Though Mountains Fall

by Dale Cramer

  Miriam’s kitchen was very small. There was only room for two at the stove, so Leah stood back and watched. But now Rachel stepped aside and wiped her hands, beckoning Leah to take her place. She went to Miriam and took her hands.

  “Miriam, you know there’s nothing in the world I’d like better than to have you at my wedding,” Rachel said. “It won’t be the same without you, and I know you would be there for me if you could.”

  Miriam’s eyes fell away for a moment, thinking. “Maybe I can be there—in a way,” she said pensively. “Come to the bedroom with me. I want to ask you something.”

  Rachel followed her back to the bedroom. A crude, handmade chifforobe stood in the corner. Miriam opened the door and brought out a dress.

  An Amish dress.

  “I wore this the morning of my wedding day,” she said. “But only to leave home. It’s new. Mamm made it for me when I was courting Micah. It was supposed to be my wedding dress, but . . . well, you know.”

  “You want to give this to me?” Rachel asked.

  Miriam shook her head. “No, you can’t accept a gift from me now that I’m banned. But if I leave it out back on the burn pile and someone takes it, well . . . it’s no great loss.”

  Rachel giggled, holding the dress against her body, gauging the fit.

  “Are you sure it’s okay?” Miriam asked. “Would you want to wear it?”

  Rachel’s grin disappeared. When she looked up, tears sprang to her eyes. “Miriam, I would be honored to wear your dress. It’ll almost be like you’re there with me.”

  Miriam hugged her, the dress pressed between them, and Rachel whispered four words into her ear.

  “No matter what. Always.”

  Chapter 17

  The rains were kind that year, and the bean fields yielded a bumper crop. But that fall, for the first time since coming to Mexico, Caleb Bender did not bring his Belgians and his spring-toothed harrow to help Domingo. The men of the church would have frowned on it.

  Domingo and his cousins labored in the sun for two days, prying the vines from the ground by hand and piling them in neat rows to dry in the sun. Miriam and Kyra helped, and Kyra’s boys, who were growing into strong young men. Everyone worked long hours, for the beans were vital to survival. When game was scarce in the winter, when the canned vegetables ran out or worms fouled the cornmeal, the beans were always there. For every peasant household in San Rafael, dried beans became a hedge against starvation.

  It was midafternoon and Miriam was bone weary, but the work was almost done. Nearly all the vines had been pulled and stacked when Miriam straightened up, pressing a hand against the small of her aching back, and saw Domingo’s mother. It was an unusual sight, the old woman standing like a statue in her full black dress with a shawl wrapped about her shoulders and a scarf on her head. She rarely came out to the fields, because her knees were bad and it pained her to walk so far, but now she stood at the edge of the field with her back to them, staring at the sky.

  “Kyra, look,” Miriam said, and her sister-in-law straightened up beside her, following her eyes.

  “Something is wrong,” Kyra said. “She would not be out here otherwise. Domingo!”

  On the far side of the field, Domingo looked around. Kyra pointed, and without another word the three of them made their way out of the field to the old woman.

  “What is it?” Kyra asked, gently placing a hand on her mother’s shoulder.

  The anciana glanced at them, and there was deep worry in the lines of her eyes as she turned her face back to the sky. “A storm is coming,” she said.

  A little wind kicked up, rustling the sage between the bean field and the house.

  Domingo glanced nervously at the gathering clouds and explained the danger to Miriam. “If rain comes after the beans are piled up for drying we will have to turn them over. It’s a lot of work, but we can do it. If a second rain comes we can turn them again. A third time will ruin the whole crop.” But then he shrugged it off. “One rain is not so bad.”

  His mother shook her head worriedly. “My bones tell me this is no ordinary storm, Domingo, and the animals are restless. The wind is strengthening from the northeast and the sky is yellow. The birds are flying low, and there are seabirds among them, hurrying inland. I have seen this once before, when I was very young. A hurricane came from the Gulf and crept into the mountains. The winds died before it reached us, but rain fell for four days and there was no way to save the crop. We went hungry that winter.”

