by Dale Cramer
For an Amish couple there would be no luxurious vacation like an Englisher honeymoon. Levi and Emma rose early the next morning to help finish cleaning up from the previous day’s festivities. Emma’s first chore was to gather her husband’s clothes and wash them together with her own, symbolic of their intermingled lives. She needed to get it done quickly because by evening they would load a buggy and start off on a three-day jaunt to relatives’ houses.
Their church district had voted just last year to allow a wringer-type washing machine to be hooked up by belt and pulley to a small, separate rope-start motor, and Caleb Bender had been among the first to rig such a contraption on his back porch. To ease his wife’s workload, he would do whatever was allowed.
The morning sun was peeking through the treetops when Emma went out to pour the first pot of hot water into the washing machine. A minute later she came storming back into the kitchen, where Rachel was helping her mother clean up from breakfast.
“Where is Harvey?” Emma demanded, hands on hips, head forward.
Mamm looked over her shoulder, drying a bowl with a dish towel. She was having one of her good days, not coughing too much. “I think he’s in the barn. Why?”
“Because somebody has taken the motor and I can’t wash clothes! I have a lot to do today. I’m not about to rub my fingers raw on a washboard, and anyways I don’t have time for foolishness.”
“The motor with the little pulley?” Mamm asked. “The one for the washing machine?”
“Jah, Mamm, that’s the only motor we have.”
Rachel bit her lip to keep from laughing out loud. Wiping her hands on a towel, she said, “I’ll go and see if I can find out what became of the motor, Emma. You should maybe calm down a little bit before you get your blood pressure up.” She winked at Emma on the way out.
Rachel found Harvey rummaging around in the tack room and stuck her head in the door.
“You might want to saddle a horse and make a run for it,” she said. “Your newlywed sister is on the warpath.”
When he looked up from the workbench there was not a trace of innocence in his devilish smile. “Why? I haven’t done anything.”
Neither of them heard Emma coming until she shoved her way past Rachel and barged into the tack room holding a piece of board like a baseball bat, threatening Harvey with it.
“Give me that motor or say your prayers,” Emma hissed.
Harvey threw his arms up in front of his face. He and Rachel were both laughing.
“You can’t hit me with that board, Emma – it has a nail in it.”
She lowered the board to look at the end of it. She’d picked it up from a scrap pile by the barn door where the boys had torn down an old shed last week, and it did, in fact, have a rusty nail sticking out of it.
“Good!” she said, cocking the board as if she would really swing it, though she too was biting back laughter.
“But I’ll get lockjaw,” Harvey said, “and then I won’t be able to tell you where I hid the motor.”
Emma’s face teetered between rage and laughter, but before she could say anything else, Harvey got off the stool and hugged her. Chuckling, he kissed her cheek and said, “It’s up in the mow. I’ll go get it and put it back for you.”
The board with the rusty nail was still cocked in her hands when Harvey went out the door. Lowering it, she looked at Rachel and both of them burst out laughing.
“I know what you’re going to say,” Emma said. “He wouldn’t work so hard to drive me crazy if he didn’t love me.”
Rachel shrugged. “It’s true.”
“I know that,” Emma said. “We are blessed to have such a family.”
By late afternoon the newlyweds had dressed and packed, loaded their freshly cleaned clothes into a buggy and headed out to visit each other’s kin. Watching their buggy rattle down the driveway and out into the road, a quiet new melancholy descended upon Rachel.
Emma was gone.
Yes, she would return, but in many ways she would not. She was Levi’s wife now. Emma would never again be quite the sister she was before, and the thought left Rachel with a lingering ache. Life was changing entirely too fast. Dat had always said, “If you don’t like the way things are, just wait,” but Rachel had always taken him to mean that familiar things would change the way leaves change from one season to the next, not that she would have to abandon everything familiar and move clear to Mexico.
Even after a celebration – especially after the noise and clamor of a celebration – the odd quiet that fell in Emma’s absence was palpable. Until now the impending trip had been an abstract, a storm on the horizon, but Emma’s sudden marriage rumbled through Rachel like echoes of distant thunder. Soon now she would be leaving her home. This was the only home Rachel had ever known, and she might never see it again.
Soon now.
Chapter 13
Rachel was walking home from the store one afternoon, full of ominous, brooding thoughts, and was half a mile past the school when she heard a wagon coming up from behind, matched horses clopping happily along. As the wagon drew near, the clip-clop of hooves slowed and a familiar voice called out to her.
She turned to see Jake hauling back on the reins and bringing a pair of dapple Percherons to a shuddering stop. Beside him on the wagon seat was his brother William with his lunch pail on his lap. Her own two younger sisters waved to her from the back of the wagon.
“Would you like a ride?” Jake asked. His wide-brimmed hat was pushed back on his head and his sleeves were rolled up for work, the muscles in his forearms straining against the reins. “I was on my way back from town and thought I’d pick up the young ones from school,” he explained as she put her parcels into the back and climbed up onto the seat.
She settled on the bench next to William, but Jake gave him a look, whereupon William rolled his eyes, climbed over the seat and sat down with an audible huff in the back of the wagon with the girls.
