Though Mountains Fall

by Dale Cramer

  “The whole clan is here,” Kyra said when Miriam finally made it to the house. “Oh, there will be dancing and singing far into the night.”

  “But, Kyra, I’ve ruined my lovely dress.”

  Kyra’s eyes sparkled. “No matter. Come, let’s get you cleaned up and then I will show you the new dresses Maria and I have made for you.”

  “New dresses?” Miriam had no trouble feigning surprise, for Kyra’s sake.

  “Sí. A bride always shows off her finery at the wedding feast—it’s the custom. Come!”

  There was something different about the bedroom, but in the excitement Miriam didn’t realize what it was until after she’d already changed and was about to make her grand entrance.

  The dresser was gone. The night she and Kyra left to search for Domingo they had put on Kyra’s father’s clothes, and she remembered taking them from a lovely little dresser with brass pulls on the drawers and fancy inlaid designs. It seemed out of place in a peasant house—far too elegant and expensive. Kyra said her father had salvaged it from a raid on a hacienda. Until now, in the mad rush of her wedding day, Miriam hadn’t even noticed it was missing.

  “Kyra, what happened to the little dresser that was here before?”

  With a curiously sad smile Kyra took her hand, ran a thumb over the gold ring on Miriam’s finger and said, “You are wearing it.”

  Miriam shook her head. “No, Maria told me about the rings. They belong to the church and will have to—”

  “No, mi hermana. My mother and I did not want that for you, so we sold the dresser. The ring is bought and paid for. It is yours to keep.”

  “But that fancy dresser was all that was left of your father! You said it was the only thing the Revolution gave you in return for his life—how could you bear to part with it?”

  Kyra smiled. “Miriam, the thing itself was not important, only what it represented. It was a symbol. This,” she said, touching a fingertip to Miriam’s ring, “is a much better symbol. My father is smiling because this is what he himself would have done. He would have loved you so much.”

  Miriam turned the little gold band on her finger, staring at it in wonder, too moved for words.

  “I have never owned a ring before,” she finally said. “My people don’t wear jewelry. Thank you, sister. Your father lives on in his children, and already I feel like one of them.”

  ———

  Miriam made a grand entrance in her new dress, then sat on a woven mat beside Domingo’s chair as the guests filed by to offer best wishes and present their gifts, usually a few pesos.

  A trio of guitar players circulated among the crowd outside, the wine flowed, and the singing and dancing began. Miriam did her best to follow Domingo’s lead, but her Amish feet betrayed her. Her new family laughed at her, and then with her, and when they took it upon themselves to educate her in proper dance steps they did it with such grace and charm that her Amish feet actually learned some of it.

  She hadn’t laughed so hard in years. Even Paco joined the festivities with his arm in a sling, and she marveled at his great good humor, despite the wound, until he confessed that he’d allowed himself a touch of tequila.

  “Only for the pain,” he said with a wink.

  Domingo cut a striking figure in his wedding clothes, and his pride in his new bride showed in every glance. Dancing close to him at one point, she asked, “Are all Mexican weddings like this?”

  “No, usually there is more, but we had to leave out the parts involving the family of the bride.” Then, when he saw the sadness in her eyes, he drew her close, kissed her neck and whispered, “It’s all right, Cualnezqui. Your new family loves you just as much.”

  The Zapara women had laid out a huge feast on tables in the backyard, and as the sun went down the wedding party dined by torch and candlelight on fire-roasted beef and all kinds of Mexican delicacies.

  It was a raucous, joyful celebration unlike anything she had ever known, and it all flew past her in a colorful blur, like one great long dance. More than once the Amish part of her felt a twinge of guilt at the worldliness of it all, but then at least a dozen times she caught herself thinking, If only Rachel could see this, she would love it.

  Long after dark it was Kyra who sang the entrega to the newlyweds, and it was over.

  The guests all said their goodbyes and departed.

