by Linda Byler
They hauled firewood into the lean-to, and Hester took her turn with the axe. She walked behind the cultivator, following the harrow; she planted corn and helped with the tobacco through the cool spring days.
The sun turned warm. Soon they had spring onions to place on the table, along with freshly churned butter, which the family spread on thick slices of wheat bread. Annie served great wooden bowls of greens flavored with a hot dressing made of eggs, vinegar, and bacon, seasoned with chives. They ate sugar peas, small and green and limp, flavored only with salt, a dash of black pepper, and a touch of butter. The greens grew tall and thick. Annie cut them in bunches, gathered them into her apron, and then cooked them in a cream sauce with nutmeg. The table was laden with the gifts of the earth, Annie said demurely, often noting the plentiful rains, the goodness of God.
Even the women at church noticed the change in Annie and wondered at it. Some said Hans was good for her, and so she could act kindly toward Hester, noting that she was not even his own child. He was certainly good to his own children, something you could plainly see by the way they sat so quietly beside him in church.
And so the family prospered, growing substantially in prestige, their status among the Amish steadily improving. For Hans had really made something of himself with that Annie by his side. Look at the way those children behave themselves in church, they said. Hans just had such a nice way about him.
Hester came to believe that times were, indeed, changing. Annie displayed a new tolerance of her knowledge of plants and their ability to heal. Annie even allowed her more time to pursue her interests, so Hester often found herself on the rock, her favorite place of meditation. She never heard or saw the whistling youth again, although she kept her eyes and ears alert, curious.
Annie asked Hester and Lissie to see if the trout had spawned yet. She was hungry for a mess of fish. They would eat them fresh and salt the rest in barrels for winter meals. Hester’s heart leaped unexpectedly as she thought of the creek’s emptying into the river, close to where Padriac shuttled traffic across on his raft. Would she be able to speak to him again?
Hans decided to take the day off to accompany the girls and help them with the net. When he asked Solomon, Daniel, and John to ride along, his request was met with whoops of joy as they clambered onto the back of the spring wagon with Lissie. Hester sat on the front seat with Hans, wreathed in smiles. The color of his face brightened, and his eyes sparkled.
Annie stood on the porch, waved a thin, shaking hand, then turned, her hand on little Emma’s head, letting herself in the door slowly. Once safely away from anyone’s prying eyes, she clasped her hands behind her back and paced, her mouth working.
Before they knew it, fall would be here, and with it, winter close behind. Hester could not leave in winter because she would freeze or fall prey to wild animals, and Annie could not live with the guilt of having her blood on her hands. Yet this plan was going entirely too slow. By all appearances, Hans loved his wife, and his mindless infatuation with Hester was completely disappearing. But Annie was running out of patience. She wanted Hester gone.
She swept the kitchen, her agitation causing her to draw the broom stiffly across the well-worn floor, her thoughts in turmoil.
When Padriac spied the spring wagon with Hester seated beside Hans, he didn’t try to veil the all-encompassing joy that shone from his blue eyes. “It’s you!” he shouted, making a mad dash for the spring wagon, holding up his hand to help her down, holding the small, well-formed fingers in his own entirely too long.
Hans felt anger rise within but told himself it was his fatherly instinct wanting to protect his eldest daughter.
Padriac showed them where the trout were heavy with roe, some of them sleepy. He caught the huge, fat trout with his bare hands, his enthusiasm rolling with his easy laugh, a sound so genuine it was infectious.
Hans had not heard Hester laugh so often or so freely since she was a young child. Lissie giggled and floundered about, soaking her skirt and the front of her dress as she came up, gasping, with yet another trout.
The afternoon was filled with the smell of fish, the blazing sun, the skittish dragonflies hovering over the tall grass on the bank of the creek. The low-hanging branches trailed their leaves in the water, as Padriac and the girls dragged the net through the still, green pools.
