The Sound of Distant Thunder

by Jan Drexler

  “They’ll be home soon. Today or tomorrow.” Katie smiled as she spoke, ignoring the growing certainty that Mama was right to be worried.

  The afternoon passed slowly. Katie wanted to wait for Jonas at the cabin site, but her new realization made her reluctant to leave Mama alone. Katie finished shredding the cabbage while Mama boiled the cloth cover and cleaned the crock weights. Every day for the next two weeks, Mama would skim the brine that covered the shredded cabbage and boil the cloth again. By then the sauerkraut would be finished and ready to eat all winter long.

  When the cabbage was all in the crock, a final layer of salt added, and the weights and cover set in place, Mama glanced out the window once more.

  “It’s still early,” Katie said.

  “Ja, ja, ja,” Mama said with a sigh. “And there are many miles between here and Smithville.”

  She tried to think of something that would take Mama’s mind off the empty road. Her mind too. Keeping busy was the only way to make the hours pass quickly.

  “I need to start preparing to set up housekeeping.” She forced a smile as Mama pulled herself from the window. “For when I get married someday.”

  Mama nodded, thoughtful. “You know what you will need. Bedding, kitchen towels. You use them every day.”

  Katie’s smile became genuine as the brisk Mama returned.

  She counted the items off on her fingers. “For the bedding you’ll need a quilt, bedsheets, and a ticking for the mattress.”

  “I could start on the quilt this fall.”

  Mama sat at the table across from her, all business. “We will ask the girls if they have scraps of fabric to use for it. I have lengths of linen that I wove last winter, and you can make sheets and kitchen towels from that. We’ll have to weave some more linen this winter for your mattress ticking.” Mama pursed her lips, tapping them with her forefinger. “We should plan a trip to Millersburg soon to do some trading. We can work to fill your blanket chest when our other chores aren’t so pressing this winter.”

  “I don’t have a blanket chest,” Katie said.

  As her sisters had grown into adulthood, Papa had made each of them a chest. She remembered spending hours in his workshop watching him as he built each box, planing and sanding the boards until they were as smooth as glass. She had been hoping that Papa would make a chest for her, but something else always came up. There was no hurry, he had always said. She had a feeling he had forgotten.

  “Perhaps Papa will make one this autumn, once the fieldwork is done.” Mama’s statement sounded like she was checking another item off her list rather than fulfilling Katie’s cherished desire, but Katie didn’t mind. What Mama didn’t know, though, is that she would need it before winter.

  “What should I start making first?”

  “The sheets. We have the linen, and once you’ve measured the lengths you need for the sheets, you can make kitchen towels from the rest. They will be easy to hem . . .”

  Mama’s voice trailed off at the end of her sentence, as she stopped, listening. Then Katie heard it too. Footsteps on the porch. Papa opened the door, a frown on his face.

  “Gustav,” Mama said, rising from her chair. “You’re home.”

  She took his hat and coat and hung them on the hooks by the door while Papa sat in her chair with a heavy sigh.

  “How did the meeting go?”

  From Mama’s expression, Katie would never have thought that she had been close to tears earlier. Both of her parents acted as if Papa hadn’t been farther away than the oat field. But as she slipped out the door, hoping to find Jonas, she glanced back. Mama stood behind Papa, her hand resting on his shoulder, and he reached to clasp it in his.

  Katie smiled, skipping down the porch steps to the path. She would never doubt that Mama and Papa loved each other.

  5

  JUNE 18

  A week after returning home from Smithville, Jonas still wasn’t sure what to think about the things he had seen and heard. Even with all the talk of unity and brotherhood at the ministers’ meeting, most of the Holmes County churches weren’t satisfied with the decisions that had been made.

  “They ignored us,” Gustav had said on the trip home, sitting on the wagon seat next to Datt while Jonas had lounged on a blanket roll in the back. “It was as if our opinion counted for nothing.”

  Datt kept his eyes on the horses’ ears and his voice mild. “Be careful not to fall into the same trap, Gustav. Labeling folks with ideas different from your own as ‘them’ and calling yourself ‘us’ is the best way to create division.”

  Gustav muttered, then said, “I think the division is already there, but no one will admit to it.”

  As Jonas made his way through the woods to his clearing, he thought about Gustav’s words. The division in the country had happened the same way, with no one wanting to admit the seriousness of the break until it actually took place last year. Since the Confederate States proclaimed their separation from the rest of the country, though, things had only gotten worse.

  The newspaper he had brought with him to read crinkled as he walked. Stuck in his back waistband, it folded and bent with every step. He had picked it up in Wooster on the way home last week, wanting to read a different editor’s point of view, but in every paper the war news continued its unending chant of doom and death. Even the army’s victories were hollow as Jonas read the lists of dead and wounded after the battles. The only good news was that one of the politicians running for state office in Ohio had promised that if a military draft happened, the Amish, Dunkers, and other nonresistant churches wouldn’t be required to fight. He had proposed that they could pay a fee instead.

  But Jonas wasn’t sure how he felt about that. What would that money be used for? And if the military needed soldiers, they would get them from somewhere. It didn’t feel right that if he was drafted, he would be able to avoid serving while someone else went instead. Someone else who might end up on the casualty list someday.