Jake glanced over his shoulder, laughing gently as he snapped the reins, nudging the horses into action. “Thanks, little brother. Someday I’ll return the favor.”
Rachel stayed where she was, sitting primly on the other end of the seat from Jake with her hands in her lap. After all, they were in an open wagon in broad daylight, and her sisters were right there in the wagon.
“I love this time of year,” Jake said, watching a four-horse team plow a field as he passed. Along the road little blades of green appeared, daffodils and jonquils raising their dainty heads to see if spring had arrived.
“I love the smell of fresh-turned earth, the warm sun on the back of my neck. Look at those birds.”
A pair of red-tailed hawks wheeled and hovered in the sky above the farmer and his plow, waiting to pounce on displaced field mice.
“This is the best time of the year,” Jake said quietly. “The time of beginnings.”
“Or endings,” Rachel muttered, even now besieged by an uncharacteristic melancholy. “It’s the worst time to think of leaving, when home shines its brightest.”
“Cheer up,” he said with a warm smile. “Think about something else.”
“It’s hard to do that when everything reminds me all the time. Every day, Andy is bringing his tools to the house and plowing our fields – his fields now. There’s sadness in Dat’s eyes, just watching. Mamm is already packing, my sisters are making canvas tents for us to live in until we get a house, and Dat spends his days sorting his tools, choosing what to take and what to leave behind.”
“You mean there’s not enough room on the train?”
“Oh no, there’s room on the train, but when we get there we have to cross the mountains. We can only carry what fits on our wagons. It could be worse, though. Dat got a letter from that Mr. Harris the other day, saying a German neighbor is going to come guide us over the mountains, and he’s bringing an extra wagon. Now we can take Mamm’s mattress and the washing machine at least, so we won’t have to use a scrubbing board.” She sighed heavily.
“I’m already homesick and we haven’t even left yet.”
Reaching across the seat and lifting her downcast face with a gentle finger, Jake said, “Everything will be fine, Rachel. You’ll see. Your dat is a good man, a strong man. He’ll take care of his family.”
She nodded. “Jah, he always has. It’s just hard for me because I’m only a girl.” Her thoughts had plagued her for a long time, and now they surrounded her. “A girl has no say over her own life, that’s all.”
His brow furrowed as he listened, but he said nothing. He waited.
“Like school,” she said. “Men in the government – men I don’t even know – decided I should go to school every day, and so I go, like it or not. Because of this, my father decides we should move to Mexico, and so I’ll go, like it or not. One day I’ll get married, and then my husband will decide everything for me, like it or not. A girl has no more say-so than a dandelion seed. It’s just not fair, that’s all.”
Jake pondered this for a long time with a wry smile, then said quietly, “Whether it’s fair or not depends a lot on the man you marry. My dat decides things in our house, but never without taking my mamm’s feelings into account. Dat says a man who is strong in his heart is gentle in his hands.”
She read between the lines, heard the promise in Jake’s words, and it brought her great comfort. Riding on the bench seat next to Jake in the fine spring weather, with the smell of freshly plowed earth in the air and a cool breeze blowing across the country road, the melancholy melted away and before she knew it Rachel was smiling.
Jake was right. The right man could make all the difference. Emma had been distraught about everything until she married Levi, but she seemed happy enough now, as if she knew things would be all right so long as Levi was there. Even Mamm didn’t seem terribly upset by the idea of leaving the house where all of her children were born. She had her quiet regrets, but even though she did not possess Emma’s boundless energy and inherent courage, Mamm managed to take everything in stride – so long as Dat was there. Looking back over the frequent misfortunes of farm and family that Rachel had seen in her short life, she saw that the women remained unshaken so long as the men were there, standing between them and total disaster.
She had seen it in her mamm’s eyes the year of the drought, when they lost the corn crop. Mamm watched the men huddle and squat, plucking straws from the ground and chewing the ends as they talked in the shade, figuring out what they would do, and as she watched her husband’s face, the worry left her and a look of relief came into her eyes. Rachel had seen it plain as day. Mamm trusted Gott, but she also trusted Dat.
There was a kind of comfort in knowing that someone else was in control so long as it was someone faithful, someone who cared for his wife as Gott cared for His children. Someone strong enough to be gentle with his wife. Someone who not only would allow his wife to be everything Gott intended her to be, but wanted it so. She had seen the other kind too, in the downcast eyes of women whose husbands ruled with an iron hand that squeezed the dreams out of them. If the right man could complete a woman, the wrong one could crush her. The choosing, as Jake himself had said, was everything.
Rachel stole glimpses of Jake’s face now, and saw the same thing Mamm had seen in her father – the peace and patience of a self-aware man, confident that he could deal with whatever came. And as she looked at his gentle face, the face of a friend, she heard again the words he had said to her that first night.
“I would do a great many things for you.”
She slid a hand across very slowly and gripped the front edge of the seat halfway between them. A moment later his fingers came to rest on top of hers. For now, it would have to do. For now, it was all she needed.
Chapter 14
Caleb rented the railcars and paid for them in advance. The railway agent went with him and marked the cars, sitting among a string of others on a siding in Fredericksburg. It took three days to get everything packed up, hauled into town and loaded on the cars.
