Though Mountains Fall

by Dale Cramer

  But Emma shook her head weakly. She even tried to smile. “It’s all right, child. I trust Gott. He knows what He’s doing.”

  “Rest, Emma. Please don’t talk. Don’t use up your strength. The doctor will be here soon.”

  Emma’s chest heaved, her breathing becoming labored. “Oh my. Levi’s not going to understand this at all. Rachel . . . you must help him.”

  Rachel fought back tears as she pressed a hand to her sister’s chest and felt the rapid heartbeat. “Emma, please,” she moaned, her voice breaking. “Please don’t go.”

  Emma closed her eyes and rested for a time. Rachel feared the worst until her eyes opened halfway and stared at the ceiling, at nothing. Her breathing came fast and shallow. “I can’t see,” she whispered.

  Emma said nothing else, and in a while there began to be spaces between breaths. As Rachel sat up she heard the crunch of gravel in the drive, and the sound of a car engine. Ida rushed out and brought back the doctor, a plump man in his mid-fifties with glasses and a receding hairline.

  “How is she?” the doctor asked as he set his leather bag on the bedside table and wiggled his stethoscope into his ears.

  “Not good.” Rachel gave him the bare facts, then took the baby and left the room.

  She found Levi in the living room, bent over with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. His hat was gone, his shirttail half out and his chest damp with sweat.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, between gasps. He didn’t even seem to notice the baby she was carrying, so great was his fear.

  “You have a son,” she said, holding the infant out to him. “A fine, strong baby boy.”

  He made no move to take the child. “Emma?” he croaked, his eyes full of anguish. “Oh, please tell me it’s not Emma.”

  “The doctor is with her,” Rachel said softly. It came out almost like an apology, for she was wracked with guilt. Midwife. She was no midwife and wasn’t sure she ever had been. When it came down to it there wasn’t a single thing she could do to save her own dear sister.

  Levi grabbed her by the arms and gripped so tightly it was a struggle to keep from dropping the baby. Forgetting his own strength he drew Rachel up onto her tiptoes, and his eyes bored into hers.

  “Rachel, do something! You get in there and do something right now! Don’t you let my Emma die!”

  Terror and grief and rage all ran together in his eyes, dredging up the unwelcome memory of Jake’s face in a flash of match light that night in Diablo Canyon. Levi’s whole world was spinning out of his grasp and there was nothing he—or Rachel—could do about it.

  “Levi, please . . . you’re hurting me.”

  Slowly his arms relaxed. He lowered her and then let go.

  “Levi, I’m sorry,” she wailed, openly weeping now. “I’m so sorry. There’s nothing any of us can do now but pray. Come, sit on the stoop with me and hold your new son.”

  She finally talked him into going outside, where he held the child as if it were a stick of firewood, paying little attention. He reminded her of Ada, rocking himself back and forth exactly the way Ada did when she was frightened, staring across the road with eyes drowning in horror, chanting a brief prayer over and over.

  “Please, Gott, please . . .”

  They couldn’t have been out there more than five minutes when the front door opened and Dr. Beachy stepped out onto the porch, holding his leather bag. Rachel didn’t wait for him to speak. She saw it in his eyes. Gently she reached over and took the baby from Levi.

  The doctor stood there for a moment, his kind face sagging as he mustered his courage, and then asked Levi, “Was she your wife?”

  Levi rose on wobbly legs, shaking his head and murmuring, “No, no, no . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “There was nothing I could do.”

  Levi stumbled past him into the house, moaning. Rachel stayed where she was and held little Tobe close, huddling over him as if she could shield his ears from the terrible wailing that rose up from the bedroom. In a moment she heard heavy feet clomping, running, staggering, and the slamming of the back door.

  “The baby will need a wet nurse for a while,” the doctor said.

  Rachel nodded. “Ida Mae can see to that.”

  “Good. Rachel, I’m so sorry. I’d like to think things would have gone differently if I’d gotten here sooner, but it’s just not true. Once she hemorrhaged I’m afraid the outcome was a foregone conclusion.”

