Paradise Valley

by Dale Cramer

  “Look how hard he’s going!” Rachel said. “He must be bringing news.”

  Aaron nodded slowly. “That must be it. Something has happened. You go and find out. I’ll finish here.”

  Rachel hit the ground flying, hitching her skirts up so she could run flat-out.

  She arrived at the back door at almost the same moment Jake arrived at the front. Her mother and sisters brought him into the living room, where he stood gasping by the wood stove, bent double. He was still trying to catch his breath when Rachel came running in from the back. She was winded too, and she stopped in the kitchen doorway with her hands on her hips, her chest heaving, waiting to hear what Jake had to say.

  He straightened, still panting, and scanned the roomful of women’s faces watching him. Flushed with exertion, he stammered between gasps, “They came . . . for Lydia.”

  Mamm’s brow furrowed. “Who came?”

  Jake gasped like a fish, holding up a forefinger, asking for patience. “Sheriff,” he managed.

  “For Eli’s Lydia? Stoltzfus?” Eli Stoltzfus was one of the men in jail with Rachel’s father. Lydia was the eleven-year-old daughter whose name had been listed in the charges against Eli.

  A vigorous nod, and then Jake finally gained control of his breathing. “They came this morning,” he said, taking a deep breath, “but they didn’t get her yet. Eli-Mary was afraid this would happen, so she sent Lydia to her sister’s in Lancaster. Yesterday.”

  Mamm’s shoulders visibly relaxed, and something approaching a smile came to her plump face. “Well, that’s good then. All is – ”

  “Oh no!” Emma’s eyes went wide in alarm as she was the first to see the whole picture. The rest of them stared at her.

  Emma grabbed Jake’s shoulder. “What did he say?” The desperation in her voice was bigger than the breach of etiquette. “The sheriff! Did he say why he came for Lydia?”

  Jake nodded. “He had a paper. It said Eli neglected his children, and words about how he was not fit to be a father, so they were going to take away Lydia and put her in a home.”

  A chorus of cries went up as Rachel and her sisters saw what Emma had already seen: If the sheriff came for Lydia, he would come for the others – all the school-age children of the five men now in jail.

  The list included Jake Weaver and the three youngest Bender girls, including Rachel.

  “They can’t do this!” Mamm cried, her voice rising in panic, and the exertion set her to coughing. The two youngest daughters crept in from the kitchen wiping their hands on dish towels, wanting to know what all the fuss was about.

  “Jah. They can,” Emma answered quietly. She had already calmed herself, already begun thinking. “They are the government. They make the laws and they have the guns. They can do whatever they want.”

  “Then we will run away like Lydia did!” Rachel cried out. “We can go to Aunt Susie’s in Geauga County. They won’t find us there!”

  Mamm collapsed into her rocker, coughing, unable to talk. None of the men were here at the moment – Aaron was in the north field, Harvey was way down by the creek clearing a stump, and Caleb was in jail. All eyes eventually turned to Emma. They all knew – she was the one closest to her father’s mind.

  She shook her head sadly. “They should not go.” Emma would not say “cannot go” with her mother sitting right there, though that was how Rachel heard it.

  “But why?” Mamm asked between coughs, her eyes full of tears, her two youngest gathered under her like chicks.

  Emma looked around the room from her mother to her sisters, and a great sadness came into her eyes.

  “Because it’s not right. Oh, sure, they could run and hide in Geauga County, but what good will come of that? Will the problem go away? No, it’ll only be up to someone else to deal with it. Would you have someone else do your work, bear your burdens? That’s not our way, and it’s surely not Dat’s way. That’s why he sits in jail right now, because he had a problem and he wouldn’t run from it. He would want us to stand up and face this, no matter the cost.”

  Her words wrenched Rachel’s heart with guilt, but not enough to conquer the fear. She was terrified by the thought of being hauled away to some strange place and separated from her family.

