by Dale Cramer
“It’ll be all right. You’ll see.”
A deacon came out shortly, summoning everyone back inside. As Rachel and Jake filed in behind a long line of children and teenagers, the deacon caught Jake by the shoulder. His heart stopped until he saw the little smile in the man’s eyes.
“The vote was unanimous,” the deacon said. “Not one person here thinks of you as a murderer.”
He very nearly wept with relief.
As Rachel was taking her seat on the backless bench, Bishop Schwartz began reading the story of the prodigal son from the Bible. When he was done, he called Jake to the front and asked him to kneel.
The bishop asked a few pointed questions, which Jake answered from the heart. His contrition was clear. When Jake rose to face them, the bishop said, “I encourage you all to forget that this ever happened. This man is forgiven, and you should hold nothing against him.”
There was one point during Jake’s confession when Rachel almost got herself in trouble. When she heard Jake promise out loud before the church that he would “seek to do better,” in essence he was promising that in the future he would do his best to avoid killing anyone. She very nearly laughed at the absurdity—as if Jake were a murderer, as if there were the remotest chance he’d ever find himself in that situation again. But she managed to catch herself and lower her face to hide the smile.
And then it was over and Jake was restored to fellowship, a member in good standing.
After the service one of the bishops pulled her aside. It was Abe Detweiler, one of the younger ones newly ordained in another district and a second cousin of Lizzie’s husband, Andy. His face was ruddy, his beard as red as Rachel’s hair. She was afraid for a minute that he’d seen her smiling during Jake’s confession and was going to give her a scolding, but it wasn’t that at all.
“I read your father’s letter. It’s a shame about Miriam,” he said gravely. “We will have little choice, but we’ll give it time before we do anything. A grace period is customary because you never know—something could happen to Miriam’s husband and she could return to the fold. Of course it’s up to Bishop Schwartz, but I’m sure he’ll want to wait a while. Perhaps when you finish your instruction classes and are ready to return to Mexico, then we’ll decide.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Miriam and I are very close. I have to tell you, after all we’ve been through I cannot find it in me to fault her for marrying Domingo. I know she made a promise when she was baptized, but how could she have known she would be hauled off to the mountains of Mexico where there were no Amish? No one knows what it was like for her. She never really had a choice. Mexico is a different world.”
He nodded and, despite his position as a bishop and a defender of the faith, there was deep sympathy in his eyes. “I have heard,” he said. “Your family has been through terrible trials . . . especially the death of your brother Aaron. We here can’t know what it must be like having to deal with bandits all the time. Do they still plague your valley?”
“Oh no. A detachment of soldiers came to El Prado not long ago. There was a battle, and the bandits lost. Word has already spread about the troops, so I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble with bandits.”
He stroked his rusty beard, staring at the floor. His eyes narrowed in thought and it hit Rachel suddenly that he was thinking about Mexico.
And he was a bishop!
Abe Detweiler was young for a bishop—only about forty—but he had several school-age children who were being forced to attend public school five days a week. She resolved to be careful with her words. It was just possible that Abe Detweiler was the answer to a thousand prayers.
“I have to go and help with lunch,” she said, “but I would love to tell you more about our home in Mexico. Perhaps you and Sarah could come visit sometime.”
He nodded, smiled. “I would love to hear more about it. And I will pray for Miriam.”
Miriam’s loss would be deeply felt by all, and none so deeply as Rachel, but on this day Jake was restored to fellowship, his sins washed away and forgotten. It was a day for joy. She and Jake went to the youth singing that night, together, and afterward they slipped away into the darkness for a little reunion of their own.
Chapter 13
Emma saw a change in Levi that summer, and she nurtured it with great care and patience—the way she watered her trees, and for the same reason. When the men came and helped Levi rebuild his barn he began to step a bit lighter and smile more often. Taciturn by nature, he said little to Emma about the lifting of his spirits, but she knew. The grace of Gott was at work in her husband, and he was finally beginning to see it.
