Paradise Valley

by Dale Cramer

  She laid her head softly against his shoulder.

  Chapter 2

  Five days later, still wearing the same work clothes and winter coats they’d been wearing when they were arrested, the five Amish fathers filed into the courtroom with hats in hand, led by a uniformed deputy who directed them all to sit behind the cherry table down front. They had a few minutes to look around the room. Four of their wives sat in the pews behind the rail, but all they could do was wave to each other. When they tried to speak, the deputy ordered them to be quiet. Shortly, the “All rise” command was given and the Honorable Charles Etheridge of the Superior Court of Holmes County swept into the room and took his place behind the bar.

  The defendants remained standing before him.

  “Gentlemen,” he began, once he had settled into his big chair, “your cases are identical – same charges, same penalties – so in the interest of saving everyone’s time we’ll try them all at once, if no one has any objection.”

  Silence. No one objected.

  The judge nodded curtly, then picked up a piece of paper and studied it through the wire-rimmed glasses perched precariously on the end of his nose.

  “Do you have representation?”

  The five men standing before the bar glanced at each other in confusion.

  “A lawyer,” the judge clarified. “Do you have a lawyer?”

  They shook their heads, no.

  “Is there one of you who would like to be the spokesman for the group?”

  No one moved. Not a single expression changed.

  The judge sighed. “Now, I honestly don’t know if what I’m seeing is stubbornness or humility, but if we’re going to get to the bottom of this, one of you is going to have to talk.”

  No words passed between them still, but all of them squirmed a bit. Four of the men cut their eyes toward the bald-headed one in the middle, the oldest of the group. Caleb gave a small nod of resignation, cleared his throat and said, “I will speak.”

  “And you are?” Again the judge glanced at his paper, going down the typed list of names.

  “Caleb Bender.”

  “Mr. Bender, in a court of law it’s customary to address the judge as ‘Your Honor.’ ”

  “I’m sorry, sir – Your Honor. It’s chust I never been in a court before.”

  “Mr. Bender, the five of you are each charged with neglecting the welfare of your children and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. How do you plead?”

  Caleb thought for a moment and said, “Your Honor, if that last thing you said means we kept our children home from your school, then yes, we did that.”

  “Then you plead guilty.”

  Caleb’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know whether we’re guilty of anything, but for us to say we neglected our children, why that would chust be a lie. We kept them home because it was right. To send them to the consolidated school every day, that would make us guilty.”

  The judge laid aside the piece of paper, propped his chin on his palm and, with obvious amusement, asked, “Do you feel it’s right to deprive your children of an education, Mr. Bender?”

  “Oh no!” Caleb answered, earnest and sincere. “We keep them home to give them an education. Our children grow up to be farmers, and farmers’ wives. We teach them the ways of the farm, and the ways of Gott. Surely some schooling is gut, but if they learn to read and write and figure, what more would they need?”

  “I see.” The judge’s face was still propped in his palm, one finger tapping absently against his cheek. A faint smile played at his lips. “So your argument is that subjects such as history, geography, and hygiene are not only entirely unnecessary but in fact detrimental to your children’s character in some way, and further, that one day of schooling a week is adequate, since all they need is the three R’s.”

  The judge looked down his nose at the papers in front of him, waiting for an answer.

  “Is that your argument, Mr. Bender?”

  Caleb nodded, shifting his feet uncomfortably.

  “Yes, sir . . . Your Honor.” His eyes narrowed involuntarily, his jaw clinched and his nostrils flared. He could already see how this would go.

  The judge’s lips pursed and he stared over the top of his glasses, all traces of amusement gone.

  “Well, Mr. Bender, I can see that perhaps we need to advance your education a little. Maybe a civics lesson is in order. You see, gentlemen – you are gentlemen, are you not?”

  The five glanced at each other. “We are Amish,” Caleb answered.

  Chuckling, the judge resumed his lecture.

  “Gentlemen, we are a nation of laws. Ohio, likewise, is a state of laws. The way this works is, the citizens of Ohio elect representatives who enact laws to advance the well-being of the citizens who elected them, and who, incidentally, agree to abide by those laws.

  “One of the laws enacted recently by our chosen representatives – the Bing Act – stipulates that all children shall attend public school five days a week from the age of six until eighteen with a possible exemption at sixteen, providing they obtain a valid work permit. Now, it’s not an easy thing to draft and pass a law – it’s an awful lot of trouble, a lot of work. Mr. Bender, do you have any idea why our esteemed legislators might have felt that it was worth all that effort to pass such a law?”

  An honest shrug. “No.”

  The judge waited a beat and prompted, “Your Honor . . .”

  “No, Your Honor.”

  “Well then, let me tell you. They did it in an effort to curtail child labor practices. It seems a great many people have been subsidizing their family income by putting their own children to work as early as eight or nine years old. We had eight-year-old boys losing fingers working on factory assembly lines, ten-year-old girls plucking chickens or sweating over sewing machines twelve hours a day, six days a week. Last year in West Virginia, boys as young as eleven died in the coal mines.”

  The judge clasped his hands in front of him and peered for a few seconds at each of the five men.

