Hope on the Plains

by Linda Byler

  CHAPTER 14

  When the hot winds faded to a lukewarm jostling of grasses, and the house cooled off at night, Hannah knew the worst of the summer was behind them.

  They redoubled their haymaking efforts, teaching Mary to drive the horses hitched double to the creaking old wagon, so that both she and Manny could fork hay, one on either side, expertly trampling it so that they could stack it high before returning to the barn.

  Manny would mow one day, they’d load it the next. There was an urgency to their work now, knowing how soon the mellow winds could turn sharp as a knife blade.

  They loved their work. Alone on the high plains with nothing but the sky and the land, flocks of wheeling birds bursting from the waving grasses like hurled stones, exploding into the sky until they formed a perfectly synchronized turn and settling again in a whir of sturdy little wings.

  The hay smelled sweet, dusty, and earthy. The sun was sizzling on their faces. Dust settled in the cracks of their arms, between their fingers and toes, and behind their ears where the sweat trickled down. The wagon groaned and creaked; the horses’ harnesses squeaked and flapped against their backsides. The wind blew and blew, raking across their faces, flapping dress skirts and handkerchiefs tied in a double triangle around their heads.

  Rabbits were unafraid, hopping in front of the horses like lead dogs, escorting them along the flat rows of mown hay. Prairie dogs eyed them with undisguised curiosity before popping into their holes, allowing the wagon to rumble across, only to reappear moments after, sitting upright, their eyes like marbles bulging from their heads.

  Occasionally, a small herd of rust-colored, white, and black antelope appeared on the horizon, the sight of the haymakers spurring them into a headlong flight, seeming to float above the prairie on wings. So smooth was their running they could have been on wheels. Shy deer emerged from hollows, bounding away on stick legs.

  Hannah felt good about the hay storage. There would be no anxiety this winter, no appetite-seizing panic that left her wild-eyed with fear. No Lemuel Short, either.

  Hannah burst out laughing, thinking of poor misguided Lemuel. He had been quite an actor, though. Very good at his craft.

  “What’s so funny?” Manny grinned.

  “Oh, nothing. Thinking of last winter. Poor Mr. Short.”

  “We were fooled. Thoroughly taken across.”

  “We sure were!” Hannah shook her head.

  “We learn.” Manny laughed, a happy sound Hannah often heard these days. He was alive, ripe with youth and good health, his arms muscled from the constant hard work, his long dark hair swinging almost to his shoulders. He never wore a hat. Devout in his faith, Amish to the core, there were no homemade straw hats available. Sarah never bothered ordering one from Lancaster County, so, his old one in shreds, he went without.

  It became a family joke, Manny without a hat. In winter, he wore the serviceable black felt hat with the wide brim, but never took to wearing one in the summer.

  Forking hay furiously to get the load done, by dinnertime they were ravenous. Sitting atop a load of hay, the sun directly overhead, her stomach hollow, saliva collecting in her mouth as she thought of fried bread and schmear kase, Hannah chewed on a strand of hay and, without telling Manny, plotted her trip to the old Perthing place.

  He’d try and persuade her to stay.

  On the day she was prepared to go, a car, a red convertible with the white top down and a white stripe of along the side, came chugging up the road.

  Hannah stood to the side of the living room window so as not to be seen and watched the slow approach, trailed by a cloud of the usual brown dust. It was Harry Rocher, and his wife, Doris, her hair piled on top of her head and covered by a white, gauzy headscarf. She was dressed in a pale yellow dress.

  She remained in the car, watching with her normal pinched expression as Harry approached the house. Sarah was in the garden, hoeing up the dry soil around the gnarly celery. She laid down the hoe, dusted her hands, wiping them on her patched gray apron as she walked toward Harry Rocher.

  “Hello.”

  Harry Rocher stopped just as he was about to step onto the porch when he spied Sarah and smiled. “Mrs. Detweiler.”

  “Yes, Mr. Rocher. It’s good to see you again. If Doris would like, we can have a cold glass of tea together.”

