Hannah's Choice

by Jan Drexler

  “It isn’t your fault, Adam. Sometimes evil wins.” Samuel’s shoulders slumped.

  “The Penningtons need to know what happened. They were expecting us, and they’ll worry if we don’t show up.”

  “I’ll take word to them.” Samuel squeezed his wife’s shoulder. “I’ll drive into Lancaster right now.”

  “You must rest, Adam.” Dora stood and kissed her son’s cheek. “We’ll leave you alone now.”

  “Not Hannah.” Adam’s grip on her hand tightened. “I want Hannah to stay here.”

  Dora smiled at her as they left the room.

  “Will your daed be all right, making the trip to the Penningtons’?”

  Adam’s thumb pressed into the back of her hand. “He should be. He doesn’t have any passengers, and there’s nothing to connect him with me.” He let go of her hand and shifted in his bed, turning away from her. “The slave hunters have gotten what they were after. They’re on their way south again.” His voice was bitter.

  “Your daed is right. It isn’t your fault.”

  “But I am responsible. Those men trusted me, and now . . .” He clenched his fist and hit the mattress with a thump. “And now I can’t even go after them or try to help them.”

  Hannah took his hand, tried to open his fist and relax the muscles, but he pulled away from her. “Don’t, Hannah. Don’t try to make me feel better.”

  She rose from her seat. “I should go. You need your rest.”

  He took her hand and held it to his cheek. “I’m glad you were here. Did Ma or Pa ask you to come?”

  “Josef and I were taking Daed’s horses to the Studebakers for shoeing. Josef saw you on the road and we brought you here.”

  “Josef Bender.”

  “He’s staying with us . . . helping Daed prepare for the move.” She glanced at Adam’s face. He was looking past her, toward the window. She knew his every expression, every look. He was angry, but not with her.

  “Ja, well.” Adam’s eyes closed and he released her hand. “I think I’ll sleep now.”

  Hannah backed away from his bed and to the door. He didn’t move, not even as she opened the door and slipped out of the room. She hurried down the narrow stairway and waved to Dora on her way through the kitchen.

  Before leaving the Metzler farm, she glanced back at the second-story window of Adam’s room. He could have been killed. She could have lost him today.

  Tears filled her eyes at this thought, but she held them back. She wouldn’t cry until she was someplace where she could be alone. If only she could take the creek path, to go to her special place where the tree overhung the creek, but the snow was too deep. No one would go that way until spring.

  When she reached home, she broke a path through the deep snow to the smokehouse. It was empty and cold, but it was sheltered, and no one looking from the house would see her trail to the door. Once inside, she sat on an upended log and let the tears flow. Using her apron for a handkerchief, she buried her face in its skirt and sobbed.

  What if Adam had died? What if she and Josef had found his cold, lifeless body on the road? They had talked of how dangerous his work was, but she had never really thought of what that meant. She had treated it like a game, trying to avoid the slave catchers. But it wasn’t a game. It was deadly serious business. Why hadn’t she tried harder to convince Adam to stop? She should have done more—even promised to marry him if he would give it up.

  Her tears spent, she wiped her eyes and tried to smooth out the wrinkles in her damp apron.

  But even if she had begged him to, he could not give up his work. She would never be able to marry Adam, not even to stay on her beloved Conestoga. His involvement with the Quakers and the abolitionists was more important to him than his home. Than his family. Than her.

  Hannah sniffed, wiping her cheeks once more, just as the smokehouse door opened wide, blinding her with the sudden light.

  “Are you all right?”

  It was Josef. He had come for her.

  “I needed some time to think.”

  “Will Adam be all right?” Josef came in and pulled another log over, sitting close enough to put his arm around her.

  “I think so. Dora stitched up the worst of his cuts and cleaned the rest. He should be all right with a few days of rest.”

  “This wasn’t a random attack by bandits, was it?”