  When he reached the clearing, Jonas put the paper on the bench and started in on the task of moving and turning the drying lumber. If he didn’t turn the boards every couple weeks and restack the piles, the planks could warp as they dried. A well-seasoned stack of lumber would make a weathertight house, just right for Katie and their family.

  He grinned at that thought, looking toward the lowering sun. Katie had told him she’d bring supper for them both, and anticipation made his stomach growl. Not only his stomach, but the rest of him yearned for Katie’s presence. They couldn’t spend enough time together to satisfy him. Fifty years wouldn’t be enough time, for sure, although it made him dizzy to look that far into the future.

  As he moved the stack from the one he and Datt had made to a new one that mirrored it, Jonas thought about the family he and Katie might have one day. They would have a boy first, for sure and certain. Maybe two or three boys before a girl came along. That would be the best way for the family to grow. And by the time the girl came along, the boys would be big enough to sit with him in church. He would teach them to listen to the minister and to sit quietly.

  With that thought, he dropped the board he was carrying onto the new pile with a slap and straightened up, stretching his back. He pulled his straw hat from his head and wiped his brow. He thought he hadn’t made up his mind about joining church, but he guessed he had after all. His boys would go to church with him, and if there were going to be boys, then he and Katie would need to get married first. That meant he was joining.

  He put his hat back on and reached for the next board.

  But what about his doubts? After last week’s meeting, he had even more. He knew where he stood on the matter of introducing new things into the church. As far as he was concerned, the Walnut Creek congregation should have conferred with the other churches before beginning to build their meetinghouse. And when the other churches in the county objected, they should have stopped the building until the matter could be resolved.

  Jonas finished that sta
ck of wood and started on the next one, laying fresh logs down for a clean foundation. As he reached for the first board, he glimpsed Katie walking across the bridge from the road, carrying her basket. He left the board where it was and met her as she reached the clearing, reaching for her basket.

  He took a deep breath. “Do I smell cold fried chicken in here?”

  Katie smiled, her face lighting up. “For sure. I made it for dinner at noon, and saved extra pieces in the springhouse for our supper.”

  She followed him to the log bench and he set the basket down.

  “I have to move these boards before I stop to eat. Do you mind waiting?”

  She shook her head. “You can tell me about the meeting. Every time I ask Papa, he just scowls.”

  “He wasn’t happy with the way the meeting turned out.”

  “I doubt if he’ll ever want to go to another one.”

  Jonas started shifting the boards from one pile to the other. “Next year’s meeting will be in Pennsylvania. I don’t think any of us will be traveling that far, except the bishops.”

  “Papa said something about the meetinghouse in Walnut Creek. Will they tear it down?”

  “I don’t think so. Bishop Lemuel didn’t seem to think it was a problem.”

  “Then he hasn’t heard Papa’s opinion.”

  Jonas paused before moving the next board. “That’s the problem. I don’t think the bishop heard anyone at the meeting except the men he agreed with.”

  Katie sighed, resting her chin in her hand. “You could say the same about Papa. He’s so set in his ways. What’s wrong with a meetinghouse?”

  “I don’t have anything against them, except that we have never had them.” Jonas left the lumber and sat next to Katie. “Other churches have them, like the Mennonites, so it seems like the Walnut Creek folks could join them instead of insisting that the other Amish congregations accept the changes they want to make.”

  “But that would divide the church. At least, it would divide the Holmes County churches.”

  “What they are doing now is creating division.” Jonas shook his head. “The meeting was filled with change-minded ministers, ones who agreed with Bishop Lemuel. But those of us from the churches that keep to the old order felt like we were shoved aside. Like our opinion didn’t count. I say let the church be divided, but Datt says we still need to work and pray for unity.”

  “All this talk makes me worry about what will happen in the future.” Katie’s brown eyes were wide as she watched his face. He stroked her cheek and brushed back a lock of hair that had escaped her kapp.

  “There’s no need to worry. What we believe and how we worship won’t change, whether the change-minded folks want us to or not.”

  She grinned at him. “I didn’t realize you were so stubborn.”

  He grinned back, reaching for the basket. “I haven’t even begun to be stubborn.” He pulled the towel away. “Can we eat now? I can’t wait until after I finish stacking the lumber.”

  Jonas fetched a couple clean boards to use for their plates while Katie unpacked the cold chicken and greens sprinkled with vinegar. Pickled eggs and thick slices of buttered bread came out of the basket next. After a silent prayer, Jonas picked up one of the pickled eggs. Katie had boiled it and taken the shell off. A week being pickled in beet juice turned it pink and sweet.

  “I could eat pickled eggs all day.”

  “I only brought one for each of us, so you’ll have to wait until another time.”

  Jonas picked up the newspaper and opened it to the second page. “Do you want me to read to you about the war?”

  Katie shook her head. “I don’t want to hear about it. Every time you mention it, all I can think about is how men are killing each other for no reason.”

  “It isn’t no reason, Katie. It’s to preserve the Union and to free the slaves.”

  “But is anything worth killing another man?”

