by Ron Hevener
“But?” she asks, innocently.
“But, when banks and businesses—and some of them very big businesses that many, many people had put their life savings into—were crashing all over the place,” Ben says, “nobody knew what to do. Yes, there were other slumps in the national economy before that. But nothing on this scale.”
“I remember various relatives of mine talking about it,” she says.
“We all do,” Ben adds, heating up. “It was the story of their lives. But can you imagine what it was like? No checking accounts. No credit cards. Only cash—if, and when, you could get your hands on it. How were you going to buy food, Diane? How were you going to start a business? Pay the rent? Pay the mortgage? I mean, think about it. We have our slumps in this country, but what happens when everybody—and I do mean everybody—is trying to dig out of a hole at the same time? Remember, there were no government safety nets to help people. This was America, land of the brave and tough and free-thinkers of the world! And we were flat on our asses.”
“What about big industry, Ben? What about movie stars and newspaper publishers and railroad tycoons?”
“What about them, Diane?”
“Well, they weren’t exactly hurting,” she says, with a lift of her shoulders.
“Diane, those are careers based on the cost of a ticket. Sure, every industry or profession has people that are talented and strong and well-connected and they’re survivors. Some would get rich no matter how bad things get. It’s just their nature. But, usually, it’s because they provide a cheap product or a service that a whole lot of people need and want and can afford. Entertainment gave relief—escape from all the fear and danger and bleakness around us. It gave hope. There weren’t any pills or drugs for a quick fix in those days, Diane. No TV. And—even if you did have a connection for it—who could afford booze? It was a hard, tough life.”
“So, back to the question,” she says. “How does a young Ezra Hoover go from an employee of a bank that loses all its money in the Crash to boss of that same bank after it opens again, deciding who gets a future and who doesn’t in town? That’s a lot of power, wouldn’t you say?” she asks so kindly, as she begins closing in. The screws are turning tighter and Ben knows he must answer carefully.
“Very true. A banker does have a lot of power in a small town. He can decide who gets money and what they get it for. But even in a big city, or a country, somebody always has that same kind of power. It’s life, Diane. When you started out as a weather girl, wasn’t there somebody calling the shots at the station? And look at you now—with your own show. Aren’t there network bosses in an office somewhere deciding what you can and can’t do? Well? You or I, or schools or churches or colleges or lawmakers no matter how hard they ever try, aren’t going to change that. It’s just the kind of animals we are and it’s just the world we live in.”
She reaches for a coffee mug imprinted with the name of her show and holding what nobody knows, but everybody guesses. And waits.
“How he got the board of directors to vote him in, or if they just decided he was the most logical choice, I don’t know. It was just a small bank, like a branch of any banks today, really. Maybe three or four employees, and he was second in command, I guess, and he accepted the responsibility. What else were they going to do, Diane? What choice did they have? If you think about it, they had their own lives to live and they were just as scared as everybody else and my grandfather knew everything and he had been working with the real bank president all along, right? He was one of them. He was born here, married here and he had a baby. He could help the town hold itself together until the country saw how deep this thing went and figured out what to do. I never questioned the decision. If you really want to know, I thought it was brave of him.”
“Well, I’m sure it was,” she agrees. Or, she seems to.
He relaxes.
“But…” her face seems slightly perplexed, “and I’ve asked a few accountants and historians to explain this for me,” she laughs slightly, because the question is so obvious and simple. “What happened to all the money the bank had when it crashed, Ben? Where did all that money go?”
It’s the big question.
“The bank examiners, which really was the board of directors made up of a few prominent citizens in the community, decided the bank president took it, Diane.”
She looks at her notes. “Ah! Yes,” she says. “William Fenstamacher.”
“Yes,” Ben agrees. Please don’t ask anything more about this, his eyes say in a way she should understand. But she doesn’t get the message.
“Fenstamacher,” she says slowly, pondering the name for just a bit too long. “Isn’t that the name of the man who originally owned this farm, Ben? The place where you and I are sitting right now?”
Like the killer she is, Diane Wallace, award-winning journalist, smells blood. She says, “Can you tell us something about your grandfather’s connection to something called…,” she checks her notes pretending to be sure of what she already knows, “I think it’s called The Brotherhood of Gold?”
* * *
Pennsylvania Dutch Country
It’s been said that organizations work best when everybody is good at something, and in those days, Ezra Hoover’s sympathetic smile came in handy. Anybody looking into those brown eyes of his could forget all about that no-good swindler, William Fenstamacher, even if they couldn’t forget losing their life savings. Anybody looking out at the world from those same brown eyes might not have been so sure of himself: The whole nation, including Ezra, was falling backwards off a cliff and smack into the dust of a long, rotten Depression without any Prozac.
Most people in Steitzburg got used to the idea of getting by with less during the Great Depression, and the truth is, nobody knew what they were supposed to call it. Rich families who lost cash, well, they always had a little more than most people, so most people didn’t mind seeing them lose a little. Crazy ideas like, a rat’s life is just as important as a child’s might be sweet a few Bambi generations later—but 1930s America wasn’t about bleeding hearts. In 1930s America it was all about survival, like a giant herd of grazing wildebeasts you see in those National Geographic shows. Every wildebeast knows the lion is out there. And how to turn your back on a butchered-up neighbor without getting chewed up yourself. That’s the America we all knew and loved. That’s the America that got orders straight from Washington after the Crash to reorganize the whole banking system—and to get it done fast.
