by Ron Hevener
“A long way from Lancaster County,” Theodore agreed. “And from home. But this is my home now.”
“Fifteen years is a long way from anything,” Ezra said. “Things change. People forget.”
“Not the Swiss!” Theodore laughed. “Never the Swiss.” He reached for a brass poker and stooped to the fire, conserving energy with every move, every breath. “Something’s on your mind tonight,” he said. “I’m listening.”
“A good businessman always listens,” Ezra said moving toward the sofa. “May I sit down?” he asked.
“Of course.”
Satin cushions the color of gold pulled him in and hugged his legs, not at all like the firmness he had expected. The dogs eyed him from a safe distance under an opposite chair and Theodore said, “I found them in London.”
“I never liked London,” Ezra said, looking at the squatty dogs. “Do you think it’s true, our dogs tell something about us?”
“Corgis are curious and brave,” Trimble said.
“If you’re that brave, why not move your office right into the bank?”
An odd expression crossed Theodore’s face. “I never know when you’re kidding.”
“Maybe because I don’t have a dog,” Ezra laughed as two Corgis scrambled for dinner. “But I’m serious,” he said. “The Brotherhood is growing, war or no war. It’s changing. Some of the original members aren’t with us anymore. And these new guys, I don’t know how I feel about them, Theodore.”
“But nobody lives forever, and the members picked their successors. That was the whole plan—in its own way, it’s one of the biggest banks in the world now and not answerable to anyone. It’s not just about farms and mortgages and local businesses anymore, Ezra. We put the money to work and it didn’t just make a money tree in a little orchard. It made a whole forest!”
But Ezra was uneasy. As much as he could understand the overwhelming joy of financial success, the power of money was more than a matter of numbers. The power of money was in what it could make happen, and what could never be accomplished or known without it.
*
By the next morning, Ruthie was fretting with her coat buttons. “Must we go so soon?”
“Don’t worry,” Stacie smiled. “Your father says he has to go back and you’re singing in church tomorrow. Oh!” she remembered. “I have a present for you.” She pressed a rhinestone-studded barrette into Ruthie’s hand, and, untying a red scarf around her neck, she slipped it over Ruthie’s with a hug. “Remember what I said. Anytime you come to New York, we’re here. Have a safe trip home!”
But, they weren’t going home.
“What about school tomorrow, Daddy?”
“What about it?” Ezra smiled, with a twinkle in his eye. “I told Esther we’ll be gone a few days. Let ’em miss us for once! Anyway, Theodore’s family only sees him on weekends and we’re just in the way.”
New York City!
WOW!
People! Cars! Lights!
No song, no book, nothing she could imagine could do it justice. Instead of sin like Esther would see, her eyes saw ballet posters glued to lamp posts. Instead of horror, her spirit flew with the energy of colorful Picassos pouncing through the street windows of an art gallery. “Do people really like that, Daddy?”
“They don’t just like it, Ruthie, they pay for it,” he laughed.
Outside a bar on Broadway, she recognized a husky, impatient man, waiting. Surely he was the one who lived in a newspaper clipping inside a book in her father’s den. Esther would have died if she knew it was Hemingway, and Ruthie would never forget it.
Robeson, the actor. When Paul Robeson performed in the matinee that day, she and Ezra were in that audience! His voice, his commanding presence and vitality gained her eternal respect. To think a world could ever forget him was unimaginable to her.
There was a life here! A life where Mennonites like them could laugh with Chinamen, Europeans and Hindus. Where people laughed and cried and hoped for the same things.
Tickets to an O’Neil play. Hypnosis by the poetry of Carl Sandburg, and both of their souls stirring to the music of Toscanini. How long had her father known and felt this vitality?
Along the street, a book store called to them, in its window a stack of books by the Indian master Yogananda. A man dressed in sheets! How odd, Ruthie thought, opening his book and holding her breath as she read his words saying a finger can be cut off and grow back. Could such things be true?
“It’s amazing what we can do,” Ezra said, “when we’re not afraid.”
