by Jan Drexler
Christian paused at the edge of the porch, taking the time to button his coat against the frosty night air. The temperature plummeted quickly on clear nights like this.
“Gott in Himmel . . .” He shook his head. He couldn’t pray to God for help when his prayers of the last nine years had gone unheeded. Did such a God even have time to look on his poor Annalise and ease her grief?
Forcing his feet to take the path to the cemetery, Christian sighed his acceptance of the burden God had placed on their family. So many years had passed, their house filled with children once more, and yet God saw fit to leave Annalise in this valley of grief.
He could almost forget her sadness in the spring and summer, when the long, warm days chased Annalise’s spells away, but with the shortening of the days they returned without fail.
Reaching the edge of the cemetery, Christian stepped over the low stone wall. Annalise lay on Fanny’s grave, her hand lying on Hansli’s next to it. He could see her shoulders shuddering with deep sobs, her voice muffled in the grass.
Frustration rose like bile in his throat, sending waves of pain through his body. If he could pull the little ones out of their graves, he would. But they were gone. Gone, except for Annalise’s unending grief.
“How long, Lord?” Christian dropped to his knees beside his wife. “How long must she suffer?”
There was no answer.
Christian laid his hand on the quilt covering Annalise’s back, moving to grasp her shoulder. She shrugged him off, but he only grasped her tighter, pulling her up, turning her shoulders to cradle her in his arms. She struggled, and then surrendered, sobbing.
“Annalise.” Christian spoke as he would to a frightened horse. “Annalise, you must stop this.”
Annalise didn’t respond, but her sobs grew quieter. Christian cast about, looking for something that might distract her from this grief that consumed her. He saw only limestone grave markers and drifts of leaves between them. How could she think of anything else when the sight of these graves reminded her of her loss?
If only he could keep her from seeing them, then perhaps she would be able to get beyond this consuming sadness.
But the only way to do that would be to move their family somewhere else. He shook his head, chasing away the thought like a summer fly. He couldn’t leave this farm. It had been entrusted to him. So many generations of his family had lived here, he couldn’t be the one to break so completely from the past. Christian let his gaze move beyond the cemetery to the dark shadows of the trees lining Conestoga Creek. He had played along those banks as a boy, just as his father had, and his grandfather. The clear water flowed in his blood.
He looked down at Annalise’s face, her crying now over, her eyes closed, but not in the relaxed peace of sleep. Could he leave this farm for her? He would do anything to regain the close bonds they had enjoyed before the Lord took their three little ones.
Annalise’s eyes fluttered, then opened and looked into his. They were clear and awake, not glazed the way they were when she was trapped by her spells.
“Are you better now?” Christian smoothed her hair, loosened from the long braid she wore while sleeping. “Can we go back to the house?”
Her fingers clenched at his arm. “You wouldn’t leave them, would you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw the look in your eyes when the men talked of moving west. I saw the eagerness on Jacob’s face. You’re considering it, aren’t you?”
Christian swallowed. He had to admit that he had been interested in the news that Yost and Eli had brought. He had often looked at the western horizon, wondering what might lie beyond Lancaster City and the Susquehanna River. Annalise must have seen a longing as he listened to his friends.
“What if we did move west, Annalise. What would you think?”
“How could we leave these little ones behind?” Annalise sat up, pulling the quilt around her. One hand strayed toward the headstone with Fanny’s name. “I can’t leave them, Christian.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I can’t.”
Hannah prepared breakfast the next morning. Corn mush with maple syrup. Christian missed the plate of crispy bacon, but they hadn’t butchered the hogs yet. It would be another few weeks before they’d have pork again.
Yost and Eli ate their fill before they left.
“Will you be visiting any more of the families around here, then?” Christian asked as Yost gave his plate to Hannah to be filled again.
“I think you’re the last of the Amish families in this area. We visited a few families up near Ephrata, and you folks here along the Conestoga.” Eli pushed his plate away and blew on the cup of coffee Hannah had refilled for him. “We’ll be heading back toward Somerset. It’s time to attend to our own chores.”
“When will you be leaving for Indiana?”
“As soon as the roads are passable in the spring. That way we should be able to find land and purchase it by mid-summer.”
Christian turned his coffee cup, then picked it up and took a sip. He looked over the rim at his bedroom door. Annalise hadn’t stirred yet this morning. “What will you do with your land here?”
“Mine is sold already,” Eli said. He gestured toward Yost with his thumb. “He and his brother own their land together. His brother’s staying in Somerset, so he’s selling his share to him.”
Christian glanced at the bedroom door again. Still closed. “What do your wives and families think?”
Eli grunted. “My wife says she doesn’t want to move again, but she’ll go along with it when the time comes. She only sees what she’s leaving behind, but I’ve seen what our future is.” He took another sip of coffee. “Our children are already being influenced by the progressives around us in Somerset County, even if she doesn’t see it.” He looked Christian in the eye, his expression serious. “Surely you’ve heard the same discussions here—talk of meetinghouses and doing away with the shunning. Some of the brethren have even taken public office.” He shook his head, looking around the table at the children gathered there and then back to Christian. “I’m making this move to save my family. Sometimes the daed has to make the hard decisions, ja?”
