When the English Fall

by David Williams

  He looked out the window. “People know that there can’t be any looting, but they still do it. Like some people went into the Walmart over near Elverson, busted in the doors with a truck. They weren’t even taking food. They were taking big-screen TVs. Who even needs big-screen TVs now? And even when they know looting is a crime, and with emergency powers and martial law in place, they know what that means. Why would you even do something so stupid?”

  Because it seemed like he wanted to talk about something else, I asked him where his parents were, and he told me that they’d moved to California a couple of years back, buying up a cheap house that had been foreclosed on.

  “I don’t even begin to know how I’d talk to them. Nobody’s Skyping, right? And none of the phones work, right? Not cells, not landlines, and everything’s a mess. Just gotta pray, I guess.”

  I asked how old they were.

  “My dad’s, what, sixty-two now. And his health isn’t that great. Problem with his heart, you know, and he takes all of these pills. I don’t know what’s even happening with that.”

  We talked, then, for a while, about our dads, as the trucks rumbled slowly southward.

  As we got closer to town, coming down Oregon Pike, we began passing neighborhoods, developments out near the edges of Lancaster. I’d been there before, many times before. For the most part, it looked as it always looked.

  But in one development, a row of houses were blackened and burned. And I noticed that there were piles of trash out by the fronts of some of the houses, garbage piling up, with no one to collect it. The piles were not large, but the neat lines of houses had not been marked by them before. I wondered what would become of them.

  And when I had come through the neighborhoods before, driven to market by Mike, there were never any people around. It was the funniest thing, about the English, about how all of their neighborhoods are always so nice and filled with things, and yet they seem to have no people in them at all.

  What I noticed, as we drove through, was that today the neighborhood was filled with people. Kids, some milling around, most playing. Adults sitting or talking in circles, or busying themselves at the height of the day, as the warm sun drove out some of the chill.

  There were no moving cars, but there were people on bicycles, some of which were pulling carts full of things. On some corners, there were parked military vehicles.

  As we passed, all eyes came up. We were watched as we went, heads turning, mouths moving to share some thought or another.

  We arrived at the Market, and there were plenty of people waiting, and many soldiers. Other trucks were arriving, most of them military, but some of them civilian.

  The distribution was orderly, despite my worries. People seemed to be getting along and helping each other. There was a feeling of purpose in the air, but there was talking and even the occasional laugh.

  It was a funny thing, because in my mind I had assumed it would be something else. Somewhere, in the last week, I had thought it would be a teeming throng, like the panicked mob in Pittsburgh that Jorge had told me about.

  But it was not that. The city was intent. It was focused. People were doing what they needed to do, and yes, there were many soldiers around. But it felt neighborly. It felt like people were pulling together, like they knew each other. The feeling was one of common purpose, like when we gathered at the Fisher house to help rebuild, or when we work together for the harvest. That whispering fear that it would be a madhouse was just a lie.

  As I reflect back on the day, I wonder how much of that came from my own fears of the English. Yes, I would not choose their life. But so much of my growing up was in a place where they were not viewed as neighbors, but as dark and terrible and spiritually dangerous. In my heart and through my faith, I do not feel this to be true, but it is difficult to entirely lose that fear once it is planted.

  October 8

  These have been two difficult days.

  Late on Wednesday morning, I rode over to the Fisher place to talk with Joseph. I had heard in the morning that they had found Tom Johanson’s body, deep in his unharvested cornfield.

  Joseph was still working the soil for one of their fall gardens when I arrived, expanding it with the plow. I walked by his side as he drove his team, and he talked.

  “It was a little hard getting the word out for a search party,” Joseph said, over the loud clink and clatter of the harness. “But we did, sending out riders and bikers to see what folk were willing to come out. I think that I was hoping all along that our prayers would be answered, and that we’d just find Tom sitting on his porch, apologetic and promising never to do it again.” It had been that way, so many times.

  But not this time.

  “A couple of men brought their hunting dogs, with the idea that we could use them to help track, but as it turned out, it was hardly necessary. He was at the far corner of his field, furthest from my house, and the crows had found him first. Once we saw them, all circling there, we knew exactly what we would find. It’s like the scripture says: ‘Where the vultures gather.’ ”

  I asked if he took his own life.

  “It was that way,” said Joseph. “He had taken a round to the head. It was not easy to see. And yes, he had been drinking, and yes, drunkenness and guns are a bad mix. But I do not think it could have been an accident like that with a rifle. So, yes, he killed himself. Perhaps it would be better to say that his drunkenness took his life. He was like two different people. Quiet and thoughtful and with a strong wit, when he was sober. But he was not sober often, especially these last few years. That other Tom took them both.”

  And his wife? How is she?

  He shook his head. “I told Julia,” said Joseph. “Lord help me, I had wondered if it would fall to me. Tom had fewer and fewer friends over these last few years. He’d always been private, but as things got harder and harder on the farm, he had turned away from everyone. I think he spent all of his time on his computer, talking with other people who were as angry as he was. But they were not friends, not in any way that mattered. They had no family nearby. And he and Julia had stopped going to church after that fight they had with another family there.