Domingo came by sometimes in the late afternoon when his work was done, toiling until dark, nailing boards on the outside of the barn and helping Levi cover the roof with new sheets of tin, paid for and delivered by his neighbors. Miriam came on those afternoons too, for she knew—had always known—that Emma held the key to her father’s heart.
“They work well together,” Miriam said one evening, watching from the back door of the house.
The sharp reports of hammers on tin told Emma what they were doing. She dried her hands on a dish towel as she went and watched over Miriam’s shoulder.
“They’re so different,” she said, “and yet in some ways they’re two of a kind. Strong, quiet, hardworking and honest.”
“You left off stubborn,” Miriam said.
Emma chuckled. “Jah, that too.”
“I’m glad to see them finally getting to be friends.”
“Levi’s come a long way in his thinking lately. When he saw that Gott has forgiven him he finally forgave himself, and it felt so good to him that he started forgiving other people. It’s all new to Levi. I only hope he doesn’t change his mind when the ban comes.”
“He won’t have any choice,” Miriam said. “Nobody expects him to disobey the church—least of all me. I won’t have anybody getting in trouble because of me.”
Emma took her sister’s shoulder and turned her until their eyes met. “Listen, Miriam. You know as well as I do that people bend the rules all the time, and your family will bend them as far as they can. The ban won’t be so hard. The only one you ever really had to worry about was Levi, and look at him now.”
They both glanced up at the barn roof just in time to see Domingo slip. He was high up near the peak, with Levi a little lower and off to one side. Domingo went to step sideways when the board he was bracing his foot against broke away. Domingo went belly-down on the steep tin roof, scrambling for a handhold as he started sliding.
Emma and Miriam both gasped, but then they saw Levi’s arm fly out quick as a snake, grabbing Domingo’s wrist and stopping the slide.
Two hammers clattered down across the tin roof and plummeted thirty feet to the ground as Levi strained to pull Domingo back up to a safe foothold.
It happened so fast neither of the women even had time to move. They just stood there with their mouths open, shaking their heads in disbelief. There was nothing they could have done anyway, and by the time the panic subsided the danger was past and their husbands were laughing at themselves.
“Laughing,” Emma said. “Look at them. They’re laughing! Have they lost their minds?”
“No,” Miriam said, her hand still pressed against her beating heart. “They’re men. They don’t think the same way we do, and after all we’ve been through I’m glad for it.”
Rachel didn’t see Abe Detweiler again until she was halfway through her instruction classes, but on a Sunday afternoon in midsummer his surrey pulled up the drive. The children all went out to play with Lizzie’s brood while Abe and his wife, Sarah, came in to visit.
Jake was there too, which was fortunate, because Abe wanted to hear more about what had happened in Diablo Canyon. Despite Jake’s interrogation, there were a great many details Abe didn’t know.
They exchanged pleasantries while Lizzie served coffee and apple pie at the kitchen table. She was well prepared;
Sunday afternoon was when people would drop in for a visit unannounced, and Amish women prided themselves on spending their Saturday baking for just such a contingency. Lizzie was a little flustered nonetheless. It was a rare honor to have a bishop drop by.
“I don’t mean to dredge up unpleasant memories,” Abe said, a fork poised over a half-eaten slice of deep-dish pie, “but I’d really like to hear the whole story about how you came to be in a bandit’s barn so far from home.”
So Rachel told him. She started at the beginning, about how she, Aaron, Ada, and Little Amos were on their way back from Agua Nueva when El Pantera and his men overtook them on the road.
“It was horrible,” she said. “Ada and Little Amos run off to who knows where, and Aaron is stabbed. I was so worried about them I just didn’t think much about myself.”
“When Ada came home the next morning we went looking and found Aaron,” Jake said. “Caleb and Harvey brought him home, and me and Domingo went after Rachel on horseback. We trailed the bandits all the way to their hideout in Diablo Canyon, but then they caught us.”
