by Dale Cramer
And it was beautiful. Rachel particularly loved listening to Schulman. He had a rich baritone voice, and his eyes reflected the genuine pleasure he found in the rare opportunity to sing among a group.
Before the guests left for home Caleb read the Christmas story from a Spanish Bible, said a prayer of thanks for the year behind them and hope for the year to come, then sent them on their way with his blessings – and a good many leftovers. When Schulman got back to his wagon he found that someone had loaded a barrel of sauerkraut onto it.
Laughing, he clapped Caleb on the back and said cheerfully, “Jah, Herr Bender, I will be more than happy to help you dispose of your cabbage!”
As the Schulmans disappeared into the night, Miriam came outside wrapping a shawl about her shoulders, looking for Domingo. She spotted him helping his sister and the others climb into his rickety oxcart. Clutching a big book against her chest Miriam started toward the wagon, but halfway there she slowed and stopped, mesmerized by what she saw.
Two of the adults held lanterns aloft, and Kyra’s youngest boy flashed through the pool of light as Domingo tossed him into his mother’s arms. For a split second the lanterns illuminated both their faces – the dark-eyed child giggling hysterically in mid-flight, and the strong, graceful man whose eyes laughed with him. The sight, fleeting though it was, stirred something deep within her, something profoundly akin to a memory, and it seemed to her that the earth trembled. She waited till the last of the children were on board before she composed herself and called to him from the darkness.
“Domingo, could I see you for a moment, please?”
He had already braced a leg to climb up, but when she called to him he turned and came to her.
“Sí ? What is it?” He stopped two feet away, but she couldn’t see his face. Silhouetted against the lanterns with his wide-brimmed hat, it struck her that he could almost have been mistaken for an Amishman.
“I wanted . . .” She found herself suddenly flustered for no apparent reason, and words tripped over themselves in unwarranted embarrassment. “I wanted to thank you for helping us with the school.”
“It is my pleasure.”
“I have a gift for you,” she said, hastily unfolding her arms to show him the book. “A woman from the village came to me with this. She could not read, and she wouldn’t say where the book came from, so I can only guess that it was looted from someone’s hacienda by one of the men in her family. I traded a shawl for it.”
She held the heavy book out to him, but he made no move to take it.
“I have nothing to give you in return,” he said quietly.
Miriam shook her head and shoved the book closer. “Owe me if you must, but take the book. I have watched you in the class. I didn’t want to say anything in front of the children, but – ”
“I know,” he said. “You have pretended not to notice. It was kind of you to say nothing.”
“It’s perfectly all right, Domingo, but learning to sound out words is only the beginning. Now you must read and read until the words come easily. This book will help.”
His hands came up slowly and embraced the book with a kind of reverence. Turning a little to one side to catch the light from the lanterns, Domingo muttered along with his forefinger as it traced slowly over the gilded title.
“Don . . . Quijote de la . . . Mancha. What is it about?”
Miriam shrugged. “I’m not sure. I haven’t had time to read more than a few pages, and what is said about it in the front, but I think it’s a story about a crazy man. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that you get plenty of practice reading. Practice, practice, practice, and before you know it, you will read as fast as you can speak.”
Domingo hefted the book in his hands. “There should be enough words in here to last a lifetime, and if I can’t read it, I can use it as a club.”
Miriam snickered. Her fingers covered her mouth and she suddenly found herself trying to remember a time when any Amish boy she’d dated made her laugh.
“Muchas gracias,” he said, running his fingers over the cover of the book. “In my whole life, no one has ever given me such a great gift.”
Something in the reverence with which he said this struck her as so solemn and so deeply personal it pierced her like a sword. Was he that poor? Her gaze dropped to the book in his hands, mostly because she could not bear it.
“It is only a book,” she muttered.
The tilt of his hat told her he had raised his face to look at her, though she could not see his eyes. His hand rose up until his fingertips lightly brushed her cheek, and his voice came softly from the darkness.
