by Linda Byler
Poor as church mice they were. Especially now, with the value of land falling, the cash flow cut off by plummeting sales and the stagnant exchange of everything.
But he loved horses, Jake did, taking an avid interest in all the work of shoeing, filing teeth, and, especially, breaking a young colt. So the partnership worked well, for now. But Jerry knew the time would come when Jake would return to his family, the ties that bind as tight as glue for him.
Jerry had brought these three horses, but he had eight more being sent as soon as he wanted. His problem now was to complete the fence-making before winter. He couldn’t imagine letting the horses run wild with no boundaries, slapping a brand on their backsides, and hoping for the best.
He wanted fences with boundaries for his horses, grain from the local feed mill in town, salt blocks, and minerals. His goal was to start up a horse auction. To get the locals involved, he thought maybe he’d have a barbeque to introduce himself. Observing how these old ranchers kept their horses, he knew he’d have to settle for some inferior ones in the beginning. Not all of them. The Klassermans had a few horses that equaled some of his.
Jerry loved the solitude, the days on end without encountering another human being, the wide open spaces, the unexpected, uncontrolled scenery of waving grass, and a sky so immense it was all right to feel insignificant.
The way he had felt most of his life. His father was a harsh, exacting man, ensuring none of his boys would turn out grosfeelich. His way of raising children was to work them hard, give them no money to spend, and then they’d stay out of trouble, especially if they were put in their place frequently enough.
Jerry had been his mother’s favorite, for some reason, which only increased his father’s dislike and jealousy. After he turned eighteen, he left home, but his sister and her husband took him in. There he learned what a normal family was like.
To love without judging, to be able to please someone, anyone. It was a different life. After his introduction to horse training, he had found his vocation, his meaning in life. But as he grew older, the horses were not enough. He wanted to have a companion by his side, someone to love and build a future with.
He’d dated plenty of girls, but all of them left him empty and bewildered. He thought something might be wrong with him; maybe he was not able to love a woman because of his upbringing, his anger toward his sniveling, spoiled mother as solid as his rebellion toward his father.
So he let go of girls, as the years came and went. Until Hannah showed up, soaking wet and angry. She had grasped his interest in those two strong brown hands of hers and taken over his thoughts, his waking hours, his whole life, the way God was supposed to.
Of late, things had gotten worse. He felt as if he was running out of time. Would he actually have to go through life without her? She had no interest in him, absolutely none. All that girl thought about was her herd of black cows.
What was she doing riding out in his direction anyway? She’d never made herself clear. Visiting the Ben Millers? Highly unlikely. At any rate, old Pete was on his last legs, whether she admitted it or not. He couldn’t see how her and her brother did all that haymaking with those two worn-out horses. They had enough hay to feed twice as many cattle as they had. Someone had worked hard, all summer long.
So, there she was again, soaking wet in his barn, years later. A very different set of circumstances this time—a different barn, a different place. Who would have thought they’d end up in North Dakota?
Life was strange. He wondered if she’d ever forgive him for the mad dash to the barn. He had never been quite so irritated with anyone in his whole life, except his father, of course. You simply couldn’t tell that girl anything. She knew everything and wasn’t afraid to let you know it. Why did he even think of her?
By all outward appearances, she was unfit to be anyone’s wife, hard-headed, often rude, and ignorant. Likely the best path for her would be the life of a single cattle queen. A baroness of the West. Or that was what she imagined herself to be. There was no doubt about it, she was a dreamer. He could see the resemblance between her and her father.
And yet, here she was, by all appearances her Bar S well on the way. It was only a stroke of luck that the fire ruined the house. That, and God’s Almighty wisdom, His ways. All that help they’d received was all to their good.
But Jerry also knew that they had a well-to-do parent somewhere. Someone had to give them their start with those cattle. Someday, he hoped to be close enough to her to hear her story, which, he supposed, contained a lot more fear and trials than she would ever let on. That was exactly the reason she intrigued him and kept him always wondering about her. What made her say and do the things she did?
He looked at Jake, who stood over him with another biscuit and question marks in his eyes. He nodded and the biscuit clattered onto his plate. Jerry raised his chin in the bread knife’s direction. Jake handed him the salt shaker instead. Jerry shook his head and said, “Knife.”
Jake handed it over with one hand and cut off a bite of steak with the other. Feeling the shanty shake in the teeth of the wind that sprang up after the storm, they both looked up from their gravy-soaked biscuits and shook their heads.
“I have a feeling we’re in for quite a few surprises living out here on these plains,” Jake observed. “It seems like the wind and the heat and the rain all have a mind of their own.”
Jerry nodded and tried to sop up gravy with his biscuit. Giving up, he stuck it in his mouth, chewing it like a pretzel. “We’d better worry about this little pile of sticks we live in.” They both winced as a piece of metal flapped wildly, making a steady buzzing sound like a giant angry wasp. There was a decided breeze coming from between the rotting logs, flapping the towel that hung beside the wash basin setting on a bench.
“We need to come up with a plan. We don’t know how to go about procuring lumber here in the booming town of Pine. Or roofing, or windows, not to mention door handles and plumbing supplies. We may have to keep our deluxe plumbing system we have now,” Jerry said, smiling broadly.
