by Linda Byler
Hannah had not yet gone to bed, too keyed up about their departure the following morning. In a way, she wished she would have gone with Ben just to make the evening go faster.
She had washed her hair, put it back with the bobby pins Doris Rocher had given her. The gold, shiny little clasps were not allowed according to the Ordnung. Bobby pins enabled the fast girls to adjust their hair in stylish waves, a fanciness not possible without them.
Hannah loved to experiment with bobby pins. She could pull her thick, dark hair up over her head and secure it with bobby pins, or push it forward to let it droop over her forehead like bangs. Mam would discourage this, asking her why she wasn’t content to wet her hair and roll it back along the side of her head the way the other girls did, which Hannah didn’t bother answering.
An object hit the window. Hail? She waited, held her breath, suddenly glad her grandfather and mother were asleep in the same house.
Ping. Ping. Two more in quick succession. Whatever could it be?
Going to the window, she pulled the retractable screen aside and pushed the wooden framed window farther up, then stuck her head out, her eyes searching the maple tree to the left and the barnyard with dark objects milling around, the driveway like a ribbon of silver in the moonlight. No dogs were barking and the cows didn’t seem disturbed. The night was warm and calm, a night like any other.
“Hannah!” A whisper from the base of the maple tree.
Vass in die velt? she thought wildly.
“Hannah! It’s me, Jerry.”
“What do you want?” she hissed, suddenly irritated by his daring.
“Come down. I need to talk to you. Please.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“No. I’ll wake my mother.”
“Then I’m coming up.”
“You can’t do that. You can’t come to my room. That would not be shicklich.”
“I will, if you don’t come down.”
Hannah snorted, replaced the screen. Well, whatever he wanted, she wasn’t going to put an apron on, or a covering. Her hair was still wet.
Oh, this was so aggravating. Why couldn’t he tell her what he wanted from the base of the maple tree? She hardly knew him.
She didn’t bother being quiet, simply went down the steps and through the kitchen, thinking that if she woke her mother, she’d tell her the truth. Jeremiah Riehl wanted to talk to her.
Jeremiah Riehl. What a name! Like a clown or a biblical prophet. She found him by the grape arbor, in the deep shadows behind the pump house. Her first thought was, coward. Bupp. Why not walk up to the porch and knock like normal people?
“What?” she asked, loudly.
“Shh. Someone will hear,” he hissed sharply.
“So what?”
“Your grandfather would chase me off.”
“Why would he? He doesn’t know you. It’s not like you were after me, or anything like that.”
In the dark, Jerry rolled his eyes to the night sky, exasperated. Off on the wrong foot, a rocky start for sure.
“How do you know I’m not?”
“What?”
“After you?”
The usual derisive snort. “You have an awful long way to go. I’m going home tomorrow morning.”
“I know.”
“Is that why you came to talk?”
Why did she always make him feel like a boy in the first grade? Probably he should turn and leave, simply walk away from this bluntly spoken, intimidating girl and never give her another thought.
Almost, he did just that. In fact, he turned his body as if to leave, thinking what a belligerent person she was, how different from the realm of other girls, the circle in which they moved, polite, attracted to him, giggling, some of them coquettish, flirtatious. This one couldn’t care one bit whether he left or didn’t.
Was that the attraction? The age-old human condition of wanting what we can’t have, and if we can have it, we don’t want it. All this crowded into his head, followed by indecision and not a small dose of irritation.
“I came to ask if I can have your address. I want to write to you, if I may. I thought perhaps you’d write back to me. I’d like to get to know you better.”
“Really? Why is that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because I find you interesting. Different.”
“Well, I’ll stop any chance of you courting me by saying that I don’t know if I want to be Amish. There’s this guy I know, Clay Jenkins, who wants me. Hod and Abby, his parents, saved us from starving more than once. He’s really nice. Polite. I just don’t know if I can do it to my mother. Leave, you know. Go English.”
Jerry felt as if she’d put a fist in his stomach, leaving him scrabbling for his breath. Despair crowded out his usual sense of optimism. Boldly, without feeling, she had told him the worst. The unimaginable. He had always thought any girl who was so cold, so bereft of parental love that she could deliver the ultimate blow of ungehorsamkeit to undeserving parents, was not worth a passing glance.
Time stood still. The night became black, the oxygen sucked into a vacuum, leaving him without air.
“Why don’t you say something?”
He had nothing to lose, so he spoke what was on his mind. “Hannah, I don’t know why I have these feelings for you. I just do. I want to know you better, in spite of your leaving to go to North Dakota. I know you’re not interested, but you could at least write to me every once in awhile and let me know how things are going.”
“Why would you have to know? Why would you care? It’s really none of your business how we’re doing.”
So it was that hopeless then. “I guess you’re right.”
“See, there are no other Amish out there. We’re the only ones. And we’re not worth very much. We won’t own that homestead for another eight and a half years. We’re getting a loan from my grandfather. We’re getting all our food from him, to be shipped out with the windmill. We’re just poorer than poor, taking an awful risk. And yet, it intrigues me to wonder if we’re going to make it with the winter coming on and the start of our herd. Oh, you have no idea, Jerry, the things that I think.”