  Hannah shook her head. Adam’s activities were a secret, but she wouldn’t lie to Josef.

  “When this happened, was he doing that same thing you told him you would no longer do?”

  “Ja.”

  Josef pulled her close. “I don’t know what he was doing, and I don’t think I want to, just as long as you aren’t involved.” Hannah leaned her head on his shoulder. “Promise me. Promise you’ll never do the dangerous thing again.”

  Hannah hesitated. She didn’t want to be involved, didn’t want to be in danger or put anyone else in danger. If Adam came to her again, needing her help to rescue people from those slave hunters, she wasn’t sure she could refuse him. And after what happened today, perhaps Adam would not be able to continue.

  “I promise, unless the need is so great—”

  “Ne. I don’t care about the need. Nothing is worth putting you in that kind of danger.” He tilted her chin up so he could look into her eyes. “Promise me, Hannah. I don’t think I could live, knowing your life might be at risk.” He ran his thumb along her bottom lip. “If Adam loved you, he wouldn’t ask you to do this.”

  Hannah dropped her gaze. He was right. If Adam loved her, if he wanted to protect her, he would never have asked her to help him that first day.

  Three days later, Adam was still confined to his bed. Sitting up made him dizzy, so he lay back on the pillows and had plenty of time to think.

  Time to think about the slave catchers and what they had done. Time to think about Toby and Jackson and what they might be suffering because of him. Time to nurse his anger at the same time as he nursed his wounds.

  He shifted in his bed. Didn’t he have the right to be angry? Those men had attacked him, leaving him for dead, but it wasn’t his injuries that bothered him as much as the fate of the two men who had depended on him. Trusted him with their lives.

  And he had failed.

  Failed.

  That one word echoed through his mind, awake or asleep.

  A soft knock at the door. He opened his eyes. “Ja?”

  The door opened and Hilda’s head poked into the room. “Do you need anything?”

  “Just a new head. This one hurts so much I’m ready to cut it off.” He rubbed his temple, the only thing he had found to ease the pain.

  “You don’t need to snap at me.” Hilda came into the room and straightened his covers. “I know it hurts, but you must be patient.”

  “Patient? I’m tired of being patient.” He clenched his fist and pounded the mattress. At the sudden motion, pain surged through his head, but he ignored it. “How can I be patient when the men who did this are getting farther away every hour? And Toby and Jackson—they have no time for patience.”

  “Pa told the Penningtons what happened. If anything can be done, I’m sure they’re doing it.”

  Adam let his head fall back on the pillow. He was so tired, and he couldn’t get anyone to understand the urgency of what needed to be done. The Penningtons? As much as he loved the elderly couple, they were Quakers. They wouldn’t take any action to change what had happened. They would accept his failure as God’s will and prepare for the next time.

  Hilda moved to the table near his bed and poured a glass of water. She took a packet from her pocket and mixed a few grains of powder into the water.

  “What is that?”

  “Ma said to give you some laudanum if you were hurting. As surly as you’re acting, I’d say your head hurts pretty badly.”

  “Don’t give me that stuff. It will put me to sleep.”

  “And isn’t that what you want? You need to rest so you can get better.�
�� She sat on the chair by his side, holding the glass. She was only trying to help.

  “I’m sorry.” He reached for the glass. “I don’t know why I talk the way I do. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t come up here anymore.”

  She smiled. “I just want you to feel better. Drink the medicine and then sleep. I’ll bring your supper up in a few hours.”

  As she left the room, Adam set the glass down on the table. The laudanum would dull the pain, but it would make everything else dull too, and he had to think. What was he to do next?

  Hannah had been right. When he first started helping the runaway slaves find their way through Lancaster County, he hadn’t thought too much about the consequences. He hadn’t counted the cost—wasn’t that the phrase she used? But he wouldn’t have done things any different.

  But what if she had been with him on Monday? His head throbbed. If she had been with him then, if she had been hurt . . .

