Though Mountains Fall

by Dale Cramer

  Darkness had fallen by the time they reached San Rafael, but there was still lamplight in the windows of the houses. Caleb turned down the street toward Miriam and Domingo’s house.

  “No sense putting it off,” he said, and Rachel turned her face away from him. He pulled up in front of the house and handed Rachel the reins.

  “You wait here,” he said. “I won’t be long.”

  They were sitting at the kitchen table when the knock came, Domingo reading a book by lamplight and Miriam sewing, patching a pair of work pants. It was a small two-room house, and the sound of her father’s knock was still hanging in the air when Domingo opened the door. They just stood and looked at each other for a second, and Miriam knew. Even before he came in she could tell by the expression on her father’s face why he had come. It was the same look she’d seen in his eyes the day he buried Aaron. Domingo stepped back, waving him in.

  Miriam laid aside her sewing and rose to her feet. Her father had not set foot in her house since she married Domingo. He walked stiffly, perhaps tired from the long day’s drive, but more likely making a conscious effort at formality. He took off his hat, and without a word of preamble opened the letter and read it to her, word for word.

  Domingo came to her as her father read, slipping an arm around her waist and gripping her with purpose. A deep and terrible grief welled up in her as her father read. Her knees betrayed her, but Domingo held her erect. Her husband knew her well.

  When her father finished reading he folded the letter and slipped the envelope back into his coat pocket.

  “You are banned,” he said flatly. “You may no longer share Communion with our church or have fellowship with your family. You will now be treated as a heathen, an outsider.”

  She steeled herself and managed not to break down or weep, though she could not hide the grief in her eyes or the heaviness of her breathing. There was no use in pleading, no answer, no words that could begin to heal the rift that had opened between them. All she could do was weather the storm and wait.

  She fully expected her father to turn his back on her and leave without another word, but there was more.

  “Domingo,” he said, and now his voice almost broke, “you may no longer work for me. The men came to me and said after Miriam is banned it won’t do for her husband to earn his bread by my hand because it’s too much like I’m supporting her. I’m not to do business with her, and not with you either.”

  Domingo nodded. “What about the others? Ezra, Levi.”

  Caleb shook his head. “I don’t expect any of them will hire you. The rules are the same for all of us.”

  “That’s not fair,” Miriam said softly, and it surprised her to hear her own voice. “Domingo has done nothing wrong, and he is not a member—”

  “He is the husband of a banned woman,” her father said, “and shares her fate.”

  “But he has done only good things for all of us,” she moaned, though a quick hard glance from her father made her amend her words. “I mean you—all of you. Over and over Domingo has proven faithful. He has saved all our lives more than once, kept you from harm many times, worked to help you build a homestead, and been a friend to all the Amish. He has worked as hard as any—”

  “You think I don’t know that?” her father shot back. He actually raised his voice, and there was a new fire in his eyes. “Do you think I wanted this? I have no choice in this matter, Miriam, I’m only the messenger. These are the consequences of your actions, the natural result of your choice. You brought this on yourself, and you knew this day would come!”

  Domingo held out a calming hand. “We will be all right, Señor Bender,” he said quietly, and the compassion in his voice forced Miriam to look up at his face. Though her husband was proud and quick to anger there was not a trace of it in his eyes, and it suddenly dawned on her that he had sensed something in her father that in her grief she had missed.

  Pain. Dat said it himself—none of this was his choice. And it was killing him. Caleb Bender was hurting, and Domingo felt it.

  “You know you can trust me,” Domingo said gently. “I give you my word, as long as I draw breath your daughter will be well cared for. No harm will come to her, and she will never know hunger. She will never want for anything so long as I live.”

  Caleb held his gaze for a long moment, and in that moment something profound passed between them that even Miriam felt. Her father said nothing else. He nodded once, curtly, then turned his back on her and snugged his hat on his head as he went out the door.

  It seemed to Miriam that most of the air in the room swirled out the door in his wake, and a fair portion of her world with it.

