The Return

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  “Any chance you’re hoping to cross paths with anyone?”

  “No. What makes you think that?”

  “You look jumpy. Anxious. Antsy. That’s it. You look like you’ve got ants in your pants . . . uh . . . dress.”

  “I’m not at all antsy,” she said coolly. Actually, I am. I want to get home to see Hans. So why don’t you offer me a ride home? “I’m just hungry. Late for supper.” She took care to enunciate the word late. And yet, rumpled Martin did not pick up on her hint.

  The silence remained tense.

  “Sure you’re not trying to meet anyone?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “Because I happened upon Hans Bauer a short time ago. He was delivering the tongue for the wagon, he said. Met him on the road going, then he passed me again as he was heading home.”

  Tommyrot. She’d missed her chance.

  Martin glanced speculatively over at Beacon Hollow, then back at her, before picking up the reins. “Well, I better not keep you since you’re in such a big hurry. So long, Tessa.”

  What? He didn’t even offer her a ride? It was hardly out of his way. Just a mile or two.

  And then he drove down the road, whistling. She watched him drive off, mystified at his lack of awareness, his lack of concern for her. She was surprised to find herself a little disappointed.

  Not Faxon’s Farm

  May 11, 1763

  Catrina Müller set to educate Felix’s boys and poor Willie Zook with a vengeance. For three full days now, since Monday morning, despite heavy spring rains, she arrived at eight o’clock sharp with her domineering mother Maria beside her in the pony cart, and sat the boys down at the kitchen table, next to poor Willie who was delivered by Anna. Maria plunked down in a rocking chair near the fireplace, waiting for Dorothea to rise from bed and join her.

  On this gray morning, Felix gave his boys a sorrowful look, a pat on their red heads. He would be spending the day in the barn. Where his boys wanted to be. Where he needed their help to muck stalls. Where he wanted their companionship. He couldn’t even look at their little round freckled faces; he felt he was letting them down. It was a terrible thing to have Catrina Müller bear down on them, stifling their joyful spirits like a fire that gets blown out before it has a chance to warm the room. “Eems Licht ausblose,” he had told her. Snuffing out their candles.

  There was plenty of time to learn to read and write, but such little time for a child to be free, to explore the natural world, to be unrestrained by adult expectations. He said as much to Catrina and she waved away his fretting as nonsense. “You sound like a man who just doesn’t want to grow up.”

  He found that remark to be highly insulting. He was plenty grown up. He was a deacon, for goodness’ sake. Did she even realize that? His job was to sniff out misbehaving church members and set them back on the straight and narrow path. And it was indeed a straight and narrow path. He was a very lax deacon, he knew, but then, Bairn was a very lax minister as well. Maria Müller threatened to leave the church on the day when Felix drew the lot, if there were only another church to flee to.

  Felix would have been delighted to see the backside of meddlesome Maria Müller, and her interfering daughter too. Yet here they were, parked inside his home, torturing his poor sons under the guise of an education.

  It was more than Felix could bear, watching his two active boys have to stay indoors in springtime, forced to recite their alphabet and practice sums. He tried to persuade Catrina to have lessons in the afternoon or, better still, in the evening, but she was adamant and unrelenting, unwilling to be reasoned with. “They can barely hold attention to a task as it is,” she said. “Keeping their thoughts focused in the afternoon would be like trying to catch dandelion heads in the wind.”

  And then she told him she would be there every single day but Sunday, including half days on Saturday, because the boys were so woefully behind in all subjects. As if it was a race! The words fell like a blow.

  Shawnee Village, Monongahela River

  June 5, 1763

  For a long while, Betsy brooded over all she had lost, mulling continually over all that her family had suffered. Time, though, chipped away at her despair. As she adjusted to her new surroundings, sleeping and eating, her mind slowly quickened, her downcast spirit lifted, and she cast aside her grief for longer and longer periods. Yesterday, she found herself to be almost . . . content. One thing she had become aware of: she had found that she could endure more than she had ever thought of herself.

