Which Way Home?

by Linda Byler

  “Hey, what is up with you and Johnny? You act like he’s as lovable as a snake.”

  “He is.”

  “Oh, come on. He’s much nicer than William was. Sorry. May he rest in peace.”

  Hester rolled onto her back, shaded her eyes the way Bappie did, and outright told her about Johnny’s misdeeds at Christmastime, the lies that followed, and her own bowing to his wickedness.

  Bappie pulled a blade of grass, chewing it slowly as she listened. She spit it out, plucked another one, and chewed it the whole way through, then spit it out, too. Finally, she said, “Well, Hester, you in a red dress were probably a sight to see. I’m surprised William allowed it.”

  “It was his mother’s.”

  Up went Bappie’s eyebrows. “Hm. Ain’t that something? Well, just goes to show, you never know how men’s minds work. I sure never had that problem. No one ever tried to, you know.” Her face turned as red as her largest red beet.

  “I guess I was too dumb to see.”

  “Stop blaming yourself. That’s why I’m unmarried. You can’t judge a book by its cover. You never know if a man is sincere—a good, kind, Christian fellow—or a genuine traitor.”

  Hester nodded.

  They both fell silent. Another rumble of thunder worried itself on the horizon. The red glow of the evening sun disappeared, leaving them in an eerie, grayish-yellow light.

  Bappie sat straight up like a jack-in-a-box. Her eyes turned dark and wide with fear.

  “Rain’s coming,” Hester said.

  Walter Trout’s perspiring face popped up over the fence.

  “Emma says we have a few corn cakes left. And some molasses and applesauce. If you’re hungry, she has a muskmelon cut open for you.”

  By the time the storm hit, Hester and Bappie sat cozily by candlelight, eating Emma’s good food, washing it down with many glasses of cold, sugared, spearmint tea.

  The lightning flashed blue, followed by great rolls of heavy thunder that shook the wooden frame of the house. The wind screamed around the corners, howled under the eaves, and lashed the windowpanes with sheets of water. A high sound of pinging ice soon followed. Bappie held her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut tightly. “Oh, my garden, my poor garden,” she said swaying back and forth as if mourning the demise of all her vegetables.

  “Gott is unhappy with us,” wailed Emma.

  She believed a storm was God’s fury on humankind and all its sins, to bring everyone to repentance.

  Hester sat, tired and relaxed, rocking quietly on the armless rocking chair. Her dark eyes watched the rain and ice punish the glass windowpanes. She heard the howling of the wind. Unafraid, she knew all humankind was subject to storms, to the ways of the sky, the sun, the moon, the earth. It was all a part of the universe, so much greater and so much more than one mind could begin to grasp.

  Like the eagle’s flight, the storm spoke to her soul. All the earth and the things of the earth could not be separated. Like the weather, everything was controlled by the almighty creator. He chose to send storms and heat, cold and wind and drought. If the garden was ruined, they had enough to get by.

  The harder the hail bounced off the windows, the more agitated Bappie became, mournfully shaking her head and muttering about the green tomatoes and cucumbers, the green beans and squash. “It’ll be gone. All of it ruined. What will we do?” she wailed, rocking back and forth, misery turning slowly to hysteria.

  “It’ll be all right. Hail is never widespread.” These words came from Hester on the rocking chair, her dark eyes untroubled pools of calm.

  “How can you say that? You have no idea!” shrieked Bappie, her eyes large and dark with the fear of losing her vegetables and of the wooden box becoming empty of coins before the coming winter was over.

  A deafening clap of thunder followed sizzling white light as jagged streaks of lightning erupted from boiling black clouds above the town of Lancaster. Winds increased as the storm moved directly above them. Hail rattled the wooden shingles, attacked windowpanes, jumped on the streets, and nestled in backyard grasses.

  Then the rain increased its fury. The wind’s force soaked every hand-hewn shingle and brought the rain to seep beneath them, then drip steadily onto attic floors. Meticulous housewives squawked, grabbed wooden buckets, and raced pell-mell up their steep attic stairs to find the dripping leaks, placing the buckets at the proper places.

