The Homestead

by Linda Byler

  Sarah steeped comfrey leaves in boiling water, added honey, and brought the cup to Hannah’s papery lips, which was all she could do. Hannah refused to swallow the vile stuff.

  Rachel said mustard and Echinacea poultices would be good. Emma suggested burdock root tea, which Sarah knew would not get past those clamped lips. They applied burdock leaves on her chest, hot and steaming, but odorless, which Hannah accepted. She fell asleep after that, resting deeply.

  Back in the kitchen, Sarah shook her head at her worried sisters, taking their concern as a token of the love she had remembered, the love she held to her heart when she journeyed west with Mose.

  “She’ll likely get better,” Emma commented.

  “I would think so. Who is going to pay the doctor? He’s been here how many times? Likely it will fall on Dat’s shoulders.” This from Rachel, shaking her head with long sighs of resignation.

  Sarah assured Rachel she would do everything in her power to repay her father, who had already done more than enough. When Hannah recovered, she’d get a job, they’d see to it. Manny was already a big help to Elam and Ben. Hannah had been on her way to apply for a job at Rohrer’s Mill when she had gotten caught in the rain.

  “Rohrer’s Mill?” Emma shrieked.

  “What in the world, Sarah?” Rachel gasped. “A girl like Hannah working at a feed mill with all those men. That wouldn’t be fitting. I would not let my daughter within a mile of that place. But then, you can’t control Hannah the way I can handle Susie and Fannie.”

  Sarah nodded agreeably. This was true. She couldn’t. But Hannah was not the type to like men. She was wooed reluctantly by Clay Jenkins. Wouldn’t these sisters have a fit if they knew?

  Suddenly, the need to stand up for herself was so strong it was like bile in her throat. Sarah coughed and cleared the passageway for the words that had lain dormant too long.

  “Hannah could handle the job at the feed mill. She doesn’t like men as a rule. She could hardly serve the table of silo fillers. I would trust her completely. She is a determined girl, but if it can be directed in the right way, she will be a talented young woman someday.”

  Her sisters stared at her, openmouthed. “Now you’re taking up for her. I’m surprised at you, Sarah.”

  “Since I’ve said that, I’ll say more. I will not stay here with Dat. Everyone in the family resents our living off his charity, which is understandable on your part. My decision is made. I will ask Dat for a loan to return, start our herd, and with God’s help, we will prosper on the claim of 320 acres. Mose lies under the North Dakota soil, and I know now, that is where I want to be. He loved me in a way none of you could ever know.

  “Your love is buried beneath your greed and avarice. All you know is to get ahead, pay off your farm, and snatch up another. You may believe my Mose was a failure, but he was the most successful man I have ever known, if you count the wealth of his love. Oh, he saw it. He saw and understood the downfall of many of his Plain brethren. It rode on his shoulders like a heavy burden. Yes, he was a failure where finances and management were concerned. But he laid up treasures in heaven far above anything any of us has ever experienced.”

  She paused for breath.

  “You can’t ask Dat for a loan!” Rachel exclaimed.

  “You’ll never pay it back!” Emma echoed.

  So there it was. The only part of Sarah’s speech they had heard was about the loan, which to them meant that Sarah was taking a portion of their inheritance, resulting in less money for themselves.

  “I will. I will pay back every penny, with God’s help. Hannah has the will, Manny has the strength and obedience, and I will be the rock of support they will need to survive. No, not just to survive, but to flourish.”

  Sarah’s face was pale, her hands shook as she made the coffee, but there was a new firmness, a foundation beneath her words that the sisters had never known.

  Quickly, sensibly, they tried to change their erring sister’s course. Sarah remained steadfast.

  They went to their father, husbands in tow, and begged him to refuse Sarah’s request for a loan, citing many reasons why it was only common sense to withhold the loan. Circling around their aging father like a pack of wolves, they lunged at every angle, trying to secure the amount she had asked for.

  Samuel Stoltzfus was well off, and he knew it, even with the depreciation on the farm he owned. The financial markets during the Great Depression were like a smothering blanket on any gain he might have expected in the future. God had a hand in this, he knew. Monetary value had replaced the fruits of the Spirit for too many brethren, himself included.

