Lies of Omission, page 8
Back in the kitchen, she found Angela still seated at the table. Adolf was shoving another log into the stove, but he turned as Hanneke came back inside. “I thought you were going to get arrested!” he cried.
“And I may yet,” Hanneke said, trying for a smile. “But so far, Deputy Barlow has evidently not found just cause. I imagine he’s tried.” She slid back into her chair and picked up her coffee cup. Only then did she realize that her hands were trembling. She set the cup down quickly.
“Adolf, pour Hanneke some fresh coffee, will you?” Angela asked. She waited until that was done before turning her attention to her guest. “Hanneke….”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Hanneke allowed herself a bracing sip before going on. “I did put a notice in the paper, asking for information about Fridolin. But I asked responders to leave a note at the post office! I didn’t even mention this place, or you. Deputy Barlow would never have known where I was staying if Dr. Rausch hadn’t told him.”
“I know. I read the notice.” Angela cocked her head at the newspaper Barlow had left on the table. “But the thing is…now he does know where you’re staying.”
Hanneke felt a sinking sensation in her stomach. “And that’s a problem.”
“I lost business when Julius left. I’ve built things back up, but in these times everyone is tense, upset…I simply can’t invite more trouble.” Angela sounded resigned. “Yankee sentiment against foreigners is rising. And John Barlow is a Yankee.”
“Deputy Barlow is married to a German woman,” Adolf objected.
“That may be,” Hanneke said quietly, “but he’s a lawman who has ordered me to leave Watertown.” She spread her hands, palms up. “He may come back here if I stay, and if your customers saw him…well, it would make them uncomfortable.”
“Yes, it would.” Angela cupped her elbows. “Watertown is split between Dodge and Jefferson Counties, and with the new city marshals…there are more lawmen than people are accustomed to seeing. It makes some of them anxious.”
“And that would hurt business,” Hanneke said. “It wouldn’t be fair for me to intrude here any longer.”
“But….” Adolf began again, then let his voice trail away. The dismay on his face was so sincere that Hanneke reached out and patted his arm. “I’ll be fine,” she told him.
“But where will you go?” he asked.
“Well, I had planned to walk out to Fridolin Bauer’s farm today. I’ll start with that, and then—then figure what comes next. Although….” She sipped more coffee, trying not to panic, trying to think. “I will have to find a place to leave my trunk.”
“She can leave that here, can’t she?” Adolf asked Angela. “In the stable, maybe?”
“Certainly,” Angela said at once, adding for Hanneke’s benefit, “It came with the building, but we use it primarily for storage. It’s right across the alley.” She smiled—grimly, but a smile nonetheless. “And if Deputy Barlow returns, I can say with complete honesty that you left with your luggage.”
“I’ll take your trunk out for you,” Adolf offered.
“And my valise as well, I think,” Hanneke added briskly. After the theft of her papers, she was loathe to leave what little she had left behind—the three volumes Fridolin had given her, her wedding shawl, her silk dress, her favorite teacup. Well, nothing for it. She could carry her knitting in her pocket and her money—such as was left—in her reticule. Everything else would have to stay.
Adolf lugged Hanneke’s trunk out to the stable and put it in a back corner, out of sight from the doorway.
“Danke schön, Adolf.” Hanneke heard a quiver in her voice and cleared her throat. Sometimes the smallest acts of kindness meant the most.
Adolf glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “It’s hard for Angela to trust anybody. Please don’t think unkindly of her.”
“I couldn’t possibly.”
He leaned even closer. “And I think she’s in debt.”
“To whom?”
“There’s a man named Hawkins—”
“Hawkins?” Hanneke hissed. “Asa Hawkins?”
Adolf looked startled. “I don’t know his first name. He’s an auctioneer. He buys goods in big quantity, freights them in, then resells at a profit.” The boy shrugged impatiently. “Anyway, he’s come around here a few times to talk to Angela. She sends me off, so I can’t hear, but she’s always upset after he leaves.”
