The Homestead

by Linda Byler

  “Thank you,” Sarah whispered.

  When she woke up in a stranger’s bedroom, her children piled around her in dark bumps under someone else’s quilts and pillows, she could not get her bearings or understand the dream that had awakened her. Someone was hitting her repeatedly until she woke covered in cold perspiration and a new knowledge of her fate.

  Mose and Sarah’s third daughter was born in the middle of a howling snowstorm out on the Hod Jenkins’s ranch, on the high prairie of North Dakota on March 31.

  They named her Abigail, for Abby, who had woken right up, got dressed, and taken matters in hand, Hod hovering by the woodstove and smoking so many cigarettes in the lean-to out back, he almost froze.

  She was a tiny thing, born five weeks early by Sarah’s calculations. Abby’s face grimaced and twisted as she fought her tears, her soft heart touched by this squalling infant, so skinny and helpless, born too soon, frightened and cold.

  “Ain’t no different ‘n them scrawny calves that comes early,” she chortled, digging out some small blankets. She ripped up some of the boys’ long underwear and slipped the soft fabric over the baby for a makeshift gown. She wrapped the red-faced, black-haired infant in two old baby blankets and put a cut-off sock on her head. She handed her back to Sarah after her bath, cooing and fussing, her eyes wet with tears. It didn’t matter how hard she tried to look stern, nothing worked. So she blew her nose, wiped her eyes, closed the bedroom door and made breakfast with Hannah’s help.

  They cooked a huge pot of oatmeal, fried cornmeal mush, made up a batch of biscuits, set the enormous blue coffee pot to boiling, fried some bacon, and made a pot of bacon gravy to ladle over the biscuits. She called the men, who tumbled into the kitchen in various stages of fright and embarrassment.

  Abby set everyone straight by telling them it was as right and natural as the calvin’. She brought out little Abby, as she proudly called her, to show her around. Hod’s face was alight with happiness, as proud of the little one as if she were his.

  “Little Abby,” he chortled. “Wal, Darlin’, you got yer daughter!” The three boys looked into the pile of quilts and asked if everyone started off that tiny or if it was only Amish babies. Clay said she didn’t look a whole lot different than a tomato, and Ken thought she should be kept in a box behind the stove, the way premature calves were.

  Mose was clearly humbled, reverent, going about his devotion to his wife and newborn daughter with a newfound zeal. How could he ever have doubted God’s leading? Clearly, he had given himself up to Mr. Jenkins’s urging. Here they all were, his wife delivered of the infant that had so troubled her.

  Again, he had won favor in God’s eyes by relinquishing his own will, and the rewards were amazing. And so he loved his wife with renewed emotion and opened his heart to his tiny daughter named Abigail. A rather fancy name, but it was found in the Bible so he knew it must be all right.

  The storm weakened in the late morning hours. By dinnertime the roaring of the wind, that scouring, whistling sound that buzzed at loose shingles and played with loose boards, had turned to harmless gusts. The sun shone on a white world with drifts packed against buildings and piled around fences and trees. As far as anyone could see, the snow lay in waves where the force of the gale had sculpted it. The sun’s light cast a blue and green aura on the beautiful prairie, washed clean of all the ominous shadows.

  Hod and Abby generously allowed them to stay, saying that Sarah could not travel and had no place to go if she could. The snow wouldn’t last long, they said.

  And it didn’t.

  By Sunday the grass was showing. Bare spots sprang up in the high places. The children wanted to play outside. They got on everyone’s nerves until Abby shooed them out. “Like a buncha spring heifers, that’s what they are,” she laughed.

  Sarah told Abby many times that this was all too much for her and they could go home. She would be fine in the wagon. Hannah was old enough to help with the family. But Abby would hear none of it. She shouldered all the extra work with alacrity, her curls bouncing on her head and her leathery skin creased into constant smiles.

  “This ain’t no bother, an’ you know it. At the end o’ March, we’re all house crazy, fit to be tied, I’m tellin’ ya. Here you all blew in, givin’ me someone else to think about other’n myself.”

