Which Way Home?

by Linda Byler

  The voices overhead continued. Hester could not understand the words.

  She could go no farther. The floor rose in a mound beneath the potato bin. With every ounce of her strength, she pulled her hips and knees further into the opening. She stopped, guessing her skirt was hidden away. She had to leave the rest of her fate to God. If they came down the cellar steps and found her, then her life would surely be over.

  It was hard to think of dying, but harder yet to imagine the hunger and torture of jail. As she thought of her life being in the hands of these swarthy, uncouth men, she inched her way into the crevice a bit more.

  The dry, rasping sound of a snake. She stifled a cry as its heavy body slithered across her hand, then down across her knees.

  The cellar door opened. A rectangle of flickering yellow light shone directly ahead of her. The men lost no time, coming down the steep stairway backward the way she had come. Hester heard the scurrying of the rodents.

  She realized she had squeezed beneath the potato bin from the wall side, away from where the men had planted their feet. Had she come from the front where there was no opening beneath it, she’d have never found her hiding place.

  She felt a cough begin in her throat. The veins in her neck swelled, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth worked as she tried to abort the raucous sound that ached to be released. I will not cough. I will not cough. She swallowed over and over, finding with each contraction of her neck muscles that the sensation was receding.

  Loud voices, footsteps on the packed earthen floor. “There ain’t no Injun down here.”

  “Snake!” A bawling sound, a howl of mocking laughter and another one of glee as a man ran straight up the stairs.

  She heard Emma. “I told you there ain’t nothing down them steps.”

  “Potatoes.”

  “Ya, wohl! I work hard to dig them Katufla. You let them be.”

  Hester heard voices.

  “You hear?” Emma shouted.

  When there was no answer, Emma warned them once more, her tone strident but relaxed. After all, she was only an ordinary housewife protecting a summer’s bounty, an important staple for the winter.

  A rude reply rasped directly in front of Hester. She shivered and felt tears of panic begin to form. Now they were reaching into the bin, the candle held aloft, rolling the potatoes and laughing. They compared sizes, filling their empty pockets with the vegetables.

  The men were so close she could hear their breathing. She smelled horses, stale sweat, deerskin, leather, tobacco. Hester’s throat worked as she swallowed her fear.

  Emma shouted down the opening of the stairway. “You leave them Katufla be. You let them down there for me and Billy. I’ll tell the constable about you making off with my stuff. You hear me?”

  There was only a rude mocking sound in reply. That, and a boot kicking the corner of the bin. A fine layer of dust from the potatoes filtered down on Hester’s face. It felt cool, smelled like Annie’s garden. Before she could think, a sneeze tore through her nose. She pushed her tongue against the roof of her mouth and willed the rush of air to be compressed.

  A sound squeezed out, but it was overridden by another clattering of heavy boots on the stairway. Breathing rapidly, her nostrils filled with dirt, Hester lay beneath the potatoes and thanked her heavenly father for keeping her safe. The image of John Lantz, the Amish bishop, his hair white, his blue eyes piercing, saying, “Gott sie gelobt un gedankt,” filled her mind. She repeated the saying over and over, the treasure of the words’ meaning increasing fourfold now.

  The choking dirt that filtered over her face took her back to the dust and heat of August, as she bent over a row of beans or hoed newly planted beets. She could see the flight of the butterflies above the purple blossoms, erratic little upward flutterings, only to zigzag sideways, or plummet ungracefully to hover over blossoms before moving dizzily on their way. Butterflies were beautiful creatures but without smooth flight patterns, which birds and other airborne insects had.

  She could hear the clatter of the iron-clad wooden wheels of the wagon bouncing over the rutted field lane. Hans was driving the faithful, plodding team, while Noah sprawled on top of the hay, his hair as light as the hot, white sunshine, Isaac beside him, a darker shadow.

  When Kate was alive, they would have waved, called out a silly saying. Hester would have straightened her back, waved, and answered, a smile playing around her perfect mouth, her spirits lifted.

