Piecing It All Together

by Leslie Gould

  A few times, Abel rode across the county to check on Asher and the farm. The two had always resembled each other, but now Asher was much smaller and looked much older. Abel was kind and concerned. He clearly cared for his brother. When Emma had shifted her affection from Abel to Asher, there was some animosity between the brothers—and now it was gone.

  In the spring, as the Miller brothers and two of their cousins and all of their families packed their covered wagons to head west, Asher went out to start the chores while Emma finished cleaning the fish they’d caught in the creek that afternoon. The warm weather seemed to be restoring Asher’s health some, and his spirits were better too.

  A half hour later, Emma slipped into the barn, calling out to him, but he didn’t answer. She waited a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Asher sat on a bale of hay, his head resting against the wall. Perhaps the fishing had been too much for him.

  She called out his name again, but he didn’t stir.

  “Asher.” She took his cold hand and then put her face up to his nose, hoping to feel his breath. She waited and waited. But he was completely still. She sat down beside him, resting her head on his shoulder. She sat there and held his hand and watched the light change through the barn door, as numb as she’d ever felt in her entire life. Why had he come down with diphtheria and not her? Why did he have to die young when he’d had so much vigor and hope for the future?

  Finally, she rose and shuffled up the trail to her parents’ house to ask for help to move her husband back up to the house to clean and prepare his body. She was a vidvieb now.

  After they buried Asher next to their son and daughter, Emma moved back to her parents’ place, and Abel moved onto Asher’s farm, although Emma took Bossie, Red, and the chickens with her. They were all she had of any value.

  When she was a baby, and no one, not even her mother, thought she’d survive, her Dawdi had held her for hours, praying over her. Now he often sat beside her, patting her hand. She knew he was praying but wasn’t sure he should bother. She seemed to be crying more and more, not less. She felt no will to live, and she couldn’t understand why the Lord hadn’t taken her too.

  A few times, Abel came to visit. Mamm finally spelled it out to Emma as they both kneaded dough one morning. “He wants to court you.”

  Emma didn’t reply.

  “You need a husband,” Mamm said.

  It had only been ten months since Hansi died, nine since she’d lost the baby, and three since Asher had passed. Jah, Abel was the most practical choice. He wasn’t Asher, though, and didn’t have the zeal and spirit that had drawn Emma to her husband. However, she couldn’t think about courting so soon. “I’m not ready to marry again.”

  “Don’t be foolish.” Mamm wiped the back of her floured hand across her forehead. “Widows remarry within a few months all the time.” Mamm sank her hands back into the dough. “It’s either that or go to Indiana with us. We’re leaving next May.”

  “Dat decided to go?”

  Mamm didn’t answer her directly. Instead, she said, “It’s what’s best for our family.”

  “Can’t I stay here with Dawdi? If I decide to court Abel, I’ll let you know. If not, I can travel west with the next group.”

  Mamm shook her head. “I don’t want to leave you behind, not without a husband. You’re not well.”

  Emma felt hollow inside. “What if I go to Indiana but then decide to come back here?”

  “I’m certainly not opposed to you marrying Abel—if you wanted to right now, I’d be fine with that. But if you’re not ready, you should go with us. Surely, you’ll have recovered by this time next year, and then you can return, if that’s what you decide to do.” She flipped the dough over and paused for a moment. “Our ancestors fled Switzerland, then Germany, and finally left Lancaster County. Someday, some of our descendants will leave Indiana and go even farther west. Nothing stays the same, Emma.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Dat, a little reluctantly, bought a covered wagon for the household goods and a spring wagon for his farm and blacksmith tools, extra food, and crates of chickens and piglets. Emma longed to take the cooker Asher had given her, but there was no room in the covered wagon or the freight wagon. She had to leave it with Abel.

  One afternoon in mid-April, Emma ventured down the trail, stopping at the crest. Below, her old house needed a coat of whitewash, and the weeds needed to be pulled at the back door. Her heart lurched at the thought of the last time she carried Hansi down the trail to it, atop her big belly.

  She found Abel in the barn, brushing his horse. “I need to speak with you,” she said.

