Abram looks at me with new concern in his expression, eyes glancing down at the rifle in his hands. “You don’t think Daed’ll come back?”
“I think he’s got an excellent chance of coming back, probably a better chance if he knows you’re safe at home instead of being a worry to him out there during the hunt. Remember, Daed won’t be fighting the thing bare-handed, and he won’t be alone. But he’ll still need all the help he can get, and part of that will be to know that you’re safely where you should be, and that Mamm will not have to fend for herself if the worst should happen to him.”
Abram thinks about it for a moment, then releases a tired sigh. “So you don’t even think I should ask?”
I lower the rifle and look Abram in the eyes. “I’m not going to lie to you, Abram. I’d rather you not go. I think you should stay. But if you’re dead-set on asking, I won’t tell you not to.”
“Especially since you’re hoping to go yourself.” Abram takes a look up at the sun as it crests above the mountains. “They’ll be gathering at the Thompson house pretty soon. Let’s go.”
With a heavy heart and a worried sigh, I nod and we cross back toward the carriage.
* * *
In the front yard of Olaf Thompson’s expansive property, men of the community gather, some of their women with them. Beau Thompson is there, with my sister Rebecca, and as we pull up she’s quietly conferring with him. He kisses her forehead, holding her little chin in his fingers.
The men hold rifles and they’re dressed for warmth, with thick boots, heavy coats. They even wear orange safety vests over their black and dark blue coats, a concession to modernity and to good-ol’ common sense. The vests have big pockets for ammo boxes, and they all seem to be filled.
Mamm is here with Daed, and they look at me and Abram as we approach, each holding a rifle. They know what we’re thinking, and Daed is already shaking his head as we get close enough for him to start saying what his gestures are already telling us.
“No, Hannah.”
I say, “Daed, I’m the best shot in the county and you know it.”
“I know no such thing,” he says, his eyes hardly able to meet mine. “It doesn’t matter anyway. This is no job for a woman.”
“Honestly, Daed, these are modern times, gender roles have changed.”
“That is why we live as we do,” Daed says. I look at Mamm, and she offers an expression of hopeless resolution - brows raised, mouth a lipless slit. She nods, wordlessly agreeing with her husband’s proclamation.
I knew she would. And I know what kind of resistance I’m going to face by making the offer I’m making. I know what kind of Old World attitudes the men of my community have, and the women share them, by and large. I personally think some of our culture’s perspectives are a bit backward. But a lot of them are stalwart, traditional beliefs that are of even greater value today than ever, since they are in ever-decreasing supply. I think there are some things that are best left to men, and some best left to women.
But any job anywhere should be held by those who are most qualified, for whatever reason. And I’m the best shot in this little community, whether my daed will admit it or not.
But my daed doesn’t see it that way, and it has as much to do with his own view as with the views of the other men in the community, even if he won’t admit it.
He looks around, shaking his head. He knows that for me to go would compromise his standing in the community, among the elders, and lead to reassessments of him as a father and as a man:
“There’s that man who went bear hunting and spent the whole time hiding behind his own daughter!”
“What kind of man sends a little girl in to fight a man-killer like that bear? Coward. Fool.”
“If I were that bear, I’d have picked him as the next to go!”
No matter how good a shot I am, Daed cares more that he be able to hold his head high, in a crowd or among the elders, at the dinner table or before a mirror.
And I understand that. My daed has had a tough time looking into the mirror lately. He’s worked hard to earn the kind of self-respect that he’d always merely assumed. His self-image has already been shattered. Rebuilding himself is challenge enough, without me undermining him at ever turn, or any turn. Despite everything that’s happened between us, and everything that hasn’t happened, I want him to thrive and I consider it my obligation to help him to thrive. I owe it to him for having the courage to confess his weakness to me, for having the strength to change his behavior.
It’s a very rare thing, and very admirable. It takes as much strength as even my powerful Daed may have in his store. And I should be a source of strength for him now, not a drain on that same reserve.
