Which Way Home?

by Linda Byler

  Walter was grateful for that bit of information. He sat down heavily and cut a large wedge of pie, thanking his stars that Emma was a talkative woman and gave forth her information readily, unlike these strange Amish.

  Back in their own kitchen, Hester stoked the fire while Bappie retrieved the herbs. They boiled the roots, chopped the scabious plant, and bottled some of it in the strong corn whiskey Hester kept for this purpose. They boiled the nettle roots separately and bottled them, too. Darkness had fallen by the time they were finished.

  Hester paced the kitchen, straightened doilies, and fiddled with the candle wax. Finally she told Bappie she would never be able to sleep.

  Bappie became quite huffy, saying if she was even thinking of going down to that dirty place in the dark, she was going alone.

  Hester said she would then. “I have to see him tonight. He may be seriously feverish till morning.”

  “You are risking your life. It’s too foolish. You can’t go down there.”

  Hester nodded. That was all. Already she was putting on her black shawl and hat and pulling on a thin pair of gloves, her jaw set in a line of determination.

  Bappie watched her, staying silent as Hester gathered the jars, herbs, and a small knife, some white muslin, and a scissors, then put them carefully into a cloth satchel and let herself out into the dark street.

  Bappie called after her. “If you’re not back by ten o’clock, I’ll come looking for you.”

  Hester waved, her long strides separating her from Bappie’s voice. At midnight she had not returned. Bappie lay cowering in her feather bed, alternately praying and being angry at Hester and her foolishness. Hadn’t she warned her?

  She tried to summon the courage to get dressed and go find her but could not bring herself to do it. Better one person dead than both of them. At this thought, her heart began banging beneath her ribs until she thought she would surely be torn apart, rib by rib.

  When the gray light of dawn finally lightened the dark windows, she got up, tired, miserable, and vowing to herself that she would not go down to those stinking rowhouses, she didn’t care if Hester was dead or alive.

  As she combed her flaming red hair and scrubbed her freckled face, she considered going to the town constable to tell him about Hester. But as she ate her steaming bowl of cornmeal mush, she figured it would be better to go see for herself what had happened to Hester. She would wear her high-topped boots this time and carry a large walking stick, just in case.

  CHAPTER 21

  HESTER STAYED ALL NIGHT IN THE PITIFUL HOVEL after lancing the wound, draining the thick, greenish infection, and applying the poultice.

  She spooned up a decoction of the bark of the white oak and the bud of the acorn from the same tree and heated the mixture to a soothing warmth. The child resisted at first, then willingly drained the liquid from the spoon.

  Heinz lay rolled in a blanket on a pallet in the corner, his rasping snores settling themselves inside Hester’s head until she thought she could no longer keep her sanity intact. At least he was not interfering, snoring like that, she told herself, as the weary night ticked toward morning.

  At the first gray light of dawn, she lifted the cover from the sleeping boy and turned his foot toward the flickering candle she held to it. She lowered her head and sniffed the wound. The absence of the sickish sweet smell a revelation, she lifted her face, closed her eyes, and whispered a direct, “Denke, mein Herr.”

  When Heinz rolled out of his pallet onto the earthen floor like a great animal, Hester stiffened and kept her face averted. He rose to his knees, then to his feet, and began scratching his armpits and his filthy hair. He thrust his feet into the shabby torn shoes made of leather, belched, coughed, and let himself out the door without a word to his wife or acknowledging Hester’s presence.

  His wife’s name was Josephine, but her pronunciation of it was funny. She told Hester to call her Finny. She could not speak English well, her German permeating every word, so that they each had a flat sound, mingled with all the wrong consonants. She was sincere, though, and she cared about her boy, Chon.

  Heinz worked at the tannery on Water Street, Finny informed Hester, which explained the loathsome odor that followed him like a cloud. The dead animals and their hides piled in stinking heaps to dry, and then be made into leather, were odorous. There seemed to be nothing to do about it. It was a thriving business in the town of Lancaster, a necessary evil, if anything.

