by Linda Byler
Hester’s hair was pulled back so tightly, her eyes were raised up at the corners, giving her a slightly foreign look. Her dress was dyed a light purple, her brown legs and bare feet emerging from beneath the hem.
Hans knocked on the door of the school, and Theodore opened it from inside, the latch wobbling to one side after he let go of the knob.
To Hans, it seemed incongruous that there was a knob on that wooden door, broken and muddied as it was by children’s boots. But he said nothing about it or the broken windows and stick siding that was warping away from the wall behind it. Instead, he said, “Theodore? I am Hans Zug.”
Theodore’s bushy black eyebrows shot straight up, his Adams apple rose high and immediately plunged much lower. “How do you do, Mister Zug?” he asked in a high-pitched voice that scared both boys. But Hester was so mesmerized by the bushy eyebrows, she didn’t notice the voice.
Hans said he was fine and hoped Theodore was the same. These were his three children, Hester, Noah, and Isaac.
Whereupon, Theodore Crane’s eyebrows rose and fell, his Adam’s apple bobbed from under his chin to below his tightly buttoned shirt collar, and he squeaked like a mole. “Oy! Oy!”
He was looking at Hester. “This one is not yours.”
“Yes,” said Hans. “She is ours.”
“But not … um, you know, your own.”
“Yes, she is our own.”
Up shot the eyebrows. He hooked a forefinger across his very prominent nose, and a wise rumbling came from somewhere near the vicinity of his throat. The subject was never spoken of again, not once, although Theodore Crane surmised plenty, thought more, but kept his mouth closed.
He tipped his rail-thin body from his heels to his toes and back again, still rumbling in his throat, his narrow, green eyes still surveying Hester. A full-blooded Lenape if he ever saw one.
“Well, do come inside. Please do.” He stepped aside and swung both hands to usher them in, still rumbling and clicking his heels.
Hans was appalled at the dark, odorous interior of the classroom. The floorboards were rotting, the old cast iron stove rusty, the desks merely hard, splintering, wooden benches. Field mice scampered across the filthy, leaf-strewn floor. The teacher’s desk was more like a box pegged together with wooden pins than a desk.
“How many students are enrolled?”
“This year, if your three come, we’ll have twenty-nine.”
“That many?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Don’t you think the school needs a few repairs?”
“Well, yes, but the parents think not. There’s no money.”
“Would you accept help if we came?”
“We?”
“The Amish.”
“If you promise not to convert me. I don’t hold with your principles.”
Hans Zug found that humorous. It was not the Amish way to try and persuade other people to conform to their ways. They believed they had enough to do, staying on the straight and narrow themselves.
Hans told Theodore this and made a true friend, right there in the middle of the dilapidated schoolhouse.
So a work bee was called for the following Thursday. Theodore Crane had never seen anything like it. The wagonloads of people with little heads sticking out all over was downright heartening. He didn’t know these Pennsylvania woods held so many people.
After the first five minutes, he gave up his impeccable manners. He had his hand shaken so hard his teeth rattled, while clammy palms slapped his thin shoulders with the force of a sledgehammer, until he sincerely hoped he’d just met the last hearty Amish man.
The women started a roaring fire, roasted sausages, and then served them with thick slices of bread. One woman brought a wooden crate lined with a tablecloth that was stained with grease and asked him if wanted a fatcake.
He didn’t know what a fatcake was, so he said, Yes, he would try one. It was round with a hole in the middle, lighter than a small cake, and coated on the outside with a sort of sugary glaze. He found it delicious and told a woman named Elizabeth, who very much resembled a fatcake herself. He would not like to pay for all the fabric it would take to make a dress for her, but then, he wouldn’t have to by the looks of things. They all had husbands.
They whitewashed the walls, scoured the floor, fixed the siding, built long tables in front of every bench, added four new windows, and then sanded and rubbed the stove with lard to keep it from rusting.
