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ALICE TOOK A QUICK bath after helping Jack repair the barn roof and dressed herself in a more respectable skirt and blouse for their visit with the Franks. She was waiting for Doc when his buggy pulled into the farmyard and accepted the lap rug he offered. Even with the sun shining, the November air was cold. “How did Otto Frank manage to injure himself?”
“He didn’t. It’s the influenza. I didn’t want to start a panic.”
Alice’s chest tightened. “I thought the epidemic was over?”
“The worst of it is, yes. At least for now. But there are still cases popping up here and there.”
“Who is it?” She thought of the older couple like her grandparents.
“Magda. Otto’s been caring for her himself, with my instructions, and everything seemed to be going well, at first, but now . . . I rang him last night to check on her progress. She isn’t doing any better and, despite his insistence that he’s feeling fine, he didn’t sound good to me. I wanted to check on them right away, but Otto insisted I wait until today. He said Magda was sleeping, and he was going to bed, too.”
Doc tied the team to the fence. Alice stepped down and scanned the farmyard for any sign of life. Otto’s cows cried in the barn. Magda’s chickens scratched and hunted in the dirt. Dried leaves skittered across the yard. She pulled her coat tighter against the icy cold and growing dread. “I don’t like this.”
“Me, neither.” Doc retrieved his bag from the buggy floor and led the way. Frantic scratching shook the side door leading to the kitchen. Desperate whining tore at Alice’s heart.
“Down, Fritzi!” she called through the door. “Down!” The scratching stopped. Doc eased open the door, and the dog leapt for freedom. A German Shepherd, he was a large, powerful dog and nearly knocked Alice off her feet. He ran past them and out to the tree line to do his business before returning to them.
By the condition of the kitchen, it was clear the dog had been kept in the house too long. Both his water and food dishes were empty and turned over. There was a puddle in the corner from during the night. He pushed his dishes toward her and looked up with pleading eyes.
Doc patted Fritzi on the head. “Poor thing. You must be starving.” He turned to Alice. “You keep the dog here, find him something to eat while I check on the Franks.”
Alice pumped water into the one dish and filled the other to overflowing with dog food she found in the cupboard. She knew it was more food than he should normally have, but she had no idea how long since he last ate. Considering how quickly he emptied both dishes, she assumed it had been a while. She’d fill them again before they left. She put the food away where she’d found it. The sack was almost empty. She made a mental note to buy some more the next time she was in town.
Better yet, perhaps she should take him home with her until the Franks recovered.
She found an old cleaning rag under the sink and wiped up the puddle in the corner. She dropped the rag in the waste bucket, scrubbed her hands, and dried them on a nearby towel. She’d empty the bucket later.
“Would you like that? Huh, Fritzi?” She rubbed the dog’s head. “Would you like to come stay with me and Jack for a while?” Fritzi nuzzled her and she scratched behind his ears. “The Franks are sick and there’s been no one to care for you or the animals. How worried you must have been.”
Fritzi barked. He settled himself on the floor outside his owners’ closed bedroom door. He rested his head on his paws and whined.
“You stay here. I’ll check on them for you.”
Doc was putting away his stethoscope when she walked up behind him. One look was all she needed. She’d seen so much death over the last month, and still it was no easier to say goodbye to a neighbor and friend.
Magda’s once beautiful face was blue. Her wide eyes reflected the desperation of her last shallow breath. Her soft white hair was damp but recently brushed. Her hairbrush lay next to Otto’s open hand, where he dropped it when his own end came. His last thought must have been the comfort of his wife.
Alice wiped her eyes. “Did you ever taste Magda’s Christmas cookies, Doc? The pfeffernusse were my favorite. I can still taste the molasses and honey, all the lovely gingerbread spices and anise, too. All rolled in powdered sugar.” She laughed. “No matter how hard I tried, I could never keep the sugar from dusting my blouse.”
“I don’t think anyone made it through the holiday season without finding a plate of Magda’s cookies on their doorstep.”
“She showed me how to make them last year. But somehow, they didn’t turn out as good as hers, no matter how carefully I followed the recipe.”
Doc raised the bedding up over their faces. “My wife was the same. She always complained her biscuits never turned out as light and flaky as her grandmother’s. I thought they were perfect.”
One of Magda’s hands slid free, limp, over the side of the bed. Alice took it gently in hers. It was cold. Magda was always complaining about cold hands in winter. Alice gave it one last little squeeze and tucked it back under the blankets. “Doesn’t matter, really, if my cookies don’t taste exactly like hers.” She sniffled. “Whenever I bake Magda’s Christmas cookies, I’ll always remember her.”
“I’ll ring Reverend Lamb and ask him to come out with the undertaker. He’ll know someone who can take the animals.”