  He smiled at her shyly.

  “My parents are leaving for Indiana soon and believe I should go with them,” she said. “I’m not certain that I’ll stay. I may come back in a year, depending on how I’m doing.”

  He nodded. The entire community knew about her struggles.

  “I was wondering, if I do . . .” She couldn’t say the rest.

  “If I would wait for you?”

  “Jah.” The word nearly stuck in her throat.

  “For a year, I will.” He met her gaze. “If your family doesn’t return, others will. We’ve seen that with those who went to Ohio over the years, haven’t we?”

  She nodded. “Denki.” Looking at Abel was like looking at Asher before he fell ill.

  “Take care of my stove,” she teased.

  He took her seriously. “It will be waiting for you. I promise.”

  Besides her clothes, she took her cow, her horse, her youngest chickens and one rooster, a lamp, a set of dishes, her salt-and-pepper boxes, her crockery and tinware, her clothes and comforter, and several woolen blankets that she’d made.

  Five other families were going west too, and by the time everyone was ready to depart, it was May, a year after Asher had once hoped to leave. The trip would take a little over a month. They would arrive with plenty of time to secure land and build barns and cabins before the weather turned cold, and hopefully they could grow enough vegetables to help get them through the winter.

  Emma was resigned to go as she told her grandfather good-bye. His faded blue eyes grew watery, and Emma fought back her own tears. He squeezed her hand. “I will pray for God’s direction for you, for wisdom,” he whispered.

  “Denki,” she managed to say. She guessed he hoped she would return, but he didn’t say so. He had been her rock and comfort through her childhood. She mourned leaving him.

  “Mach’s gut.” Dawdi let go of her hand.

  As Emma walked ahead of the covered wagon, her eyes fell to the family burial plot. Her mother had told her, in time, it would seem as if the loss of Asher and the children was part of another life. But Emma couldn’t believe she’d ever feel so.

  She would serve her family and hope she’d grow stronger, but she would find no joy in the journey.

  The travelers were known as “movers,” and instead of staying in inns, they camped under the stars at night, after covering ten to twenty miles per day, depending on the terrain and the conditions of the road.

  After one day, Emma had blisters on her feet. Dat, Phillip, and Isaac took turns driving the wagons, while Emma, wearing a bonnet to keep the sun off her face, mostly walked. She rode Red some, sitting on her pillion sidesaddle. Mamm rode in the wagon most of the time.

  The other families had young children who tugged at Emma’s heart. If only she were with Asher and their children. If only. It wasn’t the way she was raised, to dream of what wasn’t. But she couldn’t seem to stop.

  The constant dust, sweat, smoke from the campfires, and smell of the animals permeated her skin, and she felt as if it seeped out of her pores. Even when she bathed in a river once a week, if she had the chance, she didn’t feel clean. She missed the water she heated on her stove and the tub Asher dragged into the kitchen for their weekly baths. Jah, being a mover was hard.

  When they camped at night, Emma milked her cow and then helped Mamm fix dinne
r, while the men chopped wood and hauled water. Each family ate by themselves, but then the group would gather and one of the men would read a scripture, and they would all pray silently for the journey ahead. Emma found it difficult to pray, but no one would have guessed it by her bowed head and humble posture.

  In the mornings, Emma and Mamm made breakfast, boiling strong, bitter coffee in a pot and frying corn cakes and bacon, all over a campfire.

  They stayed to the east of Pittsburgh as they journeyed north and then turned west again, toward Holmes County, Ohio, to visit members of their community. Emma didn’t remember the family and friends who had left Somerset County years ago, but she had grown up hearing about them. Emma and her family stayed in Holmes County for a couple of days with a brother of Dawdi’s, resting the oxen, horses, and cows—and their own feet too—while they visited. A cobbler in the community repaired their boots, while the men shoed the oxen and horses. Dawdi’s brother, who was the youngest in that family and not much older than Dat, warned them about the Indians out west. “You should stay in Ohio. There were massacres in Indiana,” he said.

  Emma closed her eyes, not wanting to even imagine such a thing.

  But Dat replied, “We don’t have enough money to buy farms here. We’ll continue on.”