Sarah’s eyes went wide in terror. “So you were captured?” She had heard only the barest outline of what happened.
“Jah,” Jake said. “That night they chained us all in the barn, but I got loose. That’s when I . . .” His face darkened, his voice trailed off and he leaned over his apple pie, picking at it with his fork. “I don’t remember much after that,” he mumbled.
“It’s all right,” Abe Detweiler said, and there was compassion in his eyes. “It’s all behind us now. All is confessed and forgiven.”
Still grieved by the memory, Jake didn’t offer anything more, so Rachel told them the rest of the story about her escape, including Domingo’s stand at El Ojo. Abe and Sarah sat back wide-eyed, captivated, forgetting their pie and coffee.
“I’ve never heard anything like that in my life,” Sarah said. “It’s a wonder you weren’t all killed.”
“Gott protects His children,” Abe said softly. “But you were right in what you told me, Rachel. Everything that has befallen you and your family there—it’s all so different from how we live here. Almost unimaginable. Hearing what it’s really like down there makes it a lot harder to judge people’s actions. We just can’t know.”
But Rachel hadn’t forgotten her main objective. She was watching their eyes, gauging the bishop’s reactions and those of his wife. In the end, Rachel knew Sarah was the one she would have to persuade.
“But the bandits don’t bother us anymore, now that the troops are there,” she said. “And there are a lot of good things about Mexico, too. Dat says the soil in Paradise Valley is as rich as any he’s ever seen. Wheat grows like hair on a dog’s back. The winters are milder, and since we’re in the mountains the summers aren’t so hot.”
“I thought Mexico was a desert country,” Sarah said.
“Not all of it. It’s nice in the mountains. There aren’t as many trees as here in Ohio, but Emma has planted trees everywhere. Someday our valley really will be a paradise.” A little smile came to Sarah’s eyes then, and Rachel decided it was now or never. Time to run out her best argument. “We even have our own school,” she said.
Sarah’s eyes widened. “No! You have your own school?”
Rachel nodded casually, wiping her mouth on a napkin. “We teach Amish kinner reading, writing and arithmetic, without all the other stuff they fill their heads with in public school. And we teach them Spanish, just like the schools here teach Amish children to speak English.”
“But who is the teacher?” Abe asked.
“Well, Miriam started the school, and she was amazing with those children—truly gifted. But after she married Domingo the others didn’t want her teaching their kinner anymore, so now I’m the teacher. Sometimes Leah and Barb help.”
“I didn’t know this,” Abe said, sitting back in his kitchen chair as if the thought itself knocked him slightly off-kilter. “I never would have thought of it. Everyone knows the school issue is why you went there in the first place, but I never dreamed you would start your own. This is a very good thing.”
Rachel could see it in their eyes. The seed was planted; Abe and Sarah would discuss it between themselves later. Now, she judged, it was best to change the subject, not to belabor the point.
“Our houses are adobe,” she said. “They cost practically nothing because we make the bricks out of mud and straw.”
Sarah’s nose wrinkled. “Your houses are made of mud?”
The look on her face made Rachel giggle. “Jah, but you should see them. We plaster over the inside walls when we’re done, and then whitewash the whole thing. It’s really kind of nice once you get used to the idea. The men cut trees in the mountains for the roof, and we even found stone to build a basement.”
Abe’s brow furrowed. “Is there a market where you can sell your cash crops?”
Jake perked up, now that the conversation had gotten away from bandits, and it was he who answered the question.
“Well, we trade little things like milk and butter in the hacienda village, but we have to take our cash crops to Saltillo. It’s fifty miles, but they’re supposed to be building a railroad down our way. It’ll be much easier then.”
Abe and his wife asked questions all afternoon, clearly fascinated by life in Mexico. Jake and Rachel answered them all, and when the children came bursting into the house later in the afternoon Sarah took her youngest under her arm—a little sandy-haired boy named Eli—and whispered to him, “What would you think about going to a school where there were only Amish children?”