  Some horses hitched to carriages refused to travel past the tannery, balking and rearing. Others lowered their heads, took the bits in their mouths, and ran at breakneck speed, the buggies swaying and clattering over the stones, the drivers’ hats crushed low on their heads, their hands occupied solely by handling the reins.

  More than one schoolboy took to loitering about the tannery, gleefully swooping in on an airborne hat and racing off with it before the harried owner could return to retrieve it.

  When the first rays of the sun enlivened the street outside, Hester swept the floor and helped Finny stoke the fire. She boiled water, poured some in a wooden bucket, added cold from the crock by the back wall, and asked for soap. Finny shook her head, spreading her hands, palms up.

  Hester nodded and set to work with one of the muslin patches in her bag. She scrubbed the table first, then the benches. She swept and scoured the meager hearth while Finny brought out a loaf of coarse brown bread, bought from the fat baker on Queen Street.

  Hester’s eyes narrowed. For two pennies, Finny could buy a sack of meal, a bit of lard, and some salt. She could make her own bread.

  There was no milk, no eggs, no porridge or butter. Only the coarse brown bread torn into chunks. The children sat to the table in the same clothes they slept in, reaching for their share of the bread and stuffing it hungrily into their mouths. Their eyes were wizened far beyond their years, their thin faces colorless and translucent.

  “Where is Heinz? Does he not want his breakfast?”

  Finny made a sound not unlike an irate horse.

  “Nothing to eat?”

  “Of course. He eats good down there. But a man has to have his food.”

  Hester shook her head, brought in the beet tops, washed them with the small amount of potatoes, and put everything in a pot. “Salt?”

  Finny shook her head.

  When Bappie’s anxious face appeared at the door, Hester did not waste any words explaining her night. She sent her straight back to the house with a list of items they would need. Bappie muttered and complained, disgruntled, but did as she was told, returning with a wagonload of supplies.

  And they went to work. The scoured the house with strong lye soap. They washed the thin blankets in tubs of boiling water out in front of the house, by the street, where all the neighbors came to watch, their eyes hooded with suspicion and mistrust. Children threw sticks and called them names.

  Bappie lifted her hands from the hot, soapy water and ran after one especially bold child, caught him by the suspenders, and tweaked his ear. That brought a loud, surprised squawk and a scattering of the rest of the bystanders.

  Hester grinned and kept scrubbing the filthy blanket up and down on the washboard. Leave it to Bappie!

  They nailed the scrubbed wooden crate to the wall, then filled it with meal, a tin of lard, a bag of salt, flour ground from fresh wheat kernels, a jar of tomato preserves, and a bag of potatoes.

  They brought towels and sheets and two extra quilts. They brought crockery dishes and pewter spoons. Emma and Walter cried, wiped their tears, and contributed soap, dried corn, bread, and a hunk of bacon.

  Bappie said she was one solid mess of chills climbing up her back and down her arms. Her nose burned all day and all she wanted to do was cry. It was the spirit quickening her, she said.

  Embarrassed, then, she lowered her head and asked Hester what in the world was she thinking, washing these blankets if they had nowhere to dry? She said it gruffly, as if that would prove that she was not turning into a soft-hea
rted person. Hester remedied the clothesline situation by having Walter string a heavy rope from his and Emma’s house to Bappie’s, a sturdy line that would hold many clothes for years to come.

  Finny held her sickly baby, fed him, then sat on the lone rickety chair and stared into space. She did not offer to help or hinder them. She allowed them to clean and wash, her eyes veiled with an expression of mystery.

  When Walter contributed the armless rocking chair, they told Finny to sit in it. She sank onto the seat obediently and began to rock, stiffly at first, then at a slow, steady, relaxed rhythm. She lowered her head as the tears began to fall, dripping steadily, until her arms and hands glistened in the firelight where they gathered.

  Little Chon ate his bread. Hester brought him a tin cup of buttermilk and a bowl of salted vegetables. He looked at Hester’s face, his large eyes asking her if it was all right to eat it. She nodded, so he bent his head, lifted the spoon, and ate every bit, greedily licking the bowl to get every last bit of salt.

