Though Mountains Fall

by Dale Cramer

  ———

  The time finally came for Jake and Rachel to rise and stand before the bishop, who put to them the questions common to all weddings. They promised to be faithful, to care for each other, to live together in love, forbearance and patience until they were separated by death.

  The people rose, and Bishop Detweiler prayed over them. Then he placed her hand in Jake’s. Jake squeezed her hand and gave her a reassuring smile, and she saw it again in his eyes—the thing he had said to her in the very beginning that had captured her heart.

  “I would do a great many things for you.”

  When the ceremony was over the congregation remained seated while the six members of the wedding party marched out in single file. The guests would hang back for a few minutes, giving the bride and her navahuckers time to go from the barn to the house and arrange themselves at the corner table. Halfway across the yard, Jake caught Rachel’s arm and stopped her.

  “Look!” he said, and the others stopped as well, following his gaze up to the ridge.

  Miriam, Domingo and Kyra were still there on the little bluff, but now they were standing, cheering, clapping their hands.

  Rachel glanced back at the barn to make sure the guests weren’t coming out yet, then took a bow. When she straightened up she blew her sister a kiss.

  Chapter 21

  Rachel had decorated the corner table herself, the Eck, where the wedding party would sit. There were bouquets of flowers in mason jars, and a huge cake waited in the center of the table. Two empty tables had been arranged on either side of the front door, one for hats and the other for gifts, but only the women of Rachel’s family would leave gifts. The other guests would present their gifts when the newlyweds came to visit in the coming weeks. The next few days would be very busy. Friday she and Jake would help clean up from the wedding, and that evening they would begin making the rounds.

  The whole crowd filed by the Eck one at a time, offering their best wishes to the new couple and making little jokes. Levi and Emma made their way through the line and congratulated the newlyweds, but Emma left no gift. Instead, as she was about to walk away from the Eck she leaned close and whispered, “Rachel, when you can get away for a minute or two, come downstairs. I have something special for you, but I have to explain it.”

  The wedding dinner—the Hochzich Middag—was every bit as good as any Rachel remembered in Ohio except that, since they were marrying out of season, there were some things that just couldn’t be had. Like celery. Back home they would have had celery standing in glasses of water on all the tables, leafed out like a decoration, but edible. It was also too early for lettuce, so there were no salads. Yet in the presence of so much food no one seemed to notice the lack. There were mashed potatoes, dressing, chicken, gravy, coleslaw, several pies for dessert, and the wedding cake itself.

  After everyone had finished eating and the men were standing around rubbing swollen bellies while the women began the cleanup, Emma caught Rachel’s eye and nodded toward the basement steps.

  Rising, she whispered to Jake, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  By the time she worked her way across the crowded living room and down into the basement Emma was already there, standing by the bed holding a folded quilt.

  Rachel reached out and ran a hand over the quilt. “Is this for me?”

  Emma nodded.

  “Thank you, Emma. It’s beautiful!”

  “Well, I’m not much of a stitcher, but Miriam is. She helped me with it. We’ve been working on it for a long time. But, Rachel, it’s more than just a quilt. I’ll have to show you. Here—help me.”

  They took the corners and spread the quilt on the bed. The whole thing was covered with interlocking rings the size of peach baskets, made from scraps of mostly dark blues and browns on a white background.

  The sisters sat down on opposite sides of the bed, and Emma began to explain. “It’s a wedding quilt. We made it from scraps of the whole family. Look”—she ran her hand over the two rings in the center—“these rings were made from your old clothes, and Jake’s. This is you and Jake, you see?”

  “What a wonderful idea! I love it.”

  “I’m not finished. These four rings, right above you and Jake, are your parents. Mamm and Dat here, Jake’s parents here. I had Jake send me some of their old clothes, and while he was at it, these two rings are Lizzie and Andy.”

  “It’s amazing.”

  “These down here are Miriam and Domingo. Over here, me and Levi. These two are Mary and Ezra. Here is Ada, there Harvey, and down there Leah and Barbara.”