  Rain seeped down mud and stick chimneys and ran down whitewashed walls. Horses whinnied in alarm, kicking and pounding against the sides of their stalls, their eyes rolling in fright as the sizzling lightning became more constant.

  A sound reached Hester’s ears. She held completely still. A shingle? A loose shutter? Again, the repetitious knocking. She sat up straight.

  “Someone is at the door.”

  “Ach, nay, nay!”

  Emma, quite distraught, looked to Hester for assistance. Bappie, forgetting her ruined vegetable garden, sprang into action, tearing open the latch. From the narrow hallway came a shriek of surprise and then an exclamation of sorrow, a sort of mewling edged by the beginning of a sob.

  “Hester!”

  The command was so forceful she sprang into action, peering around Bappie’s narrow shoulders. There in the blinding white flashes of lightning stood a very small boy, holding a bundle almost as big as himself. Drenched, and his sodden bundle dripping water, he turned calm eyes to the incredulous women but said nothing at all.

  Behind her, Hester felt the floorboards raise and lower as Walter and Emma lumbered toward them.

  Bappie turned, unsure.

  Hester reached out and drew the boy in, as water ran off him in rivulets, pooling at his small feet. She took the bundle amid shrieks from Bappie, the usual half prayer, half exclamation coming from Emma. Quickly she unwrapped the sodden blanket, not surprised to find an infant. A baby.

  Bappie was squealing about the offensive odor and the rain in puddles on Emma’s clean floor and rug.

  Walter cleared his throat as he shuffled back to the kitchen for rags, shaking his great pink head with the crown of grayish hair circling his ears. He never could expect a normal day since marrying his Emma, not even during a summer thunderstorm. But that was all right. Anything was better than the life of crippling solitude he had led before he met the boisterous Emma. And she was so loving.

  They carried the children into the heat of the kitchen and dried them with the towels. Their smell was like a mixture of manure, sour grapes, and spoiled cream, the stench thick and cloying.

  Bappie’s anger forced a few surprising words from her mouth. She moved fast, getting down the agate washtub, then starting a fire in the washhouse. Above the howling wind and stinging rain, her voice could be heard commanding and giving instructions. The end result was two shivering children, both like lost kittens, their skin scrubbed, their heads scoured with kerosene, then soaped, rinsed, and soaped again.

  Wrapped in rough towels, the boys were terrified of the smell, the powerful soap, the water, Bappie’s less than gentle hands. The women threw the stained and torn clothing in the backyard. Bappie said she was taking no chances with the likelihood that those clothes had to be crawling with lice.

  When darkness closed in around the wooden house on Mulberry Street, the storm had moved on. Eaves still dripped. Branches and leaves, torn from sturdy trees by the powerful gusts, were strewn across the streets. Small rivers roiled by, then pooled in low places, filling large holes that set drivers’ teeth on edge as the steel-rimmed wheels of their carriages hit them.

  The quietness that eventually came was a blessing. Bappie rinsed the tubs and set the washhouse in order. Hester wrapped a towel around the baby, who seemed to be about a year old, weighing a bit more than she had thought. The older child was perhaps four. Emma reached for him, rocked and crooned, sang and stroked the small back. Tears came, puddled, then ran down her shining cheeks.

  “Oh, meine liebe Kinner. Meine liebe,” she repeated over and over. “Wh
at the deifel does!”

  She never blamed any person in circumstances such as these. It was always the devil’s fault. He stalked around the town, seeking who he could devour, that cunning deifel, Emma would say. Why, just look at the women who were slovenly, the men who chose to waste their wages on liquor and became drunkards, leaving their children to starve and eventually be turned into the streets when irate house owners put them there.

  When the devil had his way, there was no money for rent, food, or clothing. The women, in despair, turned to the orphanage and left their children there, half-mad with fear and anger and hopelessness.

  None of them could get the four-year-old to speak. His tears had dried up, but his light-colored eyes remained fixed, stone cold. Those once glittering eyes went to a place none of them could follow. His face was triangular, with a wide forehead, sunken cheeks, and a pitiful, pointed chin. His mouth, too wide, held decaying teeth that looked like wormy corn kernels.

  Hester spoke to him gently in English. She spoke in German, then tried the more common Pennsylvania Dutch.

