by Dale Cramer
He had calmed down a little and slowed to a more leisurely pace as they approached the woods where the trail led back to Levi’s. It was easier to talk now.
“She was a lot like you, Dat. Emma was wise.”
A faint smile came to his face, the residue of fond memory. “Sometimes a good deal wiser than I am, I’m thinking.”
Rachel shrugged. “She just saw things different. It’s like she could see inside people and know what they needed.”
“You mean like Levi.”
“Exactly. Emma was always so good with him. She said no one had ever shown him gentleness or patience, so she was gentle and patient with him. I’ll never forget the day Miriam and Domingo drove up to help with the barn raising at Levi’s. It was right after they got married. Miriam had on her Mexican clothes, and her hair was down in a braid. Levi wasn’t sure what to do, so Emma took him off to the side and talked to him. She didn’t think anyone was listening, but I can still hear her voice to this day. She said, ‘Who has been forgiven much, loves much. Gott is love, and love forgives. Who are we if we don’t do the same?’ I saw the change come over him then. From that day on Levi treated Miriam and Domingo like family. Emma always knew how to talk to him.”
A memory washed over her as they came out of the woods by Levi’s cornfield, and she couldn’t resist a chuckle. “Dat, you never saw that little table, did you?”
“What table?”
“In Emma’s kitchen, in Mexico. After Miriam was banned Emma got Levi to build a smaller table the same height as their kitchen table, and whenever Miriam would visit, Emma would push it up to the end of the big table so Miriam could sit right beside her. She used to put a peso between the tables for a spacer. I’ll never forget what she told Miriam. ‘I’ll give the width of a peso to the ban,’ she said, ‘and everything else to love.’ Like I said . . . Emma had your wisdom.”
She went on a few paces before she realized her father was no longer walking next to her. He had stopped several paces back and was just standing there, staring across the fields to the east, breathing through his mouth.
“Dat, are you all right?”
As she drew closer she noticed the faint line of silver at the bottoms of his eyes.
He spoke softly, with a kind of reverence in his voice. “Emma didn’t get that bit of wisdom from me. It came from her mother.”
“What do you mean?”
“When Mose was born, right after we moved to Mexico. We knew the timing wasn’t right, and I wanted to—”
“Dat, you knew?”
“Jah, Rachel, we can count. It was your mother who talked me into letting it go—not saying anything to the church. Mamm’s exact words were, ‘Is not love greater than the law?’ Sometimes, when somebody speaks the truth in just the right words it fits into you like a key in a lock, and you know it like an old friend. It seems to me, now, the best of Emma’s wisdom came from her mother.”
His voice broke with this last. He turned away from Rachel, and his eyes focused on the hill a mile away where Emma now rested. A relentless wind tugged at his hat brim.
“Rachel, you go on back to the house now, and tell them don’t hold supper for me. I got some more walking to do. Tell Mamm I’ll be back by dark.”
Caleb stood alone in the slanting light, in almost the same spot where he had stood among a host of others at noon. He held his hat loosely at his side and rubbed his bald head as he looked down on the mounded grave.
“Even now,” he said softly, “my children teach me. Emma, I don’t know if it came from Gott or out of your own true heart, but what you said was right.
“These last few months I been searching high and low, trying so hard to see what Gott wanted me to learn from failure, from losing my farm—a house that will one day crumble to dust and land that won’t remember me. And all the while the real question was right there in front of me. I know now what made me bitter. I know why Gott turned His face from me. His Word is plain. I know you tried to tell me, Emma, but some people are so close, so like a man’s own mind that he doesn’t really hear them until they’re gone.”
He took a deep, shuddering breath, wiped his eyes on a sleeve and whispered, “But I hear you now, child. I see the truth, finally. I want you to rest easy, and know it’ll be all right. I’ll make everything right.”
———
It was dark by the time Caleb got back to Levi’s. The windows glowed with the soft yellow light of lanterns, and as he came through the back door he was met with the familiar acrid smell of kerosene.
