Hester Takes Charge

by Byler, Linda;

  She woke Bappie, telling her she must swallow the liquid she would bring. If she refused, she might very well have permanent damage. She must take water and allow Hester to continue with the vinegar compresses, as well as an onion and sugar syrup.

  Bappie glared. A grimace changed her features, but it seemed as if all the wind had gone out of her sails, leaving her compliant and rocking lethargically in the waters of her sickness.

  For two days and nights neither one had very much rest. The cough persisted and the fever remained high. Finally, on the third day, after a poultice of cooked onions was applied to Bappie’s chest, her fever broke; the cough became loose and rattling. Hester gave her a decoction of mallow, an herb that was good for pleurisy. A few hours later, Bappie rolled over, opened one eye, and asked if they had any oat cakes left. Then she pulled herself up, wobbled over to the rocking chair, squinted at the afternoon light, and whooshed out a long expulsion of air.

  “I was pretty sick, huh?’

  “You were.”

  “Guess I’m still here for a purpose. God spared me good and proper.”

  Hester smiled. “I’m glad he did, Bappie.”

  CHAPTER 5

  NOAH RETURNED.

  Bappie was still weak, but eating like a horse and drinking copious amounts of steaming spearmint tea laced with honey. Sometimes she added a generous dollop of homemade whiskey, grimaced, sneezed, coughed, and sputtered, but said they always had it down cellar at home. It was good for fevers.

  Hester let Noah in through the back door, the brilliant spring sunshine blinding her for a moment. As always, he inquired about her well-being, quickly noticing the dark circles under her eyes, her pinched look of exhaustion.

  Without looking into his face, she assured him she was fine as she led the way to the rocking chair beside the stove, where Bappie sat with a quilt around her knees. She held a cup of steaming tea in her hand, her hair a disheveled riot, freed from any moisture, comb, or cap. Her face was peaked with weakness; a certain exhaustion clouded her eyes.

  Noah was quick to notice this. “You must have been sick, Barbara,” was his way of greeting.

  Flushing brightly, Bappie waved it away, his concern like an affront to her pride and determination. “I’m better. It wasn’t anything. Bit of a cough.”

  “Well, I hope you had the doctor out.”

  “No, of course not. That’s costly. I had Hester.”

  “Hester?”

  “You know, all the weeds she bottles. She poured them down my throat. Against my will, mind you.” Lifting one long, skinny, finger, she began to shake it, but the weakness in her arms made it droop, so she quickly curled it around her mug of tea.

  Noah turned, a light of recognition slowly dawning. “Hester, you …” Speechless, he searched her face.

  Hester turned away, hiding her face and refusing to meet his eyes.

  “I remember the old Indian woman and the book she gave you. I had forgotten all of that.”

  “She treats a bunch of people. Especially down in the poor section of town. Not too many Amish yet. They’re all afraid of witchcraft.”

  “Well, Barbara, I’m glad you’re feeling better. Now that the rain has cleared, I’m ready to begin, if you’re well enough to accompany me out there.”

  “Sure. I’ll go. Let me get my shawl and bonnet.”

  Noah watched Hester’s back, the lovely slope of her shoulders, the black apron tied snugly against her soft form, but he decided not to try to engage her further. She had opened the door and glanced at him only for a second before closing the door behind him. But she had let him in, which meant she must approve of Bappie’s hiring him.

  Elation waved its warmth through him as he thought of this. He still had a chance. No use pushing her or requiring more than she was ready to give. If she did not want to talk about her herbs or the use of them, perhaps she would another day. For there would be another day, and that was all that mattered.

  Hester urged Bappie to remain at home, afraid the damp, spring air would be too much for her delicate lungs.

  Noah pretended not to hear as Bappie told her it was all right to boss her around while she was sick, but now that she was well, if she wanted to ride out to the farm with Noah, she would.

