The Homestead

by Linda Byler

  The dry brown grass, weeds, various thorny shrubs were all piled together with discarded wagon axels, wooden wheels, rusty spools of barbed wire, uneven sizes of fence posts, all things the Jenkinses viewed as useful and necessary.

  Manny grinned, his shoulders already showing signs of manhood, his eyes alight with recognition.

  “Yer back!” shouted Abigail.

  “Howdy!” Hod yelled.

  The kitchen door opened, revealing a sleepy Hank, who had been taking his noon break, followed by a jubilant Ken, who sprang out and off the porch in one leap, clapping Manny’s shoulder with one hand and pumping his hand with the other.

  “Glad to see you back, ol’ buddy!”

  “It’s nice to be back,” Manny said, smiling broadly.

  He noticed the absence of Clay, but did not inquire, figuring he’d pop up somewhere, same as all the rest. He gladly accepted the offer of some leftover dinner, with a glass of chilled tea. He had forgotten the taste of Abby’s beef steaks, rolled in flour, fried in lard in a cast-iron pan so hot the whole stove was splattered, including the wall behind it and the floor in front of it. His serving of beans would easily have fed his mother and the rest of the family, but he wasn’t complaining.

  Hunger was real. It was always imminent. He knew the gut-wrenching feeling of going to bed with a hollow, shriveled place inside of him, a place that was never comfortable and often kept sleep away. He knew the sacrifice of ladling small amounts of cornmeal mush in his own bowl so that Eli and Mary’s stomachs could be filled, allowing them to sleep comfortably. So he dug his fork into the mound of beans, spread butter on an endless supply of leftover, cold biscuits, and was glad inside.

  “So, ya gonna give it a shot without yer pa?” Hod asked, his chair pushed back, tilted on the two back legs, dangling a toothpick from his lower teeth.

  Abby set to washing dishes, her mouth creased into a smile, so glad was she to have these neighbors returned, although it wouldn’t surprise her a bit if they all turned tail and ran back to wherever they had come from. They didn’t stand much chance without that oldest girl.

  She watched Manny from the corner of her eye as she swabbed the countertop, thought he showed some promise maybe, but these people needed a plan put firmly in place.

  She stopped wiping, listening as Manny spoke. Huh. Good thing. Hmm. Buyin’ cows from the Klassermans. Well, hoity toity. Somepin’ wrong with ours? But she stayed quiet and listened. A purebred herd of Angus. Huh. Don’t ask me to help out at birthin’ time. They’d have their problems, so they would. Somebody was thinkin’ some big ideas.

  She turned to Manny and said, “Where’s yer sister?”

  “You mean Hannah?” Manny asked politely, speaking after he’d swallowed.

  “Yeah. The big one.”

  “She’s helping my mother. They’re unpacking and cleaning stuff. My grandfather will be finishing our house, putting up wall board, and finishing the floors. He wants to build an addition on to the kitchen.”

  “Well now, ain’t that nice? If you got all that help. I’m speckting yer grandpappy’s got food to tide you over. Winter’s comin’ on.”

  “The windmill comin’ this fall yet?” Hod broke in.

  “Oh yeah. It’ll be here in a couple of weeks.”

  Hank said he’d want to see this new contraption. The Jenkins’ ranch boasted the old wooden type, nothing wrong with it.

  “Wooden, is it?”

  “Oh, no. It’s made of steel. Ben Miller has a welding shop in Lancaster.”

  Hod squinted his eyes, shifted his toothpick to a corner of his mouth, and said slowly, “Them Amish ain’t all like yer pa, then?”

  Manny’s eyes grew wide, turned darker as he swallowed, then swallowed again. Ashamed of the quick tears that sprang up, he looked at his hands in his lap, then shook his head from side to side. “No, not all of them.”

  “Hey, sonny, didn’t mean anything by it. Yer pa’s gone now. Didn’t mean to belittle him none.”

  Manny nodded.

  Abby had her say after that, berating Hod up one side and down the other for making that boy feel bad, mentioning his pa that way, and didn’t he have a brain in his head, talkin’ like that?