The bashful boy said nothing, but he looked up at his mother with a wide-eyed grin and nodded vigorously.
The look that flashed between Rachel and Jake was brief and wordless, yet there was an unmistakable gleam of hope in it.
Emma’s babies were asleep, the lights out, and she and Levi lay awake in bed.
“I saw Miriam today, in town,” she said. “She told me Domingo and the priest went to Saltillo for tin, and they’re ready to roof the building they’re going to use for a church.”
“That’s good,” Levi mumbled, and she could tell by the drowsy tone that he was already near sleep.
“It’s a lot of work. They’ll be needing help.”
He didn’t answer for a moment, and she was afraid he’d drifted off until he stirred. “And you want me to go help them?”
“Domingo helped you roof your barn.”
“A lot of men helped with my barn.”
“Jah, but Domingo more than the others. You owe him.”
Levi raised himself up on an elbow. “Emma, I like Domingo. He’s a good hand, and he don’t talk too much. But he’s an outsider who married your sister, and the ban is coming. To help Domingo is to help Miriam, and you know we can’t do that. What will people say?”
She smiled patiently. This kind of thinking was still new to him. “They’ll raise their eyebrows and wag their beards, but they can’t do anything more. Even if Miriam was banned there’s no money changing hands, so it’s not like you’re doing business with them.”
“But it’s a Catholic church.”
“It will also be a school for the poor children of San Rafael.”
“Mexican children.”
“Children are children, Levi. The little ones can’t help that their parents aren’t Amish. Gott loves them all, and so should we.”
He didn’t answer right away. She held her breath, waiting, because she knew her husband well. Though he loved Emma more than all the world and would always listen to her, he would never do something he thought was wrong merely because she asked him to. It was his right as a man, and his duty as the head of his house. But if he thought it over and decided it was the right thing to do, nothing would stop him. Not even the raised eyebrows of the Amish.
He sighed deeply and said, “I knew you were a troublemaker when I married you. When will we go?”
There were lots of local people helping fix
up the warehouse in San Rafael, but only one Amishman. Every morning, as soon as chores were done, Levi and Emma and their three babies showed up early and spent the day.
The women—Miriam, Kyra, and Emma—made sure everyone got their share of tortillas and beans at lunchtime, and carried water all day long.
They were filling buckets from the well one afternoon when they paused for a breather and fell to watching the men work on the roof.
“You know,” Kyra said, “Father Noceda swings a hammer pretty well, for a priest. But he’s no match for Domingo and Levi.”
Miriam smiled, and there was a note of pride in it. “When those two work side by side, no one is a match for them.”
“Esto es verdad,” Kyra said. This is true. “But I’ll say this for Father Noceda—he’s every bit as good-looking as they are. Too bad he’s a priest.”
With an embarrassed grin Miriam slapped her shoulder. “Kyra, you shouldn’t even think such a thing.”
Emma’s head tilted. “Why?”
“A priest cannot have a wife,” Kyra answered. “He is married to the church.”
“Ahhh, I see. An Amish minister would never put up with that.”
“Nooo,” Miriam said. “If an Amishman didn’t have a wife he’d starve to death.”
They all laughed. Looking at the two of them side by side, Emma said, “You know, Miriam, I never realized how much you and Kyra resemble each other. In those clothes you look more like her sister than mine.”
“Ella es mi hermana,” Kyra said with a smile. She is my sister. “Which I guess means you are my sister, too, Emma. I can’t thank you enough for bringing Levi to help with the work. From what little I know of Levi, I never thought he would help work on a Catholic church.”
Emma smiled. “He and Domingo are getting to be very good friends these days, and he’s only repaying a favor. Anyway, Levi doesn’t think of it as working on a Catholic church.” She glanced at Miriam with a trace of pride. “He’s helping to build a school for the niños. What he doesn’t know is that he’s the first student. Levi is learning a lot.”
