Nightingale (22 page)

How she wanted to see the face of grace. But she kept hearing that slap.
I'm not a harlot, Mama.

“Ye need not toil nor languish, Nor ponder day and night

How in the midst of anguish, Ye draw Him by your might.

He comes, He comes all willing, Moved by His love alone,

Your woes and troubles stilling; For all to Him are known.”

She glanced at her daughter, her two fingers stuck in her mouth, sucking. Esther edged them out of her mouth, wiped her chin. The sun in her hair turned it nearly into a halo. Yes, perhaps God did know her troubles…and her joys.

“Sin's debt, that fearful burden, Let not your souls distress.” She leaned into the hymn, drinking in the words. “Your guilt the Lord will pardon, And cover by His grace.”

Cover by His grace.

“You're marrying him because you are trying to erase what happened! You're trying to find forgiveness. But don't you see—you already have it.”

She closed her eyes against Peter's words, but they crashed over her again, their tone nearly turning her inside out. Yes. She was trying to erase her past. Make it right. But maybe she had been staring at her own sins so long, she hadn't looked up to see….grace.

Grace just seemed so….inappropriate. Why should God forgive those who intentionally sin?

She opened her eyes, lifted them to the altar, the communion wine and bread spread out on the table. Grace. She hungered for it.

Esther, He loves you more than you can imagine.

Tears burned her eyes. She blinked then reached around for her handbag to find a handkerchief.

Looked up.

There, three rows behind her, Rosemary caught her eye. Her red hair turned to fire in the sunlight, her painted lips a perfect knot of disapproval. She slowly shook her head as the final verse rose around them.

“He comes to judge the nations, A terror to His foes,

A Light of consolations, And blessed Hope to those

Who love the Lord's appearing.

O glorious Sun, now come, Send forth Thy beams so cheering,

And guide us safely home.”

She clasped the purse shut, turned back. Safely home. Wherever that was.

Mrs. Hahn closed her hymnal, turned, and lifted Sadie off the pew. Settled her on her lap. Esther sat with her hands folded on her knees, stiff, as the congregation recited the Apostles' Creed and the pastor delivered the sermon about Jesus and Nicodemus.

“But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”

Rosemary's stare burned a hole in the back of her neck.

They rose for the communion prayer, and Esther gripped the pew, her legs weak, perspiration sliding down her back. She might faint with the heat in the church.

“Mrs. Hahn—” she started as the church began to file out to the altar for their communion. Mrs Hahn shot her a look, wide-eyed, as she shifted Sadie onto her hip.

They moved out of the pew and for a moment, Esther stopped. Bread and wine, the propitiation of Christ's death and life in her.

A harlot.

She turned, bumping against the man behind her. “Excuse me,” she barely mumbled as she quick-walked to the back of the church. She felt eyes scrape over her as she fled.

Tripping down the steps, her heart in her mouth, she crossed the vacant street and headed straight for the park. Found a bench under an elm.

Listened to the organ's mourning trail after her.

Overhead the swallows chirped. The July sun syruped through her, touching her bones. Her heartbeat settled back to itself.

See, it had simply been the heat inside the church. She pulled off her hat, let the wind loosen her hair, cool the moisture from her body. And she hadn't been sleeping well, not since her job at the hospital ended two weeks ago.

And Linus—Linus had been even more distant, almost angry whenever she went to see him. And yet, he begged her to stay with him, last time throwing a pudding dish at her when she got up to leave.

“Sadie needs me—”

“I need you!”

She wrapped her hands around her waist, closed her eyes, raised them to the sun.

He just needed more time. Hadn't he said that he didn't want to get married until he could stand at the altar? That might be months—even a year. Surely he'd see, by then, that he didn't love her.

He didn't love her. She knew it in her bones. Saw right through his need to the truth.

Linus feared being unloved. Just like she'd feared it as war loomed closer, just like Hedy feared it and gave herself away in a desperate thirst for it. They all simply wanted that taste of something that could nourish their empty places, make them feel whole. For that, she couldn't fault him.

The bells rang, and she looked up to see the ushers opening the doors. She got up—at the very least, she should relieve Mrs. Hahn of Sadie so she could greet her friends. And perhaps, with Sadie as a buffer—

Oh, she'd turned pitiful along with everything else.

Esther stood back from the bottom of the steps, spotted Mrs. Hahn, and lifted her face in a smile.

Mrs. Hahn could bring a woman to her knees with a look. No wonder Bertha said little and served much.

The woman came down the stairs, Sadie's hand clutched in hers, then all but dumped the girl into her mother's care. “I never…” She shook her head, turned away.

Yes, well, she probably hadn't.

Esther crouched down next to her daughter. “Sorry that Mama left, sweetie.”

Sadie looked past her. “Mama! A black squirrel!”

Esther took her daughter's hand. “That's right, honey. Only in Roosevelt. They ran away from the circus and came to live here, where they'd be safe.”

“And why are they black and not brown, like the other squirrels?”

“I guess that's just the way God made them. To be black.” Or maybe they'd turned black when they ran away from their home. To Roosevelt.

She lifted Sadie to her hip, listening to the chatter of women, watching the men lighting cigarettes, children skipping into the park. The bells had stopped chiming.

Behind her, one voice spliced the conversation.

She tightened her jaw, even as she parted out the other sounds to listen.

“And then I saw her kiss him. That
Nazi
. I just don't know why the Hahns put up with her. Linus deserves better. But maybe they'll never get married. Linus doesn't want to, you know.”

She turned, and Rosemary didn't even bother to hide herself, just flicked a gaze at her, past the huddle of women, and smiled.