Theodore ate a roasted sausage and two fatcakes, marveling at these women’s ability to cook, or however they made those fatcakes. He met many of the children who would be coming to his school. At one point he stood and called for everyone’s attention.
“I want to say thank you for all you have done here tonight. I hope we will have a successful school year. I look forward to working with you.” His eyebrows rose and fell at an alarming rate but never simultaneously. He tipped forward and backward so fast, everyone seemed ready to spring to his assistance if he should happen to tip over.
Lissie Hershberger was quite taken with him, telling the other women he was sodda schnuck (sort of cute). Much clucking and eye-rolling followed that remark, but Lissie was quite unabashed. She went over to Theodore and struck up a most interesting conversation, telling him all about little Hester, found by the spring.
Theodore nodded and nodded, rocked on his heels, and stroked his chin with long, thin fingers. “Yes, yes. She was found. Yes, I agree. Hm. Yes, obviously, someone wanted Kate Zug to take the baby. Yes … I would say an unspoken pact was made, wouldn’t you? Oh, yes. And she’s such a winsome child.”
Hester sat on her haunches, her purple skirt tucked modestly around her legs, cooking a sausage and staring at the fire. The night was warm and humid, too hot to be sitting so close to the fire, but she was hungry. Noah had wanted her last sausage.
She didn’t like this school. She didn’t like all these people, but she didn’t know what to do about it. Her father was making them go to school, so she was reasonably sure she’d have to obey. She didn’t trust that tipping schoolmaster with the dipping eyebrows. She wanted to tell him to hold still, but she guessed she’d better get used to him.
Hester sighed, her eyes flat and expressionless. Why did she have to learn about books? It was worthless, as far as she could tell. She could ride any horse, muck out the stables better than Noah, weed the garden, do the washing.
She could imitate every bird call, knew every bird’s own distinctive call, could tell a frog species just by listening—a high trill, a low garrump, a fast whirring sound. She could milk a cow and catch chickens, easily. Even roosters. She was able to change Barbara’s diaper and feed Daniel. What else did she need to know? And why?
Far away across the ridge, she heard the yipping of a coyote, the thin, high wail of a distant wolf. The moon was sliced thin, the new moon, when the night was very dark and the whip-poor-wills called best. When the moon was full, their cry was a bit furtive, afraid. Those birds were afraid of their own shadow, silly things. The high call of an elk, bugling frantically, turned the men’s heads.
“Harrich mol sell” (Listen to that)! shouted Aaron Speicher.
Whoops of elation followed, smiles widened, beards wagged as the men’s adrenaline flowed, reminiscing, recounting tales of the hunt for these magnificent creatures.
Bats dove and swerved through the trees. A night hawk set up its plaintive screech.
“Screech owl.”
“No, no. Not a screech owl!” Noah shouted.
Hester grinned in the shadows, her eyes expressionless. Good boy. Not a screech owl.
“Is, too!”
“Nope.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No. I said no. It’s a night hawk.”
“Here. Here.” Hans hurried over, lifted Noah by one arm, and conveyed him to the wagon, reminding him not to argue. It was not polite, especially for children, who should be seen and not heard, especially in a crowd.
Theodore Cr
ane viewed this scene with hopeful eyes.
Sure enough, the last week in September found Hester, Noah, and Isaac on their way to school, their bare brown feet moving swiftly along the path that led to the newly renovated classroom.
Hester carried a round wooden pail containing the bread and butter for their lunch. The boys were dressed in linen shirts, long-sleeved, and homespun knee breeches, also Sunday ones, kept for church services but assigned for school use now.
Hester’s hair shone in the sun’s rays that pushed between the brilliant foliage, the large bun twisted on to the back of her head and secured with hairpins only suggesting the amount of straight black hair on her head.
Her usual good humor was not in evidence, her brows lowered, her eyes expressionless, her mouth a straight, firm slash in her dark face. Her brothers had to scramble to keep up with her. They paced off the five miles in quick footsteps without any words.
