son,Dauda, Waziri's brother. Also on the premises were about a dozen of thelocal farmers and craftsmen, inspecting the curious architecture theoff-worlder had introduced to their planet. Aaron, observing that thetwo classes of his guests were maintaining a polite fiction, each thatthe other was not present, had an idea. He'd seen Murnans in town at themidwinter festival, their status-consciousness forgotten in mutualquaffs of fonio-beer or barley-brandy, betting together at horse-racesand wheels-of-fortune. "My friends," the Amishman addressed the Murnansgathered in his barn, inspecting Wutzchen, "let's play a game of ball."
Kazunzumi looked interested. As the local Chief of State, the Sarki'sapproval guaranteed the enthusiasm of all the lesser ranks.
Aaron explained the game he had in mind. It wasn't baseball, an"English" sport foreign to Amishmen, who can get through their teenswithout having heard of either Comiskey Park or the World Series. Theirgame, _Mosch Balle_, fits a barnyard better.
In lieu of the regulation softball used in the game of Corner Ball,Martha had stitched together a sort of large beanbag. The playing-fieldAaron set up with the help of his visitors was a square some twelveyards on a side, fence-rails being propped up to mark its boundaries andfresh straw forked onto it six inches deep as footing.
Aaron's eight-man team was chosen from the working-stiffs. The opposingeight were the Brass. To start the game, four of the proletarians stoodat the corners of the square; and two men of Kazunzumi's team waitedwarily within.
Aaron commenced to explain the game. To say that the object of _MoschBalle_ is for a member of the outer, offensive, team to strike an inner,defensive man with the ball is inadequate; such an explanation is aslacking as to explain baseball as the pitcher's effort to throw a ballso well that it's hittable, and so very well that it yet goes unhit.Both games have their finer points.
"Now," Aaron told his guests on the field, "we four on the corners willtoss the ball back and forth amongst ourselves, shouting _Hah_,_Oh_,_Tay_,with each pitch. Whoever has the ball on _Tay_ has to fling it at one ofthe two men inside the square. If he misses, he's Out; and one of theother men on our team takes his place. If he hits his target-man, thetarget's Out, and will be replaced by another man from the Sarki's team.The team with the last man left on the straw wins the first half. _Desiss der Weeg wie mir's diehne_, O.K.?"
"_Afuwo!_" the Sarki yelled, a woman's call, grinning, crouched tospring aside. "Hah!" Aaron shouted, and tossed the ball to Waziri'solder brother, Dauda. "Oh!" Dauda yelled, and threw the ball to theshoemaker. "Tay!" the cobbler exulted, and slammed the ball at thelower-ranking of the two men within the square, the village banker. Theshoemaker missed, and was retired.
The Daturans were soon stripped down to trousers and boots, their blacktorsos steaming in the cold air. Aaron removed his shirt--but not hishat--and so far forgot his Hausa in the excitement that he not onlyrooted for his teammates in _Pennsylfawnisch Deitsch_, but evenpunctuated several clumsy plays with raw _Fadomm_'s.
Aaron's skill won the first half for his team. Blooded, the Chamber ofCommerce Eight fought through to win the second half. A tie. Theplay-off saw the Working-Man's League pummeled to a standstill by theC-of-C, who took the laurels with a final slam that knocked Waziri intothe straw, protesting that it was an accident.
Sweating, laughing, social status for the moment forgotten, the teamsand their mobs of fans surged into the farmhouse to demand of Marthawedges of raisin pie and big cups of strong coffee. As the guests puttheir rigas and their white caps back on, and assumed therewith theirgame-discarded rank of class, they assured Aaron that the afternoon atthe ball game had been a large success.
* * * * *
The next day was crisp and cold. With nothing more to be done till thesoil thawed, Aaron took Waziri down to the creek to investigate hisproject of irrigating the hilltop acres. The flow of water was so feeblethat the little stream was ice to its channel. "Do you have hereabouts adigger-of-waterholes?" Aaron asked the boy. Waziri nodded, and suppliedthe Hausa phrase for this skill. "Good. _Wonn's Gottes wille iss_, Iwill find a spot for them to dig, smelling out the water as can mycousin Blue Ball Benjamin Blank," Aaron said. "Go get from the barn thepliers, the hand-tool that pinches."