  Rachel looked up, in tears. “There must have been something I could have done, someway I could have saved her.”

  He shook his head. “No, there wasn’t, and you can put that thought right out of your mind. There’s not one thing you, or even I, could have done. Not here. She might have had a fighting chance if she’d been in a hospital when it happened, but even then she might not have made it. This is a terrible tragedy and I’m deeply sorry for your loss, Rachel, but let me assure you—it wasn’t your fault.”

  She nodded. He was a doctor, so he was probably right, but it was small consolation just now. Her mind was spinning, her whole world coming apart at the seams.

  Emma was no more.

  The reality settled on her like a blanket of snow and brought with it the first cold wave of grief.

  Oh my sweet Lord, Emma is gone! What will we do without Emma?

  Chapter 32

  News of Emma’s passing spread like a grass fire, and a shock wave of grief swept through the entire Amish community. It was a thunderbolt that stopped people in their tracks, knocked some of them to their knees, wrung gasps of disbelief and involuntary wails from others.

  Caleb kept himself together for the sake of his family, though on the inside he felt hollow as a gourd. In small private moments his heart cried out to Gott, but his pleas only echoed and faded like a cry in a canyon. Amos, Aaron, Miriam, and now Emma. Where would it end?

  Mamm collapsed when he told her. The girls put her to bed in the dawdi haus and stayed by her side while Caleb attended to chores. He kept his hands busy because when he tried to sit still the emptiness caught up with him and froze his heart. Now and then, puttering around in the yard, he heard an isolated wail, but he was never sure whether it was Mamm or Ada.

  The women of the church swarmed to Levi’s farm, and within a few hours there were six of them cleaning up the house and readying Emma. In the evening there were men who took over the chores as well, leaving the family to their grief. Later, a group of friends from the church would keep vigil all night, talking in hushed tones so as not to disturb the family.

  Late in the afternoon Jake’s buggy pulled into Levi’s lot. Rachel saw him through the window and ran to meet him in the barn.

  She was surprised to find she had any tears left, but when Jake folded her into his arms she wept all over again, instantly rediscovering her need for him.

  “I’ve never in my life been so glad to see anyone as I am right this minute,” she said.

  Jake nodded, cradling her head under his chin. “I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

  “I failed, Jake. I did everything I could, but nothing helped. The one time Emma really needed me, I failed her.” She wept bitterly, her face buried in his chest.

  “Hush, Red,” he said, gently stroking her back. “This was not your doing. Gott’s will is sometimes a mystery. If it had been His will for her to live, surely He would have shown you how to save her.”

  Jake held her tightly for a long time, letting her cry herself out. Finally she backed away, red-eyed. “Jake, you didn’t happen to see Levi anywhere on your way in, did you?”

  “He’s not here?”

  She shook her head. “He hasn’t returned. No one knows where he is.”

  “I saw someone walking by the woods on the way in, but it was a long way off so I’m not sure. I’ll go look for him.”

  ———

  It was full dark by the time the back door opened and Jake guided Levi through the house by his shoulders as if he were blind.
Levi’s eyes were vacant, his steps wooden. Jake took him upstairs and put him to bed, then tiptoed out and closed the door.

  “Frightening,” Rachel said. “Is he all right?”

  Jake shrugged. “I don’t know. I found him like that—sitting in the middle of the wheat field, staring at nothing. He never said a word. I don’t think he’s right in the head.”

  It was a long and sleepless night, a night of impossible paradox—Jake warm against her back while Emma lay cold and lifeless downstairs.

  Jake’s dat brought the church wagon early the next morning, and he and Jake set up the benches. Levi didn’t get out of bed, and no one had the heart to force him. When they were done with the benches, Jake and his father went in and found him wide awake, staring at the ceiling. Levi was compliant enough, but he never said a word as they got him up and washed him and dressed him.

