The Homestead

by Linda Byler

  Two of her sisters, Fannie and Sadie. Tears flowed like water. Her brothers, brave and stalwart, their eyes blinking furiously to stop the tears. Her Aunt Eva and Uncle Henner. Ah, but they had aged. Brave to come all the way on the train.

  Her father spoke first. “Ach, Sarah. So this is where you are. Isn’t it something?”

  Sarah managed a smile through her tears. “Yes, it is, Dat. It’s very different.”

  “Here you are, and der Herr has seen fit to take Mose. Tell us about it. Tell us what happened, Sarah.”

  But it was Hannah who spoke, with help from Manny. The sisters, like magpies, like fussing house wrens, their hands over their hearts, gasping and exclaiming, broke in with voices filled with disbelief.

  How could this be? How? What kind of animal did they raise out here on the prairie? To kill a man.

  “Oh, but it’s happened before,” Sarah’s brother Dan broke in, nodding. “Remember Kaiser Elam’s Jacob?”

  “Ah, yes. Yes. Forgot about him. That was a bull, though, wasn’t it?” Fannie asked.

  “No, a big cow. Just had a calf. They can be dangerous.”

  The hot sun chased them inside, seeking shade. The sisters were shocked at the living conditions, the aunt pitying, but they all tried to hide their feelings from Sarah, who seemed proud to show them the rough walls and dingy floors.

  “We built the house together, Mose, Hannah, and Manny. We had help from the neighbors. Hod and Abby Jenkins and their boys,” she explained.

  Her father nodded, pleased to know they were not alone.

  They talked for hours and ate the food leftover from the funeral. They renewed the old bonds, precious as fine gems. They exchanged news, mulled it over, exchanged it again, and the fine soup of happenings nourished Sarah’s starved heart and gave her a spot of color in her thin, white face. She smiled and laughed and her eyes regained their sparkle.

  Hannah watched her mother’s transformation and fear struck her heart. She’d go back. She’d ride that train back home, Hannah knew it. Her breath quickened, her eyes dilated to a bitter black. Resolve welled up like dark oil and filled her mind. Every atom of her being resisted the idea of going back to Lancaster County, to plod the well-trod road of her forefathers, the jobs, teaching, working in the fields and gardens, being a maud, the girl who lived with other Amish families in time of need, when there was a new baby or housecleaning in spring or church services. Keeping up with everyone’s expectations of a well–brought-up, obedient young Amish woman, following the same road as her mother.

  She felt real nausea well up. She could not leave this land. These 320 acres were theirs. All they needed to do was stay here another nine years and the homestead would be all their own. Her and Mam and Manny and the little ones.

  When Clay rode over that evening, her heart beat rapidly. Without a backward glance she raced out the back door and down to the barn, her eyes wide, her lips parted in greeting, motioning him to step behind the barn so no one would see. He led his horse in the direction she indicated, searching her agitated face.

  “They’re here. All of Mam’s family. Well, not all of them, but a bunch. They can’t see us. Mam will want to go back.”

  Clay looked at her, then whistled softly and shook his head. “You think she will?”

  “Oh, Clay! You should see her. She’s a different person. She’s alive. She talks and smiles and even laughs. She’s eating again. I know why. There’s hope for her, thinking of returning.”

  “You’ll have to go?”

  “Of course. How could I stay?”

  “Do you want to go?”

  She shook her head from side to side, her brows lowered over her dark eyes, spots of color infusing her tanned cheeks.

  “Why don’t you want to go, Hannah?”

  Suddenly confused, she looked away from him to the right, where the cottonwood treetops swayed in the wind. “I don’t know. I just don’t want to. I don’t want to go back and be exactly what everyone else is. A maud, a teacher, then a wife, with a whole pile of babies, turning old and fat and, well, like Mam.”

  Clay’s eyes lit up with merriment, then he laughed, a slow, easy sound that Hannah loved to hear. “You’re something, Hannah.”