  Adam closed his eyes, imagining the scene. He imagined hitting the slave catchers with his fists . . . taking their whips from them and letting the end of the lash curl around their knees the way they had with Toby . . . driving them off, broken and bloody . . .

  He unclenched his fists, willing his hands to rest on the coverlet. That same image had come to him again and again as he lay here, as helpless in his bed as he had been on the snowy road. But it wasn’t the Mennonite way to be violent. As long as he could remember he had been taught to back away from confrontation, to turn the other cheek. In his church, as well as for the Amish and the Dunkards, it was a virtue to be defenseless, going beyond avoiding vengeance to welcoming persecution as an outward sign of his commitment to following Christ.

  All his nonresistance had gotten him was a busted head and sore body. He could live with that.

  But what had his nonresistance gotten Toby and Jackson? Beatings, chains, and re-enslavement. They were worse off now than if they had never escaped in the first place. They would be fortunate to survive the trip back south, and he hated to think what would happen to them when their slave masters got a hold of them again.

  Is this really what Christ meant when he told his followers to turn the other cheek? That by his obedience to the church, he would bring about the suffering and possible death of innocent people?

  Could it be that what his church had taught him, what Pa and Ma had taught him, was wrong?

  At the camp meetings, the preachers spoke against slavery, urging all Christians to work against it. They advocated the use of force, if necessary. Of deception. Of breaking the civil law to uphold God’s law.

  All this thinking made his head hurt. He reached for the glass of laudanum and stirred it slowly, letting the powder mix with the water, and then drank the bitter liquid in one gulp. He settled back on his pillows, waiting for the drug to take effect.

  He looked out the window, toward Hannah’s house. The farm was hidden behind a thick stand of trees, but he didn’t need to see it. He rubbed his hands over his face, feeling the numbing drug take hold.

  One thing he would never do again was to put Hannah in danger. Never within reach of the slave catchers.

  More than a week after the attack on Adam, Hannah saw him walking up the lane to the house and met him on the porch. The February wind was cold and held the promise of snow in gusts that whistled around the corner of the house. She stepped off the porch to meet him.

  “Hallo. It’s good to see you up and about again.”

  Adam stopped a few feet away. “I need to talk to you.” He shifted on his feet. “Is there somewhere we can talk without being overheard?”

  Hannah wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “And somewhere out of the wind.” She looked back at the house. It was warm, but Mamm was inside with the little ones and they would have no privacy. “Let’s go to the barn.”

  As she hurried to get out of the wind, Adam caught up with her. “Aren’t your pa and Jacob . . . and Josef in there?”

  “Ne, they all went to the Hertzlers’. We’ll be alone.”

  When they shut the door on the wind, the barn loomed around them in sudden silence. Hannah turned to face Adam. She hadn’t seen him since the day she and Josef had found him lying in the road. His bruises had faded, but the cut on his head was still an angry red.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m doing all right. The blow to my head was the worst part, and it stills aches a lot, but I can get around again.”

  “That’s good.”

  “I . . . I came to tell you . . . I’m leaving the Conestoga.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t stay here any longer. I’m going to Philadelphia to join the larger abolitionist movement.”

  “But what about your family? Your farm? Aren’t you buying the Hertzlers’ farm?”

  Adam paced to the door and then back, facing her. He took his hat off, turning it in his hands. “My family doesn’t know yet. But I’m leaving the money to pay for the farm.” He looked at her, a halfhearted grin twisting his mouth. “It would make a good dowry for Hilda, wouldn’t it?” His grin faded as quickly as it had come. “I hope you will understand, but I have to withdraw my offer of marriage.”

  Hannah looked down at her fingers, rolling the edge of her shawl between them. “Are you sure this is what you want to do, Adam?”

  He sighed and then leaned over to lay his hat on the wagon tongue. The new wagon. The one Daed had built for the move to Indiana.

