by Linda Byler
He stopped the wagon by the front doorstep, dropped the handle, and pounded on the door with his fists. He waited, then pounded again, harder, looking over his shoulder. When the door creaked open and his ma peered around the flickering yellow light from the candle flame, he was weak with relief.
“Ma. I got us someone needs help.”
“Ach, du lieva. Grund a velt!” As usual, Emma exclaimed in Dutch, set the candle down on the half-round, wooden stand in the hallway just behind the heavy oak door, and lumbered down the stone steps to peer beneath the sack on the seck veggley.
“Mein Gott in Himmel, Billy, now what have you got? A dead one, sure. An Indian. Oh, mein Himmlischer Vater, ich bitte dichi, hilf mir.” She was half praying, half crying, and her ever-present tears were already pooling in the soft folds beneath her eyes. She stroked the black hair and lifted the white face for further observation beneath the weak light of the gas streetlamp.
“Ein maedle, Ein shoe maedle. Oh, du yay. Du yay.” She wrung her hands, helpless in the rush of love and pity that consumed her.
“Ma, you need to shut up now,” Billy said, not unkindly, but looking furtively over his shoulder, feeling keenly the possibility of being stuck tightly in those wooden stocks.
Emma hoisted the girl’s shoulders in her capable hands as Billy lifted her feet. Grunting and exclaiming, Emma’s breath coming in short puffs of steam in the gray, damp night, they hoisted the girl up the steps and into the candlelit hallway of the house.
Carefully, they lowered her onto the multicolored rag rug. Emma straightened, her chest heaving beneath the yoke of her linen nightgown, one plump hand going to her breast as if to control the thumping of her heart. Emma whisked the sack away and rolled it into a ball, the dust from the feed wafting to the floor. She’d deal with that later.
Billy held up the candle as Emma bent over the cold, inert form clad in deerskin. Her hands and feet were blue with cold; blood had congealed and dried on her legs and hands. Billy was used to seeing injuries and starved folks, but he’d never seen a mess like this. The girl had been pretty, but the one side of her forehead was bulging with a huge blue-black bruise, oozing blood, the texture like sausage. Her eyes were hidden behind the gross swelling, her nose widened with the fluid that seeped from her injury. Her lips were chapped and bleeding, although much of the blood had dried black.
“Ach, mein Herr Jesus, Du Komm.” Praying now, Emma felt the need of her Gott. Hardly ever did she feel in need, as she capably tackled ministering to the wounded just as she handled the rest of her life.
Tenderly, she used her fingers to examine the wound and feel the cold limbs. They traveled over the young woman’s body, searching for more injuries, broken bones, open wounds. Clucking her tongue against the roof of her mouth with small sounds of sympathy, she finished her inspection, straightened, and began to bark orders.
She lit two lamps in the kitchen. Then she stirred up the fire in the fireplace, added a hefty, split log, and swung the black, cast iron kettle over the fresh flames. She moved rapidly with single-minded purpose to the sitting room, there lifting the heavy, warm coverlets.
Then she was back in the kitchen, yellow with lamplight and the flickering flames beneath the pot of hot water. She spread the coverlets by the fire, then together they laid the girl on the soft warmth, so gently, so carefully. Billy put a down pillow beneath her head, and Emma drew up the heaviest coverlet to her chin.
While the young woman slept, they poured warm water into a crockery bowl, shaved lye soap into it, then dabbed at her wounds. Billy silently took a homespun cloth, patted the scratches on her feet and legs with it, then applied the comfrey leaves from the warm water in another bowl.
They worked together efficiently. They’d done this many times. When the wounds were sufficiently cleaned they applied bandages. Emma administered the smelling salts, wafting them back and forth beneath the girl’s nose. When she did not stir, Emma bent to lay an ear on her chest, nodded, and kept waving the evil-smelling salts. Shaking her head, she sat back.
“She gonna make it?” Billy asked, his eyebrows raised.
“We should get her awake.” Grimly she shook the thin shoulders, but her head wobbled back and forth on the pillow like a rag doll. This was beyond Emma’s knowledge. She looked at Billy and then at the door, as if she were trying to decide.