“I was not speaking of the book, cualnezqui, but the gift of reading . . . and the respect you give me by pretending you are not teaching me. To a Chichimeca, respect is the rarest gift.” She could hear the smile in his voice as he added, “But thank you for the book, too. I will treasure it.”
He turned away without another word, leaving her to watch from the darkness as he mounted his oxcart and snapped the reins.
“You are welcome, my friend,” she whispered as her fingertips drifted up to the place on her cheek where he had touched her.
Chapter 38
The Bender family ate sauerkraut for New Year’s because it was tradition, but it seemed to Rachel that a tradition didn’t mean much when it was exercised every day. She ate sauerkraut the day before New Year’s and she would eat it again the day after, but she would not complain. It was food, and she had been raised to understand that she was never to complain about what kind of food was put in front of her so long as Gott provided food.
After dinner, but before anyone had gotten up from the table, Dat pulled out the latest letter from John Hershberger and read it aloud to the family.
“ ‘Well, Caleb, I hope you’uns are ready for company because it looks like we’ll be down there before too long. The first of us will arrive at the station in Arteaga on Friday, February 2nd.’ ”
“I told them they should stop in Arteaga,” Dat explained, “since it’s only a little farther than Agua Nueva and the road is much better for buggies and wagons.”
And then Dat read down the list of names John Hershberger had written in his letter. The Hershbergers and Shrocks were the only two families that would be coming down in February, but six more families from Wayne and Holmes Counties planned to come the following summer, and a couple more even later than that. All the names were familiar. Oddly, though, of the four men who had originally been arrested along with Dat, the only one still planning to come to Mexico was John Hershberger himself. The other three had all backed out.
Rachel hung on every word, hoping to hear the name Weaver, praying that by some miracle Jonas Weaver had changed his mind and decided to bring his family anyway. Of course she’d already been told the Weavers would not be coming, but hearing her dat read the list out loud and come to the end of it without saying the name Weaver drove a spike through her heart all over again. It was all she could do to keep from breaking into tears right there at the dinner table.
The first of the newcomers would be arriving in four weeks, and she couldn’t care less. By the end of summer the Mexico settlement would number well over a hundred people, many of whom she knew and loved, as well as a few strangers that in time she knew she would come to love, yet none of it mattered one bit. There was only one name she really longed to hear, and it wasn’t on the list. She excused herself and took her plate to wash. There hadn’t even been a letter from Jake in the last month. He had given up.
Maybe it was time she did, too.
The men stayed busy for most of January finishing the other two houses, putting windows and doors and kitchen shelves in them, and running pipe to a spigot from the big well at Caleb’s.
There was always something to do. They were all so busy the month flew past, and before they knew it the day came to go get the newcomers from Arteaga.
At supper, the night before he was to leave, Caleb ma
de a surprise announcement.
“I’ve decided to let Miriam and Rachel go with me to Arteaga to meet the train,” he said. “Lovina Hershberger will be there, and I’m thinking she’ll be glad to see some girls after riding on the train with all those boys.”
The two girls were delighted, but Mamm glowered.
“Do you think it’s safe?” she asked.
After a year in the dry climate of Paradise Valley, Mamm had nearly stopped coughing and regained some of her strength. Able to resume many of her chores, she had even lost weight and put some color back in her cheeks. She was slowly returning to her old feisty ways.
Caleb smiled at her and said, “Jah, Mamm, it will be all right. Schulman is going with us – he always carries his rifle on his lap to warn bandits away. Anyways, I don’t think we have anything to fear when there are so many of us. And Domingo will be there, too.”
She stared, a look of intense worry on her face.
“I’ll need somebody to cook for me,” he argued.
“The Hershberger and Shrock women can cook,” she countered.
He sighed. “The girls need a break, Mamm. They’ve worked very hard.”
Reluctantly, she gave in, but the worried frown did not leave her face.
