Paradise Valley

by Dale Cramer

  And it wouldn’t hurt anything if it was a man whose wife needed a dry climate to survive.

  Caleb Bender took a deep breath and looked John Hershberger in the eye.

  “And that man ought to be me.”

  Chapter 9

  Dat told the family about it over dinner, while they were all gathered around the long pine-plank table in the kitchen. They were moving to Mexico, and they would have to move quickly to take advantage of the rainy season. They would leave in two months.

  The news hit Rachel like a thunderbolt.

  Jake!

  Her first thoughts were all about her secret boyfriend. She’d stolen enough time with him to know already, Jake Weaver was the one. Some things a girl just knew, right from the first moment. She knew in her heart, without the slightest doubt, she wanted to spend her life with Jake, but she was quickly learning that such knowledge could be a curse. She wasn’t even old enough to date, and now her father was going to haul the family to Mexico, a thousand miles away.

  In two months!

  Right after she reached courting age.

  Rachel was quiet all through supper, and said very little while she helped clean up the kitchen afterward. When the dishes had all been washed, dried and put away, she went quietly to the back door, put on her heavy coat and slipped outside into the cold and dark. She didn’t even take a lantern.

  It turned out she didn’t need one. A full moon hanging above the barn was so bright it cast shadows at the feet of trees and fences. The night sky was achingly clear, a billion polished stars winking at her as if all were right in the universe. The wind had quieted. The night was eerily still, and very cold. Rachel shrugged deeper into her coat, buried her fists in her pockets and angled across the yard toward the back lane. She had to be alone, to think. Her father’s news had left her reeling.

  She walked past the barn and the smokehouse, on out the lane along the pasture fence all the way to the back of the Bender property. There she came upon an old familiar stump where she had often gone to play with her sisters and cousins – back when she was just a child. For a while she sat on the stump thinking of Mexico, and Jake. No matter how mature Jake was, she didn’t really believe any boy would wait for a girl so far away. Not for long, anyway, and she didn’t know how long it would be.

  In the end, thinking about these things only made her feel worse, so when the cold began to creep into her bones she got up and trudged back down the lane toward home.

  As she passed the barn lot she heard a noise and stopped. It came from behind the smokehouse, across the lane from the barn. At first she only heard a little whisper of a sound, like a sniff, but as she drew nearer and walked softer she could hear it more clearly. Someone was crying. Rachel tiptoed to the corner of the smokehouse and peeked around behind it.

  Emma sat huddled against the wall, her face in her hands, weeping softly. In the shadows, wearing a dark coat and wool scarf, she was hard to see at first, but the moonlight lit her face when she looked up and saw Rachel peeking around the corner at her.

  Rachel rushed to her sister’s side, knelt down with her and threw her arms around her shoulders.

  “What’s wrong, Emma? What is it? Why are you crying?”

  Emma’s eyes were red and swollen. Tears covered her cheeks. She buried her face in Rachel’s shoulder and wept anew, as if someone had died.

  The sight of Emma crying shocked Rachel out of herself and filled her with compassion. Emma had always been the strong one, not given to tears or self-pity of any kind. Rachel had not seen her sister like this since her favorite colt died. Emma wept so fiercely she could not speak, so Rachel held her. She just held her, locking her arms about her sister and crooning to her that whatever the problem was it would be all right, that everything would be all right, that there was no storm they could not weather together. For the first few moments Rachel’s mind raced, until she realized that her father’s news must have hit Emma even harder than it had hit her. Emma was twenty and unmarried. If Levi didn’t offer marriage, and quickly, the move to Mexico meant leaving him behind.

  After a few minutes Emma cried herself out. The wave passed and she raised her head, dabbing tears from her face with a handkerchief.

  “Rachel, you just don’t know,” she rasped, hoarse from crying, locking onto her sister’s eyes in the moonlight, shaking her head slowly. “My whole world is about to end.” Emma’s voice grew smaller at the last, like a little girl. Her fingers covered her mouth and her face contorted again, fighting back another wave of crying.