  “Let me ask you one question,” he said, “and I want each of you to answer it individually, yes or no.”

  The five Amishmen stood shoulder to shoulder, Caleb Bender in the middle. Caleb looked to his right. Reuben Miller would be first. Reuben’s eyes widened and his face, already ruddy, flushed even redder at the prospect of having to speak out loud in a courtroom.

  The judge pointed to Reuben.

  “Mr. . . .”

  “Miller. Reuben H. Miller.”

  “Mr. Miller, I see here you have three children between the ages of six and sixteen.”

  Reuben nodded.

  “Now, specifically regarding these three children that you are accused of keeping home from school in contravention of the Bing Act – did you work them on your farm during the days when they were supposed to be in school?”

  Reuben Miller’s brow furrowed in confusion, staring at the judge, and he hesitated. Caleb was afraid he might have to explain the question to his friend, whose English was worse than his own, until Reuben Miller finally found his nerve and stammered out an answer.

  “Well, yes I did, but – ”

  The judge threw up a hand instantly, palm out, cutting him off.

  “No buts, Mr. Miller. A simple yes or no is all I want. Just the truth.”

  Caleb sensed a trap. In his experience the truth very often lay not in the yes or the no, but in the why behind it.

  The judge moved on to the next man, who also stated that, yes, his children were indeed expected to work on the farm on the days they were not in school. Caleb answered the same. They all did.

  “So,” the judge said, with an air of smug finality, “now that all the cards are on the table it seems that you have violated not only the letter of the law but the spirit of it, as well. If you men need farmhands, I would suggest that from now on you hire them.”

  Caleb Bender looked up sharply, his jaw set, a dangerous amount of white showing in his eyes.


  The judge glanced at him and apparently noticed the look on his face.

  “Mr. Bender, I get the distinct impression there’s something you’d like to say.”

  “There is more to it,” Caleb said.

  “There’s more? Well then, by all means, enlighten us!”

  Caleb Bender was not an eloquent man, but he was as he chose to be – a simple man who saw eloquence as a delicate flower, shriveling in the sunlight of plain truth.

  He glanced sideways, waved his hat toward the men standing with him and said, “We are here because we are fathers and we want to teach our children what is best. Who is better to decide what to teach a child than his father? The Bible tells us we are to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, so this is what we try to do. We teach them to love Gott and neighbor, to work hard, to care for the land, to provide for their family, to cooperate with their neighbors and to help widows and orphans. A little schooling is gut, but your consolidated school is full of the world. If we leave our children so much time in the school of the world, they learn other ways. They learn . . .” Caleb leaned his head toward Jonas Weaver, who stood at his right, and whispered, “Konkurrenz . . .”

  “Competition,” Jonas muttered.

  “They learn competition,” Caleb continued. “Not working together, but against one another. They learn to be selfish. So then it seems to me we are bringing them up in the nurture of the world. We fear for our children. We fear for their minds and hearts because we don’t know what they will be taught in your schools.”

  Caleb Bender’s eyes had grown sharp and fierce, his breathing heavy. His jaw worked as if he were chewing small seeds.

  “So much time in your school,” he finished, in a voice hard as iron, “makes them greedy and lazy, and fills their heads with foolishness.”

  The judge removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger, then sat staring into space for a moment, his chin resting on his fist. Finally, he put his glasses back on and spoke to Caleb Bender and his brethren.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, with a curious mixture of anger and regret in his voice, “I suspect we are at a cultural impasse, and that is a pity. The thing is, there will be others who will no doubt wish to do as you are doing, and what we decide here today will have a bearing on how those cases are treated. So I will explain the law and its consequences to you as best I can and then let you decide how you wish to respond.

  “Unless they are sick, the law says – not me, not the sheriff, but the law, voted upon and approved by the good citizens of Ohio – stipulates that for the good of the children, they must attend school and study the prescribed subjects. This law – and it is a law, Mr. Bender, with concomitant penalties for noncompliance – applies to every citizen of the state, regardless of religious affiliation.”

  The judge paused for a moment to let this sink in, and then asked, “You are a citizen of this state, are you not?”

  Caleb couldn’t help noticing the twinkle in the judge’s eye as he drove home the question like a nail. Judge Etheridge’s delivery made it clear he considered this the very linchpin of civilization.

  Caleb hesitated. His head, bald but for the ring of graying hair dutifully cut in a straight line below his ears, tilted down. His troubled gaze studied his own plain clothes, the coarse white shirt, the broad suspenders, the black wide-brimmed hat hanging in his work-worn hands, the scuffed black work boots on his feet. A chasm of history yawned wide between his brethren and the officials of the state – a history of persecution wrought by worldly governors terrified of the Amish because they did not understand them, because they mistook simplicity for anarchy and so felt threatened by the least threatening people on earth. The judge had unwittingly asked the one question that did in fact pierce straight to the heart of the matter, and yet, like Pilate’s ironic question, it was one whose answer the judge would never understand. In the end, life had taught Caleb Bender it was not his responsibility to be understood, but only to speak the truth. The eyes Caleb raised to the judge were clear and calm, inscrutable. His wispy gray-tinged beard kept time with his words.

