The Homestead

by Linda Byler

  Alone now, Sarah began pacing again, her hands clutched tightly over her stomach, causing a weird, rocking gait, but there was no one to see, no one to care. She cried then, loud, agonized wails until she was spent. She lay down on a blanket by the fire. Fear and doubt mixed with her heroic efforts at prayer. She could not concentrate. Her anxiety scrambled every coherent word until she gave up and lay there prostrate on her bedroll, a mere speck in this alien, unforgiving land. I just am, she thought. I am only one person. God knows where I am, and He’ll just have to take over. I can’t pray, my bones have turned to ashes, and my strength is gone. I have no will. It’s all right to give up, isn’t it?

  She thought of her own mother so far away, so unreachable, as if she no longer lived on the same earth but had spun off into the sky to some other world.

  “Shick dich, Sarah.”

  How often had she heard the command as a child to behave herself? Yes, that was what she would do. She would accept the situation, give up her own will to God, and if He chose to take Eli to heaven, then so be it. At this thought, fresh tears squeezed from beneath her closed eyes, and she knew she wasn’t close to accepting Eli’s loss.

  The night wore on, the half-moon lending its ghostly light, the stars blinking around it like silent listeners awaiting the outcome, offering their tiny pinpricks of light and comfort. The stars seemed close, a part of another world that looked out for people on earth, folks like her and Mose and the children, alone on the North Dakota prairie.

  Sarah sat up, straining to see, to hear. There was only black night and silence. Even the wind had stilled. There was no swaying, no movement, no scurrying creatures. Only the silence laden with the knowledge that Eli had wandered off, that her husband and children were out there somewhere with the only two horses they owned, their only source of survival. That, the bags of seed, and the rain and the sun to coax them into germination.

  She got up and tended to the fire once more. She thought it was useless to build it so fiercely if the dark sky swallowed the smoke without helping, the way the daylight would illuminate it. And yet she threw chunks of wood on the embers simply for the need to move, to do something.

  She didn’t know what time it was, too afraid of the time on the face of the clock in the wagon. One o’clock? Two? Would the time make a difference in her agonized waiting? Surely that was not a streak of dawn to the east. Please don’t let it be the dawn. If they were out all night long and returned at daylight without Eli, she could see no way of being able to accept it, to comprehend with the settling of the horrible fact that her son was still missing.

  She sat up. The earth spun, slanted on its axis, while a deep blackness engulfed her as the weakness spread through her limbs. Then—a smear of light on the prairie as if a star had fallen into the grass and shattered. There. Someone had extinguished it. A hand went to her chest to still her heart’s pounding. Her eyes watered from intensely straining to see, to make the light appear. Perhaps it was only a giant lightning bug. No. There. There it was again.

  She got to her feet, clumsily, whimpering now. It was a light. It was. It came on, closer. Voices. Real voices. Like a statue she stood, one hand clamped to still her heart, the other to her mouth to stop the trembling sounds that came from her throat.

  There were horses. Ah, yes. There was Pete, with Mose. And Dan following with two riders. Hannah and Manasses. Manny. Somehow, this moment seemed too holy to call him Manny.

  Was that a dark bundle across Mose’s saddle? Sarah stood, straining to see, then took a few steps forward, her hand outstretched, reaching, hoping.

  The horses and riders stumbled into the circle of light, the flickering fire illuminating the spent horses and the slump of the weary riders’ shoulders. Mose called out, a quick high cry, in a foreign tone of voice she had never heard before.

  Ah, yes. There was a hefty bundle across Mose’s lap. Now Sarah could see the outline of a gray and rumpled hat, the shape of her missing son, her husband’s strong arms around him. They came to a stop. Sarah reached Mose before he had a chance to dismount, her hands grabbing, claw like, her arms outstretched, muffled sounds no one understood coming from her open mouth without stopping until Mose had lowered her son into her arms. He was half asleep, filthy dirty, his hair stuck to the brim of his hat. When Sarah crushed him to her chest and rained tearful kisses on his face, he began to protest, turning away, spluttering and waving his arms.