  Miriam took her husband’s arm, and he walked her to their new home.

  Her new life.

  After evening prayers everyone wandered off to bed except Dat. Rachel paused at the foot of the stairs when she saw him set the lantern on the kitchen table. He took paper and envelopes down from a cabinet, along with the little hinged box containing fountain pen and inkhorn, then sat himself down and put his face in his hands.

  When he looked up and saw her watching him, she thought surely he would order her up to her room, but he didn’t. There was deep regret in his eyes as he motioned to her and said softly, “Come. Sit.”

  She sat across from him at the table, eyes downcast, unable to face him.

  “I want you to know I have forgiven you,” he said. “All day I have been thinking about what I must say to the bishop, and I have learned how hard the truth can be. I don’t blame you anymore.”

  He stared at the blank paper in front of him. “I only wish I didn’t have to do this thing. Jake Weaver saved your life, and Domingo’s. It grieves me to know that a man died by his hand, but I know Jake. I know he would never kill anyone on purpose. It could only be an accident. Anyway, if Jake didn’t do what he did none of you would be here, and now he is to be punished for it.”

  Dat gave no hint that he wouldn’t write the letter, only that he regretted it. The first and most important thing was that Jake’s soul was in peril, and the only path to safety was through repentance.

  Clinging to a fragile hope, she looked up at him. “Tell me what you really think, Dat. Will the bishop come here?”

  Her father knew her too well. She saw his face soften as he read the hope in her eyes like an open book.

  But he shook his head sadly. “No, child. I know Bishop Schwartz. He’s too old and frail, and anyway he’ll want to confer with his ministers and the other bishops on such an unusual matter. He’ll never come to Mexico. Jake will have to go to him.”

  She lowered her gaze. “That’s a pity. If the bishop would just come for a visit, there are those of us who would like to be baptized and join the church.”

  Her father leaned back from the table, his eyes widening. “You have decided, then?”

  A nod. “Jah, I am ready. My course will not change.”

  He studied her for a minute, then reached across the table, lifted her chin with a forefinger and looked into her eyes. “I must know one thing, Rachel, and I want you to tell me the truth. This is not the time for secrets.”

  “I will.”

  “Are you only wanting to be baptized so that you can be married?”

  The question itself was out of bounds, but these were extreme circumstances. Her father was taking her to a whole new level of trust. Her gaze was steady, her voice firm.

  “I’m nineteen years old, Dat. I was barely sixteen when we moved to Mexico, and I have never complained, though it was not my choice to come. If there was a bishop here I would have joined the church already. Do I want to marry Jake? Jah, I do. It is time. It is right. But do I want to be baptized only so I can marry? No, that’s not the truth. I want this life, and all that comes with it. I want to marry in the faith.”

  The words hit him like a thunderbolt. Rachel would never dream of trying to intentionally manipulate her father, but it occurred to her now that this was Miriam’s wedding day, and she could not have chosen a better time to say the words marry in the faith.

  He rested his chin in his palm and sat thinking for several minutes. She waited in silence.

  “There are problems,” he finally said. “You will have to go through instruction classes.”

  This was routine
and she already knew it. Joining the church was a serious matter. All applicants were required to take classes outlining the beliefs and practices of the Amish, the Confession of Faith. There would be nine classes, held during the Sunday service every other week.

  “That’s more than four months before you could be baptized,” her father said. “Even if the bishop did come to Mexico, he would never stay that long.”

  She still said nothing, and they stared at each other across the table for a moment—long enough for her father to catch up with her thoughts.

  A sad smile crept onto his face and he shook a forefinger at her. “You want to go to Ohio with Jake, don’t you? But even if you go back and stay long enough to finish the classes, you still won’t be able to get married—”

  “Because my family won’t be there,” she said. “That’s true, and I’ve already thought about it. I wouldn’t want to be married without my family. What would be the point of having a ceremony at all if not for them? But I could be baptized, and then I will be ready if the day ever comes that me and Jake and my family and a bishop are all in the same country at the same time.”