  She knew she was fortunate. Nijlon and Numees were very kind women, good-natured, peaceable, mild in disposition, tender and gentle in how they treated her. She learned she did not need to fear them. They shared all they had with Betsy, their home and food. Betsy was becoming somewhat at ease in their mode of living, and to her surprise, she found herself growing fond of the two squaws. Numees, especially, who made her laugh. She had a talent for mimicking, and often poked fun at the villagers who came to Nijlon with their problems.

  She spent most of her time with Numees. She taught Betsy how to grind corn on a stone, how to scrape a hide, how to sew and repair the woven reed mats that lined the interior of the wigwam by using a needle made from the rib of a deer. Earlier today, they went out to a small field, recently plowed, and spent the morning hours planting corn, squash, and beans. When they finished, Numees pointed to herself, to Betsy, and back to the wigwam where Nijlon remained. She held up three fingers and said, “Nesh-wonner numees.”

  Betsy didn’t understand, so Numees tried again, and again. Then it dawned on her that she was calling the garden Three Sisters: corn, squash, and beans. And Betsy was considered the third sister.

  When Numees saw that she understood her meaning, she laughed and clapped her hands, though not in a mocking way, and Betsy felt a trickle of pleasure.

  Nijlon was more serious minded; she did not allow Betsy to speak English in her hearing. She was determined Betsy learn their language and adapt to their customs. Betsy was willing to learn, but she was also determined not to forget. She made a habit of repeating her prayers each day, down by the river, whenever she was sent to draw a pot of water. She wouldn’t forget her father’s last words of warning to her: to remember who she was, to whom she belonged, to stay vigilant so that heathen ways would not overtake her, and to keep her trust in God.

  The curious thing was that Betsy had not observed heathen ways among this village. Nothing remotely close to the sacrilegious and profane behaviors she had seen among the warriors. These villagers were farmers, busying themselves with living.

  Each day presented countless chores—most of which revolved around food and more specifically, corn. Corn was of great importance to the Indians. It was served at every meal in some shape or form; its very name meant life.

  The food Betsy ate was entirely different food from the kinds she’d grown up with: bowls of thin broth made of beans, onions, and squash, stewed pumpkin, fresh fish caught from the river, maize cakes sweetened with molasses. It was not an abundant diet, nothing like the rich foods eaten by her family, but it was adequate, and the villagers took great pride in sharing all that they had with each other, including Betsy. Their willingness to share was not so very different from the Schuylkill neighbors’ generosity as they helped to stock the Zooks’ root cellar during their first autumn in the New World.

  At some point in each day, Nijlon’s wigwam was filled with women whose hands were occupied with a task. Several times, Betsy had come into the wigwam to find women surrounding the fire, chattering in their language, busily stringing small white and black beads. Wampum beads. Betsy had seen wampum before; she knew it was made of shells and Indians treated it like money. Wampum strings held great significance to the Indians, for when a person held wampum strings, it meant he spoke the truth.

  But it wasn’t the stringing of wampum that struck Betsy as familiar, it was the women’s behavior. She could have been walking into a quilting frolic at her mother’s farmhouse.
Perhaps that’s what startled Betsy more than anything else: how ordinary the lives of Indian villagers were, how similar they seemed to people in her own church.

  Not Faxon’s Farm

  June 10, 1763

  To Felix’s unexpected delight, Catrina did not limit the education of his sons to books. She and the boys spent a warm June afternoon picking plump blueberries, eating their fill in the process; the rest they sugared and dried into stiff leather. “To have a little bit of summer on a cold winter’s day,” she told them. She taught them how to put up butter and cheese in crocks, how to keep the crocks cold and covered with straw in the icehouse. How long had it been since they’d had butter and cheese from their own cow’s milk? Dorothea gave up the tedious process long ago, and Felix had never bothered to learn. He’d just sent the boys to Anna’s whenever he had a hankering for butter or cheese; she was always willing to share from Beacon Hollow’s bounty. Yet he was pleased with these new skills of his boys. Secretly pleased.