  His recovery was imminent now. Pink highlights appeared in his face, and he smiled and talked to his younger sisters. Hester kept the plaster of the scabious plant tied firmly in place, and he had to remain on the pallet.

  Hester and Bappie asked Finny’s permission to bathe the children, wash their hair, and then dress them in the clothes Emma had given to the family while they washed the ones they were wearing. Tearfully, she nodded.

  First, they doused their heads in strong smelling coal oil, with peppermint added to the lye soap, to rid the children of lice. They did not cry out, sturdily bearing the hot water and strong fumes, squeezing their eyes shut as they allowed Bappie’s furious scrubbing.

  The day was waning into evening when the two women stopped. Enough had been done.

  Finny said she knew how to make bread. But she had no lard and no money to buy it. Patiently, they explained about the butcher’s back door and the vats of rendered lard available for taking. She could bring home a large tin of it that would last for months, for one penny. Finny shook her head, overcome.

  The goodwill that radiated from the cleaned hovel was infectious, and Bappie and Hester were radiant, fulfilled. They walked home in the golden glow of early autumn, pulling the emptied wagon, chattering together like magpies dressed in dark Amish colors, their muslin cap strings lifting and failing with the rhythm of their steps.

  Bappie was duly impressed. She’d never seen anything work like that crazy plant, that weed that grew all over the place. You’d think the child would die, drinking that stuff in the bottle. What was it? Purple wine?

  She fussed and waved her arms, quite forgetting to help pull the cumbersome wagon up the hill to Mulberry Street, until Hester stopped for breath, leaned against a lamppost, and exhaled.

  Bappie never took notice. She merely stopped with Hester, lifted her hands, and asked how in the world she knew this stuff, and what else grew all over the woodlands and meadows that she knew had the ability to heal?

  Hester laughed, told her she’d see, and went straight to Walter and Emma’s house. Little Richard opened the door, peering around it like a shy deer mouse, and every bit as cute.

  “Do come in,” he said, for all the world like a little butler.

  “Thank you, Richard,” Hester said, smiling, then scooped him up and planted a kiss on his cheek. She was rewarded by a clenching of his arms around her neck like a vise.

  With so much happiness and so great a purpose in her life, Hester spoke with energy and enthusiasm, completely forgetting her steaming cup of tea. It turned cold as she related her rewarding day of giving to the poor and helping Finny to climb out of the pit of despair where she had no longer cared whether she lived or died, so great was the burden of staying alive.

  Emma lifted a finger. “Hester, I don’t mean to lower your banners, but don’t be surprised if Finny returns to her old ways. Remember, you two women did all the work. She may not want to continue.”

  As it was, Heinz proved to be the biggest obstacle. He swore, tore down the wooden crate, said no two Amish do-gooders were ever going to tell him what he could do and what he couldn’t, and they were not going to tell him how to raise his family either.

  But Finny remained steadfast and calm, going about her days with renewed purpose. Seeing little Chon on his feet, alive and healthy, his eyes shining, was enough inspiration for her to continue to cook the limp vegetables, make her own bread, and buy lard and salt.

  Regularly, Hester or Bappie, sometimes both, would visit, encouraging, praising, and bringing her a squash, a pumpkin, some turnips, or potatoes.

  One week before the market would be closing because the vegetables were finished, Heinz left the tavern in a drunken rage and smashed all the tannery windows with a club. He was caught, fined, which of course he could not pay, and was thrown into the worst cell in the dank, rat-infested cellar of the town’s jail.

  Finny was quite unperturbed. “He vill driggle up [dry up], vonct now,” she said firmly, pounding and kneading the bread dough as if it was Heinz himself being punished roundly for all his drinking. She stopped, then gave the bread dough one last pat. Like a wise owl, her eyes large and round, she said bitterly, “My Heinz was not always so. It iss the ale. He can’t let it alone.”

  Her words were so infused with the German, her “O’s” a total other sound. “Alone” became “aloon;” the “is” a sharp “iss.” But the strength of her words was enough to let the women know she loved Heinz still, but he needed to get better, and jail was a godsend.