  Domingo’s breathing quickened, standing next to his mother, staring at the sky. “Are you sure?”

  The anciana nodded. “Sí, estoy seguro. It is coming.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow morning. Maybe before.”

  “Then we must gather the plants and get them inside. If we can keep them dry until the rain passes we might save the crop.”

  “We have no room,” Kyra said. “The loft of our barn is very small and half full of hay.”

  He scratched his head. “You’re right. It’s not nearly enough. We’re going to need help. Miriam, I want you to ride to your father’s house and ask if we can store the vines in his loft for a few days. This must be done now, tonight.”

  Miriam raised an eyebrow. “I will ask, but I know my father. I don’t think he will help us now.”

  “Try,” Domingo said, and the urgency in his voice was enough to convince her. He turned his gaze to the north, where more fields lay scattered through the valley, rows of beans yellowing in the weakening light. Every peasant in San Rafael depended on the bean crop to get them through the winter. “Kyra, go and warn the others. I will hitch the cart, and the boys can help me. Go!”

  ———

  Miriam saddled Domingo’s horse and rode hard to her father’s house. She found him in the tack room, mending harness. Caleb looked up from the workbench when she came in the door and his eyes hardened when he saw her.

  “Dat, we need help,” she said. No sense beating around the bush. “Domingo’s mother says a hurricane is coming, that it will rain for three or four days.”

  His head tilted and he shrugged. “Then it will rain,” he said. “You have a house with a roof. Go there.”

  “You don’t understand. It’s the beans, Dat. Our vines are pulled and laid out to dry. If it rains for three days the beans will rot and we’ll go hungry this winter. Domingo wanted me to ask if we can store them in your hay loft.”

  “My loft is full.”

  “The second level, then. Or even the buggy shed—anyplace where they can stay dry for a few days. Just until the rain passes.”

  “I cannot help you, Miriam. It wouldn’t be right. You and your husband will have to fend for yourselves.”

  His stare was almost blank, but she felt sure she saw a trace of sympathy in his eyes. He wanted to help. It hurt him not to help, but he felt pressure from the others. They would be watching to see what he would do, and he was keenly aware of his position in the community. She would not plead or shed a tear, but neither would she hold any of this against her father. The respect of his brethren was vital to him. She understood.

  “All right,” she said evenly, turning to go. “I’ll find someone else.” Climbing back up into the saddle she spurred her horse toward Emma’s.

  Finding her sister in the kitchen cooking supper, Miriam laid out the situation as quickly as she could. Emma didn’t answer at all; she just stepped out the back door and called Levi. When he came in Emma did all the talking, explaining the emergency. Levi scratched his neck with a dirty, callused hand.

  “But, Emma, she’s banned,” he said softly.

  Emma nodded. “Jah. That’s why Dat wouldn’t help them. He can’t do business with her.”

  “Neither can I,” Levi said, casting a sympathetic glance at Miriam.

  “But no money will change hands,” Emma said. It was then that Miriam saw the little twinkle in her eye, the catlike smile. “So you wouldn’t be doing business with them at all; you�
��d only be helping a neighbor in a time of need. Besides, it’s only for a few days. We’re a thousand miles from the nearest bishop, Levi. It will be over before anyone can say ‘Don’t.’ ”

  He scratched his chin, and Miriam saw Emma’s little grin creep onto Levi’s face. “Well, I guess if no money changes hands. My loft is new and almost empty—you could put a lot of vines up there. But I’m thinking the work would go a lot faster with a hay wagon.”

  He was right. A hay wagon was rigged with ropes. When the wagon pulled up to the barn with a load of hay the ropes were gathered from the corners and attached to a lifting hook hanging from the beam above the loft door. While that was being done, someone would unhitch the draft horses, walk them to the far end of the barn and hook them to the other end of the rope. A team of Belgians could lift an entire wagonload into the loft in a matter of minutes.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Miriam asked, giving him an out. “There will be talk.”

  Levi gave Emma a little sideways smile. “Let the tongues wag,” he said. “Go home. Tell Domingo I’ll be there shortly.”