Hanneke was all too familiar with Hawkins’s sneers and derogatory remarks. He’d shown himself to be the worst kind of nativist even before she’d spotted him marching in the Know-Nothing parade. He was an odious man, and if Angela was somehow indebted to him… Horrid thought. Hanneke pinched her lips together. How bad was the situation? Was Angela in danger of losing the tavern?
“Don’t say I told you!” Adolf’s gaze was pleading. “I just wanted you to understand.”
“Of course,” she assured him. “She’s lucky to have a good friend like you.”
After Adolf left on an errand, Hanneke went back into the kitchen. Angela was still sitting at the table. “I am sorry, Hanneke.”
“You have no need to be.”
“If you do end up staying in Watertown, it’s just as well that more people don’t learn that you were here with me.” Angela gestured at her belly. “My child has a father, but I do not have a husband.” Her voice was steady, but those gray eyes were shadowed.
Hanneke chose her words carefully. “I regret that you face hardships, Angela, but they are none of my business. You’ve been generous and kind. Should anyone ask, I’d be proud to call you a friend.”
Angela reached out and squeezed Hanneke’s hand. Then she lumbered to her feet and began washing the breakfast dishes. Hanneke fetched her bonnet and shawl and made ready to visit Christine Bauer.
* * *
Hanneke didn’t need directions to the Bauer farm on Plum Grove Road. I purchased from a Pomeranian fellow a farm three American miles northeast of town, Fridolin had told her. It is a short drive if I need to take the wagon, and a pleasant walk if I am seeking only conversation and news…. Hanneke was glad to leave Watertown behind, and tried to forget about being shoved into the street. Right now, she must concentrate on talking with Christine. Perhaps something unexpected, something helpful, would come from that. Everything else would have to wait.
Soon she left the busiest streets behind. Her spirits inched up, just a bit. Sunshine warmed her shoulders. Her ribs still ached, but walking eased stiff muscles. She pulled her knitting from her pocket. She was starting a new shawl today, which required only two needles. With one needle set in the sheath on her belt, she had one hand free to keep the yarn flowing smoothly while she walked.
Once past the city she passed acres of stumps, and cutting crews beyond, working to satisfy the ever-present need for railroad ties and building lumber. Beyond those, the landscape rolled from forest to what Fridolin had called “oak openings”—meadowland dotted with ancient trees. Delicate white shooting stars bloomed along the roadsides, and blue spiderworts too.
It was a marvel. Such rich land! The openness, the abundance of timber and fertile black loam, patches of swampy land promising marsh hay for the taking—it was overwhelming. She passed farms with barely a pumpkin patch cleared and others with acres already green with grain. No wonder so many people from crowded, hard-scrabble, exhausted patches of Europe had chosen to risk their futures here. This land represented brutal labor, but also the promise of better things.
Hanneke felt a new ache take seed in her heart. She imagined pausing with Fridolin at the end of a busy day on their farm to take stock, pleased with each improvement. She imagined riding to town on the wagon seat beside Fridolin, taking pumpkins or geese to sell at the market, or perhaps hauling a new rocking chair or mirror home….
“This will not do,” she said aloud, startling a bright bluebird up from its branch on a glossy-leaved shrub beside the road. She began walking again, more briskly.
She passed several farms before finding the turn onto Plum Grove Road, which veered left near the skeleton of a huge tree that had been split by lightning. As she gathered her bearings, a boy and his cow emerged around a bend. “Guten tag,” he called. He carried a thin branch but it trailed on the road behind him, evidently not needed.
“Guten tag,” Hanneke answered. “I’m looking for the Bauer Farm. I believe it’s just up ahead?”
“The Bauer Farm?” The boy paused, looking puzzled. Then he nodded. “Oh, you mean the old Jaeger place. Yes, just up ahead. Third farm on the north side of the road.” He whistled to his brown cow, who politely ambled on.
“Danke,” she called after him, but her memory was re-visiting another letter: Neighbors still call it ‘the Jaeger Place.’ I suspect that you and I will need to till it for a few more years before it is known as our own. It is not as well established as some, but I was able to purchase eighty acres at a good price, ten acres of which have been improved.