Christian nodded his agreement, catching Hannah’s eye as he did. Her face was troubled. She was afraid he was considering such a move.
“Do you think moving such a distance will solve the problem?”
Yost finished his meal, pushing his dish away as he pulled his cup of coffee toward himself. “I can’t say for sure if it will or not, but I do know we have to do something. The Good Book tells us we are to be separate from the world, but how can we, when we live in the world?” He took a sip of his coffee, and then gestured toward the kitchen door, open to let the morning light in. “The world surrounds us here, in the settled east, but to the west . . .” His eyes brightened with his enthusiasm. “In the west, Brother Christian, there is such space, such freedom to live as God has called us. Land—fertile land—in abundance.”
Christian smiled at the man’s speech. “You make it sound like the Promised Land, Brother Yost.”
Yost smiled back and finished his cup of tea. “Maybe it is. Maybe it is.”
Christian looked from Jacob’s eager face to Hannah’s worried one. Her eyes held the question he couldn’t answer. Would he consider such a move?
7
Christian checked the angle of the sun. Midafternoon and the farm was quiet. There would be no better time to talk to Annalise about moving west.
He paused in the mudroom to remove his boots. A regular thumping told him he would find her at her loom—her usual place between dinner and supper. He padded his way to the room off the parlor. It was an addition made years ago, with windows in all three walls to give plenty of light. The loom filled the space, with just enough room to walk around it. Christian slipped inside the doorway and leaned against the wall as Annalise finished her pattern. The loom glowed in the sunny room, the wooden uprights and crossbars golden with the patina that only
comes from years of loving hands. Daed had made this loom for Mamma early in their marriage after they had bought the first of their flock of sheep from a farmer in Maryland. The loom would have to travel west with them if Annalise agreed to go. The sheep also. Farm equipment, household goods, food for the journey . . .
Pushing away the swirling details, Christian watched Annalise make a final pass with the shuttle and lay it on top of the woven threads. She turned on her bench to face him.
“Is there something wrong?”
“Ne, nothing wrong.” Christian ran his fingers through his beard. “I just wanted to talk to you.”
Annalise started to turn back to her weaving. Christian sat on the bench next to her and stilled her hands with his.
“We need to talk about moving west.”
She wouldn’t look him in the eye. “I have so much to do, Christian. Hannah has disappeared again, and I don’t even know where Liesbet has gone off to.”
But she let him pull her hand into the crook of his elbow. He leaned over and kissed the top of her kapp. His Annalise. Would moving west be the change she needed to stop this melancholy and bring her back to him?
“Tell me what you think.”
She fiddled with a thread hanging from the edge of the loom. “So, you’ve made up your mind?”
“Ne, not for sure. I need you to tell me how you feel.”
Her silence spoke for her.
“You don’t want to go.”
“Of course not. This is our home, Christian. How many generations has our family lived here? This is our heritage to pass on to our children. How can we leave it and go to a new wilderness where we would start with nothing?”
Christian glanced at her face. She was calm, with no sign of having to struggle against the demons today. He took a deep breath. Would she fight against his decision?
“I’m afraid for our children, Annalise. I’m afraid we’ll lose them to the world.”
She turned to him. “You’ve noticed it too?”
“Liesbet’s rebellion. Hannah’s interest in the Mennonite boy. And Jacob doesn’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with marrying outside the faith.” Christian gripped Annalise’s hand that still rested in the crook of his arm. “And where will the others go in a few years? I don’t know.” His shoulders ached with the weight of worry over his children. “Perhaps we’ve lost them already.”
“But what can we do, other than pray?”
“We can take them from here, where they’ve been surrounded by influences from the outside. Look at our neighbors—only the Hertzlers are still Amish. What happened to the Eshelmanns could happen to anyone—and they aren’t the only family we know who have either left the faith or been divided.”
Annalise was silent. Her gaze went beyond the loom and baskets of dyed wool to the view out the east window. Toward the family cemetery. Her eyes slowly widened as she became lost in her thoughts, and he knew where those thoughts were leading her.
“They’re safe.”
Annalise startled and looked back at him. “What?”
“The little ones . . . they’re safe in the arms of our Lord. They aren’t our responsibility any longer, but the ones left to us are.”
Her gaze went to the cemetery again and tears trickled down her cheeks. “I can’t bear it, Christian. Every time I look out there, I see their cold bodies under the ground . . .”
Christian folded her into his arms and let her cry against his chest, seeing the memory that haunted her. That cold November day when he dug the graves and laid his little children to rest. The fear of that day, when they were so close to losing Liesbet and Hannah also . . . and poor Jacob, who somehow escaped the fever, digging alongside him in the bitter wind.
“But they aren’t there. You know they aren’t. Their souls rest with our Lord. Would we wish any different for them?”
“Ja, ja, I would, Christian. I would wish they had lived and enjoyed full lives.”
“And go against the will of God?”
“I wish the will of God had been different.” She relaxed into his arms, her tears subsiding.