  The rare hint of sarcasm brought a smile to his face. “All right then. But we will wait for the bishop’s letter. If he says Jake must go to Ohio, then I will think about it.”

  Rachel was stunned speechless. Never in a million years could she have seen this coming. Clutching at the neckline of her dress she rose from the chair, turned her back to her father and started across the room on uncertain feet.

  “You’re welcome,” her father’s voice said from behind her.

  She stopped and looked back, making no effort to hide the tears of joy. “Thank you, Dat,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

  Nothing was the same for Rachel now that Miriam was gone. Leah moved into the vacant spot in the bed, balancing things out a bit. Now Ada, the oldest, and Barbara, the youngest, slept in one bed while the middle two girls slept in the other. Rachel loved her younger sister, but Leah was a flighty seventeen-year-old who liked to talk, and as Dat often said, people who talked all the time very seldom said anything.

  Rachel crawled into bed and lay awake for a long time, thinking, her mind running through endless possibilities. She was bursting to talk about it, but Miriam was gone and this was not something she could discuss with Leah.

  On Monday morning, though she had barely slept, she got up an hour before daylight to do chores and again felt Miriam’s absence. Leah helped with the milking, but she was not Miriam. Sometimes chattering took the place of working.

  When the chores were done Rachel went to the kitchen to help Mamm put breakfast on the table. Mamm was nearly as absent as Miriam and kept forgetting where she put things. If Leah talked too much, Mamm made up for it by not talking at all, staring out the back window for minutes at a time while the biscuits burned. When the family sat down to eat, Mamm took one look around the table and her sagging face melted even further.

  Since the carnage in the hacienda village, she had spoken very little, eaten almost nothing and never smiled. The color was gone from her cheeks, and she always looked as if she was about to cry.

  Not so many years ago, when all her children were still living and at home, there had been thirteen faces around Mamm’s table—a thriving, happy, noisy clan—and she was the center of her children’s lives. She had always laughed so easily, Rachel recalled, constantly entertained by her hearty brood. Now there were only five children left at home. During breakfast Mamm tilted her head and stared at the empty chairs as if they spoke to her.

  When the breakfast dishes were all washed and dried and put away Rachel helped her mother haul out the laundry and set up the washing machine on the back porch. A bone of contention with some of the Amish, the wringer machine was driven by a pulley, powered by a separate little gasoline engine that some said was “worldly.” Dat disagreed, and until a bishop told him otherwise he would let her use it.

  Mamm fed Caleb’s and Harvey’s work pants through the wringer in dark silence. The only time she said anything at all was when Rachel was helping hang dresses on the line and she rambled morosely about how there wasn’t nearly so much to wash as there once had been.

  Even Levi noticed it. Since Emma’s kitchen was still a wreck, he and Emma came over for supper that evening, and after dinner Levi and Caleb walked outside in the gathering dusk and leaned on the corral fence to talk. Rachel was taking clothes off the line right next to them and overheard part of the conversation.

  “Mamm’s not right,” Levi said. “She didn’t hardly eat a bite of supper.”

  Caleb put a foot up on the rail. “She’ll be fine. She’ll eat when she’s hungry.”

  “I can’t blame her for being upset, I guess, after all that’s happened lately. Dead bandits in the streets, a man hung, my barn burned.”

  Caleb picked at his teeth with a bit of straw as he watched a colt prance in the corral. “Jah, those things were bad, but not so bad as seeing Miriam in her Mexican wedding dress. That hit her mighty hard.”

  “It’s a terrible shame,” Levi said quietly, staring at the ground as if he couldn’t bear to intrude on his father-in-law by looking at him just now. “That Miriam was a fine girl.”

  Rachel dropped the last dress into the basket, picked it up and headed silently for the house, but she’d been wounded by that one word, uncontested by her father.

  Was. As if Miriam were dead.