  Hank told his mother to quit talkin’ to his pa that way, and was cuffed on the shoulder for it. Manny winced, trying to imagine his quiet mother hitting him or talking to his father in that manner.

  Feeling uneasy, he rose to collect the horses, but was met instantly by a loud clamoring of everyone wanting him to stay. Hod asked Abby to refill his coffee cup, which she did, laying a hand across his back as she did so, a warm, tender touch as if she hadn’t been talking gruffly only a few minutes ago. Hank rubbed his shoulder and told Abby she carried a mean punch. Ken guffawed about that, his mouth open wide, and Abby told him if they didn’t all sit up and treat her respectable, she’d throw that mean punch around a whole lot more.

  Manny was bewildered, then realized their anger and hard speech had no roots; it disappeared like tumbleweed on a wind. It wasn’t fastened to old grudges and jealousies. These people were different. They said what they felt, took whatever came their way, and just rolled along with it.

  Hod offered to help the old man at the house. Abby said she’d bring cornbread and a pot of beans. Hank asked how many pieces the windmill was in, and Ken said probably a thousand.

  They all laughed. Manny said counting nuts and bolts maybe. So it was late when he returned to the homestead, the sun low in the sky. Sarah wore a tight-lipped expression that meant she’d been watching for him too long.

  Old Pete was in good shape, the horse given to them by the Jenkinses looking as skinny and lop-eared as ever, his ribs like teeth of a comb, his stomach hanging low, his knees knobby and swollen, a mean look in his half-closed eyes.

  Samuel Stoltzfus stood by the barnyard fence, pushed back his hat, and scratched the bald head beneath it. His eyes crinkled, then he laughed outright. “My oh, Manuel, is this what Western horses look like?”

  Manny laughed, a joyous sound. “Ach, nay, Doddy. Not all of them. You have to remember that Dan died, so we had only Pete and no way to plow this grass. We had no means of buying a decent horse, so the Jenkinses gave us this one. Gave him to us for free.”

  Doddy Stoltzfus, as the children called him, held Mary by her small brown hand, shook his head, and said he couldn’t imagine what the family had been through.

  Sarah stood beside him, holding Abby, the wind tossing tendrils of her dark hair away from the bun she had coiled on the back of her head, her faded green dress skirt with the gray, patched, and mended apron flapping, her large dark eyes pools of hurt and remembrance, biting her lower lip as she swallowed her tears.

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  “Now, I certainly don’t want to make fun of God’s creatures, but this horse resembles a large, brown goat. If he was sold at the New Holland Sales Stables, I doubt we could get a bid!”

  “Out here you would. Lots of horses look like that, Doddy. You know why? They live on grass or hay. No grain, most times. Sometimes corn, if it’s cheap at the granary in town,” Manny said, grinning.

  “He looks as if he could collapse,” Doddy said.

  “He’s a lot tougher than he looks. These horses have the best record for stamina I’ve ever heard. They just go and go and go, their skinny necks stretched out, their legs just keep churning.”

  “Ei-ya-yi,” Doddy said, good humored.

  Hannah walked up to the group eyeing the horses. She smiled at Manny, a look in her eyes that reminded Manny they knew things, together. They were Westerners, and they knew what this horse could do.

  She strode up to Pete, stroked his neck, lifted the heavy mane and smoothed the forelocks that fell down between his ears. “Good Pete. He has a lot of miles beneath those sturdy hooves. Were you talking about the brown one, Doddy?”

  “I was. He’s some horse.”

  Hannah laughed. “Tough as leather. He’d plow all day.”


  “Ah, I doubt it.”

  “Sure he would.” This from Manny, standing beside Hannah, showing Doddy they were from the West now, knew the Western ways. They were seasoned in the art of old, ugly horses and knew their worth.

  Supper was a lighthearted affair that evening. The end of summer was here, the worst of the drought over, the wind cooling in the evening, making their sleep deep and restful, refreshing their bodies to face another day.

  The canned beef over new potatoes and canned lima beans and applesauce was so good, eaten in the slant of yellow evening light with the front door open, the sounds of grasshoppers and locusts like a symphony to usher out the day and welcome in the night.