  The smaller one continued to wail, sobbing and sniffing. Walter heated a pan of milk, added molasses, and stirred. He put a small portion in a cup, spread butter on brown, crumbly bread and brought it all to Emma, setting it quietly on the oak washstand beside her rocking chair like a well-trained servant.

  When Emma patted Walter’s arm, her eyes going to his face, her “Denke schöen” was so filled with love that Hester resolved to someday, if she lived to a ripe old age, feel a love such as they had.

  Emma offered the milk to the young boy, who grabbed the cup from her hand, sucking and slurping greedily, straining at the sweet milk. It dribbled down the sides of his face and splashed on the towel as he lifted his face to drain every drop. His eyes begged for more, even as his chest caved in, his shoulders tensed, and he leaned forward to purge every ounce of the nutritious liquid.

  There was a sudden flood on the clean floor. Walter and Bappie turned as one. They found a rag and mopped everything clean.

  Hester spoke. “That’s what happened to me when I was starved on my journey from Berks County. The child is starving like I was. Allow him only a teaspoon at a time. Give him the bread in small bites.”

  Bappie looked at Hester with a rueful shake of her copper-colored head, the hard, gleaming pebbles that were her eyes disappearing behind lowered lids.

  Emma gave the boy small pinches of bread and butter. She waited until he leaned forward, his mouth open wide, before she allowed him more. His translucent eyes were glittering with desperation, the urge to fill his stomach, to rid himself of the torment that was hunger. Small sips of warm milk, more bread. A bowl of porridge. More porridge.

  Bappie did not know anything so terrible existed. She was born and raised among the Amish, who lived frugally, and whose food was plain and simple but sufficient. Real hunger had never entered her life. She was incredulous, asking question after question. She pondered the answers. She said that even the Indians, who were supposedly ungodly, provided for their own little ones. This was a shame.

  “It’s the liquor. The homemade stills, the rye whiskey, the fermented apples, and hops and all the other stuff—they use it to make the devil’s brew,” Emma said, emphatically.

  Both boys’ heads dropped, their eyes lowered, and sleep overtook them. The room became still. Occasionally there was a drip of rain, a sighing of the wind, as if the earth was relieved the storm had moved on. Candles flickered. Deep breathing sounds assured them of the boys’ slumber.

  Emma said quietly, “We’ll let them sleep in our bedroom by our bed. Just in case they wake up.”

  Reverently, as if Christ were in the room, Walter clasped his hands over his rounded stomach and shook his head up and down.

  The two women left the hush of Walter Trout’s home, returning to the dark, damp interior of their own. They poured cool glasses of tea, and Bappie plied Hester with dozens of questions. Why had she left her family in Berks County? How could she travel all that way? Why wasn’t she dead?

  Far into the night, Hester recounted her story. She left some of the truth out. She told Bappie it was Annie’s dislike of her that finally severed the familial cord.

  “Like a birth.” Bappie nodded.

  “In a sense it was like that. I was free. And yet countless times I have longed to return to the stone farmhouse. To Noah and Isaac and Lissie and Daniel, Solomon, and the baby. I still miss the children.”

  “Were Noah and Isaac good to you?”

  Hester gazed past the candlelight, her eyes drawn to the black corners of the room, as if secrets were hidden best in the dark recesses. Her eyelids grew heavy with sadness as her mouth became soft with remembering. Her voice was husky with fettered pain, a torture that constricted her will to speak.

  “Before Annie, they were. They were my brothers. She destroyed the loyalty, the ties that bound us.”

  “Then they didn’t love you for real if they allowed that woman to come between you.”

  Hester nodded, her eyes somber. “I guess not.”

  Bappie nodded back, drained her tea, set the glass on the table, and got up a bit stiffly, putting a hand to her back. “It’s been a long day. I’m off to bed. Ah, life is crazy, Hester. Don’t look back, or your plow will go way off course, the way the Bible says. Not that I’m much of a Bible reader, but that one thing is true.” She yawned, stretching like a long, skinny, black cat.

  Hester watched and said, “I’m glad you live with me, Bappie.”

