Hope on the Plains

by Linda Byler

  It was all she could manage, before she lowered him, turned away and, with heaving shoulders, fixed the window blind.

  Manny lay back, opened his eyes, and croaked like a frog as he told Hannah he would die of thirst if she didn’t bring him some water. By the time she brought the glass, his chest was already breaking out in angry spots, the awful virus leaving his body through his skin.

  “Look at you, Manny,” Hannah quavered.

  Manny bent his head, felt the lesions on his skin, asked if he’d been very sick.

  “Manny, you were so ill. So terribly sick!” Hannah burst out.

  “Measles, huh?” Then he lay back, exhausted, and fell into a deep, restful sleep as the rash continued to grow and spread.

  When Dr. Brinter and Sarah returned, Hannah met them at the door with a glad cry. She threw herself into her mother’s arms and began to weep hysterically.

  They rushed to the room and quietly observed, Sarah weeping now, the tears a flow of healing water.

  Dr. Brinter bowed his head and thanked the God of healing. He placed a hand on Sarah’s back, and she went weeping into his arms. At once she stepped back, ashamed. To be in a man’s arms, to lay her head on a strong chest, no matter how briefly, awakened in her a longing she had forgotten existed. Mose. Mose. If only you could be here to share this moment.

  Dr. Brinter told them the Lord had chosen to save Manny’s life. He would live. He left an ointment for the itchiness and then left instructions for the ambulance driver when he arrived. Then he let himself out the door before Hannah or Sarah could gather their wits to thank him properly or ask how much they owed him.

  They were quarantined now. No visitors until the measles were gone. They thoroughly disinfected house, scouring the walls and floors, washing the bedding and curtains in bleach, wiping down the doors, cupboards, and furniture.

  The dust blew in and around them, the sun shone on the dry grass, but a happiness soaked every wall and doorway. The dust could settle in on the freshly washed floors, but what did that matter? Manny would live, would regain his health, ride the plains with Hannah, shoot coyotes, and chase antelope.

  Thankfulness had always been a way of life for Sarah, but now it was magnified tenfold. She spent her days hugging her children impulsively, squeezing poor Abby until she struggled to free herself. Eli squealed and wriggled out of her grasp but sat there blinking afterward, a small, silly grin playing around his mouth.

  She celebrated Manny’s health in song, humming and whistling softly under her breath. She cooked great quantities of stew, thick with chunks of canned beef, carrots, and celery from the late garden. She baked potatoes, fried prairie hen rolled in egg and flour and seasoned with fresh herbs.

  Manny gained weight, his cheeks filled out again, his skin healed and tanned under the hot summer sun.

  Hannah bloomed, her cheeks reddened, her teeth shone white as her lips parted in smiles about everything, and sometimes, about nothing. To be truly delivered from the awful death of a loved one left a lasting impression on her.

  Then one Sunday, without warning, uninvited and unannounced, Ike and Barbara Lapp and their seven children came to visit, driving two surprisingly nice horses hitched to a spring wagon painted black.

  Sarah met them on the porch. Manny hurried out to help Ike put away the horses.

  “Why, what a surprise!” Sarah exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “Come right in, Barbara.”

  Hannah sniffed, went to her room, and closed the door firmly. If Mam needed her, she could come get her. No need to visit with Ike Lapp. They had the nerve, uninvited, at that.

  The children circled each other shyly, Eli and Mary uncertain how to start a friendship, so they sat with the grownups while Sarah busied herself in the kitchen making coffee.

  Manny kept a conversation going with Ike. He rather liked the man. Not too much ambition, but he had a great love of life and a dry sense of humor that sent Manny into peals of mirth.

  They had brought along Barbara’s sister’s daughter, Marybelle. She was a quiet, skinny girl with large feet, hair the color of ripe wheat, slanted eyes so blue they were shocking, and a splattering of freckles like dark sand over her tiny nose.

  “She just arrived last week with the Henry Esches.”

  Sarah called from the kitchen, “Who?”

  “Didn’t you know? You know, Amos Escha Henrys, from the Gap.”