  When Annie became their mother, she spread her venomous jealousy to Hester’s brothers, her staunchest friends, and they no longer acknowledged her presence in the garden or the barn at milking time. Nowhere ever. Hester carried that great and awful pain like a growth close to her heart that cut off her capacity to feel joy. Her brothers’ love had carried her through the rough spots that occurred in her life, her grafting into the Amish community softened by their protection.

  Lying beneath the bin of potatoes in Emma Ferree’s house in this strange Lancaster town, Hester wondered at the twists and turns in the uncertain path of her life so far. Maybe sometime she’d be able to go back to Berks County, back to her childhood home where butterflies flitted blue and orange and black and yellow, and the dust was filled with the scent of honeysuckle and wonder.

  Hester longed for that lost sweetness, savoring the sights and smells of that time when she had been filled with belonging, the serenity that came from knowing her place in the world.

  All this flashed through her mind as Emma’s staccato voice berated the men who had searched her house. She told them God would hold them accountable for stuffing their pockets with a poor widow’s potatoes. She hoped their horses would all get hoof rot and their wagon wheels would fall off. She banged the door after them, then sagged against it. The color drained out of her face and a sheen of sweat appeared on her forehead as she yelled at Billy to bring the smelling salts. She was sure her heart was not going to take this.

  She moaned about poor, poor Hester down in that cellar. Oh, what had she gone through? Tears puddled and dripped from her doughy cheeks as she rained down other wishes of deep trouble on those schtinkiche menna. For what she felt responsibility for, she fiercely loved and protected and passionately esteemed as her own, sometimes to the point that Billy wished she’d stop saying all those flowery speeches. A fella didn’t need to hear all that. But his eyes shone with the goodness of Emma’s love and spread right out of his own heart to others, without him even realizing it.

  The next day, all the Indians that were held in the county jail were murdered. Fourteen of them were hacked to death by a group of men that called themselves the Paxton Boys, led by a minister who was a zealot. The town of Lancaster and the area around it had effectively been freed of any Indians, they believed.

  Hester heard the news, but her face showed no evidence of distress. She just folded in like a withering plant and did not speak the remainder of the evening. Emma watched Hester closely but decided to leave her alone to mourn, to sort out her feelings, to absorb this terrible deed done against her people.

  For weeks, Billy arrived, breathless, with one gruesome story or another. Hester gave no sign that she heard one word, simply bowing her head to her basket-weaving without a single tear or acknowledgment of his presence.

  Emma and Billy discussed the moving. It would be odd to move their belongings in the dead of winter. People would talk. They stoked the fires, cleaned the house, cooked their meals, always watchful as they went about their usual routines.

  Every Sunday morning Emma dressed in her Lord’s Day finery, combed Billy’s rebellious mop of hair, pinned his high collar amid furious grimaces as she worked. Then they set off for First Reformed Church on Orange Street.

  Hester had to stay behind for safety’s sake. Emma was well aware that other Indians were still in the area, some of them hired out as slaves, serving wealthy families without wages, but she took no chances. Helen Denlinger told her there was talk of an Indian girl having escaped the jail the night of
the massacre and that she was living with Emma Ferree. Then Helen looked at her with too-bright eyes and a knowing smile. Emma waved a hand, dismissing her entirely, then turned to speak to her neighbor, Walter Trout, who became so gratified by the widow Emma’s attention that he began to stutter, something he hadn’t done since he was eight or nine years old.

  Hester sat by the crackling fire, enjoying its warmth, then got up to look out the many paned windows, watching the carriages and wagons moving up and down Mulberry Street. In winter, most folks were hidden inside their carriages, but frequently an open wagon would rumble by, the wagon’s inhabitants blobs beneath layers of buffalo robes with even their faces obscured. Pedestrians walked off to the sides of the streets through the snow, ladies lifting their skirts daintily as carriages rattled by.

  All going to church, Hester thought. She had never seen the huge brick church houses Emma described, or the stone ones. Everyone went to church. There were so many different ones, it was dizzying. Why, if they all believed in the same God and his son Jesus, were there so many different ways to worship? It was more than Hester could figure out, so she stood hidden by Emma’s spotless, white curtains and observed the people. Always she stayed alert, her senses tuned for any peace-crushing blow delivered to the sturdy oak door that led to the street.