  An endless parade of buggies trotted into the lane all day long, parking beside one another in a line that stretched down the service road for a hundred yards past the barn. They filed in one by one to glimpse Emma as she lay in the other room on a high narrow table with a white sheet draped across her from the waist down, pale lifeless hands clasped over her chest. Then they filed back out to spend an hour or two on the church benches with their friends and kin, reminiscing.

  Levi remained in the room with Emma the whole time, but it was as if he didn’t see her. He would shake a hand if it was offered, nodding grimly at the somber condolences, but he showed little emotion and said nothing.

  Rachel glanced at him once, through the bedroom doorway, and whispered to Jake, “Where is he?”

  ———

  A front roared through during the night, and the day of Emma’s funeral dawned unseasonably cold with a blustery wind rippling fields of new grain under a cloudless sky. Trees swayed angrily, and even the birds lay low.

  The weather seemed fitting in a way, for the same cold wind blew through every heart. For Rachel—for all the Bender clan and anyone who ever knew Emma—any kind of day would be chilled and diminished by the business of putting Emma in the ground.

  She lay serenely in her box and listened politely to three sermons. Rachel sat where she could see Emma’s face and tried not to take her eyes away the whole time, dreading the end of the last prayer because she knew what would come next. Throughout the morning her mind was filled with memories of Miriam and Emma. So much of her life was intertwined with the two of them—so many moments full of laughter and tears, shared secrets and desperate longings. So many words whispered in the night. And love. Apart from Jake, there had never been anyone so close to her heart as Miriam and Emma. In the naive optimism of youth they saw themselves together forever.

  A picture bubbled to the surface of her mind, like a gift, a crystalline memory of the night she spent with Emma when she was laid up in Paradise Valley, a thousand years ago. Emma’s voice came to her whole and clear, every word ringing with silver laughter.

  “Someday, when we’re just two old biddies rocking in the shade with a hundred grandchildren doting on us and bringing us cookies, we’ll look back on this and say, ‘Remember the night the Hershbergers came to Mexico, and we were piled up in bed like queens?’ ”

  Forever, they thought, only yesterday. Now she was separated from Miriam by a thousand miles, and from Emma by even more.

  Rachel wept when they closed the lid and tightened the screws, for she would never see Emma’s face again in this world.

  Caleb was numb. All of it went by in a surreal blur as he stood close enough to see the boards they laid in place over Emma’s coffin and hear the dirt whumping softly on them while four hatless men sang the ancient funeral song, the wind tossing their hair into their eyes. Only Levi stood closer, and he never moved, never flinched, never shed a tear.

  When it was over, and all that remained of Emma was an oblong mound of loose soil, the men put their hats on their heads, collected their families and filed silently out of the graveyard.

  “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

  Later in the afternoon the Benders all gathered at Levi’s house and the women began preparing the evening meal.

  Rachel went out back to dump out a dishpan, and when she looked up she saw a lone figure walking away, passing under the oak tree out by Levi’s cornfield, where the land sloped up to the woods at the far end of his property. His back was to her, walking slowly with his head down and his collar turned up against the wind. Even at that distance she knew the shape of her father and felt the bottomless grief in that bowed head, those slumped shoulders. She hurried back inside. In a moment she came out again, empty-handed, buttoning her coat. Trotting down the lane with her hands in her coat pockets she caught up with him at the edge of the trees.

  She pulled up a few paces short and called out, “Dat? Are you all right?”

  He turned when he heard her voice, came back to her and gently squeezed her shoulder. “No, I’m not. A man shouldn’t have to bury his children—it’s supposed to be the other way around. I don’t know if I will ever get over this. I thought maybe it would help if I could get away for a bit by myself.”

  Rachel understood. She felt the same way.

  “Would you like me to walk with you? Or I can go back if you’d rather be alone. I just thought—”

  “It’s all right. It was the crowd I needed to get away from. Anyway, today of all days, how could I refuse the company of a daughter?”

  They walked in comfortable silence up the gentle slope, following a beaten footpath through the trees. The wood was only a few hundred yards deep, and they came out at the endless clearing where the railroad tracks passed through on the way to Fredericksburg.