  “So yes, I told her. Went over to the Turner farm with a deputy who’d come out to help coordinate the search. She and Bess Turner were always close, or so Rachel tells me. It was hard, but who else could do it? She did not take it well.”

  I said that it didn’t surprise me. It was such a hard thing.

  “She,” Joseph began, and then he coughed, as if his throat had closed a little bit. He started again. “She could not stop screaming and crying. She had trouble standing. Bess had to take her upstairs, and she was still crying out when I left. It was as if she could not hear anyone anymore. I worried that it might be that way, but it was still hard to see. The children are still little, and it is so . . . hard for them to understand such things. I . . .”

  And he stopped talking for a while, as the team pulled and the plow bit deep, and the rich smell of turned earth filled the air.

  I did not press him.

  For a minute, and two, we walked in silence, only the sounds of horses and earth filling the air.

  Then he told me that they had buried Tom on his property, right out by the property line. There seemed nothing else to do.

  “I said a couple of prayers over him,” Joseph said. “I do not think he would have minded.”

  October 9

  Thursday in the morning, Jon came riding by, with some more news. It was not good. The body of a man had been found by the roadside, near a field by Clay Road. He had been shot, many times.

  No one knew who he was, and he did not seem to have any identification.

  A sign had been hung around his neck. It said: LOOTER.

  The men who found him buried him, even before the sheriff got there.

  Before he rode off, Jon told me that no one around there remembered hearing shots. Or if they did, they were not saying.

  Two men de
ad in two days. It is a difficult thing, and feels like an ill wind.

  October 10

  I woke early today, before the sun, before the cockcrow. The moon was still nearly full, and low in the sky, and the faint light cast our room in a gentle blue. Like the air in the house, it felt cool and sharp, but the bed was warm. I lay there, in the warmth of our bed, and my mind played out against the events of the last two days.

  An ill wind.

  I rolled to my right, to look at Hannah. I will do that sometimes, when I wake in the night and she is sleeping. I’ll just lie there in the silence, and in the darkness, and look at the shadow softly breathing next to me.

  Her face was lit by the moon, cool and ghostly.

  Her eyes were open.

  “Good morning, Jay,” she whispered. “You can’t sleep?” Only she calls me Jay. Only she ever. It isn’t really my name, but I have never minded.

  I told her that I could not.

  “I can’t either. I was dreaming about Tom and that man. It wasn’t a good dream, so I woke up.” Her voice was even and matter-of-fact, but in the half-light I could see that she was distressed.

  “It has been hard,” I said. “To have death moving so close, so near to us.”

  “And especially with Tom. I know they had struggled, but . . .” She paused. “I just don’t know what it would be to lose you. Not just because you’d died, but because you’d died inside even before that. I just don’t know how such a thing would feel.”

  I told her that I wasn’t planning on dying.

  She curled in closer, and closed her eyes, and nestled on my shoulder.

  “I am so glad that God brought you to me, Jacob,” she whispered.

  We lay there for a while, and she fell asleep again. I did not. I lay there as she slept, until the moon’s faint light gave way to the coming day.

  BILL SMITH CAME BY again later in the morning, riding his bicycle. This time, he came to thank me for the salts and the spices.

  On the back of the bicycle he had fastened a couple of apple pies, and a bag of apples from his orchard. Wrapped in bloody wax paper were also a couple of good cuts of venison from a deer he’d shot just the day before. It was a generous trade for the spices, but this was no surprise. Bill was a generous man.

  The apple harvest is still in full swing here, and I asked him how it was going. None of his machines were working, he replied, but the harvest was now proceeding by hand.

  He said that some people from Lititz had come in a pickup, a bunch of people, all piled into the back of an old Ford that they had been able to get running. They’d helped much of the day with the harvest, picking and filling baskets. For their work? He’d fed them, then paid them in big bags of apples, and in slabs of bacon and pork from four pigs he’d slaughtered the day before.

  “They still have food coming into Lititz,” he said. “But those MREs are just god-awful stuff, and canned fruit gets real old, and there’s only so much baked beans you can eat.” He grinned. “Hooo, is that true.”

  I asked him if any of the other farmers around were doing the same thing, and he said that they were starting to get more and more folk coming out from the towns looking for work in the harvest in exchange for food.

  “We’ve just got so much to do, and there’s so many who don’t have anything to do. It’s still hard, though, getting the word out about what we need. Some of the stores are pitching up bulletin boards, though, where we can put up what hands we need and when. And if you go by ’em, you get men standing ’round and waiting for work. Guess that was the way it used to be, eh? Everyone working together, sharing stuff.”

  He grinned widely. “But y’all know that better’n pretty much anyone.”

  We talked a little bit about the man they’d found out by the roadside. Bill thought there were folks around here who might have done it, but nobody was saying much of anything.

  “Sometimes everybody helps everybody else, and then sometimes they think they’re helping. Hate to see a man killed like a dog, but these are strange times.”

  I said that I couldn’t help but agree.

  After I asked, he told me that there was more news about the state of emergency. They had closed more of the interstates, and there was talk of a curfew.