  Sarah brought a tray bearing four cups of steaming coffee and placed it on the low table by the couch. She thought, a hand going to her mouth, “Amos Escha? You mean Amos, the one who has the threshing rig?”

  “Yep, that’s the one. He moved his family out here last week. He’s going to try his hand at raising wheat. There’s a new seed wheat, an early variety, and he thinks if he gets it in in the fall, he’ll be able to grow a good crop before the drought hits. He’s sitting on close to a thousand acres right now. In a tent.”

  Ike Lapp lifted his coffee cup, sipped, grimaced. “His wife is so fat, I don’t know how she’ll take to prairie life. She takes a lot of feed.”

  Manny sputtered, choking on his coffee.

  Ike laughed heartily, a sound without guile, just pure, light-hearted merriment, the joy of a humorous situation shared with others.

  Barbara, pinched and thin, chortled with him. “Marybelle, why don’t you take the children to see the windmill? Your Uncle Ike helped erect it, one of the first ones out here.”

  She looked at Ike, who rewarded her with his smile. “Where is the windmill?” she asked, her voice low.

  Manny jumped to his feet. “I’ll take you. Come on, Eli. Bring your friends. Sorry, I don’t know your children’s names.”

  “Oh, they’ll let you know soon enough,” Barbara said, waving a hand in dismissal.

  They all filed out the door into the heat of the afternoon. Barbara began to talk the minute they were gone. “Yes, well, about the girl. You notice her name is not plain, not truly Amish. Well, her mother, my sister Anna, ran off with the local grocer, and she is the product of that marriage. Anna was only sixteen. Left the Amish, left all her teachings, ended up in Georgia or some such state down South. Just a year or so ago, we got this letter from a mental institution asking us to come and get Marybelle. A horrible place.” She said the word “horrible” with a slight shudder.

  “Guess Anna took up with a snake hunter who lived in a swamp and raised rats and mice to feed the snakes he captured. It got the best of her and they took her away. I don’t know if she’ll ever be right again.”

  Listening to Barbara, Sarah’s face went slack as she thought how she’d been to the brink herself, and so recently. A great welling of sympathy for Anna washed over her. Poor girl, making such wrong choices. Whose fault? Sarah felt a deep sadness for the woman, incarcerated now in a place where no human being should ever have to live.

  “Anyway, this Marybelle stayed with the snake hunter and lived in his house with him. She kept it clean enough and kept some food on the table. It’s hot there. You think it’s hot here. This was like liquid heat. Like swimming in humidity. He’s a drinker; passed out drunk most of the time. So we took her. She didn’t want to go. I believe she had a nice enough life. He was good to her, when he was sober. She seems sensible, no ill effects from her life in the swamp.

  “She told me she wasn’t afraid of the snakes. They milked them for the venom and sold it, I guess. Alligators and mosquitoes, bugs—the whole place simply buzzed with hundreds of insects. Thousands.

  “We’re trying to teach her about God, but she doesn’t really seem to understand.” Barbara stopped for breath.

  “How old is she?” Sarah asked.

  “Older than she looks. Guess how old.”

  “Fourteen?”

  “Almost fifteen. But immature. Needs discipline. Wants her mother and misses being near the water.”

  “I bet.”

  Hannah lay on her stomach, her room like an oven with the door closed and no breeze. The buzz of voices rose and fe
ll. She dozed and woke up sweating, seized by an irritation. You watch, she thought. Mam will invite them to supper. She’ll waste all our food on those starving little brats.

  Sure enough, she heard the clatter of pots and pans, the sound of water running, footsteps. A knock on her door. She had a notion to crawl out the window. Here, this situation, was precisely why she resisted the Amish migration to North Dakota.

  Instead of roaming the prairie on Pete and being left alone on a hot Sunday, she was expected to keep up appearances, help make supper, talk, smile, and go to church, when she’d rather go lose herself on the plains, completely unknown, forgotten by anyone who came from Lancaster County.

  Stupid old Ike Lapp with his oversized, hooked nose and yellowed teeth. He looked like a horse!

  Her happiness about Manny’s regained health was overshadowed by her own dark nature, leaving her annoyed, in no mood to shake hands or make small talk. Meddling old man! Hoping to creep out of her room and sidle down the hallway to the bathroom, Hannah opened her door and slid through noiselessly.