  “Put a scarf over your mouth.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Without another word, Bappie pulled her bonnet over her scraggly hair, pinned the black wool shawl across her shoulders, and, minus the scarf, left with Noah in Dan Stoltzfus’s top buggy to review the renovations at the small farmhouse.

  Frustrated, Hester wandered through the house picking up vases, pitchers, pin cushions, and small dishes, and setting them back down. Her mind raced, full of bits and pieces of her past, including the torment that the book containing the herbal remedies of the Indian tribes of Pennsylvania had brought.

  Well, she was not going to tell Noah that their stepmother, Annie, had threatened to burn the book. He didn’t need to know all that. Besides the deep wound of failing William and his parents, she couldn’t bear to go back to the time of Annie’s hatred, which had been brought about by Hans’s infatuation, or whatever was the right word to call it. Much better to leave that stone unturned. Noah did not have to know anything about her past from the moment she stepped into the woods in Berks County and traveled the vast distance across mountains, fields, creeks, and rivers. If he wouldn’t have taken Annie’s part, and then come to dislike her and want nothing to do with her, things might have been different.

  Hester decided to do the washing. She’d take the covers off the comforters, wash them and the pillowcases, all the muslin clothes and rags, the dresses and socks, washing away all the sickness that had hung about the kitchen like a pall. Hester know the scabious plant had again proved its worth. How amazing that God had provided for humans’ diseases in the form of plants of the earth. Now, slowly, people were losing this knowledge.

  Only the simple and the ignorant retained it. The red people, the Lenapes, the tribe of Indians whose blood ran in her veins. And yet she knew now that she would never return to them. She was steeped in the culture of the Amish. It was all she knew.

  She recalled Noah standing in the warm spring air, the sun at his back. Her heart swelled. She put up a hand to cover it, ashamed of its beating. If she could still it, she wouldn’t need to be reminded of how she felt. She could not give in, ever. It was too misleading, this thing called attraction, which tempted her to believe that it would grow into love and marriage. No, no, she couldn’t bear a whole new set of deceptions.

  She threw kindling underneath the brick oven that held the great copper kettle. She pumped as if her life depended on getting all the water she could to fill the buckets and then slosh them into the kettle before setting fire to the kindling.

  A roaring fire took hold, and soon the water was steaming. Using a bucket, she filled the tin tubs with hot water, shaved a portion of the white lye soap into it, and then threw in the covers and pillowcases. Taking up the smooth, well-worn stick, she swirled the items in the steaming, soapy water until it had cooled enough so she could rub them up down across the washboard.

  The day was perfect, so she swung open the back door, then bent to wring the covers out, twisting them securely with her strong hands before pegging them onto the sturdy rope washline. Droplets of water were flung from the clean squares as the spring breezes caught and flapped them. Good! They’d be dry by sundown.

  She paused on the back steps, inhaling the sweet fragrance of April. Here in town she detected the smell of mud and dirt and squalor from the poor section, but over top was the scent of hay, of new green lumber, of horses, and of whatever else makes up the people and houses that are a living town.

  Hester longed to ride in an open buggy out away from the town, if only for a few hours. The garden in spring was like a tonic to her soul, but to live in the little house that Bappie wanted was an idea she could not imagine.

  She’d wait and see what Noah accomplished. She had no pla
ns of going out there while he was working. That would only be inviting trouble, the kind that required too much effort to control. Better to stay here and let Noah and Bappie figure things out.

  She wondered where Walter and Emma Trout had gone. Their horse and carriage had been away from the shed already. She’d love to sit at their table the way they always used to do, but Emma was unhappy about their plans to move out to the farm. She had never been capable of displaying the good manners of her husband, so there was no use going over there only to be shoved out the door by her disapproval, her face red with it.

  Hester ate a molasses cookie, then sat in the rocking chair by the fire. Just enough warmth radiated from the kitchen stove to make her eyelids droop, and sleep overcame her quickly. Her nights of tending to Bappie’s needs had taken their toll.

