Hester had been born with the uncanny ability to sense the coming of different changes in the weather, an Indian skill and knowledge that had been a part of her since birth. She had no fear of any of nature’s forces. She was calm and unhurried in the face of storms and winds.
Noah scrambled off the roof, threw his hat on the ground, and ran his hands through his blond hair, turned dark with the sweat of the day’s heat. “Think we should head back?”
Bappie searched Hester’s face for reassurance, anything. She swallowed the fear rising in her throat, her breath coming in jagged puffs.
“I wouldn’t.” Hester spoke quietly, nodding her head toward the black cloud. Noah looked at her dark eyes that were intent, curious, eager. Without a trace of fear. “It’s coming fast.”
“What about the garden?” Bappie asked, her voice quivering.
In answer, Hester shrugged slightly, her eyes never leaving the clouds.
They stood in front of the house, the small log hut with the unfinished addition, the new shingles a lighter shade than the dark, warped ones on the original roof. The small front porch would give them a bit of shelter when the storm hit, but for now, it was comfortable to stand in the new grass surrounding the house, feeling the air change to a more seasonable temperature as the storm approached.
Noah, looking around, decided to push the buggy into the small barn with Silver, then latch the door securely, as he had always been taught.
The first rumble could soon be heard, even before any lightning was visible, which was unusual. A prickle of apprehension raised the hair on Noah’s arms. He crossed them across his chest and absently drew a palm across his forearm. “Let’s go inside.”
Bappie’s teeth were chattering as she sat on the edge of the porch to put on her socks, now a welcome warmth. Noah watched her, seeing that she hated a storm. A quick stab of sympathy softened his eyes, and the lines around his mouth softened, as he thought about how alone she was and how responsible, without a husband, father, or mother to care for her.
Hester lifted her arm, pointing a finger in the direction of the storm. Small, orange streaks, like trailing threads, appeared as a fringe on the fast-moving clouds. As they watched, the streaks’ size and color changed until they appeared as white, hot, jagged streaks of lightning, powerful and breathtaking in their fury.
Ahead of the boiling mass of clouds, the blue of the sky had changed to a dirty yellow, as if the hissing clouds had spewed their tepid breath before the onslaught they contained.
Still, the new leaves hung unmoving; not a blade of grass whispered. A large brown spider scuttled across the bare spots, disappearing beneath a wall of grass. In the barn, Silver whinnied, a high, lonely sound, as if the static in the air reminded him that he was in a solitary pen, deep in the surrounding walls of the barn.
“He wants out. He’s afraid,” Bappie said, quite unexpectedly.
Noah shook his head. “He’s better off in the barn.”
The first sign that the storm had come closer was a soft rustling of the new leaves, a subtle rearranging of their pattern. The small grasses waved, disturbed by an undercurrent of the winds that were about to sweep through.
Noah rubbed his palms across his forearms as the wind increased, lifting the wet hair from his moist brow. Hester reached behind her back, found the wide, white strings of her muslin cap, and tied them securely beneath her chin.
Bappie whimpered like a child as she watched the heavy pea crop begin to shiver, the tender shoots waving slowly like tiny, slim dancers moving to invisible instruments, the prelude to the approaching storm.
CHAPTER 8
AS THE WIND INCREASED, NOAH DASHED BENEATH THE MAPLE tree to gather up the lunch basket and water jugs. He laid the ladder flat on the ground right next to the wall, picked up his hat, and pitched it through the door.
The last row of shingles hummed, as if an unseen hand was rifling through them. In a matter of seconds, the wind rose, a wall of power that ripped the tender new leaves off the purple stems and sent them whirling through the thick yellow atmosphere, followed by dead growth from all trees and bushes. Grasses were flattened in a minute. The garden became a mass of undulating movements, the plants twisted and tortured by the power of the storm.
When Hester shouted and pointed, Noah reached her side, then followed the direction of her finger. Where the clouds were darkest, in the middle of the restless, roiling mass, a lashing tail appeared, a dark, terrible tunnel of fury, whipping as if building its strength for the moment it would hit the soft green earth beneath it.