  Chapter 16

  Rachel sat with her face in her hands most of the way home from Miriam’s, devastated. Miriam’s ban cast a shadow over everything. Even coming home from Ohio a baptized member of the church and bearing news of a bishop coming in the spring, all she could think about was Miriam.

  But that changed when they came in sight of the house.

  “They’re waiting for you,” Dat said as he turned the buggy up the lane. They were the first words he’d spoken since leaving Miriam’s. A little smile came to him as the front door opened and lanterns began bobbing outside.

  Before the buggy stopped rolling Rachel leaped out. Ada reached her first, and nearly knocked her down with an exuberant bear hug. They were all there. Mary and Ezra had come up with their five children, and Emma and Levi with their three. Even Lovina Hershberger came to welcome her home, but then Rachel knew for a fact Lovina would use any excuse to spend time with Harvey.

  Mamm stepped out of the crowd and clutched Rachel’s face in her two hands. Rachel stifled a gasp. Mamm had lost so much weight she didn’t even look like the same person. Her face—a face that had always been round and red and cheerful—had become thin and drawn. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her skin was pale.

  The difference was alarming to one who had been gone for nearly five months, and Rachel couldn’t hide her fears. “Mamm, are you all right? Have you been sick?”

  “No,” Mamm said, but even her voice sounded strangely high and frail. “I just missed my little girl, that’s all.”

  The whole crowd migrated inside, and since Rachel and Caleb had not eaten supper the women set about heating up leftovers. They all crowded into the kitchen and gathered around the table while Rachel and Caleb ate, which they hardly had time to do because they were forced to answer a barrage of questions from all angles.

  “How are Lizzie and Andy?”

  “Who does her new baby look like?”

  “How’s the farm doing?”

  “Did anybody else get baptized?”

  “Did you miss us?”

  “I missed you all so much,” Rachel said. “I thought I was going home until I got there and realized home is where my family is.”

  But in the middle of answering, Rachel noticed an unnatural hush had fallen, and only then did she see that Mamm had filled a plate and sat down beside Dat at the table.

  And she was eating. Mamm was packing away the vegetables, eating the way none of them had seen her do in months. Mamm finally noticed the stares, the silence. She looked up wide-eyed, with her mouth full, and muttered, “What?”

  They laughed, a bit nervously until Caleb took a chicken leg from his own plate and laid it on hers.

  “Pay no attention to them,” he said. “Eat up.”

  It was a joyous reunion, and Rachel was full of news about how the crops had done, who was courting whom, who had gotten married and how all the children had grown. They sat around the stove in the living room on hard-back chairs and talked and laughed and cried for two hours, hungry for news.

  The whole time Rachel noticed her father watching Mamm. Her mother didn’t talk much, but she seemed suddenly alive again, as if some spark of her old self had ignited, some small ember of hope. As she watched her father watching her mother, Rachel realized it was hope she saw in his eyes, too.


  The house emptied out when Mary and Ezra and Emma and Levi left with all their children, and Rachel’s siblings wandered off to bed. After the others retired Rachel caught her mother alone in the kitchen putting away the last of the dishes.

  “Mamm,” she said, touching her mother’s shoulder, “I need to tell you something—a secret, just between us.”

  Folding a dish towel, Mamm turned to face her. There was a trace of the old fear in her eyes then, as if she had forgotten that news could sometimes be good.

  “Jah?”

  “I need your help,” Rachel said, a smile creeping onto her face. “Jake will be coming back in the spring when he comes of age. I didn’t tell the others yet, but a bishop is coming, too. Abe Detweiler is coming down in the spring to see if he wants to live here.”

  “Oh, that’s good,” Mamm said. “We have waited a long time for a church leader.” She said it almost absently, her brow furrowed in confusion. “That’s your secret?”

  She hadn’t taken the hint.

