by Faye Sonja
“Where have you been all day,” she turned to him with a curious face.
“I was busy making arrangements by telegram, in communication with the man who will help us get to Ohio,” he said with a smile.
That was music to her ears.
* * *
5
Chapter FIVE
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“ I would never, ever
forget about you … ”
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Four days after the initial shunning Clara was piled into a buggy with her family and sent on their way. They were brought to the train station where she had arrived and for the second time in her entire life, she boarded the train. She stared out the window as John and his father made final negotiations with the man who had arranged their passage.
“What are they doing?” Sara asked, staring out at the men.
“He will be buying our horse and our buggy,” she told her, kissing the worry from her forehead.
“So how will we get around Ohio? I thought it was going to be loaded onto the storage of the train.”
“We will have to get a new horse and buggy when we get there,” Clara informed her. “He says once we get to the station, there is a man named Jackson who will be waiting for us. It will take us two days of travel.”
Clara looked at John who boarded the train after a long embrace with his brother. It could not be easy on them, and as she understood it this was the first time they would be apart from each other. Nevertheless, John looked happy to be going somewhere better. She was not very worried about having to move again, for each time she moved she was moving to someplace better than the last. That she was okay with. That she was looking forward to. It was as if she were on one of Sara’s adventures with the man of her dreams.
As the thought struck her she looked at John to find his warm loving eyes gazing at her. She was happy he was there with her too.
She looked at a tearful Amin standing just outside the train and dashed out to hug him one last time.
“I will miss your contagious laugh,” she said to the man who had come to be just as important to her as the rest of his family.
His wife chuckled tearfully at his side and Amin held her close. “Thank you for bringing more warmth to my family for me. Please, take care of them as best as you can.”
“Until you both come to join us,” she reminded him.
He looked at his wife as if passing some secret words between them.
“Yes,” he finally said with a hesitant smile. “Until we both come to join you.” With that she boarded the train as the whistle blew for the final boarding call.
“See you soon,” she told him, speaking all kinds of possibilities into being. She was somehow sure she would not see the Amin again but she kept that thought to herself. When the train pulled away minutes later she waved to him until she couldn’t see him anymore, and then it dawned on her. It was clear to her that she had completely left her life behind. John sat beside her and she reached for his hand.
“We will be okay,” he said. “We will be okay.”
Then he closed his eyes and went to sleep.
“Your brother?” an elderly woman who had a Bible open asked from the seat across from her. The woman spoke in old German and pointed to the waving Amin.
Clara smiled, a bit surprised but grateful to hear someone else speak their language. “No, hopefully he will soon be my brother in law, but he is family and a good man,” she said.
“Ahhh, these days it is so hard to find men of that sort,” the woman lamented. “I only hope he will be fine.”
Clara hoped so too and said as much.
“I am Carmen,” the old woman offered her a shaky hand encircled by a rosary. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“I am Clara and the same here,” she smiled back.
“Heading off to a new life?” the woman asked eyeing the suitcase at her feet. She nodded. “Plenty of adventure to be had then.”
On any other day that might have meant something good, but not today.
“Oh good God, I hope not!” she spoke against such a thing. “I am hoping a quiet life, one that will be quite uneventful save for the everyday nuances of survival. Too much adventure will surely cause me death.”
The older woman laughed at her proclamation. “Is it that you have had too much adventure already or are you just not interested in any?” the woman asked. It was a question jaded with the undertone to suggest she might think that Clara’s youth was wasted on her.
“I have had my fair share of struggles, and I am afraid that adventures of any kind will bring more to my doorstep.” It was truly a fear she had to get over because it might kill her desire to live, but Clara had her reasons. She was up for moving as many times as it took them to find some place suitable, but her mother and John’s mother might not survive it and she could not lose either. Most importantly, Sara could not lose her mother.
“Life is about perspective, little one,” the old woman began speaking to her with a voice that made her listen to the wisdom she had to share. “And without a little adventure we would all turn to rocks sitting in the same spot staring at the sun each day. Never let it be said that your youth is wasted on you.”
There it was, the thought she knew had crossed the old woman’s mind. Clara knew her words to be true, but as the train chugged on its way, she really was hoping it would whistle her away to the quiet and easy, the awaiting fertile farm lands with lots of space for her tiny tots to run amuck.
“I really don’t mind adventure Carmen,” she began solemnly. “What I fear is that when the joy and spoils of adventure has passed I will be left right where I started and I cannot have that. I cannot be forced to start all over again.” Beside her a reserved John kept silent but did not let her hand go.
