Carrie inched her way down the row of strawberry plants, looking under every leaf. As she reached for a large red berry, two tiny black eyes stared up at her.

“Oh!” She pulled her hand away, almost falling over backward. The tiny mouse stared, his quivering muscles causing his gray fur to ripple.

Carrie folded her hands across her lap. “You scared me,” she said softly, “but I know you are scared too. How did you, or your mother, live through the fire?” But Carrie knew the answer. Many small creatures hid deep in their burrows last October, safe from the blazing forest fire as it swept across northeastern Wisconsin taking everything in its path.

“I’m sorry, little mouse, but you can’t have our strawberries. We need every one of them. Go find some weed seeds. Shoo!”

The tiny rodent turned tail and disappeared under the strawberry leaves.

Carrie stood up. “Look, Papa,” she called as she held out her wooden bucket. “Mama will be pleased that I found so many.” Her father nodded, then continued to nail leather strap-hinges on the new door for the cellar.

“I see another!” Carrie dropped to her knees again to continue her search. At the end of the row she stood and stretched. She shook her long brown skirt and counted the berries in her bucket. “Enough to have on our pancakes in the morning.”

The hearty two-year-old strawberry plants had been donated by a nursery from a part of Wisconsin that had escaped the dreadful fire that burned forests, farms, and fences, killing thousands of people and animals. As hard as she tried, Carrie could not make that fire go away in her mind.

She rubbed her arms. They were healed but had rough white scars from her burns suffered in the fire as it raged through the town of Peshtigo and across the river, where she and others had taken shelter in the waters. Ever since she came back to the homestead, thoughts of the fire jumped into her head each day.

Carrie searched once more for berries. The ground was mostly gray ash, not at all like the dark brown dirt that Papa plowed when they first came here in 1865, seven years ago when Carrie was only six. Carrie sighed remembering that was the year President Lincoln was killed. Some crazy man named Booth shot him.

Black stumps and fallen trees lay crisscrossed over one another as far as Carrie could see. It was hard to imagine that only a year ago, on a July day like this one, the homestead was in a dense forest. Now, the two-room log cabin with Carrie’s sleeping loft was gone. Only the rock foundation and a pile of chimney stones marked where it stood.

She looked behind her, closing her eyes and trying to picture the log barn in her mind. But when she opened her eyes, that space was empty, too. The horizon was clear, without buildings, like a picture that somehow had been erased. The only remaining landmark was the root cellar, in the side of the low hill on the west side of the farm, where Papa now worked.

She walked over to watch Papa nail the last leather hinge on the new door that replaced the old charred one. The inner door was already completed and in place. The two doors were about three feet apart. “Why two doors this time, Papa?”

“To keep the cellar warmer in the winter.” He took a breath. “And cooler in summer.” He sat down to rest.

The cellar! It was here that Papa and Mama huddled in a corner and escaped the fire. “Papa, what did you and Mama do during the fire?”

“Do? We prayed. And we talked about you and Fritz.” He stopped for breath. “But we couldn’t talk much. Thick smoke.” He coughed. “We hoped you were in the river.”

She sat down close to him. “Fritz and I could not have run to the river without Father Pernin’s help.”

“Father Pernin and God,” Papa reminded her softly.

“Did you think the crops would grow back this soon?” she asked, looking across the potato field.

“Grow back this soon?” Papa had that way of answering a question with a question. He tried to take a deep breath. Carrie heard the raspy sound in his chest. The smoke had damaged his lungs. “We plant, then trust God to bring the harvest.” Like those neighbors and townsfolk who had survived, Carrie’s parents found comfort in their deep faith, which helped them face things that otherwise were hard to understand and accept.

Carrie opened the cellar doors. Potatoes, rutabagas, carrots, and a few onions lay on wooden racks. People from all over Minnesota and southern Wisconsin had sent train-loads of vegetables. Even now, although it had been nine months since the fire, relief trains still arrived with food, clothing, furniture, and other supplies for people like Carrie’s family who had lost everything.

At first, not many people knew about the Peshtigo fire because it happened on the same day as a terrible fire in Chicago, which became known as the Great Chicago Fire. Even though the Wisconsin fire was much worse and many more poor souls died in it, people around the world heard about the Chicago fire first and began to send supplies.

Wisconsin’s own Governor Fairchild went first to Chicago to help. But when his wife, Mrs. Fairchild heard the news that came in later about the Peshtigo fire, she herself ordered the trains loaded with supplies for Chicago to be sent instead to Peshtigo. This action saved the lives of hundreds of people who would have died from the cold. Because of her quick thinking, people had blankets, clothes, and food, as well as medical help. She then organized women’s groups to gather more and more supplies. Carrie wished she could meet Mrs. Fairchild and thank her.

Seven-year-old Fritz came running across the field holding a rabbit by its hind legs. “Papa! Papa! Kleine got it. Dug it from its hole.” Kleine, the big golden collie, jumped and leaped, trying to get close to the rabbit.

“So, you dug it from its burrow.” Papa patted Kleine’s head. “Give it to me, son. And take Mama some potatoes and a rutabaga.”

