by Dale Cramer
Please let there be a ram, she prayed.
He sat down on an outcropping of rock overlooking his farm, took off his hat and patted the rock beside him.
“Sit,” he said.
She sat.
He was silent for a minute or two as he gathered his thoughts, and then he said, quietly but sternly, “I want you to tell me the truth.”
She tugged at her kapp strings, thinking. There would be no more lies, but her whole future might very well depend on how she shaped the truth.
“Do you remember when I told you about the night I was chained in El Pantera’s barn at Diablo Canyon?”
Caleb nodded curtly. “Jah, I remember well. You said Jake knocked out the guard and that was how you escaped.”
“There was more to it than that.”
“Tell me the whole truth, Rachel. I want to know everything.”
“The guard came to me alone in the middle of the night. To harm me.” She hesitated then, embarrassed.
“You don’t have to say any more about that,” her dat said. “I understand.”
“He came into the stall where I was chained, put his hand over my mouth and told me what he was going to do. He would have done it, but Jake came and stopped him. Jake caught him from behind with his handcuff chains and choked him.”
“Jah, so that much was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth, was it?”
She took a deep breath and her gaze dropped away from her father. “No, Dat. The guard was dead. Jake never meant to kill him, but it was dark as pitch and he couldn’t see. He only wanted to stop the man, to make him pass out, but Jake was half crazy with fear and I guess he held the chain too long, too tight. I lit a match and . . . it was awful.”
“Are you sure the man was dead?”
Recalling the sight, she was overcome with emotion for a moment. Finally she managed, “Jah. There was no doubt. I only saw his face for a second, but it was a horrible sight. When Jake came to his senses he ran away to the other side of the barn. He didn’t see what I saw.”
“So Jake believed the guard was still alive?”
“No, not at first. He was so sure he killed a man that he nearly lost his mind. The flames of hell flashed before his eyes and he couldn’t think of anything else. He didn’t hardly know where he was after that.” Now she clutched at her father’s arm, pleading her case. “Dat, we only had one chance to escape and we needed Jake to be alert. Domingo saw how shook up he was, so he lied to him. Domingo told Jake he saw the guard breathing, that he was only unconscious.”
“But Domingo knew the man was dead?”
“Jah, he took the guard’s weapons. He knew. When Jake asked me if Domingo was telling the truth, I lied, too. I said yes, the guard was alive, and Jake believed me because he trusted me. He was all right after that. Dat, I don’t believe we would ever have made it out alive if we hadn’t lied to Jake about the guard.”
Her father’s jaw tightened and he stared straight ahead.
“So why didn’t you tell him after you got home? It’s been seven months, Rachel. The boy you love has been walking around in danger of hell’s fire for seven months, and he didn’t even know it. All because of you. Why didn’t you tell him the truth?”
She hung her head and began to cry softly. “I was afraid he would be sent away and his father wouldn’t let him come back. I didn’t want to lose him.”
Her dat stared into space a bit longer, and then as he jammed his hat back on his head and started to rise he said something that cut her like a knife.
“The truth is more important than what you want, child. I’m disappointed in you.”
The dam broke then. Rachel Bender could bear almost anything, but not her father’s disappointment. She lay on the rock with her face on her arms and wept.
“Jake will confess,” her father snapped. “He will have the chance to repent before Gott and his brethren, and cleanse his soul. A man’s soul is no one’s plaything, Rachel.”
Then he stalked off down the hill and left her alone.
Chapter 8
Emma clutched baby Will tight with one hand and hung on to the buggy rail with the other. Levi was pushing the horse harder than he should, his eyes fixed on the thick column of smoke in the distance. Little Mose and Clara clung to each other in the back seat as the buggy jostled hard over rocks and through ruts, flying past the other buggies and wagons.
She tried to calm him, once. “There’s no need for such haste, Levi. What’s done is done.”
But Levi only leaned forward and whipped the reins harder. “You never know. We might still save something.”