Mamm looked up at him from a hickory rocker, and he gently prodded her shoulder.
“We have to get on home,” he said. “I need to get an early start in the morning.”
Chapter 33
Rachel stayed on at Levi’s after the funeral to take care of the children until other arrangements could be made. Ida Mae kept Tobe. He would most likely stay with her until he was weaned.
Levi barely touched his breakfast. He said nothing, even to his children, his only expression an empty, stony glare. He ate a few bites and shoved the plate away, then stuffed a hat on his head and went out without a word.
Clara and little Will stood on a chair and helped Rachel with the dishes while Mose went to help his dat with the chores. Mose was almost five now and already a willing worker. When the housecleaning was done Rachel walked Clara and Will over to Ida Mae’s to check up on their new brother.
“He’s fine,” Ida said, handing over the swaddled bundle. “No trouble at all. A sweet boy, and I’m thinking he’s going to be a handsome little woodcutter.”
Rachel pulled back a corner of the blanket and peered at the sleeping face. “He looks just like his mother,” she said, and it brought a lump to her throat. “Oh, Ida, I miss her so. I can’t imagine a world without Emma in it. To think of her now, up there on that bald hill . . .”
She could see it through the window, that naked green dome a mile away, wearing a white picket fence like a lopsided crown, and a thought came to her. It was a wonderful idea, and she didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before.
“Ida,” she said, “can you keep the little ones for a while? There’s something I need to do.”
Ida Mae gave Rachel a dismissive wave, laughing. “Jah, what’s a couple more? Go!”
———
Rachel ran back to Levi’s, hitched a mule to the hack, tossed a shovel in the back and drove to the nearest woods. Walking the edge of the woods, the shovel on her shoulder, she soon found what she was looking for: an oak sapling, a little taller than she was, symmetrical with a good straight trunk the thickness of the shovel handle.
She smiled. “How about this one, Emma?”
It took her nearly an hour to dig it up, saving as large a root ball as possible, and then her ambition caught up with her when she tried to lift it. By the time she got it loaded on the hack she was filthy from head to toe, and smiling with deep satisfaction. It was perfect.
Driving the hack up the hill toward the picket fence she saw the lone figure of a man standing in the graveyard with his hat in his hands, head down. She hadn’t expected to meet anybody, and after a quick, embarrassed inventory of her grimy hands, muddy feet and filthy sweat-stained dress she thought seriously about turning around. But when she looked up again she was close enough to recognize him, and she felt a little foolish.
It was just Levi.
The graveyard sloped gently down from the crest of the grassy hill. Rachel pulled up to the fence and set the brake. Levi stood silent beside the fresh mound, never once looking up at Rachel. Little Mose stepped out from behind him, a miniature copy of his dat in his wide-brimmed hat and bowl haircut. He smiled when he saw his aunt Rachel, and came running.
Rachel marked a spot at the highest point of the graveyard and pried off the turf with her shovel, setting it aside, then started digging the hole. Mose couldn’t stand it. He begged for the shovel until she finally paused. Every time she looked at Levi she heard Emma’s
voice echoing in her head.
“Levi’s not going to understand. Rachel . . . help him.”
“Here.” Rachel handed Mose the shovel, which was taller than the boy. “Dig me a nice deep hole, this big around, okay?”
He grinned from ear to ear and rolled up his shirtsleeves, just the way his dat always did. Mose wasn’t heavy enough to sink the shovel all the way but he chipped away at it, undaunted, a little man.
She opened the gate in the picket fence and walked quietly over to Levi. His eyes were red, his face wet, and when he finally saw her coming he turned away at first.
But then he spun around to face her, wiping a shirtsleeve across his eyes, angry and defiant.
“I don’t care. I won’t hide anything anymore,” he hissed, knifing a hand sideways, palm down. “No more secrets. Gott is not mocked. I sowed deceit, and look what I have reaped!” He choked on tears, even as he raged.
Rachel moved a step closer and reached out to touch him, but he jerked his arm away. Her heart broke for him, and tears left tracks in her own dirt-stained face.
