Which Way Home?

by Linda Byler

  Seeing the happiness on their grandmother’s face, the children smiled and resumed eating, content.

  Elias blew on his pewter mug of tea. For a long while he said nothing. He looked first at Naomi, whose eyes were bright with anticipation, then bowed his head to the turn of circumstances he knew were out of his control. “It is done, then.”

  Those words sealed the ownership of the farm.

  Triumphant, Johnny’s eyes seared into Hester’s, conveying victory over her. She lowered her eyes. Otherwise, the contempt would have flashed, and Naomi would have seen. Best to let her revel in her husband’s acquisition.

  “Although I cannot allow you to have a horse. It is simply not safe for you to travel on your own with robbers and highway men about as thick as fleas. Johnny and I will build a cabin for you here on the home place. You can be maud to Naomi. We will pay your living expenses.”

  Hester shook her head before Elias stopped speaking. “No.”

  Frances breathed out, so obvious was her relief. With shaking hands, she lifted her tea and sipped a tiny portion, blinking rapidly.

  “Where will you go?” Johnny’s eyes begged her to stay. She was a necessity for him like she had been for Hans.

  “Barbara King is coming to make me an offer. But I would rather travel to Ohio, to go back to my people where I belong.”

  Elias shook his head, his mouth grim. “Hester, you are one of us. You do not belong with the Indians. They are being steadily pushed farther west, becoming more savage and more hostile as time goes on. Or so we hear. You have been raised among the Amish, you have promised to keep the faith. How could you turn your back to us now?”

  Stony-faced, Hester lifted her eyes. “It would be out of necessity that I do this.”

  They allowed her the good little mare, Fannie, and the top buggy that day. She had only one wish, and that was to visit Emma Ferree, which they agreed to.

  Hester’s face was flushed with anticipation as she took up the reins, clucked to the little mare, and rode away from the farm in the gray mist of a spring rain. The wheels turned, picking up mud and old withered leaves of winter. Fannie’s hooves made a sucking sound in the low, wet places, but Hester saw neither the mud nor the gray drizzle. On this one day she was doing something she had wanted to do for years—return to Emma and Billy.

  The surrounding fields were still unplowed. Old wet cornstalks bent low, driven into the earth by the heavy snows of winter. The hayfields were drab, but new growth was sprouting in low places, the promise of an abundance of grass to cut into hay.

  An oncoming team of horses made her pull on the right rein, drawing Fannie to the side, allowing the team to pass. Inquisitive faces peered out from the open front of the buggy. Hester nodded, glad when they continued on their way.

  On the outskirts of town, the road widened and hardened. The stones from the lime quarry made traveling easier. Fannie pricked up her ears as they passed the blacksmith shop on the right, a low stone building with a wide chimney. Smoke poured from it, created by the hot coals used by the smithy.

  She remembered her excursions with Hans, the smell of the horses’ hooves as his trimming knife cut expertly into them. His strong, muscular arms pounded the shoes into shape. There was the anvil, the hot coals, the odor of hay and corn and manure. From her perch on the wagon, she would take in all of this, cultivating a love of horses that Hans had taken away when he forbade her to ride. Still, it was an enriching part of her childhood, listening to Hans’s voice as he told her stories, bouncing along on the seat of the spring wagon beside him. He had been a good father to her.

  Many carriages passed her now. There were poor farmers in clumsy wagons with wide wheels, covered in mud. Drawn by thin mules, their ribs strained against the wet, brown coat covering them. Their necks were too thin, their heads enormous and bobbing, unsightly ears above them.

  There were also ornate hacks, polished to a high gloss and drawn by high-stepping black horses, their coats gleaming in the rain. Their drivers were top-hatted and mustached, with long, thick sideburns down their cheeks like squirrels’ tails. Ladies protected themselves from the rain with fancy parasols as they cast superior glances at the Amish woman clad entirely in black, her plain, serviceable buggy drawn by the squat, little mare.

  A group of children dashed across the road, their hats and bonnets slick with the rain, the girls’ skirts like striped flowers, the petticoats beneath them ruffled and sewn by loving mothers.