  “Silly child,” Rachel said, and she suddenly heard Emma’s voice coming from her own mouth. Her older sister had called her a silly child a thousand times, usually when she was being irrational, as Emma was being now. Their roles had reversed. Rachel took her sister by the shoulders and looked her in the face.

  “Listen to me, Emma. You must talk to Levi. What sort of man is he, anyway? If he’s the kind of man you want to marry, he’ll understand and he’ll find a way to make you happy.”

  Emma’s head tilted, and now a look of compassion came into her eyes as she reached up and brushed her fingertips lightly down Rachel’s cheek.

  “Oh, Rachel,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “Poor, dear, innocent Rachel. I have already spoken to Levi about marriage. He is a good man, an honorable man, and he loves me as much as I love him. We will marry. But right now, I am in trouble.”

  This was confusing. “Trouble? Emma, if Levi has asked you to marry him, what kind of trouble could be bigger than that? All your troubles – ”

  “I am with child,” Emma said.

  Rachel recoiled. She was literally knocked backward onto her haunches by this thunderbolt, her hands flying unconsciously to cover her mouth as she stared at her sister’s face in shock and horror.

  This could not be true! Not Emma. Her hero, her shining saint of a sister, the heartbeat of the family, the only person in the world Rachel had ever wanted to become.

  Emma had fallen.

  At the speed of teenage thought, Rachel’s mind began searching, scrambling for an alternative – any alternative. Anything but this.

  “Emma, you can’t be certain of this, can you? How do you – ?”

  “I know the signs, Rachel. I just . . . know.”

  Rachel looked into her sister’s eyes and saw truth. Suddenly her own world came crashing down in ruins alongside Emma’s. She had seen this happen before, and the effect was devastating. It would mean scandal and ruin, reputations forever tarnished. Emma and Levi would be hauled before the church and condemned, shamed, cast out and ostracized, at least for a time. After a few weeks they would be allowed to reappear before the church to publicly repent of their sin, whereupon they would be reinstated so they could be married, but their sin would never be forgotten. The people of their church – their whole world – would bear a portion of the public humiliation, and no one would look at either of them the same again. All these pictures rushed across Rachel’s mind in one great wrenching torrent, and the flood swept away the ordnung.

  This was Emma.

  In the end, all the rules and regulations and traditions, the nuances of right and wrong so ingrained in the fabric of her people’s day-to-day living – all of it was swept away in a single instant, and Rachel was left empty of judgment. What she saw before her now was a sister she loved perhaps more than anyone else in the world, and she was suffering.

  Rachel reached out to Emma and pulled her close, hugging her tightly and whispering into her ear as they wept together, “Everything will be all right in the end. I love you. I will stand by you. Oh, Emma, if I could take this away and bear what is coming myself, I would do it. For you.”

  Her words jolted Emma and she wept harder than ever, wracked by the kind of remorse only love can cause.

  After a few minutes, when Emma had calmed herself again, Rachel backed away to look into her eyes.

  “What about Levi? Have you told him?”

  Emma nodded, wipi
ng away tears. “Yesterday. He was crushed. Now he will have to face his father with this news, and you know how Uri Mullet can be.”

  This was well known. Uri Mullet was an upright man, but sometimes with his sons he was known to be a bit too upright, a little too harsh, even for an Old Order Amishman.

  “He said he will marry you?” Rachel asked, just to be sure.

  “Jah. Levi loves me, Rachel – as much as I love him. Of this I am sure. I suppose that’s how we came to be in this mess in the first place.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as we are reinstated, I’m sure.”

  “Emmaaaaa!” Mamm’s voice called out from the back door. Emma looked up, dabbing at her face with a handkerchief.

  “EMMA!” Louder this time. There was an uncommon urgency in the way Mamm shouted.

