Home Is Where the Heart Is

by Linda Byler

“What kinda people would leave their kid in a barn in the dead of winter? They were a normal couple, weren’t they? Come out here, bought that property fair and square, with good intentions. Nobody burns up that fast.”

  Hannah recognized again the common sense of these prairie dwellers. She had thought the same thing, often. Did a person turn completely to ashes in a house fire? Or did someone place those wedding rings on the floor to throw everyone off?

  As if he read her thoughts, Bill continued. “Them fire company big shots don’t know nothin’. They make a good calculation and guess the rest. Whatever suits ‘em, is what they go by. We got enough horse and cattle thieves around. Them white Percherons was in somebody’s sights, I’d say.”

  “They was all in the barn, though.”

  Hannah felt a jolt of excitement. There had been more than eleven horses the day she’d been there. All those white horse trailers. She sat up straight, opened her mouth to speak, and was cut off by a short, stocky fellow who tipped his hat back on his head, scratched his thatch of orange hair, replaced his hat and lined up his four fingers to examine the wealth of dandruff he’d scraped loose.

  Rubbing his nails down the side of his oil-stained jeans, he hacked loudly, cleared his throat and said that nobody knew how many o’ them oversized chunks o’ horseflesh had been there ta begin with.

  “More than eleven.” Hannah spoke without thinking. Jerry turned his head sharply and looked at her. Hannah didn’t look back; she looked out to the general circle of men and went on, her eyes like dark sapphires.

  “It was a few months ago, early in the spring, when I rode over to see if the people from Texas had moved in …”

  “They wasn’t from Texas,” Bill Hawkins said.

  Jerry corrected him. “The young couple was.”

  “Anyway,” Hannah continued, “the place was crawling with white horse trailers. I didn’t count them but there were definitely more than five. If there were two horses in each one, I’d say there were more than twenty horses.”

  “Thet barn ain’t thet big.”

  “It wasn’t. It isn’t. They weren’t all in the barn,” Hannah said quickly.

  “Hm. Ain’t that somepin’ to think about?” Bill Hawkins asked.

  “Ah, you know how it goes. Don’t matter what we think. Them there horse thieves is slicker’n greased pigs. How you ever gonna ketch ‘em? One sheriff in two hunnert miles and they don’t give a …”

  Bob Daley glanced at Hannah, cleared his throat, and said, “Don’t care.” Hannah grinned good-naturedly and said he was right. She wanted to tell them about Lemuel Short but Jerry didn’t know about that episode and she had no intention of telling him, either.

  “Any high falutin’ caravan o’ white trailers movin’ into the area like that is like the wasps to a cake o’ honey. Them horse thieves probably had them pegged way back in Missouri, if they came from those parts.”

  Heads nodded. “That’s fer shore.”

  “Yer right.”

  “Yeah, but to light that house. That’s just goin’ too far.”

  The conversation changed directions, turning to the growing of wheat, half a dozen different opinions crisscrossing the hot, dusty feed mill.

  Jerry and Hannah stopped at the butcher shop for lard. A five-gallon tin would hold them over for a while.

  Seated on the high wooden seat, Hannah felt rich, endowed with great wealth. Such a large amount of supplies was something. The ability to ride into town and purchase even more than was necessary was an indulgence that she could not have imagined for many years. She hoped she would never take it for granted and forget to realize the gift of provisions.

  Hannah gazed at the land with unseeing eyes, her thoughts churning faster and faster. Was this the secret to the true homesteader then? What separated the greenhorns from the true pioneers? The ones who stayed. It was possible. Over and over, the folks who stayed lived through drought and hail and all kinds of calamities. They kept their homesteads, adapting their views and values to suit the environment and not someone else’s version of success.

  Worry did not fall into their vocabulary, posed no threat. If it didn’t rain, they pulled their belts tighter and ate cornmeal mush and prairie hens. Here, success might be measured by the ability to weather whatever the Almighty handed you.

  She didn’t want to reveal her thoughts now, while Jerry was busy controlling the cranky quarter horse, reining in King, who wanted to run full out, which was the way he always ran when he was hitched to a spring wagon.

