Hope in the Land

by Olivia Newport

“Mamm will want to know if you expect to be here for dinner.” Tap. Tap. Tap. Polly did not look up from her task.

  Henry never tried to talk while he was typing. It seemed an unnecessary risk.

  “I hope to be,” he said, slinging his repaired satchel strap over one shoulder.

  “I hope Mrs. Oberholzer has done her part.” Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Polly was using three fingers on each hand, which was more than Henry managed when he typed. At least as she flew through the work, Polly would not come across Coralie’s letter amid the items on the desk. Henry had taken it outside last night, lit a match, watched it burn, and ground the ashes into the dirt under the heel of his shoe. He could not turn back time and undo its arrival, or her distraction by the attentions of another man, but he did not have to torture himself with the sight of her flamboyant handwriting.

  The bicycle leaned against Henry’s hushed automobile. At supper last night Ernie mentioned that he hadn’t forgotten about Henry’s car, but his remarks didn’t go so far as suggesting what ought to be done. In a few weeks Henry’s work with the farms in this part of Lancaster County would be complete. He would have to do something about the car other than hope Ernie was going to turn up with a solution. Rose deserved to have her bicycle back.

  Henry pedaled out to the Oberholzer farm, where he reviewed the notes Mrs. Oberholzer had jotted on scraps of paper. She hadn’t used the forms he’d left for her, but she had assembled enough information that Henry could put the bits and pieces where they belonged. Pencil in hand, he followed her around for a few hours, making note of her movements and asking questions. When she began to scrub potatoes for her family’s midday meal, Henry put his pencil away. He had what he required and more.

  He pushed off on the bicycle once again, this time in the direction of the farm he had begun to think of as home in his mind. Certainly no other place met the definition. As long as he remained a roving agent, he would board one place or another. Once he was far enough away from the house that Mrs. Oberholzer would not look out a window and wonder what he was doing, Henry slowed the bike. The view from alongside the Oberholzer pasture was stunning, and an ancient oak was positioned perfectly for respite. He had time to enjoy a bit of the September day, collect his thoughts, and still be back to the Grabills’ for the midday meal that he missed as often as he partook.

  With his back against the rugged bark and his legs stretched out in front of him, Henry took the envelope from his satchel and slid the pages out. Slow as it was, his typing had improved considerably in accuracy. The papers were crisp and clean, and as he once again read the various summaries, he was confident of the content as well. His work was strong, with clearly arranged data, flowing prose, and insightful analysis.

  Perhaps that promotion was not out of reach, even for someone as new to the job as Henry was.

  Gloria used a buggy for her late-morning errand. Not only would the baskets be tedious to carry for any distance, but the gesture was a last-minute decision. If her afternoon were not already full, she might have waited until after dinner. As it was, she needed to go and return with some speed.

  Gloria had now intentionally pointed herself toward the Swain farm two days in a row. Even Marlin did not do that.

  Minerva had said little at supper last night. Perhaps a heart of forgiveness had not accompanied her words of forgiveness. But Gloria’s repentance was sincere, and Marlin would be delighted to know that Gloria was making an effort to hold Minerva at less of a distance. Taking vegetables to a neighbor she had known all her life ought to be as easy as taking them to a soup kitchen where she did not see the faces of the people they fed. If she could send them with Lillian to remove any doubt whether she caused hardship by sending Homer to the Swains’, she could deliver them herself as a gesture of goodwill.

  Outside Minerva’s house, Gloria lifted both overflowing baskets of garden bounty out of the buggy and set them on the ground. She had intended to carry them one at a time to the porch and then knock on the frame of the front screen door, but Minerva came out of the barn. Gloria had not supposed Minerva ever went in the barn.

  In a printed apron over her dress, Minerva stopped, clearly startled at Gloria’s arrival.

  “I brought you some vegetables,” Gloria said, her voice bright. “Rose was asking a lot of questions last night about what we grew. I thought both of you might like to try some casserole recipes.”

