Martha
Zeke was on time for the milking the next morning and said the doctor had examined his Mamm and then given her a tuberculosis test. “She tested positive.”
“Oh no.” Martha’s heart sank for all the Zimmermans.
“Jah,” Zeke said. “But the doctor also said there’s a new treatment he wants to try. He said to bring her back next week.”
Martha hoped the treatment would work. Rosene came out to help a few minutes later, and the three worked without speaking much.
An hour and a half later, as she connected a pump to the last of the cows, Rosene said, “I’m going into the house to help Clare finish breakfast.”
“Good,” Martha said. “The PWs will be here soon.”
A few minutes later, Zeke shouted, “Martha! We have a leak!”
She scooted back on the stool. From time to time the old aluminum milk cans, which were hard to replace since the war started, sprung leaks. Vater welded the holes shut, but he couldn’t do that when the can was full. “Pour the milk back into the holding vat,” Martha called out as she ran toward the milk room.
“There are more leaks!”
She quickened her pace. The cans, with brass tags engraved with the name Simons on them, were lined up on a low shelf, ready for the driver to pick up. Milk covered the shelf and dripped down onto the concrete floor.
“These are leaking.” Zeke pointed to the first one and then the second one. “And this one too.” He moved to the third can and shifted it around, showing the leak. Martha looked closer. It was more than a leak. A hole had been punched in the bottom of the can with some sort of tool. And in the fifth can and the eighth one too. Half of the cans had holes punched in them and were leaking.
“Someone did this on purpose.” Zeke took the lid off the first one and quickly dumped it into the vat.
Martha nodded. The PWs had left yesterday before they’d finished the milking. And they hadn’t arrived yet. Or had they?
She heard voices outside. Was that German? “Are the PWs here already?” She grabbed the next can.
“Jah.” Zeke stepped to the door. “They’ve been here for fifteen minutes or so. Your Dat is talking to them.”
Martha groaned. They were an hour early. She grabbed two twenty-gallon cans that they used when she was a girl. “I’ll sterilize these in the house. Hopefully Clare has water boiling. Pour all the milk into the vat for now. We can’t take any chances. I’ll send Rosene out to help.”
She ran as fast as she could toward the house with the cans. Dirk stared at her while Otis grinned.
“Why are you here so early?” Martha yelled at Sergeant Schwarz.
“We were dropped off first,” he responded. “Before the neighbors.”
“Go to the field and continue picking up rocks.” Martha gestured toward the shed with one of the cans. “The burlap bags are just inside the door.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
When Martha reached the house, she barreled in without taking off her boots. “I need boiling water,” she said. “Now.”
Clare, with Arden on her hip, said, “The kettle is hot, and I have a pot nearly boiling.” As Clare spoke, Rosene began scrubbing the sink.
When she finished, Martha told Rosene to go to the barn and help Zeke. “He’s pouring all the milk back into the vat. We can’t take any chances. Bring me another twenty-gallon can to sterilize.”
Martha got to work, first testing the twenty-gallon cans to make sure they didn’t have any leaks. They didn’t. Then she scrubbed the cans with soap and water and rinsed them with the boiling water from the kettle and then the pot on the back of the stove. After she dried them carefully, she started back out to the barn, meeting Rosene halfway, who was carrying another twenty-gallon can. “Three more of the cans have holes.”
“Thank you,” Martha said. “Are the PWs all out in the field?”
“All except Pavlo. I saw him behind the barn a few minutes ago.”
Martha groaned. She needed to find him. The milk truck turned the corner of the lane and headed toward her. “I’ll tell the driver we have one more can coming. Hurry.”
Fifteen minutes later, when they had all the milk on the truck, Martha asked Zeke if he’d seen Vater.
“He followed the PWs to the field.”
When Martha found Vater, he was breathing heavily. As she took his arm, she asked Sergeant Schwarz where Pavlo was.
“In the outhouse.”
“Rosene saw him behind the barn.”