  The loud knocking on the door failed to waken her at first. Repeatedly, the sound entered her consciousness until she sat bolt upright, her eyes wide. She heard the sound again, more urgent than ever. Back door? No, definitely the front.

  Hurriedly, she walked down the hallway, pulled open the oak plank door, and looked into the wild stare of the same visitor of a few days ago.

  “Is Bappie here?”

  “No, I’m sorry. She accompanied uh … our worker out to the farm.”

  “I need help. My wife, Martha, is gone. She’s disappeared. I have searched every corner of our farm, and I thought perhaps Bappie could understand her ways better than I.”

  “How long since she’s gone?”

  “This morning. She was in her bed when I went to do the feeding.”

  “Have you asked anyone to help? The town constable? What about your hounds?”

  “No, I haven’t. I wasn’t sure if our bishop would approve of having English people searching for my wife. Yes, I used the hounds to find her scent, but …”

  Here Levi stopped and his voice choked. He lowered his eyes and shook his head, as if he meant to hide a thought that was too fearful to contemplate. Denial seemed best. “Bappie had a way with her.”

  “But I don’t remember Bappie visiting Martha ever.”

  “She did. More than you know. She was very good for Martha’s feeble mind.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No.”

  Hester listened. She thought she may have heard the clatter of buggy wheels.

  “Come in, Levi. I am going out the back door. I think Bappie may have returned.”

  Together they hurried through the house and out the back door to find Noah throwing the reins across the sweated horse’s back. Bappie had already climbed off the buggy.

  Levi pulled his hat down over his head to keep it securely in place. His eyes immediately sought Bappie’s face.

  “Levi Buehler.”

  “Hello, Bappie.”

  “What brings you?”

  “My wife is gone missing.”

  Bappie stopped short, the color leaving her face, her dark eyes wide.

  Noah remained in the background, tying the horse to the hitching post, although he glanced at Levi a few times.

  “How long?” Bappie asked, curtly.

  “This morning, early.”

  “Did you get help?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not? You need to round up a bunch of men. She can’t be very far. She’s not strong enough.”

  Levi nodded.

  Hester tried to convince Bappie to stay in the house, but she would not hear of it. Martha was her friend. She had been ill in body and mind for far too long, and lately without the aid of a doctor.

  On her last visit, Martha had been disoriented. Some of her talking sounded more like a dream, as if she lived in a world of her own creation. Bappie felt caught. If she revealed her worries to Hester, she’d want to try healing through herbs. But the doctor was unable to diagnose her illness as her mind steadily weakened, along with her body.

  Martha talked incessantly of the children she had lost as infants, one after another. Sometimes Bappie listened without trying to stop her. At other times she tried to have her think about something else by speaking forcefully, as if chastening a young child.

  Martha railed at Levi from her twisted confinement, blaming him for the loss of the babies. Patiently, he absorbed her disgruntled cries like a sponge. He closed his eyes in an effort to squeeze out the bitterness, telling himself she couldn’t help it. He fed her, changed her clothes and her bed, and did the washing and most of the housework with the aid of a maud, a young Amish girl hired out to help.

  Some days she would cry and beg his forgiveness, which he gladly granted, for she was his wife, and he had promised to care for her in sickness and in health.

  Bappie thought she must have a cancer growing in her head, which was damaging her brain. She was an innocent victim, beset by a disease, an unschuldicha mensch. Bappie’s loyalty stood firm. Let people say what they would, she would not bend. She’d told Josiah sei Esther that if she kept on judging poor Martha Buehler, she’d end up worse than Martha if she didn’t watch out, which pretty much set Esther on the straight and narrow, what with that Bappie Kinnich’s flashing eyes and red hair and her splattering of freckles.

  It was a situation in the small Amish community of Lancaster County that few people understood. The doctors called it nervous affections and treated her with different medicines that brought on sleep or stupors, but she always resumed calling out to Levi, her husband. Now she had disappeared.