And I know there’s even more to it. I’m worried about him, the same way I’m worried about Abram. A hunt like this can be deadly. Rebecca is worried about Beau, I can see it in her eyes as she mutters to him in the unheard cloud of their intimacy. Ruth and Samuel are also here, Ruth stoic nearby, her husband fidgety and nervous.
And in the same way, Daed is worried about me, protective of me. He doesn’t want me going on the hunt for fear of my life. And he daren’t say it for fear that I’ll disobey him. He’d rather have me think he cares more about the elders than he does about me.
But the opposite is true.
And I will not take this from him. It makes him feel honorable, and he is honorable. It makes him feel that he’s putting my needs above his own, and he is. It makes him feel like my father.
And he is.
Simon approaches us, sharing a nod of mutual respect with Daed. He looks at me, at the rifle in my hands, and says, “You brought us an extra rifle.” He smiles, telling me that he knows why I’m really holding it. Telling me that, despite my intentions, I won’t be holding it for very much longer.
I look at the rifle, a symbol of my independence, of my personal power, and I prepare to turn it over to a man. My husband.
No, I tell myself. This is no symbol, this is no embodiment of your person or your skills or your worth. This is no more the essence of you than those Whoopie pies were. You’re not turning anything over to Simon that you haven’t already given: trust, mutual respect, and support.
I hand him the rifle with a smile and a kiss, lips touching to renew our unwavering commitment to each other, our future, and our God. I say, “You be careful, and come home to me soon.”
Simon takes the rifle and looks it over. “Seems a likely tool.”
I say, “Really, Simon. Don’t be swept away by your passions, or they’ll get the better of you.”
He looks at me, giving me a little kiss, his lips against mine in an unspoken promise to return. “You’re my only passion,” he says.
Nearby, Rebecca, Beau and her parents are also saying their goodbyes. “Don’t worry, Rebecca, Mamm, I’ll be fine.”
“Of course you will be,” Ruth says flatly.
“I know you’ll make us proud, lad,” Samuel says, earning his wife’s stern glare.
She looks her husband over, not bothering to hide the sneer on her lips or the shake of her head, hands crossed over her breast.
Rebecca says, “I wish you didn’t have to go, Beau. I’m afraid...”
“Don’t be,” Beau says, looking deep into her eyes. It was as if his own parents weren’t standing right there - he certainly didn’t notice me overhearing their conversation. Beau gives Rebecca a little kiss. “You think I won’t do everything I can to come back without a scratch?”
“It’s not just you out there in those woods,” Rebecca says. “Beau, we’re supposed to get married in less than a month!”
“That’s right, we are.” Beau smiles, but even at this distance I can see that he’s hiding something.
Worry.
Fear.
He goes on to my sister, “So don’t think you’re going to get off that easy. I’m gonna come back here and marry you and there won’t be a thing you or that bear or anyone can or will do about it.”<
br />
Rebecca forces a smile and lets her eyes dip shut while her beloved kisses her again.
“Well, at least one man from this family should step forward,” Ruth says. “And it might as well be the one man in the family who does it.”
Beau says, “Mamm...”
“Fine, fine,” she says, looking away to try to hide her contempt. She turns to Rebecca instead. “Don’t you worry, honey. You let him go. When he comes back, you’ll know you’ve got a real man for a husband-to-be.”
Without taking her eyes off Beau’s, Rebecca says to Ruth, “I already know that.”
Nearer to me, Abram and my Daed are just ending a conversation that more closely resembles the one he had with me than the one Ruth is having with Beau.