  Minerva inspected the baskets from a distance. Behind her, Ernie emerged from the barn.

  “Some of them are canned already so late in the season,” Gloria said. “But plenty are still fresh.”

  “I’m sure they’re lovely,” Minerva said, her voice dull. “However, we do not need your charity vegetables.”

  Gloria squelched the urge to grab both baskets, climb into the buggy, and drive straight to the soup kitchen at Minerva’s own church.

  “Of course you don’t,” Gloria said. “I only thought you might enjoy them.”

  “It’s not necessary.”

  Gloria controlled the breath she let out between her lips. It was just vegetables. She had plenty at home, piling up on the back porch faster than she could cook or can.

  “I sent you another mouth to feed,” Gloria said. “The least I can do is help out.”

  “Homer is a good worker,” Ernie said. “I’m grateful you sent him to us.”

  “Still, I’d like you to have the vegetables,” Gloria said.

  “I’m sure you mean well,” Minerva said, her words grating, “but there’s no need to pity us.”

  “It’s not pity,” Gloria said. “I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue.”

  Ernie put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Min, it’s not pity. It’s friendship. Neighborliness.”

  “Yes, friendship vegetables,” Gloria said. It might be her husband’s friendship, but she was doing her best.

  “Thank you,” Ernie said. “We’ll get the baskets back to you.”

  “No hurry.” Gloria turned toward the buggy before Minerva could object further. Ernie could deal with his wife, who had moved with rapid steps toward the house, leaving the vegetables for Ernie to bring.

  Gloria walked to the front of her rig and patted the horse’s long nose. Just as she lifted her hem to climb up onto the bench, she spotted Homer coming around the back of the house. Gloria crossed the yard.

  “I’m glad things are working out for you,” she said.

  “It’s all due to your kindness,” Homer said, tipping his hat. “You saw my need and knew where I might do some good. I’m glad to be earning my way here.”

  “I wonder if you might answer a question.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “My daughter and her friend have spotted a young woman with a new baby on our land. They want to help her, but she seems to be hiding. I wondered if you knew who she might be.”

  “Another person fallen on hard times, you figure?”

  Gloria nodded.

  “And you figure since I was on your land I might have seen someone else?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Nobody stays in one place long. We have to keep moving just to stay fed and not get caught—until we get lucky the way I did.”

  “I understand,” Gloria said. “But she’s young, and she has a baby. We’re concerned.”

  Homer cocked his head to the right. “Could be Eleanor.”

  “Eleanor?”

  “When I first came to these parts I heard about a woman about to have a child.”

  “That must be her.” Polly would be glad to have a name. “We only want to help her.”

  “She’s a spitfire, from what I hear. On her way to her cousin’s in Indiana. Probably there by now.”

  “Thank you,” Gloria said. “I hope you’re right.”

  But it seemed unlikely. A woman traveling with such a new infant would be exhausted, and Indiana was a long way from Lancaster County. Eleanor, if that was her name, had been on Grabill land
just three days ago. She wouldn’t get far trying to ride a freight train with a baby.

  The beast crashing through the wooden fence and thundering across open land sent Henry scrambling. He jumped up, clutching his reports against one thigh and abandoning the out-of-reach satchel. The horses had been placid in their grazing the last time Henry looked beyond the pasture to the undulating landscape enfolding the Oberholzer farm. This was no time to speculate about what had spooked the animal.

  The horse would wrap himself around the oak if he didn’t change course. But which direction would he turn? Henry gambled and sprinted a few yards to the left of the tree. The first sheet slid out of his grasp, and even though he pressed his open palm against the pile against his leg while he ran, two more eluded him. Then five. Then seven. But the horse was circling the tree, rearing up on its hind legs, crashing down, and zigzagging in a path Henry could not predict. Instinct told him to run, to put as much distance as possible between him and a frightened, angry stallion.

