Though Mountains Fall

by Dale Cramer

  “We can try, but you won’t find a lot of buyers in Mexico. Most people don’t have that kind of money, and the ones who do are selling.”

  “What about the haciendado? Is there any chance he’ll buy the land back? We made a lot of improvements.”

  Caleb shook his head. “I don’t think so, John. He’s who I meant when I said the people with money are selling.”

  John drew on his pipe and blew a smoke ring. “There has to be somebody. We put a lot of work into this valley, and it would be a real bargain for anybody with eyes to see. Trouble is, nobody knows about it. Maybe we can put up posters in Saltillo where lots of people will see it. You never know.”

  “That’s a good idea. And if we don’t sell our farms before Christmas maybe one of us could stay on down here to keep trying.”

  John shrugged, drew on his pipe. “I could do that for you if you want me to.”

  “What about your family?”

  “No. I might have to travel a bit and I wouldn’t want to leave them alone. It would be better if they go stay at my brother’s in Fredericksburg till I get there.”

  ———

  Caleb spent the remainder of the afternoon halfway up the ridge behind his house, sitting on his rock, the little outcropping at the tree line where he went when he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, and with Gott. It was a black day, a day for mourning the impending loss of his farm—all those months and years of toil, wasted. But Caleb Bender understood that toil was a man’s lot in life, that he would always work from dawn to dusk no matter where he was, and deep down he felt a far more disturbing loss.

  It was Gott himself. Where was Gott now? In the beginning Caleb felt sure it was Gott who’d led him to Mexico. He was so convinced that he’d persuaded a hundred others to follow him, and now they would suffer for his foolishness. He had paid for his convictions with the life of his son, and now he would lose a daughter as well. Aaron would remain in Mexico, forever separated from his twin, and so would Miriam.

  Truth be told, the loss of Miriam now hit Caleb even harder than the death of Aaron because she had chosen her path. Gott allowed Aaron’s passing; Miriam left on her own. Now his beloved daughter would face not only shunning but complete exile. She might as well be dead.

  I wonder how she will feel about her choice now? he thought, and the thought was tinged with bitterness. He tried very hard, but in his anguish he could not banish the anger from his mind.

  Sitting alone on his rock with his face in his hands, Caleb pondered his fate until he could stand it no longer. He raised his head, and his red eyes looked to the heavens.

  “Why, Gott? Have I not been your faithful servant? Tell me where I have sinned! Why do you hide your face from me and treat me like an enemy?”

  Rachel went home after lunch and waited for Jake alone in the basement of her father’s house. Now that he was married, Jake was considered the head of his household, allowed to sit in on the meeting of the men.

  His steps were ponderous on the stairs, as if he carried a great weight. He came down and sat beside Rachel on the edge of the bed, on the double-wedding-ring quilt Emma had given them, put an arm around his wife, and sighed.

  “We’re going home,” he said. “It was as your dat feared. Bishop Detweiler says he will stay until September, but then he’s leaving. There won’t be another bishop coming.”

  Rachel nodded grimly. “So that will be the end of things.”

  “Jah. We’ll leave after harvest.” He shrugged. “I guess it’s not so bad for me and you. We haven’t built a house yet, nor a barn, and if I can sell my corn we’ll leave with a little money in our pocket. We’ll lose less than anyone else.”

  She shook her head sadly, staring at the floor. “No, I’m thinking I’ll lose more than anyone else. It grieves me to think of leaving Miriam behind.”

  Jake sighed deeply. “I hadn’t even thought of that until now, but you’re right. This is indeed a dark day.”

  In a little while there came a knock at the head of the stairs. Rachel looked up with eyes red and swollen. “Jah?”

  “It’s me—Emma. May I come down?”

  “Surely. Come.”

  Emma came only partway down the stairs and leaned on the rail. “Rachel, we’re going to visit Miriam. Someone has to tell her what has happened. Do you want to come?”

