by Linda Byler
Sarah’s face was pale, tired, and weary, despite a temporary bright spot of color on each cheek from the heat of the cook stove, where she was boiling tomato juice to make ketchup. Glass jars lined the countertop, scalded and sparkling clean. Mary was playing with Abby on the green marbled linoleum, pulling a small wooden duck by a string, the orange feet flapping rhythmically with each step. Abby laughed and waved her arms, then fell to one side, where she rolled, happily grabbing her bare feet. Mary giggled, then went to blow kisses on her little round belly.
Manny and Eli were helping the silo fillers, driving teams of horses while the men hoisted the heavy bundles of corn.
“Hannah, watch what you say.”
“Why? No one can hear me. They’re all just afraid Doddy is going to spend his money on us instead of stashing it away at the bank so that when he dies, they all get a nice check. Their inheritance. Greedy, greedy. Well, I have news for them. I’m not picking produce. I won’t break my back so they can have more inheritance.”
Sarah wiped the back of her hand across her forehead, then turned to sink onto a kitchen chair, hitching up her skirts only a bit, just enough to cool herself a little while remaining chaste.
“Hannah, you make me so tired. Why can’t you do this for us? I know my sisters are right.”
“What?” Hannah shrieked.
Sarah lifted confused eyes to her daughter’s angry ones. “We can’t be like a leech to my father’s money.”
“What about the church? Isn’t that what alms are for? To keep the widows and orphans? The poor? Well, we qualify under poor and certainly widowed, so there you go.”
“Hannah, listen to reason now. As long as we are able-bodied, we deserve to be employed, to make our own way. You can do this for us. Your father provided for us when he was alive, now it’s your turn.”
Without glancing at Hannah, she rose to her feet to stir the bubbling tomatoes on the hot stovetop.
“Well, Mam, if I have to be the breadwinner, then I’ll do it my way. I’ll make money all right, but it will not be here. I’m going back to the homestead, me and Manny.”
Sarah gasped, a hand went to her chest. “You can’t!”
“And why can’t I?”
“You just can’t, Hannah. We almost starved. The winter is coming.”
“So? We have firewood.”
“You know I don’t ever want to leave Lancaster, my family, my church. My heart is here with my loved ones.”
Hannah threw her argument like a knife. “What about Dat lying alone under the prairie sod? What about 320 acres of prime grassland to fatten cattle?”
Sarah moaned softly, began to weep, making small mewling sounds that failed to break Hannah’s resolve.
Why couldn’t her mother brace up and be her own person? Simpering through life depending on everyone else’s judgment rankled Hannah, spreading thistles into her own fiery ambition, irritating her to the point of anger. “I’ll work in the fields but Doddy Stoltzfus is not getting all my money. Some of it is mine. I’ll save it for my train ticket. Mine and Manny’s.”
Up came her mother’s face, followed by the sound of honking into her handkerchief. “Yours and Manny’s? What makes you think he’ll go with you? He’s not like you. If I ask him to stay, he’ll obey me.”
Hannah had no answer to that. Sarah looked at the clock, gasped, and sent Hannah down to the cellar for potatoes. The silo fillers would be hungry, twelve men who had not eaten since their early breakfast.
Hannah washed and peeled potatoes, cut them in chunks, and put them on to boil, adding a stick of wood to the cook stove. “It’s hot enough to fry an egg on the table,” she grumbled.
“Be quiet. Hurry up and quit complaining,” Sarah said roughly.
Hannah threw her an unapologetic look and fried the chunks of pork in lard, added salt and pepper, while her mother grated cabbage for pepper slaw. They boiled long yellow ears of corn, cooked navy beans that had been soaking all night and seasoned them with bacon and molasses, tomato juice and pepper. They sliced the red and succulent tomatoes in thick circles, and piled homemade bread on ironstone trays, with deep yellow churned butter and raspberry jam, in addition to applesauce and small green pickles.
For dessert there was chocolate cake, ground cherry pie, cornstarch pudding, and freshly sliced peaches sprinkled with sugar. Tall glasses of sweetened meadow tea acquired a sheen of moisture along the outside of each glass, the humidity soaking everything, man and beast alike.