  It was sobering to think of the scant pot of cornmeal mush, the heat and drought, the fear and foreboding taking away any sense of survival. And now, here they were, making another attempt, without their husband and father, but with a new plan, with Doddy, a loan firmly in place, the agreement written by a lawyer, signed into a legitimate pact by both Sarah and her father.

  With his faith in her and the children, anything was possible. Everything. Anything. A new fierceness took hold of Sarah, a new will to do it right this time.

  She sat on the front steps with her father, long after the children had gone to bed, tired out by their endless roaming, the wind and the sun and the dust. The moon rose in the east, a great white orb so close to the prairie it seemed to rise from the restless brown grass like a brilliant round flower surrounded by the dark, whispering foliage.

  “Ah, Sarah, I’m afraid I have to say this. I can see how a person like Hannah would want to return. There’s a freedom out here. You can feel it in the wind, you can see it in the emptiness. It’s a great land, and a restful one.”

  Sarah looked at her father’s profile in the white-washed moonlight. Like a patriarch, an Old Testament prophet, with his white hair and full white beard surrounding his face like a curtain.

  “You really think so, Dat?”

  “Oh yes. Yes, I do. I can understand Mose liking it here. He had the pioneer spirit, the dislike of crowds. Too many people.”

  Sarah wrapped her hands around her knees, her fingers interlocked. “We just couldn’t make a go of it. There was no money.” She shuddered.

  “I can only imagine, Sarah.” Her father’s voice was kind, full of caring, which brought an unexpected sob to Sarah’s throat. She put a hand to her mouth, unsuccessfully suppressing the tearing sound of sorrow and remembered agony.

  Quickly she coughed, trying to hide her emotion. Things like this were not easily spoken of. Far braver to hide it away.

  “You will need chickens and a milk cow. A few pigs to fatten. We’ll take care of that tomorrow, now that the horses are here. If you have eggs and milk, food goes a long way.”

  “Oh, eggs, Dat!” Sarah exclaimed, drawing in a pleased breath. “So often I was hungry for a nice soft-boiled egg with butter and salt.”

  Pleased at his daughter’s grateful response, he spoke of perhaps not wanting to return. What if Elam and Ben wanted to come too? Here there was a simple appreciation of life’s necessities, a deep thanks in everything, the way Sarah and the children bowed their heads over the most common bowl of food. They were not aware of this, he knew, but it came from the hardscrabble year they had only recently encountered.

  Suddenly, thoughts of Emma, Rachel, and Lydia crowded out everything else. He could hardly contain his anger. What if he simply decided to stay? What if? He chuckled.

  “What?” Sarah asked, facing her father.

  “Oh, the girls. What would they say if I never returned?”

  “You can’t do that to them, Dat. They’d be furious. You must keep the home farm profitable.”

  “Until the day I die, gel? Gel, Sarah?” A brittle note of bitterness distorted the old man’s normally friendly tone.

  “You know they’re all waiting to snatch up everything the minute I’m safely buried. They’ll squabble like magpies over the kitchen cupboard that was your grandmother’s. They’ll fight for my collection of coins and knives. Then they’ll sell all those family treasures and buy new linoleum and spanking new horses and shiny buggies, build another silo so the neighbors say, ‘Must be Samuel was well off.’

  “I can’t stand it, Sarah. I can’t believe I’m talking this way. I would never have, before. It must be the wild of the plains got into my speech. I’m sorry. You know I love all of you the same, but they have so much, and you went through so many trials. I can’t see how they could possibly feel right with God. So greedy. Not wanting me to provide for my own destitute daughter.”

  He stopped, rubbed his hands together. Sarah could hear the rough, scraping sound of his calluses.

  “What would they say of my loan to you? They’d have tried to stop the train. It breaks my heart in so many unexpected ways.” He stopped, a deep sigh ending his speech.

  “Ach, family. We all have our problems, some more than others. We always had a nice life together. Little squabbles, perhaps, but nothing like this. The Depression may have something to do with it. The desperation of the falling value of their land. I don’t know.”

  Sarah nodded. She realized times were hard, in spite of the prosperous appearing farms and properties of her childhood home. She could not condemn her sisters, neither could she wallow in the mud of her own self-pity, a grudge against Rachel slowly drowning her sense of peace and goodwill. Of love and inner happiness.