  “No, no. I doubt if she would. I came to ask if Hannah would be willing to lend assistance at the store. My wife, Doris, is unwell. She went back East for a time but has returned. Why, I can only guess. Perhaps to make my life miserable. This time, I’d be willing to pay Hannah a small wage, beings as you’re fairly well established here.”

  “Let’s go in and ask Hannah, shall we?” Sarah asked. The poor man. Thin as a rail, like a stick man, with that stricken look about him, like a whipped puppy.

  Hannah met them at the door. It was all arranged. She would work two whole days, spend the night, for five dollars. She was expected to resume her duties as before, cleaning, organizing at the store, and do some cooking. Mr. Rocher would transport her, if it was allowed.

  The cogs on Hannah’s brain wheel caught and set her thoughts in motion. Perfect. This would be her biggest need, the most pressing reason for a horse. Her ride to work. Jerry didn’t need to know her boss had a perfectly good car. She needed a horse to ride to Pine.

  “No, there’s no need for you to drive your car. I always enjoy riding my horse to town. Thank you.” Harry agreed, grateful for her promise to help out.

  Hannah spun in a circle on her tiptoes, arms outspread. “Just perfect, Mam. Five dollars a week till the snow flies will stock our pantry with everything we need—flour, cornmeal, oatmeal, coffee, tea—all of that stuff. We can make our own way this winter. Nobody has to look out for us, not the Klassermans or the Jenkinses, and none of the greenhorn Amish either.”

  She gave one last exaggerated twirl on one foot. “We are westerners. Real ranchers, planning our cattle drive. Homesteaders who made it pretty good, without our father.”

  Manny smiled and Sarah laughed outright. She wanted to hug her again, with abandon, the way she’d thrown herself in her mother’s arms after Manny’s measles rash appeared. Since then, a certain selfconsciousness had come between them, as if they were much more aware of each other. That move had been so uncharacteristic of Hannah, exposing a new vulnerability she had never been aware of. And now Sarah knew that beneath Hannah’s veneer of disloyalty and unkindness was a profound love of family that she had never displayed with such abandon.

  This created a shyness in Hannah, a wariness of her mother’s trying to force that vulnerability again and corner her into a sort of submission, into changing and being a better, more unselfish person, when she planned on clapping that veneer firmly back in place, and keep it there.

  “Yes, Hannah, we are survivors, aren’t we?” Sarah said.

  Hannah spread her fingers. “Remember when Eli got lost that time? Dat’s death, winter storms, fire, diseases, starving hungry, cold, drought, heat.”

  “Lemuel Short!” Mary shouted.

  Eli giggled and blinked his eyes owlishly. He remembered Mr. Short and had loved every story he told while sitting on his knee.

  “He was a good man underneath all of his troubles,” Sarah said.

  “He was not. He was an actor,” Hannah said, forcefully.

  “Whatever. I still do feel sorry for him in prison. If we could, we’d go visit him and take him some food.”

  Then there was nothing left to do but dress in her most brilliantly colored dress, comb her hair becomingly, brush Pete and saddle him, tell Mam and Manny she was going to visit Ben Miller’s, and then ride off in that direction.

  Summer’s end was all around her. The grass looked as it always did after a drought, but the assortment of weeds by the dusty road were bent double, heavy with seed pods and dust. The butterflies had left, except for the dizzy white moths that fluttered over everything. The crickets and katydids set up a racket, undeterred by the long, dry
summer.

  Hannah wasn’t sure exactly where the Perthing place was, so she kept a steady eye on the horizon. The prairie could be tricky when you were searching for something, like the roof of a building or a creek bank or a lone tree. Everything appeared level, but there were deceiving swells, the land rising slightly, and then falling away to a large hollow, like a shallow bowl. The road was straight, disappearing to a point in the distance.

  Hmm. Not much as far as she could see.

  Pete was acting strangely. His head was lower than usual, and he kept stumbling, as if his feet were too heavy to clear the ground. She tugged on the reins, chirped, making the sound most horses understood as a sign to quicken their pace. His sweat-soaked ears flicked back, then forward, but he did nothing to increase his speed.

  She wondered idly whether he had had a drink of water before she left home. He certainly was not in top form but, oh well, he had a lot of miles on him and the day was as hot as the middle of summer. Would this heat never end?

