I had a couple of apples, brought for my lunch, and some meat. I gave him one of the apples, and he was thankful. He ate it carefully, slowly. It seemed that it hurt him to eat, perhaps his teeth. And it was a firm apple.
I asked him his name, and where he was from, and he told me.
Doug. From Philly. He was thirty-two, and his parents lived in Florida. He used to be a vice-president of a company that used to do things with investing. I don’t remember exactly.
His girlfriend was, he said, nearby, where they’d set their tent. Too tired from nights and days of walking. She must be hungry too, I said, so I offered him half of the meat I had brought, and he hesitated.
“She . . . she’s a veeg.” He paused, like his throat had closed around the word.
“A veeg?” I asked.
“She doesn’t . . . eat . . . um . . .” And he seemed to be struggling with something.
“Are you sure you don’t want it?” I asked.
He took the jerky, and thanked me.
He asked if there was work, if he could do anything else for food. I told him I did not have need, but that maybe others might. He seemed resigned. I rode on, and when I glanced back for a moment, he was just standing where we had spoken.
THE NEWS, WITH THE cold, grows worse. I heard it from Asa, as we sat out on his porch. The cities, they are emptying. There are too many people, too many hungry and without light for too long, and the efforts to rebuild are too slow. Though there are curfews and many soldiers, and some food coming in from the mostly lost harvest, there is still so much violence. And hunger.
From Philadelphia to the east, from Baltimore in the south, the people are coming.
Asa told me of roads filled with the starving and those who prey on the starving, leaving the cities where there was not enough, leaving and just walking. He told me also of deaths and gunfire, everywhere.
“I was talking to the Guard yesterday. They have set out barricades, Jacob,” Asa said. “It’s not just the sheriffs and the police. Not just the state Guard. But our neighbors. They want to turn them back, these people, these hungry people. It is like trying to stop the flow of a river, or to catch every falling leaf before it touches the ground.”
I thought of Sadie, then, and the leaf crumbling in her hand.
I asked if he had heard the shooting last night, and he said he had, but that he didn’t know what exactly had happened.
I told him about the man I passed on the road. Asa nodded.
“There were two families that came to our door yesterday, and we fed them what we could. They made their way past the roadblocks during the night, I think. So hungry. Hollow eyes. Overnight, a half-dozen or so more tents, out on the edge of the wheat field. They came to my door, begged for anything we could give them.
“And in the eastern and northern districts, I hear there are even more tents. They come by the hundreds. There are more, so many more. Maybe thousands. They are still coming, even though they are cold and there is danger, they are coming.”
“What can we do?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Jacob. I . . .”
He paused, his lips pursing, tight. “I know how to run a good farm. I know how to serve God, and how to submit to God’s will. I try to be a good husband. But I am not sure what we are meant to do. We are safe here, I know that.” He said it strangely, spitting it out.
Safe? I was surprised. What about Isaak? What about . . .
“We are safe. There is what is left of the police, though more and more go to protect their families, because there is no pay. The sheriff came by, after the shooting at your home. He has almost no one still with him. He has vehicles, but what use are they? Unless you are military, it is too hard to get fuel, too hard to get around, and the police fear for their own families when they are away. So there are the militias now. They will . . . protect us.” But he did not say it like a celebration. The words held no reassurance. His lips pursed tighter still, and his eyes dropped from mine. “Is that what we are meant to be, Jacob? Safe? Safe behind the guns of our neighbors?”
Again, he paused. “Jonas would have known what to do. What was it he said? About the sword?”
“It has no handle,” I replied.
Asa nodded, still with his eyes down. “I think it cuts us, even if it is not our hand that wields it.”
SADIE CAME INTO BED with us tonight. The work of the day was done, and Mike and his family had settled into the daadi haus for the evening.
The door opened, as I read and as Hannah knitted. It was like when she was a little girl, her small face around the side of the door.
“What’s the matter?” Hannah asked.
“I can’t sleep,” she said. “I feel . . .” and she stopped talking. Her eyes were bright, and she seemed nervous. But she was not upset in that way she used to be.
Hannah welcomed her over, and she curled up by her side, nestling in like a kitten. I remember, as a boy, wanting that comfort on the nights when the storms rose. My father made it clear that it was not right for a boy to do so, and that waking them would bring the belt.
I am glad our bed is different.
Sadie closed her eyes, and there were more gunshots, closer still than last night. Ten or fifteen, and then silence. Hannah looked at me, quiet. But Sadie did not stir.
Now, they both sleep.
And I sit here, and I watch them. So soft, so quiet.
Safe.
October 31
I did not have time to write yesterday.
It was a warmer day, much warmer, almost hot.
Jon came, riding, with the news of the bodies. His face was grim, and he did not seem to wish to linger. There were five of them, strung from the branches of an old oak near the Sorenson place. They had been shot in the night, then their bodies hung.
“They caught them stealing food,” Jon said. Some of the people from the road, trying to steal from a barn. It was full of the feed-corn that had been harvested for the cattle and the pigs with a harvester that’s been gotten running. One of the militias caught them, they thought. Then left the bodies out as a warning.
