When the English Fall

by David Williams

  Like the rising of the sun or the phases of the moon, I thought.

  Again, about Mike.

  Jon knew what it was about, too. I suppose everyone did, as everyone always knows everything. It would be the same conversation we had many times.

  But now it would be different, I knew. So much was different now. I sighed, and said a little prayer.

  I ARRIVED AT THE farm, and helped with the loading. Two trucks today.

  Bishop Schrock asked me to walk with him along the fence that bordered his pastures. It could have been a very long walk, because the Schrock farm is the largest in the settlement.

  We talked for a short while about the labor of the farm, about the change in the weather, about the coming of the cold. And then, as I knew it would, the conversation turned to my guests.

  “You know what I have told you about the dangers of being too close to Englishers like your friend,” he said. “His life is broken.”

  I told him that I remembered our conversations, yes.

  “And now he has come to live with you, with his children and a woman to whom he is no longer married.”

  I told him that was so.

  Bishop Schrock stopped walking, and looked out into his fields. His face seemed tight, his eyes not on mine.

  “I never thought I would see this time, Jacob. A terrible time, a time of trial and testing.”

  I did not say anything, because I was not sure quite what he meant.

  He went on. “I do what I can to watch out for our spiritual integrity. The ways of the world can so easily destroy us, and work their way into our souls. The English are all around us, and our path is all we have that gives us strength. I know I can be hard. But that is needed, if we are to serve God.”

  His eyes turned to me. “I hope you know this. I only do what I do because I must. It is my duty.”

  I told him yes, and though my voice was calm, my heart was not. It stirred, leapt, and I could feel that old anger rising. Those words were my father’s words, and my uncle’s words. Those very words.

  He looked away again, out to his fields. He was silent for another moment, his eyes far away.

  “You must continue to let your friend and his family live with you.”

  “What!” I said. It squeezed out of me on a breath, like I was a crumpled paper bag. “What?”

  He did not look at me, but he spoke plainly.

  “You must let him stay with you. And the woman who was his wife, and his children. These are not times like other times, Jacob. Around us, the English are dying. They are dying. We give our food, and we give our skills, but we are so few, Jacob. Whenever the soldiers come, I hear things that tell me this. Every time, and it worsens. There will be so many terrible days ahead.

  “I know I have told you to be wary, to be careful around Mike. And when I heard that he had come to you, I was troubled. But I have prayed, and prayed with Liza. She is a good woman, as is your Hannah. She bears grace in her more deeply than I, and reminded me of what Jonas Beiler would have done. Prayers do not always give us the answers we assumed we would get.”

  His mouth worked a little bit, as it always did when he struggled with something.

  “I . . . am not Jonas Beiler. I have never been him. I did not choose this, to be Bishop. I did not want it when it was given to me. It all came easily for Jonas, even the hard things. Because of his simple kindness and wisdom, the families came, as you did. More of the young stayed. His every word seemed to be grace. I am . . . not so good at that. I am clumsy at it. I feel like a child learning to milk a cow. But I try. We were different, I know, but he was my friend. I wish he were here now.”

  There was silence. I still did not know what to say. He went on.

  “And in this time, as everything we know falls apart, all we have to hold on to is our way. But what is our simple way, and all of our actions, if we cannot welcome the hungry? And be hospitable to the homeless stranger in our land? It is our burden. It is a sacrifice. It is a duty. Even if it destroys our bodies, or brings us hunger. We have no choice, but to be as Christ taught.”

  I nodded.

  We stood there for a few more moments, and then he turned back toward the farmhouse.

  “Come. Have some coffee,” he said.

  THE DAY HAD GROWN cloudy by the afternoon, so the meat will cure for another half-day. That will be fine. It will only add flavor.

  MY HEART FEELS STRANGE tonight. I thought about this during my evening prayers. It is hard to explain. It feels like something has broken in me, but in a good way. Like a band of steel in my chest was cut, and suddenly I am a little more alive. I had become so used to it that I didn’t even realize it was there anymore. And now it is gone, and I feel different. I feel fuller, stronger, released.