  “Hope you’ll say the same thing a year from now,” Bappie said, grinning.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE GARDEN STRETCHED BEFORE THEM, GREEN and flourishing and unharmed. The late-morning sun slanted through the washed tomato plants. The red fruit was mud-splattered, their stalks tossed and showing the lighter dusty shade of green underneath. The corn all lay at an angle, its short roots partly exposed but the ears of corn intact.

  They stood, two women shading their eyes with their hands, palms down. One, dressed in dark navy blue, was taller, sharper. The other, dressed in green, was tall and willowy, but possessing the figure of a woman. Their skirts rippled. Cap strings lifted, moved, and fell across their shoulders, the clean, fresh breeze of summer playing with them.

  Hester turned to Bappie, her eyes conveying her pleasure. “What did I say?”

  Reluctantly, Bappie answered, “Hail is never widespread.”

  They laughed.

  Together, they weeded that day, the cool mud squeezing up between their toes, the hems of their aprons becoming brown with it. The sun shone hot but pleasant. Doves hurried across the blue sky, propelled by their triangular wings. Crows wheeled and flapped, their raucous cries grating and unpleasant, on their way to rob other birds’ nests if they could.

  Sometimes, Hester broke into song, with Bappie joining in. Mostly though, they remained quiet, pulling weeds, tossing them aside. They spread a blanket in the shade of a spruce tree and opened the lunch basket between them. Bappie cut a ripe tomato into slices, then laid them warm and sun-kissed on squares of new brown bread, spread with plenty of yellow butter, and sprinkled the slices with salt.

  They drank cool tea and glasses of buttermilk. Side by side, they reclined on the blanket, resting their backs. Above them, suddenly, a deep laugh, a joyous welcome.

  “Well, surprise, surprise!” A lilting slick tone, lifting and falling in all the wrong places.

  Without thinking or caring, Hester sat bolt upright, her privacy invaded, her happiness destroyed. Black, hostile lights filled her eyes, and her voice sounded like an assault. “Does Naomi know you are here?”

  Johnny recoiled, looking quickly at Bappie for support.

  She shrugged her shoulders and kept quiet.

  “Go home to your family and leave us alone. You have no business out here with us.” Hester did not flinch when Johnny’s eyes became bright with anger. She met the light head on, unwavering.

  For one wild moment,
she thought he was going to hit, to lash out with his fist, helplessly flailing the air between them. Instead he tried to frighten her with his anger, held in check by the regulations of his religion. Still she did not back down. He turned on his heel, sharply throwing his shoulders back, and stalked off with exaggerated steps like an irate schoolboy sent to stand in the corner. Hester would not have been surprised to see a rock come hurtling in their direction.

  “Hoo-boy.” Bappie shook her head.

  “He doesn’t need to follow us around. He has wrong intentions.”

  “But still, Hester. He may be trying to make amends.”

  “He’s not.”

  “How can you tell?”

  Hester shrugged her shoulders and went back to work without another word, pulling weeds like someone possessed, without one backward glance in Bappie’s direction.

  The child would not speak. Walter and Emma had tried every available resource to get him to at least tell them his name, some sense of where he had come from, who a relative or parent was. But the boy sat, his eyes giving away nothing, only the greenish-yellow light ringed by brown flecks, impossible to decipher.

  Both children ate every morsel of food given to them. They were clad in a set of Emma’s “necessaries,” meaning a small shirt and pants for the four-year-old and a girl’s dress for the baby, all made from flour or feedsacks. Emma always kept a wooden trunk well stocked, just in case a hungry or homeless person had need of clothing. The baby crawled, but slowly, pulled himself up by his thin little arms and stood, his thumb in his mouth, his eyes wide and frightened.

  Emma showed Hester the stripes on the older child’s back and across his legs where a switch had bitten through the flesh. It had healed, then been cut open, time after time. He had angry flea bites and rashes on his elbows and his knees. In the candlelight, they had failed to notice.

  Emma sighed. One little victim saved for now.

  They gave up trying to find their home after Walter walked to the constable’s office, where he was waved away. Repeatedly he talked to the clerk at the desk, who fixed an impatient stare of resentment on his perspiring face. Finally he lifted his hat and wished her a good day, losing no time in getting out of that office.