Paradise Valley

by Dale Cramer

  “ ‘Everyone here is talking about the bandits who stole your horse. I know you must have been frightened out of your mind, Rachel, to have to face such men. I only wish I could have been there with you. Don’t know what I could have done, but I wish I was there all the same.’ ”

  She stopped reading for a few seconds and muttered, “Why would Dat tell them about the horse?” And then, with hardly a pause, she answered herself. “Because he is Dat. They sent him here to find out the truth about the bandits, and he will tell them the truth even if it costs him everything he has. He is Dat.” Then she picked up reading where she left off.

  “ ‘There was also an article in a magazine a little while ago about all the trouble in Mexico and how bad things are right now. Everyone was talking about it. I don’t know how to say this, Rachel, but Dat is telling everyone he can’t take his family to such a place because it’s not safe. I asked him myself, and he said no, we are not going right now. Maybe later, if things calm down, he said, but not now. Sometimes I think I will die if I cannot see you, but Dat will not budge. I am very, very sorry, Rachel, but we won’t be coming to Paradise Valley anytime soon.’ ”

  Emma didn’t read any further, nor did she say anything. Rachel didn’t need words anyway – what could be said? Emma just wrapped her arms about her, pressing Jake’s letter to her back, and held her for a long time while they wept quietly together.

  Rachel pulled away at last. While wiping her eyes on a sleeve she made a little backhanded motion toward the house.

  “Go on,” she said.

  As the surrey reached the house, Rachel jumped out and stalked across to the kitchen garden, head down, fists clenched, doing her best to hide her face. Perhaps it was an extension of her father’s stoicism that even in a family dominated by daughters – perhaps especially in a family of daughters – self-pity was not tolerated. Rachel and her sisters had been raised to believe that though each of the Bender women had her own personal trials and struggles, there was never a problem that couldn’t be overcome by some combination of hard work and faith. Ada was the only one in the entire family allowed to wallow in self-pity, and then only because she couldn’t help it; she was, and always would be, a child.

  Naturally, at a time when Rachel would rather not face any of them, most of her family was right there in front of the barn with the hay wagon, right next to the garden. To make matters worse, she had to cross in front of the house to get there. She nearly ran into Mary when she came out the front door with the slop bucket in her hands on her way to the pigpen. Mamm’s voice rang through the open front door, telling Mary to rinse out the bucket and bring more water. Ada swept a pile of dirt out the door as Rachel stalked past, dusting her skirt with it. Beyond the house, her father was standing by the hay wagon, and Rachel passed within fifty feet without speaking to him. She dared not look up for fear that he would notice her puffy eyes and red nose, and ask why she had been crying. She did not want to lie to her father just now. Still, it seemed to her that he stopped what he was doing and watched her. Keeping her back to him, she picked up the potato fork and went back to work.

  Fighting back the urge to cry, Rachel worked her way down the row, jamming the fork into the soft earth a little harder than necessary, shaking the dirt and clumpy roots from the potatoes with a bit too much enthusiasm, and throwing the potatoes into the pile a little too hard. But when she reached the far end where the dry remains of the pole bean vines hid her from view, she sank to her knees in the middle of them and gave in to self-pity. Holding on to the shaft of the fork with both hands as if it were a rope to Gott, she cried her heart out. Hope came to her all awaggle, thrashing through the vines, ducking under her arms and licking her face until Rachel swatted her away.

  And then she heard the last thing she wanted to hear – the rustling of dry vines and the sound of soft footsteps behind her. Not now. There was nothing she could say to her father, no way she could even attempt to explain that she was wasting time weeping over the loss of a lover she was not supposed to have in the first place, a lover she had lost because he told Jonas Weaver about the bandits taking the horse.

  She tried, but she couldn’t stop crying. She remained where she was and waited for the inevitable, for her father’s voice to ask what was wrong, and then she would have to stand and face him. But it didn’t happen. Instead, a hand lay softly on her shoulder and squeezed; then someone – a woman, Rachel could tell from the rustling of skirts – sank to her knees behind her and wrapped loving arms around her, gently enfolding her. Rachel did not look up as a white-kapped head pressed itself to her shoulder, and then Ada’s childlike voice cooed to her.