  “Jah. We’ll be right there.”

  Levi was helping Emma down from the surrey at Miriam’s house in San Rafael when Domingo and Father Noceda walked over from Kyra’s.

  “Why the long faces?” Domingo asked. “Has something happened?”

  “Not yet,” Levi said, “but it will. That’s why we came. Miriam’s sisters need to see her, to break the news.”

  Domingo stepped aside, pointing vaguely to the back of the house. “She’s in her garden, gathering for supper.”

  Rachel and Emma hurried around back while Levi and Jake stayed with the men.

  “What’s going on?” Father Noceda asked.

  “We’re leaving,” Levi said, his tone nearly as downcast as the women. “All of us. The whole settlement, after harvest.”

  “But why?” Domingo asked, visibly shaken. He knew what this would mean to his wife.

  “We’re losing our bishop,” Levi answered, “and there won’t be another. Our people won’t stay if there can be no church.”

  Levi explained to them about the beating of Atlee’s children and the execution of the two soldiers, but left out the part about the girl, so he was caught off guard by Domingo’s first question.

  “Will the girl be all right?”

  Levi stared. From the depth of concern on Domingo’s face it was clear that he knew.

  “Someone told you about the girl?”

  “No one had to tell me. Soto would never execute two of his own men for anything less than murder or rape, and there was no murder.”

  Levi nodded. “Rachel was with the girl, right after. She said Saloma will get over the beating, but not the other. It’s a shame. Her family is leaving right away, going back to the States.”

  “We will pray for her,” Father Noceda said as he crossed himself.

  Levi looked over his shoulder. The three sisters could be seen on the edge of the garden, huddled together, crying.

  “I don’t know what they’ll do without each other,” he said.

  ———

  Domingo’s eyes grew hard and cold. “It’s those stinking federales. They make life miserable for all of us.”

  “We were just talking about that when you drove up,” Father Noceda said. “Two days ago Captain Soto posted a public notice on the bulletin board in the post office. Presidente Calles has added a whole new list of laws to the constitution—rules he wrote himself. They’re calling it Calles’ Law. A priest is now a second-class citizen, no longer allowed to vote. We can be imprisoned for the slightest offense, even for holding an opinion.”

  “Our new presidente is out to destroy the church,” Domingo said, “and he will stop at nothing. Things are going to get much worse. Already there are rumblings among the people. They will not stand for this.”

  Levi raised an eyebrow, for he had heard what Domingo did not say. “You think there will be another war?”

  “Sí. It is coming, mark my words.”

  The three sisters clung to each other at the edge of the garden as if they were sinking, permanent separation looming over them like the threat of hell.

  “What did Dat say?” Miriam asked, choking back tears.

  Emma shook her head. “He didn’t say much of anything. I asked him if he wanted to come and talk to you and he said no. Then he went up to the ridge to be alone. He was pretty upset.”

  “With me?”

  Emma shrugged. “With everything, I think, but you’re a big part of it. All he can see right now is he’s losing a daughter.”

  Miriam’s voice came out small and lost. “I don’t think he sees me as a daughter anymore.”

  Emma took Miriam�
��s face in her hands and tried to smile. “Of course he does, Miriam. Dat can’t see you any other way. Why do you think he’s so upset? He knows that when we leave he may never see you again, and in the front of his mind he blames you for that. But you know how he is. Deep down he blames himself for bringing us to Mexico in the first place. That’s where his anger really comes from.”

  “Do you think he will ever be able to forgive me?”

  “Oh, child,” Emma said, folding Miriam into a gentle hug. “Of course he will. In time.”

  Chapter 26

  As soon as he could get up a load of produce Caleb made a run to the market in Saltillo, fifty miles to the north, and while he was there he nailed up leaflets on telegraph poles and bulletin boards around town, advertising farms for sale in Paradise Valley. Every nail pierced a dream. Every blow of the hammer reverberated in his heart.