Hanneke walked on, hurrying now, as if some invisible cord was drawing her on. Not this farm… nor this one—the Steckelberg place, wasn’t it? But soon, beyond this stretch of woods. A few moments later she rounded a bend in the road…and there it was. Fridolin’s farm.
Her hands stilled, and she shoved her knitting away. No, she thought. Our farm.
Despite the abundance of local wood, a German builder had constructed the home in the Old County fachwerk, or half-timbered, style. A straw-and-mud mortar had been packed between an open framework of squared beams. The house was modest, one story with, most likely, a loft beneath the roof. A narrow front porch ran the length of the house, providing a shady place to snap beans or card wool. A vegetable garden extended from road to porch—Americans might waste such space on lawns, but Frau Jaeger had not. Someone had woven slim boughs through the rails on the garden fence, creating a barrier to rabbits with a minimal expenditure of precious lumber or expensive nails. It all felt very European. Very Germanic.
Grapevines had been trained along the fence. Hanneke paused at the front gate, surveying a cloud of delicate red columbine blooming in one corner, parsley and thyme and dill weed along the walkway, squares sprouting green with new growth—kohlrabi, kale, onions, potatoes, leeks. The layout was tidy, but her palms itched with wanting to take a hoe to weeds poking up here and there. And were those beetles on the broccoli? She’d have to….
“No,” she muttered. She swallowed hard, trying to quell the salty lump in her throat.
Then she took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. She checked for stray locks of hair beneath her bonnet, picked a bit of lint from her skirt. I am a respectable working-class woman, her clothing said. I am not a woman who puts on airs or tells fantastic tales.
She let herself in the gate, strode down the path, mounted the steps, wiped her palms on her skirt, and knocked on the door. After a few moments, she heard muffled footsteps. Then the front door opened and Christine Bauer appeared. “Oh!” she exclaimed. She wore the same dull black dress today, with a black crocheted pelerine around her shoulders and the mourning brooch with one yellow curl entombed beneath glass.
Hanneke managed only with difficulty to look away from that pin. “I beg your pardon. I know you didn’t expect me to call—”
“You are not welcome here.” Christine started to shut the door.
“Please. I don’t mean you any harm. I—I’m just trying to understand what has happened.”
The two women stared at each other. Christine’s gaze darted over Hanneke’s shoulder, up and down the road, as if looking for assistance. A goose honked from somewhere behind the house, and a breeze riffled the grapevine leaves.
“I beg you,” Hanneke said quietly. “Just a moment of your time. May I come inside?”
Chapter Eight
Christine pursed her lips. Smudges of fatigue showed beneath her eyes. Her cheeks were hollow. Hanneke reminded herself that this woman was grieving Fridolin’s death as well—and that she had known him far better and longer.
“No, you may not come inside,” Christine said finally. But she did step out onto the porch.
As she did, Hanneke caught a quick glimpse of a closed interior door, just beyond a small entryway. The door was wide, and a thin curl of smoke wisped beneath it. “Is—is that a schwartze Küche?” she stammered.
“Yes,” Christine said shortly, pulling the front door closed behind her. “What is it you want?”
Hanneke pulled her attention back from the house that should have been hers, but was not. “I want to understand why Fridolin kept my existence a secret from you, and yours a secret from me.”
“I have no reason to believe that you even knew my brother.” Christine twisted the fingers of one hand through her pelerine’s openwork.
“Fridolin Bauer traveled to Treptow last September.” Hanneke spoke quietly but quickly, trying to forestall more objections. “He liked ham but not mutton. He ate bread dry, without butter or grease. He loved going outside on clear nights to study the stars.”
“So, you…you might have met my brother. It does not prove that you married him.”
“He had a bad scar on his right thigh. He told me he got it as a boy, when he jumped from a haymow and landed on a scythe.”
Red spots appeared on Christine’s cheeks, harsh against her pallor.
“His—your—mother died in childbirth when he was six,” Hanneke continued. “The midwife smelled like peppermint and had a withered foot. He said he hid in the pantry behind a cabbage crock and—and listened.”