  She noticed the swaying, then. The unnatural rhythm, as if Pete couldn’t carry his back legs properly. She had just cleared the saddle, her feet hitting the ground, when Pete went down in the back, his legs folding up like a massive accordion.

  His front legs stayed stiff, his neck outstretched, the whites of his eyes showing his alarm, as if he did not understand what was happening. Then his front legs buckled, and he went down on his knees, grunting with an expulsion of air. He rolled sideways, his legs bent and the saddle half buried beneath him.

  Hannah stood helplessly by. This was a fine pickle. Out in the middle of nowhere with a horse down. Great!

  She tugged on one rein and called, “Pete! Come on here! Get up! Pete!” But he never really made an effort. He just lay there as if he planned on taking a long nap.

  Why was a horse so large when they were laying there helplessly? He was like a mountain of flesh, and as immovable as one.

  The sun beat down on both of them, as if purposely making things worse. Hannah’s mouth was dry and perspiration beaded her brow. All around her, the wind kept up its steady, even rustling of the grass, tossing it, and tearing at her perfectly combed hair, flapping the triangle of her dichly.

  Hannah tried to get Pete back on his feet, lifting, sliding her hands beneath the impossibly large mound of his body. Her face reddened with exertion, her temper steadily becoming shorter, like a length of rope being eaten by fire.

  She straightened and took a long breath, folded her hands into fists, and stamped her foot. Now what? Keep walking? Keep looking for this old place even if she couldn’t see a roof or the tip of a windmill for miles in every direction?

  She could leave Pete, turn around, and go back home. But who would ever get this horse back on his feet? If she walked the long dusty road home, it would be a few hours, at least, before she could return with Manny and Goat and the spring wagon. Even then, what could they do?

  Hannah plunked herself down. She studied the rise and fall of Pete’s heaving sides and thought he didn’t appear to be in pain or particularly stressed. He had never done anything like this before.

  She was thirsty. She wondered if this was how people who were lost in the desert felt. She couldn’t sit in the heat and the wind and dry out; she’d have to walk in one direction or the other.

  On her feet again, took stock of the situation. Pete lay in the middle of the narrow dirt road. If an automobile or a truck came barreling along, it would plow right into him. She renewed her efforts imploring Pete to stand, tugging on the reins, calling his name, but he only opened his eyes wider and grunted that strange whooshing sound.

  Hannah was just about to start walking back toward home when she heard, or rather, felt, the dull clop of hoof beats. Someone was riding toward her. Help was on the way. Billowing dust clouds preceded a galloping dark horse, his legs pounding the parched earth. The hatless rider, judging by the width of him, looked much like Ben Miller.

  Selfconscious now, Hannah raked at her disheveled hair and the wildly flapping dichly, which had slid back on her head, tugged by the mischievous wind.

  The gladness in her eyes darkened, replaced by a dull sheen of pride.

  Jerry Riehl.

  Oh, of course, she thought bitterly. Damsel in distress, plunked right down in his path. The chivalrous rescuer—big, bold, and brave!

  The magnificent horse slid to a stop with an easy touch on the reins. Hannah could tell it was easy, not the usual western way of the Jenkinses, sawing and pulling on the reins attached to the bit in the iron-mouthed mustangs they rode, half-broke and cranky.

  “Whoa! What have we here?” Jerry sat astride his horse with the easy grace of being one with the animal, smiling down at her with his white, even teeth in his dark face.

  Why did she think of the scent of toothpaste and aftershave? She glared up at him, figuring that if she could convey all that ill-will, he’d have no idea she remembered ever kissing that grinning mouth, and, even more important, that she was certainly not glad to see him.

  She just had this bit of a problem with a downed horse.

  “You don’t have anything here. I do,” she stated, flat and hard as a sheet of granite.

  His chuckle increased her irritation. Sit there and laugh, she thought bitterly.

  “Yeah, you definitely do.”

  There was no way to answer that so she didn’t.

  Jerry leaned forward and crossed his arms on the horn of the saddle as his horse snorted, sidestepped, and pranced as if there were springs in his hooves.

