Home Is Where the Heart Is

by Linda Byler

  Hannah nodded and thought of the many ways they would be valuable on the ranch. Manny had left his dog but it had disappeared like fog in a hot sun the minute he left on the train. She looked at Jerry, who was paying no attention to her, watching the direction the dogs had gone instead. She wouldn’t have to answer to him for every little thing she wanted, since their marriage wasn’t the way most people’s marriages were.

  She had no money of her own, that was the thing. She had to ask him for everything, which included these dogs. Did he even like dogs?

  Hannah heard the hoofbeats long before the brown mules trotted into their line of sight, the dogs dodging in and out of the moving hooves, never making a sound, simply pushing the mules in the direction of the barn, steadily working together as a team, guiding them through the wide gate into the wooden corral.

  After Obadiah closed the gate, he reached into a pocket of his coat and handed each dog a treat that looked like beef jerky as he praised them for doing so well.

  There were eight mules. Hannah climbed onto the second rail of the board fence and looked them over, her hands clutching the top rail, wondering why this fence was so much higher than most corrals she’d seen.

  The mules stood facing her, their long, narrow faces like corncobs, their ears the size of a good sail on a boat. One was as ugly as the next. Mud brown. Big hooves, ratty tails that had long hair only on the ends. Her father said man created mules, breeding a donkey and a horse, so God really did not create them, which had rendered them useless to him. He would never own a mule, or use one to plow his fields. A camel was almost better looking than a mule! Hannah had seen pictures of camels in a Bible story book, so she knew their eyes were huge and soft, with sweeping black lashes like little brushes. There was simply not one nice feature about a mule!

  Jerry stood apart with Obadiah and Hod, conferring, a man’s conversation that excluded her. The wife. She had absolutely no say in the matter. Hannah couldn’t believe she was caught in a situation very similar to what her mother’s had been. Quiet, taking the back seat, obedient. Every ounce of her rebelled against it. She didn’t want these mules. She was not about to make hay to keep these knock-kneed, flop-eared creatures alive. She stiffened when she felt Jerry beside her.

  “Hannah.”

  “What?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Does it matter what I think?”

  “Of course.”

  “They’re mud ugly!”

  Jerry laughed long and loud. He reached up to grasp her waist to pull her off the fence, which frightened Hannah so badly that she jumped off backward and almost lost her balance. She stepped back, away from him, refusing to look at him.

  “Hannah.”

  “What?”

  “I know they’re ugly, but they’re God’s creatures too.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  Jerry cleared his throat. “I know what you mean, but these mules are good mules. Top of the line. I mean, look at the power in those long, deep chests.”

  “They’ll be tired after the first hour carrying those ears around!”

  Jerry whooped and laughed. Hannah tried not to smile, her face taking on all sorts of strange contortions.

  “Hannah, listen. It’s our only hope of putting in a crop of wheat.”

  “We could get a tractor.”

  “You know what I want.”

  “Then why do you want my opinion?”

  Jerry sighed and looked off across the prairie. “I know you don’t want the mules, but you do want to try to raise the wheat. We already discussed this, didn’t we?”

  Hannah shrugged.

  “So, it’s mules and wheat or no wheat,” Jerry said evenly.

  If only she didn’t feel as if she was giving in to Jerry, it wouldn’t be so bad. Her whole being wanted to refuse him, watch him flounder and wheedle and beg, then refuse him anyway. Guilt welled up in her, like a blot of black ink that she could not ignore. For a fleeting instant, she wondered at the need to control the men in her life, the disdain for her father, her superiority over her brother, Manny. And yet, she was helpless to stop it. She didn’t want the mules, it was as simple as that.

  “How much money do you have?” she asked, short and blunt.

  “Enough.”

  “To buy two dogs, too?”

  “He doesn’t have more than these two.”

  “You get the mules. I get the dogs.”

  “You can’t buy these dogs.”

  “I know. I want two just like his.”

