by Dale Cramer
He sighed heavily, glancing up the hill toward his grand mansion. “But all things must pass, Señor Bender. History tells us that there will always come a day when the peasants band themselves together – as they did in Russia a few years ago, and in Europe before that – and arm themselves and overwhelm the nobility. Now it has happened here. This misguided egalitarianism has spread like a plague through Mexico, and now the hacienda will go the way of the plantation in the American South. The passing of our way of life is a shame, but we must face the fact that the revolution has come and things have changed. We are entering a new, more democratic time. This is why I have sold part of my pastureland to you and your people. I have decided to liquidate some of my family’s estate and invest in anonymous business and industry. Oil is the future of Mexico.”
With his hands clasped behind him, Hidalgo strolled slowly down a brick-lined path between high banks of exotic flowers and pampas grass, into the shade of a towering oak whose autumn-browned leaves fluttered lightly down to collect in little drifts on the path.
“I have said all this to say I am sorry, my friend, but I cannot help you with the bandit problem. I can no longer defend my own lands for fear of triggering an uprising. Hacienda El Prado only stands today by the favor of Francisco Villa, who once swore an oath of friendship to my father. Now that the war is over, there are far too many armed men scattered through the mountains for me to risk provoking them and uniting them against me. My advice to you is to make peace with them as best you can.”
“But there must be law,” Caleb said. “There must be some police or sheriff or soldiers somewhere who will protect us. Surely we will not be left at the mercy of these criminals.”
Hidalgo shrugged. “Well, you can appeal to the government, but I don’t know if they will help you. When we get back to the library I will give you the address of an official in Monterrey who controls the allocation of government troops in Nuevo León. Perhaps you can persuade Señor Montoya to send a detachment to live here in the valley, and then the bandidos will go away. They will become a thorn in someone else’s side.”
“Well, I’m not the best letter writer,” Caleb said, glancing sideways at Hidalgo. “I’m wondering if it might be better for this letter to have your name on it. After all, this government official wouldn’t know me – ”
“But that is the problem, Señor Bender. He would know me. As I said, times have changed. For the men who now rule Mexico it is not politically expedient, and may even be perilous, to be seen as friends of the haciendados. I am afraid my name might do your cause more harm than good.”
Chapter 31
Miriam, with her intense studies over the last couple of months, had become the family expert on the Spanish language, so it came as no surprise to her when her dat asked her to help him with a letter. The two of them sat up late at the kitchen table, by lamplight crafting a letter to Señor Montoya, the government official in Monterrey. Even the actual printing of the final draft fell to her, as her dat doubted that anyone could decipher his herky-jerky farmer’s hand. When she had finished, he signed it.
“Mebbe now they will help us,” he said as Miriam sealed the envelope.
Everyone else had gone to bed. It was just the two of them bending over the letter at the table. Dat yawned and stretched and started to reach for the lantern, but Miriam stayed his hand.
“Dat, I need to talk to you about school.” This would be as good a time as any. He was tired, and she had just done him a great service.
“School?” He settled back onto his bench, directly across the table from his daughter.
“Jah, for the kinder. I would like to start a school.”
He pondered this for a minute, rubbing the back of his neck. His eyebrows went up. “Well, little Sammy and Paul are old enough to learn their letters, and Leah and Barbara could use help with Spanish. I don’t see why you couldn’t teach them if you want to.”
Miriam hesitated, not sure how to lay out her plan. “I will need some things. I will need to take a little time away from work once or twice a week, and I’ll be needing some space for the school.”
Dat shrugged. “There’s only just the four of them. You could teach them Spanish here at the kitchen table after evening chores.”
“But when the others come there will be more children, and I’m thinking I could teach them not just Spanish but reading and writing and numbers,” she said, watching his face. “I might need more time than that.”
Dat’s head tilted and he stared at her a little too long. She squirmed a little, and he read her like an open book.
“What is it you really want to say, daughter? Just say it.”
He was right; she should just get to the point. Her father always said what he meant in as few words as possible, and he expected the same from his children.
“I want to start a school,” she said, fidgeting with her kapp strings, “but not just for Amish kids. For the Mexicans, too.”
He leaned back a little, and his eyes widened in surprise. Then, as if there was a chance he hadn’t heard her correctly, he squinted and said, “For the Mexicans?”
“Jah. They have no school.” It was almost a whisper. She knew this was dangerous ground. The main reason the Amish had fought so hard to keep their children out of the consolidated school in Ohio was that they spent too much time mingling with outsiders, being influenced by them.
He looked away for a minute, his hand first covering his mouth and then wringing his beard.
“They have no school?”
“No, Dat. That’s why most of them can’t read and write their own language.” Sensing an advantage she pressed her point. “I thought maybe since the way they really talk isn’t like in the book, the Mexican children could help the Amish children to speak real Spanish, and we could teach them to read.”
“But are you sure there is no school? Schulman is always saying the mestizos are illiterate, but I thought he meant they just wouldn’t go to school, or could not be taught. Why, just today Señor Hidalgo said to me that Spanish landowners like him were the ones who brought culture to this poor country. I thought surely there were schools of some kind.”
