Authors: Marie Bostwick
River's Edge (6 page)
Five sets of eyes bored into me, four of them questioning, one judging. I felt my cheeks go scarlet with embarrassment that quickly turned to irritation. “I should hope I'm not a âkid,' as you call it. Isn't that another name for a goat? That just about fits you! My parents brought me up to behave like a young lady, not a wild Indian. I am not perfect. I never said I was, but at least I know I'm a girl!”
As soon as I spoke, I saw the wounded expression spread across Cookie's face and I wished I could take back my words.
“What's that supposed to mean?” asked Junior, his eyes narrowing.
Searching for something to say and knowing that every answer was the wrong one, I opened and closed my mouth like a landed fish, gasping for air.
“I know what she means,” Cookie said softly, her eyes filling with tears. “You mean me, don't you, Elise? You think I don't know I'm a girl.”
Before I could protest or explain, she ran into the house, dropping her baseball glove on the ground. I felt awful.
Chip, who had been ready to knock his sister into the dirt only a few minutes before, cast a look of pure hatred in my direction, picked up Cookie's glove, and followed her into the house. The remaining Mullers trailed behind in a line of hostility with Junior taking up the rear.
“A properly brought up young lady?” he sneered. “Yeah, and I'm sure your Herr Hitler is a real gentleman. Your father is an officer in the German army, isn't he? I'm sure all those Austrians whose country you invaded think real highly of German manners.” He laughed derisively. “I've already seen enough of the manners of proper German young ladies to last me a lifetime. If that's what you are, give me a plain old American girl any day of the week.” He marched off with the rest of his siblings and left me standing alone.
I was furious with Junior for insulting Father and confused about his reference to Germany invading Austria. We'd freed the Austrians, not invaded them. At the school I'd attended after Mother died, I'd seen a film showing crowds of Austrians cheering the German troops and giving them flowers. I simply didn't understand what Junior was talking about, and the more I thought about Junior's cutting words, the angrier I became.
But I was also genuinely and deeply ashamed of myself for hurting Cookie's feelings. That was the last thing I wanted to do. Even though she was such an odd girl, she had never shown me anything but kindness and generosity.
I was suddenly and deeply homesick.
I didn't understand these strange children and their strange ways. I longed for a good German meal with sausages and sauerkraut and chewy rye bread, or a strudel dripping with the juice of sweetened apples. My head ached from the effort of speaking and listening to English all day long. I would have given anything to turn on the radio and hear a song by Erna Sack or Lale Anderson ... or one more glimpse of Mother.
Somewhere a screen door slammed, and the noise frightened the birds roosting in the oak tree. They took to the sky in a sudden furious flutter of wings and startled chirruping, sounding exactly like the birds that lived in the tree outside my window at home. I turned my head to follow them as they flew away. A tear seeped from the corner of my eye. Father would have been ashamed of me, but I couldn't help myself. Just then, a hand thrust a clean white handkerchief in front of my face. It was Reverend Muller.
“Here,” he said shoving the handkerchief into my hand. I took it, quickly wiped my eyes and nose, and returned it to him, ashamed that he had caught me crying.
“Wonderful thing about the sky,” he said as his face turned to follow the flight of the sparrows. “It looks the same everywhere. Landscapes are different, they are so variable, but if you are in Brightfield, or Berlin, or Bangkok, heaven is the same clear blue.” He stood looking up for a long time before speaking again. “I've been to Europe, you know. France.”
“You have? When?” I asked in surprise.
“During the war. I was a soldier, but I didn't see much action. I had sort of a desk job.”
I didn't know what to make of this. I liked Reverend Muller. He seemed so nice, but it was hard to think of him as a soldier, fighting Germans.
“Junior hates Germans,” I said gloomily. “He hates me.”
“No,” Reverend Muller replied. “Junior is just young, and he gets easily fired up. Fifteen-year-old boys are very passionate and very righteous.”
I didn't really understand what he meant, but I knew he was trying to make me feel better. “Do you hate Germans?” I asked. “Do you think we are invaders?”
“Of course I don't hate Germans,” he answered easily, as though the question was too silly for serious consideration. “Half the people in my church are of German ancestry. My own father was born there. Even if I don't agree with German politics, I certainly don't hate Germans. It's wrong to hate anyone, and it's especially wrong to hold a little girl responsible for tides of history that are beyond her understanding or control.”
I wasn't sure I liked being called a little girl and was about to say something to that effect, but I thought that would be rude. Instead I studied a bank of white clouds suspended in the sapphire canvas above us.
We stood there a long moment before the reverend took up the conversation again. “When I was in Europe and homesick, it made me feel better to look up and realize that the clouds and sun and stars and sky there looked just the same in Brightfield. It was as if God wanted to remind me that no matter how far from home I was, He was watching over me. “
“My father doesn't believe in God,” I murmured.
“Hmmm,” Reverend Muller rumbled distractedly, his eyes still scanning the horizon. “What do you believe?”
“I'm not sure. I never really thought about it.”
“Lots of people never do,” he said simply. “I guess it's the sort of thing a person has to decide for themselves. You can't just rely on the opinions of others. Now, for me, when I look at the sky and the trees, the river as it flows by nourishing the earth, the faces of my children, and your face,” he said, turning to me with a smile, “each so unique and precious, no more alike than any two snowflakes and each one a miracle of creation, I just know that God exists and that He is good.”
“Is it that easy for you?” I asked, surprised and genuinely interested. This was a brand of theology that bore no resemblance to the dull litany of saints, church history, and confusing theories that Frau Finkel, who was devout and insistent in her attempts to convert me, had recited to me.
Reverend Muller tilted his head to one side and paused for a moment before answering. “Not quite so easy, at least not all the time, but a beautiful sky helps. It gives me faith that God is in heaven and things will turn out all right in the end.”