  And he did.

  He had only two crumpled sheets of paper left in his hand by now. In horror, braced to keep running if need be, he watched horse hooves slam down on his careful work and shred it one wayward page at a time. What the animal missed, the wind caught. Full sheets, half sheets, shaved paragraphs, ribbons of words, slivers of meticulous intention churned before his eyes.

  CHAPTER 37

  Henry cringed when the horse circled again, forelegs thrashing, and crashed toward Rose’s bicycle where Henry had laid it on the ground. There hadn’t been time to pick it up, and now he was yards away.

  And the horse—the beast, as Henry thought of him in that moment—was too close, too wild, too erratic.

  When a hoof mangled the bike’s front tire, Henry’s chest filled with air he could not seem to expel. Henry knew little about horses, but his own limits in the circumstances did not escape him.

  Mrs. Oberholzer bolted up the hill from the house. Henry conceded that an Amish farmwife would know more about soothing a horse than he did and planted his feet. When a snippet of white paper rode the breeze toward him, he could not resist snatching it from the air and closing his fist around it.

  “Are you all right?” Mrs. Oberholzer asked once she was close enough to converse without shouting.

  Henry nodded. “I was just enjoying the view for a few minutes. And then … well, you must have heard.” The crashing fence, the screaming stallion.

  “Did you see what happened?” She was beside Henry now, inching her way toward the horse with a bridle in her hands.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t.” A hoof pounded a page of typed lines into the dirt. Henry flinched.

  “I doubt he did either.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The vet says his vision is going. He might sense something and spook because he can’t see it. Could have just been a bird that flew too close. Anything, really. It’s been getting worse.”

  Mrs. Oberholzer moved a couple of steps closer.

  “Are you sure that’s safe?” Henry wanted to reach out and impede her progress. “Shouldn’t we wait for him to calm down?”

  “I want to get close enough for him to know I’m here,” she said, taking several more steps. “We’ve had him for years. He knows me.”

  Henry held his breath. The horse circled the tree, coming around in an orbit that allowed Mrs. Oberholzer to lay a hand on his neck and speak his name. She slipped the bridle on and held fast.

  “I’m sorry about your bicycle,” she said.

  Henry moved in to assess the damage. The fender might be pounded out, but half the spokes were ruined and the rubber gashed in two places. Nevertheless, he righted the bike. The tire hung sideways like a broken and protruding bone.

  “You’ll never get anywhere on that,” Mrs. Oberholzer said.

  She spoke truth. He would have to roll the bike home on its rear tire.

  “And your papers!”

  He heard in her voice the sudden realization of the fluttering fragments. The bike could be repaired. The work was lost. The only interviews not in his lap when he sprang out of the stallion’s path were the ones Polly was working on in the barn.

  “I feel terrible,” Mrs. Oberholzer said.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  As she led the horse away, Henry emptied his lungs and opened his clenched fist to stare at the remnant in his hand. Weeks of work. Shredded. Hopeless. Rousing himself, Henry grabbed the satchel and began rescuing pieces of paper, large and small, from the ground and branches and stuffing them inside the satchel.

  Rolling a one-wheeled bicycle six and a half miles was time-consuming. Dinner had come and gone long before Henry leaned the mauled bicycle against the side of the back porch and pumped the handle on the well for cool water to splash on his sweat-drenched face and swallow down his gullet.

  “Henry, what in the world happened?”

  He glanced up at Polly and then pumped the handle again to rub his hands together under a fresh stream.

  “It’s all gone,” he said. “Everything.”

  “What’s gone?”

  Henry seized his satchel and tossed it toward Polly. She caught it in one hand and peered in.

  “You tore up your reports?” She raised puzzled eyes.

  “Even I am not that foolish.” He straightened his shirt collar.

  “I didn’t mean to imply you are foolish.” Polly reached into the bag and pulled out a handful of scraps. “I just don’t understand.”

