Season of My Enemy, page 27
She’d shed tears numerous times over the months since, keeping them to herself, of course. That is, until Patsy burst in and found her with her damp face pressed into a pillow. Then a strange thing happened. Patsy cried too. Not drastically, but she’d swiped at some tears and let others tumble down, holding Fannie and telling her that she understood. She had no such notions that Rudy would ever come back to America, but she was young. She admitted she would get over him. Already had mostly. It wasn’t love. Not like it was for Fannie. Her heart ached for Fannie.
Love! Fannie’s head sprang upright. “It isn’t that,” she told her sister, dabbing a handkerchief to her eyes, but Patsy shushed her and rubbed her back.
“Of course it is. I may be only sixteen, but I’m not blind to what happened between you. Or naive,” she added.
And Fannie hugged her sister tightly.
Then Wolf had written. His first letter from Germany was a long one. Longer even than any he’d written to her from the lumber camp. He told her that Germany was in a shambles, though his own city had been largely undamaged. He’d sent her two photographs, one of his parents standing in front of their home and one of himself. It looked like a professional picture, the sort he’d probably had taken for his teaching position. He was a little younger in it. He said it was taken before the war. He looked handsome, but Fannie thought him even handsomer at the age she’d met him. How would he have changed again in two years’ time? Too bad he couldn’t have sent a more recent photo. She tucked the picture of Wolf into her Bible and prayed for him and his parents. She couldn’t imagine leaving her mother and siblings to move to another country—another continent—yet she didn’t stop praying that one day he’d come.
She wrote him back right away, and they continued to write letters back and forth, though sometimes the mail was delayed because of the troubles still going on returning life to order back in Germany. In one of those letters, he gave her the heartrending news that he had been released from his teaching position. Having been a prisoner in the United States, his employers considered him contaminated by Western thought.
But did that mean he would not remain in Heidelberg, or that he would simply seek another position?
Eventually, though, the day arrived when he wrote to her mother and asked if the O’Briens would consider a sponsorship. Fannie’s heart thrummed with thankfulness as Mama laid a new stone in the walk to the barn and praised God for giving their family a new start, for Calvin and Liza’s baby to come, and for those young men who’d been enemies once. And now today …
She pulled in a breath as she read the words:
I will take passage on a merchant ship, working my way to America. I think I have learned what it means to do hard work.
There was humorous chagrin in his words.
I will also work for my train passage. I hope your family does not change their minds during my travels, or I will have to sleep under the stars when I arrive.
She laughed aloud. He would not be sleeping under the stars unless it was on the deck of the ship. She’d fix up a place for him in the barn. Calvin would have his new house ready to move into before long, and then Wolf could have Calvin and Liza’s room for as long as he needed it. Wolf hoped to find a teaching position here, but in the meantime, he was not afraid to take any work that might come to him. He would labor happily on the farm to earn his keep from Fannie’s mother.
Fannie finished reading his letter, then folded it up, tucked it into its envelope, and held it to her chest while she drove the tractor one-handed back up the drive.
It was the first of October when the telephone rang—two short, two long—their ring on the party line they shared with four other farms. Mom answered the call. “Yes, I’ll accept the charges.” Her chin lifted, and her glance found Fannie. Fannie sat at the kitchen table with a bowl of apples, half-peeled. Her fingers coiled around the paring knife in her hand as her heart quickened. “Yes … Hello … It’s no trouble … Why, really?” Mom’s voice heightened, and Fannie’s heartbeat sped. Mom fixed her gaze on her with a nod. Fannie stood. “Why don’t you speak to Fannie? It’s all right.” She held out the receiver.
Fannie took the heavy black receiver. “Hello?”
“Fannie.” She could not mistake Wolf’s voice for all the world.
“Where are you calling from?”
“I am at a station in Milwaukee. My train will come through Barron at four p.m.”