  I did not know how much anger I must have been carrying in me. It is that same anger, from being driven from a place that I had called my home. I know I had carried it here, as we carry our demons with us wherever we go.

  And then the Spirit had moved in Asa Schrock, and it had broken something in him, which broke something in me. I have never seen him as he is, I think. Always “Bishop.” Always seeing him as the role, and not seeing him as a brother. And when I think of him as “Bishop,” I am seeing the image of “Bishop” I had in my head. I brought that image with me, as a hard, cold idol carried in my soul. I did not let that idol stand between me and Jonas, because Jonas was so different. But Asa? I could not see him. I only saw echoes of my uncle. And my father.

  I feel so filled with gratitude for this day. As hard as this time is and will be, I am still grateful.

  October 21

  The news of the morning was that the delivery in Lancaster had not gone well. Again, there were disruptions, and the crowd was bigger, and there was less food. People were hungrier, and women were crying, and men were angry and most were armed. Order was maintained, but everyone was growing more desperate.

  Alongside the roads, the piles of trash were growing, and stories of looting and killing for supplies were everywhere. Many stories were rumors and untrue, but there was some truth to parts of it. Too much truth.

  Word had gotten out that the National Guard had been ordered to shoot looters on sight, and there was now a curfew. No travel after dark, for any reason.

  This I heard from Jon, who had gone along for the ride into Lancaster.

  He had heard more, that masses of people were leaving the cities on foot, that fuel was growing increasingly scarce.

  Jon had many stories, and dark news was all about. It feels as it did when that storm was gathering, like the clouds are fat and bulging and dark.

  AT DINNER, MORE BEEF, and there were potatoes that had been brought by from the Sorensons, to whom we had given some cuts of steak. And greens, there were, and fresh milk from the morning. Though it had been cold outside the whole day long, all the bodies gathered and the warmth from the woodstove made the house feel welcoming.

  Everyone was gathered around, and the table was cheery, and there was talk about our plans to go to the Stolfutzes’ for dinner the next day. There were important things to discuss, especially what sort of pies we should bring to their house tomorrow.

  “So should it be apple, or should we make pumpkin pie?” asked Hannah. “I have the sugar and the cinnamon, and we’ve prepared the dough for the crusts, and we have plenty of both. Who says pumpkin?”

  “Pumpkin,” Jacob said, “I want pumpkin!” Mike and Derek agreed.

  Sadie piped up. “Remember that Mr. Stolfutz has a special favorite! He is always saying that he likes . . .” and her voice hitched. “Aaaa. Aaaa.”

  And suddenly her body went taut and straight, like a plank laid across her chair. Like the legs of the steer, I thought. Just like the legs of the steer.

  Another seizure, so like the throes of death. Her eyes rolled back, and she was choking, choking on the food that was still half chewed in her mouth. Before any of us could move toward her, she toppled off the chair and onto the floo
r, shaking like a drying sheet in the wind.

  Dishes crashed all around, and there was uproar.

  I rose quickly, and Hannah let out a cry, but Shauna was with her in a moment. She turned her, and cleared her air pipe, and then held her loosely, protecting her head from the hard tile floor.

  Shauna asked if we had any medications we’d been giving her, and we did not. Her antiseizure medication had run out last week, and there was no doctor that could be called, not now.

  As she bucked and convulsed, Shauna loosened the top buttons of Sadie’s blouse. “She has to breathe. She’ll be fine. It’ll be all right. She has to breathe.”

  Her breathing was a gurgling, like thick soup on the stove. But she was breathing.

  It could not have lasted more than a minute, but it seemed like it was forever. I knelt by her side, and Hannah by her other, and she began to calm, her body slowly stilling.

  Her eyes came into focus, and she looked at me, finally seeing.

  “I’m just like him, Dadi. He’s just like me.” Her voice was weak and faint.