  The boys helped Catrina grind corn and oats from the fields to make flour and meal. Felix didn’t mind those lessons either; anything that taught his boys how to stay healthy and well fed was fine with him. But when he came home one day and found his boys learning how to spin wool, he felt Catrina had crossed the line. He sent the boys outside and turned on her. “It’s female work,” he said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Felix,” Catrina said. “Anyone who keeps sheep needs to know how to spin wool. What do you do with all that wool?”

  He rubbed his neck. “Give it to Anna.”

  She sighed. “I’m teaching the boys skills they will need in life. You’re the one who wants them to know how to survive on the western frontier.”

  “Not by sissifying them.” He frowned. “Next you’ll be teaching them to spin flax.”

  “In fact, I was planning to do exactly that.”

  “Not my sons!” he roared. “No self-respecting male in this valley would be caught spinning flax.”

  “You certainly don’t mind wearing linen shirts, or sleeping under a woolen blanket on a cold winter’s night. Do you think these things will magically appear for your sons when they venture west?”

  They glared at each other, a standoff. Somewhere in Felix’s mind came a memory of staring games with Catrina on the Charming Nancy. He’d always lost.

  “Son, let her teach.”

  He turned to see his mother standing at the doorjamb.

  “Thank you, Dorothea,” Catrina said. She gathered her belongings and started toward the door. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

  Now? Now his mother decides to get out of bed?

  Shawnee Village, Monongahela River

  June 16, 1763

  Early one morning, Betsy made her way down the bank of the river and squatted beside the water. Even before she lowered her hands into the river, she knew the icy cold would make her fingers sting. As she bent down to scoop up the water into the pot, she heard a man’s voice speak in her dialect. “Do you need help?”

  Betsy snapped her head up, disoriented.

  That blue-eyed Indian stood beside her, pointing to the empty pot. “Do you need help filling the pot?”

  At the sight of him, she faltered and nearly dropped the clay pot. “You! It’s you,” she said, surprised. Stunned. She had never expected to see him again. “What are you doing here? Where did you come from?”

  He pointed downriver. “I have come to bring you news of your brother. He is well and strong, adapting to Indian life.”

  Shocked silent, she was so filled with gratitude that she dropped the bucket and grasped both his hands in hers. “Thank you, thank you!” she cried. “I rejoice to hear this news! It gives me hope that we will soon be reunited.”

  His eyes dropped to their joined hands. She hadn’t realized she was still holding on to him. She let go and bent down to pick up the pot. Her mind started spinning with questions. “Where is he? Would you take me to him? Or bring him to me?”

  “No. I have no such influence.” The Indian’s look grew pensive; his gaze shifted and fixed on a hawk riding the wind. The hawk banked suddenly and flew straight down to the water, snatched a fish out of the river with its sharp talons, and shot up like an arrow into the deep and empty sky. They fell quiet, listening to the wind’s breath in the trees around them, the hum of activity floating down from the village.

  Who was this man? She risked a gander at him. He was long and lean like other Indian men; his muscled shoulders and bare chest tapered into a hollow gut, wiry arms looked as strong relaxed as flexed. Like the other village men, he wore a breechcloth and deerskin leggings on his legs, brown moccasins on his feet. She’d never seen anyone stand so still. But no sooner had the thought formed in her mind than he spun to face her. She felt her face grow warm, embarrassed to be caught looking at him, but he seemed almost amused. She noticed a quick tightening of his mouth and a crinkling of the sun-creases that fanned from the corner of his eyes. “How is it that you speak my language?”

  “My mother belonged to your people.”

  Betsy was shocked. “Your mother? She was Amish?”

  “Mennonite. She was captured by the Iroquois and sold to another tribe. She taught me her language and her customs. And her prayers.”

  “You are a Christian?”