  “Eli. Eli. Eli.” Over and over Sarah said his name, unaware of Mose or the other children’s vigil.

  “I’m all right, Mam. Stop it!” Eli protested hoarsely.

  The horses were taken away by a dry-eyed indignant Hannah muttering to herself, a reluctant Manny following, having rather enjoyed the theatrics of his brother’s return.

  Sarah collapsed on a stump by the fire, her energy drained away by the enormity of her relief, the deflation of loss replaced by a sense of wonder and the dawning realization that Almighty God had heard her pitiful doubt-filled cries and had taken mercy. She could barely stay on the stump, her arms like water now, liquid, without substance. And yet she gathered her son to her breast, the rough wool of his coat a luxury, the softest fur imaginable.

  “Eli, where were you? Where?” she asked, both laughing and crying. Mose sank to his knees, his arms going around his wife and son, his brown eyes searching Sarah’s face, lit only by the fading embers of the fire.

  But Eli didn’t answer. He had fallen asleep. They laughed then, her and Mose, with a sound of bell-like joy, an exultation. A miracle. Their son had been returned to them. Together, they undressed him, washed his grimy face and hands, put him to bed beside the still sleeping Mary. Then Mose told Sarah his story.

  They had ridden in wide circles around the creek bed. Keeping the treetops as their center they circled farther and farther, always calling, until their throats were parched by their hoarse cries. Darkness fell and hope with it. Mose could not understand why he had no guidance, no inner light. He asked God over and over, he explained. Stumbling around the seemingly endless prairie, only the North Star lending its light to keep their bearings, the horses became too weary to go on. Hannah complained about the senseless riding without an idea where Eli may have gone. Manny wanted to go back, rest, and resume the search in the morning. Mose could not face Sarah with empty arms and crush her with disappointment. So they kept riding.

  It was Mose that ran his horse into the strand of barbed wire. Pete stopped, then shied away from the cutting of the sharp barbs, almost unseating Mose, but a cry went up from Hannah who immediately recognized the significance of a fence. Follow it and they’d find folks, other human beings in this forsaken place. She meant godforsaken but couldn’t say it, having had her mouth slapped for it earlier and sent to the back of the wagon to ride with the horse feed—like a sack of oats.

  They rode and rode, always by sight of the fence looming to their left. Sometimes, the prairie rose gently; sometimes it dipped down, but never very far or very steeply.

  They found the outbuildings first. Black silhouettes, stark and unwelcoming in the dark, star-pricked night. Cattle stood around the barn like dark ghostly humps. A raucous barking rattled Hannah badly. There had to be five or six of them, all wolves or half-wolf. She fell back, holding Dan until Mose rode ahead. By the sound of them, they’d slay the horses and have them for dessert.

  On they rode, past the corner post, beside an old wagon parked in waist-high grass, the dogs appearing like a dark sea of moving bodies, roaring and growling, leaping but never touching. Hannah wanted to turn her horse and get out of there but Mose said no, not before they spoke to someone.

  They didn’t have long to wait. There was the slam of a door, a shout of command, and the dogs’ barking was extinguished like magic. A figure appeared carrying a lantern with a small orange flame burning inside the glass chimney, surrounded by tin and held by a thin metal handle. The opposite hand carried a rifle, long and low, the dark figure revealed only from the waist down.


  “State yer business. If’n yer cattle rustlers, I kin tell you right quick that if’n you don’t leave this here propitty straightaway, ye’ll be peppered wi’ gunshot.”

  “No, no,” Mose called out, his voice gravelly with exhaustion.

  “Wal, what you here fer?”

  “We lost our son, a little fellow named Eli. We’re probably nine or ten miles away homesteading government land. Name’s Mose Detweiler from Pennsylvania.”

  The bobbing lantern came to a halt, hoisted by one arm, it showed a grimy denim overcoat, a battered brown Stetson pulled low over a thin face, eyes barely visible, a moustache like a plastered-on chipmunk tail, a thin, scraggly gray beard, and a face like overcooked ponhaus. Silence spread through the night, thick and uncomfortable.