Bappie screamed a sound of rich terror as gigantic hailstones hit the earth in front of them. As one, they turned and raced for the safety of the four log walls. Noah slammed the door, breathing hard, but Hester yanked it open, yelling that being watchful was what they needed to do. She stood at the door, her hands bracing her body, as the wind roared and hailstones sharp as knives whirled onto the porch floor.
The roars and moans reached a shrieking crescendo. Bappie’s screams of terror were lost among the intensity of the wind.
Suddenly, Hester turned, flattened herself against the wall of the house, and cried out for Noah and Bappie to do the same. Like three fenceposts, they lay prone against the sturdy log walls. Hester stopped her ears with her fingers, the pressure in her head almost unbearable. Bappie no longer screamed, and if she made any sound at all, it was lost in the roaring and gnashing that were the wind and hail, the torrents of water and ice.
All they knew, then, was a ripping, tearing sound, as if a giant piece of fabric had been torn in two. And then the hail—and cold, wet pain—hit their bodies. Noah yelled as a bough of the maple tree hung on the log wall where the roof had been, toppled, and fell on top of him, the weight of it smashing into his back and taking his breath away.
As he fought to regain it, out of the corner of his eye he saw the opposite wall shudder, then fold out and crumble, the logs falling haphazardly. Dust, thick and brown, was instantly soothed by a biblical deluge from the moaning, roaring sky.
Hester pressed her body to the ground, praying the wall would hold. If the logs came dislodged and rolled, they’d be killed, if even one fell on top of them. She had never known such fear, didn’t know it existed. She pressed her face into the cracks of the lowest log and breathed in the splinters and sawdust, dirt and dust of years of neglect in this little old hut they meant to call their home.
She was aware of being soaked through, of being cold and shivering, of being accosted by sharp blades of freezing rain, by the clamoring wind, and by a high keening sound like the howling of a thousand demons left helpless in the storm’s wake. Her tears were undetected as her soul cried out for deliverance. She knew only that the grace of God alone could save them all from this untamable fury. She was as helpless as the day she was born.
A great ripping, tearing sound rose higher than the wind. She heard the splintering of some object she could not identify. Sobs rose in her throat, along with the knowledge that they would all surely die.
A great sadness for what might have been welled up in Hester. But suddenly she throbbed with anger at the rip-roaring elements that had turned her into this dirty, wet, sniveling heap. She was not going to die. If a log fell off this wall, the wind could just place it beside them. A cry of deliverance emerged from her throat as she felt, rather than heard, an easing of the shrieking wind. The worst must be over. But better to stay here than risk the deceiving lull in the wind.
Rain still pounded against their bodies. The log wall shivered but held. The wind moaned around it; the clouds boiled like black porridge over their heads. Piles of ice were scattered across the floor of the hut, banked against the tree trunks, and whooshed into the air and flung out of sight by the power of the gale. And yet Hester knew the worst was past. She could sense the storm’s weakening, its defeat.
Noah was the first to sit up, painfully, his shirt soaked with blood where the branch had jammed into the muscle of his back. The dark r
eddish color turned pink where the rain and hail had lashed at the cut. He winced, then put his head in his hands to steady himself as the world tilted and turned black.
Bappie had fainted dead away. Hester leaned over to place a hand on her narrow, sodden back. The heartbeat was there, strong and sure, but she slept on.
Hester rolled over and got to her feet. Quickly, she surveyed this new world. Only two walls of the hut remained standing. The maple tree was twisted off and flung across the garden, a sentry fallen in its prime.
Her throat tightened. The roof was gone. It had simply disappeared, the new one and the old one, like a grandfather and a newborn grandson joining hands and melting into the horizon. The barn was a pile of debris, everything misplaced, the buggy somewhere inside.
Silver. The dread of discovering Bappie’s faithful horse injured or dead made her nauseous. Oh, surely not.
She turned to Noah. She was shocked to see his bent head. Dirt, wet, puddles of filthy water, splinters of wood, sodden leaves and dead grasses, branches—destruction was everywhere.
She nudged Bappie, then tried to speak, but only croaked. She cleared her throat, turned to Noah, and reached out to touch his head. “Noah?”
