Emil’s dream for years had not been to just survive in the West. He wanted to live and to thrive there, making fair money for a fair day’s work, giving his wife a safe, comfortable life in a home of their own, and providing his boys with the formal education he’d never had and the opportunity to go their own way when they were ready. More than that, secretly Emil desired a car. He’d fallen in love with automobiles while living in Germany and liked to imagine himself driving around wherever he wanted to go, as free as a man could be.
On the deck of the troop transport, Adeline returned with the boys, about to be fourteen-year-old Walt and about to be twelve-year-old Will, both of whom were wrapped in blankets and grumpy at being awakened in the middle of the night.
“I can’t see anything,” Will said.
“I’m tired,” Walt said, yawning. “I want to—”
“There!” Emil said, pointing out over the bow where a light had appeared, faint at first, but growing, and then another followed by dozens more as the fog swirled and lifted a little. People began to clap and cheer. Others went to find their families. As tugboats came to pilot the ship through the Verrazano Narrows, the foredeck became crowded with refugees cheering each glimpse of New York City through the ever-changing fog.
The ship slowed on entering Upper New York Bay, came to a complete stop, and lowered anchors shortly after one a.m. The fog had lifted to thirty feet, and they could see lights on all the shores around them.
Emil was about to say that this was as good as it was going to get for the night, when the breeze picked up and the fog swirled before a vent formed high in the sky to the northwest, revealing the lit torch and the hand of the statue.
People began to gasp all around the Martels because the vent was growing with each passing moment, revealing the arm, the face, and then the crown of Liberty. Emil lost it then, grabbed Adeline and his boys, held them tight, and broke down sobbing.
As everyone on the deck around them roared their delight or dissolved into tears at their own deliverance, Emil choked, “We did it! We made it!”
“Your dream come true, Emil,” Adeline said, kissing him. “Right there in front of you.”
By then, the fog had blown away to the east, revealing the lady in all her glory. Emil stared up at the statue in awe, shook his fist, and whispered, “Freedom. All a man could ever want.”
“We still have to find Mama’s green valley,” Will said.
“This is enough,” Adeline said, also unable to take her eyes off the statue. “I don’t need the valley.”
“But we’re going there the day after tomorrow, aren’t we?” Walt asked.
“We get on the train the day after tomorrow,” Emil said, and kissed Adeline. “Then we’ll have a three-day ride.”
“To the beautiful green valley?” Will asked.
“It has to be,” Walt said.
Four nights later, when the train pulled into the depot in the tiny town of Baker, in far-eastern Montana, a freak, early-autumn storm was bombarding the area with snow. Adeline’s long-lost uncle was waiting with his Jeep. The little wagon had been left behind in Germany in favor of a single wooden crate of belongings that they lashed to the roof and drove off through the storm to the farm where they were to live and work for the next two years.
The storm was howling when they reached the farm and were shown to a bunkhouse where they collapsed in exhaustion. When Emil awoke at dawn the next morning, the storm was over, the temperature was falling, and the sun was shining brilliantly on the bleakest, most barren, snow-blasted landscape he’d ever seen.
“We’re in Siberia,” he muttered in disbelief. “What the hell have I done?”
For the next month, as the boys started school in town and Emil learned the workings of the farm, he became convinced that he had made a gigantic mistake bringing his family to America, to Montana, and especially to Baker. That conviction grew as winter set in and the true cost of feeding and housing an extra four mouths became clearer to Adeline’s uncle and his wife, who complained often about the amount of food Will and Walt were consuming. Emil tried to work as hard as they would let him and told himself that they’d be off the farm within a year.
By February 1952, however, his frustration deepened. Their sponsors had stopped paying Emil’s full wages, saying they had to keep some of the money back to make sure everyone was fed. Then their sponsors’ son was given a 4-F at boot camp and returned home. In early March, Adeline’s uncle told her they did not have enough work and food. She and her family had to leave the farm and make their own way. Adeline and Emil needed to find jobs, and fast.
Rather than fight the situation, rather than be angry and bitter about the short hand he’d been dealt yet again, Emil drove straight into Baker and discovered that the town’s first hospital was being built. He found the foreman and spoke to him in broken English, asking for work. The foreman told him the only job he had to offer was as a laborer and concrete mixer.
“Concrete mixing? That I know how to do from building a hospital in the Russian prison camp I escaped from,” Emil said, smiling.
“You escaped from a Russian prison camp?”
“Yes. I know cement from this time.”
“Then you’re hired.”
Chapter Forty
The Martels rented a small house in Baker within walking