Sarah wrinkled her nose as the men filed into the kettle house to wash up precisely on the dot of twelve o’clock. From noon until one o’clock, the men refueled themselves and their sweating horses.
“They stink!” Hannah hissed to her mother.
“Hush, they’ll hear you.”
She thought Ben and Elam’s foot odor was unbearable. The smell was like cleaning the cow stable on a rainy day. She grimaced as she watched the long hair and ratty beards being sloshed with soapy water and dried on one towel for all twelve of them, their thin, short-sleeved shirts sticking to their backs with perspiration and dust. Ruddy faced and muscular, these husky men were used to manual labor, heat, and humidity, eagerly facing whatever came their way.
Silo filling was an event, a neighborhood get-together. Each farmer had his own silo, his own cornfields, but the work went so much better with a group, many horses and mules, the camaraderie of their neighbors a boost to everyone. Showing off their strength and tirelessness, they encountered plenty of friendly jokes and ribbing, especially the one who was perhaps a bit over confident.
Hannah served them with a minimum amount of breathing, especially when she refilled glasses of tea or retrieved empty serving dishes. She had a good notion to pinch a clothespin on her nose, but she was sure her grandfather would be mortified. Didn’t these men ever bathe? They should be thrown into the watering trough.
Chewing with alacrity, talking around mouthfuls of mashed potatoes and gravy, wiping their hands on the tablecloth or, some of them, on their shirt fronts—it was the worst display of manners she’d ever seen.
Was this how the Jenkins men ate? She hadn’t had too many instances to remember. She knew Harry Rocher did not talk around his food or wipe his hands on the tablecloth. But he was English, and they were fancier in their eating habits. Likely she had been accustomed to this behavior her whole life long; now grown up and having seen some of the world, she had a new perspective on scenes like this. She had no plans of becoming anyone’s wife, ever, so her worry about cleanliness and table manners was unnecessary.
She wondered if the Jenkinses had received her letter. Would Abby be the only person to write back? Or would Clay send her a letter? And if he did, what would she make of it? There was an ocean of culture separating them. No matter how hard she tried to make it go away, to minimize its length and depth, it was there, inaccessible, uncrossable, without a deep and abiding pain that would cut into her mother’s already grief-battered heart. There was no easy way out.
She served the chocolate cake and pudding, followed by the ground cherry pie, amid yells of approval, yellow-toothed smiles, gulps of tea thrown down throats with heads tilted back, and calls for more coffee.
Ephraim Hershberger watched the daughter of Mose Detweiler and thought someone had their hands full with that one. Her expression was enough to pickle red beets, sour enough to curdle milk. She probably didn’t want to live under her grandfather’s direction, rebellion sticking out of her like porcupine quills. If she was his daughter, she’d be taught a thing or two.
To watch her response, he yelled out, “This coffee has grounds in it,” followed by a brown, tobacco juice grin.
Hannah didn’t skip a beat, pouring tea. Didn’t look at him, either. “Shut up and eat them!”
A howl of delight from Emanuel Yoder. An intense look from her grandfather. A whispered, “Hannah!” from the pale-faced widow, Sarah.
Washing dishes with fury, spraying water and soapsuds across the linoleu
m, Hannah silently took her mother’s admonishing, listening wearily as she quoted scripture about the virtues of a good woman.
“Hannah, you are choosing to be prickly. You are choosing to go through life irritated by the slightest thing, caused by your inability to give up. Such a flagrant display of disrespect, Hannah. It isn’t funny.”
“One of the men thought so.”
“Your grandfather didn’t. Your punishment will be to stay home from any of the youngie ihr rumschpringas this Sunday.”
“That’s not much of a punishment. I don’t want to be with the youngie.”
So that was the reason Jeremiah Riehl searched the barn floor most of the evening, the harmonicas’ lilting tones setting the dancers’ feet flying across the oak floor of the gigantic bay between two others filled with hay.
She wasn’t there. All evening, he kept up his hope, until at midnight he finally gave in and went in search of Ben Stoltzfus, who was about to leave, in a sour mood himself, having lost his main ally when Hannah refused to accompany him to the hoedown.
