Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
New York City, 1857
I was lost, and had no idea of my way back. To ask for directions would be futile. Even if someone understood me, how could I understand their replies? New York City had seemed a grand entryway for my new life in America a few hours ago. Now I longed only to escape the chaos behind me, people spilling out of doorways, gushing up from underground, staggering, shouting at one another in thick, slurred voices. I could not tear from my mind the shaking of fists at the windows, the raining of bricks from the rooftops. I believed I could find my own way, but I had failed.
I had come too far. In the center of this broad open square a fountain splashed musically, enticing a few families to linger. The clop-clop of horses and rattle of carriages along the broad avenue helped restore my addled senses. I inhaled deeply, the reek of urine and sweat not so strong here. Into my awareness swam the memory of a shop with a German name I had seen a few streets back.
With faltering steps, I returned to the establishment, the shop of a cabinet-maker, the sign painted in both German and English. The windows were dark. At Castle Garden they had warned of this — that no businesses would be open on the festival of American Independence. But they had not warned of the fighting in these streets, more fierce and desperate than any I had witnessed as a child.
As I stood in uncertainty, a man came walking toward me, near to my older brother in age, perhaps eighteen. I drew up the courage and spoke to him.
"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"
The stranger narrowed his eyes. "Sag mal, who wants to know?"
Relief flooded over me. "Bitte, I am looking for Elizabeth Street."
The beardless man pushed back the brim of his round-topped hat and scratched his forehead. His jaw looked pale and bare, but many men were beardless in this city. He spit on the walkway and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
"You're a long way from Elizabeth Street." The man peered at me more closely. "Say, don't I know you from somewhere?"
"Not unless you're from the Palatinate, near Freinsheim."
"Freinsheim? Well, what do you know? We're practically cousins. I'm from Dürkheim. Have a beer with me and tell me news of the Old Country."
The man did not have the Palatinate dialect. Would my speech also change over time?
"I'm sorry, I must meet my friends the Beckers," I said, "and hope to arrive before dark. Please point me in the direction of Elizabeth Street, and I'll be on my way."
The stranger frowned, then his brow cleared. "I'll show you myself, for a price."
"A price? You would charge me?"
He shrugged. "You won't be friendly and have a drink with me. Five pennies will buy me a beer after we part. But you must pay in advance."
I had heard rumors of tricksters, so I removed the five coins from my hidden breeches pocket but handed over only two. "I'll give you the other three when we arrive," I said, attempting a voice of authority.
After a moment's hesitation, the man tucked the coins in his vest pocket and doffed his hat. "Karl Finger at your service. And you are?"
"Harm. Michael Harm."
"You don't know the Fingers of Dürkheim? Too bad. What a good time we could've had." Settling his hat back on his head, Karl Finger set off down the street. "You are traveling alone?" he asked over his shoulder.
I swallowed, disturbed by the enormity of the Atlantic Ocean, by the distance that separated me from my family. "I am in America to apprentice as a blacksmith in a wagon-making shop."
Karl nodded and said no more. We walked far, too far it seemed to me, then turned on the street called Bleecker, the roar of the crowd on Bayard growing audible once more.
"This isn't right!" I said, fear making my voice hoarse. "I was told to turn on Canal."
My guide paused. Many buildings surrounded us, but the streets were strangely empty. Twilight had come. Up ahead, a man lit a gaslight, then turned the corner.
"You don't trust me? But look, here is the start of Elizabeth Street."
Karl Finger gestured, and I saw with my own eyes the word Elizabeth painted on the corner building. He picked up his pace and I followed. We went a long way, crossing several streets. Intermittent booms and pops erupted ahead of us. Gunfire? I was so concerned about the riot, I did not notice when my guide slowed his steps. I stumbled right into him.
Karl Finger turned on me, wrapped his leg behind me and shoved. I tripped backwards and fell. As I tried to rise, he leaped on my chest and banged my head hard on the dirt-packed street. Pinned by his weight, I felt him yank and claw at my hidden breeches pocket. He started to tug at my rucksack, then blackness swallowed me.
CHAPTER 2
Freinsheim, Bavarian Palatinate, 1848
Is it any wonder that as a boy I yearned to go to America? In 1848, all Europe swelled with the democratic tide, a breaking wave that swept so many across the sea. When the rebellion came to our village, I was but a boy of seven, a farmer's son in the Palatinate, my head full of Indian stories and dreams of adventure.
My family, the Johann Philipp Harms of Freinsheim, owned a modest acreage — fields of grain and vegetables, a vineyard and a plum orchard — but my heart turned in a different direction, toward the bell-like tones of the blacksmith hammer. After all, my name came from my great-great grandfather, Johann Michael Harm, the first Harm to come to Freinsheim. A blacksmith by trade.