  “Shhhh, little one. Gott knows. Shhhh.”

  Chapter 33

  In early November Dat loaded the wagon with cabbage and made another trip to Saltillo. This time he took Domingo and Aaron with him. He claimed he wanted his son to learn the way to Saltillo so he wouldn’t have to go himself every time, but Rachel knew the real reason he chose not to take any girls along. She remembered too well the incident with El Pantera, and the bandit pulling the kapp from her head.

  When he returned three days later with the cabbage still piled on the back of the wagon, Rachel could tell by the set of his jaw that something was wrong. Dat was scowling and holding his head a little sideways the way he did when he had a headache. Rachel thought surely he’d been accosted by bandits again until her mother ran out to meet the wagon and Dat barked at her.

  “Make sauerkraut!” he snapped. “Make as much as the barrels will hold and we’ll feed the rest to the pigs. What the pigs don’t eat, we’ll plow under.”

  Mamm tried to appease him. “What’s wrong, Caleb? Why didn’t you sell the cabbage in Saltillo?”

  “I tried!” he shouted. “Mexicans don’t eat cabbage!”

  “I tried to tell him,” Domingo said, working hard to suppress a grin.

  Dat glared. “They came by the stand and poked their fingers at it,” he said, miming the action with a comical look of disgust. “They asked us what it was, and then they said our lettuce was too hard and turned up their noses. I even peeled some off and ate it to show them, but when they tasted it they just made a face and spit it out! What kind of people don’t eat cabbage?”

  “Mexicans,” Domingo said dryly, and then suddenly decided he would be wise to go help Aaron unload the cabbage and pile it by the back door.

  Miriam had come from the house wiping her hands on a rag, and heard part of the conversation.

  “Dat, were you able to buy paper?” she asked carefully.

  Some of the frustration melted from his face then. “Jah, I had a little money left over yet, from the corn. I didn’t get as much as you wanted, so you’ll have to be sparing with it. I got pencils too, and Domingo even found an old blackboard someplace. He paid for it with his own money, and he wouldn’t tell me how much he paid. He got chalk, too.”

  Mamm broke out the cabbage cutter, and the women set to work filling three big barrels with shredded cabbage. Sammy and Paul had great fun stomping it down in the barrels, but they were not happy about having to scrub their feet when it wasn’t even Saturday.

  Miriam put out the word, and the following Monday she held her first class in the living room. Leah and Barbara, the two youngest daughters, helped her set up the benches from the kitchen and bring in the long crude writing tables the boys had nailed together in the barn.

  “I don’t know what to expect,” she told Leah. Miriam was literally wringing her hands, trying to figure out how to hang the little blackboard on an adobe wall.

  “Calm down,” Barbara said. “If they see you’re afraid of them, they’ll take advantage.” She knew this from her own classroom experience. “I’ll get Harvey to fix the board for you.”

  While Harvey was driving a wooden wedge into the adobe and screwing the blackboard to it, Rachel ushered in Domingo with four small boys from San Rafael. Long-haired, hatless, barefoot and dirty, terrified of the strange surroundin
gs, the boys stood mute against a wall at first, but when Sammy and Paul ran in from the barn the new boys loosened up. Shortly after that a couple of young girls showed up, having walked the two miles from a tiny village at the end of the opposite ridge.

  Miriam did her best to get them seated, but she had let them go a bit too long and the children had gotten rowdy. She clapped her hands and shouted. Sammy and Paul heard her, stopped running around and eased into their seats – they had, after all, been trained to sit still and pay attention for three hours in church all their lives. But Miriam couldn’t get the Mexican boys to quiet down and stop chasing each other around the room until Domingo snagged one of them by the back of his shirt and lifted him off his feet the way he would have picked up a puppy by the scruff. The others all froze in place, watching to see what terrible fate would befall Juan.