The woman reached a hand across to her and took it in her old palms, calloused with signs of working for far too long. “You should have no fear of anything life throws your way. I have a feeling that you are a survivor, and with God by your side be it feast or famine you will be just fine.”
She smiled not so confident at the woman’s words.
“Where are you from?” Frieda asked.
“Yuma.”
“Ahhh, you are from the very orthodox Amish family there,” Frieda nodded, her eyes opening in joy. “So was I too once.”
“Really? From Yuma?” Clara’s attention perked up as she waited for the woman to impart some sage advice.
“No,” the old woman laughed. “From a strict Amish community. I left to find a better life in the English world.”
“And did you?” she asked.
The old woman nodded. “But I have never stopped missing my home. Where are you headed?”
“We are headed to Ohio.” As she said that she watched the old woman’s face lose a bit of its smile.
“It is nice there, but you might find that you need to hold firm to your belief in family or you might slip through each other’s fingers like sand in an hour glass,” Carmen said with a smile before turning back to the paper she was reading.
She exchanged confused looks with John, but somehow felt that the old woman had just imparted valuable advice.
* * *
John was taken in by the sounds and sights of the cities they passed through. The pipes of running water and the indoor toilet that used water to flush were some of the best things he had ever experienced in life. It took him a while to get used to, but by his third trip to the bathroom on the thirty-six hour train ride he had learned it well. Clara wasn't as excited as he was. Nervous was her default state of being though that of her mother was silent and serious. No matter how he tried to get her to smile she worried. He had known her long enough to know that she was excited about their new start, but she was also afraid they would be rejected.
Amish communities were very peaceful and accepting, but John knew h
er fears were right. This community seemed like one that had a different take on things from what he was hearing and the advice the old woman had given was not easing their spirits in the least. In an ideal world they could just up and go someplace they would have electricity and running water, but that was not to be the case. There was no progress in retrogression even though he knew that sometimes you needed to go backwards in order to move forward, but this was not one of those times. There was no way the elders of the community he had just left would ever take them back.
He looked across the aisle of the moving train to see the sadness clearly written across his mother’s face and decided to make his way to her.
“Daed,” he said gently shaking his father’s shoulder. “Switch seats with me so I can talk to Maem for a while, please.”
His father kissed his forehead as he complied with the request. “Maybe sometimes we should talk as much as you talk to your Maem,” he said pinching John’s face with a smile.
He knew his father meant nothing by it. When he was younger his father had been the apple of his eye, and they had been an inseparable pair. But as the struggles of life in the barren valley had taken its toll, the carefree relationship they shared had taken on more of an adult-like tone and the fun had given way to worry about what was to come.
“We will Daed,” he assured his father and it was something he himself was looking forward to, assuming life got better for them soon. That shouldn’t have the ability to take from them their bond, but John had quickly learned that as much as he wanted life to remain the ideal little secret it could be, life itself often had other plans that made that an impossibility.
“Hey Maem,” he said settling into the seat and taking his mother’s fragile hand in his own. She had once been a sturdy woman, running behind her children all day. When they gave her a break she would cook up a storm in the kitchen. These days they were lucky if she could stand long enough to make them a decent meal. Sickness of some kind had taken its toll on her too and the acrid environment of the valley did not make it any easier.
“How are you doing?” she asked him resting her head on his shoulder.
He smiled at how time had turned the tables. “I am fine, Maem. I am looking forward to where we will be going.”
“And your girl Clara?” she asked him.
He could feel the red creeping into his cheeks. “She is not my girl, Maem!” he protested almost a little too loudly, and blushing a whole lot redder when his eyes met Clara’s smiling back at him.
His mother laughed at his embarrassment and he wished the driver could just eject him from his current embarrassment. “She will make you a lovely wife,” his mother whispered into his shoulder.
“How do you know she feels that way about me?” his words trailed off as he stopped himself from continuing.
“Can’t you see she does?” his mother nudged him. “She hangs on to your every word like it is her breath of life and stares at you while you work all the time.”
He thought about it for a moment. “I think she is beginning to see me as a brother or a best friend.”
His mother sighed and for a moment he thought something was wrong with her. “For someone so smart, you can be very naïve. I have watched you both fall in love with each other from the moment she arrived at our home. You should ask her to date you when we get settled.”
He was still stuck on the point she made about watching them fall in love with each other. He had neither seen nor felt that, but then again he was clueless when it came to these things.
“She likes you a lot,” his sister said, her head resting against their mother’s chest the entire time. Or so he thought. He kissed the top of her head and glared at his mother who just smiled proudly.
