When the English Fall

by David Williams

  I will see what the doctor can do tomorrow. I will be true, but gentle with truth.

  I am very tired.

  September 9

  Awoke before the sun, even before cockcrow. My mind leaps to all that must be done.

  The cows gave a little less milk today. The steers I bought to fatten up for the winter are coming along well, putting on plenty of weight and eating well.

  Plowed three acres and put in the wheat. That was my day. Jacob watered the horses, good lad.

  TONIGHT SHE IS QUIET. The new medicine helps, thanks be to God. The doctor came, Doctor Jones, and though we did not tell him everything, I know he knew that things were harder. We held him in prayer. He is a Baptist, he says. A good man. He has always had kindness in his heart.

  I am tired, but I’m still awake, and so I stood outside for a while. It was beautiful, the stars bright. But brighter still was the glow of Lancaster, off to the south, so many miles away. It is not really dark at night. I notice this. I wonder about my grandfather’s father, and how he and I share the same place, yet even as we live beyond the English and their ways, their light still fills our skies.

  I think of Mike, and his anger. Today he came to check on the order, and when he talked, he was very angry about something he had heard on the radio in his truck. The radio person was angry about “the global warming hoax,” and “the economy,” and everything. I do not know why Mike listens to the radio if all he receives is anger, but he does. The things I hear in my life are so different. I read. I listen to the worship, and to the singing, and to the teachings, and that is not what I receive. I listen to the stillness in our times of silent prayer especially.

  It is a funny thing, to listen to silence. I do it when I am done with my prayers for my neighbors and my own struggling soul and the world around me. Then, I try not to pray at all. Why would God need to hear me babbling on about myself? Instead, I try to listen.

  Even in silent prayer, when we are in worship, all is not quiet. Not if you are really listening. All around me, my brothers and sisters move and shift and rustle, like young leaves in a soft spring breeze. It is calming, to hear them. And a comfort.

  I wish, sometimes, that Mike could hear such things.

  But I am not Mike.

  Mike was mad again at the president, and about the Congress. Apparently things are bad among the English. Another bridge failed last week, and many died. The lights in Lancaster have been dark more often lately. Others in this district do not see it. Best to sleep early after a long day, if you can. But I am often awake at night. The stars are so much easier to see, when the lights are out.

  Mike is angry about that too. He says it’s all a mess, that no one trusts anyone, that nothing seems to work. But mostly, he talks about how he is no longer free, and how the new taxes make it hard to buy fuel to drive his big truck.

  I don’t know. This has been a strange year again, sometimes so hot, at other times too cool. The rain has not come often these past few years, and when it comes, it comes fierce like a fever. Deacon Sorenson remembers when it wasn’t so, and will fret now and again, although we know that we must take what the Lord gives us.

  Many have lost their crops, and we have had to help many families. There has been much praying, but little has changed. Perhaps this is the work of the English. Others do not say it, but I do think it. I think it often. If they can fill the night sky with wasted light, perhaps this heat is theirs as well.

  But it is all right. I am not English. I would never wish to be.

  AND YET, AND YET. I say I am not English, and still I write this. I write it in English. These words, this way, these thoughts. Not Deitsch. Not the language I was taught as a boy, not the language of our songs and the Ordnung. The Order. I can barely even think in that language now, not as my mind works.

  I can speak Deitsch, yes, of course. I speak it almost every day. I have not forgotten the language of our community, or of my father. But it is not the language I hear when I dream. It is not the language of my soul. My father would remind me of that, as I would fall into speaking it. It was another reason to be ashamed.

  My mind, which is now filled with silly, silly thoughts. Childish thoughts. Dwelling on things, chewing over them like a cow with its cud.

  I must sleep.

  September 10

  I rose with Hannah and Jacob. Milked the cows, then set out feed for the rest of the cattle, and fed and watered the horses, while Jacob collected eggs. One of the hens has not laid for several weeks. I think I must slaughter it. It is a shame, she is not old, but there are two dozen others. So we will have chicken.