  “Mamm, Jake has asked me to be his wife. We’re going to be married when the bishop comes in the spring. I’ll need your help to get ready.”

  Mamm just stared for a few seconds as if she still didn’t comprehend, but then something happened. She blinked. Her eyes widened a little, and Rachel watched as that small ember of hope in her mother’s heart burst into flame, as if she suddenly remembered who she was. Mamm came alive in that moment.

  “Oh my stars!” she said, clutching her cheeks. “Rachel, we have so much to do! You know it’s harder having a spring wedding because we can’t plant everything we need in the winter.”

  “I know,” Rachel said. “We’ll have to do without a few things, but that’s how it’s got to be. We’ll publish the first Sunday after the bishop gets here, and not one minute later. Jake and I have waited long enough.”

  It was harvesttime and, without Domingo, Caleb had to work twice as hard. Barbara, his youngest daughter, was driving while he and Harvey walked along behind a mountain of hay on their way back to the barn when Caleb looked up and saw the platoon of federales cutting across his fresh-mowed field.

  Captain Soto rode at the head of the column.

  “Buenos días, Señor Bender,” the captain shouted as his men rode up alongside the draft horses, grabbed the reins and brought them to a stop.

  Caleb nodded, but declined to return the captain’s cheerful greeting.

  Undeterred, Captain Soto grinned broadly, leaning on his pommel and looking down at Caleb. “It is a fine crop you have here,” he said. “I was wondering if perhaps you can share some of your bounty with us. We have no place to pasture our horses, and they will need a lot of hay for the long winter ahead.”

  Caleb eyed the captain cautiously. He already knew how this would go. “How much are you going to take?” he asked bluntly.

  Soto shrugged. “I was thinking it would save us a lot of time if you could just let us borrow your wagon and team, since the hay is already loaded. We will take this load to our barn and have your wagon back in an hour.”

  “Pity you couldn’t show up a little earlier and help with the harvest,” Caleb said.

  Soto shrugged again, and his men chuckled among themselves. “We are not farmers, Señor Bender; we are soldiers. We are here to protect farmers.”

  Caleb’s jaw worked and he chewed on his bottom lip to keep himself from saying what he was thinking. Soto and his men were here to protect farmers from those who would steal, but the soldiers stole more than the bandits ever did.

  “Take it, then,” he said, and motioned Barbara down from the seat.

  “Muchas gracias, Señor Bender. Of course this one load will not be enough to last the winter, but I see others in the valley bringing in their hay. We will only need this one little wagonload from you.”

  The captain actually tipped his cap and grinned at Caleb as he turned away, and one of his men climbed up into the seat to bring the wagon about.

  They brought the wagon back empty in two hours, and Caleb watched as they headed straight for Hershberger’s farm. John was on his way to the barn with a big load of hay.

  Think of it as taxes, he thought.

  They came back a few days later and took a wagonload of corn.

  Rachel was glad to be home, but it seemed to her now that her world was fractured, divided into three distinct pieces. Part of her was with Jake in Ohio, and part of her with Miriam in San Rafael. Miriam hadn’t come around since the ban letter arrived, so Rachel hadn’t seen her at all. Her name was rarely even mentioned at home. Her name brought the darkness back to Mamm’s face, a thing which they all learned quickly to avoid. Better not to speak of Miriam at all.

  But ban or no ban, she was still Rachel’s sister, and Rachel missed her sorely. Already, after only a week at home, she’d caught herself turning over in bed a hundred times to say something to Miriam, only to remember that she was gone. She loved Leah, but Leah was not Miriam.

  She finally got a chance late one afternoon to take the buggy into town to do the trading at the mercado and pick up the mail. Leah went with her, talking the whole way, but it occurred to Rachel as she was tying the horse to the rail at the mercado that she couldn’t recall a single thing her seventeen-year-old sister had said.