When Padriac had to leave to ferry a team of horses across the river, Hans watched Hester as he walked to the small building, an expression he had never seen etched on her lovely face. Well, he would have to nip this in the bud. This fellow was not Amish, and Hester knew it. Cold fear of her disobedience wrapped its stifling tentacles around his heart. His breath came quickly.
What would such a romance do to his pride? How would it appear to the Amish community if one of his children went off with an Englisher? Such an occurrence would only flaunt his failure at raising the Indian foundling in God’s way so her soul would be saved and she would go on to lead a true Christian life by choosing the way of the cross.
Hans called a swift halt to the afternoon’s activities, his face pinched and white, his eyes darting furtively from Padriac’s open, joyous demeanor to the blush on Hester’s perfect cheeks.
Quickly, he threw the flopping, dirt-encrusted fish into the wooden barrels, tied them securely to the sides of the wagon with strong hemp rope, called his children, and told them it was time to go home. The children wailed their disapproval but climbed onto the back of the spring wagon obediently, where they sat smelling like fish, wet, bedraggled, and tired.
Hans hitched Dot in anxious jerks, snapping the traces hurriedly to the singletree, his eyes going repeatedly to Padriac and Hester as they stood aside. He couldn’t hear what Padriac was saying. He just saw that Hester’s eyes never left his face. When Padriac reached with his hand to clasp hers, Hans became inflamed like a man possessed.
“Hester!” He shouted the word once, harshly.
Hester responded as if she’d been shoved. Without another word, without a backward glance, she ran to the spring wagon, leaped lightly to the seat, and spread her wet skirts carefully around her feet.
Before Padriac realized what was going on, Hans held the whip aloft, brought it down on Dot’s back, and startled her into a wild plunge up the slope and away from the river, the wooden barrels swaying and creaking against the heaving sides of the fast-moving spring wagon.
The children clung to the sides and to each other as they bounced and swayed from side to side, leaving wet spots when they moved from one location to the next. Lissie became angry and yelled at her father in her brash manner. Hans told her to close her big mouth. Hester hung on, braced her feet against the dash, pulled her cap strings forward, and thought surely Hans didn’t have to be in such a hurry to start the milking.
When they clattered into the barnyard, Dot was soaked with sweat, the lather white against her black harness, her sides heaving, the pink nostrils dilated, her eyes rolling behind the blinders on her bridle. Noah straightened from the water trough, ran his fingers through his soaking wet hair, and watched with narrowed eyes.
Isaac opened his mouth on one side and said with certainty, “Dat has seen a schpence.”
Noah only shook his head, his mouth grim, his eyes slits against the brilliance of the late afternoon sun.
CHAPTER 24
FROM THAT DAY ON, HESTER BECAME UNEASY WITH Hans’s behavior. He dogged her footsteps. Some days it seemed she was never out of his sight. He popped up in the house when she least expected him. He hired Noah and Isaac out, putting a much larger workload on Lissie and Hester. Even Annie took her turn in the fields, forking hay and chopping thistles.
When Hester realized the new kind of prison that had closed its talons around her, she resigned herself to whatever God, the one who controlled her life, would allow. She had long ago reasoned to herself that he was the only one she could trust. Her people called him the Creator, the Great Spirit, and he was the same to her.
She had found an uneas
y truce, as well, between the Amish and the Lenape. In her heart, she no longer tried to divide them. They were all God’s handiwork, the same as the tall pine and the lofty oak, made according to his purpose. In the Indian tribe, there was good and evil. In the Amish community, there was the same. Human nature contained tempers that flared, jealousy that reared its poisonous head, covetous folks, and dishonest ones.
There was kindness, so much goodness, pity, and compassion, plus a spirit of helpfulness, all things that kept her within the culture in which she was raised. Deep in her heart, she believed that to be among the Amish was a privilege. It was a blessing to be shown that you needed Jesus Christ and the power to overcome the nature one was born with.
Of course, people were imperfect. Even Annie had good qualities—her discipline, the way she managed her family’s duties, her financial outlook.