It was a week of long and tearful goodbyes, as one by one Martha and Caleb Bender’s brothers and sisters dropped by the house with their surrey-loads of children and grandchildren.
The Sunday before they were to leave they attended gma – church services – in Abe Byler’s barn loft. A soft rain fell during the service, and though they were all thankful for the spring rains, the steel gray sky only added to the already somber mood. Even the youth singing that night, usually upbeat, fell victim to the overcast. The Benders would be pulling out the next morning. They had lived in Salt Creek Township as far back as anyone could remember, and their departure would rip a gaping hole in the fabric of the community. What was worse, everyone suspected the rift would grow larger over the next year or two as more families migrated south.
The rain stopped in late afternoon, and after the singing Jake and Rachel slipped away behind the buggy shed. They didn’t talk much; anything worth saying had already been said, so they just held each other. Rachel made him promise to write, and then he left her with a kiss that she would long remember.
They left home on a cool, breezy morning under a bluebird sky, the previous day’s rain having washed the air and fed the newly awakened earth to bursting. Everywhere the world was drunk with sunlight and succulence, shouting out that rare spring green that makes new grass and budding leaves seem lit from within. Beside the house, the kitchen garden had exploded into bloom overnight, and along the front fence a garish army of tulips stood at starched attention, beaming.
The day was bright and perfect – cruelly so, for it broke Rachel’s heart. It nearly killed them all to leave on such a day.
No one came to see them off. Their church friends had all said their goodbyes the day before, and today they would all be busy with washing and farming. Jake would be working somewhere on his father’s place. Rachel could only cling to the hope that she would get a glimpse of him one last time as her family paraded past the Weaver place. On a morning like this, she knew for a fact that everywhere they looked as their odd caravan wormed its way down country roads toward Fredericksburg, Amishmen would be out in the fields working.
Jonas Weaver stopped his team and stood up on the back of his harrow waving and shouting.
A quarter mile farther along, there he was.
Jake. She would have known the shape of him from any distance, and there he was, standing on the back of a steel-wheeled planter holding the reins of two draft horses. When he saw them Jake took his hat off and waved it wildly over his head, a huge grin on his face.
The whole family – strung out along the road in two surreys, a hay wagon, a produce wagon and a hack – waved and shouted to him as they passed. All except Rachel. She knew his eyes were on her alone as she sat beside Harvey in the hack. Very slowly, hoping none of her family would notice or know what she was doing, she raised the fingertips of her right hand to her lips and held them there for one brief second. He saw. She knew that he saw because after he put his hat back on, his own fingers paused at his lips. It was such a fleeting gesture that she was sure no one else could have noticed it, a secret message passing just between the two of them in the middle of a crowd.
Rachel watched him as long as she could, wondering if this would be the last she would ever see of him, and then she turned and faced the road ahead hoping Harvey would not see the tears in her eyes, for she could not take his teasing just now.
But Harvey surprised her. As far as she could tell he never took his eyes off the wagon ahead, but his hand came up and gently squeezed her shoulder. Today, even Harvey’s heart was soft. Rachel wiped the tears away and clutched her arms against her stomach trying to quell the terrible ache.
At the railway station the men loaded the surreys into a cattle car and put up the horses while the women arranged things in the boxcars that would be their home for the next several days. An hour later the big door rumbled shut. Couplings clanked and cars lurched as the train hooked them up. The engine chugged and strained and grumb
led, belching clouds of smoke, and slowly they began to pull away. Mary and Ezra’s little boys stood with their fingers hooked in the boards, tiny Amishmen in their wide-brimmed hats, suspenders and dark coats, hair down over their ears, peeking through the cracks as Fredericksburg slid past and the train gained momentum. Mamm was busy holding Ada, who had sunk into despair, crying even before they boarded the train. By the time the train got under way, Ada had curled into a fetal ball on top of the bedding at the front of the boxcar, and all Mamm could do was to lie up against her and wrap her arms about her, whispering over and over, “Shhhh, little one. Gott knows. Shhhh.”
Harvey and Aaron and the two youngest girls rode in the cattle car with the livestock for now, watching over the animals.
In late morning they rumbled through the outskirts of Columbus, the first real city Rachel had ever seen. She couldn’t believe so many people could live so close together, and she scarcely believed there could exist a city even larger until she saw Cincinnati. In the early afternoon they passed over the wide river, through Louisville and on down into the rugged hills of Kentucky. In the open country between cities the whole earth was bursting with buds and blooms, promising a bountiful year.
While the train took on water at a whistle-stop in the hills, Rachel carried lunch back to her brothers and sisters in the cattle car – cold sweet potatoes and leftover roast chicken. She stayed there with them because she could see so much better from the slatted sides of the cattle car. Harvey was his usual exuberant self, endlessly optimistic and unfazed by the trials that lay ahead. The younger girls were flush with excitement – too young to see it as anything but a grand adventure. Aaron said nothing, watching through the slats, his eyes drinking in the sights. When Rachel took him his lunch he stayed where he was, refusing to sit down even to eat.