“Going home already?” was his way of greeting Ben.
“Yeah. It’s late.”
“Need help?”
“With what?”
“That horse.”
“I’m not driving him.”
“Oh.” Then, “where’s your niece this evening?”
“You mean Hannah? I couldn’t persuade her to come with me.”
Without sounding disappointed or interested, Jerry let it go, changing the subject to the horse he had for sale, if any of his brothers needed a sound driving horse. They exchanged pleasantries the way two well-brought-up young men would, before Jerry asked how come Hannah had never joined the group of young men and women before this.
“Her dad is Mose Detweiler. Was Mose Detweiler. He was killed.”
“Oh, that guy. Moved out West. Where was it? Montana?”
“No, North Dakota.”
“Yeah, I heard about that. Sort of different, wasn’t he?”
“Hannah’s like him. She doesn’t want to be here. Says she’s going back. They’re homesteaders, or were before he died. She’s determined to keep those 320 acres. She’ll break her mother, you watch, and her fifteen–year-old brother. She wants a windmill and a herd of cows. Dry as a desert out there. No other Amish. Got a mind of her own.”
Jerry let it go at that, grateful for that bit of information. His interest only increased. He vowed to make her acquaintance, somehow, before she left. He could do no more than wait and hope she’d show up.
He could never drive up to the Samuel Stoltzfus farm and ask to speak to her; the culture in which they lived completely forbade it. All matters of the heart were conducted in secret and never mentioned until long after a couple had actually begun seeing each other. It would be considered brash beyond reason to approach a young woman in the light of day, let alone on the home farmstead.
He figured he’d been patient before, he could be again. He turned and went back to the lively sounds of the Saturday night hoedown that suddenly appeared drab and colorless.
Hannah stayed true to her word and began picking tomatoes on Monday morning. A fine mist settled across the tomato field as she picked up the first wooden crate of the day, bent her back, and began to find the ripened fruit under the prickly stalks.
All morning Hannah’s back stayed bent as the late-summer sun burned off the mist and she continued to pick tomatoes. The backs of her legs ached, then her lower back. She stood up, stretched, rubbed her back, then bent over and threw more tomatoes in the crate. Teams of Belgian horses pulled flatbed wagons across the level fields and hauled the loaded crates to the cannery.
She became aware of a shadow crossing ahead of her, looking up to find the farm’s owner, Daniel Lantz, standing in front of her with his arms crossed. Tall and wiry, his beard like a stiff, brown brush, his straw hat creased and worn, he drew his eyebrows down across his small brown eyes and said, “I’ve been watching you.”
Hannah was hot and aching with fatigue, her mood at a genuine low, wishing she’d brought a jug of water. Her throat was so dry she could not have swallowed her saliva if there was any available.
She glared at him and thought, what a scarecrow.
“You’re throwing the tomatoes. You’ll bruise them. You need to place them in the crate, not throw them.”
“Is that right?”
Taken aback, Daniel opened his mouth and closed it again. “I was just saying, if the skin of the tomato breaks, it makes a real mess on the bed of the wagon. You just need to be more careful in the future.”
Hannah stood in the warmth of the sun and glared at him with so much dislike that he felt as if he was in the presence of danger. Turning on his heel, he left without a backward glance.
Hannah picked tomatoes for awhile longer, filled the last crate, and stalked out of the tomato patch with her head held high, her shoulders erect, and never returned.
She refused her mother’s pleas, Manny’s embarrassment and obedience, and said she’d do anything else to earn money, but she was not picking tomatoes for that picky stick man.
So Sarah had to go to her sister’s quilting and answer their questions truthfully, saying no, Hannah hadn’t yet found a job, leaving out any information where Daniel Lantz and his tomato picking was concerned. Often ashamed of Hannah’s belligerence—where did it come from?—she found it only increased here in Lancaster County among so many friends and relatives.
Rachel drew her eyebrows as if made from elastic. “But, Sarah, you need to take that girl in hand. She is one ungehorsam girl. You can tell by the way she walks, so stiff and unfriendly.”
