When the English Fall

by David Williams

  He was nearly finished speaking—I think—when the helicopters came over. They have been flying these last few days, back and forth, in threes and fours. Great big helicopters. One of the neighbors told Joseph Fisher that they were carrying thousands and thousands of MREs, which is some kind of preprepared food that the army uses. The same food that is in the columns of trucks that move and rumble through the night.

  They were low and huge and flying close together, and the room shook with the thunder of them. You could feel it in your skin, in your body and bones, the beating of those blades against the air.

  It throbbed like the beating of your heart in your ears when you have been running. It was the whole world. It was so loud that Bishop Schrock stopped talking. That takes some doing.

  We all stood still for a moment, and then another, as nothing could be heard or said or sung. They passed, fading off into the south. There was a moment of silence in the fading of the sound, as if the room was holding its breath, as if all of us were listening for another sound. What more might come? What sounds of violence would follow?

  And then the Bishop began talking again, without missing a single word, as if nothing had even happened.

  It is moments like that, I think, that I most appreciate him.

  WE RODE BACK TOGETHER, after the day of worship at the Schrock farm. It was good, without question, to spend that time together. There was much talking, much speculation. There is worry. Nothing seems to be changing, at least not for the better.

  In the buggy, with the sound of the hooves and the smell of horse, we were all silent after a long worship.

  Home we went, and then prepared to go over to see the Fishers.

  JOSEPH MET US AT the gate, along with young Rachel, who called out to Sadie and Rachel and their five, plus the older Rachel pregnant again, they have been blessed and fruitful.

  The three boys hollered out to Jacob, and off they all went running, off toward the creek at the edge of the Fisher place. We brought food in, and Hannah settled in to chat with Rachel in the kitchen as the food was readied, while Joseph took me around to see how the painting of the storm damage had been going.

  Sadie and young Rachel went off walking and talking, as they do. It was good to see that, good to see her at ease. She was always so, I don’t know, so awkward around other children. When she was little, oh, it was fine. But she would say such strange things to them sometimes, and children can be so . . . hard. So hard on those who are different.

  The other girls, they have come by less and less over the last year, since she had worsened. She does not run with the gang, laughing and playing and talking, because they did not know how to be with her. And when she told Fannie Hostetler about her nose, before she even broke it?

  Fannie took it as spoken from jealousy, or spite. How else was she to understand it? So the circle closed, and Sadie was outside of it. Until the fall from the horse. Then they were not angry. There was fear, I think.

  But Rachel was always there for her, even when Sadie herself was not really there, though it was sometimes hard. I could see it with my own eyes, how she was the only one remaining, but it was also in being with her and listening even when what was said was strange and hard. Hannah told me so.

  But the clusters of girls who would move in clouds, passing by on their skates? She was not part of that. She was too intense.

  So it is good to see her with Rachel.

  The tree damage to the house was almost invisible, and the new coat of paint, purchased before all of this began, makes the house look perhaps even better than it did before the tree fell.

  The remnants of the tree now sit neatly stacked, standing off a ways from the house, several cords’ worth. It was a big and healthy tree, and when that wood has cured, it will be good for a few winters of heat from their woodburning stove.

  The boys had cut most of it, over these last few days, splitting and sawing and preparing it, dragging the leafy branches off to a nearby stand of trees.

  “Good work for boys,” Joseph had said. “Keeps them busy and out of mischief.”

  But then our talk turned, as it does so much these days, to what we were hearing from the outside. I shared with him what I had heard in my conversations with Young Jon Michaelson, and he listened patiently, nodding in agreement. When I had told him all of what I had heard, he said, “Yes, that’s what Young Jon told me, too.”

  As hard as the story was, I laughed a little bit. “And you didn’t think to stop me?”

  “No,” he said. “Because the story as you tell it is just a little bit different. And I like to hear that.”

  He told me, then, other stories he had heard. Joseph is a listener, and I know he made his way to some of the English stores just to hear what was going on. “I was told that there are fires in Boston, fires that have been burning for a week in some of the big buildings there. They cannot put them out, and the rains haven’t been enough to extinguish them, and they are spreading.”

  “What else have you heard?” I asked.

  “That they are going to begin to close the roads, to make it so that only the army can travel, and that they are impounding fuel. One man at the Giant . . . Don Samuels, I think his name is . . . was shouting to anyone who would listen that the army was going to take all of the guns so that no one could fight them. He was also yelling about how the Sun storm was really just a secret weapon to give the government an excuse to take away guns.”

  “Really?” I asked. “Was anyone listening to him?”

  “Some were listening politely, and a couple intently, but most of the people were trying to ignore him.”

  “Is that what they’re calling it now?” I asked. “Sun storm?”

  Joseph thought for a minute. “I’ve heard that. And some are calling it the Big Carrington, I think because some guy called Carrington had seen a storm like that before. And I remember hearing it called Lucifer’s Night, because of the lights. And the Second Flood. Because it wasn’t a flood of water, but of heaven. A lot of people seem to think that it was God’s judgment on man. But most just call it the Blackout.”