She wet her lips and gripped the cloth-covered telephone cord. She could hear some kind of announcement echoing over the line. “Four o’clock, you say. Someone will meet you at the station.”
“If it is inconvenient, I will walk.”
“It’s not at all.” Where were her senses? Her brain fluttered about without being able to still. “Mom and I will be there or maybe Dale. Someone. Don’t worry. We can’t wait to have you,” she added with a glance at Mom, who stood watching. “Goodbye.”
Fannie set the phone in its cradle on the edge of the counter and turned around, her mind still spinning. It was only ten o’clock.
Liza lumbered into the room looking very uncomfortable. She was four days overdue and seemed to have gone from excitement to resignation that the baby might never be born. “I heard our ring. Something important?”
“It was Wolf. He’s coming today.”
Liza rubbed her lower back. “Today?”
Fannie nodded and turned on the tap. She needed a drink of water, something to do with her hands, a way to steady her thoughts.
“You look nervous. And excited,” Liza said with a grin.
Fannie tipped the glass back and drank, but it did nothing to stem the heat rising to her face.
Liza chuckled. “Oh, Fannie. To think you have fallen so hard for someone you hated so deeply.”
“I did not hate him.”
“I’m sorry. Hate is a strong word.”
“I mistrusted him.”
Liza lowered her bulk into a kitchen chair, her knees splayed beneath her skirt. “You were right to at first. We all have German friends. What is Wisconsin without her German heritage?”
“And Irish,” said Fannie.
“Aye. A-rrighty then, Miss O’Brien.” Liza imitated a brogue but stopped to add, “And Jewish.”
Fannie looked at her. “I never thought about your maiden name before.”
“Your niece or nephew will have quite a mix of ancestry. My mother is a mix of German and Scottish descent.”
“I suppose if we began to untangle all the roots of our family history, we would find that there is really very little that separates any of us.”
“That’s the way I look at it.”
Liza’s kindness etched itself on Fannie’s tumbling thoughts. She smiled at her sister-in-law. “Thank you, Liza.”
“What for?”
“For being so good to Calvin and to all of us.”
Liza waved away Fannie’s gushing with a puff of breath as she pushed herself straighter on the chair. “Well, resting here to get comfortable didn’t last long. I think I’ll walk a little bit. Want to come?”
Fannie shook her head. “No. I think I need to stay busy for the next”—she glanced at the wall clock above the sink—“four or five hours. This is going to be the longest day ever.”
“It’s already the longest month.”
They both laughed, and Liza waddled out the door.
When Fannie had gotten the letter in August telling of Wolf’s imminent plans, it was decided that he would not be sleeping in the barn. The weather would turn cold any day now. With Calvin and Liza set to move into their own house by the end of the month and Jerry gone off to school, Dale said that it was only right that Wolf would bunk with him. He brought the subject up himself when she’d come upstairs with a basket of clean laundry.
“Not like I’m not used to having bunkmates,” he told her as he lifted a stack of his folded shirts from her basket and put them into his dresser drawer.
Fannie set the basket on Jerry’s bed. “Dale, you’ve never shown a moment of bitterness about Wolf or any of the prisoners. Not even one. Don’t you feel it sometimes, after all that happened to you? You told us about the men who were like family to you over there, even that German guard, but what about the cruel men?”
Dale turned to her and sat on the edge of his bed. “Have a seat, Fan.”
She sat across from Dale on Jerry’s bed so that their knees almost touched. Dale rested his elbows on his legs. “It would be easy to live there in that ugly past, thinking all the time about all the bad things. Truthfully, there have been times I felt them swallowing me. But then I remind myself that it’s in the past.