  It is so hot today. It has been difficult to work, and Hannah has been careful in the kitchen. But we do what we can, as we can.

  I feel so thankful, for the blessings of God and the goodness of His Providence. Sadie is quiet and more at peace, and today when I came in for dinner, she smiled at me as she had as a little girl. I have said a special prayer for the doctor, and his kindness.

  I was reminded, in a flash of remembering, of a time when she was a girl. It was a particular moment. I do not know why I remember it. It was after the harvest, just a few years ago, and we had walked to the edge of a field, then down a hillside.

  Eleven she was, I think.

  We sat together, father and daughter, quiet but for the apples she had brought for us, which we ate. Down the hillside was a road, a great serpent of highway, on which passed many cars. We watched them, she and I, for a while.

  And then she asked about the cars, and the people.

  “There are so many, Dadi,” she said. “Are there little girls like me in the cars?” I said yes. “What are they like?” I said they are English. They are the world. They are so busy, they have no time to see God or each other.

  She looked sad. “I think God loves them,” she said. “Even if they don’t know it.”

  I agreed. God loves all of his children, I said. But we must learn how to love him back.

  She got up.

  “It makes me so sad,” she said. And then she walked up the hill, her skirt brushing across the long grass.

  Such a kind-hearted girl, my gentle, strange Sadie was. Is. She must still be, under the cries and the darkness. I say a prayer, that her kindness is not broken, too. The window is open, and outside it smells like rain. And the horizon is alight with lightning.

  September 11

  Today there was much work, but not on the furniture or in the fields.

  The storms came deep in the night last night, scouring. Terrible storms, as bad as the spring. The winds beat the house like fists. Tonight as I write, the lights in the city are still out, and the sky is dark, but among us, that means nothing. But there was so much broken, so much. Shingles down. A barn damaged. The Fishers got the worst of it, had to shelter in their cellar.

  Jacob came with me out to the Fishers’ farm. So many trees fallen. So much broken, like a great hand had swept across the land. It was a very familiar scene.

  Is it right for me to be proud of Jacob? I feel pride in my heart for the strength of this boy, almost a man, and how eager his heart was to labor by my side.

  He and I and all of us worked for much of the day, because so much was broken. That old oak had rested the Fisher home in shade for a hundred years, and still it was shattered, one large branch crashed through the roof, the trunk falling away by God’s grace. Some of the men gathered with bucksaws, others with two-man saws. We worked together, and that great old trunk came apart, piece by piece.

  It was such an old thing, that oak, but still so very alive. There was no rot in it. It was a healthy, strong, living tree. And yet it was time for it to die. By midwinter, perhaps, the wood will be cured enough for firewood.

  Jacob and I, once we’d pulled that tree from the roof, joined the Stolfutzes in replacing the damaged soffits and joists. I had brought wood, and others had brought new subroofing and shingles. So many hands at work, Isaak and his sons, now almost men. Joseph and his
boys, so diligent in their youth.

  It was hard work, and the storms had not brought cool with them, but more heat. We drank the water, and took breaks in the shade, and we sweated. Jacob worked as hard as any of us, and I had to remind him sometimes to stop and come out of the sun. He has such a precise hand, and attends to the work before him.

  By late afternoon, the roof was repaired, and we returned home.

  Sadie was calm today. It was a good day for her. She spoke evenly, and did not seem angry, and had helped Hannah with preparation for the dinner. Truly, the Lord does answer our prayers. We must just be patient.

  September 12

  It is so hot. It gets so hot. More rain again today, not fierce, but the heat hangs in the wet air.

  Mike stopped by again today, to check in on the order. The client is impatient, he says, although it has only been a week. The client was angry because he couldn’t reach Mike yesterday, and only got through on his cell phone this morning. But there was no power in the town, so nothing was working. He could not get gas, and there were lines, and people were not getting along. Mike is angry, because he is tired and has not slept well. The power comes on and off, and his house does not cool with air-conditioned air, because the compressor blew.