Alice nodded. “I’ll gather up Fritzi and his things. He can come stay with me. It’ll be nice to have the company, the protection of a dog, now that I’m living in the house alone.”
Doc set his bag on the kitchen table and reached for the telephone earpiece. “What about after the wedding? Didn’t you say you’re moving to Minneapolis? City’s no place for a dog like Fritzi.”
Alice hesitated. What about after she was married? Everything would change. Her entire life would become different than she imagined.
“He can stay with Jack.” She smiled down at the dog sitting at her feet. “You like Jack, don’t you Fritzi. Jack likes you.”
Doc turned the telephone’s crank. “Iris, Doc Peterson here. I need to talk to Reverend Lamb, please.”
Alice stacked Fritzi’s water and food bowls on the table next to Doc’s bag. She put on her coat and gathered his food and blanket in her arms. “Time to go.”
Fritzi returned to sit at the closed bedroom door, looking up at her. He knows. She took him in to say goodbye to his owners.
* * *
ALICE ARRANGED HIS blanket on the buggy floor. Fritzi settled himself, resting his head on her feet. He barely acknowledged Doc when he held up a rope.
“Otto used it to keep him from running off.” He tied the rope to Fritzi’s collar and handed the other end to Alice. “You’ll need to keep an eye on him for a while. Shepherds are loyal animals, protective. He’ll probably try to return.”
Fritzi whimpered when Doc snapped the reins and they headed away from his home. Alice reached down, stroking his head in silence.
What was there to say? More death, more loss. So many familiar faces gone. So many voices never to be heard singing during services, laughing during the 4th of July picnic, gossiping in Erikson’s. The community would never again be the Pine Lake of her childhood. Maybe it was just as well she was moving to Minneapolis with Harry.
Doc turned the horses right at the fork. Home was to the left. “I’d like to make a quick check on Black John and his family since we’re already out their way. It’s been a while since he’s been in town.”
Alice’s stomach did a little flip. Black John and his Ojibwe wife seldom came to town, but she had seen him once from a distance. She’d never been out to his camp and didn’t know anyone other than Doc who had. Talk in town was that Reverend Lamb tried to visit once, but Black John chased him off with a gun.
Doc stopped the buggy. “I’ll take you home first, if you like. It would be perfectly understandable with how people might feel in town. And there’s Harry, of course.”
Harry would be upset enough when he learned she’d gone with Doc out to the Frank’s farm. She’d broken a promise. But she knew for a fact he’d be really angry if he learned she’d been out to Black John’s. She wasn’t so sure even Jack would back her on this one.
Alice forced a smile. “I won’t tell him. Will you?”
He studied her hard. “You can wait in the wagon. I won’t be long.” He tightened her hand on the dog’s rope. “Black John’s got a dog of his own, and he’s not of the friendly kind. You think you can hold Fritzi?”
Alice wrapped the rope around her hand close to the knot, pulling Fritzi to a sitting position against her legs where she could easily grab his collar with her other hand, if needed.
“Sure, you don’t want me to take you home first?”
“I’m sure.”
Black John’s camp was at the end of a narrow, wooded road, barely wide enough to accommodate a wagon. The sun poked through the heavy branches overhead. Dead leaves crackled beneath their wheels. Alice held tight to Fritzi’s rope with one hand, and the side of the buggy with the other, as they jolted from side to side over roots and stones.
“Aren’t you afraid we’ll break a wheel or axle bouncing along like this?” Would she come to bodily harm herself before they finished their visit?
“This isn’t bad, at all. I’ve been steering the horses around the truly big ones.”
Black John’s cabin appeared in a clearing along the river. It was small but looked cozier than she imagined. Except for the gossip whispered in town, Alice wasn’t sure why she thought it would be otherwise. There were curtains visible in the glass windows. Smoke rose from the chimney. A lean-to near the river sheltered a single milk cow and a pair of horses. There was a coop with a fenced yard holding what appeared to be healthy chickens. Two children, a girl and a boy, gathered root vegetables from the garden. The large basket sitting between them was piled high with squash, potatoes, and carrots. A woman, presumably their mother, stirred a large steaming kettle of laundry over the fire. She wore her hair tied back with a leather thong. Sweat glistened on her copper-colored face. She stopped her work to wipe a sleeve across her forehead. When she saw Alice, her eyebrows raised in surprise, but only for a moment. She nodded a greeting and returned to her washing.
A growling, barking, ruckus rose from inside the cabin. Fritzi reacted with a deep-throated growl and bared his teeth. Alice needed both hands to hold him close.
Black John’s booming, baritone voice made her jump. “Quiet! Stay!” He stepped out the front door of the cabin, pushing back a large mangy creature more wolf than any dog Alice had ever seen before. “Don’t let him out.” He warned the children.
Doc stepped down from the buggy and tied the team to a tree. The horses shuffled anxiously every time the dog in the cabin barked or scratched at the door.