  “Wal, I’d say we gotcher son. Little fellow, stocky on ‘is feet, he is.” Mose couldn’t speak, afraid to show weakness in the face of this unknown character. He swallowed, felt the tears, and swallowed again.

  The house was behind the barn, rising like an unkempt monster in a sea of mud. Lights glowed from the windows though, and somewhere was Eli. Somewhere behind those crooked walls with rectangular yellow eyes, perhaps his son would be safe and sound.

  And he was. He didn’t cry, only blinked and blinked again. The lean woman sitting beside him was stringy and mean-looking like her husband, as if all the years on this harsh land had honed them into this toughness. But she smiled, said “Howdy,” and that was most important.

  Their names were Hod and Abby Jenkins. Lived on this here place all our lives, spoken proudly. Had three sons. Hod out riding, he said, checkin’ cows. Stumbled on the sleeping li’l guy. Scared ’im, so he did.

  They would come visiting. There was a road, a pattern of dirt roads. They had missed them all. Ranches dotted this land now. Surprised they could still get a grant to homestead. They’d be over, they said.

  Mose’s voice was an endless stream of rich gold oil that poured into the loneliness of Sarah’s soul. There were people! Dirt roads! Even if it was nine or ten miles, that was a jaunt compared to the months and months of weary travel they had just come through.

  Sarah had not realized she felt so alone until she knew they had neighbors. Real human beings. Flesh and blood. Someone to talk to, share lives, stories, find out about weather, crops, what could be done, what was profitable and what wasn’t.

  Here she was, holding her beloved son, delivered to her by God’s own hand, the promise of folks living around them. People who built fences and lived in houses would come visiting.

  Sarah breathed deeply, her eyes taking in the sweep of dark prairie, the sky above them, dark and starlit, the moon wan and impotent now, sliding toward dawn. The chill of fear and foreboding left with Mose’s words, replaced by a warmer, more welcoming atmosphere, an air of hope, a breeze of anticipation. Perhaps it would be possible to feel content here, flourish even. Who knew?

  Suddenly bone weary, her head drooped, her arms fell away from her stomach, as she tried to get to her feet. Mose came to her rescue, then held her lightly, too weary to think of further conversation. Hannah and Manny returned, spoke a few words before retiring to their bedrolls, arranging themselves into a comfortable position before nodding off.

  Mose and Sarah knelt by the wagon, side by side, bowed their heads in silent prayer as each one silently spoke their gratitude to God. They retired for the night, rolling the heavy sheep’s wool blankets on the canvas, drawing down the sides that allowed them a small amount of privacy beneath the wagon, still grateful, and immeasurably drained of strength.

  Mose snored almost immediately. Only a minute had elapsed before the comforting sound of his breathing told her he was asleep.

  Oh, she was blessed. Blessed beyond anything she deserved. Blessed among women. She reached over and stroked her husband’s shoulder, then drew closer for the warmth of him, and shivered once before slumber overtook her.

  In the waning hours of night, prairie dogs slept in the rich soil of their tunnels dug beneath the heavy growth of prairie grass. Rabbits tucked their twitching brown noses into their forepaws and rested, their ears flat along their silky backs. The firelight died down until only a few red embers glowed into the dawn of a new day.

  CHAPTER 3

  It was the cry of a meadowlark that woke Sarah, or some other familiar bird from Pennsylvania, she thought, without being fully awake. The sun was already high in the sky, which made her throw back the blankets and leap to her feet, thinking of the washing and the cleaning.

  It was only after she stood on her feet, her hair scraggly, her dress rumpled and mud stained, the cold spring air sharp on her face, that she remembered where she was, how she had gotten there, the whole scene before her eyes a reminder of the shadow of hopelessness that had threatened to envelop her and choke life’s breath from her body.

  Squaring her shoulders, she took a deep breath and winced as ragged pains shot across her ribs. Ah, yes. This too, to be dealt with. Well, Mose had found someone, as he promised he would, so they were not alone.