Gently, with utmost compassion, she said, “Levi, Emma would not want you to feel this way. She never once blamed Gott for any of it—she always just said she was not good at having babies. Emma would never have blamed anyone, least of all Gott. Levi, this is the darkest day of my life—and yours—and I don’t see how any of us can live without her. But it was an accident. An awful, unbearable, tragic accident, not the hand of Gott. Emma was heaven-bound and she knew it.”
“She couldn’t know that,” he seethed. “She could hope, but she couldn’t know, and neither can you. That’s just arrogant.” Then his voice softened, staring at the grave, and he said mournfully, “You don’t understand. We sinned, me and Emma . . . and we hid it.”
“I know. I’ve known about it from the very beginning. There are few secrets between sisters.”
A hard glare. “Well, it was a secret from the church. We never repented, and where there is no repentance, there is no forgiveness.”
“Emma repented in her heart, and before Gott.”
“But not before the church! And just like you, Emma thought that didn’t matter.” He jabbed a forefinger at her, and his voice rose in anger. “You’re wrong!” he cried. “Emma was wrong! Adam and Eve sinned and hid it, and they were cast out. David sinned and hid it, and Gott took his son. Ananias sinned, and when he tried to hide it from the church he fell dead on the spot. If you sin and hide it, you pay! She was wrong, Rachel!”
He waved his arms, shouting now. “Emma was wrong about everything, all of it. We should have obeyed the church when they banned Miriam, but we didn’t. We did things we never should have done.”
Rachel shook her head, her eyes pleading. “You helped Miriam and Domingo out of love, Levi. How is that wrong?”
“It was disobedient. It was willful!” He screamed this last in rage, but then he broke down and crumpled to his knees. “And now I have paid with my Emma’s life. I wish Gott would have taken me, but that’s not punishment enough. I will live with this grief for the rest of my days.”
He wiped his eyes on his sleeve again, and quieted. She thought maybe he had gotten it all out, but in a moment he stood up and turned on her with a new and frightening fire in his eyes.
“I will tell you this,” he rasped, shaking a finger, “and it is a promise before you and Gott both. I will never again defy Gott’s church! Sin will never again hide in my house! I will root it out.”
His head tilted back, and his red eyes looked up to the heavens. “Hear me, Gott . . . as I have heard you. No sin will go unconfessed, no sinner unrepentant in Levi Mullet’s house. Never again!”
Without another word he clapped his hat on his head and stalked away, leaving Rachel stunned. He vaulted over the little picket fence and broke into a run, toward home.
She wanted desperately to run after him, to plead and beg and argue—for Emma—but she couldn’t abandon Mose. A breeze tugged at the stray tufts of red hair escaping from her kapp as she looked down at Emma’s grave.
“Levi will take this mighty hard . . . help him.”
Emma’s words rang in her head. She had failed. Standing there, filthy and sweaty and bedraggled at the foot of Emma’s grave, she felt as small and helpless as a child. Once again she had failed Emma.
But she had seen the iron resolve in Levi’s eyes and knew. He was a man; he needed to be alone. Maybe in a few days, or months, or years, his anger would fade. Maybe in time he would begin to see the light—Gott’s light—reflected from Emma’s life. Heavyhearted, Rachel turned about and trudged back up the hill.
Mose had stopped his digging. Now he was sitting spraddle-legged on top of the dirt pile, waiting patiently for her to return, playing in the dirt. She watched him scoop a handful and hold out his little fist, letting the dirt sift through his fingers and fall next to his left knee, play-talking to himself as he did it. As Rachel came through the gate he scooped dirt with his other fist, held it out and let it rain down beside his right knee.
“And some for you,” he said cheerfully.
Good, she thought. Either he hadn’t heard his father or didn’t understand. Either way, he seemed perfectly at peace, unperturbed by the storm around him.
Children, she thought, shaking her head. They are the most amazing creatures.
She picked up the shovel and went back to work.