  “Well, here is a horse. Levi, I’ll go with you now. Perhaps she’s hiding, and when she hears my voice, she’ll come. Noah, you and Hester hitch up Silver. Go to the blacksmith shop and spread the word. All able-bodied men will be needed.”

  Noah nodded and turned to go the small barn. Levi sat in Dan Stoltzfus’s buggy like a man in a dream, weary of the tension, the demands placed on him, and now this. Bappie wasted no time in seating herself beside him, picking up the reins, and taking off at a fast trot.

  Hester did not want to go. Her first instinct was to run into the house and hide upstairs where Noah could not find her. Let him go by himself. She didn’t want to sit beside him in the buggy.

  Noah threw the harness across Silver’s back, then adjusted the straps quietly and efficiently. Silver’s ears pricked forward, then slid back, ready to listen to any command Noah would require.

  Hester stood, unsure of herself.

  Noah looked up. “Ready?”

  She shook her head. “I will need my shawl and bonnet.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  CHAPTER 6

  OVER AND OVER, WHILE SHE PULLED ON HER OUTER CLOTHES, she told herself that this was only Noah, the brother from her childhood. She yanked her hat forward, well past her face as a protection, a wall between her heart and this blond giant.

  He helped her into the buggy, a gesture she was unprepared to accept. Amish men did not normally do that, so she became flustered and unsure. But when he stayed on her side of the buggy with his hand extended, she had no choice but to place hers into it, the mistake already done before she could retrieve it and place it beneath her black woolen shawl where it should have stayed in the first place.

  Holding his hand, even lightly, was not something she could do ever again. The touch of his hand broke straight through the barrier of her strict resolve. They were at the blacksmith shop, and he had already climbed off the buggy before she could even begin to gather the fragments of the shell she had built around her heart.

  Her hat helped. Like blinders on a horse, she could look straight ahead without seeing him. That was good. She had gotten her resolve firmly back in place again. She focused on Silver turning, leaving the blacksmith shop and taking the well-traveled road out of town.

  Noah remained quiet, driving with one hand. Hester watched the tip of Silver’s ears flicking back and forth. The muddy road stretched before them, and nothing else.

  Suddenly, Silver shied away from a groundhog that had popped up from its hiding place, his haunches lo
wered as his hooves dug into the muck. When he took off running, a large portion of the mud flew out from under his hooves and landed on her face. Hester let out a bewildered sound before reaching up to brush away the offending dirt.

  Noah brought Silver under control, then put the reins between his knees, turned, and placed a hand on each side of her hat. His fingers found the strings, untied them, and slid the hat off her head. “There, now maybe I can see your face.”

  He brought out a square men’s handkerchief and wiped the splatters of dirt off her face, smiling directly into her eyes. “Better?”

  He returned to his driving without waiting for an answer.

  Hester was deeply ashamed and wildly elated as she nearly choked on her beating heart. She wanted to get down off the buggy, tell him she wasn’t six years old, and stalk away. She also wanted him to wipe the mud off her face again and smile at her one more time. What she did do was say, “You used to do that a lot.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes, you did. Remember when I cut my face on that cornhusking knife?”

  “It wasn’t really your face, was it? More a cut just above your temple. Is there still a scar?”

  Hester shrugged and looked sideways at him without meaning to. Certainly without wanting to.

  But Noah was intent on his driving, watching for the almost hidden road that was Levi Buehler’s lane. By all accounts, he had dismissed Hester in favor of remembering more important things, which was the matter at hand—finding Levi’s wife Martha.

  “Did you know Martha very well?”

  Hester shook her head. “Not at all. I only learned about her when Bappie spoke of her, which wasn’t often. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen her.”

  “It’s very sad. Levi has had his share of sorrow.”

  “Oh, he did. He took to coon hunting with a pack of hounds. He sold his cows. Says he makes more money raising the hounds.”