“I’m not saying it’s easy. Truth be told, I wake myself up at night sometimes from bad dreams, you know? I cry and I can’t remember why.” He didn’t wait for an answer but straightened his back, planted his palms on his thighs, and went on. “Then I remind myself of what I know. I know that evil men will have their just reward. I can’t judge the whole human race or even a small part of it by them. None of us can. You know …” Dale looked into her eyes but seemed to see straight into her heart. “There were Americans who did wrong too. I saw some of it with my own eyes. Boys who shot down prisoners who’d surrendered, just because they had the power to do it and they hated them. Just to get even.” He bowed his head over his clasped hands for a moment and then lifted his gaze straight at her again. “It was war, and things like that happen in war. Awful things. Things that I hope to God some of those fellows will repent of. But it’s war, Fannie. And it’s over. Your friend Wolf … well, maybe he’ll become my friend too.”
Tears had already clouded her vision the instant he mentioned giving up the past, and now her tears washed out. “I love you, Dale.” She leaned into his arms, and he hugged her.
“I love you too, Fannie.” He set her back and straightened with a glance around the room. “My, my. So what do we do with Jerry’s model airplanes?”
Now, weeks later, with the memory of their conversation tucked into her heart, she went upstairs and ran a hand over the new quilt they’d laid over their guest’s bed. Gone were the war posters and model planes. Jerry’s dresser drawers were empty except for a pair of work overalls in the bottom one. Wolf would fill those drawers with his own things. There were hangers available for his slacks and a couple of nicer shirts. Even a hanger for a suit too, if he had one.
She tried to imagine him sitting with them in church next Sunday. Would she be able to stop smiling long enough to hear the sermon?
Finally, the hour arrived for her to leave for the station. Patsy had gotten home from school, and Mom set her to peeling potatoes for their supper. She groaned, complaining that she wanted to go to the station with Fannie, but it had already been decided that Mom would go along.
Then Liza waddled into the room, a stricken expression on her face and her hand holding her lower belly. “I think my water just broke. I mean … I know it did. It’s … Oh no.”
Fannie saw what Liza felt. Patsy gaped too. Mom went into action.
“Get Cal.”
Fannie blinked. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s at the new house,” Liza said.
“Is Dale with him?”
She shrugged. “Probably.”
“Let’s get you comfortable,” Mom said, taking Liza’s shoulders.
“Patsy, bring us some towels.”
Fannie glanced at the clock. Three-fifteen. “Should I ring the bell?”
Mom was as composed as Fannie had ever seen her while she helped Liza to a chair. “Dale will hear it. But maybe you should drive over there either way.”
She hustled out the door and rang the bell at least a dozen times. It clanged across the fields. The new house was about a quarter mile away on the southwest edge of the property, not too far from where the creek crossed the road. Pulse jumping, she ran to the car and roared off. Better to be safe and certain he got the message.
She didn’t need to say a thing. Cal met her at the door, his expression as urgent as her own. “Dale said he thought he heard the bell. I was about to head over. Liza?”
Fannie nodded.
Hammering echoed through the empty house. “Dale! It’s Liza’s time. I’m leaving.”
The hammering ceased, and Dale appeared in the doorway, a grin stretched across his face. “Don’t let him hurt himself, Fannie. I’ll keep laying floor down.”
She smiled, and together she and Cal raced to the car.
They reached the house to find Liza pacing the kitchen and puffing breaths between Mom and Patsy.
“How’s she doing?” Cal rushed to his wife’s side, replacing Patsy.
Liza leaned into him with a tiny moan. “Not too badly yet.”
Mom was matter-of-fact. “It’ll be a while, Cal. It’s her first.” For Mom to remind her own son that it was their first child was the first crack in her veneer Fannie had seen.
She glanced at the clock again. Three thirty-five. “I’ve got to get to the station.”
“I’ll come!” Patsy said.
Mom pointed at the sink. “You stay here and finish peeling potatoes. Put them on to boil so they’ll be done when the meat loaf is ready. I’ll go to the hospital with Calvin and Liza. I’m not going to miss my first grandchild being born. You help her to the car, Calvin. I’ll go fetch her bag.” Mom left the room.