Levi and Emma had settled into their new home already, but on the morning Dat was to leave for Arteaga the whole family came down to Mamm’s house to see him off.
After breakfast Rachel and Miriam loaded a box of food to put on the wagon. Emma helped clear away the breakfast dishes while Mary laid Little Amos up on the table to change his diaper. He took advantage of the opportunity to pee in his own face. Seeing this, and the look of utter shock in the infant’s eyes, Emma laughed so hard she nearly lost the plates. As she set the stack of dishes on the counter she gasped and dropped to her knees, one hand gripping the edge of the counter and the other clutching at her stomach.
“Emma?” Mamm and Rachel both rushed to Emma’s side, kneeling with her, supporting her. “What is it?” Mamm asked.
“I don’t know,” Emma said, wide-eyed, as she drew a breath through clenched teeth and tried to straighten up. “I have a sharp pain.”
“Here?” Mamm said, placing a hand on top of Emma’s. “Do you think . . . is it possible you are with child again so soon?” Mamm asked. Ada stood behind her mother, eyes wide with fear and her teeth clamped tightly over four fingertips, moaning and swaying.
Emma nodded weakly. “I think so, Mamm. I’ve been sick in the mornings lately. But something is not right.”
“We have to get you to bed,” Rachel said. “Maybe if you get off your feet for a while, whatever is wrong will pass.” She looked at Miriam. “Can we get her down the stairs?”
The basement of Dat and Mamm’s house was now unoccupied, though one of the beds remained. The Hershbergers would soon be sleeping there.
“No.” Emma winced. “If I have to be laid up, I want to go home, to my house.”
Miriam bolted out the door and in a moment came back with Levi. He lifted his wife from the floor, carried her out back to the surrey and drove home while her sisters held her in the back seat. Mamm stayed home to mind the three babies, and Ada.
When they got to Emma’s house Levi brought her in and laid her on the bed, anguish carved into his young face. He knelt at her bedside stroking her forehead.
“Are you gonna be all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said, glancing up at Rachel, Miriam and Mary, but her face was pale and ash gray. “This is nothing, you’ll see.”
“Okay, then.” Levi pointed a thumb nervously over his shoulder. “I left the team out. I guess I better . . .”
“Jah,” she chuckled. “Go to work, Levi. There’s nothing for you to do here. My sisters will tend to me.”
Rachel looked at Miriam and said, “Go with Levi back to the house. Tell Dat I’m staying here with Emma. Mary is here, and Mamm will be up in a bit. We’ll take care of her.”
Emma rose up on an elbow. “No, Rachel. You go on. I know you were looking forward to the trip. Don’t stay here for me. I’ll be fine.”
There was a strange twinkle in Emma’s eye, despite the pain, but Rachel held her ground. “No. If I’m to be a midwife, then it’s important for me to be here at a time like this. I’m not leaving. But one of us should go meet the train, for Lovina. Go, Miriam! Dat won’t wait long.”
Miriam hesitated, glancing back and forth between her sisters, but she got no support. “Oh, all right,” she said. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I know how excited you – ”
“GO!” Rachel waved her off.
As soon as Levi and Miriam were gone, Rachel and Mary undressed Emma and put her gown on her.
“Was there blood?” she asked as Mary pulled the covers up and tucked her into bed.
Rachel nodded, biting her lip. “A little.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing,” Rachel said. “Be very still. Give your body time to rest and maybe whatever is wrong will heal itself.”
“That’s right, I remember now!” Mary said. “This same thing happened to Ezra’s cousin in Maysville a while back, only she went to the doctor with it. He made her stay in bed for a month.” She gave Rachel a curious sideways look. “You’re so sure of yourself, child. How do you know these things?”
“Did the cousin get better?” Rachel asked, ignoring Mary’s question. Emma’s eyes said she wanted to know, too.
“Oh, jah,” Mary said. “I heard she had a new son right before we left Ohio, and they were both doing well.”