True to my namesake, I could not resist the smithy on Herrenstrasse. I went there often to peer inside at the smoke and flames of the forge, enthralled by the falling sparks, the yellow-white iron at its hottest glow. The smithy gave a glimpse of the world outside our mothers' kitchens, of men working heavy iron, of heat, muscle and grime.
The first rumors of unrest, the rebellion to come, arrived on a February day. That morning I stood with my friend Günter in the open doorway of the blacksmith shop, half my body soaking up the acrid heat inside, the other half exposed to the crisp wintry air. My eyes followed every movement of the master blacksmith Herr Becker, the most powerful man in our village. As usual, he was ordering about two journeymen and Veit Börner the apprentice — at fifteen years old, finished with school and on his way to making a living. Herr Becker was the tallest of them all, his leather apron hanging from his broad shelf of shoulders to the scarred tops of his work boots. In the back, Veit pumped the bellows in sullen concentration.
Herr Becker spied us in the doorway, grabbed a heavy sledgehammer and held it beside us.
"Guck mal, they're only as big as this hammer!" he thundered to the other men, his voice grumbling off the stone walls. He dropped the hammer on its head, set his enormous hands on his hips and looked down his thick blond beard at us. "Can either of you lift it?"
Günter stepped forward. He grabbed the handle and bent his knees, lifting it a short distance off the dirt.
"There he goes." The men urged him on with gravelly voices. "That's the way."
Günter backed off and it was my turn. I gripped the handle, straining to raise the leaden hammerhead off the ground, but nothing happened. Were they playing a trick on me? I bent down to examine the sledge. The handle wrenched from my grasp and clunked me in the ear, inflicting a sharp bite of pain. Laughter boomed through the smithy.
"The hammer is beating the boy," Herr Becker said. "You wouldn't know he was a Harm." The men pffed and shook their heads. Herr Becker glanced back at Veit, still pumping away at the bellows. "Bass uff!" the master shouted, lunging across the room. "You're burning up my iron!"
Günter and I, familiar with Herr Becker's rages, backed out of the shop. In the street, the men's mocking laughter lingered, along with the pain in my ear. What had Herr Becker meant, that I wasn't a Harm? Was it because I was so small? Villagers remarked on this often enough, but I had not thought it mattered so much. I stared at Günter with resentment.
"You could lift that hammer because you're bigger than me," I said, heading off beside him down the paving-stone street.
"I'm not so much bigger. You didn't try hard enough."
"I'll get bigger. I'm going to be a blacksmith."
"You are not. Your father is a farmer, and you must be a farmer, too."
"How do you know?"
"My father says so."
Günter's father was a schoolteacher, so he must have been right. But I did not want to believe him.
"Beat you to the gate," I challenged, the two of us already running.
It was our favorite game, to race down the inner alley of the wall that ringed the village, our feet slapping, our shouts echoing behind us. Houses in Freinsheim crowded up against one another so tightly some even stretched across the second story to meet the fortified wall, forming tunnels.
I touched the corner house first, just barely ahead of Günter, then doubled over, gasping for air. The corner house was the usual finish line, a spot so narrow men had to turn sideways to pass through. Boys assembled here to measure their growth. If we stood squarely in the narrow space and both of our shoulders touched, we could call ourselves men. Günter and I took turns standing in the passage, but of course we weren't big enough. We had not yet started school.
Continuing on to the front gate, we encountered farmers streaming in from the fields, an unusual sight before the noon bell.
"Something has happened," Günter said.
We turned our steps toward the marketplace.
"There is rioting in Paris!" Herr Reibold was saying as Günter and I climbed onto barrels and benches to one side, where other boys had also gathered. In the center of a crowd of men, Herr Reibold held an unfolded newspaper in his hands. Herr Reibold had been a child in the time when Napoleon ruled our region, so he often read the French newspapers aloud, explaining where needed. Due to the rioting, the French King had vanished, Herr Reibold said, probably fleeing for his life. In France, they beheaded their kings.
The blacksmith Herr Becker, still wearing his leather apron, stepped into the center beside Herr Reibold. "The reform banquets have worked," he said, steam rising from his shoulders in the chill gray air. "Let it happen here, too." He gazed at the farmers from under the brim of his cap, making a full circle. "It's time we chased the House of Wittelsbach once and for all to the devil!"
Some men cheered.
With his deep bass voice, Herr Reibold started the men in the "Marseillaise."
Let's go children of the fatherland,
The day of glory has arrived!
Against us tyranny's
Bloody flag is raised.
Some sang lustily. Others glanced from side to side, wary of the Bavarian police on the edges of the marketplace, who stood observing with their arms folded. To speak against the monarchy was forbidden and could land a man in the tower jail. On this occasion, the police did not intervene.