  “Hannah!” She sagged against the wall, clapped a hand to her forehead, and rolled her eyes.

  “Hannah! Get over here! Didn’t know you were home,” Ike called. Hannah arranged her features into some semblance of normalcy, her lips in a tight smile that only served to provide an aura of frost around her. If she were a horse, she could buck and kick, break through the door and take off running, but as it was, she was stuck. Strangled by company.

  “Well now, Hannah,” Ike Lapp chortled, saying her name as if she was the title of a story he was about to write. “Still the same. You don’t want anyone around, but they all want you!” He slapped his knee at his own hilarious observation, sending Hannah to the kitchen in a huff, where she greeted Barbara in a voice strung with icicles, resulting in a firm jab in her ribs from her mother’s elbow and followed by a dark look of warning.

  She mashed potatoes in the torrid kitchen, the steam rising up over her face, listening half-heartedly to Barbara’s high-pitched voice, which irritated her worse than a whining mosquito.

  Sarah told her to open the table and add at least eight leaves, as there would be fifteen of them. She stood at one end of the table and yanked. Nothing happened. She knew someone would have to pull it apart from the other end, but there was no way she’d ask Ike for help. Of course, watching her like a hawk, he rose to the occasion, helped her pull the table apart, added leaves, chatting all the while like a woman.

  “You heard about the new barn? Down on the old Perthing place?”

  Hannah shook her head.

  “Quite a barn. That Jerry has some excellent horses. Never saw better.”

  Hannah didn’t answer so he continued to ramble on about nothing. She didn’t care how many horses Jerry had, or if his barn was covered in gold. She only half listened, wishing he’d go sit down and be quiet.

  With a clattering on the porch, Manny and the children came in, windswept and red-faced, the constantly blowing dust powdering their hair and shoulders. Hannah caught sight of Marybelle. Now what? She wasn’t one of the Lapp bunch, sure as shooting. Boy, was she a looker. That hair like a palomino.

  Hannah blinked. Blinked again. Tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She couldn’t stop looking at her. What was it about that girl? She looked to be about fourteen, but carried herself with a practiced grace, her shoulders back, her head held high. Her eyes were astonishing—slanted, huge, and blue.

  No one acted as if there was anything going on that was out of the ordinary. She was too proud to ask, so she remained in a fog of curiosity that only became thicker as the meal went on.

  Ike Lapp ate with his usual bad table manners, but Barbara was surprising, holding her fork in a proper manner, speaking quietly to the children, spreading elderberry jelly on their bread and cutting it in half for the little ones, who ate quietly, without speaking.

  She watched Marybelle, sitting across from her, cutting the chunks of beef, spearing her carrots. What was it about her eyes. Like a knowing, a telling of something. Was it sadness? Experience? Hannah decided that her eyes were older than her face. And those freckles!

  Ike Lapp was rambling on about the need to add onto his house and insulate it a bit. “I could cover the whole thing with mud and call it an adobe house. Isn’t that what they do farther south?”

  Marybelle looked up from her plate at the same time Hannah did. Their eyes met but neither one acknowledged the other.

  After the Lapp family left, Sarah threw herself on the couch, thrust her feet in front of her, and sighed, her eyes half closed. “Wonderful! Just wunderbar.” She grabbed Abigail and nuzzled her little face, then turned her toward her chest and kissed her all over.

  “What a blessing! What an opportunity for good old fellowship. Making Sunday supper for company. Just the way I was raised. And now we can keep up this old tradition of visiting, just showing up at someone’s door and being welcomed in. What about that Marybelle?”

  Hannah jerked to attention. “Is that her name? Fancy,” she said sourly.

  Sarah related Marybelle’s life story. She was surprised to be met with a snort, a shrug of disinterested shoulders, as Hannah evidently found her story uninteresting. She brought her little story to a close, closed her eyes to relax, and let it go. Typical Hannah. Pessimistic. Always looking on the dark underside of everything.

  Suddenly Hannah said, “Well, if she’s not lying and was raised in a swamp, she should be dried out by now.”