  She didn’t have long to wait. A moment later they all heard the sound of an automobile motor chugging up the road. The two youngest daughters ran to the window to watch as for the second time in eight days an automobile turned into the gravel driveway and pulled up between the Bender house and the buggy shed.

  Rachel’s eleven-year-old sister peered out the window, then turned to the hushed crowd in the living room and said, “It’s not the same one that took Dat. This one has a star on it.”

  They waited, quaking in terror, no one moving or speaking. Rachel’s breath quickened. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest. She looked at her mamm’s face, hoping for permission to bolt out the back, but Mamm’s tear-filled eyes were on the front door.

  Emma caught Rachel’s attention and, as if she were reading her little sister’s mind, shook her head. Then she pressed her palms together in a clear message: Trust Gott.

  Mamm’s coughing attack had abated by the time the knock came at the door, but she still didn’t get up. Emma was the first to move. She opened the door to find the sheriff standing alone on the porch with a yellow paper in his hand.

  “Is this the home of Caleb Bender?” he asked. The sheriff was a portly, cherry-faced man in his mid-forties, wearing a brown uniform with a badge and a hat that looked sort of like a cowboy hat. A pistol hung from his hip in a holster, and the mere sight of it sent a chill through Rachel.

  Emma smiled politely and glanced around the room at her sisters’ faces. Every one of them was staring at that pistol.

  “Jah,” Emma said pleasantly, “this is the home of Caleb Bender. Could I please speak with you alone? Chust for a moment, please.”

  He hesitated for a second, but clearly no one there was trying to run or hide.

  “Sure,” he said.

  Emma stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind her. Rachel could hear the buzzing of soft voices but could not make out what was being said. Then she heard footsteps leaving the porch, and in a moment, coming back. The door opened again, and Emma ushered the sheriff into the room.

  His gun belt was gone. Emma had talked him into leaving it in the car. Dat had always said Emma could talk the devil out of his pitchfork.

  The Bender girls stood more or less in a circle around the room, their hands folded in front of them and their fear only half hidden on their faces.

  “This is Martha Bender,” Emma said, introducing their mother. “Wife of Caleb Bender, who is not at home right now.”

  “I know,” the sheriff said, remembering only now to remove his hat. “I want you to know this wasn’t really my idea, but I have orders. Mrs. Bender, do you have a fifteen-year-old daughter named Rachel, a thirteen-year-old named Leah, and an eleven-year-old named Barbara?”

  Mamm nodded and glanced up at Rachel.

  “Jah. They are here,” she said, stifling a cough.

  “I’m afraid I have to take them in.”

  Mother and daughters all looked pleadingly at Emma. Emma nodded, gently pressing her palms together.

  Suddenly, Jake Weaver, who had remained silent until now, stepped forward and stood directly between the sheriff and Rachel.

  “Take me instead,” he said. “I am Jacob Weaver, son of Jonas Weaver. I’m thinking you have my name on that paper, too. Take me, and leave them go.”

  Rachel was stunned, and now a host of other emotions fought against the fear inside her. She could feel her face flush with the strange new excitement she had felt in the barn that day, only this time it overwhelmed her, sweeping away her fears like dry leaves in a gust. In that tumultuous moment an image flashed across her mind for the first time, clear and beautiful – a picture of herself all grown up and married to the handsome, gallant Jake Weaver.


  The sheriff looked for a second as if he might waver, regret written plainly on his face.

  “You’re right, son, I’m afraid I have to take you, too. But the fact is, all four of you are going to have to come with me. I’m sorry, but there’s a bench warrant. I have no choice in the matter, I’m just following orders. When we leave here we’re going straight to your house and pick up your little brother.”

  Mamm grabbed her two youngest in her arms, clinging to them, and for a moment there was some question as to whether she would let her baby daughters go. This time it was Rachel who spoke to her.

  “It’s all right, Mamm. I’ll watch over them. Emma is right. We should not run from this.”

  Turning to face the sheriff, Rachel buttoned her coat, checked to make sure her unruly red hair was tucked into her kapp properly and said simply, “I’m ready.”

