Paradise Valley

by Dale Cramer

  “Danke, but no,” Caleb said. “We don’t pick on Sunday.”

  “Ohhhh, I see. Sorry, sometimes I forget about your religion. Well, that’s all right then, you can come back another day or send the women up here – anytime.”

  Ezra pointed, curious. “Why would you have to lock up the bull to pick berries?”

  Schulman laughed. “Satan is the meanest animal I have ever known. If he gets the chance, he will kill you and trample your corpse.”

  “Then why would you have him loose around your vineyard?”

  A devious smile stayed on Schulman’s face as he pointed at the vineyard. “Would you go in there with Satan, on foot, for a handful of berries?”

  Ezra shook his head, his eyes wide. “Noooo.”

  “Neither will the Mexicans. He makes an excellent watchdog.”

  Schulman’s fields were thick with oats and wheat, and at dinner they learned that not only did his garden yield a bounty of vegetables but his wife was an excellent cook.

  “Oh!” Schulman said suddenly, his mouth full of chicken. “By the way, Augusta has pups! There are four left, already weaned, and you must choose one to take with you.” He pointed at Caleb with his fork. “You will need a good dog, Herr Bender, to watch your chickens.”

  Schulman’s table, built only for him and his wife, would not hold them all, so the younger ones were eating in the kitchen. All of them broke into excited chatter over the new pup, rushing through the rest of their dinner so they could hurry out and pick their new dog.

  After dinner the grown-ups strolled out to the stable, where the younger ones had already gathered around the pups. Walking across the backyard Caleb said, “I have not seen Pelao since we came. Is he not here today?”

  “Pah!” Schulman spat, glowering. “I chased him off. Two days ago I found one of my peons sleeping in the barn when he was supposed to be working, and I woke him with a buggy whip. Pelao snatched the whip away from me and threatened me with it, so I ran him off. Good riddance. I never trusted him anyway. There’s nothing worse than an uppity Chichimeca.”

  The four shepherd pups bounded and tumbled in a furious heap with the children.

  “Sammy! Paul!” Mary shouted, bending to snatch her sons’ Sunday hats from the dirt, but Schulman’s booming laugh overruled her.

  “They’re boys!” he said. “Let them play.”

  There were three male pups and only one female, the smallest of the four. Miriam and Rachel squatted among them, running fingers through the rich puppy fur and getting scratched by needle-sharp puppy teeth, testing their personalities. The little female took an instant liking to Miriam, who clutched it to her chest, heedless of her new white apron. She looked up at Caleb and said, “I want this one.”

  “Ach, that’s the runt,” Schulman said. “You can have the big one if you want. He’s going to be a fine dog.”

  Rachel intervened. Like Emma, she knew her father’s mind. “A female can have puppies,” she said. “We have only to find a suitable mate, and then there will be more dogs to come.”

  Caleb’s eyes softened, and she knew she had him.

  “All right,” he said. “The female it is.”

  On the ride home, in the purple light of a mountain dusk, Miriam held her new puppy on her lap and hugged it to sleep. By the time they reached the hacienda she had given it a name.

  Hope.

  Chapter 19

  Schulman said when we finish the well we can borrow his diesel pump for irrigation until we can get a windmill,” Caleb said, thinking out loud as he drove the wagon out to the homestead in Paradise Valley with the sun just beginning to rise behind him.

  Levi nodded, sitting beside him on the wagon seat. “We can probably buy a windmill in Saltillo.”

  “Jah, but it will take most of my cash, and if we use his pump for a while we can put off the windmill until we can raise a cash crop to sell. In the meantime, I’m thinking we need to hire a couple of the locals to help us build the house and fences. Already we don’t have enough men to put up a house, dig a well and work the fields all at the same time. It’s a hard question. If we don’t get a cash crop in the ground soon, we won’t have enough money to make it through the year, but on the other hand I don’t know if it’s wise to spend money on hired hands.”

  “The train wasn’t cheap, either,” Levi said. He had paid his share of the passage, as had Ezra. “But me and Ezra have a little money put by yet. We can pay the Mexicans. Anyhow, they will work for almost nothing . . . if we can get them to work. Schulman says they are lazy.”