Abram will be staying behind. He rolls his head on his shoulders, as if I hadn’t warmed him several times not to get his hopes up. He should have expected our Daed to refuse his request. I’m just gratified that he does it with the handshake of one honorable man to another, and not a fist across the mouth with enough force to put my brother out for six hours to ensure his lack of participation. At one point, my daed would no doubt have considered that a kindness; and he would have meant that. It would have been the action of a man protecting a boy. But the handshake is the gesture of one man to another, asking for his sacrifice of honor and adventure in favor of practicality and true duty. And Abram accepts the gesture, nodding, rising to the task he is called to perform, lacking entirely in glory or power or any real means of graduating within the community, or out of it.
But he will do what he has to do, because he’s becoming a man.
Daed returns to the other men as Rebecca approaches us. We stand together, three siblings, in a way we’ve never really done before. We lived together all our lives, of course, but there was always that divide between Rebecca and us two. It was always the folks and their precious Rebecca on one side of an invisible wall, Abram and I on the other side. But now the three of us stand together, with no partition between us and the members of our family, or father and betrothed, as they walk away from us. And the one thing we know for certain, the one thing we can cling to, is that their return is by no means assured.
Jessup’s fate was never guaranteed, even by his likability, by his grace and good humor. Nobody is granted any more than God will allow, and that puts us all in the hands of something far greater than fate.
But even in this time of trial, we’ve been blessed by togetherness, a new bond shared with these three different people of common blood. Rebecca and I have had a chance to bond since the gap has been bridged between me and the folks. And the gap between me and Rebecca has also shrunk, such that we can virtually hop over it and become closer.
Friends as well as family.
Now I watch as my older sister and my younger brother, virtual strangers, are drawn together by these terrible circumstances. All of us wait in the crucible of our helplessness. For all our strengths and skills, there is nothing for us to do now but hope, and pray.
And wonder.
Rebecca is the first. “Hannah, I’m afraid for Beau. He’s not like Daed, he’s not made for this kind of thing.”
“Like his father?” I ask, quite innocently. I like Samuel, I admire him, and I mean no insult against him, but I can tell by Rebecca’s glare that I accomplished the opposite of my goal. I add, “Refined, I mean, a gentleman.”
Rebecca smiles and nods, but I know there is more plaguing her. Samuel isn’t the typical Amish man, who is generally strident and strong, a farmer, big and powerful by necessity. Samuel is a different type of man, whose soul and heart do the heavy lifting. His brain and his mind have helped him raise the finest chickens in the state, and he tends to them with care.
He’s a caring man.
Not a hunter.
I say of Beau, “Well, there’s always his mother’s influence too. Were she to go out there, I wouldn’t give any bear more than ten minutes to say its prayers.” We share a little chuckle, but Rebecca’s withers away under the pressure of her worry.
Abram says, “If I were going out, I’d be able to make sure your Beau comes back without a scratch.”
Rebecca offers him a tender little smile. “I’d rather have you safely home with us anyway, Abram. It’s been too long, were anything to happen to you now, it will have been far too short.”
I say to Abram, “Too bad juggling isn’t considered a deadly weapon or you’d have an even better chance than Ruth!”
Another chuckle, another quick return of that painful, lingering silence. Abram says, “Next year, this happens again, I’m going.”
I put my hand on Abram’s arm. “I don’t think this happens every year, Abram.” He looks at me as if disappointed, shoulders slouching, head lolling. I add, “But if it does, they’d be crazy not to take you along.”
Abram seems satisfied with that, and he’s going to have to be, because there’s not much more I or anybody can tell him. This will not be his day.
I miss Abram, and he misses me too. It’s one of the few positive emotions I can cling to now. No matter what, I have to tell myself, we’ll always have each other.
Then a familiar voice grabs our attention, and we all turn to see our minister, the aging Paul Malfee, tall and grey and slender, standing on his front porch, a few feet above the ground, giving him a pulpit for his address.
“Gentlemen,” he says, adding, “and ladies, we ask the Lord’s blessing be with us today, that He guide us to find and uproot this force of nature that threatens us, that he will bless the animal with a quick and painless dispatch, that we all will be returned safely and quickly. Amen.”