  Rachel and her sisters rode in the back seat of the sheriff’s Model T, while Jake and his brother shared the passenger seat up front. It took a half hour to reach the county children’s home, a sprawling seventy-five-acre compound out in the country four miles east of Millersburg. The sheriff turned onto a long paved driveway that curved gently up a grassy hill dotted here and there with winter-bare oaks and dominated at its crest by a large, rambling one-story house, red brick trimmed in white. The car swung around the teardrop driveway in front of the house and stopped. Wide brick-lined steps led up to a shaded front porch stretching nearly all the way across the front, where a few ladder-back rocking chairs and a porch swing tried to make the place look homey. It didn’t work. The grounds were clean, the grass neatly cut, but even though it was January and nothing would be in bloom anyway, Rachel couldn’t help noticing the absence of flower beds and shrubs. To her Amish eyes this was clearly no home.

  The sheriff herded the five of them up the steps to the front door, where they were greeted by the superintendent, a tall man in a suit.

  “Good morning,” he said with a smile that seemed painted on, and then he gave a small dismissive nod to the sheriff as if to say, That’ll be all. I’ll take it from here.

  The sheriff tipped his hat and headed back down the steps to his automobile.

  “Right this way,” the superintendent said, ushering them into the front room, where there were comfortable chairs and hardwood floors, oil paintings of flowers on the walls. Two Englisher girls and a boy, all of them in fancy clothes, stood talking to a woman there, but they stopped talking and stared at the five Amish children as they filed past. The boy, who looked to be about twelve, flashed Rachel a curiously sinister smile, and then, when he was sure neither of the adults would see him, grimaced and dragged a forefinger across his throat.

  They followed the superintendent through a door, down a long hallway and into a rectangular room off to the right. Wooden chairs lined the walls, like a doctor’s waiting room, and sitting in them were seven other Amish children. An older woman dressed in white sat behind a desk in front of the window at the far end of the room. Her hair was plastered into some kind of tall hairdo with a little white nurse’s hat pinned to the top. She wore a lot of makeup, and when she smiled, something about those neatly painted bright red lips seemed vaguely sinister.

  “I believe you all know each other?” the superintendent said, grinning as if he thought finding friends in the same predicament would somehow make it easier to adjust to his pretty prison.

  Rachel did know them. They were all there – all the school-age children of the five men being held in the Holmes County jail – except for Lydia Stoltzfus, who had gone to Lancaster. They jumped up from their seats when the new ones came in and greeted them as if they had not seen one another in years. Rachel noticed that all of them were between the ages of ten and fifteen. For some reason the county had not taken any children younger than ten.

  The nurse let them chat for a minute before she rose from her desk, spread her hands and herded them back to the chairs along the wall.

  “You all need to settle down now,” she said. “I don’t mind if you talk a bit, but do it quietly.”

  The superintendent stepped out the door and closed it softly behind him. Listening, Rachel was sure she heard the click of a lock.

  From long habit, the children segregated themselves – boys together on one end of the row and girls on the other, the older girls trying to console their younger siblings. Rachel, who sat nearest the boys, turned to Henry Hershberger and asked, “What is this place? What are we doing in this room?”

  A shy one, Henry was reluctant to answer at first, but after he took a cautious glance at the nurse he said, in Dutch, “I’m not sure, but they said they were going to clean us up. I guess they think we’re dirty.”

  This seemed strange to Rachel, but then everything here was strange. Suddenly it dawned on her that Henry’s older brother Mose was missing. Mose was Rachel’s and Jake’s age and should have been taken along with his brother and sisters. Maybe he had gotten away.

  Rachel leaned close and whispered as quietly as she could, “Where is Mose?”

  Henry raised his hand only a few inches from his lap and timidly jabbed a forefinger toward a closed door on the other side of the room. “In there,” he whispered. “They took him first.”