He lifted his head, the pupils of his blue eyes black with pain and shock, his face the color of new muslin.
“Are you hurt?”
“My back.” He spoke the words around a block of pain. The effort to speak took his full concentration.
“Can you move?”
In answer, and with heroic effort, he leaned forward, wincing. The muscles in his face worked, but he got to his knees and turned.
Hester remained calm, having seen so much suffering when she treated the poor in the low section of town. The soaked shirt that clung to his pooled blood was not too alarming. So she said nothing at first, quietly bending over Noah’s shoulder. Then she asked him to move forward a bit so she could see.
He complied, but sank to the floor, his legs folding beneath him as he fought waves of darkness.
His shirt was torn and mangled, so when Hester lifted it away, she was not surprised to see the massive lacerations. The extent of his wound was beyond her knowledge. She bit her lower lip to extinguish the gasp that rose in her throat.
Bappie moved, whimpering.
Hester straightened and looked around. Noah had lost too much blood and was still losing it, so that made it impossible to move him.
She shouted for Bappie to wake up, nudging her with a wet shoe. “Bappie. Wake up. Come on. Up.”
She groaned, opened one eye, rolled over, and covered her face with her hands. “Oh, dear Lord. Dear Lord. What have we done to deserve this, your tzorn?”
“Bappie, listen, Noah is hurt, bad.”
“Why?” Still dazed and uncomprehending, Bappie lay on her back, as wet and bedraggled as a drowned rat.
And worth about as much, Hester thought. Well, it was off to Levi Buehler’s, the closest farm. She’d have to walk. She told Noah to stay there and not to move, ignored Bappie, and headed in Levi’s direction, stepping over destruction, trying not to think of Silver somewhere in that heap of lumber that used to be a barn.
When it became evident that the power of the twisting, grinding wind had been a narrow swath, she broke into a steady lope, her feet settling easily on the wet ground, the only hindrance her heavy, sodden skirts that clung to her legs like cold, wet flaps of leather.
Everywhere branches were torn off trees, and broken limbs lay on the ground, leaving yellow wounds in the steady coat of bark that protected the tree. Some of the older, weakened trees were toppled, pulling down more branches of healthy trees, but nowhere was the destruction as bad as at Bappie’s small place, the old hut, the small barn, and few surrounding acres.
She slowed and came to a stop, her breathing in short rapid jerks, when she saw an approaching figure. Tall and thin and surrounded by his coonhounds, Levi Buehler was on his way to see how they had fared during the storm.
His hat was floppy, the brim coming loose from its base. One side was higher than the other, giving him the appearance of someone rather pitiful, a poor person needing help. His shirt was clean but old, torn in places and patched, or patched on top of a patch.
His eyes were kind, the laugh lines called crow’s feet deep and pronounced from squinting in sunlight, or straining to see through the dark nights when he went coon hunting. His beard was gray and thin, like an afterthought of wispy hair.
“Hester!” He flung up a large, knobby hand, like a fly swatter, a long flat growth on the end of a thin handle.
“Levi.”
“I was on my way to make sure you’re all right out there. Never saw clouds like that. Figure you had hail.”
Hester gave a short, rueful laugh. “A lot more than hail. Listen, Levi, Noah Zug was working on Bappie’s roof, and he was hurt. We need a doctor. Can you help us, please?”
Levi had already turned, his hounds like an appendage of himself, and was gone, calling, “Be there as soon as I can.”
The desolation was hard to describe. Bappie’s small holdings were flattened except for the south and west walls of the hut, the barn was in splinters, the garden ravaged, the crops all lost, and the buggy buried somewhere. Faithful Silver lay beneath the capsized walls, a mound of beautiful silver horseflesh with no life at all. He had gaping wounds on his head and neck; one leg was almost severed, impaled by the beam from the door.
Bappie said it was just as well that he died, because they’d have had to shoot him with that busted leg. She didn’t cry, only sniffed and blew her nose, blinked rapidly, lifted her head, and said, “That’s how it goes. You never know.”