  Adam was leaving. Everything she had counted on was slipping away as fast as dried beans through her fingers. She couldn’t keep him from leaving any more than she could keep Daed from going west. Her life was going to change. It was changing already. Tears pricked in her eyes. She was powerless to stop it.

  “Hannah, look at me. Please.”

  She turned to face him again, and he stepped up to her, taking her in his arms. “I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to put you in danger. But I have to do the task God has laid before me. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. “I understand. You must do this, but I’m afraid for you.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “You have no surety that what happened last week won’t happen again. And you’re walking right into the middle of the hornet’s nest.” Adam released her and started to step away, but she stopped him. “You be careful, Adam Metzler.”

  He pulled her to himself in a sudden, quick embrace, and then just as quickly let her go. He took his hat and slipped out the door without looking back.

  Hannah sank onto a keg sitting near the wagon. He was gone. She could hope he would change his mind, that he would never leave . . . but she knew better. Adam was a man who never took action on a whim. If he said he needed to go to Philadelphia, he would go.

  She stared, unseeing, at the straw-littered floor, her stomach a hollow, sour pit. He was gone as quickly as the water flowing by in the creek, never to return.

  30

  Annalise sat at her loom, the rhythm of the flying shuttle and beater punctuated by the rattle of the harnesses shifting as she alternated them with her feet on the treadles.

  With her hands busy, Annalise’s thoughts were free to light on whatever subject was foremost in her mind, and today it was Liesbet. Christian had forbidden fellowship with her daughter, but he couldn’t forbid the anguished thoughts that followed one another in a haphazard race.

  Her baby, setting up housekeeping in the city, having a child with an outsider. Her Liesbetli, lost to them forever. The shuttle came to a halt as Annalise’s thoughts pulled her gaze to the window facing Lancaster. The weaving room was on the opposite side of the house from the kitchen, and the view was only snowy woods. But on the other side of those woods were her Liesbetli . . . and her Englischer husband.

  Annalise sighed and pulled the shuttle the rest of the way through the shed, brought the beater forward, and shifted the harnesses once more. She was weaving sturdy brown linsey-woolsey to make trousers for the men, with wool dye
d walnut brown for the weft and linen threads for the warp. Yards of cloth to clothe her family, and the weaving had to be finished before the end of the month when the loom would be dismantled and packed into the big Conestoga wagon with the rest of their household goods.

  Another inch of weaving done, and Annalise paused to roll the finished fabric under again, making it easier for her to reach the unwoven warp. The babe was growing larger and more active as the winter passed, and weaving became more difficult. She straightened up, pressing her fists into the small of her back. Did Liesbet feel the same heaviness? Did she feel her babe move and cherish the memories? Was she warm enough? Did she have enough food?

  Seeing a movement at the door of the room, Annalise turned. Margli leaned against the doorframe, her finger in her mouth.

  “Hallo, liebchen. Did you and Hannah finish the carding?”

  “Ne, Mamm, but Hannah said I could get a drink.”

  Annalise smiled and patted the space next to her on the bench. Margli climbed up beside her and watched the shuttle flying back and forth.

  “I think you went the wrong way. The water is in the kitchen.”

  Margli touched the tightly strung warp as Annalise paused to roll the finished cloth again.

  “I know. But I like to watch you weave.”

  “You can watch me for a few minutes, but the last of the wool needs to be carded today so we can spin it into yarn.” Annalise looked down at her daughter. Margli was staring at the big loom. “Do you want to try weaving?”

  Margli nodded her head and Annalise shifted over so the little girl was seated on the center of the bench.

  “Take the shuttle like this . . .” Annalise showed her how to push the shuttle along the shed. Margli stretched to reach far enough, and pushed the wooden shuttle most of the way through. Annalise took it from the other side and pulled it the rest of the way. “All right, now pull the beater bar down to snug the thread tight against the cloth.”

  Margli got up on her knees to reach the beater, and Annalise helped her bring it forward with the right pressure.