  Domingo dangled the petrified boy from one hand and turned him so that their faces came very close together. The room was deathly quiet when Domingo looked straight into the boy’s frightened eyes like a wolf and spoke in a low voice that rumbled through them like thunder.

  “Esto es un regalo de Dios, Juan,” he said. This is a gift from God. “You will treat the señorita with respect, no?”

  Little Juan’s eyes were white with fear as he nodded fervently, his lip quivering. “Sí ” was all he could manage.

  Domingo twisted the child about like a weather vane and lowered him gracefully onto a bench, facing Miriam.

  Standing at the front of the room, Miriam now had their full attention, and it took only a nod and a small gesture of her hand for the rest of them to file calmly into the rows and seat themselves.

  Rachel leaned close to Domingo’s shoulder and whispered, “Maybe you should stay.”

  Domingo switched to German so the Mexican kids would not understand, and said, “They are outside children, accustomed to running free all day. They will learn quickly, but you must have a firm hand.”

  Miriam began with introductions. After they had all said their names she asked, “How many of you can spell your name?”

  The kids looked at each other, shook their heads.

  “By Christmas,” she said, “you will all be able to write your names, I promise.”

  Doubtful stares.

  “Ahhhhhhh,” she said, drawing a great big A on the blackboard, then waited a beat and explained, “Letters make sounds. First we will learn the letters, and what sounds they make.”

  She made a game of it, asking them for words they knew that began with “Ah.”

  Sammy and Paul looked at each other and then over their shoulders at Rachel. Miriam’s Spanish had already lost them.

  Rachel knelt behind them and translated. “Words that begin with an Ah sound,” she whispered.

  “Apfel!” Sammy blurted. The Mexican kids all leaned forward frowning at him, confused; then one of the little girls raised her hand and said bashfully, “Agua?”

  Miriam was stumped for a second, but then she just went with the flow. Turning to the blackboard she picked up the chalk and wrote.

  Apfel.

  Agua.

  “German or Spanish,” she said, “it doesn’t matter. The letter makes the same sound.”

  Juan pointed a thumb at Sammy and asked, “Do they not speak Spanish?”

  “Not yet,” Miriam said, smiling. “You are going to teach them.”

  Paul’s face lit up, suddenly seeing what was required. Placing a hand on Juan’s shoulder he beamed up at Miriam and belted out, “Amigo!”

  “See?” Miriam said. “They are learning already.” She added Amigo to the list.

  Domingo never left the room. Rachel thought at first he was being very kind to volunteer his services as classroom disciplinarian, but then she noticed he was paying very close attention to everything Miriam said. When the kids belted out words and Miriam added them to the list his lips moved with them. Then he began to add words of his own. Focused and intense, he whispered, “Aquí, adiós, año, arena, azul . . .”

  They only worked until noon that first day, but by the end of the session all of the children had made a connection between letters and sounds, formed a few crude letters with their pencils, and learned to count to five. The two Amish boys had even picked up a few words of Spanish. Leah and Barbara, who already knew their letters, had been a great help.

  At the end of the class Miriam pulled a little black New Testament from the pocket of her dress, opened it to the ribbon bookmark and read aloud, “ ‘Porque tanto amó Dios al mundo, que dio a su Hijo unigénito, para que todo el que cree en él no se pierda, sino que tenga vida eterna.’ ”

  The children listened in silence and then bowed their heads while she said a brief prayer.

  Miriam explained to them that she couldn’t let them take the paper home because they would need to use it again next time, but that they should help each other remember their letters, practice writing them in the dirt with a stick and come back on Friday ready to learn more letters.

  Miriam’s first day as a teacher had flown past. Mamm was in the kitchen putting lunch on the table for the men, so the benches had to go back right away.

  “That,” Rachel said, lifting one of the benches to take it back to the kitchen, “was amazing. All this time I thought you were just a brickmaker. Now I find out you’re a teacher. Miriam, you were wonderful with those kids. Did you see how they listened to you?”

