Fields of Grace Read Online Free PDF Page B

come with me.”
    Henrik caught Jakob’s arm as if to push him away, but then his grasp relaxed. He dropped to one knee and slid his hand onto Jakob’s shoulder. “All right, Jakob. I will come.”
    Jakob threw himself against Henrik’s chest, and Henrik scooped him into his arms as he rose. Carrying Jakob, he turned toward the gangplank without another word. Lillian shot Reinhardt a relieved look, but Reinhardt’s hard expression didn’t change. He cupped her elbow with one hand and reached toward Joseph with the other.
    “Let us board before the ship leaves without us.”

    Once on board, Henrik lowered Jakob to the deck but kept a grip on his hand. The little boy’s eagerness to explore matched Henrik’s desire to escape. Maybe by staying together, they could keep each other out of trouble.
    Henrik glanced at his father’s stern profile. Guilt pricked, but anger squelched it. He shouldn’t feel guilty for resenting this move to America. Wasn’t he almost eighteen—a man? He’d been told his whole life he was intelligent; Ma often praised him for his ability to make good decisions. But Father treated him as though he were no older than Jakob. Embarrassment stung anew as he remembered being hauled to the ship’s boarding dock like a wayward child.
    Jakob stepped on the lowest rung of the railing, and Henrik curled one arm around his little brother’s waist to prevent him from toppling. He clamped his free hand over the cool iron bar that formed the top rail and peered at the people standing on the boarding dock. His heart skipped a beat when he spotted a young woman with sunshine yellow braids much like Susie Friesen’s. Would he ever see Susie again?
    He blinked, turning his attention away from the yellow-haired girl to others who clustered on the pier and lifted their hands in farewell. Jakob waved animatedly, as if he personally knew everyone down below. None of his brother’s enthusiasm touched Henrik. Dread sat like a stone in his stomach at the thought of leaving Susie, leaving Gnadenfeld, leaving all that was familiar. Yet Father insisted he had to go.
    Honour thy father and mother . The biblical command had been fed to him from his earliest memories. He’d had few opportunities to rebel, given the numerous watchful eyes and wagging tongues in Gnadenfeld that witnessed and willingly reported any misdeed, real or imagined. Henrik had obeyed partly out of honor and partly out of fear of unpleasant consequences. All the while, he had looked forward to the day he would leave the school in Gnadenfeld to attend a Mennonite-approved university.
    But now his long-held plans had been thrust aside in favor of traveling to America. Did they have Mennonite-approved universities in America? Henrik snorted, his arm crushing Jakob tightly against his aching heart. Father and Eli called America “de Launt üt ne Je’laäjenheit”— the land of opportunity. Well, once there, Henrik would be eighteen—a man fully grown—and he would seek his own opportunities, separate from Father’s plans.
    “Come, Jakob.” Henrik caught Jakob beneath his armpits and lifted him from the rail. “Let us go below deck and find our bunks.”
    Jakob huffed his disapproval. “But I want to look around the ship!”
    “We can explore the rest of the ship when we are out on the water.”
    Although Henrik sensed Father’s sharp-eyed gaze on his back as he guided Jakob toward the stairway leading to the lower levels of the ship, he didn’t turn back to look.

    Lillian awakened to the sound of retching. Forcing her heavy eyelids open, she squinted into the deep shadows and tried to determine the source of the sound. Was it Jakob, who slept directly above her on his shelf bed?
    The retching came again, longer and more intense. She was able to discern that it came from somewhere ahead and to her left, not from above. Ducking low to avoid bumping her head on the underside of Jakob’s bunk, she rolled from her lumpy mattress. She