  Jerry caught her gaze with his own, hers black and defiant, but with the beginning of a golden light behind the darkness. What passed between them was mysterious, not decipherable to either one, but its evidence was known. Like two opposites that melded for a split second, producing a miniscule spark of recognition, they both knew the first inch of a long journey had begun, here on Obadiah Yoder’s farm, west of Dorchester on the North Dakota plains.

  The shining, two-bottom plow was drawn through the crumbling soil, still dry after the snows of winter, the brown mules plodding along under the warm spring sun with seemingly no effort at all.

  Hitched four abreast, the new leather harnesses gleaming, Hannah was taken straight back to her childhood in Lancaster County, watching her father plow the soil with his Belgians. She loved to hear the mules’ hooves hitting the earth, the clanking of the chains hooked to the plow, the creaking of the leather as it moved with the mules’ muscles.

  Jerry stood on the steel-wheeled cart, balanced seamlessly, driving the mules with one hand, and turned halfway to watch the soil roll away behind him, pulling the lever whenever he came to the end of the space that would be wheat.

  The summer had flown by, with haymaking, a new and bigger corral built around the barn, the beginning of the new herd of longhorns grazing around the windmill.

  They had sold the Black Angus cattle to Owen Klasserman, who had dispersed of his cattle, his farm equipment, and then sold his ranch to a wealthy cattle baron from Texas.

  Sylvia cried great wet tears for Hannah, as well as every neighbor woman for miles around, saying she would never have better neighbors, no matter if they traveled from one end of the world to another.

  Hannah swallowed her snort, endured Sylvia’s soft, perspiration-soaked hug and felt not the least regret to see the shiny, pink couple ride away, probably never to be seen again. She did write the news to her mother, who responded in a month’s time saying she was so happy indeed to hear that Sylvia was able to move out of North Dakota.

  So, nothing had changed. Her mother, Manny, and Mary and Eli were settled in, happy to live on the homestead in Lancaster County among a growing population of the Amish faith in an area of Pennsylvania called the Garden Spot by many. Which is certainly what it was. Fertile soil, plenty of moisture, a hub of industry between the capitol city of Harrisburg and the seaports of the East Coast.

  Hannah never failed to compare Jerry with her father, Moses. All his steps counted. He never seemed to hurry, yet things were accomplished in record time. Everything was well thought out, reasoned, and bargained for, with Hannah being the sole person he sought out when he needed help.

  Rains came in the form of thunderstorms, although sparsely. The prairie rebounded after the drought, sprang to life as moisture revived every tiny seed that had dried out and lay in the dust, creating a kaleidoscope of unimaginable wildflowers. The south slant of unexpected swells of land were dressed as delicately as a new bride, with the lacy, lavender pasqueflower. The low places harbored chokecherry, buffalo-berry, and gooseberry bushes, which Hannah discovered when she was out training their two dogs.

  She had had them for over three months now, and by the way they responded to her commands, she knew they were on to something. They were like hired hands, the way they knew instinctively where to look for cows or horses. They routed out prairie dogs, badgers, foxes, even terrorized deer that outran them, their legs carrying them like wings.

  They had
named the dogs Nip and Tuck, which suited them perfectly, the way they tucked into a group of cows and nipped at their heels.

  Hannah named them, and Jerry thought she was awfully clever. He told her so, and watched the color spread on her cheeks like an unfolding rosebud. He told himself the long wait for her love would someday come to an end. More and more, he realized the difference in her, when she felt she performed a task to his approval, versus when she failed to meet the stringent requirements she set for herself.

  Jerry could never tell her his discovery. She would viciously deny it and then stop communicating altogether, pouting for days, punishing him with her silences. It wasn’t only the silence that got to him, but the resentment and bald-faced disapproval that was like a slap in the face the minute she was aware of his presence.

  He knew now, though, that the harsh judgment she ladled out on those around her, she also ladled out for herself. She didn’t like herself, so how could she stand anyone else?

  A work in progress, he constantly reminded himself.