  “I saw,” Miriam said, wiping the board clean with a rag. “And I’m as surprised as you are. It all seemed so natural, so easy. Even that little troublemaker Juan, after he settled down, turned out to be my best student.”

  Coming back for the other bench, Rachel stopped in the doorway and said, “No, I don’t think so. Not even close.”

  “No? Who then?”

  “Domingo. Didn’t you see him? He hung on every word.”

  “Oh my . . .” Miriam spun around, her eyes widening and her fingers covering her lips. “He was listening? You think he was trying – ”

  “Miriam, I can’t believe you didn’t notice. While the children were making letters on the paper he was leaning over them watching, and the fingers of his right hand were imitating what they were doing.”

  Miriam sat down heavily in her mother’s hickory rocker, stunned. “Oh my. Of course he wants to learn to read. Why did it never occur to me? Well, we’ll just have to include him in the school.”

  “You’ll have to be careful about that. I think he may be too proud to sit on the little bench with the kinder,” Rachel said.

  Miriam nodded. “Oh jah, we’ll have to figure out a way that’s not so obvious. I know what we’ll do – we’ll make him an assistant. Next time we’ll move the small table from the kitchen and put it in the back of the room. You and Domingo can sit there in real chairs and I’ll put the supplies on the table. That way you can help him and it’ll look like he’s just there to watch the kids. You know, Rachel, you were great with the children, too. When the others get here you may end up teaching a class of your own.”

  Rachel scowled and shook her head. Glancing at the kitchen where Mamm was flitting back and forth from stove to table, she glided across the room to Miriam and whispered, “I don’t think I’ll be here that long.”

  Miriam’s lips mimed What? Rising, she grabbed Rachel’s arm and dragged her out into the yard, closing the door behind her.

  “What do you mean, you won’t be here? Where are you going?”

  “Back home,” Rachel said, lowering her face. “I miss Jake, and if he’s not coming here, then I’ll go there. I can go right back home and live with Lizzie and Andy in the same house, like I never left.”

  “You can’t do that, Rachel. Think of your family. What would Mamm do without you, or me, for that matter? Will you leave me to make bricks all by myself? And don’t forget you promised you would be midwife for Mary when she has her baby.”

  Rachel shrugged. “Mary’s baby will come anytime now, and I’ll wait until after. But I’m going home, Mi
riam. I won’t stay here if Jake’s not coming.”

  Miriam’s eyes narrowed. “I see. So, if there’s no one here for you, you can’t stay, is that it? Because there are no prospects in Mexico? You would use this excuse with me? You were the one who told me everything would be all right. Now you’re leaving?”

  Despite her best efforts, Rachel clouded up and started to cry.

  Miriam wrapped her arms around Rachel’s shoulders and drew her in. “Oh, it’s all right. You were right, you know – what you told me about how everything would turn out okay in the end. It will, you’ll see, but you can’t leave your family. Not now. Not when we all need each other so badly. Rachel, nothing on this earth is so important as family, especially now, here in a strange land with so much work ahead of us. What would we do without you?”

  Rachel sniffed, wiping at her eyes with her fingertips. “It’s just . . . Jake. I miss him so. I want to hear his voice, feel his arms around me.”

  “I know, I know. But, Rachel, you can’t leave your family. Family is everything. You must be patient. Trust Gott and see what happens. No matter what, you must never, ever leave your family.” She gripped Rachel’s shoulders and held her at arm’s length, trying to look her in the eye. “Okay?”

  Rachel nodded meekly, still refusing to look up. “Okay.”

  Chapter 34

  It was Mamm who brought up Thanksgiving one night while they were gathered around the table for dinner.

  “I was wondering if we should invite Herr Schulman and his wife,” she said.

  “And let’s not forget our Mexican friends,” Miriam added. “Domingo and the other farmhands, at the very least.”

  “What about your school kids?” Rachel asked. The excitement had spread through Caleb’s daughters like a virus.