“I’ll take them,” Carrie said. She didn’t want to see Papa kill the rabbit, even though she knew he would do it quickly. The rabbit would not suffer. Carrie liked growing and harvesting the crops, but she always felt pain when Papa and Fritz came home with game. She knew their family needed the meat from the deer, bear, turkey, quail, rabbit, and other small animals for food.

Many of the animals had perished in the fire, but others had fled swiftly before the searing snapping flames. Not all could go deep underground like the little strawberry thief.

Carrie put several potatoes and a big rutabaga in her apron. Careful not to spill her bucket of strawberries, she closed the cellar doors and headed for the big canvas tent. Some survivors of the fire lived in one-room shacks waiting to build houses, but Carrie didn’t mind living in a tent again. It was just like her family did when they first came from Germany.

She put the vegetables on the ground next to Blessing. Blessing was really an iron stove, but when it arrived as a gift from some generous person that the Heidenworth family didn’t even know, Mama exclaimed, “A stove! Such a blessing!” And that’s how a big black cookstove got its name. It did look rather strange sitting next to the big tent.

Carrie tugged at the ruffle around the edge of her cotton cap. It still felt strange not having any hair. “It’s only hair,” she would tell herself. But there were still times she cried knowing it would never grow back. She only wore her pretty blond wig with long curls to town and church. She was grateful that her face was not scarred like her head.

“Have you found anything else, Mama?”

Carrie’s mother was searching through the ashes where the cabin had stood. “Only a few buttons.” She held out her hand to show Carrie. She smiled at her tall slender daughter, but there was sadness in her eyes.

“Mama, what do you miss most that we lost in the fire?”

“Oh, I think of photos—and the clock, now and then. But we have our most cherished possessions,” she said softly. “You and Fritz.” Tears welled up in her eyes as she put her arm around Carrie and hugged her.

“I miss my bed and the sleeping loft,” Carrie replied.

“Papa will build you another bed.”

“I miss the cabin, and I miss Lisa.” She clutched her necklace. Her good friend Lisa had made it for her. Carrie never took it off, not even to sleep. And Lisa had the other half. When they held the two half circles of wood together, they fit like a puzzle. Lisa had carved Friends Forever on them.

“Do you think I will ever see Lisa again, Mama?”

Mama dropped the buttons into her apron pocket and brushed her hands together. “People are returning to rebuild Peshtigo. Perhaps Lisa’s family will come back.”

“How will they do that? They lost everything.”

“Just as we are doing. By the help of their faith in God and the goodness of people everywhere. Papa plans to build a house where the cabin stood. Lumber will be delivered next week.”

“Will it have a ladder to the loft, like the cabin?”

“No ladder. No loft.” Mama looked at the gray ground where the cabin had been. “It will have a stairway—with a polished railing.”

Carrie could almost feel the shiny smooth wood.

The soft look on Mama’s face made Carrie’s heart dance. It was exciting to think of a new house with bedrooms and windows.

Papa and Fritz returned with the skinned and gutted rabbit, ready for the cooking pot. When Mama’s rabbit stew was ready, the family sat on the grass around a blue cotton tablecloth. Papa said grace, with thanks for the people everywhere who provided for their needs.

Carrie ate every bite of the rabbit stew on her plate, pretending that Lisa was sitting next to her. Before the forest fire, there were many foods that Carrie didn’t like. But now with so few choices, everything tasted good. Yes, even the chunks of rutabaga that tasted a little like cabbage but looked like turnips. Mama called rutabagas “swedish turnips.” Carrie didn’t care what they were called or why. She was just thankful to have food and not be hungry.

She rubbed her necklace. It made her feel a little closer to Lisa. Maybe Lisa was holding her half of the necklace now, too. Carrie hoped so.

“The peas are growing nicely,” Mama said gazing at her nearby garden. Some should be ready soon.”

“Can we eat them now?” Fritz jumped up.

“No, son, they haven’t grown enough,” Mama explained.

Carrie thought of the sickness that caused Fritz to be slow growing, like those peas. He would never go to school to learn to read and write. But he sure knew how to make things of wood. Some day he would be a carpenter like Papa.

The sun was setting when Carrie crawled under her blanket in the back of the tent. How different this bedding on the ground was from the fine soft bed in Bentz Manor in Oconto where she and Fritz had lived after the fire. She missed Mr. and Mrs. Bentz. They had been so kind to her and Fritz. She missed Fawn too, her Menominee Indian friend who lived in the little cabin on the Oconto river. Carrie wondered if she would ever see Fawn again.

And then there was Hans. Hans Heiss had helped her and others that night in the river as the fire roared overhead. Now he worked for Mr. Bentz as handyman and driver. Those days in the Bentz Manor had been a time in her life she would never forget.

But Carrie missed Lisa most of all. She fell asleep holding her necklace and remembering the good times she had with Lisa here on the homestead.

[First chapter from CARRIE AND THE BOARDING HOUSE, by Nelda Johnson Liebig, (Midwest Traditions, 2005), © Nelda Johnson Liebig, is used with permission. Further reproduction is prohibited without the written permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Philip Martin, Midwest Traditions, at info@bluehorsebooks.org.]