  Hester held the baby, her eyes dark and alive with interest, listening as Hester talked. Finny was strong, an amazing woman, keeping her children from starving in the rawest conditions.

  When the winds of autumn became chilly, the leaves of the trees blew through the town and filled the gutters. Rains pounded them into a slimy, brown soup that lay in every ditch.

  Finny needed firewood. She burned every stick she could find, her pride keeping this problem from Hester until she was forced to speak to her. The children were coming down with the chilblains, rashes, and angry blisters on their lips.

  Soberly the women rode to church, Silver running along sedately as if he knew this was the Lord’s Day. In their black shawls and bonnets, they rocked together comfortably in the roofless buggy, the road wet and puddled, brown streaks of water spitting from the wheels as they traveled.

  They did not speak, for Hester’s thoughts were muddied and clouded over with the knowledge of winter coming and the decision she would soon have to make. She thought of the handsome brave named Hunting Wolf and his true, honest love for her. She believed he came from the Lenape as he had said. He was not someone who repulsed her. A part of her longed to see her mother, her cousins and sisters, perhaps brothers. But that was all.

  Having been married before, she knew the tremendous effort it would take, the constant work, the drawing on every reserve of love and affection, just to make it through her days and nights.

  She had truly fancied herself in love with William, but was it love? Was what she experienced all that she was capable of? Perhaps with her own kind, with Hunting Wolf, it would be different. She had failed William and would likely fail the Indian. The thought of marriage was as burdensome as lugging a wagon behind her, up a hill from the rowhouses to Mulberry Street. Yet his eyes had held her, made her feel alive.

  To his lodge, he had said. One separate lodge, or a communal longhouse?

  The decision was too monumental, too formidable today with the sky the color of the Indian’s turquoise, the clouds large and puffy like whipped cream, the air brisk and invigorating, alive with swaying branches and the smell of black walnuts hidden in wet brown grasses. Squirrels were romping and collecting hickory nuts which still clung to their summer branches, reluctant to fall and become the squirrels’ winter staple.

  The women were headed north from town on the level road, passing homesteads that were turning into well organized farms, each year making a difference in the a
mount of buildings and the cleared land.

  Hester was grateful, as they drove by the well kept farm where she had spent her years with William, that Johnny kept up the tradition of tidiness. The fields were clean of corn fodder, the woodpile was stacked neatly, the cows looked well kept in the barnyard. Well, you had to give him that credit. He had, by all accounts, forgotten about pestering them, the silly man. He simply had never grown up. Despite having a wife and children, he acted like a youth.

  How could he have grown up in the same house and have had the same parents as William? Her sober, conservative, meticulously versed William? A great tenderness rose in her, a memory of William’s face and his touch.

  “You better get him going or we’ll be late.” Bappie’s voice broke in on her thoughts.

  “How far is it to Jacob’s?”

  “At least another three miles.”

  Dutifully, Hester brought the whip from under the seat and flicked it lightly over Silver’s back. The air whizzed past as he lunged forward. Hester shivered, tugging at her hat.

  The women that stood around the kitchen of the stone house shook hands with both Bappie and Hester. Their lips met in a brief kiss of holiness, the traditional greeting among the women.

  Jacob Stoltzfus’s wife, Veronica, was flushed and “nerved up,” the way women were when church was at their house and they were responsible for the comfort of the congregation. Was the house too cold? Too warm? Was there enough food for the dinner table? How many freme would show up?

  Having made their rounds of greetings, Hester stood to the right of the fireplace, her arms crossed at her waist in a familiar stance, the way most of the women did. She looked around at the typical whitewashed walls, the shelves built on top of the sturdy cupboard that contained all Veronica’s dishes.

  She admired the embroidered artwork on the wall and noticed the heavy pewter of the candle holders. The curtains which hung on the one window in the kitchen appeared to be very worldly, crocheted along the edges like Emma Ferree’s. But then Veronica was said to have a hankering for fanciness, she’d heard from Bappie.