Did the preacher at home know such things? Did any of her teachers? How could anyone see such wonders and call them wrong, or evil? How could anyone feel these things and settle for less?
“You did this for me, Daddy,” she said. “Didn’t you.” It was a certainty and not a question.
“You wanted to know about power,” he said. “And I wanted to be with you, Ruthie, when you saw what’s possible.”
“But how can I be happy now?” she asked.
Without hesitating, he said, “Maybe you can’t,” as they entered a fashionable men’s store on Fifth Avenue.
“Mr. Hoover,” an attendant nodded to him in recognition as they made their way upstairs to an office and Ezra asked a secretary to show Ruthie around.
“I have a meeting here, Ruthie,” he said to her, lifting his briefcase slightly in explanation. “It could be a while. “Miss Dubois will take you to a nice restaurant and help you find something pretty for us to take home for Esther. OK?”
Surprised at her sudden freedom, and having no option, Ruthie managed to say, “OK, Daddy.”
*
Their journey back to Lancaster station was silent that night as Ezra scribbled money trees on a folded Wall Street Journal. In his black suit and broad-rimmed hat, greying beard and shaggy eyebrows pinched together in thought, he appeared not at all to be a banker thinking of his investments. This was the Ezra no one could reach and only a child could forgive.
“Daddy, wasn’t their house beautiful?”
He didn’t move.
“The flowers,” Ruthie said. “It’s October and Stacie had them fresh cut and real from a flower shop, special just for us,” she babbled. “Can we go back sometime? I think Stacie wants me to visit again.”
But Ezra was gone now.
“Momma would like Stacie,” she said, pressing her fingers against the cold window glass as New York became New Jersey, and became the farmlands of Pennsylvania, and her glittering lights and freedom faded into the distance.
Momma would like the pretty hat she bought, too. Just like Esther’s.
CHAPTER 5
Wolves & Peeping Toms
“Everybody on set!”
Diane takes her place and Ben seats himself again across from her.
She digs right in. “Murder is one of those crimes, Ben, that never has a statute of limitations,” she says. “Did anyone ever ask what happened to Fenstamacher?”
Ben doesn’t skip a beat.
“Well, if you’re asking if anybody murdered him, I can’t answer that, Diane, because he was never found.”
“Never found.” She considers this and looks at her notes. “That’s interesting. So, the bank closes. The president skips town and the money goes up in smoke.”
“A lot of money went up in smoke when the banks closed. It was the Haves and Have-nots, Diane. It was the Great Depression.”
She nods, as if understanding, and says, “I met your lovely Aunt Sarah when we arrived this morning. Delightful. Most gracious. It must have been wonderful growing up with her. Can you tell us what effect Sarah Mattison had on the young Ben Hoover?”
He laughs, tossing his head back just a little. “Quite a lady! Well, not having my real mother around, Sarah filled that role for me.”
Diane smiles. “She knew your grandfather through business. Is that right?”
* * *
Pennsylvania Dutch Country, 1945
Anybody a
sking how Arden Miller—tall, lanky and a former hot-shot on the big time horse show circuit—got his place along The Ridge wouldn’t find much of mystery. Land was cheap in that part of the county and somebody was always selling. The real mystery was how he managed to hold onto it when so many others had lost theirs, and farms along The Ridge weren’t exactly known for their productivity.
For fifteen years, without fail, Miller’s loan statements had gone out, just like they did for everybody else doing business with Steitzburg Bank & Trust. Every month, for fifteen years, Arden Miller’s mortgage was paid. Month after month, year after year, it was paid in a currency of beautiful, clear silence. Natural, flowing water was free. Air, moist and fragrant, was free. Who would imagine something as universal as silence could be so precious, or come at such a price?
Prices can be high when it comes to getting what you want. For the horses Arden loved, flashy, fast and rare around Steitzburg, the place was perfect. They were Arabians. He liked breeding them, showing them and he liked racing them at county fairs and exhibitions. Just like it is in life, you needed to train for racing, if you wanted to win. You needed every advantage you could get, and as long as there was Ezra Hoover, he had one.