  Dat went straight up onto the tracks and began stepping from crosstie to crosstie like a child, hands clasped behind his back. Rachel kept pace on even ground, letting him have his space. He kept going for nearly a mile, his head down watching his step, his hat brim covering his eyes, so he was nearly upon the workmen before he noticed them. A clank of metal caused him to stop and look up.

  There were two of them, next to a small handcar with their backs to him. One of the workmen bounced his full weight on a claw-foot pry bar, trying to break loose a stubborn spike. The pry bar slipped off and he fell down, busting a knuckle.

  Dat moved a step closer, watching. The two workmen eyed him suspiciously, but they didn’t speak.

  “Try it from the other side,” Dat said, pointing at the spike.

  The one with the pry bar ignored him, cinching his coat tighter about him and peering up at the sky. Now that Rachel could see them clearly she thought the two men looked Mexican, but she didn’t seriously entertain the notion until the man her father had addressed turned to his partner and spoke in Spanish.

  “I want to go home,” he said wearily. “I wish I was back in San Luis Potosi, where the weather doesn’t crack my bones and we don’t have to put up with these ignorant yanquis.”

  Her dat stared blankly for a moment, as if he hadn’t understood, but Rachel saw the narrowing of his eyes. Suddenly his anger boiled over and he said, in flawless Spanish, “In San Luis Potosi you would live at the mercy of a rich haciendado. You would work all day in the scorching heat for a few pesos while bandidos steal your burro and federales take your women. The jefes politicos would burn your church and throw your priest in jail, and you would have to live in a mud house with scorpions and snakes. If life is so terrible here, why don’t you go home?”

  Both of the Mexicans froze, staring at him. “Su español es muy bueno,” the other one said in a hushed tone. Your Spanish is very good.

  “Sí,” Caleb spat. “Most of the ignorant yanquis around here speak Spanish very well. Perhaps you should choose your words more carefully.” Before they could answer he turned his back to them and stalked away, back toward Levi’s house.

  As he brushed past Rachel, she heard him mutter, “Even here, I can’t get away from it.”

  H
e kept up an angry pace, coiled fists swinging at his sides. Rachel had to trot to catch up.

  “Dat, I think maybe you were too hard on those men. They meant no harm.”

  His face was red, his eyes like stones. “I’m sorry, it just offended me. Anyway, it don’t seem right for people to be working on the day we put Emma in the ground.”

  She waited a while before she answered, letting him walk off some of the venom. But something had to be done. The whole world was out of kilter when Caleb Bender became irrational.

  She finally touched his arm, gently, and said, “Dat, it’s a weekday, a regular workday for those men. They were only doing their job. They didn’t even know Emma—there’s no reason to be angry at them.”

  No answer. Instead he kept walking.

  She took his arm to slow him down and pleaded, “Listen to me. You haven’t been right since we came back to Ohio. You never talk, you never laugh, and you’re always angry. Everyone tiptoes around you, praying for the day you’ll be yourself again. Please talk to me. What’s wrong?”

  “Everything, Rachel. Nothing has been right since we left Paradise Valley. I still don’t know what Gott expects from me, and I grow weary of asking. Nothing ever changes. No matter what I do I’m still a broken old man who’s lost everything . . . and now Emma. I’ve searched and prayed, and still I don’t know Gott’s question. How can I answer if I don’t know the question?”

  “What question? What are you talking about, Dat?”

  His voice softened perceptibly, but he wouldn’t look at her. “Something Emma said to me on the train, on the way home from Mexico—that we don’t always understand Gott’s purposes, that He uses our failures to teach us, to help us grow. Emma believed Gott was asking me a question, and she said the rest of my life would depend on my answer. Rachel, I still don’t know what she meant . . . and her voice haunts me. I can hear her like it was yesterday.”

  “So can I. I miss her so.”

  “There will never be another Emma, that’s for sure. I don’t see how anybody can be so like me and yet so different.”