And the tents that had been out on the edge of the Schrocks’ wheat field had been smashed. All cut up, things tossed out all around. There was no sign of the families Asa had spoken of.
No one was talking about it. No one knew anything.
Jon told me that a couple of men were going to go cut down the bodies at noon. It was not good to have them there, where children and others could see them, and where the crows could peck at them. He said that he was going to go, too. He looked less young when he said that, less like the boy who rode so excited to share the news. As he spoke, I could see that his had become a man’s face.
He rode off, to tell others. I went in and told Hannah, and said I would go help bury these men. She said it was the right thing to do. I also talked to Mike about the farm work today, asked if he and his boys could tend to what needed tending. He said that he could.
So later that morning, I went.
Jon was there, and his father, and Joseph Fisher. Joseph had brought ladders. I had a shovel. There were several of the English around, too, five or six men I did not recognize. They were carrying long guns. There were no police.
The dead were on two of the middle branches, hung up by ropes, six or seven feet in the air. Four were men. One was not yet a man, though he was tall for his age.
Two had signs, handwritten on cardboard, tied around their necks, just as that first hung body. LOOTER, one of the signs said. THEIF, said another. It was not spelled correctly.
I did not know four of them.
But the one with the sign that said THEIF I knew. It was Doug. From Philly.
His head lolled, his eyes were open, his thin face distended. His feet were bare and blackening, the hiking boots gone.
“We should cut these bodies down,” I said.
“Aye,” said Joseph Fisher, and he pulled his stepladder from the wagon. I took it, and moved to be
gin with the man whose name I knew.
There was a shifting among the English men, and one stepped forward. “The bodies oughta stay up. Can’t have no thieves takin’ what little we got.” He shifted the rifle in his arms, but he did not raise it.
I felt my heart race, but I do not think I showed it.
I set the ladder up, and with the help of both Jons I began to take the body of Doug from Philly down. I cut away the rope with my knife, and took the weight as we eased him down. He was rigid, the hardness of death set in, but also light, much lighter than I would have thought for a man of his height. A bag of bones, with no meat. I had not known, under all of those clothes, that he was so thin. How hungry he must have been.
As we worked, Joseph was talking to the men, quietly. They were not happy, but seemed to hear when Joseph said that the bodies would be bad for the children to see.
We buried them, the boy and the three men and Doug from Philly, right there under the oak tree. The ground was softer than it had been before, more eager to take the bodies.
AGAIN, ALL ARE ASLEEP, but I am not. I need sleep, but though I read and I pray, I feel too awake. My mind paces the floor.
There are shots now and again, bursts here and there, far away, and I cannot sleep. I think of this man in his hunger, shot like a rabbit raiding a garden. For what, Lord? For stealing corn intended for pigs and for cattle, like the hungry prodigal helpless in a strange land.
I can hear his voice.
I read back to what I wrote earlier today, and I can hear his voice as I read the words. And I can see the sign, hung around his neck. Not even the right spelling, for this man who has been killed, like a sign above a cross that reads IMRI. I can see him, feel his weight, smell the early rot of him.
Just as I see the man fall, and hear the ragged breath of the boy, and taste the scent of his blood in the air. Those words, and the reflection on those words, like shouting in an empty grain silo. I read back, and back, through the days, and suddenly these pages feel like a terrible burden.
I feel angry at them, and my hand shakes again as I write. I feel an urge to tear out the pages. How silly, to be angry at a book. But I am.
I am angry at the memory it holds, like a band of steel around my chest. A band of words and thoughts, and my soul feels scattered.
And tomorrow is Sunday. I have to preach tomorrow, over at the Schrocks’.
It has begun to rain outside, hard and heavy, clattering against the window.
I try to think about what I might say, as I look at scripture, but my thoughts are as scattered as the rain.
O, Lord.
November 1
It is late again, and I am very tired.
We woke, and brought the food that had been prepared for the meal. Mike and Shauna and the boys woke, too, as they have been doing, and ate a simple meal with us before we left for worship. They promised to tend to some things when we were away.
The ride to the Schrocks’ was difficult. All night, it had rained, and a half-mile from their farm, the road had been washed out. Like a bite taken out of the side of an apple, the damage had begun during the big storm, and with every rain, it failed further, and now there was barely room to pass with a buggy. We slowed, and I had everyone get out, and I walked Nettie past it.
Worship was what it was. The old songs, just so. The voices raised, honest and simple. I spoke about the prodigal, about times of hardship in a strange land, about the need to accept what must come, just as the prodigal accepted whatever came to him.
All sat in silence, and their eyes watched me, and now and again there would be a murmur. There sat Hannah and Sadie and Jacob. There sat everyone I know, all listening and still but for the rustling of their movement and the occasional cough.
I talked and I talked, until the words felt like they were done, and then I stopped. It was not like writing, not like thinking about what words might be best. I felt a blur, like I was floating. The Lord will do with the words what He will. I am not sure I even remember what I said. Out the words tumbled, one after another, forgotten the moment their sound had left the air.
