Sharon warned, as they crossed a little bridge. “Here are the ovens and the gas chamber, though the chamber was never used for some reason.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t have told me,” Margaret said.

  “Sorry,” Sharon said. “But I didn’t want you passing out.”

  “I’ll try not to.” Margaret set her jaw firmly.

  Katie glanced at a memorial as they approached the rugged set of buildings. A stone base held the statue of a man with a mournful upturned face. She translated the words etched into the stone. “The dead which were here, now instruct the living.”

  “God give me strength to see this,” Margaret said, hanging on to Sharon’s arm. They all stayed close together, stopping at the posted pictures outside that showed the stacked, emaciated bodies of the prisoners. Inside, a row of brick ovens stood along the wall. Metal frames were visible inside the door opening on which bodies had been slid in and out of the fires.

  “How could someone do this to their fellow man?” Margaret asked, tears running down her face.

  “It’s the wickedness of fallen mankind,” Nancy said. “This is what sin does if it isn’t cleansed by God.”

  Beyond the ovens was the four-sided room meant to be a gas chamber. It was made to look like a communal bath so that the prisoners wouldn’t object to being herded in. At least no one had died here. Margaret and Sharon were both sobbing by the time they exited, and Katie wiped away the tears herself. They gathered in a huddle a short distance away and prayed mostly sobs and crying from the agony they’d just witnessed. But also cries from their own hearts that the day would come quickly when such evil would never be seen on the earth again.

  “Come, we had better go,” Nancy soon told them. “We have a ways to travel yet today.”

  Katie trailed behind the others, taking one last look at the high, barbed-wire fence and the pictures of prisoners on the plaques. She read the line below one sign, this one in English. It was very appropriate, Katie thought: “But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  With the three-week trip behind them, the plane lurched through fluffy clouds that drifted past Katie’s window. She’d been given the window seat instead of Margaret this time. She’d offered Margaret an exchange, but her friend turned her down, saying, “It’s your turn, Katie. Enjoy it.” Katie had expected she’d treasure the window seat since their flight would be flown completely in the daytime. Now, though, with so much water appearing during every break in the clouds, it would have been nice not to have the constant visual reminder that the ocean lay far below.

  The remaining hours of this plane ride would go faster if she thought on the last few pleasant days, she decided. Except for that awful tour of the Nazi concentration camp. None of them had wanted to speak about it again. Their tears had kept flowing on and off on the long drive to their next stop in Northern Austria. There the rugged mountains and clear green rivers soon brought a more cheerful mood. It was hard to stay with dark thoughts for long once you were out in Da Hah’s beautiful creation, Katie thought. He must have made it for that reason, or as one of the reasons, to help weary souls through the horrid effects sin would leave on the world.

  They’d visited the castles in the area the next day, and that had also helped lighten the mood. Mad King Ludwig had built two castles in his lifetime, obsessing over them to the extent of never marrying. The second castle sat perched high on a mountainside overlooking a gorgeous valley and was never finished on the inside. They’d taken a bus to the top, touring the castle before climbing higher to walk across the suspension bridge the mad king had built over a deep ravine. From there the castle looked even more beautiful, along with the rushing tinkle of the river far below. Sharon must have taken twenty pictures, hardly able to control herself.

  The plane gave another bounce, and Katie looked away from the window. The flight attendant was making her way down the aisle, pushing a cart of prepared meals.

  “This is going to be the longest day of my life.” Margaret laughed as she glanced at her watch. “We’re taking off at ten o’clock, flying for eight hours, and landing at noon. All with the sun still shining in the sky. Sort of feels like Joshua in the Bible telling the sun to stand still.”

  Katie shivered. “At least we’re not having to fight a battle like he did.”

  “I know.” Margaret grimaced. “We saw some awful things on this trip, but also some mighty works of the Lord. It makes me appreciate the good things God has done, especially when I saw them against the backdrop of man’s evil deeds.”

  “Evil deeds.” The words brought Ben to Katie’s mind. She deliberately turned her mind away from him. She would never see him again; it was as simple as that. Instead she turned her thoughts to home. She looked forward to sharing about her trip with Mamm and Jesse. Even the thought of seeing Mabel and the other children was almost pleasant.

  “Chicken or beef?” the flight attendant asked, interrupting Katie’s thoughts.

  “Beef,” Margaret said, answering first.

  Katie nodded and said, “The same, please.”

  The girls ate in silence. They’d been together for almost three weeks, and even close friends could grow tired of each other during that period of time. Likely the other girls were also thinking of home and what awaited them. A joyous reunion, for sure, after being gone all this time. There would be a chattering of voices in their homes as they shared everything they
’d seen and experienced.

  The others would have pictures to share. Sharon had already made arrangements to get copies to Margaret and Nancy. Katie had said no when Sharon offered to print copies for her. Ben’s photo was still in the bottom of Katie’s suitcase. She’d gotten around to stealing only one peek at it before she’d heard the terrible news. It had stayed buried for the rest of the trip. She should have destroyed it, but she hadn’t even wanted a brief glimpse of his face. Perhaps once she was home and unpacking she could finally dispose of it without bursting into tears.

  They should never have exchanged pictures in the first place, Katie thought. She couldn’t believe they’d been sneaking around like that. Not that it would have changed anything, really, but it would feel better now knowing Ben didn’t have her picture. Surely he would get rid of her picture too. At least she certainly hoped so. Ben had no right to keep such an intimate item of hers in his possession when he’d turned out to be such a disappointment.

  Katie finished her meal and leaned back against the seat. The flight attendant came by to pick up the empty plates. After she was gone, Katie contentedly drifted off to sleep. She awoke to the sound of the captain’s voice announcing they would be landing at Philadelphia in approximately thirty minutes. Everyone was to keep their seat belts securely fastened, make sure their tray tables were closed, and put their seats in an upright position.

  Katie punched the button on the seat, and it snapped into place. Margaret did the same. The plane continued to descend, feeling much like the landing had three weeks ago. Yah, it was the same as three weeks ago, but she was not. As the wheels bounced on the runway, Katie realized she felt three years older instead of just three weeks. So much had happened, but the biggest change was the struggle with what to do about Ben. Her life would never be the same.