  I asked him what he thought.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t fit with anything that I read about in the Bible, not if I’m honest with myself. A lot of people are trying to make it that way, make it fit with something in Revelation, but it doesn’t feel right to me.”

  I told him I felt the same way. Sometimes, a storm is just a storm.

  Then we talked about the Johansons. As bad as it was before with them, it is ten times worse with them now. They were struggling. He could not easily work with his hand so badly burned, and he was not taking it well. Another neighbor said he is drinking even more, and they are fighting all of the time. He hears them screaming at each other, even across the fields, and Joseph is worried.

  “I don’t even know if they have enough food,” said Joseph.

  I AM AWAKE AGAIN, and it is deep in the night. I woke up, because Sadie woke me. “Dadi,” she whispered in my ear. “Come and see, Dadi.” Her eyes, bright and intent, watching my face. Her head moving slightly, changing perspective, as she does when she pays attention to you. Like a little bird, I always thought, or maybe the way that a praying mantis bobs and shifts to see.

  I took care not to wake Hannah, and we went downstairs. Sadie is so quiet as she walks, as if her feet barely touch the earth. We stepped out of the house, and in the clear night sky the heavens were gently dancing with faint light.

  My heart leapt to my throat for a moment.

  But Sadie seemed unmoved, except for a little smile. “It isn’t anything, Dadi,” she said. “They are far away this time. I love the way they move and dance. So beautiful, aren’t they?”

  I agreed, because they were very beautiful, as they had been the first time we had seen them. We watched for a while. There was no electric smell in the air, and my hair did not rise in hackles as it had before. This was not the same, and I thanked Jesus for it.


  The air was cool, almost with a bite in it, the coldest it had been in a while. The sky billowed, sheets of light hung on the sharpness of a crescent moon. I told Sadie that they were called aurora, as I had told her before, but she was lost in the sight. I do not know if she heard me.

  And as we stood there and watched, there were gunshots again from far away. One gun, very faint, crack crack crack crack. And a pause, and again it sounded, crack crack crack crack. And again, crack crack crack crack. Sadie noticed, but she just watched the skies, and smiled.

  But as beautiful as the sky was, it was hard to hear that sound. I prayed that it did not mean anyone was being hurt.

  The sound of shots continued, a faint tapping on the door of the night. After a while, Sadie and I went inside, because it was getting too cold.

  October 5

  The morning was sharply colder than yesterday, perhaps forty degrees, and I wore my jacket and my coveralls as I tended to the horses. Jacob was out with the chickens, and I watched him struggling with his old coat from last year as he worked. The sleeves were halfway up his arms, and it was too tight for him to do much in it. Not that he noticed or complained.

  “I think you’ll need a new coat soon,” I said to him. He just grinned back. I wondered if Hannah had enough fabric.

  In the garden, Sadie was watering and putting in the broccoli seedlings, now that we are hoping that the temperature is finally cool enough. We have had such trouble with our fall crops these last years, with the warmth, but if we stagger them and are careful, they will still yield.

  When the morning chores were done, we settled in the kitchen to eat breakfast, as always, together as a family. The kitchen was so warm, and where that warmth was unwelcoming in the height of the summer, it felt wonderful this morning. Few things are more like home than a kitchen in winter, as my mami used to say.

  Later in the morning, I heard from Young Jon about the gunshots last night, as he rode by with news. He does that more and more now, and it is good that he does. We need to hear what is happening, and his telling is the best way.

  He had talked to Joseph Fisher, and Joseph had told him that the shots had come from the Johanson place. Mr. Johanson had been drinking, drinking all day, and there had been fighting and shouting from the house in the afternoon. Then Mrs. Johanson had gone with the children. They had walked, leaving the house on foot to go to a friend’s house a few miles away, Jon was not sure who. And they were carrying a bunch of things with them, and she was pulling a child’s wagon filled with food and supplies.

  The house was silent after the fighting, but when the aurora came, he went outside with his rifle. The Johansons always had many guns, Joseph had told me, and the worse things got with the family business, the more guns he seemed to have. A couple were for hunting, but most were not.

  Then he was shouting, shouting drunken curses at the sky, and firing his rifle over and over again at the heavens. He screamed and screamed, Jon said, and for ten minutes he howled terrible things at the sky.

  It was very frightening for the Fishers next door, said Jon, because you do not know where the bullets will go when a drunken man is firing wildly.

  And this time, there were no police to call. There was no way to call anyone else.

  The Fishers stayed inside their house during the shooting, and moved to the rooms downstairs and on the other side of the house. When the gunfire stopped, and stayed stopped for a while, Joseph went out to see what was going on. He looked around for a while, in the fields. He went to the house. It had been open. There were many things smashed, and there were a few bullet holes. But he couldn’t find Mr. Johanson.

  In the morning, he went to talk with other English neighbors. The last Jon heard, there was talk of a search party to look for the elder Johanson.

  “Are you going to have supplies ready for the Guard tomorrow?” asked Jon. It was Tuesday again, and the Guard was going to try to bring more food from our community and others to supplement the other materials they were bringing in.