  As they drew near to the farm they saw a lone figure at the base of the ridge overlooking their property. He was sitting on the ground with his knees drawn up and a blanket about him, but they recognized the wide, brown flat-brimmed hat even from a distance.

  Pelao.

  “I wonder what he’s doing here,” Levi said. “After what Schulman told us I hope he doesn’t think we’re going to hire him.”

  “Well, let’s not be too quick to judge,” Caleb said to his young son-in-law. “He seems able enough, and there’s two sides to every story.”

  Caleb halted the pair of Belgians near the well site and climbed down to start unloading. While he was untying the ropes at the back of the wagon a low voice behind him said, “Señor Bender?”

  Pelao was standing behind him, the moth-eaten blanket still draped over his shoulders.

  “I come to work for you,” Pelao said in Spanish, then glanced around at the well, the saw pit, the half-plowed field. “You need help.”

  Caleb chuckled. “I never heard you speak before. I wasn’t sure you could.”

  This, Pelao did not answer. He stared blankly.

  “What about Schulman?” Caleb asked. “I thought you worked for him.”

  Pelao’s head turned sideways momentarily. He spat on the ground, and then his steady gaze came back to Caleb.

  “Veo,” Caleb said. I see. He thought for a long moment, trying to find the Spanish to say what he wanted. “It’s true, we do need help. Your troubles with Señor Schulman need not follow you here, but I expect you to do as I say and work as I work. Do that, Pelao, and you will be treated with respect.”

  Pelao’s eyes narrowed. “My name is not Pelao,” he said in Spanish, speaking slowly, apparently having heard enough to know the language was still difficult for Caleb. “That name was a gift from Schulman, a callous word for someone with no education. It is his way of calling me an ignorant savage. My people are the Nahua, and in my native tongue my name is Tlacayaotl. It is a proud name, a warrior name.”

  Caleb tried it, but stumbled over the first syllable.

  The native smiled. “Nahuatl is difficult for a Yanqui tongue. My mother’s Spanish name for me was Domingo, because I was born on Sunday.”

  “Domingo,” Caleb repeated. “That I can pronounce.”

  Rachel and Miriam, unloading the shovels and hoes they would need for their brickwork, watched Domingo climb down into the cistern with Aaron and Levi to begin drilling the radial holes.

  “Did Dat just hire him?” Miriam whispered. “I thought Schulman said he couldn’t be trusted.”

  “Jah, but you know Dat,” Rachel said, hefting two shovels onto her shoulder. “He makes up his own mind about people. Anyway, Dat’s a good judge of character.”

  Harvey and Ezra unloaded the plow and switched the Belgians over to it. Domingo had taken Harvey’s place in the cistern, freeing him to plow the cornfield.

  Not more than a half hour later, mixing mud, Rachel stopped to wipe her brow and saw the Belgians standing idle at the far end of a freshly plowed furrow, and Harvey wading off through the uncut prairie grass beyond them.

  She nudged Miriam and pointed. “There goes Harvey. Doesn’t matter if it’s Ohio or Mexico, as soon as he starts work in the morning he has to stop and go,” she chuckled.

  Then she saw her brother leap into the air sideways, falling, losing his hat. He popped up from the grass immediately and bolted towar
d them, snatching at his left pant leg, running with a pronounced limp over the soft, plowed field, shouting and waving.

  “Dat!” she cried out, pointing. “Something’s wrong with Harvey!”

  Caleb and Ezra dropped what they were doing and ran toward Harvey, who fell to his knees as soon as they reached him.

  Rachel and Miriam ran to see what happened. Harvey was screaming, and she knew pain would not have done that. It was fear – Harvey was in a panic.

  “Schlange!” he cried. Snake! “It bit my leg!”

  By the time she reached the little huddle in the field, her father had pulled up Harvey’s pant leg and rolled him over onto his stomach. There were two puncture wounds in the center of his calf, the skin around it already red and swelling. Aaron, Levi, and Domingo had climbed out of the hole to see what the fuss was about and now leaned over Harvey. Ada came puffing up to the group last and squeezed in between them to look. Her eyes went wide when she saw Harvey’s calf and heard the word snake. She flung her hands in the air and bolted back the way she came, screaming, Miriam hot on her heels to make sure she didn’t fall into the well or run off to the ridge.

