Part 2 (1/2)

He grinned, humor lighting his eyes. ”Here, Louisa, share my apple pie with me. I can't eat the whole piece,” he offered, handing me his fork.

After taking a bite, I said, ”sehr gut! This pie is delicious! It tastes like Apfel Strudel.”

”I'll say. I'm all for rationing and doing my part for the war, but I sure do miss sugar. Aunt Martha keeps us on a strict diet.”

The rude waitress brought over some crayons and a tattered coloring book for William, but I wouldn't look up at her. I was still annoyed with her for questioning my intelligence. I took my intelligence very seriously. Too seriously, my father often remarked. I picked up a crayon and helped William get started coloring a page.

”Louisa, I never really learned how you had met Dietrich,” Robert said, stirring his coffee.

”Oh, I've known the Bonhoeffers since I was a child. My father is,” I paused, ”my father was an excellent piano tuner. The best in all of Berlin. He even tuned the concert pianos for the Berlin Symphony. The Bonhoeffers are a very music minded family. Father worked at their home frequently and took me along with him. They were very kind to me. They all play the piano, though Dietrich is probably the best musician in the family. He plays the cello and the violin, and can sight read any kind of music, no matter how difficult. He is a big man, yet he has such delicate hands. Perfectly designed for the piano. I think he can reach an octave and a half.” I looked down with dismay at my own small hands. I had trouble stretching comfortably to a full octave.

”Did you know that Dietrich has been here? To Arizona,” Robert casually mentioned, as if it was an everyday occurrence.

”Really? No, I didn't know.” I looked at him, expectantly, hoping he would elucidate. He didn't, so I added the prompt, ”when?”

”At the end of the year he spent in New York at the seminary, he drove all of the way out to Mexico with a friend. They stopped in Copper Springs for a few days while they pa.s.sed through. That must have been in 1931.”

So Dietrich had been to this dry, forsaken land. Why would he think that I could live here? My conscience started stinging; I silently rebuked myself for being ungrateful. What was the matter with me? This man was kind enough to provide shelter for me, a total stranger, because of his friends.h.i.+p with Dietrich, and I was complaining about the landscape.

But I missed the country of my childhood, and its seasons, sights and smells familiar to me. Oh, the colors of Germany. Velvety lawns, trees the color of dark jade. So many shades of green!

I had to stop this train of thoughts. Did I miss the sound of the n.a.z.i boots as they goose-stepped through town? Or screeching police sirens as they hunted out innocent people in the night? Hideous shrieks of ”Heil Hitler?”

It worked. Arizona was already looking better to me.

”Did you know that Dietrich is engaged to be married?” I asked Robert. ”To a lovely woman named Maria. She's young, very young, but quite well suited to him.”

”You're kidding me! I thought that maybe you and he, well, I just thought...” His cheeks became flushed as he looked down at his coffee cup.

”Pardon? Dietrich? And me? Oh no!” I laughed at the thought. ”He's like an uncle or a brother to me.”

Just then, we heard the woman sitting in the booth next to us shriek, ”mouse! There's a mouse under the table! It tried to bite my ankle!” Other people started to jump up as the rude waitress ran to the woman's booth with a broom to swat the mouse.

Suddenly, Robert sprang into action, as if accustomed to this scenario. In one deft move, he scooped William up from under the table. William held a feather in his hand and an enormous grin on his face. Robert tossed two dollars for our bill on the table and nodded his head towards me, indicating we should leave. Fast.

We got in the car and Robert headed back on the highway towards Copper Springs. ”See what I mean about his intelligence?” I said smugly.

”Intelligent? Or mischievous?” he answered, but I noticed he was grinning.

No sooner had we arrived at the house but Miss Gordon marched out to greet us, eyes blazing. ”William! Go wash up for supper.” She scrubbed her hands together as if she held a bar of soap.

Obediently, William hustled inside.

”Robert, I expected you back hours ago. Mr. Mueller stopped by, mad as hops. He says that William stuck bubble gum on his office chair at the bank, and it ruined his favorite pair of trousers. Now, Robert, I know that man would complain if he was hung with a new rope, but if William really did put bubblegum on his seat-”

”That's impossible! Mueller wasn't even in the bank when we were there. And William was with me...or with Louisa the entire time. Unless...” Standing on the porch steps, he turned back to me. ”Louisa, did you see William put gum on a chair in the bank while I was in the vault?”

Now that I thought about it, William wasn't chewing gum after we left the bank.

Just then, William came outside after was.h.i.+ng his hands. He looked at Miss Gordon, who glowered at him. He looked at his father, who eyed him with suspicion. And then he looked at me, wide-eyed.