  She looked at him, and she should not have. His eyes were filled with so much longing, she knew it mirrored her own feelings, and this was not anything she could have prepared herself for. Swept away by the light in his eyes, she was captive, a willing prisoner, propelled forward into his waiting arms. He held her there against his wide chest, her cheek resting against the flap buttoned over his shirt pocket. She wanted to be held closer, to stay there forever while the rest of the world went away.

  “Clay …”

  “Shh. Don’t talk, Hannah.”

  He bent his head and lifted her chin until her eyes found his, blazing with a new and fiery light. His kiss was soft and tender, his lips asking questions, claiming her love, then wondering if it was possible.

  Hannah had never felt a man’s lips on her own. Shocked, her first instinct was to step away, smack his face, and ask him how he dared. But the need to be close to him, closer still, was so overpowering that her own arms crept about his waist and drew him to her, the world turning liquid with stars and butterflies, and the sweet breezes and light.

  “Hannah!” The voice tore through her spinning senses as she wrenched her arms away from Clay. She stepped back, a hand going to her mouth, her eyes wide with horror to find her Uncle Dan standing at the edge of the barn, his wide-brimmed hat squarely on his head, his brown eyes spitting indignation and outrage.

  “Voss geht au?”

  Hannah opened her mouth, but no sound came out of it. Clay regained his senses, cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. We just …”

  “You just what? Hannah, come with me. I believe your mother will want to know this.” Glaring, he looked at Hannah until she started to walk away from Clay. He reached out a hand, as if to keep her, then dropped it helplessly and stood rooted by his own sense of having overstepped his bounds.

  Slowly, he gathered up the reins, swung into the saddle, and without a backward glance he rode away.

  Hannah walked behind her uncle, her head bent, her eyes blazing into the grass at her feet, unprepared to meet the shame that would be showered on her. The discipline that would follow was unthinkable.

  Why had she kissed Clay? What had compelled her? She knew any feelings for Clay Jenkins were an impossibility.

  The time of sitting in the house with the posse of relatives was worse than if Uncle Dan would have blurted out the awful scene he had encountered behind the barn. She made small talk, her agitation making her face flush, then drain to a chalk white, her eyes black with shame and remorse.

  Dan waited to tell Sarah until they had a moment alone, so Hannah lived through hours of fear and unknowing, before Sarah approached her on the porch, in the still of the night.

  Hannah felt the soft presence of her mother before she could see her. The heat had evaporated into nightfall, the grass quieted, the moon rising in its perfect symmetry in the east, the vast night sky sprinkled with the stars that were still uncountable, as they had been for Abraham of the Bible.

  “Hannah.” When there was no answer, Sarah wasn’t surprised, so she pressed on. “Dan told me about you and Clay.”

  “So?”

  “Hannah, you must try to understand. It isn’t allowed. He is not of our faith. He is a boy—a man—of the world. We are a Plain sect, set apart, living in a culture he would not understand. It can’t be love. You are too young to know your own heart. Our bodies sometimes betray us. Loneliness, fear of the future, a need for safety, these can all be mistaken for love. A young girl can be swept away by infatuation, a need that is nothing close to what God wants us to have, the real, spiritual kind of love that is lasting and by far the most important love, blessed by Him.”

  “I didn’t say I loved him.”

  “Then why were you in his arms, Hannah? He was kissing y
ou.”

  Hannah choked, hearing her mother say that word, almost like an obscenity. Her face flamed in the dark and she turned it away.

  “Listen, meine dochter. Clay is very handsome. No doubt he has had plenty of experience with girls and knows every wile to captivate a young girl’s heart. You were ripe to be falling for him with Mose, your father’s, death. Please don’t tell me it is nothing. The kiss meant something.”

  “You’re going back, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “But you are going back.” It was a statement, each word a stone thrown in Sarah’s direction, stones she could not dodge.

  “Yes, I am planning on returning.”

  “I knew it!” Hannah shouted.

  “Shh! You’ll wake everyone.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t care if they all wake up and come down the stairs to point fingers at me. You can go, Mam. Just go, you and nice, obedient Manny and the little ones. I’ll stay right here. This is our home, this is where we belong. We built this house, and we will own all these 320 acres of land. Dat is in his grave, here. Here, Mam. Not in Lancaster County.” She rose from her seat on the steps by the power of her passion.

