Hope on the Plains

by Linda Byler

  The characters and events in this book are the creation of the author, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

  HOPE ON THE PLAINS

  Copyright © 2017 by Linda Byler

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Good Books, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  ISBN: 978-1-68099-311-0

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-68099-313-4

  Cover design by Koechel Peterson & Associates, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota

  Printed in the United States of America

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  The Story

  Glossary

  Other Books by Linda Byler

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  The brisk winds of autumn faded, leaving the North Dakota plains silent, dry, and dusty, the grasses that never ceased their brittle rustling hanging limp and brown. The sky took on a yellowish gray color, hanging above the Detweiler homestead as if it might crack and fall. The air crackled the atmosphere still and ominous.

  Sarah shivered, rubbed her arms as she crossed them tightly to her waist, standing on the edge of the porch that looked across the level land to the barn, gray, weathered, its roof capping the logs with rusted tin, the fence around it brown and splintered. Every morning on that porch, the widow repeated her early morning ritual of gazing between the second and third posts of the barnyard fence, where her husband, Mose, had met his early death, gored by a displaced and angry cow with horns like sabers.

  And she spoke to him. To his memory. She told him she loved him still, that today was another new day without him, but she was all right. She had the children. Hannah, strong, independent, a mind of her own; Manny, growing into another version of his devout father, conscientious, obedient; Eli and Mary, still so innocent, playing and playing on the endless prairie; Abby, the baby, growing, crawling, her little body a comfort to her mother when she held the child in her aching arms.

  She turned, her eyes misty, her dark hair parted in the middle, the white head covering set on her sleekly combed tresses pulled into a bun on the back of her head. Still slim, her worn, faded dress a soft blue, a black apron tied at her waist, her feet encased in black stockings and sturdy leather shoes.

  She stepped off the porch, her eyes drifting to their beacon of hope, the windmill, its rotating blades pumping the water necessary for a fledgling herd of thirteen cows and one magnificent bull. But the blades were still now, and the up and down movement of the pump silent.

  There was no wind.

  Sarah prayed, asking God to bless them with the wind. She never imagined praying for wind; in times past, its endless blowing could test the limits of her sanity.

  She felt her daughter’s presence before seeing her. Tall, disheveled hair as dark as midnight, her dress hanging loosely, surrounding her thin frame in ragged patches, worn thin beneath her arms and along the sides of her chest. And no apron—again.

  Sarah didn’t understand her daughter’s aversion to the required black apron. It was part of the Ordnung, which was highly regarded in her own mind, the lack of it meant being partly undressed. No head covering this morning.

  “No wind?” Hannah asked, her large dark eyes black with anxiety. Sarah shook her head, shivering.

  “Well, we’re going to have to go to town for gasoline. The tank was half empty last night. We have to get that engine started.”

  Sarah stifled a whimper. The engine terrified her. To think of pouring gasoline into a tank, the dreadful machine churning away out there surrounded by unpredictable cows and grass dry as bone, filled her with dread. But she hid this away, for Hannah’s sake.

  They ate their breakfast of fried eggs and homemade yeast bread, bowls of oatmeal spooned up and appreciated.

  There was a time when breakfast consisted of barely enough watered-down cornmeal porridge to stave off the lurking hunger that made their stomachs, cramped and empty, growl with voices that drew down their courage and hope, leaving them to endure their days in wide-eyed incomprehension of what to do next. Until Hannah rode to town and worked for Harry and Doris Rocher, who paid her in enough flour and cornmeal to keep their stomachs filled and their courage up.

  The 1930s were lean, the Great Depression causing hardship even in prospering areas of the United States. On the Dakota plains, stark reality was crying children, hurting with hunger and dark-brown questioning eyes asking silently for what no one could provide.

  Sarah spread the fragrant butter on toasted bread, thanking God with every bite, her mind reaching out to her Heavenly Father as her spirit sang its praises.

  “Hannah, when you go to town, will you wear an apron and your white head covering, please?”

  Hannah’s dark eyes met her mother’s anxious ones, a quick rebellion thrusting its way between them, filtering out the love and obedience. “Why? There’s no other Amish for miles, hundreds of miles. Who cares what I wear?”

  “God sees. He cares. You are an Amish person, subject to an Ordnung. Hannah, your father’s words should mean more to you than they do. You cannot still them by your disobedience.”

  “I am not Amish unless I choose to be, Mam.” This with a proud toss of her head and a shrug of her wide, capable shoulders.

  Fear clenched Sarah’s stomach, a cold lump lodged in her chest as her oatmeal turned into a gray, inedible mass of anxiety. She longed for Mose’s calming presence, his gently spoken words as wise as those of the biblical Solomon.

  Nothing more was said, the dread in Sarah’s mind obliterating further conversation.

  Hannah rode off with Manny on the spring wagon, the triangle of a blue men’s handkerchief fluttering from her head, and no apron in sight. Shameful, that patched dress worn thin.