Hester did not want to go. Kate had done something highly unusual that morning, chastising Hester’s disobedience with a firm slap on the side of her head when she refused to allow the comb to rake out the snarls as she did her hair for school.
It was the first in a long time that Hester had displayed any sort of self-will or rebellion. An alarm was set off in Kate by the violent jerk of Hester’s head, the flat eyes that hummed with silent defiance. Kate stood her ground, however, admonishing Hester with strong words and sending her out the door with motherly warnings, words of wisdom, and no pity. These things had to be nipped in the bud.
Theodore Crane presided over his twenty-nine students with a good balance of authority and friendship. His eyebrows raised and lowered busily according to his words.
Enrolling was simple. Each child stood, stated his or her name, birth date, and age, then sat down, either blushing, blinking, or showing some sign of discomfort.
When it was Hester’s turn, she stood, announced her name, “Hester Zug,” her age, “ten,” and then stopped, still as a stone, her eyes boring into the opposite wall, black with defeat.
She had no birthday. Kate had never spoken of it.
The silence stretched like a rubber band, taut, dangerous.
Theodore Crane waited, then swallowed. What to do?
Instantly, he thought of Lissie Hershberger’s kind words. This girl had no idea at ten years old? He was angry at Hans and Kate suddenly. Why hadn’t they provided this girl with a birth date?
What he said, was, “That will do.” His Adam’s apple rose and fell as he swallowed again, moved on to the next pupil, and vowed to have a word with Hans Zug.
But it was too late. The damage had been done. The two sixteen-year-olds, Joash and Obadiah, had found a delightful new plaything, the angry Indian girl with no birthday. They teased her without mercy, conjuring up myths and old wives’ tales of how she appeared at Hans Zug’s house.
Hester stood, her head bent, the purple dress billowing behind her where the black apron parted, her sleeves too short, thin arms contracting at the wrists as she clenched and unclenched her capable fingers. That was her only movement, the ripple of purple, the leaves overhead rustling as the early autumn breeze moved them about.
“Your Mam found you, huh? That’s because a ghost left you there.”
Raucous laughter followed, the smaller boys tittering behind their hands. “Schpence (ghost)! Schpence!” they yelled, looking eagerly for the big boys’ approval.
Where was Theodore Crane when all this was going on so close to the classroom? He was, in fact, tutoring young Isaac Zug, who had to stay in for recess and go over some of the numbers that he always wrote backward.
The sounds of yelling and calling were all commonplace, hovering on the edge of Crane’s knowing, but not penetrating it, so the merciless ribbing continued.
When the bell rang, they all went to their seats and sat obediently.
Hester sat down, bent her head to her black slate, lifted the dusty white chalk, posed it above the slate, and waited for instruction, showing no outward sign that anything out of the ordinary had taken place.
The numbers and letters required of her all swam together in a hopeless mish-mash, a sort of vegetable soup of undecipherable shapes and lines that made absolutely no sense.
It took her a few weeks to remember the letters in her name. She could not grasp the concept of using letters to form simple words or doing addition problems. All numbers cavorted around in her head like mayflies, and she could never quite grasp them correctly.
Now the teasing included a new name. “Dum kopf (dumbhead). She can’t spell, she can’t write, that’s because she’s not quite right!”
Over and over the children continued their brutal chant, and as children will do when something cruel gets started, especially when it’s led by the “big” leaders of the playground, the children who felt kindness toward Hester couldn’t bring themselves to stop the cruelty, not wanting to be unpopular.
Noah and Isaac played with the little ones and knew vaguely that their sister was being teased, but they figured she was capable of taking it. They thought it was all in fun, and there was no harm in it.
When Hester became withdrawn, Kate reasoned it was due to her dislike of school. She went about the never-ending job of being a mother to her brood, cooking, cleaning, washing, and helping Hans in the fields. Hester’s moods became no more than an annoying thought.
So, Hester took matters into her own hands. She roamed the surrounding forest, looking for the perfect branch that was sturdy yet pliant enough to cut and shape. She climbed trees, took Hans’s hatchet, and whacked away at a suitable branch, only to have it split down the side, making it useless.