Her voice was low, but filled with so much passion, every fiber of her being invested in the homestead in the West.
“See, if you’d see how we live, where the homestead is, how horribly poor and primitive, you would see me for what I am. You don’t want to know me. Why not become interested in one of these Lancaster girls who live on a farm, in line perhaps to own the farm someday? A girl worth something. I have to look out for my mother and the rest of my family.”
“You just said you might not stay Amish.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Would it help if I persuaded you to stay?”
“Well, there’s Clay.” That statement held a bit of doubt. All was not lost.
“All right, Hannah. Then I’ll have to let you go. And I will. I realize how young you are, and you need room to make your own choices. Someday, I hope to go to North Dakota to see where you live.”
“No. No. Don’t. Don’t ever do that.”
Puzzled, Jerry asked her why she said that.
“I don’t know.”
He stepped closer. The cloud that had obscured the silver of the full moon drifted away, bathing Hannah in the white light of moon glow, her dark hair with a sheen of diamonds, her eyes two pools of vulnerability.
He reached out to touch her hair. Instantly, she jerked away from his touch.
“I was just checking to see if it was moonlight on your hair, or diamonds.”
“Smooth talker,” Hannah said, but she was smiling, a small uplifting at the corners of her mouth.
Emboldened, he cupped her chin in his large, calloused hand.
“Hannah, if only you knew how beautiful you are, you would not set so much store in the state of your poverty. Don’t you know that none of that means a thing to me? I don’t care if you live in a cave, or a wigwam, if you
have money or if you don’t. That has nothing to do with …” Almost he said love, but caught himself just in time.
“With what?”
“With my interest in you.”
She didn’t answer.
Thinking he had said too much, he sighed, looked away across the darkened landscape, the black shadows behind buildings, the silver outline of the maple tree trunk.
“See, if I did say it was all right to exchange letters, you would lose interest. I am not a person that says entertaining things to young men the way the other girls do. I don’t have anything to say.”
“You talked to me that day in the rain.”
“Oh, that.” Suddenly she laughed, the deep laugh seldom heard.
“Do you have any idea how wet I was when I got home? I got sick, double pneumonia. The doctor wanted to put me in the hospital.”
“You are surely not serious?” he asked.
“Oh, I was sick.”
“See, I wanted to take you home that day.”
“I know.”
Then, the thought of her sickness, knowing the time of her leaving was in the morning, the permission to write to her unsecured, a great need to hold her and never let her go, keep her here with him, shook his frame.
He reached out to grasp her shoulders, surprised to find she did not immediately react and wriggle free with the usual sound of disdain.
Very softly, his hands slid down to her waist, imprisoning her arms. “Hannah, may I kiss you goodbye? Just as a token of remembrance?”
“No.” She pulled away from him.
There was nothing to do but release her, let her go to stand by herself in the moonlight, her back turned to him.
“Are you afraid you’ll remember me?” he asked gently.
“Of course not.”
“What is it then?”
“I just want to go now. I want to forget Lancaster County and everybody in it. Why would I want to remember you? I certainly don’t want to remember anyone else.”
“Well, all right, Hannah. If that’s what you want. May I ask you to write down your address, though? Could you please do that?”
“It takes weeks, sometimes longer, for a letter to arrive.”
“That’s all right.”
She disappeared into the kettle house. The dim orange glow of a kerosene lamp in the window. Her bent head. A hand pushing back the curtain of dark hair.
She reappeared, handing him a slip of paper. He gave her his own on a white envelope. An exchange of promises. A slip of hope.
“Thank you, Hannah.”
“Don’t thank me. I didn’t write to you yet.”
He laughed. “Will you?”
“Maybe. If I can think of something to say.”
They stood in the moonlight, each with their own thoughts, reluctant to leave, both of them now.
Hannah felt a flutter, a spark of interest, the moonlight carving his chiseled face, the dark hair that fell over his eyes, making him appear rakish, decidedly handsome. She’d go back to the homestead, sure, but what if this man actually meant what he said?
She wasn’t sure how both of them stepped forward at the same time, but she found herself in his arms. One hand went up to stroke her hair, then dropped immediately when he felt her pull away.
“Hannah,” he murmured. He could say that beautiful name a thousand times and never tire of it.
“May I kiss you now?” he whispered.
He smelled of sweet soap and shaving cream, toothpaste and night air, maple leaves and dew-wet grass. He was the only man that had not repelled her, even slightly. Before she could answer, she thought of Clay’s slightly acrid and not too clean shirtfront, the stubble of his moustache when he had kissed her.
Without her answer, taking her slight yielding as an answer, he bent his head and found her mouth with his sweet-smelling lips. He kissed her lightly, almost like a breath.
It was Hannah who drew him closer, who would not break away. She had never imagined anything such as this. She was unprepared for the sweetness of him that rocked her and took away all of the irritation and natural rebellion that rose in her at the slightest provocation.