Hester tried without success to gauge Hans’s odd behavior, then decided to give in and stop thinking he was unreasonable. He was concerned about her welfare, that was all.
It was in the evening, when the katydids and locusts were already in full symphony, their whirring, chirping chorus the music of the forest in Hester’s ears, when Hans approached her.
Dusk was only a few minutes away, the light was slowly leaving the front porch where Hester sat shelling pole beans. She popped the pods with her thumb and caught the heavy beans in the palm of her hand before dropping them into the wooden bucket beside her chair.
He stood above her, his breathing hard, his hands held loosely by his sides. Hester could smell the soil on his shoes and see bits of earth clinging to the rough fabric of his trouser leg. He smelled of straw and warm grass, of honest perspiration after a day’s work in the field.
“Hester.”
She remained seated, the urgent note in his voice keeping her face lowered.
“Hester.”
The word was not a question or a command; it was more a sound of desperation. Why was Hans so frantic on an evening such as this?
“Yes, Dat.”
She hardly ever called him that, so why now?
For reasons beyond her understanding, “Dat” seemed necessary suddenly, the proper word, the needed fence around her.
“Look at me.”
She obeyed.
“You know I have loved you as a father should from the day my beloved Kate found you by the spring. I have given you a home, fed you, raised you in the fear of the Lord in the Amish way.”
Hester dropped her gaze away from the wrong in his. In one jolt of awakening, she understood. She sat still, as if she were part of the stone wall behind her, except for the white of her cap, listening to the words he said, his breath catching on phrases, his eyes boring into the top of her head.
“Promise me, Hester. Promise me you will not begin a courtship with this Irish heathen. For you are preserved among the Amish. God would not want you to consort with the Irish.”
On and on, his voice rose and fell, the words true and Christian, fatherly and caring, the motive behind them another thing entirely. Hester was no longer an innocent child. The knowledge of Hans’s caring and Annie’s hatred—all of it—suffused her mind and heart like a white-hot iron, branding her with its pain. Hans knew, as did Annie, that he loved her in the way a man loves a woman, in the way God designed that two people fall in love, and that, as time went on, it would become harder and harder for Hans to deny this. This Annie knew, as well.
A great pity welled in Hester’s heart for the thin, hurting Annie with the palsied hands. Ah, how Annie must hate her! She loved Hans, Annie did. But his love eluded her, and she saw the reason why.
Before Hester now lay the great unknown, a vast new world without the safety of the Amish fold. There was only one remedy for this situation, and that was for her to disappear. Hans must never know what had become of her. Unlike Joseph in the Old Testament story, she would leave behind no evidence. All this flashed through her mind as Hans talked on. Bits and pieces of what he said pierced her consciousness, but nothing mattered, nothing was of any consequence.
“You were more precious to me than my own sons,” Hans spoke heavily. His hand came down on her shoulder, the touch like that of a viper.
Leaping to her feet, Hester scattered the bean pods. She kicked the wooden bucket to one side as she stood erect, facing Hans squarely. Her voice was low, well-modulated, but terrible in its depth. “Don’t you touch me ever again, Hans Zug. Your words are righteous, but your foul breath contains the wrong that battles in your chest. You will never have the right, from this day forward, to tell me how to live my life. You are living in hidden adultery, and you know it.”
She was crying now, with the weight of his wrongdoing, the uncovering of his intentions. His betrayal was a blow so crushing, Hester dealt with it in the only way she knew how. With her foot, she kicked his shin again and again. She pummeled his forearms with her fists, then fled around the corner of the house as he watched her go, helpless as she unveiled his innermost secret.
She slammed through the back door, found Annie at the hearth, grabbed her forearm, and spun her around. “You will never have to look on my face again after this night. I wish you and Hans a long and blessed life together with his children gathered around your table.”
Annie’s mouth opened, then closed. When it opened again, a mere squawk emerged. She stopped and licked her dry lips with an anxious tongue.