Yes, yes, Sarah knew. She knew. But a mother’s feathers are often ruffled by being admonished about her own children, and Sarah was no exception.
Who was Rachel to speak? That little Samuel of hers had been expelled from school in eighth grade. Annie told her that, and here sat Rachel, all high and mighty, telling her where she was going wrong with Hannah.
But being the cowed, humble person she was, Sarah agreed with Rachel outwardly, nodded her head, and said times were hard during this Depression, but they would keep trying. She told them about Hannah working in Harry Rocher’s store in the town of Pine, thinking they would approve, but she was met with cold stars of disapproval for allowing Hannah to stay the night at an Englisher’s house.
Sarah bent her head over the quilt, wondering how she could possibly have missed this quarrelsome bunch of women. Their disapproval was like a kick in the stomach, taking all the life’s breath from her, leaving her bewildered and alone. How could any of them understand being poor to the point of desperation? Yes, times were hard, they knew, but not to the extent that Sarah did. They had no idea of the panic of scrabbling a tin scoop around in an almost empty sack of cornmeal, of children who went to bed hungry. Yes, hungry. To admit that even to herself brought back the cold fear of actually having to starve. Or crawl to the neighbors.
Perplexed, bewildered, Sarah stayed quiet, kept her peace. She could not keep thoughts of pity from crowding out the love she sought to keep. Yes, it was pity for herself, perhaps, but in the face of this cold-hearted onslaught of not understanding, the blatant unfairness was like a slap. Jesus said the poor would always be among us. Every fair-minded Christian, surely including her own sisters, recognized the poor and gave what was available.
“You don’t have much to say, Sarah.” This from Rachel and Emma, well fed, their crisp white coverings pulled over the oiled hair combed severely, so perfectly obeying the laws of the church, outwardly at least. Respected and well-liked, a beacon of shining examples by the way they dressed, they hid their refusal to accept Sarah’s plight well beneath their wide black capes.
Sarah merely shook her head, her mouth unsteady with the tears so close to the surface. Lydia eyed her sharply.
“Did we hurt your feelings about Hannah? Well, I do feel sorry for you, but you know we’re right. You do need to take her in h
and.”
“How?” Sarah burst out, so out of character, this meek and quiet sister defending herself with one harsh word. Down came the eyebrows, everyone’s attention grabbed effectively. “Tell me how,” Sarah said harshly.
“How did she get like that in the first place?” Emma wanted to know.
Sarah shook her head. She had always been like that. Vonn glaynem uf. Since she was small, she had been obstinate, her will unbreakable. Nothing fazed her; fear was not in her vocabulary. Had the move to the West only worsened the nature she had been given at birth?
“Nothing like hard work to break that stiff will,” Rachel began. “Uncle Jake’s Suvilla got in her head she wasn’t going to be gehorsam and he sent her to his brother Sam’s, as maud. They had the twelve children in fourteen years, milked twenty cows by hand, and grew strawberries. She was busy from four in the morning until nine at night. Really did the trick. She was glad to go home, glad to help her mother after a few years of Uncle Jake’s wife, Lomie.”
Rachel chuckled, comfortable from her viewpoint on the self-appointed tower on which she had hoisted herself by her own opinions.
“Isn’t Suvilla the one with mental problems?” Sarah asked, quietly.
“I guess she does have some affliction of the mind, but only because she won’t give up. The devil has plenty of room to stay as long as that will isn’t broken.”
Emma nodded, pulled a long thread through the quilt top, then dipped her head for another round of pushing her needle up and down to create tiny, even stitches on the nine patch Rachel had pieced from scraps.
“That’s what Hannah needs to do,” Lydia said, staring at Sarah.
Sarah laughed outright, a sound that came from her throat without intention. “She wouldn’t go. You don’t realize, you cannot make Hannah do anything.”
“Oh, really?” Rachel’s voice dripped with disbelief and something close to mockery. “That sounds more like an excuse than anything else. Mothers that do that—stand by their children when they know full well they are in the wrong—will only suffer sorrow and heartache down the road.”