“Quiet!” Black John bellowed. The front door stilled, and the dog fell silent. The horses went back about their business of finding something to eat, and Fritzi laid down at Alice’s feet.
Doc reached into his jacket pocket. “Hello, children.”
They dropped their tools and rushed to his side. The girl was the color of her mother, while the boy was as dark as his father. Doc handed each a peppermint. Their eyes sparkled like wet obsidian in the autumn sun as they offered what Alice guessed was a thank you in their mother’s native tongue.
“Speak English with the doctor.” Their father’s stern voice commanded they obey.
“Thank you for the sweets, Doctor Peterson,” they said in stiff, well-practiced, English before popping the candy into their mouth. “Mmmm.”
“You are welcome. How are you feeling? Are you well?”
They looked at each other and at the same time pushed the candy into their cheeks with their tongues and carefully mumbled in unison, “We are feeling well, thank you. How are you, Doctor Peterson?”
“I am also feeling well. And your English is getting much better. I can tell you are studying hard.”
They smiled. Alice knew that feeling of being complimented for doing well with your studies, especially coming from someone who mattered. For her, it was her father’s praise that meant the most.
Alice was so entranced watching the children she didn’t notice their mother set aside her laundry paddle and approach Doc, wiping her hands on her apron. “Every day my husband teaches us how to cipher numbers, and how to speak correct English, so one day we might go into town with him—when things are better.”
“How are you feeling, Anang. You look a little flushed, but I’m guessing that’s from standing over the fire.”
“I, too, am feeling well. Thank you for asking.”
Black John touched his wife’s shoulder. “Bring our guests a cold drink.” His voice was tender, his smile loving.
“Of course.” She went to the river and pulled a bucket in from where it floated in the current. Four metal cups hung from the rope. She filled hers last.
Alice took the cup offered her. “Thank you.” The water was cold as winter. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was until she drank. “Your children are lovely. Well behaved and hard working. You must be very proud.”
“Yes.” The woman nodded and smiled. “I must finish my washing, now. It was nice to meet you—” She hesitated.
“Alice Armstrong.” She held out her hand.
“It was nice to meet you, Alice Armstrong. Come visit us again.” She took Alice’s cup.
“I will, Anang.” The name felt odd on Alice’s tongue, but she liked it. Anang. It had a beautiful ring to it, like a church bell.
Doc handed his cup to Anang, as well. “John, we were in the area and I wanted to check on your family. There’s been influenza in and around town.”
“I heard.”
“A lot of people have died. We just came from the Frank place. Found them in their bed. Both dead of the influenza.”
Anang stopped her stirring.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Black John sighed and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “They were good to us. Didn’t care I’m black, or Anang, Ojibwe. Didn’t care that we live like a married couple when we’re not.”
“Magda baked cookies for the children.” Tears streamed down Anang’s cheeks. “She was my friend.”
Alice nodded. “She was a good woman.”
Black John wrapped an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “They have a son out west. Colorado, I believe. Who will tell him?”
“I will. He’s in Denver. I have a friend there. Also a doctor. I’ll contact him and he can tell Stephen in person. In the meantime, I’ve asked Reverend Lamb to help with a quick burial.”
Black John frowned. “I do not like the Reverend Lamb. I will not have him telling our children we are damned for not doing what the law will not allow us to do. I told him our God loves the weak and downtrodden. He holds us in his hands, not under his heel, and he will protect us until we can protect ourselves.”
“Wise words, John.” Doc put his bag in the buggy and untied the horses. “We’ll be going for now. I have to get Alice home, or they’ll soon be sending out a search party.”
They didn’t talk much on the ride home. The events of the day played through her mind. Otto’s and Magda’s death broke her heart, yet she felt joy when she imagined Otto brushing his wife’s hair even as he was dying.
Then there was Black John, his wife Anang, and their two children. They were not at all what she expected. If she were to believe the talk in town, and until that day she shamefully had, he was a beast, his wife a savage, and their children an abomination. They were none of these things, not even remotely, and they certainly weren’t living in the devil’s den of squalor.
If Harry knew where she had been, he would be furious. He would never understand how she could experience such things and feel uplifted, like she had a new sense of purpose. The only acceptable manner for a lady to help people like Black John and his family was through women’s social organizations, teas and grand parties where the rich talked a good game, dropped a few dollars into a basket, then went back to their beautiful homes never seeing how the others lived. Soon that would be her life. The thought made her sad.
Alice sighed and patted Fritzi on the head.
Doc leaned over. “Are you tired, Alice? I’m afraid I may have kept you out too long.”
“No, I’m not tired at all. In fact, I feel surprisingly energetic. I’m glad you took me with you today.”
Doc gave her a sidelong glance.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking I was right. You are a natural at this kind of work. I wish you’d reconsider my offer.”