  But he did it anyway, for the same reason he did everything else: it needed doing. He went through the motions that day and for the rest of that summer, working his fields, feeding his cows and horses, mending fences as if nothing had changed. As if he weren’t leaving. He came out of his cornfield one afternoon and ran into Emma, who was watering the trees she had planted along his lane.

  He just stood there and watched her for a moment, standing very still until she straightened up and saw him. He pointed casually. “Seems a little silly, watering trees when you know you won’t be here to see them grown.”

  But Emma only smiled and went for another bucket of water. As she was pouring it at the base of the next tree she said quietly, “A wise man once told me, ‘Do what today calls you to do, right up until the day you can’t do it anymore.’ ”

  Caleb chuckled, staring at his feet, remembering. By the time Emma turned around he was carrying a bucket of water to the next tree.

  She smiled, blushing. “Thank you, Dat.”

  “I guess it’s true,” he said as he walked past. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  ———

  Often in the course of a day’s work Caleb found himself stopping and staring, gazing out over his land, up at the red ridges or the purple mountains in the west, and in those moments he was surprised to discover in himself a subtle but familiar sense of grief—the same one he had felt before leaving the family farm in Salt Creek Township. For all its faults, Paradise Valley had become his home.

  On a Sunday in the latter part of August the bishop baptized the three young people who had finished their instruction classes. Two weeks later, in early September, the church gathered for council meeting and Communion—their second, and last, in Paradise Valley.

  The members of the church met in Caleb’s barn on a Friday, men on one side and women on the other. Bishop Detweiler preached for two hours, a heartfelt sermon in that singsong rhythm of his, about humility and self-sacrifice, the attitude of Jesus. As the sermon drew to a close, Caleb and John Hershberger went out to bring in the bread and the wine, since there was no deacon.

  It was a beautiful service, emblematic of all they believed, but on this day it was especially poignant because they knew it would be the last time they would meet together as an official church. Throughout the serving of the bread and wine, and the washing of one another’s feet, a deep and reverent silence held, broken only by the occasional sound of a woman sniffling, fighting back tears. As sweet and lovely and profoundly meaningful as it was, their last Communion in Paradise Valley had the inescapable feel of a funeral. It was, in a way. They were all mourning the death of a dream.

  The next morning, before daylight, Caleb hitched his buggy and went to pick up Abe Detweiler. As he started down his lane he saw in the darkness across the valley what must have been twenty-five kerosene lanterns glittering like stars in front of the old Coblentz place. Everyone had set aside their chores and gathered to see their bishop off and to wish him well.

  All that was left to the Amish of Paradise Valley was one last harvest, and they went about it with their customary zeal. The only difference this time was that they didn’t cut hay. There was no point. They would not be wintering here.

  “Leave it for the troops to graze their horses,” Caleb said, a little bitterly. “At least this time they can’t steal it after we do all the work.”

  Wagons came and went every day, making trips to Saltillo, mostly hauling corn to sell in the market. Here, too, Caleb saw reason for complaint.

  “When we bought this place they promised us a rail line. ‘To market and back in one day,’ the man said. So where is the railroad now? A day late, like everything else in this country.”

  No one came to make offers on the land. Not a single one. When the haciendado arrived on his estate to supervise his own harvest Caleb went to see him in his office.

  “We’re leaving,” he said bluntly, standing before the haciendado’s desk in the grand mahogany and marble library. “Going back to Ohio. We had a bishop for a little while, but after the way your troops behaved he couldn’t see his way to bring his family down here.”

  “My troops,” the dapper Don Louis Alejandro Hidalgo replied. “As I recall, it was you who wanted them so desperately—I only wrote the cheque. And I would also point out that while the federales have protected your people from the bandits, they have been precious little benefit to me.”

  Caleb stood there, hat in hand, with no answer. The man was right. “One mistake among the many I have made,” he finally said, “but perhaps, in the end, the biggest one.”