  She might just keep the whole thing to herself. She wanted to ask Jerry how much money he still had in his bank account, but was too proud to ask. How did one ask for sky-blue dress fabric without giving him the notion that she was buying it to be attractive to him?

  Which she definitely wasn’t.

  The wheat had turned from the brilliant, earth-toned green of spring to a drab, olive-hued, windblown mess, probably half the height it should have been. Hannah turned her head to keep from looking at it more than was absolutely necessary.

  “Here we are,” Jerry called out, his usual good humor evident. She didn’t answer, just stepped off the spring wagon and began the trek to the house, carrying armloads of provisions. She couldn’t tell him, but the solid weight of the food was a joy, a feeling of luxury, a cared-for and appreciated gift of sustainability in the face of another drought. The surge of happiness she felt gave her strength.

  She knew she should thank him that evening as they rested on the porch after carrying buckets of water in an effort to save their potatoes and pole beans.

  “What do you think, Hannah? Is it worth lugging water?” Jerry asked.

  “Long as it doesn’t rain,” she answered.

  “But the potatoes look half-dead.”

  “They always do. You can’t compare Western potatoes with what we were used to back East.”

  “Do you get any potatoes to dig?”

  “Sometimes.”

  They fell silent as they listened to the sounds of the evening. When the wind slowed for the night, the sounds of birds and insects became easier to distinguish, the crickets and grasshoppers, the little dickeybirds and the evening whistles of the larks. Hannah loved this time of day. The serenity of pure, empty skies in several shades of lavender and pink, the blue fading to gray before twilight followed the setting of the sun, that effortless disappearance of amazing light and heat.

  She thought of all the crow’s-feet etched along the side of these ranchers’ eyes, imagined they squinted all day long from beneath their filthy hat brims. Tentatively, she reached up to run the tips of her fingers along her own eyes, the outer edges still smooth. She lowered her hands quickly when Jerry looked her way.

  “So, what do you think, Hannah?” he asked.

  “About what?”

  “We are having another drought, whether we admit it or not. I don’t know if we can expect any wheat at all. Which means the calves are our only source of income, and they’re not too great either.”

  “You heard the men.”

  Jerry looked at her. She was sitting on the porch floor, her knees drawn up, her skirts pulled taut down to her brown feet. Her arms rested on her knees, her neck long and graceful like a swan. Her hair had come loose from the heavy coil that lay on her neck and strands of it were blowing lightly in the evening breeze.

  As black as midnight. Black as coal. His mind wandered, thinking of a different time, a different place, another girl with black hair. What had kept him from marrying her? Why had he walked away from Ruth Ebersol?

  God’s ways were far above his own, but sometimes the thought of being successful in business at home in Lancaster County, with a girl … no, a wife like Ruth, seemed like a bright beacon of rest, one he had missed entirely.

  He wanted to go back home and resume a normal life.

  “I heard them, yes.”

  “Well, what did you get out of what they were saying?”

  “One thing’s for sure. They
don’t look on droughts or …”

  Jerry laughed ruefully. “Or anything at all with too much concern,” he finished for her.

  Hannah met his gaze, her eyes flashing. “Exactly! You do understand.” In the depths of her eyes there was a spark or recognition that kept his eyes riveted on hers.

  “Oh, Jerry. Don’t you see? Today at the feed mill I found the reason why some people stay here in North Dakota and all the lands west of here, and others don’t. It’s so plain to me now, especially why our Amish neighbors went home. These people out here measure their time on earth in a completely different way than we do. They don’t care about what we call success. They are happy, Jerry, happy with food on the table and a roof over their heads, enough wages to keep their clunker automobiles or trucks going. In other words, getting ahead, our version of it, with a large herd of cows and money in the bank, simply isn’t important.”

  Jerry narrowed his eyes. “So you’re saying to be a successful homesteader, you need to adopt a different attitude.”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean, a drought isn’t so awful, as long as you’re content with what you have.”

