Amish Country Arson

by Risner, Fay

  Roseanna followed Hal to the kitchen and picked up the dish towel covered wicker basket full of sandwiches, bags of chips and a covered cake pan.

  Hal chattered as they headed for the buggy. “I'm not only ready I'm excited. I didn't get involved when Emma was in charge. I know this is something that has passed down from generation to generation in the Plain community. I want to learn all about molasses making so I can do it from now on. When they are a little older, I'll pass on how to make molasses to my little girls.” She tossed two quilts in the buggy to sit on at Sugar Camp and placed a two gallon cooler of water in next. “I've been waiting all summer for the cane to get ready to harvest.”

  Hal drove down the lane and across the hay field. They passed the cane field which was now rows of stubbles and green piles of cane. The day before, Noah and Daniel stripped the canes of their leaves by cutting swiftly along each side of the stalks. Next the boys removed the head of seeds and cut the five to eleven foot stalks off close to the ground.

  As the women drove by, Noah and Daniel placed arm loads of cane on a hay wagon to bring to Sugar Camp. Hal stuck her hand out the open window and waved. “I'd never seen sorghum cane growing before I saw this field. I think it looks much like corn without the ears.”

  “Sure enough,” Margaret agreed. “Except instead of tassels on top, cane has a seedy head cluster.”

  “When the canes mature in four months, it is time to harvest. That is just the start of the hard work through the whole process to make sorghum molasses,” Martha said.

  “Molasses sure will be gute this winter,” Roseanna said.

  “Sure enough,” Hal agreed. “I used the last of my supply to make two shoo fly pies for supper last night.”

  “That was dessert for your family?” Margaret asked.

  “Jah, I gave my parents and Aunt Tootie their choice of food for supper since it was their last night with us. Shoo fly pie was Aunt Tootie's pick for dessert. Dad wanted a raw apple cake. Emma came over to help me so she mixed up the cake. We had most of the cake left over last night so it is our lucky day. We'll eat the raw apple cake for dessert today.”

  Martha shook her head sadly. “Emma must be beside herself about the school house burning.”

  “I know she is,” Margaret agreed.

  Roseanna Nicely nodded. “So are my children. They cannot understand how someone could burn their school.”

  “Jah, Emma was very upset that someone was that cruel to her students,” Hal said.

  The cane field wasn't far from the small pie shaped pasture on the back side of John's farm known as Sugar Camp. The sorghum mill had been built a century ago. It was a long framed building open on one side. Noah and Daniel had done a good job of cutting a large supply of wood. They piled it by the building to fuel the fire under the pans.

  Hal parked the buggy in the shade of the grove of burr oak trees. “My, this is a pretty time of year with the timbers so full of color.”

  Roseanna sighed. “Jah, and watch the leaves fall like feathers flying in the wind from hens. Will not be long until the trees will be bare. I never look forward to the signs of winter.”

  The women climbed out of the buggy. Margaret spread one of the blankets on the ground. Hal placed Redbird on the blanket, and Martha put Beth beside her. Redbird yawned while Beth rubbed her eyes.

  “Lay down, girls. Take a nap,” Hal said.

  “You think they will nap this time of morning?” Martha asked.

  Hal covered the girls up with the other blanket and walked toward the mill. “Usually they wouldn't, but they ran from room to room all morning, looking for their grandparents and aunt. For once, the girls are tired and ready for a nap which is gute for me. I won't have to watch them while we get started.”

  Along the south of the building was the fireplace chimney. Attached to the chimney was a brick oven, with an enormous pan covering the top. Its size was eight feet long and four feet wide. The pan had four compartments with gates that opened from one compartment to the next. The pan ran downhill just enough to keep the cane juice flowing through the pans.

  Outside the mill was the machine which crushed the cane stalks. Sweet green juice ran into a trough which led to the first pan in the vat.

  The machine shredded the stalks by the horse walking around and around in a circle. His hooves had already tramped the grass into the dirt. By the end of the day, the horse's hooves would wear the path down to a deep groove.

  Noah drove the wagon, loaded with cane, close to the crushing machine. He called to Hal, “We have enough juice in the first pan for you to start cooking.”