  Mike wishes the client would understand that things take time and are more difficult. The client should know this. Mike was hot and angry, and was not sympathetic, and said so in his profane way.

  He knows this will take time, but it is hard for the client to understand. I wish I could talk with them, but they are far away, near Washington, DC, and do not wish to come here. Mike told them they could, but they do not want to, because they are too busy.

  Mike says the impatience is because of the internet, because everyone now wants everything the moment they want it. I remember this from when I was jumping around in the world. I remember how people would walk around not even seeing each other, eyes down into their rectangles of light. No one was where they were.

  So busy, the English are, and there was so much in my time there that was terrible. I was at a party those years ago when I went running around, I remember, with a friend, and one of his friends asked to show me something, and I said sure, and we sat at the computer and he showed me. It took me a moment, and then I had to look away. It was pornography, something strange, something even most English found horrible, and they laughed as I recoiled. They knew it would horrify me. It was funny for them, I think. It was not as things ever would or could be with Hannah.

  And yet this is how the English live now. Whatever they want is there, even their most terrible darkness. So different from when the Order stepped away. There was a time when we were almost alike. All rode on horseback. Oil lit all homes, be they English or of the Order. We all worked the land. But now?

  Now the English have their wild magics, so different it becomes hard to understand.

  Such a wild terrible mess, the world is now. I am glad that I am not in it.

  I WRITE AGAIN TONIGHT, because I cannot sleep. It is so hot, the blasting sun of day hanging in the wet air. We can none of us sleep, except for Sadie, who has taken her medicine. Hannah and Jacob moved out to the root cellar, and set down one of our mattresses in the cool of the earth. I carried Sadie, who nestled light in my arms, half asleep. They rest down there, all three of them. It is cooler there, resting in the earth.

  But I cannot sleep. So here on the porch I look out at the night, and wish that the air was not so still.

  Sometimes when I cannot sleep, I read. So I will read the Martyrs Mirror, and reflect on those who gave their lives for what we believe.

  I will sleep, soon.

  September 14

  I did not write yesterday. And the Sabbath worship was good today. We gathered at the Sorensons’, and the room was filled with the old songs and the honest smell of sweat as we sat in silent prayer. Deacon Sorenson preached the first and the second sermons. They were good and simple. He was a good choice for preacher, and he mixes the duties of deacon and preacher with grace.

  I know all men are to preach if they are chosen, and that it is not to ever be a source of pride or arrogance. But just as some men are better in the fields and others better with tools, some speak better than others.

  With all gathered in together, it became very hot. It was easy to forget in the preaching and in the singing, but as we sat in silent prayer, the heat was all around us. After a time old Mrs. Miller collapsed and had to be cooled down with water. But the women took care of that.

  Perhaps the greatest blessing was that Sadie was calm again, and she even sang. Just a little bit, but I could hear her. It made Hannah smile. I was glad.

  But then I was also ashamed, ashamed about this very thing I do now.

  I am wondering about this writing.

  I see back six months, and I was wondering then. For so many years, I was sure that it was prideful, my secret sin, my shame. As a boy, I was convicted of that from the sermons of my uncle. Today, Deacon Sorenson’s preaching was simple and good, but though he did not mean to do so, he stirred an old hurt in me. Much like a cold, wet day does not mean to make that long broken bone ache. It was not his fault.

  Deacon Sorenson preached about secrets and shame, and about how nothing can be hidden from God. He taught about how hiding thoughts keeps us from being together, and staying true to the Order, and to Christ. None of that is wrong, I think. Much of what he had to say was right and true.

  There is shame that we feel that is a good shame. It comes as we see how we hurt others and ignore God. But there is a bad shame that is used to hurt others and turn them away from God. I used to be told that this act, this act I am doing right now in writing and remembering, worse yet in English, was just such a shameful thing.