  Rachel’s heart froze. The locals had told them the nearest doctor was thirty miles over the mountains in Agua Nueva, and no one in the family had any experience with snakebites. The thing that scared her most was the fear in her father’s face.

  Dat looked up, and his eyes swept the little circle. “What do we do?” he cried, near panic himself.

  Domingo knelt beside Harvey. He’d left his own hat in the back of the wagon, and his long black hair hung loose, hiding his face.

  “What kind of snake?” he asked, in Spanish.

  Lying on his stomach, Harvey had to turn his head and look over his shoulder to see Domingo. At the moment, Spanish words escaped him. He held up a forefinger, twitched it back and forth rapidly and hissed between his teeth. A rattler.

  Domingo’s hand slipped behind his back and reappeared with a knife in it. Without a word he slit quickly into the flesh of Harvey’s calf, straight across the two puncture wounds.

  “Leave him be!” Levi yelled. Unsure of the native’s intentions and unwilling to wait and see what else he would do with the knife, Levi grabbed Domingo by his shoulders, pulled him off of Harvey and sent him sprawling backward.

  Dat snatched off Harvey’s suspenders and began winding them around the leg just below the knee.

  The leg was bleeding profusely now, from Domingo’s cut. Dat slid his own pocketknife, closed, under the loop of suspenders and twisted it several times, cinching the tourniquet tight. Then he sat back on his haunches and looked up at the sky.

  “Gott, what do we do?” he prayed, anguish written on his face. Rachel knelt and prayed. Levi glowered. It was Ezra who first heard a noise and looked back toward the wagon.

  “Is he stealing our horse?”

  After coming to the site in the surrey that morning the girls had unhitched the buggy horse and left it tied to the back of the empty wagon. Domingo, apparently taking advantage of the diversion, had untied the horse, leaped on its back and was now spurring it to a full gallop, racing away toward the ridge.

  Levi glared after him. “I knew that Indian couldn’t be trusted.”

  “There is no time to worry about that now,” Dat said. “Is there a doctor at the hacienda?”

  Rachel shook her head. “No, I heard Señor Fuentes say the doctor only comes when Señor Hidalgo is here. He travels with the haciendado, and right now they are in Europe. There is no doctor in the village.”

  “Well, we have to do something. Bring some kerosene!”

  Ezra ran to the wagon and fetched a gallon can from the toolbox. Dat opened the can and poured kerosene directly into the knife wound on Harvey’s calf, washing out the blood and revealing red meat. Harvey didn’t even flinch.

  “Maybe that will wash the poison out,” Dat said, but he didn’t look convinced. When he noticed that Harvey’s ashen face was lying on the dirt, he took his own hat off and placed it gently under the boy’s head. “We will wait and see. It’s no good to move him yet. Let him calm down and slow the poison a little bit.”

  They heard hoofbeats and looked up to see Domingo charging toward them from the ridge, gripping the horse’s mane in his fists and hauling back on it as he drew near. He leaped off the horse and landed nimbly on his feet, so close by that his momentum carried him running into the little circle, where he brushed Levi roughly aside.

  Kneeling by the stricken boy, Domingo leaned over, put his hands on both ends of the cut and squeezed, opening the wound like a change purse.

  Then he spat.

  A big mouthful of some viscous yellow substance splattered right down into the cut on Harvey’s leg – something Domingo had been holding in his mouth, chewing. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and then, without a word, pulled a bandanna from around his neck and wrapped the wound with it, tying it tightly when he was done.

  It all happened so fast, none of them had time to object. Rachel could only stare openmouthed at Domingo as he rose to his feet.

  “Que es?” Dat asked, proper Spanish eluding him in the heat of the moment.

  “Raíz negra,” Domingo said, pointing a thumb back toward the tree line at the base of the ridge. Black root. “Nahua medicine for snakebite.” He pointed at Harvey’s leg. “If I was quick enough, he will walk in two days. You will see.”

  Dat took a deep breath, staring hard at Domingo. “Sí,” he said. “We’ll see.”