“Won’t hurt us,” Jake said dryly.
“What if we get company?”
“No one will bother us. That …” Jake jerked a thumb in the general direction in which Hannah had arrived.
“Hannah?”
“Yeah, her. She could come calling.”
Jerry shook his head. “She won’t be back anytime soon, I have a hunch.”
Jake chose to keep his curiosity to himself.
After they washed the dishes, wiped out the frying pan and hung it back on its nail on the wall, they went outside to see how cheaply they could get by the winter-proofing the old, falling-down remainder of a half-log, half-sod house that had stood for a century or more, attacked by all kinds of rain, hail, snowstorms, and extreme temperatures.
The wind scoured the rusting metal, bent the tired, brown weeds and grass up against the old logs, swung the door back against the wall on its hinges with a loud clap.
Somewhere in the distance, coyotes set up their high, yipping bark, answered by another set of yelps close by. Jake said they needed a dog if they were planning on raising horses successfully.
“They wouldn’t touch a colt with the mother nearby.”
“Think not?”
Jerry nodded. “Think about Hannah Detweiler’s cattle. They were out all winter, with no hay for them at all. That was nothing short of a miracle.”
Jake thought it would take another miracle to get Jerry back to normal.
CHAPTER 16
The whole thing was bad timing.
Stuck behind the counter at Harry Rocher’s hardware store, to look up and find that Jerry Riehl was the one that had set that annoying little bell to tinkling. If he hadn’t already spied her, she’d have ducked behind the cash register and crawled away, which, for one panicked moment, she almost did.
Her practiced glare firmly in place, she looked at him standing tall, slim, and wide in the shoulders, her fad
ed purple dress too tight in the sleeves.
When his dark face broke into a welcoming smile, his white teeth gleaming and looking ridiculously handsome, her glare intensified.
“What are you doing here, Hannah?”
“What does it look like?”
“Well, since you’re standing behind the counter, I’m guessing you’re employed here.”
“Smart of you.”
A flicker of irritation passed through him. Why did she always make him feel like a bumbling second grader? “I need doorknobs and hinges,” he said, brusque now, turning away to inspect a bin of bolts.
She came out from behind the counter and led him to the section where all sorts of hinges were displayed, along with a variety of door handles. Standing back, she turned on her heel and left him to decide. No use trying to help him out.
When he had chosen the hinges and doorknobs he wanted, she was involved with another customer, a small boy who silently handed her a slip of white paper.
Jerry stood patiently, watching as she bent over the counter, propped her elbows, her too tight sleeves revealing her muscular arms. For an instant, something like fear of her wafted across his vision. Definitely someone to be reckoned with.
But when she spoke to the thin, wide-eyed little boy, her smile brought one to his face as well.
“Your mama had no time to come get her own thread and buttons? So you had to come the whole way here by yourself?” she asked.
The boy nodded, whispered, and bent his head.
Hannah came out from behind the counter, got down on her knees and placed her hands on his shoulders, squeezing gently. “Can’t hear you.”
“My bike. I rode my bike.”
Feigning astonishment, Hannah said, “My, you are little to be riding a bike. You deserve a piece of candy for that.”
The boy’s face lit up as if an internal light switch had been flipped on, watching every move she made until the bit of wrapped chocolate was in his hand.
Jerry stood, without realizing his own soft expression, his eyebrows slightly raised and his mouth open. So she had a tender heart for children, a well-buried kindness that rose to the surface on occasion. Somehow, to witness this scene balanced the muscular arms and her glare. He knew he’d continue his pursuit, but this was certainly a boost.
Hannah helped the boy first and left Jerry standing there holding his armload of doorknobs and hinges. No apology for keeping him waiting when he unloaded them on the counter, she merely pecked the keys on the cash register, a hidden face, presenting only her profile, the perfect contours of cheekbone and jaw, the small, flat nose. Oh, she was beautiful!
His heart set up a sweet pounding, like an ache. To begin a conversation, he mentioned the little boy. When there was no response, he tried the weather; no response then either. As she bagged his purchase, he became desperate and asked when she’d be ready to race horses again.
A flicker of interest, the lifting of her eyes, and looking straight into his. “We’ll be driving part of our herd and part of the Klassermans’ to Dorchester the last week in October before the snows come. We need horses. Pete is …” The slightest tremble of the firm lips. “Not strong enough,” she finished, her voice husky.
“It’s his kidneys.”
She nodded and held his gaze.
Suddenly, it was as if they were conversing with their eyes. The interior of the store with its yellow light bulbs overhead illuminating the shelves and dark walls, the shadowed objects, disappeared, leaving them both in a world where only the depths of their eyes existed.
Help me.
You know I would give my life for you.
Ride with me. I’m scared.
I’ll be there for you.
And then it was over, the moment broken by the jarring sound of the bell above the door. Jerry cleared his throat, ran a hand across his eyes, and left. There were no words, and if there had been, they would have ruined what he had just experienced.
He rode home, bouncing high on the saddle, flinging himself into the wind, a song like the high notes of a wailing bugle in his chest, an exhilaration of his spirit that rode high in the heights of the prairie sky.