Finally she went to the tall cupboard by the opposite wall, took down a redware bowl of tea leaves, placed them in two cups, then dipped boiling water from the pot over the fire with a long-handled copper ladle. She poured some water in each cup, then handed one to Billy who took it silently, wrapping his cold fingers around the heavy mug. He lifted the jar off the white cone of sugar, but Emma was too fast for him as she reached for the shears and clipped off a chunk of the expensive sugar. Her German frugality allowed her only a small snip for herself and a small one for Billy.
“Ma, that ain’t enough for half a cup.”
“Ich glaub. Ich glaub.”
Billy had to be satisfied with the hot semisweet tea, but was heartened when Emma set a cloth-covered bowl of biscuits and a small crock of jam beside him.
“So no, Billy. Sage mihr.” In fluent German, Billy told his story, relating his forays into the livery down by the tavern. Emma shook her head with consternation, blaming herself. She was far too easy on the boy. He should be at home in bed, not allowed to tramp about the streets, and certainly not near the tavern. But she knew about his stash of coins, knew, too, that he would aid her work in helping the poor, so how could it be so bad? That Billy had a head on his shoulders, so he did. He always had. The way his mother batted him around, it’s a wonder he had a grain of sense.
She looked down at the bruised, sleeping girl, then to Billy as if he could help her make a decision. She spread her third biscuit with hulla chelly and licked her fingers well, the sweet preserves sustaining her flagging spirits. “Billy, vass sagsht?”
Billy shrugged as he looked down at the girl.
The lamps burned steadily, a waste of expensive oil. Heaving herself to her feet, Emma lowered her face and pursed her round lips, giving a hefty, whistling blow, extinguishing the lights.
“Let’s try and get some rest, Billy. I’ll check on her every hour, all right?”
The heat and the scalding hot tea were making him drowsy, so he nodded. Lifting the mug, he emptied it, placed it back on the table, and went upstairs to bed, unbuttoning his knee breeches as he went.
It was the pain in her hands and feet that woke her. At first she was aware of a ripping, tearing sensation, an awful thing she could not overcome. She moaned and turned her head, but an explosion of pain stopped her from doing anything. When she went to lift her hands to her head, giant pincers of pain gripped every finger. She tried to cry out, but found she had no voice.
She held very still, as wave after wave of tingling pain coursed through her feet and up her legs. She shivered with cold. She could not remember anything and had no idea where she was. She was terrified, suspended between a place she could not remember and a void she could not grasp. She had no focus and no sight, only the clawing, ripping pain in her feet and hands.
Slowly, she became aware of a persistent yellow light, a flickering through the blackness of her torment. She would open her eyes. It took all the strength she had, like lifting two huge stones.
The pain in her head exploded into something so white and hot she could not tolerate it. She whispered, then moaned. She tried again to open her eyes. This time, before the pain overtook her, she saw the source of the flickering yellow light. A fire.
She receded into unconsciousness, a blessed place of knowing, of feeling nothing at all until the painful sensation in her feet brought her unwillingly to the frightening knowledge that she was alive. All she knew was that she was somewhere between certainty and a vast area she knew nothing about, as if she were hurtling through a dark tunnel without end.
With her entire being and the full strength of her will, sh
e tried to focus, to find a foothold somewhere. Painful as it was, she lifted both eyelids, willing herself to find an object, something nearby that would help her make sense of this unbearable hurting in her feet and hands.
A fireplace. A floor. Relief flowed through her veins. A floor. A wooden floor. She knew what that was. She knew the fire. A wetness ran down the sides of her face and she knew why. She knew she was crying. She knew her name now. Hester Zug.
When the rustling of skirts came near, she closed her eyes. When she heard the voice of someone saying words in German, she wondered if she was at home in the large stone house in Berks County with Hans and Annie. She wanted to see Lissie and Daniel and all the little children. She wanted to talk to Noah and Isaac the way she always had before they shunned her. Ach! Ach, du lieva, the crooning continued, mixed with prayers and pleadings, all in the Pennsylvania Dutch Hester knew so well.