The crowd mutters a repeated, “Amen,” and then dissolves into two camps, the men climb into the carriages and the rest of us gather up and prepare to see them off.
I look at them as Mamm approaches, looking at us as she’s never done before. And then I reason, if seeing Abram and Rebecca together fills my own heart, just think of what seeing the three of us together must mean for Mamm!
Mamm, think for a moment. How difficult it must have been for her to obey my father’s misguided parental theories, to hold back her love and attention from me and Abram all these years. How unnatural that must have felt to her, how unnecessary and foolish. But my daed isn’t the kind of man to be challenged in his own home, much less so was he that twenty-three years ago when the entire, unfortunate experiment began. She must have been intimidated by him, even afraid of him.
I sure was.
In some ways, I think I still am. But I’m getting older, stronger, growing into my power as a woman, as a person, as a member of this family and this community. I’m not as easily frightened as I used to be.
But my Mamm still seems like the poor little church mouse she’s always been. Daed has changed his behavior toward me and Abram, giving us more love and consideration, being less demanding of our time and our labor. But things between him and Mamm were never made evident to me and Abram, we only saw their interaction from a certain remove.
So I can’t tell if he’s treating her better than before, or worse, or no differently at all. She doesn’t seem to be acting any differently, except to be a bit warmer to me and Abram, almost gratefully so. But it’s been so long since she’s allowed herself to do that, to be that way with us. Like Daed, she doesn’t seem certain of exactly how to do it, even though loving your children should be a perfectly natural and instinctive thing. And perhaps it is. But showing love to a person isn’t so natural, and for some people it simply isn’t possible.
Not for Mamm, I’m glad to say. Those little changes start to poke through the same subservient persona more and more, but it’s been a slow turning, especially when I think that I don’t really know what point she was starting from.
But it doesn’t really matter. It’s where we’re going that counts, not where we’ve been. It’s the future that matters now.
And it means everything.
Mamm looks at us, a bittersweet
smile on her aging face as she gently strokes the back of Abram’s hair. “Okay then, let’s see them off and then get back to the house. Our men need to come home to clean shelter and hot meals, yes?”
We three nod and turn as the four carriages carrying our eight hunters roll away from Olaf’s home. The men sit stoically, rifles in cruxes of their arms. Simon turns and offers me a nervous little wave, and I return it with a smile I know he can see, even at that distance.
But there is one man left behind by the others; Samuel, who walks in small steps away from the porch with his stern wife Ruth behind him. Rebecca, standing with us, is not there to impair or impede Ruth’s ire, and apparently being in public wouldn’t forestall her diatribe any further.
“That’s right,” Ruth says to Samuel without inspiring him to turn. “Slink away like the little rat you are. How dare you, send our boy off while you can’t even lift a rifle, much less shoot one?”
Samuel says, “You know very well I have brittle bones. The recoil from one of those things would shatter my collarbone.”
“It’s backbone that’s your problem, you sniveling little whelp! Maybe if you had the bones of a man, and the guts of a man, our boy wouldn’t be going out there to risk his life to protect yours. Talk about pearls before swine!”
“I’m very proud of him too, dear,” is all Samuel can manage to say before shuffling back to their carriage, Ruth climbing into the other side. “Oh come on,” she says as he fumbles with the reins, “honestly, can’t you do anything? I suppose if you shake those reins your arms will pop out of their sockets. Don’t pull them too hard either! Be careful, your fingers are likely to turn to dust and crumble from the sheer force of the horse’s head when it looks to the right.”
Their carriage rolls off, and just in time. I don’t think I can stand another minute of that nasty crone. I’m glad she’s embraced Rebecca and is treating her better, and the fact that I had some small part in that fills me with a great sense of wholeness. But to hear her deride that poor, good man Samuel fills me with a bile I find hard to express and even harder to contain.
Whoopie Pie Promise - Book 3 (The Whoopie Pie Juggler: An Amish of Lancaster County Saga series) Page 3