  No one laughed. They all fastened cold eyes on her face until she felt a prick of humiliation, one eyelid twitching uncomfortably. She got up and walked out of the door into the evening shadows.

  Out to the water tank where the grass was trampled until it disappeared, the roots dried out and mashed into the dust by the wide, cloven hooves of the cows that milled around their only source of water in the blazing sun.

  They were all there, every one, fat and black and sleek, chewing their cud contentedly, others cropping the short, brown grass. The calves were growing into well-built heifers or steers at an alarming rate. Hannah couldn’t believe how well the tough prairie grass fed these cattle, all the feed they needed without a cent paid out.

  Haymaking had gone well, but they’d need to resume, starting tomorrow morning. She could never let her guard down, never relax about the amount of hay they’d need.

  The calves were growing, but not all of them would be sold. Only enough to make a nice payment on the loan.

  She watched them cropping grass, well-built, firm in the front shoulders, wide chests, straight spines and muscular legs. They’d sell well at auction. Compared to the Jenkinses’ slat-sided, potbellied creatures, these heifers would bring a good price.

  She loved to smell the dry, trampled earth, the wet smell of mud where the clear cold water ran out over the sides of the tank and mixed with the dust. She could stand for hours, listening to the whine and clanking of the great wheel as it turned, the huge metal paddles taking full advantage of the slightest breeze. The long steel rod that pumped up and down glistened in the late evening twilight, the life of the wind and the water pump.

  Manny often climbed to the top, hung by one arm crooked over a metal rung, his eyes shaded with his hand, dark hair blowing in the wind, his trouser legs flapping like a struggling bird. That he had been restored to health still seemed like a miracle. So easily he could have slipped away from them, leaving her to work the homestead by herself.

  Well, Mam too, but she couldn’t ride and shoot and rope and make hay. She’d have to get a dog. After they sold the cattle, she’d buy a decent dog, teach him to watch the herd; maybe two dogs. Then, if one of them couldn’t be there, the dogs could take over. Plus, they’d be good in winter at keeping the wolves away.

  A deep satisfaction spread through her, a sense of well-being, like the wearing of a new garment.

  Proud. She was proud of her accomplishments. If she hadn’t worked in town at Rocher’s Hardware, they wou
ld have starved or have gone crawling to the Jenkinses, the same thing they always did. Yes, they’d had help after the fire, but so had plenty of other folks. If anyone else had a fire, they would help in return. It was the way they did it.

  Hannah knew that pride was squelched down among their people, stepped on, destroyed by acts of humility, half-disguised tut-tuts of, Oh, it isn’t so. Go on. A wave of dismissal, turning a scarlet cheek.

  But still, it was pride. Perhaps people like Ike Lapp had none. He had no reason to have any, never amounting to a hill of beans. Happy as a pig in mud, though.

  Take Ben Miller. In the middle of the Great Depression, when times were unbelievably hard for most ordinary folks, here he comes, raking in opportunities by the handful. ’Cause he was smart, that’s what it was. He saw things, took life by the horns, and ran with it.

  She had one big obstacle coming up, and soon. They had to do something about better horses. That teeth filing, or floating, as Jerry called it—why did she always imagine large yellow molars floating out of a horse’s mouth? It did make Goat appear to be a better horse, but he was still the same lazy, winded old bag with the jounciest gallop God ever gave a horse.

  Pete was also on his last legs. The long journey from the East, coupled with her father’s insane plowing of the prairie grass. It still made her sick to think about Pete standing with his neck outstretched, sweat running from his belly, his withers.

  They had no money until they sold the calves, and then, all of what they made at auction should go to pay back her grandfather’s loan.

  Pete and Goat would never manage the round up or the long drive into Pine, perhaps Dorchester, or farther. The summer’s drought would produce fewer cattle than usual, which meant the small town of Pine might not have an auction this year.

  They could have them trucked, but Hannah didn’t want that. Ever since she had set foot on this prairie, she’d wanted to join in a real cattle drive, and she was going to do it.

  A thrill shot through her. All she needed was a good horse for herself and one for Manny. So if that meant being nice to Jerry Riehl and Jake Fisher, then she’d do it. Yessir. She would.