Noah was soon stitched together, bandaged, and taken back to Dan Stoltzfus’s, where he lived. The kindly doctor, George Norton, did his work efficiently, giving Noah a healthy dose of whiskey to help with the pain. The flying limb had cut his back so that it looked like great raw chunks.
Only Levi Buehler, Bappie, and Hester remained in the aftermath of the storm. The countryside looked washed clean, in spite of the ruined buildings. The sky rippled with shades of rose, lavender, deep orange, and yellow. The sun had emerged from still grumbling clouds that were neither gray nor white, like dirty sheep’s wool before shearing.
Bappie bit her lip as she lifted shreds of ruined pea vines. She kicked the sodden growth, gouged a hole in the mud with the toe of her shoe, and looked at Hester. “You know I have nothing left.”
“You have your things. Your furniture and dishes.”
“I can’t start another garden. I have no money to rebuild. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Levi Buehler stuck his hands in his pockets, leaned back, and eyed Bappie with one eye. The other one was covered by the floppy hat brim. “The church will help. When the men hear about this, they’ll be out.”
“Who’s going to pay for the lumber, Levi?”
“Well, maybe I can.”
“With what? Your skinny hounds?”
Levi lifted his face and laughed, a great sound of merriment that he had not made for too long. The wispy gray hairs on his chin waggled, his yellow teeth were in full view like even ears of corn, as he kept up the sound that made even Bappie smile.
“Ach, Bappie, I forgot.”
“You forgot what?”
Levi shook his head.
Levi drove them home to Lancaster. Bappie jumped unceremoniously off the buggy, never said a word of appreciation, and disappeared through the back door, a thin stick of a woman, dirty and wet, but efficiently containing all her pride and well-being.
Hester thanked Levi, then turned to follow Bappie. She had already yanked the tub off the wall and was filling the kettle with cold water from the pump, as she barked at Hester to get some kindling made, they needed to wash.
They didn’t eat anything, only drank warming cups of tea, holding the heavy mugs in both hands, each one appreciating the warmth, the roof, and the walls that enclosed them.
Walter
Trout popped in unannounced with news of storm damage throughout the town. He took the news of Bappie’s ruined farm with great soft sighs of sympathy, his swollen fingers entwined over his massive stomach. He pursed his lips and rolled his eyes, dipped his head, and grimaced as they told their story.
Emma stayed home and nursed her solid grudge. She told Walter he could prance over there and make amends, but she wasn’t going to. But when she was told of their loss, she threw her hands in the air and cried, “Ach, du lieva! Du yay! Die arme mäed!”
She covered her fresh Ob’l Dunkes Kucha with a white tea towel and told the boys to stay out of mischief, that Vernon and Richard, the dear ones she’d taken in from the street. They could be a handful, they could.
The scent of the warm applesauce cake followed her, the short, wide woman who rocked from side to side when she walked, the pleated white housecap like a large blossom on top of her head, her beady dark eyes like boiled raisins.
She cried, “Voss hott Gott getan? Meine arme liebchen!” She patted their shoulders and kissed their cheeks and said, “No rent, no rent, just stay here with me and Walter,” then had to sit down and lay a hand over her heart to still it, to slow it down. “More than a person can imagine. More than these meine liebchen can take.”
But Walter said the Lord does not give us more than he gives us strength to bear, and he most assuredly had a plan somewhere. Emma nodded so hard her housecap slid forward over one eyebrow, then settled up farther on one side than the other.
Bappie ate three squares of applesauce cake and made another pot of tea, nodding her head in agreement with Walter’s words of encouragement. Her eyes had narrowed though, and a new light glinted in them, as if the brown irises had been polished like silver with a damp cloth.
Hester saw this, she knew Bappie so well. Something was churning inside that mind like the dasher on the butter churn—kalunka, spaloosh. When she saw Bappie concentrating and chewing her nails, her eyes still holding the same gleam, she became concerned.
They ushered their effusive neighbors out the door with many cries of “Gute Nacht. Denke, denke.” Then they went to bed, each to her own room, sleepless, sighing long into the night as they relived the nightmarish event of the day. Never had they seen anything like it.
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