I didn't know how to answer him, or even if he expected me to. I looked at the sky again. It did look just exactly the same as it did at home. I felt a little better. I stood admiring the view for several moments before I remembered with dread that I couldn't just stay there. It was almost lunchtime. At any moment Mrs. Muller would be calling me inside, where I would be forced to face an undoubtedly stony reception by the children.
“Elise,” said Reverend Muller, “I need to finish my sermon for Sunday, but it's too noisy to work at home. Far too many battles going on outside the window of my study,” he commented with pretended seriousness. I couldn't help but blush a little at his observation. “I have just decided I'm going to the church where I can finish my work in peace. Would you like to come with me? Maybe we'll drive by the river on the way. Have you been down to the river yet?”
“No.”
“Well, you've got to see the river! We won't have time for a swim today, but you should see it. It's just beautiful. Then we could stop off at the café for an egg cream. After that you could go to the library and check out some more books, or you could sit in the sanctuary and play the piano. Nobody's there on a Tuesday, so you wouldn't be disturbed.”
I didn't know exactly what an egg cream was, but my heart leapt at the thought of being able to play that beautiful piano again. Even so, I was hesitant to accept his invitation. “Wouldn't I be bothering you?” I asked doubtfully. “You said you couldn't work with so much noise going on.”
He grinned. “Elise, listening to my children argue about foul balls is noise. Listening to you play ... Well,” he said, his tone softening slightly and his grin fading, “that is inspiration. I'm not sure I've ever heard anything like it.
“This will probably be the best sermon I've ever written.” His eyes twinkled. “What do you say? Are you coming to town with me, or are you going to spend the rest of the day standing under this tree?”
I couldn't help but laugh. “I think I'd rather go with you, Reverend Muller.”
“Good! I'll get the keys to the car. “ He turned to go but stopped short as if remembering something. “Elise, you know, you might be with us for a while, and it seems awfully formal, calling us Reverend and Mrs. Muller. If you want, you could call us Papa and Mama, same as the other kids.”
I hesitated for a moment, trying to imagine how Reverend Muller had looked when he was young, dressed in a soldier's uniform, carrying a gun that could kill another young soldier, but I couldn't conjure up the image. All I could see was a kind man with a kind face.
“Yes,” I said slowly. “I would like that. If you are sure you don't mind.”
“I don't mind at all. In fact, I'm pleased,” he said, grinning as if he really was. “Now you wait here, and I'll be back in a jiffy.”
I watched him walk toward the house with his long, loping strides and made a mental note to ask him what a “jiffy” meant when he returned. As the screen door slammed behind him, the few sparrows that had returned to the oak tree were startled again and fluttered from the branches. I watched them rise over the treetops and wondered what time it was on Alexander Platz and if the skies were blue there, too.
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I stood on the hill, with the landscape laid out before me like an impressionist paintingâan idea of a river at the center of the canvas, a collection of colors blending one into another, a melted sunlight dream of a river that twisted and turned, making its own way wherever it pleased. Its banks were littered with branches and streaked with swatches of gray sediment where the waters had become impatient within their boundaries and spilled over onto the land, just to prove they could. The riverbank rose gradually, in step-like grades, until sandy shores gave way to mile upon mile of green velvet fields, flat and fertile, stretching to the edge of the valley floor, where they suddenly met the tree line. At that point the land sloped sharply higher, and trees in a hundreds of shades of green, from moss to sage, olive to emerald, stood row upon row. Each tree gazed over the head of the one in front of it, like spectators in a stadium peering at the spectacle below.
“People say it is one of the three most beautiful rivers in the world, but I can't imagine how there could be a river more beautiful than this.” Papa pointed to the green valley floor. “Those are tobacco fields. One way or another, nearly everyone in Brightfield depends on tobacco for their living. The Indians were growing it when the Pilgrims landed, though not in any great quantity or quality. Yankee farmers have cultivated tobacco as a cash crop since the early eighteen hundreds. Immigrants, like my father and Mrs. Muller's grandparents, came later to work in the fields as laborers and then stayed on and bought farms of their own. We're mostly German stock here in Brightfield, but Connecticut River Valley tobacco has attracted a whole melting pot of people looking for a chance: Poles, Czechs, Russians, Jamaicans, to name a few.”
Papa paused and smiled to himself. “I used to work in these fields when I was a boy. It's hard work, let me tell you, but this tobacco is some of the best in the world for cigars. See those long tents in that field over there?” He pointed east. I saw an enormous rectangle of what looked like fine, white linen surrounded by a sea of green tobacco plants, as though an alpine ski run and a tropical forest sat side by side and you could choose your climate by crossing from one to the other whenever you grew too hot or too cold.
“Those are shade tents, where they grow tobacco for cigar wrappers. Those tents protect the leaves from the sun and make the climate inside as moist and warm as it is in the tropics. Shade-grown wrappers fetch a high price, but they are expensive to cultivate and an awful lot of work.”
“Now, farther out on the edge of that same field,” he continued, and my eye followed where his finger was pointing at several long, narrow houses without windows, “is a tobacco shed. These plants are just starting to grow. When they are ready for harvest they'll stand taller than I do. The plants will be cut, sewn onto lathes, and hung in those barns to dry. The walls of the shed look solid, but they actually open up to let the air in, something like a shutter that can be louvered open to let in the light. That helps the tobacco dry at the right speed and temperature.”
When Papa finished speaking, I climbed to the very crest of the hill for a better view. The valley spread beneath my feet like a gift, so lovely and serene it seemed almost a thing imagined rather than seen. Papa let me look for a long time. Finally he said, “It's pretty, isn't it.”
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