  She wished he’d fall off. Flat on his righteous backside.

  He dismounted, all fluid grace and expertise, swinging the reins to the ground and leaving his horse standing there, still as still, as if he was made of stone. Trained like that, Hannah knew.

  Jerry ignored her as he ran his hands across Pete’s back, felt his ears and checked his legs, which were now stretched out full length.

  “How’d he go down?” he asked, straightening up and running one hand through his dark hair.

  “He just went down.”

  “No, I mean, did he collapse suddenly, or did he act strange? Did his gait change? Did he maybe go down in the back?”

  “His walk wasn’t right. He swayed. And then his back legs kind of lowered.”

  “And then they went down?”

  Hannah nodded.

  Jerry walked around Pete and considered the problem. The wind blew, lashing the grass to a rustling frenzy. It grabbed Hannah’s kerchief off her head and sent it spinning away, across the now almost horizontal grass.

  Jerry lifted his head and searched the horizon at the same time they heard a pronounced rumble, deep in a bank of roiling clouds to the north.

  “Does a storm crop up at midday out here?” Jerry asked.

  Hannah shrugged.

  “At any rate, there’s one on the way,” he concluded.

  “It won’t hit us, coming from the north.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve lived here a lot longer than you have. I should know.”

  “You mean to say, in the few years you’ve been here, it hasn’t happened? Doesn’t say it couldn’t now.” His eyes watched the clouds.

  In spite of the hot sunlight, there was a decided change in the atmosphere. A prickly kind of feeling, as if each blade of grass now crackled instead of rustling. A boom in the distance rattled the ground beneath their feet.

  Jerry said sternly that they’d have to try and get Pete to stand up, then perhaps get him to the ranch, if he could walk. He guessed Pete had kidney problems, going down at the back like he had.

  “Are you feeding him corn?” he asked.

  Hannah snorted. “Yeah, we raise a lot of corn out here where it never rains.”

  A quick flicker of irritation rose in his dark eyes. He turned. “Come on, put your hands beneath his withers. When I pull on his head, push. Heave toward the front.”

  “What does that have to do with it?”


  Another boom of thunder sounded in the distance. A split second of jagged white lightning appeared in the steadily darkening north. Jerry stood far too close to her, lowered his face, his dark eyes boring into hers and ground out, “Do as I say for once.”

  She refused. What were two hands going to amount to? Nothing. That mound of horseflesh could not be moved by any mere human, she was sure. He thought he could come out here from soft little Lancaster County and tell her what was what, the weather and everything. Well, he couldn’t.

  Jerry urged Pete, lifting his head by his neck and drawing him up and forward, straining, calling his name in a level voice. Hannah stood and watched him, her arms crossed, her skirt blowing wildly in the wind. She hadn’t tried to retrieve that dichly, he noticed.

  Another boom of thunder. The wind increased. Jerry shouted something Hannah didn’t understand. Suddenly he loosened his grip on Pete’s neck, stalked over to his horse and lifted the reins. He looked at Hannah, his eyes snapping, his dark hair blowing up off his forehead, accentuating the stark wings of his black eyebrows.

  “I’m leaving. I don’t trust that storm,” he shouted against the ever-increasing wind.

  “It won’t hit us. It’ll go to the east. Round by Pine.” Her words deterred him, but only momentarily.

  “You better leave the horse. Come on, I’ll take you home.”

  Hannah shook her head, crossed her arms tighter, her shoulders hunched forward.

  Jerry mounted his horse. “Come on!”

  “I’m not going with you.”

  “You can’t stay here.”

  “I sure can.”

  Jerry’s eyes scanned the north. The prairie appeared yellow, drenched in a strange glow against the backdrop of storm clouds as black as night. As they watched, the sun’s heat became weak, losing its power, like the wick on a kerosene lamp when it’s turned down.

  Another rolling, menacing boom rattled the ground beneath their feet. The air around them crackled.

  Hannah watched the light fade and felt a prickle of doubt. She weighed her options: stay here, in the middle of nowhere, unprotected, a sitting duck for the wind and the probable hail, or get up on that saddle with Jerry.