  “Denki, we're ready to go,” Hal replied. “Wait until we empty the pan before you start crushing again.”

  Martha picked up the hoe like tool, leaning in the corner, to stir the juice. Roseanna went to the creek after a bucket of water to wash the tools. Margaret and Hal lifted the mesh off the pan and carried it over to the timber edge to dump off the cane pieces.

  Margaret opened the gate on the pan. She stirred around the pan as the last of the green liquid swirled into the next pan. She shut the gate, helped Hal replace the screen and waved at the boys. “Now start the next batch.”

  Hal picked up an arm load of wood to put under the compartment with the juice in it. Margaret splashed kerosene on the wood and lit the pile. Soon the pan had flames licking up out of the bricks and along the sides of the pan.

  Smoke billowed around the women as they stirred, stinging their eyes. Sweat beaded up on their foreheads and dripped down their faces. Margaret wiped her face with her apron tail. “Denki to the woman that invented the apron.”

  “How do you know it was a woman that invented aprons?” Hal asked.

  Margaret surmised, “It had to be. Men do not worry about covering their clothes to keep clean, and they have a handkerchief to wipe their face.”

  Noah helped Daniel feed the cane slowly on one side of the crusher. The rollers in the mill crushed the stalks and shredded the canes dry of the juice which ran out of the cane into the first pan in the mill.

  The vat was divided into four pans so several batches could be cooked at one time, facilitating a continuous cooking process. So for the next eight to twelve hours, the juice cooked at a slow boil. The women stirred with long-handled tools shaped like a hoe and called a skimmer.

  By the time, the boys had enough cane shredded for another batch to fill the catch pan, the first batch had thickened a little and changed to a greenish amber. Margaret lifted the gate and moved the juice into the third pan. That batch was cooked until it lost all the green color. By that time, the syrup was darker and thicker. Margaret opened the gate to let the syrup into the fourth pan. The sorghum cooked until it was mahogany color and quite thick. The first batch took eight hours, and each batch was an hour behind that one.

  Martha ran a skimmer over the top of the syrup in the pans and remove the impurities. Hal watched her lift the scum out with her hoe into a pail. “Why are you doing that?

  “The whole time the juice is cooking, until the last pan or two, it must be skimmed. This involves running this skimmer across the top of the cooking juice to remove the skim that forms which is the impurities cooking out of the juice,” Martha said.

  “I see. This is such a hot job so when one of you are ready to get away and cool off let me spell you,” Hal said. “In the mean time, I'm going after more wood.”

  When the first batch of juice reached the last pan, Margaret said, “Hal, the sorghum must be watched carefully so it is removed at just the right time. This is the part that takes practice and know-how. Remove it too soon and it will not be done. Wait to long and it will be too thick and have a strong, bitter taste.”

  “Until I get the hang of this, you better be the one to watch the last pan. I'd hate to ruin the molasses now we have our taste buds set for it,” Hal told Margaret. “Why don't you go take a break? Eat lunch and cool off before you take over. I think I can watch the molasses boil down long enough for you
to take a break without ruining the batch before you come back.”

  Margaret laughed. “That sounds like a gute idea to me. You will do fine. Martha, you want to come with me. Roseanna can skim until we get back.”

  Martha wiped her flushed face on her apron. “Jah, I could use a time to sit and cool down.”

  “Redbird and Beth are hungry and thirsty by now. You can give them each half a sandwich if they want it,” Hal said.

  When Margaret and Martha came back, Margaret chuckled. “The girls are rutsching around. You might be glad to have them take another nap.”

  Hal rolled her eyes. “If only we were so lucky.”

  “I have them piling the leaves that fell on the quilt by colors. They seemed to like that, but little ones that age do not stick with anything for very long,” Martha said sagely.

  Hal brought two more glasses from the buggy and filled them from the cooler. She handed one glass to Roseanna and reached under the dish towel to get a sandwich out of the pan. Redbird and Beth watched her take a bite from her sandwich. “You two still hungry? You want to split a sandwich.”