  That was all she said, and then she closed her eyes, her breathing easing.

  Hannah and Shauna helped take her upstairs and to bed. Hannah stayed with her for a while, and Shauna came back downstairs. We talked for a while, about Sadie’s seizures, about the different medicines the doctors had given us.

  Shauna seemed to know much about those things, and what she had to say was very reassuring. I found myself thankful that she was here with us.

  I WENT TO SIT with Sadie for a little while, as it came time to sleep. She seemed very tired, but not unhappy. As she lay there in her nightdress, we did not speak, but simply sat with one another.

  I held her shoulder, gently, and she looked off into the distance, playing with her hair. She teased it, and twisted it, and pulled at it softly.

  She began to hum, a tune that I would wordlessly sing to her when she was a little girl. It was a lullaby, one I remember from a video I saw on rumspringa. I could not remember the name of the movie, or the name of the song, or even any of the words. But it was simple and beautiful, and so I would sing it to her before sleep. Never with words.

  “I remember that tune, Dadi. I keep thinking about it. Did you never remember what it was called?”

  I said that I never had.

  “That’s okay,” she said. And she went back to humming it.

  I listened, and we sat.

  After a few minutes, she stopped.

  “Dadi,” she said, her voice soft. Her eyes did not seek mine.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Do you think I’m still sick? You know, that I’m crazy. That I still need the medicine and the doctors and everything?”

  I told her I did not know, that I was not sure. And that I hoped she was better.

  She looked up at me. “Do you think I’m—something else?”

  I sighed, and asked her if she remembered what she had said after the seizure.

  “No,” she said, and then paused. “No. I don’t. But I think it was something bad.” She looked down again, and again began to hum.

  I asked her why she thought it was something bad.

  There was a pause in her humming.

  “I don’t know. But I felt suddenly frightened, and ashamed, like my heart was breaking. Like I’d done something horrible. I hadn’t. It wasn’t me, Dadi. It was someone else.”

  I told her I did not know what she meant, and she nodded back.

  “I don’t know what I mean either.” And she gave a little laugh.

  After a while, her voice grew still, and her eyes closed, and the soft breath of sleep folded her up.

  I sat with her for a very long while.

  HANNAH IS NOT IN our bed now, but sleeps in the room with Sadie. It is partly because Shauna had suggested it, that it would be good to have someone there and listening to Sadie as she sleeps. Just to check, to be sure that she does not have another seizure.

  But I know Hannah is also afraid that this could mean a return to how Sadie was for so long. The crying out. The pain. We had been blessed with this time, this respite, when she was not so broken of soul. I do not wish her to know that time again.

  This is not my decision, I know, whether she suffers or not. That is in God’s hands. And I am thankful, thankful that she has been well these last weeks.

  My prayers, this evening, are that in the grace of God’s Providence, he might spare her all of that pain. But what will come will come. It is God’s will, and our only task is to bear it with the grace His Son gives us.

  I feel so tired.

  October 22

  Hard to write today. It is hard.

  The news came with the sunrise, with Jon. I was checking on the meat in the drying houses, and saw him riding as if the devil himself was chasing him. He had ridden up fast, too fast, dangerously fast, at a wild gallop. He pulled Chestnut up abruptly, and the horse had clearly been driven hard.

  He never came this early, never. Tears were streaming down his cold-burned cheeks, but it was not the cold that drew his tears.

  He was crying as he told me, sitting there on his horse.

  “Isaak Stolfutz is dead,” he said, choking out the words.

  I felt my legs weaken, as if the tendons had been cut. Isaak? How? I started to speak, but he stammered out more.

  “It is not just Isaak. And Jim. And Barbara. And . . .” His throat closed, and he could speak no more.

  “O Lord Jesus, what has happened, Jon?” I said. “Tell me what has happened.” I found my legs, and helped him down from his horse. He sat, roughly, and struggled to compose himself.