  There was nothing else to do now but send the boy back home and let his mother tend to him, so they loaded him into the buggy and hitched up the horse. Rachel drove. Harvey lay in the back, nauseated, sweating profusely. Miriam held his head and prayed.

  Caleb took over the plowing, fretting constantly about his son and glancing a million times down the road toward the hacienda wishing for news, but there was nothing he could do. It would have been a waste of time for all of them to stop work, and it would only worry Harvey. If all the men of the family came home to stand over his bed, Harvey would think he was dying.

  Rachel and Miriam returned in the buggy at midday, bringing lunch. They also brought good news.

  “Harvey’s feeling pretty good,” Rachel said. “His leg is swelling really big, but it’s not turning black around the wound anymore. It’s not even as red as it was before.”

  “And the fever is almost gone,” Miriam said, casting a curious glance at Domingo, who was leaning casually against the wagon wheel.

  “The Nahua have lived with the rattlesnake much longer even than they have lived with the Spaniard,” he said, as if the two were synonymous. “When it comes to snakes, maybe savages are not so ignorant.”

  Driving home that evening in the purple twilight, Caleb eavesdropped on his son and son-in-law, who were riding behind him on the wagon.

  “He’s a pretty good worker,” Aaron said. “Almost like an Amishman.”

  Levi, lying on his back utterly exhausted and covered in mud from head to toe, had to raise his hat from his face to reply. “I hate to admit it, but you’re right. He’s not so bad, once you get used to his ways. I still don’t like him much, but he sure knows how to work. Why, that Indian worked almost as hard as I did, and mebbe twice as hard as you.” Levi lowered his hat back down over a wry smile, waiting for Aaron’s comeback.

  It didn’t take long.

  “You’re forgetting, Levi,” Aaron said quietly. “I was there.”

  Everyone on the wagon got a chuckle out of this inside joke. A few years earlier, Aaron and his twin brother, Amos, had gone on a fishing trip with some of their cousins to a river up beyond Akron. When they returned, Amos told everyone at the dinner table about how they’d gotten bored and started skipping rocks, and he was the only one who could skip a rock all the way across the river.

  “Why, that river must have been a quarter mile across!” the irrepressible Amos said, to doubtful stares.

  In the ensuing silence Aaron quietly
pointed out, “The river I saw wasn’t more than a hundred feet at the widest place.”

  When Amos saw he was caught in a lie he hung his head and muttered darkly, “Oh, jah. I forgot you were there.”

  Amos’s flawless deadpan delivery made the moment enormously funny. They laughed about it for three days, and the line became a standard among the family, a sly rebuke for wild exaggeration.

  Aaron’s gentle rebuttal to Levi brought a smile to all their faces, but it also reminded them of Amos, who had always been the life of the party. They were quiet the rest of the way home.

  Harvey didn’t make it to dinner that night, and everyone else was almost too tired to eat. Around the long pine-plank table in the little stable, every head drooped. Their elbows were on the table and their cheeks resting on their palms, all of them, as they picked one-handed at their potatoes and peas – until Mary livened things up.

  “Looks like I’m going to have another baby,” she said.

  Heads came up, and smiles lit tired faces.

  “Well, that’s a fine thing!” Caleb said, beaming. “He’ll be the first Amish baby in Mexico.”

  “Maybe not,” Emma said, smiling at her older sister. “It seems I’m going to have a baby, too. We can race to see who’s first.”

  The whole mood in the stable changed then, and an air of celebration took over. When Emma went out to feed and water the pigs an hour later, Rachel went with her to talk. Emma dumped the slop bucket and hung it on a fence post while Rachel pumped water into the trough.

  “Emma, what made you decide to go ahead and tell?”

  Emma shrugged, admiring the stars. “I didn’t have any choice, really. Pretty soon now this dress won’t hide it.”

  Harvey’s lower leg was swollen to twice its normal size that evening, and he was in considerable pain, but by morning the fever abated and he wasn’t sick anymore. By the next night the swelling had begun to subside. After two days, just as Domingo had said, he was able to walk on it. After breakfast on the third morning, Harvey put on his hat and coat and limped out to the wagon, ready to go back to work.