I wish all forgetting came as easily.
But then we sang, and we sang some more, the old songs from the Ausbund. “Live Peaceably, Said Christ the Lord,” we sang, and I felt the roots of that music set my soul more at rest.
After, there was food and there was visiting, but there was something else. Asa asked for the menfolk to gather, and to talk about what must happen next. Word had come to him, he said, from last night. Fifteen dead in Lancaster, at least, in an attack on an army supply convoy. Another dozen on the road from Philly, some refugees, and five men from Lititz who were on the barricade. To the south of Lancaster, a growing city of tents and makeshift shelters, with hundreds and hundreds, many armed. And the word from those around? The militias were meeting, planning. Growing more angry, and more anxious.
There was concern in other districts, especially those more reliant on businesses with English clients, where there were fewer farms and fewer gardens. Most districts had food enough, but many could see that even what they had would not carry through the winter.
And he spoke more, about what he was hearing from the colonel of the National Guard. About the conditions in the cities. What food was available. What fuel was available. How many millions must be fed, and how the numbers were not matching. There would be starvation and famine. It could not be avoided. It would be a terrible, violent winter.
In New Wilmington, the word came that the Plain folk had been overrun, their homes and barns looted. Three wagons bearing two families had arrived at a distant relative’s house in a northern district two nights ago, and bore the ill tidings. Many were dead, even though they had offered no resistance.
There were more stories, none of them good.
Asa talked about all of this simply, as if he were sharing details of a new collection for a family in need, or about a barn raising.
“We all knew this would be a time of hardship, and of trouble. We knew it would be hard as winter approached. But to lose a family, and to have blood spilled on our soil? To ‘protect us’? And it will happen again, more and more. To know that we cannot feed those who are hungry? What do we think is the Lord’s will in this?”
There was silence for a few moments.
Then Joseph spoke up. “You know what Jacob’s Sadie has been saying. My wife tells me, what the women are talking about.”
Eyes turned to me, with more interest than when I was trying to preach. I had even fewer words. What did I know?
Asa saw that I had no idea what they were talking about, and in mercy spoke up. “Liza has told me, too. About what your Sadie says will be next, when the women have gathered to talk. That we go west, to Ohio, or perhaps beyond, all together with all that we can carry. That we leave this behind. That we leave the safety of Pharaoh and his chariots, and go to where the land is empty and we do not need the blood of others shed so that we might live.”
There was murmuring, quietly, among those gathered.
“I have been thinking the same thing. As have others, in other settlements around this district.”
There was a faint smile on his face, so rare for Asa. “Not that your young one is telling us what to do. Just seeing what may be.”
Joseph looked at me, and asked me what I thought.
I said I was not sure, but that here in this place, the cost was too high. I said I did not know where we could go. I was silent, and thought, for a moment, of my father and my uncle, farther from the great cities. But I could not imagine turning to such a harsh place for solace. Those there would not be welcoming.
It was Asa who spoke up next, about his nephews in Ohio. And farther yet, of a new settlement in Nebraska. Much land. Good land, abandoned by the English, left to the great machines and robotic harvesters run by the big businesses.
Levi Stolfutz, Isaak’s brother, spoke up. He did not often speak, but he was a thoughtful man. “We could reach Ohio in
two weeks, which we could make with supplies at hand. And my uncle is there, too, Asa. The community is large. It would be hard, the journey. And they might not be ready. But if we do not leave now, winter will be upon us, and the time to act will have passed.”
There was much talking, and back and forth, as others worried about the dangers of the journey, and the even greater peril—to our souls—if we stayed. Then, there was quiet as we thought and prayed.
Asa said that we should pray some more with our families, but that all should gather at his farm again on Tuesday.
And now I am too tired to write more. Even the gunshots—one there, another, then another—even they cannot keep me awake any longer.
November 3
It feels very strange, to think that we may be leaving all of this. But when I spoke with Hannah and Sadie and Jacob together on Sunday on the ride back home, it seemed very clear that this was the will of God.
Then when I woke on Monday, it felt much less clear.
To leave this behind, this place and this good sturdy house? With just two weeks of food, traveling across a land torn by famine and war? What sort of father would do that to his children? Perhaps I should speak against it.
I remember, again, that feeling. Looking into the cold empty eyes, and the raised barrel of that gun. Knowing that I would die, in that moment. It was not that knowledge, I think, that tightens the band around my heart.
It was Hannah, and Sadie, and Jacob. It was that I did not want what was coming for them, though I know it was not humble. I did not want them to fear, so I felt fear for them. I see that, out there, casting us again in the face of guns and the starving, wandering, desperate English.
I know that fear should not rule me. I know I should be open, to what it is that God is asking us to be. That we should submit ourselves. I know this. But I still do not want harm to come to my Hannah, to good-hearted Jacob, to my strange, bright Sadie.
And should we leave? Should we flee? I think of the old story of the Dutch Anabaptist Dirk Willems, fleeing his captors across the frozen ice. When his jailer broke through the ice, and cried out in the frozen water, did he leave him behind? No. He returned to help him, even though it meant his death.
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