  He listened to the undertone of greed in his daughters’ arguments, shored up by the desperate pleas of obedient husbands to refuse Sarah. But he remained like a rock, firm and unmovable. In his mind, he doubled the amount she had asked for, then tripled it, adding a windmill, a new well, and a decent house.

  He’d ask Ben Miller’s crew to install a windmill. He would. He sat at the kitchen table, his gray hair and beard surrounding his lined, aging face, weathered by hard work and a good temperament, his head and shoulders bowed by the wisdom of his years; like a head of wheat so filled with kernels, it bent him.

  Once he had fully absorbed the insatiable grasping of his daughters and their collaborating spouses, there was no turning back. It was not rebellion, merely recognition of giving where giving was due. Sarah was the meek and quiet daughter, with the true love required of a married woman running in her veins. He did not doubt for a moment that she carried the same love within her heart as Ruth had for her mother-in-law and later for Boaz, as told in that beloved Old Testament story that was expounded at every Amish wedding.

  “Wither thou goest, I will go. Thy God shall be my God.” Hadn’t Sarah proved her love, followed Mose to the ends of the earth, and believed that his God was her God?

  Ah, yes, she had. Now, she was choosing to honor their love, with Mose lying beneath the plains, driven by the memory of the love that meant more to her than her own home, her own relatives, everything she had known. Sickened by the betrayal of her sisters’ ravenous selfishness, she was returning to the land that had brought her to her knees, separated the worldly from the spiritual, what was true from what was a lie.

  Samuel spoke with Elam and Ben and laid out his plans. At first, the sons responded with disbelief. But after hearing their father out, they slowly came to see his point. Their respect for him ran deep, so in the light of obedience, they “gave themselves up,” in the often-used words of the Amish.

  Hannah regained her strength, her lungs healed, and she was soon back to her forceful self. Manny told his mother that anyone as angry as Hannah probably got better by force of the strong will they lived with. But he smiled when he said it.

  Sarah and the children had a long talk with her father. Hannah was wide-eyed and disbelieving. Manny grinned and all but bounced up and down.

  He told them of his plans for a windmill, the crew who would install it, the cattle he would buy for them, and his plans to accompany them on the train to help give them a start. He wanted to meet the Englische leid around them and get a feel of the surrounding culture.

  He spoke of his concern that Sarah and the children would stay true to their Amish culture and faith. He explained the need for Ordnung, the reason for modest dress, forgiveness, “de lieve,” the love necessary for a successful fottgung. If they left Lancaster County in anger or self-righteousness, they would lose the blessing they needed to be successful.

  Herr saya, God’s blessing, is the ultimate goal, he said. If that is on your agenda, you will not fail.

  Hannah listened, wide-eyed and silent. Her grandfather’s words were priceless, but in her opinion came awfully close to her father’s dreaming. Surely her grandfather didn’t think along the same lines as Dat had. She knew full well it took hard work, foresight, and more hard work to get the homestead up and running. If he started in about the drought being a sign of unsaya, the unblessing so o
ften spoken of—well, she didn’t believe it. If it didn’t rain, then it just didn’t rain, and that was that. It made you tough and put every resource to use. You adapted, got a job in town to feed yourself, and you kept right on going, even if you only ate cornmeal and bread and prairie hens.

  But she was grateful. She was more than grateful. Overjoyed, filled with a new and burning passion to excel. A windmill! A water tank like the Jenkinses had. Their grandfather to accompany them. It was much more than she could have ever hoped for.

  Elam and Ben wanted to go. The harvest imminent, they knew they had to stay. It was hard, but they’d hear their father’s account of things changing at the homestead.

  Sarah was quiet, with a new resolve surrounding her like a set of fine, new clothes worn with a lift of her bowed shoulders.

  CHAPTER 20

  Word got around.

  Samuel Stoltzfus was as bad as his son-in-law, that Mose Detweiler and his crazy venture, dead and gone now. Incredulous of his support of his widowed daughter, they tried to dissuade him, to make him see the light.