  Hester turned away from the window, then sighed restlessly. Going to the small mirror above the hall table, she examined the wounds on her face in the light from the snow and sun. She found a redness, but very little besides. That pleased her immensely. She wandered back to the window and saw a tall, top-hatted man walking sedately, a lady’s hand on his arm, her skirts spread below her coat like a yellow flower. What unthinkable finery! So out of the Amish Ordnung, the stringent rules that kept them obedient, that held them within the promise they had made to be faithful.

  Hester had always been accustomed to wearing a huge cap and hat pulled well past her face with a heavy, black woolen shawl pinned severely over her shoulders. If she wore her Amish outerwear, she would not be taken for an Indian, but the Amish did not live in town, so that would be stranger still.

  An oddity yet. An oddity all her life. Well, she wouldn’t look too far ahead, which was like welcoming a whole nest of wasps into a kitchen. It did no good, brought a load of unnecessary anxiety, and in the end, a stinging pain that had to be daubed with care, same as memories that were painfully colorful.

  She looked forward to spring, the time when they would take their belongings and move to the country, close to the Amish. Today was the Sabbath, so she would not work at her baskets. But she felt restless, a longing for something she couldn’t name. If she had wings like an eagle, she’d fly above this house and all the others that looked exactly the same.

  In row upon row of wooden houses with brick chimneys rising from their middles, gray smoke waved endlessly, coming from the heating and cooking fire in the shuba, the soul of each house.

  Hester sighed again. She sat down, reaching for the Heiliche Schrift, the great German Bible Emma delved into constantly, reading out loud to Billy, who, like as not, was fast asleep or carving a small object from a stick of wood.

  Hester looked at the intricate black and white pictures and tried to read in Mattheu, but so many of the words eluded her. Reading in English was difficult enough. Reading German was like climbing a tree without branches. Hans had taught all his children well. He brought out the catechism every Sunday morning as regularly as he milked cows. Noah and Isaac were brilliant. Hester could read only haltingly, but Hans had praised her nevertheless, his eyes warm and brown, staying on her face too long. She could never remember hearing him give a word of encouragement to Noah or Isaac. And they so deserved it.

  In one quick, fluid movement, Hester rose, a fierceness in her change of position. Taking the German Bible in both hands, she dropped it on the floor solidly. Her breathing came hard. Noah and Isaac had been slaves, working—no, toiling—from the time the sun appeared above the mountain, till it sank below the opposite one. And always, always, she had received flowery words of gratitude for the smallest endeavor.

  Well, she’d gotten what she deserved, she supposed. Reaped richly the suffocating jealousy of her stepmother, after, like a slow-witted opossum that’s so easily trapped, she finally saw Hans for what he was.

  For a moment she was tempted to compare herself to Joseph in the Old Testament who had been persecuted because of jealousy. But he was good and holy and found favor in God’s eyes. She, too, had a coat of many colors laid on her shoulders, in the form of colored linen made into her Sunday dresses. And when other little girls had one Sunday dress, she had three.

  Ah, but he had loved her—she tried to convince herself—in the proper way a father loves a daughter. It was she who had done wrong. Perhaps. But how?

  She paced the confines of the house accusing herself, but for what? Her past was like rain—life-giving, sweet, and generous in its abundance of things that were good. But if she lingered too long in this rain, she became cold and uncomfortable and needed to retreat to a place where the rain could not touch her. And yet, it still did. The rain penetrated her heart, filling it with sadness for Noah and for Isaac. They were such noble young brothers, working endlessly to Hans’s and Annie’s specifications, until they built the farm from a lowly log house and a few cleared acres to the status of a homestead belonging to Hans and Annie Zug. They were regarded as the best managers in Berks County, owners of a large stone house and barn and of the finest herd of cows in that area (if not in all of Pennsylvania), plus a couple of Belgian horses and a blacksmithy.

  Hans had it all. Hester’s eyes narrowed. Yes, he did, but by his shrewd wife’s manipulation and the sweat of Noah’s and Isaac’s brows.