Reorganize the national banking system? How in hell does a shattered nation do that? The only one left in Steitzburg who still knew anything about banking was honest-faced Ezra. When the government came to its senses, at least long enough to start patching things together, a few business owners in town who still had customers went to Ezra and asked if he could help them put the old bank together again under the new federal rules. “Shame that a slick con man like Fenstamacher robbed the bank and left you holding the bag,” they said. “But, Ezra, we know you didn’t have anything to do with that, and well, right now, we need your help. And, we never liked Fenstamacher anyway. There was always something different about him.”
Speaking of different, Mary’s family wasn’t about to lose their money without getting a pound of flesh. By the time they were done with her, poor Mary had been led to slaughter without knowing what hit her. Shame can be a heavy cross to bear when you have to move in with family to keep a roof over your head and they keep reminding you of their charity. “Did you finish baking all the pies, Mary? You forgot to dust the furniture, Mary. Don’t forget to say your prayers, Mary. If you want to forget something, girl, you can just start with that man of yours! Don’t forget what he did to everybody!” Little did they know, forgetting was the one thing she wanted to do most.
Most of the town didn’t want to make trouble, especially since Mary’s pies and donuts at the Weaver family bakery were the best around. But behind closed doors they had to admit talking people into losing
their money was a pretty rotten thing for her to do. After that, Mary didn’t have much to say to anybody, and if feeling guilty meant an occasional trip to the local doctor for “nerve medicine,” well, for some parents, that’s a bargain to pay for a live-in housekeeper. Housekeepers with babies, though, can be a problem for guilty daughters who go back home. The sad and predictable solution was for Ezra to make a deal with the businessmen pushing to open the bank again, take the baby, and raise her himself. And that’s what Ezra did.
Mary didn’t seem to mind. She was busy saving her voice by not talking much and taking nerve medicine. If not for her best friend, Esther Kraybill, moving in, Ezra probably couldn’t have raised the baby who looked so much like him. With Esther’s faith, cooking—and don’t forget her comfort and frequent reports to Mary—Ezra and little Ruth Anne managed to get along and still remain members of the Phantom Creek Church. Funny how some churches are so perfect on the outside, and how empty they can be from within. The little church along the creek swayed to organ music and passionate hymns of those hoping to save themselves from life’s horrors and death’s mystery as war, financial collapse, mistrust and suspicion blew across the land, touching the lives of anyone who could think, or listen to the radio and read a newspaper.
Only the animals appeared untouched by the ravages of a broken country. Only wild animals and children who didn’t know any difference seemed to be free—and most of them had parents determined to smash the happiness right out of them. How little Ruthie managed to escape that unfortunate life script is anybody’s guess, and definitely not Esther Kraybill’s fault. But having a father who adored her had a lot to do with Ruth Anne Hoover turning out the way she did. Like most things, good or bad depends on who—or what—is talking and how you look at it.
Take a look at what Ruthie brought into the house and swore she saved from an alligator when Esther knew for sure it was Ruthie, herself, who had slashed the little bird’s wing and left it hanging like a bloody flag in the wind—“Momma!”
“Your Momma ain’t here, Ruthie Hoover, and you know that! Quit cryin’ for Mary. She don’t want to see you. She don’t want to hear you. She don’t care nothing about you! Can’t you get it through that thick head of yours?” Tears had long since stopped for Ruthie when it came to anything Esther said.
“Momma!” the girl hollered, even louder.
“What’s going on here?” a salt-and-pepper-haired Ezra, about thirty-five now and built like a boxer, asked, rushing into the room with the morning paper crumpled in his hands.
“Oh, your daughter’s whinin’ for her mother. And she’s been playin’ in that muddy creek again. I told her to stay out of that water. Look at that dress I just washed and ironed! She’s a mess! Always a mess! I could just tear my hair out!”
“Daddy!”
“Well,” Ezra said, “we can always get another dress. But I’m not so sure about the hair.” Leaning down to his daughter, he asked, “What have you got there, Ruthie?”
“I found her, Daddy. I found her near the creek. But she’s hurt,” the girl pouted.
“Let me see,” Ezra said, as Ruthie surrendered the baby dove into his gentle hands.
“Ooooo!” Ezra said, as he studied the mourning dove’s shredded wing. “That’s pretty bad. What happened to her?”
“It was a alligator, Daddy. I saved her from the hungry teeth of a alligator!”
“Stop telling lies, Ruthie!” scolded Esther. “There’s no such thing as alligators in the creek!”
“Maybe not,” said Ezra. “But I know there’s plenty of snapping turtles.” He smiled at his daughter. “Let’s take care of Ruthie’s new friend, Esther. If you find a needle and thread, I think we can fix this wing and make it good as new.”
“And when you get done playing doctor,” Esther accused, searching her sewing kit, “you might want to look in the creek for my good scissors!”