  “She baptized me.”

  Betsy must have looked shocked at the idea of a woman having the authority to baptize because he added, “Women are not kept silent among our people, as they are in yours. You must have noticed that Nijlon is head of this village. She sits in council. Women show great wisdom as leaders.”

  It was an astonishing thought. She had never heard anyone express such an idea before. She had, indeed, noticed the Indian men in the village defer to Nijlon, and once she saw her speak harshly to a man. The man looked injured but not indignant, the way a child would look if his knuckles had been rapped. “So you are half German?”

  He gave her a wry smile. “You have probably heard the term ‘half blood.’”

  “Have you thought to seek out your mother?”

  “She died, many years ago.” His voice remained free of emotion, but Betsy thought she saw something cold shiver across his eyes.

  “What of your German relatives? Could you not go to them, seek them out?”

  “Half bloods belong to no one.” Then he lifted his head proudly and thumped his naked chest with his fist, once, then twice. “But I . . . I belong to the Holy One.”

  She was completely baffled, and the corners of his mouth lifted at her confusion. “My mother was offered as tribute, like you. And like your new sisters, the villagers who adopted my mother were very kind. When the time came, I was sent out to become a man. There was a wild stallion that roamed through Pennsylvania. This horse, it is said, once belonged to William Penn, a white man who treated the natives well. With respect.”

  “I know of this William Penn! A Quaker man. He was given this land by the king of England.”

  He nodded. “My tribe believed that if the horse could be found, the people would be strong again, their reputation would be restored. But this horse was wild. He roamed free, he would not be captured. I was foolish and determined, for I had caught sight of him many times. I understood this horse. I knew where his mind would take him. I kept tracking him, far into the mountains. Too far. Iroquois warriors hunted me down and caught me, and then I was given to Shawnee.” He lifted his palm in the direction of the village. “To this tribe.”

  It shocked Betsy to hear that Indians would capture other Indians. She had thought their evilness was directed only against white people. “How awful.”

  He made a dismissive sound. “It was my own foolish pride that made me think I could capture the stallion. Instead, I was captured. That is the way of all pride.”

  “Why haven’t you gone back to your people?”

  “I am slave.”

  “A slave? But you’re not confined to this village. You seem to have the freedom to roam.”
But then, so did she. However, she had no idea which way to go to get home.

  “A man’s spirit withers if confined. Nijlon understands that.” He took the pot out of her hands and squatted down by the water’s edge. “Nijlon sent me to seek out news of your brother. To give you peace.” He scooped water into the pot, then passed it to her. “She treats her people well. You would do well to accept your fate.”

  Her fate. It sounded so final, so fixed. She refused to believe that. She had to believe that she would be reunited with Johnny, returned to her people. That one hope helped her face each new day. “Tell me, what is your name?”

  “Nijlon gave me the name Askuwheteau. It means ‘he keeps watch.’ A strong and powerful name. Names hold great meaning for Indians. A man becomes his name.”

  “Ask-oo-we-tow.”

  He winced as she mispronounced it. “My mother called me a different name. Caleb.”

  “There’s a Caleb in the Bible who was a fine man. A man worthy of great respect. A man who never wavered. Wholehearted, God called him.”

  His eyes smiled. “Then you may call me Caleb.”

  11

  Not Faxon’s Farm

  June 20, 1763

  Felix spent a portion of each day training the young Conestoga colts to work as a team under harness, preparing them to pull the highly anticipated and talked about Conestoga wagon, if the time ever came when Bairn actually finished it and delivered it to Faxon Gingerich. That brother of his was a perfectionist of the worst sort.

  Bairn said after this prototype wagon was finished, he wanted to build it again in three sizes—small, medium, and large. This first one, he told Felix, was the smallest size. He aimed for it to haul as much as two to three tons. It astonished Felix to think of horses pulling a wagon with that kind of load, yet this unique God-given breed of horses seemed suited for their role in the fast-growing New World.