  Rachel fought back tears. “I’m stunned—and honored. This is the most precious thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe you would do this for me, Emma.”

  “I’m only happy you like it so. I wanted it to symbolize your marriage, and the family you spring from. We’re all here.”

  “Well . . . not quite all.”

  “Oh, but we are. If you mean Aaron and Amos, that’s the best part.” Emma reached across the bed and took her hand. “I saved Aaron’s shirts—that was easy. I didn’t think I could get anything of Amos’s, but it turned out that when he died Aaron kept his clothes. And all he did was keep them; he never had the heart to wear Amos’s things. So Harvey ended up with them when Aaron got too big, but then Harvey didn’t want to wear them either. He gave me everything that was left of Amos’s clothes.”

  “So which rings are theirs?”

  Emma shook her head. “I started to make rings for them, but it didn’t feel right. So I finally cut up their shirts and used them for the white spaces. Some of them are a little off-white, so it’s not perfect, but they’re here. They’re all around us.”

  “This is just too perfect, Emma—the whole idea of it. I’m truly overwhelmed. I will cherish this for the rest of my life.” Rachel began to weep softly.

  Emma came around and sat beside her, put her arms around her. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you on your wedding day, child. Maybe I should have waited for another time. I know how badly you miss your brothers. It’s such a shame they couldn’t be here for your wedding day.”

  Rachel sniffed and blinked and took a great deep breath to calm herself, then looked into Emma’s eyes. “But they were,” she said.

  ———

  When she rejoined Jake—her husband, she thought for the very first time—at the corner table, she found him holding a piece of paper in his hands with a look of utter shock on his face.

  Rachel asked him what was wrong even before she sat down.

  He shook his head and laid the paper in front of her. “Nothing is wrong. Your father . . . he has given us twenty acres of land.”

  Now it was her turn to be stunned. “Jake, we can build our own house!”

  “And plant! He said he would pay me to work for him, and help me plant my own cash crop when we have time. We’ll be able to buy more land before you know it.” He lifted the paper from the table and shook it. “This is a big head start your father has given us.”

  She patted his hand. “We have a lot of surprises waiting, I’m sure. Wait till you see what Emma did.”

  ———

  They all stayed up late that evening helping clean up from the wedding, but eventually everyone else wandered off to bed and Jake went downstairs to wait for Rachel. At the last, she was alone with her mother.

  “I was so proud of you today,” Mamm said, wringing out a rag and hanging it on the lip of the washtub. “I think Jake is a fine young man, and he’s going to make you a very good husband. He loves you so much, he would do anything for you. I can see it in his eyes.”

  I would do a great many things for you.

  “Jah, that’s true, Mamm, but I didn’t know you could see it, too.”

  Mamm smiled, heading for the stairs. “I’m maybe not quite as blind as you think. Ach, I’m so tired, and we have to get up early tomorrow and clean. I’m going to bed.”

  But before she reached the stairs she turned around,
came back and took Rachel’s face in her hands. “You were such a beautiful bride,” she said, then let go and walked away, muttering, “in your sister’s dress.”

  ———

  There was no honeymoon for Rachel and Jake. They got up early the next morning to help clean up after the wedding, then spent the next few weekends visiting every house in Paradise Valley, as was the custom for a newlywed Amish couple. But even that age-old custom underwent a change. The houses in the tight settlement were all within sight of each other, and most of them were small and crowded, so instead of spending the night they went back home and slept in their own bed in the basement of Caleb’s house.

  It was a glorious time. Every household showered Rachel with gifts, and Jake collected a number of farm implements he would need to get started on a crop. None of them were new, for there were few new things in the valley, but a planter is a planter, new or not. He still didn’t own a mule, and thanks to the deprivation of the troops at El Prado no one had a horse to spare, but John Hershberger made him a gift of a fine unbroken colt.

  Rachel had collected handmade baskets, sheets, pillows, fabric, yarn, dishes, candlesticks, two crocks, some well-used candle molds and an iron kettle.