She tried to tell this person about her pain. Her mouth opened, then closed and opened again, but she could not speak. She felt tender hands and willed them to her feet.
A squawk of recognition sounded from the region of her worst pain, now. “My grund! Die fees. See Fa-fieer.” Over and over, she heard the exclamations about her feet being frozen. Then a slap, and the loud voice of the speaker berating herself. “Dumkopf, Vot a dumkopf!”
Steps retreated hastily, a loud, urgent calling ensued, and then another person joined the Pennsylvania Dutch–speaking woman. Together, they placed her hands and feet in cold water. The pain worsened, and Hester cried out, then bore it uncomplaining. She knew about frozen toes and fingers, and so she allowed the work that Emma and Billy were doing.
They gave her a shot of Enos’s home-brewed whiskey or tried to, but with Hester unable to swallow, they wiped away the dribble from her chin, and what fell on the pillowcase, and gave up.
Her feet were still frozen but tingling with a milder sensation. And when the morning light shone through the windowpanes, Hester was able to focus her eyes, despite her swollen eyelids.
She saw a strange, round woman, wearing the English cap favored by the non-Amish. She saw a boy with riotous, long hair the color of fire and copper. She saw a kitchen, a fireplace, a cupboard and plank table. She could read a few words of a stitched sampler on the wall.
She remembered God, the hand that delivered her to this house. She thanked him softly.
They brought warm water now, further decreasing the pain in her thawing limbs. She tried to let them know how she longed for water to drink. They brought a bowl with a rag and let her suck it greedily for the cool water. As she swallowed, she choked and coughed, grimacing from the pain in her head. But her thirst was so strong she continued to work her throat muscles, finally receiving life-giving water into her body.
She told them her name in halting whispers. She learned theirs—Emma and Billy Ferree. These weren’t Amish names. Or Indian. Hester was confused. The woman spoke Dutch. Why was she not Amish?
It took far too much effort to ask, so she closed her eyes and slept. She slept for days, waking only to drink water.
It was early one afternoon when she finally awoke, her senses clear, her mind refreshed. She still lay on the oak floor, in the kitchen by the fire.
When Emma found her awake, she threw her hands in the air and yelled for Billy, who, she’d forgotten, had gone to school. “Guten morgen, guten morgen!” Emma kept repeating. Then she proceeded to heat water, thinking she could finally get this poor, striking girl out of that Indian dress made of deerskin. She could just picture the lice and fleas that must be crawling all over Enos’s mother’s best sheep coverlet.
When Hester tried to sit up, she couldn’t make it the whole way, lying back down twice before she could stay erect. The pounding in her head increased each time, but she remained sitting upright, propped by the pillows Emma placed against the back of a chair.
Emma washed her hair when Hester felt up to it, gently but thoroughly, and more than once. She bathed her like a small child, dressed her wounds, and put her in a heavy linen nightshirt that had been Enos’s. She put his woolen socks on her feet and made a warm, honey-sweetened porridge with milk, feeding it to her by the spoonful and talking the entire time.
When Billy came home from school about two hours late, she scolded like a hen whose eggs had been snatched from beneath her. But Billy didn’t seem bothered by it, merely eating a slice of bread, tearing off the crust, and watching Hester, curiosity plastered all over his face.
“Hester. Hester Zug,” Emma said. “Amish settlers in Berks County found her, an Indian baby at the spring close to the log house where they lived.”
Billy’s eyes lit up, recognition shining from their depth. “You’re like me!”
Hester smiled, a small widening of her mouth that caused her eyes and nose to feel stretched, it had been so long since they had been exercised in this way.
“Your second mom better than the first?”
Hester shook her head.
“Well, you ain’t got a thing to worry about no more. Ma’s the bestest there ever was.”
Hester watched Billy’s face, his natural kindness as beautiful as a wild rose or a sunset, a reflection of the good in humankind. But she wondered what Theodore Crane, the schoolmaster, would say, if he heard that grammar.