“Annalise, sometimes I wish the same.” He kissed her forehead and she looked up into his eyes. “But God knows best, ja?”
She sighed. A deep, shuddering breath of surrender. “Ja. God knows best.”
Through the open door, voices drifted on the autumn breeze. Jacob and the younger children were coming home after an afternoon of fishing in the creek. They sounded happy. Content. Alive. Innocent. Untouched by the world. He stiffened with the urgency that swept over him. He must act, and soon.
“We must consider going west, Annalise, for the children we have left to us.”
He waited for more tears, but when she spoke, her voice was calm. “Ja, Christian.” She sat up, looking out the windows at the sheepfold, the old cabin, the barn. “We will pray and think. I would miss this house and this farm. And our friends.”
“The Hertzlers are considering going also.”
She smiled at him then. A true smile. “That would be good.” She looked out the window once more. “I wonder . . .”
“What?”
“Was this how our ancestors felt when they left their homes in Switzerland?”
“They were driven out, fearful for their lives.”
“And for their children. They wanted their children to grow up in the faith.”
“Ja.” Christian felt a thread spanning the generations to the time of their forefathers. Were they really any different today?
Annalise stood and went to the west window. She rested her hand on the window frame, looking out toward the lowering sun. Christian walked up behind her and surrounded her with his arms, resting his chin on her head, his eyes on the line where the trees met the pale blue sky. Somewhere, out beyond the Susquehanna River and the endless ridges of the mountains that formed the edge of his world, was the west. Indiana. What would they find out there? They could hope for good farmland, good neighbors, and godly mates for their children. The future was spread before him like the clouds turning pink with the sun’s glow.
“But if we go or not,” Annalise said, her voice a whisper, “a part of my heart would always lie here.”
Christian lowered his head to kiss the top of her kapp. If they moved west, would she be able to leave those graves that captured her thoughts and ruled their lives?
Jacob had already started the milking when Christian reached the barn. He took up the pitchfork to start mucking Beppli’s stall.
After a few minutes of working in silence, Jacob cleared his throat.
“Ja, son?”
“I’ve been thinking about what Yost and Eli said last night, about Indiana.”
“Ja?”
“I want to go. Even if it means leaving you and Mamm, I want to go west.”
Christian smiled at the conviction in Jacob’s voice. “You won’t need to leave us quite yet, Jacob.”
Streams of milk filled the pail.
“You can’t keep me from leaving. I’m nearly of age.”
“You misunderstand me, son. Your mamm and I are thinking of going.”
Jacob jumped up so quickly he nearly upset the milk pail. “Really? When do we leave?”
Christian stopped pitching clean straw into the stall long enough to look over his shoulder at Jacob’s eager face. “It hasn’t been decided for sure, not yet. And if we do go, it wouldn’t be until spring, so you have time to sit down and finish your milking.”
“But we need to make plans. Do you know the way there? What will we take with us?”
“Ja, ja, ja, there are many questions to answer and many plans to make.” Christian moved on to Blitz’s stall. “I heard the Hertzlers are thinking of going also. The trip would be easier if we travel with another family.”
“And then there are the others from Somerset. We might have a big group.”
“Ja, we might.”
“Will Hannah be coming too?”
“Why wouldn�
�t she?”
Jacob was silent as he continued his milking. “Adam Metzler is sweet on her,” he finally said.
“I thought he might be. But Hannah is still my daughter, and she would come west with us.”
“What if Adam wants to marry her instead?”
A cold finger ran along Christian’s spine. This was what he had been afraid of. “Do you think Hannah would marry outside the faith?”
Jacob finished his milking and picked up his pail to take to the house, pausing as he went past Christian. “I don’t know if she would, but I think Adam might ask her in order to keep her here with him.”
As Jacob continued on to the house, Christian finished spreading the clean straw. How far had this gone between Adam and Hannah? Were they no longer just childhood friends?
He stuck the pitchfork into the pile of straw next to the horses’ stalls and spied Hannah hurrying toward the house. She had come from the direction of the Hertzlers’, not the Metzlers’. She must have spent the afternoon with Johanna.
Christian paused at the door of the barn, his eyes drawn to the cemetery in the grove of trees. Nine years ago his life had been full, complete. Then in one terrible day his heart had been ripped in two as his little children succumbed to the fever. Hannah had been spared, although she had been so ill, and Jacob hadn’t even been touched. Christian leaned against the barn door as he relived that night when Fanny had died, next to Hannah in the bed. Hannah hadn’t woken as he took Fanny’s cooling body from the room so Annalise could prepare her for burial, the fever finally gone.
Fanny had been the third to die. Catherine, barely four months old, had gone first, and then his little Hansli. His brave little Hansli, only five years old. His nose prickled as he remembered the boy’s mischievous grin. What kind of young man would he have become by now?
He had wanted to bury all the children together, and so delayed digging the graves, waiting for Liesbet. His Liesbetli. Her breathing had been so shallow, her damp blond curls tumbled on the pillow as if carelessly tossed there. He and Annalise didn’t leave her bedside through that long, long night.