Hannah rode home with Harry Rocher in the red car, a scarf tied over her head, black and warm.
The day was too cool to have the top down, but that was what he liked, so she crossed her arms, pulled the light denim jacket tighter, and didn’t say anything.
Harry talked nonstop, his considerate face thinner, pulled down, as if the years had not been kind. His hair had thinned and turned white at the temples. His hands were long and lined with heavy blue veins across the backs.
Old hands. An old face, long before it was time. Curious, Hannah asked about Doris. It was strange that she had worked in the store all day without being asked to do one chore for Doris in the house.
Harry talked then, his voice rising well above the rushing air and the sound of the motor. “She’s going downhill, fast. I don’t know what to do. She says if I don’t accompany her home to Baltimore, where her folks are, she’s going to file for a divorce. I don’t want that. It would be a public scandal. But I don’t want to live in Baltimore, in the city, with the heat and gut-wrenching smell of saltwater, the humidity that is so stifling you can’t breathe in the summer.
“Her parents are aging. They need our help. I don’t want to go, and I don’t want a divorce. She’s beyond miserable. I’m afraid if I don’t consent, she’ll lose her mind, and I’ll have to put her away. I can’t do that, either.”
Hannah considered his words that were peppered with self-pity. Hadn’t he promised to care for her in sickness and in health, or any other circumstances presented by God? Perhaps English vows were unlike the Amish vows.
“I hate Baltimore,” he said, his grip tightening on the steering wheel. “She hates it here. I love it. I love the people, the open sky, the land, snow, drought, dust—all of it. This is where my heart is.”
Hannah thought of her mother. Lancaster County was where her heart was. But she had followed Hannah’s father withersoever—as the Bible said. His God had been her God, or rather, her father’s version of God, his own translation of dreams and miracles and high-mindedness.
Call it what you wanted. Straight into near starvation they had gone. Hannah realized again that the reason for having survived that winter were both sitting here in this car. It wasn’t a miracle. You simply went out and did what you had to do, whatever came your way.
“Well, seems your choice is pretty clear. You need to go home to Baltimore if you want to do the right thing. You’re supposed to give your life for your wife.”
“And she’s supposed to submit to my will,” Harry said, the kindness in his face vanishing, leaving him looking old and thin, his face papery with wrinkles, his eyes hard.
Hmm. Here was a side of Mr. Rocher she hadn’t seen. When they pulled up to the door, the dust following them, blowing across the open car, the porch, seeping into the house and away across the prairie, Harry turned to her.
“Next week, same day?”
“Till the end of October. Then we drive the cattle.”
Harry nodded. He hesitated, ran the tip of one finger around the smooth rim of the steering wheel. He straightened his back, reached into his pocket for a rumpled, red handkerchief and busily dusted the glass of the gas and speedometer gauges.
“What do you think I should do, Hannah?” he asked.
“I told you.”
“But you have no idea. The smell of fish hangs over that city like a plague. The noise, the stench, the ships in the harbor, smelling of rust and oil and old saltwater. I can’t tell you how much I loathe that place.”
“Then get a divorce.”
“I can’t.”
“You mean, you can’t give up to take Doris home.”
Harry gazed off in the opposite direction. Finally, he thumped the steering wheel with his clenched fist and said he never should have married her. Hannah shrugged, got out of the
car, and went into the house without watching him drive away.
Big baby. She had no sympathy. Grow up. Do what it takes to face life. You’re married to a squeamish little woman who is afraid of her own shadow, so get over it. She didn’t blame Doris.
Her face clouded over with her disgust of Harry’s indecision. She stormed into the house to find her mother bent over the open oven door, poking a fork into the aluminum roaster filled with a steaming mound of roasht.
The house smelled like Christmas dinners and weddings. Sarah straightened and smiled at Hannah but her smile faded as she saw her dark countenance.
“You’re upset, Hannah.”
Hannah gave a quick snort of derision, then gave her mother an account of Harry’s life. Sarah nodded, feelings chasing over her features like light and shadow. She could not judge Mr. Rocher harshly. No. Buoyed as she was by the foundation of her upbringing, it still had not been easy. After she had ridden away from her home on the hard seat of that covered wagon, resentment had crept up and rode on her shoulders like a heavy burden, more times than she could tell. The private and bitter struggle, so much more than her daughter would ever know.
English hardware-store owner, Amish wife of a dreamer. Was there a difference, when the hardest task for all members of the human race was to relinquish the hold on your own will and allow someone else to present you with their will, expecting the nearly impossible?
No! It was called life. Living here on earth, giving your life, if not to your spouse, then for the sake of Christ alone.
Christ, who had bled and died, tortured by Roman soldiers, for her, for all of mankind. Without this belief, the bedrock of her faith, she would not have done it, and now, prospering here on this bleak and unforgiving land.
Or was it? She had come to love it. She had come to love her home, her neighbors, the vast realm of prairie, the magnificence of an ever-changing sky, a kaleidoscope of times and seasons, the hard work of producing vegetables from a garden that, except for their efforts, would remain unwatered.