He let out a long wail of anguish as soon as they were close enough to see. The barn had already collapsed in on itself, a tangled mass of charred rubble still belching smoke and flame from between the adobe foundation walls. A lone mule and a draft horse looked up at them from the kitchen garden as their buggy bounced into the yard. A few chickens pecked at the dirt by the smokehouse, but there were no other signs of life. Dead horses and cows lay scattered in the barn lot.
The open front door of the house hung by one hinge, smoke crawling out the top of the doorframe. The roof was still intact.
Levi jerked the buggy to a stop and leaped out, running. He grabbed a bucket from the back porch, filled it from the horse trough and rushed into the house. Two other buggies rolled up as Levi stumbled out the door and doubled over, coughing and gagging.
They found more buckets, and the women carried water while the men doused the flames and dragged smoldering cabinets out of the house.
“It’s only the cabinets,” Levi wheezed. “The rafters never did catch, and adobe walls don’t burn.”
By the time Dat and Harvey arrived the fire was out. Levi had destroyed his coat beating out the flames, and one of the cabinets left a nasty burn on his forearm, but the house was still standing.
In the barn lot, the men loaded two dead cows onto wagons to be strung up and butchered. Even though it was a Sunday, they couldn’t afford to waste the meat.
———
In the evening, after everyone left, Emma walked out to the barn lot where Levi stood alone, leaning on a shovel outside the smoldering ruins of his barn. He was completely exhausted, his beard singed, his shirt filthy and torn, but beneath the weariness she could see rage in his eyes.
“It could have been worse,” she said softly, holding little Will on her hip. “We still have our house, and the fields were too green yet to burn.”
Levi sighed heavily, glaring at the carnage. “Besides our stores of hay and grain we lost a good mule, a milk cow, a yearling Guernsey bull, a fine kid-broke draft horse, a wagon, a harrow and a planter. All gone,” he said, his voice a raspy whisper from fatigue and smoke. “Was this Gott’s doing, Emma? Punishment for our unconfessed sin?”
She rubbed his shoulder. “Aw, Levi, everything bad that happens is not Gott’s punishment. Sometimes it’s just bandits. There are bad people in the world.”
He still refused to look at her. “Then why did they only burn our barn? Why not someone else’s?”
“Ours was the first one they came to, that’s all.”
“A lot of hard work, wasted.”
Emma shook her head, put an arm around him. “But it’s only work, Levi. Our children are safe. The things we lost are only things, and we have family and good neighbors to help us rebuild. We’re going to work every day of our lives anyway, no matter what comes, and even now, with the help of Gott and neighbors we will want for nothing. We will still have food to eat and a roof over our heads. We are blessed.”
Watching his eyes, she saw that he remained unconvinced. From birth, his heavy-handed father had pounded it into him that no sin would go unpunished, ever. She could see it still, in Levi’s angry eyes, and she knew his thoughts. The two of them had sinned before Gott and had never confessed publicly. In Levi’s world, every ill wind was divine retribution.
“We are cursed,” he said.
Shifting Will to h
er other hip she smiled patiently and kissed his cheek.
“No, Levi. We are blessed. In time, you will see.”
He looked down at the baby she was holding and gently ran his blackened fingers through Will’s curly brown hair. When his eyes met hers she saw it—the glimmer of hope, the beginning of faith. Levi trusted her. In time, he would come to know the Gott of love and forgiveness that she knew.
In time.
The butchering of Levi’s cows kept some of the men busy all afternoon, but they managed to gather in Caleb’s barn that evening. Because of everything that had happened there would be no youth singing, although the church benches remained in place.
They were all there except Levi, sitting shoulder to shoulder on a couple of benches in the back—Caleb’s son-in-law Ezra, John Hershberger, Ira Shrock and the five new men. Caleb stood before them, and with grim determination told them everything Rachel had confessed about what happened that night in El Pantera’s barn at Diablo Canyon. There were gasps of astonishment, along with a few grunts and groans as he talked, but no one interrupted.