  Quickly Miriam got herself back on the horse and took off at a gallop.

  ———

  Kyra caught up with her in the barn as she was putting away the horse.

  “Father Noceda moved all the church benches out of the way and told the people they could bring their beans into the church—a good idea, since it sits on high ground and it was a warehouse before it was a church. You know, he really is a good man,” Kyra said. “Pity he’s a priest.”

  Levi arrived a half hour later with a team of Belgians pulling his hay wagon. The freshening wind put new strength into arms and backs that had already seen a day’s work, and the hayforks flew. Dusk came and went, and they toiled on by lantern light as the wagonloads trundled out of San Rafael, around the ridge and up to Levi’s farm at the other end of Paradise Valley. Men, women and children labored all through the night, filthy and utterly exhausted.

  Miriam and Domingo rode on the wagon with Levi as he drove home with the last load. At the barn, his horses leaned into the hoisting rope, lifting the last of their bean vines into the loft as lightning flashed, the sky rumbled, and black night paled to a yellow gray.

  A steady rain began to fall as Levi pulled his wagon into the barn and took care of his horses. Miriam and Domingo propped each other up in the doorway to watch the rain thicken in the half-light of dawn. It fell softly at first, then harder and harder. Ten minutes after the last of the beans went into the loft the rain swept through in sheets, blowing, driving, gathering into little streams that wound through fields and down the lane, growing.

  “It looks like my mother was right,” Domingo said, his voice raspy with fatigue. “This is no ordinary storm.”

  ———

  The hurricane behaved exactly as the anciana had predicted, spending its fury on the coast and then pushing inland until it came up against the mountains. By the time it reached the foothills the tired winds merely hummed about the eaves for a few hours, too weak to tear off a roof, but frustrated clouds piled themselves in against the piedmont and dumped rain for three days. Streams cut gullies through plowed fields and washed out parts of the main road in the valley. There were few places in Paradise Valley where water could stand, so the runoff streamed out of the valley and wandered to the southeast in swelling torrents. There would be terrible flooding in the lowlands, but Paradise Valley and San Rafael suffered very little damage.

  Except for the bean crop. Most people didn’t see the long hard rain coming, and even if they had, most of them owned no barn big enough to shelter their crop. Everywhere rows of wilted vines rotted and melted into the mud. Most of the peasants would wait a few days and then go out with long faces and slumped shoulders to turn the entire crop under. It was going to be a long winter.

  But not for Domingo and Miriam. On the fourth day the sun broke through. And on the fifth day, when the ground began to dry out and firm up, they went back to Levi’s farm. Kyra and her boys came with them, and together with Domingo’s cousins they pitched the vines down from the loft and piled them in neat rows in Levi’s pasture to finish drying.

  “We probably lost a fourth of the beans from so much handling,” Domingo said.

  “But we saved three fourths,” Miriam answered.

  At noon Emma called everyone inside for lunch. Miriam tiptoed in tentatively, not sure what to expect, but Emma was prepared. She had pushed a small table up against the end of her long dinner table and covered both with one long cloth. She used a peso for a spacer, leaving a mere crack between the tables. On the main table sat large bowls of vegetables—creamed corn, tomatoes, butter peas and sweet potatoes—and on the little table at the end, smaller bowls of the same.

  Miriam covered a little hiccup of a laugh when she saw the arrangement, and took her place at the smaller table without a word of direction, pointing for Domingo to sit opposite her. Domingo gave her a puzzled look as he sat down. Miriam said nothing; she just ran a finger down the divide between the tables, pressing the tablecloth into the void to show Domingo that the letter of the law was being preserved. Emma was bending the rules as far as she could without breaking them.

  Later, when the men had gone back to work, Miriam stayed behind in the house to help Emma clean up. All three of Emma’s children were napping and the kitchen was quiet; it was just the two of them. Emma was up to her elbows in a washtub full of dishes while Miriam dried.

  “Thank you for that,” Miriam said quietly.

  “For what?”

