The Turtle Catcher by Nicole Lea Helget

Author:Nicole Lea Helget [Helget, Nicole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

22

WILHELM RICHTER HAD BEEN preparing for the antiwar rally for weeks. He and Archie, along with the mayor and the city council, had organized this day to unite the citizens of New Germany as well as to show the politicians in St. Paul that German-Americans wouldn’t be bullied into fighting a war they didn’t want. “Into the wagon, my children,” he had said to his boys and daughter that morning.

Liesel Richter had spent all morning washing her hair and pinching her cheeks. She’d never, not once, ventured farther than Spider Lake, and she’d never seen more than ten people in one place. But her papa had demanded that every one of them get ready to go into town for the parade.

“Me?” she had asked then.

“Yes, you,” he’d replied. “It is important we all go and support the cause.” He’d looked at Herman long and hard.

“You look nice,” Herman said to Liesel now.

“Thank you,” she said. Since their argument over the war, Herman and Liesel had mostly avoided each other and certainly avoided speaking of anything that might create further tension. Liesel spent more and more time out of the house, taking Otto on walks with her or spending time with Lester. Sometimes it felt like the three of them, she, Lester, and Otto, were a family. She wondered if Lester’d be in town today.

Herman had said he’d not be going, but Wilhelm ordered him into the wagon too.

“I’m eighteen now,” said Herman.

“Damn you,” said Wilhelm. “If you say that one more time, I’m going to give you the beatings I should have given you as a child. You are not eighteen until I say you are.” Wilhelm’s voice quivered. He never spoke to his children this way. “Now get in.”

Luther followed behind the wagon, thundering in the Richters’ new tractor, sending out a holy racket for miles. The wagon and tractor passed the Richters’ own grove; Spider Lake; the Sutters’ grove, in which cows and pigs foraged for things they sniffed out of dirt; acres and acres of fields; other farm places; and kids walking into town, who covered their eyes and noses when they passed. A dirty cloud rose a mile into the sky from the skip of the horses’ hooves, the roll of the wagon, and the grip of the Richters’ new tractor. The wind picked up the earth and swirled it into a spinning dust devil that crossed over the road and sped off into a field laid out with cut alfalfa, lifting the grasses into flying, swirling clumps of green.

“Bad omen,” said Herman to Liesel. She watched the dust devil until it wore itself out and left a pile of alfalfa on top of a far-off hill.

“Bad omen, I said,” Herman said louder.

Liesel nodded at her brother. She couldn’t speak. Her tongue felt like a loaf of bread in her mouth, dry, big, and wheaty. The closer to town they got, the worse she felt. Her stomach spun. She saw black spots and could hear only a whooshing noise.

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