  Hannah was unimpressed with the baby’s arrival, deeply ashamed of being so needy and pathetic to these English people. What must they be thinking? Being part of a poor, pathetic family of greenhorns was not the way Hannah wanted to live her life. The whole episode was intolerable, and then Mam went and had that baby. She told Manny those boys probably thought they were all from the poorhouse somewhere. She didn’t care that Dat made it sound as if he owned Lancaster County. Really? She knew very well what happened to the farm, the whiskey fiasco, everything. Here he was acting as if he had never done anything wrong in his entire life, and it simply wasn’t the truth.

  She became slavishly devoted to every move the three brothers made. How they shoveled snow and cleaned stalls. How they fed the livestock, saddled a horse, pulled on their boots, the way they wore their hats, their language, and above everything, the way they rode a horse as naturally and as easily as walking.

  Manny was awestruck as well, except he felt as if they shouldn’t imitate the way they talked. Dat had often warned against unnecessary words. Hannah shrugged her shoulders and said there was nothing wrong with it, not if their parents talked like that themselves. Maybe everyone talked like that out here in the West, away from ordinary civilization where people were packed together in cities and towns and worried a lot more what others thought of them.

  “I’m never going back, Manny. These people suit me just fine. If we weren’t so poor, I’d buy a saddle, a bridle, boots, and a hat, and I’d learn to ride and rope right along with them. You bet!”

  Hod and Mose decided that Sarah would stay at the Jenkins’ with the two youngest children, while Mose took the two oldest children in the wagon and drove Pete and Dan home through mud, defeated grass, and patches of snow. White geese flew far overhead, heading south, honking and whistling without ceasing. Hod said they were snow geese and would stop at Fall Lake. He’d have to take the whole family there sometime to see all the migrating birds.

  The homestead was still there, the mud and the half-finished house, the logs and the sprawling trees in the creek bottom, the cache of food and belongings beneath the canvas.

  Mose stood and surveyed the center of his domain and knew he could not finish the house without a loan. He had underestimated expenses for the months of travel, and now there was not enough for a decent roof, windows, and floors. There was not a person he knew for miles, except Hod, and he could not lower himself to ask him for a loan. He never spoke of finances, not even to his closest relatives, whom he thought would never know. But things got around.

  They would manage. He’d learn how to make his own shingles. They could do without windows and a floor until the first corn crop was sold. They’d make do. Sarah would be willing, he knew. A virtuous woman, her worth was far above rubies. The truth, for sure. He never had to navigate life’s path without her support. She would sweep her dirt floor, and if the roof leaked, she would set an agate dishpan under the leak and take it in stride.

  Yes. He took a deep breath, filling his chest with appreciation of the good, moist air. The sun had risen in all its splendor. This was a land rich with the promise of wealth, with loamy soil and verdant grass, fair weather, and God’s promises. He was a man blessed beyond measure.

  And so he took his two horses, his two oldest children, his axe and his wedge, and went whistling to the creek bottom to fell more trees for the building of his house on his homestead.

  CHAPTER 5

  When Hod saw the log walls going up, he squinted, ran a hand over Mose’s workmanship, and whistled softly. “It’s a right good house you got here,” he said.

  Mose smiled his thanks, his eyes reflecting his goodwill.
He nodded and said yes, he thought after those logs were chinked with mud, the house would outlive any of them.

  “You got shingles or sheet metal for the roof? I’ll tell you right now, the tin roof is the best in these here winds.”

  Mose stammered, his words didn’t make much sense, saying he’d likely make his own, or something Hod didn’t understand.

  “You can’t make yer own shingles. Not with these logs. Don’t work. That’s how come the folks here build sod houses.”

  Mose set his axe aside, pushed back his straw hat, and scratched his head. “Really?”

  “Yep. These here trees in the bottom? They’re too soft for shake shingles. Can’t be done. I know. I’ll take you to Dorchester, make a two day trip. We’ll bring home the windows, doors, an’ the roof.”

  Mose pondered Hod’s kind offer, wishing there was enough cash in the box and ashamed to tell Hod there wasn’t. He shoved his hands in his pockets, kicked at a clump of mud, then straightened, looked at Hod with the straightforward look that reminded him of a child, and asked if he could get credit at the lumberyard.