  Oh. Mose was in the next room being cleaned up, whatever that meant. Rachel sneaked a glance at the nurse, who seemed to be paying them very little attention. All of their talk to this point had been in Dutch, and Rachel was fairly sure the woman hadn’t understood a word.

  They waited for an eternity, full of curiosity about what was happening on the other side of that door. Finally, after they had sat quietly for so long that the younger ones were starting to squirm, the door opened and an Englisher boy walked through it wearing matching tweed pants and coat with a white cotton shirt underneath, and a tie. There were brown city shoes on his feet. His hair was trimmed very short on the sides, left a little longer on top, and slicked down, parted in the middle. He seemed terribly upset and embarrassed, and most of them didn’t know why until he came and took a seat next to Henry, his head hanging nearly in his lap.

  Only then did they recognize Mose Hershberger.

  His little sister began to cry. Even the boys recoiled in horror, but none of them said a word. Rachel didn’t know what to say to this. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that such a thing could happen to Amish children in America.

  She didn’t even notice the two men standing in the doorway until one of them spoke.

  “Who’s next?” the man said. They were big men, and they wore no coats or ties, their sleeves rolled up as if for work. They looked very strong.

  The girls cowered. The younger ones were all crying now. The boys shrank back against the wall, the whites of their eyes showing.

  “Well then,” the man said, “if nobody wants to volunteer, we’ll just pick one. You!”

  He pointed at Henry and crooked a finger.

  “Come with us.”

  Poor shy Henry shook his head and looked almost as if he might start crying himself. When he didn’t rise from his seat, the two men came and took him by the arms, lifting him, half dragging him into the other room. The last Rachel saw of him, he was looking back over his shoulder at his brother as if there were something he could do.

  And then the door closed.

  Mose would not look up. His shorn head hung low, his eyes on the floor in front of him, his hands limp in his lap, utterly humiliated. What thoughts must have been going through his head! He had taken the empty seat next to Rachel, and she turned to him now to try to console him.

  “It’s all right, Mose,” she said in Dutch. “There was nothing you could do. It’s not your fault. You did nothing wrong.”

  He gave his head the slightest shake, a deep and genuine grief lining his young face. He would not speak, and she knew it. There were no words.

  Then she looked down the row and saw Jake’s face. His jaw was set. There was fire in his eyes. His younger brother sat next to him, huddled a
gainst the wall and leaning to one side, trying to hide behind Jake. It was all too clear to Rachel what was on Jake’s mind. He would not worry about himself. Jake could endure anything, but his younger brother had always been his to watch over and it was a responsibility he did not take lightly. Jake would think only of his brother, of the humiliation that awaited him. He was searching for a way out.

  Rachel followed Jake’s gaze. At first she thought he was staring at the nurse behind the desk, but then she realized he was looking at the window – and the woods beyond. An ordinary window, with an ordinary latch, on the first floor. Beyond the window, the edge of the woods lay no more than a hundred yards distant. Jake and his brother could both run like the wind. If they got a three-step head start, there was not a man in this place who would be able to catch them.

  But the nurse was in the way. If Jake made a move toward the window, she would call out and the men from the other room would be on him in an instant.

  The nurse raised her head and smiled compassionately at Mose. “You know, you really shouldn’t be upset, dear.” Clown red lips cracked her powdered face in a disquieting smile. “I think you look quite handsome in your new clothes. Very nice indeed.”

  There was no hint of insincerity in her voice. She meant it. She had no idea what she was saying.

  Jake had moved to the edge of his seat. His left hand was behind him, squeezing his little brother’s knee, making sure he was paying attention. Rachel saw the desperation in his eyes. Any second now he would bolt for the window, his only thought to get William out of this place – but he hadn’t thought it through. He would never make it.

  Rachel thought, for the hundredth time, of that moment in her own living room when Jake had stood between her and the sheriff. “Take me instead,” he’d said.

  Jake coiled himself on the edge of his chair, planting the balls of his feet squarely under him. She had to do something, and quickly.

  Rachel pressed a hand on her younger sister’s knee and mouthed the word Stay!