  A lone boy strolled through the rain, rolling a hoop expertly, his white shirt front in stark relief against the gray of his opened coat. For one instant, Hester thought it must be Billy, then remembered that Billy would be fifteen years old now, close to sixteen, and no longer a child.

  She drove up the narrow passageway called Water Street, turned left on Orange, and then right onto Mulberry. Everywhere she looked, there was a construction site. Houses were springing up like mushrooms.

  The homes were all made of wood. Even the chimneys were slapped together with mud, the way Hans disliked. He said more houses burned to the ground because of shoddy chimneys than for any other reason. Hester knew the wealthy lot owners erected these wood dwellings cheaply, charged a goodly sum for rent, and made a hefty profit. It was only when yet another fire broke out that they saw the error of their ways.

  She drew Fannie off to the right and tied her to a lamppost when she neared Emma Ferree’s house. Better to walk the last distance, then knock on the door to see if she was home.

  Her breath came rapidly as she blanketed the steaming Fannie. She patted her forehead, promised her return, and walked across the street, a lone, black figure, the corners of her shawl spreading out behind her.

  There it was. The sturdy house made of stone and wood, the steps going up right off the street as if to welcome any person who wanted to enter.

  Hester drew in a deep breath, steadied herself, and lifted a hand to knock. She tried once, then twice. Disappointed, she raised her hand again and knocked harder. When no one answered, she drew back to gaze through the window. On a day such as this, Emma would be burning her oil lamp and perhaps a few candles.

  Obviously, there was no one home. She turned to make her way back down the steps when she thought of Walter Trout. It would be better to see him than no one at all.

  She made her way to his front door, resolutely, remembering his kindness, his effusive words of praise. Seeing him was the closest thing to meeting Emma Ferree, and it would have to do for today.

  CHAPTER 17

  SHE KNOCKED WITH A FIRM RAP ON THE FRONT door, followed by another. She stepped back when the latch jostled, lifted, and the door swung slowly inward.

  Hester’s mouth dropped open when a ruffled white housecap appeared around the edge of the door, below which shone two beady blue eyes and a florid pink face. Emma Ferree opened her mouth to speak, closed it again, gave up, and threw both hands in the air, her eyes wide and full of recognition. “Ach, mein Gott im Himmel!”

  Hester started to laugh, but a sob cut it in two. She fell into Emma’s soft, plump arms, bending over to lay her bonneted head on her warm shoulder and to let her tears and hiccupping flow for a long moment. Emma’s plump hands patted and soothed, her voice crooning as if Hester were an infant.

  Somehow Hester was drawn into the dim hallway, the door was closed behind her, and she was enveloped in warmth and the heavenly scent of ginger and molasses and cinnamon and sugar.

  “Ach, du yay, du yay. Meine Hester. Meine own Hester. How often my prayers went to heaven because of you, meine Liebchen, miene Indian girl, still so beautiful.” Exclaiming nonstop, Emma reached for Hester’s hat strings, yanked on them and removed the hat. Her brilliant gaze swept over the white cap, taking in the severe cut of her black dress, cape, and apron.

  “You really are Amish!” she said forcefully.

  The back door swung open. The gray light from the doorway was darkened as Walter Trout hove his large frame through it.

  “Emma?�
�� he shouted.

  Emma held up one finger. “Yes, Walter?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Here in the hallway. Come look who’s here, come quick.”

  Walter Trout filled up the width of the hallway with his presence, his reaction much the same as Emma’s. He began with a polite handshake but pulled Hester into a gentlemanly embrace with one arm, looked down on her face, and proclaimed her his long-lost daughter.

  Hester let herself absorb the luxury of their welcome, the love that flowed unhampered by pride or judgment. Her soul expanded with the knowledge that so much kindness was available and that God had not forgotten her after all.

  Walter’s shirt smelled of ginger and cinnamon, his breath like sugar.

  She found herself seated at the kitchen table, a checked cloth covering it. Walter arranged cookies on a platter. Emma put the tea kettle on the stove, and brought out china cups, talking all the while. “Tell us, please tell us, Hester, how is your life? Does he treat you well? Are you happy?”