  Jonas took another bite of his egg. “You can’t put a price on a man’s life.”

  “That’s what the war does, doesn’t it? It says that stopping slavery is worth . . . how many lives? A hundred? A thousand?”

  Jonas’s eyes flitted to the list of casualties from a recent battle in Tennessee. The editor of the paper had praised the small number of soldiers killed in the skirmish, but each one of those twenty-seven men had families who loved them. Dreams of their own. Each one of their lives had been precious, but now they were gone . . . and slavery still flourished in the South.

  And at the same time, each slave was a person, a life worth defending. Was it right to trade one person’s life for another? He shook his head. He knew he was right. Slavery was wrong. Abolition was worth fighting for . . . but was it worth killing for?

  He grasped at something to defend his opinion. “The preservation of the Union is important . . .” That phrase sounded weak, even to his own ears.

  Katie crossed one leg over the other, bouncing her foot up and down. “So men are dying in order to preserve the unity of the country, but when it comes to the unity of the church, you say we should let the dissenters go their own way? Isn’t the church worth fighting for just as much as the country?”

  Jonas had no answer for her. The church was too close, and too dear, but the war . . . His thoughts went to a place he didn’t like. Up until now, the war had been interesting to read about, but it was something that happened to other people, like Tom Porter. Or in other places, like Tennessee. The war was only words in a newspaper article. He closed the paper as he finished the egg, the treat turning bitter in his mouth. Katie was right. The war wasn’t glamorous or exciting. He was sick of reading the accounts of battles, sick of skimming over the numbers of casualties. Sick of reading the conflicting opinions of the different editors as they argued over the question of slavery and the inaction or actions of Congress and the president.

  His attention and his energy should be spent here, in the church, where it mattered. Where he could make a difference. In the church, he could work to build a place for Katie and their family within the bounds of the community. Any questions he might have about the doctrine were minor compared to that.

  He glanced at Katie. “Before we get married, we need to join the church.”

  Katie nodded. “The next membership class will probably start in September. We can be baptized in time for a November wedding.”

  Jonas watched Katie’s smile as she looked off into the trees. She loved watching the birds in the forest. He would make sure her kitchen window faced east, toward the woodlot near the creek, so she could watch them all day once they were married. That vision of the little boys sitting next to him during the church service came to mind, and he could see them as if they were a reality, playing among the tree stumps at the edge of the woods while he and Katie worked together to build their home and raise their family.

  This was what he would sacrifice if he let his questions about the war prevent him from joining and being baptized. Katie’s words about fighting for the church rang in his heart. He loved the church enough to fight for it and its commitment to follow the Scriptures.

  “We’ll go to membership class together.”

  She smiled at him as he took her hand in his own.

  JULY 11

  July had turned hot and stifling, but Katie still had plenty of chores to keep her busy. As the green beans ripened, Katie’s days were filled with long hours of stringing them to dry. When she wasn’t stringing beans, she was weeding the gardens. The work never ended.

  Suppers were quiet meals. Katie had been the only child at home for so long that the routine grated on her. If only she could eat supper with Jonas every evening, but Mama would only allow her to pack a picnic supper for them once or twice a week. Every night Mama and Papa would discuss the day’s work, or tomorrow’s plans, or what one of the grandchildren had done, and ignored her.

  To them, it seemed, she was still a child when they were at the table.

  On this July evening, she
finished her soup in silence, listening to her parents’ conversation.

  “The corn has grown tall enough that we don’t need to use the cultivator to control the weeds anymore. It should be a fine crop, as long as we get some rain.”

  Mama’s hands stopped moving, her spoon halfway between her bowl and her mouth. “We haven’t had any rain since a fortnight ago. We’re overdue.”

  “Ja, ja, ja. But the rain will come in God’s own time.”

  Katie stifled a sigh. When she and Jonas were married, the last thing they would talk about at the supper table was the weather. She must have been wrong about her parents loving each other. They certainly didn’t talk as if they knew what the word even meant.

  “Mary brought the children by today. That Lizzie is growing up. I’ve never heard a two-year-old talk as much as she does, chattering all the time.”

  “Are Leah and Rosie over their illness?” Papa’s words were muffled as he tore off a piece of bread and stuck it in his mouth.

  “Only a bit of a cough left. They’re past the danger point.”

  Katie laid her chin in one hand. Her nieces had been quite ill for a week, and being so young, only four and five years old, the entire family had been concerned. But that was a month ago, and they had been well enough to be out and visiting for at least ten days now. Her thoughts drifted to Jonas. This week or next, he would start laying the foundation for his house. As soon as it was finished, he had promised Katie, they would be married. But they wouldn’t tell anyone until autumn came. For now, their plans were their own sweet secret.

  “I heard that Rosie Keck is getting married next month.”

  Papa finally had some news. Katie sat up straight.

  “To the Schrock boy from up north in Smithville?” Mama shook her head. “I know Hannah had hoped for someone better suited for her daughter.”

  “Ja, ja, ja. That’s the one. I’m not sure what Simeon is thinking, letting his daughter keep company with a boy from a change-minded church.”

  Mama shook her head. “You know one can’t always choose who their children marry. At least he’s Amish, not like—”