  “Right.”

  Jerry said nothing for a long while. Then he asked, “Would you be content here, like this, if we never had more than we have now? No church, no fellow Amish, no parents or relatives, simply this seclusion day in and day out?”

  “Yes.”

  His heart sank. He didn’t speak again. He simply rose, let himself in the house, and let the screen door flop behind him. Decidedly, the conversation had taken a new and different turn, and he needed time to think.

  Hannah remained on the porch, her chin resting on her arms, now a bit miffed. That was unnecessary, Jerry cutting off the conversation like that. He just couldn’t bear to think of staying here. He figured she’d break down yet. Well, she almost had.

  But after today, she wasn’t so sure. These old ranchers had something, an element of satisfaction, of peace, no matter what happened. They took it, made the best of it, enjoyed themselves with simple pleasures. Oh, the list went on and on.

  She thought of her father, the manic fasting and praying, believing that God would come on his terms and bless him because he was a righteous man. Wasn’t he misguided? Which one was God’s way?

  The ranchers gathered in a feed mill with total kinship, saying what they thought, accepting and accepted, easily doing the same with whatever life handed them, paragons of patience and contentment.

  Her father had left Lancaster County because of the argumentative brethren who aired their highly esteemed opinions, took offense and held grudges, all in the name of Christ and his written word. Her father would not have wasted the time telling her these men were all unsaved heathens, and perhaps they were. But that part was up to God.

  Hannah knew her own mind. These ausrichy (outsiders) displayed plenty of the fruits of the Spirit, in her view. They demanded nothing from God, appreciated plenty, and lived in peace and harmony, helping anyone who needed it. They would have starved, the whole Mose Detweiler family, if Hod and Abby had not given and kept on giving.

  And so Hannah remained on the porch watching the pinpricks of white stars appear, one by one, then in clusters, then in numbers far beyond her ability to count. Nip and Tuck came from the barn, surprised to find her, shoving their wet noses in her face, then flopping down beside her.

  “Phew! You smell. Have you been unearthing your treasures? Get away from me!” She shoved them aside with her foot. Killing prairie dogs and other rodents was play for these swift-moving dogs. They buried the excess, then retrieved it after it became putrid.

  And still she lingered, her thoughts racing from one subject to another, questions left unanswered, new ideas like cartwheels cavorting through her mind. She couldn’t expect Jerry to stay if he simply did not see things her way. Neither could she keep up her expectations of living together for the sake of enough money to keep the homestead.

  Clearly, she was in over her head. To move to Lancaster now was simply not possible. He’d have to take her by force, kicking and biting like a wild horse!

  As for that other…. She felt so tired so quickly, her thoughts dragging along like a hundred-pound weight, trying to reason her way out of it. Regret was suddenly very real. Why had she married Jerry on a whim? For money of course, when money was still important. After today, she’d have to be honest and somehow have the courage to tell him she would never return to Lancaster County and give him the option of leaving to go back by himself.

  Jerry lay in his own bedroom with his own thoughts, trying to be reasonable. Mentally, he made a list. Number one: he was married to her, the girl of his dreams, who obviously had no normal love or desire for him. Number two: her goal in life was to stay on the prairie, especially after today. His goal was to leave this endless prairie, the dust and wind that shaved away at his goodwill and patience. Number three: today, she had come up with a whole new philosophy.

  He was weary, bone-weary, in mind, body, and soul. Regret for the marriage became an insistent whine, which he tried to slap down like a mosquito, but he had to face it. He wished he’d never met her. That marriage certificate was binding by God and by man. Holy Matrimony. He turned his face to the wall.

  He felt old, bitter, and hostile toward Hannah, a whole new, uneasy accumulation of thoughts and feelings. He couldn’t pray in this state of mind. But he did tell God that he was in too deep and couldn’t find a way out. So, he’d allow God to lead and go where He thought best, and if it was His will, he would stay. He would sacrifice his life for Hannah’s love. But he did require Hannah’s love, if it was meant to be.