“The question that is in my mind,” Caleb said, “is what do we do now?”
Ira Shrock was the first to speak. “If the boy killed somebody he will have to be put in the ban, it’s as simple as that. We cannot abide a murderer in our midst. But we don’t have a bishop, and it don’t look to me like we’re going to have one anytime soon.”
“That might change,” Mahlon Yutzy said hopefully, “now that we got rid of those bandits.”
“They’re not the only bandits in the land,” Ira huffed.
Atlee Hostetler chimed in. “Jah, but now that we have troops in the valley we won’t be having so much trouble. We should write and tell the folks back home. Maybe a bishop will come at last.”
Caleb nodded, but he didn’t share their enthusiasm for the troops. They had not seen the things he’d seen.
“I will write them,” he said. “But just now we have to decide what to do with Jake.”
Hershberger, the man who was working Jake as a hired hand and knew him best, raised a finger and said, “I think we should take things in order here. We haven’t heard from Jake, nor have we heard from two witnesses.”
“Did you bring him?”
“Jah, just like you asked me to. He is waiting outside. What about the witnesses? Two witnesses are needed for a proper hearing.”
“I don’t think there were two witnesses,” Caleb answered. “Only Rachel. Domingo knows the truth, but he’s not one of us.”
“We can’t have a proper hearing anyway, since we don’t have a bishop,” Hershberger said. “So let’s bring Jake in here and see what he has to say for himself. We can listen to Rachel, too. We should hear this from the lips of those who were there, don’t you think?”
Several of the men mumbled words of assent.
Caleb motioned to Ezra, who stepped outside and returned in a moment with Jake trailing behind.
They questioned Jake at length. He freely admitted his guilt, and it was clear from his demeanor that he felt deep and terrible remorse, though he respectfully maintained that he never meant to kill the man.
As soon as Jake was allowed to leave, Ezra fetched Rachel from the house and they interviewed her. She confirmed everything Jake had told them, holding nothing back, even when they asked her why Jake attacked the man in the first place.
“The bandit was on top of me,” she said. “He came to me in the middle of the night to—” she hesitated, blushing, but then straightened herself—“to do terrible things to me. He tried once before, when we camped in the mountains, but El Pantera stopped him then.”
The men stirred and muttered among themselves.
Ira Shrock raised an eyebrow. “Why was this bandit so interested in you? Did you do something to provoke him?”
Caleb gave him a hard look, but said nothing.
Rachel met Ira’s stare. “I was forced to ride with him, sitting in front of him on his horse for hours, traveling through the mountains. He said many awful things to me about what he planned to do. I said nothing, did nothing. My hands were tied.”
Ira nodded. “You did nothing? Sin begins with tempta—”
“Enough,” Caleb said. “She was bound, Ira—a prisoner. She had just seen her brother killed by these same bandits, and I’ll thank you to remember that she’s my daughter.” He didn’t raise his voice, yet his tone was clear and firm.
Ever the peacemaker, Hershberger broke in before Ira could say anything else and started a different line of questioning. “Jake says he didn’t mean to kill the man, that he only meant to put him to sleep. Do you believe this is the truth?”
Rachel nodded. “I’m sure of it.”
“How can you be certain? Can you read Jake’s thoughts?”
“No, but I saw El Pantera trick him when they were wrestling by the campfire. That’s why—”
Ira broke in again. “Jake wrestled with the bandits?”
Rachel’s mouth flew open and she looked to her father for help, but Caleb only said, “Answer him.”
“Jah,” she said reluctantly, “but they forced him to do it. El Pantera held a knife to my throat and said he would kill me if Jake didn’t fight him. So Jake agreed, but only to wrestle. He would have won, too, but El Pantera tricked him. Jake got him from behind, with an arm around his throat, choking him, and El Pantera pretended to pass out. When Jake let go he jumped up and started hitting Jake with his fists.”
Ira smirked. “So the man in the barn was not the first bandit Jake strangled.”