Waziri trotted off and brought back the pliers. "What are you up to,Haruna-boss?" he asked. Aaron was holding the bulldog pliers out beforehim, one handle in each hand, parallel to the ground.
"I am smelling for the well-place," the Amishman said, pacingdeliberately across the field. The boy scampered along beside him. "Wewill need at least one well to be safe from August draught. CousinBenjamin found the wet depths in this fashion; perhaps it will work forme." Aaron walked, arms outstretched, for half an hour before his facegrew taut. He slowed his walking and began to work toward the center ofa spiral. Waziri could see the sweat springing up on the young farmer'sbrow and fingers, despite the cold breeze that blew. The bulldog plierstrembled as though responding to the throbbing of an engine. Suddenly,as though about to be jerked from Aaron's hands, the pliers tuggeddownward so forceably that he had to lift his elbows and flex his wriststo hold onto them. "Put a little pile of stones here, Waziri," he said."We'll have the diggers visit as soon as the ground thaws."
Waziri shook his head. "Haruna, they will not touch soft earth until thefirst grass sprouts," he said.
"Time enough," Aaron said. He looked up to satisfy himself that hisprospective well-site was high enough to avoid drainage from hispig-yard, then left the Murnan boy to pile up a cairn for the diggers.It would be good to have a windmill within ear-shot of the house, hemused; its squeaking would ease Martha with a homey sound.
Alone for a few minutes, Aaron retired to the workshop in the cellar ofthe barn. He planed and sanded boards of a native lumber very like totulipwood. Into the headboard of the cradle he was making, hekeyhole-sawed the same sort of broad Dutch heart that had marked his owncradle, and the cradles of all his family back to the days in theRhineland, before they'd been driven to America.
Martha Stoltzfoos was speaking Hausa better than she'd spoken Englishsince grade-school days, and she kept busy in the little bacteriologicallaboratory on her sunporch, keeping fresh the skills she'd learned atGeorgetown and might some day need in earnest; but she still grewhomesick as her child-coming day drew nearer. It was wrong, she toldAaron, for an Amishwoman to have heathen midwives at her lying-in. Forall their kindness, the Murnan women could never be as reassuring as theprayer-covered, black-aproned matrons who'd have attended Martha backhome. "Ach, Stoltz," she told her husband, "if only a few other of_unser sart Leit_ could have come here with us."
"Don't worry, Love," Aaron said. "I've eased calves and colts enoughinto the world; man-children can't come so different."
"You talk like a man," Martha accused him. "I wish my Mem was just downthe road a piece, ready to come a-running when my time came," she said.She put one hand on her apron. "_Chuudes Paste!_ The little rascal iswild as a colt, indeed. Feel him, Stoltz!"
Aaron dutifully placed his hand to sense the child's quickening. "He'llbe of help on the farm, so strong as he is," he remarked. Then, tugginghis hat down tight, Aaron went outdoors, bashful before this mystery.
The little creek had thawed, and the light of the sun on a man's facealmost gave back the heat the air extorted. Waziri had gone to towntoday for some sort of Murnan spring-festival, eager to celebrate hishard-earned wealth on his first day off in months. The place seemeddeserted, Aaron felt, without the boy; without the visitors he'd playedball and talked crops with, striding up in their scarlet-trimmed rigasto gossip with their friend Haruna.
Between the roadway and the house, Aaron knelt to rake up with hisfingers a handful of the new-thawed soil. He squeezed it. The clod inhis hand broke apart of its own weight: it was not too wet to work.Festival-day though it was to his _Schwotzer_ neighbors, he was eager tospear this virgin soil with his plow blade.
Aaron strode back to the barn. He hitched Rosina--the dappled mare,named "Raisin" for her spots--
to the plow and slapped her into motion.Sleek with her winter's idleness, Rosina was at first unenthusiasticabout the plow; but the spring sun and honest exercise warmed herquickly. Within half an hour she was earning her keep. Though Aaron wasplowing shallow, the compact soil broke hard. Rosina leaned into thetraces, leaving hoofprints three inches deep. No gasoline tractor, Aaronmused, could ever pull itself through soil so rich and damp._Geilsgrefte_, horsepower, was best exerted by a horse, he thought.
The brown earth-smells were good. Aaron kicked apart the larger clods,fat with a planet-life of weather and rich decay. This land would take
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