Chapter 34
In the late afternoon, after being cooped up with the baby all day, Miriam laid him down and pressed a hand against the small of her aching back. “I need to get out for a bit and stretch my legs,” she told him, smiling. Wiggling his hands and feet, he smiled back. There had been no word from Rachel or Emma in almost two weeks, so she left the infant with Kyra and walked briskly to the little adobe post office on the main street at the other end of San Rafael.
They were about to close up for the day, but the postman handed her a letter and then locked the door behind her. She turned toward home, her attention on the envelope in her hands—a letter from Rachel—but before she could open it she heard the distant sound of heavy hooves in the dirt street and glanced over her shoulder.
What she saw was impossible, like something out of a dream—a pair of Belgian draft horses pulling a farm wagon. Her heart stuttered, her fingers flew to cover her mouth and she took an involuntary step backward, for she knew the horses, the shape of the wagon. Even at a distance she knew the silhouette of the solitary driver, the cut of his hat and the slope of his shoulders.
Dat.
He was the very last person on earth she expected to see in San Rafael, well over a thousand miles from Salt Creek Township, unannounced.
She waited, hardly daring to breathe, clutching the envelope too tightly in her hands.
When he came abreast of her he pulled up on the reins and the horses came to a shuddering stop. In that moment, when she first looked into his eyes, she knew something had changed.
There was a palpable sadness in him, but something else, too. He looked at her in a way she hadn’t seen since she married Domingo. The anger was gone, and he looked at her as if she was his daughter.
He patted the seat beside him, and she climbed up.
“That letter,” he said, nodding at the unopened envelope in her hands. “Is that Rachel’s handwriting?”
She glanced down at it. “Jah.”
“Don’t open it yet. Better you hear it from me.” He took a deep breath and hung his head. “I have terrible news.”
———
Miriam wept bitterly, sitting beside her father, his arm around her, consoling. In a little while, when she could speak, she looked up at him with swollen eyes.
“You came all this way just to tell me this?” she asked.
He thought for a second and said, “No, not just to tell you, but partly because of it. In a way it was Emma who sent me here. She was the one who opened my eyes. We have her to thank when we see her again.”
We, he said, as
if he thought Miriam might still one day find herself in heaven. Emma had indeed wrought a miracle.
“You’ve changed,” she said.
He nodded. Then, as if he needed someplace to focus his attention while he talked, he clucked at the horses and tugged on the reins. They surged ahead at a slow walk.
“You are my daughter, Miriam, and I love you as I love all my children. I think maybe only a powerful love can fire so great an anger, so great a disappointment. But anger is sin, and disappointment is only selfish.
“I am bound by the rules of the church to uphold the ban against you—I made a vow, and I will not break it. But I am also bound by love, as Emma was.
“The church says I cannot eat your food, or accept a gift from you, or give one, or do business with you. Simple rules, really. But Gott has taught me that I cannot be whole myself unless I forgive, so in my heart I forgive you, Miriam. Completely and forever. You are my child.”
The wagon rattled slowly on. Only now, when he had said his piece, did he turn his face to her. It was a sad smile, but a smile nonetheless.
The shadows were stretching across the main street, though it was still daylight. Daylight or not, public place or not, Miriam leaned close, kissed her father gently on the cheek and wrapped her arms around him.
A few minutes later he started to pull in beside her little house when she stopped him.
“Go on up to Kyra’s barn,” she said. “You can put the horses away there while I go in and break the news to Kyra and her mother.”
“Kyra and her mother,” he repeated softly, a note of concern in his voice. “What about Domingo?”
“Oh jah, I forgot to tell you! He came home safe and sound . . . almost. He was wounded—again—but not too bad this time. He’s out limping around in the bean field.”
Caleb unhitched the team and put them away, pitching a little hay in their stalls and making sure they had food and water. Then he gave them a quick brushing, for they had put in a long hard day without complaint. When he turned to go, Domingo was standing in the doorway of the barn, backlit by the setting sun.