  Jerry plowed the land with ease, the prairie soil falling away behind his plow, the mules plodding like a cadence, a symphony of sound and wonder. Skylarks wheeled across the hot, azure sky, and dickeybirds called their vibrant chirps. Grasses bent and swayed, rustled and shivered in the constantly teasing wind.

  There was a stack of winter wheat seeds bagged in pretty muslin prints sitting against the wall of the forebay. It was their first crop on the prairie, and hopes ran high thinking of next summer’s profit, God willing. Almost forty acres of wheat. Jerry calculated, counted low. Even with that amount, they would be able to buy many more longhorns, which was still a sore subject with Hannah.

  Jerry figured that Hod Jenkins was the real authority on long-term survival. Not Hannah, nor those German Klassermans, nor any fancy government brochure that touted the merits of life on the high plains.

  You had to live it, experience it, and not for only a few years. Jerry didn’t know if he had a love for this Western land or not. He knew if he was meant to be here for Hannah’s sake, God would provide for them, for sure.

  So he insisted on longhorns, or they would not raise cattle at all. Hannah yelled and slammed doors, threatened and shouted, said she wasn’t going to lift a finger to help him with those arrow-tipped monstrosities, and when he’d laughed, she got so mad she threw a plate against the wall, then stayed silent for weeks, talking only to the dogs.

  That time she outdid herself, refusing to cook, so he made his own salt pork and eggs, ate a can of beans, made toast by holding a long-handled fork inserted into a thick slice of bread over hot coals. Then he applied a slick coat of butter, ate it in two bites, and made another.

  The house turned blue with smoke, but neither one acted as if they noticed. Hannah threw her apron over her nose and coughed until she choked the minute he went out the door. She slammed the lid on the cook stove, when it lay crookedly until she nipped it with her finger and heard the skin sizzle before she felt it, then lived in pain for hours afterward. A huge, watery blister formed on the tip of her finger, burst, and an angry red infection set in. She treated it with wood ashes and kerosene, lay wide-eyed in bed at night thinking of blood poisoning and lockjaw, remembering in vivid detail the story her grandmother told of Uncle Harry who died, skin and bones, his jaw locked so tight no one could pry it open, even in death.

  She wondered if she would go to hell for being stubborn, then got so scared she tiptoed across the hall and asked Jerry if he thought she might have blood poisoning or might get lockjaw. He said it looked as if it was healing already, that he didn’t think she’d need to see a doctor. She looked so genuinely terrified that he reached for her, only to comfort her as he would a child, but she stepped back, slipped into her room, and shut the door with a resounding click.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE WINDMILL CREAKED AND GROANED AS THE GREAT PADDLES ON the wheel spun in the wind. Cold water gushed into the huge galvanized tank from the cast-iron pike that ran into it.

  Brown, speckled, gray, black, or brindled cows with various sizes of horns roamed the plains around it. There were exactly nineteen head. They resembled Hod Jenkins’s herd somewhat yet there was a certain sleek roundness to their bodies, the absence of long, coarse hair.

  Jerry set out mineral blocks, salt blocks, and wormed his cattle. Hod said once a year was plenty. Jerry nodded his head in agreement and then went ahead and did it more often, which resulted in healthier cows. They’d done it in the spring, when they acquired the herd, and with the forty acres plowed, it was time to herd the cows for their de-wormer, as Jerry called it.

  “Why don’t we de-horn them, too?” Hannah asked, testy at the thought of all those contrary cows swinging those horns at her.

  “I don’t think so. Those horns will keep the wolves away this winter.”

  “Hmph. Hod lost ten calves.”

  “Out of a herd of a hundred and twenty.”

  “It’s still ten calves.” Hannah turned and flounced off, her men’s handkerchief bouncing on her head. At times like these, Jerry wished he could shake some sense into her.

  They saddled their horses without speaking. Jerry’s horse, King, was a brown gelding, magnificent, huge, with a heavy black mane and tail as luxurious as a silk curtain. Hannah’s horse was a palomino, the horse Jerry had made many attempts to gift to her, which she accepted now, as his wife, although she never spoke of those past offenses.