Rachel’s eyes narrowed and her lips tightened into a thin line. “He never had a choice, Ira, and he never meant to kill that bandit.”
Ira’s expression didn’t change. “But, woman, he fought with a bandit, and the bandit died. Gott’s Word does not say, Thou shalt not mean to kill; it only says thou shalt not kill.”
Caleb sighed heavily. “Jake’s transgressions are between him and Gott, who knows his heart. We are only trying to decide what we should do. I think there have been enough questions. Rachel, you must leave now, so we can talk.”
She found Jake just outside, leaning back against the wall of the barn with his hands in his pockets. It was the first time she’d seen him since that morning in the churchyard, and the forlorn look was still in his eyes. He barely glanced at her.
“You lied to me,” he said.
She made sure no one was looking before she took his arm. “Jake, I’m sorry we lied to you, but there was nothing else we could do. You were acting like a dead man, the way you’re acting right now. None of us would have escaped if we hadn’t lied to you. Would you rather I was sold as a slave?”
He thought for a moment, then shook his head slowly. “No. I suppose a lie is better than that. But you could have told me after we got home.”
“Jah, and then what?”
He looked at her, shrugged. He didn’t see it.
“Then they send you to Ohio to face the bishop,” she said. “And you never come back. I didn’t want to lose you.”
His eyes widened as understanding took hold. Gripping her shoulders, he looked deeply into her eyes. “Rachel, you can’t lose me. Did you learn nothing in Diablo Canyon? We can be separated for a time, but I will come to you. No matter how far, no matter who stands in the way, if I can draw breath I will find my way back to you.”
Overcome with emotion, she couldn’t answer.
“Anyway,” he said, “you’re forgetting something. In less than a year I’ll be twenty and then I can make my own decisions.”
This was true. In their district a boy became his own man at the age of twenty. He could keep the money he earned and go wherever he wanted.
A kiss brushed her forehead. It was the lightest of kisses and yet it rolled through her like a warm wave. Forgiveness.
“Jake, what did they say to you?”
He sighed deeply. “They just asked a lot of questions about what happened. I will be banned, I could see it
in their eyes. But not for long. I’ll repent and be forgiven. What about you? Are you in any trouble?”
Rachel hung her head. “Only with my dat. He was upset about the lies, but the church won’t do anything since I haven’t been baptized.”
He nodded. “Jah, I forgot. Maybe I would be better off if I hadn’t got baptized when I did.”
She heard the shuffling of feet, the murmuring of voices, and let go of his arm. “They’re done. Here comes my dat.”
Caleb walked up to them slowly with his head down, his wide hat hiding his face. When he finally looked up, Rachel saw the worry lines deepened around his eyes. Miriam’s wedding, the battle with the bandits, and now this. It had been a very trying day.
“It was as I feared,” Caleb said. “No one here is able to deal with such a thing—or wants to. They were all in agreement that I should write to the bishop back in Ohio and see what he would have us do. But there is another thing on which they all agreed. I must also write to your father, Jake, and tell him everything.”
“What will happen now?” Rachel asked.
“Most likely Jake will have to appear before the church and the bishop, where punishment will be decided. He will probably be banned, at least for a time.”
“Will the bishop come here?” Jake asked.
“We won’t know that until we get a letter back from him,” Caleb said. “I’ll write him tonight and maybe we’ll have an answer in two or three weeks.”
Chapter 9
Miriam braced herself for the inevitable culture shock of going from American Amish to Mexican peasant, but nothing could have prepared her for the wedding party. Domingo said only relatives and close friends would be there, so she was shocked when half the population of San Rafael turned up at Kyra’s house. Red was the color she had chosen for her wedding, to match the roses on her dress; the whole house and yard were trimmed in red banners and clay pots of red cactus flowers. Half of the women wore red dresses. When she and Domingo climbed down from the carriage the guests lined the walk for the ritual entry of the new couple into his mother’s home—or in this case his sister’s home where his mother lived.