  I told him that I would be ready, and that we would set aside some of the meat, and some of the fall peas and lettuce from the garden. And then, as I was about to say that we could give away some of the strawberry and blackberry preserves, and our raspberry jam, the words stilled themselves before they reached my tongue. Though we had much more of them than we could ever use, I could not say this, not yet. Those preserves were the things that we had planned on selling. Or, rather, these were the things that Hannah was planning on selling. We would need to talk, Hannah and I.

  So I did not speak.

  It is one of the things that I have learned, over the years with Hannah. A wife makes a far better helpmate if you remember to ask her before doing something.

  And then Jon was off, shouting farewell as he rode off toward other farms.

  HANNAH AND I TALKED for a while after dinner tonight. It began with conversation about the larder, about how prepared we were to face the winter. We had talked a little bit about it yesterday, for a moment or two, but as the day wound down today and the dishes were done, she settled in reading. I wrote in my journal, and read a little bit myself, but finally moved to sit nearer to her. I told her about what Young Jon had said, about how I might want to go to Lancaster with the men in the truck tomorrow.

  “It would be good to see with my own eyes how the town is doing,” I said, and she nodded.

  Then I asked about the preserves. “I know you were going to sell them,” I said. “And I know there are no clients for a while for my woodwork, we may need the money. But we have so much, and there is such a need.”

  She looked down for a moment, as she does whenever she is thinking.

  “I think we need to give some,” she said. “But we do not know how long this will last. We need to think about how we might be called upon to give again, how there will be needs beyond our own that we must be prepared to meet as the days grow shorter.”

  She smiled a little, and cocked her head in a way that always makes me want to be nearer to her. “You know how I get when we’re not prepared for guests who are coming to visit. We must have a little extra, and work just a little harder.”

  I nodded, and agreed. A wise wife is such a blessing.

  October 6

  Cold again this morning. Couldn’t have been more than forty- five degrees when I woke in the darkness. I worked the morning, and then as I was getting ready to ride to the Schrocks’, I saw Isaak arriving with his wagon. By his side was Bill Smith, who’d ridden along. To talk with me, apparently.

  Bill was a big man, with hands like hams and a ruddy face. His face is big and flat, and set into it is a smile filled with big teeth. He smiles a great deal. He was even smiling as he told me about how things are hard. He was one of the fortunate few who had some equipment still working, a generator and a couple of freezers. But they were running low on fuel. He had a tank he kept on the farm for fuel, and that would last for a while, but the military had been requisitioning gas, and what little could be had was at outrageous prices. So he could see that his stocked freezer full of meat wasn’t going to be good for much longer. He’d heard from Isaak what we’d done with our meat, and remembered buying some of our jerky at the roadside stand, and wanted to see if he could buy or barter for some of the salts and spices we had.

  I asked him if he’d ever cured meat before, and he grinned and said that he had. And that he loved our jerky. With his big teeth, I can see how he would like jerky.

  We talked for a while. Money right now is not very helpful. So he would bring us apples from his orchard, a couple of bushels. I think that would be fine, but I went back in to the kitchen to talk with Hannah about it.

  She was fine with it, too, and so I came back out and we shook hands on it.

  He seems like the kind of man whose handshake matters.

  THE MILITARY TRUCKS ARRIVED at the Schrock farm, only three of them this time. We loaded them up, close to full, working carefully and intently together. Th
e work was done quickly, and then I settled in to the first of the trucks, along with Isaak and three Guardsmen.

  We moved along the roads toward Lancaster, passing out of our little community and going along one country road after another. We passed farm after farm, and as we moved beyond where I usually venture, I was struck by the absence of work. Nothing was happening on most of the land, even though the crops were almost overfat and nearly past the time of harvest.

  The harvesters and combines were not busy. The tractors were not moving. There was no activity on most of the farms. It was still and quiet.

  I asked the driver—his name was James—if there were any among the English farms still operating, if the Guard were picking up flour or anything else from them. He said he didn’t know, but that he hadn’t seen much of anything.

  “I think there was a bakery open, I think. Or a couple of them, smaller ones, the ones selling organic bread. But the big mills are still not running, so, you know, like, that’s not been easy. Getting the flour to the little shops is just really hard, and once you get it there—well, shoot. It’s just hard.”

  I said that I was sure that it was, and then asked him how the city was holding up.

  “Doing okay so far, I guess. Nothing like the bigger towns. At least there’s farms and food around here. It’s gotten real bad other places, that’s what we hear. I mean, so many people got a couple of days of food, or maybe some were good for a couple of weeks. I mean, really, if you eat your way through the fridge in five days, and then you were smart enough to have emergency food good for a week, you’d be doing better than most folks.”

  So more people are coming for food now, I asked.

  He grunted. “Yeah, you could say that. Not at all like those pictures you always used to see of Africa or nothing, but—yeah. Oh, everything is fine here so far, though folks do worry. But this thing makes me worried about my mom and dad. Shoot, I don’t even know how they’re doing, so far away and all. Desperate people do stupid things.”