  “You’re the only one who can help me,” Henry said.

  Her green eyes questioned. Henry explained.

  “Henry. I’m so sorry.”

  “If only I hadn’t sat down to look at the view. If only my ego had not made me want to read the reports one more time to make sure they were perfect. If only I had gone straight into town to mail that envelope.”

  “You were just trying to do a good job,” Polly said. “No one could know the horse would spook or charge toward you. No one but God, that is.”

  “Perhaps next time God will find a gentler way to make His way plain.” First Coralie, and now this.

  “We may not always understand God’s ways,” Polly said, “but we know His care for us. Your faith teaches you this, doesn’t it?”

  This was certainly the message Henry heard preached on Sunday mornings. His parents’ early accidental death. His grandmother’s prolonged illness. Scrapping his way to an education when others suggested he should be more realistic about his prospects. Through it all he wanted to believe what his faith taught. But the constant testing of his future was wearing.

  “You are the only one who can help me,” he said again.

  “God has not abandoned you,” Polly said.

  “I know,” Henry said quickly. “He has put you in my path. You can help me.”

  “You must rely on God.”

  “And what if it is God’s will for you to help me?”

  Henry waited while Polly’s lips twisted. She was thinking, hesitating on the brink of persuasion.

  “You remember everything,” he said. “Everything you read. Every fact someone speaks. Every bushel of vegetables you see. How many apples are in a basket. How many hours the ice will last in the tray of the icebox. How many potatoes are still in the cellar.”

  “Henry, what is it you think I can do for you?”

  “Reconstruct everything.”

  She stared at him.

  “Somewhere in your brain is everything I need. Every conversation, every interview note, every completed form. You’ve seen and heard it all. I can’t re-create it by myself, but you can.”

  “Like a puzzle?” Polly stared into her hand and then plunged it again into the satchel and stirred its contents. There was no telling how much of Henry’s reports and notes were right here in this mixture of ragged fragments of paper. It might be more than he thought or less than he hoped. Either way, most of it was in such small remnants that it would not be an easy task.


  “Exactly,” Henry said. “Exactly like a puzzle.”

  “But didn’t you keep any of your handwritten notes? Did you use any carbon paper when you wrote or typed?”

  “Of course I did.”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat. “It was all in your satchel, wasn’t it?”

  Henry nodded. “I thought it was best to keep everything with me. I wanted to know my records were safe until I received verification that the final reports were accepted in Philadelphia.”

  “I suppose that makes sense,” Polly said. It would have made more sense if Henry had just asked her where he might safely leave some of his papers on the farm. They could have found a drawer or a cabinet in the house somewhere. No one else would have had to know where his things were. There was nothing to gain from pointing that out now.

  “You’ll help me, won’t you?”

  She squirmed. Those bottomless brown eyes should not expect so much from her. Yesterday Henry said he was enjoying doing the interviews independently. He could do them again, and this time they would go faster because the Amish women would have their own recollections—and even some notes.

  But they might not all take pity on Henry. Mrs. Oberholzer might, because it was her horse that trampled through his work, and Mrs. Coblentz might, because she was the kindest person Polly had ever known. But the others? They were busy. Carving out the time once had been hard enough. Polly couldn’t send Henry with his hat in his hands begging for their cooperation to do it all again. Besides, even Henry didn’t have enough time to do that. His supervisor was expecting a report in the next few days, and if Henry didn’t provide it, he might lose his job.

  Henry was right. His best hope to reconstruct his work was Polly’s memory.

  She closed the flap on the satchel. “This is what we’ll do. We’ll find some empty boxes—or bowls from the kitchen. Or empty mason jars. Anything we can use to sort.”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes,” Henry said.

  “We’ll start by going through this mess.” Polly patted the satchel. “We’ll look at every piece and between us we’ll figure out which farm it’s from. Even if a scrap has no writing on it, we’ll keep it because the shape might help us put other pieces together.”