  The summer ended without rain. The wheat stayed short and never grew to a head. The dust blew between the limp plants and lay like volcanic ash. They worked together to put up enough hay to last through the winter before the worst of the drought. They never talked about the failed wheat crop, or the endless dust.

  Just when Jerry thought things could not get worse, Hod Jenkins came by in his rusted, blue pickup truck in a cloud of dust, almost setting it on its nose, he hit the brakes so hard.

  Hod strode up to the porch, brought his fist up, and banged on the screen door. He said they’d had a telephone call from Abby’s sister that lived down Ventura way.

  Hannah moved quickly from the table, opening the door to let him in, her eyes wide with dark apprehension.

  Their food turned cold as Hod told them what Tessa had said. “There are horse thieves around. Seriously dangerous ones. Men who won’t think twice about knockin’ you off to git at yer horses. That King o’ yourn …” Hod shook his head. “They’s workin’ at night. Hittin’ every ranch from Ventura to Calvin. Gittin’ closer by the day. She says even the sheriffs is afraid of ‘em. Callin’ in a buncha cops from the capital. Alls I’m sayin’ is to keep watch at night. I dunno how yer gonna keep ‘em from takin’ yer horses, though. Iffen they do show up, uer better off lettin’ ‘em take ‘em, I guess.”

  Hannah set down a mug of coffee in front of Hod with shaking hands, her face gone pale. Jerry’s face looked grim, but he said nothing, allowing Hod to have his say.

  “They’ll ketch ‘em, eventually. The thing is, will they git ‘em fore they git this far? Hannah, now if they show up, don’t you go doin’ anything stupid. Stay in the house. Act like there ain’t nobody around.” He slurped his coffee and grimaced.

  “An’ they say there’s a green tint to the east. Old timers used to say the grasshoppers is walkin’. Like the plagues of Egypt, mind you. Time’ll tell, I guess.”

  CHAPTER 12

  AFTER HOD LEFT IN A CLOUD OF DUST, JERRY SAT IN A KITCHEN chair dazed, as if all the vigor had gone out of him. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Hannah. He didn’t want her opinion just yet. He needed space to think. He drained the last of his coffee, stood, and walked out.

  He was halfway to the barn when he heard his name being called in strident tones laced with the old belligerence. He stop
ped, turned.

  “Come back in here!” Hannah shouted. It was about the last thing he wanted to do, but he knew ignoring her would only make things worse. He returned to the kitchen and sat down without meeting her gaze.

  “You know you’re acting like a coward. Like an ostrich! Or whichever animal it is that sticks its head in the sand when trouble comes along.”

  As irritating as a burr in his sock. “An ostrich is a bird.”

  “We have to talk,” Hannah said, ignoring his correction.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Don’t you have anything to say?”

  “No. Go ahead. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  Hannah sighed. “I wish you would go first, okay? You won’t like what I have to say.”

  “Well, keep going. I want to hear it,” Jerry urged, trying to sound like he meant it.

  “All right. I know you want to go back to Lancaster. I don’t. I want to stay here, away from all the people who know everything about everybody. After our afternoon at the feed mill, I feel like I finally have a grasp on what it takes to make it out here. And I love it so much.”

  “I know you do, Hannah. And if it means so much to you, we’ll stay, for a while anyhow. But didn’t you want to talk about the horse thieves? And the grasshoppers?”

  “Oh, you can’t listen to that Hod. He’s always making this stuff up. I don’t believe all his horse thief talk either.”

  Jerry’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Don’t look at me like that!”

  He shook his head. “It’s good to have confidence, Hannah, but to be too confident after a warning like that can be extremely foolish.”

  Hannah snorted, that grating sound that said everyone was foolish except her. There were few things he actually disliked about her but that was definitely one of them. He wanted to bring up the subject of how long they would still be living in this manner, but he figured that wouldn’t do him any good at this point, either.

  Was he a coward? Quite likely. He preferred to think he was patient and understanding.

  At first, they thought a hailstorm was brewing. The greenish cast to an otherwise cloudless day seemed the harbinger of a mighty storm.