The Bavarians ruled us in the Palatinate, but we did not welcome them. They ruled from afar, two duchies away, and were separate from us in other ways, too. They ate breaded pork, pretzels and apple strudel. We ate liver dumplings with wine sauce, stuffed sow's stomach, and plum cake. They made beer. We made Rhine wines. They were Catholic. We were Protestant. The Bavarian monarchy demanded high taxes and wine quotas with complete disregard for the welfare of the farmers and traders. The idea that we might one day be free of them inspired us and also filled us with fear, a nagging dread that whatever came next might be worse than our present suffering.
As the farmers dispersed, many faces wore frowns.
February turned to March, and news continued to flow in of revolts in Munich, Vienna, and Berlin. In the vineyards and fields around Freinsheim, the farmers stopped their plow carts to grumble on the road, anxious over what might happen. I was too young to realize the rebellion might also come our region.
One night at supper, Father tugged at his beard as if his mind would not rest.
"Tonight I go to the men's singing club," he said, his wide-set blue eyes serious and clear. He turned to my older brother Philipp. "You and Michael will come with me so your mother has some peace."
I looked over at Mütterchen, seated and trembling at the table, her skin pale as candle wax. I had a vague notion of my mother's illness, the baby girl who did not live. Somehow, the childbirth had weakened her heart. She spent most days at home, except when she went to market or to see if the post coach had brought a letter. Mütterchen wrote to her family in America each year but never received a reply.
"The boys can stay here, Mann," she said, tears spilling down her cheeks.
We were unimpressed by her show of emotion. Mütterchen wept for sad things and happy ones, from weariness and, as far as I could tell, for no reason at all. Later I would come to understand this constant sadness, born of separation and loss.
"May I go to Günter's?" I asked.
"Aha. You may go to the Glocks," Father said, nodding. "Philipp, you will come with me."
Philipp saw the teacher Herr Glock at school each day, so was just as glad to go with Father. Sometimes I resented how Father chose Philipp, not me, to accompany him. But tonight, another Pfennig-Magazin had arrived at the Glocks.
Their rooms weren't far. Our Harm Hof stood just outside the village wall. The Glocks rented rooms in the village center. Eagerly, I hopped off in my leather-shod feet down the paving stones of Wallstrasse, so excited about the penny magazine, I did not even pause to pet the stray cats along the way.
As I reached the Glock's door, a white goose beat her wings and honked, driving me around to the back. Günter's father answered my knock. I removed my cap.
"N'Amend, Herr Glock."
The schoolteacher's frown relaxed to a smile. "Oho! It's our wanderer friend."
"What is a wanderer?"
"Someone who makes many travels."
"That is not me. I have never traveled anywhere."
"But it's in your blood, oder? Seven years old, and already you leave your house after supper to wander the streets."
"I did not wander, I came here directly. Father doesn't get the Pfennig-Magazin."
Herr Glock burst into a hearty laugh. He let me in, closed the door, and went to the table piled high with books and papers. I once overheard my father say that Herr Glock's schoolteacher income did not amount to much. He had to write newspaper articles to bring in extra coin.
Trailing behind him, I kept my eyes peeled for the Pfennig-Magazin.
"Günter!" Herr Glock called to the ceiling. "Michael is going to read to us!"
A thump sounded overhead.
"Nä, nä, I can't read," I said. "You must read it to me. Is there not a story in the magazine about the Indians?"
"Doch, the Indians of the Great West." Herr Glock nodded, his brown eyes studying me until I squirmed under his gaze. "Your Uncle Jakob also had this interest. And your same gray-blue eyes. I can hardly look at you without being reminded of your mother's brother. Such a big personality. Still no letters? I would like to know how it is with the Handrichs, after all these years."
"No letters since the first one."
Herr Glock shook his head in wonderment. "Such a wanderlust with the Handrichs. What an idea your Oma and Opa Handrich had, to sail across the ocean to America as if it was the Bible land of Canaan."
"I thought it was called Cleveland."
The schoolteacher gave a great guffaw. The air itself seemed to prickle with excitement. I wondered if it had to do with the new freedom of the press ordered by the Bavarian king. All the villagers were talking about it.
Günter thudded down the stairs and landed in the kitchen with both bare feet at once. His straw-colored hair jutted off his head at odd angles as if he'd been lying down. The sight of him made me reach up to smooth down my tangled brown curls. Under his arm, Günter carried the Pfennig-Magazin.
"I have read most of it," he said, bringing it over. "It's a good one."
Günter had already learned from his parents how to read. The kitchen had three squat wooden chairs with sturdy backs, one for Günter, the other two for Frau and Herr Glock, but Frau Glock sat in the front room, saying she preferred poetry. Günter and I settled in, and Herr Glock waggled his eyebrows at us, each one bushy as a mustache.
"Ja, ja, I know you want to hear the story in the Pfennig-Magazin, but tonight, I have a special surprise. I have been waiting for this moment when Michael Harm comes for a visit."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Last of the Blacksmiths"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Claire Gebben.
Excerpted by permission of Coffeetown Enterprises, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