  Chapter 10

  On Wednesday afternoon Caleb brought the harrow up to the barn and was putting away the draft horses when he heard hoofbeats. Four soldiers on horseback escorted a wagon into the backyard and hailed him as he came out of the barn.

  Captain Soto dismounted, shook hands and greeted him like an old friend.

  “Buenos días, Señor Bender. I trust everyone is well?”

  Caleb nodded, a little suspiciously. The knot in the pit of his stomach was the same one he always got when bandits came around. “Sí,” he said, rather tersely. “What can we do for you?”

  Might as well get to the point. He was not inclined to engage in small talk with this man.

  Smiling, the captain waved vaguely toward the wagon. “We are trying to get settled into our new headquarters, my amigo, and things are going very well except that we have found some necessary items in short supply, so we have come to purchase what we need from the local campesinos. What better way to establish a bond between my men and the people we have come to serve, no?”

  Caleb nodded slowly, one eyebrow creeping up. “What do you need?”

  “Only a few sacks of grain to feed our horses, señor, and perhaps a few ears of corn. Oh, and we will need to purchase six saddle horses—broken, of course.”

  “I don’t have six saddle horses to sell.”

  Soto laughed. “No, Señor Bender, I can see that, but there are other settlers here.”

  Caleb eyed the other three soldiers, all mounted on pinto ponies.

  “But you got the bandits’ horses, didn’t you?” He’d seen soldiers corralling the ragged ponies on the outskirts of town as the remainder of the bandits were led away on foot.

  “Sí, this is true. We have rounded up all of their ponies, but there are seventy men left in my command. There were seventy-five, but some of my brave men died protecting you from the bandidos. If we are to defend your valley properly my men will need mounts, and we are short six horses. I will buy that one.” He pointed to Caleb’s best buggy horse, a standard-bred gelding that stood staring at him over the pasture fence.

  “He’s not for sale.”

  Captain Soto glanced over his shoulder, then leaned a bit closer and spoke in a low conspiratorial tone, as if sharing a secret he didn’t want his men to hear.

  “Señor Bender, you must understand my position. I am a company commander in the Mexican National Army, and I have the authority to take whatever I need. Now, I offer to pay you out of kindness, because I don’t wish to be a burden to the yanqui campesinos.” Then his head
tilted and he shrugged. “But if you dishonor me in front of my men . . .”

  Caleb was no fool. He could see where this was going.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll sell you the horse.”

  Soto grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “Muy bueno! I will pay you a hundred pesos. Corporal, fetch this fine animal from the pasture and put my saddle on him.”

  “A hundred pesos?” Caleb said, perhaps too indignantly for his own good. “He’s worth at least twice that.”

  Now Soto’s smile turned condescending, as though he were talking to a child. “Perhaps in America, but this is Mexico, and things are different here. A hundred pesos is a whole month’s pay for a peon or a soldier. But if this paltry sum offends your dignity I can always keep the money.”

  Caleb glared at the little captain, but he knew from experience it was useless to argue with a thief. He held out a hand, palm up.

  Beaming, the captain pressed the coins into Caleb’s hand and closed his fingers over them. But Soto wasn’t done. While he bargained with Caleb his men climbed up into the barn, and now they began tossing down sack after sack of grain. In the end Soto paid for this too, perhaps a fourth of what it was worth.

  “It has been a pleasure doing business with you, Señor Bender,” the captain said, “but now I’m afraid we must go. We have other farms to visit, other purchases to make.” Soto tested the girth strap to make sure the saddle was properly secured on his new mount, and as he hooked a foot in the stirrup he glanced over his shoulder at Caleb. “By the way, we took care of the rest of the bandidos for you. El Pantera’s rabble will trouble you no more.”

  The wagon driver made some kind of remark that caused a ripple of subdued, sinister laughter among the others.

  The knot tightened in the pit of Caleb’s stomach. “What did you do?”