Mrs. Hahn, however, standing with her own group of women, stilled—in fact, it seemed to Esther that even the wind stopped in the trees, the birds ceasing their songs. Then, she pasted a smile on her face, one that turned the day to January.

“Linus will marry Esther, Rosemary. Friday evening, in fact. At the hospital.” She lifted her voice, still that smile. “And you're all invited to the joyous event.”

“According to the rules of the Geneva Convention, you should be in solitary confinement.”

Bert Siefert's dark words clawed into Peter, sharp and tenacious. “But something just doesn't sit right with me. So, you stay out of trouble, and you'll be home before you know it. You make more trouble, we'll ship you off to Fort Robinson, and you can wait it out with your Nazi pals.”

I'm not a Nazi.
But Peter didn't argue—better to keep his mouth shut and do his time by driving the tractor on the Janzen pea farm, mowing the peas into windrows for Arne and Fritz to fork onto the flatbed trailer.

With the slain peas fermenting under the early August sun, the sky a limitless blue, the sun a haze of gold, Peter felt nearly healed. Who knew that the smell of home—of sauerkraut in its brine—might be scoured up by wet pea silage? His cotton pants reeked of it, his T-shirt soiled with green stain, but somehow it soothed his corrosive ache for Esther.

Now, he sat atop the Flambeau Red JI Case V-series tractor that his uncle would have given his prize hog for. He glanced behind him, monitoring his speed as Arne and Fritz scooped the silage into the trailer. From there, they'd put it through the viner and separate the silage from the peas. Then, off to the cannery, a job he'd feared they'd assign to him after he returned from the hospital.

But Mrs. Janzen had requested him back, and apparently Bert Seifert hadn't bought into Fritz's accusation that he'd caught Peter escaping.

Even though the thought plagued Peter more than he wanted to admit. Since seeing Linus erupt, then collapse into the arms of Rosie, well, it only churned up the still-simmering desire to find Esther—and her beautiful daughter Sadie—and run for the hills.

Especially since he'd sat in the solarium the entire morning, finally returning to his room after the church service, and not a man there realized they'd been worshipping with the enemy.

Then again, when voices raised as one to the High King of Heaven, how could they be enemies?

“You going to ever let me drive, Peter?” Arne asked, leaning on his rake.

“Leave him alone,” Bert said, finishing off an apple as he walked behind them. Peter had seen him nick it from the crib in the barn. “He can't rake.”

“I can take a turn,” Peter said, setting the brake. He stepped down, stole the rake from Arne. “Slow and steady on the gas.”

Arne grinned, something raucous in it, and Peter shook his head. Every day, a morsel of Arne's youth returned to him, the haunted look dissolved by the rolling hills, the smell of the shaggy black spruce ringing the fields, the kindness of Mrs. Janzen. Yes, somehow, it helped him return to Germany and fishing with his grandfather.

And maybe someday he really would.

Arne fired up the tractor and Peter held in a wince as he scooped a forkful of silage onto the wagon. So, maybe he'd take it easy, just a bit. Two weeks out of the hospital, and his ribs still burned when he moved too fast.

However, the work took him away from his helplessness. What kind of man was he if he let Esther marry Linus—what if Linus's anger erupted at her?

He'd been forming a letter in his head for the better part of a week. One of these days—maybe after he left, so the temptation to find her, rescue her, redeem her, didn't run wild in his brain—he'd put the pen to paper.

I'm not getting married.
Oh, Peter hoped not. Linus's words, more than anything, kept him sane.

The tractor jerked as Arne let the clutch out too quickly. The wagon rattled on the drawbar and Fritz put his hand on the end. “Go easy there, kid. We don't want this thing to mow us down.”

Fritz didn't look at Peter, hadn't met his eyes but once since Peter returned to camp. But that one look bore enough for Peter to keep his distance.

Soon. Soon they'd leave—move to a different location or even be shipped home. All he had to do was stay alive. Faithful.

The tractor belched, and the gears ground, the machine lurching forward as Arne slammed the gas. The tractor shot off down the row, toward the rise in the hill.

“Arne!” Peter shouted. “Slow down!”

Arne turned, shooting a grin at him.

Then, Peter could only guess at what happened. Perhaps Arne had his hand on the steering wheel as he turned, cranking the two narrow wheels uphill. Or maybe the lilt of the hill and the weight of pea silage conspired to knock the trailer off balance.

Maybe both, indeed, because one moment Arne shot them a grin, the next he vanished behind the shudder of the pea trailer as the tractor
slipped, tipping sideways. For a moment, the trailer held it fast, the tongue wrenching from the whining argument between the two, and in that moment, Peter yelled. “Arne! Jump!”

Then the trailer shook itself and ripped free, skidding into the back end of the tractor. The tractor rolled over and slammed into the soggy ground.

The right wheel spun in the air, still turning.

“Arne!” Peter dropped his rake, sprinted toward the flipped machine.

Bert reached him first. Arne lay pinned, the weight of the engine crushing one side of his body, pressing him into the earth, the other leg wrapped in the steering wheel.

“Help me, help me—” His tone dug a hole through Peter, yanked him back to the battlefield even as he assessed the situation. The boy's breath came out rapid and shallow, and Peter shucked off his gloves, put his finger to his carotid artery. Rapid and weak.

“Bert, go back to the farm, get the truck.”

Bert stared at him as if he'd slapped him.

“Listen—I'm a doctor—and we're running out of time. We need to get this thing off of him—go, get the truck!”

Bert took off down the field.

“Fritz—don't just stand there—cut the power!”

Fritz had paled.

“Fritz!”

The man cut the power on the tractor. The engine died to only Arne's wails.