  “It ain’t like nobody can do much moving around anyway, but it feels weird not to be able to at all. Folks don’t like being told what they can and cain’t do, ’specially when it comes to where you can go. All the gas stations are dry anyway, and what gas folks do have they ain’t sellin’. Guess that doesn’t mess with y’all at all, though.”

  I said that it did, perhaps more than he might think. If it hurts a neighbor, it messes with us.

  “Yeah, I’d figure you’d think that way.”

  IN THE AFTERNOON, I did as Joseph had done. We had many seeds left for planting . . . broccoli and lettuce, cabbage and cauliflower . . . and though our usual garden was plenty for us, I expanded the plots. Pearl was her usual patient, solid self as we turned the soil, and Nettie remained back in the stable.

  It is later than I would typically plant, but even if the seeds do not take, it feels like we will need to cultivate more in the coming year. In the house, Hannah and Sadie worked together, preparing the pies that we would bring to the worship tomorrow.

  After a while, Hannah sent Sadie out to bring in the clothes from the line, which they’d handwashed instead of taking over to the Stolfutzes. It worked almost as well, and it took less time than loading up and riding.

  “It looks to rain tomorrow, Dadi!” she shouted out to me. “It’s good you’re getting the soil turned today!”

  And I suppose it is good. A little rain will help set in the seeds.

  COME SUNDOWN, IT WAS not as cold as it had felt in the morning, a breeze had come up. The wind was blowing from the south, gusting and pulling at my clothes, snatching at my hat. It caught leaves from the trees, and here and there, they would dance through the air. Little shadows, flitting across the rose-colored sky.

  It made a very lovely sunset, as the clouds moved swiftly across the sun. Under the front porch, the rain-stick is drooping down. It felt like a storm.

  October 11

  When I woke, the wind was stronger still, and the temperature was very noticeably warmer. The clouds were heavier, and the rain came in gusts and squalls. The morning’s chores were wet and cold, and the animals seemed anxious as we fed them.

  Worship would be at the Beilers’ today, and though we usually would not have worship on this Sunday, everyone last week had felt that we should gather for prayer and preaching and singing. It felt even more vital for us to be together in such a way, and Isaak had agreed that he would preach, even though it was not his turn.

  That would be good to hear, because Isaak always had a way of finding the best grace in any sermon. Everyone had agreed last week that it would be a good thing.

  But last week, we did not know that today would be a squalling mess of rain. It makes it feel more important, somehow, when we make the effort to gather together even though the weather is rough. I was also remembering that time two years ago, when the snows came fast and thick, and Nettie had struggled mightily. It had not been easy to get home that day.

  I don’t think Nettie feels quite as positively about worship when the weather is bad. Certainly not as I brought her out from the barn.

  Nettie seemed skittish as I hooked her to the buggy, much more so than usual. We piled in as quickly as we could, and Jacob sat up front with me as Hannah and Sadie nestled in the back. Just a few moments, we were in the rain before we’d secured the side curtains, but the rain fell in heavy sheets. I wore my long coat, but it was not quite enough to keep the wet out. Warmer though it was, the wind still bore a chill, and I felt it through my clothes.

  We rolled down the drive, and onto the road, and began making our way to the Beilers’ for the worship. The rain lashed against the buggy, beating angrily against the sides. With each gust, and each blast of rain, the b
uggy rocked and creaked. “Tall like a sail,” shouted Jacob, and he was right.

  Water sprayed in around the edges of the rain curtains, and Hannah and Sadie moved more toward the center of the buggy.

  There was a flash of lightning, close by, and the thunder came in a great concussion right afterward. Nettie started, just a little, and I reined her back. We all started, in fact, just a little.

  It was clear that this was a strong storm, and the further we got out into it, the more I wondered at the wisdom of continuing. It was a long ride.

  When we got there, Hannah and Sadie ran inside, carefully sheltering the pies that they had baked. Isaak, who was waiting in the drive, shouted out to tell us to park over by their bigger barn and lead Nettie inside. Normally, we’d have put her in the field, but as the wind snarled and howled and the rain beat down, that did not seem kind.

  “Too rough to leave the horses outside! Quite a storm!” We got her unhitched, and inside, and then made our way to the smaller barn, the place we gathered to worship whenever we were over at the Beilers’.

  Some were there ahead of us, but most had not arrived yet. Others came eventually, all soaked to the skin, and we settled in to listen to the first of the sermons.

  Young Bill Stolfutz was offering it, and he’d been selected to preach only just last year. He tried, he did, every time, and we’d sit and listen because even in the simplest effort, you can hear God speaking. Usually.

  But not today. The rain hammered and rattled and shook the metal roof of the barn, and the wind battered the walls of the barn, and our ears were full of the sound of it. Bill has never been the loudest man, and it is one of the things I appreciate about him, but his voice just could not carry over the roar.

  Still, he did what was his duty, and preached, and we could tell this because his mouth was moving.

  Then we sang, and sang some more, and then there were prayers. We sang with more vigor, so as to be heard, and our voices seemed to mingle with the thunder and the drumming of the rain.