  “We are truly blessed,” she said one evening, eyeing the many gifts crowded into their basement abode.

  Jake came to her and wrapped her in a warm embrace. “Jah,” he said with a smile. “And we got a lot of fine gifts, too.”

  Their weekdays were harder than ever since Jake was now essentially working two jobs. He spent his days working for Caleb in the fields, and after supper every evening he would borrow a team and head down to his own fields, plowing and planting corn until it was too dark to see.

  “You work too hard,” Rachel said, rubbing his shoulders.

  “Nonsense. I’m young and strong, and just knowing you’re here waiting for me gives me the strength of a draft horse. Work is only hard when you can see no reason for it. I toil for you and me, for us, and it is pure joy. I only wish the days were longer.”

  It was still there in his eyes. I would do a great many things for you. Far and away the greatest blessing was in knowing they were meant for each other, that they had found the perfect mate who, like a matched team, would always pull in the same direction. Life could not have been sweeter.

  The weeks flew by and Jake’s corn came up thick and green. She brought him water in the afternoons, and they would just stand there together, looking at the corn. They saw it as the beginning of a long, healthy, beautiful life together, and they dreamed of how it would be to raise a family of their own among so many friends and family in the fertile fields of Paradise Valley.

  Their bliss was perfect and complete.

  Chapter 22

  In the first week of June a nudge from Mamm awakened Caleb in the middle of the night. She’d always been a light sleeper. “Someone’s at the door,” she said.

  He lay very still for a second, listening. He heard the bar being lifted from the inside, the front door opening, the low murmur of voices. Harvey, and a woman. Bunking in the living room since Rachel and Jake took over the basement, Harvey was a light sleeper, too. In the pitch-dark Caleb felt for the lantern and lit it, then slipped into pants and shirt. When he came down the stairs tucking in his shirttail, Harvey looked up from just inside the front door.

  Jemima Hostetler was there—Atlee’s wife. Her eyes were puffy and red as if she’d been crying, and the up-lighting of the lantern she was holding made her baggy face even baggier.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Caleb asked, pulling his suspenders up onto his shoulders.

  “Joe and Saloma didn’t come back yet,” she said, her voice high and quavering.

  At seventeen and fifteen, Joe and Saloma were the two oldest Hostetler children, but they had no business out at this hour.

  “Where’d they go?”

  The lantern flickered silently while she stared at the floor, clearly embarrassed.

  “They went looking for their dat,” she mumbled.

  “Atlee’s missing, too?”

  She nodded, still downcast. “Jah, he almost always goes to town on Friday afternoon. He said he had to get something.”

  “I see.” And Caleb did see. Everyone knew that what Atlee Hostetler went to the hacienda village to “get” on Friday afternoons—and often one or two other days of the week—was drunk. “And he didn’t come home when he should?”

  “No.” Now she looked up, pleading, apologizing. “He’s almost always home by nightfall. A couple hours after dark we got worried, so Joe hitched the buggy and went looking.”

  “In the hacienda village?”

  A meek nod. “Jah.”

  “And Saloma went, too?”

  Another nod.

  “Jemima, why would you send a fifteen-year-old girl into town after dark?”

  Again she hesitated, and her voice came out small and ashamed. “Because most of the time when Atlee is late like that he’s not able to manage the hack, so Saloma drives it home.”

  Caleb sighed heavily. Up to now he’d ignored Atlee’s indiscretions because drinking wasn’t expressly forbidden in their district, but now he had crossed the line. Now he had put his children at risk.

  “Harvey, go hitch the buggy. I’ll be right out. Jemima, you have small children at home—go look after them. We’ll find Joe and Saloma.” She nodded without looking up and turned toward the door. Before she opened it Caleb added, “I want you to know I plan to talk to Bishop Detweiler about Atlee. This has gone on long enough.”

  Jemima looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes wide. “Oh, please do . . . but don’t tell Atlee I said that.”