  Emma rose to her feet, shook the dust from her dress and took a few deep breaths, steeling herself.

  “This might be it,” she said, looking into Rachel’s eyes with the grim fatalism of one bound for the gallows.

  “EMMM-AAAAA! Come IN! You have visitors!”

  It was too late to do anything about the red eyes or the puffiness, so Emma held her head high and walked primly around the corner toward the house.

  “I am here, Mamm,” she said.

  “Come, come, come! Come in, child,” her mother said quickly when she heard Emma’s voice, waving her in with one frantic hand and holding aloft a kerosene lantern with the other.

  Emma marched into the house slowly with her chin up, and with a dignity all the grander for having been dented. Rachel shadowed her, apprehension growing with every step.

  Ignoring her mamm’s nervous urging, Emma took her time hanging her coat in the mud room and exchanging her scarf for a prayer kapp, then took one last quick swipe at her eyes and cheeks with her handkerchief before she followed her mother’s lantern through the kitchen.

  “Do I look okay?” she whispered, glancing back at Rachel.

  “Fine,” Rachel lied. It was too late anyway.

  Dat and Levi Mullet stood waiting for her in the living room. They had risen when they heard her come in, the hickory rockers behind them still swaying a little. Between them stood the minister. A fire crackled in the potbellied wood stove, and two kerosene lanterns hissed from the tables by the chairs. All three men wore wooden expressions, revealing nothing.

  Levi was a little taller than the two older men, probably because years of hard work had bowed their backs and legs a bit while Levi was still young and straight and strong. At twenty-one he was a serious man, fervent in following the ordnung and known for being a hard worker.

  Rachel, watching closely, saw the look that passed between Levi and Emma, but could read nothing from it. Levi only nodded, his face revealing nothing except that his brows furrowed and he breathed through his mouth as if he was very nervous.

  “This is grown-up business,” Dat said, brushing fingertips in the direction of the younger daughter. “Rachel, you can go. Out.”

  Rachel felt a little wave of relief when her father excused her from witnessing what was about to happen, and she turned quickly to leave. But it was not to be.

  “No,” Emma said, grabbing Rachel’s hand before she could get away. “Please let her stay.”

  Normally calm and congenial, Dat’s eyes were hard. An uncomfortable anger seeped from their edges, but he said nothing more to Rachel. She stayed, half hidden behind her sister.

  “This young man,” Dat began in a gruff voice and words oddly formal given his long and intimate knowledge of Levi Mullet, “has asked me for your hand.”

  Rachel’s heart raced. Her hand went all by itself to Emma’s back for support – both ways.

  Emma glanced briefly at Levi, shaky fingers covering her lips. She nodded grimly, and her gaze fell to the floor. She said nothing.

  The minister remained mute as well, his hands clasped behind his back, but everyone knew why he was there. Levi would not have engaged in such talks without a minister present. This was serious business.

  “I told him we were going to Mexico very soon,” Dat said, “and would not be here for the wedding season in the fall. Levi said he already got that news from his father, this afternoon, and this was why he wanted to go ahead and be married right away. So he can go with us.”

  Rachel blinked. Her head recoiled in shock, and her hand involuntarily clenched the cloth in the middle of Emma’s back. Was this what Levi had told them? Rachel watched as Emma’s head came up slowly and looked into Levi’s eyes. She saw both the question and the answer pass between them as Levi met Emma’s questioning gaze with the briefest frown and an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

  He had not told them about Emma’s predicament! Levi was using the imminent Mexico trip as an excuse to get married right away.

  “I told him it would be a long road we travel,” Dat continued. “There will be much toil and many hardships. He said he don’t mind work, and hardship is what makes a man.

  “I told him there would be talk, that people would think it was a scandal. Why, everybody knows the only reason couples get married out of season is they’re in trouble. Levi said let the tongues wag as they will.”

  The minister didn’t blink, even at this last, though over the years his church had seen a few scandals. Under the circumstances Levi’s answer was not only bold, but shrewd.