Sergeant Schwarz shrugged. “Then why did you ask me?”
“Because you’re responsible for him.”
“I can’t walk each of the men to the outhouse.”
“Reprimand him when he comes back,” she said. “Zeke will be out soon.”
When she got Vater to the house, Mutter had already left for the store. Martha told Clare to make sure Vater ate and rested, and she told Zeke to go to the field and continue plowing. Then she gulped down a bowl of porridge and went back outside to look for Pavlo. She found him just then coming out of the outhouse.
“Stomach problems,” he said in English as he took off jogging toward the field. Martha followed him at a swift march. When she reached the field, Pavlo was trudging across the plowed furrows toward the others.
Martha waved at Sergeant Schwarz and then beckoned him toward her where they could speak in private. It seemed to take him forever, but finally he reached her. She told him about the punctured milk cans.
“You think one of the PWs did it?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you have any evidence?”
“That’s what I’m looking for,” she responded. “You need to search them.”
“If one of them did do it, they wouldn’t keep the tool.”
“You need to search them anyway.”
He squinted toward the men. “What about the Amish boy you have working for you. Does he live close by?”
“He could have snuck over and done it in the middle of the night. Or while you were out of the milking room.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Martha nodded toward the PWs. “Go search them.”
“I’ll search them during our lunch break.”
“Search them now,” Martha said.
He started toward the men, calling out in German, “We’ve had some mischief in the milk room. . . .” The men turned toward him, and he started back across the plowed part of the field.
Pavlo nudged Otis, who turned his back to Sergeant Schwarz—and Martha. Dirk took a step forward and called out in German, “What are you looking for?”
“Something sharp,” Sergeant Schwarz replied in German.
Pavlo stepped in front of Otis. Otis’s leg moved. And his foot. Was he stomping something into the soil?
Martha watched as Schwarz patted the men down and then lifted their pant legs and checked their socks. When he finished, he turned toward her and shrugged.
Not bothering to respond, she turned.
Zeke stood a few feet away. “What was that all about?”
“He was looking for something sharp that could have punctured the milk cans.”
“But he didn’t find anything?”
Martha nodded. “I was sure he wouldn’t, but I wanted the PWs to know we aren’t going to pretend as if nothing happened. Not this time. They caused a lot of unnecessary work.” She met Zeke’s eyes. “Are you okay doing the plowing this morning? I don’t want Vater to do it.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said.
When they all gathered in the kitchen for their noon meal, after Vater prayed, Zeke told everyone about his Mamm’s diagnosis and that the doctor hoped to try a new treatment.
“Streptomycin, most likely,” Mutter said. “I read about it recently. They’ve just started using it with good results. She’s fortunate.”
Zeke nodded. “That’s what the doctor said.”
The rest of the day passed by without any further incidents. By three o’clock, Zeke had finished the plowing, and the PWs would finish picking up the rocks by four, when they were scheduled to leave. There were several large piles by the side of the field that would need to be moved.
Martha returned to the house, quickly washed, and changed into a dress. The day had grown surprisingly warm, and she didn’t need a coat. As she came down the back stairs to the kitchen, she overhead Clare cooing to Arden, “Your Dat will be home soon.”
Arden squealed in reply.
“Where’s Rosene?” Martha asked as she stepped into the kitchen.
“Helping Mutter.” Clare turned toward Martha. “Thank you for getting Jeremiah. Vater wanted to go back out and give Zeke a break, but I convinced him to rest again.”
“That sounds like a good idea.” Martha poured a glass of water from the pitcher by the sink, drank it, and then grabbed the keys to the Studebaker off the hook by the back door. “I imagine Jeremiah will want to see his Mamm too. Do you want to tell him about the doctor’s visit?”
“Jah,” Clare said. “We’ll go over on Sunday after church to see her—at a distance.”
“When will Jeremiah have to return?”
“Sunday evening.”
“I’ll give him a ride. You and Arden should come with us.”
Clare smiled. “I’d like that.”