  After they left Holmes County, Emma’s heart grew heavier and heavier with each step that took her farther away from Somerset County. She grew quieter, but only Isaac seemed to notice. Emma mostly walked in silence, lost in her thoughts and memories, interrupted by an occasional reprimand from herself to stop obsessing about the past. She smiled a little, remembering how it had annoyed her when Asher obsessed about the future.

  The weather had turned hot and humid, and even though she wore her bonnet every day and her sleeves came down over her hands, Emma’s skin grew darker. They headed north to Michigan to avoid the Black Swamp in northwestern Ohio and then veered down to Indiana, traveling along the border of the two states.

  A month after they left Somerset County, Pennsylvania, they arrived in Elkhart County, Indiana.

  Emma was amazed by the heights of the trees. Poplar and sycamore soared to the sky, some as high as a hundred and fifty feet. Ash, birch, pine, and cottonwoods were also plentiful, along with black walnut, plum, and sweet crabapple trees that would all help feed them. Wild geraniums bloomed in the woods, along with late bluebells. There were marshes in the southwest corner of the county, and deer and other wildlife, including Beaha and panthers, throughout. They wouldn’t starve, that was for sure. And hopefully they wouldn’t be attacked by wild animals either.

  But the settlements in the county were few and far between, and there were few places to trade. Compared to her hilly home, the landscape was as flat as Emma was trying to keep her emotions.

  THEY SOON DISCOVERED that Joseph Miller had purchased land northeast of Goshen in Clinton Township, while his brother had purchased land in Newbury Township. Dat scouted out both areas but decided to buy land south of Goshen in Jackson Township, where the land was less expensive. With the money they saved, Dat hoped he could buy a farm for Phillip too. Emma knew Dawdi had sent money to help secure as much land as possible.

  The camping didn’t stop. The only difference now was that they were in one spot, hauling water and chopping wood and cooking over an established campfire, while Dat and the boys sawed down trees in the woods to strip and turn into logs to build a cabin.

  Mamm and Emma hoed a plot of soil and planted a garden as best they could, planting both herbs and vegetables from seeds and starts that they’d brought from home. They also planted several apple seedlings that had survived the trip because of their babying.

  Dust covered everything, from their wagon to their dishes. After it rained, usually after a thunder and lightning storm that split the sky, everything was covered in mud.

  It wasn’t long until word got out that Mamm was a midwife. One evening in mid-July, as the family ate corn cakes and ham steaks around their campfire, a man on horseback appeared.

  He took off his straw hat that appeared Plain. When he introduced himself in Pennsylvania Dutch, it was quite clear that he was Plain. “I’m Judah Landis,” he said. He didn’t have a beard, which meant he wasn’t married. His dark hair was pushed back from his head and needed to be cut. “My brother, Walter, sent me. His wife is having a hard time. It’s her first child, and she’s on her third day of laboring.” He glanced from Mamm to Emma with caring brown eyes. “We were told there’s a midwife here.”

  Mamm stood. “I’m the midwife. I’ll grab my things.” Mamm retrieved her bag from the wagon and then turned to Emma. “Come with me.”

  Emma hadn’t assisted with any births in Pennsylvania after Hansi died. She couldn’t leave Asher after he fell ill, and she had no desire to help with births after her baby died.

  Would she even remember what to do?

  Mamm told Isaac, “You come too. We need you to drive the wagon. Bring your rifle.” Emma guessed she wanted him to be available to scare off a bear or panther, if needed.

  Once Isaac had the horses hitched to the spring wagon, they followed Judah west to Union Township. The trail was rough and bumpy, but they made it through. The mosquitoes were out in force, the biggest Emma had ever seen. The toads began croaking just as dusk fell. She strained her eyes to keep sight of Judah in the night.

  Thankfully, they soon arrived at a cabin. Judah stayed outside with Isaac as Mamm and Emma let themselves in through the front door, into the dim interior. A woman lay on the bed in the corner, moaning with her arm over her eyes. A man stood nearby, his hands trembling. Relief washed over his face as he thanked them for coming. “This is Sarah.” He motioned toward the woman, who wore her hair in a long braid.