Fannie stared as Calvin moved his puffing wife by and Patsy scraped thick potato skins into the sink beneath a scowl. “I’m sorry, Pats. If it matters, I’m sure Wolf will be glad to have something good to eat when he gets here.”
Patsy gave a weak smile. “I know someone has to hold down the fort. You’d better get going. You’ll miss his train, and he’ll think you forgot.”
Fannie nodded, but she felt dazed. She hadn’t planned on meeting Wolf alone. “I suppose I’d better.”
She barely reached the station on time. There were more people waiting this time than when they’d come to meet Dale. Normalcy had returned to her homeland. The sound of steel wheels and a train whistle met her ears before she’d really had time to catch her breath and decide the best place to wait. So she stood on the platform, staring at the oncoming iron beast like a ninny while a flutter built inside her chest. The train stopped, and the passengers began descending. She took a step forward, searching through the crowd, past faces, and then … Wolf stepped from the car and turned to the platform. He moved to the step, and her heart seized. A head taller than the gentleman in front of him and broader in the shoulders, he spied her only half a moment later.
He wore a suit. Tweed. His hand went to his hat, pulling it off and clutching it to his chest as he descended from the train. His hair was slightly longer on top now, though neatly trimmed and combed back from his forehead, and his gray-blue eyes creased in the corners as he smiled.
Fannie’s breath rushed out, and she moved through the thinning crowd until she came to a stop before him. He set down a worn brown case she hadn’t noticed he carried, then dipped his head. “Hello, Fannie.”
She blinked, hardly able to conceive that he was real. “You’re here.” Finally, her senses returned and heat rushed up her spine. “Hello, Wolf. Welcome. Welcome to America.”
“Thank you. It is good to be back.”
“Oh … I meant to say Willkomen. Willkomen in Wisconsin.”
He gave a light chuckle and bowed his head. “Danke, Fraülein.” He looked at her for another long moment, and it was as they simply stared at one another that Fannie felt the past two years fall away. Many things had happened since. Some she’d written about in her letters. Some had never bothered to find their way onto the page. She was older now, almost twenty-five, and he was thirty-two. The war had changed them all, and time had played its part.
She smiled again. “Are you ready to go? Everyone is waiting.” And then she remembered Liza was having a baby. “Well, not everyone. It seems my brother Calvin is going to become a father today. Liza is in labor.”
“I apologize for arriving at an inconvenient time.” He picked up his case and put his hat back on. She followed his movements, then turned and stepped with him across the platform.
“Your timing could not have been better unless you had come months sooner.”
As they reached the edge of the platform, Wolf held his hand up to offer her assistance stepping down. Fannie laid her palm in his. In all their time together, never had they touched so intentionally. Now, as their hands met and his fingers closed over hers, Fannie felt grounded. As her feet touched the earth, she reluctantly let go.
At the car, Wolf stowed his case on the backseat, then slid into the passenger seat beside her. Her heart still hammered at his presence in her life. “How was your trip?” Her question came out airily, but at least she’d thought of something more to say.
“All went without incident. I worked aboard ship and hope to never have to take up that life.” His face creased with a smile as he talked, telling her about his tasks on board, about arriving in New York Harbor, and his journey since. She intermittently asked questions, and their conversation relaxed, bringing them home.
“Everything looks familiar,” he said, sounding peaceful. “Except …”
“That’s Cal’s new house over there across the field,” she said as they turned into the drive. “It’s almost finished. They’ll be moving in by the end of the month.”
“Perhaps there will be something I can help him with.”
“That would be kind of you.”
“You painted the barn.”
She beamed as they drew up the drive toward the house and the bright red building. “Yes, Dale said it needed to be done. Dad would have loved to see it looking so fresh. His father built it.”
“I enjoy hearing you speak about your family.”
Fannie glanced at the house where things were still very quiet. Not even Patsy came bursting out. “Are you hungry? Patsy has dinner waiting. Or would you like to stretch your legs?”