  Perhaps it was better that she wasn’t alone too much, the way these thoughts rushed around in her mind, creating ripples of pain. Why did she remember her brothers so keenly now? If only she could talk to them and make things right. She wanted to tell them that they were the ones who deserved to be exalted, lifted up, encouraged. Just look at me. Please look at me. Talk to me. I need to tell you these things.

  Hester was relieved when a quiet rapping sounded on the door. She quickly scooped up the Bible she had let fall, then hurried to slide back the bolt on the door, allowing Emma and Billy to enter. Emma’s face was flushed, two purplish spots appeared on either cheek, her nose looked bruised from the cold, and her green hat was sliding to the back of her head. She resembled a frenzied bantam hen at home in the barnyard when a skunk raided her small, neat nest of eggs.

  “We’re getting company!” she said.

  “Rufus and Helen Denlinger. And Walter Trout,” Billy crowed, already divesting himself of the noose other people called a collar.

  “But?” Hester was bewildered.

  Emma was sliding the wool cape off her rounded shoulders, her eyes flashing beneath the folds of skin, now heightened to an alarming pink color. “Now, Hester, you don’t worry. If Helen is nosy, then she’s going to have the surprise of her life. You are my new maid from Virginia. A slave. Here.” She stopped Hester, handed her a ruffled housewife’s cap and an apron that was so oversized it was ridiculous, but since Emma didn’t seem to mind, Hester didn’t either.

  Emma fried salt pork, the pan so sizzling hot it was only a miracle the kitchen didn’t go up in flames. She peeled potatoes while Hester laid the table with a plain white tablecloth, serviceable ironstone plates, pewter utensils, and clay tumblers.

  They served the sauerkraut with dumplings, the salt pork with pickled watermelon rind. The potatoes had a whole lake of brown butter on the mounded top. Like a volcano, the butter spilled down the sides, pooling around the edges of the serving bowl.

  Emma served the chilled chow-chow in a glass dish. Pats of homemade butter gleamed and shone by the tall candles. Thickened elderberries sat alongside the butter, making a perfect marriage of fat and sweet to spread on thick chunks of crusty German bread.

  Helen Denlinger was a b
it stout, although she girded herself so severely that she appeared slender, at least in the proper places. As she ate and ate and ate, her face grew steadily more colorful, her eyes decreased in size, and her breathing became decidedly more labored, like a plodding horse pulling a plow in the spring.

  She mentioned the delightful way the Germans served their bread, in a thin, gasping voice, before reaching for another thick, crusty chunk, spreading it with a greedy portion of butter and the marvelous berries. Her husband ate like a starving wolf, lowering his head and shoveling it in without the good manners of taking time to answer the smallest inquiry.

  Walter Trout sat at the end of the table where there was plenty of room, cut his salt pork with knife and fork, poised like a perfect British gentleman, slowly chewing the neat squares of meat with his mouth closed. His small mouth, moving up and down in a grinding, circular motion, completely entranced Billy, who thought it amazing the way that small opening could be the only door for so much food.

  To his knowledge, Walter had never tasted German cooking. He found the dumplings on the sauerkraut blissful, the salt pork heavenly, the turnips absolutely divine.

  Billy rolled his eyes at Hester. “I can tell you come fresh off a sermon,” he quipped.

  Emma was so mortified she didn’t know what to do, but when she looked at Walter and he was rolling from side to side, trying to repress his good-humored mirth, she spluttered, then gave up and lifted her hands, howling with unladylike glee that Helen Denlinger found ill-mannered. And since she had to struggle to breathe, she certainly could not waste precious air in laughing. That Billy Ferree needed to learn manners, to be seen and not heard.

  Hester hovered over the Sunday dinner, the ruffled white cap hiding her sleek, straight hair, enhancing the simple beauty of her large dark eyes. She filled and refilled water tumblers, filled the sauerkraut dish twice, and made sure the dumplings were moist and hot. She brought out a chocolate cake, loaded with walnuts ground to slivers and topped with crumby brown sugar. She served applesauce and golden pears, glazed with honey.