  If God was found in the love we have toward others, then how could Sarah continue her life with a grudge against anyone? Especially her sisters.

  These thoughts chased themselves around in her head as she sat quietly with her father, the silver moon climbing steadily into the night sky. All around them, a shrill sound of insects, accompanied by the high yip of the coyotes and the bawling of the yearling calves brought a sense of being one with the earth.

  The night smelled of dust, devoid of the moist dew, a dry scent of papery-thin grass, cracked, parched earth, and thirst.

  “Where do the creatures find water after a summer of no rain?” her father asked quietly.

  “Wherever they can, I suppose. Our well is almost dry. I don’t think it would supply water through another drought.”

  “Ya, vell, we’ll fix that.” Then, “Did you want to return?”

  For a long moment, Sarah searched for the right words. Finally she decided a forthright answer was best. “No.”

  “What made you do it?”

  “Hannah. Mostly.”

  “And your sisters’ jealousy?”

  “That too.”

  “You do realize, Sarah, that Hannah will need company of her own kind. We cannot expect her to remain unmarried, as well as taking up with an ausra. With her temperament, I’d be afraid for her soul.”

  Better not mention Clay. “Hannah isn’t like other girls her age. But without her, we would not have survived. She saw ahead the way Mose could not. She treated him with contempt many times.”

  Samuel shook his head, making noises of disapproval. “Children are expected to honor their parents. It doesn’t say honor them if they live life according to the children’s approval, or anything like that. Hannah lives her days with much confidence in her own opinion, and I imagine she often usurped his authority. Mose was a gentle person, a mensch of soft-hearted views, his quest for spiritual perfection sometimes overriding his good judgment. No, Sarah, he would not have made it here, had he lived. In a way, it’s a mercy he could be taken home to spend eternity with his Lord and Savior.”

  Sarah’s voice caught. “But what is to become of me? I loved him so. He treated me kindly, always caring. Some days I feel as if I can’t place one foot in front of the other, going through life without him.”

  “You have Hannah. And Manuel.”

  They drifted apart, sitting on the rough wooden steps, the old man lost in thought. It was well that his daughter had memories of her husband in that light of love. He knew, for him, it was more than he could honestly
say.

  His wife of fifty-two years. Dead now, and gone from him, never to return. His grieving was real, but he well knew it was a different kind of sorrow than Sarah’s own. His sorrow was the deep, ingrained sadness of having spent all those years with a woman he still felt as if he hadn’t known in the way many husbands share a closeness with their wives.

  She had simply never given him her heart. That knowledge was a deep wound in his own heart, scarred and opened, scarred again. The house, the children, the garden, the social church-going, and the quiltings, had all meant more to her than he had. He had often longed for the sharing of innermost thoughts, times spent alone, on the porch swing in the evening, or the shared intimacy of pillow talk at night.

  They farmed and raised ten children, prospered with the milking of the cows, the growing of abundant crops, traveled together side by side in the gray, canvas-covered buggy, without the ties that bind. Without the love they needed.

  Oh, he had loved her, as much as he was able. But a warm flame is soon extinguished if met only with the icy blast of refusal. Eyes averted, mouth downturned. Always busy, her hands moving, moving. Shelling peas, cutting corn, sewing, washing dishes. He longed for a pure light of recognition, a smile that meant Denke. The tiniest slice of approval, a warm and tender touch. Perhaps he had been the one who had failed. Failed to nurture the love that had withered before it could blossom.

  Ah, but the children, each one more precious to his heart. Sarah, the woman of tribulation, marrying gentle Mose, and still they had so much more than himself. Thrown into poverty, perhaps, but wealthy in love.

  In this way, Samuel Stoltzfus conducted himself and hid all the imperfections of the marriage away from his children, figuring they would not need all that unnecessary information, their mother dead and gone.

  It was the way of it. He stretched and yawned.

  “Bedtime for an old man.”

  “Ach, Dat, I hate to think of your leaving. Going back to Lancaster.”

  “Oh, but you know I have to, and soon, even before the windmill crew gets here.”