  Rachel traded her eggs and butter for a bag of salt and the cloves that Mamm had requested, then hurried back to the buggy, but Leah wasn’t back from the post office yet. She untied the horse and drove slowly down the main street, watching for her sister. As she passed a narrow alley she happened to glance down it and saw Leah coming toward her, escorted by an Amishman. The man didn’t look up, but that pointed black beard and small stature were unmistakable. Atlee Hostetler. He was holding Leah’s arm, and the look on Leah’s face was one of abject horror. Rachel could also see a little group of uniformed men farther down the alley, staring at Leah’s back, laughing and gesturing.

  Before they emerged into the main street, Atlee looked up and saw Rachel waiting there with the buggy. He gave Leah a little shove and then turned about, ducking his head as if he thought he could keep from being recognized.

  “What happened?” Rachel asked as her sister climbed up into the seat.

  Leah only shook her head, pale as a ghost. “Go,” she said, waving at the horses. “Go!”

  By the time they were clear of the town Rachel finally got her sister calmed down enough to talk.

  “I was on my way back from the post office,” she said, drawing a packet of mail from the deep pocket of her dress, staring at it. “Three of those soldiers stopped me, took my arm and dragged me into that alley.”

  She broke down and cried for a minute, then sobbed, “I thought they were going to kill me! I don’t know what would have happened if Atlee hadn’t come along. He told them to leave me alone, and they let me go.”

  “What was Atlee doing there?” Rachel asked.

  Leah shook her head, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. “I don’t know, but I did smell liquor on his breath. I think they were all drinking.”

  “Atlee was drinking with the federales?”

  “I guess so. I don’t know what else to think.”

  Rachel thought about this for a minute, and nodded. “It makes sense, I guess. There are rumors about Atlee’s drinking. They say that’s why he came down here, to get away from his reputation and maybe straighten up. I guess if you’re looking for a drink, a bunch of soldiers would know where to find it. Are you okay?”

  Leah nodded. “Those men are pigs. You should hear the things they said.”

  Rachel shook her head. “I don’t want to, but I can imagine. It’s okay. You’re safe now. I think from now on we’ll have to have a man come with us when we go to town. Dat will hear about this, and I’m thinking he’ll want to have a word with Atlee.”

  Despite the problem with the soldiers they’d made good time in town, and when Rachel came to the crossroads, instead of going on straight toward home she turned right, toward the l
ittle town of San Rafael.

  “Where are we going?” Leah asked, still upset.

  “To see Miriam.”

  “Really?” Leah said, a little shocked.

  “Jah, she’s still our sister.” She gave Leah a hard stare. “You’re not to tell Dat about this, you understand?”

  Leah shook her head, still sniffling. “I won’t.”

  ———

  They found Miriam in her kitchen with Kyra, canning the last of the produce from the garden. Kyra opened the door, and when Miriam heard Rachel’s voice she almost knocked over the big boiling pot in her excitement.

  Miriam gave Rachel a big welcome-home hug, but when she went to hug Leah she held her at arms’ length for a second.

  “Have you been crying? What’s wrong?”

  So Leah told her the whole story about the soldiers while Rachel pitched in with the canning.

  Kyra listened in. Wiping her hands on a rag, she said, “You mustn’t go to town unescorted. Any of you. Those soldiers are no better than bandits, especially when they’ve been drinking.”

  “Sometimes I think they’re worse,” Rachel said over her shoulder. “But at least they haven’t killed anybody yet.”

  “They killed a whole bunch of bandits,” Leah said. “Dat was pretty upset about that.” But now she was craning her neck, already distracted. “Your little house is very nice, Miriam. I like it a lot.”

  As she helped fill jars with peppers Rachel remembered one of her main reasons for coming.

  “I have some really good news, Miriam. Abe Detweiler is coming down in the spring.” And then, as if Miriam needed a hint, she added, “He’s a bishop, you know.”

  “I know,” Miriam said quietly. There was a trace of sadness in her eyes. “I know exactly what that means for you . . . and for Jake. I only regret that I can’t be there for you.”