  The girls nodded no, but they held out their glasses. While they sipped water, the girls put leaves scattered on the quilt in the piles Martha started for them.

  “What are you girls doing?” Roseanna asked.

  Beth pointed to her pile, picked up another leaf and put on her stack. She looked at Roseanna for approval.

  “Very gute, Beth. Such a neat pile.”

  “What are you doing, Redbird?” Hal asked.

  Redbird stared at a red oak leaf in her hand. She raised her pensive face so she could see passed her bonnet bill with a sad face. “Leave?”

  “Nah, it is a leaf,” Hal said slowly.

  Redbird nodded no. “Mammi and dawdi leave?”

  “Jah, they went home. We will miss them, ain't so?” Hal said.

  Both girls puckered up. Hal held out her arms and let them sit in her lap while she hugged them. After a few minutes, Hal pointed to the birds overhead. The girls chattered about the birds flying from tree to tree, and all the pretty leaf piles they had made.

  Finally, Hal said, “How about taking a nap? We will go home soon after you wake up?”

  The sound of wagon wheels made the girls straighten up and watch. They pointed at Noah and Daniel coming back.

  “Your brothers need to eat. I expect they're hungry.” When Noah stopped the wagon by the crushing machine, Hal said, “You two come eat and get a cold drink of water. It is hot work you've done. You can shred that load after you rest.”

  Hal and Roseanna rose from the blanket and let the boys sit down. “As long as you're here, the girls won't go to sleep. Will you lay them down and cover them up for a nap when you're done eating?”

  “Sure enough,” Noah said.

  As the women walked away, Hal heard Daniel say, “What have you girls been doing?”

  “Leaf,” Beth's shy voice said.

  “Leave us,” complained Redbird.

  “Nah, Redbird, that is a leaf,” Noah corrected.

  “Nah, Mammi and Dawdi leave,” Redbird said grumpily.

  “Jah, they did. We miss them,” Noah said. He stuck his hand in the dish pan and pulled out two sandwiches. “Have a sandwich, Daniel.”

  That afternoon while the women cooked Luke Yoder, Samuel Nisely and Rudy Briskey's sorghum canes, Hal listened to the other women reminisce about past experiences at the sorghum mills.

  Margaret stirred the darkening molasses with a paddle as she talked. “I remember helping my mother in Pennsylvania when I was young. The smell of this wood smoke all around us takes me back to those times. Mama would give me a cane stick to dip into the rich, sweet sorghum as it cooked. After warning me not to burn my mouth of course. I have seldom tasted such delicious sorghum as that first time.”

  Hal leaned down and added sticks to the fire. “We need to treat the boys and the little girls with a sweet treat like that. It will bring back memories to them some day of this time we spent together at Sugar Camp.”

  Martha gazed into her compartment as she pushed and pulled on her skimmer. “My dawdi used to hand out little pieces of canes and let us children dip them into the hot molasses, too. Poor dawdi used to love working in his sorghum mill. He died doing what he loved.”

  “How did that happen?” Roseanna asked, dumping the skim on her hoe in a pail.

  “Dawdi fainted after stirring the pans all day. He died of heat stroke a few days later, brought on by working in the sorghum mill.”

  “How sad. I am so sorry that happened,” Roseanna said. “I remember my mama used to make biscuits for us to break into pieces and dunk in a bowl of molasses.”

  Martha dumped the skim off her shovel. “I remember we used each run we called the pans for some different recipe. First run for lite syrup to put on pancakes. Next run was thicker for using in shoo fly pie. Last run Black Strap molasses was in cookies and gingerbread.”

  When the last of the sorghum was entirely cooked in the last pan, Margaret raised the little gate at the end of all the pan. Hal went out to the pile of shredded cane and hunted up several ends. She dipped the pieces of cane in the molasses and blew on two of them until they cooled.

  Hal carried the dripping cane strips to the quilt. The girls were still napping. She put the cane treats in their drinking glasses for later. She handed Daniel and Noah the remaining two.

  By the time she came back to the mill, the syrup had filled a barrel, and it was replace by another. And so on until the entire pan was empty.