  It took a month of planning, acquiring prices and agreements, and coordinating the schedules of freight trains for shipping the costly parts for the steel windmill. It was made in sections in Lancaster County by a reliable company to be shipped by train.

  Most of the windmills in the West were made of wood, the lack of humidity preserving them for years of service. Windmills made of steel, used widely in the eastern United States, were better, and dozens of manufacturing companies produced them.

  Ben Miller was a tall and swarthy man, red-faced and yellow-toothed from his love of a hefty wad of chewing tobacco lodged in his right cheek like a growth. Ambitious, his business of producing and installing windmills was known for many miles around. So when Samuel Stoltzfus came to see him about building one in North Dakota, his small green eyes squinted with delight. He immediately went to the door of his welding shop to spit out the long-chewed wad of tobacco before inserting a clean one.

  “Ho! North Dakota! Vass gebt?” His voice carried well, too well in fact, leaving Samuel rubbing the ear closest to Ben.

  “My daughter was married to Mose Detweiler.”

  Nothing further needed to be said. Ben nodded, understanding. He’d heard, knew Mose, watched the demise of a fine farm under his management. Long-suffering schöene frau. But nothing was said about her reason for returning. Unnecessary.

  Samuel reasoned about this long before he approached Ben Miller. What the rest of Lancaster County did not know was fine with him, for he would carry a significant amount of shame from his remaining family and their overreaching concern about his charity to Sarah and her children. If Rachel and Emma wanted to air their grievances, word would spread, but so be it. Some would side with them; others would be aghast at their tightfisted selfishness.

  They would need the windmill shipped as soon as possible. The prairie winters were nothing to take lightly.

  Yes, yes, Ben had heard. In fact, he heard more than enough to wonder what was wrong with Samuel, thinking of supporting this venture.

  “Surely you ain’t leaving Sarah out there by herself?” he asked, adjusting his wide, black suspenders across the width of his barrel chest.

  “She has Hannah and Emanuel. Manny they call him.”

  Ben reached under the rusty metal desk and produced a tin can, filled halfway with the dark liquid of his spitting. Pursing his lips, he sent a stream of tobacco juice expertly into the can, landing it with a fine, splashless plunk. He scratched his stomach after replacing the can, then put a foot up on a pile of metal and turned his full attention to his customer, figuring it wasn’t his business. If the man wanted a windmill, he’d do his best to give him one and install it for him, no questions asked.

  After the men finished the planning and negotiating the shipping costs and the price for the job, Samuel drove his horse away from Ben Miller’s shop, satisfied that he had a trustworthy person to oversee the whole transaction from start to finish, in spite of the roaring in his ears and the questionably aimed stream of tobacco juice at frequent intervals.

  At home, Sarah was canning vegetables and fruit in Mason jars. Tomatoes, peaches, corn, apples turned into sauce, zucchini relish, late cucumbers, anything she thought they might need. A new respect for food that was preserved and edible in the cold winter months drove her to work tirelessly all day, laboring in the heat of the wood-fired cook stove and the boiling water in the blue agate canner. As the jars cooled, she packed them in cardboard boxes with a thick layer of newspaper, labeling each and setting it aside.

  She couldn’t help thinking of the journey with Mose and how he had persuaded her that the jars of food would be too heavy for the horses. They had money and would buy food along the way. Plenty of small towns. Folks were generous. They’d be all right. They had been all right, had eaten well, in fact. The only downside was the disappearance of their money, leaving them destitute, scrabbling to survive.

  Oh, she tried hard not to compare her departed husband with the planning and foresight of her father, but she could not help some comparisons. The journey on the train was so much wiser, but then … Sarah’s thoughts drifted to the joy of pleasant days on the road, the crisp mornings when a light shawl that felt good on her shoulders, the clinking of the horses’ harness, the swaying of the wagon, the crunch of steel-rimmed wheels on gravel roads. She fondly remembered Mose sitting beside her, his childish joy contagious, pointing out the different flocks of birds, the thrashers and dickcissels and indigo buntings, hearing their piercing songs long before they were in sight. His heavy arm about her shoulders, drawing her close for a kiss on her cheek. My Sarah, he had called her. And his Sarah she had been, in every sense of the word.