  She poured water into the coffeepot, set it on the rack above the fire, poured some into an agate bowl, grabbed a bar of Castile soap, and began to wash. She combed her hair, winced at the snarls, then twisted them along the side of her head. Using the very tip of the comb, she drew a straight line down the center of her head, divided the dark hair and twisted each side into a long roll before coiling first one, then the other, to the back of her head. She inserted steel hairpins with a quick, practiced precision. Satisfied, she placed a black scarf on her head, tied it beneath the thick, dark coil, and then began to prepare breakfast.

  She shook her head a bit, thinking of her wasser bank back home. The kitchen cupboards lined along one wall, the deep sink where she placed her dishpans, the spot where the drain cover allowed the dirty water to drain out, the days she spent there, baking and cooking, and the wood-filled cooking range with the smooth cast iron top she cleaned with a piece of emery board until it gleamed like a polished mirror.

  No use thinking about that. All she wanted was a roof over her head and four sturdy walls that kept out the night sounds. She hoped for the cleanliness of a floor, even if it was made of rough wood.

  Her heart leaped at the thought of the possibility of a frolic. Inviting all the neighbors for miles around to have a day of building, erecting a house or a barn in a few days, the whole place swarming with straw-hatted and suspendered men, like a new hive of worker bees.

  The sun’s light dulled, the light fading out as if night were falling. Astounded, she lifted her head and saw a gray bank of clouds building up in the west. It was only midmorning but something was brewing, like a pot of coffee that had been percolating too long.

  Well, if it was going to rain, she had better alert Mose and try to stay dry somehow with a canvas stretched between poles for a makeshift shelter. She rubbed her back when she straightened and searched her surroundings, with no trace of her husband.

  As she sliced the boiled, congealed cornmeal mush, Hannah rose, disheveled and mud splattered. She stretched as far as she could reach then eyed the fast disappearing sun, the half-finished house, the weak morning fire out in the open, her mother’s back rubbing, and her burgeoning figure. She snorted, stamping one foot.

  “Mam, you know a storm is brewing,” she said, pulling out hairpins and running her fingers through her thick, black tresses, spreading them around her face and shoulders.

  “Yes. I believe there is a storm coming.” Sarah stopped slicing the mush and turned to look at her oldest daughter. “Up already? I thought you’d sleep later, having been up all night.”

  “Yeah, well, we found him. We have neighbors too. They definitely aren’t like us. Not Amish, that’s for sure.”

  Sarah eyed her sternly. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, after the wolf pack stopped braying, he carried a rifle to greet us and meant to use it if we were cattle rustlers. What’s a rustler?”

  “I suppos
e a thief. What else?” Sarah answered. “Now get your hair combed, Hannah. Your father will be here soon.”

  Hannah obeyed, and Sarah turned back to frying mush. Sarah thought wistfully of the brown hens in the whitewashed chicken coop with the fenced-in yard surrounding it. Gathering the warm, brown eggs in the rubber-coated wire basket, washing them carefully, cracking them in the black cast iron skillet and watching the clear whites set to a white deliciousness surrounding the yellow yolk, like the sun in a pale patch of sky. She swallowed, her mouth watering for the taste of an egg. And freshly baked bread, yeast bread, white and so soft with the light brown buttery crust. She felt faint with hunger and longing then thought it may have only been the night’s emotional chaos taking its toll on her well-being.

  Fried cornmeal mush with a side of cooked navy beans; that was all they had. Hannah shook salt over her helping of beans, frowned as she scooped them into her mouth, and said she didn’t care if she never saw another bean as long as she lived and that she was going to shoot a bunch of rabbits and prairie hens. At least they’d have meat and gravy.

  Mose laughed outright and said she’d best help get the house finished. He looked worriedly at the changing color of the sky and asked Sarah if she needed a shelter before the rain came.

  “Well, what do you think? Should we just stay in the wagon?” Hannah pursed her lips as she listened to her parents. Always asking Dat, always following, going along with what he thought best. It drove her crazy. Didn’t Mam ever have a will of her own? Not a thought in her head, other than what Dat thought? Gee. She was never getting married if she was expected to give her husband everything, including the contents of her head.