  Sarah knew that any further words of discipline would only fuel the fire of rebellion, so she let it go, turning to the dishes and her day’s work, the crushing weight of her daughter’s disobedience taking away the joy of the washing and ironing.

  The mismatched team, one steady, thick muscled and plodding horse from Lancaster County named Pete, was hitched with a lean and rangy brown mustang, a gift from their neighbor, Hod Jenkins. He never acquired a decent name after Hannah said he looked like a goat. So Goat he was. Goat and Pete, a pathetic pairing, driven by a girl dressed in little better than rags, that ridiculous kerchief tied on to the back of her head, her shoulders wide and proud, her goal keeping her head high, her eyes alive and questioning.

  She was a homesteader, the owner of the Bar S. A cattle owner. No one would have a finer herd. No one could get better prices at market time. They were well on their way, with the generous loan from her grandfather, the ten first-year heifers dropping calves next year.

  They had a bank account, a checkbook, and cash in her pocket to buy gasoline. They needed coffee and baking powder and chicken feed. Laying mash for the flock of precious chickens was an unimagined luxury after the generous lending from their grandfather.

  She drove the mismatched pair
as if they were fine thoroughbreds, and the patched, jingling wagon with the loose wheel spokes a grand carriage, the picture in her head differing greatly from the actual lowly form of transportation, the endless gray dust that squelched out from the steel rims of the wheels launching into the still air before powdering the papery grass.

  Hannah shivered in spite of herself. Her coat was too thin, too patched and worn.

  On either side of the grass-lined dirt road, the prairie fell away, level, unmoving, and endless. As far as the eye could see, after the clump of cottonwoods and jack pines in the hollow where the winding creek was deepest and widest in normal weather, there was nothing but grass and sky.

  The next road right led to the Klasserman ranch, a neat assembly of low buildings surrounded by heavy black Angus cattle, run by Owen and his wife Sylvia, a couple of German descent, hardworking, hard-eating and larger in size than most other folks who ran cattle and lived spare, lean lives that wore them down like polished wood, and creased and fissured their leathery faces. Not the Klassermans. They remained florid pink, smooth-faced and portly, their clothes pressed to perfection, washed until the whites shone blue.

  After that road, a few miles farther, was the road that led to Hod Jenkins’s spread. He had resorted to some barbed wire, the corner post leaning haphazardly, the wires rusted and sagging, like everything else around their place.

  The sight of the corner post took away Hannah’s proud thoughts and replaced them with a sort of humbling.

  More of a put-down, she thought grimly, thinking of Hod’s oldest son, Clay. Blonde and handsome, desperately in love with her, he was as bothersome as a determined green-headed horsefly. But he made her feel wanted and beautiful, everything she had planned to resist.

  Would resist. For one thing, he was a person raised according to worldly standards. A non-Amish. An English. A chasm stood between them, a divide that Clay simply did not understand or try to. His comprehension of all things spiritual was distorted by his infrequent church attendance, Hannah thought. He claimed he went with his parents, Hod and Abby, but knowing them, they went on an irregular basis themselves.

  Well, the neighbors’ church-going particulars were none of her affair, so she wasn’t going to ruin her morning thinking about Clay. If she was inclined to marry, which she was not, he wouldn’t be included in the list of possible suitors. She’d have to travel back home to Lancaster County, join the Amish church, then take up the serious vows of church membership, which meant giving her life to God, accepting Jesus Christ as her master and the author of her faith, a prospect that seemed a bit daunting.

  The Detweiler homestead was situated on 640 acres smack in the middle of nowhere, with not one other Amish family living closer than hundreds of miles, giving Hannah reason to question her future as far as staying Amish.

  She put all of this out of her mind as they approached the dusty little town of Pine, situated among clumps of half-dead trees and rusted out cars, broken-down farming equipment, and peeling signs.

  There was a livery stable, Rocher’s Hardware, the feed store, two cafes, and a few bars, places of evil that Mose had warned his children were the devil’s watering holes and to stay away from them.

  There was a gas station on the edge of town by the railroad tracks where the redroot and tumbleweed sprawled among each other, both sifting dust and dirt and whatever blew past. Hannah stopped the team, gave the reins to Manny and pushed open the heavy door covered with cracked white paint, fly speckled, the long window splotched with grease and fingerprints. The loud bell that jangled above her head made her jumpy.

  She didn’t smile at the young man behind the counter, just looked him square in the eye and said she needed five gallons of gasoline and a can to put it in.

  He looked back at her, then leaned on the counter, his elbows propping up his long bony shoulders, without smiling.

  “You that Detweiler girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I need the gas. Cows out of water.”

  “Oh, you got the engine, do ya?”

  Hannah nodded, irritated, watching his slow movements, getting the metal gas can, dusting it off by blowing on it, wiping the top of the can with a greasy rag, then methodically thumping the numbers on the buttons of the high-backed cash register.

  “That’ll be two bucks and fifty-four cents.”