Twenty minutes later, Martha approached the train station and found a place to park. She’d always admired the brick building with the columns in the front and remembered when it first opened when she was seven.
“Martha!” Jeremiah walked through the vast lobby, bathed in the late afternoon light streaming through the windows. He wore trousers, a handmade shirt, and a wool coat. He clutched the strap of the bag he carried in one hand and held a magazine in the other. His beard touched his chest, and his eyes twinkled.
Martha adored Jeremiah. He was the older brother she never had. “You’re here already.”
“The train was early.”
“Ready to go home?”
“Jah.” He sighed. “I just wish it was for longer.”
“I can imagine,” Martha said. Here she longed for some sort of life away from the farm when all Jeremiah wanted was to be with his little family.
Once they were in the car, Martha noticed he still held the magazine in his hand. On the front cover was an ice skater. “What do you have there?” she asked as they turned onto the highway.
“The March edition of Life magazine. I bought it at the Thirtieth Street Station.” He opened it. “There’s an article about the bombing of Cologne. Twenty thousand civilians were killed, and sixty percent of the city destroyed.”
Martha glanced at the photo. It appeared to be miles and miles of rubble. They already knew thousands of people had been killed in Frankfurt in bombings over the last few years, and the city’s central old city, which was close to Onkel Josef and Kuisine Lena’s house, had been nearly destroyed.
“Every day I’m thankful Clare and Rosene came home when they did,” Jeremiah said. “Whenever I question how God can use me where I am, I think of how He used Clare, and continues too. And Rosene too.”
Martha agreed. It was a good reminder for her as well. “How are things at the hospital?” she asked.
Jeremiah hesitated a moment and then said, “You don’t want to know.”
“No, I do,” she replied. “Tell me.”
“Horrible,” he answered. “The patients are treated worse than animals. There’s no dignity for them.” He shuddered. “I’m not certain what to do, but I know I need to do something.”
Martha wasn’t sure how to respond.
Jeremiah asked, “How do I smell?”
She laughed. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t seem to scrub away the smells of the hospital.”
Martha smiled. “Surely it’s not worse than the farm.”
“It’s a hundred times worse.”
“What kind of smells?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Jeremiah,” she said. “Of course I want to. I don’t think you can shock me.”
He grimaced. “Urine, feces, vomit. Rotting flesh from bedsores.”
She wrinkled her nose.
“The odors permeate the entire place.”
“That does sound horrible.”
“It’s a hellhole,” Jeremiah said. “And many of the regular attendants come to work drunk. I think it’s to numb themselves, but then they beat the patients.”
Martha winced.
Jeremiah said, “I don’t mean to complain. I know others have it far worse than I do, including the patients. And people in war zones all around the world.”
“What do you think can be done?”
He held up the magazine. “Some of us think Life needs to be told how horrible things are.”
“You could send a letter,” Martha said. “Or send one to the Philadelphia Inquirer.”
“One of the Quaker men I work with grew up in Philadelphia and contacted a reporter from the Inquirer. The response was that there were far more important things to investigate than a mental hospital.”
“I’m sorry,” Martha said. “Maybe after the war . . .”
Jeremiah nodded. “But that won’t help the ones who won’t last until the war is over.”
“It’s that bad?”
“Jah. And worse.”
After a moment of silence, Martha said, “We have PWs again.”
Jeremiah’s voice rose. “We do?”
“Yes. Vater requested them without telling me. It’s complicated, but it does mean Rosene should have more time to help Clare.”
Jeremiah crossed his arms. “Hopefully it won’t be more complicated than it became last time.”
Martha didn’t have the heart to tell him that it already was.
When they reached the farmhouse, Clare handed Martha a folded piece of paper. “Your friend George left a message for you with Mutter. Rosene ran it over.”
Martha unfolded it. I need your help translating. I’ll come by to pick you up at 5:30. I’ll explain once we’re on our way.
It was 5:15. She ran upstairs to change into a skirt, blouse, and sweater. And her new hat.