  “My husband is dead.” When she spoke the words, they crowded her consciousness, blotting out the moments of love and acceptance mere minutes before.

  Walter became very still. “Oh no! Oh no! What happened?”

  Emma sat down heavily, her hands to her face. “The rain? The flooded creeks?”

  “Yes. Yes. He rode with a group of men here to Lancaster to reinforce the lower part with sandbags. His horse shied going across a bridge and threw him against the bridge’s stone foundation.”

  “Dead instantly?”

  “No. He lived for eleven days. He never woke up.”

  “Oh, mein Herr. An act of God. An act of God.”

  Hester nodded. Guilt flooded her eyes.

  Emma spoke on, freely and openly. “God took him. He did. That’s good. He was not for you. It was not his will that you marry him.”

  Walter came to stand behind Emma’s chair. He reached out a hand and patted her round shoulder. “Now, now, Emma, my dear.”

  Hester’s mouth opened in surprise when Emma reached up to clasp the round fingers placed on her shoulders and kept them there. “What?” Hester could not put words to the question, so she gestured toward the clasped hands.

  “Oh!” Emma and Walter said with one voice and a great display of merriment. Their pink faces were wreathed in smiles, all the aging lines and wrinkles turning into little trails of happiness. “You don’t know! Why, of course not. Walter asked me to marry him after Billy ran off to the war. Oh, and you don’t know that, either,” Emma burst out.

  And so began a long tale, a story spun into emotional clouds of longing for Billy, newly discovered marital bliss, the blessings received from the Lord for their marriage, and spending their days together in gratitude.

  “But, you didn’t like Walter,” Hester stated, laughing.

  “Indeed, indeed, were it not for Billy’s leaving, I would not have my darling Emma.” Walter, always the well-bred gentleman, patted her arm reassuringly.

  “That and my washline,” Emma chirped. “How I hated the fact that Walter could see my nightclothes flapping on the line! It was downright immodest. And it never failed, I’d hang them out, and there he was like a nosy gopher, up over the top of that fence.”

  Walter laughed, and his tears ran copiously as he held his rotund stomach. “Now, Emma, I never looked at your washline.”

  “Puh! That is a schnitza!

  “Billy got himself in trouble down at the livery. He punched a drunken man in the stomach, then let his horse loose. He had fines to pay after his arrest and couldn’t go back to the livery, ever. He almost landed in the stocks on the square.” Emma shook her head as sorrow filled her deep-set eyes.

  She clucked and lamented, but he was gone now. “Old enough, he was, and fit as a fiddle, that boy. Strong in the legs like a draft horse, he could run for miles without being winded. He’d make a good soldier, but any day, he might be killed.” Emma could hardly live with that.

  Walter added solemnly that as long as the French supported the Indians to the north, and they fought the English colonists this way, the war would continue. It all boiled down to the lust for land. The Indians had been driven to Pennsylvania from the south, and here they had been wiped out, driven west to Ohio and beyond.

  Then Hester began her story. Her marriage to William, her failure to give William children, his stringent rules and exacting nature.

  Walter and Emma allowed Hester to continue unhindered, giving no indication of their opinions. They drank cup after cup of tea, snipping off so much sugar with each cup that the solid, white cone was disappearing rapidly, which seemed quite wasteful to Hester. But she must remember, these were English people, not frugal Amish. So she allowed Emma to place a large piece of white sugar in her own tea, sipped it with relish, and pronounced it very good. Frances would have a fit.

  The last of her story was her plan to travel to Ohio to look for her people. She presented her case well without seeking pity, stating her inability to be a good wife to William because of her Indian heritage.

  The loud ticking of the clock was the only sound in the homey kitchen. The candlelight cast the whole room into the warmth of its yellow glow. The kettle purred on the lid of the cast iron stove. The checked tablecloth was covered with molasses cookies and tea, the cone of sugar, and a white milk pitcher, so much like Kate’s kitchen. The only thing missing was children, a baby in the cradle. There had always been babies. And Kate’s devotion to them.