  Hannah counted out the money, ten quarters and four pennies, placing them on the counter before turning to pick up the empty gas can. She walked to the pump, waited and waited, then went to find the youth, who was bent over a red metal tub, his pant legs hitched above his ankles, fishing around in the cold water for a bottle of root beer.

  “I need my gas can filled,” Hannah said loudly. He came up with his drink, turned, adjusted his pants and said, “Git it yerself.”

  Ashamed to tell him she didn’t know how, she stalked off, figured she could learn, unhooked the nozzle, and pressed a button.

  Nothing happened. Red-faced, she tried again. Still nothing.

  “Manny, get down offa there and help me with this thing,” she shouted, holding the pump nozzle in one hand and the gas cap in the other.

  Obediently he leaped off, hung the reins across the splintered dashboard, walked over, pressed not one lever, but two, and an aromatic stream of clear gasoline shot into the can. At the proper moment, Manny stopped the flow, capped the gasoline can, and hoisted it onto the back of the spring wagon.

  At the hardware, they made their purchases, promised Harry she’d be back the following week, said hello to the wan Doris, who clasped her hand in both of hers and begged her to return.

  The hardware store was more of a general store, stocking all kinds of groceries and housewares, fabrics, boots, and shoes. The place had returned to its usual disregard for order of any kind, but Hannah knew there would only be time for an occasional day’s work done there. The ranch required most of her time.

  The ride home was even colder, the dry air slicing through their thin outerwear, cold and cruel. Manny said they could have brought a horse blanket. Hannah shook her head, chapped hands to warm them, and drew back a nose-full of mucus, her teeth chattering.

  “This weather is odd,” Manny remarked.

  “Nothing’s odd out here. If you expect the worst, it’s normal. Terrible cold, high winds, drought, heat that scorches the grass, hailstorms—that’s all normal. So why would we worry about a still day?”

  Manny nodded, his eyes lifted to the yellow light that came from gray clouds, the air so cold and still. He didn’t like it. The hairs on his forearms prickled with electricity.

  The engine chugged away, propelling the pump into the well. Water gushed from the cast-iron hydrant, filling the galvanized tank to one half, three fourths, then to overflowing.

  The cows smelled the fresh water, came from every direction, hopping, trotting and bobbing through the trampled brown grass. The sound of the engine stopped them in their tracks. Heads lowered, they stood grouped together, sniffing the air, ears forward like black flaps, their fear of the engine overpowering their thirst. The large cow, the one who had turned on their father, shook her head and pawed the ground, her breath whistling through distended nostrils.

  “Watch her, Hannah,” Manny said, tense and alert. Hannah nodded, shutting off the engine.

  Snorting, blowing, the cows surged forward, dipped their noses and dry tongues into the tank brimming with cold water. Hannah stood watching the milling cattle jockeying for position, butting heads, tossing a smaller heifer like a half-empty sack of feed.

  They started the engine again, leaning, yanking on the starter rope until it popped, backfired, sparks flying. The cows took off, panicked, bawling short, sharp sounds of craziness, their tails held aloft like baseball bats.

  “Hey! Watch those sparks!” Manny yelled above the roar of the clattering engine.

  “It’ll be all right,” Hannah yelled back.

  When the tank was full, they shut off the ra
ttling contraption, glad to regain the sense of solitude and sweet lonesomeness that clumped together out in this boundless land without end, bringing substance to an unstable world. It was always like that. A town, a loud engine, company coming, letters from Lancaster—everything was a tangle of noise and uncertainty. Alone on the prairie, everything came together and made sense. The sky, the earth, the cattle, hopes and dreams. Thoughts became reality, and reality became thoughts. A oneness with the land materialized over time, a fine, sweet message that flowed back and forth without effort. To feel the level dirt beneath her feet, knowing it held an uncountable amount of roots that would push new growth to meet the undying sunlight every spring without fail, was a promise of the future, a substance she could feel in her spirit.

  If she listened to the neighboring ranchers, their past, their predictions of the future, she lost sight of this reassurance with the land. Folks just talked too much. They made her so tense and irritated. Take that Hod Jenkins and his boys. They’d as soon make fun of any new idea as try it out, stuck on that ranch that didn’t know the meaning of the word maintenance. If a hinge on a door broke, they merely lifted the door to swing it open or shut on one hinge. Every empty tin can was plastered with buck shot, left to rust in the grass for someone to cut themselves on. Their herd of cattle was slatted with protruding ribs, potbellied, scrawny-necked and ugly, coarse hair hanging off them like dead grass. That didn’t keep them from telling Hannah her fancy cows wouldn’t winter over good and would need help birthing calves.

  But she knew that without the Jenkinses, they would not have survived that first year. Generous and plain good-hearted, they took the Detweilers under their wings like a mother hen. Everything they had given, everything they had done, had been with the Detweiler’s best interest in mind. Even as they begged them to return to Lancaster County because they weren’t cut out to be homesteaders, the Jenkinses eyes were liquid with sympathy.

  The cows watered sufficiently, they walked back together, the stillness of their companionship the only thing necessary.