Over dinner Dat had described Hacienda El Prado to his family – the flowing gardens and manicured walks, the soaring library with its acre of books and gilded ceilings covered with paintings.
“No, Dat. The haciendados keep their fancy libraries to themselves, and they hire tutors for their own children. I’ve heard that some of the Catholic churches have schools, but the one at El Prado does not. There is no school for the poor. Maybe things are different in the cities, I don’t know, but out here in the country the only ones who can read and write are wealthy landowners, Catholic priests, and foreigners like us.”
Her father sat for a long time staring at the edge of the table, thinking. She could hear him breathing. After a while he began to nod slowly. He had reached a decision.
“Then your school is a good thing, Miriam. It is a very good thing. What will you need?”
“First, I will need time. I’m thinking one or two days a week. And then, I don’t know how many will come, but we’ll need a place to meet.”
He scratched his bald head. “The barn wouldn’t be too good. It’s too crowded already.”
This was true. Since large timber was scarce on the nearby ridges, they had built the walls of the barn with adobe and put a gambrel roof on it to make a loft, but the adobe walls limited them to a space half the size of a normal Amish barn. And it was harvesttime – the barn would soon be packed with hay and oats.
“I guess you’ll have to have your school in the house,” he finally said, “if there’s not too many people. I hope to get a buggy shed built by spring, but I don’t know if it will have doors on it yet. Or a wood stove.”
“We’ll need paper, too. Lots of paper and pencils, and a place to write.”
“A desk?”
“No. Well, we can make benches and tables from wood scraps, but
I was talking about a blackboard. And chalk.” Miriam was bursting with energy and ideas now that her dat was on her side.
“We will have to see about that. I wouldn’t know where to look for something like that in Mexico. Maybe we can get them to bring one from Ohio when they come.”
As he was saying this he yawned, and in the same instant from the next room Miriam heard Aaron’s soft snore. She was keeping her father up past his bedtime.
“It’s very late, Dat,” she said, rising. “I should be getting to bed. Thank you for letting me do this . . . for understanding.”
He didn’t make a move to get up right away. He was leaning on his elbows, his chin in his palm, looking to the side with his fingers covering his mouth. There was a peculiar sadness in his eyes.
“Dat?” she said, pausing, three fingertips resting on the end of the table. “Are you all right?”
He looked up at her then, the sadness clinging. “Yes, child, I’m all right. Just a little ashamed.”
Her head tilted. Shame was not something she associated with the image of her father.
“Ashamed? Why, Dat?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know if I have the words. It’s just . . . I try my best to be honorable, to keep Gott’s laws, live in peace with my neighbors and forgive those who wrong me, but I’m finding out it’s mighty easy to be honorable until a man steals your horse.
“My mouth says ‘I forgive,’ but my heart wants soldiers to come and do away with these bandits. All of them. That’s why I wanted to send this letter; I wanted those men to pay for taking my horse. I don’t want to see harm come to my family, and that’s good, but in my heart I do want to see harm come to the bandits. And that’s not right.”
His eyes wandered as he struggled to put words to his thoughts. “All these laws we try to follow, Miriam . . . they are Gott’s laws, and in my heart I believe what they’re for is to keep me humble and remind me not to be selfish. I always thought that if I could do that, why then my one short little life can mebbe push the whole world one inch to the good, in the direction Gott wants it to go. That’s all. One inch. But the change one man makes in the world is so little we wouldn’t even see it, and that’s why we need faith. If a man lives without faith, he pulls the world toward himself – only an inch, mebbe, but he makes it hard for people around him to live in faith because they learn to fear him. They are afraid to be without. If a lot of men live selfish lives for a very long time, they move their world a lot of inches the wrong way, and they end up with a country full of hungry people who steal because they are afraid.”
He waved a hand at the envelope lying on the table. “My answer to this problem is to ask the government for soldiers. Your answer is to teach them to read. It’s only an inch, but which is Gott’s way?”
Lifting the letter from the table he held it in his rough hands for a moment, feeling the thickness of it with his thumbs, and then tore it in half and dropped the pieces on the table.
“Not by power or might, but by the Spirit of the Lord of hosts,” he said. “A father is never prouder of his children than when they make him a little bit ashamed of himself.”
Chapter 32
When the first fall cold snap came to the fields around their thatched huts, the Mexicans began working from daylight to dark, pulling up bushes by the roots and piling them to dry. While the Amish farm slowly turned to shaved ground dotted with orderly rows of oat shocks, the mestizo fields yielded little mounds of uprooted bushes, tangles of leaves turning from green to gold, drying and shriveling in the autumn sun.
One day, when the men had come in from the harvest for lunch and Miriam was helping to clear the table afterward, she asked Domingo about the piles of bushes.
“They are beans,” Domingo said. “After the bushes are all pulled and piled up, you will see families in the fields every day turning the piles over to make sure the beans dry all around. It is a lot of work.”
“I have seen them. They work as if their lives depend on it,” Miriam said as she brought another pitcher of water to the table. Sometimes when the men came in for lunch they were not very hungry, but they were always thirsty.