  “The table. The way you set it up. You can’t know how much it meant to me. You’ve made the ban bearable. It was a generous gift.”

  “It was nothing.” Emma was concentrating on her dishwashing, but now she looked up and gave Miriam that catlike smile. “Actually, it was Levi’s idea. He built that little table just for you and made sure it was the same height and width as the other one.”

  Miriam nearly dropped a plate in shock. “Levi did that for me?”

  Emma nodded. “For him to even think of such a thing is a real turning point, I think. It still makes him nervous to tread near the edge of the ordnung, but he’s learning. I believe it helps that there’s no bishop here.”

  “He’s come a long way,” Miriam said. “The Levi I know would never have done such a thing.”

  “Jah, I know. I’m so proud of him. I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to open him up like that. It’s just not the way he was raised.”

  “He’s a lot like his father. And the Bible does say Gott chastises those He loves.”

  “Jah, but whose life is not full of trials? Even the righteous lose crops and loved ones. Triumph and disaster alike, it’s all part of life. Our faith only helps us put it all in its place.”

  “That’s true. I never thought about it like that.”

  “Neither did Levi,” Emma said. “He’s still divided on it, but he’s trying.”

  “What do you mean, ‘he’s still divided’?” Miriam asked.

  Emma shrugged. “I get the feeling he’s watching me, and watching Gott, to see what happens. Helping save your bean crop, making this little table for you—it’s Levi’s way of testing things. I can see it in his eyes. He’s testing Gott, watching to see if punishment comes from bending the rules. But Levi’s mill grinds slowly, and it might be years before he makes up his mind.”

  Miriam chuckled, sliding another plate onto the stack. “Well, you better hope nothing terrible happens in the meantime. He’ll blame you for sure.”

  Emma shook her head. “No, Levi never holds anything against me. He loves me, and he knows I would never do anything to harm him. That’s not what worries me.” Her hands stilled themselves in the washtub and she fell silent for a moment, staring out the window.

  “I’m afraid he’ll blame Gott.”

  Chapter 18

  The Benders hosted their annual Thanksgiving feast in late November of 1925, their fourth since coming to P
aradise Valley, and it was bigger and brighter than ever. More than a hundred Amish came to break bread together, to celebrate the fruits of their labors as only very hardworking people can.

  Emma found joy in it too, and most of all, sitting at the women’s table, she saw her mother had almost returned to her old self. Mamm was eating again and putting on weight. Her smile was back.

  But when the meal was done, the turkey and ham and sweet potatoes and pies all ravaged, as Emma was helping clean up she saw her father standing apart from the others. Staring out over his fields he had that distant look in his eye, picking at his teeth with a wood splinter, and she could tell from the tilt of his head and the slump of his shoulders that he was troubled. A darkness had settled upon him.

  There were plenty of women to help with cleaning up, so Emma left a stack of plates on a table and went to him.

  “Are you all right, Dat?” she asked, touching his shoulder.

  He stared blankly for a moment, shrugged and looked away.

  “What’s bothering you?”

  His chest swelled with a long sigh. “Your sister,” he said quietly.

  He meant Miriam. Otherwise he would have named her, or at least said My daughter.

  “I miss them too,” Emma said, the plural intentional. It was their first Thanksgiving without Miriam and Domingo, and she knew her dat missed Domingo almost as much as he missed his daughter.

  “There’s a hole in the family,” he said. “We gather at a time like this to give thanks, and we have a lot to be thankful for, but I keep catching myself looking for Aaron and Miriam. And Domingo. It’s not the same. There’s a hole in my heart, too.”

  Emma knew his heart, and she watched his eyes. Looking out over the tables of food and beards and bonnets in his yard she knew that here, finally, was what he wanted, what he had set out to accomplish in the beginning. This thriving community was the very reason the whole family had worked so hard these last four years. In many ways the sight of all these transplanted Amish, living and laughing and celebrating a fruitful harvest in the wilds of Mexico, vindicated her father’s heartfelt belief that people who honored Gott, worked hard and cooperated with one another, could thrive anywhere. But for her father, the achievement had come at a terrible price.