Hester had already gone to the stairs, her feet pounding up the steps. Annie stood stiffly, her breathing so rapid she felt lightheaded, listening to the sounds overhead. She heard Hester take the wooden box out from under her bed, then slide her feet across the floor. She opened and shut the wardrobe.
Hans came into the kitchen. His face searched Annie’s. “Where’s Hester?”
Silently, Annie pointed to the ceiling.
“What is she doing?”
Annie shrugged, her face chalk-white, her eyes dilated with the stark fear that was wreaking havoc in her conscience. What if Hester died? Quickly, she moved to Hans and grasped his shirtsleeve with nervous fingers.
“Hans, the winter is coming. She won’t survive.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Hester is leaving.”
“No!” The cry exploded out of him. He was completely unable to stop himself from that burst of fear. He leaped up the stairs, two at a time, and tore open the door to Hester’s room, begging her to stay.
She didn’t know how it happened; she just knew her fury and disgust propelled her across the floor. The great banging and thumping that ensued was Hans’s heavy body falling backward down the stairs, the breath leaving his body in drawn-out “oofs” and “ahs” of pain before he lay sprawled out on the kitchen floor at Annie’s feet, doubled up in hurt and humiliation.
Hester grabbed the sack she had filled with her earthly possessions, with the only coat she owned stuffed on top, and lunged down the stairs after him. Without a word of goodbye, she let herself out of the house and into the deepening dusk to the sound of the katydids and crickets.
“Hester! Wait! Where you going?” Little Emma came flying across the yard, her strong young legs propelling her.
A groan escaped Hester’s lips. She dropped the sack she’d slung across her shoulder and bent to reach for Emma, the true little companion she loved. Lifting her, she held the small body close to her face, kissing her over and over as hot tears pricked her eyelids.
“Goodbye, Emma.”
“But stop! Where are you going?” Emma’s voice was raised in concern, her lisp pronounced.
“I’m going away. I’ll be back soon.”
“How soon?”
“Soon.”
“All right. Stay safe.” Wriggling, Emma wanted down, satisfied that Hester would be back soon.
Hester held her tightly, kissed her one last time, and set her on her feet.
“Bye!” Emma called, running across the yard to the house. Hester stood at the edge of the forest and lifted her r
ight hand, a small smile on her face and tears coursing down her cheeks. It was almost Hester’s undoing, this saying goodbye to little Emma.
She knew nothing of the world she was about to encounter. The forest, the surrounding mountains were not alien or terrifying. But she was leaving a world that was safe and cloistered, where ministers led her in the way of righteousness, parents made decisions, and her identity was taking shape. But she had to go. There was no other way. Annie was Hans’s lawful wife, his wife in God’s eyes.
Still she hesitated, her eyes taking in the stone house, strong and magnificent in the evening light. The green slope fell away to the long stone and log barn, surrounded by split-rail fence, keeping the animals safe from predators.
Long, straight rows of vegetables lay in perfect symmetry with the rows of trees, the springhouse, the new corn crib. Each year, the Hans Zug farm prospered and grew.
She would leave all this and become no one, a runaway, hiding, always moving, for she had no home now.
She stood tall, her green skirts lifting, blowing slightly, her hair barely visible beneath the starched white cap. Her face shone with an inner light; her eyes contained immeasurable sadness. Her posture was erect, upright. Her heart beat strong in her chest. The blood in her veins sang the song of the Lenape.
She would go now. Etched forever in her heart was the stone farmhouse, the ways of the Amish, the Bible, the work she had learned, the preserving of food, the cleaning and cooking, the way to keep clothes pure with lye soap made of wood ashes.
Down in the shadowy hollows below the barn, a cow bawled for its calf’s return. A horse thumped against the wooden gate, causing the hinges to creak. All common noises of the farm, dear, familiar. She would carry them with her in her heart forever.
Turning, she faded into the overhanging branches of a maple tree, into the Pennsylvania forest that would be her home.
GLOSSARY
Ach, du lieva—A Pennsylvania Dutch dialect phrase meaning “Oh, my goodness.”