  Sometimes, she wondered if he had been slightly demented toward the end. Perhaps he was only too determined. How hard it had been to let him go. But how hard might it have been to see him slowly losing his sense, his sound mind, had he lived?

  This she must leave in God’s hands. It was an enormous test of her faith, to let this wondering go. She would never know. His time had come, and God took him. So now it was up to her and the children to keep the homestead. A part of her mourned the loss of Lancaster County, her childhood, her heritage. Perhaps she could never go back home, like she once thought she could.

  Did she only remember the perfection? Did she view her world through the pink haze of rose-colored glasses? The most difficult task that lay ahead of her was truly forgiving her grasping sisters, especially Rachel and Emma.

  Unexpectedly, a smile came to her lips, her shoulders shook with mirth, and tears rose unbidden as she thought of Hannah’s version of her two sisters: “cows.” Flat and unadorned, labeling them along with her least favorite animal, a milk cow. Hannah should have been sharply reprimanded, for all the amount of good it would probably not do.

  But still. She knew too that Hannah would board the train with a hefty chip on her shoulder, not caring whether she forgave Rachel and Emma or if she didn’t.

  And so Sarah planned her own journey, allowed her father to add burlap bags of potatoes and fifty-pound paper sacks of flour, cornmeal, oatmeal, and brown sugar. They packed coffee and tea, white sugar and baking soda, stacks of canned goods and round wooden boxes of cheese. It was a carload of luxuries, a God-send of security for Sarah. She felt as if she could face the harshest winds of winter, the worst drought in years—anything. There was a song in her heart, a new purpose supported by her aging father’s love, his willingness to see this homesteading undertaking through to the end.

  Of course, Ben urged Hannah to go to the singing that last Sunday evening. They were leaving the next day, Monday.

  Hannah had just endured the final church service, shrugging off the nosy girls’ questions, glad to return home and rid herself of all these people and their sharp glances and pitying looks.

  As if she had a growth on her face, or two heads, or some strange disease like leprosy. That was all right if
they didn’t like her, she didn’t necessarily care for them either.

  People just weren’t Hannah’s favorite thing. They were just so false, most of them. Saying nice words, their eyes full of pity that they were so dumb, returning to the West like gypsies. Wanderers. Vagabonds. Taking all her grandfather’s inheritance.

  She’d show every one of these superior people. She’d be known for miles around, hundreds of miles around, for her pure bloodline of the best cattle. Her most important goal was to persuade her grandfather to buy the cattle from the Klassermans, not the Jenkinses.

  The tough old longhorns they mixed with any old Angus or Hereford produced scrappy calves that survived blizzards and heat and drought. But in the auction ring, they weren’t worth nearly what the Klassermans’ Angus were worth. Calves took more care. Hard to birth, Hod said. Well, that might be true, but what about fast weight gain? What about good bloodlines?

  Oh, the list of her dreaming could go on and on, but she needed to stop and take stock of what they had now. Debt to her grandfather, the drought, the two calves, and one mad cow. All the food was nothing but charity.

  She told Ben, no, she wasn’t going to the singing. Then it was the usual round of coaxing followed by the usual amount of excuses from Hannah.

  “What will Rebecca Lapp say?”

  Hannah sat up straight. “I don’t care what she says. She doesn’t give a fig about me, and I don’t give one about her. She doesn’t even know if I’m there or not. Besides, if you don’t have the nerve to ask her for a date, then I don’t either. It’s your problem, not mine.”

  Ben ground his teeth in frustration. She irked him so hesslich. Speaking the truth like that. Why couldn’t she be nice like other girls? She honestly didn’t care if she had any friends or if she didn’t. She was so odd, so different, wanting to return to the West.

  He left without her, disgruntled more at himself than at her, berating himself for still not having the gumption to ask Rebecca Lapp. He didn’t notice Jerry Riehl watching his arrival, then turning away, or that he wasn’t at the singing at all that evening.