  “A pity. We hate to see you give up after all your hard work. Your farms are thriving. I can scarcely believe how my old pastureland has blossomed in your care. Are you sure there is no way you can stay?”

  Caleb shook his head. “Our church is the center of our lives. If we have no bishop, we have no church, and if we have no church we cannot stay.”

  “Well,” Hidalgo said with a shrug, “I suppose you must do what you must do, though I can’t say I understand it. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Caleb fidgeted for a moment, trying to find just the right words. “We were wondering if you might be interested in buying back your land.”

  “I see. So that’s why you have come to me. Señor Bender, I wish I could help, but in the current political climate my financial advisers are all telling me to divest myself of agricultural holdings and reinvest in oil and industry. Oil is the future of our country, if those fools running the government don’t nationalize all of it.”

  Caleb tried one more time. “I’m not sure I speak for all of them, but I know that some of us would be willing to sell it back for ten dollars an acre—the same price we paid for it. And like you said yourself, we’ve improved it quite a bit.”

  Hidalgo studied him for a minute, and Caleb could tell by the sideways expression that the battle was already lost.

  “I’m sorry,” Hidalgo said, “but my assets are tied up. I am in no position to buy back your land, even if I wanted to. But I wish you well. We will miss you and your people.”

  One morning in early October Emma was feeding her children while Levi devoured a plateful of eggs and biscuits. She straightened up for a moment and stared out the window at the sun, just now peeking over the horizon in the east, the low adobe houses of the Amish silhouetted in the valley between.

  She was spooning a bit of scrambled egg into Will’s gaping mouth when Levi said, “Domingo told me he was going to start pulling his beans today. It looks like a good crop.”

  “I hope they’ll be all right,” she said. “I worry about Miriam, with us gone.”

  “Why don’t we go help? The harvest is going good. I think I can spare a day.”

  Her father had made a tradition of it, every October going to Domingo’s fields with a spring-toothed harrow and a team of Belgians, which made short work of pulling the bean vines out of the ground. But Dat hadn’t been back to Miriam’s at all since the ban. Now Domingo and his cousins had to do all the work by hand.

  “You wouldn’t mind?” she asked
. “People will talk.”

  Levi gave her a mischievous grin. “Let them. Anyway, what does it matter? The bishop’s gone, and pretty soon we will be, too. What will they do, ban me?”

  She smiled warmly. Her husband really had come a long way.

  Right after breakfast Levi hitched the harrow to his Belgians and left. Emma followed along a little later in the buggy with the children. She also brought lunch, as was her custom when visiting Miriam. That way nobody had to fret over the rules about eating food Miriam had raised or prepared. Miriam just pushed two tables close together in the yard and served herself from separate bowls. It didn’t take long to get used to the arrangement.

  Since Levi’s Belgians freed Miriam from having to work in the bean field, the sisters spent the day with each other working around the house.

  Emma chuckled as she hung laundry on the line. “I’ve never done laundry on a Wednesday before.”

  “I know, isn’t it fun? I teach the children on Mondays, so I wash on Wednesdays now. Some of the old habits die really hard, but some things I do different just because I can.”

  She paused for a second, watching the men work in the field. “It’s good of Levi to help with the beans. Those draft horses will save us three days’ work.”

  Emma peered across the fields at Levi and his team. “You know, it didn’t cross my mind this morning but I bet this wasn’t about the beans at all. I think it’s just Levi’s way of letting me spend time with you—while I still can.”

  “He’s changed so much lately,” Miriam said quietly as she shook out a painted skirt and hung it on the line. “He’s so much more relaxed. You’ve been the best thing in the world for him.” She hesitated for a second, then said, “It’s a shame my niño won’t get a chance to meet his aunt Emma.”

  “Your niño? Miriam, you’re going to have a baby?”

  A bashful smile. “Jah, I’m pretty sure.”