“Our lives do depend on it,” Domingo explained, emptying his glass and reaching for the pitcher. “In bad years the beans are all we have. Sometimes rabbits are scarce in the winter, or we have no luck finding deer and javelinas. One year the coyotes took all our chickens, and another there was not enough rain for the corn to grow. But no matter what else happens, the family can live as long as we have beans stored up. With a little cornmeal or flour and some dried beans, we survive.”
Caleb held up his last bite of sweet potato and pointed at Domingo with it. “Have you got beans?”
“Sí,” Domingo said. “Everybody does. The three of us – me and my cousins – we have a few acres outside of San Rafael that we work together.”
“Well, you’ve been working here every day. When did you harvest your beans?”
Domingo gulped water, wiped his mouth on a sleeve and shrugged. “We haven’t yet, but they are ready. We need to take a few days off.”
Caleb laid his fork down, glowering.
“Why, that’s just not acceptable, Domingo. That’s not the way we do things here.”
Domingo’s eyes met Caleb’s hard glare. “Señor . . . you are a farmer. You know the beans won’t wait – the pods are starting to crack.”
“I know that,” Caleb said flatly. “So tomorrow morning at first light my boys will be at your place with a team and a spring-tooth harrow. They’ll have your few acres of beans out of the ground in a couple hours, then you can all come back here for the rest of the day. The next day we’ll all be there with pitchforks. How long does it take before they’re dry enough?”
“Three, four days if there is no rain.” Domingo and his cousins all sat motionless, staring at Caleb, not sure what to make of this.
“A couple hours every morning – with enough hands, that’s all it’ll take to turn them. Then we can bring in the oats in the afternoon. It’s not that big of a field.” Caleb paused, his brow furrowed. “And after the beans are dry, you separate them by hand?”
“Sí. Put the pile on the cart, take out the beans, then throw the chaff back on the ground and get another pile. It takes a long time.”
“Hmm. Shame we don’t have a thresher for that. We can all help with the shelling, even the women. Many hands make light work.”
Domingo shook his head. Carlos and Paco stared at him in disbelief. “Señor Bender, we have no money to pay for your help.”
Caleb’s eyebrows went up. “I didn’t ask for money. I told you, that’s not the way we do things. When neighbors need help in the fields, we help them.” He pointed at Domingo with his fork. “That is how we do things here.”
By late October the kitchen garden was spent, all except for the potatoes. Rachel had never seen so many potatoes, and so big. She’d never dug them up this time of the year either, but obviously the late start had done them no harm. The potatoes clearly loved the soil of Paradise Valley.
She was prying a tangled mess of potatoes and roots out of the ground with a stout fork when she spotted Emma coming up the road in the surrey. Emma saw her from a long way off, smiled and waved, and held up a letter. She’d made the weekly run to the hacienda village and brought back a letter from Jake. With a little twinge of excitement Rachel dropped the fork and trotted down the driveway to meet her. Emma stopped to let her climb up.
“Dat’s right up there behind the house putting hay in the loft,” Rachel said, and Emma understood. She would hold the buggy still long enough for Rachel to read Jake’s letter and put it away before they went up to the house. Rachel had been careful not to let her father find out about the boyfriend she was not supposed to have, and Emma was dependably complicit in the deception.
While Rachel devoured the letter from Jake, Emma gazed around her at the stubbly fields dotted with shocks of bundled hay.
“This place ne
eds trees,” Emma said, almost to herself. “I miss them so, especially in the fall. Back home there were so many trees – not just the woods but shade trees by the driveway and the house and the barn. Even when the fields are ripe, this valley seems barren without trees in it. I’m going to write Lovina and see if they’ll bring saplings when they come.” Her eyes brightened with a vision of the future.
“Yes! I know just what I’ll do. I’ll plant poplars all down both sides of the driveway and one day they’ll make a lovely shady lane for anyone who comes to visit Dat’s house.” She spread her hands against a backdrop only she could see, and her eyes shined. “There will be great big oak trees on both ends of the house to hold off the summer sun, and I’ll plant a grove of fruit trees along the base of the ridge. And maples! Why, that whole ridge will blaze like fire with maple leaves in the fall. Rachel, could you and Miriam make me some adobe for a sugar shack?”
Rachel didn’t answer. The letter lay crumpled between her fists in her lap. She kept her face away from Emma, staring out over the fields and biting her lip to keep the tears from coming. It wasn’t working.
“Rachel?” Emma reached out very gently and hooked Rachel’s chin with a finger, turning her head. When their eyes met, Rachel’s freckled face crumpled like the letter and she sobbed.
“Rachel, what’s wrong?”
Rachel pressed her face into Emma’s shoulder and her sister’s arms closed about her.
“What is it, child? What’s happened?”
“He’s not coming,” Rachel whimpered, her shoulders shaking.
“Jake’s not coming? But why?”
Rachel didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Without moving her face from Emma’s shoulder she held up the crumpled letter. Emma took it, smoothed the paper against her knee with her free hand and read over Rachel’s shoulder. She skipped over the first part of the letter, but when she came to the middle paragraph she began to read aloud, her soft voice now sharing her sister’s grief.