  “Hannah, listen to reason. We can’t live here without Mose.”

  “And why can’t we? He did nothing but fast and pray and dream and read his Bible. He didn’t know a thing about making it on the prairie. He didn’t know his foot from his elbow when it came right down to it. Look at the way he penned up those pitiful calves. He was so stubborn, so dumb.”

  Hannah drew back, but not fast enough to save herself from her mother’s solid, open-palmed smack that hit her cheek, twisting her head sideways with its force, promptly followed by another, then a claw like grip on her shoulder, shaking her firmly until her head spun.

  “Stop it! Stop saying those words, Hannah Detweiler. You are blaspheming against God and your poor, dead father,” Sarah panted, her throat hoarse with pain and emotion.

  Hannah didn’t cry. She stood with blazing eyes that appeared like black, glistening pools in the moonlight, her fists clenched, her feet planted firmly.

  “I don’t care what you say. He was not the reason we got this far. It was all the help from the Jenkinses, and you know it. We’d all be dead, starved, lying like skeletons, our bones picked by buzzards, if it hadn’t been for you and me. You were the one who sent me to the Jenkinses for food. I was the one who rode into town for food. He was off on a tangent, wishing God would help us. Wishing!”

  Hannah was crying now, her face contorted, hot tears of shame and hurt and rebellion splashing down her cheeks.

  “It was his faith, Hannah, his faith. He believed until the end, and will be rewarded in heaven.”

  “That may be so. But we did the work. We used our God-given talents and found food. Barely enough to keep us, but we did it.”

  Sarah sighed and sat back down on the porch steps, lowering her face into her hands. “How could our lives come to this? It all started with Dat’s dreaming back in Lancaster County and losing the farm.”

  “It was the Depression. We’re not the only ones who were unfortunate.” There was nothing to say to this. It was uncontested truth.

  Hannah said, “We’re here, now. I’m not going back.”

  “Because of Clay Jenkins?”

  “No.”

  “The homestead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re going back. You will have to obey. Please Hannah. It’s your duty.”

  “You can’t make me go with you,” Hannah stated flatly.

  “You can’t stay here.”

  “Could Manny stay?

  Sarah sighed. “He says he’ll go back.”

  For a long moment they sat in silence, absorbing the night. Was anything ever as wondrous as the prairie at night? The moon was twice as brilliant, unfettered, shining with a blue-gold brilliance that washed the grass in tinted white shadows. The soft rustling was like a plucking of nature’s guitar, a moving music of sighs and longings, the call of one melancholy heart to another. The boundless territory of nothingness, when a lone person could disappear into a small black dot, insignificant, unnoticed by the human eye, but much closer to God than ever before. He reigned absolute here on the plains, with nothing to come between a mortal and her Maker.

  Together, mother and daughter breathed in the solitude and let it wash out the hopelessness, the anger and passion that goaded it, until their spirits became restful. Yet they did not speak, both realizing they had reached an impasse.

  Hannah would refuse. Sarah would not allow it. There was no sleep for either one as they lay on the hard wooden floor by the kitchen stove until the old clock banged out the hour of morning.

  Stiff, tired, and obstinate, Hannah dragged a comb through her hair, dressed, and left the house long before the relatives were awake.

  There was no dew, not even a trace of moisture after months of no rain, so Sarah set out in her bare feet to check on the calves. They never strayed far, and she wanted to make sure the brands were not bleeding or infected.

  She walked briskly, as fast as her skirts would allow, her eyes searching the dry grass for the telltale black calf backs rising above it. After she found them, she called, “Sook, sook, sook,” gently, the way she used to call the calves in Lancaster. They allowed her to walk up to them and she rubbed the tops of their heads, ran a hand down their backs, parting the thick, black hair, till she came to the Bar S brand.

  The Bar S—her own project, her own idea. The S standing for the heritage that was her mother’s name. And here she was, faced with the awful prospect of following her remaining family away from this, away from everything she loved, all her hopes and dreams.