Domingo sat up front with Dat while Miriam bumped along in the back of the wagon by herself all the way to Arteaga. It was just as well, as she felt she would have been too flustered to talk to Domingo right now anyway. She sorely missed Rachel.
Late that afternoon they rolled into the station in Arteaga. On a siding in the rail yard, six cars had almost finished disgorging two large families of Amish along with all their worldly possessions. Dat’s arrival made the chaos momentarily worse as all the newcomers converged on him, shaking hands and being formally introduced, one by one, to Schulman and Domingo.
Miriam found Lovina Hershberger, and they hugged each other fiercely, a truly happy reunion. When Miriam looked up she got the shock of her life.
Jake Weaver was standing there watching, hat in hand.
“Jake! Oh my goodness! Where did you come from? OH MY! I thought you weren’t coming! Rachel said – ”
“I know,” he said, smiling. “But at the last minute your dat convinced my dat to farm me out to John Hershberger so I could come down by myself.”
“Dat did this?” Miriam looked around instinctively for her father. He was talking with John and Ira, paying no attention to them. “Why?”
Jake chuckled. “I think Emma talked him into it – for Rachel’s sake.”
“Emma knows you’re coming? She didn’t say a word.”
“Jah, she knows. I guess she and your dat wanted to surprise Rachel. I might have ruined the surprise, though. I sent a letter a few days ago, as soon as I found out. Didn’t she get it yet?”
“No. The mail is slow here. If she knew you were coming, I would have heard her crowing from the rooftop. Oh, Jake, you just don’t know. She’ll be beside herself when she sees you. It’ll be the happiest moment of her life.”
Little clusters of Mexicans watched as cows and horses and mules and men and women and children and buggies and wagons and crates and chickens and pigs and barking dogs clogged the little railroad yard with uncommon busyness, but in the presence of so many Amish, chaos is doomed. In two hours’ time the horses were all hitched, the wagons loaded and strapped down, and the parade had begun streaming through the narrow streets on its way out of town.
John Hershberger rode with Caleb on the lead wagon so they could talk. As the string of wagons pulled out of town Caleb glanced up at the small orange ball of winter sun about to kiss the western mountaintops.
“There’s not much daylight left,” he
said to John. “It gets dark quick in the mountains. I’m thinkin’ we best make camp in the foothills just outside town.” They could have made a few miles yet, but he couldn’t bear the thought of spending the night in the high mountain passes where El Pantera lived.
“That will be fine with us, Caleb. I think nobody really cares where we camp, so long as it’s not on that train. I’ll be hearing those wheels in my sleep tonight.”
Caleb chuckled. “Did you bring any firewood? Might be a little chilly after the sun goes down.”
John Hershberger busted out laughing at this. “Jah, we got a little firewood, but if you think this is chilly, why then, you’ve already forgot what an Ohio winter is like, Caleb.”
The men talked around the campfire for a long time after supper, catching up on all that had happened since they last saw one another. Domingo sat with them but he didn’t say much, probably because Schulman was there.
Well after dark a high-pitched scream echoed down from the mountains. All of them turned and looked.
“What was that?” Caleb asked.
“Panther,” Domingo answered. “There are still a few of them in the high country.”
Caleb nodded, casting a meaningful glance at the young native. “Jah . . . and not all of them walk on four legs.”
Ira and John both shot questioning looks at Caleb, but he would say no more. There were girls within hearing.
“Where did the boys get to?” Caleb asked, looking around.
“Oh, they got their own campfire going – over there on the other side of the wagons,” Ira said, his ruddy face shining in the firelight. “I imagine they’re wrestling. They like to do that whenever they get a chance.”
“Jah, I forgot how much your boys like to wrestle. Especially that Micah. He’s even bigger since I saw him, Ira. Filled out like a plow horse. I guess a little wrestling is good for ’em after being cooped up in that train for so long, but it’s getting late. We probably all need to turn in.”