  Walter sighed, and his great bald head swiveled from side to side. He stood up. “I’ll tend to your horse, Hester. She must be thirsty.”

  Hester nodded. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, her mouth soft and trembling.

  Emma was careful with her words. She chose them deliberately, while letting Hester know that she had done nothing wrong. In fact, she had done well. God had chosen to take William, yes, but not by her sins. Or because of them.

  And there was no way on earth she could allow Hester to travel west, a young woman alone. She wouldn’t last two weeks before some ruffian would make off with her horse and perhaps even herself.

  “Hester, my dearest heart, you must finally make peace with who you are—an Indian, yes. There is nothing wrong with being one. And you were Amish-raised by a loving Kate. And you’ve lived with Hans, Annie, William, and Frances, all created by God, too, living here by the grace of God. Imperfect, yes; perfectly lovable, no. Blaming yourself has got to go. None of this is a fault of your own. But if you want to hang on to that whole misery, then go right ahead.”

  Hester cowered beneath Emma’s forthright manner.

  “Stop running away.”

  “But I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “But it’s for the best.”

  “Do you really want to go?” Emma’s beady blue eyes shot darts of truth. When they hit their mark, Hester’s shoulders sagged and her face relaxed, as warm, healing tears appeared in her black eyes. They hung like silver jewels on the thick, dark lashes, trembled, and then splashed on her cheeks and down the front of her black dress, where they soaked into the fabric, turning it darker than it was.

  What followed was a shock to Emma. She had never heard weeping become so forceful. The sobs of anger emitted from her open mouth, the hoarse heaves of sadness and misery propelled by the power of her guilt and misplaced blame, were frightening. In simple language, Emma urged Hester to grasp forgiveness and draw on God’s unlimited supply of grace. Slowly, she dismantled all the explanations and resolve Hester had created to explain what she had experienced.

  Emma held her, letting her sobs enter her own heart, and cried with her. Walter’s small eyes filled up as he came through the door, and he cried as he filled the teacups. He cried as he sliced ham into the frying pan, sniffed as he seasoned the beans, and wiped at tears that plunked into the water in the dishpan as he peeled potatoes. For he loved Hester so much.

  She went home in the fading gray light, the r
ain splashing on the buggy top and the little brown mare named Fannie. She told Elias and Frances of her plans to move into Emma Ferree’s house, the empty one beside Walter and Emma Trout. Quite simply, she wanted to be with them.

  No, she would not attend church every time, but she would remain true to the Amish faith. Emma thought it would be best.

  Barbara King came to visit on Sunday, early, before the hordes of others arrived who would come to wish the young widow well. She came in on the stiff April wind, the kind that bent tulips double, flopping them against the side of the stone house, brushing their delicate petals. She whirled through the door and banged it shut behind her, latched it with a loud ring of iron, and turned to the fireplace, rubbing her hands furiously.

  Hester rose immediately, her black dress swishing about her narrow hips as she used the bellows to stir up the fire.

  “Chilly out there.” Barbara handed her stiff black hat to Hester, loosened the long steel pin so she could slide the black shawl off her shoulders, folded it expertly, and gave it to Hester as well. “How’s it going, Hester? I think of you every night.”

  “Good, Barbara, it’s—”

  “Call me Bappie.”

  “Bappie, I went to visit an old friend, Emma Ferree, and her new husband, and she helped me out of a few dumbkopf decisions.”

  “Don’t you know the old saying? ‘No decisions for a year, when a spouse passes away.’”

  “What? A year? A whole year to live here with Johnny and Naomi? I can’t,” Hester whispered her defeat.

  “Why not? You’ve got it made. Big stone house. Money. Frances at your beck and call.”

  Hester told Bappie about Johnny and Naomi, and the farm.

  “You’re not thinking straight, Hester. Take the farm.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  Bappie looked thoughtfully at Hester, her bright brown eyes polished with understanding. Then she nodded firmly, signaling her empathy. Hester’s heart relaxed in the strength of knowing that Bappie, Emma, and Walter all stood with her.