  Her goal was to own a herd of cattle. A good bloodline, like the Jenkinses and the Klassermans. Decent buildings, a better well, horses in the stable, not horses like Pete and that leftover pile of bones the Jenkinses had sent over.

  She’d work at the Rochers to support the family. Manny would have to get a job. After she became good at running the store, she’d demand wages. She’d put every nickel, dollar, penny, and dime in a jar until she could build up the herd. With the sale of the first calves, she’d dig a better well, and think about a windmill.

  She could probably do better than the Jenkinses. They were all an easy going lot, in many ways. Especially Hank and Ken. Probably the reason she liked Clay best was that he came around most often and seemed to be the one with the most ambition.

  Take all that junk lying around, which didn’t seem to bother them a bit. Hannah figured her ranch would not look like that at all. Everything would be in its place. She’d plant trees and water them with water from the new well, the windmill pumping it up out of the ground.

  At breakfast, she didn’t talk and avoided the cold stares by remaining invisible. She ate coffee soup and fried mush, thinking what a treat coffee soup had turned out to be. Buttered bread sprinkled liberally with brown sugar, placed in a bowl with a cup of hot coffee poured over it. Aunt Eva had brought a can of tinned milk, which only made the coffee soup better.

  She wasn’t going to let anyone see her taking pleasure in her meal. She simply sat at the corner of the table and ate deliberately, spoonful after spoonful. Sarah seemed pale and edgy, but if anyone noticed, they said nothing. Hannah looked up once to find Uncle Dan’s accusing eyes probing her face and felt her face flame before lowering her eyes.

  Old goat.

  It was her grandfather who opened the subject of returning, like lifting the lid off a beehive, the bees filling the room with their terrifying buzz. “So, we need how many tickets to return?”

  An icy silence crept across the room. Fannie said he didn’t have to know ahead of time, they could purchase the tickets at the station. Sadie said certainly not.

  Uncle Dan said Fannie was right, everybody calm down.

  “But everyone is agreed to go?”

  “Yes, I believe so,” Sarah said quietly
, without looking at Hannah.

  “We need to get the train in Dorchester, right?”

  “How will we get there?” And so on.

  First of all, the horses had to be taken to the Klassermans, who were closer than the Jenkinses. The cow and calves could be turned loose, they’d find their way to the water, and had plenty of grass. There was nothing to do about the stove and the beds and the table, although no one said what they were truly thinking, that they weren’t worth a red cent anyhow.

  Sarah worried about Abby Jenkins’s dishes, her tablecloth and fabric, all things she had given them.

  All around Hannah, plans swirled, buzzing in her ears, tormenting her head like a fever. They, none of them, were considering her refusal. They forged straight ahead, pushing her along like that blade on the Jenkins’s tractor, pushing a load of snow ahead of it.

  It was now or never. Loudly, actually louder than she intended, Hannah blurted out, “You don’t have to worry about anything. I’ll be here to fa-sark everything. I don’t intend on leaving the homestead. This land will be ours after nine years, and I don’t plan on giving it up.”

  All eyes turned to her. Mouths hung open in disbelief.

  “Ach, Hannah, stop chasing rainbows, you silly girl,” her grandfather said.

  “I’m serious. I have no plans of returning.”

  “But you must. You can’t stay here. Surely you know that.”

  Hannah shook her head. “I can stay, if Manny will stay with me.”

  Sarah opened her mouth, then closed it. She met her daughter’s eyes, shivered at the light of determination, helpless before it. She began to cry, lowering her eyes, then her head, reaching into her apron for a handkerchief.

  This angered Sarah’s father and Uncle Dan. “Hannah, you are an ungehorsam daughter. Nothing good will come of this.”

  Hannah met their eyes, unflinching, unmoved.

  “God is not mocked. What you sow, that shall you reap. You have already taken up with an ausricha, that despicable man you were with.” This from Uncle Dan.

  Audible gasps went around the room. Sarah slid down into her chair, flinched until her features looked folded.