  “You need credit? You don’t have money to finish?”

  “No.”

  “How were you figgerin’?”

  “Well, I thought I’d make my own shingles and doors. We could do without windows until cold weather, then my first corn crop would be ready to sell, and I could pay for a floor and windows.”

  Hod said this wasn’t Pennsylvania; he better not count on a crop the first year. This was the West, and anything that can go wrong usually does.

  Nonplussed, Mose smiled. “Like what? What can go wrong?”

  “Wal, about a hunnert different things. This country ain’t fer the weak.”

  Quickly Mose defended himself. “Oh, I’m not weak.”

  “Obviously, yer not. These walls couldn’ta been easy.”

  “That’s right!” Mose was pleased to receive Hod’s praise and felt powerful, as if he could get through anything the Lord chose to test him with. Anything. Out here in this level, uncluttered land, free of other brethren, those bickering, complicated fellow men who robbed him of his peace, his self-confidence knew no bounds.

  “You know I have a good wife. She won’t complain about a dirt floor. I can’t go into debt. It would worry me.”

  Hod considered this, stuck both hands in the back pockets of his jeans, flapped his elbows a few times, pushed back his hat, squinted at the straight rafters and thought this man may well be able to figure something out on his own. He knew, too, the futility of the projected corn crop. And he thought of Sarah and her baby daughter.

  “I’ll tell you what, Mose. I got some windows stacked along the back of one of my sheds. We’ll paint and putty, replace the panes o’ glass. But you have to have a roof. Whyn’t I pay fer the tin, an’ soon’s you can, you pay me back? How’s that fer a pretty decent plan?”

  “Oh, I’ll pay you back. I certainly will,” Mose said gratefully.

  “Sure you will.” Hod stuck out a hand, and they shook with strength, an amiable light on Hod’s leathery red face and an eager, guileless one on Mose’s.

  So it was agreed by the pact of a good handshake. They made the trip to Dorchester with the two sturdy horses, leaving Sarah in Abby’s care, and Hannah and Manny to fend for themselves in the middle of the prairie’s expanse until their father’s return.

  Left to roam free, they explored their world on foot, took their father’s rifle and shot prairie hens and rabbits, blowing the heads clean off, delighting in their marksmanship.

  They skinned the animals, taught themselves to clean them and cut them apart into decent sized sections. They fried them in a cast iron pan over a bed of coals, in lard and cornmeal sprinkled lavishly with salt. They ate well, delighted in their freedom, slept late, and forgot to say their prayers until Manny reminded Hannah they hadn’t prayed once, not even before eating all that fried meat.

  Hannah eyed her brother, shrugged her wide, angular shoulders and said that praying before every meal they ate wasn’t so all-fired important as Dat let on. You could wait and pray at the end of the day, when you said your goodnight prayer, or the end of the week. Same thing, so long as God knew you were hungry and thankful. You could even wait until the end of the year, if you wanted to.

  Manny narrowed his eyes, pondered his sister’s words until he came to the conclusion that she had no fear of God. No Gottes furcht, and told her so. Mose and Sarah would have quaked in their shoes if they heard their daughter’s brazen answer. Manny showed no surprise, just stripped meat off a delicate prairie hen bone with his teeth and flung it over his shoulder into the deep black shadows behind him before shaking his head, wise-like.

  “You better watch your words, Hannah Detweiler. You’d put our father in his grave if he heard you say that.”

  “He didn’t hear me.”

  “Well, watch what you say. You’re disrespectful.”

  “You think? Oh, hush.”

  Hannah sat cross-legged, her elbows resting on her knees, her hands loose, perfectly imitating the Jenkins brothers when they sat watching one another rope a calf or train a horse. If she would have had a fence to sit on the top rail, boots on her feet to hook her heels over the lower rail, she would have done that too. Manny did the same, whether he was aware of it or not.

  The brothers were a wonder. They could do anything. Anything they tried, with loose-jointed skill, an unhurried grace, ambling through difficult tasks as naturally as if they’d been doing it all their lives.