  Mamm stepped to the bed, placed her hand on Sarah’s shoulder, and told Walter to go on out with the men. Once he was out the door, Mamm spoke gently to Sarah, and Emma lit the lamp.

  Another pain seized Sarah, and she let out a cry. Emma stepped to the bed and took her hand. “Squeeze as hard as you can.” It didn’t feel as if it had been two years since Emma had helped Mamm during a birth. She remembered exactly what to do.

  When the pain passed, Emma began massaging Sarah’s shoulders while Mamm lifted up her white muslin nightgown and then ran her hands over the woman’s belly. When she finished, she said, “The baby is in position.” She reached for Sarah’s arm. “Let’s get you up.”

  Sarah’s legs shook as she stood.

  Mamm had her lean against a chair for the next pain, while Emma stoked the fire and started water to boil. She found cornmeal and started to make a gruel from it. Sarah needed some sort of nourishment.

  Between pains, Mamm tried to get Sarah to talk, to try to relax her.

  “Where are your folks?” Mamm asked as she rubbed the woman’s lower back.

  “Back in Ohio,” Sarah answered.

  “Holmes County?” Mamm asked.

  Sarah grimaced as another pain started. When it had passed, she muttered, “Just north of that.”

  “Wayne County?” Mamm asked.

  “That’s right.” Sarah continued to shake.

  Emma finished the gruel and brought a bowl to the girl, spooning bites into her mouth between her pains and also giving her drinks of water. Serving Sarah in her pain made Emma forget her own.

  Mamm kept rubbing Sarah’s back. The pains grew even worse, and Sarah screamed again.

  “You are doing what you need to do,” Mamm said to her. “Your little one will be here soon.” She whispered to Emma, “Make her a cup of chamomile tea.”

  A flash of lightning shone through the one window in the cabin and thunder crashed a moment later. As the storm continued, Sarah’s pains grew worse, even after she drank the tea. With each one, she cried out, one time calling for her mother.

  “Now, now,” Mamm said. “I am here instead. I am your mother tonight, and Emma is your sister.”

  Finally, Sarah’s water broke, and then the young woman started to push.
Mamm and Emma helped her back to the bed. The thunder had stopped, but the rain had started, washing the outside world away. The pains went on for another two hours until the head finally crowned. Then, with one last scream, Sarah pushed the baby out, and Mamm scooped him up into her arms.

  Emma’s heart stopped as she remembered her stillborn baby girl, but this baby was red and began crying immediately. Still, tears stung her eyes.

  Jah, midwifing had come back to her, but so had her loss and grief.

  THE NEXT MORNING, as Walter held his son and Judah and Isaac hitched the horses to the spring wagon, Emma stood outside the cabin. Raindrops still glistened on Sarah’s kitchen garden and on the cornstalks in the field. To the left, a flock of swifts swooped toward the willow trees along the creek and then rose in the sky and over the seemingly endless landscape. Would Emma ever get used to how flat the land was? How far away the horizon seemed?

  Mamm went home with Isaac and would return the next day to check on Sarah, but Emma would stay to cook and clean for the little family. Sarah had no one else to see to her needs, and she and Walter had set aside a sack of potatoes and some produce to give Emma in return for her help.

  As Emma breathed in the morning air, trying to reconcile both how hard it was to be at a birth again after her losses but also how wonderful it had been, riders in the distance appeared. As they grew closer, it was obvious it was a man and a woman. As they neared, Emma made out a child, a little boy, riding in front of the woman sitting sidesaddle. The woman wore a blue calico dress with a pattern of forget-me-nots and a bonnet with a wide rim. Around her neck was a string of shells. The man wore leggings and a wide-brimmed hat.

  “Jean-Paul!” Walter called out as they neared. “A son has been born to Sarah.”

  The man, who had a pipe in his mouth, waved and steered his horse toward the cabin. The woman followed. The little boy appeared to be two or so. Emma’s heart lurched at the sight of him. He had a straw hat on his head, and the shadow made his skin look darker. The woman’s hands were darker too, perhaps from the sun.