CHAPTER 7
EMMA FERREE SHOOK OUT THE FEEDSACKS THAT HAD covered her newest fugitive, wrinkled her nose at the dust that flew across the snow-covered bushes in her backyard, then laid them down on the stoop, and ducked back inside.
It was cold, too cold to hang out clothes, but the sun was bright, the air was fresh, and she wanted to wash those union suits, both hers and Billy’s. When long underwear got to itching, it was time to wash it.
She filled the gray wooden tubs, shaved lye soap into one, dumped in a pile of light-colored things, and began to stir with a well-worn wooden stick, swirling the thick, heavy undergarments around and around. The small room off the kitchen was thick with steam as she took up the wooden washboard and began to rub, her upper arms flapping in time to the furious scrubbing she gave the items she was washing.
Why, she’d sat beside Rhoda Denlinger down at the church house on Sunday and endured all that itching in silence, until she declared there must be insects in unreachable areas of her outerwear, as well her as underwear. She was in so much misery during the service she hardly heard a word the minister said, and all that week it seemed as if her soul needed food, which she couldn’t find just by reading her Bible.
It was the way John Evans spoke, so true, so pleading. It just filled her soul with grace. And now she’d have to go hungry all week, where spiritual food was concerned, all on account of her insect-infected clothes.
She wrung the cumbersome garments with hands turned red from the hot water, then wrapped up in a too-small shawl, tied on the vesh pettsa sock, threw a heavy scarf across her head, took up the basket of washing, and ventured briskly into the frigid morning.
She shook out Billy’s union suit and had just pegged it firmly to the line when a deep voice shouted her name. That dreaded voice was the very reason she didn’t wash her long underwear more often.
Turning calmly, she answered in what she hoped was a level voice, her mouth flat, her face expressionless. “Why, Walter Trout.” She didn’t say it with a twinge of welcome or excitement, not even a smidgen of gladness. She meant to convey just a simple recognition, albeit grudgingly—as, Oh, there you are, and I wish you weren’t.
“G’ day to ya, Emma! Wonderful morning! Wonderful!” The beaming man on the opposite side of the fence could only be described as vast. His face was wide and florid, alive with color and good humor, his shoulders, back, and stomach twice the size of any other man. He wore no coat or hat. His pink head was circled with a U of gray hair, as if a squirrel had taken up permanent residence around his noggin.
Emma was in no mood to take his sugary description of this frigid winter morning, when she was just about to hang up her undergarment shift
which he could easily examine. So she turned her back, bent and picked up the basket, and returned to her washing, slamming the door unnecessarily.
Nosy, overfed man. If he’d stop eating all that tripe and liverwurst. Well, she was not hanging out her shift. She’d dry it inside. It dripped all over the clean floor, so she waited till he had himself back inside, then scuttled out the back door, her head lowered. She looked neither left or right as she brought the wooden clothespins down hard on the offending garment now hanging on the washline.
She had just reached down to retrieve a petticoat when a stentorian voice made her jump all over. She nearly dropped the garment, took a deep breath, and turned. Her supply of good Christian patience was awfully low, the way she’d missed most of John Evans’s sermon, but being the kindly person she was, she said smoothly, “Why yes, Walter?”
“So, then, neighbor. Had a bit of a goings-on the other night, heh?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Billy had a load of something or other on the sack wagon.”
“Oh, that. Yes, yes, that.”
“What was that?”
“Oh, that. Well, yes, it was that.”
“What was it?”
“Well, don’t you know what a sack wagon’s for?”
Oh, he hadn’t meant to offend her. Of course, a sack wagon was for hauling sacks. He thought that’s what it looked like. He smiled widely, and the squirrel around his head moved upward a few inches, making Emma shiver, it looked so real.
He hung his florid face above the fence, like a red full moon, she thought grimly, and told her she had nothing to fear, he understood if she hauled things in her sack wagon that were not sacks. Then he giggled in the most obnoxious manner. Emma gave him a stare that surpassed the frigid morning air and said if it was all right with him, she’d be pleased if he stayed to his own business, thank you.