  “I was just, I just, I just came from, to . . .” And he had to catch his breath again. I sat with him, and he tried again. It came out in fits and starts.

  Last night there had been shooting, just after dusk. Six or seven shots, all together, then several more a few seconds later. We had not heard it, and it was not far away. Strange, I thought, as he told me, that we did not hear it. They are not far off. Isaak’s property abuts ours to the north. Just a half mile, no more.

  It was the time of Sadie’s seizure. It must have been.

  Old Jon had told him to ride over to the house, to talk to Isaak, to see if they had heard anything. The shots, they thought, might have come from someone hunting on the Stolfutz property.

  But when Jon had cantered up the drive, he found bodies. Right outside of the barn, Isaak and Barbara and little Sophie and Benjamin. Sophie turned seven just four weeks ago. And Benjamin was only ten.

  The house was ransacked. Food gone, mostly, but everything smashed up. And in the kitchen, the bodies of the two oldest boys, Jim and Eli. Jim was seventeen, and he and Jon were inseparable. He had been shot in the head. Twice.

  I asked about the two middle girls, Maisie and Grace. He just did not know. He was too scared to shout for them, he said, and he had fled.

  Jon had ridden straight back home, in a panic, and told his father.

  “Dadi told me to tell everyone, to tell everyone to come. He rode to tell Bill Smith, who could get word to the sheriff. And then he will go there himself. He said to get you, you would know what to do.”

  At that moment, I did not feel that I knew what to do any more than if he had landed a helicopter in the drive and asked me to fly it. But God gives strength and guidance, especially in those times when we feel lost and uncertain.

  I told Jon to ride on, to everyone, to do what his father had told him, and gather up as many of the menfolk as he could and to tell them what he had told me. Tell them to come.

  “I will ride there with my friend Mike,” I said. “We will look around, and see what we can find. Go, now, go.”

  And he managed to get back on Chestnut, and rode off, nearly as quickly as he had come.

  Mike had just walked up, with Derek at his side and Tad loping along behind.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. I told him there had been a shooting, a neighbor, Isaak. And that th
ere were others dead.

  “Isaak? And . . . Barbara? And . . .” He cursed, and shook his head in disbelief. “I’ll go get my gun.” I knew that he had brought his carbine with him.

  I told him that I did not want him to do that. “If you come with me, please do not do that,” I said. “I do not wish for there to be any more killing.”

  He muttered something under his breath, but said he would come with me without it. Derek, too, but Tad said he did not want to. Go get my wife, I told him. Tell her this, and get some of our old sheets. So he did.

  I moved, quickly, to go hitch up Nettie to the buggy. Mike helped.

  Hannah came out to see me as I was finishing, her face ashen. Behind her, Shauna and Sadie.

  “Can it be,” she said. “Is this really so?” Barbara was a close friend to Hannah, almost like a sister. “And the children?” Her lips tightened, and her eyes brimmed. “Go. You must go and see.”

  We spoke a brief prayer together, for strength, for guidance.

  And then Mike and Derek and I left in the buggy. I drove Nettie as quickly as I could.

  THE THREE OF US arrived, and it was as Jon had said. The farm was very quiet. There the bodies were out in the drive, two large, two so very small. They had fallen together, close to one another, just a heap, like a pile of meat dumped on the road.

  Isaak had been my friend, almost from the moment we arrived in this community. He and Barbara had given us welcome, and he had shared his gentle spirit with us. We ate together, we prayed together, we worked side by side. A good and gentle man. And there he was, that strong farmer’s body, broken, that fine spirit now gone to be with Christ.

  His flesh was cold, and his body was hardening. It had been many hours. I asked for help with the bodies. Mike helped me separate them, and to cover them, and to close their eyes, but Derek could not help us. He stood back, clenched fist to his mouth, knuckles white.

  “Who does this?” whispered Mike, over and over again, as we wrapped the bodies of the children. As if it was the only thought his mind could form. “Who does this?”