For now, Arden’s horses were just a curiosity for gamblers and other racing fans. But, if they ever had a chance to run at first-class tracks like Arabians did in the rest of the world, it would be a whole new ball game for the breed, and just like the two men he saw planting a golden time capsule on the luckiest night of his life, Arden Miller planned to be there for Arabian horse racing. Everything starts with a dream.
Until then, until that dream came true, it was all about riding lessons, and there was plenty to teach. Kids, parents, a single woman or two, a lonely man. Some could afford to ride themselves to the top of the show circuit and some couldn’t afford to buy a saddle. But all of them—every one of them—were learning the sport of horsemanship. All of them were mastering their own lives, or at least trying to. They were all trying to get from here…to there. Wherever “there” was. And whatever it took.
For Arden, and Sarah Mattison, getting from “here” to “there” was everything horse racing stood for. Saturdays were the final stretch of the week and there was still Sarah’s gelding to work for the Mason Dixon show at the Quentin Riding Club. He finished breakfast—a few eggs from his chickens—and checked his list: Kenny Martin at nine thirty…somebody else at ten thirty…eleven thirty…six lessons today in all. Enough to cover the feed bill and still leave enough time to work the Chestnut gelding after everybody left. At least he didn’t have to worry about the orchard and the corn field on top of everything else—what little there was, at least. Jake Zimmerman and his boys took care of that.
Picking up his hat, checking his boots and smiling in the mirror, he put on his teacher look. If there was one thing he knew, it was how to play the part when you wanted to play the game.
Outside, he called to the red-head in jeans and a man’s shirt, leaning on a pitchfork. “Sarah! Did you muck out the stalls yet, or are you gonna waste your whole day?”
“Done!” she hollered back and gave him the finger. He gave her one back and wiggled it. Fingers had a way of knowing all kinds of things between lovers.
“Can you help out with the Martin kid when his Mom gets here?” he asked, reaching her with a puppy-dog smile. “My foot’s killin’ me again. An’ did you get some apples from the orchard, so the kids can give ’em to the horses?”
“A whole basket full!” she said, with understanding in her eyes. “And you’re supposed to be takin’ pain killers for that.” She pointed square at his foot.
“Pills—no damn good! Cover up the pain so you can work. But the damage is done. You have to feel the pain so you don’t overdo it. Didn’t I tell you that about horses?”
“A hundred times,” she laughed, smacking him on the butt and pulling at his belt.
“Well, there’s your lesson for today,” he said, pulling away from her with a playful grin. “You just learned what it’s like to be told something a hundred and one times!”
“Wait a minute, Mister!” she said, tossing her head and walking after him. “I didn’t just clean out fifteen stalls this morning to hear you go on about Mother Nature! I want a riding lesson from you, man!”
“The only riding lesson you’re getting’ from me is on that gelding!” he teased, knowing exactly what she wanted and not willing to give it.
“Fine!” she said, throwing some irritation into the way she said it, and knowing she’d get him later. “I’ll fetch the lunge line and one of the mares for our student, who I see pullin’ in the lane with his mother right now.”
She waved to the car. “Mornin’!” she called out to all seven crew-cut years of Kenny Martin, who hopped out of the car and followed her to the barn. “I know you like Juanita,” she said to him, as they walked past a row of neat stalls. “So we’ll take her. You don’t have to worry about falling off Juanita like you did the last time, OK?”
Grateful, Kenny managed a brave smile. He liked Sarah Mattison. She made him feel like he was part of the team instead of the last one to be picked in school gym class. He watched as Sarah folded Juanita’s mulish ears and slipped the leather bridle over the mare’s head. He listened to her as she worked. “Good girl,” Sarah was saying. Let’s brush you up and check your feet.” She spoke to Kenny now. “You know, horses and people go together a lot better than most people know. Sometimes, you can even get a horse to do what you want, just by thinking about it. Watch this,” she said, standing beside Juanita and touching her far shoulder.
“Get the fly,” she told the mare. “Get the fly.”