It was months until she finally finished her weapon. The hardest part was procuring a long length of rubber for the part of her slingshot that would launch the rock. Rubber was rare, a precious commodity, but she knew Hans had a small square of it stored away in the chest where he kept his horseshoeing supplies. So she waited for the chance.
The teasing had quieted, somewhat, from a novelty to an occasional uprising from two or three of the more mean-spirited children who thrived on hurting their classmates. Hester brushed it off like bothersome horseflies.
It was the ones who’d started it, Joash and Obadiah, whom she remembered. In her mind, sixteen-year-old boys who are almost men and who resort to bullying a ten-year-old girl need to be put back a notch.
One morning, she told Noah and Isaac to go ahead, that she needed to heed a call from nature. They went on to school without their sister, talking animatedly, innocent of anything out of the ordinary.
Hester slipped into the woods, took a running leap at a low branch her sharp eyes had discovered a week beforehand, caught it deftly with both hands, and swung herself up into the tree. Her purple dress billowed up and out, her bare feet latched onto the rough bark like a squirrel.
A small grunt, and she was up to the next branch, her hands and feet quick and sure. She took the slingshot from the large pocket sewn into the seam of her dress and draped it around her neck.
She stopped. Her dark eyes peered through the brownish-red foliage of the white oak tree. Unsatisfied with her vantage point, she moved quickly to the opposite side of the tree, her eyes moving from side to side, evaluating the distance and the clearest view.
Lifting the small homemade slingshot, she reached into her pocket for the largest, smoothest stone. She rolled it between her thumb and forefinger, savoring the perfection of it. She knew her aim was uncanny, completely without fault. She’d practiced behind the barn for weeks, sliding the slingshot into her pocket whenever footsteps approached.
Her breathing was steady, her muscles bunched, rigid as iron, her feet wrapped about the thin branch as she squatted, her back leaning against an adjoining branch. A group of children approached, walking fast, low words rising to Hester’s ears, but she made no move to acknowledge them. A horse and wagon followed, rumbling by beneath the tree. Still she waited.
Then she spied both forms
strolling into view, stalling for time, wanting to be the last ones into the schoolroom, to see what Theodore Crane would make of it.
Joash wore a brown straw hat, which made it more difficult as a target, so she chose Obadiah’s instead. Skillfully, she fitted a smooth stone into the strip of rubber, drew back, and let it fly, picking Obadiah’s light-colored straw hat expertly off his head and setting it neatly in the tall, dry grass beside the road, where it swung on the grass tops, then slithered from view.
“Voss in die velt” (What in the world)? Obadiah stopped and lifted his face, his mouth open in astonishment. Before he could retrieve his hat, a stone knocked Joash’s hat neatly off his head.
“Voss gate aw” (What’s going on)?
Shaken, their faces blanched now, they bent to retrieve their hats, only to be hit simultaneously on their backs by hard objects that caused them to cry out, each grabbing at the spot that was already smarting.
When a high-pitched ghostly yodel followed, an otherworldly, weird quality in the awful sound, they scrambled around on their hands and knees, grabbed their hats, and with a wild-eyed glance at the treetops, took off running, unable to resist a few backward glances as the high, undulating wail continued.
When Hester saw a knot of boys in the schoolyard, listening with rapt attention and large, scared eyes as Obadiah and Joash gesticulated with their hands, she turned away, her eyes flat and expressionless.
When the teasing stopped, she said nothing. When she heard Obadiah say there was an old legend about a ghost in the hollow where they had their hats knocked off, her mouth twitched.
For months, the men discussed this happening at church and every other gathering. Always, for a long time afterward, they lifted the reins, brought them down on their surprised horses’ rumps, and moved through that hollow at a smart clip, keeping their eyes straight ahead as they rumbled past the haunted tree.
Hester never turned when she felt Obadiah’s and Joash’s eyes boring into the back of her head.