Her arms crept up around his shoulders, her fingers in his dark hair. It was Jerry who broke away and released her. She stayed where she was, her arms finally falling to her sides, her head lowered, ashamed now.
“Hannah,” he said again. Nothing else fit into this night, this feeling.
Her hands found the edges of his black vest, clung to them. “I just …” She began to talk, but he stopped her with his fingers on her mouth.
“Don’t talk, Hannah.”
To his complete astonishment, she began to cry, softly at first, and then with childlike sobs and hiccups that threw him completely off guard. He gathered her straight back into his arms and kept her there, until the storm of weeping ceased. He produced a clean handkerchief that smelled like a different kind of soap.
“I am so sorry,” she whispered.
“Sorry for what?” he asked.
“For … for that.”
“That, if that’s what you mean, was the most perfect, the most … There are no words to describe it. Why would you be sorry?”
“I shouldn’t have allowed it. Now what am I going to do?” The old irritation welled up, her take-charge attitude firmly in place.
“You’ll go to North Dakota on the train. We’ll write.”
She couldn’t tell him that a letter from him was the last thing she wanted. She wanted to stay here with him. No, she didn’t. She had no plans of living in Lancaster County. But surely they wouldn’t always live apart. She had to be with him sometime in the future.
Confused, his leaving like nothing she could begin to explain, Hannah walked slowly back to the house, went upstairs and plunked herself into bed vowing to never, ever let Jerry Riehl back into her life. She couldn’t.
CHAPTER 21
How could Sarah fully describe the return trip with her father? There was no way to stave off the fear of recurring starvation, the hopeless feeling of those days with Mose. Over and over she reassured herself with her father’s presence, the freight car filled with food, the later arrival of the promised windmill.
She had forgotten the desolation of the plains, the sheer expanse of it. The flagrant emptiness was like an assault, a slam to the senses. Knowing her own unpreparedness, she prayed when they got off the train and on the journey to the homestead. She knew now, it would take much more strength than she had imagined.
It helped, though, watching the children’s excitement. Even Manny, who was normally subdued, seemed willing to step into their past life with renewed hope and exhilaration. Eli and Mary simply loved the freedom of the prairie, the quirky gophers and wealth of flying insects.
The view of the buildings remained unchanged, though they had turned darker and with more gray undertones, perhaps. But they remained erect, braced against the never ending wind like a proud Amish fortress.
Here was the log house with the rusty tin roof, the door barred against the elements, windows closed and shuttered. The grass had reclaimed the yard, billowing up against the house. The barn looked half buried in it, only the tops of the barnyard fence showing.
Sarah shuddered, held her arms tight to her waist, thinking, thinking. She would never be able to clear her mind of the picture of Mose, her heart, lying battered and bleeding by the barnyard fence.
She got off the buggy as if in a dream, walked straight toward the barn and collapsed by the fence, where she stayed until her tears of sorrow were complete.
Her father helped the children unload, paid the driver, took care of the necessary steps as he let Sarah grieve. The door to the house unlatched easily. The floor was littered with the debris of the nosy rodents that had entered.
They resumed their life on the plains as before, seamlessly entering into a routine of cooking, washing, and cleaning.
Hannah remained a mystery to Sarah, during the entire journey on the tr
ain and for weeks afterward. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought she had fallen in love, or was suffering from some other malady of the heart, like other girls did. But not Hannah.
Questions about her health revealed nothing. She was fine. Clipped words with her nose in the air, heavy eyelids covering any expression. Finally, Sarah decided it was the pneumonia, leaving her in a weakened condition, changing her fierce personality. Subdued, is what she was. Tamped down, the way you tamp down the good soil around a tomato plant when you put it in the earth.
Sarah stood by her garden, a withered brown patch of shriveled, dead plants. She shook her head as she scuffed a bare toe in the dust and dry grass.
Ah, but her father was here. The food would arrive in cardboard boxes. Safely. They would never go hungry, she assured herself over and over. The windmill would arrive and men to erect it and dig the well. She had to keep these thoughts, give herself over to the comfort of them, to keep the panic at bay, like a fire that keeps lurking wolves in the shadows of its heat and light. The time wasn’t long, the distance between hopelessness and starvation, to this new beginning.
Her father smiled about the drought, said he’d never known there was an area in all of America where it simply didn’t rain. “Our God is so much greater than we think,” he said, smiling.
Sarah took solace in the fact that he did not despair in the face of the blowing grass and the emptiness. He rather liked it, he said, his hat all but leaving his head whenever it felt like it. Sarah laughed and pinned a strip of elastic from the inside of the crown to the other side, to be worn below his chin, the way they kept small boys’ hats from blowing away. Rather than discard the troublesome hat, he stayed true to his teaching, the elastic cord keeping it firmly on his head.
Manny walked all the way to the Jenkinses to bring back the horses, asking Hod and the boys about the cows. Surprised to see their neighbors had already returned, they threw their hands in the air, delight creasing their weathered faces, standing there on the porch of the ranch house surrounded by their accumulation of earthly treasures, the stuff most people would label junk.