“And your father and I love her. You better show her that you have not forgotten why she came here before some other man comes along and steals her.”
“Love is a strong emotion Maem,” he said looking across at Clara and his father deep in conversation. She said something to make him laugh and his father’s soothing deep chuckle warmed his heart. John knew his father did not laugh for just any reason and somehow Clara could always get him to. He looked at her smooth face shadowed by the wispy strands of her hair that dared escape the bonnet she wore over her head and the way her feminine hands moved as she spoke.
Yes, he did love her. He just hoped that wherever they were going didn’t change them for the worse. Newness had a way of changing people and there would be lots of fun and excitement to get used to.
“It shows in even the way you look at her,” his mother pointed out. “You should tell her.”
“I will Maem,” he said realizing in that moment he wanted to do nothing but that. “When the time is right I will.”
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6
Chapter SIX
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“ I would never, ever
forget about you … ”
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Later that same day in Ohio
Minna walked into the farmhouse to see Henry sitting around the desk he usually sat at when he addressed people’s problems.
“Minna, how are we today?” he asked, but she did not miss the apprehension in his voice as she was on a mission and she was not going to be deterred. “What can we do for you today?”
“Oh I am just here to hang out with Jackson today,” she said as she walked past him and followed Jackson to the room in the back where Henry did not allow anybody but him and his men inside.
“You can’t go back there,” Henry said.
“And why not might I ask,’ she said turning to him defiantly with a smile. She used her nervous hands to tuck her stray strands beneath her bonnet and waited for him to answer.
“Only members of this community’s leadership can go there,” Henry pointed out.
She smiled at him even sweeter, having heard exactly what she wanted to. “The last time I checked, both my brother and I belong to this community’s leadership faction, are you saying we do not?”
“Tread lightly Minna,” Henry glowered at her. “I have suffered your insults long enough.”
She could see the intolerance lurking in his eyes and his clean shaven face looking nothing like his fellow Amish men. His chic tuxedo was an image of the English world he seemed to have embedded himself in and his arrogant stance made her want to shove him off his feet, but they were a gentle people. The Amish did not fight, they simply tried to understand and then to help. Even the thought she had was disturbing to her.
“I am here to spend the day with my brother and I will not be denied that, so if you have some work I can help with you just let me know. I barely see my brother because you have him doing your grunt work when you know he deserves more recognition. If he has to slave through his days for you then I get to exercise my right to be here.”
“Minna,” her brother said cautioning her.
“No!” she said flashing his hand away. It is one thing to be in command and a total different thing to have deserved that command. “Henry needs to treat you with the respect you deserve and until he does, my presence here will be a daily thing.”
She stormed off in a huff, trying hard to hide the smile of satisfaction. Henry was all kinds of predictable. He was either going to leave her be or give her brother a job outside of the farm house so he wouldn’t have to see her. Her hope was that he would choose the latter. There was lots of work to be done outside of the barn, especially in an effort to aid their elders in establishing Amish parameters. There community was an old one, one of the first Amish settlements in the US, but as the world around them changed so did the need to root themselves in their belief. Henry’s job was important and she was not going to belittle it, but so was what Jackson was deserving of.
“What did you do that for?” Jackson asked her in an angry hushed tone as soon as the door was closed behind them. �
�You are going to get us in all sorts of trouble with him.”
“Are you that afraid of Henry?” she asked him. When he didn’t answer she shook her head at him in disappointment and took up her seat on the comfortable couch in the corner, pulling from the satchel the book she had brought with her to read.
It was close to two hours later when Henry peeked his head in through the door and she knew she had won the first round.
“Jackson, tomorrow you work with Harry on the road. One of our residents had their buggy destroyed by a reckless man in a car on the ride home and the man didn’t even stop. You will be going with Harry to ensure that the man pays for his mistake.”
Minna smiled inwardly trying not to look too satisfied yet again. She had spent a year in the English world on Rumspringa and the one thing she was sure of was that English or Amish, men were as predictable as the clothes she would choose for the following day.
“Minna I have a job for you that should keep you out of my hair as well.”
“I am listening,” she said with as little enthusiasm as she could muster.
He glared at her not taking light to her tone. “There is an Amish family that was recently shunned from their group in New Mexico, and they are on their way here to make a new start.”
“Why were they shunned?” she asked. It was more out of curiosity than an actual need to know.
“They wanted to use electricity to run their farm because they had no water and a pump would make it easier for them. That is basically it. They were shunned because they are from a far more traditional community than this one. They will be staying with you and Jackson. Show them around and assign them tasks. A house is being built for them.”