  Now Dat sounded a little less angry. A smile crept slowly into the corners of his eyes.

  “So I told him yes, I would be thankful to Gott if my daughter Emma would marry a man with such a backbone.”

  Levi took a deep breath and seemed to relax for the first time. After watching him stand there so stiffly the whole time Dat talked, it now dawned on Rachel that Levi must have been holding his breath for fear of what Emma might say. One wrong word and his gambit would have failed.

  But it had not failed, and now Emma would be saved from humiliation, at least for a while. The minister smiled for the first time and shook Levi’s hand. Dat came and hugged Emma briefly, then spun Rachel around and herded her toward the door.

  “I don’t care what your sister says, get out of here and leave them alone,” he growled.

  Rachel left the room reeling, battered by conflicting emotions, the terrible anguish of Emma’s secret sin warring against the relief of knowing that it would remain a secret, at least for now. Balanced against the joyous news of Emma’s pending wedding was the ominous cloud of Mexico and the certainty that no matter what else happened she would soon be leaving the only home she had ever known.

  And Jake.

  She started to go up the stairs to the privacy of her room, but there was never any real privacy in a house with so many others. Her two younger sisters would be there and they would want to know what had happened downstairs – why the minister had come with Levi at such a late hour. She could not face questions just now. She knew too much.

  She paused there for a moment with her hand on the stair rail before she turned toward the back door. In the mud room Rachel had only a rectangle of moonlight to see by as she took her heavy coat down from the hook, slipped her arms into it and tied a wool scarf snugly under her chin.

  The full moon had risen higher, lighting the yard and the barn even brighter than before. Angling across the yard, she walked slowly down the back lane and slipped around behind the smokehouse. Growing up every day in a family of thirteen they’d always said you couldn’t even be alone in the outhouse, but right now, in the still of the night behind the smokehouse, Rachel had never felt so utterly alone in all her life.

  She sat down on the cold ground, huddled against the wall, and cried.

  The next day’s dawn found Rachel and Emma in the barn together, doing chores as if nothing had happened. As soon as they were alone, milking cows back to back on their stools, Rachel glanced about to make sure no one else was near and then whispered over a shoulder, “What did Levi say?”

  The steady rip, rip, rip of milk against the g
alvanized pail never changed its rhythm. Once already this morning Emma had slipped off behind the barn to be sick, but now she seemed fine.

  “About what?” Emma asked.

  Rachel stopped milking and turned around. “About why he chose not to tell them about . . . you know.”

  Now Emma stopped too, and turned to face her sister. “You know why.”

  It really didn’t need to be said. There was no greater humiliation than what Levi and Emma faced.

  “Jah,” Rachel said, “I know the first why – that he wanted to avoid a scandal. But I don’t know Levi nearly as well as you, and the reason he wanted to avoid a scandal is the second why. The second why would tell me a lot about who he is. About his heart.”

  Emma smiled and touched her forehead to Rachel’s. “You are far too wise for such a young girl,” she said softly, and her eyes shined, remembering. “When we were alone he told me what anguish he’d been through the last two days, thinking of what I would have to endure. Meidung.”

  The shunning. Excommunication. All the people who mattered would turn their backs on her.

  “He said to me – and you mustn’t repeat this to anyone, Rachel, for these are the words of a man to his betrothed – he said I was the moon in his night sky, and he could not bear to see my light dimmed so. He said he would abandon all he knows, move heaven and earth, pour out his last ounce of blood and spend his last breath before he would let me suffer such pain.”

  Now tears came to Emma’s eyes. Turning away from her sister to keep from crying, she said, “I think it is because he knows the pain of dire punishment and humiliation, of being made to feel small, that he cannot bear to even think of such a thing happening to me. His father . . . you know. So when Levi learned that we were going to Mexico very soon, the plan took shape in his mind and he acted upon it quickly before I had a chance to tell anyone else.”