Christine hugged her arms across her chest. Hanneke thought she saw the actual moment that a crack formed in the younger woman’s disbelief. Something new flickered in her eyes. Fear, perhaps, or simply shock as she allowed herself to wonder. Her indignation seemed to flow from her bones like corn from a sack.
We’ve both been duped, Hanneke wanted to say. She wanted to reach out in commiseration. But the moment felt fragile, and she feared that either response would be rebuffed.
Finally, Christine said, “I came to America to keep house for my brother. I did so for three years in Milwaukee before we came here and started over. I cooked his meals, I darned his socks. I was the only person he had to talk with on long evenings. How could a man keep such a secret from his sister?” Her voice trembled. “How?”
“I don’t know.” Hanneke thought of her own brother Theodor; how she would feel in similar circumstances.
“I am sorry for your distress, but there is nothing for you here.”
“This isn’t just about Fridolin’s secrets,” Hanneke persisted. “Something strange and—and terrible is going on. Someone stole my marriage papers and will while I was upstairs in the Buena Vista. And yesterday evening, someone shoved me into the street.” Hanneke waited for a reaction and got none. “Did Fridolin act in any unusual manner in the months before he died?”
“No.”
“Was he…do you know if he was involved in politics? I understand that some Germans are working to defeat the Know-Nothings. Was he involved in that effort?”
“No. Fridolin had all he could manage to keep this farm limping along.”
“Was he truly such a poor farmer? I was shocked to learn the manner in which he died—”
The tears overflowed, tracking down Christine’s cheeks. “I will not revisit that painful day! My brother’s skills, or lack thereof, are none of your concern!”
Hanneke struggled to find some new line of inquiry, something that might turn Fridolin’s sister from an adversary to an ally. “I am not raving mad, and I am not trying to cheat anyone. But we are not entirely unalike, you and I. We are both women responsible for our own welfare. For reasons I cannot imagine, Fridolin Bauer did both of us a great injustice. Perhaps, if we work together, if we shared—”
“I have nothing to share with you!” Christine looked incredulous. “Why should I? What possible motive could you have except stealing from me what my brother left behind when he died?”
“That is not true! I don’t want money. I just want to understand what—”
“Fridolin left me with very little. Can’t you see that? I could end up at the city’s poor farm! My brother’s bank account was almost empty when he died. In fact, I can’t help wondering if he gave money to you.”
“Quite the contrary. I gave him my small dowry, which leaves me destitute. He said he wanted to build a summer kitchen.”
“Oh!” Christine gasped softly. She looked away, one slim hand over her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” Hanneke said quietly. “But if we could just—”
“No more. You must go. Leave Watertown. I know that Deputy Barlow already ordered you to do that.”
“I am not able to simply—”
“Wait.” Christine turned abruptly and disappeared into the house, slamming the door behind her.
Several long minutes ticked by. Perhaps the woman isn’t coming back, Hanneke thought. Perhaps she intends to leave me standing here like a leper, barred from comfort and company.
Then the door opened again. “Here.” Christine thrust a small piece of paper toward Hanneke.
“What’s this?”
“A note. Take it to the Bank of Watertown on Main Street. You’ll receive enough money to get you back to Milwaukee—”
“This is not why I came here!” Hanneke made no move to take the note. “Fridolin must have had some reason for keeping secrets from both of us. All I want is the truth! That’s all!”
Christine was trembling. A little sob hiccupped from her throat, and she needed a moment to find words. “I think I know that,” she whispered finally. “Perhaps we are more alike than we can even imagine. Perhaps…perhaps if things were different, we might have even gotten along—”
I think we’ll get along well enough, you and I.
“—but things are not different. They are as they are. I have nothing left but this farm, and I have to provide for myself. So please—just take this!” Christine forced the note into Hanneke’s hand, closing her fingers over it. “Take it and go.” Then Fridolin’s sister darted back inside. When the door slammed this time, Hanneke heard the metallic clang of a bolt sliding home. A moment later the muslin curtains hanging inside over the front windows were jerked closed.