Or the time a bright-eyed Ruthie saw her father dancing alone to the radio and knew what she wanted to be when she grew up. “Daddy, I want to be a singer on the radio!”
“A singer?” he asked, swooping her up in his arms. “You’re already a singer, Ruthie. You’re the best singer in the whole church choir.”
“Am I?” she asked. “How do you know I am?”
“Because you’re the only one I hear,” he answered. “And it makes me feel so good.”
“I’m a singer. And everybody loves me. Even Momma.” It wasn’t long after that when Ruthie started reading fashion magazines and painting her nails red.
Little girls have a way of becoming young women, even little girls who have housekeepers like perpetually angry Esther in their lives instead of real mothers to love them. A misfit by circumstances, our girl Ruthie swam through a school of classmates and teachers tolerating her because their families owed the bank money; church members who owed their homes, shops and farms to the bank; and friends who resented the wardrobe of pretty dresses Ezra made sure she always wore.
From the time she was old enough, Ruthie’s greatest freedom was tagging along with Daddy whenever she could. Mennonite girls like her mother might get as far as a farmer’s market in Lancaster, Downingtown or Philadelphia to help their families sell pies and homemade bread, but they didn’t often get the chance to take the train as far as New York City. Of course, most Mennonite girls didn’t have a banker for a father, and everybody knows, bankers keep their own hours and have a secret life the rest of us don’t know about. Shopping seemed to have something to do with it. Ezra knew some great stores and he always seemed to need a new tie or pair of cuff links.
What else was Daddy doing in the city? Who did he know there? These were questions Ruthie asked herself on trips such as this as her imagination expanded beyond the limits of Steitzburg, seeing what could be instead of what was.
After supper that evening, Ezra said he had business for the bank and they would be leaving for a day or two. Esther scowled as she cleared off the table, and lucky for them, nobody had to hear what she was thinking.
“Shopping?” Ruthie asked, with a quick sideways glance at Esther.
“Of course!” Ezra said.
Ruthie brightened. “Oh. I can’t wait! I’ll help Esther in the kitchen, Daddy.” In playful disbelief at her sudden act of kindness, Ezra tilted his head and wrinkled his brow. “She needs me,” his daughter explained, as if helping with the dishes was something she did a lot of lately. “She won’t say it, but I know. Maybe we can get her something else to wear besides those flowery dresses all the way down to her knees. And maybe we can get Old Esther a nice, pretty hat instead of the hairnet she wears to church.”
At the kitchen sink, they worked in silence, the pretty, young lady and the stocky, middle-aged woman. Together, they scraped clean the dishes and pans while hot water and sweet-smelling soap suds blurbled in the sink. “Daddy and me. We’re going to have fun!” Ruthie said.
“Dry the dishes, girlie,” Esther sniffed, handing her a towel. “You don’t want to ruin them hands. Lord only knows you might need ’em to catch another baby bird. Just don’t try killin’ it next time.”
Ruthie reached for the nearest blue willow-patterned plate and lifted it out of the dish rack. Her mother’s dishes, and her mother’s before that. “Why…?” she started and tried catching the words, but a flittering barn swallow fluffed them into dishwater froth. Esther looked out the window and waited, daring her to finish and knowing it would be what she always asked about. “Why don’t you like me, Esther?”
Esther scrubbed a greasy pan and swirled her dish rag under the water. Was it quiet insolence? Resentment? Surely, her silence couldn’t be from not knowing what to say.
Bolder, Ruthie took another step. “And you never talk about my mother. Don’t you think Daddy can tell?”
Esther clenched the dish rag, and turned to her with a long, suffering sigh. “Tell what, Ruthie? Tell what? Tell that your mother was my best friend and now she can hardly even think! My best friend! Mary and
me, we grew up like sisters! You talk about fun—we’re the ones who had fun! Her family lived on the farm right next to ours. If it wasn’t for your father, Mary would be right here with me, right now, and you wouldn’t be saying such stupid things. Because she’d raise you a whole lot better than I can and you’d know better!” She pressed the wet dish rag against her red face. “Oh, go on!” she said, starting to cry. “Go to New York. If I could push you on that train myself I’d do it a hundred times over! And not for what you think!”
The fact that there would be no Ruthie at all if Ezra hadn’t come along didn’t seem to occur to Esther. She didn’t explain. She didn’t smile. She didn’t give the reassuring hug she knew Ruthie needed; had always needed. No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t say the one thing she wanted to say most: “Go, dear child. Grab onto the biggest life you can—and don’t ever come back here!”
“I hate you, Esther! You and everybody else!”
Like a good girl that night, Ruthie considered her choices. The morning air would be October-crisp and the thought of wearing the practical tweed coat Esther bought in town made her shudder. Someday, her coats would be beautiful furs, she promised herself, packing a simple dress, fresh panties, and extra socks for the secret bra she was wearing now. Her cotton socks would be silk and she would be so big and sexy no bra could hold her. Looking in the mirror now, she pushed up her breasts, puckered her lips and stuck out her rear like haughty models in dirty pictures did. How she knew this, she wouldn’t tell.