  Noah and Daniel watched the last batch run into a barrel. That was a very enticing spot for kids of any age. Daniel reached down with a couple of fingers and swiped along the top edge of the barrel. His fingers darkened with licking good syrup. Since Daniel got away with sticking his fingers in the sorghum drips, Noah did the same thing.

  Hal spotted the boys with their fingers in their mouths and grinned. “At your age, you boys should have something better to do than suck your fingers.”

  “Ach, Mama Hal,” Daniel said, his face flushing with embarrassment.

  When the day was over, the barrels were hauled away. The women cleaned out the brick fireplace. They polished and oiled the pans then placed them up side down on top of the fireplace for the winter.

  Noah and Daniel carried out all the hot ashes and coals from the brick foundation under the pan. They scattered the coals in the grove.

  With everyone busy during the clean up, no one noticed the barefoot little girls wander toward the grove. They wanted to go into the trees to get a closer look at the pretty birds.

  Daniel carried the last bucket of coals out of the sorghum mill. He looked toward the grove and saw the girls disappear in the trees. He took off in a run. “Come back, Redbird! Beth, come back here! Mama Hal, come quick.”

  “Was ist letz?” Hal asked as she ran after Daniel.

  “The girls are in the grove with the live coals,” Daniel yelled over his shoulder.

  Before they reached the grove, Redbird screamed in pain. By the time Hal and Daniel got to her and Beth, Beth was backing up as Redbird hopped on one foot and cried, “It hurt! It hurt!”

  Hal grabbed Redbird and carried her out into the sunlight while Daniel rescued Beth.

  By that time, the other women and Noah came to meet them. Hal explained what had happened to Redbird and lifted her right foot to look at the bottom of it. Red welts and water blisters had formed already.

  “We need a pan of cool water to place her foot in to take away some of the heat,” Hal said. “Can someone get that for me? Redbird isn't going to let go of my neck long enough to put her down.”

  Margaret grabbed a pan and raced to the creek for the water. The other women packed the lunch supplies in the buggy. Noah and Daniel mounted the horse and trotted for home.

  After Redbird had soaked her foot a few minutes, she was calmer. Hal inspected the burn area.

  “Is it bad?” Roseanna asked.

&nbs
p; “She'll have a scar sure enough,” Hal said. Margaret, will you drive home while I hold on to Redbird? I want to keep her foot in the water a little longer.”

  Chapter 12

  After supper, Noah and Daniel went coon hunting for real this time. The boys took Biscuit hunting to get the dog used to trailing for them, before they went out with friends to hunt. The little girls were upstairs in bed. Hopefully, Redbird wouldn't be in too much pain to keep her from sleeping through the night.

  Hal decided to work on the mending to keep her mind off the fact she missed her parents and aunt. She sat down on the couch and pulled a pair of Daniel's trousers out of the mending basket. She put a patch over a split knee.

  John rocked as he read the Wickenburg Daily newspaper. He folded the newspaper and laid it on his legs.

  Hal looked up as the paper rattled. “Any noteworthy news in the Wickenburg Daily.”

  “An article on the fires around here. Phil King has been working hard to earn his wages for the newspaper again. He interviewed farmers and even went to Yoder Store to catch customers for their opinion of the fires. I am surprised he has not used this for an excuse to come here to get your ideas,” John said dryly.

  Hal snorted. “Phil knows better than to bother me.”

  “Sure enough. Maybe he is afraid of you and your skillet,” John said, grinning.

  Hal folded Daniel's trousers and laid them on the couch. She reached in the basket for a shirt of Noah's that needed a button. “If fear is what keeps him from pestering me, I will go with that. Mind reading me the article he wrote? I'd like to hear what he said.”

  “Jah, I can.” John unfolded the newspaper. “The story made front page news with a picture of the schoolhouse foundation. It says, The Amish, devout pacifists, were profoundly shaken by the violence that took place in their community recently. But there are no doubt going to be further shocks to come with a torching madman on the loose. Crime is so rare here that members of the Christian sect consider the fires a test of faith. All the while, the Amish have simply turned the other cheek to the arson destruction aimed at them.