”No, Robert. I did not see him do that,” I answered in truth.

”Well, there you have it, Aunt Martha. Mueller just doesn't like kids. He blames William for everything. I'll talk to him tomorrow...” Robert's voice faded away as he and his aunt went into the house.

I slowly closed the car door, stopping for a minute to watch the waning sunset. Lord, thank you for bringing me here and providing safe keeping for me. Please watch over and care for those I love in Germany.

I felt a small hand reach for mine. It was William's, wet and soapy. Together, we stood and watched the sun go down. ”Going, going, gone!” I looked down at him and smiled. He looked back up at me with luminous eyes.

Chapter Two.

Come Sunday morning, I attended the service at Robert's church. It was the first time I had been inside the building. Humble, like its exterior. I inhaled the consoling fragrance of old wood, lemon oil, and beeswax. Along the sides were rows of hardwood pews, with a center aisle that led up to the steps that ended at Robert's wooden pulpit. Behind Robert's pulpit sat the choir, like plump pigeons on a telephone wire.

Above the choir was the feature I liked the best: A beautiful stained gla.s.s window of a figure of Christ, hands outstretched, and the words below it: ”Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” The window was situated so that the eyes of the congregation were drawn to the Christ figure. As the sun hit the window during the morning service, it splayed the colors of stained gla.s.s into rays like a rainbow. Someone had planned that well.

The pews were half-filled with an a.s.sorted sundry of faces, as oddly diverse as the town buildings. Mexicans with sun-kissed skin, Eastern Europeans with pale skin and dark circles under their eyes, even two tiny elderly Chinese ladies. Later, I learned that these two ladies' parents had emigrated from Canton, China, to work on the Southern Pacific Railroad in the 1800s. Oh, it felt a welcomed contrast to the b.e.s.t.i.a.l ethnic cleansing of Hitler's Germany.

We sang a few hymns, accompanied by a portly woman on the organ whom I soon learned to be the judge's wife. To my enchantment, an elderly man whistled, loud and in tune, a perfect accompanist to the hymns.

Robert dismissed the children for Sunday school in the fellows.h.i.+p hall right before his sermon. William didn't make any motion to run off with the other children, but I did notice he had been casting covert glances at all of the small boys within view, a look of longing on his face.

Then came Robert's sermon. Dry and dusty, just like Arizona.

He had more enthusiasm giving me a lesson on copper than he did while preaching the word of G.o.d. His theology was sound, but something in his delivery was lacking. Conviction? Yes. That was it.

Perhaps I expected too much. I was accustomed to ministers who preached like Dietrich, who spoke to the heart of his congregation. I never left church after a sermon of Dietrich's without feeling inspired.

Next came a baptism. Robert invited a beaming young couple with a dimple-chinned baby to come up and join him next to the baptismal font. Robert held the baby in his arms, introduced her to the congregation, and asked the proud parents a few questions of their intent to raise this child to know and love G.o.d. He looked surprisingly comfortable with the baby as she peered solemnly at him.

As Robert lifted the lid of the baptismal font, he jumped back, startled. A large greenish-brown frog leaped out. The mother screamed, the baby cried, Robert looked stricken, and the congregation howled in laughter. The judge's wife jumped up off of the organ bench and ran to change the water in the baptismal font. Someone else chased down the frog. Miss Gordon glared at William from her seat in the choir loft as he slunk low in the pew, a rather culpable look on his face.

During the announcements, Robert introduced me. Why hadn't he warned me? I could feel my cheeks burn as all eyes turned to me. Afterwards, a few church ladies came up to greet me, curious about the new houseguest at the preacher's home.

A dangerously handsome man with a closely trimmed beard worked his way through the clump of women. ”Frulein Louisa, allow me to introduce myself.” He took my hand and didn't release it. ”I am Friedrich Mueller, and this is my wife, Hilda.”

Standing next to the man was a tiny woman who looked as if she might jump if I spoke to her. I had a fleeting impression of a large proud peac.o.c.k with full plumage displayed, standing next to a small brown sparrow. I smiled politely at the woman and turned to her husband, pulling my hand out of his tight grasp. ”Grss Gott. Where in Germany are you from, Herr Mueller?”

”Nowhere important. And you, Frulein? Where are you from?”

There was something oily in his voice. I didn't trust this man. ”From Berlin, Herr Mueller.”

Robert came up and told me, wearily, that he was ready to go. On the walk back to the house I asked him if he knew where Herr Mueller had lived in Germany.

”Berlin, I believe. He's been in Copper Springs for over a decade or so. Came for the mines. And he owns the bank in town.”