Juanita swung her long, heavy neck sideways to her far shoulder and snorted at an imaginary fly. “Goood girl,” Sarah praised, patting the mare’s neck with a spirit of encouragement. “Now,” she said to Kenny, “watch.”
Again, Sarah stood beside Juanita, only this time she looked straight ahead as if concentrating on something in the distance that only she could see. Instinctively, Kenny’s eyes looked for the object of her attention, and seeing nothing special, returned to the mare just in time to see her swinging her head toward the far shoulder again.
“Good girl!” Sarah praised again, smiling. “See what I mean, Kenny? She went for the fly and I didn’t say a word.”
“But…,” his eyes were wide, “how?”
“Magic. If you think hard enough about what you want, sometimes it comes true!” Pleased, Sarah finished brushing Juanita for Kenny’s lesson. “There. All bright and shiny. Ready for sun and fresh air, girl?” She snapped on the lunge line and turned to him. “All yours, Kenny.”
The mare raised her head, alert and ready for her jaunt, nickering as the boy led her from the stall, into the dirt aisle as cats scrambled for safety from giant feet glinting with steel and clip-clopping into the courtyard where Arden patiently commiserated with Kenny’s anxious, well-dressed mother.
“OK, Kenny!” Arden coached. “Stand back and give her enough line so she can trot. Hold your whip close to the ground. Use it to guide her, just so she can see something there. Click your tongue and let her hear it!”
Kenny, remembering his lessons from the week before, had already started. Juanita liked him. He could tell. He wasn’t scared of her.
The mare trotted around him in a big circle and, slightly dizzy, he moved with her. Remember your hands, he reminded himself. There was so much to hold! What if he tripped and fell? The mare pounded around him…around…around. Head high, tail like a flag, jumping and kicking.
“That’s good, Kenny! Let her work out the kinks!” The boy was learning. Arden felt it more than saw it. “OK…now tug on the line a little, so she knows you’re there, and tell her to walk. Can you do that?”
Kenny did as he was told and the mare slowed down.
“You’re doing great today, Kenny!” Arden smiled. “Now, let’s step it up a little!”
Clicking his tongue and rais
ing the whip higher, Kenny called out, “Trot, Juanita! Trot!” but it didn’t work for him.
“Tell her like you mean it!” Arden ordered.
Kenny loved this beautiful creature with deep red-brown hair covering muscles of such power and the black mane flowing so free. Please, he thought, don’t make me hurt her.
“Come on, Kenny! Get tough! Show her who’s boss!” It was his mother. At the sound of her voice, the boy felt foolish. When would this be over? Home never looked so good.
Juanita moped around, her head beginning to droop now, the lunge line threatening to tangle in her legs like a loose dog leash. Kenny was close to dropping it. People always wanted him to be meaner than he was. Why couldn’t he find a quiet place where he could just lay down and cry if he wanted to? Cry, like he wanted to right now. It was hot here, in front of everybody. He felt stupid.
“Kenny, if you don’t make that horse…” His mother didn’t finish, or maybe he just couldn’t hear her anymore.
Juanita had seen the whip, jerked her head up and broken into a canter, plunging over the lunge line dangling at her feet. Kenny’s arm yanked so fast he lost his balance—don’t let go! Hold on, he told himself!
“Whoa!” Arden yelled at the mare as he tried jumping into the paddock to save the boy.
“Kenny!” Sarah screamed, as the boy’s feet slipped out from under him and he felt himself falling to his belly. “Drop it! Let go!” Smashing through the fence and dragging Kenny with her, Juanita headed for the grassy meadow. She was free, all right. And she was taking Kenny right with her!
“GOD!” his mother screamed, as Kenny bobbled up and down over clumps of weeds and dirt. Faster. Faster, the mare went, as the rope bit and twisted around her feet!
Stones tore into the boy’s sides, but he held on.
Then, on her own, as if she had sensed or heard his one, powerful command, or maybe as if she had felt it even though he hadn’t said even one word in all this time, Juanita stopped. In that instant, Kenny jumped to his feet…and went straight to her. “Easy,” he said, gathering up the rope in his bruised hands. “Nobody’s gonna hurt you.”