  Nip and Tuck whined and yelped and tugged at their chains, but Jerry felt they were two young to help with this serious work. What if one of them got hooked by those massive horns? They had better wait until they were older and more experienced, he claimed.

  Hannah argued her point. How would they ever gain experience but by being allowed to help? Obstinate now, more than ever, she refused to get on her horse. She stood like a tin soldier, her limbs stiff with resolve.

  It was already past the time that Jerry had planned on starting. The black flies were thicker than water, which meant there was a storm brewing somewhere and he was not about to stand there and try to persuade Hannah in a patient manner.

  He lost his temper. Stalking over to Hannah, he shoved his perspiring face into hers and said, “Fine. Stand there all day. I’ll herd these cows into the corral by myself. You’re not going to take those puppies out on the range.”

  He swatted the pesky little flies out of his eyes, leaped into the saddle, kicked his heels into King’s side, and was off across the prairie in a cloud of dust.

  Hannah’s mouth dropped open, disbelief taking her breath away. She felt the beginning of a sob forming in her throat. The tip of her nose burned as quick tears sprang to her eyes.

  Well! He didn’t have to get all mad. Goodness. She had the distinct feeling she’d been wadded up like a piece of paper and thrown in the trash.

  She blinked. She sniffled. She wiped a hand across her nose, hard.

  This was an interesting turn of events. For one thing, she had to save her pride and let him bring in the cows by himself. If he wanted her to stand here all day, that is what she would do. She would stand here by the fence and watch him try to herd those despicable longhorns by himself. He’d never accomplish it.

  Jerry disappeared over a rise. That was disappointing. She had hoped to be able to watch him wear himself out on King.

  She unsaddled the palomino and put him in the barn, gave him a small forkful of hay to keep him happy, then hooked her elbows on the barn fence, her boot heel on another rung, and looked in the direction Jerry had gone. She swatted at the bothersome flies, then got tired and slid down by the fence into the dusty grass.

  Hannah wondered if there was any trace of her father’s blood left in the soil after all these years. She was sitting at the spot where the angry old cow had brought him to an untimely death.

  Even now, the awful incident brought a feeling of overwhelming despair. She knew her father was in a better place, heaven being his only goal, the many prayers and de
vout reading of his Bible preceding him in death.

  It was the story he lived before his demise, the shame Hannah still carried with her, the sensitivity to the loss of their homestead, the humiliation of the ride to North Dakota. Like tramps. No, like Amish gypsies. Different, weird people that traveled roads and highways with two tired horses, asking ordinary folks to stay a night here, feed their horses there.

  “Would you spare a pound of butter for travelers?”

  “Would you allow us water for our horses?

  “Thank you. God bless you. You’ll be blessed.” As if they were some ragged apparition sent from heaven to test people’s ability to be kind.

  There was a disgrace, an indignity attached like a loathsome parasite to all those painful memories, a part of her past she would never shake.

  Ordinary folks, English people of class and citizenry, would peer through the opening of the covered wagon to find them seated among their belongings, unwashed, raggedy-haired, poor, stupid misfits. The people would stand there and stare, make clucking noises of banal sympathy.

  Hannah felt like an orangutan at the zoo, a strange monkey, an amazing sight. If she allowed herself to think, it was like drowning in wave after wave of embarrassment, impossible to rise above it. She could control the self-loathing as long as no one took advantage of her, or used their authority in a demeaning manner, making her feel as if she was in the back of the wagon again.

  Evidently, neither one of her siblings suffered from the same malady. They were all sweet and simple and obedient to this day, same as her mother. Bland as bean soup!

  She’d been lost in her own thoughts, wrapped up in the past, which effectively sealed her off from Nip and Tuck’s constant yapping, whining, jerking on their leashes, then starting all over again. “Hey! Quiet down there. It’s not that bad.” She walked over to play with them, scratching the coarse hair between their ears, rolling them over to rub their bellies, but keeping them tied the way Jerry wanted.