  It was what I was told, back when I was a boy. I was told it so much that part of me still wants to be ashamed. That teaching cut a deep furrow in me. Like all people, I cling to my past, and even to the pain of my past. It is who I am. It seems hard to believe, here in this place.

  Writing about crops served a purpose, my uncle would say. About yourself? It is selfishness. It was why he and others left their homes, and formed their own community. Others were not as holy. Others had abandoned the one right path, the real Ordnung.

  I can hear the prayer my uncle would have me be praying. “Lord, keep me from this,” I would say. “Silence my desire. Make me your servant. Guide me to your will. This will be the last of these entries. I will cast this away. In Jesus’ name, Amen.” I can hear it. But I cannot pray it. I will not pray it.

  I know that in this place, I will not be asked to pray it. That is why we came here, to this place, to this district, to this old settlement.

  And I will be allowed to remember. I am grateful for that here. And grateful for Preacher Sorenson, for the day of contemplation.

  AFTER OUR EVENING PRAYERS, Sadie came over to me, and whispered in my ear.

  “It is all right to remember, Dadi. It is important.” I was startled, and pulled back. “God says so,” she said, smiling.

  Then she went to get ready for bed. She did not say another thing.

  Funny, how she knows. And again, I shiver, as if suddenly cold, at what that might mean.

  September 15

  Today was again hot, the sky a dull, cloudless blue, the sun set in it bright and fierce and terrible. Jacob and I worked awhile in the morning, and we were able to make some progress. But the going was slow, and by noon the workshop was an oven.

  Sadie was able to work with Hannah in the kitchen this morning, canning preserves and making apple butter. She seemed a little better.

  The oats are coming in, not the best, but coming in.

  I went across to the Fishers, who were offering up wood from their fallen oak. I took a tenth of a cord, no more, for wood has been easy to come by. Joseph asked if they could come visiting tomorrow, and I said sure.

  Nettie and Pearl were so hot when we returned, mouths all foam and eyes a little wild. I
watered and splashed them with buckets of cool well water.

  Together we worked in the orchard in the early evening, gathering in five bushels of apples. Our trees have taken some damage from the storms, and the apples are smaller and less plentiful this year. But the damage is not too much, and the water in the well still holds, and we are not in need. The Lord is gracious with his harvest, still, and it is enough for our family and our simple needs.

  Although we would be blessed with a cooling rain.

  September 16

  The rain did not come, but the winds blew, and the day is cooler.

  This early morning, after the milking, Jacob and I slaughtered a pig, the big one. Much of the morning was cutting and preparing, and setting the meat into the freezer.

  There will be more, but it was the whole work of our morning. It took longer than anticipated, and our breakfast was no longer warm, but Hannah was forgiving, even as she chided us.

  After breakfast, we finished building the last of the order. Mike will be pleased. I sent Jacob to the community phone, so that we could tell Mike.

  Hannah prepared simple food, slaw and some meat pies, and Sadie helped, as the Fishers were to come in the late afternoon. Joseph and Rachel and their five, plus Rachel pregnant again, they have been blessed and fruitful. And they are still not old. There will be more children, a larger family.

  Their oldest, also Rachel, is fourteen just like our Sadie, then Fritz and Hosheah, then Mariam, then Micah.

  It was a lively afternoon. The Fishers came in their wagon and a buggy, and Jacob was at once off with the boys to play. Sadie was calm, and she and Rachel went to talking and walking for a while, as Hannah and the older Rachel rested with lemonade before cooking for the evening.

  Joseph and I sat, and we talked. He was worried about the Johansons, who operate the 375 acres just to the south of his own. They had always had problems, and always been the sort of family that struggles, even in the good times when the harvest was good and the money was plentiful. Even the best blessings of Providence cannot turn a soul from sorrow if it has set itself down that path.