  “Your Honor, I am not a citizen of this world.”

  The judge sighed heavily.

  “Then you leave me no choice.” His voice contained only sadness and resignation now, the anger all but gone. “I’m going to find all of you guilty as charged and sentence you to sixty days in the county jail unless and until you each pay a fine of twenty dollars per child, plus expenses, and submit a signed statement agreeing to comply with the conditions of the Bing Act by seeing to it that your minor children attend public school five days a week, henceforth.”

  His proposal drew nothing but blank stares from the five men.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Caleb nodded once. “We understand you want us to sign a paper promising to send our children to school every day.” The rest, in Caleb’s opinion, was trivial.

  The judge peered warily over his glasses.

  “And will you agree to do this?”

  Caleb did not hesitate, nor did he need to confer with his brethren. There was nothing to discuss.

  “No, Your Honor. We will not.”

  “Sixty days,” the judge pronounced, and banged his gavel. “Gentlemen, I’m very disappointed. You should think more of your children’s futures. Rest assured, you have not heard the last of this. Bailiff, remove the prisoners.”

  They were allowed to stop on the way out and speak, only for a moment, with their wives. There were a few tears, but mostly what Caleb saw in the eyes of his wife, and the others, was pride.

  Chapter 3

  Three days had passed since the trial. Fifty-two days remained until Rachel’s father could come home. There was a little more work to do with Dat in jail, but not so much that the family couldn’t split it up and make light of it. It was a small price to pay. Rachel was up well before daylight doing chores – feeding the livestock, helping Emma with the milking, forking down fresh hay through the hay hole in the mow while her brother Aaron cleaned out the stalls.

  After breakfast she rode with Aaron on the wagon when he went to spread the manure on the winter-brown stubble of the cornfield. Some steel part had broken in the spreader and they would have to do the job by hand until they could get a part made by the smith.

  Working alongside her twenty-one-year-old brother, Rachel was always vaguely aware of standing in the shadow of his departed twin. They had been like a team of matched horses, Aaron and Amos, working shoulder to shoulder right up until the Spanish flu felled Amos three winters back, and left Aaron to grieve.

  They were identical. The family had been able to tell the twins apart most of the time, but others found it easier to identify Amos by his harmonica. No one knew where he’d gotten it, but Amos loved to play the harmonica when he and Aaron were out working in the fields or riding someplace in the wagon, and Aaron loved to hear it. Their particular Old Order sect maintained a strict ban on musical instruments, but Amos never played his harmonica anywhere near the house, and if Caleb ever knew about it, he chose to look the other way. Right or wrong, Aaron loved it. Only Rachel and Emma knew that Amos went to his grave with his harmonica in his pocket. They were the only ones who saw Aaron put it there, and they would never tell.

  Even now, after three years, Aaron would occasionally pause for a second, his head would come up and his eyes would scan the horizon as if he’d heard some distant music, but then he would close his mouth without speaking and darkness would cover him for a while. They had laughed constantly, Amos and Aaron, always playing pranks. If they weren’t playing a joke on one of their sisters, they were doing it to each other.

  When Amos was alive.

  Aaron didn’t laugh much anymore, and he always seemed to be looking for something, as if part of himself had gone missing. He could have easily handled his chores alone, but Rachel had gotten in the habit of keeping him company when she could see the loneliness on him. Anyway, it
wouldn’t have made sense for her to be inside helping wash dishes and scrub floors while her father was in jail. Aaron and Harvey had the men’s work to do all by themselves now, and there were six sisters still living in the house.

  Rachel and Aaron were in the north field, slinging straw and manure as far as their shovels would throw it, from opposite sides of the wagon. The horses, a pair of old Belgians long accustomed to this work, plodded straight down the row at a snail’s pace exactly as they had been trained to do. Rachel could hear the rhythmic scrape of Aaron’s shovel, and she matched it. It was more difficult for her because she was smaller and weaker, but her dat had always said hard work only makes you bigger and stronger. She tried to match him toss for toss.

  But then he stopped. The sound of Aaron’s shoveling ceased, and in the next few seconds she heard the soft whistle meant for the horses’ ears. The two big Belgians halted in their tracks, heads down. When Rachel turned to see what was the matter, Aaron was leaning on his shovel gazing across the fields to the road, staring at a spot a half mile away, down by the cow pond.

  “What is it?” Rachel asked, glad for the small breather but too proud to admit it.

  Aaron pointed, and then she saw him – an Amish boy, running. He was charging up the slight grade toward the Bender house, one hand pressing his hat to his head, running as if his hair were on fire.

  “That’s Jake,” she said, and her pulse quickened. She thought again of that day in the barn when their fathers had been arrested, when Jake had held her in his arms and comforted her. Like a man. The look in his eyes, his genuine heartfelt concern for her, brought the butterflies to her middle even now, and made her face flush. Since then, except for her dat in jail, she had thought of little else.

  “Jah, I think mebbe it’s Jake, all right,” Aaron said, “but he should be home doing chores at this hour. Especially now, with his father away.”