  ———

  The roosters were crowing, birds chattering, and the sky had grown pink in the east when two surreys crept slowly up the main road and turned into the Hostetler lane. When Caleb drove the lead buggy up into the yard Jemima burst from the door and ran out to meet him. He stopped, and she held her lantern high, peering at the girl lying on the back seat.

  Jemima screamed, and her knees almost failed her when she saw Saloma’s face—a mass of yellow and purple bruises, one eye swollen nearly shut and blood smeared in wide swaths from her nose and mouth. Her kapp was missing, her hair tangled and matted.

  “She’ll live,” Caleb said, “but she’s beat up pretty bad.”

  Harvey pulled up beside them in the other surrey, and Caleb nodded in his direction. “Harvey’s got Joe, and he’s beat up worse than Saloma.”

  Jemima ran to look at the dark form crumpled in the back of Harvey’s surrey.

  “His jaw’s broke,” Harvey said, “and some of his fingers.”

  Horrified, Jemima looked back at Caleb and cried, “What happened?”

  “We don’t know.” He lifted the limp girl from the back seat of the buggy and started toward the house with her. “Joe can’t talk . . . and Saloma won’t.”

  Jemima followed him into the house and showed him where to put her. The younger children peeked around the doorframe, and two of Saloma’s sisters ran to her bedside.

  “She drug herself a ways to get to her brother’s side,” Caleb said. “We found them together, but Joe was unconscious until we went to put him in the buggy. I guess we mashed his hand and the pain brought him around. With his jaw like that he’s not going to be able to eat, so we’re gonna have to get him to the doctor in Agua Nueva—a rough road, but it’s the closest doctor.”

  Jemima nodded meekly. “Did you find Atlee?”

  “No, we didn’t see him anywhere. Nor his hack, neither.”

  ———

  Caleb went to put away Hostetler’s horse and buggy while Harvey stayed with Joe. When he came out of the barn the sky had lightened and he could see a hack coming up the main road very slowly. Caleb squinted. The driver slumped forward as if he couldn’t quite hold himself erect, and as he drew nearer Caleb could just make out a black, pointed beard.

  Atlee.

  Harvey’s buggy
horse pranced and snorted, but Caleb looked at his son and held up a finger—wait.

  Atlee’s hack crept up the lane past Harvey’s buggy, finally stopping in front of Caleb.

  Jemima came to the door and looked, but went no farther.

  “Are you all right?” she called from the doorway.

  “Jah,” Atlee said gruffly, and jerked his head toward Caleb. “What are they doing here?”

  Jemima opened her mouth to answer but froze, looking back and forth between Atlee and Caleb as if she needed help answering. The fear in her eyes told Caleb all he needed to know. When a belligerent drunk asked a question there was never a right answer.

  Atlee didn’t wait for one. He rose from the seat and made to climb down, but he caught his toe and stumbled. Falling, he reached for Caleb’s shoulder to catch himself. Caleb stepped back so the hand caught only air, and Atlee fell flat on his face in the dirt. He shook himself, then lurched awkwardly to his feet. His eyes were bloodshot, and a rancid tequila smell rolled off of him.

  “I’m all right,” he grunted. “I’m fine.”

  “No, I don’t think you are. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Atlee. Joe and Saloma were beat half to death last night, and from where I’m standing it looks like your fault.”

  “What are you talking about, Caleb? Why, I never even seen them. What happened?”

  “When you didn’t come home they went looking for you, and found trouble instead. Some of your federale friends, I suspect. Your children were lucky—they’ll live—but Joe’s jaw is broke and his hands are busted up. He can’t eat like that, so somebody’s got to take him to the doctor in Agua Nueva.”

  “Then I’ll take him. He’s my son, none of your concern.” But Atlee almost lost his balance as he said it and flung his arms out to steady himself.

  “You’re in no shape for the trip. I’ll take care of Joe—you see to Saloma. I’ll send Rachel over. In Paradise Valley she’s the closest thing we’ve got to a nurse, and I’m thinking maybe she can help.”