  Which, Hannah supposed, they had.

  Her awe of them bordered on reverence. Their easy gait, the language they used, the way they stuffed a wad of pungent smelling dark brown tobacco into the side of their mouths and left it there, spitting a majestic stream of brown tobacco juice unbelievable distances.

  When Hannah compared her own tiresome existence with the lives of those boys, it didn’t seem fair being a girl, and an Amish one at that, with parents who set all these careful guidelines, recited those endless verses and Psalms from the German Bible, instilling the words of wisdom and the fear of God in their children. They were taught well. Behave, honor your father and mother, live righteously in love and truth, keep the Sabbath, fear going to Hell and missing Heaven by one wrong deed—it all hung over Hannah’s head like irritable black ravens she wished she could shoo away.

  What was the use of going through life when it was all so boring, so pale, like milk pudding without sugar or cinnamon? Take Mam. She’d live the remainder of her life walking behind Dat, her steps measured and careful, always obeying, always smiling into his kind eyes. They were always polite, always caring, always flat-out boring.

  She was pretty sure Manny thought so too, although he was far too good-natured, too subservient, to say so. She doubted if he would ever stray very far from his parents’ wishes, which were good and right.

  A twinge of apprehension settled over her shoulders, as if this self-examination came with a price, and the cost was frightening her. So be it. Dat had no business packing her out here to the middle of nowhere, with not one other Amish soul around. Didn’t he know in just over a year she’d be at the age when she’d begin her rumschpringa? Then what was expected of her? To have no company, no friends, and certainly no husband?

  Manny’s voice broke into her train of thought, derailing it precisely by his announcement that Clay asked him to help herd the cows to the corrals, as soon as they decided to do it.

  “What?”

  “You know, ride all over their land looking for cows and calves.”

  “Why not me?”

  “You’re a girl.”

  “What does that have to do with it?”

  “A lot, actually. You’re supposed to be in the house, helping Mam.”

  “She’s taken care of, being with Abby.”

  “She’s coming home, soon as this house gets done.”

  In answer, Hannah threw a few chunks of wood on the fire and flounced off to her bed
roll in a huff. Manny watched her jerky movements, her stiff gait and elaborate thumping into her bedroll, and grinned. Here was a job for Dat. Good, kindhearted Dat.

  The Jenkins men descended on the Detweiler house, wielding hammers and nails, bringing tin, windows, and doors. They cut and sawed logs for the floor, working long days before beginning their ride home, often through the dark. Hannah stayed with the men, keeping the coffeepot filled and heating the stews and soups Abby sent along.

  Hod showed them how to chink the logs with a mixture of cement and mud, which Hannah tackled with her usual aplomb, shouting at Manny if he took a break or watched the men too long.

  Mose was effusive in his appreciation, pumping the men’s hands, emotion making his eyes shine with a gleam close to tears, which made Hod uncomfortable, not being accustomed to flowery speeches. But he guessed Mose was thankful, so he shrugged his shoulders, went home, and told Abby he believed Mose was a little soft in the head.

  They brought Sarah home to the new house, pale and wan, but with a new eagerness to begin life in a house, living like civilized folk. It was small compared to her house in the East, but it smelled fresh and clean and had a good wood floor that had been sanded and oiled. That was plenty good enough for her, as Mose knew it would be.

  They had no furniture. There had not been room to bring anything except the sewing machine, the trunk, a few dishes, pots and pans, extra clothing, and bedding. There was no fireplace and no stove, so the cooking was done outside, the stones set up in a circle, closer to the house.

  The first thing Mose built was a sturdy table made of planks, which he sanded smooth. One of Abby’s tablecloths fit just perfect.

  The breezes carried moist warmth, and the columbines began to bloom in the low places. A variety of birds moved across the sky of whispering grace. The air smelled different and infused a hope that had been elusive for Sarah.

  Sometimes she stood at the doorway and watched Mose with the two horses and the plow, drawing a straight black line across the level prairie, tufts of grass sticking up like an old man’s eyebrows. She thought of all that grass decomposing beneath the western soil, making possibilities seem like a certainty, a reality.